Space Clouds

Psionic Shrouding Micropatch Update

The Story

The Seer subskill Psionic Shrouding has been on our “radar” lately. On April 27 we began to receive reports that Seers were dodging beam attacks from bases while sneaking around killing trade bots. This surprised us because Seer doesn’t have any source of Evasion, or so we thought. After a look in the code, we discovered that Psionic Shrouding provides a hidden source of dodge chance: a hefty 20% per level! Based on how the code was written, this bonus is only meant to apply versus non-targeted damage, i.e. when a stray shot happens to pass over the Seer. The logic is that a cloaked Seer should have a pretty good chance to avoid getting hit by shots that are intended for someone else, or when the attacker can’t see them anymore.

seer

 

The Problem

The problem is that the scenario being reported didn’t match our expected behavior. The bases could see the Seer and shoot at it, and yet the Seer was able to dodge. After further review of the code and comprehensive testing with the help of some players, we figured out the problem. The code was checking if the Seer was “invisible” to the attacker, not “undetectable.” As a result, any time the Seer was detected by radar, but not in visual range, they would receive the bonus 60% dodge chance from Psionic Shrouding.

Why Now?

This isn’t the first time Seers have been reported sneaking around galaxies to “pop” trade bots. That type of sabotage has been a staple of player conflicts for years. Why is it that we have only just identified the problem? In this case, unlike all previous ones, the player who reported the issue was able to provide us with new information we had never heard before: that Seers were dodging targeted beam attacks from bases. In all previous instances, the reports we received were solely that Seers were killing trade bots, which could have simply been due to lacking radar bonuses on the defensive bases. We had no reason to suspect a bug until now.

The Changes

  1. The Psionic Shrouding bonus of 20% dodge chance per level has been changed to only apply when the attacker cannot view or detect the Seer.

  2. The client description of Psionic Shrouding will be updated next patch to include the 20% dodge chance per level versus attackers that do not detect the Seer.

Disclaimer

I want to be frank that this mechanic was brought to light by the war between Eminence Front and Star Revolution X, and that the proposed change may have some effect on that war. Large-scale conflict between endgame players always tends to expose quirks and bugs in the system, so this is nothing new. However, I want to respect players’ time and not make unnecessary changes to the game while a war is in progress. For that reason, I sought feedback from twenty-four current members of the affected teams (Eminence Front and Star Revolution X) who also work in various roles on the dev team. The proposal received unanimous support as a sensible change that addresses an obvious bug.

As many players already know, I am always available on Discord @enk#3571 if you have any questions or comments about the game or the operations of the dev team. Drop me a line!

Easter 2020

Easter is here! The bunnies have setup shop in Eastern Warren accessible from Sol, Elmer Fudd has returned to Handel’s Cove and is on the hunt for rabbits, and egg boxes litter the universe. The event will run until April 24th.

Happy hunting!

Stay at Home Special Free PvP Event Server

A lot of people are stuck at home and bored, so Star Sonata will be launching a temporary new, totally free, PvP oriented server! The PvP server will last for 30 days with prizes for players who beat certain challenges.

This special event server will launch on Saturday, March 21 at 1:00 pm EST.  It will end after Sunday, April 19.  Hopefully we’ll be allowed out of our houses by then.

There will be some minor difference compared to Liberty, the main server.

  • All areas except Nexus will be open PvP

  • Repair costs are increased and death will cause 10% durability damage for increased credit drops after a PvP kill

  • Universe size will be smaller and Wild Space will have a unique shape

  • Subspace will be disabled

  • Reworked Zen of Shield and Energy skills

  • Item mod rate is increased

  • Every aspect of playing on this new server is completely free. No subscription required for anything.

  • Logging in to the PvP server requires an account on the main Liberty server.  For your rewards to transfer to your main account, log in with that account. If you are returning and no longer have an account on Liberty, please create one there before moving over to the PvP server.

The server challenge rewards are:

Challenge

Reward

First person to claim Emperor

100 Space Points (a $50 value)

First person to level 1900

Special tech 20 Plague Rat ship

First kill of Emperor in UZ

A unique personal tech 22 version of any UZ ship

First kill of Pretender Zeus

A unique personal tech 22 version of any Olympus ship

First 190 people to have a level 601+ character

+1 character slot on live plus their top character and all its stuff will be copied over to live at the end of the event.  Names that are duplicates to live will have a random number appended to them when copied over.

To claim one of the first 4 rewards, send a screen cap of your accomplishment with your character name to an admin, and we will verify on the admin panel. Winners will be announced as we go. Once 190 characters have reached level 601, we will make an announcement and copy down a list of those people. Their stuff and rewards will be granted at the end of the event.  Let the chaos commence.

If you haven’t already, join our Star Sonata Discord channel.

Zebucart attack

Subscription Changes

As of the patch on March 3rd, premium characters (p2p) are now able to log back onto their accounts with f2p status!

The following list describes exactly what this means for you today, and a few more changes that will go into effect next universe reset.

Lapsed Subscription Changes

Current Universe Changes

  • Trade skills are enabled
  • Bases cannot be placed in Wild Space
  • Bases in Wild Space will function normally
  • Trade Bot orders will be executed normally
  • T21+ skills will be retained (this won’t change)
  • PvP in Wild space is enabled
  • Access to premium zones (Perilous Space, Kalthi Depths, Subspace, etc) is disabled.

Next Universe Changes

  • Trade skills will be disabled
  • Bases cannot be placed in Wild Space
  • Bases in Wild Space cannot fire, extract, or trade
  • Trade Bot orders will not be executed in Wild Space
  • T21+ skills will be retained (this won’t change)
  • PvP in Wild Space is disabled
  • Access to premium zones (Perilous Space, Kalthi Depths, Subspace, etc) is disabled.

**All of these changes are subject to alterations between now and reset.

Additional Changes

Next Universe Notification Changes

  • Any subscribed account without auto-renew enabled will receive an email notification one week before the subscription expires.
  • A team message will be announced one day before bases lose bonuses (optional toggle in settings)

Future Subscription Bonuses

  • XP boost: 25% more XP from kills
  • 10 extra docked ship slots
  • 1000 extra TSL capacity
  • Setting up auto-renewal will reward one extra SP per month renewed!

Major Changes This Weekend

With the upcoming Universe Reset on January 11th, there will be some changes that are coming that will be important to keep in mind.

Galaxy Assault

Notifications

Deploying a BvB station against another team will result in a warning notification in that team’s chat.

Off-Team Healers

We discovered a longstanding bug in the code that controls hate generation through healing. The upshot of the bug was that off-team healers did not receive hate from the enemies of the people they were healing. We have corrected this bug, so healing someone who is in a fight will automatically mark you as a participant as well. This will include AI fights as well. There is a warning message now to let you know if healing a person will generate hate from another player. Also, safety lock will not let you heal someone if it generates player hate.

Lockdown

Destroying a defending station during BvB will trigger a 2-hour lockdown* that prevents the defenders from creating additional fortifications in that galaxy. Lockdown covers actions such as deploying permanent drones and bases, repairing bases, and commandeering abandoned bases. Also, the defenders cannot unown a galaxy that is in lockdown. The purpose of these changes is so that defenders cannot indefinitely prolong defeat by deploying new kits and repairing destroyed ones.

*Edited from 1 hour! Since this post went live, players expressed concerns that a 1-hour lockdown would cut things pretty tight for the attackers. This change is designed to benefit attackers, not make their lives more difficult, so that feedback had us worried. We have decided to debut the lockdown mechanic with a 2-hour timer instead. We apologize for the last-minute change and will do our best to get your feedback earlier next time.

EF Layer

The remaining systems in EF layer that allow pvp are being changed to not allow pvp. This will largely affect Hyper as you will no longer be able to contest the system from the owning team.

 

Instance Scaling

Thanks to some hard work from Ingendum, we’ve released Instance Scaling!

When running your normal instance dungeons and bosses, you now have the option to increase the difficulty, and loot drops, of the ai in them! With the increased difficulty, the loot drops will increase by a rate of sqrt(N), up to +231% with a 11x modifier, where N is your difficulty modifier. This can currently go from 1x difficulty to 11x! To increase the difficulty of your instance, all your squad leader needs to do is a few easy steps.

Go into your squad window and create a squad.

3

Click on the Instance Difficulty button on the bottom of the window.

1

Use the scaling tool to determine how much harder you want the fight to be and click Confirm!

2

Star Sonata 2020

Happy 2020, Star Sonata!

2019 was a busy year for us, with an active dev and QA team and lots of little improvements that have been patched in. In addition there are some huge changes and improvements that are currently on test2 server being thoroughly tested before an early 2020 release. Some of the things that we added in 2019 are:

  • AI Empires
  • Instance Scaling
  • Improved the graphics for many weapons and engines using a new particle system
  • We fought Rattie Moe by the hundreds, and the server is running so fast now, there was almost no lag
  • Bonnet Expansion
  • Lots of conversions of clunky trade in missions to the new alternate currency system
  • Revamp of Strontium-90 missions
  • Ongoing improvements to Kalthi Depths
  • Comet improvements
  • Market check improvements
  • V Formation improvements and other bot AI improvements
  • Improved Zebucart boss fight
  • Revamp of cloaks
  • Revamp of overloaders
  • Rebalance of exterminators
  • Rebalance of fighters and fighter bay improvements
  • Rebalance of drones
  • Rebalance of engines
  • Torpedo rework and rebalance
  • Rebalanced Pulse Guns and Mag Cannons
  • Improved parasite code and balanced parasite damage

We have some major changes to BvB that will be added with the new universe this month, and termites 2.0 to be patched mid-uni.

Healing Revamp and Other Things on Test2

On test2 are the exciting changes we’ve been working on revolving Shield Monkey and healing changes. Healing no longer manufactures shields by big reductions to the shields lost with resistances, so you don’t get the weird situation where cross healing is super efficient. HPS has been generally increased, but those shields have to come from somewhere. At level 1 of Shield Monkey, ShM’s get 1 extra shield slot in support freighters, and at level 2, they gain the ability to steal shields from enemies with shield transference weapons.

Zen of the Shield has been changed to +5% shield max and +1% shield regen per level, so everyone can have a much higher shield bank and not be so worried about being 1-shot by bosses and in PvP. Long battles will still be about shield sustain, but with more margin for safety. Shield Monkeys can alternate between healing and stealing without needing to worry about constantly healing the tank without him dying. Shield chargers have been made incredibly stronger, but now only operate out of combat. They won’t suck up your energy during a fight, and when the fight is over, you can quickly fill back up again. For recon class, that means they can even dip in and out of fights to fill up their shields if they can get away from the enemies for long enough.

Transference Power now increases the strength of shield transference lasers while healing, and Transference Efficiency increases the strength of shield transference lasers while stealing. Damage tweaks and buffs now only apply to shield stealing and not healing, but overall, HPS has been increased, as the intended bottleneck is not how fast you can heal, but how fast you can get the shields with which to heal. Many augmenters with transference power and/or efficiency have had their stats slightly altered.

Most resistances have been removed from most ships and replaced by a combination of a new armor stat and higher shield banks from Zen of the Shield. This is in an attempt to move away from the Pokemon-like system where you have to memorize what is vulnerable to what and the only difference between the damage types is just needing the right type for the right enemy. Armor works mostly as a “resist all” stat, with the exception that it is doubly effective against physical, and half effective against mining and transference stealing.

Since the various damage types are no longer as useful as ways to bypass resistances, some types have been increased in power and/or utility. Physical weapon strength has been increased in power by 22%, making them the strongest damage type, generally, though higher in DPE and lower in DPS than energy. Radiation weapons have been increased in power by 33%, and are now the ethereal type of damage. “Laser” damage type no longer exists. Surgical damage on a target is now tracked, and when an AI dies, it has up to twice as much change to drop augmenters and items (but not items from drop tables) based on how much surgical was used to kill it, with the last hit being slightly overvalued in the calculation. Kills against players and their possessions can cause up to twice the item damage and drop up to twice the credits based on how much surgical was used.

For now the way that bases heal will be left mostly how it is on live as to not disrupt the current BvB meta. Base healing will probably get changed at the uni reset following this one, but we will be sure to let you know.

Road Ahead

We had some lofty goals at the beginning of 2019, mostly a full class rebalance and release of tech 23 content. Those got delayed because we wanted the ability to fully branch code and content in order to really test and polish and not hold up our regular patch schedule for minor improvements and bug fixes. But being able to fully branch like this is dependent on me converting all of our many balance sheets over to a new system that I devised, which is powerful, but takes a lot of work. All the various rebalancing of engines, cloaks, weapons, shields, etc that you’ve seen over the last year or so are the results of the new balance sheets. It just takes a ton of time, and I spent almost the whole year personally working on Excel sheets and VBA macros. What I thought would take about a month has been about a year and a half now, but a lot of the changes to the sheets have really improved the way we can make and design items, and should pay off in the years ahead.

Because it was taking so long, we decided to do the Shield Monkey and healing first, rather than waiting for everything to go in one gigantic update. The Shield Monkey rebalance has gone really well and received very good feedback from testers. It will be ready to go soon, and possibly will be paired with some minor changes to Engineer class skills and rebalancing of all of the support freighter hulls. We have a new balance sheet for ships that is really cool, using a “perk” system, but it will result in a lot of changes, since our current stats for ships are largely unbalanced. To minimize disruption for the players, but to push updates out without waiting for everything to be done, we are thinking to rebalance classes two at a time by related hull type, and rebalance ships of that hull type together.

Our nearterm roadmap for 2020 is to release the Shield Monkey and possibly minor Engineer changes described above very soon, finish the few remaining balance sheets, release the mod rework and the new cargo system, and then proceed with the other class rebalance two at a time. We have a lot of design work done of the tech 23 stuff, but we want to get the class rebalances done before that can be released.

Fighter Rebalance: Reloaded

developer_blog Hello Sonatians! The last time I spoke to you about Fighters it was to tell you that we were in the process of changing them and we needed your feedback. As a result of that feedback, we settled on some long term goals that I am about to lay out for you. While implementing the features neccessary to make those goals a reality, Fighters were left in a place that was a little too one dimensional. Now, we have finally implemented everything and I am happy to share that what looks like!

unknown[1]

Main Objectives

  1. Fighters will be more powerful when launched from the Main player ship, and less powerful from Bots. Fighters should be able to account for roughly a third of the Fleet Commanders total damage output, more if they decide to specialize.
    1. Bots that launch fighters should, roughly, output a third of the damage their Owner is able to output.
    2. Players will either be able to launch lots of smaller, weaker fighters OR a few bigger, stronger fighters.
    3. Some fighters will have secondary effects of some sort.
  2. Fighters will benefit from a player actively managing them rather than passively deploying them.
    1. Fighters will no longer be generated from generators, and instead they will enter a destroyed state that can be repaired by the player.
    2. There will be rarer Fighter bays with faster deployment times to enable faster reaction to changing scenarios.
  3. Fighters will have more opportunities for growth and differentiation by way of Fighter Bays, Auras, the Flight Controller skill, Advanced Class Subskills, Imperial/Kalthi skills and varied types of Fighters.

fleet

Stronger Fighters

Fighters will be situated halfway between drones and bots. This means they will fly to intercept a target of your choice (like a bot), but cost energy to deploy and enter a destroyed state that requires repair when damaged (like a drone). Fighters will generally be more resilient as well. Players should see a greater variety of fighters, with different damage types and energy requirements across said fighters, making your choice of fighters even more important. unknown[1]

Active Management

Fleet Commanders’ will use short duration super item aura’s to significantly increase the power of fighters, and only fighters. The deployment of the right fighter for the right situation will be important, as having your fighters destroyed will mean you need to repair them ( In order to repair your combat bot’s fighters, you must select the bot and press X. A menu will appear and at the bottom, you will see a Repair option. If you click it, your bot will repair everything on it, including their fighters). Players will be able to recall their fighters by using the fighter bay itself in the event that they need to get their fighters out of harm’s way. This will cause the player’s fighters, and also their combat bot’s fighters, to instantly be teleported back into the ship that launched them.

kalthicommander2.jpg

Growth and Differentiation

Fighters will have far more variety based on the type of weapon that they use, the type of damage they do, how resilient they are, how fast they are, and whether or not they have a powerful secondary effect. These may be further augmented in the future by Advanced Class Subskills that allow a player to really embody the roll of a carrier. At present, Advanced Flight Controller is the only skill that directly affects a Fleet Commander’s fighters. In addition: Your Fighters will inherit the same skills bonuses your Bots and Drones inherit. This means things such as Imperial Skills will affect them. All Bots, Drones and Fighters inherit 50% of these skill bonuses.

All of these changes should be coming in with the upcoming patch, keep your eyes peeled!

Weekend Event 11/23/19

Hello again!

A weekend event is now active! Enjoy your 2x prospecting bonus, 8x prospecting node refill rates, and 25% boost to comet drops!

Enjoy the event,.
Kilando

Weekend Event 10/18/19

 

 

Hello again!

This weekends event will feature a 2x increase to Mod drop chances!MegaMoe

Thanks again to the players who helped test Mega Moe on the 17th.
We will be giving an additional 2x increase to prospecting rates, 2x increase to aug drop chances and a prospecting refill rate boost of 8x!
Enjoy your event!

~Kilando

Bonnet Ships

With the new Bonnet expansion out and live, here are some teasers for what all the new ships look like!

 

 

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