Hello everyone. We’d like to announce some changes to permanent drones that will take effect tomorrow on Universe Reset.  The upshot is that healer permanent drones have had their HPS output nerfed by about 50%, down to around 23,000 for endgame variants.  For exact numbers, please consult the spreadsheet linked below (which also gives some helpful augmentation suggestions).  We have undertaken this nerf as part of a larger repositioning of permanent drones as anti-player emplacements, as opposed to general-purpose defense assets that often rival bases in defense utility.  For this reason, we are trying to balance drone healing power to around the level that a player ship can achieve.  Since endgame drones were healing in the 40-60k range, a nerf of roughly 50% was required.

Spreadsheet of Changes

There’s one other change to permanent drone mechanics that was decided on ages ago but never got coded until now. When we revamped Augmenter Tweaking, we buffed all non-base augmenters by a factor of two to compensate. Accordingly, we decided to stop allowing non-base augmenters to be inserted into permanent drones via Astral Injection, but the code for this has only just been prepared for patch.  We do regret giving you all such late notice on this change. If you were planning to use non-base augmenters on your drones and have been thrown off by this, we would be happy to do an exchange at no cost to you. Just submit a ticket within the first two weeks of the universe and specify which non-base augmenters you would like to have exchanged for base augmenters (tech 10 and lower).

Greetings!  We are excited to announce a new role on the Star Sonata development team.  This role is being introduced to address two separate goals:

1. We would like to make the dev team’s work more transparent to the community.
2. We would like to attract skilled and dedicated community members to the dev team.

As a member of the Star Sonata Press Corps, you will receive read/listen-only access to weekly dev meetings.  At these meetings, you will have the opportunity to ask questions, much like the public comment period at a local governmental meeting.  In exchange for this access, we would like Press Corps members to report to the rest of the community on what the dev team has been discussing and working on.  You’ll receive a forum designation to reflect your status as a Press Corps member, but you are also welcome to use other avenues to report to the community. Joining the Press Corps is also a great way to get acquainted with the team in case you’re interested in becoming a developer in the future.  Everyone is welcome to apply, even if you have previously applied to join the dev team.  Just send an email to jeff@starsonata.com indicating your interest and he’ll take it from there.

Universe Reset July 22nd 2017

In recent events, Hober Mallow has learned how to buff stuff. With this revelation he has buffed the strength of the Aveksaka exponentially to increase the difficulty of Subspace. The Aveksaka are now destroying the Terran universe quicker than ever before – Lyceum scientists predict our universe will end on the 22nd of July, 13:00 EDT (18:00 BST, 03:00 AET). This is only days away now, remember to pack your bases and permanent drones before they are deleted! All characters, ships, bots, and skills will be unaffected by the reset. Fortunately, the newfound power of the Aveksaka will be lost in the collapse of our universe.

SunDog60

I’ve been working on Arctia the past few days, fixing any issues with it mainly. The Arctia AI will now spawn around each room, not on top of every wormhole as they do currently. They will also spawn in a flurry of snowflakes, this should help alleviate the strangeness of seeing a random shard of ice appearing next to you. Lady Aurora will now drop a rare holoprojector similar to Lord Borean (these changes aren’t in yet at the time of posting this blog!).

Next patch, there will be a temporary mission in The Junkyard to delete those pesky Prefab Fighters from your ship until we can get an improved solution to them.

Bobbo

Bobbo has been working on fixing problems and in general improving the Seer Nanite Infusion Devices. If you have had issues with this and would like to help speed up the fixing process, the current fixes are available on test for you to experiment with!

NCCIntrepid

NCC has converted the built-in Lion Maul tweak generator on the Lion and the built-in Sniper Re-Router tweak generator into tweak devices. This will allow bots to use them as well as modernizing the ship inbuilts to be closer to what is now found on ships today, such as the Paxian Grand Reinforcement on the high tech Paxian ships. We are aware of the lack of information on the super item tooltips and we will be looking into fixing that soon.

Pixel

Pixel has been very busy yet again adding wounderful background changes to galaxys and other things.

End of the Universe

Temple Grounds

Shadow

Reaver Skins

Base Radiation Field Generators

Changes to base radiation field items, that will affect enemy ships resistances as they get closer to your bases.

Client Fixes

* Fixed a bug where buttons in the client would stay pressed if the “mouse up” event happened outside if their click boundary
* Fixed a bug where the resize border would still show when a window was focused even if the mouse was outside of the window bounds.
* Fixed a bug where sometimes the skill search bar would not reset
* Fixed the text scroll in the target window
* Fixed a bug where the “misc” type empty item slot inventory indicators weren’t being sorted properly, which resulted in them changing order every time the inventory changed contents
* Fixed a bug where the friends list would not clear when logging out and back in

Visual changes

* Adjusted Faranji Stinger texture, thanks to contribution from Klestiko.
* Improved Rhino model and texture.
* Updated faction selection dialog.
* Changed the color of the “empty item slots” to be darker and stand out more from normal items.
* Updated visuals for Chihuahua, Whippet, Terrier, and Border Collie fighters.
* Added Frozen Harrier skin.

Content Changes

* Battle Sphere: Augmenter slots from 5 to 4
* Fleet Commander augs are being nerfed
** Aptitude: lost its Turning and Speed
** Proficiency: lost its Turning and Speed
** Mastery: lost its Turning and Speed
** Art of FC: lost its Speed and Tractor Power
** Ult. Art of FC: lost its speed and Tractor Power
* Arsonist’s Augmenter: Crit Chance 20% (from 30%), Crit Strength 40% (from 0%)
* Slumber Augmenter: Crit Chance 15% (from 40%), Crit Strength 60% (from 0%)
* Hibernation Augmenter: Crit Chance 20% (from 60%), Crit Strength 75% (from 0%)
* Reaver Augmenter: Crit Chance 20% (from 40%), Crit Strength 40% (from 55%)
* Hantr Psu: Crit Chance 20% (from 30%), Crit Strength 125% (from 100%)
* Arcadian, Apollo and Ares Base Energies no longer generate Nuclear Waste
* Vulture and Hawk inbuilt scoops replaced with inbuilt super items, Scavenger fires the Vultures signature pulse guns (and gives Tracking and Range bonuses) and Hunter fires the Hawks signature weapon (and gives Rate of Fire and Radar bonuses). The AI versions of these ships do not have these super items.
* Red Photon Plasma Missile no longer does 2x the damage they should be doing, nor do its fires stack up to very high amounts. Each missile does 5k damage instead of 10k damage (For a total of 25k damage per salvo), and the fires last 2 seconds instead of 10 seconds.
* The Seer Rift generators got a slight reduction in cooldown and the lower tech Microwarps received beefs
** Warpping Paper: max distance from 200 to 1000, chargetime from 600 to 25 seconds
** Witch’s Broomstick: chargetime from 300 to 60 seconds
** Gallows Robber: chargetime from 600 to 60 seconds
** Bimbus 3000: chargetime from 450 to 60 seconds
** Monkey Jump: max distance from 700 to 1000, chargetime from 2 (no, that’s not a typo) to 25 seconds
** Leopard Jump: chargetime from 180 to 15 seconds
** Prototype Rift Generator, Seer Rift Generator, Aveksaka Rift Generator: chargetime from 180 to 150 seconds
* Assault Behemoth’s Assault Dropship fighters can now acquire a new target after their first target has been lost.
* Paxian Battle Frigate has had its Shield and Energy augmods reduced to 200% each.
* Hawk has had its Weight increased 55000>110000, Max Speed increased 137>140, Diameter increased 35>50, Laser resistances decreased 65%>60%, Energy resistances decreased 20%>10%, Mining resistances decreased 70%>60%, Aug Mods replaced (10% Turning, 10% Tracking, 15% Thrust, 15% Energy Recharge)>(20% Damage, 20% Energy Recharge, 5% Critical Hit Chance), inbuilt electricity generation increased 35>50.
* UrQa’qa Qu’ishi Qa: Energy bonus from 450% to 800%
** Inbuilt missile launcher now increases missile speed by 50% from 20%
** Inbuilt missile launcher now has 4 seconds charge rate down from 5 seconds
* Gunner Ion Missile devices should now properly apply + electric tempering to target
* Added unique with tags to anti graviton tweaks (they now share cooldown)

Misc changes

* non bvb kits must now be within 30k dist of the nearest solarbody.
** Kits that are out of bound will be notified in team chat and are given 10 minutes to be moved back in before destruction
* Base thruster are no longer restricted while under attack.

Next uni changes

+ Added Shadow AI base back into Shadow galaxy.

Universe Reset July 22nd 2017

It’s that time of the month (year..? whatever) again. The universe has become old and unstable. Scientists predict the precise collapse will occur on the 22nd of July,13:00 EDT (18:00 BST, 03:00 AET).

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.

Content Changes

* Lyceum Offensive and Defensive Field’s are no longer useable by bots and no longer affect drones
* Fixed mission description wording in exchanging twisted tech for tokens.
* Energy needed for Earthforce Overload Prototype’s Overloaded Mining Laser Prototype increased to 25k, charge time increased to 54 seconds.
* The Lyceum Research Cruiser’s Offensive and Defensive auras are no longer improperly affected by Neuro Tweaking.
* Over 25 Permanent drone fixes. This will result in heavy nerfs to a lot of drones (but they were unintentionally too strong to begin with).

Bug Fixes

* HAZMAT Collection mission in Tra Subspace fixed, Corrosive Alien Plamsa has been renamed to Corrosive Alien Plasma and will now appear as a parasite in your ship.
* Fixed all Parasitic pulses to properly inject parasites again.

Content Changes

* Due to the excessively strong nature of the Mastodon as a fighter platform, the fighter bay is being nerfed to 6 slots from 10 slots. The launch speed of the Bay has been reduced from 5 seconds to 0.75 seconds. There may be further adjustments to the Mastodon, as neccessary, going forward.
* The Trap is Set mission in Katur Subspace now points you towards the Landmark Drone to begin, which has had its trigger radius increased from 100 to 300.
* On The Offensive mission in Katur Subspace requires 15 Sahvitra kills, the Sahvitra will now spawn from an interval of 45 seconds (2 spawners) down to 20 seconds (2 spawners).
* Dark Kobaldstein’s Offensive and Defensive Lasers replaced with Injectors in the drop tables. Any existing offensive and defensive lasers will still convert into injectors.

Bug Fixes

* Fixed a bug where slaves would not follow seers into a warp if the seer was relying on their seer skills for warp nav.
* Fixed a bug where seers would not get the full map merged from their team if they were relying on their Seer skills for warp nav.
* Fixed 3 of the most common client crashes.
* Fixed a bug where team xp progress towards the next level would have been wiped when the server loads.
* Fied bugs where range tweaks weren’t counted for deathblossoms and the Seer jammers
* Fixed Voulge and Flamberge skin names.
* HAZMAT Collection mission in Tra Subspace fixed, Corrosive Alien Plamsa has been renamed to Corrosive Alien Plasma and will now appear as a parasite in your ship.

Next uni

+ Copper background adjusted.
+ Dragon Boss Lair background adjusted.
+ Easter galaxy backgrounds adjusted.
+ Captain Kidd galaxy background adjusted.

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:

Jey

Recent client patch reduced the crashes by a lot but there is still more than can be considered acceptable. I am still working on tracking and fixing as many of the crashes as possible but the remaining ones are pretty complicated. We are up to date on patches so expect new ones every week or so.

Pixel

Has been busy with another developer make the faction selection dialog!

Dark Steel

We’re introducing a new tag that allows items to drop on death. It’s first implementation will be on every kind of Industrial Commod. If a bot or player gets killed all their/its Industrial Commods will be dropped.

We’re also going to be making bots drop 20% of their credits upon death which will be modifiable by Piracy and Surgical damage. This should put a lot more risk on off-team trading routes.

Bobbo

Fixed a bug with Deathblossom where it wouldn’t take the range tweak bonus into account when choosing targets.

Ryan

Ryan has been working on our ingame store. Here is a preview of it while it is still in progress. Keep in mind that there are still a couple images missing and that the fonts in several spots are going to be upgraded.

– Server Patch 06.14.2017 (minor patch) –

Misc Changes

* Fixes Flamberge and Voulge skin name.

Content Changes

* Kalthi Armored Commander: Speed from 127 to 100
* Kalthi Wrathful Commander: Speed from 127 to 100, +10% Splash Damage, +25% Splash Range
* Bule Hyperdrive Device turned into an inbuilt Superitem for the Bule Eradicator. New stats: 200 warp distance with 700 speed afterwards with 60 seconds cooldown.
* Altered Christmas Present drone size from 12 to 1.

Bug Fixes

* Fixed Lelih’ayu and Zarkar’ayu fighter factories, they should now generate a fighter generator.
* Fized Bule Blackness requirement in Bule Eradicator Upgrade Blueprint mission.

– Server Patch 06.10.2017 –

Misc Changes

* Added option to “Use Some..” for stacks of items such as Crystals and Industrial Commodities
* Multiple client crashes fix
* Slight improvement to the client dump generation to help track and fix the remaining crashes.

Visual changes

* Added muzzle flashes
* Updated the visual of the Unt Faranji Wingship.
* New lightning laser effect
* The following plus ships now have different textures: Wingship 1-4+, Saudara+ and Bule Saudaron, Ghostship+, Thatch+ and Battle Thatch, Anachron+, Bulk Trader 1-2+, Banshee+, Wyrm+.
* Added Twisted Wattage skin.
* Added Adamantiumized Behemoth Skin.
* Added Emberge Skin to the Voulge, Flamberge, and Flamlite.
* Added Heaven’s Eagle skin to Heaven’s Decent.
* Added Heaven’s Antu skin.
* Added Eridium Isavas’ayu Skin.

Content Changes

* Kalthi Wrathful and Armored Blueprint requirements lowered: Kalthi Ship Plating 10 > 2, Reinforced Kalthi Essence 10 > 4.
* Changed Zeus Research Module to require 200 Platinum (was 2000)
* Sub-Shield Reactors Factory now consumes 50 Enriched Nuclear Waste every 1 minute (from 25)
* Base AI base price of Sub-Shield Reactors increased to 700.000 from 375.000
* Tamed Wasp fighters no longer do twice the damage they’re intended to do.
* Fixed “Rewired” giving +elec temp rather than -elec temp and corrected the description to show the actual bonus
* Removed the splash damage from the Demolishing and Neutralizing line of pulse guns. These weapons are still the highest DPS Mining and Radiation weapons you can acquire, but they were doing a very large amount of damage against multiple targets while still maintaining high DPS numbers.
* Ruby Carrier kill mission for Strontium (Silver base) fixed.
* Rumble Instance Rooms now have a 5 minute lockout.
* Nexus Map arrangement fixed, Arctia and Building Academy Entrance are now in the top right area of the Nexus layer.
* Particle, Singularity and Quantum Brakes nerfed to not be usefull in combat.
* Added missing newline to description of Translocators
* Twisted ship blueprints have gotten their relatively unnoticeable Microchip requirements changed to Sentient Chatbots
* Olympus ship blueprints now require 5 T21 modules of various kinds (down from 10-11) and 1 Adamantium Module (down from 2)
* Battle Sphere changes
** Battle Sphere and Battle Thatch weights have been increased from 3,000,000 and 2,000,000 to 30,000,000 and 20,000,000 respectively.
** Maneuvering Thrusters weight has been dramatically increased, and its Turning has been dramatically increased.
** Battle Sphere and Battle Thatch now have twice the diameter.
** Battle Sphere and Battle Thatch now have 50% Hostility augmod.
* Design pass on Plating X to bring it into line with power curve for other X gear. Tech 14-20 affected, up to 22% nerf to T20.
* Increased Twisted Extensive drone energy charge by 20% more.
* Increased Twisted Compact drone energy charge by 20% more.
* Increased max workforce amount from 10,000 to 100,000 on the Demented Titan Shield plus blueprint.
* Phoenix AI will now transform much sooner and has additional resistance when transforming and increased shield bank by 50,000.
* Converted Lunarium Dust to Lunarium Shard.
* Converted Lunarium Shard Blueprint to Lunarium Blueprint. Blueprints already installed wont be effected.
* Seprated the inbuilt items between the Voulge and Flamberge. The Voulge has recieved bonuses to its versions of the built in items. The old built in items will be deleted on the Voulge and Flamberge and will require the /outfithull command to install the new ones.
* Added Flamberge Charge Drone Device Superitem to Flamberge.
* Added Voulge Charge Drone Device Superitem to Voulge.
* Fixed -electric tempering aura mods and tweaks making weapons cost more energy, and vice versa.
* Fixed Blue Photon mission name typo and clarified the objective of Sweep the Asteroid Field Subspace daily.
* Fleet Commander Transwarps can no longer be sold to AI bases.

Bug Fixes

* Ships can no longer thrust and turn without an engine. Stats from auras, tweaks, zen skills, and engine skill will now no longer add into the turning or thrust of the ship if there isn’t already turning and thrust values from an engine.
* Attempting to thrust in a ship without thrust will no longer play the engine sound or create particles.
* Fixed the bug where class skills were giving skill point debt
* Fixed a bug where your possessions could charge your Gunner Analysis

Changes that will be applied upon Universe Reset

+ Paxian Figurines consumption rate and base max increased by 20%
+ Sentient Chatbots consumption rate and base max increased by 20%
+ Price of all Tier 0 Industrial Commods decreased by 20%
+ Improved Absolution background.
+ Improved Judgement background.
+ Improved Penance background.
+ Improved Arena Lobby visuals.
+ Improved The Colosseum visuals.
+ Improved The Planetarium visuals.
+ Improved Beta Antares AI base and ships docking visuals.
+ Improved Jux background.
+ Adjusted Beta Antares visuals and added shipyards.
+ Adjusted Blue Photon visuals and rock belt.

Welcome to another Pixel blog where I, Pixel, will be going over what has been done over this past week.

Background Improvements

Yes! That wonderful default background of nebulae that has been around Star Sonata for quite a while now has been expanded upon! With eight more variants of backgrounds, expect next universe and possibly some current instances of this universe to have a more dyamic background than before!

Here’s one of many changes the new background visuals have produced.

Shipyards

Shipyards are now visually constructing dreadnaughts and battleships in Beta Antares once again, this will come next universe.

Here’s the shipyard animation in action.