The Emperor Contest has long been one of the most prestigious and contentious parts of Star Sonata, and this upcoming contest will continue this trend. With the next cycle fast approaching, we’re introducing a significant overhaul to how the contest works. Specifically how Fragmented Imperial Signets are obtained, how Influence is gained and lost, and when the contest comes to an End.

These changes are designed to add more depth, encourage active participation, and tighten the pacing of the contest.

If you want to understand the context of these changes, take a look at the previous Dev Diary.

Strands and Surges

Gone are the days of farming Strategos’ for Fragmented Imperial Signets. In the upcoming contest, we’re introducing Anatolian Surges. These will spawn enhanced versions of existing Hoplite and Ekdromoi, along with the return of a powerful mini-boss. These special AI will only spawn throughout the Anatolia layer when Strategos’ are active, creating dynamic and time-sensitive opportunities for teams to engage and earn Signet Fragments.

When defeated, Surge Spawner enemies drop a new item: the Imperial Strand. These strands must be delivered to Anatolian AI bases and traded in 1000 at a time to form Fragmented Imperial Signets.

To keep the intensity focused, Imperial Strands will only drop during the three-week contest period. Once that window closes, even if the contest enters a tiebreaker phase, no more strands will appear and no more surges will occur.

Escort the Influence

Gathering Influence no longer relies on an automatically deposited currency. Instead, it’s now an active objective. Influence now drops as 1 of 5 different Influence granting items from the AI in Anatolia. All Anatolian AI, except for those spawned in a Surge, will drop some of these special commodities.

Teams must recover and escort these items back to AI bases in Anatolia to successfully bank the influence and gain points for their team. This is the only way players can contribute toward their team’s standing in the Emperor Contest.

When a player holding these commodities dies, they drop as a physical item in space. Anyone can pick it up and ferry it to an Anatolian AI base to turn it in and gain Influence for their team. This change adds a new layer of tactical decision-making: Do you split up to bank influence as it comes in? Hold on to all of it and deposit it at once? Send someone to go intercept the enemy as they’re depositing Influence? That’s up to you.

Note: The amount of Influence a team can acquire from a Strategos and its minions is unchanged.

“The End”

In the event of a tie after the 21 day contest period, the only way to win has been to gain a 1 million point lead, regardless of how long it took. The process of getting that lead could theoretically drag on for weeks (or even longer), and we heard your feedback loud and clear. We understand that this uncertainty about how long the contest will last is not sustainable.

So, in the upcoming contest we’re introducing a decaying lead threshold. After the contest period ends, the required lead to win will shrink over time—until, after one week, even a single point lead will grant the top team the title. This ensures a definitive and timely conclusion while still rewarding consistent effort and tactical finesse.

We’re excited to see how these changes will shake up the contest and can’t wait to watch the new strategies unfold.

Note

The Anatolian Expanse and associated Emperor Contest is a labor of love by us to support an active PvP event that breaks up the day to day activities in Star Sonata. We appreciate the many rounds of feedback the community has given about this experience. We are committed to continuing to support this activity and monitoring its success and failures. This blog post includes all information on the current system used to ascend to the throne to become Emperor, but like with many things in Star Sonata, it changes often. This system will likely be iterated into the future to bring an experience that promotes competition. You can stay up to date on what is involved in the contest to become Emperor by visiting our wiki page on the topic. https://www.starsonata.com/wiki/index.php/Emperor