*** bugs fix patch notes 05.08.2018 ***
* Fix for comets orbiting too fast at high eccentricities.
* Electrified Georg Ohm no longer has Lunarian, Selenite and Perilous Augmenters equipped to his ship. Thus, he will no longer drop them.
* Travel Fields now reduce Shield and Energy Recharge by 90% instead of 100%.
* Termites should no longer pose a substantial threat to bases.
* Reduced class reset cost from 500mil at lvl 500 to 500mil at lvl 1500.
* Fixes for drones fighting ai permanent drones.

*** uni reset patch notes ***
* The Blue Photon Corvette no longer grants +1000 Damage for 5 seconds, it now grants +100% damage for 5 seconds.
* Grand Navigator’s Offensive Augmenter: 100% Energy, 80% Firing, 30% Range, 70% Damage, 60% Shields, -15% Electric Tempering, 15% Resistance to Damage
* Persephone Augmenter: 50% Turning, 10% Hull Space, 50% Energy, 22% Rate of Fire, 10% Speed, 50% Radar, 100% Thrust, 18% Critical Hit Chance
* Hebe Augmenter: Damage increased to 70%.
* Helios Augmenter: Damage increased to 40%
* Ares Augmenter: Rate of Fire increased to 80%
* Metis Augmenter: Damage increased to 80%, Firing increased to 30%
* Heracles Augmenter: 50% Firing, 33% Range, 60% Damage, 66% Hostility, -12% Electric Tempering
* Hades Augmenter: 60% Shield Regeneration, 50% Damage, -20% Shield Bank, -50% Visibility, 10% Critical Hit Chance, 100% Critical Hit Strength
* Deimos Augmenter: Rate of Fire +190%, Shield +100%, Range +40%, Visibility -89%
* Phobos Augmenter: Shield Max +100%, Damage +80%, Visibility -89%, Electric Tempering -20%
* War Chant of Ares Augmenter: 20% Range, 20% Speed, 125% Damage, 45% Electricity, +15% Critical Hit Chance, -25% Resistance to Damage
* War Chant of Ares Augmenter+: 20% Range, 20% Speed, 135% Damage, 45% Electricity, +19% Critical Hit Chance, -20% Resistance to Damage
* Molten Fires of Hephaestus Augmenter: Shield Max +130%, Energy Max +300%, Rate of Fire +25%, Electricity +20%, Speed -40%, Capacity +40%, Hostility +100%, Resistance to Damage +33%
* Molten Fires of Hephaestus Augmenter+: Shield Max +130%, Energy Max +300%, Rate of Fire +40%, Electricity +20%, Speed -33%, Capacity +45%, Hostility +100%, Resistance to Damage +35%
* Poseidon’s Tsunami Augmenter: 100% Energy Bank, 40% Thrust, 80% Damage, 70% Shield Bank, -20% Electricity, +40% Tractor, -60% Electric Tempering
* Poseidon’s Tsunami Augmenter+: 160% Energy Bank, 40% Thrust, 80% Damage, 100% Shield Bank, -15% Electricity, +40% Tractor, -60% Electric Tempering
* Zeus’ Planar Field Augmenter: 30% Hull Space, 20% Range, 50% Shield Recovery, 64% Damage, 30% Electricity, 30% Electric Tempering, 20% Resistance to Damage
* Zeus’ Planar Field Augmenter+: 30% Hull Space, 20% Range, 65% Shield Recovery, 70% Damage, 30% Electricity, 22% Electric Tempering, 20% Resistance to Damage
* The Lasers on Subspace AI that grem no longer grem, they now reduce your turning by a large amount.
* Reduced Lunarian Energized Shield, Lunarian Destructor Shield, Lunarian Modulating Shield, Selenite Energized Shield, Selenite Destructor Shield, Selenite Modulating Shield’s Visibility by a factor of 10.
* Neutralizing Pulse, Earthshaking Cannon, Lacerating Bloom, Demolishing Pulse, Burning Bloom, Lancing Tusks, and Smashing Tusks Blueprints no longer require Tech 20 skill boss commodities in their builds. The T21 upgraded versions now require them, this is a reduction in the total amount of these commodities needed to build the Tech 22 versions of these weapons.
* Super Shield Soother has had it’s -electricity regeneration removed and it now has a charge up time like every other Shield Regeneration tweak.
* re-enabled team message variables, fixed the crash caused by ‘oplist’
* Fixes for less frequent drone cross healing and healing in protected gals

* Bases outside of the userbase placement limits (over 30k from the nearest solarbody e.g. suns, planets, wormholes, etc) will not count for galaxy ownership. If the only kits in the galaxy are outside of this limit, the galaxy will go un-owned. If a galaxy is owned with kits outside of their team beyond the limits, they will be converted to bvb kits
+ Updated the spread of Juxtas and Concourses in Wild Space. They no longer only appear on the edge of the map
+ Lowered the amount of Kalthi Dephts galaxies from 250 to 140
+ Lowered the amount of Perilous Space galaxies from 300 to 250
+ Increased the amount of Earthforce Layer galaxies from 450 to 500 to allow better AI spread over Danger Factors
* Frozen Snowflakes holoprojector reward now has bigger snowflakes
* Lord Borean’s Snow Crown has proper holo text now
+ Artica AI spawn locations have been improved. They will also spawn in a burst of snowflakes to mark their entrance into existence
+ New holoprojector from Arctia, Lady Aurora’s Snow Crown. Auroral lights shine through, creating a flurry of kaleidoscopic snow
* Psionic Weapons Jammer to no longer cause over RoF cap on AI and players
+ Points of Interest in Subspace are now visible from the beginning of the universe, without being explored
* Primal Jungle Drone no longer has 2 more augmenters than the Jungle Drone. The specific augmenters removed are the Aspect of the Monkey and Aspect of the Elephant Augmenters. These drones should now be appropriately better than Jungle Drones, instead of comparable to some Tech 20 drones
* Buffed base weapons in accordance with galaxy assault changes
* Adjusted temporary drone weights.
+ Added The Vault
* Changed old gadget using bp manhours/workforce to match raw commod versions
* Changed a diploma tagged bp for sale in lyceum to berserker tagged
* Bonnet mission “Drones” now requires a Bonnet Pirating Drone instead of a regular Pirating Drone from Brigand’s Stronghold.
* Added the ability for holoprojectors to do a tweak when they convert to a different projector
* Removed base aug bps from a drop list
* Added Twisted Crimson skin to Nikola, Twisted Honey, Bule Eradicator and UrQa Vo’kii Uka Uu’Qa
* Added Twisted Blacklight skin to Nikola, Twisted Honey, Vanguard, Bule Eradicator and UrQa Vo’kii Uka Uu’Qa
* Added Twisted Honey skin to Twisted Vanguard, Bule Eradicator and UrQa Vo’kii Uka Uu’Qa
* Added Ruby Scrupling skin.
* Added Dark Scrupling skin
* Added Angry Scrupling skin.
* Added Raging Scrupling skin
* Added Golden Bana King Skin
* Added Mechanical Bana King skin
* Fixed Bimbus 3000 cooldown
* Added “Idle Attack Patterns” where AI can do certain defined patterns while not attacking rather than the default AI behavior
* Added tutorial event and sound for attempting to jump through a blocked wormhole
* Added the ability to play a specified sound when a new mission pops up, and added voices for the tutorial bot when the first 3 missions pop up in the pirate Nexus
* Made some changes to Mutara Gardens galaxy
* Gave the Gatekeeper ship in Mutara Scrapyard an idle pattern to just stay parked next to the wormhole and to slowly rotate around it when engaged
* Fixed a bug that was preventing mission indicators from showing sometimes
* Gave Junkyard station kits inbuilt hydroponics
* Updated resists on the Unforge for base Rebalance. It now has 40% resists to all but heat and 1000 Soak to all but heat
* Added a summary and mission text note to Honorary Mention and Diploma exchange missions about requiring a Silver Bar and a Gold Bar respectively
* Added Diseased Larvae with attack patterns to Mutara Gardens
* Changed the bonus thrust and turning on all Zebucarts from +100% to +50%
* Greatly buffed the rof mod on Earthforce Supply Ship from 0.07 to 0.50
* Changed loadout on Gatekeeper Supply Ship to have Nano Heavy Tracking laser so he can’t crit the player with rad just before he dies and cause confusing warp interdiction effect
* Add pop up error message when trying to jump through a blocked wormhole to make it more obvious to the player
* Base Construction Vulnerability
* Fixed chargeable neurotweaks being unsellable
* Added a minimum orbit velocity to planets in the universe generation so that they will never have an orbit slower than the server can handle. (this should eliminate planets far from their star being stationary)
* Fixed a case where planets in certain rare solarsystem types did not have an orbit and were stationary
* Removed equip method on Rich Christmas Pudding tweak and added 5,000 energy initial usage
* Removed the grem effect from annihilator platforms
* Removed/deprecated 3 missions in Mutara Gardens
* Removed the money rewards from some of the early Nexus pirate missions — to be added to later pirate missions.
* Increased forcefield drones’ health, lifespan, and time between generation of envelopments by five times
* Space Rats in The Nexus will now idle and attack with attack patterns
* Made Space Rat hull a lot faster

Client changes

* Some slight performance tweak, should result in 5-10% higher framerate under high spaceobjects scenario.
* Removed black background from Red Photon flag (ID 222).
* Added new flag (ID 44) for team The Elites found in Edge of Reason.
* Fixed the following engine mounts: Behemoth, Goblin, Kelvin, Earthforce Cruiser, Earthforce Battlecruiser, Earthforce Battleship, Earthforce Overload Prototype, Earthforce Dreadnought, Red Photon Warship, Faranji Wingship, Pax Stratos, Ares War Chariot+, Delquadrikamdon
* Altered faction selection image to give better interpretation of options. Credit to Doran.
* Added a server dropdown to the login screen
* Kalthi warrior no longer has black triangles in the corner of its body and front spikes.
* Fix for floaty text memory leak
* Changed the default camera view to top down.
* Made it so that sounds will load through mods (the skin system can now be used to mod sounds)
* C1 style gal circle (plain circle instead of a sphere texture)
* made it so that the random gal link color is only for wild space
* Gave the map a more “classic” feel to it.
* The map now show less station tabs than previously, up to a max of 15.
* Added per-team colors to owned gal links.
* Improved Space Rat textures.
* Tabs instead of spaces between cells when copying tables
* Added mods to the copy to clipboard functionality for inventories
* Added pagination to skins UI
* Fixed the target circle to point to the front of the ship
* Improved UI target rings resolutions.
* Fixed the rendering of icons next to the players name (such as the emp star)
* Fixed an issue where the “class skills available” dialog was sometimes blocking drag n dropped items that it shouldn’t be even when invisible.
* Fixed orthographic mode clipping
* Fixed ortho camera changing to perspective
* Added a server selection combo box on the connection screen
* Multiple client crash fixes.
* Fix for a file handle leak in the client.

Fixes

* Made wormholes count as object for userbase distance check.
* Andaman laser mission now gives fembot assembly plant as intended
* St. Bernard Packs will now open a generator instead of 10 Prefab Fighters.
* Corrected fab/compl bundle amounts should be 40 of each
* Fixed Ares Aegis and Poseidon Trident Generators
* Quickened Demon Tracking Device now states the loss of 50% range for its duration
* Fix for space blue fighter mission
* Fix to the Twisted Travel Field Projector/Twisted Enraged Travel Field Projector not affecting ships.
* Fixed Brute force roaming out and disabling himself.

Content Changes

* Changed warmongering team skill to 1SP
* Increased range of weapon that gives corrosive plasma for hazmat collection mission
* Added dusty commodities crates for various prospectable commodities for the use in comets.
* Made Halley’s Comet use the new elliptical orbit system.
* The new Recycled Armada Augmenters mission in Serengeti Blockade has been replaced by a new set of five missions. They work similar to the mission they replace, however you can choose which spirit blueprint you will get in exchange for 4 blueprints.
* Added Bloody Mastadon skin.
* Copper AI can no longer dock at the Copper entrance station.
* Station Point Defense Array now requires, in addition to its other requirements, 500 Titanium and 500 Gold to build (was 100 Titanium, 12 Gold Sensors and 10 Gold Nuggets)
* Hidden Nanite infusion device now does 1.75 damage, we will keep an eye on the place that nanite is in for both PvP and PvAI and continue to make adjustments accordingly.
* New Combined Aspect of the Mastodon Augmenter Token mission added to the Augmenter Tweaking mission chain.
* Added the ability for missions to reset at the same time as daily/weekly galaxy lockouts, and added monthly mission resets that reset at the first of every month. Once completed, missions with this tag cannot be accepted until their next daily/weekly/monthly period. Missions with this tag will have a tag like [Daily] in front of their name. Missions on cooldown will show up in the lockout tab alongside galaxy lockouts.
* The AI Outpost exchange missions will now indicate the amount of tokens they require in the summary text as well.
* Vacohar’ayu (ship): Weapon slots from 3 to 4
* Silent Night (ship): Visibility from 30 to 12, Reflectivity from 75% to 61%, Damage from 20% to 30%, Critical Hit Chance from 10% to 5%, Critical Hit Strength from 0% to 15%
* Removed some Missed Lore Skills from the following items: Unt Faranji Gatling X, Unt Faranji Station Tech, Unt Faranji Diffuser, Kikale Mzungu Frigate, Ancient Transdim Extension and, Bule Abadi Cell.
* Added Stratos Knight skin.
* Made the vulture’s inbuilt generator 0 size.
* Added Blacklight Nikola skin
* Increased the Danger Factor range that Smashing Shiv, Lancing Shiv, Earthshaking Driver, Burning Petals, Lacerating Petals, Demolishing Discharge, and Neutralizing Discharge drop within. They should drop from slightly higher and lower difficulty dungeons now.
* Prawn build cost reduced from 50,000,000,000 to 10,000,000,000.
* Jungle ships no longer require Aluminum Sheets, they now require Titanium Sheets. Primal Jungle ships require Titanium Sheet’s and Laconia Sheet’s.
* Travel fields (Both Capital and Berserker) no longer reduce your shield or energy bank, they now reduce your regeneration instead.
* Reduced the number of missiles launched by Kalthi Commanders.
* Agamemnon Fighters (Launched from Big Green Battleships) now last 60 seconds instead of 20 seconds.
* The mission “Restless Spirits” no longer tells the player it is necessary for the Paranormal Research quest line.
* Perilous Space Roamers now spawn more often, drop more credits, and have their spawn locations randomized (This means bosses like Sputty Nutty, Marco Columbus, Closeness, etc.)
* Lunarian and Selenite Drone Blueprints now have a small chance to drop from any Kalthi Depths boss, like other Lunarian/Selenite loot.
* The Sniper Blind no longer gives +200 and +1000 damage, instead it gives a 25%/33% damage boost. There is also a -75%/-99% reduction in tracking to go along with the effect.
* Sniper’s Ricochet Device has been changed to Sniper’s Spotter Device, and deploys a drone with a short duration Spotty Beam. The drone also gives +15%/25% Range and Rate of Fire as an aura.
* Bule Abadi Adum’s Test Expander will no longer show up in ruins.
* Buffed some Augmenters
** Tinted Augmenter now has 26% Damage instead of 4% Damage.
** Opaque Augmenter now has 35% Damage instead of 6% Damage.
** Dark Augmenter: 30% Turning, 10% Hull, 50% Energy Bank, 20% Shield Recharge, -75% Visibility, 20% Critical Hit Chance, 5% Resistance to Damage.
** Vulture Augmenter: 100% Energy Bank, 80% Rate of Fire, -10% Range, 35% Speed, 50% Damage, 60% Shield Bank, 100% Visibility, 40% Hostility, 15% Resistance to Damage.
** Hawk Augmenter: 30% Turning, 30% Tracking, 22% Speed, 100% Radar, 60% Thrust, 90% Damage, 70% Shield, 100% Visibility, -15% Electric Tempering, 10% Critical Hit Chance.
* Altered Blue Photon Corvette model and texture.
* Added free Toxified Photon Corvette skin to the Blue Photon Corvette.
* Added free Cybernetic Photon Corvette skin to the Blue Photon Corvette.
* Added new missions to the start of Subspace to fix any issues with not having an affiliation skill while trying to start the chain.
* Added Kalthi manufacturing items.
* All members of a team will now contribute to team tithe
* Added Rainbow Force Field to Ancient Asteroid Being drops.
* Added Pax Felicitas.
* Edited the amount of Kalthi Manufacturing Parts needed for a Perilium to account for the Kalthi Assembly step.
* Adjusted run cost of the Kalthi mobile factory.
* Added additional Rat names and adjectives to reduce duplicates in Nexus and holiday event rats.
* Made Space Rat Hatchery 10 times less common than Slaughterhouses, as you only need 1 per 10 Slaughterhouses
* Made blueprints require Equipment rather than Station Management
* Adjusted Earthforce Station Panels from 5% resistance to 15% shield and negative 5% energy.
* Added Horizon Station Solar Panel and Anti. As a dungeon blueprint drop.
* Added Citadel Station Solar Panel and Anti. As a dungeon blueprint drop.
* Added Crystalline Station Hybrid Solar Panel. As a dungeon blueprint drop.
* Added Avalon Station Solar Panel and Anti. As a dungeon blueprint drop.
* Added Adamantiumized Station Solar Panel and Anti. As a dungeon blueprint drop.
* Allied AI is now healable irrespective if it is attackable or not.
* A single BvB base can now be placed even if the adjacent owned galaxy hasn’t been owned long enough. Any more than one base will have to wait for the timer.
* Updated The Nexus pirate side background visuals.
* Added Earthforce Supplier skin for The Nexus.
* Added pirate Ai base skin for The Nexus.
* Added Automated Attached Miner Kit IV Blueprint to Capella AI base.
* Added a warning during planetscanner use for solarbodies having no base slots.
* Added Kalthi Orbital Habitats Blueprint.
* Added Hotrod Station Kit VI Blueprint. As a dungeon blueprint drop.
* Added Golaz Station Kit VII Blueprint. As a dungeon blueprint drop.
* Added Hermes Station Kit VIII Blueprint, separate from all existing drops.
* Added Gaia Station Kit IX Blueprint. As a dungeon blueprint drop.
* Added Depot Station Kit VII Blueprint to Dungeon Drops.
* Added Depot Station Kit VIII Blueprint to Dungeon Drops.
* Added Depot Station Kit IX Blueprint to Dungeon Drops.
* Added new drops to Serengeti for Primal Gear and possibly some ships!
* Vapor Condensor (and Mobile version) has been item renamed to Vapor Condenser. Any existing condensors will be automatically converted to the new version when taken out of storage.
* Added various features to disable AI only ships in player hands (they can no longer be undocked, if undocked already their stats will be nerfed severly. To get rid of them, dock the ai only ship and remove all items from it, it will then destroy itself.
* Added new comet tutorial to Capella, demonstrating how to acquire comet loot and finding out what each comet contains.
* Reduced player obtainable base kit transference resistance to 70% to somewhat increase effectiveness of HPS bases.
* Removed duplication of status in HQ field generators.
* Added 3 Depot Defender temporary drones to Depot kits.
* Moved the UrQa Kasa Akuk’oj Ukoq ruin to a dropped item on Bana Queen and Bana King. Separate from current drop lists. This is also within a crate for easier scooping.
* Gargantuan Give and Take has been converted into a crate of size 75 from 1585 for dg drop.
* Gargantuan Misdirection has been converted into a crate of size 50 from 1077 for dg drop.
* Gargantuan Ion Justice has been converted into a crate of size 50 from 900 for dg drop.
* Gargantuan Obsidian Ionizer has been converted into a crate of size 50 from 1069 for dg drop.
* Gargantuan Yallow has been converted into a crate of size 50 from 833 for dg drop.
* Gargantuan Fission Thrust has been converted into a crate of size 50 from 946 for dg drop.
* Gargantuan Moral Emphasis has been converted into a crate of size 25 from 418 for dg drop.
* Bhisaj Kavaca has been converted into a crate of size 25 from 841 for dg drop.
* Boson Blower has been converted into a crate of size 25 from 512 for dg drop.
* Tamed Wasp fighter is now scrappable at Junkyard like other prefab fighters.
* Rabbit Hunter Assistant Prefab fighter is now scrappable at Junkyard like other prefab fighters.
* Added Rubicite Station Kit Blueprint to dungeon drop lists.
* Added unpacking IC factories to Capella for purchase.

Misc stuff

* Allowed use of variables in team messages. Variables must be enclosed in $(), (e.g., “Hi, welcome to $(name)!”). Supported options are:
** name – the team’s name,
** chars – number of characters,
** slotcount and slotlimit – number of used account slots,
** hqloc – the location of the HQ kit, or “[no HQ]” if you don’t have one,
** gcount – number of owned galaxies,
** pcount – number of protected galaxies,
** pop – team’s total population
** popperc – percentage population ownership of the universe
** opcount – number of outposts
** oplimit – max number of outposts
** oplist – comma delimited list of outposts’ galaxy’s name
** director – the character name of the director
** councillorcount, officercount, operatorcount, soldiercount, peoncount – counts of the number of those at that rank
** score – current team score
* Fixed the lack of a space after the number of base slots when using planetscanners.
* Better optimized the teleport protections for high latency players

Next uni changes

+ Industrial Commod bases no longer deal in off-theme Industrial Commods (For example, a Girder base will only deal in Steel Girders, Titanium Reinforced Girders, Laconia Reinforced Girders and Adamantium Reinforced Girders and no longer deals in Fusion Cells, Sentient Chatbots, Fine Space Whisky, Paxian Figurines, Cyborg Brigades and Sub-Shield Buffers
+ Umbra nodes are now 2 times as common and yield 2 times as much Umbra on average
+ Updated the spread of Juxtas and Concourses in Wild Space. They no longer only appear on the edge of the map
+ Lowered the amount of Kalthi Depths galaxies from 250 to 140
+ Lowered the amount of Perilous Space galaxies from 300 to 250
+ Increased the amount of Earthforce Layer galaxies from 450 to 500 to allow better AI spread over Danger Factors
+ The Badlands, in the Jungle, can now drop Bauxite and Bronze from the asteroids.
+ Added comets, these new celestial bodies will orbit their stars for long periods of time in elliptical orbits, and when they come close to their star they will drop items. The items that they dropped can be determined by using a prospecting planet scanner on them.
+ The list of Aveksaka gal names in Subspace has been expanded with 24 new possible names.
+ The potential galaxy name LACS-01804 Lamba has been fixed to LACS-01804 Lambda.
+ Jungle Bosses, except for Subemperor Baloo, drop 100,000,000 credits when killed. Subemperor Baloo drops 200,000,000.
+ Added Sivar’s Augmenter, Glare, Broken Glare, Focus, Purifier and Purpose to Sivar Hvar’kann’s drops.
+ Added Electrified Georg Ohm, a roamer in Kalthi Depths who has a vastly increased chance to drop Georg Ohm’s loot, as well as Kalthi Depths specific loot.
+ Fixed the missing glowmap on the Red Photon Oversized Turret.
+ Added a vuln aura for unattached bases to all suns in buildable gals.
+ Updated pax mission for Felicitas
+ Fixed Aether Escape super item will now have a charge of 25 seconds, with a flat speed boost of 150 lasting for 15 seconds.
+ Added exit gate to Dark Diablo.
+ Added Compact Station Solar Panel and Anti. Will be sold in Free Market and The Acropolis.
+ Added Divine Station Solar Panel drop, separate from all existing drops.
+ Added UrQa Kasa Akuk’oj Ukoq ruin station solar panel.
+ Added Armada Station Solar Panel and Anti as a separate mission in Serengeti Blockade.
+ The Twisted Token reward missions will now auto-start upon entering Prejudice.
+ Made base amp holoprojector a fixed size.
+ Qa Quuu Drone has been converted into a crate of size 100 from 5000 for dg drop.
+ Quu Drone has been converted into a crate of size 25 from 560 for dg drop.
+ Changed resistances of Quu, Qa Quuu, and Kasa Quu to be in accord with the BvB rework.
+ Reworked paxian explorations missions, added 2 new items a microwarpers and travel ship.

Hello everyone! In this post, I will fill you in on the final details of the galaxy assault revamp that will go live for the upcoming universe. Until that time, the changes detailed in this post will be up on the test server for everyone to experiment with.

Summary of changes

Hi everyone, here’s a report from press corps member DJ on this week’s meeting.

Jeff

-Fixed bugs with missions in Nexus

-New Tutorial speech for certain missions in Nexus

-Attack/idle patterns introduced into Nexus and early level areas, still in development.

-Replaced older missions with more updated one in Nexus layer involving Volcom Outpost.

-Debugged mission indicators

Markoz

-Station Expansion part one will be introduced at Uni Reset, part two under development

-Specialized Olympus fighters, bps requires Olympus gear.

-Possible DG rework(multiple AIs per lvl) -DGs one off with Hives and Delquads

Additional Notes

-Add soaks for Unforge in regards to base tanking

-Forcefield Generator Drones reworked and moved to testing for base tank/spamming

-Galaxy assault testing ongoing, minor changes coming and full list of changes coming this Saturday. Base healing weapons to be tweaked in regards to successful testing by our tester group

-Termite revamp

 

Welcome to the station expansion update! This blog will go over all the details of what’s to be expected within this update.
Enjoy all of this next universe.

Welcome to the station expansion update! This blog will go over all the details of what’s to be expected within this update.

Enjoy!

A total of 13 solar panels have been added; more details below:

The currently existing Earthforce Station Solar Panels have lost their +5% Resistance bonuses and have had them replaced with -5% Energy Max and +15% Shield Max bonuses.

Normal panels and anti-panels of the same type cannot be stacked together.

Solar panels that are acquired from dungeons will drop in blueprint form and other solar panels will drop as a crate to compress the size.

This part of the update has experienced some issues with having existing equipped extractors on station kits, and so currently only the tech 9 station kit will be available in Capella for 250,000,000 credits in blueprint form.

Additional gear within the kit:

• 1 Automated Hydroponics (2,525 Workers)
• 2,000 Rations
• 2,525 Workers
• 300 Advance Metal Drills
• 300 Advanced Silicon Extractors
• 300 Advanced Nuclear Waste Collectors
• 300 Tree Cutters
• 300 Harvesters

The Automated Attached Miner Kit IV Blueprint requires:

Intial Materials

• 500,000,000 Credits
• 30 Junkyard Scrapnote*
• 1 Loaded Attached Station Kit IV*

Periodic Materials

• 500,000,000 Credits

If this intial station kit gets wide use, expect an expansion into this area once the bugs are ironed out.

Yes, you heard right, station kits that can be pulled, pushed, and flown even faster. All these station kits copy the stats of the corresponding kit they’re built from, but of course with the extra speed and base thrusters.

These station kits focus around being either transfer and production type kits. They’ll contain the following additions:

Depot Cargo Extension

• Tech: 16
• Size: 1,000
• Extra-Space: 100,000
• Galaxy-Bound
• Build Cost: 100 Promethium, 2,000 Steel Girders, 100,000,000 Credits.
• One is already placed within the Depot Station Kits.

Depot Warpastic Hot

• Tech: 16
• Damage: 1,125 (186.25 DPS, 0.030 DPE)
• Recoil: 6.04s
• Range: 100
• Ethereal
• Damage Type: Heat, Adds 90 heat damage over 30 seconds.
• Side-Effect: Warp Interdiction +1 for 8 seconds.
• Base-Bound
• Already placed within Depot Station Kits.

Depot Warpastic Hot+

• Tech: 16
• Damage: 1,125 (186.25 DPS, 0.030 DPE)
• Recoil: 6.04s
• Range: 150
• Ethereal
• Damage Type: Heat, Adds 90 heat damage over 30 seconds.
• Side-Effect: Warp Interdiction +1 for 8 seconds. On hit does a 75% damage splash effect with range 250.
• Base-Bound
• Made from in-built blueprint.

Depot Basic Field Generator

• Tech: 16
• Fields Generated:
  • Max Speed: +20 (2,000)
  • Shield Charge: +50 (220)
  • Energy Charge: +100 (220)
• Electricity: 1,666/s
• Base-Bound
• Already placed within Depot Station Kits.

Depot Advance Field Generator

• Tech: 16
• Fields Generated:
  • Max Speed: +55 (6,000)
  • Shield Charge: +75 (400)
  • Energy Charge: +150 (400)
• Electricity: 1,666/s
• Base-Bound
• Made from in-built blueprint.

Depot Construction Facility Blueprint

• Tech: 16
• Construction Speed Bonus: +10%
• Made from in-built blueprint.
• Build Cost: 1 Dementium, 2,000 Promethium, 8,000 Steel Girders, 8,000 Sentient Chatbots, 5,500 Fusion Cells, 2,000,000,000 Credits.

Included temporary galaxy-bound drones:

Additional information about each station kit:

Players have been asking about this addition for a while, to add station kits based off specific resources. So here it is! The Rubicite Station Kit, essentially a huge constructed crystal of Rubicite. This station kit will contain the following:

Rubicite Protector (Shield)

• Tech: 14
• Protection: 2,000,000
• Regenerate: 100/s
• Regen Electricity: 4500/s (0.02 regen/energy)
• Electricity: 117/s
• Sticky

Rubicite Plasma Fabricator (Superitem)

• Tech: 14
• Does a Rubicite Plasma Ball Missile.
• Charge Required: 40,800,000
• Charging Rate: 340,000/s
• Base-Bound

Rubicite Plasma Launcher

• Tech: 14
• Launches Missiles.
• Queue up to 10 missiles.
• Launch speed: 5 seconds.
• Sticky

Custom Missiles

• Salvo: 5 indiviudal plasma balls.
• Max Distance: 15,000
• Has a Mini Rubicite Discharge laser.
• Superitem built-in

Rubicite Crystal Presence (Field Generator)

• Tech: 14
• Fields Generated:
  • Capacity: +5% (4,000)
  • Range: +5% (4,000)
  • Range: -5% (1,000) Enemies
• Electricity: 5,000/s
• Base-Bound

Rubicite Discharge

• Tech: 14
• Damage: 24,030 (5,492.57 DPS, 0.340 DPE)
• Recoil: 4.375s
• Range: 1,000
• Ethereal
• Damage Type: Laser, Adds 400 heat damage over 40 seconds.
• Electricity: 69,065
• Base-Bound

Rubicite Station Kit VI Blueprint Costs:

• 1 Demented Station Kit VI*
• 10 Industrial Promethium Crystals*
• 125 Rubicite*
• 25,000 Steel Girders
• 10,000 Fusion Cells
• 2,000,000,000 Credits

If this intial station kit gets wide use, expect an expansion into this area.

Universe Reset

Subnavigator Xibesh, commander of the P.S.S. Excelsior, has reported increasingly large hordes of Aveksaka Suta in the Vihara region of Subspace. The Suta will soon breach the blockade and reclaim Subspace entirely. In response, Paxian scientists plan to use the device in Kumari to destroy Vihara and the countless Suta swarms inside. Lyceum scientists believe losing this region will destabilize all of Subspace and result in our universe imploding on the 5th of May, 13:00 EDT (18:00 BST, 17:00 GMT). With the destruction of our old universe, a new one will be created! All characters, their skills, ships, and bots will be transferred over, but deployed drones and userbases will be lost, as well as anything on the userbases! You’ll have to re-explore the universe to map everything out once again.

With the activation sequence of the Kumari device, Lyceum scientists also predict the arrival of two waves of ancient outposts surfacing from the depths of time. They will be reappearing some time around the 22nd and 28th of April.

This has been a long time coming, multiple delays kept on creeping on and things just got out of hands.

The beta client is highly recommended if you want to connect to livetest, if you do not have the beta client and wish to install it, it can be downloaded here
https://www.starsonata.com/beta-client-download/

The beta client should work fine on liberty but some features will not be functional as they depend on server changes.

Client specific changes in this beta:
* Multiple client crash fixes.
* Some slight performance tweak, should result in 5-10% higher framerate under high spaceobjects scenario.
* Removed black background from Red Photon flag (ID 222).
* Added new flag (ID 44) for team The Elites found in Edge of Reason.
* Fixed the following engine mounts: Behemoth, Goblin, Kelvin, Earthforce Cruiser, Earthforce Battlecruiser, Earthforce Battleship, Earthforce Overload Prototype, Earthforce Dreadnought, Red Photon Warship, Faranji Wingship, Pax Stratos, Ares War Chariot+, Delquadrikamdon
* Altered faction selection image to give better interpretation of options. Credit to Doran.
* Added a server dropdown to the login screen
* Kalthi warrior no longer has black triangles in the corner of it’s body and front spikes.
* Fix for floaty text memory leak
* Changed the default camera view to top down.
* Made it so that sounds will load through mods (the skin system can now be used to mod sounds)
* C1 style gal circle
* made it so that the random gal link color is only for wild space
* Gave the map a more “classic” feel to it.
* The map now show less station tabs than previously, up to a max of 15.
* Added per-team colors to owned gal links.
* Improved Space Rat textures.
* Tabs instead of spaces between cells when copying tables
* Added mods to the copy to clipboard functionality for inventories
* Added pagination to skins UI
* Fixed the target circle to point to the front of the ship
* Improved UI target rings resolutions.
* Fixed the rendering of icons next to the players name (such as the emp star)
* Fixed an issue where the “class skills available” dialog was sometimes blocking drag n dropped items that it shouldn’t be even when invisible.
* Fixed orthographic mode clipping
* Fixed ortho camera changing to perspective

livetest patchnotes will be available by monday.

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 13th April.

As an additional bonus, we’re also giving +50% XP until Easter Monday (that’s 2nd April, if you don’t know).

Happy hunting!

Balancing the Books

We have had many discussions about “Balance” on our Discord server these last few months. In this blog post I’d like to explain how we determine if something is “balanced”, the issues we are currently dealing with and generally talk a whole lot of math. If you are not interested in heavily theoretical discussions, feel free to ignore this blog post in its entirety. For everyone else: Welcome to my world. Let me show you around.

During the years I’ve worked on Star Sonata, one question has come up often: “Is this thing balanced?”. Initially, it seemed like a very easy question to answer: If the balance sheets say it’s balanced, it’s balanced. End of discussion. Assuming that the balance sheets are perfect, however, is dangerous. Star Sonata has evolved massively over time, do the basic principles used in the balance sheets still hold?

Star Sonata is a game of synergies. Any change in a ship’s equipment has a cascading, multiplicative effect. And most importantly: The resulting changes are usually very, very significant. It’s not a matter of doing 5% or 10% more damage, it’s more often a matter of hundreds of percentages of difference.

It is due to this fact that even just a few items being ever so slightly too strong can make the entire balance feel off. It would of course be disingenuous to say that no items currently existing in the game are more than just “slightly” too strong, but more on that later.

In Star Sonata, a ship’s strength is the product of its parts. To put it into very simplified, but mathematical terms, it would be something like this:

Player strength = Weapon * Energy * Shield * Ship * Augmenters * Skills

This means that if Player B had gear that was just 10% better than Player A, he would in fact be 10%^5 =61% stronger!

While this is a simplified way of looking at player strength (Would an energy bank that is 10% better really increase the entire player’s strength by 10%? Probably not), it does highlight the main challenge: If items increase in power over tech, this increase has to be handled very carefully to keep the gap between techs reasonable.

Armed with this knowledge, let’s look at how Star Sonata’s balance sheets work exactly.

Balance Sheets

All balance sheets have a set of parameters that they use to approximate how powerful an item should be. These parameters are:

• Cost (Very, very cheap -> Insane)

• Acquire Method (Common -> Hard Build)

• Weight (Ultralight -> Extremely Heavy)

• Size (MicroMicro -> Gargantuan)

Each sheet combines these modifiers into a “balance power”, a rough representation of the item’s allowed power, which is then translated into actual stats, which is roughly:

Balance Power = Base Item Power * Tech Modifier * Cost Modifier * Acq. Method Modifier * Weight Modifier * Size Modifier

Since the Base Item Power is constant for each type of item and Tech Modifier is constant per tech, it is only Cost, Acquire Method, Weight and Size that make up the difference in power between items at a specific tech.

 

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 Tangent: Examples

To show how much of a difference these can make:

A normal cost, common, normal weight, normal size item would result in being exactly Base Item Power * Tech Modifier.

An expensive (x1.25 price), hard to build, normal weight, normal size item would be Base Item Power * Tech Modifier * 1.02 * 1.3, so 32.6% stronger than the base item!

And the extreme end:

An insanely expensive (x100 price), hard to build, extremely heavy (x10 weight), gargantuan (x10 size) item

1.2 * 1.3 * (1/0.9) * (1/0.6) = 2.89 , that’s +189% stronger than the “normal” power of an item at this tech!

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The individual balance sheets have additional parameters that need to be entered, for example:

• Lasers: Range, Firing arc and Damage type

• Ships: Hull, Speed, Weapon Slots, Augmenter Slots, Visibility, Diameter, Resistances

In the case of lasers, the balance sheet is able to calculate a DPS and DPE from the item’s Balance Power and damage type. More “useful” damage types, such as mining and surgical have lower overall power. Mining has the lowest DPE, Radiation has slightly higher DPE, and Physical has the highest DPE. Size class has an additional effect on a weapon’s DPE: big weapons have a lower DPE (=more DPS), small weapons have a higher DPE (=less DPS).

The lasers size is calculated from its range, firing arc and size class.

Ships

The balance sheet for ships is a different matter. Calculating a Balance Power, which is then translated into actual stats is not feasible. Ships are simply too complicated for that. They have a myriad of stats that matter significantly. In order to automatically calculate stats of a ship of a specific strengths, the balance sheet would have to have a lot of restrictions. In essence we would be sacrificing variety for theoretical balance.

What the balance sheet for ships does instead is the following:

Assign a value (i.e. X Weapon slots are worth Y) and a scaling (i.e. hull space is valued exponentially, sort of) to every stat of a ship. These values are added together and then compared to a guideline, which is the value a generic ship of this tech and rarity should have. If the ship’s value is approximately near (+/- 30%) this guideline, it is considered balanced by the balance sheet. It’s a relatively big range, but that’s quite intentional: With so many variables in play, there needs to be room for common sense.

 

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 Tangent: Example: What’s the worth of a zebu?

Hullspace (75) is worth 18,8

Speed (100) is worth 33,97

Aug Slots (3) are worth 1,64

Weapon Slots (3) are worth 1,05

Vis (12) is worth 1,374

Diameter (=Reflectivity) (33) is worth 0,391

Taking the product of all of those results in a combat value of ~591.

The average combat value for a normal price, common, but heavier tech 0 ship is considered to be:

570 * (1/0,98) = 581,63

591 / 581,63 = 1,02 Great, it’s balanced!

…but there’s also some inbuilt aug stats in the zebucart that have to be considered, bumping this value up to 1.22. That means it’s 22% above where it should be. Still okay!

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 Is this a good approach? Does this result in balanced ships?

Maybe. Nobody knows. Here’s why:

 

 

While the 1.0 +/- 30% holds for low-tech ships, newer additions over every tech have mostly ignored the guidelines the sheet offers.

It is also noteworthy just how much these numbers vary from each other. Something clearly isn’t working well.

So if we assume that these ships are in fact okay, a fair assumption to make as most of them are used (perhaps with the exception of the Wrathful Deployer and the Samgrahak’ayu), then it would be great to figure out a way to confirm that. If we can confirm it, ideally through some sort of math, we can definitively answer our initial question of “Is this thing balanced?” for every ship!

The root of the problem.

The initial approach of assigning a value to each stat is sound, but how valuable is each stat? For most stats, it simply boils down to “How much of this stat do we expect people to have” and “How big should the spread be”. If speed was a very cheap stat, everyone would have very fast ships. If more speed was more expensive (i.e. the exponent of its value was higher), then faster ships would have to sacrifice more from other stat. The same line of argumentation applies to most other stats, except…

Resistances

The value of resistances is calculated as follows (Note however that we don’t use the resistance here (i.e. 0.9 for 90% resistance), but rather the multiplier (i.e. 0.1 for 90%) resistance.

So in short: A HIGH resistance will cause the number at the bottom of the fraction to be LOW, which in turn makes the entire value HIGH.

But… Laser resistance is valued triple. That means Laser resistance has a higher effect on the resistance value than other damage types, but in a good way. In other words: It is easier to get away with having high laser resist than other types.

This is an artifact from ancient times, when lasers (i.e. weapons that hit their targets instantly) were nearly always laser damage. Getting killed instantly is no fun, so laser resistance was intentionally more common and higher. Nowadays, that assumption no longer holds. While Laser damage is a damage type with inherently higher power, so is energy. And energy lasers exist…

The lowest resistance is valued 4 times as much (or 6 if it happens to be laser). That means a high weakness would… wait a minute! We’re dealing with MODIFIERS (i.e. 0% resistance is 1.0, 100% resistance is 0.0). But in that last bit, we take the highest modifier OR 1.0, which will always be 1.0!

So a value that should scale like this (and therefore make a ship that is super resistant to everything nearly impossible):

instead scales like THIS (and therefore actually allows fully invulnerable ships without issue!):

Ooops.

Augmenter Slots

The other very interesting topic is Augmenter Slots, or the question: “How much strength does each augmenter slot add to a ship”?

The value of an aug slot probably depends on the value of an augmenter, which get stronger over techs (so an aug slot on a high tech ship is worth more than one on a low-tech ship). It probably also has diminishing returns due to the additive nature of augmods, but…

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 Tangent: Augmod value

The value of Augmods is determined through relations between the different stats and assumptions about the general meta and educated guesses.

Damage is considered the standard, i.e. +100% damage is a value of 1, every other stat is derived from there. Rate of Fire is much cheaper, since it affects DPS just like Damage, but does not affect DPE. Multifire is slightly more expensive due to the high alpha strike damage potential, but the same principle applies.

An Augmenter is considered balanced if the sum of the value of its bonuses is exactly the value of the augmenter power progression curve for its tech. In short: Add all the bonuses together, compare to the expected value, done.

 

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…what about synergies? An individual augmenter CANNOT be balanced around the synergies it provides, nor can it be balanced around every combination with every other aug possible. A single aug with +100% Damage and a single aug with +100% RoF provide the same bonus to DPS individually. In a 1 aug setup, you can use either aug and get the same DPS. In a 2 aug setup, you could use any combination and get the same DPS. In a 3 aug setup however, using either 3 +Damage augs or 3 +RoF augs would suddenly be worse than using a combination.

The issue quickly escalates with more stats. Certain numbers of aug slots open up nicer possibilities for augmenter synergies. Going from 1 aug to 2 augs is MORE than 100% stronger since you no longer need to rely on the synergies provided by a single aug. Going from 7 to 8 augs however is nearly irrelevant.

No matter what, to find out (more or less) exactly how much an aug slot is worth, there is no way around making some calculations with augs that are actually in the game.

Unfortunately, explaining the exact math behind the calculations is too difficult for the scope of this blog, but the gist is simple: Augmods are additive. If I have lots of +Damage from augmods already, more +Damage will not do much. In fact, the more +Damage I have, the more effective +RoF becomes. If I have tons of +Damage and +RoF, then +Critical Strike Chance and Strength becomes very valuable.

The same is true for Shield Recharge and Resistance. And Shield and Resistance. And so on.

After taking the brute force approach and generating millions of augmenter setups using high tech augs, these are the results:

Each row shows the average value of a setup above a certain percentile. The columns containing percentages show the percentage increase in power per increased augmenter slot.

The values for 1 aug make a lot of sense: Augmenters generally hover around ~2.0 in the augmenter balance sheets. Even the very best aug is not THAT far off, even with synergies included.

Going from 1 to 2 aug slots increases the effective stats provided by over a hundred percent. Even going from 3 to 4 is not +33%, but significantly higher!

So lets plug in these values into our current assumptions:

 

Oh my. Worth noting that the calculation to estimate the value of an augmenter slot was severely changed after the Hephaestus Machine and the Prawn. It is also worth considering that the value of an augmenter slot is only needed to compare different hull types (since ~all ships of the same hull type have the same number of augmenter slots), but there are of course some exceptions that would benefit from having proper calculations here (PBF, BS) and getting something accurate would open up interesting possibilities in the future.

… TO BE CONTINUED

 

Hi everyone, here’s an update on what we have done lately. As always, some of these changes may be finished but awaiting patch, so just ask if you aren’t sure if they’re live.

DarkSteel

We have put together some plans to iron out the cost of Tractoring skill levels 15 through 19.  The provisional idea is to make these skills obtained by turning in various DG-dropped tractor beams.  Alternatively, you will be able to use Adamantium Traction Modules to skip directly from 14 to 19.

NCC

I need a lot of help from the player testing for Red Photon, please pm me on discord for any squads you might have that you would like to attempt my Turret fight with. Possible changes coming in about a 25 man squad but will need to rebalance for that possibility. I have the ability to fix the Lion V2 if I can figure out what is causing it to be tiny!!!

enkelin (me!)

I am project manager for a design pass on the Gunner class.  My role is to supervise Contributors who are putting together the specifics of this project, and to make sure that any changes are fully vetted by the dev team and Jeff himself.  Here’s what Contributor Hober Mallow would like to report about the project.

We all know that Gunners have, for quite some time, suffered from feast or famine gameplay. Anyone who has played a Gunner knows this scenario well: You warp into a galaxy, lets say the first level of a DG, and there are 8 targets. You start firing on them, with your Deathblossom equipped of course, and decimate them quite quickly. You destroy them even faster if you have splash or chain weaponry. But as soon as there is only a single target left, your damage drops off like a rock. The current iteration of Gunner is not fun for a variety of reasons, and we hope to address them in the upcoming months. Gunner skills are going to be adjusted as neccessary, in the interest of making sure Gunner is fun for both single target and multiple target situations.

Here’s what you can expect. Splash weapons will no longer do less DPS than a comparable non splashing weapon, instead they will have worse DPE and have better DPE than a comparable weapon when you are hitting enough targets. The Deathblossom will now use extra energy for each extra shot. The Adv Class Subskill that gives +100% Splash Range will be removed. Missile Mastery will be removed, and Missile Launchers will gain bonuses to give their missiles more damage so that players can scale their missiles up via better launchers. This will be accompanied by an adjustment to missiles at various tech levels, transferring their power into the missile launchers. Finally, the Gunner Analyzer (Shield Remodulation Scanner) will no longer increase the energy used by your weapons for increased resistances. Instead, it will take a portion of your incoming damage and apply it to your energy bank!

The details of these changes will be made available later, stay tuned for further updates!