An issue has been identified where players have been placing low tech attached drones throughout the Earthforce Layer to intentionally use up base slots on planets and moons.

To fix this issue, the upcoming patch will be removing any attached drones in Earthforce Layer.

Any attached drones in storage will be converted from attached drones to unattached drones. The only drones that will be removed from space will be the ones in the Earthforce Layer.
Any currently attached drones in Wild Space will not be affected.

Many people play video games as a way to unplug from the worries and responsibilities in their lives. This is especially common in role-playing games, which encourage players to escape to an entirely different persona and explore a world or universe that’s not quite like our own. In Star Sonata, our friendships and conflicts mostly play out in our virtual world between our virtual characters. It’s easy to forget that even your sworn enemy in-game is just an ordinary person like yourself, with hopes, dreams, fears, and faults. Right now, there are people in our community who are scared, anxious, and hurting. We owe it to them to respond with compassion and solidarity, not only because there would be no Star Sonata without its community, but because helping those in need is the right thing to do.

Police brutality is wrong and unacceptable. Police infringing on citizens’ rights to peaceably assemble is wrong and unacceptable. Police assaulting, arresting, and maiming journalists is wrong and unacceptable. Racist and discriminatory policing practices in the United States must be brought to an end.

I am running a donation-matching campaign with a fund of $1,000 of my own money. I will match up to $100 per contribution to any local organization that is working to end police brutality in the United States. I specifically ask for donations to local organizations because of the immediate impact these organizations can have on the communities they serve. For more information, reach out to @enk#3571 on Discord.

In compassion and solidarity,

Anil “Enk” Venkatesh
Lead Content Developer

We’re hard at work preparing to make the Steam launch a success, but I just wanted to take a moment to share the ways that our community can help spread the word of our Steam launch both before and after we hit June 12th.

Wish-listing on Steam

We are really close to a major milestone in our wishlist counts. We’ve got the largest email campaign we’ve ever undertaken underway and it’s yielding great results, but we need even more! Every wishlist counts, and the sooner we can hit higher numbers the more people we’ll be able to reach with our launch. Please add the game to your wishlist if you haven’t already, and if you haven’t ask your friends to do so as well!

Play the game through Steam

Once we launch, it will help us greatly if you download and play the game through Steam. The more players we have playing through Steam, the more likely we are to get featured as a popular new release, so this is very important! Ideally, all of our existing players would play through Steam for the 30 days after we launch.

To help encourage this, we’re going to be having a launch event exclusive to players playing through Steam.

This will include:

• 50% bonus to XP from all sources, if playing through Steam.
• An exclusive holo-projector granted to you, the first time you login through Steam.

Purchases through Steam

Purchasing any of our offerings through Steam helps us earn a higher placement on the new releases section of Steam. We’ve got some really good deals to make it worth it, so if you’re able I hope that you’ll consider them!

Steam Starter Pack

We’ll be offering a starter pack, available exclusively through Steam on June 12th. This will include: 3 months of subscription, 5 exclusive skins to low level ships, and a unique holoprojector that you won’t be able to get anywhere else. The base cost will be $19.99 but we’ll be discounting it during the week after our launch. This is a really good deal even just for the subscription time itself!

Bonus Space Points

When buying space points through Steam for a short period of time after launch, we’ll be offering a bonus 10 Space Points with every purchase (even the 20 SP bundle!). This is the first time we’ve ever offered a discount on space points, and not something we’re planning on doing again anytime soon!

At long last, now that we’ve been approved for release, we’re ready to announce that Star Sonata 2 will be releasing on Steam on June 12th, 2020!

There have been many changes to the game over the years, but one thing has remained consistent: the passion for this universe that we all spend so much time in both as developers and as players. It goes without saying, but I think we’re all very excited at the opportunity that releasing on Steam will present to bring new players into our community!

We’ll be sharing ways that players can help us spread the word, but one of the most important will downloading and playing the game through steam during the launch window. We will absolutely continue to support direct downloads through the website, but this will be critical in helping us spread the word on our launch.

We’ll be hard at work up until that day making improvements and additions. We’ll have more announcements to come in the weeks ahead!

Hi everyone! I want to give you a quick update on some improvements we have been making to the player feedback system. Earlier this year, Community Manager Kilando set up the #ideas and #feedback channels on the public Discord server, and we have collected a lot of great feedback from you all. The one downside we see with the current system is that it’s hard for devs to catch all the different ideas as they fly by in the chat, resulting in some good ideas getting buried.

New Suggestion System

In order to keep track of everyone’s comments, we are launching a community suggestions page. On a weekly basis, we will create focused discussion channels on Discord for the top-voted suggestions to help keep everything organized. On top of this, Senior Content Developer Hober Mallow will hold a weekly town hall meeting to discuss the top suggestions of the week. He will be assisted in this role by Kilando and myself, in addition to a number of community members who have volunteered their time as “Paxian Balancers” to help keep the new discussion channels flowing well. With the new system in place, we hope to collect and act on community priorities much more quickly than ever before.

How To Participate

So you’ve got an idea that would make Star Sonata better. Here’s how you get it into consideration.

1. Create a suggestion explaining your idea and why you think it would improve the game. You may wish to first workshop your idea informally in the general Discord channels so that you come up with the best presentation.

2. Vote in favor of your suggestion, and encourage others to do the same. If you see any other good suggestions posted, consider voting for them as well! It’s not a competition–any reasonably popular suggestion will get its own dedicated discussion channel.

3. Keep an eye out for the dedicated discussion channels that will be created for popular suggestions. The better a suggestion gets polished in these channels, the sooner it will be placed on a town hall meeting agenda.

4. Accounts that are either subscribed or have a level 100 character are eligible to vote/create a suggestion. Eligible accounts start with 30 votes and get 30 new votes every month. Creating a suggestion costs 3 votes. Eligible accounts can only vote 3 times on a single suggestion.

5. If you are especially passionate about game balance, you may consider applying to become a “Paxian Balancer” community volunteer. If you are interested, reach out to Hober Mallow to learn more about the roles and responsibilities of Paxian Balancers.

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.

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 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!

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:

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.

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!

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.

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

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