Greetings! I’m reaching out to update you all on the release schedule for the next universe cycle and the upcoming changes to PvP in Wild Space. My aim here is to provide high-level information on the planned changes and communicate when you may expect more detailed information and a concrete universe reset announcement. If you’re just here for the basic information, here it is:

1. The next universe reset will occur in April at the earliest.

2. Once decided, the reset date will be announced with four weeks’ notice.

3. Upon universe reset, there will be a two-week temporary universe so that players can get accustomed to the new ownership mechanics in Wild Space.

4. After the two-week temporary universe, another reset will occur and we will have a full 4-month universe.

If you have any questions or clarifications, you can feel free to send me a DM on Discord at enk#3571.

Controlling and Contesting Territory

While contesting territory is an iconic part of Star Sonata, too often it takes place in a cynical manner where the actual value of the territory is irrelevant and the true aim of the conflict is to inconvenience one’s opponent. To make matters worse, the rules and restrictions surrounding galaxy assault are impossibly complicated to the point that even the devs are not always certain of every detail of the system. It is clear that we need to drastically simplify the process of contesting territory, and do so in a way that prioritizes genuine conflict over resources.

One of the greatest obstacles to this vision is the current ownership system. Simply put, it’s too quick and easy. In a short ten minutes, you are capable of greatly reducing your opponent’s ability to assault your territory, and any assault they would make would be subject to the arcane rules of BvB. We are going to have to make some big changes to galaxy ownership if we are going to realize our vision for Wild Space conflict.

We have prepared two major changes to the process of claiming and contesting territory in Wild Space:

1. Establishing ownership will take longer than before, and carry an initial and periodic resource cost. Instead of merely controlling a galaxy for ten minutes, you must deploy a new type of base and complete a resource-intensive construction project in order to establish ownership. This process may take a couple hours. Once ownership is established, a steady stream of resources will be consumed to maintain it.

2. There is no PvP possible whatsoever in owned galaxies.

Note that these changes work together to focus all territory conflict on the first few hours after an initial claim, as this is the time when it’s most typical to see genuine conflict over resources. The rules of engagement are also drastically simplified since all fighting takes place in an unowned galaxy state.

Changes to Base Combat

Focusing all territory conflict into the unowned galaxy state means that we need to make some changes to how base combat works. Otherwise, it would be too easy for people to deploy effectively unlimited numbers of bases (especially unattached bases) and cause the same kind of lag and frustration that led us to take this project on in the first place. We have prepared a couple changes to base combat that will address this concern:

1. Unattached bases can’t be deployed in unowned galaxies.

2. Base weapon ranges are greatly reduced (maxing out around 3k overall).

3. Bases no longer use healing weapons.

The reason base weapon ranges are so long is to allow bases to effectively defend against players while the base owners are offline. This is no longer necessary since ownership confers absolute defense against PvP. In the new system, base combat (against other players) only takes place in a window of a few hours, during which time the base owners are online and actively working to establish ownership. Therefore, it’s no longer necessary for bases to be able to “take care of themselves” to the same extent as they do on Liberty. A similar explanation holds for the removal of base healing: this is something that helps bases stay alive while their owners are offline, but that won’t be a concern anymore in the new system.

These changes mean that contesting territory is all about surgical PvB against your opponent’s isolated industry bases, all the while fending off PvP from that opponent and potential PvB incursions against your own growing territory. The best thing about this is that the time scale of each fight is on the order of an hour or two, not a 12-hour BvB slog or a universe-long war of attrition. I’ll never forget the time my EU friends made me get up at 2 AM Eastern to organize a BvB and then teased me six hours later for wanting to take a break for breakfast.

Mid-Universe Reveals

Changing the ownership mechanics as detailed above has some serious knock-on effects to other aspects of Wild Space. By ruling out any PvP in owned galaxies, we could be making Wild Space too safe and boring. Not only that, but someone who had an unlucky reset or joined mid-universe would not have any way of taking territory away from those who got there first. It turns out that these two concerns share a common solution: mid-universe galaxy reveals.

1. Every 9 days and 17 hours*, a fresh batch of galaxies will appear in Wild Space, connected in some way to the existing map.

2. These galaxies will have higher average resource abundance to make up for lost time.

3. Since ownership is a time- and resource-intensive process, it no longer requires a connection to your team’s HQ. Anyone with spare base slots will be able to compete for the newly revealed galaxies no matter where they appear on the map.

*Bonus points if you can figure out the logic behind this timing!

Release Schedule

We will continue the precedent of giving four weeks’ notice of universe resets. This means that April is the earliest that the current universe can end. You can expect detailed information on the Wild Space Conflict project to be released along with the universe reset notice. In order to give players time to familiarize themselves with the new ownership mechanics, the next universe reset will enter a 2-week temporary universe after which we’ll reset into a full 4-month universe.

I’m sure that many of you have questions and concerns about the information I’ve shared here. That is completely natural and expected since I’ve glossed over the details and left out a lot of nitty-gritty considerations and adjustments we’ve got planned. Rest assured: you’ll get your hands on all that information when we make the 4-week universe reset notice. However, if you are fired up about this and can’t wait until then, you are more than welcome to reach out to me via Discord DM and share your comments, questions, and concerns.

[Empyrean Zone]

• Added additional drops to bosses and added additional gear exchanges at the Celestial Encampment base (new AC will be added within 48 hours after patch).

[Engineer Changes]

• Engineer Class Skill 3 now gives 33% Resistance to Damage when in a Support Freighter.
• Zen of Engineer gives 1% of Resistance per level to Temporary Drones (the skill doesn’t currently list – will be fixed in future patch).
• Took 1 of the shields off of all non-super item bubble drones. Reduced the diameter of all non-super item bubbles. Each Bubble drone now gives nearby drones a chunk of flat shield bank, starting at 30k with the Droplet Drone and reaching 500k with the Twisted Galactic Bubble Drone.

[UI/Client Changes]

• Generic Gear and Augmenter debris now have visuals that reflects the quality of the item.
• Client now takes player’s level of nanotech plating into account when calculating repair costs instead of giving wrong costs
• Cargo hold tooltip no longer goes negative when out of cargo slots.
• Added a new Neon Blue Delquadrikamdon skin.
• Added a new Neon Red Phoenix skin.
• Added a new Jelly fish Model and texture.
• Added a new Space Grey skin for the Space Blue family of ships.
• Added a new Kelvin Advanced skin for the Kelvin.
• Fixed Delquadrikamdons engine placement.
• New models and textures, and glowmaps for the following: Goblin Family, Cleft Thorns, Voltage Family, Inferno Family, Kelvin Family, Constable Family, and Monochrome Family.
• Missiles no longer appear in the squad/assets bar.

[Skill Changes]

• Update description of Bot Ph.D. to clarify that it gives 2 extra combat/wild bots on swarm limit.
• Fixed skill description of team roster skill to say starts with 70 slots.

[Item Changes]

• Faranji Pulse Charger aura on Unt Faranji Wingship now works on combat bots.
• Adjusted stats on Astranomologica Augmenter so that it is strictly an upgrade.
• Platform Augmentation Alpha, Beta and Gamma blueprints no longer require Drone Mastery to install.
• Reduced Galactic Junk Station Kits starting credits from 10 mil to 100k.
• Reduced the manhours from 400,000,000 to 100,000,000 for the blueprints for Kalthi Commander, Kalthi Deployer, Kalthi Stinger and Kalthi Warrior.
• Shattered Celestial Core again decays on universe reset per previous patch notes now there’s a use for it.
• Reduced Particle Stream augmod from 30 flat speed to 25.
• Coordinator Gemini Support Platform class-specific super item inbuilt to the Kalthi Armored Deployer has had the 20% damage reduction buff granted by the Sub Drone removed.
• Renamed Small Pax Cosmologica Fighter Generator Crate to Small Pax Cosmologica Fighter Crate.
• Fixed the Sas mission to give proper Pax Cosmologica Fighter Crate.
• Kalthi Armored Sanctuary, inbuilt to Kalthi Armored Warrior electric cost reduced from 2,500 per second to 300 per second.
• Kalthi Blazing Engagement, inbuilt to Kalthi Armored Warrior, has additional damage and -range, +vis debuffs if you manage to charge straight into an enemy.
• Updated description on the Kalthi Blazing Engagement.
• Adjusted the Wrathful Snare Mine’s effects: Additional +4500 vis to enemies within the drone’s active range, Resistance reduction increased from +10% to +20%, Speed reduction increased from -85% to -95%, increased drone lifetime to last 10 minutes, fixed the visibility adjustments so it stealths better; still susceptible to suns and detection like Seers.
• Changed the Wrathful Snare Mine Device to have a cooldown of 2 minutes and updated the description.
• Reduced the maximum opacity of the Deployer Weak Point Cover Up super item’s visuals (used to be a blinding green).
• Increased all the Kalthi Warrior Focus super items charge time from 90 seconds to 120 seconds.
• Kalthi Heart Focus superitem: add a -electric tempering at the end along with new visuals. Consumes shields instead of reducing Shield Max.
• Kalthi Warrior Focus super: grant immunity to grem and critical hits while in regen phase. Extra 5% life steal afterwards. Fixed the visual color to blue.
• Kalthi Warrior Mind focus super item: removed the -energy max penalty, deploy a huge electron cloud revealing surround objects.
• Kalthi Armored Commander’s Fighter Overdrive Blitz class-locked superitem fixed to actually work. Drawback effects are no longer a separate aura tweak, so only the fighters that receive the benefits suffer the drawbacks of the ability.
• Kalthi Armored Commander’s Commander Coordination Array cooldown was reduced from 5 minutes to 3 minutes.
• Converted Pax Stratos & Heliosoleta ships and Grand Navigator capital augmenters in “Allied Staging Sector” to trade bay exchanges (will need to be live edited shortly after patch).
• Added new super item to Voulge, Gravity Well Stabilizer, that reduces speed of self, allies and foes greatly and gives a forced thurster tweak.
• Reworked Voulge Thruster and Flamberge Thruster super items to be powerful Oilheart Afterburners, with the electric regen utility from the old version preserved.
• Adjusted the Voulge and Flamberge Charge Drones: Increased the electric regen tweak, Increased the HPS on the drone, now gain Energy Damage resistance when healed.
• Zeus’ Energizing Beam will no longer be Neurobound on purchase.
• Crawl Wyrm Blueprint now requires 50 Petroleum, instead of 5000.

[AI Changes]

• Ruined Sanctuary and Empyrean zone bosses are now listed on the Instance Scaling Leaderboard.
• Fixed issue with Darkerhole’s reflectivity so its harder to see then Darkhole.

[Universe Changes]

• Added Translator Droid for purchase on Earth Central in Sol.

[Next Universe Changes]

• Preventing the placement of Warp Beacons in Emphatic Biology and Empathy Field. You cannot transwarp to an engineless galaxy anyways and prevents players from wasting warp beacons.
• Removing planets in Building Academy Entrance.
• Increased the drop chance of Holochart Fragment Epsilon within Tortuga.
• Renamed “Undergrowth” in the Protoplasmica to “The Undergrow” due to being a duplicate name to a galaxy within The Jungle.
• Added additional loot to Kalthi.
• Adjusted some Kalthi Armada Commander’s minions’ attack patterns to work properly.
• Moved Imperial Tweaking level one to Earth Central with other Imperial Skills and removed the AI Base from Anatolia.

[Mission Changes]

• Fixed the “Get Piloting 7″ mission to require “Get Piloting 5″ to be completed prior to becoming available.
• Removed some improper xml tags from the description for the Constable mission “Undercover Investigation”.

[System]

• Expanded base log system. See this dev diary for more information.
• New fuzzy Market Check search. See this dev diary for more information.
• Attempting to transfer, capture and/or dock bots/wild bots will now list all of the items that have skill levels too high to the prevent the action from occurring.
• Changed use condition for base upgrading to be using a kit while docked in a base, rather than while targeting a base. Will allow players to place bases without having to deselect another base.
• Can now upgrade bases within the same tech without the owner needing to be online, tech increasing will still require them to be online. Error messages now communicate this better.
• Transwarp no longer factors in avoided galaxies when determining distance.
• Negative Transference resistance reduces healing again.
• Resistance to Damage auras reduces healing.
• Wild Bots can no longer scoop items via RTS command.
• Made AI/bots think faster when they are in combat. This should result in better and quicker weapon choices if the target’s resistance profile changes.
• For items that have a tech requirement, their info box now properly states “base” instead of “ship” when it is a base only item.
• Dungeons will now reflect the premium status of the galaxy they’re in.
• Bases will now consider envelopments at the same weight as the target they were trying to hit if they expect to hit the envelopment instead of the target when prioritizing targets.
• Galaxy scanners can no longer be used remotely.
• Reduction of excessive graphical and network spam with warhead effects.
• Event chat now includes the new buy/sell price on ‘Updating prices for’ message when updated.
• Updated self-destruct error message when already in spirit form.

[Bug Fixes]

• Fixed a bug where player assets wouldn’t update with team skill changes on galaxy state changes (ownership).
• Fix for monthly mission reset timer not using the right time zone as the rest of the time resets when determining the current month.
• Fixed bot order limit using the programming characters order limit rather than the bot owners order limit.
• Fixed a bug with re-centering not working correctly sometimes.
• Fixed certain AC trade or normal sales being blocked for items with no scrap value.
• Fixed a issue where super items would still work if already equipped even if the hull tech exceeded the limit the super states.
• Controlbots will now auto unequip if somehow equipped on anything but a bot or if multiple are equipped.
• Fixed a bug where Outpost Drones did not respect the team Outposts skill limit.
• Fixed a bug with bases unequipping items into multiple stacks.
• Fixed a bug with base extenders not unequipping if there’s an unequipped stack of it already.
• Bot fighter/missile selection will no longer select a missile/fighter too high tech for the bay to use, preventing launching.
• Fixed a bug that made you lose the TSL storage bonus during the last 24 hours of a subscription.
• Fixed a bug where drone resists could be included in ship scan results.
• Trade bots are no longer affected by /botsfight or /botsattack.
• Fixed an bug with Concourses at universe generation not properly linking.
• Fixed juxtaposition being able to randomly choose the same gal twice making a dead end.
• Fixed a bug that causes certain custom galaxies to overridden to no PvP rules due to layer settings during universe generation.

Welcome to another Star Sonata Dev Diary!

Today we’re going to talk about an upcoming backend expansion, Base Logs and Market Check! One of the most sought after and longest asked for things in the history of Star Sonata!

Base Logs

Currently on the live server, base logs are divided into 4 categories that store 15 logs each – Trade, Construction, Management, and Important (trades over 100 million credits). None of which saves when the server crashes or is restarted currently. Most important gets washed away by docking, bot purchases or various odd-ball tasks.

We’ve taken that and expanded it to 9 categories and 15 logs per category. Some categories retain memory while the server is up but on restart or crash are not retained due to being lower priority.

List of Items that display and save with server crash/restart:

Trade: Buying and Selling under 100 million credits.

Important Trades: Trades greater than 100 million credit but lower than 10 billion credits.

Very Important Trades: Trades greater than 10 billion credits.

Management: Equip/Unequip, Use Item, Toss Item, Set Trade Bay

Ledger: Construction Started/Finished, Transfer Item, Install Blueprint, Cancel Construction, Add/Remove Credits.

Status: Set Name, Changed Rank Access, Set Team, Transfer Base, Hostile Takeover, Abandoned.

List of items that are retained in memory but don’t save:

Construction Misc: Pausing/Resuming/Setting Description.

Bots: Docking and Buying/Selling of Bots.

Docking: Docking by players.

While not a radical departure from the current state and the interface remains the same – we hope to add additional features that are able to build off this first iteration to help players better manage their shops, production hubs and have greater insight into past events.

Market Check

Next up is the market check search, which can now perform “fuzzy” searches. When an exact match can’t be found the client will present a selection dialog with a list of up to 50 similarly spelt items, ordered by how similar they are to the search term. The algorithm is fairly simple, looking at the number of matching words and letters.

We also optimized the interface to ignore capitalization as some items (Artifact) were picky about exact matches in the past. These changes should help players spend less time focusing on exact spelling.

This morning a bunch of duplicate credit card charges accidentally went out to our credit card processor.  We have refunded all of the duplicate charges.

Our two old servers were supposed to have been taken offline and wiped.  One of them was, but the old web and database server was mysteriously brought back online by our hosting provider this morning unwiped after being offline for many days, and it ran our recurring billing process as soon as it came up based on its stale data.  Jey has connected to it and completely wiped it.

Our apologies for any problems or inconvenience that this may have caused.

Hello Sonatians! There have been whispers amongst the player base that Fighters and Deathblossoms would see some sort of adjustment sooner or later. I am here to confirm that we are definitely making some targeted changes to both of them, and we plan to patch them in soon. We’re doing this because, in our conversations with you during the Healing Revamp, we committed to taking decisive action to fix pain points and problems sooner rather than later. We’ve also found that the way that Fighters and the Deathblossom works causes the game to become almost unplayable in crowded situations.

With that being said, let’s dive into some of the problems we’re going to address.

Note: Things may be subject to change before release.

Problems

Deathblossom

When enough SOBs (Space Objects) are present on the field, the user’s game experience deteriorates rapidly. Not only do excessive SOBs cause significant graphical lag, they also lead to severe network latency between players and the server. The more Deathblossoms looking for targets to fire at, the bigger the lag and latency for all players involved.

We decided to target two separate things in order to fix this problem:

• Bots firing Deathblossoms.
  • Bots will no longer use a Deathblossom.
• Deathblossoms firing at fighters.
  • Deathblossoms will no longer fire at fighters.

When a Deathblossom is fired, it creates lots of space objects that need to be tracked. When those projectiles fly towards fighters, and the fighters evade them, those projectiles still exist and will keep trying to track towards the fighters. This causes a significant amount of latency and graphical lag.

Also, when a critical mass of fighters are on the battlefield it becomes almost impossible to actually use a Deathblossom or splash weapons to kill them fast enough due to the cap on the number of targets splash is allowed to hit (20 at present).

This creates a weird situation where Deathblossoms almost completely counter fighters, until you bring enough fighters to a battlefield and suddenly the Deathblossom is nearly useless against them. UPDATE: Several players pointed out that splash, on live, does not have a limit. This limit was considered in the past, but was not implemented in favor of another change. Unfortunately, I had bad information. However, this does not change the point of the project.

We’ve decided to remove this from the equation. These changes will result in Fighters being much more durable against players and AI that use Deathblossoms. They will also result in Gunner bots doing less total damage than they used to. We’re aware that this will result in lower damage output from high-end bots, but we believe that Gunner is overtuned in DPS in the first place. Any niche situations where the drop in Gunner bot DPS unreasonably affects squad play will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Fighters

When enough fighters are present on the field, the user’s game experience deteriorates rapidly. There are too many objects with their own particle effects from weapons and engines in play, and when a critical mass of fighters are on the battlefield it becomes almost impossible to actually figure out which ones you should prioritize shooting down. This means that area-of-effect weaponry are the best way to deal with them, but even this is unreliable because of Evasion and the random nature of target selection.

However, the biggest reason to adjust fighters is the sheer number of fighters players have fielded at once. The presence of this many fighters in play at once creates an enormous amount of client and network lag, and has made it clear that Star Sonata is not able to handle massive swarms of player assets. All of these factors combine to create a situation that warrants a change to fighters.

We decided to target a few things in order to address these issues:

• All fighters will require 1 slot to launch.
• Bots will be disallowed from launching fighters.
• Fighter bays will have a maximum of 2 slots (+2 on Fleet Commanders).
  • The total damage that Fighters do is increased to compensate for the reduction in the total number of fighters launched.
  • Fighter shield bank will be increased, and they’ll be made a little bit bigger visually.
  • Stat bonuses on Capital class Fighter Bays are doubled.
• Evasion will be removed from fighters.
  • Fighters will have a 90% chance of avoiding non-targeted damage. This includes area-of-effect, splash, non-targeted collisions, and so on.
• Fighters with aura generators will no longer have them, and fighters that take very high amounts of energy for extra damage will no longer do so.
  • Death of First Born, Jovian, and Panther Kitten fighters are examples of fighters that have been changed.
• Radiation Expert will no longer apply to Fighters.
  • Flight Controller will give 20% damage per level to Fighters (from 15%, on live).
  • Advanced Flight Controller will give Fighters +15% Damage.
• Pulse Guns on fighters now act like Magcannons, and do not inherit the velocity of the fighter.

The most controversial change is the removal of fighters from combat bots. It’s important that we do this because Bots represent an automatic way of engaging targets, and they can be used to immediately launch dozens or even hundreds of fighters in seconds. As long as Bots are allowed to launch fighters, we will continue to see players trying to figure out how to reach critical mass with regards to the number of fighters on the field at once.

To address this, we are going to make fighters more powerful on the main ship.

In addition, there have been long standing requests from the players themselves for changes to be made to fighters.

• Players have routinely asked for fighters with projectiles to be changed so that they continue to fire at targets when in range, so we’re doing that.
• Players have also asked for AoE and Collision code mitigation, and although we’re not giving them resistances or immunity to it they will be highly resilient against it.
  • They also will no longer be targeted by Deathblossoms!
• Players have also asked for fighters other than Radiation to be useful, and we’ve done this as well by removing the Radiation Expert Bonus from fighters but buffing all fighters Damage values through Flight Controller and Advanced Flight Controller.
  • This will result in a reduction to Radiation damage bonuses on Fighters, but an increase to non Radiation damage bonuses.
  • UPDATE 2: We have also changed Radiation Expert so that Radiation Damage is increased by 15% per level, while Damage is is increased by 25% per level. (NOTE: This means Radiation weapons will have ~154% bonus damage.) This will allow Fleet Commanders to consider a wider array of damage types when outfitting their combat bots.
• Players have also routinely asked for something to be done about holiday fighters, specifically Death of First Borns, being powerful and impactful relative to other fighters. By normalizing them, we’re making them no longer feel mandatory.

“What does this mean for me?”

Summary

• Fighters will no longer be launched from bots, at all.
• Fighters launched from your main ship will be stronger and tougher to kill, won’t be shot at by Deathblossoms, they will no longer have Evasion when targeted but will evade the vast majority of non-targeted damage.
• Higher tech fighters will be visually bigger.
• Fighters with projectiles will shoot them more consistently.
• There will be much fewer fighters launched at once.
• Gunner bots will no longer use Deathblossoms.
• Gunners will not quickly kill groups of fighters.
• The DPS you do with fighters should be equivalent to what you are able to do on live. This will be higher in some cases, and lower in other cases.
  • If you are a low level player just starting out as an FC and only have a few fighters, you will probably do more damage.
  • If you are a mid level player who has a bunch of bots that launch fighters only, you will probably do less damage.
  • If you are a high level player who has good fighters on yourself and your bots, you will probably do more damage.
  • If you are an end game player with powerful bots, and powerful fighters, you will do more damage in most situations.
    • The one area you will certainly be less powerful is with Radiation fighters.
• UPDATE 2: Radiation Expert now grants 15% Radiation Damage per level, while Damage is increased by 25% per level.

UPDATE: To further clarify, if a player used Death of First Born, Cerberus, or any fighter that used a very large amount of energy to do more damage (High Energy), your personally launched fighters under this change will not do the same amount of damage as your bots and your own fighters combined. This is because High Energy fighters do not exist in the new system, and the damage bonus they received for using large amounts of energy will not be carried over.

While we are doing our best to vet this project from many angles and solicit feedback from the players, it’s always possible that we may overlook something important. If this happens, we will quickly move to address the issue.

What do the items look like now?

Will you be adding more fighters?

Yes, we will be adding more fighters in future updates. We have about ~40 fighters that have been created and will eventually be added to the game.

Can I test these changes to see how they affect me?

These changes are now available on Test.

(You can select “Test Server” from the drop down menu within your client’s login screen.)

~

All of these changes should be coming in with an upcoming patch, keep your eyes peeled!

[Repair Costs]

• The following item types have had their repair costs reduced:
  • Cloaks are being reduced by 50%.
  • Radars are being reduced by 50%.
  • Microwarpers are being reduced by 75%.
  • Tractors are being reduced by 75%.
  • Translocators are being reduced by 75%.
  • Transwarps are being reduced by 75%.
  • Scoops are being reduced by 75%.

[Item Changes]

• Made the following changes to the Mega Dangerous Dung super item:
  • Removed the parasite.
  • Moved the effects to non-tweakable weapon effect.
  • Removed the physical knockback effect.
  • Note: the AI version used by Mega Moe is unchanged.
• Warheads (missile-like explosions) being activated by a superitem now grants 300 firing vis for 2s to the user, similar to how it works with weapons.

[System]

• Changed the team base player attack warning interval from 30 seconds to 10 minutes per entity.
• The following changes have been made to base names:
  • Bases no longer can have leading spaces or spaces following their names.
  • Bases can no longer have multiple spaces between characters.
  • Bases can no longer use names that already exist within that galaxy regardless of capitalization.

[Bug Fixes]

• Fixed a bug where Seer Radar Jammer items would work on bases.
•  An exploit with killing Spirits revolving fixed.

[Item Changes]

• Warp Beacon, Attached Warp Beacon, Native Warp Beacon have had their base Resistance to Damage increased to 87% and added 80 soak excluding Transference, which remains 30% vulnerability. They were also each given Annihilator Shield Z and Annihilator EnergyBank Z instead of their Andaman counterparts.

[Bugs]

• Fixed a credit exploit with items that decay on jump or decay on leaving an instance. They no longer have scrap value.

[AI Changes]

• Fixed issue with Shielding 22 (Vihara Vaidya) having way too much regen and will now give a consistent shout when its changing damage types.
• For Weaponry 22 (Devalaya Deva), platforms do not spawn until the boss is aggroed.
• For Tractoring 22 (Kandara Janayitri), bombs spawn more frequently, have a higher maximum speed, and do more damage. Infected Bombs should now properly heal the boss when they come into contact with it.
• For Cloaking 22 and Radar 22 (Akhara Vizvadrz and Akhara Gupta), during the damage absorption phase, the bosses will heal for 20% of incoming damage instead of 100%.

[Bugs]

• Fixed a bug where constant dps did not interact correctly with parasite damage.
• Fixed a bug where constant dps didn’t interact correctly with rate of fire tweaks.
• Marked targets (in weapon range) will now be shot by bots from beyond 2k range without needing to mark as team enemy.
• Fixed issue with “A Fair Trade” having a chance of giving no items.

[New Servers]

• To address some of the lag that players have been experiencing, Star Sonata is upgrading the servers that the website, game, and support system is ran on. We understand some players will be inconvenienced during the downtime, but we are expecting the servers to operate at least twice their current speed.

[UI/Client Changes]

• Fixed issue causing target menu buttons to get oversized if name was longer than 16 characters.
• Base items no longer appear in equipped and in flight use ship inventory search methods.

[Item Changes]

• Added new holoprojectors to the Free Market station Friendman for SP.
• Imperiled Polarized Catapult no longer has giant particle effects.
• Earthshaking weapons have one third the particles for one third the duration.
• Added Zeus’s Call to Zeus Throne and Zeus Throne+, which fabricates Jovian Guard fighters for a Zeus Fragments and credits.
• All Engines from Olympus now have updated visuals with unique aesthetic qualities derived from the engine’s prefixes.
• Empyreal Zenith Coalition Regenerative Field Emitter, Rapid Repositioner and Commanding Spirit given a visual effect to indicate when the super item is used.
• Commanding Spirit no longer gives shield regeneration to allies.
• Coalition Regenerative Field Emitter now drains shields and gives increased electric tempering for 5 seconds, instead of 15 seconds. It also gives 26,666 shield recovery for 5 seconds instead of 13,333 shield recovery for 15 seconds. The energy cost is now 36,000 over 30 seconds.
• Empyreal Zenith: Replaced Shield Overcharging Beam with Coalition Preventative Field Emitter. The Coalition Preventative Field Emitter is a short ranged advanced blocker style super item that only affects your own drones.

[AI Changes]

• Greatly increased the respawn interval within the Infernal Tempest main room to allow for out of combat regenning.
• NB items for Fallen Delquad bosses are now in their own drop list and don’t mess with chances of other items.
• Ancalagon the Black and Timotheus the Red have had their vacuum attack adjusted. The first pulse of the vacuum, which warns players of what is about to happen, now does 98% less damage than before.
• Emperor Sharahn Rhak’kai IV now orbits The Emperor’s Peak instead of drifting out.
• Twisted Artillery in the Twisted Fate of Death instance no longer have very high amounts of turning normally, or during their telegraphed attack. They also no longer microwarp sporadically.
• In Twisted Nikola and Twisted Dragon Ai, when the minions explode, they explode for several seconds and deal damage over that time period instead of dealing their damage all at once. This should give players more time to react to what’s happening.
• Reduced Shield Bank of Super Omega Platform and ARoused Slumberchrome by 2/3.
• Reduced the damage, range and tracking of Super Omega Platform’s ethereal laser.
• Removed the tracking on the ARoused Slumberchrome’s pulse guns fired from the super item, while reducing the projectile speed by 150
• Reduced the damage and rate of fire of the KiloWatt Chain Laser, changed the damage type from Radiation to Energy, and reduced the negative Energy Bank aura from -67% to -33%. Reduced the tracking of the KiloWatt Blaster (from the super item) by 80%, and reduced the duration of the negative Speed tweak on the Kilo Wattage super item from 2 seconds to 1 second.
• Big Green Dreadnought, Ragnarocker, ARoused, Kilo Wattage, Super Omega Platform should now drop loot appropriate for their danger factor and difficulty (Already live edited).
• Increased size and number of asteroids in Fallen Flames (Fallen Kuhani’s arena).
• Increased the time until the player is kicked out of Fallen Flames.

[Subspace Changes]

• Adjusted the damage of all instanced Subspace bosses and mini bosses.
• Being outside of the bubble in some bosses (Piloting 22, for example) wasn’t disincentivized hard enough. Instead of making that effect do more damage, it gives immunity to transference, a large -% damage tweak, and a large -% shield regeneration effect.
• It is no longer possible to ignore the damage immunity phases of Subspace bosses.
• Praheti Sahvitra mobs in various Subspace boss rooms have had their damage buffed significantly.
• Removed the old gremlin style simulated desynchronization effects from Subspace alien weapons.
• For Rader 22 (Rajanicaragupta) and Cloaking 22 (Rajanicaravizvadrz), they have new and more meaningful effects to watch out for, clearly display when they are entering their damage immunity phase now, and fixed wormhole issues.
• For Cloaking 22, Akhara Vizvadrz, the boss will no longer target a non player during its visibility checking phase.
• For Engines 22, (Adhara Akara), has had its turning rate reduced.
• For Shielding 22, (Vaidya)  will cycle through phases in a truly random way and will not repeat any phases and made it easier to see where you’re going to take damage by making the damage indicators red and orange.
• For Electrical Engineering 22, Vihara Sahvika, the boss now has 70% base resistance to incoming Energy damage instead of 0%.
• For Piloting 22, Devalaya Sahisth, all debuffs that a player would incur for leaving the protective bubble now apply to their bots, except for the constant damage. Guardian eggs will no longer spawn simultaneously if the boss is damaged too quickly, preventing the player from killing anything.
• For Weaponry 22, Devalaya Deva, The boss will no longer bug out and either become permanently invulnerable, or permanently vulnerable. It now spawns each station individually before becoming aggressive, and clearly states that the stations must be killed in order to weaken it. The damage the boss does directly has been reduced, but its minions are now stronger, and get stronger as the fight goes on. (You’ll probably want to keep them culled.) It’s mining pulses have little to no tracking, and can be dodged. You might not want to dodge them, they can break the asteroids and spawn additional new minions.
• For Equipment 22, Bila Zarkara,  Zarkara, Raurava, and Hantr should now trigger their attack phase every single time without failing. Reduced the damage of the energy beam by one third, and made the chains do more damage to spread the incoming damage out.

[Universe Changes]

• Moved the suns within Rhino instance away from the edge of the GSA spawning.

[Next Universe Changes]

• Greatly reduced Solar Prisms prospecting node in Arctia.

[Mission Changes]

• Adjusted “A Fair Trade” mission exchange rates to match their quality tier now.

[System]

• Super items now require the ship tech to be greater or equal to the super item’s tech minus 2 tech levels (For example, a tech 16 ship can equip up to a tech 18 super item).
• Characters that log out no longer will get kill credit several minutes after the ship vanishes.
• Added a check to only allow the current character logged in on an account to get kill credits.
• Items that require tech of ship or greater will now display on their descriptions such as Augmenters or Aura Generators.
• Auras that don’t work on bots now state: Does not work on Bots instead of just nothing.
• Added a new chat command /autotarget. Which toggles the functionality of auto-targeting AI in certain situations on or off.
• Added a new chat feature that will auto forward private messages to an accounts alts (will not tell sender who it was forwarded to and allows the receiver to choose to respond).
• Mission rewards now grant Cargo tag to eligible types. (Known issue that missions don’t factor in the cargo tag, when asking for items.)
• The visual effect when bases are scanned has been removed.
• Changed the galaxies web api so that userbase totals in galaxies are no longer updated immediately and instead are updated up to 24 hours later. This change is intended to reduce the usefulness of polling the web api to receive information in an unfair manner.
• /enemies and /mc command are disabled for characters logged into the web chat.

[Bug Fixes]

• Fixed a minor issue when attempting to transfer a wild bot to a character with Radiation Expert would report that the recipient didn’t have a Radiation Expert level equal to the hull’s tech instead of the actual value needed.
• Fixed a bug with “Also makes:” on blueprints missing the first two “[[“.
• Fixed a bug where constant dps did not interact correctly with parasite damage