This weeks post details my last weeks work including some more details on Transdimensional Warp Devices, some bug fixing and a few changes for the upcoming class rebalance.

Once again it’s Monday! I’ve had a pretty busy week and there is quite a bit to talk about! First, I am sure most people are wondering how they’ll be able to get their hands on a Transwarp device. Players will be able to get their first Transwarp, a tech 0 device, in the Nexus. After that, every five equipment levels a new device will be available in Beta Antares for a modest fee. These devices will be available to everyone and will offer the following jump locations; The Nexus, Sol, Lyceum, Free Market, Kumari, Iq’ Bana, The Mausoleum and The End of the Universe. Keep in mind, you might not be able to access all of these locations from everywhere as devices have a limited number of jumps.

If you are in a team and your team decides to build their own Warp Beacons, those beacons will also be available as destinations for the entry level devices. These beacons can be placed in Wild Space and Celestial Garden. Blueprints for them will also be found in Beta Antares.

If you use the ticket system, you may have noticed that I am now handling some support tickets. We also have recruited someone to make sure the bug forums get better developer attention. As such I’ve been doing quite a bit of bug-fixing — I’d give you a list but it would make this blog unreasonably long! Expect to see me squashing more bugs going forward.

If you have been following the Dev Notes forum, you should know we are planning on a class rebalance. Since my main character in game is a Gunner, I’ve taken on the coding changes required for Gunner. Apart from some minor skill changes, the biggest project I’ve taken on so far are additions to missiles and launchers.

In order to help reduce the clicky-button spam that Gunners have to do in order to do reasonable damage in combat, we are changing missiles so they fire in salvos. These will be determined by the missile and better missiles will fire stronger salvos. There have also been some launcher changes. Apart from enabling launchers to fire the salvo of missiles, launchers will be able to give the missiles they fire augmenter stats. This will allow us to create some extremely interesting options when it comes to gearing up your Gunner. This change also allows us to give all missiles a bit of extra speed and thrust, something I’m sure everyone would agree they’re lacking.

So, that’s this week’s look at what I’ve been up to. Feel free to post comments or questions in the magically generated discussion post!

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So in the old tried and true we’ve decided to do Double EXP before we start making our monthly events more exciting, and dare I say, more dangerous. So level those alts and get that experience!

This monthly event will start at 12:00am EST on Friday September 27th and end at 11:59pm on Sunday September 29th.

Well well, it’s getting to that time of year again. Before you know it you’ll be blasting open presents and beating up that Astro-Grinch for his goodies, and remembering the pain that is Spiked Egg Nog. But before all of that, is a very special day, a day of candies and costumes.

To lead up to this lovely occasion, which is obviously Halloween, we, the Dev Team would like to hear all your scary stories, the more terrifying the better! The best ones will be justly rewarded.

You have until October the 13th to submit your stories. Good luck. Please post your submissions here.

This weeks dev blog is looking at an extremely exciting new feature that will be headed to game soon.

Another Monday means another update from me filling everyone in on what I’ve been up to the past week. It’s been a pretty big week and I’ve been working on an exciting new feature that I am sure everyone will be looking forward to! Once again I’m going to let a screenshot do the talking.

We are finally working on adding teleport devices! Known as Transdimensional Warpers, these new items will allow players to teleport to distant galaxies based on a few factors. First, warping distance which is controlled by the device. If the warp requires more jumps than that, it’s a no go. Second, each Warp Device has a shield and positioning requirement. If you are not at full shields and far enough away from nearby solar bodies (suns, moons, planets), it’s also a no go. Finally, you may only warp to a special Warp Beacons. There will be some AI controlled warp beacons scattered around the universe in special places like Sol, Lyceum, Iq’ Bana, etc, but the real draw is in player controlled warp beacons.

Player controlled warp beacons come in two varieties. First, there are permanent beacons. These can be built and placed in any team owned territory. Once placed, they function as a warp destination for the player who placed it, his squad and his entire team and can be used by any class of warp device. Second, there are temporary warp beacons. These are beacons that have the same placement requirements as normal drones, with the exception that they are unable to be placed in instanced or owned galaxies. As with permanent beacons, they will act as destinations for for the player who placed it, their team and their squad. The difference is they can only act as destinations for specialized transwarp devices.

Fleet Commanders (and maybe Seers) will gain initial access to the specialized devices capable of warping to temporary beacons. Even more interesting  though is the other feature of a Fleet Commander Transwarp drive. These capital ship devices will allow a player to teleport an entire squad to any warp beacon. This means you could have a speedier player scout ahead to your instance entrance, place a temp. beacon and an FC could bring the entire squad there!

Finally, for those wondering, Transwarp Devices will bring slaves along for the ride. If you have any non-stasised slaves set to follow in the galaxy with you, they’ll jump as well.

This is a really big gameplay feature that I’m extremely excited about and I’d love to hear your feedback on it. I know there are going to be a lot of questions so sound off in the forums and let me know what you think!

Once again it’s Monday, so it’s time for a Calypso update! I’ve done quite a bit in the past week so here is a run down of the bigger things I’ve been working on.

First, I’ve been doing quite a bit of bug-fixing. The Nexus is working properly now (and with the new starting missions), and a bug allowing people to un-neurobind and un-mod items that were neurobound and modded using the new feature has been squashed. I’ve also been pretty busy taking care of a few bugs with Subspace and am pleased to report that AI from different leaves of the area will no longer roam where they are not supposed to (and subsequently murder their comrades). I’ve also managed to track down a bug with the alien invasion reinforcement timer which was keeping their numbers low. It’s been fixed and when it’s patched, the aliens will be back in much greater numbers.

Secondly, new features! I think one that people might find most exciting are Subspace Tunnels. Subspace Tunnels are similar to Juxtapositions and the Subspace layer will feature six of them. Each one contains a very powerful alien and I am considering locking the higher DF exit (the one that would take you to your instance), until the guardian is dead. Naturally the exit to the lower DF Hub galaxies would remain unlocked so you could get out if you needed to. In case you were wondering, normally a change like this would require a universe reset to go in — however, I have also worked on some back end admin features so I will be able to add in the Subspace Tunnels without a universe reset.

A lot less exciting, I’ve been doing quite a bit of testing on all of the mod changes I talked about last week. With expanding the mods available on some items, adding some new items, and letting entirely new classes of items get mods, there are quite a few code changes that needed testing to make sure all the new functionality is working as intended. For those who aren’t aware, we’ve added mods for tractors, shield chargers and hull extensions. I’ve also added two new mods, Reinforced (reduced durability damage) and Angelic (lowered visibility and hostility).

Finally, the Bindomite event! It’s coming to a close today and I hope everyone enjoyed the chance to stock up on the commodity. When we released the Neurobind and Mod feature we weren’t able to add in all the sources of Bindomite that we wanted — only Prospecting. Hopefully the event has alleviated some of the demand. Keep in mind that prospecting won’t be the only source. DG Bosses will be dropping it sometime in the near future as well.

So, that’s this week’s look at what I’ve been up to. As always, feel free to give me feedback and you’ll hear from me again next week!

While researching the strange properties of a newly discovered resource (and seeking a way to further monetize it) a team of researchers from the Universal Mining Corporation, the Blue Photon Manufacturing Corporation and the Lyceum has stumbled upon a frightening discovery!

When exposed to extremely rare radiation found only in the depths of Subspace, strange things happen to Bindomite. Individual crystals align and combine, eventually coalescing into larger sentient beings!

Unfortunately… they are hostile. Seizing the entirely radiation supply the creatures have multiplied. The research base where they first took form has been destroyed. They have escaped!

This weekend only (Sept. 13 to Sept. 15), help the research team destroy the crystal abominations. The reward? Bindomite!

Another week, another update! This update will focus on a few new things I’m working on as well as a few of the things that went in with the patch.

First, last weeks patch and what was supposed to go in. I had quite a few features that I’d been working on pushed live in this last patch– the biggest being prospecting changes, a new Olympus daily, neurobind and mod, and scooping changes. To quickly recap; the prospecting change give nodes a lifespan, when it’s up they die and are reseeded elsewhere in the universe, the new Olympus daily, the Tidepool, neurobind and mod is a new right click feature where you can neurobind an item in exchange for random mods and the scooping changes allow you to hold down your scoop key to continually scoop items.

There was a change I was working on that wasn’t entirely ready that made its way in, those were the new character creation options — and it did created a bit of confusion with the Nexus. Rest assured, those changes have been disabled and we will be pushing a new client shortly to enable the fix.

The past week I have mainly been working on a new spawner type, the Wave Spawner. The Wave Spawner is similar to an Ambush Spawner (spawners that only spawn when a player gets ‘caught’ in their trigger area), with the main difference being it spawns multiple, predefined waves of AI. Previously, we ‘faked’ this functionality with multiple Ambush Spawners (think the UrQa vs. Mzungu battle in the Enigmatic Sector, Whiskey Outpost in the Nexus), but with this new spawner we will be able to do similar content much more easily and with much greater control.

This control is enabled with some key new features. First, there are the spawn features. We can set a wave to automatically spawn after a set duration, when the previous wave is cleared, or a combination of both. Secondly, there are enhanced mission control features. Each wave can be assigned a different mission requirement and the spawner will skip to the highest wave based on player missions. So for example, we can have missions to skip the first 10 of 20 waves for a spawner if you have the required mission. Thirdly, unlike traditional spawners, we can set individual teams and extra skills for each configuration. This affords us greater variety in the kind of AI we can spawn, ie, we can do a wave with Gunner and Sniper AI, etc, as well as letting us make AI that are hostile to one another with the same spawner. You can expect to see this new kind of spawner used quite a bit going forward to hopefully make some epic space battles.

Perhaps more exciting since it directly affects player, well, I’ll let the screenshot explain.

I have been working on some mod changes, including adding two all new mods. The first, Reinforced, will make your items take less durability damage when you die. The second Angelic, reduces hostility and visibility. Along with these two new mods, we are also expanding the number of items that can have mods to include Tractors, Shield Chargers and Hull Expansions. Finally, we’ll also be adding new functionality to some of the old mods so we can add them to items they couldn’t be on before — for instance, Amplified on cloaking devices to increase their cloaking power, or Rewired for engines where some turning is traded for thrust.

So, that’s an update on what I’ve been doing the past week. As always, feel free to give me feedback! Until next week!

Client:
Additions:
* New model for the Mzungu Acolyte/Kikale Mzungu Frigate
* New Neurobind and Mod feature
* Scooping changes: Scoops are now activated by holding down ‘C’, they’ll scoop a certain number of items per second as long as you hold C.

Tweaks:
* Client will now flash its task bar icon when you receive a pm and the application is not in focus.
* Your current number of Space Points available on your account is now shown under avatar (take note that it can take up to a minute for it to update after you buy Space Points on the website)

Fixes:
* Fixed Pax Scutelogica being off-center in the character selection screen
* Fixed the Behemoth+ visage

Server:
Additions:
* Added 1500 max shield to slaves for each level of remote control
* Added 2% per level resist all for slaves for each level of slave research
* Added 150 max shield to drones for each level of drone deployment
* Support for Space Points using items (Augmenter Retrieval Module and Ship Dry-dock Module)
* Aug Reset and Ship item forming item using SP (basically replacing the ticket system to pay for Augmenter Retrieval or Ship Dry-dock Module) are now available in game in free market ai base “Friedman” for 1 credits. Using it do not consume the item and will ask for confirmation before using the spacepoints.
* Galaxy wide prospecting scanners.

Tweaks:
* Made Drone Deployment skill require piloting skill
* Split out the dual-functionality of the Sticky tag and added a new Ship-bound tag for items, additionally applied it to various items that needed it
* Bhisajayu had some stat changes.
* Missions will automatically complete if they can be completed when started. Repeatable missions completed this way will automatically reopen.
* Parasites decay while in stasis.

Fixes:
* Changed the outfit hull command to required you to be docked. Outfitting your ship will unequip any items of the same class that’s given to you (eg: doing it to get a superitem will unequip your other non-sticky supers)
* Fix for drones/AI using weapons which heal the target instead of damaging it
* Prospecting Beams and DNA Extractors now properly display error messages in the client.
* Fixed the bug causing Subspace spawners to sometimes change to Zebucart Spawners.

Content:
Additions:
* Added some basic gear to the station in Lyceum just in case bad stuff happens during a class reset
* Gave Faranji Wingships a new inbuilt (replacing the mag one)
* Gave Captain Kidd a few Prawn Piece drops
* Added some new items to dungeon loot
* New T21 daily mission, The Tidepool.
* Tractoring 21.
* New T21 Tractors.
* New T22 Fighter missions.
* New Capacitors and Diffusers that reduce reflectivity.
* New items that can be built with Eridium.

Tweaks:
* Various changes to The Mausoleum, given normal DG/boss loot, increased chances of Mausoleum specific loot
* Re-added the Mini-Marinus Blueprint as a drop from Mausoleum
+ Updated UZ galaxies to use the automatic wormhole unlocking where appropriate, and made the spawners one time where appropriate (gals outside of the instances won’t change till next uni, if appropriate).
* Updated the requirements on T21 skill and added a player progression (Tut bot in Sol) mission for T22 skills
* Blueprint update: Build times on most blueprints radically changed, following a general trend of a minimum build time of a few days if you have a really good prod.
* Set all the Lyceum factories (Sensors, Microchips and Augmenter Module commodities) intervals to 10 minutes
* Increased the Prawn Piece drop rate in DGs a tiny bit.
* Prospecting nodes now have a lifespan and will be reseeded when they die.

Fixes:
* Fixed an issue where DG Roc Minions dropped too many credits
* Fixed a typo in the pretender Shard missions
* Made some adjustments to the Auric Sector to inhibit slave spam
* Fixed Olympus mini bosses not dropping Unstable Shard Dusts
* Fixed a typo in the item name for the Mercury Condensers
* Fixed a bunch of typos in Augmenter Tweaking missions of Condenser spelt incorrectly.
* Fixed Qokujiii Qa’Ik visage being angled incorrectly
* Fixed Range Crystallizers Blueprint weighing 1.5b and costing 100m
* Fixed a bug with the MF Bigger Green and 4MF Slumberchrome Strontium missions
* Fixed DD22 drone stablizer factory being unusable

It’s been another week so it’s time for another Calypso Update! As you all know I’ve been making some changes to the Nexus but that’s not all. Over the past week I’ve done quite a bit of bug-fixing and iterative development on some of the new features heading your way. Perhaps the most work though has been with the Neurobind and Mod feature.

So, firstly, the Neurobind and Mod feature. In my current iteration of the feature I’ve added a few new things. One, when you neurobind and mod an item, the output text in your Event channel now displays a list of the mods added to that item. This should make bulk modding items for a very specific combination much easier.

As you can see from the screenshot above, I’ve also done a few changes to the way the client and server handle displaying the Neurobound property to the user. Previously we handled letting players know an item was neurobound by using an item’s stat string in the tooltip. This means when an item was neurobound by default, (for example, Olympus Chargers), the client would display ‘Neurobound’ in the tooltip. This won’t work for the new Neurobind and Mod feature because the stat string text in the tooltip is identical for all instances of an item — which led to the above solution. The new neurobound tag in tooltips will apply to all neurobound items, so get ready to see pretty purple text on stuff like Shards too.

Secondly, concerning the Neurobind and Mod feature.

During preliminary testing of the feature, we came to the realization that every single time an item was NB + Modded, it was always getting the [Miniaturized] modification. After a little investigation, I realized it was quirk in the way we randomly roll on mods. As probability of getting a mod approaches 1.0, so does the probability of getting the [Miniaturized] modification (as it’s the first modification to be rolled on). Unfortunately, the only way of guaranteeing a mod was passing in that 1.0 probability… however, that has been addressed. We can now specify that we want an item to get at least one additional mod, no matter what, and the function will continue to roll until a new mod has been assigned. This gives us much greater flexibility when using the mod system to assign new mods to neurobound items — that is to say we can use the same probability parameters as DG, ship-dropped items or ruin items to determine the mods that your item will get using the feature. It also allows for us to create a parameter to control it for a new bonus weekend event if we want to!

We are currently prepping for a patch and this feature is on the test server, if you have a beta client, feel free to test it out! I’ll be adding Bindomite, the commodity required to Neurobind items for sale in Sol.