followup patch 11.10.2017

–This patch is currently available on livetest.starsonata.com and will be on live on Friday evening–
UI/Client
* Fixed and improved the ship info dialog: Now shows firing arc for lasers, more decimals for resistance and correctly updates the ship visage when changing ships.
* Fixed UseSome not working on bases (already live)

Fixes
* Fixed description of space blue delta fighter generator mission.
* Fix for item teleporter not working properly
* Fixed disconnect on importing a very large trade log
+ Fixed Twisted AI station textures.
* Centered and Strategic deployment no longer get disabled if your drones and/or bases are attacked.
* Fixed a bug with factories where their total allowed cost was 2.4b

Balance Changes / Additions
* One sided war declaration now cause hostility on both sides.
+ Roaming Icepick Hunters and Roaming Stellas in Perilous Space now have their spawner locations randomized upon death.
* Adjusted Cleft Claw to use a tech 16 energy instead of tech 21.
+ Removed the need for and drop chance for deep/dark jungle keys
* TBFD 9000 drone now costs 50mil to repair.
+ Added new refund missions for Twisted Tesla Augmenter within the Twisted Manufacturing AI station.
* The Pax Astronomica Insurance mission within Brigand’s Stronghold has been renamed to Pax Astralogica Insurance, and will refer to the targets as Astrologicas instead of the playership version (Astralogica).
* Changed many dg drop bps from none/scrappable, to diploma/mention turn ins
* Changed Twisted tweak crates Junkyard scrappable level from 1 to 2.
* Lowering the Mining resistance on a few ships to make sure they have lower Mining resistance than userbases do so these ships aren’t as effective in tanking userbases.
** Poseidon Wave(+)/Poseidon Crown: Mining from 75% to 60%, Surgical from 60% to 75%
** Isvas’ayu: Mining from 70% to 50%, Surgical from 50% to 60%
** Twisted Vanguard / Adam’s Karkh’ala Scythe: Mining from 70% to 50%, Surgical from 45% to 55%
+ Tier 0 Industrial Commodities Steel Girders, Sentient Chatbots, Fusion Cells, Paxian Figurines and Fine Space Whisky now have a minimum price of 20% rather than 50%. This results in the consumption for these commodities being increased from 2.4x at 50% to 6x at 20%. This allows players to (nearly) always being able to sell their commodities as well as increase the gap between AI stations which gives players incentive to trade between AI stations.
* Changing the resistances on some permanent drones so that it is ineffective to block userbases with drones
** Nihilite Drone: Energy 80% to 65%, Physical 75% to 65%, Heat 70% to 65%, Surgical 70% to 65%
** Orb Drone: Surgical 100% to 65%
** Faranji Head Drone: Energy 80% to 65%, Physical 85% to 65%, Heat 70% to 65%, Surgical 70% to 65%
** Mzungu Iko Drone: Energy 75% to 65%, Mining 20% to 0%, Physical 75% to 65%, Heat 90% to 65%
** Quu Drone: Heat 40% to 5%, Mining 40% to 5%
** Qa Quu Drone: Heat 40% to 10%, Energy 75% to 65%, Mining 40% to 10%, Physical 75% to 65%, Surgical 75% to 65%
** Kasa Quu Drone: Heat 40% to 15%, Energy 75% to 70%, Mining 20% to 15%, Physical 75% to 70%, Surgical 75% to 70%
** Qafir Drone: Energy 80% to 60%, Physical 85% to 60%, Heat 70% to 60%, Surgical 70% to 60%
** Plasmite Drone: Energy 80% to 65%, Physical 75% to 65%, Surgical 70% to 65%
** Advanced Pirating Drone: Energy 70% to 60%, Heat 70% to 60%
** Qafir+ Drone: Energy 80% to 65%, Physical 85% to 65%, Heat 70% to 65%, Surgical 70% to 65%
** Mzungu Energy Blaster: Energy 75% to 65%
** Solar Collection Drone: Heat 90% to 70%
** Plasmite Defense Platform: Energy 80% to 65%, Physical 75% to 65%, Surgical 70% to 65%
** Paxian Urqa Denial: Energy 80% to 65%, Physical 85% to 65%, Heat 80% to 65%, Surgical 70% to 65%
* Temporary warp beacons can be placed in systems eligible for bvb
* Bots once again get bonuses from Advanced Flight Controller (+1 slot, +75% evasion for fighters)
* MFM now once again gives +2% to many stats on trade bots, up from +1%

patch 11.09.2017

UI/Client
* Lasers say in their description if they’re ethereal
* Fixed Super Item descriptions not generating in certain circumstances
* Fixed typo when a planet’s gravity is too high for a BP you’re trying to use
* Improved dialog background gradient
* UI Textbox background gradients improved
* Ekam monthly mission now correctly states the player needs to kill 200 Ekam AI
* Fixed description on the const radar bonus to say ‘Detection’ rather than ‘Radar’ since it only gives a detection bonus
* Added Volcanic Antu skin.
* Added Glacial Antu skin.
* Adjusted hive texture and added glow map. This also adjusted the Honey Comb alternative skin.
* New Halloween infected cheese wormhole texture and infected space cheese mound texture.
* Altered xMas Helga visual.
* Added new xMas visual for the Fuzz.
* Altered and fixed xMas augmenter size and improved visuals.
* Altered and fixed Halloween augmenter size and improved visuals.
* Added Fire Extinguisher icon graphic to client
* Added C1-esque on-hit particle splashes
* Nanite Infusion device explosion effect quantity scaled to the total damage, 10k for each one, up to a maximum of 10 explosions
* Added Nebula Hermes skin
* Mobile drones now give their mobility factor in their description

Fixes

* Fixed a bug with Shadow Ambush giving half the critical hit chance it should’ve done
* Changed starting subspace missions to work even if no pirate/ef affiliation is chosen
* Roaming Subspace AI will no longer respawn every 30 seconds
* Fixed Rajanicar’ayu Superitem so the fighters no longer return to ship
* Zarkarapratinu launched by the Alien Nest drone will shoot again
* Fixes to the Nanite Infusion devices, they’ll now track the damage you do with each damage type and use each damage type as used. The damage tracked is ‘true damage’ (i.e., what you do before the target’s resistances) and the damage applied goes through the normal steps (such as resistances). Transference damage will no longer work
* Nanite Infusion device will not damage players in no-PvP scenarios and will not do 0 damage impacts
* Corrected engines 16 mission cloud mercury amount in the mission text
* Kidd and Io will now do original damage with their Incinerators. Kidd will now use his Incinerator
+ Fixed instant respawn and kickout of lavrite boss in vulcan
+ Removed the four hidden planets from Absolution, to prevent projectiles being blocked randomly as well as to prevent prospecting nodes to generate on them (and being unavailable for prospecting)
* New God Augmenters missions fixed, beginning with the Demeter Augmenter mission (intro renamed to New God Augmenters, you will now need Infinite Knowledge instead of Augmenter Tweaking to unlock them). Available in The Acropolis
* Gave the Hull Regeneration Drones on the Vaziayu Trans Efficiency instead of Transference Resistance. This will allow them to still be healed but not drain drones/bases of all of their shields while healing
* Fixed the Engineer Capacitor Device
* Fixed Seer Class 20 requirement on the missions for the Seer’s Searing Fire
* Fixed mission text and requirements for accessing Platinum level Strontium-90 missions
* Fixed a bug in missions on reset timers causing them to abandon when they shouldn’t
* Fixed class aptitude augmenter mission only mentions 1 set while mission requires 2
* Psionic Weapon’s Jammer to no longer cause over RoF cap on AI and players

Balance Changes / Additions

* Perilous Scope properly reduces your range by 25% for 5 seconds after 5 seconds.
* Changed the sizes of base chargers with the formula used for other base items.
* Added Aug stats to increase splash/chain/etc damage and range
* Fixed Twisted Torch by reducing the bullet amount from 3 to 2 and increased damage from 20 to 30 per bullet. This will make all bullets face behind the ship without affecting dps
* Increased arcadian x bank to 18k so it can fire arcadian x laser without help
* Resistances on the purchasable Kalthi Ships have been adjusted:

Kalthi Warrior: 55>50% to Laser, 55>50% to Energy, 58>53% to Heat, 53>48% to Physical, 50>40% to Radiation, 48>38% to Surgical, 57>52% to Mining
Kalthi Stinger: 48>60% to Laser, 48>40% to Energy, 41% to Heat, 48>36%% to Physical, 48>44% to Radiation, 40>34% to Surgical, 48>58% to Mining
Kalthi Deployer: 55>45% to Laser, 55>60% to Energy, 55>45% to Heat, 55>57% to Physical, 55% to Radiation, 45>36% to Surgical, 45% to Mining
Kalthi Commander: 48>55% to Laser, 48>45% to Energy, 48>45% to Heat, 58>62% to Physical, 48>45% to Radiation, 43>32% to Surgical, 43>35% to Mining

* Removed the Class Requirement “from the Art of …” Blueprints
* Greatly reduced cost of mercurian gear
* Increased Stygian Fist Blueprint manhours and max worker significantly, increased max workers from 1 to 100000
* Removed the max use and max workforce from base thruster blueprints. It is now 7.5mil man hours which is roughly 3 minutes with 500k workers available. Added a cost per build instead which is 250mil credits per Annihilator thruster to 25mil per Apollo thruster
* Increased base thruster blueprint build cost from 250mil each to 500mil each (Annihilator thruster) and scaled down each tech
* Kalthi Deployer drones have been heavily nerfed, and the Deployer’s themselves have been slightly buffed. The drones also orbit in a bigger radius
* Ult. Interceptor Augmenter Critical Hit Chance reduced 30%>20%, Damage increased 40%>45%
* Hybridized Ships no longer gain significant resistance weaknesses compared to the normal ships, they are now direct upgrades of their previous forms
* Pax Coronae, Scutelogica, Venaticora and Sheliak (As well as the Hybridized versions) now have +50% Shield Bank
* Blueprint packs now contain the industrial blueprint versions of the defender, platform, and assault drones
* Altered the Urchin Presence to now give 150/s energy to allies and take 150/s energy from enemies within a 500 radius. The energy requirement to power this aura is now 325/s
* Adjusted the Honey Badger drone to sustain much longer to account for the aura being disabled/scraped
* Academy kits (non-fortified) no longer have a build time on them
* Coppers now have tech appropriate Exterminators
* Reduced cost of thanars astral fire mission
* Nerfed the pirating/advanced pirating drones in bonnet, mccoy’s, rackham’s, and stede bonnet’s systems
* Space Blue Gamma’s now deploy Space Blue Alpha Prototype Fighters instead of Space Blue Alpha Fighters, this means their fighters no longer do extremely high amounts of damage
* The Hawk Blueprint now builds a Hawk Upgrade, which upgrades the Vulture into a Hawk
* The Harrier Blueprint now builds a Harrier Upgrade, which upgrades the Hawk into the Harrier. The prices of the Hawk and the Harrier have been reduced to account for the cost of building the previous ship
* All Multifiring Controlbots now have +50%>20% Electric Tempering
* Rime Drones are now Tech 4, Advanced Rime Drones are now Tech 5
* Updated Jungle to now drop 1 JAC per boss kill, guaranteed. Subemperor Baloo has a chance to drop up to two
* Changed Kalthi Wrathful and Armored Upgrades to be able to Swap to each other. ie. You are in a Kalthi Wrathful Stinger and want a Kalthi Armored Stinger, you can now simply use the upgrade on the Wrathful Stinger
* Changed Fembot Blueprint and Factory to Tech 16
* Adjusted station suite bps to require less factory parts
* Changed the laser station gear turn in mission rewards from canneries to a single terraforming commod factory
+ Added 8 new station gear turn in missions that reward terraforming factories, factory parts bundle and nu conv 2s
* Lyceum Exploration Cruiser has had it’s Offensive Field Generator changed from +150 Flat Damage to +150 Energy Regeneration. Going forward, this will be changed to +150 DPS, which means it will no longer be more powerful with high rate of fire/multiple projectiles weapons
* Engines, across the board, have had their thrust increased by ~100%, and their turning increased by ~33% (This is roughly the bonuses one would get from using an Ace in a Pill II)
** Ace in a Pill’s, as a result, have had their duration reduced to 12 seconds
* Uu Quu DPS increased from 140 to 196
* Increased halflife on Copper Heart to 24 hours
* Marked instanced Rumble rooms as unmappable
* Meeting Pirate Maboule mission now has Piracy level 1 as a mission goal, to inform the player of requiring Piracy to dock at Maboule’s Hideout
* Reduced manhours and maxworkforce of the vulture, reaver, absconditus, rosamarinus, equanimizer pax astronomica, dark freighter ships, to only take 5.5 hours with max workforce of 10k
+ Increased drop chance of bp and commods to make the following ships/ubers that are found in dgs/perilous space, vulture, reaver, rosmarinus, equanimaizer, pax astronomica and dark freighter
* Hydroponics and Imperial Hydroponics descriptions now state they feed 300 Workers, similar to Junkyard Hydroponics and the Harvesting Dynamo
* Fixed bug where BFDs and other neurobound drones would not stack correctly on scooping
* Changed micron mission credit, XP, and difficulty so rewards are useful at the likely level you would complete them
* Changed Darkened Diffusers to not give -Reflectivity and they don’t give visibility
* Changed Darkened Capacitor/Diffuser blueprints to have unlimited uses and are not junkyard scrapable
+ Added Darkened Capacitor/Diffuser blueprints to The Dark
* Removed Darkened Capacitor/Diffusers from drop tables
* Increased Shard/Frag Grenade’s bullet spray effect from 40% of normal damage to 200% of normal damage. (Shard/Frag Drone’s Weapons)
* Changed transference resistance on Frag/Shard Drones from 40% to 0%
+ Removed some base blueprints that can be obtained in The Acropolis via blueprint packs
* Improved damage on Anni/Ada Cannon, lowered range, and increased energy to shoot
* Prawn Piece A to H have been renamed to Prawn Piece
* Fixed typos in a couple of Catur arm subspace missions (‘etheral’ -> ‘ethereal’ and ‘LACS 1099′ -> ‘LACS S1099′)
* Decreased spawntime on Speedy Gonzales to 5 minutes (from 10)
* Allowed pax astro+ to also upgrade to hybridized pax astro
* Nerfed drop rate of hellfire, buffed drop rate of love cylinder
* Updated Carcass Missile to be shipbound and 0 size
* Changed most of the sub UZ t20 and below bps to have more reasonable maxworkforces, manhours, and costs.
* Removed about 70 class locked items from the dg drop tables and placed them in lyceum at the respective ai stations
* Added Battle Sphere superitem laser
* Reduced cost of several mission reward fighter generators. Changed missions to reward fighter generators directly instead of fighter generator BPs
* Changed all unstable overloaders to be sticky to the ship. They are now 0 size
* Mini Kasper, Kasper, Kasper+, Mzungu Disk, Faranji Stinger, Underscout, Space Blue Prototype, Reaver, Orca, Orca+, Turtle, Turtle+, Reconditioned Kasper, Reconditioned Turtle, and Tutorialis.drv have all had their weapon slots increased by one to acomodate up to 3 weapons on a berserker and 2 on a gunner including inbuilt weapons
* Ares Aegis Generator, Trident Generator and Bolt of Lightning Generator are now all super items. The Hermes Adrenaline Syringe now self injects the Hermes Adrenaline Injection into the user of the super item
* Mini Vulcanite Fighter, Ujqii Ishi, and Slumber Mc Chrome Face Fighters can now be scrapped through the Junkyard Prefab Fighter scrapping missions
+ New mission available in Serengeti Blockade, to exchange four Spirit Augmenter Blueprints into a random spirit blueprint
+ Glaucopennia’s and Phoenix’s will drop blueprints to their ships
* Fuelled energies will no longer consume fuel if you’re at maximum bank, you’ll also get your full regen when unfuelled at maximum
* New set of missions available for Lyceum Combined Augmenters. You can now recycle 10 fabrication modules of the same tier (i.e. Basic) in exchange for one random fabrication module of the same tier
* Aveksaka Xenobiology and Continued Aveksaka Xenobiology missions now require 100,000,000 Credits to complete. These missions are for obtaining an Alien Xenobiology Research Blueprint
* Aspect/Spirit/Combined Aspect of the Mastodon Augs are now attainable from The Serengeti
* Replaced Shield Monkey’s transference power from the Shield Transference with damage. ShM healing output should remain neutral, while buffing their personal and bot dps
* Removed the random boss aura from Bana King
* Changes to Engineer augmenters (stats not listed remain the same)

Twisted Tesla Augmenter: Shield regen from 60% to 0%, Energy from 80% to 125%, Transference Power from 0% to 60%, Transference Efficiency from 0% to 40%, Drone ops from 20% to 0%, Offensive Ops from 20% to 30%, Defensive Ops from 20% to 30%, Everlasting ops from -20% to 0%
Qa’ik’ Banu Akk’oj: Everlasting ops from 12% to 0%
Mechanical Hound Augmenter: Speed from 50% to 30%, Turning from 0% to 65%, Thrust from 0% to 110%

* New mission available for Combined Aspect Tablets. You can now exchange 10 combined aspect tablets for 1 Zaphragi Research Diploma and 2 Honorary Diplomas
* Lowered Bule Hyperdrive from 45 seconds to 30 seconds and added a anti gravitation effect when activated.
* Removed visibility on Queen Wasps launchers
* Can no longer tractor attacking BvB kits
* Aku Qui’Oj (Bana King Capacitor): Hull space bonus of 2% has been removed

Strange readings have been recorded, indicating that the universe is becoming unstable. Lyceum scientists have since made a prediction that our current universe will collapse 2017-11-11 13:00 EST. All your ships should make it across into the new universe without problems, but assests such as stations and drones will need to be packed up and collected, credits on active bots will need to be collected. Remember to leave yourself in a convenient ship to travel in the new universe.

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!

Enkelin and Pixel

Have been hard at work putting the final touches to the new Station Management 22 zone. Pixel is working on getting the AI to function as desired and making them look awesome while enkelin is putting his focus on getting the stats for the new equipment just right. It’s unlikely the project will be finished and properly tested before the upcoming universe reset but we’re hopeful we can get it all done by the one after.

Bobbo

Has created a Vulture boss which is currently on test server for you to check out.

Jey

Has been working on plugging the hole regarding Base Thrusters. Before, when someone would attack, the defending party would be able to ‘outrun’ the attacking party by simply using base thrusters into the same direction, meaning the attacking party could never catch up and after the 12 hour timer their kits would go destroyed. Jey has implemented a hard limit of 30.000 distance from the nearest solar body (planet, wormhole, etc). If permanent assets go over this limit they have 10 minutes to get back in range. Failing to do so will make the station go into a destroyed state and any permanent drones will vanish. This timer never resets, but when a station has been destroyed by this mechanic the timer will be set at 1 milisecond, allowing players to tractor their kits back within the 30.000 limit and repair them. Repairing them outside of the 30.000 limit will kill the base instantly again. Once this feature gets patched in the base thrusters will be returned to their former glory.

DarkSteel

I’ve been spending my afternoons reverting the unintentional beefs to permanent drones that were brought to our attention last week. We’re also discussing further adjustments since we’re not entirely happy with the role permanent drones currently play. More about that after next week’s developer meeting.

Introduction

Greetings! I’m excited to announce a new project that has recently cleared the earliest stages of development (in other words, the devs have finally stopped arguing over all the little details). The main goal of the project is to make the item modification system more accessible to new players, while also giving endgame players greater ability to fine tune their setups.  While we’re at it, we’re also trying to make modifications more exciting.  As with any revamp of existing content, there is always the danger of throwing off the balance of the game. The purpose of this post is to share our plans with you at the earliest possible occasion; we’ll listen to your feedback and take our time with the next development stage in order to avoid any unintended nerfs. One other note: while this project is a whole dev team effort, enkelin is taking point on it so any feedback should be directed to him.

Discussion of Design Philosophy

Making Modifications More Rewarding

People play video games because they are rewarding.  One of the great UI improvements of the past few years was the Ship Window revamp, in which you can view all your exact stats.  This gave players a concrete way to measure the improvement of each new item they obtained, and has led to an improved sense of reward.  But while you may feel rewarded when your DPS goes up by 1000, this is not the most powerful kind of reward a game can offer.  What we are going for is a game experience where you KNOW you’re better even before checking the Ship Window. That’s a deeper level of satisfaction compared to unemotionally comparing two numbers after the fight.

The problem with the current modification system is that most mods only provide a small increase in stats, and the total effect is only noticeable because you have so many modified items.  We are making mods feel more rewarding by introducing new, powerful modifications on a limited number of gear types.  There’s a weapon mod that splits every shot into two, an energy mod that redirects some damage taken to your energy bank, and a radar mod that boosts your hostility by broadcasting rude messages to all your enemies.  The end result is that your gameplay will be noticeably altered (and improved) when you obtain one of these new modifications.

Stat Stick Discussion

With the addition of these new, extremely powerful modifications, we are going to be toning down another aspect of your setups in compensation.  Part of the reason for this is that we would have to rebalance all existing dungeon content if we allowed everyone to get way stronger than before, but there’s a more fundamental reason too.  The nerf will target so-called “stat sticks,” i.e. any item that is equipped primarily for a stat bonus it grants, and is rarely or never used for its primary purpose.  In Star Sonata, examples of stat sticks include Mzungu Cloak, Point Defense Zeta, and high-tech tractor beams.  In many cases, well-modded items of these types are carried but never activated/used.  In a game like Star Sonata, stat sticks may make up over half of a player’s inventory.  This is sometimes taken to be a sign of customizability of setup, but it is actually the opposite, as I explain below.

One of the principal facets of game design is to give players interesting choices. Should your Shield Monkey sacrifice 500 shield regen for 2000 more HPS?  Should your Speed Demon sacrifice 100 speed for extra range?  These are examples of choices where there’s no clear answer, and that’s the kind of decision that makes for an interesting game.  But when an item’s value is exclusively based on its modifications, there’s no choice left for the player.  As a Berserker, you want to fill your hull with Evil-modified gear, and if you get the chance you won’t mind a few Radioactive or Super Intelligent mods on top of that.  The actual nature of the gear has no bearing on the decision, so long as it’s reasonably small.  In pushing back against the proliferation of stat sticks, the dev team is shifting the game in a direction that will give players much more interesting choices, which is what customizability is really about.  For specifics, see the Grand Table O’ Nerfs below.

Rundown of Changes

What is staying the same?

• Any existing modified items will retain their modifications.

• The stats of most current modifications will remain unchanged (see Grand Table O’ Nerfs for details)

• Bindomite acts the way it always did on non-core types of gear (core types are Weapon, Shield, Energy, Engine, Radar, and Cloak).

What is changing?

• Bindomite can now also be used to add modifications to neurobound, unmodified gear.

• When using Bindomite on a core gear type (Weapon, Shield, Energy, Engine, Radar, Cloak), you will receive one new Primary modification in addition to a random number of Secondary modifications.

• You may use Bindomite to add a Primary modification to a core item that gained modifications before this change. However, certain legacy modifications are being deprecated and will be removed in the process.  The client will warn you if any modifications would be removed in this way.  See Grand Table O’ Nerfs for a list of the deprecated modifications.

• Primary modifications have a range of possible stats. For example, your weapon could gain x-y% AoE damage.

• You can spend credits to repeatedly reroll your gear’s Primary modifications. Each time, you’ll be given three choices: pick one of two new Primaries or keep the one you already have.

• Modifications that are randomly spawned on loot will only be drawn from the Secondary pool, but they won’t be overwritten when you apply Bindomite.

Grand Table O’ Nerfs

We are aware that this project will cause a lot of concern in the community. This blog post will serve as the first step of many in ensuring that the revamp proceeds in a way that works for the players.  We are intentionally leaving all numerical values up for debate for now, which will allow us great flexibility in achieving the desired game balance.  Here are some considerations we will be looking at as the project proceeds:

Star Sonata is a game that has changed much over the past 12 years, including tons and tons of new content, both small and large in scope, and more are yet to come. But to avoid going off on tangents as I enjoy doing, let me skip straight to the actual topic of this blog post:

All content, new and old, relies on our balance sheets to be ‘balanced’. However, as the game evolves, the sheets need to be adjusted to better reflect how the perception of ‘balance’ has shifted. Sometimes, doing exactly that goes too far, while other times necessary changes are not done at all. Both extremes are unhealthy, as new additions to the game continue along the same flawed principles.

A big motivator of all these changes is to make less used weapon types viable. You should be able to pick a weapon that feels fun to use without sacrificing effectiveness. Currently, despite their shortcomings, the best weapons are so powerful that they are always worth using.

While it would be simple to give all underused weapons a buff, this is not practical. Many of these underused weapons, specifically Pulse Guns and Magcannons, are commonly used by AI. This is not the case for many of the weapons that are too powerful, which means that changing them would affect the game’s overall balance the least.

Changes to the most commonly used weapons will, of course, affect the relative difficulty of many AI. We are aware of that and have already adjusted a lot of them, often going as far as halving their effective shields.

In fact, a recent addition allows us to adjust the strength of individual AI much, much more easily, so keep that feedback coming and we’ll act on it!

Pulse Guns

Pulse Guns are the quintessential weapons of Star Sonata, but over time and over tech, they become lackluster compared to the alternatives.

There are two major issues:

• Weapons have 4 parameters that determine their power: Acquisition Difficulty, Cost, Size and Weight. Size is, by far, the most impactful modifier of these 4.

Pulse Guns however get very, very big.

• Due to the lackluster nature of most Pulse Guns, there haven’t been many new ones for quite some time.

The changes:

All Pulse Guns are getting their size effectively halved.

Looking forward:

Pulse Guns are meant to be the default weapon. Reasonable DPS, reasonable DPE, reasonable skill requirement. As it stands, they are not.

The change to their size will hopefully make them more usable, but it is likely that more work is required. Ideas include increased projectile speed, or smart tracking (i.e. the projectiles are fired towards where a target is going, rather than straight).

The Thorax Conundrum

The ‘Thorax’ type weapons have been part of the game since the very beginning. Their principle is simple: High damage and high efficiency, in exchange for being very difficult to hit with.

Sometime before 2013, Torpedo (and therefore Thorax) behavior was changed:

• Their projectiles were made to turn towards their target while they were spinning up.

• Rather than only tracking near the end of their lifespan, they now only tracked near the start of their lifespan

Jumping forward, there are now additional factors to be considered:

• With higher techs come stronger augs. Range bonuses further increase the distance during which Thoraxes have tracking

• Sniper projectile speed bonuses had the unintended side effect of further increasing the effective tracking of Thoraxes

All these little changes and synergies combined, a Thorax effectively became a “fire and forget” weapon. Their high damage and efficiency was no longer offset by being difficult to use.

And then, there’s also the fact that Thoraxes have not used a balance sheet since 2013. That issue is being rectified as well.

The changes:

Torpedo projectiles (and therefore Thoraxes) will no longer turn towards their targets during their spinning-up phase.

Torpedo projectiles will no longer get increased tracking distance from range bonuses. To compensate, their base tracking range was quadrupled.

There will also be some minor changes to their stats.

 Looking forward:

While the changes to the mechanics of how Torpedoes work are significant, they should still be very effective low to medium range weapons in controlled environments (i.e. against stationary, large or controlled targets), but far harder to hit with at longer ranges.

Due to the unintended effects of Sniper projectile speed bonuses also increasing the effective tracking of thoraxes, Thoraxes will not currently get any projectile speed bonuses while we work on a satisfying solution.

All Thoraxes are effectively Torpedoes, but the actual Torpedoes have not been addressed. Many of them are lackluster. In fact, the AI base torpedoes (Torpedo, Torpedo I, Torpedo II) are objectively the worst weapons in the game!

As mentioned before, the balance sheet for Torpedoes and Thoraxes needs work, which will be my (s_m_w) next priority. Torpedoes are fun to use, but there are only a select few that are worth using. (And fun fact: This is only because they completely circumvented the OLD balance sheets!)

Bursts are Magcannons

When Timotheus the Red was introduced, among his drops was the ‘De-Focused Plasma Particle Distributor’, a Sebastopol (or incinerator, aka ‘RNF Burst’) with slightly less power than a normal Sebastopol, yet a significant amount of tracking.

Initially, the weapon was not considered to be very good. Its range was increased significantly and with that change an entire new weapon archetype was created: The Burst.

The concept was continued at tech 22 with the Hazardous Oomping Burst and various other types.

There were, however, two problems:

• The Sebastopol balance sheet works under the assumption that Sebastopols have NO tracking and SHORT range.

• All Sebastopols receive a +15% DPS bonus PER TECH, for a total of +330% DPS at level 22. This means that Sebastopols were the only weapon type that had an exponential power scaling, rather than linear. (More on this in the next section)

The added range that the RNF Burst received caused the weapon to no longer fit into the Sebastopol sheet, since it no longer had any of the characteristics that Sebastopols were supposed to have.

The changes:

All Bursts have been moved into the balance sheet for Magcannons. While we have tried to preserve their position as some of the most damaging weapons in the game, we have had to make significant changes. We have attempted to keep their DPS and size as close to live stats as possible, but they will receive a significant decrease in DPE.

Looking forward:

Magcannons and Pulse Guns with self damage are a relatively new addition to the game. The self damage aspect has not been included in the balance calculations before. While it is simple to take the same calculations that we use for Sebastopols and apply them to Magcannons and Pulse Guns, the extraneous, tech-scaling DPS bonus Sebastopols receive makes it hard to know whether that formula is reasonable. There is still room for improvement, but it is impossible to properly judge a weapon by numbers alone. Time will have to tell.

Sebastopols (including Incinerators)

Sebastopols in our balance sheets currently receive a massive bonus to their DPS scaling by tech. Since pictures say more than a thousand words, here’s what that means:

For comparison’s sake, the graph uses ‘Power’, an intuitive number to judge how ‘good’ a weapon is, calculated by multiplying DPS with DPE.

Currently, at tech 0, a Sebastopol is roughly 93% better than a Pulse Gun (due to being a more difficult to use weapon while also factoring in self damage). At tech 22, a Sebastopol is roughly 731% better than a Pulse Gun.

Sebastopols are, in fact, the ONLY weapon type that scales exponentially over tech. This is not good.

 The changes:

The Cyan line shows the new scaling of Sebastopols. The extraneous +15% DPS per Tech modifier was removed. To compensate, their base power was increased by 33%. They are intended to stay very powerful, but they were magnitudes too strong.

 Looking forward:

The changes to Sebastopols are, unfortunately, massive but these changes are necessary. As with all things however, the numbers do not tell the whole picture. Neither does a graph.

While there is no possible justification to retain a DPS modifier per tech, there are other ways to boost Sebastopols up more, without affecting the lower techs. Specifically, the percentual self damage could be increased for the higher tech weapons.