Greetings Pilots!

Here is the next set of LiveTest Server patch notes, the goal of these is to give you a heads up on changes before they’re pushed to Liberty and allow you to test and experiment with these changes!
If you have any concerns or feedback on any of these changes please report them in the #feedback channel on the Star Sonata Discord!

The LTS updates are only applicable to the LiveTest Server and may be changed before being pushed to Liberty.

You will need the newest Beta Client to check out these changes.
(+changes require a new uni)

[Nexus Rework]

• The Nexus has been reworked, there will be a blog post soon.

[Skill Changes]

• New skill, Zen of Devices, increases the charge rate of certain super items by 3% per level up to level 100. Super items will say in their description if they are affected by this skill.

[Item Changes]

• Removing Attached Drones.
• Converted All Attached Drone items to their non-attached variants. Attached Warp Beacon will be unchanged.
• Converted Attached Drone Blueprints to their non-attached versions.
• Removed Attached Magic Attach requirement from Attached Warp Beacon.
• Converted Armada Ambrosia Drone to an unattached drone.
• Player owned attached drones are no longer allowed to exist in Earthforce layer. They will be removed when the server restarts.

• Adjusted the stats on many super items.

• Envelopments will now always attach to the object that used them. Envelopments generally have been strengthened, but their active time reduced. Envelopments can now look like different things, such as a chunk of ice.

• Ice block super items will now have a much lower bonus resistance buff, but create an envelopment around the ship that looks like ice with a fixed hit point pool.

• Increased the tech level of many built in super items that were artificially low.

• Common shield tweaks have had their stats increased.

• Fixed a bug where Enveloping Monkey, Seer Backstab, and Sniper Marksman were affecting super item damage.

• New Roscap Mining Punch Super Item.

• All tweaks used by Super Items will automatically get the NoTweak tag and not use the Neurotweaking skill.

• All the Common tweak super items can charge faster with Zen of Devices skill.

• Changed Krill Fighter device and Alien Krill Fighter device to only launch one Krill fighter, but that fighter will do about 3x the DPS as before.

• Claw Missile Device will now charge much faster, Alien Claw Missile Device will charge a little faster, but do a lot more damage.

• Updated visuals on the Zebucart Mark 2 skin, the Volcom and its variants, the Brigand’s Volcom and its variants, the Phunka.dll, and the Helga.

• Added an unremovable “Tracking Beacon” item to a new player’s starter Zebucart ship.

• Reduced the tech level of the “Cadet Missile Launch Device”, the Cadet and Reconditioned Cadet’s missile generator, to tech 0 to fix issues with it.

[AI Changes]

• Fixed Kalthi Minion Fighter Hull engine mount locations.

• +Forgones will now take 20 seconds between firing their super item instead of 10.

[Universe Changes]

• +Changed “Earthforce Sanctuary: East Wild Space” and “Earthforce Sanctuary: West Wild Space” galaxy names to “Earthforce Sanctuary Alpha” and “Earthforce Sanctuary Beta” respectively.

• +The AC exchange for Primal Zebra / Panther Ship Remains have had their Zaphragi Research Diploma turn-in values normalized to two per.

[System]

• Fixed a bug that allowed selling items to stations without a trade bay.

• Made shops which are not public or trading have their entries removed from market check.

• Fixed bug which only allowed base owners to use items on the base. It now depends on Management permission.

• The ship window will now only show the effects of damage and rof buffs on your most recent fired weapon, and no longer show incorrect numbers for the other weapons.

• Damage tweak / aura is now a DPS tweak / aura. For the percent based ones, this won’t change anything, but the few non-percent ones will be a change in DPS now instead of damage per shot.

• Added separate smaller resets to the skill resets in stations. Can now reset classes, hostility skills, adv subskills, or control skills separately alongside the full skill reset.

• Can now search for “nb” or “neurobound” in inventory or TSL to see all NB items.
• Can now search for “*” in inventory or TSL to see all modded items.
• TSL will now display an asterisk after the names of any modded items inside

• Fixed a bug where drones on the hotbar would sometimes default back to the unequipped version.

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

(+changes require a new uni)

[Item Changes]

• Converted T9+ Station kit blueprints from Metal to Steel Girders.

• Added drone slots required to tooltips on permanent drones.

• Created a new t15 Cardinal’s Excommunicator weapon.

• Adjusted defuser code so that vulnerabilities take priority over resistance.

• Created a new line of Capital Lasers that upgrade into the Capital Armageddon weapons.

• Capital Armageddon weapons were set to the wrong cost category resulting in a slight reduction of DPS.

• Added in three new player obtainable capital ships and three new player obtainable support freighters.
• +Added the capital ships Mordred, Gawain and Gareth to Bonnet, Lavanite and Absolution AI bases.
• +Added the support freighters Scarab, Stag and Weevil to Bonnet, Lavanite and Absolution AI bases.

[AI Changes]

• +Update to Stella AI (roamers and DGs) for proper Solarian loot drops.

• +Cardinal Bellarmine in Absolution and his DG variant Bell from Hell have chances to drop Excoms, with Bell from Hell having a chance of dropping the Cardinal’s Excom.

• +Lowered the range and damage of Bellarmine’s Cathedral in Penance.

• +Rosemary, Basil, and Basilus AI are more tanky and do significantly more damage to be more in line with their level.

• +Reducing the number of fighters the Blue Gamma holds from 6 to 2.

• +Added Solar Prism drops to the AI in Arctia.

• +Added new line of Capital Lasers to drop from Roaming EF Capital Ships.

[Missions]

• The Galileo mission chain has been adjusted as follows:
• The player now receives an Excommunicator earlier in Galileo’s mission chain.
• The player now receives an Cardinal’s Excommunicator at the end of Galileo’s mission chain.
• +An AC turn in for Galileo’s Telescopes have been added to Sai’s Retreat in Sol after ‘Galileo’s Research’ has been completed.
• +An AC turn in for Cardinal’s Excommunicators has been added to Sai’s Retreat in Sol after ‘Excommunicator’ has been completed.

• The Vulcan mission chain has been adjusted as follows:
• The mission to kill Infernus has been made to auto start when you enter the Chamber of Heat, and can be done concurrently with the previous mission to kill the three bosses.
• +The player now receives a new mining weapon, the Vulcan Mining Blaster after finishing the first mission.
• +The player can purchase additional Vulcan Mining Blasters after completing the first mission via an AC turn in of 50 metals and a Vulcanite Core.

• Reworked the Perpetual Motion drone missions:
• +No longer will you need to bring the drones or DG drone BPs to open up the turn in missions, instead you bring items to the station to unlock AC turn ins.
• +Removed the drone BPs from the DG drop list that have mission/AC pairs.

• EF Capital ship acquisition missions have been added to Beta Antares:
• +Added missions that give EF Capital Ship Upgrades.
• +Added missions that give EF Capital Ship Upgrade Blueprints.
• +Reworked difficulty of Earthforce Roaming Capital Ships.
• +Removed Capital Ship Research Blueprint from Beta Antares.
• +AC turn-ins unlock after mission is completed.

[Universe Changes]

• Adjusted Tidepool and Tartarus Dailies to reward shards only via the end of the mission chain instead of drops via fighting enemies.

• Removed phasing effect from the large planet in the Drone Deployment 22 boss instance (Kandara Var).

• +Instanced the bosses of Jungle.

• +Instanced the bosses of Mira.

• +Added Zobitan’s Retreat to Arctia, an AI base with several Paximinus guards and a small mission chain giving a Zobitan Beam. After completion of the chain, additional Zobitan Beams can be acquired from the tradebay in exchange for 10 Solar Prisms each.

• +Added an AC turn in for the t5 class augmenters to the respective class stations in Lycuem, these will unlock once the class intro missions are completed.

• Core skill training locations have been adjusted as follows:
• +Core skills are trainable to level 3 in Sol.
• +Core skills are trainable to level 4 in Arctia for Solar Prisms.
• +Core skills are trainable to level 5 in Blue Outpost for Blue Whispers and Blue Aethers.
• +Core skills are trainable to level 7 in Vulcan for Heated Metals.
• +Core skills are trainable to level 9 in Mira for Paxian Medallions.
• +Core skills expect for Piloting are trainable to level 12 in Jungle for Jungle Powercores.

• Sol layout has been adjusted as follows:
• +Increased the planets orbit distance around the sun.
• +Increased size of planets.
• +Dramatically increased size of Earthforce Headquarters, Earth Central, Sai’s Retreat stations.
• +Moved Enforcer station to orbit Mars instead of the Earth.
• +Increased the illumination of the Sun to compensate for the increase of orbits.

• +Locked LACS 1894 (Jungle Entrance) to Warp 1.

• +Added an AC trade in Beta Antares to upgrade Capital Lasers to Capital Armageddon Lasers.

• +Converted most weapon BPs for sale in the Lyceum class bases to the AC system.

[System]

• Created a “Create a Support Ticket” menu icon to allow for an instant link to submitting a ticket.

• Added commas to energy and shield bank numbers in their tooltips.

• Fixed Storage tab not being immediately visible on first logging into the game in your TSL base.

• Moved TSL tooltips to be positioned to the side, like they are with the trade bay.

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!

Scanning for Reset
So, with this most recent patch we have changes that came in with a player emp item. Scanning solarbodies will now result in being told how many extractor slots each Base on a planet can utilize!

To give a few examples:
So, using a planet that has Loads of Nuclear Waste (100) and a Lot of Metals (26). You can see that each station on that planet will be able to have 100 Nuclear Waste Extractors and 26 Metal Extractors.

Likewise, a planet with Loads of Metals (124) and smidgen of Silicon (2). You’ll only be able to put 124 Metal Extractors and 2 Silicon Extractors on those stations.

All planet scanners have been updated to show extractor slots like this.

With the upcoming Universe Reset on May 23rd, there will be some changes that are coming that will be important to keep in mind.

Projectile Furtherance

Projectiles will no longer be blocked by targets with less effective shield than the projectile’s damage. Instead, the first target will be destroyed and the projectile will continue through in the same direction until its damage is expended. This change won’t come up a lot in ordinary gameplay, as it’s intended to resolve some undesirable edge cases. The main ones we have in mind are in the Brute Force fight, where a weak envelope or other obstacle can be used to completely counter the boss’s weapon, and in galaxy assault, where various weak obstacles can be used to interrupt base weapon streams.

Station Kits

Attached Station Kits have been renamed to regular Station Kits. These kits can be placed either on a solarbody or as a standalone station. To place it on an allowed solarbody, just click on the planet/moon and then place the station.

Additionally, base thrusters will not decay on reset!

For a more in-depth explanation regarding Projectile Furtherance and Station Placement, check out this video!

https://youtu.be/hMuMgGrJTzc

Wild Space

The layout of WIld Space will be changing with the new universe!

Blueprints

Station kit blueprints, and some others are being converted from high amounts of t0 resources, to equivalent IC requirements.

Subscription Changes

With the subscription changes, lapsed players will still be able to log into the game while keeping their skill and gear usage. However, lapsed players will not have access to the following mechanics until they re-subscribe.

• Wild Space (Station placement, Trade Bot Orders, PvP)
• Premium Content Zones (Perilous Space, Kalthi Depths, Subspace, Serengeti, etc)

There are also some new bonuses for players with active subscriptions:

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

Steam

Star Sonata will launch on Steam on June 12th!
Direct downloads will be still allowed through our website, but please add Star Sonata to your wishlist on Steam!

(+changes require a new uni)

[Subscription Changes]

• Added the following benefits to accounts with an active subscription:
  • 25% extra XP from kills.
  • 10 extra docked ship slots.
  • 1,000 extra storage space in the TSL.

[Attendance Rewards]

Login everyday to collect your attendance rewards! They reset daily at tickover, 00:00 UTC.

• +Added AC trade in Sai’s Retreat for new Holoprojectors.

• +Added AC trade in Earth Central for Midas Pouch.

[Class Changes]

[Seer]

• Fixed an issue in Seer’s Psionic Shrouding description. Psionic Shrouding granted 20% evasion per level when you are invisible (vision) to the attacker, updated the description to match the behaviour.
  • Changed Seer’s Psionic Shrouding Evasion bonus to depend on if you’re detectable, not visible, to the attacker.

• Shadow Ambush and Psionic Shrouding class subskill locations have been swapped.

[Gunner]

• Destruction and Juice Junkie class subskill locations have been swapped.

[Fleet Commander]

• Class skills reworked, progression is now Class 1: Energy Charge, Class 2: Range/Tracking, Class 3: Field Generation. Class subskills Flight Controller and Bot Mastery locations have been swapped.

[Speed Demon]

• Class skills reworked, progression is now Class 1: Rate of Fire, Class 2: Electric Tempering, Class 3: Speed/Docking. All class subskills swapped, Subskill 1: Speedy Firing, Subskill 2: Dogfighting, Subskill 3: Speedy Movement

[Berserker]

• Impervious Armor and Ordnance Supremacy class subskill locations have been swapped.

[Item Changes]

• Base Thruster Containers no longer decay on uni reset.

• Adjusted the Solarian MagCannon blueprint to require 1000000 metals.

• Reduced weight of UrQa Kasa Akuk’oj Ukoq(base solar panel) from 112,500,000 to 1,125,000.

• Pax Felicitas built in aura “Auxiliary Navigation Subsystem” now gives +50 bonus speed instead of +350.

• Corrected the Paxian Battle Frigate Blueprint from T21 to T20 to be the same tech as the ship it produces.

• Removed the -20% Resistance, Energy bank, and Shield bank augmods from the Berserker Power Transfer to match the other Berserker travel fields.

• Fixed Wave Rider having no thrust.

• Removed inbuilt XYZ Station Upgrade and Station Industrial Blueprints from all stations.

• Removed manhour discount for Industrial Research Y and Z for multi-builds

• Reduced energy cost for Ancient Dragon Device.

• Reduced Junkyard Two-Way Jammer Pill and Two-Way Jammer Pill from 1 hour to 60 seconds and -85% Visibility to -25%.

• Reduced Junkyard Marksman’s Aim Pill and Marksman’s Aim Pill from -25% Visibility to -10%.

• Reduced Junkyard Scanner Magnification Pill and Marksman’s Aim Pillfrom -25% Visibility to -15%.

• Reduced Junkyard Sonatian’s Explorer Pill and Sonatian’s Explorer Pill from -50% Visibility to -20%.

• Changed the Automated Attached Miner Kit IV Blueprint from needing 30 Junkyard Scrapnotes to 10 Station Gear Tokens to build.

• Updated several Kalthi Super Items to be more clear of the actions they perform.

• +Removed the T17 Ares Combat Controlbot from Staff Quarters until a new T21 version is created.

• +Created Mobile Vortex Conv ship factory and added to the same locations as the base only version.

• +Added Mobile Enrichment Plant to Metal Processing, Inc. in Arena Lobby.

• +Added Rapid ENIAC Inspection to platonic academy as AC for 1 gold bar and 2 mentions.

• +Added the Rapid ENIAC Operations and Rapid ENIAC Venture blueprints to drop tables in dgs.

• +Added Starter Capital Fighter Bays and Freighter Fighter Bays to East Vindia.

• +Converted the Whippet Light Fighter Blueprint, Dachshund Light Fighter Blueprint, Bulldog Light Fighter Blueprint, Terrier Light Fighter Blueprint, Border Collie Light Fighter Blueprint, to AC in East Vindia.

• +Added small Surgical Strike Type 1, Incendiary Type 1, AP Type 1, and Kinetic Type 1 crates for sale in Hyperion.

• +Added medium Surgical Strike Type 1, Incendiary Type 1, AP Type 1, and Kinetic Type 1 crates for sale in Lyceum.

• +Added 2 breadcrumb missions in Locus of Fleet to direct players to Hyperion And East Vindia for missiles/fighters.

• +Removed Freighter Fighter Bays from dg drop list.

[AI Changes]

• Reduced most Rat and Flyswatter shields to pre-shield rebalance numbers. This should result in Rats being easier then Flyswatters again.

• Adjusted the Qokuji’qi and Qokuji’s tractor to be AI only instead of sticky. This will require the Tractoring skill of at least Tech 15 to be able to radex them.

• Removed Heavy Laser and Shield Salvation from Tanzanite in Color Empires. This allows it to have enough room to be capped.

• Reduced Recoil of Deflector/Reflector drones from 2 seconds to 1.6 seconds.

• The UrQa ships have had their fade effect fixed, they will no longer suddenly brighten or darken for a second during their animation. Additionally, they will only fade to half opacity before fading back in, rather than fully fade out to black.

• Reduced the respawn time of the Temporal Anomalies in the Paxius Interdimensional Rift from 6 minutes to 2 minutes.

• +Adjusted the pillbox in Snake Visions to no longer launch Icepick fighters.

• +Added Icepick spawns in Snake Visions that drop Neural Keysyncs.

• +Fixed issues with AI entering Steppes and Ruby Steppes.

• +Dungeon bosses with scripting have had their named target shouts fixed.

[Missions]

• Added tags to repeatable missions, supported tags:
  • [Repeatable]
  • [Repeatable Chain X of Y]
  • [Mission Chain X of Y]
  • [Timed Repeatable]
• [Daily]
• [Weekly]
• [Monthly]
• [Uni]
• [Yearly]

• Fixed the Rumble 2 Paxian Mission credit cost to reimburse the full cost of the Super Nova weapon it requires.

• Removed mention of neurbounding from the cerberus fighter mission as the fighter is no longer neurobound.

• Removed the various Pirate Crest requirements and updated the mission text for the Oversized Trader missions.

• Changed the Blue Photon 4000 Series Transwarp mission and its repeatable version to no longer require premium status.

• Added equipment skill requirement to the transwarp missions equal to the tech of the fleet transwarp items, to prevent the possibility of ending up with a transwarp you can’t use and having to waste credits buying another one.

• Removed mention of scanning the wormhole entrances in Mausoleum, and instead made mention of scanning the Death’s Eye sun in the galaxy. For the Dulce et Decorum Est, Pro patria mori exploration mission.

• Readded the Zen reset missions accidentally removed in an earlier patch.
  • These have been manually added to Sai’s Retreat in Sol.

• +Added series of daily missions in Handels Cove.

• +Removed The Ancient Asteroid Being mission start and end from Prism ai station, as well as the Ancient Asteroid Being spawn in Prism.

[Universe Changes]

• Adjusted the capitalization on the warps in the Twisted zone instances from “Return to prejudice” to “Return to Prejudice”

• The planets within Building Academy are now stationary.

• +Locked Bonnet to the Southern Arm with the rest of the Spice Pirates.

• +Removed the static interference from the exit out of Absolution.

• +Recentered the Lavanite cloud effects, restoring them to their position on the main star.

• +The Vault has been removed from Kalthi Depths.

• +Converted Zebra Armada Crests to Honorary Diploma and Honorary Mentions Missions into Alternative Currency and placed on the Serengeti Research Labs station.

• +Locked Serengeti Research Labs station to Premium Only.

• +Reduced the level of Infinite Knowledge from 20 to 10 to dock at Serengeti Research Labs.

• +Adding 200+ new galaxy names to the universe generation. Removed several names due to being immersion breaking, overly long, UrQa/Subspace names or confusing to existing gal names.

• +Converted Ariadnites in Labyrinth from being planet extraction to being a respawning prospectable resource.
  • +Removed building privileges.
  • +Increased local AI spawn and made more aggressive.

• +Converted Plasma Crystals in Hyper from planet extraction to a mining resource.
  • +Removed building privileges.
  • +Unteamed Hyper base.
  • +Made local AI aggressive to all players.

• +Removed Industrial Station Gear X Blueprint Pack from Acropolis.
  • +The original Industrial Station Gear X Blueprint Pack has been installed into all stations above tech 9.

• +Added Scoop to trade bay of Nexus Station.

• +Removed trade resources from the station in Hephaestus that required Weaponry 25 to dock at

• +Arctia and Building Academy will now generate off of Sol. Their intro missions have been moved to start at Earthforce Frontier Station in Sol.

• +Changed the warp locks for Zebra, Panther, and Rhino bosses in the Serengeti to be based on if the ambushers are dead or not.

• +Removed “Asteroid” from the list of moons to prevent confusion.

[Typo Fixes]

• Fixed the Ayudhinlaghu Akrama Blueprint, which was mistakenly named “Ayudhinalghu”.

• Fixed the effect description of the Red Photon Prototype Remote Weapon Augmentation.

• Typo fix for Colored Empires Black Court mission “The Art of Assassination 101″, “politian” > “politician”.

• Typo fix for East Vindia mission “Nukes”, “afterall” > “after all”.

• Corrected the Nanite Infusion Device’s description, dealing a 150% damage multiplier rather than the 100% damage multiplier it previously stated.

• Corrected the inconsistent name of a planet within Building Academy.

• +Corrected station name, Earthforce Headquarter->Earthforce Headquarters.

[System]

• Added a new target reticle that clearly defines the backstab range at the back of a selected ship. It also provides visual cues of what is the front and rear of the selected ship in two 180 degree spheres. (Credit to Dark Wolf#7153)

• Fixed prospecting nodes spawning on invisible solar bodies.

• Fixed Possessions tab from refreshing a few seconds after selecting the tab. It will now properly default to sort the Category column by default and sort alphabetical.

• Changed the AI Base Skill Tab to be sorted by Alphabetical and no longer jump around when skilling.

• Changed the Focus Skill Page must be Level 10 instead of 5 as the requirement.

• Changed the Transwarp menu to be expanded down. Sorts by alphabetical by default now.

• Set the lockout tab to sort by Mission Type first and lockout name second.

• Mission Tab now states Difficulty instead of just D for sorting. Sorts by Mission Status first – mission alphabetical second.

• Updated the Storage tab to make references to being TSL again but left the tab labeled as Storage.

• Added the subtype for some gear and ships to the info box. The subtype makes gear with that subtype only equippable on ships with that subtype. Gear with this feature was already in the game, but the subtype was not displayed.

• Made it so that userbases and drones consider a hostile player entering / logging in a galaxy as a “combat action” causing them to react almost instantly instead of waiting 5-10seconds before shooting.

• Updated combat bot rules to follow PvP rules in galaxy, fixed combat bots bypassing PvP rules.

• Added a requirement of Leadership 2 to the Emperor’s Crown to ensure that any crowned emperor’s will end up with at least Leadership 3 (which allows them to dock in the emperor’s club).

• Made it so bots in V formation won’t shoot irradiated enemies.

• Can no longer attach bases to asteroids.

• Fixed a bug where the web api couldn’t report the number of bases in a gal over 127.

• Added the ability for the server to send new skill names, descriptions, costs, etc to the client, so different servers can have different skills.

• +Fixed Autopilot behavior within Hallway to Mother when trying to leave.

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!