Hey everyone! I’m super thrilled to present some more screenshots of Perilous Perilous Space to you guys. In this blog post I’ll show you some of the challenges you can expect to encounter in Perilous Perilous Space. In the words of a wise man: “Prepare for battle!”

One major faction are the moonfighters. They are Selenites and Lunarians, who have sworn to protect the various moons in Perilous Perilous Space. They are extremely hostile to any Terran lifeforms. Some moonfighters roam around in the various galaxies and some were set to guard the several dungeons in Perilous Perilous Space.

Lunarians and Selenites are fighting side by side. They have sworn to drive any Terran lifeform out of Perilous Perilous Space, so their moons can be left alone from the Terran machinery.

The moonfighters aren’t the only ones with a strong hate towards Terran factions and Earthforce. In Perilous Perilous Space, there are also cyborgs. These were initially designed and developed by Earthforce scientists, but somewhere in the process they got corrupted, they were dumped in outer space and left to rust and rot. What Earthforce scientists didn’t predict was that these corrupted lifeforms were able to survive in outer space. They survived, and multiplied, and developed their own unique ships and technologies.

The Corrupted Cyborgs consist of four standard ships and two advanced ships.

Now, let’s visit some of the less common AI you will face. Like Perilous Space, there are also birds o’ prey present in Perilous Perilous Space. The Harrier and the Caracara strike from above, and take down any prey who doesn’t move out of the way fast enough.

And that UrQa there? Oh yes, that is an UrQa capital ship. This UrQa capital ship was once a great commander of the UrQa, but due to conflicts within the UrQa, it was banished from the rest of the UrQa fleet. It now roams around in Perilous Perilous Space, angry and upset, but it has not forgotten the arts of UrQa warfare…

And there is also room for one more faction, which you all know from before. Let me take you guys back in time. The Kalthi are ancient, they were wiped out by the UrQa. Kalthi are advanced fighters, specialized in warfare, but nobody saw much of their presence, since the Paxians reported that the Kalthi expeditions were destroyed. However, the Paxians didn’t look in the farthest corners of the universe. The Kalthi were able to establish a Kalthi Outpost somewhere in Perilous Perilous Space, a place where they could rebuild and try to regain communication with the Kalthi in Hyperion. However, due to extreme distances, the Kalthi have not been able to reach Hyperion, and most expeditions have been destroyed by the UrQa, and so they are hesitant to establish communication until they know for sure that they can safely reach Hyperion. Until then, the Kalthi are very aggressive towards any unknown lifeforms that enter the Perilous Perilous Space, as they fear that the UrQa are sending spies, possibly disguised as other lifeforms, in an attempt to find out why there were Kalthi expeditions sent from outer space towards Hyperion.

Now, it is up to you guys, noble Sonatians, to see if you actually dare to enter the Perilous Perilous Space. Gear up your strongest ships, prepare your fleets, and get ready to face… MADNESS.

Hey everyone! As some of you might have noticed, I’ve started doing more content development lately, and not so much bug support. Recently I’ve finished quite a lot of content additions, but one major content addition that was voted up on the player suggestions was to make a Perilous Perilous Space. So, let me give you guys a small taste of what it will be like.

Perilous Perilous Space will be an extension of the current Perilous Space, and all galaxies above Danger Factor 400, up to Danger Factor 500 will be considered Perilous Perilous Space. I must warn you however, the AI you will face in here will give you guys a serious fight – so prepare to spend some time in your escape pods!

There will be three new major factions, these make up the majority of all ships. However, there will be a nifty variety of different AI flying around, and I’ve also added in some roaming bosses. I’m not going to reveal too much about what is obtainable and not, but there will be a lot of rewards coming from roaming AI, and the roaming bosses will also be represented with their own dungeon versions and their own unique drops. Which brings me to the next part: dungeons.

Dungeons will now be a lot harder. However, most of the loot in these dungeons will be new additions, and will be high-end loot, like it was suggested by some players. We’re moving some pretty powerful items into these dungeons, and we will probably expand this mid-universe if needed. We want these dungeons to feel exclusive and unique, so we might just do some extra tweaking to them… You’ll see next universe I guess!

The most important part for us – management wise – is to make sure the universe generates the right danger factors and the dungeons, so they behave the way we want them to for the entire universe. There are some things we can add mid-universe, and since this project is based upon volunteer developer work, it has been short on time.

I hope you guys are looking forward to it, and you’re all welcome to come and play with my new lovely minions when the new universe has launched! Moahahahaha…

I have been collecting various skins that have been posted on the forums at various places, as well as creating new skins myself. In this latest client and server patch, here is a list of new skins that players will be able to use. This list is in alphabetical order of skin name, with columns specifying the ship/s that the skin applies to (some skins will work on multiple ships), and what the account name of the creator of the skin is.

The skins  Earthforce Police Battlecruiser,  Earthforce Police Battleship, Earthforce Police Cruiser, Earthforce Police Destroyer,  Earthforce Police Dreadnought,  Earthforce Police Zebra, HM1080, Rainbow-imizer and Rainbow-imizer+ have animations on them, and the images below corresponding to those ships have a link to a GIF file where you can see the animation that is featured in the skin. All of the areformentioned skins’ animations play continuously through a loop, the animation for the HM1080 plays when a weapon is first used after undocking, and resets once docked again.

The skins except from Adamantiumized Samgrahak’ayu, Ember Vazi, Frozen Zeus, Hybridized Black Paxian Battle Frigate, and the Neon Machine + may have their engine mounts not appearing correctly where they should be; I do not know if the problem was fixed in the latest client and server patch, but I will tell you when it does get fixed if it has not been already. The Zebucart Mark 2 skin I believe appears approximately 3% smaller than it should be on the ships, due to the volcom model being scaled to the size of the ships the skin applies to; this is something that I will try to fix.

I plan to add more skins in the future, such as a skin for the Battle Sphere and Singularity sphere that changes their model to have a slightly cubic shape compared to what they are now, and a skin for the Wattage and Resistance each that replaces the glowing spheres on the back of the ships with a miniature version of a star that is seen in the galaxies in Star Sonata. Also, any players who have not received a free copy of the skin that they designed that is currently in the game please send me a forum pm.

Skin name	Image of skin	Ship/s that the skin can be used for	Account name of creator of skin
Adamantiumized Samgrahak’ayu		Samgrahak’ayu	xcrunner5
Earthforce Police Battlecruiser		Earthforce Battlecruiser	egrosphere
Earthforce Police Battleship		Earthforce Battleship	egrosphere
Earthforce Police Cruiser		Earthforce Cruiser	egrosphere
Earthforce Police Destroyer		Earthforce Destroyer	egrosphere
Earthforce Police Dreadnought		Earthforce Dreadnought	egrosphere
Earthforce Police Zebra		Zebra	egrosphere
Ember Vazi		Vaziayu	Sk1rm1sh
Frozen Zeus		Zeus Throne	grimer
Hephaestus Machine Frame		Hephaestus Machine	egrosphere
HM1080		Hephaestus Machine	thecrazygamemaster (combat mode animation made by egrosphere)
Hybridized Black Paxian Battle Frigate		Paxian Battle Frigate	joku1999
Neon Machine +		Hephaestus Machine+	Tomzta09
Rainbow-imizer		Equanimizer, Equaminizer	egrosphere
Rainbow-imizer+		Equanimizer+	egrosphere
Zebucart Mark 2		Zebucart, Zebucart+, Advanced Zebucart, Oversized Zebucart, Micro Zebu	egrosphere
Zebu Master Mark 2		Zebu Master, Zebu Master+	egrosphere

King Midas is pissed off that you players keep farming him for Imperial Chests, so he has recruited a giant mob of various Big Greens and Green Battleships to warp into Perilous Space and exact revenge!

As part of our month-long celebration of the 10th anniversary of Star Sonata, tonight, the invasions of the Midas Goons is beginning. Approximately every half hour, somewhere in Perilous Space, up to 25 ships will spawn. If you can manage to fight them off, they will each have a small chance to drop an Imperial Chest, Dementium Fragment, or Bindomite.

But if you think that you’re so leet that fighting off hordes of Green Battleships is easy, well, this *is* Perilous Space, and you might have to PvP other players for the drops.

Just for fun, here is the XML code we used to add this event. You may notice that this is limited to 4000 spawns. Once this spawner has produced 4000 children, it deletes itself and the event will be over. This should take somewhere between 3-5 days, depending on how vigilant people are at killing Goons.

<WILDAI>
  <WILDSPAWN name="SuperGreenSpawner">
    <QUANT>1</QUANT>
    <WILDSTART>3.8</WILDSTART>
    <WILDEND>99.0</WILDEND>
    <LAYER>4</LAYER>
    <USETEAM>Midas Goons</USETEAM>
    <SPAWNOBJ typename="SpawnNasty">
      <SPAWNER>
        <SPAWNBASE>
          <NAME>SuperGreenSpawner</NAME>
          <INTERVAL>1800</INTERVAL>
          <NUM>25</NUM>
          <LIMITSPAWNS>4000</LIMITSPAWNS>
          <LEVEL>-1</LEVEL>
          <MINATTACKLEVEL>0</MINATTACKLEVEL>
          <ATTACKFRACMINAI>0.5</ATTACKFRACMINAI>
          <ATTACKFRACMAXAI>0.0</ATTACKFRACMAXAI>
          <ATTACKFRACMINPLAYER>0.0</ATTACKFRACMINPLAYER>
          <ATTACKFRACMAXPLAYER>999.0</ATTACKFRACMAXPLAYER>
          <SCAREDYCAT>0.0</SCAREDYCAT>
          <DROPITEM chance="0.01">Imperial Chest</DROPITEM>
          <DROPITEM chance="0.02">Dementium Fragments</DROPITEM>
          <DROPITEM chance="0.05">Bindomite</DROPITEM>
          <SPAWNATONCE>true</SPAWNATONCE>
          <RANDOMIZED>1</RANDOMIZED>
          <NAMELIST>BigGreens100.txt</NAMELIST>
          <NAMEPREFIXLIST>UberPrefixes.txt</NAMEPREFIXLIST>
          <NAMESUFFIXLIST>UberSuffixes.txt</NAMESUFFIXLIST> <!-- extra suffixes for identification -->
          <BOUNDTOLAYER>true</BOUNDTOLAYER>
          <HATEMODIFIER>3.0</HATEMODIFIER> <!-- hate on the haters -->
        </SPAWNBASE>
        <PERIPATETIC>25</PERIPATETIC> <!-- jump reasonably often -->
        <SWARM>1</SWARM> <!-- birds of a feather ... -->
        <ALLOWJUMP>1</ALLOWJUMP>
        <GROUPATTACK>1</GROUPATTACK>
        <GROUPATTACKDIST>3000</GROUPATTACKDIST>
        <RALLYFACTOR>10000</RALLYFACTOR> <!-- fight everyone -->
        <CANUPGRADE>0</CANUPGRADE>
        <DONTDOCK>1</DONTDOCK>
        <ADDITIONALBRAVERY>200</ADDITIONALBRAVERY>
        <SHIPCONFIG weight="1.0">Green Meanie</SHIPCONFIG>
        <SHIPCONFIG weight="1.0">Titan Green</SHIPCONFIG>
        <SHIPCONFIG weight="1.0">Green Battleship</SHIPCONFIG>
        <!-- pooling all the skills all versions of the Greens get for a particularly nasty combo, +50%-->
        <XTRASKILL lvl="30">SKILL_COMBAT_FOCUS</XTRASKILL>
        <XTRASKILL lvl="15">SKILL_SNIPER_EFFICIENCY</XTRASKILL>
        <XTRASKILL lvl="15">SKILL_FLEET_FOCUS</XTRASKILL>
      </SPAWNER>
    </SPAWNOBJ>
  </WILDSPAWN>
</WILDAI>

Hey guys!

So, a while ago I asked you guys which AI ship you would fly, if you could. Now you can know the reason! I’m actually planning on making one of these player available! 

You can cast your vote over at the forum, at http://forum.starsonata.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=60171

I’m looking forward to the results. Of course, I’m not going to tell you guys how it’s going to happen. But you’ll see soon enough.

So, that’s it for my little update. Stay tuned, there’s some cool things coming your way soon!

Regards,

The classiest Dev alive.

We are looking into possible revamps of the way base slots work, and we need your help! Before we can move on with the project, we need some basic information from the player base, which is where we need help from you guys

All we need are some questions to be answered, so please take a minute and help us out, and post the information in the forum thread related to this blog post If you want the information to be kept private, send it in a private message to The Vert or yclepticon!

1. How many accounts do you have?

2. How many Extraction Expert, Colonial Administrator, and Station Mastery characters do you have?

3. How many colonies do you have?

4. How many Extraction Expert kits do you have extracting basic materials such as Metals, Space Oats, Silicon, Nuclear Waste and Baobabs?

Hey guys/girls! So, I’ve taken over the blog again. Now with some fun little news. I’ve taken over the Star Sonata Facebook as well. With this, I’m planning to do some fun Q&A’s, some updates and last but not least, giveaways!

Be sure to follow us (me) at http://www.facebook.com/Star.Sonata !

First idea…. If you could have any AI ship ingame… Which would it be, and why? Be sure to reply on our Facebook page! I may or may not use the answers for something fun in the future…

~Suit

A new feature that I’ve just finished coding is a global XP boost item type. Each of these items will bestow a certain amount of bonus XP to the universe for a certain amount of time. The most common ones that you will see will give +5% XP to all players for 30 minutes.

Each account can only have one XP boost active at a time, but as many people who want can theorectically activate simultaneous XP boosts which are additive with each other, and multiplicitive with any other XP bonuses, such as bonus XP from a weekend event. So if 4 players manage to trigger XP boosts simultaneously, then every player in the game will get +20% XP for the duration.

Whenever anyone triggers an XP boost, a message is sent to all players in the event text so they know that the XP boost has commenced. In addition, when you log in, it will tell you the current amount of XP boost, and which players have caused it.

To start with, there will be two sources of global XP boosts available, called “Pan-Universal Neural Plasticizer” and “Pan-Universal Neural Artificial Plasticizer”. The first will be generated by a power up spawner randomly placed somewhere in Perilous Space, and it will change galaxies every time it spawns. It is use-on-scoop, so no storing up a ton of them, and will be kind of an easter egg hunt to find it. The second will be tech 10, available in Free Market, and require 1 Space Point to trigger. Remember that this gives bonus XP to every player in the game, so it’s not “pay to win”, but maybe gives you something to spend that extra Space Point on that you have sitting around from verifying your email address.

This should be going into the game sometime after the next major patch. I’ll have to manually add them in after a patch, so there will be some delay.

Most of us have experienced “You need to place your drone in a clear place” at some point in the middle of combat. You’re fighting, you want to get some drones down for defense, but there are ships swarming all over the place, and you just can’t get a clear spot. All you can do is Spam your hot key repeatedly, hoping for a brief opening.

Since the main point of this retriction on drone placement is to keep them visually separate so they can be selected and targeted properly, it doesn’t necessarily make sense for such quick moving things as ships and mobile drones to block the placement of drones. It was also the case that you could deploy a mobile drone on top of a normal drone, but not the other way around.

I was up in the mountains, looking for something quick to code on my laptop and decided to rewrite the function that determines non-mobile, non-attached drone placement. The new code will not block drone placement from ships or from mobile drones. Since both of these types of objects move around a lot, it makes sense to me that they shouldn’t block normal drones from being placed.

Here’s the new code, just for fun. This should be appearing on live in a patch sometime soon.

// make sure nothing is underneath or it's a special drone
if (!bSuperItem && !IsMobile() && !GetSpec()->bEthereal )
{
  sobit_ALL it;
  for (it = husk->getGal()->sobs.begin(sobmap::PARSE_ALL); it != husk->getGal()->sobs.end(sobmap::PARSE_ALL); it++)
  {
    SpaceObject *sob = it->second;
    if (sob == husk   // The ship deploying the drone won't block it
      || !sob->Corporeal()  // Non-corporeal things will not block it
      || sob->SobType() == SOB_SPACESHIP) // Spaceships will not block it
      continue;
    Pillbox * sobPillbox = dynamic_cast<Pillbox *>(sob);
    if (sobPillbox && sobPillbox->IsMobile())
      continue; // Mobile drones won't block normal drones
    if (sob->WithinRange(husk, (sob->sizex * 0.5) + (GetSpec()->diameter * 0.5)))
      throw string("You need to place your drone in a clear place.");
  }
}

It’s been a few weeks since an update, but I have some definitely interesting things to talk about! This update covers a few new mission and spawner options I’ve created for some new content I will also be discussing! Keep reading to find out more!

A few weeks ago there was what I thought was a rather good suggestion about how it makes a lot of sense to move some tutorial elements into the low level custom dungeons like Arctia and Vulcan. I really liked this idea. It really does make sense to not over-stuff the Nexus with EVERYTHING like slaves, drones, classes, et cetra, and I think places like Arctia and Vulcan really could use fleshed out a bit. Yes, they’re both excellent custom dungeon zones to help acclimate the player to the kill minion -> kill boss -> scoop loot -> repeat flow a lot of content in the game has, but I felt they could do a bit more depth and character.

So, I came hit upon the idea of doing a small expansion to Arctia focused on bringing a few tutorial elements into play to not only further establish the lore and character of the zone, but to help explain one of the most interesting and exciting features of Star Sonata; ship capture.

We have a bit of a ship capture tutorial already in place in the Blue Empire of the Prism Color Empires zone, but I really thought we could use a more involved tutorial utilizing all the new features we added for Nexus 3.0. However, even with the bounty of new mission options, I was still missing a few to make this tutorial really work. There were a few missing things.

Firstly, I wanted to make sure the ship the player captures for the tutorial was easy to capture. I wanted it to be a derelict that couldn’t move, couldn’t fight back. It would just sit there and let the player capture it. Currently, players are unable to capture an AI without an engine, and if they could, it would be stuck, dead in space. So to remedy this, I’ve added a new spawner option called “Spawn Derelict”. When this flag is turned on it will mark the ship as a ‘derelict’. When it’s time for capture, any ship flagged as a derelict will override the controlbots engine check and if the capture is successful, it will add a Coalfurnance engine to the captured ship. That solved the first problem I had.

The second problem was with how I would actually have a tutorial mission verify the capture. Currently, missions like the Merchant Trader Goods or the ones in the Blue Empire have the player return an item that can only be obtained via capturing a ship. This is an obvious work around for the fact that we didn’t have an actual mission goal to capture a ship. So, I’ve added one. It works almost identically to the Kill mission goal currently in game, with the exception that it tracks when you successfully capture a ship with a conversion device.

Finally, in order to make the tutorial missions as straightforward as possible, I knew I needed one additional feature. I’ve expanded the Kill mission goal so it now includes an option to specify the damage type of the kill. Obviously, in the context I am initially using it, I am instructing the player to kill the ship they are to capture with Radiation damage. However, going forward I can see many different uses for this!

With all of these new mission features in play, I’ve been able to create a brief, but very involved tutorial mission chain to Arctia that supplies the player with a Prismatic Conversion and instructs them on how to properly use it. At the latest, you should see it implemented with the next universe reset, but I’ll see about getting it in sooner!

That’s it for this update, feel free to post feedback to the forums! I’ll be back again when I have something else new and exciting to share! Until then!