It’s time to celebrate! Ten years ago today, 12th November 2011, our brave pilots stepped into a brand new universe. After years of work Star Sonata 2 was ready to be released, and while the road may not have been the smoothest, we have made some great strides in that time.

10 Years Event

To celebrate, we’re hosting an event running from 12th November, 18:00 UTC (13:00 server time) until 23rd November at 05:00 UTC (00:00 server time). During this time we’ll have a whole slew of bonuses running. Anyone who logs on during this time will receive a commemorative holoprojector, Sonata, Second Impression, in recognition of the event. Each day (that is midnight to midnight, starting on the 13th at 05:00 UTC) players who login will also receive a new, special item, a visage kit. There are a total of ten, one for each day, to collect. The ten visage kits coming with this event span the tech ranges from tech 1 to tech 22. More will be coming in the future.

The bonuses for the event are increased augmenter (50%) and bindomite drops (10%), increased chances on mod rolls for dropped items and loot (10%), and prospecting node refill rate (10%) and amount extracted (10%), and comet drops (50%) until 22nd!

Visage Kits

Visage kits are a new type of item. They can be combined with the item listed in their description to alter the appearance of that item. The item you are combining it with must be unequipped. Once combined the item becomes neurobound (so use your Bindomite before combining), however you can reverse the process at any time by selecting Dismantle from the right click menu on that item.

Just a quick heads up that while most of the world has now come out of their DST (or entered it, for countries following DST in the southern hemisphere), the US and Canada do not come out of DST until the day after the universe reset.

That means it’s one of those rare occasions where for a lot of us the universe reset is at a different hour to normal. To reiterate, here’s the countdown timer and the times for a few timezones;

Server Down for Emergency Maintenance due to a large bug. We are currently researching the issue.

More information will be posted on the SS Discord. We have no ETA at this time.

Edit: Issue was resolved.

The Halloween event has started, and Spacey has been busy!

Spacey has opened wormholes accessing Plaguespace throughout the universe. From these wormholes poured hordes of vampyres, pumpkins, will o’ wisps, trolls, and undead space rats!

Please, help contain these intrusive beings until the plans to evacuate the universe are complete!
If you run into one of the many entrances to Plaguespace, do battle the space rats inside to help stem the influx of them into our universe!

Spacey has informed us that Halloween will run until the universe collapses on November 6th!
Happy Halloween!

Lyceum Bulletin:

The Mad Scientist has done it again!

Reports are flooding in of an explosion radiating out from the laboratory located in Lunacy. After an experiment mixing Eridium, Adamantium, and Dark Matter failed to be conducted properly, the scientist was seen fleeing the lab yelling, “It’s not my fault!”

Nobody has seen or heard from the scientist since that date and authorities are advising everyone to begin packing for the universe relocation program! The containment unit housing the experiment has begun leaking an unknown particle into the universe. Lyceum scientists began studying the leaking particle shortly after receiving news of the explosion and have provided the following statement.

After extensive examination of the radiation leaking from the explosion site, top scientists predict the collapse of the universe to be on November 6th, 2021. Citizens are asked to ensure all personal assets and fleets are properly stored.

Dev Notes

• Bases, permanent drones, and the credits on active bots will be lost.
• Player ships will not be affected
• If you’re docked during the reset, you will spawn into the new universe using your docked active ship.
  • Careful not to spawn into the new universe in an immobile ship!
• Wild Space will be scrambled and receive a new map shape.
• All other layers will have the systems scrambled but contain the same shape.
• After a universe reset, all of your docked ships will be in a state of limbo allowing you to dock them all at any non-player station. For the first 72 hours of the new universe, you can use the /limbo chat command only once to bring all of your docked ships back into limbo to dock them elsewhere.
  • For those familiar with the limbo command, going forward the timer has been extended from 24 hours to 72.

Lyceum Bulletin:

We have just received word of a major disruption within the fabric of the Universe.  Reports are coming in from wild space that an interdimensional traveler has phased in and out of our universe creating vast distortions of our reality.  It is said that this traveler has impressed upon our reality a cataclysm of change due to a contract he has made with the Trans-Dimensional Bean Counters. Our top researchers have discovered a haiku communique left behind in the wake of the traveler:

“New I shall create

A hat I shall never eat

Please save my stomach”

 After carefully examining this haiku we expect a tremendous upheaval within our universe leaving behind a resonance of something new. Top scientists predict the collapse of the universe to be on June 26th, 2021. Citizens are asked to ensure all personal assets and fleets are properly stored.

Dev Note:  Credits on active bots and bases will be lost as well as permanent drones. Player ships will not be affected.

Dear Pilots,

There have been a lot of changes in the Universe of Star Sonata and the finalization of the Healing Revamp is here! The development team has been hard at work updating damage mitigation, adding a new cargo system, and a plethora of other changes to improve balance and game dynamics.

We have also overhauled the endgame bosses in Prejudice, Dragon’s Lair, and Akuq’ba for a more dynamic and challenging experience!

Star Sonata understands the importance of progression and our duty to ensure players get a head start on these redesigned bosses, so we are having a Boss Lockout Event! These bosses will be available every 24 hours to challenge as well as the weekly missions that complement Prejudice, Dragon’s Lair, and Akuq’ba.

Just to throw a bit more juice in your flux capacitor, every boss and mission that falls within a weekly lockout cycle will also be reset every 24 hours during this event!

The event will run April 23rd – 25th and April 30th – May 2nd.  That is two weekends jam-packed with bosses and missions so don’t miss out! Reclaim your place in the Universe and get ready for the Boss Lockout Event!

Star Sonata Dev Team

We are proud to announce the next chapter of the Star Sonata story:

The Rise of the Space Rat Empire

Rattie Moe has returned to unite his race under one banner and realize his vision of a dung covered paradise. They have descended upon Anatolia and claimed it for themselves. The Space Rat Empire has even brought the UrQa to their knees, enslaved them as a vassal race, and unleashed their full might onto their foes.

Their future reign of the universe has shattered the uneasy peace of Earthforce space. It will be up to the heroes of the universe to pass judgement on those who dare to steal the Terran Throne.

New Features

• New Ships: Players will wield the captured corpses of rats that have been hollowed out and outfitted with the latest in stolen technology.
• New Zone: Descend back to where it all began with your old friend Ahab against the Home nest of Rattie moe. Finding the space not how you left it, setting the tone for a cheese and dung filled wonder-land of squeaky-large proportions.
• New Customization: Improved Avatar Options: A host of new holoprojector appearance options for all ships will be made available to players when they defeat their enemies to emulate their Rodent enemies.
• New Weapons: Defecate all over your foes with brand new Dung Rockets, Dung Missiles and other Dung themed weapons.
• BvR: Enjoy a new side of Star Sonata with a new, RTS-capable Base Versus Rat layer replacing Wild Space. Battle teeming hordes of Moe’s minions that come to gnaw apart the universe.

Only you can heed Moe’s call of nature…

Coming June 2021

In response to an incident that occurred at 6:28 PM Eastern today, the server has been taken down. The server will be down for approximately 1.5-3 hours and have a 1 hour and 20 minute rollback.

The incident was the result of us turning off a parameter that stopped worker ration consumption. Unexpectedly, the workers had been counting all of their missed meals while they were not allowed to go on strike, and decided that since they could eat again, they would eat all of their missed meals as well. This event occurred due to the parameter being left in an enabled state for a long period of time and was missed during its testing phase.

We are currently working to fix the issue, but when the server comes back up it will be reset to its save state as of 6:00 pm Eastern. This will result in the ration event to be completely reverted and any stations to be in the state they were in before we enabled worker ration consumption.

We apologize for the oversight that allowed this bug to slip to live, and will be enabling double build speed and colony growth rate for two days in recognition of this inconvenience. As an added silver lining, the unexpected downtime will result in the fix to superlasers going live at the time the server is brought up again.

Greetings! Earlier this week, I posted a rundown of the big Update that’s hitting on February 7. Now that the contents of the patch are locked in, I’m back with a follow-up on a few items that missed the cutoff and will be included in Version 1.1 a few weeks after the initial patch.

What’s in the Update??

If you’re curious to see how the game will look after the Update, point your game client to the LiveTest server from the login screen. You can access the Community Testing Event galaxy from Sol, where all player-obtainable gear is accessible for your testing enjoyment. We are also working on updating stat tables on the wiki so that theorycrafters have easy access to this information. I’ll post on Discord when the wiki update is complete.

Jey worked extra hard and got several late changes into Version 1.0. These include the changes to shields that make balanced shields more useful and the work on shield transference weapons that introduced greater variability in healing output and weapon range and tracking. The quality changes to the loot of Bana King and Black Nightfury are also included in Version 1.0.

What’s Waiting Till Version 1.1?

Due to Jey’s hard work, all major components of the project are included in the first patch. However, we do have an assortment of side projects and one-off changes that will have to wait till Version 1.1. I want to make sure you feel able to get out there and explore the Update from the start, so I’m going to grant another universal augmenter reset upon release of Version 1.1. Just as the first one, this reset will be activated using the command /freeAugreset, and will be available on every ship that pre-exists the release of Version 1.1. Make sure you use up the one you’re granted on February 7, as any ships that still have their reset from the first round will not accumulate a second one with Version 1.1.

Here’s a rundown of biggest components of Version 1.1:

• Market Check command support added for wildcard and spelling errors, yields interactive list of matches.
• Ultimate Art class augmenters will remain Exotic but their stat distributions will be adjusted to better reflect their pre-Update stats.
• Perilous Augmenter’s quality tier will be increased to Exotic.
• All solar panels will be converted to hybrid functionality.
• Transference weapons with low tracking (20 degrees) will be adjusted for greater usability.
• Adjustments/script improvements to Twisted, Bana King, and Black Nightfury (see next section!)

In addition to these scheduled items, Version 1.1 will also contain any adjustments and fixes that result from player feedback on Version 1.0. It’s my highest priority to address any issues with Version 1.0 without delay, and I’ll do everything in my power to keep Version 1.1 on the fast track.

Endgame Boss Improvements

Thanks to some great testing work from players, we learned that certain bosses got a bit too easy at some point along the way. The ones that concerned us most are Bana King, and Black Nightfury, and the three top bosses of Twisted, as these bosses are the sources of some of the highest quality loot in the game. When we first got the reports, we could have simply cranked up the stats of the bosses and called it a day, but this wouldn’t really have addressed the root problem. These bosses just aren’t designed in a way that goes well with the Healing/Support Update: they all involve high pressure damage and are pretty oriented toward tank-and-spank. Going forward, we want bosses to rely less on pressure damage and more on burst effects with clear tells. We also want to pack more tactical moments into boss encounters and cut down on the average time to kill. For this reason, we’ve decided to substantially rework these five boss encounters, for release with Version 1.1. In fact, three out of five reworks are already complete as of today, but unfortunately it’s not possible to incorporate that work into the February 7 patch at this late stage.

As with the Healing/Support Update as a whole, it’s our responsibility to justify any disruptions we make to existing content (especially when the content has been around for years). I believe that these five bosses are going to be much more enjoyable to fight without being inappropriately challenging. As a side benefit, Bana King and Black Nightfury will also have increased drop rates of their highly coveted loot, enabled by some improvements I made to the dev tool for drop rates.

Since these five bosses are not currently in an acceptable state and are slated for revision in the very near future, I have decided to lock their zones upon Version 1.0 release until Version 1.1. I understand that this means missing several valuable lockouts, and have the following special event prepared to compensate. Starting with the Update launch and until the release of Version 1.1, we will have double augmenter drop rates, double item modification rates, and a major prospecting event. I picked these bonuses because they will make the rest of PvE content substantially more rewarding while you wait for us to unlock the five bosses in question.