NOTE: If you haven’t read the previous blog posts, Neuroforge Update: Forging Items and Neuroforge Update: Gunner & Ranger, you might want to check them out before reading this one.
In our final blog post, we’re going to talk about a variety of notable changes that we plan on rolling out with the Neuroforge. These changes focus on addressing various class and system level issues we think keep the game in a stagnant place. Some of these things are nerfs, but some of them are buffs. Let’s break down what you can expect.
Evolving Critical Hit Mechanics
The current meta favors driving critical hit chance to 100% and then stacking critical hit strength, leading to a skewed optimal stat prioritization for DPS builds. We aim to broaden the optimal stat distribution, encouraging a more diverse set of builds by changing how critical scaling works.
Critical Hit Chance is the only DPS stat that has a ceiling. While driving up your Damage, Rate of Fire, and Critical Hit Strength always improves your overall DPS, the same isn’t true for Critical Hit Chance since you can’t benefit from more than 100% chance (adjusted for the target’s Critical Hit Resistance). The practical consequence of this situation is that as player’s stat budget grows with tech and item quality, they quickly run up against the ceiling of Critical Hit Chance; therefore, the meta for dealing weapon damage is to max out your Critical Hit Chance and then invest in Critical Hit Strength, which is available in greater amounts than Damage but gives the same benefit when paired with guaranteed Critical Hits.
We want to promote greater build diversity but we are greatly constrained by the reality of this meta. It has kept us from adding new sources of Critical Hit Chance since that would only worsen the situation, driving folks even harder into Critical Hit Strength. With this update, we have come up with a way to gradually shift the relative value of the DPS stats, with the eventual goal of normalizing the value of Critical Hit Chance and Strength when compared to Damage.
We’re going to accomplish this by granting a ramping bonus to Critical Hit Resistance to higher tech ships. Starting at tech 22, all ships and drones have 25% more Critical Hit Resistance than they used to. For every tech level above that, we add another 25%. The upshot is that the ceiling of Critical Hit Chance will rise by 25% with each new tech level, gradually reducing the pressure to invest a large proportion of your setup’s stats into the critical hit bonuses. Importantly, AI will receive these resistances as well.
As you can see in this table, as you go up in Tech the Critical Hit Resistance of ships and drones increases. This will reduce your DPS by the amount listed. These numbers assume a static 100% Critical Hit Chance, but higher Critical Hit Chance values will bring you back to a 0% reduction.
What you can see here is that as we increase the highest available tech level of content, the optimal stat spread for offensive stats will shift. This is because players will actually have a need for much higher levels of Critical Hit Chance in order to fully maximize their Critical Hit Strength in higher tech content. Going forward, we will be releasing Augmenters and Items with higher amounts of Critical Hit Chance, so players can expect to see bigger bonuses to that stat on Tech 24 and above content.
Reimagining Seer
Seer is simultaneously a very powerful alpha strike/execution class that is incredibly binary — if the player used all of their tools and mechanics without being interrupted they would often overkill a target, but if anything went wrong or their damage was blocked the vast majority of its damage bonuses were negated.
We think Seer needs to be much more consistent, so we are firmly cementing its role as an executioner with a steady damage output that ramps up as their targets get closer to death. Backstabbing and Ambushing have been adjusted, and we have added some new mechanics that offer comparable or greater damage than the Nanite.
For context, the Hidden Nanite Infusion Device once activated keeps track of all damage the Seer does to that target over a 7 second duration. After 7 seconds, it deals 175% of the damage stored. The problem with the Nanite is that it is a big chunk at the end, which makes it very easy to over kill something all in one go … or to have your entire damage bonus completely mitigated with a blocker. It is very binary, and that’s the part we’re focusing on.
So, here’s what we’ve done:
- Seer now does 100% bonus damage to targets that are under half shields, receiving a fraction of this bonus against healthier targets.
- Backstabs and Ambushes will now grant a 30% damage bonus for 5 seconds.
- We have replaced the Nanite Device and the Psionic Jammers with the Seer Remodulator, which guarantees a critical hit every 2 seconds.
- Wraith now grants the Seer 35% Critical Hit Strength against targets below 50% shields.
- Brooding Gaze makes beams ethereal against backstabbed or ambushed targets.
We took away stealth and radar, and we are aware that this can affect a Seer’s ability to avoid damage. We have made the following adjustments with an eye towards increasing a Seers ability to survive.
- We added 25% more Range
- We added Shield Recovery to Recon Focus
- We reduced Weight by 30%
- Seer’s Warp Devices charge 2x as fast
- Clairvoyant gives a 25% Resistance to Damage bonus when struck from behind
- Assassin allows the Seer to equip another Warp Device
In addition, all sources of flat visibility that an enemy can apply to you have been changed to increase your visibility by a % instead.
Recon Focus now includes an extra hull expansion by default. The Expansionist Advanced Class Subskill further boosts this by granting an additional weapon slot and doubling cargo capacity.
Speed Demon
First, we’re happy with how Speed Demon plays in the majority of situations. We think the class is a great example of a good class. There are some things that we thought we could do better, and that’s what the focus of these updates are.
The Rate of Fire cap is a tough thing to work around as a Speed Demon. The class gets a lot of Rate of Fire bonuses, and we have always wanted Speed Demon to be interested in fast firing weapons. This has been a significant limitation in buildcraft for Speed Demon over the years and we want to address that. Another observation is that Beams and Magcannons have remained meta weapons for this class, even as we have repeatedly improved Pulse Guns.
We’ve always wanted Speed Demon to make good use out of high damage projectiles, but because they inherit the velocity of the user they aren’t so easy to use while also dodging incoming fire. This has led to a preference for Beams and Magcannons among Speed Demons.
Here is what we’re doing. The Target Tracker will no longer provide a big damage boost at the cost of range, instead it will cause your projectile weapons to fire from your ship as if they were a full tracking beam weapon. This is going to allow you to keep moving while firing these weapons, opening up whole new weapon choices for the Speed Demon to use even while they are focusing on maneuvering.
In order to further encourage this, we have included a 25% Projectile Damage bonus in the base class. No more damage multiplier on the Target Tracker, but you get:
- Much better uptime with projectiles.
- You get a damage boost to projectiles.
- We have tuned the damage of the class to compensate for the loss of the damage boost on the Target Tracker.
With regards to the Rate of Fire cap, if you exceed it you will now gain the equivalent amount of damage in exchange for increased electricity consumption. This works out exactly as if there was no Rate of Fire cap, which has to remain in place for technical reasons.
And finally, you also get the Shield Recovery and Hull Expander bonuses from Recon Focus mentioned earlier in the Seer section.
This is a light touch to the class, we like where the class is (more or less) and we think what we have done here is give it a new coat of paint.
Berserker
Berserker is a very strong class and is very popular. We like how fun it is to play, and we decided to give it some fun mechanics while also implementing some targeted nerfs. We’re confident the class is going to remain very popular and effective.
- Berserker Classic will now additionally reduce the number of weapons you need to have in order to Multifire by 1. This means if you want to MF3 you are only required to have two of the same weapon equipped.
- For example, if you pick this skill your 3 equipped weapons will act as if they are 4. If you equip 4 weapons you will max out with an effective Multifiring 5.
- Impervious Armor now additionally reduces damage in a frontal arc by 30%. This means you take 70% of the damage.
- In exchange, we have shaved some of the Resistance to Damage bonus from Eye for an Eye and Impervious Armor. This is still a significant mitigation buff when taking damage in the frontal arc.
- So with regards to Lifesteal, only 10% of the damage done by On Hit effects or Parasites are eligible for Lifesteal. So instead of Lifestealing 25% of their damage, you will lifesteal 2.5% of their damage.
- The speed bonus on Berserkering Berserker was reduced from 30% to 10%.
Engineer
We haven’t changed our vision for this class at all, but we do recognize that the Neuroforge is not going to result in the same offensive power increase for Engineers who are looking to upgrade their gear with modifications.
In light of this, we have increased the non-transference damage bonus on Engineer Class 1. We recognize that it’s harder for Engineers to optimize the Critical Hit Chance of their drones than it is for other damage dealing classes to do so. We have also increased the number of Drones that Engineers can deploy from 6 to 7, since Droney will no longer grant an extra deployed Drone. Finally, as mentioned earlier, Drones now have Critical Hit Resistances as well.
We are also thinking about future updates to the Neuroforge that would give Engineers more interesting options when it comes to mods.
General Advanced Class Subskills
- Bot PhD
- We have taken most of the bonuses from Combat Bot Tweaking and Bot PhD and given them to everyone. This means that combat bots get 50% of your skills, or 60% if you take Bot PhD. Bot tweaking doesn’t contribute to that stat anymore.
- Droney
- We have taken the skill inheritance bonus off of this skill and given it to everyone, and instead of giving another deploy drone it gives +100% Tweaking to Drone Controllers for non Engineers. If you are an Engineer it gives 15% instead.
- Resilient
- Now causes you and your possessions to take 20% less damage from indirect damage and on hit effects.
- Strategic Deployment
- You and your possessions gain 50% speed out of combat.
Heat Weapons
It’s well known that Heat weapons are highly desirable in the meta. We realized very recently that one of the reasons for this is that they have unwarrantedly high damage per energy. The tools we set up were not properly increasing the energy cost of these weapons to account for the portion of the damage dealt by fires.
This required some nuance when we addressed the issue, because if we charged you upfront for the future damage of your fires it would not be fair. You cannot be sure if all those fires will do their damage before the target dies or before the situation changes.
Live values on the left, effective DPE is somewhere between .63 and 1.26. Test values on the right, the effective DPE is somewhere between .49 and .98.
It’s not fair to charge 100% of the energy costs for future damage, but we need to charge more than 0%.
We did some detailed analysis and came up with a formula to balance those extremes.
On Hit weapon effects
We have reduced the power of Area Effect Damage effects on certain weapons, and increased the power of Bounce/Chain/Splash/Spray effects on other weapons. These changes include DPS, DPE, and On Hit effect ranges. The intention is that these effects are situationally useful rather than Area Effect Damage being the only thing anyone uses most of the time.
Beam weapon sizes
We have normalized the sizes of Beams, which means longer range Beams are smaller. At the same time, we have increased the size of many short range Beams that had high DPS and low DPE. Beams like the Luminous Discrete Oscillator Cluster or Vazaha Caress are much bigger than they are on live. We want a weapons size to be aligned with high DPS, low DPE like it is for Projectile weapons. This also applies to Transference weapons.
Follow along with us
The Neuroforge update has a lot more going on than just the addition of the Neuroforge. We will have posted follow-up blogs to detail what is being changed with the Neuroforge update. We have opened up access to our test server for players to try out the systems we have designed before they go live. The changes on this server encapsulate all of what the Neuroforge has to offer so far. There are plenty of class changes and other fancy things to explore as well.
You will need a totally different client to connect to this server. You will need to connect to “Test Server” using the Delta Client. You can get this client at the follow link: https://www.starsonata.com/dl/StarSonata_2_delta.exe
You can find the “Test Server” on the login screen by using the Server Drop down on the login screen end then selecting “Test Server.” For more information on how to use the test server or to provide your feedback, please use the Star Sonata community discord server.
Disclaimer: Anything on test servers are subject to change at any time and may not be representative of what will be seen when the live server is updated. The test server is subject to be shutdown, reset and restarted at any time.
![devdiaryanatolia[1]](https://www.starsonata.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/devdiaryanatolia1.png)
