Hi everyone, it’s a surprise post from Yclepticon which means that something, somewhere, is about to get balanced!  As I hinted a few times on the forum, I have been working on a plan to rebalance user bases with the goal of bringing them up to par with all the new tech 21-22 gear that has come out over the years.  Bases are one of the most distinctive and complex features of Star Sonata, so I want to make sure to get this right.  So first, let’s hammer out what the current problems are.

Most players will agree that bases don’t feel powerful enough compared to players.  Even though their weapons are enormous, they don’t seem to pack much of a punch when up against a squad of endgame ships.  And despite special dampeners and augmenters they don’t tend to survive very long when a group of ships open fire on them.  On the other hand, an otherwise weak galaxy can become very strong if a few players show up to defend.  This is because defending players are pretty tough to kill when backed up with healing from their bases, and they can focus their damage on support classes instead of mindlessly going for the tank like bases do.

So what we have is a situation where the presence of active defenders is one of the most important aspects of galaxy defense. This is not necessarily a bad thing.  PvB and galaxy defense can be really exciting.  However, we would like to make base building more accessible to players who don’t necessarily spend 8+ hours a day online, and would be unlikely to take off work or wake up in the middle of the night to defend their bases.  The struggle for territory is an amazing part of Star Sonata and we want to bring it to a wider audience.  This means making bases stronger so that casual and less experienced players have a chance to keep their galaxies safe from PvB.

I know some of you have just put a head shaped hole in your desk after reading that paragraph.  Let me save you the breath and ask the obvious question: How are we supposed to struggle for territory if you make PvB harder?

The answer is almost too simple: we are bringing BvB to center stage.  That’s right,  BASES with frickin’ LASER BEAMS attached to their heads.

Here are the main points of the plan.

1. Base gear will have most stats increased by a factor of 2.

2. You will now be able to BvB from any galaxy you own, not just from HQ-connected galaxies (must still own the galaxy for 24 hours first).

3. The number of kits you can deploy for BvB is being raised from 2 to unlimited.

With these changes, a good PvB squad will still have no problem against weaker galaxies, or even medium-strength galaxies if the owners don’t take defense seriously.  However, if your enemies put a lot of effort into defense, BvB may be the better choice for you.  In that case, you’d better go get your Ada kits ready because you are going to need some spares pretty soon!

I look forward to reading everyone’s feedback on this project.  To get the conversation going, here are a some points I won’t cover in detail right now but which are definitely not being overlooked.

• These changes are tentatively scheduled to go live for next universe, subject to dev availability.

• Everything will be tested extensively before going live.  I will make an announcement as soon we can arrange for players to try out the new system on the test server.

• There will be cheaper, disposable alternatives to endgame base gear (which I announced informally a few weeks ago).  I will elaborate on these in a later post.

• There will be temporary outpost drones that will help you hold territory you have “liberated” with BvB.  More on these later, as well.

This week’s blog post will detail an exciting addition that will be coming to the game soon — a new custom dungeon known as Mira!

Mira, also known as Akuk’ii Suqq’ Bana in the UrQa tongue, is the site of the latest conflict between the UrQa and Paxians. During routine exploration by the Terrans at the behest of the Paxians, they discovered an UrQa stronghold under construction near the strange binary star, Mira. The Paxians dispatched a fleet and have blockaded the immediate area, trapping the UrQa inside. It is up to the combined fleets of both the Paxians and Terrans to destroy their outpost and push the UrQa back to Iq’ Bana.

This custom DG is targeted at players level 100 to 200 and contains 3 new bosses and 10 new galaxies. It will contain special unique items ranging from tech 5 to 12 from both the UrQa and the Paxians! These items will also include a brand new set of tech 5 class overloaders, something oft requested by players. The new overloaders will be added to the general dungeon drop tables, but all the bosses in Mira will have a special extra chance to drop one of them.

Players will be directed to Mira by way of a Paxian mission and the galaxy itself will have a small mission chain where the Paxians ask the players to defeat the bosses of Mira. Doing this will unlock a daily mission to kill one of the bosses which rewards a Paxian Medallion! This should encourage players coming back since they can spend Medallions on Warp Navigation training and other unique Paxian items.

Mira was originally conceived at the same time as Vulcan and Arctia and has been a side project since I started working on those two zones. In the past few weeks I’ve been able to make significant progress on Mira (in between working on bugs and further Nexus changes) and it should be ready to go in midway this universe, or at the latest, next universe reset! This zone functions as part of the initiative to make sure there are places for newer players to go to level without getting immediately swarmed. Maybe even more important, it has the added bonus of furthering the UrQa presence in game. Considering how important the UrQa and Paxians conflict is to the game’s lore, the UrQa are severely underrepresented and easily upstaged even by some of the minor factions! UrQa from the main galaxy of this zone, if able to escape the Paxians, will roam the universe at large and make Earthforce Space a little bit more dangerous if you choose to attack UrQa ships and definitely add some UrQa flavor.

That’s it for this week’s update. I’ll be back next week with another update on what I’ve been up to! Until then, feel free to post in the forums with comments, questions or suggestions.

We all know there are a lot of little things that are somewhat easy to fix, but end up forgotten in the system or ignored, so I decided I’ll try to start something.

Every 2 weeks I’ll start a new quickfixing session. Those session are essentially a period where you can shout out any and all small bugs or missing features that annoy you in the discussion bellow. On Tuesday I’ll go through the forum and fix as many of the issues listed as I can in the day.

Its at my own discretion as to which bugs or features I’ll do on that day, based mostly on if its possible to do it in the day and how many people are affected/want it fixed ASAP.

For bug request, if the bug can be described precisely including a way to reproduce it in 2 lines, then just posting about it in the topic is fine. Otherwise a short description and a link to a bug topic is preferred.

Similarly for feature request, if it can be described precisely in 2 lines, then just write it in the topic, otherwise a short description and a link to a suggestion is preferred

Only code related bug/features will be considered for now, since I do not do content. But if the concept become popular, who knows maybe a content dev will do the same !

- 07/08/2014 276.352 -
* The optimizations mentioned in my recent blog post are now in the beta client.
* Added glowmap for Shrimp
* Some more skins related data for livetest and soon live.
* new ship stat window (broken on live since it lack the proper message, but should work on livetest)
* Fixed the band at the top of the screen not being clickable
* Fixed an issue with the rightclick -> activate control bot not working sometimes when the ship had never been opened.
* the client now know if a ship has skins or not (non functional on live for obvious reasons)
* hopefully fixed the issue causing docked ships to appear when docking.
* fixed a problem with drones initliasation, causing them to sometime go out of sync.

- New micropatch 276.237 (This client contain the client side of the quickfixing session and is needed to connect to livetest).
* lower the autopilot message a bit and fix the message when traveling to unknown galaxy.
* Add an x button to the radar window
* Add a /command (/HideHuiMethod) to change the function of h from deadman switch to a toggle for the session.

* Added tooltip lightly explaining the benefit of DDS textures
* support for the first iteration (still wip) for the ship skins system. (SKIN_FEATURE_1_0)
* Added support for the server/client feature system, allowing for better retrocompatibility between different versions
* Multiple crash fixes
* Fixed the commodity tab in stations to be consistant
* Fixed an overflow causing the “owned” column in tradebay to go into the negative with more than 32k of an item.
* Fixed a flag related handle leak
* Fixed the issue that caused flags to randomly not show next to the ship nametag.

livetest will be updated soon with the first iteration of the skin system, this client will be required to connect to it (trying to connect with live client will give you an unsuported feature error and wont connect).

If you do not have the beta client and wish to install it. It can be downloaded from http://www.starsonata.com/dl/StarSonata_2_beta.exe. The installation is separated from the live client, and it is recommended you keep the live client at hand reach, in case beta client update break it for you.

This week’s post is going to be exceedingly short, but will detail a little bit of what I was up to in the past week.

I was off on holiday for most of this past week (July 4th is a big day for Americans!) but that doesn’t mean I spent the entire week sitting idly by; I did manage to get some bug fixing in. There were three main bugs that I worked on.

Firstly, I added a special check in the missile AI code to stop some exploitative behavior. Missiles will now die when the ship that fired them docks at a space station. When this goes live some players will no longer be able to fire off missiles at AI bases and dock right away to avoid retribution.

Secondly, I took a look at the Deathblossom code and added a check that ensures that targets selected are detectable by the ship that’s firing the Deathblossom. This will fix the issues related to targeting a planet, using Deathblossom and hitting targets that are too stealthy for your radar to normally detect.

Finally, I took care of a minor bug with the trade window UI in relation to augmenters. Since I added the line coloring feature (for too expensive or too high tech) augmenters weren’t displaying the proper line color and were always appearing as grayed out. With the next client patch they’ll properly respect the rules that all other trade items follow.

That’s it for this week’s update. It was a short one, but I can promise that next week’s will be much, much more exciting! Until then, feel free to post questions, comments and suggestions in the forums!

This week’s update is going to focus on some post-reset bug fixing, a few changes to the Ally AI type, an update on a mission feature and a look forward to what’s ahead for the Nexus! Keep reading to find out more.

With the reset we pushed the new Nexus — but don’t think we’re going to stop working on it. The Nexus is perhaps the most important area of the game. It’s the first thing a potential new player sees and it really needs to excite them. More importantly, it needs to make them want to keep playing. That’s why we’re committed to continually iterating it until it’s perfect. It’s in a much better state now than it was when we started this latest rework, but it’s not done yet. So expect to keep seeing Nexus changes as we move forward.

This past week I made a few changes to the Ally AI type that was developed for the Nexus revamp. I extended it so it functions with drones. Now when an allied AI drops a drone it will properly prioritize targets for both healing and attacking based on the type of ally that dropped it. For example, let’s say a pirate-allied AI drops a drone that has a healing wand and a pulse gun. If there are pirate affiliated players in the area, the drone will heal them. If there are hostile Earthforce affiliated players in the area, the drone will instead attack them. If it’s a factionless ally, say a Paxian, the drone will only heal players.

This is a pretty big change that let’s us do some pretty cool things with content. For one, we can have AI healers that will help players out. More importantly though, it further lays the groundwork for another extension of the ally system, one in which faction affiliation determines AI aggression. Eventually I’d like to be able to have neutral AI that can be attacked by either affiliation, but would lean towards one when it come to aggression. For example, one day it would be kind of cool if Space Blue AI weren’t naturally hostile towards pirate affiliated players, but Merchant AI, like Goldenboys were.

While I was in the drone code working on the new features, I also took care of a bug that I’m sure has been annoying some of you — drones shooting at immune targets. Along with that I took care of quite a few smaller issues as well, many of which have made their way to live servers already.

Finally, this past week I worked on an additional feature related to the autocomplete feature that was introduced a while back. There has been a lot of upset over the feature when it comes to turn-in missions for things like skills or other rewards, so I’ve added a new tag so we can manually flag some missions to never be autocompleted. This will be added in the very near future to all the missions in Staff Quarters, any of the T21 skill turn-in missions and other places like Strontium-90. Along with the slash-command toggle this should hopefully alleviate any of the issues some people have with the autocomplete feature.

That’s it for this week’s update, I’ll be back again next week with another update! Until then, as always, feel free to sound off in the forums with questions, comments and suggestions!

First of all the monthly event is live! Enjoy Double EXP through Monday!

Secondly, Jeff, Ryan (SI), and myself all went to E3 this year! This was our first time meeting Jeff in person even though we video chat all the time. It was a little awkward at first, but a total blast! We explored all the new stuff at E3 and had some cool discussions on new and current things for Star Sonata!

We explored around the convention hall trying out new games and technologies. One interesting technology of note was the Oculus Rift, the 3D Virtual Reality headset. Ryan has the first version of the developer kit, and we were able to try the prototype for the second version. It was higher resolution and absolutely stunning. SI’s fun side project is Rift support for Star Sonata but it’s still in it’s very basic stages.

We also got to play a pre-release gamemode in Titanfall (my current favorite FPS), and try out the new Super Smash Brothers games on both Wii U and 3DS. Ryan and I also got exceptionally lucky and got a rare test of Sony’s Project Morpheus (a competitor to the Rift). We also stopped by the Nvidia Booth and got to participate in a Titanfall Pro-Am competition. My team won and I got a free headset. Ryan won way too much Super Smash though. Damn Pikachu.

After the show on Tuesday Jeff, Ryan, and I had dinner at a really tasty mexican food restaurant in LA. This restaurant had exceptionally potent margaritas that nearly left me on the floor. First real life meeting with your boss and you get completely hammered… on just ONE drink? I’m such a winner.

At the dinner we discussed all manner of things Star Sonata, including a new idea we had for an alternate “speed” server with open PVP, and an insanely fast experience gaining rate. This server would only be active for a month at a time, and fully wipe at the end of a month. You’d start over from scratch each time this server resets.  Live Server bonuses would be given to people who got onto the leaderboards. Right now we’re working on our Steam launch, skin system, and catching up on some crucial bugs, but as soon as all that’s done, we’ll be discussing this idea with the rest of the team and possibly hammering out some details if it seems like an actual good idea. We’d love to know what you think of this idea!

We met up with Jeff again for a dinner on the last day of the show, where we were introduced to a really cool card game. Unfortunately my phone broke on the last day of the show so I had only one really blurry picture of the three of us as proof we actually met. Ignore the photobomber behind Ryan and Jeff, also my really derpy excited smile. Ugh.

The next blog post you’ll see from me will be July’s Suggestion Review post which probably will be published the second week in July. See you next time!

This week’s update will focus on some minor tweaks to the Nexus, a change to the TSL transfer cost formula and a change to the trade bay GUI. Keep reading to find out more!

I got quite a bit of developer feedback on the latest iteration of the Volcom side of the Nexus since I completely reworked it — and with feedback comes a lot of little bugs and tweaks that can be made. One of the biggest ‘problems’ I had with the new Pirate tutorial is that it lacked any sort of story motivation. So I came up with a fairly quick story to rectify that! The new Volcom tutorial focuses on running an Earthforce Blockade of the Mutara Nebula in order to meet up with the Volcom pirates. It’s not a groundbreaking story, but it definitely adds a bit more flavor into the introductory experience.

I’ve also taken care of a lot of smaller balance and mission issues that cropped up during our latest round of testing. Overall, the goal is to make it much harder to to get stuck and to encourage exploration. Even though the new Nexus has launched with the universe reset, I’ll be continuing to make changes and tweaks as more feedback comes in — so definitely give feedback on the experience so we can get it as polished as possible before the Steam launch!

As we’ve been working on the Nexus we’ve also constantly been thinking about the TSL. One thing that can be extremely confusing about Star Sonata to a new player is how to handle storage of items they don’t need on their main ship — but they don’t want to throw away. It’s not the most intuitive concept to buy a new ship, keep it docked and fill it full of stuff. We used that as motivation to make some changes to the TSL. The first went in a while back; it was changing the name of the station tab from TSL to Storage. That change was added to address new player comprehension. It’s much easier to figure out that the Storage Tab is for storing stuff, TSL isn’t going to have any meaning to them.

Secondly, for a bank, the TSL was prohibitively expensive. Moving it around the universe just cost WAY too much for a low level player for it to function as an adequate bank. The previous formula is as follows.

Transfer Cost = (Base + (# Transfers * Base Ratio)) * Base + Item Value * 0.5

The old formula counted the number of transfers you made throughout the universe and it got more expensive each time you moved it. It also charge a fairly prohibitive base cost — and it really wasn’t needed. As a team we decided if we’re going to encourage the use of TSL, it definitely needed to be a bit cheaper. The new cost formula only takes item values into account.

Transfer Cost = Item Value * 0.1 + Commod Value * 0.5

This drastically reduces the cost to transfer items with your TSL. During testing costs for ~10M worth of gear dropped from over 100M to transfer to around 1M. This change should make the TSL infinitely more usable for newer players.

Another very big design principle we’ve been adhering too as we’ve reworked the Nexus was to remove clutter as much as possible. We’ve been trying to cut away all the unnecessary UI elements that only serve to confuse new players. One of the biggest offenders was the Trade tab. The shear quantity of items in the trade bays in the Nexus was a bit overwhelming for new players — so we’ve been taking steps to remedy that. Firstly, Jeff worked on giving us a way to specify which categories of items should appear in the trade bays. That way we can remove item types like Misc, Base and Cloaks which a new player doesn’t really need to know about and would only find confusing. While this worked well, it didn’t entirely alleviate the confusion since it left behind entirely blank trade tabs. To fix this, I’ve worked on a change so a base will only display item tabs in the trade bay that have items listed in them! This will also make player shops a bit less cluttered so it’s really a change that affects both high and low level players.

So that’s it for this week’s update, I’ll be back again next with with another update. Until then feel free to post questions, comments and suggestions in the forums and enjoy the universe reset!

So it’s about 11:26am right now and the server’s been down for roughly 30 minutes. Jey is working as fast as he can to fix some last minute issues that creeped up in our final testing before reset. He is approximating that the server will be back up in 30 minutes from now (So roughly 12:00pm MST, 2:00pm EST).

One issue that will not be fixed prior to the universe start is the AI Outposts will not spawn. This means that neither the Faranji, Mzungu, Bule or Vazaha Bases will spawn, and neither will the Green Meanie or Iceprick bases.

We are however planning to manually load them in later and do an event on this. This would require much less work and we will announce this event in good time before it goes live!

Thanks for your patience and you’ll be exploring the universe soon!

EDIT: Live will be open at 2:20pm EST (so in roughly 15 minutes)!

Additions
* Added auto-targeting, where if you fire while having no target currently selected and there is a ship or drone in front of your ship that is either a mission kill goal, a hostile object, or a hostile AI, then that object will be automatically targeted
* Added map layers for Arctia and Vulcan.
* New Equip Item mission goal.
* Mission rewards can now be equipped to your ship by the mission rewarding them.
* New /age chat command, shows how long the character has been played
* New Ally AI type.
* New level-up sound
* New scoop error sound
* Added a special arrow for players level 20 and below that points them to the nearest mission target.
* New /itemsetdisplaytoggle command to turn on and off tooltip text for items with an item set.
* Item tooltips now display a line of text noting which kind of item it actually is (i.e. Shield, Energy, Radar, etc)
* Added a “Special” galaxy indicator on the map (purple text and says ‘point of interest’ on mouseover)
* Added power up sound and delay to target dummy super items
* Added engage sounds (special sfx when fighting an enemy) for Volcoms, Target Dummies, Earthforce Supply Ship, Vulcan, Arctia, UrQa, Rats, Flyswatters, Pirates and Star Runners
* New models for Heavy Zebucart and Zebu Gunship
* New chat command to toggle mission autocompletion: /toggleautocomplete
* All missions will now display the agent name under their portrait.
* Added new “Upgrade or Buy Ship” button to Ships Tab that takes you to the hull tab of a station’s trade bay.
* added /AlternativeTitle to change the format of the window title. From the fps / performance oriented version, to a ship shield status (add it to /savecommands to make it permanent) (based on The white wizard idea)
* made it so background window will flash in the task-bar if their shield ratio drop below 10%) (based on The white wizard idea)
*Added No RadEx tag to Pax Astralogica and Green Battleship
* Created a low level line of Zebucart ships that go from tech 0 to tech 3 starting with Zebucart and ending with Oversized Zebucart. Tweaked the stats of all the ships in the low level zebucart line, mainly giving more hull space, a little more speed, and a bunch more thrust and turning.
+ Increased the number of wild AI in all layers
* Added three new freighter fighter bays: Madman Fighter Bay, Qu’ishi Quu Qa and Hephaestus Launch Bay
* Added two new tech 21 capital ship fighter bays: Zeus Fighter Bay and Solarian Fighter Bay
* Docking in an AI base now gives a static shield and energy regen bonus.
* new Contact Agent button for station mission list
* New models for Heavy Zebucart and Zebu Gunship
* new chat command /toggleautocomplete. setting this will turn the mission autocomplete on or off.
* Ambush Spawners can now be triggered by multiple missions.
* New “Fire” mission goal to check if player has fired weapons.
* Arctia and Vulcan added to Earthforce Space custom DG list.
* Added some new fighter and missile bays to bosses
* Added engagement sounds for pirates, rats, flys, and Star Runners.
* Added new “Upgrade or Buy Ship” button to Ships Tab that takes you to the hull tab of a station’s trade bay.
* Mission popups from autostarted missions now automatically close after their mission text is finished typing.
* Missions popups from autostarted missions now
* Added physical impact effect to Cadet Catapult
* Made it so that if one of your current lockouts gets updated to a new time (say from killing a UZ boss) it tells you instead of doing it silently.
+ added Vulcan missions.
+ added engage sounds to Arctia and Vulcan AI.
+ Added Sup. Augmenter Condensers
+ Added Sapphire, Emerald and Diamond versions of the Ruby Carrier/Transport
+ Added Piracy 22
* New PvP galaxy flag system, instead of just being allowed or disallowed PvP has different levels, which are: None, F2P (only), P2P (only), Unmixed (f2p+p2p, but no pvp between the two) and Open (normal).
* Added engage sounds for Vulcan.
* Added engage sounds for Arctia.
* New option to allow ambush spawners to specify initial velocity for the ships that they spawn.
* new mission option (OPENTRADETAB) to open trade tabs on accept.
* added Rudimentary Augmenters to Janitor’s Outpost.
*New overloader: Strontium Overloader

Tweaks
* Combined the Volcom Outpost drone’s two super items into one that shoots them both one after the other
* Made the Target Dummy Missile go way slower
* Added power up sound and delay to target dummy super items
* Repositioned some objects in Nexus a bit in order to work better with the new roaming code
* Fixed credit reward on easter turn in missions
* main inventory dialogs opened by completing missions will auto-close when you undock.
* Changed the scoops per second on all scoops that were at 1/s to 2/s. (e.g. Drone Scoop)
* Items that are too low tech will appear dark gray in the trade tab instead of red.
* Mission Agent Dialog has been streamlined
* trade bay now only shows tabs that have items
* Combined the Volcom Outpost drone’s two super items into one that shoots them both one after the other
* Made the Target Dummy Missile go way slower
* increased the smoke trail length a bit.
* Removed big “Cancel” button from mission agent dialog. Accept button now handles “Accept”, “Finish” and “Close”
* main inventory dialogs opened by completing missions will auto-close when you undock.
* Mission popups from autostarted missions now automatically close after their mission text is finished typing.
* Recruit Training Area drones now give players shield and energy charge.
* Destroyed, Inactive and Abandoned drones now have a decay timer of 48hrs + 2hrs per tech level.
* Irradiated drones now become destroyed instead of exploding.
* Reduced the shields on Destroyed FirstLine from 275 to 200.
* reduced the negative elect temp bonus on alien siege mode from +100% to +50%.
* Gave the Pax Astralogica 100% resistance to all but surgical
* Moved ship upgrade items to the ships tab of the trade bay.
* reduced shields and range on the Volcom Outpost drone.
* Made Scoop size 2 and Drone Scoop size 3
* Changed the description on launching tubes commodities to avoid confusion on their use
* Improved Bhisaj Kavaca
* Small changes to Antu Varman, Antu Varmansamvita, Dhatri Sicaya and Dhatri Sicayadeva
* Changed Demon Expansion to give less hull with less speed penalty
* Reduced the number of Reavers in the ShM crucible by 2
* changes to enable auto-open-next-mission for missions that don’t end at a base.
* completed missions will auto-open when you dock.
* moved the mission title out of the mission agent text box.
* Small changes to most tech 20-22 fighter and missile launchers to make them more balanced
* Increased the range on Solarian Pulverizer from 60 to 80 to match the Mercurian Disintegrator range
* Ambush Spawner ‘Transmission’ pop ups.
* Removed Neural Keysync and Space Oat drops from Flys in the Fly Dungeon.
* Transwarps now take Seer skill into account.
* Autopilot no longer requires Astral Travel
* Removed termite spawners from earthforce and Perilous.
* Given each character selection an explicit button to click, converting the old one into a static text box
** Changed the min and max levels and repeat times of a bunch of tutorial messages
* Fixed the bug where we had an extra tab in several different tab control UI elements
* Added the ability for some AI bases to only sell certain categories of common items (so we can simplify some of the Nexus bases)
* Rattie Moe now has a sound!
* Marked various DG bosses to give boss kill points
* Missions now autocomplete when you dock at the ending station
* text in the trade bay is now colored based on price and tech levels (green for can’t afford, dark gray for insufficient tech level).

* Increased drop rate of Infernal Faction Access Card from 10% to 50%.
* Added auto-credit scooping, where credits will be automatically scooped by peoples ships that fly over them, and for the first 5 seconds after a ship is destroyed, the credits will fly towards the person who killed that ship. Credits caused by kills by non-people will not fly anywhere, but can still be auto-scooped
* Increased the speed at which credits fly out of exploding things if killed by a person
* Made it so credits won’t fly to your ship if you’re over 2000 distance from them
* Made wormhole into shielding 22 boss stationary.
* Changed the way that AI work who are supposed to stay in a particular area. They now will no longer go and visit objects outside their area when they aren’t fighting. They won’t ever move randomly, but will sometimes get random move goals inside their area. When fighting, they will no longer stop and turn around right at the edge of their area when they get slightly outside, and then turn back around the instant they are inside. Instead, they will be willing to leave their area by a bit of a margin if fighting, and then when they get too far, will return all the way to their area before turning to fight again.
* Removed big “Cancel” button from mission agent dialog. Accept button now handles “Accept”, “Finish” and “Close”
* All missions will now display the agent name under their portrait.
* Set the Goldenboy Gold/Fool’s Gold turn in missions to have a reset timer
* Made the Golden Torpedo Device tech 5
* Increased the number of wild AI in Perilous Space, also added all the normal spawners again to Perilous Space with limited number of spawns (so as the universe progresses it gets less populated)
* You can no longer transwarp into a galaxy that is engineless
* Removed regen from Defective FirstLine and Rat Carapace Shields
* Removed the Celestial Garden layer, moved all the CG custom galaxies and dungeons to the Earthforce Layer.
* Earthforce Layer is now buildable in warp 0 and warp 1 galaxies, maximum colonial population reduced to 2b
* Deep Space now directly links to Sol.
* Made space stations which don’t vend ships can scrap your old ships, you get 0 credits for it. It mustn’t have any items on it which are removeable.
* Speed Demon Target Tracker Device now has 90 second charge time and halves range when in use
* Each end boss in The Crucible is now the relevant hull class
+ Changed commodity needed in Emphatic Biologique for Warp Navigation 4 to Microbes Warp
+ Dungeons inherit pvp permissions from their parent galaxy (EF space dungeons are no longer allowed pvp)
* Changed TSL transfer cost to be 10% of item value + 50% of commodity value
* Replaced ‘Crack Whores’ with ‘Entertainers’
* Flipped Deep Space mission structure (less mission clutter for first time fliers and more accessible from the main universe)
* Tweaked a bunch of the EF wild AI’s ranges and aggro radius (how close they have to be before they’ll attack you without hate)
* Changed the random part of a dungeon number to be a static number for the whole dungeon, branches are denoted by letters after the numbers, eg ‘DG X 4.231B’
* Reworked how team tithe works. Credits will go to team whenever you gain credits that is not from another player, a slave credit transfer, or from a user station transfer or user station selling. Team tithe now effects colony purchases directly. You are told how much goes to team tithe for colonies and space stations
* Drones can now be scooped while tractored.
*Revamped the size of all player temporary drones
* Volcom Radar is now tech 0
* Implemented Egg Carton Goal for Acropolis Augmenter Condenser missions.
* Implemented Egg Carton Goal for Lyceum Mention and Diploma Blueprint missions.
* Added new NERFSALVO tag for missiles that reduces the number of missiles launched if missile is used by an AI.

Ship Tweaks
* Changed Zebucart from 2500 weight to 10000 weight, changed it’s built in turning and thrust mods to +100% each. Changed the hull space to 75 and max speed to 100. Similar changes to weights and built in mods to most every Zebucart-like ship
* Changed hull space on Phunka.dll from 95 to 100
* Changed hull space on Volcom from 65 to 75 and max speed from 85 to 100
* Changed hull space on Wingship from 60 to 70 and max speed from 110 to 120
* Changed hull space on Scooty Puff Jr from 90 to 110 and max speed from 100 to 110
* Changed max speed on Oversized Wingship from 80 to 100
* Changed hull space on Wingship IV from 160 to 200
* Changed hull space on Helga from 130 to 180
* Changed hull space on Oversized Helga from 380 to 400 and max speed from 70 to 80
* Changed hull space on Roswell from 200 to 220, max speed from 65 to 70, and number of aug slots from 2 to 3. Also added built in tuning +20% and shield max +10%. Added Shield Salvation Device as extra built in to Roswell+.
* Changed hull space on Big Roswell from 600 to 700 and max speed from 70 to 80.
* Changed hull space on Rosfire from 400 to 500 and max speed from 70 to 80.
* Changed hull space of Rosburst from 240 to 260 and max speed from 60 to 70.
* Changed hull space on oversized Rosburst from 480 to 600.
* Changed hull space on Aether Scout from 100 to 105 and max speed from 90 to 105.
* Changed max speed of Wingship II from 90 to 120.
* Changed hull space of Wingship II Pro from 110 to 130 and max speed from 99 to 120.
* Changed hull space of Wingship III from 120 to 140 and max speed from 110 to 120.
* Changed max speed of Mini Kasper from 55 to 100.
* Changed max speed of Kasper from 70 to 100.
* Changed max speed of Mzungu Flying Disk from 80 to 110.
* Changed hull space of Kelvin from 300 to 350 and max speed from 80 to 90.
* Changed hull space of Anachron from 180 to 200.
* Changed hull space of Agamemnon from 400 to 500.
* Changed max speed of Ghostship from 90 to 130.
* Changed hull space of Banshee from 220 to 270.
* Changed hull space on Sawtooth from 225 to 300.
* Changed hull space of Ragnarok’s from 320 to 400.
* Changed hull space of Wyrm from 250 to 300.
* Changed hull space of Underscout from 150 to 250.
* Changed max speed of Zebumaster from 85 to 100. Added critical resist +50% to match other Zebu variants.
* Changed hull space of Astralantern from 250 to 350 and max speed from 80 to 100.
* Changed hull space of Pax Celestica from 450 to 500 and max speed from 85 to 90.
* Changed max speed of Paxian Peacemaker, Pacifier, and Negotiator from 85 to 90.
* Changed hull space of Space Blue Prototype from 150 to 190 and max speed from 75 to 100. Added Prototype Blue Autoblaster super item.
* Changed hull space of Space Blue Alpha Scout from 120 to 140 and max speed from 80 to 100. Added Prototype Blue Autoblaster super item.
* Changed hull space of Space Blue Hunter from 160 to 220 and max speed from 80 to 100. Added Prototype Blue Autoblaster super item. Added built in turning +30%, radar +40%, thrust +40%, and shield +20%.
* Changed hull space on Space Blue Alpha from 200 to 250 and max speed from 75 to 100.
* Changed max speed of Space Blue Alpha Interceptor from 85 to 100.
* Changed hull space of Monochrome Tint from 200 to 220 and max speed from 80 to 100. Added 30% resists to laser, energy, physical, and surgical, and 50% resists to radiation. Added new built in super item called Paint Abuser Device.
* Changed max speed of Monochrom Shade from 70 to 80.
* Changed hull space of Monochrome Hue from 400 to 450 and max speed from 60 to 80.
* Changed max speed of Monochrome Tinge from 60 to 70.
* Changed hull space of Tear from 200 to 220, added built in rate of fire modifier of -50%, and changed built in damage modifier from +15% to +50%.
* Changed hull space of Salty Tear from 210 to 230 and max speed from 75 to 85.
* Changed max speed of Serpica from 120 to 200 and added two built in super items, Phunky Gremlin Device and The Finisher.
* Changed hull space of Inferno from 300 to 360.
* Changed max speed of Absolution from 72 to 90.
* Changed hull space of Cruiser from 160 to 200 and max speed from 90 to 110.
* Changed hull space of Voltage from 380 to 450 and max speed from 85 to 95.
* Changed hull space of Ampage from 150 to 175 and max speed from 80 to 90.
* Changed hull space of Flyswatter Egg from 70 to 80 and max speed from 50 to 70.
* Changed hull space of Flyswatter Embryo from 30 to 50 and max speed from 22 to 40.
* Changed hull space of Flyswatter Larva from 120 to 130 and max speed from 55 to 80.
* Changed hull space of Flyswatter Maggot from 180 to 190 and max speed from 75 to 85.
* Changed hull space of Flyswatter Flylet from 190 to 210 and max speed from 59 to 70.
* Changed max speed of Flyswatter Flyboy from 55 to 80.
* Changed hull space of Goldenboy Pyrite from 160 to 200 and max speed from 65 to 80.
* Changed hull space of Goldenboy Nugget from 200 to 220 and max speed from 70 to 90.
* Changed hull space of Goldenboy Ingot from 220 to 250 and max speed from 70 to 80.
* Changed hull space of Goldenboy Coin from 310 to 350 and max speed from 60 to 70.
* Changed hull space of Goldenboy Sovereign from 430 to 450 and max speed from 45 to 50.
* Changed hull space of Statue from 300 to 330 and max speed from 63 to 70.
* Changed max speed of Goldenboy Bar from 50 to 55.
* Changed hull space of Enforcer from 330 to 350 and max speed from 75 to 100.
* Changed max speed of Sergeant’s Enforcer from 82.5 to 95.
* Changed max speed of Ghost Ship from 80 to 100.
* Changed hull space of Paximinus from 220 to 280 and max speed from 75 to 85.
* Changed hull space of Paximinus Scout from 220 to 280 and max speed from 75 to 90.
* Changed hull space of Cadet from 200 to 220 and max speed from 75 to 80.
* Changed hull space of Outlaw’s Volcom from 130 to 150 and max speed from 90 to 100.
* Changed hull space of Mini Mad Scientist from 300 to 500 and max speed from 85 to 100. Added additional super item called Lesser Sine.

Fixes
* Fixed up the Light Laser Barrage Device on the first target dummy so that it actually works
* Fixed a bug where sound emitter items would not work in superitems being used by drones

* Fix for not being able to properly drag the mission agent dialog from the top.
* Fixed up the Light Laser Barrage Device on the first target dummy so that it actually works
* Stopped the character selection screen from being moveable
* Fixed a bunch of auras that weren’t properly flagged to affect only players.
* Fix for drones spawned by spawners not properly dying when killed.
* Ship Upgrades now only check for piloting skill instead of both piloting and equipment.
* Fix for T21 Drone Ops Aug missions requiring Drone Mastery 21.
* Fixed the issue where Wave Spawners would either skip or say wave completed multiple times when multiple copies of the wave spawner existed (instances).
* Attempted fix for WaveSpawner’s not always crediting wave completion kills
* Fixed a bug where you could take slaves you didn’t own into instances without their owner
* Fixed it so that you can’t cap a ship with a sticky item that’s over your tech level, but can xfer them (you can xfer EFFs to someone without E20, but someone without E20 couldn’t cap it)
* equip mission goals now properly update the mission list if you are docked.
* Typo fix in Easter Egg Collector missions
* Rattie Moe and other rats are no longer Rad-Exable
* Missiles that can’t be fired due to range restrictions no longer get refunded.
* Missiles no longer display any death messages.
* Made the wormhole in shielding 22 boss galaxy stationary to avoid sync issues
* Fixed the bug causing Tractor 16 to be available for 1 Bauxite in Capella.
* AI can no longer own debris
* Changed userbase attack code so they will ignore AI warp beacons.
* Fixed a bug where you couldn’t use items which were marked as Freighter class on Support/Industrial Freighter ships
* Fixed Ancient Dragon Form device not triggering it’s Shield Salvation.
* Fixed issues with being able to bypass PvP restrictions by firing missiles manually from slaves.
* Fixed issues with newly purchased drones being placed in a destroyed stack.
* Moved damage auras in Bila Akara and Kandara Janayitri from a sun to the boss so they’ll disappear after the boss has been destroyed.
* Fixed damage aura in Bila Tra so it no longer affects drones.
* Fixed a bunch of EF Space special galaxies being improperly flagged as buildable.
* Fleet Transwarps will no longer take non-premium slaves into semi-premium areas.
* Fixed Reaver’s Breath not being neurobound
+ fix for Serengeti Blockade being set as the action galaxy for the Lyceum Paxian mission.
* Fixed a bug where all the AI with hate modifiers were not saving it correctly, so when the uni was saved/loaded, they came back unwilling to initiate an attack on anything.
* Warhead effects (like on Bunkerbusters) no longer splash damage friendly missiles.
* Gave Repair Rejigger Deployment Drones transference efficiency so they don’t heal themselves to death with other healing drones
* Created new Emperor’s Launch Tubes item to replace mistyped version
* Fixed a bug where Radiation Experts could transfer their wild slaves to non-Radiation Experts
* Fix for Herophilus 3000 Distress Call Olympus Daily Mission.