Christmas is here, or near enough, with our Christmas event kicking off this Saturday. Astro-Ginch better watch out, as those pesky terrans will seek him out for his tweak generator and other goodies.

Christmas will run from the 10th December for a bit over three weeks, extended from what we said in the weekly blog to avoid ending on New Year’s Eve. The Christmas event will now end on the 2nd of January in the new year.

The event this year will feature the normal festivities, including the return of Astro-Santa, spreading his jolly cheer and giving all the (nice, and definitely not naughty) citizens of the universe their presents. Rumor has it that the Gingerbreads have formed an empire and are lurking in the depths of space.

Missions and related content can be found from the Lapland system, which’ll appear from a new wormhole in Sol when the event starts.

Astro-Santa Letter Competition

This years competition will take a bit of a change from previous years, it’ll run as normal but the letters submitted will appear in next year’s Christmas event. This year’s event will feature all the letters we’ve ever had, going back around the last 8 years. In addition, all the letters will use the egg carton system, grouped by year, to save you from some tedious clicking.

Standard rules for the competition apply:

• You are allowed to make multiple submissions.
• Deadline for submissions is Friday 23rd December, 00:00 EST (05:00 GMT). Submissions after this date will be ignored.
• Submissions to be posted in the topic for this post.
• If you want your letter to be counted as from your player name instead of your account name, include it.
  • Ideally, put your letter in a [quote][/quote] block and leave other comments outside to make it clear what you want in your letter.
• Submissions may be excluded for reasons we see fit (such as plagiarism).

Once the deadline has elapsed, a maximum of five winners will be chosen, which’ll have their letters created for the following year. They’ll also recieve a unique permanent holoprojector, Frozen Snowflakes, and various Christmas items.

Currently

Augmenter Tweaking (AT) gives the player 4% increased effectiveness on his augs. This means that, at the max level of 25, augs are doubled in their stats. So if an aug gives +50% shield you’ll get +100% shield from this aug with AT 25.

Okay, so what is being changed?

What we will be doing is giving all the augmenters the values that they would have if they player had AT 25. What this means is that all stats on all augs will be doubled.

The new AT will increase the effectiveness of augmenters on your ship by 0.5% per level up to maximum of level 10. Players will be able to obtain the new AT skill just like the old one: through a chain of missions in The Acropolis.

Why are we making these changes?

We’ve come to realise that lower tech players are at an incredible disadvantage until they get their AT skill up to a reasonable level (often players would have far lower AT level than they would be able to acquire), especially because the AI in the early – mid levels do have AT. Missiles and Bots have been very popular in the early game and we feel that AT is partially responsible for this. Low tech augs already have low stat values, and the lack of AT makes it even worse. With this change, players will really feel an increase in their effectiveness after equipping an augmenter when they start playing the game.

What is happening to my current Augmenter Tweaking?

• Players with Augmenter Tweaking 0 – 4 will have their skill reset back to level 0.

• Players with Augmenter Tweaking 5 – 9 will have their skill lowered to level 1.

• Players with Augmenter Tweaking 10 – 14 will have their skill lowered to level 2.

• Players with Augmenter Tweaking 15 – 19 will have their skill lowered to level 3.

• Players with Augmenter Tweaking 20 – 24 will have their skill lowered to level 4.

• Players with Augmenter Tweaking 25 will have their skill lowered to level 5.

This will help players get through the missions without having to do content that is far lower than their current tech level (preventing largescale grinds).

Universe Reset

Ahab has contacted us recently about the Space Rats he’s been observing. The AI attack patterns have spread to them! Before he could dispose of them, the rats have coordinated an assault on the fabric of space time itself! These tears in the fabric of space time have destabilized the universe, the universe will implode on 13:00 EDT (18:00 BST, 17:00 GMT), on the 17th of September. Fortunately in the rubble of the old universe, a new one will be created! All characters, their skills, ships and bots will be transferred over, but deployed drones and userbases will be lost, as well as anything on the userbases! You’ll have to re-explore the universe to map everything out once again.

Hober Mallow

I’ve gone through and redone all tech 20+ ubers to use the daily/weekly lockout timers similar to the current system used by The Serengeti. I’ve also gone through and improved some underused and underpowered class super items, and plan to do more for the rest of them. I’ve also adjusted the difficulty of the Daily missions in Olympus, they should all be of relatively similar difficulty now. Eventually the Subspace Daily missions will work similarly to the Olympus Dailies. There’s a lot of other little things I’ve changed, but they don’t need to be talked about in the blog. Look out for the post I made on the forums in regards to a Video Trailer Contest! Go here for the details!

SunDog60

I’ve been working some more on Iq’ Bana, connecting all the wormholes. Aside from that I’ve also finished up the new Completionist Missions, they will be available at Sai’s Retreat next universe and will require you to complete most mission chains in the game (such as the Paxian exploration chain and the 4 Subspace mission chains). As a reward you’ll be given the Completionist Holoprojector by Pixel himself!

Blue Dwarf

The Emperor notification changes are done and are coming next patch, I’ve picked up a little bit of exciting stuff for next universe and been working on the event system save with the database.

Pixel

Pixel’s added a new boss to the Twisted Zone, to a total of 3 minibosses and 3 bosses. The boss is a giant eyeball with multiple mini eyeball guards. The items it drops are radar and cloaking based, including misc. items such as lighthouses with special bonuses.

Jey

Jey’s been trying to track down an elusive bug on the beta client where the client would flash while on low graphics. This issue has been around for a while but only happens frequently with the new compiler, as well as other bugs and crashes allowing them to be reproduced and fixed.

Hello all, this is a quick note detailing the upcoming changes to industrial commodities (effective next universe reset).  I have gone through and reduced AI base inventory size and consumption of all tier 1-3 industrial commodities. The new consumption rates are 50/day for tier 1, 15/day for tier 2, and 5/day for tier 3.  Inventory sizes are seven times these figures, across the board.  These changes were made in order to align the consumption rates of these commodities more closely to the actual extraction rates of tier 1-3 commodities.

The basic value of Metals, Nuclear Waste, and Silicon has also been adjusted. Steel Girders now price Metals at 15 credits.  Nuclear Waste is now priced at 75 credits, and Silicon is at 25 credits.  These changes were made in order to bring the credit sourcing of the system down somewhat from this uni.

The value of Promethium and Enriched Nuclear Material has also been reduced via the pricing of Sub-Shield Buffers and Reactors.  Promethium is now worth 10,000 credits and E-Nukes are worth 2,500 credits, down from 30,000 and 20,000, respectively.  Also, AI base consumption rates for these commodities have been changed to 25,000/day for Buffers and 2,500/day for Reactors.  These changes were made in order to rein in the amount of income from these particular commodities.  Our data from the current universe has shown that people were making a lot more profit than we had wanted from the Sub-Shield line of industrial commodities, so this change should rectify that issue.

As always, the calibration of industrial commodities is subject to change, usually on a once-per-universe basis. We will continue monitoring the market and make revisions to the system as needed. We welcome your input on this process.

First and foremost, this idea is still in its planning stages so anything posted here may change at any given time. The purpose of this thread is to give players a chance to weigh in at an early development stage.  We welcome any questions, concerns, and suggestions.

Why are we doing this rework?

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on a redesign for the Emperor contest. The current contest hasn’t been very fun or competitive for some time now. Long ago, the goal of every endgame team was to become Emperor of the universe. Today, the Emperor contest is a shell of its former glory. What used to be a very cool system that rallied players together to fight against the team claiming the throne has devolved into a system where players do not feel it is worth their time to even bother with it. We want to give the title of Emperor meaning again.

What exactly is changing and why?

We are planning to move Anatolia, which will be surrounded by a cluster of galaxies (more on those later) to Wild Space. This means that the galaxies will all become buildable. We made this design choice because permanent drones have become less powerful compared to player ships over the years and a small squad can take down 30 permanent Drones without too much trouble. As such, Anatolia requires a 24/7 active watch from the claiming team. While there is nothing wrong with the Emperor system being dependant on a team’s activity to some extent, the current lack of interest in defending Anatolia makes it clear that the player base would prefer a new system.

Anatolia will still be the galaxy where the Palace rests and it will be surrounded by a cluster of galaxies. We haven’t settled on a layout of the zone just yet, but you can expect something along the lines of this:

All these systems, including Anatolia itself (which is in the center), will have multiple planets of a new kind in them that doesn’t allow the construction of colonies. The planets will also have no resources other than a small amount of Nuclear Waste (which is required for the bases that will be built to stay fully operational). We’re taking these steps to ensure that players do not take these systems to make profit off of them, but only if they want to compete for the Throne.

The lore behind this area is that the war for the Throne has annihilated all surrounding star systems, leaving only ruined worlds behind.

How do you claim the Throne and how do you dethrone another team?

Anatolia and its surrounding galaxies will become buildable.  This means that becoming Emperor will be a King of the Hill contest. At the start of the universe King Midas will be the Emperor of the universe. Anatolia (and likely its surrounding galaxies to a lesser extent) will be defended by a good amount of Midas-type stations that players will have to BvB. We’re doing this to prevent players from instantly claiming Anatolia when the universe resets.

Once King Midas has been dethroned and his galaxies laid to waste, players will be able to own the Emperor zone for their team. With ownership also comes the standard rules that apply throughout Wild Space: you must own an adjacent galaxy for 24 hours before you are able to lay BvB kits in the galaxy you want to assault. The only difference is that you can only own the galaxies in this area by using outposts. The reason we don’t want them to be ownable by linking them up to a team’s HQ is simple: we don’t want a team to absorb these galaxies into their teamspace, making it more difficult for other teams to assault. The only way to dethrone a reigning team will be to blow up their palace, which they will be able to defend with their own stations.

What will the rewards for becoming Emperor be?

A team will get absolutely nothing from owning Anatolia and the palace until they build a Crown ship and manage to dock it in Sol. The rewards for becoming Emperor will be as follows:

• Ability to create one Unclean Imperial Seal every 24 hours on the palace. (already ingame)

• A 10% tithe to the reigning team that applies to colonies, sales to AI bases and credit scoops. (already partially ingame)

• A team-wide aura that will give a percentage boost the reigning team’s experience gained, shield, energy, speed and possibly an increase in hull space. We are still considering whether to apply these boosts to their bases as well (we haven’t decided on any values yet).

• The director of the team that has successfully docked the Crown in Sol will be given the opportunity to create an item of their choice (keep in mind that we do not intend to create new item types, as that would take a lot of development time). If said person would rather not design an item, they will be given a custom holo projector (which will be awesome, we promise).

Closing words

Once again I’d like to remind you all that this is in its beginning stages and nothing is set in stone. Any and every kind of feedback will be highly appreciated so feel free to comment!

Also, this rework will not go live until we are absolutely sure that BvB is stable and will cause no lag. The last thing we’d want is another Anatolia that is unkillable not because it’s so strong, but because your client crashes before you’re be able to kill anything… *cough* old Andaman Drones *cough*.

As you all should be aware, we recently change how item modifications were given to items; some of you have also noticed things aren’t quite right.

I’ve spoken with ylcepticon and we’ve (well, mainly him) done some number crunching and we’ve written the part of the process which decides how many mods you get.

Under the old system, mods were handed out “in order” they were declared in the code, the order is below:

Miniaturized, Composite, Shielded, Extended, Scoped, Dynamic, Amorphous, Radioactive, Sleek, Resonating, Docktastic, Intelligent, Amplified, Rewired, Workhorse, Evil, Superconducting, Transcendental, Overclocked, Forceful, Gyroscopic, Buffered, Superintelligent, Reinforced, Angelic.

Because of this, mods towards the end (such as Superintelligent) were less likely to be chosen.

In the old system, for a T20 ruin item, the probabilities for mods were 0.00275853 for no mods, 0.119395 for one mod, 0.31415 for two mods, 0.347688 of three mods and 0.077762 for four. To simplify and even things out, ruins have 20% chance at 0, 1, 2 3 and 4 mods. In other words, you’ll get a modded ruin item four out of five times, two and three modded ruins will be less common, but four modded ruins will be three times more likely now.
For the other mod sources (drops, droplists, bindomite and spawning (like on AI)) we’ve adapted a similar pattern with different numbers.

The changes are coming with this next micropatch, around 17:30 BST (12:30 EDT) today.

Hello!

The dev team has decided to put out a call for volunteers who are interested in helping Star Sonata grow.  We are especially looking for folks in the community who can help us record or edit promotional content for the game.  If you have skills along those lines, please send me a forum message and we’ll go from there.

We are also interested in expanding our referral system.  If you are interested in promoting Star Sonata on commission, please also get in touch with me about that!

Ladies and gentlemen, please collect your belongings and prepare to depart as this is the last stop of the universe.

This universe is coming to a close. Scientists predict the full collapse will occur on the 7th of May at 13:00 EDT (18:00 BST, 17:00 GMT).

Earthforce would like to remind you to pack your stations, recover your drones and for the paranoid, dock your bots before the collapse.

We hope to see you on the other side!

Jey

Tracked down and fixed weird crash issue relating to Control bots.
Preperation for Christmas to go live in a few days.

Ryan

I’ve been working on some brand new christmas content! I think everyone will like it a lot, there are 11 new gals and a boss that scales based on how many people are attacking it (and everyone will get personal loot).

Pixel

Worked on some lots more pretty artwork which you’ll be seeing in game soon, as well as some cool sounding items

Astro-Santa Letter Competition

The Astro-Santa letter competition is now drawing to a close with just a few hours left, so if you want to be in with a chance to win, you better send your letter to Astro-Santa!

You can find out more about this here.

Universe Reset

The Scientists have been at the eggnog, getting their party on early and in their drunkness have missed the prediction of the universe’s imposion. Fortunately, being the time of Christmas, Astro-Santa’s Astro-Elves have been hard at work making all the presents as well as conducting research for new ideas! Amongst their research findings the Astro-Elves have learnt that the universe is becoming unstable and have predicted that it’ll eventually suffer a total collapse at 540 on 9th of Aer, 153rd Grand Age of the Elves. However, due to also being drunk the Elves have made a mistake and actually the date of the collapse will be around 14 Earth days later, making the demise of our universe occur on January 16th, 2016 at 1PM EST.

Astro-Santa is soon returning to our universe to dash our systems with his presents. He’s made his list and checked it twice but he doesn’t know what to get anyone?!

Can you help out Astro-Santa by writing him a letter claiming what you want?

Yes, it’s time for our annual Astro-Santa Letter competition.
The challenge is simple and easy to do, write a letter to send to Astro-Santa and submit it to us. Your letter doesn’t even have to be a letter, it could be a song you’ve made up, a poem or haiku about Christmas. As usual bonus points for apt references to Star Sonata.

When the competition ends, we’ll choose a few of our favourites, depending how many entries there are (maximum of 5), and award the players who submitted them. Winning players will get their letter added to the game with a corresponding mission to go with it and a collection of items will be given to each player too.

• Players are allowed to make multiple submissions.
• Deadline for submissions is Thursday 17th December, 00:00 EST (05:00 GMT).
• Submissions to be posted in the topic for this post.
• If you want your letter to be counted as from your player name instead of your account name, include it. Ideally, put your letter in a [quote][/quote] block and leave other comments outside to make it clear what you want in your letter.