Space Clouds

Dev Diary – Emperor System, Wild Space and Aug Sourcing

Welcome to another Star Sonata Dev Diary! Today we’re going back into the Emperor system, talking about new Wild Space improvements and the new ways to target farm for augmenters.

How to become Emperor?

Let’s dive into the mechanical details of the new Emperor system. To be crowned emperor you need points called Influence.

These points are gained from 3 types of Anatolian bosses that spawn within the Anatolian Expanse:

  • Polemarchos gives 900,000 Influence

  • Starategos gives 60,000 Influence

  • Taxiarhos gives 3000 Influence

The harder the boss and the more influence it gives, the longer it takes to respawn. Influence is awarded on a teamwide basis and any team that participates in killing an Anatolian boss gets some Influence from the total pool. Because Influence is apportioned for different things, any time spent dealing damage to a boss will make you eligible for points; however, getting the finishing blow is also worth a heavy portion of the bosses Influence pool. Influence is awarded instantly upon kill via an event chat notification of your team’s share and does not require scooping anything or having to turn anything in.

Once a team has greater than 9 million Influence and a sufficient lead in Influence over any other contenders, they will automatically be awarded the Imperial Throne and the contest will be over. After crowning an Emperor there is a cooldown period of three weeks during their reign where no Influence can be earned. After the cooldown period all teams have their influence points set to zero and the cycle starts again. However the incumbent Emperor remains in position and still gets the perks of being Emperor until a new one succeeds them.

Fighting for Emperor up until the very end is still worth it, even if there are only a few weeks left in the universe. This is because the majority of the rewards for becoming Emperor are granted immediately upon claiming the throne.

anatolia

After being crowned Emperor

Once crowned Emperor, the Director of the winning team will take ownership of the Imperial Palace, which is invulnerable and takes up no base slots. Only members of the reigning team can dock at the palace and management access is set to Councillors. A Splendid Imperial Trove, a crate with the following unbound items will be placed in the palace awaiting the Emperor’s team once crowned:

  • 150 Imperial Chests

  • 3 Imperial Augmenter Resets

  • 3 Imperial Ship Dry-Dock Modules

Additionally, members of the ruling team will receive win points: three for directors, two for councillors, and one for everyone else. The director also gets Leadership 3 if they do not already have it, granting access to the exclusive Emperor’s Club in Sol. Lastly, a universal 5% tithe on colony profits and scooped credits accrues in the reigning team’s funds until the next Emperor is named.

PvP Items

See: Dev Diary – Anatolian Expanse

There is a new item tag on the Anatolian Crest that drops from Midas’ Fleet within the Anatolian Expanse, with the following unique properties:

  • Drops on death.

  • Drops on layer change (tow or jump).

  • Drops on ship evaporation (1 minute after logoff).

  • Decays on new uni.

  • Prevents Transwarp.

  • Bots cannot scoop.

  • Debris has high visibility.

  • Gives high visibility if you scoop.

  • Debris is persistent for 48 hours via any action other than tossing.

  • Once docked, it cannot be transferred to another ship or tossed; it must be used or destroyed (scrapped) before undocking is possible.

Wild Space Changes

We have heard loud and clear from the community that obtaining a foothold in Wild Space at the beginning of the universe was frustrating due to the relatively small number of galaxies revealed at the start. We have recalibrated the reveal process in two important ways: it is now front loaded with substantially more galaxies appearing on Day 1, and the rate of new reveals is much higher early on in the universe as well.

We have also touched up the resource distribution code to make galaxies that reveal later considerably more desirable.

Ownership Process

We also made a number of changes to the Command & Control Station Kit which should provide more depth to Wild Space territory control, especially between teams looking to snag the same galaxy. No longer will your only recourse be to kill the opposing teams Command & Control base.

  1. Command & Control (C&C) bases cannot be irradiated. This means that you are unable to capture an enemy’s C&C base without the owner of the base intentionally abandoning it.

  2. Command & Control bases must be deployed within 3k distance from the edge of a sun. The universe generation code been updated accordingly so that at least 3 suns are found in every Wild Space galaxy.

  3. The Nullification Generator build time has been increased from 2 hours to 3 hours, but a new system has been introduced that can accelerate the build speed back down under 2 hours (see #4 below).

  4. We have added a basebound factory called Nullification Generator Construction Support. This factory automatically constructs Ownership Booster Drones as long as it is equipped and supplied with materials. Ownership Booster Drones auto-deploy upon being built and orbit the station at a distance of 8k.

    1. Each deployed drone provides a 16.7% build speed increase to the man-hours required to complete the Nullification Generator Blueprint. In theory, a team can reduce the build time for a Nullification Generator to approximately 100 minutes by constantly building these drones.

 

Colony Changes

We’ve implemented a few new features and expansions to existing Colony content. We’ve buffed the colony enhancement items (Mobile Mani-Pedi SolonBot Housing, Optimo-Life (TM) Curation Station, Atmospheric Robotic Vacuum Dock) to increase the storehouse of the colony which will increase the number of items it will buy and sell every interval.

We have also added a new toggle within the Colony tab to disable specific bases from trading with that colony. For example, if you have 3 Extraction Expert bases and one Colonial Administration base attached to a planet, you can disable colony trading from the Extraction Expert bases to help maximize profits. You can only toggle this on bases you own.

Colony button

Common Augmenter Sourcing

Common augmenters (Minor, Basic, Std, etc.) are some of the most iconic items in Star Sonata. They are used extensively throughout the game: countless builds, ship improvements, and outfitting bases for combat are all reliant on these items. Dungeons have always been a great way to gather augmenters, but the variety of augmenters was always inconsistent (looking at you, Good Electric Augmenter). This led to scarcity of certain augs that weren’t commonly found equipped on AI, not to mention a variety of unintuitive farming locations.

To alleviate this disparity and refocus gameplay on DGing, we are taking a new approach to the sourcing of common augmenters. Starting at universe reset, you will be able to “target farm” the augmenters of your choice to a much greater extent than ever before. Dungeon bosses will gain extra loot rolls that are dedicated to Common augmenters, and will often drop several augmenters at once. Each boss is capable of dropping four “flavors” of Common augmenter and the tech level of the augmenters dropped is determined (along with some RNG) by the subjective strength of the dungeon boss. For example a Green Battleship boss might drop from a pool of Damage, Speed, Targeting and Docking Augmenters. Whatever specific augmenters you’re looking for, you will be able to find many different DG bosses that can provide them. To make doubly sure of this, we are also greatly increasing the number of DGs in the game. One final note: ordinary AI ships will continue to spawn with random augmenters but they will no longer carry dedicated augmenters as in the past.

DG Boss Drop

 

Dev Diary – Anatolian Expanse

Welcome to another Star Sonata Dev Diary! Today we’re diving into the new Emperor System within the brand new Anatolian Expanse layer: a PvP oriented experience to claw to the top.

Overview

Killing Midas’ Military leaders grants the slayer influence over Anatolia. They have three different ranks, of varying strength, defending their civilians as they gather and transport resources to maintain their domination over the universe. By defeating these military commanders, you prove your strength to the universe and limit Midas’ power.

Anatolian

The Layer: Where it is and what it’s like there

The Anatolian Expanse can be easily accessed in Anatolia off of Earthforce Perilous Outpost. From Anatolia there are 3 paths that take you into the neighboring provinces owned by Midas. Upon entering the expanse, you can either go deeper into the province (to confront powerful Anatolians), or you can travel to the other entrances of the expanse. Make sure you bring some friends and firepower as you attempt to go deeper, because large Anatolian structures block the way to keep their more valuable space and illustrious prestigious generals safe.

There are also stations owned by disgruntled Anatolian citizens in each of the entrance galaxies. They are tired of his rule and applaud your actions, and are even willing to offer you some rewards for putting a stop to his reign.

Anatolian Expanse

The Anatolians

The Anatolians are split up into 3 major groups. The first of them is the civilians. These are the laborers and craftsmen, the backbone of Anatolia. However, they don’t have much means to defend themselves. That’s where the soldier’s job comes into play. They form a never ending army of diehard Midas followers who have no concern for their own lives… mostly because they are protected by Midas’ immortal soul! They patrol the expanse and quickly come to defend any leader who is attacked. The leaders are the third group found here. These captains and generals are extremely powerful: killing them is an incredibly heroic act and those who can accomplish this feat will be recognized by the universe for their influence. Killing enough of these leaders will allow your team to claim the Imperial Throne. The stronger the leader, the more influence your team will accrue!

Wormhole Blocker

Being Crowned Emperor of the Universe

Being crowned Emperor is a simple process. You merely enter the Anatolian expanse and take on some of the most powerful and well equipped forces in the universe! Kill enough of their leaders, and none can deny your worthiness. The keys to the palace are awarded directly to the leadership of the team that proved themselves worthy, and there they may claim their reward.

It is possible that one group will have shown themselves worthy through their influence, but another group is not far behind. If it is too close to tell, the people of the universe will not be convinced that either is worthy! Continue dominating in the Anatolian Expanse to truly prove that you belong as the Emperor of this universe.

After a team has been crowned, the universe will no longer be worried about Anatolia for a time (a cooling off period of a few weeks). Midas will brood, frustrated with the failure of his people. But, before long, Midas’ influence will begin affecting the universe anew. And, once more, the throne will be open to those who can prove themselves worthy! Some other team will take the throne … if the previous regime doesn’t step back up to repel Midas’ forces again!

Mining ship

Anatolian Crests

Defeating any of Midas’ loyal subjects will award you Anatolian Crests, which are recognized by the Detractors of Midas. Bring these trophies to one of the stations near the entrances to the expanse, and they will handsomely reward you for your actions against Midas with a variety of treasures. However, once you dock at the station you may not leave with these Crests! They will not recognize them once you leave, so you must exchange them before you are allowed to depart.

The detractors do not care who brings the Crests to them, and will recognize any who bring them evidence of an Anatolian defeat… no matter how it was gained! This means that Anatolian Crests drop on death if another player kills you, so be careful! Also you may not leave the Anatolian Expanse, or log off, with these Crests!

King Midas

May adum always be in your favor! Good luck, Sonatians!

Dev Diary – Termite Sieges

Welcome to another Star Sonata Dev Diary! Today we’re talking about termite sieges within Wild Space! There are three main changes that are coming with Universe Reset with Termites.

Termites

  1. Termite mounds are considerably stronger now and are likely unkillable by player ships alone.
  2. Players will be alerted when and where they are going to be attacked so that players can prepare their defenses via a new team chat and galaxy notifications.
  3. Termite mounds spawn a harasser termite that can kill lower tech bases. The Danger Factor of the galaxy determines the strength of the harasser termites, so lower tech bases are somewhat less vulnerable in galaxies with lower Danger Factor.

Clearing Mounds

We wanted to ensure players had to actually prepare base related defenses and tried to move away from the chore of constantly scouting and killing mounds before they even became a threat. Termite mounds are now far more hardy and will not easily die to player weapons now. Termite mounds will appear in any galaxy that has a player asset inside of it, owned or not. However, only one mound per galaxy can appear at a time.

Siege Notification

Upon logging in, a new alert in the team login message will notify any team members of every galaxy that has an active mound within them. You can also see exactly when the mound is going to start its full siege on the galaxy by checking event chat when you warp into the galaxy. A mound will lay siege exactly seven days after it appears in a galaxy.

Termite Waves

Termites will attack in waves instead of coming in one at a time. This will make them a bit more formidable, but there’s also a cap on the size of each wave to prevent a Termite Deathball™  from appearing (no more 50+ termites). Termite range has been reduced by over 50% to ensure they don’t kite excessively or hang out beyond the range of player bases. Mounds will only spawn up to a maximum value of termites to prevent issues. Sieges will last for 3 hours after which the mound and all its termites will despawn.Counter Attack

Survive the Siege

The ultimate goals are to ensure players are committing the proper resources to galaxy defense, providing advance warning for players to plan and reducing the chore of scouting galaxies constantly. Good luck on withstanding these Termites!

Open Community Positions

Moderation Team

The Star Sonata Moderation Team is recruiting! Moderation in Star Sonata exists to make sure that all of the chats provide a welcoming place and positive experience. If you are passionate about the game and want to give back to the community, please consider joining the Moderation Team!

Mission and Goal Statement

If you’re thinking about becoming a Moderator, here are some more details about the mission and goals of the team.

  • Keep the chats clean of anything considered offensive or inappropriate.
  • Strictly moderate anything that makes people feel unwelcome, including but not limited to: racism, sexism, homophobia, or any other form of bigotry.
  • Keep discussion civil, and ensure that they stay on topic. Those who seek to start fights should be cleanly excised from conversations so that the discussion can continue.

To ensure that we keep community support for moderation, we must:

  • Lead by example by following the chat rules ourselves at all times.
    • We cannot enforce rules that we don’t follow ourselves.
  • Make sure players follow the community guidelines.
  • Strive to eliminate any bias or perception of bias in moderation.
  • Avoid disrupting normal conversation whenever possible.
  • Our chat rules are consolidated into one master set of rules here, and they will apply to all public chat in-game, on discord, and private messages in-game if they are reported.
    • Ideally, moderation should apply to the individual behind the computer as much as possible, but in the cases of account-sharing, punishments should be considered to apply both to the person behind the screen as well as anyone using that account.

For more moderation information please contact Kilando#9002 or Demi#0609 on Discord!

Paxian Disciple

If you’re interested in the design and development process of Star Sonata, there is another community role that you can apply for. The *Paxian Disciples* are community members who are invited to attend weekly dev meetings and provide a player perspective on the ongoing work. If you’re interested to learn more about becoming a Paxian Disciple, here is what is expected of the role:

  • Regularly attending and participating in our weekly meetings.
  • Representing the interests of your subgroup in the community.
  • Providing feedback on how our work in progress may impact the game.
  • Relaying information from the meetings in a factual manner to the community at large.

Worried about not having anything to add during the meetings? That is perfectly OK. We’re happy to just have you in attendance!

For more information on becoming a Paxian Disciple contact enk#3571 over Discord!

Wild Space Conflict: The Nitty-Gritty

Greetings! I’m excited to share some more details on the Wild Space Conflict project that will go live along with the 2-week temporary universe on April 30. A working version of this project is available on the Test server for those who are curious to get an early look–just be advised that we’re still putting the finishing touches on a few minor components. Fair warning: this is a long post that dives into some really detailed design and stats. For a lighter overview of the project, you can check out this post from February.

Controlling Territory

Back in February, I shared the following details about controlling Wild Space territory in the new system.

  • Instead of merely controlling a galaxy for ten minutes, you must deploy a new type of base and complete a resource-intensive construction project in order to establish ownership. This process may take a couple hours.

  • Once ownership is established, a steady stream of resources will be consumed to maintain it.

Figure 1: The equipment you’ll use to own galaxies.

I’d like to follow up on this with some details so you know what to expect well in advance of Universe Reset.

  • You need a Command and Control Station Kit. It’s a tech 16 base that cannot be attached to planets and moons. You’ll be able to purchase this base kit in Building Academy.

  • Your team can deploy just one single Command and Control Station in each galaxy. Once it’s deployed, you can start the Nullification Generator construction project. This takes two hours at standard build speed and carries a periodic cost of 10,000 Steel Girders and 10,000 Sentient Chatbots. For reference, this resource cost roughly equates to seven ideal tech 9 Extraction Expert bases for Metals, and half that for Silicon. Of course, it’s also possible to build the Nullification Generator over a longer period of time if your resources are spread thin at the start of the universe. Just make sure to actively monitor your space and rebuff any hostile players who try to steal your territory!

  • The Nullification Generator is the device that actually establishes and maintains your team’s ownership of the galaxy. It is a base-bound factory that consumes 100 Fusion Cells every ten minutes. This cost roughly equates to one ideal tech 9 Extraction Expert base for Nuclear Waste. Every time the Nullification Generator consumes a batch of Fusion Cells, it establishes or re-establishes your team’s ownership of the galaxy. If the Nullification Generator fails to re-establish ownership for any reason (e.g. if the Command and Control Station is destroyed or abandoned), there is a grace period of up to 24 hours before ownership is lost (the grace period is shorter for galaxies that have been owned for less than a day). During the grace period, the owning team’s chat channel receives warning messages. To resolve the problem, simply feed the Nullification Generator enough Fusion Cells to catch up with the deficit (it will consume however much it’s owed).

Contesting Territory

Once a galaxy is owned, no one is allowed to take any PvP actions there. This includes hostile actions by the team that owns the galaxy! It’s no longer possible to manually toggle ownership status, so there is no practical way for the owning team to temporarily cede ownership status in order to PvP. From now on, ownership essentially means that the territory has been successfully claimed and fighting can move on to another theater.

This change means that fighting in Wild Space is much more straightforward with very few hidden or counterintuitive mechanics to get in the way of gameplay. If you want to contest another team’s ownership attempt, you need to stop them from building and activating a Nullification Generator before you. Here are some strategies you can try:

  1. Interrupt enemy shipments of Steel Girders and Sentient Chatbots to their Command and Control Station.

  2. Find and destroy the enemy’s extraction bases that are sourcing these Industrial Commodities.

  3. Destroy the enemy’s Command and Control Station outright (but these are pretty tanky!)

Don’t forget that you’ll also need to complete a Nullification Generator on your own Command and Control Station while you’re busy slowing down your enemy’s attempts to do the same! As soon as any Nullification Generator activates, all unaffiliated bases and permanent drones are immediately destroyed and any such bases that were attached to planets or moons become unattached as well. This puts an end to the contest and awards the galaxy to the winning side.

ezgif.com-gif-maker

Figure 2: Three enemy bases enter destroyed state as a different team establishes ownership. Note: the bases also detach from the planet but our tester needed an updated client to show this.

The only non-intuitive rule in the system is that unattached bases are not allowed until the galaxy is owned (with the exception of the Command and Control Station, of course). Allowing unattached bases in territory contest instantly necessitates a huge number of hidden rules and mechanics, as anyone with experience in BvB knows all too well. It’s best if we avoid the problem entirely by ruling out their use in PvP.

AI Empires will continue to exist in the new system, but the method for contesting their territory is slightly different. Since you can’t deploy bases directly in their galaxies anymore, we’ve introduced the following behaviors:

  • A galaxy owned by an AI Empire will automatically lose ownership if a different team owns an adjacent galaxy.

  • Deploying a base in the presence of an AI Empire will turn the AI hostile toward you.

Simply put, if you want to take territory away from an AI Empire, you must first own a neighboring galaxy (disabling the AI Empire’s ownership next door), then take over the freshly unowned galaxy by whatever means you choose. Remember that you won’t be able to use unattached bases for this task, though.

AIempireterritorylost

Figure 3: A player team establishes ownership in Tuscany Verge, causing the neighboring AI Empire galaxy Tyro to lose ownership.

Changes to Base Combat

Aside from the restriction on the use of unattached bases, we’ve made some other changes that will greatly affect the mechanics of base combat.

Bases no longer use healing weapons and any base augmenters the used to grant healing-related stats have been repurposed (check out Spirit of the Rhino!).

Figure 4: Spirit of the Rhino has been repurposed.

We realized that the main purpose of base healing has always been to keep your galaxy safe–particularly from enemy players–while you’re away. With the new ownership mechanic, this insurance is no longer necessary. To keep your galaxy safe from players, you only need to be on high alert during the few hours it takes to establish ownership. Granted, base healing was also helpful to protect against termites; more on this below.

Bases have a lot less range than before. When I announced this back in February, some people assumed we were reducing the base weapon range cap from 10k down to 3k. This is not correct. Instead, we’ve compressed the range stat spread on base weapons, reduced the magnitude of the Range augmod on base augmenters, removed the range bonus from Station Mastery, and reduced the strength of the Volatile Projectile Overcharger. Putting everything together, your pulse gun bases will probably hit between 1,500 and 3,000 range, while some specialized long-range magcannon bases can probably reach around 6,000 range. As with the removal of base healing, we make this change with the idea that you no longer need 10,000-range bases to keep your galaxy safe from players since ownership will do that job for you. And yes, this change impacts termite defense too. So let’s talk about termites.

Termites are being made to spawn a lot more frequently and pose a bigger threat than before. Also, it’s no longer possible to enable a protected galaxy state and thereby keep the termites out. Coupling this with the removal of base healing and the reduction in practical base weapon range, how exactly are you expected to keep your bases safe from termites? Here are some key points to know:

  • In our testing, three tech 20 non-Station-Mastery bases were narrowly defeated by the strongest possible swarm of termites. We used competitive setups for the bases but I’m sure our expert community theorycrafters can do better than we did.

  • In lowish danger factors, the termites have their damage reduced by half. With resources being more equitably distributed across danger factor (more on this below), this is a pretty valuable consideration.

  • One new termite infestation spawns every hour, meaning that the average galaxy can expect to experience around six infestations over the course of four months. Some will get unlucky, though!

  • Termite nests mature over a period of 24 hours and can be destroyed by handful of properly equipped bases (and maybe also by a player squad).

termitesgiftrimed

Figure 5: A maximum-strength wave of Termites assaults three tech 20 Adamantium industry bases.

One thing I’m confident about is that it will no longer be safe to use low tech industry bases on outlying planets and moons. Even if chaperoned by a “fully operational” Station Mastery base, low tech bases will probably die before the termites get cleaned up. This means that to fully exploit the resources of a galaxy, you will most likely need to use more industry base slots than you’re used to. Here is what we’re doing to make that more palatable. Just as powerful, high tech extractors make high tech bases viable for extracting tier-0 commodities, we’re introducing new content that will make high tech bases advantageous in other aspects of industry as well:

  1. Every tier 1-3 commodity extractor is getting a new higher-tech upgraded version that grants a substantial extraction power boost. The tech and power of each new version depends on the tier of the commodity. Tier-1 commodities get a tech 9 extractor with 50% more power; for tier 2 it’s a tech 12 extractor with 100% more power; and for tier 3 it’s a tech 16 extractor with 150% more power. You can pick up the new extractors in exchange for a regular one plus some credits.

  2. Higher-tech Colonial Administrator bases can now grant extra benefits to suitability in the following way. We are introducing new base-specific items that increase suitability and max suitability when equipped, as long as the base owner has the Colonial Administrator skill. For example, a tech 20 Colonial Administrator base can build and equip an item that grants +10% suitability and raises the maximum suitability of the colony to 140%. Be warned: the first iteration of this new item type will decay upon universe reset! If it’s well received, we may release reusable alternatives down the road.

These buffs to industry bases certainly improve the value proposition of using higher tech bases (possibly with augmenters) for your outlying industry. We want you to experiment and decide for yourself how to build optimally in the new system. One thing to remember: it is fully possible that some planets are just not worth industrializing. For example, a low-gravity planet with no moons that orbits 15,000 away from your main operations would be difficult to defend due to the lack of base slots. Depending on its industrial value, you will have to decide whether it’s worth spending the resources to exploit that planet and keep your operations safe. This is intentional design. We want the game to pose complex problems and we don’t want the designers to solve them all in advance.

Another point about base combat: base weapons have been made a lot more interesting. Beams have been redesigned for medium-damage AoE with the same range stat spread as pulse guns. Magcannons keep their long range profile but have received a variety of impactful  on-hit effects. I’m really looking forward to seeing what cool new strategies emerge from the greatly increased base weapon diversity.

Lastly, we’re making some changes to the “IC” base content that’s currently obtained through Industrial Commodities.

  1. During the 2-week temporary universe, “IC” base kits and augmenters will be available for purchase at the cost of 1 credit. Remember that these items will decay at the end of the temporary universe.

  2. After the temporary universe, “IC” base kits will no longer be obtainable, while “IC” base augmenters will have a new cost and acquisition method: the Z-tier versions will be available for direct purchase in exchange for 4 theme-and-tech appropriate augmenters and a credit cost comparable to the price of a normal Z base augmenter. Be mindful that these augmenters will still decay on reset for the time being.

  3. “IC” base gear (e.g. Annihilator Shield Z) will continue to exist but with an added “can’t-jump” tag to prevent players from moving it between galaxies. The associated research projects will also have to be conducted anew in every galaxy where “IC” base gear is desired.
  4. “IC” permanent drones will continue to exist in their current form.

Resource and Territory Abundance

In February, I explained the basics of mid-universe galaxy reveals. To recap:

  1. Every 9 days and 17 hours, a fresh batch of galaxies will appear in Wild Space, connected in some way to the existing map.

  2. These galaxies will have higher average resource abundance to make up for lost time.

  3. Since ownership is a time- and resource-intensive process, it no longer requires a connection to your team’s HQ. Anyone with spare base slots will be able to compete for the newly revealed galaxies no matter where they appear on the map.

Revealmapfinal

Figure 6: Time lapse of galaxy reveals.

For convenience, Jeff has coded it so that whenever a new galaxy appears, it automatically appears on the map for anyone who’s online at the time.

I also want to tell you about some changes we’ve made to the code that distributes resources across the universe. In the current system, we have a drastic resource imbalance between the lowest and highest danger factors. I’ve worked closely with our code dev Bobbo to design a completely new process for distributing resources. The new process uses principles from probability to apply various distribution rules, ensuring that the correct amount of each resource is apportioned and that the resource value of galaxies in the highest danger factor should only be 2-3x that of galaxies in the lowest danger factor. There is still a fair bit of variance in the process, but the upshot is that it won’t feel as bad if you get stuck with suboptimal territory for a universe. Keep in mind that termites in the lower danger factors have their damage reduced by half, meaning that you might be able to find some real sweet spots to maximize your income per defense budget.

Capital Ship Shield and Energy Bank Adjustments

Upcoming Changes to Capital Ship Shield and Energy bank bonuses

Shield and energy bank augmod bonuses on some Capital Ships are being significantly reduced. Here is a sampling of commonly used Capital Ships so you can see the effect this will have on you.

Capital Ship Shield and Energy Bank Adjustments – April 2, 2022

Note: the % difference may be different depending on the amount of shield or energy bank augmods you have from augmenters and Items. The values in the table assume no augmod bonuses.

Due to the significant nature of the changes, we will be giving augmenter resets to every Capital Ship significantly affected by the changes. In order to receive your augmenter reset, all you have to do is open the ship while docked and use the /FreeAugReset command in the chat.

The Changes Explained

One of the main ways we give “flavor” to a ship is to assign some modest negative stats that are then counterbalanced with extra bonuses in other areas. The Kalthi Wrathful Warrior is an example of this.

If I assign a tradeoff of -20% capacity for +50% energy bank to a Light Fighter, Heavy Fighter, and Support Freighter then these ships will end up with -20% capacity, 50% energy bank.

However, if I assign that same trade off to a Capital Ship then the Capital Ship would receive -20% capacity and +200% energy bank.

Note: This also affects the Thrust augmod bonuses on a few Industrial Freighters, since they were given scaling thrust based on their tech level. 

This was not what we had in mind when coming up with the tradeoff, and these tradeoffs can stack in ways that quickly become distorting.

This all happened because of a single Excel formula that has a * instead of a +. Capital Ships that had more bank than others will still have more bank, but it won’t be as drastic. For example, instead of the Vaziayu having 2.1x more Shield augmods than the UrQa’qa Qu’ishi Qa it will have 1.26x more.

While this resulted in very “flavorful” capital ships, the magnification of the stat spread is so high compared to other ships that it makes it very hard for us to balance around. We made this change because the native bank bonuses on Capital Ships were synergizing with the bonuses from the tradeoff which led to extreme stat spreads that were further compounded by gear, skill, and consumable choices.

Timing and Next Steps

We have been discussing the best way of handling this interaction for a very long time (more than a year) before deciding to pull the trigger. We’ve wanted to address this from the moment we realized what was going on, but it didn’t seem appropriate to make changes to them due to a variety of dependencies (For example, Fighters were a significant consumer of energy for both Players and Bots). We wanted to wait until some of those dependencies were addressed before making these changes, and since we’ve already taken significant steps towards addressing them in the previous patch we are taking the opportunity to get this fixed.

Some players will choose to stick with a bank setup on the ships that have a larger shield or energy bank bonus than others. Other players may choose to move to a more regenerative based setup. We are open to both setups, and are not doing this to drive players away from bank setups. We want them to be appropriate based on the content you’re doing, with clear upsides and downsides.

Dev Diary – Merchant Navy

Merchant Navy Seal Commander's new texture.

Welcome to another Star Sonata Dev Diary!

Today we’re going to talk about the Merchant Navy! Most players are going to associate this group to either the Merchant Navy Contriver or Merchant Navy Seal Commander. We hope to expand this association to be a presence within Terran space and a notable player contact for various missions and storylines.

Strontium

The Merchant Navy, the future administrators of Strontium-90, pay most of their bills by hunting pirates and defending trade routes in the Terran heart worlds. Visually identified by their Paxian-like but not quite boomerang ships, the Merchant Navy maintains peace while Earthforce itself deals with more universal threats. This means that the Merchant Navy will take over from Earthforce as the primary player contact for missions in the lower levels while Earthforce interactions pick up later in progression. Orca and Porpoise will now be retextured to be Merchant Navy variants and will visually move away from the Paxian look but we will keep original look as a free skin for those that prefer that style.

Orca's New Texture Outside of Strontium-90, this will be slow transition as we move through the early game and readjust our protagonist allies in various missions, zones and content. Earthforce will still have player interactions but Merchant Navy will provide another key mission vendor.

Dev Diary – Base Logs and Market Check

Welcome to another Star Sonata Dev Diary!

Today we’re going to talk about an upcoming backend expansion, Base Logs and Market Check! One of the most sought after and longest asked for things in the history of Star Sonata!

Base Logs

Currently on the live server, base logs are divided into 4 categories that store 15 logs each – Trade, Construction, Management, and Important (trades over 100 million credits). None of which saves when the server crashes or is restarted currently. Most important gets washed away by docking, bot purchases or various odd-ball tasks.

Baselogs

We’ve taken that and expanded it to 9 categories and 15 logs per category. Some categories retain memory while the server is up but on restart or crash are not retained due to being lower priority.

List of Items that display and save with server crash/restart:

Trade: Buying and Selling under 100 million credits.

Important Trades: Trades greater than 100 million credit but lower than 10 billion credits.

Very Important Trades: Trades greater than 10 billion credits.

Management: Equip/Unequip, Use Item, Toss Item, Set Trade Bay

Ledger: Construction Started/Finished, Transfer Item, Install Blueprint, Cancel Construction, Add/Remove Credits.

Status: Set Name, Changed Rank Access, Set Team, Transfer Base, Hostile Takeover, Abandoned.

List of items that are retained in memory but don’t save:

Construction Misc: Pausing/Resuming/Setting Description.

Bots: Docking and Buying/Selling of Bots.

Docking: Docking by players.

While not a radical departure from the current state and the interface remains the same – we hope to add additional features that are able to build off this first iteration to help players better manage their shops, production hubs and have greater insight into past events.

Market Check

Next up is the market check search, which can now perform “fuzzy” searches. When an exact match can’t be found the client will present a selection dialog with a list of up to 50 similarly spelt items, ordered by how similar they are to the search term. The algorithm is fairly simple, looking at the number of matching words and letters.

mc Matra

We also optimized the interface to ignore capitalization as some items (Artifact) were picky about exact matches in the past. These changes should help players spend less time focusing on exact spelling.

mc Uka

Dev Diary: Upcoming Fighter and Deathblossom Adjustments (UPDATED)

Hello Sonatians! There have been whispers amongst the player base that Fighters and Deathblossoms would see some sort of adjustment sooner or later. I am here to confirm that we are definitely making some targeted changes to both of them, and we plan to patch them in soon. We’re doing this because, in our conversations with you during the Healing Revamp, we committed to taking decisive action to fix pain points and problems sooner rather than later. We’ve also found that the way that Fighters and the Deathblossom works causes the game to become almost unplayable in crowded situations.

With that being said, let’s dive into some of the problems we’re going to address.

Note: Things may be subject to change before release.

Problems

Deathblossom

GunnerDeathBlossoming

When enough SOBs (Space Objects) are present on the field, the user’s game experience deteriorates rapidly. Not only do excessive SOBs cause significant graphical lag, they also lead to severe network latency between players and the server. The more Deathblossoms looking for targets to fire at, the bigger the lag and latency for all players involved.

We decided to target two separate things in order to fix this problem:

  • Bots firing Deathblossoms.
    • Bots will no longer use a Deathblossom.
  • Deathblossoms firing at fighters.
    • Deathblossoms will no longer fire at fighters.

When a Deathblossom is fired, it creates lots of space objects that need to be tracked. When those projectiles fly towards fighters, and the fighters evade them, those projectiles still exist and will keep trying to track towards the fighters. This causes a significant amount of latency and graphical lag.

Also, when a critical mass of fighters are on the battlefield it becomes almost impossible to actually use a Deathblossom or splash weapons to kill them fast enough due to the cap on the number of targets splash is allowed to hit (20 at present).

This creates a weird situation where Deathblossoms almost completely counter fighters, until you bring enough fighters to a battlefield and suddenly the Deathblossom is nearly useless against them. UPDATE: Several players pointed out that splash, on live, does not have a limit. This limit was considered in the past, but was not implemented in favor of another change. Unfortunately, I had bad information. However, this does not change the point of the project.

We’ve decided to remove this from the equation. These changes will result in Fighters being much more durable against players and AI that use Deathblossoms. They will also result in Gunner bots doing less total damage than they used to. We’re aware that this will result in lower damage output from high-end bots, but we believe that Gunner is overtuned in DPS in the first place. Any niche situations where the drop in Gunner bot DPS unreasonably affects squad play will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Fighters

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When enough fighters are present on the field, the user’s game experience deteriorates rapidly. There are too many objects with their own particle effects from weapons and engines in play, and when a critical mass of fighters are on the battlefield it becomes almost impossible to actually figure out which ones you should prioritize shooting down. This means that area-of-effect weaponry are the best way to deal with them, but even this is unreliable because of Evasion and the random nature of target selection.

However, the biggest reason to adjust fighters is the sheer number of fighters players have fielded at once. The presence of this many fighters in play at once creates an enormous amount of client and network lag, and has made it clear that Star Sonata is not able to handle massive swarms of player assets. All of these factors combine to create a situation that warrants a change to fighters.

We decided to target a few things in order to address these issues:

  • All fighters will require 1 slot to launch.
  • Bots will be disallowed from launching fighters.
  • Fighter bays will have a maximum of 2 slots (+2 on Fleet Commanders).
    • The total damage that Fighters do is increased to compensate for the reduction in the total number of fighters launched.
    • Fighter shield bank will be increased, and they’ll be made a little bit bigger visually.
    • Stat bonuses on Capital class Fighter Bays are doubled.
  • Evasion will be removed from fighters.
    • Fighters will have a 90% chance of avoiding non-targeted damage. This includes area-of-effect, splash, non-targeted collisions, and so on.
  • Fighters with aura generators will no longer have them, and fighters that take very high amounts of energy for extra damage will no longer do so.
    • Death of First Born, Jovian, and Panther Kitten fighters are examples of fighters that have been changed.
  • Radiation Expert will no longer apply to Fighters.
    • Flight Controller will give 20% damage per level to Fighters (from 15%, on live).
    • Advanced Flight Controller will give Fighters +15% Damage.
  • Pulse Guns on fighters now act like Magcannons, and do not inherit the velocity of the fighter.

The most controversial change is the removal of fighters from combat bots. It’s important that we do this because Bots represent an automatic way of engaging targets, and they can be used to immediately launch dozens or even hundreds of fighters in seconds. As long as Bots are allowed to launch fighters, we will continue to see players trying to figure out how to reach critical mass with regards to the number of fighters on the field at once.

To address this, we are going to make fighters more powerful on the main ship.

In addition, there have been long standing requests from the players themselves for changes to be made to fighters.

  • Players have routinely asked for fighters with projectiles to be changed so that they continue to fire at targets when in range, so we’re doing that.
  • Players have also asked for AoE and Collision code mitigation, and although we’re not giving them resistances or immunity to it they will be highly resilient against it.
    • They also will no longer be targeted by Deathblossoms!
  • Players have also asked for fighters other than Radiation to be useful, and we’ve done this as well by removing the Radiation Expert Bonus from fighters but buffing all fighters Damage values through Flight Controller and Advanced Flight Controller.
    • This will result in a reduction to Radiation damage bonuses on Fighters, but an increase to non Radiation damage bonuses.
    • UPDATE 2: We have also changed Radiation Expert so that Radiation Damage is increased by 15% per level, while Damage is is increased by 25% per level. (NOTE: This means Radiation weapons will have ~154% bonus damage.) This will allow Fleet Commanders to consider a wider array of damage types when outfitting their combat bots.
  • Players have also routinely asked for something to be done about holiday fighters, specifically Death of First Borns, being powerful and impactful relative to other fighters. By normalizing them, we’re making them no longer feel mandatory.

“What does this mean for me?”

Summary

  • Fighters will no longer be launched from bots, at all.
  • Fighters launched from your main ship will be stronger and tougher to kill, won’t be shot at by Deathblossoms, they will no longer have Evasion when targeted but will evade the vast majority of non-targeted damage.
  • Higher tech fighters will be visually bigger.
  • Fighters with projectiles will shoot them more consistently.
  • There will be much fewer fighters launched at once.
  • Gunner bots will no longer use Deathblossoms.
  • Gunners will not quickly kill groups of fighters.
  • The DPS you do with fighters should be equivalent to what you are able to do on live. This will be higher in some cases, and lower in other cases.
    • If you are a low level player just starting out as an FC and only have a few fighters, you will probably do more damage.
    • If you are a mid level player who has a bunch of bots that launch fighters only, you will probably do less damage.
    • If you are a high level player who has good fighters on yourself and your bots, you will probably do more damage.
    • If you are an end game player with powerful bots, and powerful fighters, you will do more damage in most situations.
      • The one area you will certainly be less powerful is with Radiation fighters.
  • UPDATE 2: Radiation Expert now grants 15% Radiation Damage per level, while Damage is increased by 25% per level.

UPDATE: To further clarify, if a player used Death of First Born, Cerberus, or any fighter that used a very large amount of energy to do more damage (High Energy), your personally launched fighters under this change will not do the same amount of damage as your bots and your own fighters combined. This is because High Energy fighters do not exist in the new system, and the damage bonus they received for using large amounts of energy will not be carried over.

While we are doing our best to vet this project from many angles and solicit feedback from the players, it’s always possible that we may overlook something important. If this happens, we will quickly move to address the issue.

What do the items look like now?

Will you be adding more fighters?

Yes, we will be adding more fighters in future updates. We have about ~40 fighters that have been created and will eventually be added to the game.

Can I test these changes to see how they affect me?

These changes are now available on Test.

(You can select “Test Server” from the drop down menu within your client’s login screen.)

~

All of these changes should be coming in with an upcoming patch, keep your eyes peeled!

Astro-Grinch is at it again!

xmas3
Christmas is here and Astro-Santa is out to deliver presents to all the good peasants and workers in the universe again! However, Earthforce and the other Terran factions report that Astro-Grinch has been sighted roaming Perilous Space again! Many speculate he is looking to stop Astro-Santa from delivering his presents!

Lyceum Scientists report that the wormhole to Lapland will stabilize in Sol on December 10th, 2021 for the beginning of the Christmas event! The event will continue until January 3rd, 2022.
For the duration of the universe, Lapland will remain in Sol for any turn-in’s you may have forgotten to do.