Easter is Here!

Easter event has started. Be sure to pay a visit to the Easter Warren Sector off Sol!

Jeff

Jeff added some equipment that new players can purchase in Mutara Gardens as well as an asteroid belt with an AI miner flying about. The miner is not just there to liven up the place: The Volcom side of the Nexus is meant to be a bit of a puzzler, with the miner acting as a hint on how to get rid of that pesky asteroid blocking the wormhole to the next galaxy. In general, Jeff is not very happy with how the Volcom starting zone currently is. Rather than fighting random cadets everywhere, there should be more puzzles and challenges.

AI can now have multiple engagement sounds. Even the most diehard of Volcom pirates needs some variety in their vocabulary other than “Yarrrr!”.

Bobbo

Bobbo found bugs and presumably fixed many.

He has also added some important details to item descriptions, such as the amount of space the items in a crate will take up, or whether a laser is ethereal or not.

s_m_w

I’ve expanded the damage meter to show individual sources. Not quite perfect, as parasites injected by missiles and such count as the player’s damage, but it’s still far more detailed than what we had before!

And it also works for healing!

On an unrelated note: Samgrahaka Bhisajvars are REALLY good. This was a test with 7 of them in a 3 gen ops setup.

I’ve also finished the next, and hopefully final, pass on Torpedoes and Thoraxes. Most importantly: Torpedo I, II and III are no longer the worst weapons in the entire game. In fact, torpedoes in general got changed: Their niche is now high DPS, low DPE weaponry. There are very few torpedoes to experiment with at the higher techs currently (mostly due to how bad torpedoes were in general), but that’ll change over time.

Since it’s going to come up: The Zebra Hooves Torpedoe got changed quite a bit. The reasoning is simple: The hallmark of the physical damage type is high DPE. For non-physical torpedoes to be in line with the ZHT (DPE of 0.4), they’d have to have far lower DPE (in the range of 0.25 and less! Torpedoes of large size classes would be approaching 0.1!), which simply didn’t work.

While the ZHT itself did lose some of its burstiness, it did inspire the general idea of what torpedoes should look like.

Jey

Last week has seen a pretty large server performance improvement, much larger than what was expected from this change! It came with a few new item related problems but all those should be fixed now. This is the reason why there hasn’t been any real update since last week, I did not want to add new things on the server when it was in an unstable state. Now that the server is a bit more stable, patching will resume later this week.

Thank you to everyone who’s been clicking yes when they crash, all those dumps are providing me with a lot of data to fix the crashes. A client patch for those I found should be available on beta in the coming days and hopefully will become the live client with the patch coming up.

Hober Mallow

Fixed Shielding 22, I kept the boss at a 30 second cycle timer because anything more made it far less exciting. The timer wasn’t the issue, it was the insane healing the boss got from seemingly out of nowhere. The boss is now less of a spank fest, and you’re less likely to kill it inside of a single damage type rotation. Killing the spawns is much more important than it previously was.

There are now Combined Augmenter blueprint packs for sale in Augmenter Labs inside of The Acropolis, this should make building the Lyceum Combined Augmenters a much more reasonable and feasible task. This means that the blueprints will no longer drop from AI.

Assault Dropships, from the Assault Behemoth, have been reworked and are now close range and tanky fighters. A non Fleet Commander user can only deploy 2. They should be really interesting.

Updated the player progress missions for Tech 21 and Tech 22 skills, they are now much more specific and no longer mislead the player about what they need to do in order to level their skills up.

In regards to Subspace Invasion, I am working on a system where you won’t have to kill Outposts for monthly missions rewards, you will instead be killing invading Motherships instead. These will spawn at the beginning of the Invasion, and I’ll move a big chunk of the rewards away from Outposts into Motherships. It will still be worthwhile to kill Outposts, I don’t intend to take that away from players.

Ryan & Pixel

Pixel has been hard at work updating the various guides on the SS website.

• Guide Sector Menu: http://www.starsonata.com/players-guide/
• Quick Start Guide: http://www.starsonata.com/quick-start-guide/
• Summary & Key Bindings: http://www.starsonata.com/summary-and-key-bindings/

And last but not least: A far more convenient way to check your lockouts!

SunDog60

Added Zen Reset missions, available in Sai’s Retreat (once they are added). They will instantly reset one of seven Zen skills of your choice.

Jey

Death to instances, lets ban all players so the issues aren’t a problem anymore.
On a more serious note, beta client is currently available on http://www.starsonata.com/dl/StarSonata_2_beta.exe and include multiple crash fixes currently in testing.
If you crash a lot, grab it and keep me updated. Another server patch is coming by the end of the week, specific time still to be determined.

Bobbo

He has been finding and fixing a few bugs with the new class skills and “investigating” the Seer player experience.

Pixel

Has been looking at the Dark Wave weapon and adjusting it dramatically to become useful and thanks all those owners of this weapon for your patience on the matter. The image below is subject to changes but this is the current development on the weapon.

Expect some changes and improvements over this coming week to the players guide section of the website.

Jeff

Been fixing Nexus issues, for example adjusting the spawners in the first Volcom galaxy and adjusting commodities in the Janitor’s Outpost AI base for next universe.

Pixel

He’s been working on the skill tree selection images! Here’s the new additions that made it into the game just before the universe reset.

Including some work within The Nexus (Ignore the bunny eared Nightfury).

Tunnel and droppings galaxy.

Fuel drone in Deep Space.

New Universe

The universe reset is at the usual time of 1PM server time. However North America has entered their summer time, making this 1PM EDT, for the UK players (who enter summer time next weekend) this is 5PM (GMT), not the usual 6PM. Here’s an countdown timer Bobbo setup: click here.

Hober Mallow

Arctia, Vulcan, Mira and The Jungle are being tweaked to be more difficult for their appropriate level. This means that players who are at that level should seek out other people to do the content with. This was done by increasing the strength of the bosses, and by adding a very small Aggro radius to the minions within these Dungeons.

Kalthi Depths is currently a little too easy, and a little too hard at the same time. AI like Corrupted Battleships and Corrupted Cruisers are far too difficult to take down, and lower danger factor AI like regular Kalthi ships are too easy. Expect outliers to be buffed or nerfed accordingly.

Pixel

Pixel has been updating the skill tree section with these wounderful images!

New Universe

As the universe is coming to a close don’t forget to pack before Saturday March 11th at 1:00 PM Eastern / Server time.

Jeff

Added 25% shield regen buff to the shield trans of the Support Drone for low level support focus players.

Made a super item for low level Fleet Focus players called “Forward Operating Base Deployment Device”. It has a very short range field gen that gives +25% shield regen and +25% electric and launches two fighters, but the base is very fragile, with the intention that you either use it out of combat to regen, or in combat, but away from the enemies.

Hober

Hober will be posting two short blogs about what has been done to Kalthi Depths and Subspace.

s_m_w

Other than doing back-end stuff to ensure that AIs don’t suddenly get super powerful thanks to the class skill changes, I’ve been digging into our balance sheets and unearthing issues and oddities, like Sebastopols getting worse DPE the more pellets they shoot.

Our experimentation with weapon balance changes, mostly focused on Thoraxes and the “Burst” line of weaponry on test continues. Expect a blog post with more details, our reasoning behind the upcoming changes, as well as our thoughts on why changes were needed in the first place in the near future.

Pixel

Pixel has been busy giving visual effects to all the tweak Superitems, here’s some examples:

He has also been working on new Tech 16, 18, 20 tier 0 base extractors for next universe last minute to encourage players to use higher tech bases as extraction kits. These will be sold in Blue Photon as blueprints. Here’s an example of metal extractors (these are subject to changes):

Pixel has been posting some topics on the forum related to next universe changes:
Base Extractors
Module Tablet Packs – Related to modules

Additionally the level 16 Tractoring skill acquired from Capella requirement has been reduced from 50 Umbra to 30 Umbra.

In-General

Everyone in general has been working towards the patch and universe reset, fixing any bugs and ironing out any potential issues that could arrise when the time comes. We’ve also updated the Steam trailer video for everyone to enjoy.

Jeff

Jeff has created a Support Drone Device that involves a Support Drone and a tech 3 weapon called “Push Back” which shoots a high velocity physical bullet with no recoil and short range. This is targeted towards ‘The Nexus’ for players to have the ability to play the support focus role by deploying this drone and healing your buddies while pushing the enemy back using the drones knockback weapon.

Darksteel

We’re changing some aspects of the commodity system of Kalthi Depths. Hazardium and Precarium are being phased out of the game as well as the Unstable / Stable / Enriched / Concentrated variants of the 2 as well as the stages of upgraded Perilium. We felt like this was unnecessary cluttering of drop tables as well as making KD builds more annoying than they really should be for no reason.

For instance, if a build currently takes 1 Precarium, 1 Concentrated Hazardium and 1 Enriched Perilium you will now have to supply 3 Perilium, 2 Rudimentary Admixium, 2 Middling Admixium, 2 Advanced Admixium and 1 Expert Admixium.

We will be making factories that will exist for one universe for the players to convert their built materials back to their raw materials EG Concentrated Hazardium –> 1 Perilium, 1 Rudimentary Admixium, 1 Middling Admixium, 1 Advanced Admixium and 1 Expert Admixium and 1 billion credits.

Pixel

Has been busy creating/splicing pixels together to create the almighty ‘Space Urchins!’, these little creatures will roam around Perilous space grappling onto their victims and exposing them to their spikey bodies. Some will inflict a lot of damage while others could provide benifical purposes… Lyceum scientists expect these to appear next universe due to the unstable nature of the fabric of space.

A new type of ship has also been created but its usage and reasoning remains a mystery!

Q/A

-13- : what is happening to Ruins at reset, specifically?
Not as far as I’m aware at this present time, apart from the current conversion of these ships which are more useful ships and will be tech 20 instead of tech 19:

• Unt Faranji Wingship X
• Bule Abadi Sidhe X
• Golagoay Vazaha Archetype X
• Kikale Mzungu Frigate X

-13- : is there going to be a patch before reset, and if so, when?
What will happen is the universe reset and patch will happen at the same time, this will result in a temporary universe for one week that will allow players to acquire the nessary class skill required for the proper universe reset. Gives everyone an equal start when the rush begins!

KangarooBlob: Could we get a comprehensive list of updates/balance changes coming in for reset please?
We will be providing a patchnote release and possibly other blog posts before this event takes place that we feel may need more context.

Chrono: Is XYZ gear being nerfed?
Only X gear has recieved a slight downgrade.

Pixel

Pixel’s been busy working on a new Cleft Claw to roam around earthforce and wildspace layer. Bringing abit more hell fire to the universe.

He’s also going to start working on the base extractor changes, where only one type of each extractor can be equiped for next universe.

Hober Mallow

On test are also some changes to a variety of Pulse Guns, Magcannons and Laser Beams. Many of these weapons that had less than 1 second rate of fire now have between 1 and 1.5 second rate of fire (this is especially true of the Speed Demon locked weapons like the Hell Raiser, and other weapons that impart parasites/fires). The reasoning behind these changes was to preserve their DPS (they have the exact same DPS listed on the weapons) while enabling Speed Demons and other fast rate of firing characters to use the weapons without wasting DPS due to the rate of fire cap. It should be very hard, if not close to impossible, to hit the rate of fire cap with them now. Weapons that chain or splash, have been increased to 2-5 seconds as well. This was to make the Gunner weapons feel more thematic and heavy hitting. Let me know how these changes feel, or what effects they have on your setup.

Dark Steel

Dark Steel, mainly went over with the rest of the development team what Augmenters should be given a unequip due to changes.

This also applies to the following ships to recieve a free Augmenter reset:

• Prawn
• Resistance
• Hephaestus Machine
• Wattage
• Delquad

Q/A

Masterful: Reset? Still in the works sadly as we’re still sorting out issues. The current goal is sometime March but don’t take this as a solid deadline.

Chrono: Are termites being more buffed again ontop? Yes next universe they’ll be unleashed into the wild to test your resolve!

SunDog60

I’ve been working on collecting bug reports and getting them fixed with the help of Egrosphere. If you know of any obscure bugs that we may not know about, please feel free to contact me on Discord and let me know about them.

Red

Red’s been working on making various missions such as the tech 20 skill missions auto-start when you get to the boss zone.

Ingendum

Ingen’s been busy working on spawners and tracking down bugs in the new class system to get them all tested and fixed. More testing for this new system on the test server would be very helpful to getting this system complete and ready for universe reset.

Unfortunately for readers, much of what was discussed and done was for internal changes such as changes to spawners that won’t affect gameplay, as well as more tweaks and changes for the upcoming class system change.

Bobbo

Bobbo’s been working on fixing universe generation issues (issues arising from the addition of Kalthi Depths to the universe, mainly).

JeffL

When a new userbase is deployed by a player, instead of being an unnamed kit, it will now display the owner’s name initially.

Deathblossoms will no longer fire at every target within range (to the maximum target count they can achieve). If your deathblossom does not think it can hit an enemy within range, it will not target them. This will not affect ethereal weaponry (because if you are in range, an ethereal weapon will go through obstacles and other enemies to hit the target), this will affect non-ethereal weaponry and as a result mainly projectile weaponry.

Community Meeting

Hober will be having a conversation with the playerbase about Kalthi Depths loot on Friday February 3^rd 2017 at 3PM EST.

Click the flailing rat to join the conversation.

Hober Mallow

Hober has finished the first pass on all of the Kalthi Depths AI, the new AI should be put on test shortly for your testing pleasure.

Hober has convinced the rest of the development team that blueprints requiring Station Management by the player equipping them was unnecessary. Going forward, they will require the appropriate level of Equipment for a player to equip them to a base.

Finally, he will be adding one time missions for the majority of non Serengeti Tech 20 ships. These missions will have (roughly) the same requirements as the blueprints. This change is meant to allow players who do not have a Wild Space presence to continue progressing through content.

Pixel

enkelin

enkelin applied his renowned mathematical wizardry to the Gunner Analyzer. It should be up and running on the test server sooner rather than later. He has also come up with a brilliant plan that will solve all of our BvB woes… but he’s not ready to share it yet.

Bobbo

Working on Gunner Analyzer, courtesy of enkelin.

JeffL

Created a cool new Speed Demon super item that increases Shield Regeneration out of combat! Otherwise, he is working on things behind the scenes.

MicroCapacitor

Looking into potential issues with resistances and soaks.

Jey

He has been diligently hunting down bugs, and patching vulnerability issues. He was able to get the client to a point where it passed all of his stability tests. Out of the 183 dmps that were sent in the past 2 months, 164 of them are confirmed to be fixed by his changes. The rest were crashes without sufficient information, so they may or may not be fixed.

He has narrowed down the root of the graphical glitch that causes engine particle effects to display on things they shouldn’t, now he has to figure out the best way to fix it.

Oh, and we finally got him to move to Discord!