Lyceum Bulletin:

The Mad Scientist has done it again!

Reports are flooding in of an explosion radiating out from the laboratory located in Lunacy. After an experiment mixing Eridium, Adamantium, and Dark Matter failed to be conducted properly, the scientist was seen fleeing the lab yelling, “It’s not my fault!”

Nobody has seen or heard from the scientist since that date and authorities are advising everyone to begin packing for the universe relocation program! The containment unit housing the experiment has begun leaking an unknown particle into the universe. Lyceum scientists began studying the leaking particle shortly after receiving news of the explosion and have provided the following statement.

After extensive examination of the radiation leaking from the explosion site, top scientists predict the collapse of the universe to be on November 6th, 2021. Citizens are asked to ensure all personal assets and fleets are properly stored.

Dev Notes

• Bases, permanent drones, and the credits on active bots will be lost.
• Player ships will not be affected
• If you’re docked during the reset, you will spawn into the new universe using your docked active ship.
  • Careful not to spawn into the new universe in an immobile ship!
• Wild Space will be scrambled and receive a new map shape.
• All other layers will have the systems scrambled but contain the same shape.
• After a universe reset, all of your docked ships will be in a state of limbo allowing you to dock them all at any non-player station. For the first 72 hours of the new universe, you can use the /limbo chat command only once to bring all of your docked ships back into limbo to dock them elsewhere.
  • For those familiar with the limbo command, going forward the timer has been extended from 24 hours to 72.

• Temporarily removed credit costs from ENM Cube Blueprint and Promethium Cube Blueprint until universe reset.
• Removed hull lock from the Delquadrikamdon Controlbot and Poseidon Combat Controlbot due to a long time sheet bug ignoring the Heavy Fighter lock. We have reverted to previously this to honor the player’s expectations of them being without a hull type lock.
• Fixed a bug with Overloaders that weighted Electric Tempering backwards.
• Fixed a client crash bug.

This patch includes the new base upgrading system we talked previously about in Dev Diary – Base Upgrades, Bot Commands, and Everything Nice.

[Item Changes]

• Fixed Empyreal Eclipse’s Coalition Armaments super item. (Already handled via a small hotfix).
• Reduced the cost of Augmenter Retrieval Module (Paid Augmenter Reset) from 60 SP to 20 SP. (Already handled via a small hotfix).
• Increased the drop rate of Solarian Fighter Bays.
• Updated the visual effect for the Empyreal Wave Manipulator and Corrupted Pulse.
• Promethium Cubes and ENM Cubes now cost 5 mil credits per use to build.
• Empyreal Plating is now tech 23 instead of tech 21 and gained 400k damage taken per 1% durability.
• Controlbots were all made 1 size and weights changed
• The following beam’s sizes were adjusted: Amped Zeus Bolt, Amped Jupiter Bolt, Amped Chain Lightning, Amplified Jupiter Arc Lightning. Anti Pralinatasamvita went down in size. Antu Zaktisamvita size went up. The size changes were about 20-30 more size on weapons that are already multiple hundreds in size.
• Overloader % Damage augmod values changed as a result of new augmath that better accounts for the value of negative augmods. The following overloaders were affected: Berserker Way, Berserker Method, Berserker Style, Blue Overloader Alpha, Emergency Core Cooling System, Marco’s Cooler, Jury Rigging of Hephaestus, Hermes Power Punch, Hermes Delirium Tremens, Kidd’s Wrath, Kidd’s Volatile Wrath, Reaver’s Rage, Zarkara Kostha, Tiger Modifications, Perilous Quickened Overloader, Perilous Quickened Modifier, Perilous Offensive Overloader, Perilous Offensive Modifier, UrQa Ukuk’qa, Unstable Offensive Overloader, Twisted Death Overloader, Latis Recta’s Modifications, Strontium Overloader, Mythic Celestica’s Mod, Ocelli Modification, Buzzing Oscillator, Red Photon Prototype Weapon Guidance Extension Overloader, Frenzied Presence.
• Sizes, weights, and costs of some shields have been shifted around a little.
• Faded Torpedo had its stats slightly reduced.

[Mission Changes]

• Updated Olympus mission that still referenced the previous name for Sidrat Station Extensions.
• Fixed spelling issue in The Deflector Solution mission.

[System]

• Bases can now be upgraded in-place by targeting one and using another base kit.
• Aura Generators will disable themselves if there is less energy in bank than the amount it needs to power.
• Added /networklevel (/nl) low|medium|high|veryhigh to change network policies, this command is for testing purpose and will be integrated in client configs if we find that players want more control.
  • At low, the network is identical to the state before the new setting
  • At medium, update to resync planets/other objects more or less every minutes. this should mitigate cases where for some players planets move slower or faster than on server causing complications when attempting to dock or fight.
  • At high, updates become much more frequent, and projectiles also get synch update. Based on how far you are from the projectile this will cause a noticeable increase in network stress / bandwidth usage (upward of 10kb/s !)
  • At veryhigh, updates for projectiles are done on a much larger area, this may hit the 30kb/sec range in some extreme scenario.
  • Both high and veryhigh are excellent if your want to avoid projectiles (or intentionally block them), as their position on screen and on server should match almost perfectly minus the network delays.

[Bugs]

• Fixed an exploit that allowed to bypass class limits for item slots.

[User Interface/Client Changes]

• Fixed several causes of client crashes.
• Changed “Can’t Be Put Into Locker” on items to “Can’t Be Put Into Storage”.
• Updated the visual effect for the Empyreal Wave Manipulator.
• Towing base ship list now has a column indicating if the ship is in stasis or not.
• Added a new model and texture to reflect the SS1/Client1 version of Brute Force.
• Fixed remaining issues with right click APing to some wormholes not resulting in jumping through that wormhole.
• Changed damage percentage aura/tweaks to say “Damage” instead of “DPS”. Flat damage aura/tweaks still displays as “DPS”.
• Cargo now has its own display next to hull and hull is properly calculated.

[Item Changes]

• Changed Cruiser and Astrodust from 2 to 3 augmenters (Somehow this change was reverted during the ship size changes).
• Fixed the Ambrosia Overloader Blueprint not being added by the Ambrosia Base Gear Blueprint Pack.
• Reduced Kalthi War Core weight from 25 mil to 2.5 mil.
• Fixed Drone Deployment not being correctly attributed for its bonus effects on permanent drones in show stats.
• Changed the Quality tier of T23 modules from Exotic to Rare.
• Added “Rare” Quality tier to Empyreal ship upgrade blueprints.
• Kleptomaniac and Mythic Drones are now no longer scrapable.
• The Empyreal ship supers descriptions have been made very detailed like Kalthi supers and all of them made to not affect bases.

[AI Changes]

• Added the missing engine to Zebu Gunships’ spawn loadout.
• Removed Large Field Hospital from the loadout of Kalthi Armada Wrathful Deployers. They never used it but removing to prevent future issues.
• Reduced the duration of Celeste and Estelle Envelopments from 17 seconds to 5 seconds and increased their size to be more noticeable.
• Increased the number of shots from Estelle’s Rage super from 6 to 12.
• Drastically reduced the DPS Estelle’s pulse gun but increased the range.
• Drastically reduced the fire dot damage and base DPS of Analemma’s weapons and increased the tracking and spread of the bullets. You get hit by more of them at maximum range but at closer ranges all of them don’t land
• Drastically increased DPS of the Analemma’s rage device.
• Reduced Equinox’s magcanon dps but increased tracking of their laser and magcannon.
• Reduced the DPS of Perihelion’s Flare lance and removed the -10k shield degeneration effect.
• Removed the shield degeneration effect from Ascension’s weapon, slightly increased the base dps to compensate and reduced the hostility weapon effect from -99% to -80%.
• Removed the electric degeneration effect from the Ascension’s other weapon.
• Increased the regen of most mob Empyreal AI.
• Made Tutu Missile more visible and added a holo effect.
• The following changes were made to Apex boss:
  • Reduced main attack DPS drastically.
  • Reduced the shield charge effect from -66% to -25%.
  • Increased Apex Blast Pulse from 1 range to 50 range.
  • Apex Rocket Barrage has 50% more range and fires more often.
  • Increased base shield regeneration.
• The following changes were made to the Aelia Boss:
  • Pulverizer DPS drastically reduced.
  • Reworked the pulse gun and warper logic.
  • Increased basic shield regeneration.
• The following changes were made to Saros:
  • Reduced charging time of the Annilation Beam but reduced the DPS drastically.
  • Sara’s Railgun’s  DPS and range was increased drastically.
  • Increased basic shield regeneration.
• Reduced tracking bonus Haraka Station causing projectiles to super track.

[Next Universe Changes]

• Removed Reboot Modules being sold in Lyceum and Plato Academy as they are just trophy items now.
• Removed trophy items Bule Calumniator Blueprint and Amplified Fighter Recall from the Fleet Shipyards base in Lyceum.

[Mission Changes]

• Fix for the T23 skill missions incorrectly stating engines for several of them.
• Updated “Where did I leave my keys?” mission to state Super Phunka keys were left somewhere near the space cheese in Shadow.

[System]

• Bots will no longer report spam errors in event chat from automatically used superitems back to their owner, such as missile superitems being out of range.
• AI will now have weighted spawn logic to prevent massive build ups in gals.

[Bugs]

• Fix for active weapon being able to end up with negative tracking after -tracking effect.
• Fix for deathblossom sometimes firing the wrong number of shots.

Welcome to another Star Sonata Dev Diary!

Today, we’re covering a range of topics from the new Base Upgrade system, new Bot chat commands and some fixes to pesky bugs that we’ve been chasing for years!

Base Upgrade system

So here’s the problem: You’d laid bases on a planet. They’re just plain vanilla Ai station kits deployed on the planet and yet, several weeks later you have some upgraded Laconia kits you’d prefer to lay down.

You’d have to transfer gear, demolish the original bases, lose any augmenters that were already equipped and lay the new station then move everything over and re-equip.

With the new Base Upgrade system, you simply select the currently deployed base, you double click/use the new kit from your inventory, and the base upgrades into the new version without any of the previous hassle.

Notable Mentions

• The upgrade process causes the construction timer and vulnerability to reappear.
• Bases cannot be upgraded into with a station kit that will result in over hull capacity, lower tech level or fewer augmenter slots.
• The same conditions that prevent deploying normal bases apply to upgrading bases with bases.
• Destroyed bases cannot be upgraded — they must first be repaired.

Bot Commands

We are always looking to improve players’ ability to directly control their bots. We’re expanding the level of control players have with 9 new commands players can use.

/botsAttack: All combat and wild bots will be set to attack your target.
/botsNoAttack: All combat and wild bots will be set to not attack your target.
/botsFight: All combat and wild bots will be set to fight enemies.
/botsNoFight: All combat and wild bots will be set to not fight enemies.
/botsClose: All bots will stay close.
/botsNoClose: “Stay close” will be disabled for all bots.
/botsDock: All non-wild bots will dock and deactivate.
/botsCombatDock
/botsTradeDock

We are also adding an option in the bot menu to disable weapons that can’t be unequipped in the “More bot settings” menu.

Everything Nice

As a point of pride, we’ve finally found and tackled the issue with Deathblossom not firing the correct number of projectiles when having Multifire 3.

The deathblossom fix will be part of the next patch the others will be in a later patch.

The June 2021 universe introduced some changes to how DG loot works.
The patch notes at the time did not go into particular detail on what the changes were or how they would affect the loot quality from DGs.
Now that the dust has settled from the reset, we put together this Dev Diary to clear up any confusion about the new system.

First, we’ll look at how DGs used to work.

Previously

DG bosses would get one guaranteed item drop and two rolls (at 30% and 15%) at an extra item from our dungeon items list.
This was a global dungeon item drop list that featured every single item you could get from a boss in a DG.
We also often reuse this list for generic loot from non-DG bosses across the game.

Now

The global dungeon drop list itself has remained unchanged, however, a lot of DG bosses no longer roll on this list (just seven do). Instead, we now have multiple lists split into categories;

• Commodities & Neurotweak crates

• Weapons

• Shields

• Engines

• Energies

• Equipment (anything you could find in the “Item” tab of the trade bay) and Scoops

• Tractors

• Station

• Radars

• Drones

• Augmenters

There is also an additional list of generic gear, similar to the old global list, but with fewer items in it.
Blueprints for gear are included in the category for the type of item they build (e.g., the Fine Tuned engine blueprints come from the engines list, not the station one).
The augmenters list consist of Class, Ship Mastery, Spacey, and Speedy augmenters.

Each DG boss has been assigned one of these lists to drop 100% of the time. They then have a second list with a 50% drop rate on which may be the same, or another list, and finally typically a 40% chance at the commodity list.

For example, a Vulture boss will always drop from the engine list, has a 50% chance to drop from the radar list, and a 40% chance to drop from the commodity list.
A Big Green will always drop from the weapon list, with 50% chance at another item from the weapon list and 40% chance from the commodity list.

Not all bosses completely follow this new pattern, and some bosses will always grant a commodity drop in addition to their gear drop.
Bosses which were special before and granted unique or extra loot, such as Red Wattages, Stellations, the named bosses, still give their extra loot.

The result of these changes will be that you’ll get loot of certain types at a more consistent rate than before, and if you need something in particular you’ll be able to target that item better by fighting bosses which are known to drop that type of gear.

While we’re not going to just give away which bosses drop from which lists, the assignment is on the boss type and will be consistent from universe to universe.

[Item Changes]

• Kalthi Commander, Kalthi Armored Commander and Kalthi Wrathful Commander’s Inhibiting Fighters no longer cause -regen on enemy target shields and instead inflict -25% Thrust and slightly reduced tractor range.
• Fixed issue with a few Empyreal gear being unequipable/neurobound.
• Added additional searchable tags to various items.
• Updated the visual effect for the Empyreal Wave Manipulator.

[AI Changes]

• Perihelions now have better radar and have more shields.
• Celeste’s long range beams shots have a more delayed ramp up and increased the visibility of the beam. Also reduced the -elec effect drastically.
• Changed Tutulemma ‘s Solar Annihilation Missile’s launch pattern.
• Equinox shields were increased.
• Analemma’s short range weapons increased DPS and it gained two short range auras.
• Made the envelopment used by Estelle larger in diameter so it no longer is hidden by the target ring.
• Fallen Minelayer had shields by 25%.
• The following changes were made to Fallen Haraka encounter:
  • Haraka Station’s beam super item has been replaced by a projectile super item
  • Gave better radar.
  • Reduced shields by 25%.
  • The Mini Delquad have weaker tractors and stronger pulse guns.

• The following changes were made to Fallen Kunahi:
  • Reduced shields by 25%.
  • Protective Laser Platforms now always try to stay by Kuhani’s side.

[Universe Changes]

• Increased number of drop rolls to the Empyrean fleet bosses.
• Added unique uncommon drops to the strong Empyrean fleets.
• Added new T23 augmenter drops to Empyrean mobs
• Empyrean boss rooms now have a maximum range before GSA/adds spawn shown by an asteroid field.
• Added a planets and light sources to the Empyrean boss rooms. Should prevent AI camping the wormhole entrances.
• Lowered the suns to prevent issues with orthographic and made targetable in the rooms before the bosses in Empyrean zone.

[Mission Changes]

• Fixed issue with the T22 Diploma and Alien Egg missions that prevented players with T23 skills from being able to access them.

[System]

• Player hate of AI will decay much faster. In most cases, 20-30 minutes.

The server will be down at June 30th 9:30PM ET / July 1st 1:30AM UTC due to Emergency Maintenance due for an estimated 5 hours. The website may be down at times during it.

[Item Changes]

• Warrior Brawling Field and Mega Electron Discharge Device removed from player ships. Were previously supposed to be removed / not in player hands.
• Fixed oversight with Empyreal ship blueprints manhours being 160,000,000,000 and change to 16,000,000,000.
• Adjusted costs of many AC trades at Celestial Encampment.
• Added a note to the descriptions of the Empyreal Ship Upgrade BPs of what ship they’re upgrading from.
• Reduced Hi-Combat Probe’s Shields by a factor of 10.
• Fixed various tag issues on other new Kalthi Super Items.
• Removed old Kalthi Supers that were missed.

[AI Changes]

• Harraka Station has had the following changes:
  • Removed Haraka Station being able to spawn with augmenters.
  • Doubled Haraka Station’s turning.
  • Removed the laser on Haraka Station’s Torpedo stations.

• Fading Minelayer has had the following changes:
  • The lightning effect on Fading Minelayer’s gigantic mines now are the radius of the aura they use near death.
  • Gave Fading Minelayer’s giant mines more shields and high visibility
  • Fallen Mines now have cloaks.
  • Fading Minelayer now has auras to decrease its enemies’ radar.
  • Fallen Mines in Fading Minelayer’s fight will destroy themselves after three minutes.
  • The giant mines now spawn faster and there are up to two up at once.
  • The Harakas in Fading Minelayer have more shields and are more aggressive.
• Fallen Kuhani has had the following changes:
  • The platforms in Fallen Kuhani now fight the player.

[Universe Changes]

• Fixed an issue with Rear Brawler Fleet lockout.

[System]

• Fixed a possible issue causing planets to desync.

[Item Changes]

• Adjustments to the new Kalthi super items and made most not affect bases.

[Universe Changes]

• Updated the Serengeti instance and lockout names to match the new boss names.
• Fixed Nexus exploration goals not correctly revealing target star systems.