Jeff

Jeff has been working on fighters and the new Augmenter Tweak adjustments.

Pixel

Has added the existing skins to the Hybridized Scutelogica Paxian ship and added a new Wraithful Egg skin to the Kalthi Warrior branch of ships, this skin was created by Curse!

He has also been fiddling with explosion effects! Here’s one of many examples that what could be possible in the near future:

Hober

Hober has been talking about trying to get a recruitment type system thats for squads instead. For example when a player wants to find a squad that needs a Monkey class they can look in a list that would accept them into their squad. We felt this was a great idea but will have to be set aside currently as the push for prioritised things are much more needed.

He has also been balancing the fighters a lot lately and is slowly chugging through them, expect some nice improvements to most fighters!

Here’s some new content Hober has been working on (subject to changes):

DarkSteel

Still hard at work balancing content for the latest Prawn changes and some adjustments to XYZ base gear requiring the new Industrial Commodity system.

MicroCapacitor

Went through most of the base gear and reduced the size of base gear and base augmenters!

Jey

Through the past 2 weeks been debugging the client to look for the client crash / memory leak that some players are experiencing. Jey thinks he’s narrowed it down to a certain section in the client but will still take a bit of time before this memory leak is fixed.

New Developer!

We have a new developer join the ranks! Not much can be said currently as this individual/machine is still fresh from the recruitment line. More information about this next weekly blog.

Enkelin

Headed the first weekly content meeting. These meetings will be held once a week and serve to make sure that all new content is being officially brought to the attention of the team and analyzed for balance issues. This should help improve the game’s quality assurance workflow.

Pixel

Pixel added some new unique ship graphics for the Corrupted Cyborg faction found in Kalthi Depths! This includes two new corrupted capital ships, as well as a corrupted support freighter. These ships will not be player obtainable, if you would like more info on them check them out on our official Discord server!

To go alongside this, Pixel’s also created 3 player-obtainable ships! The Rosbulk and Roscap are additions to the well known Roswell family of ships, as well as the Golden Man ship being a tech 19 addition to the Goldenboy ship family. Please keep in mind, all stats shown here are subject to change at any time before release!

Ryan

Ryan’s fixed the random prices on ruins, all should have their normal amounts now and will not change after the server goes down. He’s also fixed drones being affected by the 0.5s fire rate cap, fixed bosses not resetting due to destroyed drones being present, and fixed the abandon button in the possessions menu for drones, meaning you will no longer have to be in the same galaxy to abandon a drone.

Pixel

Pixel’s added a set of micro-sized support focus ship dampeners, half as effective but only 80 size compared to regular dampener’s 250 size.

Jey

As players have noticed, although Jey reported that he had fixed the hate rollover issue, it still occurred constantly. Jey looked further into the issue and found that AI needed the same fix for their target prioritization, which will mean that the hate rollover fix only needs a patch now and will be properly fixed.

Jey’s also worked on fixing server stability problems, mainly the recent 500ms+ frames issue.

DarkSteel

Changed the Basegear Y and Z upgrades, galaxy bound drones and base thruster blueprints from raw materials to Industrial Commodities.

Hober Mallow

Lyceum Combined Augmenters now require Infinite Knowledge, have increased credit costs on the blueprints, and do not require credits to acquire the blueprints from the missions. We’ve got a change coming in soon to Augmenters and various Tweaking skills, look out for a blog post explaining these changes in the coming days. I’m still working on Fighters, gathering data and figuring out scaling.

Halloween Event

I hope everyone had a great Halloween! If you’re still looking for more Halloween goodies, the Halloween event has not yet ended! Until the 5th of November you can still find time-exclusive Halloween items and special missions in Graveyard, as well as encounter the Undead Narwhal in Perilous Space!

Jey

Jey wasn’t able to make it to the meeting, though he did give us a quick report on his work! He was able to track down and fix a slowdown issue some players have had with particles, though is still attempting to find a memory leak issue and the engine graphic displacement bug. On the server side of things, he’s preparing some changes to reduce server lag in the future.

MicroCapacitor

Nerfing Amplified Field Amplification Device. At the moment with both Bravado and Enlightenment amped, it gives ~13x dps modifier. Changing the Field Amplification Device to be 100% and the Amplified Field Amplification Device to be 300%. This would make with both Bravado and Enlight. amped you’d get ~5x dps modifier. Worry not! Hober and I will be changing fighters to help with the lack of FC dps!

DarkSteel

DarkSteel’s been fine tuning the Twisted Zone content with Pixel recently.

Pixel

Pixel’s been tinkering with the sensor factories and could possibly make the system much more easier but keep the existing system intact to provide optionality.

Halloween Event

The Halloween event has already begun! Be aware, it will end on the 5th of November! Be sure to head out and hunt some space trolls and vampyres for sweet Halloween loot before the event is over! Graveyard has a collection of special Halloween missions available for you to check out and complete for rewards available only around this time of the year.

Official Discord Server

In light of recent events, we’ve launched an official Discord server for people to join. You can access it through either your browser, or by downloading the Discord application. Here’s a link you can use to access it: https://discord.gg/bKtX3CK

For those of you unaware, the previous Discord server in use was shutdown by the player who owned it, this new one is run by the admins and developers and will not be shut down in a similar fashion as the last one.

Pixel

The Slumberchrome, Basil and Rosemary ships have been given some new graphics for their multifiring counterparts to better differentiate them. Their weapon colors have also been modified to match their colors shown in the image below, as seen with the Rosemary ships.

The ships found in that image are, in counter-clockwise starting with the leftmost Slumberchrome:

• Awakened (Triple MF Slumberchrome)
• Roused (Quad MF Slumberchrome)
• Basilus (MF Basil)
• Rosemaries (MF Rosemary)
• Prog Rosemary (Quad MF Rosemary)

JeffL

Jeff’s working on finishing up the new class skill system, some issues were found during testing and are being remedied.

Jey

The micropatch scheduled for yesterday had to be delayed due to an issue, and has been rescheduled to arrive tomorrow. Besides this, Jey has also found and fixed several more crash issues using dmps players have sent him.

Halloween Event

The Halloween event has already begun! Be aware, it will end on the 5th of November! Be sure to head out and hunt some space trolls and vampyres for sweet Halloween loot before the event is over! Graveyard has a collection of special Halloween missions available for you to check out and complete for rewards available only around this time of the year.

Pixel

Pixel has added 11 more Strontium missions with the help of Daedalus and SunDog60!

He has also improved the Ares Sapper built versions: Bloodstained from 1s to 0.9s recoil, Heavy from 1k to 1.1k range and finally the Heavy Bloodstained (combined) with 0.9s recoil and 1.1k range.

Hober Mallow

Please keep in mind, all ships and items shown here are a work in progress and are subject to change before release!

I’ve still been working on Tech 20 and below ships and I’ve also worked on a slew of Jackhammer like weapons. The latest ship I’ve worked on is the Mastadon, a tech 20 Zaphragi capital ship that will be available as a blueprint drop from Emperor Shaddam Kilrathi IV.

If Zaphragi ship design is not what interests you, there is also the tech 16 Lyceum Exploration Cruiser.

Additionally, four old ships have been given some attention and have been updated with additional ancient tech. They are the Bule Abadi Spectre, the Unt Faranji Wingship, the Golagoay Vazaha Archetype and the Kikale Mzungu Frigate.

These X ships will take the place of the old ship ruins, but old ships will be left as they are to be relics of ancient times long forgotten.

I’ve also continued my work on the jackhammer-like series of weapons, adding in two additional tiers of them. In order of tech level, they are: Shiv, Tusks, Cestus, Talon.

Jey

New beta client out (see: http://www.starsonata.com/client_news_beta/beta-client-298-513/). Still preparing full patch, currently planned for next week but its not final yet. I also added some new improvements to our server profiler (its code that let me track down lag sources) so that once its patched live ill be able to find the sources of the lags live has been experiencing lately and hopefully fix them.

Ryan

Finally got a test server running with the new class skill system, once we get a few final issues ironed out we’ll be giving everyone instructions on how to access it to test for yourselves. Its shaping up nicely, and I’m excited to share it with everyone soon.

DarkSteel

I finished the reworks to the (Ultimate) Art augmenters. The new stats can be viewed here: http://forum.starsonata.com/viewtopic.php?p=761158#p761158

Halloween Event

Starting on the 15th of October and ending on the 5th of November, the Halloween event will begin! Plaguespace rifts will open around the universe, spawning an endless stream of undead space rats, special missions will appear in Graveyard and special ubers like the Undead Narwhal will appear in Perilous Space! You’ll be able to find special Halloween loot on just about any AI, including DG AI!

Pixel

Pixel been working on Twisted zone some more and has removed all neuro-keys from the dungeons and instead just need to kill the boss(s) to unlock the wormhole. The back tracking from the main boss zone is still an issue until Pixel can figure out how to make a dual lockout system work in the way players want.

To also mention Prejudice has been altered to make it more player friendly with more AI stations situated in the center with the middle holding the kill boss missions while the three outta stations contain exchange missions related to their dungeon branches.

While tinkering with making more AI be more better wild bots for Fleet Commanders the weapon color was changed from generic titan pulse+ color to yellow variant on the Unforgone.

Ryan

Ryan is working on getting the beta for the new class skill system live. He also got a fix in for high update super items on AI, so that they will function on bots or new bosses and we can design exciting new content.

MicroCapacitor

• Changed Kalthi Deployers to not bunch up in Kalthi Depths Dgs early on.
• Changed Tin and Copper’s price to 750k since Bronze is 2 million.
• Changed the Hesediel’s Augmenter Blueprint from tech:5 size:11 | to tech:11 size:5.
• Change the ai in the crucible to not be able to warp to different galaxies so they don’t leave while you fight them.
• Changed the nerf capacitors to be t0. This was preventing people from capture ai.
• Going to change the seer virus weapons to superitems and make the parasites last 1 minute so players using the seer class can buff an ally while still being able to fight.

DarkSteel

Fine tuning the final values on the Art and Ultimate Art augmenters. Should be ready for next patch and I’ll make sure the post the values somewhere before the patch happens.

Bobbo

I’ve added tracking and speed stats to weapon descriptions, lasers have simply a tracking value, which is how much they can rotate (180 is therefore full tracking). Projectiles will give their turning and maximum speed, and torpedoes (including thoraxes) give their delay, burn and flight times.

Hober Mallow

I’m working on Jackhammer type weapons to add, a whole line of them by the way. They’ll be pretty rare and expensive to acquire, you won’t acquire these through Daily Missions. I’m going to go over the other lower tech Jackhammer weapons to make sure they’re all relatively useful.

My work on the Tech 20 ships is coming to fruition, I plan on adjusting the Tech 19 Ruin ships to Tech 20 so that they are interesting and viable options for both players and their Combat Bots. I also have some ideas for further Tech 20 and below ships: a Lyceum Capital Ship, a Serengeti Capital Ship, a Paxian Heavy Fighter, an Earthforce Freighter and a Blue Photon Light Fighter. I may add more Support Freighters between techs 5 and 10 and a few more Capital Ships between Techs 5 and 20.

It was brought to my attention that there are several low level areas in the game (Blue Outpost for example) that doesn’t give players full experience. I will be fixing these areas. I will also be going over the requirements for special gear (Like the Enforcer’s Stamina or the Sgt. Enforcer’s Stamina) to make sure that they follow a pattern tech and power wise, as well as requiring more reasonable amounts of faction specific currency.

I do not have anything to share in regards to the Gunner Analyzer yet, we’re still in the process of getting everything just right so that it functions the way we want it to. I will keep you posted.

Last but not least, I will be addressing the issue with Honorary Mentions. There are currently very few sources of Honorary Mentions for players who cannot kill Zebra’s in The Serengeti. I will probably add missions involving research for Lyceum in exchange for Honorary Mentions, expect to see more from me on that in the future.

 MicroCapacitor

• Changing Ruin Base gear to be the same as X gear, except let them have the small buffs so they are an alternate for endgamers.
• If the players are ok with it, +1 to all the ruin base gear tech/kits so they are not messing with slots/stats.
• Creating new base augmenters, which would be combined avesaka augs (Not the base ones but the normal augs that are used to make the base ones) Mainly to have an alternate to the SoL resist stat and give other augs like Burst hps aug, and a hps aug that gives -weight to help move the base around.
• Going to look through many ruin base weapons/built weapons and make many of the weapons towards Anti-Player (besides the mzungu since they are mining).

Hober Mallow

After reviewing the Pax Stratos with DarkSteel, we’ve decided to nerf the ship slightly as well as the transference resistance on the Red Photon Warship (-25% to -10%). Additionally, I’m going to be adding more Tech 20 ships that are worth using, will take some time though.

Pixel

Pixel’s added some sunglasses for the next universe and he’s also been working on some new shiny drones, prawn related.

DarkSteel

I’ve been busy reworking the Art of ___ and Ultimate Art of ___ augmenters: http://forum.starsonata.com/viewtopic.php?p=760730#p760730 . These augs represent the core stats of the class and in many cases, the stats are already received by the player from their class skills. In addition to being locked by class they will now also be locked by hull type. For instance, an Art of Destruction can’t be used on a Light Fighter, only on a Heavy Fighter. This change was made to allow this particular series of augs some extra power (don’t worry, we won’t be doing this anywhere else). I’ve also reworked the Nightfury’s Patience to be a much more desirable aug since it was very underutilized.

Oh, and I’ve also nerfed some of Hober’s augs (he wasn’t pleased), which was fun.

These changes should be in the upcoming patch.

Ryan

Ryan fixed a few exploits that came up over the last few days, including an item dupe bug and a case of extractors going haywire (extracting T2 commods at the speed of metals). Luckily, the items weren’t spread around and were easily cleaned up without any damage to the economy. Unfortunately, this slowed work on the new class acquisition system but it is nearing the final stages.

Bobbo

I’ve fixed some droprate issues on Ancalagon the Black and the Bana King. The Bana King was locked for a day or two but he’s available again now. Both of them have a 33% chance to drop a piece of loot from their roaming counterpart. Happy hunting!

Max_Whynd

Max_Whynd worked with DarkSteel to re-work Capital Light of Peace to better reflect the cost of creating the weapon. (Mini, lower-tech Ball-Lightning comes to mind.) Added tech 6 Capital-ship only splashing energy weapon which will drop from a boss in Arctia, tech 10 splashing capital-ship only weapon which will drop from random DG bosses, tech 14 multi-chaining mining weapon built from a new boss-drop bp in The Jungle.

Hober Mallow

I’ll be working on Anatolia with Auxilium and yclepticon to try to get it ready for testing and fine tuning. I’ve also asked one of our programmers to prototype a “Gunner Analyzer”, the purpose of which is to give Gunner’s resistances for shooting lots of targets. If things work out as planned, and I don’t see why they wouldn’t, Gunner’s would be a viable way to hold the attention of AI while simultaneously becoming tanky enough to survive the onslaught. I should have more information for you all in the upcoming week or so.

JeffL

Jeff’s been finishing up some details about the new class system.

SunDog60

I’ve added Star Sonata 2 to Twitch, if you plan on streaming the game it will finally be available.

DarkSteel

I’ve been busy making a list of content that’s eligible for rebalancing due to the Prawn change and the removal of MF2 (it’s a pretty long list) that is planned for next universe. I’ve also made an estimate of how much the content in question should be nerfed. From my testing we’re looking at values varying from 20% to 40% depending on the current difficulty of the content.

I’ve also increased the times you can use the blueprints for Kalthi Depths commods such as Admixium and Perilium to 5 up from 3.

Bobbo

A couple of weeks ago we discussed changing how bot slots work, and these changes have now been done!
From next patch, bots will take their tech in slots and the skills will give double what they did before. Players with Wild Man will get twice the number of wild bot slots instead of their slot cost being halved. Also the quantity of bots you could have is changes, slightly.

• Slots:
  • Trade slots: (Remote Control + Bot Research) * 2
  • Combat slots: Trade + 8 (if you have Bot Ph.D.)
  • Wild slots: Trade * 2 (if you have Wild Man)
• Reworked (slightly) the maximum number of bots you can have.
  • Trade bots: Remote Control + Bot Research – Minimum of two.
  • Combat bots: Half trade (rounded up) + 2 (if you have Bot Ph.D.)
  • Wild bots will name be named “WB” instead of “CB”

Pixel

Mainly been tweaking Twisted content, ensuring everything is working and fixing any related problems players give Pixel feedback on.

Ryan

Working to get the new class stuff ready for test server, it took a little longer than expected but should be available for testing very soon.

Jey

Trying to track the client freeze some players have reported and begun work on the next full patch.

Max_Whynd

Max has recorded a completely new tutorial bot, which will be added soon. He has also been working with other devs on improving wild bot choices within the game, and some balance changes are coming to newly-available wild bots. Two more previously non-capturable AI ships will be available as wild bots after next patch.

Hober Mallow

I addressed some of the issues with the the Subspace Daily Missions, the ones that give you Allied Commendations which you can turn in for rewards and Tech 22 skills, but the missions are currently a little bit broken. All of the missions, except for one, should be working just fine now. I’m waiting for a micropatch from Jey in order to address the issue with their lockouts. If things turn out to work very well, I will look into making more repeatable Daily Content for rewards and things of that nature.

All of the Lyceum Combined Augmenters I added are now in game as well, you can find the Tech 1-17 augmenters turn in missions in Acropolis, the Tech 20 ones in Lyceum, and the Tech 22 ones in Lyceum Research Concourse. If you don’t see them, you need to be a higher level.

I’ve made a post in the Suggestions forum about some tentative changes to Class locked augmenters, check that post out and give me feedback on it so it won’t be a surprise: http://forum.starsonata.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=62336

I’ve got some more ideas I’m kicking around to address the disparity between new and old players, one of them being reworking Augmenter Tweaking. My current idea is to make augs twice as strong as they currently are, and change Augmenter Tweaking to work in a different way. What that is, I do not know. If you have any suggestions feel free to PM me on the Forums, Discord, or reply to the Development Blog thread.

DarkSteel

I’m going to start looking at what content should receive a nerf for the removal of MF2 and the rebalance to the Prawn that will go into effect next universe.

Bobbo

Fixing bugs and general post uni reset fixes.

JeffL

Class rescaling will hopefully be available for testing by next week, we’re still working on fixing bugs and making sure everything is working together nicely.