With the major class reworks from the neuroforge behind us, we have been watching the meta and all of the accompanying build craft closely. There are some things we have observed that we believe need to change in order to encourage more variety. These changes are all on the Live Test server, available for you to test before they hit the live server. Feel free to check them out there!

Shield Monkey

With the previous patch, we made some changes to Shield Monkey. These directly reduced the Shield Monkey’s ability to both deal damage with shield stealing and heal up from shield stealing. It also gave them the ability to do increased damage with their weapons with the  Shield Monkey Enveloper. There was a vision that the Shield Monkey would mainly use stealing to refill it’s shields, and then deal damage with non-transference weapons with the help of the Enveloper. In actuality, the way the new shield stealing resists were calculated ended up mitigating the healing gained by the Shield Monkey. This made that playstyle unviable.

Stealing is not only critical for a Shield Monkey offensive ability, it’s also needed to help the Shield Monkey survive. Most importantly, its what allows them to heal others for more shields than they are capable of generating with their own shield bank. When we moved to a system where healing is 1:1 between the healer and the healed, we added Shield Stealing as a way for the class to keep up with incoming damage a squad might find themselves facing. Because a Shield Monkey needs this mechanic to function, having the amount of shields a Shield Monkey could restore vary so wildly from target to target doesn’t make sense. So here’s what we decided to do:

• When a Shield Monkey deals transference damage to a target, the shields they gain via stealing are not mitigated by the resistances of that target.

  • The damage dealt is mitigated by both the target’s shield stealing resistance and beam resistance.

  • Both damage dealt and shields gained are still mitigated by class based mitigation mechanics, Like  Speed Demon’s glance and Berserker’s frontal shield.

• In the last patch we adjusted the rate at which shield stealing does damage and restores shields. These values were reverted to what they were before they were changed. You can see these values on the Shield Monkey Class 3 skill.

We also noticed that stealing resistances were not always working as intended. Some combinations of AI resistances and diffusers were returning unexpected results.

• Shield stealing resistance mechanic has been refactored. Resistances should now be consistent in both effect and how they are displayed to players.

Finally, the way the Shield Monkey Enveloper works created some pretty ludicrous results under certain circumstances, resulting in very high Damage Per Hit values when optimized just right. We are aiming to force Shield Monkey’s to aug and gear for larger amounts of Shield Bank in order to fully unlock the damage potential of the Shield Monkey Enveloper, making it more tricky to replicate those high Damage Per Hit numbers.

• The Shield Monkey Enveloper can only give up to 10% of the Shield Monkey’s current shield bank as bonus damage per shot. This is reduced from 50%.

We are still trying to find ways to divorce Shield Monkeys from relying on its shield bank in order to power its mechanics. As long as it does, it needs to be able to generate enough shields to feel potent when using its tools.

Ranger

Ranger has been very successful at reimagining the Sniper gameplay it was meant to replace. We need to make one change to the way the class functions with Critical Hit Chance, so that it falls in line with the other classes in terms of how the stat interacts with it. This is going to heavily pull back on the ability of end game Ranger to scale with Critical Hit Chance, but it is necessary to do before we start piling on the Critical Hit Chance sources as we move into another tech level.

• Ranger’s empowered shot will only benefit from 100% critical hit chance worth of bonus damage. This bonus damage is now calculated after checking the targets Critical Hit Resistance against the Ranger’s Critical Hit Chance.

• Ranger’s “True Grit” skill now gives +10% more damage per level.

  • This damage was previously on this skill, however it was originally removed in favor of Ranger getting a 7th mark. Now they both get the bonus damage and retain the 7th mark.

Berserker

Players may have noticed that we have been very careful to make changes to Berserker. Our previous changes were focused on reducing the amount of multiplicative sustain they could generate via Lifestealing, and in doing so we made it so that they only gained 10% of their normal value from Damage Over Time weapon effects (Parasites and Fires) and On Hit weapon effects (Area of Effect, Splash, Bounce, etc.). This was the same multiplier for both effects. We do not like how this has affected the class and are making further adjustments.

• 33% of On-Hit effect damage is used for Lifesteal from the Berserker Shield Redistribution Device.

• 0% of Damage Over Time effect damage is used for Lifesteal from the Berserker Shield Redistribution Device.

Neuroforge Item Logic

We have not made many changes to the Neuroforge since it was released. We think it is in a good place, for the most part, and are mostly interested in making some slight adjustments. As a player invests more and more item copies into a Neuroforged item, the option to swap an Enhanced mod for a different Enhanced mod just isn’t as desirable. Obviously, if a player has a high enhancement level it means that they want to keep that Enhanced mod! Because of this, we’re going to make the following adjustment.

• The rate at which you are offered the option to swap your Enhanced mod goes down as the Enhancement level of the mod goes up.

  • Options to swap secondary mods, remove secondary mods, or add a new secondary mod, will be offered more as you are at higher levels of enhancement.

The Emperor Contest has long been one of the most prestigious and contentious parts of Star Sonata, and this upcoming contest will continue this trend. With the next cycle fast approaching, we’re introducing a significant overhaul to how the contest works. Specifically how Fragmented Imperial Signets are obtained, how Influence is gained and lost, and when the contest comes to an End.

These changes are designed to add more depth, encourage active participation, and tighten the pacing of the contest.

If you want to understand the context of these changes, take a look at the previous Dev Diary.

Strands and Surges

Gone are the days of farming Strategos’ for Fragmented Imperial Signets. In the upcoming contest, we’re introducing Anatolian Surges. These will spawn enhanced versions of existing Hoplite and Ekdromoi, along with the return of a powerful mini-boss. These special AI will only spawn throughout the Anatolia layer when Strategos’ are active, creating dynamic and time-sensitive opportunities for teams to engage and earn Signet Fragments.

When defeated, Surge Spawner enemies drop a new item: the Imperial Strand. These strands must be delivered to Anatolian AI bases and traded in 1000 at a time to form Fragmented Imperial Signets.

To keep the intensity focused, Imperial Strands will only drop during the three-week contest period. Once that window closes, even if the contest enters a tiebreaker phase, no more strands will appear.

Escort the Influence

Gathering Influence no longer relies on an automatically deposited currency. Instead, it’s now an active objective. Influence now drops as 1 of 5 different Influence granting items from the AI in Anatolia. All Anatolian AI, except for those spawned in a Surge, will drop some of these special commodities.

Teams must recover and escort these items back to AI bases in Anatolia to successfully bank the influence and gain points for their team. This is the only way players can contribute toward their team’s standing in the Emperor Contest.

When a player holding these commodities dies, they drop as a physical item in space. Anyone can pick it up and ferry it to an Anatolian AI base to turn it in and gain Influence for their team. This change adds a new layer of tactical decision-making: Do you split up to bank influence as it comes in? Hold on to all of it and deposit it at once? Send someone to go intercept the enemy as they’re depositing Influence? That’s up to you.

Note: The amount of Influence a team can acquire from a Strategos and its minions is unchanged.

“The End”

In the event of a tie after the 21 day contest period, the only way to win has been to gain a 1 million point lead, regardless of how long it took. The process of getting that lead could theoretically drag on for weeks (or even longer), and we heard your feedback loud and clear. We understand that this uncertainty about how long the contest will last is not sustainable.

So, in the upcoming contest we’re introducing a decaying lead threshold. After the contest period ends, the required lead to win will shrink over time—until, after one week, even a single point lead will grant the top team the title. This ensures a definitive and timely conclusion while still rewarding consistent effort and tactical finesse.

We’re excited to see how these changes will shake up the contest and can’t wait to watch the new strategies unfold.

Note

The Anatolian Expanse and associated Emperor Contest is a labor of love by us to support an active PvP event that breaks up the day to day activities in Star Sonata. We appreciate the many rounds of feedback the community has given about this experience. We are committed to continuing to support this activity and monitoring its success and failures. This blog post includes all information on the current system used to ascend to the throne to become Emperor, but like with many things in Star Sonata, it changes often. This system will likely be iterated into the future to bring an experience that promotes competition. You can stay up to date on what is involved in the contest to become Emperor by visiting our wiki page on the topic. https://www.starsonata.com/wiki/index.php/Emperor

NOTE: If you haven’t read the previous blog posts, Neuroforge Update: Forging Items and Neuroforge Update: Gunner & Ranger, you might want to check them out before reading this one.

In our final blog post, we’re going to talk about a variety of notable changes that we plan on rolling out with the Neuroforge. These changes focus on addressing various class and system level issues we think keep the game in a stagnant place. Some of these things are nerfs, but some of them are buffs. Let’s break down what you can expect.

Evolving Critical Hit Mechanics

The current meta favors driving critical hit chance to 100% and then stacking critical hit strength, leading to a skewed optimal stat prioritization for DPS builds. We aim to broaden the optimal stat distribution, encouraging a more diverse set of builds by changing how critical scaling works.

Critical Hit Chance is the only DPS stat that has a ceiling. While driving up your Damage, Rate of Fire, and Critical Hit Strength always improves your overall DPS, the same isn’t true for Critical Hit Chance since you can’t benefit from more than 100% chance (adjusted for the target’s Critical Hit Resistance). The practical consequence of this situation is that as player’s stat budget grows with tech and item quality, they quickly run up against the ceiling of Critical Hit Chance; therefore, the meta for dealing weapon damage is to max out your Critical Hit Chance and then invest in Critical Hit Strength, which is available in greater amounts than Damage but gives the same benefit when paired with guaranteed Critical Hits.

We want to promote greater build diversity but we are greatly constrained by the reality of this meta. It has kept us from adding new sources of Critical Hit Chance since that would only worsen the situation, driving folks even harder into Critical Hit Strength. With this update, we have come up with a way to gradually shift the relative value of the DPS stats, with the eventual goal of normalizing the value of Critical Hit Chance and Strength when compared to Damage.

We’re going to accomplish this by granting a ramping bonus to Critical Hit Resistance to higher tech ships. Starting at tech 22, all ships and drones have 25% more Critical Hit Resistance than they used to. For every tech level above that, we add another 25%. The upshot is that the ceiling of Critical Hit Chance will rise by 25% with each new tech level, gradually reducing the pressure to invest a large proportion of your setup’s stats into the critical hit bonuses. Importantly, AI will receive these resistances as well.

As you can see in this table, as you go up in Tech the Critical Hit Resistance of ships and drones increases. This will reduce your DPS by the amount listed. These numbers assume a static 100% Critical Hit Chance, but higher Critical Hit Chance values will bring you back to a 0% reduction.

What you can see here is that as we increase the highest available tech level of content, the optimal stat spread for offensive stats will shift. This is because players will actually have a need for much higher levels of Critical Hit Chance in order to fully maximize their Critical Hit Strength in higher tech content. Going forward, we will be releasing Augmenters and Items with higher amounts of Critical Hit Chance, so players can expect to see bigger bonuses to that stat on Tech 24 and above content.

Reimagining Seer

Seer is simultaneously a very powerful alpha strike/execution class that is incredibly binary — if the player used all of their tools and mechanics without being interrupted they would often overkill a target, but if anything went wrong or their damage was blocked the vast majority of its damage bonuses were negated.

We think Seer needs to be much more consistent, so we are firmly cementing its role as an executioner with a steady damage output that ramps up as their targets get closer to death. Backstabbing and Ambushing have been adjusted, and we have added some new mechanics that offer comparable or greater damage than the Nanite.

For context, the Hidden Nanite Infusion Device once activated keeps track of all damage the Seer does to that target over a 7 second duration. After 7 seconds, it deals 175% of the damage stored. The problem with the Nanite is that it is a big chunk at the end, which makes it very easy to over kill something all in one go … or to have your entire damage bonus completely mitigated with a blocker. It is very binary, and that’s the part we’re focusing on.

So, here’s what we’ve done:

• Seer now does 100% bonus damage to targets that are under half shields, receiving a fraction of this bonus against healthier targets.
• Backstabs and Ambushes will now grant a 30% damage bonus for 5 seconds.
• We have replaced the Nanite Device and the Psionic Jammers with the Seer Remodulator, which guarantees a critical hit every 2 seconds.
• Wraith now grants the Seer 35% Critical Hit Strength against targets below 50% shields.
• Brooding Gaze makes beams ethereal against backstabbed or ambushed targets.

We took away stealth and radar, and we are aware that this can affect a Seer’s ability to avoid damage. We have made the following adjustments with an eye towards increasing a Seers ability to survive.

• We added 25% more Range
• We added Shield Recovery to Recon Focus
• We reduced Weight by 30%
• Seer’s Warp Devices charge 2x as fast
• Clairvoyant gives a 25% Resistance to Damage bonus when struck from behind
• Assassin allows the Seer to equip another Warp Device

In addition, all sources of flat visibility that an enemy can apply to you have been changed to increase your visibility by a % instead.

Recon Focus now includes an extra hull expansion by default. The Expansionist Advanced Class Subskill further boosts this by granting an additional weapon slot and doubling cargo capacity.

Speed Demon

First, we’re happy with how Speed Demon plays in the majority of situations. We think the class is a great example of a good class. There are some things that we thought we could do better, and that’s what the focus of these updates are.

The Rate of Fire cap is a tough thing to work around as a Speed Demon. The class gets a lot of Rate of Fire bonuses, and we have always wanted Speed Demon to be interested in fast firing weapons. This has been a significant limitation in buildcraft for Speed Demon over the years and we want to address that. Another observation is that Beams and Magcannons have remained meta weapons for this class, even as we have repeatedly improved Pulse Guns.

We’ve always wanted Speed Demon to make good use out of high damage projectiles, but because they inherit the velocity of the user they aren’t so easy to use while also dodging incoming fire. This has led to a preference for Beams and Magcannons among Speed Demons.

Here is what we’re doing. The Target Tracker will no longer provide a big damage boost at the cost of range, instead it will cause your projectile weapons to fire from your ship as if they were a full tracking beam weapon. This is going to allow you to keep moving while firing these weapons, opening up whole new weapon choices for the Speed Demon to use even while they are focusing on maneuvering.

In order to further encourage this, we have included a 25% Projectile Damage bonus in the base class. No more damage multiplier on the Target Tracker, but you get:

• Much better uptime with projectiles.
• You get a damage boost to projectiles.
• We have tuned the damage of the class to compensate for the loss of the damage boost on the Target Tracker.

With regards to the Rate of Fire cap, if you exceed it you will now gain the equivalent amount of damage in exchange for increased electricity consumption. This works out exactly as if there was no Rate of Fire cap, which has to remain in place for technical reasons.

And finally, you also get the Shield Recovery and Hull Expander bonuses from Recon Focus mentioned earlier in the Seer section.

This is a light touch to the class, we like where the class is (more or less) and we think what we have done here is give it a new coat of paint.

Berserker

Berserker is a very strong class and is very popular. We like how fun it is to play, and we decided to give it some fun mechanics while also implementing some targeted nerfs. We’re confident the class is going to remain very popular and effective.

• Berserker Classic will now additionally reduce the number of weapons you need to have in order to Multifire by 1. This means if you want to MF3 you are only required to have two of the same weapon equipped.
• For example, if you pick this skill your 3 equipped weapons will act as if they are 4. If you equip 4 weapons you will max out with an effective Multifiring 5.
• Impervious Armor now additionally reduces damage in a frontal arc by 30%. This means you take 70% of the damage.
• In exchange, we have shaved some of the Resistance to Damage bonus from Eye for an Eye and Impervious Armor. This is still a significant mitigation buff when taking damage in the frontal arc.
• So with regards to Lifesteal, only 10% of the damage done by On Hit effects or Parasites are eligible for Lifesteal. So instead of Lifestealing 25% of their damage, you will lifesteal 2.5% of their damage.
• The speed bonus on Berserkering Berserker was reduced from 30% to 10%.

Engineer

We haven’t changed our vision for this class at all, but we do recognize that the Neuroforge is not going to result in the same offensive power increase for Engineers who are looking to upgrade their gear with modifications.

In light of this, we have increased the non-transference damage bonus on Engineer Class 1. We recognize that it’s harder for Engineers to optimize the Critical Hit Chance of their drones than it is for other damage dealing classes to do so. We have also increased the number of Drones that Engineers can deploy from 6 to 7, since Droney will no longer grant an extra deployed Drone. Finally, as mentioned earlier, Drones now have Critical Hit Resistances as well.

We are also thinking about future updates to the Neuroforge that would give Engineers more interesting options when it comes to mods.

General Advanced Class Subskills

• Bot PhD
  • We have taken most of the bonuses from Combat Bot Tweaking and Bot PhD and given them to everyone. This means that combat bots get 50% of your skills, or 60% if you take Bot PhD. Bot tweaking doesn’t contribute to that stat anymore.
• Droney
  • We have taken the skill inheritance bonus off of this skill and given it to everyone, and instead of giving another deploy drone it gives +100% Tweaking to Drone Controllers for non Engineers. If you are an Engineer it gives 15% instead.
• Resilient
  • Now causes you and your possessions to take 20% less damage from indirect damage and on hit effects.
• Strategic Deployment
  • You and your possessions gain 50% speed out of combat.

Heat Weapons

It’s well known that Heat weapons are highly desirable in the meta. We realized very recently that one of the reasons for this is that they have unwarrantedly high damage per energy. The tools we set up were not properly increasing the energy cost of these weapons to account for the portion of the damage dealt by fires.

This required some nuance when we addressed the issue, because if we charged you upfront for the future damage of your fires it would not be fair. You cannot be sure if all those fires will do their damage before the target dies or before the situation changes.

Live values on the left, effective DPE is somewhere between .63 and 1.26. Test values on the right, the effective DPE is somewhere between .49 and .98.

It’s not fair to charge 100% of the energy costs for future damage, but we need to charge more than 0%.

We did some detailed analysis and came up with a formula to balance those extremes.

On Hit weapon effects

We have reduced the power of Area Effect Damage effects on certain weapons, and increased the power of Bounce/Chain/Splash/Spray effects on other weapons. These changes include DPS, DPE, and On Hit effect ranges. The intention is that these effects are situationally useful rather than Area Effect Damage being the only thing anyone uses most of the time.

Beam weapon sizes

We have normalized the sizes of Beams, which means longer range Beams are smaller. At the same time, we have increased the size of many short range Beams that had high DPS and low DPE. Beams like the Luminous Discrete Oscillator Cluster or Vazaha Caress are much bigger than they are on live. We want a weapons size to be aligned with high DPS, low DPE like it is for Projectile weapons. This also applies to Transference weapons.

Follow along with us

The Neuroforge update has a lot more going on than just the addition of the Neuroforge. We will have posted follow-up blogs to detail what is being changed with the Neuroforge update. We have opened up access to our test server for players to try out the systems we have designed before they go live. The changes on this server encapsulate all of what the Neuroforge has to offer so far. There are plenty of class changes and other fancy things to explore as well.

You will need a totally different client to connect to this server. You will need to connect to “Test Server” using the Delta Client. You can get this client at the follow link: https://www.starsonata.com/dl/StarSonata_2_delta.exe

You can find the “Test Server” on the login screen by using the Server Drop down on the login screen end then selecting “Test Server.” For more information on how to use the test server or to provide your feedback, please use the Star Sonata community discord server.

Disclaimer: Anything on test servers are subject to change at any time and may not be representative of what will be seen when the live server is updated. The test server is subject to be shutdown, reset and restarted at any time.

NOTE: If you haven’t read the first blogpost, Neuroforge Update: Forging Items, you might want to check it out before reading this one.

We’re excited to unveil updates for the Gunner and Ranger classes as part of the Neuroforge overhaul. These changes focus on diversifying viable playstyles and refining mechanics to keep things fresh. These changes aim to add flexibility and new dynamics while staying true to the core identities of each class. Let’s break down what you can expect.

Ranger Rework

The Ranger class still retains its long-range stealth playstyle but now offers more flexibility. Compared to Sniper it has less range and tracking, is no longer a glass cannon, and replaced the Sniper Analyzer with a Ranger Scope for faster and chunkier damage buildup.

The core distinction between Sniper and Ranger is that Sniper had much greater stealth, range, and tracking bonuses. Sniper was all about maximizing range, with a high-damage mechanic that benefits from focusing down a target over a 2 minute and longer time scale. But this came with limitations: it was slow to ramp up damage, being near useless in short-duration fights, and depended exclusively on range and stealth for survival. Ranger brings down these extremes, making it less reliant on its fragile glass-cannon nature, allowing for more diverse strategies. The fine tuning we’ve been doing in the closed beta has been aimed towards making sure Ranger can still perform in the old long range stealthy style, while making sure that the playstyle is not the de facto way to play Ranger going forwards. We expect that what we’ve accomplished here is a class that can be played in a greater variety of styles, including the old glass cannon Sniper style. Maybe someone will come up with an offtank Ranger, or a non stealthy duelist focusing on grinding tough enemies down head to head.

Damage Ramping

One of the key new mechanics is the Ranger Scope, which works similarly to the Sniper Analyzer but ramps up much faster, in 25 seconds rather than 2 minutes. Marking a target by landing an Empowered Shot, automatically available every 5 seconds, builds up stacks on the target. These marks echo every other preexisting marks damage each time they are applied, letting you amplify your damage against a target without forcing you to tunnel vision the target.

Unlike the Sniper Analyzer which forces you to focus on a single target, Ranger can spread marks across multiple enemies. Marks decay slowly on a per target basis, allowing you to stack damage across multiple targets without fear of losing your damage bonus. By ramping up the Ranger’s damage on a per target basis, we allow the Ranger to freely choose its targets based on what they consider the highest priority to be. At the same time, Marks are not applied to extra targets via On Hit weapon effects. This means that Splash/Chain/etc will not apply a mark, nor does the extra damage done to the main target from the Marks echoes apply to extra targets damaged via on hit weapon effects either.

As you can see, the new system is really chunky. Your damage ramps up, but it ramps up in a ratcheted way. We have to be really careful to prevent excessive variance. We don’t want too much variance because it will be unsatisfactory to the player if they want a critical hit but don’t get one, and a player on the receiving end will feel really bad if they get hit with a lucky empowered critical hit. When we have such chunky damage already baked into the class, we don’t want the added variance of criticals. Because of this, Empowered Shots get a multiplier from the average critical damage bonus calculated from your Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Strength and are not allowed to critically hit.

Damage Mitigation

Sniper doesn’t have much mitigation on the live server. While they do get shields from Combat Focus and stealth/range from Stalking and Sharpshooting to stay away from damage, they’re not mobile and don’t have much of an ability to react to incoming damage or avoid it. They have to rely on range and stealth to bring their full damage to bear, and in a squad setting they often aren’t allowed to make good use of their range and stealth. We don’t think the class has good mitigation, and we think this gets in the way of the class performing consistently. We’ve addressed this by introducing two key mechanics: a mobility aura and Grit. The mobility aura activates when your speed drops to 0, giving you a brief boost to Thrust and Speed to reposition or retreat when needed. This ensures that even an unagile Ranger has the ability to reposition quickly, without feeling like you’re playing a Recon Focus class.

More significant is the addition of Grit, which stores a portion of incoming damage as a parasite that deals that damage over the next 30 seconds. This gives Rangers more time to mitigate or avoid incoming damage, and killing the enemy that caused the damage instantly removes the stored Grit. With Survivalist, an advanced subskill, you can increase Grit accumulation based on the marks you’ve applied, further enhancing survivability. Grit adds a new mitigation layer for survival. By spreading damage over time, you get more opportunities to eliminate threats before receiving their full damage. This system synergizes well with Shield Regeneration, making Rangers highly durable while offering different combat roles, from stealth sniper to brawler… which is why we’ve also added Shield Regeneration to the skill! However, this effect only works when you’re piloting a heavy fighter.

Heavy Fighter? Light Fighter?

Speaking of Heavy Fighter, when you’re flying one your overloaders are twice as powerful! This gives you additional build flexibility, so if you really want a long range build you can select an overloader that grants range to specialize in it. The same skill that gives the player access to Grit also gives 30% Shield Recharge and Damage in a Heavy Fighter. With Grit being so core to Heavy Fighter, we should see more players preferring to use a hull befitting a Combat Focus. With these changes, some may still opt for a Light Fighter. However, that will be a choice made with some risky defensive drawbacks and a loss of a damage bonus. We’re really excited to see what players do with this, and people will find ways to use it that we haven’t even thought about.

NOTE: We have tuned the numbers so that the stealthy Sniper playstyle can still exist, while also encouraging other playstyles to evolve.

Gunner Enhancements

Gunner is a class that relies heavily on stacking weapon damage to maximize the various Advanced Targeting Computers it has, allowing it to copy its high single target damage and spread it to multiple other targets at very high ranges. You also have access to missiles, but they are difficult to land in chaotic fights. Because of this, Gunner feels like a one-dimensional class. There is one meta way to play it, and that is as a long range multi target artillery piece. Our goal is to diversify its viable builds and emphasize Gunner’s role as a Fleet Focus class, capable of significantly enhancing squad damage output.

Shifting the Meta

Gunner has traditionally been about pushing weapon damage bonuses for massive Deathblossom output, but we’re moving towards a more dynamic set of mechanics with the removal of the Deathblossom and the introduction of the Targeting Computer. This allows Gunners to fire fewer but more consistent shots (with no firing arc limitations if they are projectiles), ensuring that every shot hits something even in chaotic battlefields. This means the Targeting Computer will always fire all of its extra shots, even if there’s only a single target nearby.

With our current numbers, this means that the Targeting computer is doing double damage against a single target. This makes the Targeting Computer better against small numbers of enemies in the Neuroforge update. Each shot can also propagate on-hit weapon effects! And, finally, they can even be equipped on bots for even more mayhem! Gunner’s new Fracture mechanic emphasizes its role as a fleet multiplier. When a Gunner damages an enemy with its weapons, they apply fractures to the target. Allies can then hit those targets to receive a 100% damage boost, effectively doubling squad DPS as long as the Gunner generates enough fractures. For every 100 damage the Gunner deals, allies can benefit from 700 additional fracture damage. This mechanic is crucial for fleet combat, making the Gunner an essential part of maximizing a squad’s firepower.

• Example 1: Lets say the Gunner is doing 100k DPS, and their ally does 200k DPS. The Gunner is injecting 700k fractures per second, and their ally will consume 200k of them to double their DPS. Overall, the Gunner and its ally will not be dealing 300k DPS, but will instead do 500k DPS.

• Example 2: Lets say the Gunner is doing 100k DPS, but it has a bunch of allies and its allies do 1.5mil DPS in total. The Gunner is only generating 700k worth of Fractures per second, and the squad is using all of them and cashing in the full 700k. There aren’t enough around for all of their damage to get doubled, so the squads damage is increased by 700k and the total outgoing DPS is 2.3mil as a result of the Gunner.

As you can see, depending on the Gunner’s weapon DPS, and the total DPS of their allies the fracture mechanic will have a variable multiplier on the squads total DPS but that multiplier will generally be significant and the more the Gunner invests in their weapon DPS the greater their contribution. Even better, the more Gunners you have the more fractures they create!

Expanding Playstyles

Even in solo play, this mechanic still works—fractures boost the damage of your bots, missiles, and fighters. The Mass Destruction skill amplifies this further by significantly increasing the amount of fractures your missiles and fighters can exploit. This system offers more depth for Gunners, as they must now consider balancing their own damage output against their allies’ in order to maximize their influence on the battlefield. Missiles have seen an update in terms of launch patterns, timings, and mechanics. They are more reliable when it comes to their maneuverability, are unaffected by collision code, missiles solely meant to do damage fire in a salvo, missile stats now scale off of quality level, and they benefit from a bonus to missile damage specific to the Gunner class.

We’ve also removed the Multifiring bonus, but have given a significant increase in damage to compensate, since the Gunners bots are also getting the ability to multi-target. We have also reduced Range and Tracking bonuses since Targeting Computers have less restrictions. This streamlines combat while ensuring Gunner still packs a punch in both fleet and solo scenarios.

Summary

These updates to Ranger and Gunner are meant to create room for deeper, more dynamic playstyles. From Ranger’s faster damage ramping and mitigation to Gunner’s fleet-centric fracture system and the Targeting Computer, these changes are designed to keep both solo and squad-based gameplay exciting. We’re eager to see how players adapt to these new mechanics!

Follow along with us

The Neuroforge update will have a lot more going on than just the addition of the Neuroforge. We will be posting follow-up blogs to detail what is being changed with the Neuroforge update. In the meantime, we are opening up access to our test server for players to try out the systems we have designed before they go live. The changes on this server encapsulate all of what the Neuroforge has to offer so far. There are plenty of class changes and other fancy things to explore as well. You will need a totally different client to connect to this server. You will need to connect to “Test Server” using the Delta Client. You can get this client at the follow link: https://www.starsonata.com/dl/StarSonata_2_delta.exe You can find the “Test Server” on the login screen by using the Server Drop down on the login screen end then selecting “Test Server.” For more information on how to use the test server or to provide your feedback, please use the Star Sonata community discord server.

Disclaimer: Anything on test servers are subject to change at any time and may not be representative of what will be seen when the live server is updated. The test server is subject to be shutdown, reset and restarted at any time.

Item modifications have been an integral part of every pilot’s journey for the majority of Star Sonata’s life. The “Bindomite roulette” is something many of you are all too familiar with. We have been hinting at (and even writing full posts about) a new vision for item modifications for a very long time. After a concerted development push and a lot of help from the Paxian Disciples, we’re finally ready to announce the details of this project. Here is a breakdown of what you can expect from the finalized Modifications revamp, which is planned for release next month.

High Level: Neuroforging

The biggest feature of this revamp is the introduction of enhanced modifications via Neuroforging. Neuroforging allows you to take an item that is already neurobound and improve a single modification on that item. This is done by taking an unmodified copy of the same item and spending it to neuroenhance your chosen piece of gear. This opens up the brand new Neuroforging menu.

The Neuroforging menu gives you 3 semi-random options to pick from every time you neuroenhance an item. The first thing that may catch your eye are the pink modifications at the top of each selection, coupled with a +15 in the case of Forceful in the first option. This is an enhanced modification and is one of the key features of the modification revamp. Upon completing your first enhancement on a piece of gear, one of your modifications on that item will be enhanced.

Mid Level: Enhanced modifications

Let’s get a bit more detailed about enhanced modifications.

• Neuroforging is a process that can be done multiple times, but you can only ever have one enhanced modification at a time.

• Enhanced modifications are coupled with an enhancement level. This tracks how much extra power above a basic version of the modification is being provided.

• Some modifications get special benefits for being enhanced. These special benefits do not scale up their bonus with enhancement level.

• Not all modifications are eligible to be enhanced.

• Enhancement level has a cap, it’s not infinite!

• The higher quality the item, the better it can become. Enhancement Cap and Total modification count scale with item quality.

Keep Rolling

So the basic flow of enhancing and modifying your gear is as follows: You neurobind a piece of gear. You grab another copy of that gear, and consume it to start neuroforging. Even though the item’s enhancement level has a cap, you can neuroforging an item an infinite number of times. This can do things like swap your enhanced modification, and add or swap “secondary” modifications in addition to its normal purpose of increasing your enhancement level. However, the middle option will always increase the bonus of your currently enhanced modification and not change anything else about the item. You could call it a “safe” roll.

What do I do with all of these items?

If you were a heavy user of the current modification system, then you likely have storage ships full of Bindomite-bound gear lying around. One aspect of this modification system is that all of those items are eligible to be used for neuroforging. Neurobound items can be used in forging, but the item must first have all modifications stripped from the item. We have implemented a system that allows any Bindomite-bound item to have all modifications stripped by using another Bindomite. You are allowed to either re-roll the item for a new set of modifications or use it as fodder for neuroforging.

Follow along with us

The Neuroforge update will have a lot more going on than just the addition of the Neuroforge. We will be posting follow-up blogs to detail what is being changed with the Neuroforge update. In the meantime, we are opening up access to our test server for players to try out the systems we have designed before they go live. The changes on this server encapsulate all of what the Neuroforge has to offer so far. There are plenty of class changes and other fancy things to explore as well.

You will need a totally different client to connect to this server. You will need to connect to “Test Server” using the Delta Client. You can get this client at the follow link: https://www.starsonata.com/dl/StarSonata_2_delta.exe

You can find the “Test Server” on the login screen by using the Server Drop down on the login screen end then selecting “Test Server.” For more information on how to use the test server or to provide your feedback, please use the Star Sonata community discord server.

Disclaimer: Anything on test servers are subject to change at any time and may not be representative of what will be seen when the live server is updated. The test server is subject to be shutdown, reset and restarted at any time.

We have made another batch of adjustments to the recurring mid universe contest to take the Imperial Throne. If you want to understand the context of these changes, take a look at the previous Dev Diary. The latest suite of changes are a result of closely monitoring the outcome of our previous set of changes over the past couple of contests. In this blog, we will describe what is different in the new system!

Arena Size

Every galaxy within the expanse has had the size of its arena significantly reduced from 24,000 to 15,000. The asteroid belt encircling every galaxy now forces everything back towards the center using a friction cloud. This allows for plenty of room for large fights, but it also shuts down the tactic of dragging Midas’ champions to the outermost portions of the galaxy.

Strategos

Midas no longer sends Polemarchos or Taxiarhos to maintain order in his domain. Now, he will send 6 Strategos champions as a display of his might. These champions announce their presence globally, and spawn 5 times a day. As players fight them, they will spawn strong minions worth a good deal of Influence who also drop a generous amount of Anatolian Crests. While calling forth their minions, they will hunker down and become immune to damage while simultaneously slowing to a crawl. After 25 minutes, all of his champions will despawn. If they are not killed before they despawn, no Influence will be awarded.

Each Strategos is worth 30,000 Influence, and the minions they spawn are worth more than 30,000 in total. This means that every 24 hours there is more than 1,800,000 Influence available from Strategos alone.

Claiming the Throne

Influence is what is used to determine which team will be crowned Emperor. 30 days after a new universe is formed, killing soldiers inside the Anatolian Expanse provides any teams that took part in killing any given soldier with Influence.

At the start of the contest, there is an Influence cap of 1,000,000. No team is able to gain more influence than the cap, and the cap increases over time to 4,000,000 by the end of the 3 week period. If the 1st place team does not have 1,000,000 or greater Influence than the 2nd place team, the Influence cap is removed and the contest continues until a team has 1,000,000 more Influence than the 2nd place team.

Any team in the #1 spot loses Influence when a Player, Bot or Temporary Drone on their team is killed in Anatolia. Player deaths cause 5000 Influence to be lost, Bot deaths cause 1000 to be lost, and Temporary Drone destruction causes 200 to be lost.

Imperial Signets and Imperial Skills

All three stations in Anatolia now allow players to train the Imperial Seal skills up to level 7, at the cost of 2 Imperial Signets each. Imperial Signets are crafted with an Imperial Restoration Forge, which can be rarely acquired from defeating Strategos. In order to craft an Imperial Signet, teams will need to acquire Fragmented Imperial Signets which are earned through participation in the contest for the Imperial Throne. Once teams have accrued at least 100,000 Influence, they are eligible to earn a portion of the 2000 Imperial Signets available to all. These Imperial Signets are split based on the amount of Influence a team has in relation to the total amount of Influence in the pool.

For example, if a team has 100,000 Influence and the total amount of Influence earned by all teams is 9,000,000 then that team is eligible to earn roughly 22 Fragmented Imperial Signets. The team that claims the Imperial Throne is not guaranteed any Fragmented Imperial Signets, their proportion of Fragmented Imperial Signets is based on the exact same rules as everyone else. This means that their total Influence is the only thing that determines the amount of Fragmented Imperial Signets they earn.

These exact same rules also apply to the 250 Imperial Seals awarded at the end of the contest.

Note

The Anatolian Expanse and associated Emperor Contest is a labor of love by us to support an active PvP event that breaks up the day to day activities in Star Sonata. We appreciate the many rounds of feedback the community has given about this experience. We are committed to continuing to support this activity and monitoring its success and failures. This blog post includes all information on the current system used to ascend to the throne to become Emperor, but like with many things in Star Sonata, it changes often. This system will likely be iterated into the future to bring an experience that promotes competition. You can stay up to date on what is involved in the contest to become Emperor by visiting our wiki page on the topic. https://www.starsonata.com/wiki/index.php/Emperor

Hey Sonatians,

We thought we would work up a helpful guide to highlight several new and old features that help make universe resets more of a breeze!

Limboing Tow Service

Every universe players get one /limbo to redock all of your ships if you’ve placed them in a location and need to change your mind. If you’ve used up your free one and require another you can purchase Limboing Tow Service for 5 billion credits at Friedman AI station in Free Market. This will “limbo” all your ships and let you choose a new AI station for them all to be placed at. This can be extremely helpful for moving large storage ships like Thatch that lack an engine.

Item Teleporters

Item Teleporters are station builder’s best friend when packing or unpacking. Located at the Friedman AI station in Free Market for various times and prices. Or if you want a less stressful experience, a 3 day length teleporter is also available in the in-game Store via the Gold Icon at the bottom for Space Points. These useful tools allow for teleportation of items within team space between ships and/or stations (if you’re docked at the station) provided those possessions are also in team-owned space. The item teleporter timer starts immediately after purchase so be prepared to equip it and utilize immediately!

Packing

Buy and equip the Item Teleporter then head to the location of your stations in a galaxy your team has ownership of. Open the Character window and then select the Possessions tab. Find the ship you wish to “store” your stuff in and right click and select Open Inventory. This will open a remote inventory window of the ship. Go ahead, leave that window open and then dock at the station you wish to pack up. Then highlight and drag and drop the items from the station inventory onto the remote ship inventory. This will make the items instantly transfer. Dock to another station and repeat.

Alternately, you can right click on a Station and select Open Inventory in the Possessions tab. It won’t display anything in the window but you can drag and drop the items onto that window to transfer them to that station (again restricted to an owned team galaxy).

Unpacking

Once you have ownership of a galaxy and laid the Stations in the locations you want for the galaxy, you can purchase and equip the Item Teleporter. Open the Character window and then select the Possessions tab. Find the ship you have your station items in and right click on it and then select Open Inventory. Dock at an appropriate station and drag and drop from the remote inventory window of the ship with your station items onto the station.

Again alternately you can do the same with a a station you deploy strictly to unload your stuff onto for sorting. Unpack the goods onto that station and then you can right click on another Station and select Open Inventory in the Possessions tab. It won’t display anything in the window but you can drag and drop the items onto that window to transfer them to that station.

Trade Bay Import/Export

Trade Bays can be exported or imported during the packing/unpacking process.

To Export, dock at your Station. Go to the Control tab. Press Trade Goods. Then press Export. This will open a window that allows you to copy paste the text for later importing. Follow the same process but press Import on the Add Trade Goods page when importing your template you’ve previously exported. This can be extremely useful for include things like your shop or a main production station, but also any trade bay that is worth re-using such as a colony or extraction setup.

Transferring Stations and Bots to Characters on the Same Account

One of the major changes of the last few universes has been the ability to transfer Stations and Bots within the same account! This helps streamline the ability of a player to centralize most of their Station construction builds and supplies onto a single character. To utilize this new feature – select your bot/station and press “X” if the menu below the targeting box is not visible. For stations, Transfer Ownership will be on “X” menu. For bots, you must press More Bot Options and then press Transfer Ownership. You must have a character, on the same account, that you wish to transfer to, offline within the same galaxy for it to be a valid choice, provided the receiving character has sufficient skills and/or slots for the transfer.

Bot Orders

A new search window has been added to help players better sort through the huge commodity lists. This should help players more quickly set buy and sell orders. We also have further improvements regarding orders coming in the near future!

We hope you take full advantage of these tools and enjoy a more efficient and less stressful universe reset experience. Happy packing and good luck in the next universe!

The Economic Assault update has been live for about six weeks and it’s already made a big impact on the Star Sonata economy. We’ve seen high levels of participation in the Active IC events (including a fair bit of good natured PvP) and a lot of productive experimentation with the Colony IC system as well. We have been loving all the engagement on the community Discord server when it comes to questions and comments about the new system. Let’s dig into some of the key feedback we’ve received and a few updates we are planning for the near future.

Key Feedback and Upcoming Changes

One significant piece of feedback was regarding the location of sale events for the lowest tier of Active ICs. Players rightly pointed out that holding these events in the Earthforce Layer could lead to trade bot automation, circumventing the “active” in Active IC. To address this, we have moved these events to Perilous Space.

Feedback from early entrepreneurs in the Colony IC space led to another big discovery. There was an unnecessarily complicated interaction between colony population and an internal “maximum storage” custom value that could be set on each commodity. The upshot was that four of the five Colony IC’s were achieving maximum sale volume at around 1 billion colony population, while the fifth Colony IC (Genetically Modified Trobbles) was never reaching its intended sale volume. This is also the reason why the Storehouse bonuses on colony enhancement items were absurdly large, yet didn’t seem to have much effect. We have torn up this old code in favor of a simpler version, while still keeping much of the well studied theory of colonies intact.

1. The trade volume of a colony now depends only on its population and its Storehouse bonus (if a colony enhancement is present). It no longer depends directly on your level of Colonial Administrator since higher suitability means more population anyway. This is a substantial buff to any colonies that are not owned by Colonial Administrator characters.
2. Storehouse bonuses now do exactly what they sound like: a colony with +80% Storehouse will buy 80% more of every commodity than it otherwise would, increasing your revenue by 80%.
3. As part of simplifying the formula for colony sales, we have made a few numerical adjustments so that the net impact on traditional commodities (e.g. Nuclear Waste, Entertainers) is neutral or a slight buff for mature colonies. Since the Storehouse bonuses on colony enhancement items are now a lot more impactful than before, we’ve adjusted the size of those bonuses on some of the items to keep their overall impact on colony revenue roughly constant.
4. As was always intended, the five Colony IC’s will now only trade in large volumes when the colony is mature. We have run fresh tests on the new system to make sure that the optimal credit sourcing of these commodities is aligned with our design. The tests confirmed that Colony IC nodes are tremendously valuable if occupied by a mature colony and traded with in an optimal fashion. As part of these adjustments, we have also modestly increased the peak sales volume of Colony IC’s so that you can not only get back to the bugged rate but even exceed it by 9% with a really good colony.

These changes will be in the next patch, expected by the end of March.

Future Plans and Adjustments

We’ve also identified some aspects that we’d like to adjust, but we need to wait until the end of the current universe. The biggest change relates to the distribution of the original five colony commodities in Wild Space (e.g. Dragon Eggs, Astral Silk). We have roughly twice as many sources of these commodities compared to last universe, meaning that there is way more supply of these commodities than mature Colony IC nodes are willing to consume. I am working with Bobbo to adjust the universe generation code so that in the next universe we will have more control over how many sources of these commodities appear. In the meantime, it’s unfortunately the case that there will not be as much demand for these commodities as projected, since the supply is about twice as high as we had forecast. To any players who aggressively claimed colony commodity sources in anticipation of liquidating these commodities via Colony IC nodes, I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and assure you that the relative abundance of colony commodities to Colony IC nodes will be much more dialed in starting next universe.

When it comes to the Active IC sale events, we feel that they have been the standout success of the system and certainly don’t want to derail that success. We just want to inject a little bit more randomness to help keep traders and pirates on their toes. Our plan is to randomize the event locations so that you can’t predict where each Active IC will be sold next time, and also introduce some random variations in the price that the server will pay during each event. Our idea is that these measures will help keep the events fresh and also add a bit more nuance to the strategies around shop pricing.

Lastly, toward the end of the current universe we will take stock of the consumption rate of Active IC’s, colony commodities, and Colony IC’s. Depending on our findings, we may make some adjustments to the volume of ingredients that go into making Colony IC’s. We have high hopes for this new economy and are committed to doing things carefully and methodically. We understand that it takes a lot of time and effort on the part of the players to learn and begin to profit from a new system like this, so whenever we make adjustments we’ll endeavor to keep things simple and conservative in scope to avoid invalidating the knowledge you have gained about the system.

Conclusion

It’s been a real pleasure to see players from all corners of the game trying out the new economic systems and sharing their thoughts in the chats. We believe that the release of the Active IC economy marks the beginning of a very positive new direction for Star Sonata. We are committed to closely monitoring the economy’s evolution and methodically adjusting its various components when necessary. Our aim is to promote a healthy amount of collaboration and competition in the economy of the game, while ensuring that every individual player has multiple paths to profit from their time online.

Stay tuned for more updates and developments in the Star Sonata universe!

Hello Sonatians! We have two exciting new projects that will go live with the upcoming Universe Reset on February 3. While these two projects are very different in the specifics, they stem from one core vision that we have for Star Sonata: we want to give players fresh and exciting ways to collaborate and compete with each other as they progress through the game. So let’s dive right in!

Active Industrial Commodities

Industrial Commodities have been in the game for ages and were originally envisioned as a way for players to liquidate extracted resources for credits, providing a simpler passive income process to the somewhat arcane art of colonial administration. Over time, the Industrial Commodity economy has become increasingly automated and saturated to the point that it’s not living up to the vision that originally created it. We’ve decided to graft an active-play component onto the existing Industrial Commodity system that, while entirely optional, may yield a lucrative credits-per-hour rate for players who choose to pursue it.

Vision

We’ve known for quite some time now that we need to do a better job of rewarding players for going out into the universe and playing the game with each other. Our previous changes to Dungeons and Instanced Content are an example of our commitment to this. This project focuses on augmenting the Wild Space economy to promote these goals, relying on two main principles:

1. New sources of passive income should have a connection to active gameplay.

2. Players should be substantially rewarded for participating in the player-driven market as opposed to running their industries entirely solo.

A huge difference between the existing Industrial Commodity economy and the new system we’ve created is the reduction* of demand-side scarcity. When players are limited in the amount of commodities they can sell, this encourages them to keep everything in-house and discourages player markets. If a credit source can dry up when too many players are selling, the best thing to do is to max it out on your own and not share it with anyone. As you read the details of the Active IC project below, note that we’ve reduced* demand bottlenecks to encourage a player market to develop.

Per our core vision for this project, the raw goods that feed into the Active IC system have to be gathered via a substantial active play component. This ensures a linkage between credit generation and player activity, which in turn means that everyone has something profitable to do the minute they log into the game.

Three-Sector Model

Taken together, these goals drive us toward establishing a three-sector game economy (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-sector_model for more on this). In the first sector, Gatherers collect raw materials while playing the game. In the second sector, these raw materials are refined by Manufacturers. In the third sector, the refined goods are sold to AI bases (or colonies) by Traders for credits.

Note that Gathering requires active play, while Manufacturing requires bases and trade bots (passive play). Trading will require active play for some commodities, and passive play for others. This means that players with holdings in Wild Space are free to Gather and Trade as well. However, it will be impractical for any one player to specialize into Gathering, Manufacturing, and Trading. This means that avoiding participating in the broader market is disincentivized and players should instead find it more profitable to do business with each other.

Wild Space Resource Flow

There are two types of commodities that will be added in this upcoming universe.

The first are actively-sourced Industrial Commodities (Active ICs). These take a single commodity that can be gathered in the game (such as a Blue Dust or Rosemary Sprig) and combine it with basic materials to produce an Active IC (a Fragrant Arrangement in this case). Each new Active IC can then be sold to special AI bases that will only buy it when an event is active and indicating it can be sold. The factories that make these commodities can be purchased in Capella. So, if you’re looking for a new way to build wealth in the game, you can spend some time farming commodities and converting them into Active ICs, which you can then hold and sell during the new events or else sell them to other players who will have their own uses for them (read on…)

The other new kind of commodity are the Colony Industrial Commodities (Colony ICs). These commodities require ordinary colony commodities (such as Astral Silk or Dragon Eggs) to be purchased from colonies and then combined with a variety of Active ICs and regular ICs. The resulting Colony ICs (​​Shimmering Astral Brocades or Luminescent Dragon Scales, in this case) can be sold to certain special colonies that are on planets capable of purchasing Colony ICs. There are only a limited number of these special planets in Wild Space, and they are only found in galaxies whose quality is Rare or higher. The factories that make Colony ICs are constructed with a blueprint that can only be acquired as a drop from Perilous Space. These factories require Goop to build, so you will need to secure some Goop from a Fractured Galaxy if you are lucky enough to claim a colony that can purchase Colony ICs.

While Colony ICs require colonies in order to passively liquidate assets for credits, these colonies can’t earn anything for their owners unless they also obtain Active ICs as well. Similarly, while Active IC factories and the raw materials from Wild Space are the only way to manufacture higher quality Active ICs, they can only do so if they connect with Gatherers. And in all cases, we have set up these new economies with limited* demand-side scarcity. Suppose you’re a player who is lucky enough to own a colony that purchases Shimmering Astral Brocades; since your fully mature colony will purchase a very large number of these items*, you have every incentive to buy Astral Silk from everyone in the universe who can provide it… at the right price, of course! You’ll also buy the Active ICs that go into making Shimmering Astral Brocades, creating multiple market relationships between yourself and Gatherers and Manufacturers.

What’s the role of the Gatherer?

The Gatherer wants to figure out what they can farm the easiest for the highest profit per hour. So they’re going to search the Market Check to see which station is buying the commodities they can gather with the least amount of effort. Then, they’re going to gather as much of these commodities as they can and sell them to the highest bidder before they end their session. Additionally, highly active Gatherers may also keep a keen eye out for the new kind of server-wide event in which a randomly selected Active IC will be purchased by an AI base at a generous price.

What’s the role of the Manufacturer?

The Manufacturer puts money and capital up on a base, buys the materials from other players, and subsequently sells them at a markup to players who bring them to the relevant AI bases during the sale event. Otherwise, the Manufacturer can hoard them and try to sell the materials themselves. Manufacturers who control colonies with commodities such as Astral Silk and Dragon Eggs will likely find that these items are now demanded by other players!

What’s the role of the Trader?

The Trader spends time looking to get good deals on various Active ICs, so they’ll be checking the prices to see how things look. They’ll also watch for cheap farmed commodities that can be sold to Manufacturers. If a surge in demand happens, they will take whatever they have stockpiled and haul them to the station with the demand surge. If they are selling one of the three Common Active ICs, they can safely offload them in Earthforce Space. However, if they want to sell the higher quality Active ICs, they will need to venture into Perilous Space. Because of this, they may need to enlist the help of other players to defend them while they bring the commodities to the base in question so that they can safely sell their goods.

What are Surges in Demand?

Intermittently, throughout the week, certain Active IC’s will be infinitely demanded by specific AI bases in Earthforce or Perilous Space, at a generous price. The Active IC will be specifically indicated in an event notification. During this time, players can sell as much of these commodities as they can move at a time to these AI bases.

Conclusion

By implementing a three-sector economy in Star Sonata, we’re creating new ways to generate credits through active play, deeper manufacturing paths to wealth, and most importantly, the potential for greatly increased interaction in the player-driven market. The Active IC and Colony IC system should create many new opportunities to collaborate with others in the economy, and just as many opportunities for healthy competition as well!

*Edit from Enk (2024-02-13): I helped Hober write the section on Active IC’s but I must have had a bit too much of Doctor L’s Cure-All Life Tonic at the time because I mistakenly wrote that there is absolutely no demand-side scarcity of Colony IC’s. I have edited the offending lines in this post to be more representative of the system. If you happen to control a colony that purchases Colony IC’s, what you need to know is that you definitely should grow that colony’s population up to mature levels in order to see large sales volumes, but if you do so you will find that it buys a TON of the relevant Colony IC, most likely far greater than you and a few friends could source on your own.

Fractured Galaxies

Fractured Galaxies are special galaxies in Wild Space that can’t be owned by any team. Consequently, they are pretty risky to occupy since you can be attacked by any player at any time. We envision Fractured Galaxies as a way for advanced players to flex their strength and potentially work off some ancient grudges against their opponents. As our first universe with Fractured Galaxies draws to a close, we’ve reflected on the  feedback we’ve received and have some adjustments queued up that should greatly improve how they work. Players generally found that Goop, the special commodity you obtain in Fractured Galaxies, wasn’t useful enough to warrant the risk of obtaining it. We are addressing this concern by making Goop essential in the Colony IC system (detailed above) and will continue to iterate until its value is in the right spot. We also received feedback that assaulting a Fractured Galaxy was nigh on impossible when the defender was heavily fortified. To allow for more contest over these Goop sources, a new station kit is going to be added in the coming universe.

Given that we’ve had some enjoyable battles over Command and Control stations, this new station is going to follow a similar gameplay loop. If you would like to disrupt someone’s stations in an unowned galaxy to make attacking them easier, you would place a Disrupt and Dismantle Station station in their galaxy. You would then have to construct one of two Station Disruption Field Generators on that station to begin disrupting all stations in the galaxy. This includes all friendly, neutral and enemy stations except for the station generating the disruption field.

These auras debuff damage, rate of fire, and shield regeneration of all other stations in the galaxy but differ in build time and strength of the debuff. The stronger aura generator takes about as long to build as a Nullification Generator. This is where we see an experience similar to a Command and Control station. If you get a notification that a Disruption station is placed in your galaxy, you’d better get in there and destroy the attackers’ station or pretty soon they’ll make your stations in the galaxy much more vulnerable to siege!

If you are looking to lay siege to someone else’s Fractured Galaxy, be aware that these Station Disruption Field Generators are not cheap. Fortunately their build costs are primarily periodic materials and are aligned with materials generally used for building strong stations. If you get a third of the way into building one and defending the disruption station isn’t going well, it may be wise to abandon ship and cut your losses on that build!

Additional Changes

To help make the process of getting colonies established, and to promote their broader use, the Colony Booster base items (e.g. Mobile Mani-Pedi SalonBot Housing) will no longer decay on reset. Instead they will be sticky, meaning once equipped they cannot be unequipped. Now you can store as many of these boosters as you’d like!

Good evening Sonatians. The contest to take the Emperor’s Throne has gone through a few iterations over the past few years, from a game of “escort the payload” to the battleground oriented fights we have seen more recently. We have carefully monitored the experience of the Emperor mechanic since its inception and plan to continue iterating on the design as we learn more about player patterns and preferences.. In this blog, we will describe every aspect of the current system! It will be detail oriented and should answer any questions you may have about how engaging with it works.

The Anatolian Expanse

First, let’s talk about the Anatolian Expanse. The Anatolian Expanse is a layer of space found by traveling to Anatolia (which can be found off of Earthforce Perilous Outpost), then heading past King Midas into his domain. Here you can find Midas’ soldiers waiting to engage whoever comes to challenge them. The soldiers come in a few forms: Midas’ mining crew, his foot soldiers and his champions. All of these soldiers drop Anatolian Crests, a currency that can be used to get rewards for participating in the Anatolian Expanse and provide your team influence. I will elaborate on that later.

This layer has a few other rules that make it a PvP battleground. You cannot transwarp in or out of this layer. You must go in through one of the entrances, and there are no other ways out. Logging out of this layer will also cause you to be kicked out of the layer, which means no hiding large fleets logged out in deep space. Every galaxy within the expanse also has a set arena size. There is a 24,000 radius asteroid belt in every galaxy, and each galaxy emits a deadly aura past that point! This allows for plenty of room for large fights, while also preventing some extreme cases of kiting Midas’ Champions. (The early fights in the expanse took place tens of thousands of distance away from the center of the galaxy)

Midas’ Soldiers

Midas’ miners and foot soldiers aren’t too interesting. They will fight anyone that engages them, but they don’t give much influence. However, they are a good source of Anatolia Crests. You can find them at all times in the expanse, but compared to the champions they are significantly weaker.

Midas’ champions are where his might is truly on display. They are capable of fending off entire squads of players. They also provide large numbers of Anatolian Crests and a large amount of influence. These champions come in three different ranks that drastically increase in strength and rewards. There can only be one of each champion in the Expanse at a time, and they spawn on timers that can be seen in notifications next to the chat. If you do not see a notification there when you log in regarding these bosses, they are either already alive or not respawning soon. The ranks and champions are as follows:

• The lowest rank champion, Taxiarhos, is worth 30,000 Influence.

• In the middle is Strategos at 180,000 influence.

• And, finally, the strongest and most legendary champion is Polemarchos worth 900,000 influence.

Anatolian Crests

Anatolian Crests are one of the two things that are obtained by defeating Midas’ soldiers. Their concept is relatively simple: you kill soldiers, they drop crests. Gather lots of crests and take them to any of the AI bases in the Anatolian Expanse to turn them in for lots of wonderful rewards! Be careful, if you are killed while transporting these crests you will drop them to whoever killed you! These PvP items have a few other attributes that go along with them.

• Crests drop on death.

• Crests drop when you leave the layer. This can happen due to logout kick or just warping out.

• Crests prevent undocking while they are in your inventory. You will have to sell them back to the base for credits if you are unable to get other rewards for them.

• Crests stick around longer than other debris.

• They provide visibility to a ship that holds them.

With 100 crests you can purchase an Anatolian Trove. These are loot boxes that contain a bunch of very useful items, including a low chance at a Tarnished  Imperial Seal! Crests and troves can be obtained before, during, and after the Throne is claimed, so come on in and fight for some crests!

Claiming the Throne

As mentioned before, killing Midas’ soldiers provides influence to the killers team for killing them. Influence is what is used to determine which team will be crowned Emperor. However, you cannot just go and get influence in the Anatolian Expanse at any point in the universe. The Emperor’s contest is a timed event. At exactly 720 hours (30 days) after a new universe is formed, killing soldiers inside the Anatolian Expanse provides any teams that took part in killing any given soldier with  influence. This influence is provided proportionally based on how much damage each team did to the soldier. 20% of a soldier’s influence is also provided to the team that landed the killing blow on a soldier. At any given moment you can see the total amount of influence a team has by looking at the bulletin board in any AI station.

The contest itself lasts 3 weeks (21 days). When this time period ends, the leading team will be crowned Emperor, with a few conditions. After 3 weeks, if no teams are eligible to claim the throne, the contest continues until the moment a team becomes eligible. For a team to be eligible they must have at least 1,000,000 influence and they must also have a 900,000 point lead ahead of the team in second place. If a team is not crowned by the universe reset, all influence is wiped and an Emperor will not be crowned for that universe. Since the contest is a one time event, once an Emperor is crowned that Emperor will hold their throne for the rest of the universe.

The Contest’s Spoils

The current rewards for the Emperor contest take 4 major forms. Three of which are only provided for the Emperor and their team:

1. A 5% tithe is applied to scooped credits and colony sales to players not on the Emperor’s team.

2. The Emperor can dock at the palace in Anatolia and receive three augmenter reset modules and three ship dry dock modules

3. A galaxy in wild space will forever be named after the Emperor.

Additionally, there is another reward that is distributed amongst the top 10 participating teams who have  accrued at least 100,000 influence. A pool of 250 Imperial Chests are proportionally provided to these eligible teams based on their teams percentage of the total influence earned by all teams. The greatest amount of these will always be provided to the winning team, but there’s still chests to be earned by whoever can snag a spot in the top ten!

Round up

The Anatolian Expanse and associated Emperor Contest is a labor of love by us to support an active PvP event that breaks up the day to day activities in Star Sonata. We appreciate the many rounds of feedback the community has given about this experience. We are committed to continuing to support this activity and monitoring its success and failures. This blog post includes all information on the current system used to ascend to the throne to become Emperor, but like with many things in Star Sonata, it changes often. This system will likely be iterated into the future to bring an experience that promotes competition. You can stay up to date on what is involved in the contest to become Emperor by visiting our wiki page on the topic. https://www.starsonata.com/wiki/index.php/Emperor