This week’s update is going to cover a few different things including; new Tech 22 missiles and factories, some changes to Tech 22 Alien Ships and an update on the new zone launching next universe, the Temple Grounds. Keep reading to find out more.

As promised, with the class rebalance we are going to be making a new set of tech 22 missiles available. We would have done this earlier, but it didn’t make sense to make a set of new missiles only to rework them a few months later. These new missiles will come from factories available from Mitchell Sparks in LACS S2637 once you have done the introduction mission available in the Blue Photon Subspace Facility.

There are three new missiles that will be available.

• The Ksaravis’ayu is a physical damage missile similar to the rotten eggs launched by Raurava in Equipment 22 or Janayitri Sahistha in Piloting 22. While flying they will damage nearby enemies and on impact they will impart a caustic parasite. These launch in salvos of three.
• The Matra Markata Prahetiayu is a standard missile, the twist being that is is a radiation damage missile. These launch in salvos of 5.
• The Visphotakapad Ksaravis’ayu is a small, fast missile that does a low-damage but sizable area-of-effect on detonation. All ships caught in the blast zone are infected with a caustic parasite. These launch in salvos of 10.

In addition to adding the new missiles, you will not be able to use the Basic DNA Extraction Beam on on a variety of missiles launched by the Aveksaka in Subspace. Extracting from a missile is going to be challenging, and as such, you will get a high return from each DNA extracted. Currently, each factory will produce 5 crates of the new missiles per DNA used.

Tech 22 ships will be seeing a few changes as well. Firstly, all tech 22 player ships are getting nameplates. Currently they don’t have them and it can get a little confusing when you can’t tell the aliens and the players apart! Secondly, there are goign to be a few changes coming to both the Vacohar’ayu and the Rajanicar’ayu.

It’s important that these ships are viable alternatives to the high end Olympus ships and at the moment they are a little lacking.  As such, both are getting new in-built superitems. The Vacohar’ayu will be getting “Alien Evasive Maneuvers.” This device will give a short duration 75% evasion buff on a fairly lengthy cooldown. This will add some much needed survival utility on the ship. The Rajanicar’ayu will be getting the “Alien Translocator”. This is a super item that uses a translocator, effectively allowing the ship to have two. Finally, both ships are also having their resistances reevaluated. Energy and physical resistances are lacking and will see some buffs.

Finally, I’ve been doing some serious work on making sure the new tech 22 boss, The High Prophet, is ready for launch with next universe. The boss fight has seen quite a few changes from it’s previous iteration and will be available for testing in the next week. This boss fight is unlike anything currently in game and I’m very excited to see how players handle him.

That’s it for this week’s update. As always feel free to post questions, comments and suggestions in the forums. I’ll be back again next week with another update!

This week’s update will focus primarily on the newly announced advanced class skills. It will give a few more details about the skills and detail how we are handling training them. Keep reading to find out more!

First, I’d like to give a few more updates about the new advanced subskill system, as it’s been my primary project for the last few weeks. In all, we are adding 42 new skills to the game. There are six general skills, four focus locked skills (one per focus) and 32 class locked skills (four per class). All of these skills will reset with a Skill Reset.

If you remember last week’s post; in it I detailed transference resistance and evasion augmenter stats. From what I have seen in the forums, there has been a fair bit of speculation on how they are going to be used. Since we have finally announced the new advanced subskills, I think it’s safe to give a few more details on these new stats. Both of those will see use in the new subskills. Specially, the following three;

• Lucky Devil (Speed Demon) – +10% evasion, +5% critical hit chance
• Advanced Flight Controller (Fleet Commander) – +75% evasion for fighters, +2 fighter slots.
• Civil Engineer (Engineer) - +20% transference resistance, -15% tractor beam energy cost.

The design for advanced subskills calls for leveling up your focus to unlock the ability to train a new skill. For example, training focus 21 unlocks the ability to train one new skill, training focus 22 unlocks the ability to train another, etc. Using the current skill training and mission systems we have in place there was no easy way to accomplish this. We considered a token system, where your focus training mission would grant you a token to train the skill, but unfortunately there is no way to remove tokens on a skill reset (which would allow players to get extra tokens). So, we hit on the idea of ‘Advanced Skill Points’.

Advanced Skill Points can be received as mission rewards, and are used as mission goals and mission requirements. Each time you complete a focus training mission for a tech 21+ focus skill you will get one of these points to spend on an advanced subskill. You can then go to your focus base to find a set of new missions unlocked that offer advanced subskills. These skill training missions only appear if you have a token to spend.

For players who already have their focus skill trained to level 21, they will be able to find a set of missions to grandfather them into the new system so they don’t have to skill reset to get their first advanced skill point. Players will also be able to train tech 22 focus and class skills. Much like with tech 21, each focus will require the player to have already obtained two different tech 22 skills.

So that’s it for this week’s update. We’ll be starting a series of blog posts detailing the new skills this week, so be prepared for that. And as always, if you have an questions, comments or suggestions on the material covered here, feel free to post in the forums!

This week’s update is going to detail some general changes coming with the class rebalance. They include two new augmenter stats and a new client animation to go along with one of them. Keep reading to find out more.

As I mentioned earlier, we’re adding two new augmenter stats; the first of these is Transference Resistance. Transference resistance added by the new augmenter stat is handled in the same way transference resistance added by the Resistance augmenter stat is — that is to say it only affects positive transference damage (from an AI that uses transference damage weapons or an outgoing heal). Right now there is only a specific usage of this stat in mind, but it may make its way onto augs or gear sometime down the line.

The second new augmenter stat is one that I think is a lot more exciting; Evasion. The evasion augmenter stat gives the user a chance to dodge damage; that is the damage source will pass right through their ship without hitting them and potentially hit something behind them.

In order to keep this stat from becoming too powerful a ships evasion will scale based on the damage source.

• For projectiles evasion will scale based on the speed of the evading ship relative to the speed of the projectile. So the faster the projectile and the slower the evading ship, the lower the chance to evade.
• For laser beams evasion will scale based on the evading ships distance from the shooter. The closer the evading ship, the less likely to evade.
• For warheads evasion is ignored. That means to escape missile damage you need to kill the missile or fly away from it.

Evasion also has one other condition and that is the evading ship needs to have an equipped engine to evade. That means no evasion on your Thatches, sorry! Evasion is applicable on all lasers and projectiles fired normally. It also is applied to projectiles and lasers created by splash, chain, ricochet, spray and chain bullet weapon effects. Evasion is not applied to AoE or Warhead weapon effects.

With the mechanics out of the way, I am sure people are going to ask something along the lines of “How do I know a shot has been evaded and it’s not just lag?”. This is handled in two ways. First, the evader and the evadee will get a damage pop up reading “Miss”. The pop up will only display if you have damage pop-ups enabled. Secondly, the ship evading will do a barrel roll.

Barrel rolling will only be enabled for players who play using the perspective camera mode.

That’s it for this week’s update. As always, feel free to post your comments, suggestions and questions in the discussion topic! Until next week.

Yclepticon here with a surprise post about a new facet of the class rebalance.  Some of the older players may remember when we first put in class skills past level 20.  This was largely well received as it allowed endgame players to get a bit more hull, speed, and DPS out of their setups.  However, it was noted at the time that some classes made out a lot better than others with that addition.  For example, Sniper got about 7% more DPS while Berserker and Gunner got little to none (since 5% more Multifiring doesn’t do anything).  Here is how we are going to fix that problem.

First: class subskills will now only train up to level 20, and players who still have them higher than that will no longer receive the extra bonuses.  But don’t stop reading!

Second: each class now receives four new advanced subskills.  You can train one advanced subskill each time you level up your main class skill past 20.  So players with Berserker 21 can choose one advanced subskill, and then another one once they get Berserker 22.  And yes, the main class and focus skills will now go up to 22.  In addition to the four advanced subskills of your class, you will also have access to around ten subskills that are available to everyone.

Now some of you are probably thinking, “why should I trade in all three of my level 21 subskills for a single skill?”  The answer is self-evident when you see what the new skills are like.  So without further ado, let’s see some numbers!

Say you’re a Speed Demon with level 21 in all the subskills.  When we scale back Speedy Movement to level 20, you’ll lose a small amount of speed (about 1.4%).  That’s like unequipping a tech 4 sleek item–not that big a deal–but suppose you really want that extra edge in PvP.  You may be interested in the following advanced subskill:

Master Scout: +10% Speed, +25% Radar, -50% Scanner Energy Cost

That’s right, you’ll get a full 10% Speed increase, multiplicative with all your other skills and gear.  On top of that, you’ll pick up some extra Radar to find those pesky Snipers and Seers, and using an ENIAC Omega will suddenly be a lot easier as well (if you can fit it!)

Now suppose you have a Berserker with level 21 in all the subskills, which currently gives you some small bonuses to Resistance (2.4%), Damage (1%), and Hull Space (based on equipped weapons).  First of all, the Hull Space bonus is now moved completely over to the main Berserker class, so your hull won’t change even after subskills are scaled back to level 20.  But suppose you really want that extra Damage.  You may be interested in picking up:

Berserker Classic: +200% Multifiring, -30% Rate of Fire

If you don’t fancy carrying so many weapons around, there’s another new Berserker skill that also boosts DPS… but I’ll leave that for another day.

Finally, let’s say you have an Engineer with level 21 subskills.  One thing you can’t currently get from any skill is the ability to charge your equipped drones faster.  That’s changing now with:

Electrical Engineer: Equipped drones charge 10% faster

There are a few other new ways to improve your drone-juggling skills but I’ll leave those for a later day as well.

This week’s update is going to focus on some new items that will be released with the Class Rebalance. More specifically, a set of three new super items that will be available for Berserker.

The first item available to Berserkers will be the Engagement Device. This super item comes in tech 5 and 17 varieties. By overcharging the engines and focusing an energy shield at the front of the ship, it grants the Berserker vastly increased speed and thrust, as well as immunity to knockback and critical hits — allowing them to boldly charge into the fray. The result of the massive shift of energy when the overcharge ends results in spatial concussion pulling all nearby enemies in closer! This will function as an engagement or escape item giving Berserker some needed mobility as well as a nice way to quickly establish spawn control.

The second item is the Shield Redistribution Device. This super item is available at techs 9 and 20. This device harmonizes the Berserker’s shielding systems with that of their weapons allowing them to transfer some of the damage dealt back to the Berserker in the form of shields. This effect unfortunately will cause the Berserker’s ship to become immune to other forms of shield transfer, so it will be best used in situations where one doesn’t need to rely on a Shield Monkey! This device should give Berserker’s a little bit of self-regeneration, making solo endeavors a bit more manageable for them.

Finally Berserkers will be able to obtain the Reactive Hull Explosion. This device is available at techs 13 and 22. Unlike normal super items, which can only charge via energy, the Reactive Hull Explosion can use incoming damage to charge up. This means as the Berserker takes more damage, the device will be able to be used with a higher frequency. When fully charged, the device increases the hostility of the Berserker and releases a spray of energy plasma around the ship followed by a concussion knocking all nearby enemies away. This device should give Berserkers a nice tool to help establish and keep better spawn control.

That’s it for this week’s update, I’ll be back again next week for another update! Hopefully everyone has enjoyed a look at what we have in store for Berserkers. Question and comments, as always, can be directed to the forums!

This is a brief demo of the incoming new item “Large Shield Battery” which is a tech 22 Shield Monkey only class super item.

The Large Shield Battery charges up primarily using shields. It takes 60,000 shields to charge up over 100 seconds, in addition to 1000 energy. That’s 600 shields and 10 energy per second if it’s able to charge at full rate. This is the first item created that charges gradually using up shields in this manner.

Upon activation, the Large Shield Battery instantly gives the owner back all 60,000 shields, as well as a group charge that gives all nearby allies within 1000 distance a tweak of +750 shields per second for 15 seconds.

There is also an entry level tech 13 version of this item that charges up 20,000 shields over 60 seconds and gives nearby allies +500 shields per second for 10 seconds.

Also for your amusement, me struggling against a gigantic ambush in Perilous Space on the test server.  Note that I put shield batteries on my slaves, too!

Welcome to my first weekly post of the new year! In this week’s post I’ll be primarily discussing some upcoming additions to the client UI that I think most players will be extremely excited about.

What I’ve been working on is a UI addition; specifically, a right click context menu for the Possessions tab of the Character dialog. This new menu contains remote slave commands that can be used on slaves in other galaxies. It currently has five options, but it was coded in a way that it’s easily expandable, so if the feature is popular and people want more, we can do that. The current options on this menu are as follows.

• Release Slave – this was the button option that is currently in the Possessions tab. Selecting the option will allow you to permanently get rid of a slave — don’t worry, it still has the confirmation dialog so we can avoid accidents.
• Leave Stasis – this is exactly like the X-Key menu option with the added benefit that you can issue the command from another galaxy.
• Follow Me – this is also exactly like the X-Key menu option and again, it can be issued from another galaxy.
• Open Inventory – this was adapted from a little known feature of the Possessions tab — if you double click on one of your possessions it will open the inventory. I put it in the menu as well so people know it’s there (the double click command isn’t very intuitive).
• Repair Ship – this will allow you to repair your slaves on the fly, provided you can pay the credit cost needed. That’s right, no more docking to repair. Slaves being repaired must be out of stasis before the command is valid.

These new options are meant to make it possible to manage slaves when you get them stuck in hairy situations while keeping the master safe; for example getting slaves out of a galaxy like Iq’ Bana while safely sitting outside or getting your slaves to return if they get lost. They won’t in any way replace the X menu that everyone is so used to using on for slaves in the same galaxy. Also, the Repair Ship command I created for the Possessions context menu has been added to the X menu as well — as a quicker way to repair slaves on the fly without tracing through menus.

So that’s it for this week’s update. As always, questions, comments and suggestions can be posted in the forums!

Happy New Years, Star Sonatans!  2013 was a pretty good year for us, and I hope 2014 will be even better.

Within the game, 2013 saw the new Subspace Assault Expansion, with a large new area, alien invasions, and tech 22.  We added prospecting, Bindomite, TSL, and transwarping.  We restructured Olympus, and improved the galaxy map.  We continued to improve the Nexus, and rearranged and improved a lot of the low to mid level content and missions.  We’ve continued to optimize and improve both the client and server and increased both the speed and reliability of both.

We did a huge revamp on the website, which now looks and functions way better than the old one, and is much more tightly integrated.  We did massive upgrades on the billing system, and improved the whole Space Point system.  We added the suggestion list, where we can propose new features that either we come up with or the players propose on the suggestion forum, and players can vote on them to let us know where out priorities should be.

We’ve recently updated the suggestion list so that it will better track what is currently under development and what has been completed.  As you can see, the solo wave-based challenges are underway, as are the class based super items that will be the rewards for those instances.  Both are coming along really well, especially the super-item rewards that we’ve been working very hard on to help make Star Sonata a little bit more action oriented and increase the cool abilities available to players.  These will be major improvements to the game that you guys should see in the early part of 2014.

Completed, and waiting for client and server patches are new extensive high score tables and improved in-game news that will bring all the lasted developer blog posts to the in-game log in screen.

The other major project we are making great progress on is a big class rebalance spearheaded by yclepticon and s_m_w.  There have been lots and lots of discussions, maths, and testing going on, and these class balance changes are already in large part on the test server.  This is going to give more active and interesting roles to every class and improve the game for everyone across the board.

After the class balance and class super items go in, we plan another big round of suggestions and suggestion voting to help determine the major improvements to bring you during the rest of 2014.

We love working on Star Sonata and constantly improving it.  Thank you to everyone who plays Star Sonata who make all of this possible.

This is a very brief look at two more new superitems that are arriving with the class rebalance, both for Snipers.

The first is the Flak Device and is available at tech 5 and 17. This device fires a volley of exploding projectiles and fills the surrounding space with flying shrapnel hitting all nearby enemies.

The second, the Sniper Ricochet Device is available at tech 9 and 20. This devices fires a fast moving physical projectile that can bounce between targets up to five times; quickly dealing with smaller enemies or ricocheting between larger ones to deal significant damage.

Both of these devices will give Snipers a bit more AoE utility which is something they’re currently lacking. As always, questions, comments and feedback can be directed to the forums!

This week’s update is going to focus on some bug fixes and changes made to various weapons, as well as a new addition to the weapon effects system! Keep reading to find out more.

A while ago I worked on a fairly big addition to the weapons system called the ‘Weapon Effects’ system. Since I’ve never written a blog on this before, I’ll explain it a little. The weapon effects system allows us to attach various effects to any of our weapons that are triggered on various conditions. A few examples of weapon effects are Laser Splash, Warhead Splash or Projectile Ricochet and we can specify if the effect should fire on hit, miss, near miss, etc. When I added the system Chain Lasers were also moved into the new system.

Unfortunately, Chain Laser has never worked exactly the same as it did before the migration to the new system. It’s either bounced the wrong direction, bounced off into nothing, only bounced once or not even bounced at all. I’ve spent a large chunk of time this past week debugging the chain weapon effect and have gotten it into a much better state. I think it’s safe to say that when I get this fix patched live Chain Lasers will be a lot more usable and should once again work the way everyone expect them to!

The big reason for taking this time to look at the Chain Laser code was preparation for a new weapon effect that shares some of the functionality of a Chain Laser. This new effect is called the Chain Projectile (or Mutalisk Bullet, but we can’t actually call it that). It will be similar to a Chain Laser in that it bounces between targets but it will also have the advantages of a projectile such as tracking and knockback. Expect to see it used in one of the new Class Superitems that we’ve been working hard on for the rebalance!

Finally, I’ve made a few more additions to warheads and the warhead effect for the upcoming class rebalance. The most notable of these is the addition of support for parasite injection to warheads and warhead effects. Going forward we will be able to do some extremely interesting missiles utilizing this support. For example, this past week I made a powerful fire parasite for warheads and added it to the new Incendiary Missiles as well as Lancer Missiles. We are also planning on changing missiles like Entanglement missiles to inject a heavy sludge instead of doing agility reducing tweaks.

That’s it for this week’s update and this one will be the last of the year. I’ll be taking some time off for the Christmas holiday so I won’t have anything to report next week. As always feel free to post comments, questions and suggestions in the forum post. I hope everyone enjoys the holiday season and I will be back in 2014!