Update: The system has been patched onto live and applied to the current universe, resulting in the following amount of resources added to the buildable territories in the universe.
Wildspace
metal: 8850
oats: 2776
baob: 1154
nuke: 1795
silicon: 1951

earthforce:
metal: 1378
oats: 447
baob: 210
nuke: 260
silicon: 348

As we increased rather dramatically the number of planets in the universe by adding a minimum number of planets per galaxy, this resulted in a greatly thinned out resource spread. The resource distribution system attempted to keep a similar amount of resources available in the uni but this resulted in a lot of rounded down 0, all in all less lower tier commodities (metal, oat, nuke etc) all around.

To improve on the situation, all the while adding a bit of “style?” to the universe generation, we are adding a resource explosion pass to the universe generation (and will be also done on the currently running universe). This pass is designed to increase the number of valuable t0 planets all the while create a bit of separations in the resource distribution. The goal is for some resources to be more present in different regions of the universe without completely segregating the resources.

Each resources explosion come with method to control how likely/strongly and what type of planet they may impact. How quickly they degrade over distance and some other details. This way we can ensure no oat end up on a blistering and more oat can occur on high suitability planet for instance (since oat is a plant). This is used for all resources type with varied settings but is kept pretty lax on common stuff like metal and silicon

Each explosion are positioned randomly and if in the same pass, explosion must be at a minimum of 3 quarter the size away from other explosion. This ensure that no region end up with tons of explosions bringing more resources in a single point than intended.

Each resources added from an explosion are scaled by the df/200 (so df400 would get twice the gain compared to a df 0), pass in earthforce layer see the resource divided by 2 on top of it.

Currently there are four explosion passes applied on both earthforce and wildspace separatly (so total of 8 pass but 4 per layer)

1. A single very large spaceoat explosion covering the whole layer adding a very small amount of oat randomly, add between 2 and 1 oat to random planets in the layer, the closer to the center of the explosion, the more likely planet matching conditions get oats.
This is to compensate directly for the multiple galaxies with 0 oat even tho they have perfectly habitable planets and for all intent and purpose should have at least 1 oat.

2. 8 smaller explosion adding between 4 and 1 spaceoat to matching planets in its area. The amount scale down from 4 to 1 linearly according to the distance from the center of the explosion, each matching planet have an identical chance of being affected. This add a rather large number of “bit” and “little” amount of spaceoats in a variety of locations, helping colony and base network to develop in those area.

3. 4 large sized explosion adding between 12 and 1 metal to matching planets in its area. This also scale linearly. This should add a lot of metal to some random regions of space, without adding it all on a single planet/galaxy. Like everything else, rng is involved but this could mean regions of 3-4 galaxies seeing an increase in 180 metal resources in high df.

4. 10 small explosion of either silicon, metal, nuke, baobabs. Adding between 60 and 8 of said resources onto matching planets in the area. Also scaling linearly from the center of the explosion. This is where the actual “good t0″ galaxies get added. The area are small enough that only the galaxy on which the explosion happen will get a large amount of resources, the neighboring galaxies will also see an significant increase but not as much.

Those images are provided only as an example. The actual distribution is done randomly following the set of rules described in this post.

Universe Reset

Quick reminder to everyone, the universe will implode on the 17th of September, be sure to pack your userbases, temporary and permanent drones! Characters, skills and ships will all be transferred over. Industrial commodities and platform/defender drones will be deleted at the reset, remember to sell your industrial commodities before then!

Jeff

Jeff’s finished up his work on the new class skill system, converting all the old class skills to the new system.

Pixel

Pixel’s added in a new skin for the Argeiphontes Hermes(+) ship, the Hermes Black Racer skin.

Bobbo

Fixing lots of bugs! Error reporting on scooping has been changed to suppress error messages that are the same as the previous, squelching the issue where players wouldn’t be told why they couldn’t scoop stuff. The new Emperor notifications are live as some of you may have noticed last night when enkelin completed his coronation.

This weekend is supposed to be our next bonus weekend, however due to the uni reset I’ll postpone it a week.

DarkSteel

I’ve finished testing and refining the Tech 21 heavy fighters as well as the Resistance: https://postimg.org/image/3ypsxr033/

I’ve put the -20% Range that the Prawn was getting on the Prawn’s Claw. This was to avoid having to put -75% Range as a ship inbuilt stat to counteract the Sniper skills that grant range, because that would severely hurt any other class that’s trying to make use of the ship. The -Vulnerability on the Prawn’s Claw has been removed because it was basically a flat increase to effective shield bank with Transference damage.

The Prawn has also received a new inbuilt item called Boarding Hooks. This superitem is a stream of mags that, if they hit the target, pull the target towards the Prawn (like Kidd’s mags). It also recharges faster if you are taking damage.

The Red Pill for the Delquad has been reworked. It’s now a transformation that lasts 18 seconds and has a 2 minute cooldown. In testing, it was doing about 30% more DPS at the cost of Range, Resistances, Visibility and Tracking.

The three ships compare to each other as follows:

1. The Wattage is 20% more efficient vs the Delquad (50% more efficient vs the Prawn)

2. The Prawn does 20% more DPS vs Delquad & Wattage at the cost of 20% Range (vs the Wattage) and 20% efficiency (vs the Delquad)

3. The Delquad (Blue Pill)  has 20% more Range vs the Wattage (50% vs the Prawn)

Testing was done with a 2 Emp 1 CaL setup.

These changes will be applied the uni after next, together with the removal of MF2 and content rebalance.

Hober Mallow

I will be going over all of the Class locked augmenters (Tech 5, Tech 10, Tech 15, Tech 20, Art of Augmenters, etc) to make sure they all line up properly and make sense under the new class system. I had to fix an issue with lockouts as well (which resulted in most tech 20+ ubers being locked for a short amount of time after the patch, since then they have been fixed and unlocked – SunDog60).

Jey

Jey is preparing for our universe reset this Saturday. He’s also managed to track down and fix an old bug causing souls to duplicate occasionally. Players who were suffering from flashing lights will be happy to hear that Jey has managed to track down and fix the bug.

Universe Reset

Quick reminder to everyone, the universe will implode on the 17th of September, be sure to pack your userbases, temporary and permanent drones! Characters, skills and ships will all be transferred over. Industrial commodities and platform/defender drones will be deleted at the reset, remember to sell your industrial commodities before then!

Jey

Patch on monday, patchnotes alongside livetest update will be posted this week.

Bobbo

I’ve been prototyping an idea for a new layer shape for our universes which would generate clusters of galaxies with a few numbers of links between them.

The ‘webifying’ links between clusters (the extra links above the bare minimum needed to link all galaxies) isn’t quite right yet though. We won’t be seeing the new shape for the next universe, but the following universe should see the new shape. Aside from this, I’ve been on a few bug fixes and such.

Bobbo also added Harambe to the Jungle Monkey AI name list.

Pixel

Pixel’s added a new HQ superweapon, which multifires two Adamantiumized Superlasers alongside your regular weaponry.

He also added some exit wormholes in the boss instances of The Serengeti due to popular demand.

SunDog60

I’ll be adding an exit wormhole to Copper, Dark Diablo’s room in Infernal Darkness and hopefully Olympus to go with Pixel’s UZ exits.

DarkSteel

Still working on the Prawn / Wattage / Delquad reworks. Range and DPS are done, still got to get the DPE right and I’m going to have a look at the resistances on the various ships. When this is done I’ll move on to looking at Recon class strength increases to make up for the removal of MF2.

Universe Reset

Quick reminder to everyone, the universe will implode on the 17th of September, be sure to pack your userbases, temporary and permanent drones! Characters, skills and ships will all be transferred over. Industrial commodities and platform/defender drones will be deleted at the reset, remember to sell your industrial commodities before then!

Bobbo

Most of you are probably now aware we’ve decided to make some changes to how Wild Space is laid out. We’ve changed the shape to a circle, with the high danger factor galaxies in the middle. We’ve also dropped the galaxy count for Wild Space to 375 (from 600) and adjusted the quantity of AI stations appropriately. I’ve done some extra adjustments so that the minimum number of planets you get is proportional to the danger factor, maxing out at 6 planets.

Yclepticon

There will be a new station item available for construction, the base amplification device! It will cost around 20 billion credits and takes 7 days to activate once built. Once active it will give your team +5 BvB base slots to all connecting star systems.

Jeff

Jeff’s been working on finishing up the new class skills.

Ryan

Ryan’s working on the coding for the new class UI and has added the decay on reset tag, defenders, platforms and IC’s will now properly decay upon universe reset.

Pixel

Pixel’s added in a new Twisted player ship, the Twisted Vanguard. It is a stealth and range based heavy fighter for snipers. Stats are a work in progress and may be changed.

Jey

New patch is coming along nicely, current estimate is by the end of next week. Livetest notes will be available once they are complete.

On the beta client side, I am still trying to pinpoint the issue with the light flashing on low graphics.

Once that’s done, I have some major improvement ideas to rework the lagkiller since the current version is far from ideal. Thanks to the new c++ version, we get access to a more reliable and threadsafe high precision clock, on cpu where the precision is high enough, the lagkiller will allocate a % of frame to specific section and only reduce the parts actually causing lags instead of the current approach that lower everything until the fps is back up. Assuming it works as intended, it should mean that the lagkiller would be a lot less visible and react much faster than currently.

Hober Mallow

Reworked Class Super items! Their descriptions and names may not exactly say what they do, this is something that will come once everything has been nailed and set in stone. The Aveksaka dailies and weeklies should now work like the Olympus Dailies, and I added some cool new rewards that you’ll have to turn in Allied Commendations for. There are also monthly missions to do, so there should be plenty for players to explore. And, probably the biggest thing, is that the Tech 22 skills no longer require a boss kill in order for you to acquire the skill! Rejoice all those who have forgotten to pick the mission up before killing the boss, or those who were getting the skills via daily missions!

Universe Reset

Ahab has contacted us recently about the Space Rats he’s been observing. The AI attack patterns have spread to them! Before he could dispose of them, the rats have coordinated an assault on the fabric of space time itself! These tears in the fabric of space time have destabilized the universe, the universe will implode on 13:00 EDT (18:00 BST, 17:00 GMT), on the 17th of September. Fortunately in the rubble of the old universe, a new one will be created! All characters, their skills, ships and bots will be transferred over, but deployed drones and userbases will be lost, as well as anything on the userbases! You’ll have to re-explore the universe to map everything out once again.

Hober Mallow

I’ve gone through and redone all tech 20+ ubers to use the daily/weekly lockout timers similar to the current system used by The Serengeti. I’ve also gone through and improved some underused and underpowered class super items, and plan to do more for the rest of them. I’ve also adjusted the difficulty of the Daily missions in Olympus, they should all be of relatively similar difficulty now. Eventually the Subspace Daily missions will work similarly to the Olympus Dailies. There’s a lot of other little things I’ve changed, but they don’t need to be talked about in the blog. Look out for the post I made on the forums in regards to a Video Trailer Contest! Go here for the details!

SunDog60

I’ve been working some more on Iq’ Bana, connecting all the wormholes. Aside from that I’ve also finished up the new Completionist Missions, they will be available at Sai’s Retreat next universe and will require you to complete most mission chains in the game (such as the Paxian exploration chain and the 4 Subspace mission chains). As a reward you’ll be given the Completionist Holoprojector by Pixel himself!

Blue Dwarf

The Emperor notification changes are done and are coming next patch, I’ve picked up a little bit of exciting stuff for next universe and been working on the event system save with the database.

Pixel

Pixel’s added a new boss to the Twisted Zone, to a total of 3 minibosses and 3 bosses. The boss is a giant eyeball with multiple mini eyeball guards. The items it drops are radar and cloaking based, including misc. items such as lighthouses with special bonuses.

Jey

Jey’s been trying to track down an elusive bug on the beta client where the client would flash while on low graphics. This issue has been around for a while but only happens frequently with the new compiler, as well as other bugs and crashes allowing them to be reproduced and fixed.

Hello all, this is a quick note detailing the upcoming changes to industrial commodities (effective next universe reset).  I have gone through and reduced AI base inventory size and consumption of all tier 1-3 industrial commodities. The new consumption rates are 50/day for tier 1, 15/day for tier 2, and 5/day for tier 3.  Inventory sizes are seven times these figures, across the board.  These changes were made in order to align the consumption rates of these commodities more closely to the actual extraction rates of tier 1-3 commodities.

The basic value of Metals, Nuclear Waste, and Silicon has also been adjusted. Steel Girders now price Metals at 15 credits.  Nuclear Waste is now priced at 75 credits, and Silicon is at 25 credits.  These changes were made in order to bring the credit sourcing of the system down somewhat from this uni.

The value of Promethium and Enriched Nuclear Material has also been reduced via the pricing of Sub-Shield Buffers and Reactors.  Promethium is now worth 10,000 credits and E-Nukes are worth 2,500 credits, down from 30,000 and 20,000, respectively.  Also, AI base consumption rates for these commodities have been changed to 25,000/day for Buffers and 2,500/day for Reactors.  These changes were made in order to rein in the amount of income from these particular commodities.  Our data from the current universe has shown that people were making a lot more profit than we had wanted from the Sub-Shield line of industrial commodities, so this change should rectify that issue.

As always, the calibration of industrial commodities is subject to change, usually on a once-per-universe basis. We will continue monitoring the market and make revisions to the system as needed. We welcome your input on this process.

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.

We’re back! Since last week, there was an argument over whether Poseidon’s tsunami was too overpowered or balanced. After a developer run of Poseidon on live, and then on test with tech 20 ships, we’ve come to an agreement that Poseidon’s tsunami is… balanced!

Pixel

Pixel has been working on adding visual differences between regular AI and multifiring / upgraded AI:

Additionally, if you’re an aspiring new base builder you may want to look into getting a Singularity Brake for your new Singularity Sphere or similar transport ship. Luckily for you, Pixel’s added the new Particle Brake and Quantum Brake:

Pixel’s also added new DNA beams you’ll be able to get next universe:

Bobbo

More emperor notification changes. The 24 hour waiting period after claiming the Palace has been scrapped and instead the claiming team will progress to the crowning stage once construction of the crown has been completed. Destruction of the crown during a run will push the progress back to the declared stage (and the claiming team will have to produce another crown ship).

Yclepticon

Reducing the consumption rate of tier 1-3 industrial commodities and nerfing Enriched Nuclear Material value in the Buffer line to 5k instead of 20k.

Jey

New beta client coming in today, you should see a performance improvement all around. It is a test for the new version of the compiler alongside the use of some of c++11 features. Be sure to send in your dmpfile to dmpfile@starsonata.com if you do crash. There’s a lot of low level changes in the code so new crashes and old crashes have a good chances of providing data to fix them.

SunDog60

I’ve paused my work on Iq’ Bana for a few days to create a tech 22 guide.

Hober Mallow

Been working on T22 drones, and some T21 drones. They should be updated on the test server for you to test (Hephaestus Drone, Samgrahaka Akramavar, Indrakoza Akramavar and Indrakoza Amzuchidvar, Solarian Drone). Buffed up a bunch of lower tech content from Infernal Tempest, still working on improving it. Updated the stats on the Pirates Mark Augmenter, it should be a rather interesting augmenter now.

The free Zebucart skin applies to all the low tech variants of the Zebucart! Hooray!

I finally finished implementing the Lyceum Combination Augmenters, from Tech 1 to Tech 22. The blueprints will be acquired in a variety of different ways (The Tech 22 augmenter blueprints will require the player to turn in Allied Commendations, for example) there may be other ways to acquire them as well… you’ll have to find out!

Jeff

Been working on AI formations some more, adding new options to allow for cooler formations.

Pixel

Added in new drone controllers for engineers to use as well as the Twisted Harbour, a station aura generator giving all ships, including enemies, -5% Weight and +100% Docking Speed (affected by Neurotweaking, with a lower range of 4000), all of this will be available next universe in the Twisted Zone. Here’s a quick preview of them:

Additionally Pixel has also added new missions to The Junkyard (not currently available), which will allow you to exchange 50 Junkyard Scrapnotes for 32 Minor augmenters.

Jey

Been working on a queue system for the steam launch, there will be more on that once the system is fully functional. I have also been working on updating our client code to c++11 which brings a rather large potential of performance improvements. It’s still too early in the process to see what kind of improvement we’ll get since right now its pretty unstable so it is difficult to tell if the performance gain is real or just a side effect. I am hoping for a 25-50% fps increase from it but it’s still subject to change.

Hober Mallow

I’ve added the Zebucart Mark 2 as a free skin for the Zebucart. There are also versions for the ZebuMaster and ZebuTitan. They should come in with the next patch. I’ve done anywhere between light touches to drastic changes to some more low level areas (The Jungle, Blue Outpost, Tortuga) and I plan to move on to East Vindia/Infernal Tempest/Bonnet/Protoplasmica. Let me know if I’m missing anything. Tortuga got a lot of its content changed, the gear should definitely be worth a new player’s time now.

I did a few things to the other end of the player spectrum too. Hybridization Blueprints are taken out of the Aveksaka drop tables, they will now be in the Lyceum Research Concourse AI base, it never made sense for the aliens to drop blueprints about how to Hybridize non Aveksaka ships… (There’s actually a perfectly good reason, but I guess your way makes life easier – SunDog) Anyway, you can also get Honorary Diplomas by turning in Aveksakan Tech 22 Skill Commods. Lyceum needs more research specimens, provide them. Expect this change for next universe.

I adjusted a few more things, Strontium Cannons been buffed. Kalthi Stronghold should be in DF 400. All 4 Admixium Blueprints have had their requirements tweaked, they build out of the Industrial Commodities that their previous requirements go into.

Last but not least, I’m working on a way for Gunners and Fleet Commanders to act as Tanks/Off Tanks. Many of you may not know this, but Fleet Focus gives 40% more hostility (at max level) when you’re piloting a capital ship. My thinking is, why not let the players make use of it somehow? I’ll keep you updated on this front. The augmenters I posted about in the previous developer blog have been looked over by the development team, we’ll be making changes to some of the proposed augmenter stats, thank you for your feedback!

SunDog

Finally, it is time to inform you all of what I’ve been working on. I’ve been working on redoing Iq’ Bana, and will be doing the same for other tech 20 skill zones after. The zones will have their overall difficulty raised, but there will be daily missions available which allow you to weaken the strength of the AI and/or boss if you’re trying to obtain the relevant tech 20 skill. If you would rather simply kill the boss and get the skill however, you’ll still be able to do this! These dailies will only be an option, if you are unable to find a group willing to run you through the zone.

Jeff

Over the years, many have complained that AI never do anything interesting, they simply fly at you with the hope that whoever designed them gave them good enough weaponry to take you down. Recently, Lucien Slimebottle discovered some flies in The Nexus that will circle players and coordinate a burst attack together. This is the first in a decade, where AI will work together to take players down. Unfortunately, the flies were quickly hunted to extinction in an attempt to stop more of these coordinated AI from appearing. Fortunately, this new mechanic is spreading to other AI, but will only appear next universe!

Jeff’s been working on adding attack patterns to AI, such as a group of enemies circling around you and all firing at you at the same time for a quick kill. Check out the videos below for a preview!

Bursting Video – Circling Video (shown under this)

Hober Mallow

Hober’s been busy making new augmenters with the help of players on Discord (link to discord here). The new augmenters would work similar to currently existing combined augmenters (such as the Marksman and Rage augmenter lines), giving the player more choices in how they augment their ship. If you would like to see the current work on these new augmenters, check out the design document he’s written up. If you have any suggestions for new augmenters, or changes to some augmenters he’s already written up, you can add comments to the document or talk to him on discord.

Pixel

This section is probably the reason you’re here, Pixel’s been working on a huge list of various things:

• Pixel’s recently buffed up termites to once again threaten the universe, and a chance to find a legendary termite mound. These new legendary mounds will, once nearly fully evolved, begin spawning giant termites. You can find more information in the forum thread he’s made, link to it here.
• He’s also added a new Expedition Team Blueprint terraforming project, allowing you to send a team down to a planet/moon’s surface to discover various things, such as a cavern filled with gems, or floating islands in the sky (that you somehow didn’t see), or the Garden of Eden in the middle of a blistering desert planet. You’ll also find hostile creatures and pirates, who will make living on the colony much less safe, and may even lower the amount of resources on the planet or moon!
• He’s also made a BvB colosseum for players to fight in, with special kits and permanent drones available for purchase. Now you’ll be able to test out unique station setups and practice base vs base combat, maybe even recreate a historical base battle?
• He’s added some new capacitors for the Twisted Zone, which will be available next universe.

SunDog

Sun’s been continuing his work on the UrQa race, with a new and final message to translate:

- Uj’qi urQ’oj iiuqok -
Okara qiiQa, ur qua quu’oj, ur kii iq, kii iq’ bakoqaa… kusoQa uka ur quu’iq’.
Ur vo’ba urk’uu. Iq’uu ur’bakoqaa uku jiq’q'uka, kusoQa kii’oq qok akukoiii vo’koquii.
qiiQa qua qokuji’qii, iq urko qokuji’qii. Sunqa iq’ba, iq zurk ur sunqa iq’ba, urk’nik kur.
Ib qa’ik, kak vazuk nik iq’uu, kak jiq’qi koquii urk’qii ur. Iq UrQa.
- UrQ’oj iiuqok nik -

Some information on my work will be shown on discord in english, because none of you seem to understand anything I’m trying to tell you when I say it in UrQa.

MicroCapacitor

• Making repair kits not work until after 30 minute from the death of the base.
• Planning on a t19 Support Freighter based off of Lyceum.
• Adding calculations for terraforming of BonusShields and BonusRadar. This is for Pixel’s new terraforming blueprints, allowing you to create planet-side shield generators and radar sensors to buff your bases in orbit!
• Gonna work on having bots stop shooting below 1% of their energy so they will regen their shields instead of just only shooting. (This will prevent wild bots from somehow not regening shields if they are in constant battle).