Happy 2020, Star Sonata!
2019 was a busy year for us, with an active dev and QA team and lots of little improvements that have been patched in. In addition there are some huge changes and improvements that are currently on test2 server being thoroughly tested before an early 2020 release. Some of the things that we added in 2019 are:
- AI Empires
- Instance Scaling
- Improved the graphics for many weapons and engines using a new particle system
- We fought Rattie Moe by the hundreds, and the server is running so fast now, there was almost no lag
- Bonnet Expansion
- Lots of conversions of clunky trade in missions to the new alternate currency system
- Revamp of Strontium-90 missions
- Ongoing improvements to Kalthi Depths
- Comet improvements
- Market check improvements
- V Formation improvements and other bot AI improvements
- Improved Zebucart boss fight
- Revamp of cloaks
- Revamp of overloaders
- Rebalance of exterminators
- Rebalance of fighters and fighter bay improvements
- Rebalance of drones
- Rebalance of engines
- Torpedo rework and rebalance
- Rebalanced Pulse Guns and Mag Cannons
- Improved parasite code and balanced parasite damage
We have some major changes to BvB that will be added with the new universe this month, and termites 2.0 to be patched mid-uni.
Healing Revamp and Other Things on Test2
On test2 are the exciting changes we’ve been working on revolving Shield Monkey and healing changes. Healing no longer manufactures shields by big reductions to the shields lost with resistances, so you don’t get the weird situation where cross healing is super efficient. HPS has been generally increased, but those shields have to come from somewhere. At level 1 of Shield Monkey, ShM’s get 1 extra shield slot in support freighters, and at level 2, they gain the ability to steal shields from enemies with shield transference weapons.
Zen of the Shield has been changed to +5% shield max and +1% shield regen per level, so everyone can have a much higher shield bank and not be so worried about being 1-shot by bosses and in PvP. Long battles will still be about shield sustain, but with more margin for safety. Shield Monkeys can alternate between healing and stealing without needing to worry about constantly healing the tank without him dying. Shield chargers have been made incredibly stronger, but now only operate out of combat. They won’t suck up your energy during a fight, and when the fight is over, you can quickly fill back up again. For recon class, that means they can even dip in and out of fights to fill up their shields if they can get away from the enemies for long enough.
Transference Power now increases the strength of shield transference lasers while healing, and Transference Efficiency increases the strength of shield transference lasers while stealing. Damage tweaks and buffs now only apply to shield stealing and not healing, but overall, HPS has been increased, as the intended bottleneck is not how fast you can heal, but how fast you can get the shields with which to heal. Many augmenters with transference power and/or efficiency have had their stats slightly altered.
Most resistances have been removed from most ships and replaced by a combination of a new armor stat and higher shield banks from Zen of the Shield. This is in an attempt to move away from the Pokemon-like system where you have to memorize what is vulnerable to what and the only difference between the damage types is just needing the right type for the right enemy. Armor works mostly as a “resist all” stat, with the exception that it is doubly effective against physical, and half effective against mining and transference stealing.
Since the various damage types are no longer as useful as ways to bypass resistances, some types have been increased in power and/or utility. Physical weapon strength has been increased in power by 22%, making them the strongest damage type, generally, though higher in DPE and lower in DPS than energy. Radiation weapons have been increased in power by 33%, and are now the ethereal type of damage. “Laser” damage type no longer exists. Surgical damage on a target is now tracked, and when an AI dies, it has up to twice as much change to drop augmenters and items (but not items from drop tables) based on how much surgical was used to kill it, with the last hit being slightly overvalued in the calculation. Kills against players and their possessions can cause up to twice the item damage and drop up to twice the credits based on how much surgical was used.
For now the way that bases heal will be left mostly how it is on live as to not disrupt the current BvB meta. Base healing will probably get changed at the uni reset following this one, but we will be sure to let you know.
Road Ahead
We had some lofty goals at the beginning of 2019, mostly a full class rebalance and release of tech 23 content. Those got delayed because we wanted the ability to fully branch code and content in order to really test and polish and not hold up our regular patch schedule for minor improvements and bug fixes. But being able to fully branch like this is dependent on me converting all of our many balance sheets over to a new system that I devised, which is powerful, but takes a lot of work. All the various rebalancing of engines, cloaks, weapons, shields, etc that you’ve seen over the last year or so are the results of the new balance sheets. It just takes a ton of time, and I spent almost the whole year personally working on Excel sheets and VBA macros. What I thought would take about a month has been about a year and a half now, but a lot of the changes to the sheets have really improved the way we can make and design items, and should pay off in the years ahead.
Because it was taking so long, we decided to do the Shield Monkey and healing first, rather than waiting for everything to go in one gigantic update. The Shield Monkey rebalance has gone really well and received very good feedback from testers. It will be ready to go soon, and possibly will be paired with some minor changes to Engineer class skills and rebalancing of all of the support freighter hulls. We have a new balance sheet for ships that is really cool, using a “perk” system, but it will result in a lot of changes, since our current stats for ships are largely unbalanced. To minimize disruption for the players, but to push updates out without waiting for everything to be done, we are thinking to rebalance classes two at a time by related hull type, and rebalance ships of that hull type together.
Our nearterm roadmap for 2020 is to release the Shield Monkey and possibly minor Engineer changes described above very soon, finish the few remaining balance sheets, release the mod rework and the new cargo system, and then proceed with the other class rebalance two at a time. We have a lot of design work done of the tech 23 stuff, but we want to get the class rebalances done before that can be released.
