As part of our launch on Steam, we are excited to announce the contents of our brand new Starter Pack that is exclusive to Steam! Whether you’re new to the universe, launching into your first Zebucart, or an experienced pilot traversing the stars, the Starter Pack has something for you!

Included in the Starter Pack are 5 unique ship skins, a unique Steam exclusive holoprojector named the Cosmic Shimmer, and 3 months of premium subscription time. This starter pack is a one-time purchase option for all players for $19.99! Normally a three-month subscription is $24.95, so that’s a 20% savings on a premium subscription.

Now if that isn’t enticing enough for you, during our Launch Event Window, the Starter Pack is going to be discounted even MORE. From June 12 through June 19 the Starter Pack will be 25% off the base price. So that’s 5 skins, a holoprojector, 3 months of sub time for $14.99! This deal won’t be coming back anytime soon so jump on it while you have the chance!

Here’s a preview of the Cosmic Shimmer and skins in the Starter Pack!

Don’t forget that the more you play on Steam during our Launch Event, the more it helps us to grow and gain visibility. Even better, if you purchase the Starter Pack, or any Space Points through Steam, it also really improves our rankings and visibility! If you want to support us so we can keep on making Star Sonata an epic game, here is your chance. We definitely wouldn’t be where we are today without your support, so join us on Steam!

It has been a long time coming, but we’ll be going live on Steam at roughly at 10:00am PT this Friday. We’ve already made a huge post about how you can help make our Steam Launch a success, so if you haven’t checked that out yet give it a read. In a post coming later today, we will be outlining what is included in our Starter Pack.

Today, we wanted to take a moment to highlight what our launch event is going to look like and why you should definitely play on Steam during the event! Playing through Steam helps us, so here’s what we’re offering you in return:

• Just by logging into Star Sonata through Steam, you will get a Steam exclusive holoprojector named Raging Steam. This is the only way to get this holoprojector, and it’ll be unobtainable in the future.

• Additionally, we’ll be offering 50% extra experience for characters logged in through Steam for the entire duration of the launch event.
• Finally, we’ll be offering a bonus 10 space points on top of every space point purchase through Steam. We’ve never offered a special on space points ever before and I’m not sure if we’ll ever do it again, so its a good time to stock up!

These bonuses will only apply if you are logged into the game through Steam during the launch event window, which runs from June 12th to July 12th. Make sure to log on through Steam at least once to grab the exclusive holoprojector, but we hope you’ll keep using it through July 12th to get the 50% bonus experience.  As we mentioned in our previous posts, every purchase and play through Steam during the launch event really helps us to grow our visibility and rankings within Steam, so we really hope that you participate to help make this a success! Thank you for your support, and stay tuned for the next blog post coming later today outlining the Steam Starter Pack. It’s a really good deal, so keep an eye out!

Note: Just to correct a common misconception, linking your existing account through Steam is not currently possible and not required for any of the above bonuses. You can login via your normal username and password through the Steam downloaded game client.

An issue has been identified where players have been placing low tech attached drones throughout the Earthforce Layer to intentionally use up base slots on planets and moons.

To fix this issue, the upcoming patch will be removing any attached drones in Earthforce Layer.

Any attached drones in storage will be converted from attached drones to unattached drones. The only drones that will be removed from space will be the ones in the Earthforce Layer.
Any currently attached drones in Wild Space will not be affected.

The item search functionality has been greatly expanded recently, allowing you to narrow down the item you are looking for in your storage much more effectively.

This post will highlight some useful tags that can be searched for at the bottom of your inventory window. This functionality also works for searching in your bases and TSL!

A complete list of the available tags to be searched can be found on the Star Sonata Wiki.

Here is a video that gives a quick overview of the search function, or you can scroll to see a visual breakdown below.

You can search for any item type by the tag shown at the top of the item in question. The entire tag must be entered with no abbreviations, though it is not case sensitive:

Modifications, like Evil, Sleek and Reinforced can be searched for by typing in the name of the relevant mod:

A list of all gear with modifications on them can be searched for by entering an asterisk. (*)

Neurobound equipment can be searched for by entering ‘Neurobound’ or ‘NB’.

Augmenters can be searched for with ‘Augmenter’ — handy for searching for those augmenters that might not have ‘augmenter’ in their name:

It’s worth mentioning that the original search functionality is unchanged, so if you’re looking for ‘Ore’, you will also search for items that contain the word ‘ore’, such as Powercore:

 You can even combine tags with ‘&’, as shown below:

We hope this added functionality will be of use when searching for specific items.

Greetings Pilots!

Here is the next set of LiveTest Server patch notes, the goal of these is to give you a heads up on changes before they’re pushed to Liberty and allow you to test and experiment with these changes!
If you have any concerns or feedback on any of these changes please report them in the #feedback channel on the Star Sonata Discord!

The LTS updates are only applicable to the LiveTest Server and may be changed before being pushed to Liberty.

You will need the newest Beta Client to check out these changes.
(+changes require a new uni)

[Nexus Rework]

• The Nexus has been reworked, there will be a blog post soon.

[Skill Changes]

• New skill, Zen of Devices, increases the charge rate of certain super items by 3% per level up to level 100. Super items will say in their description if they are affected by this skill.

[Item Changes]

• Removing Attached Drones.
• Converted All Attached Drone items to their non-attached variants. Attached Warp Beacon will be unchanged.
• Converted Attached Drone Blueprints to their non-attached versions.
• Removed Attached Magic Attach requirement from Attached Warp Beacon.
• Converted Armada Ambrosia Drone to an unattached drone.
• Player owned attached drones are no longer allowed to exist in Earthforce layer. They will be removed when the server restarts.

• Adjusted the stats on many super items.

• Envelopments will now always attach to the object that used them. Envelopments generally have been strengthened, but their active time reduced. Envelopments can now look like different things, such as a chunk of ice.

• Ice block super items will now have a much lower bonus resistance buff, but create an envelopment around the ship that looks like ice with a fixed hit point pool.

• Increased the tech level of many built in super items that were artificially low.

• Common shield tweaks have had their stats increased.

• Fixed a bug where Enveloping Monkey, Seer Backstab, and Sniper Marksman were affecting super item damage.

• New Roscap Mining Punch Super Item.

• All tweaks used by Super Items will automatically get the NoTweak tag and not use the Neurotweaking skill.

• All the Common tweak super items can charge faster with Zen of Devices skill.

• Changed Krill Fighter device and Alien Krill Fighter device to only launch one Krill fighter, but that fighter will do about 3x the DPS as before.

• Claw Missile Device will now charge much faster, Alien Claw Missile Device will charge a little faster, but do a lot more damage.

• Updated visuals on the Zebucart Mark 2 skin, the Volcom and its variants, the Brigand’s Volcom and its variants, the Phunka.dll, and the Helga.

• Added an unremovable “Tracking Beacon” item to a new player’s starter Zebucart ship.

• Reduced the tech level of the “Cadet Missile Launch Device”, the Cadet and Reconditioned Cadet’s missile generator, to tech 0 to fix issues with it.

[AI Changes]

• Fixed Kalthi Minion Fighter Hull engine mount locations.

• +Forgones will now take 20 seconds between firing their super item instead of 10.

[Universe Changes]

• +Changed “Earthforce Sanctuary: East Wild Space” and “Earthforce Sanctuary: West Wild Space” galaxy names to “Earthforce Sanctuary Alpha” and “Earthforce Sanctuary Beta” respectively.

• +The AC exchange for Primal Zebra / Panther Ship Remains have had their Zaphragi Research Diploma turn-in values normalized to two per.

[System]

• Fixed a bug that allowed selling items to stations without a trade bay.

• Made shops which are not public or trading have their entries removed from market check.

• Fixed bug which only allowed base owners to use items on the base. It now depends on Management permission.

• The ship window will now only show the effects of damage and rof buffs on your most recent fired weapon, and no longer show incorrect numbers for the other weapons.

• Damage tweak / aura is now a DPS tweak / aura. For the percent based ones, this won’t change anything, but the few non-percent ones will be a change in DPS now instead of damage per shot.

• Added separate smaller resets to the skill resets in stations. Can now reset classes, hostility skills, adv subskills, or control skills separately alongside the full skill reset.

• Can now search for “nb” or “neurobound” in inventory or TSL to see all NB items.
• Can now search for “*” in inventory or TSL to see all modded items.
• TSL will now display an asterisk after the names of any modded items inside

• Fixed a bug where drones on the hotbar would sometimes default back to the unequipped version.

Many people play video games as a way to unplug from the worries and responsibilities in their lives. This is especially common in role-playing games, which encourage players to escape to an entirely different persona and explore a world or universe that’s not quite like our own. In Star Sonata, our friendships and conflicts mostly play out in our virtual world between our virtual characters. It’s easy to forget that even your sworn enemy in-game is just an ordinary person like yourself, with hopes, dreams, fears, and faults. Right now, there are people in our community who are scared, anxious, and hurting. We owe it to them to respond with compassion and solidarity, not only because there would be no Star Sonata without its community, but because helping those in need is the right thing to do.

Police brutality is wrong and unacceptable. Police infringing on citizens’ rights to peaceably assemble is wrong and unacceptable. Police assaulting, arresting, and maiming journalists is wrong and unacceptable. Racist and discriminatory policing practices in the United States must be brought to an end.

I am running a donation-matching campaign with a fund of $1,000 of my own money. I will match up to $100 per contribution to any local organization that is working to end police brutality in the United States. I specifically ask for donations to local organizations because of the immediate impact these organizations can have on the communities they serve. For more information, reach out to @enk#3571 on Discord.

In compassion and solidarity,

Anil “Enk” Venkatesh
Lead Content Developer

(+changes require a new uni)

[Item Changes]

• Converted T9+ Station kit blueprints from Metal to Steel Girders.

• Added drone slots required to tooltips on permanent drones.

• Created a new t15 Cardinal’s Excommunicator weapon.

• Adjusted defuser code so that vulnerabilities take priority over resistance.

• Created a new line of Capital Lasers that upgrade into the Capital Armageddon weapons.

• Capital Armageddon weapons were set to the wrong cost category resulting in a slight reduction of DPS.

• Added in three new player obtainable capital ships and three new player obtainable support freighters.
• +Added the capital ships Mordred, Gawain and Gareth to Bonnet, Lavanite and Absolution AI bases.
• +Added the support freighters Scarab, Stag and Weevil to Bonnet, Lavanite and Absolution AI bases.

[AI Changes]

• +Update to Stella AI (roamers and DGs) for proper Solarian loot drops.

• +Cardinal Bellarmine in Absolution and his DG variant Bell from Hell have chances to drop Excoms, with Bell from Hell having a chance of dropping the Cardinal’s Excom.

• +Lowered the range and damage of Bellarmine’s Cathedral in Penance.

• +Rosemary, Basil, and Basilus AI are more tanky and do significantly more damage to be more in line with their level.

• +Reducing the number of fighters the Blue Gamma holds from 6 to 2.

• +Added Solar Prism drops to the AI in Arctia.

• +Added new line of Capital Lasers to drop from Roaming EF Capital Ships.

[Missions]

• The Galileo mission chain has been adjusted as follows:
• The player now receives an Excommunicator earlier in Galileo’s mission chain.
• The player now receives an Cardinal’s Excommunicator at the end of Galileo’s mission chain.
• +An AC turn in for Galileo’s Telescopes have been added to Sai’s Retreat in Sol after ‘Galileo’s Research’ has been completed.
• +An AC turn in for Cardinal’s Excommunicators has been added to Sai’s Retreat in Sol after ‘Excommunicator’ has been completed.

• The Vulcan mission chain has been adjusted as follows:
• The mission to kill Infernus has been made to auto start when you enter the Chamber of Heat, and can be done concurrently with the previous mission to kill the three bosses.
• +The player now receives a new mining weapon, the Vulcan Mining Blaster after finishing the first mission.
• +The player can purchase additional Vulcan Mining Blasters after completing the first mission via an AC turn in of 50 metals and a Vulcanite Core.

• Reworked the Perpetual Motion drone missions:
• +No longer will you need to bring the drones or DG drone BPs to open up the turn in missions, instead you bring items to the station to unlock AC turn ins.
• +Removed the drone BPs from the DG drop list that have mission/AC pairs.

• EF Capital ship acquisition missions have been added to Beta Antares:
• +Added missions that give EF Capital Ship Upgrades.
• +Added missions that give EF Capital Ship Upgrade Blueprints.
• +Reworked difficulty of Earthforce Roaming Capital Ships.
• +Removed Capital Ship Research Blueprint from Beta Antares.
• +AC turn-ins unlock after mission is completed.

[Universe Changes]

• Adjusted Tidepool and Tartarus Dailies to reward shards only via the end of the mission chain instead of drops via fighting enemies.

• Removed phasing effect from the large planet in the Drone Deployment 22 boss instance (Kandara Var).

• +Instanced the bosses of Jungle.

• +Instanced the bosses of Mira.

• +Added Zobitan’s Retreat to Arctia, an AI base with several Paximinus guards and a small mission chain giving a Zobitan Beam. After completion of the chain, additional Zobitan Beams can be acquired from the tradebay in exchange for 10 Solar Prisms each.

• +Added an AC turn in for the t5 class augmenters to the respective class stations in Lycuem, these will unlock once the class intro missions are completed.

• Core skill training locations have been adjusted as follows:
• +Core skills are trainable to level 3 in Sol.
• +Core skills are trainable to level 4 in Arctia for Solar Prisms.
• +Core skills are trainable to level 5 in Blue Outpost for Blue Whispers and Blue Aethers.
• +Core skills are trainable to level 7 in Vulcan for Heated Metals.
• +Core skills are trainable to level 9 in Mira for Paxian Medallions.
• +Core skills expect for Piloting are trainable to level 12 in Jungle for Jungle Powercores.

• Sol layout has been adjusted as follows:
• +Increased the planets orbit distance around the sun.
• +Increased size of planets.
• +Dramatically increased size of Earthforce Headquarters, Earth Central, Sai’s Retreat stations.
• +Moved Enforcer station to orbit Mars instead of the Earth.
• +Increased the illumination of the Sun to compensate for the increase of orbits.

• +Locked LACS 1894 (Jungle Entrance) to Warp 1.

• +Added an AC trade in Beta Antares to upgrade Capital Lasers to Capital Armageddon Lasers.

• +Converted most weapon BPs for sale in the Lyceum class bases to the AC system.

[System]

• Created a “Create a Support Ticket” menu icon to allow for an instant link to submitting a ticket.

• Added commas to energy and shield bank numbers in their tooltips.

• Fixed Storage tab not being immediately visible on first logging into the game in your TSL base.

• Moved TSL tooltips to be positioned to the side, like they are with the trade bay.

We’re hard at work preparing to make the Steam launch a success, but I just wanted to take a moment to share the ways that our community can help spread the word of our Steam launch both before and after we hit June 12th.

Wish-listing on Steam

We are really close to a major milestone in our wishlist counts. We’ve got the largest email campaign we’ve ever undertaken underway and it’s yielding great results, but we need even more! Every wishlist counts, and the sooner we can hit higher numbers the more people we’ll be able to reach with our launch. Please add the game to your wishlist if you haven’t already, and if you haven’t ask your friends to do so as well!

Play the game through Steam

Once we launch, it will help us greatly if you download and play the game through Steam. The more players we have playing through Steam, the more likely we are to get featured as a popular new release, so this is very important! Ideally, all of our existing players would play through Steam for the 30 days after we launch.

To help encourage this, we’re going to be having a launch event exclusive to players playing through Steam.

This will include:

• 50% bonus to XP from all sources, if playing through Steam.
• An exclusive holo-projector granted to you, the first time you login through Steam.

Purchases through Steam

Purchasing any of our offerings through Steam helps us earn a higher placement on the new releases section of Steam. We’ve got some really good deals to make it worth it, so if you’re able I hope that you’ll consider them!

Steam Starter Pack

We’ll be offering a starter pack, available exclusively through Steam on June 12th. This will include: 3 months of subscription, 5 exclusive skins to low level ships, and a unique holoprojector that you won’t be able to get anywhere else. The base cost will be $19.99 but we’ll be discounting it during the week after our launch. This is a really good deal even just for the subscription time itself!

Bonus Space Points

When buying space points through Steam for a short period of time after launch, we’ll be offering a bonus 10 Space Points with every purchase (even the 20 SP bundle!). This is the first time we’ve ever offered a discount on space points, and not something we’re planning on doing again anytime soon!

Scanning for Reset
So, with this most recent patch we have changes that came in with a player emp item. Scanning solarbodies will now result in being told how many extractor slots each Base on a planet can utilize!

To give a few examples:
So, using a planet that has Loads of Nuclear Waste (100) and a Lot of Metals (26). You can see that each station on that planet will be able to have 100 Nuclear Waste Extractors and 26 Metal Extractors.

Likewise, a planet with Loads of Metals (124) and smidgen of Silicon (2). You’ll only be able to put 124 Metal Extractors and 2 Silicon Extractors on those stations.

All planet scanners have been updated to show extractor slots like this.

With the upcoming Universe Reset on May 23rd, there will be some changes that are coming that will be important to keep in mind.

Projectile Furtherance

Projectiles will no longer be blocked by targets with less effective shield than the projectile’s damage. Instead, the first target will be destroyed and the projectile will continue through in the same direction until its damage is expended. This change won’t come up a lot in ordinary gameplay, as it’s intended to resolve some undesirable edge cases. The main ones we have in mind are in the Brute Force fight, where a weak envelope or other obstacle can be used to completely counter the boss’s weapon, and in galaxy assault, where various weak obstacles can be used to interrupt base weapon streams.

Station Kits

Attached Station Kits have been renamed to regular Station Kits. These kits can be placed either on a solarbody or as a standalone station. To place it on an allowed solarbody, just click on the planet/moon and then place the station.

Additionally, base thrusters will not decay on reset!

For a more in-depth explanation regarding Projectile Furtherance and Station Placement, check out this video!

https://youtu.be/hMuMgGrJTzc

Wild Space

The layout of WIld Space will be changing with the new universe!

Blueprints

Station kit blueprints, and some others are being converted from high amounts of t0 resources, to equivalent IC requirements.

Subscription Changes

With the subscription changes, lapsed players will still be able to log into the game while keeping their skill and gear usage. However, lapsed players will not have access to the following mechanics until they re-subscribe.

• Wild Space (Station placement, Trade Bot Orders, PvP)
• Premium Content Zones (Perilous Space, Kalthi Depths, Subspace, Serengeti, etc)

There are also some new bonuses for players with active subscriptions:

• 25% XP bonus from kills
• 10 extra docked ship slots
• 1000 extra TSL capacity
• Setting up auto-renewal will reward one extra SP per month renewed!

Steam

Star Sonata will launch on Steam on June 12th!
Direct downloads will be still allowed through our website, but please add Star Sonata to your wishlist on Steam!