Easter is here! The bunnies have setup shop in Eastern Warren accessible from Sol, Elmer Fudd has returned to Handel’s Cove and is on the hunt for rabbits, and egg boxes litter the universe. The event will run until April 24th.

Happy hunting!

A lot of people are stuck at home and bored, so Star Sonata will be launching a temporary new, totally free, PvP oriented server! The PvP server will last for 30 days with prizes for players who beat certain challenges.

This special event server will launch on Saturday, March 21 at 1:00 pm EST.  It will end after Sunday, April 19.  Hopefully we’ll be allowed out of our houses by then.

There will be some minor difference compared to Liberty, the main server.

• All areas except Nexus will be open PvP

• Repair costs are increased and death will cause 10% durability damage for increased credit drops after a PvP kill

• Universe size will be smaller and Wild Space will have a unique shape

• Subspace will be disabled

• Reworked Zen of Shield and Energy skills

• Item mod rate is increased

• Every aspect of playing on this new server is completely free. No subscription required for anything.

• Logging in to the PvP server requires an account on the main Liberty server.  For your rewards to transfer to your main account, log in with that account. If you are returning and no longer have an account on Liberty, please create one there before moving over to the PvP server.

The server challenge rewards are:

To claim one of the first 4 rewards, send a screen cap of your accomplishment with your character name to an admin, and we will verify on the admin panel. Winners will be announced as we go. Once 190 characters have reached level 601, we will make an announcement and copy down a list of those people. Their stuff and rewards will be granted at the end of the event.  Let the chaos commence.

If you haven’t already, join our Star Sonata Discord channel.

As of the patch on March 3rd, premium characters (p2p) are now able to log back onto their accounts with f2p status!

The following list describes exactly what this means for you today, and a few more changes that will go into effect next universe reset.

Lapsed Subscription Changes

Current Universe Changes

• Trade skills are enabled
• Bases cannot be placed in Wild Space
• Bases in Wild Space will function normally
• Trade Bot orders will be executed normally
• T21+ skills will be retained (this won’t change)
• PvP in Wild space is enabled
• Access to premium zones (Perilous Space, Kalthi Depths, Subspace, etc) is disabled.

Next Universe Changes

• Trade skills will be disabled
• Bases cannot be placed in Wild Space
• Bases in Wild Space cannot fire, extract, or trade
• Trade Bot orders will not be executed in Wild Space
• T21+ skills will be retained (this won’t change)
• PvP in Wild Space is disabled
• Access to premium zones (Perilous Space, Kalthi Depths, Subspace, etc) is disabled.

**All of these changes are subject to alterations between now and reset.

Additional Changes

Next Universe Notification Changes

• Any subscribed account without auto-renew enabled will receive an email notification one week before the subscription expires.
• A team message will be announced one day before bases lose bonuses (optional toggle in settings)

Future Subscription Bonuses

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

(+changes require a new uni)

[Item Changes]

• Adjusted the Commodities order within the Trade Bay and the Bot Trade Order Menu to be more friendly to players for QoL.

• Added Antu Agniparvata and Vazi Pralinata to appropriate laser drop list.

• Adjusted some Super Item effect descriptions to properly show what they do.

• Added new transference weapon to Demented Delquad boss loot.

• Fixed a bug that caused Pretender Poseidon not to do any splash damage.

• Poseidon Splash fighters now do splash damage as they are intended.
  • Poseidon Splash fighters no longer have a Trident Prong equipped.

• Gave the Red Photon Doomsday Device a new visual.

• Modified Queen’s Hive Missile to be non-neurobound.

• Liposuction scrap value has been fixed.

• Adjusted Honey, Wasp and Twisted fighter weapons that were incorrectly set due to a bug. Resulting in slight reductions in range and increase in recoil.

• Changed Dark Shielding Blueprint from T21 to T20 to reflect the tech of item being built.

• Corrected the Advanced Eucration Flux Blueprint from T20 to T21 to reflect the tech of the item being built.

• Corrected Mzungu Energybank Blueprint and Mzungu Protector Blueprint from T15 to T16 to reflect the rarity of the item being built.

• Adjusted the tech of Large Blue Photon Stock Missile Production from T15 to T20 to reflect the tech of the missile being produced.

• Updated descriptions for Energon and Peasants.

• Removed the out of combat speed boost and evasion from Green Defense Fighters.

• Var Zuladura Katur, Var Zazatamzu Katur, Var Mizra Katur, Var Bhisaj Katur have been given the same energy as their Tra counterparts.

• Change weight of Crate of Pirate Crest, Crate of Veteran Pirate Crest and Crate of Master Pirate Crests from 7 million to 100 and changed from breaking into 5 to 4 to 6 to match the strongboxes of the same item.

• +Removed the only drop of Crate of Master Pirate Crests from Barbe Noir and replaced with a Master Pirate Strongbox.

[AI Changes]

• Reduced the weapon range, recoil and slightly increased damage for the Deflector drone. This restores the stats to what it historically was.
  • +Moved Deflector and Reflector drones 50 farther out from the center so they don’t kill the Light Nuzzle and Aqua Nuzzle on irradiation.

• Corrected missing visual for the Target Dummy.

• Removed the evasion from the fighters Master Flylet and Master Maggot use.

• +Fixed an issue with Queen Hive phases not activating.

[Missions]

• Adjusted Ahab’s Training Mission from 10 rat kills to 5 kills.

• Adjusted Ration Relief mission to start at the same time as Ahab’s Training.

• +Added Priority Target mission for Lord Mulligan boss.

• +Increased expected levels on Strontium KD AI kill missions (this means you will get more exp from them at higher levels).

[Universe Changes]

• Irradiated Subspace Anomaly visuals have been fixed. Bad timer values resulted in their radiation cloud effect flickering and twitching constantly.

• +Added upgraded DPS kits for AI empires

• +Removed the Warp Beacon from Glass Matrix

• +Removed the Warp Beacon from Iq’Bana.

• +Added a new custom warp beacon to Beta Antares.

• +Unteamed the Free Market Warp Beacon.

• +Changed the entire Serengeti zone to non-PvP.
  • Removed the lockout for killing some of the Panthers in the Serengeti Nebula instance. Only killing Baron will grant the lockout now for this gal of the instance.
• Removed Single Panther from Lake Manyara instance and replaced it with an additional Rhino.
• +Removed the keys for instance warps in Ngoronoro and Ngoronoro crater other than Lion and Emperor.
• +Made Zebras and Panthers in Ngoronoro guard their respective warp.
• +Replaced 2 Zebras for Rhinos in Ngorogoro Crater.

• +Removing the Scrap Prefab Missions from Creaky’s Junkquarters in The Junkyard.

• +Moved credit cost of Andaman Extermination Blueprint from periodic to initial to match other extermination bps.

• +Changed “The Dark” from locking to the north spiral to locking to the south spiral of Earthforce layer during uni generation.

• +Removed the link and wormholes between Lyceum and Lyceum Wormhole Research.

• +Updated and revised the shouts that DG bosses use.

• +Added new Condenser Augmenter Packs to the Augmenter Lab station within Acropolis.
  • Removed Augmenter Condensers from drop tables.
• Adjusted rarity of some Blueprint Packs.

• +Corrected the “Investigate the Pretenders” mission to end at Olympus Entrance instead of Serengeti Blockade.

• +Changed Hallway to Mother to no PvP.

• +Added 40 additional random AI team names. Removed inappropriate AI team names.

• +Added an AC turn in mission to trade 1 Allied Commendation for 600 million credits at the E.F.V. Avenger at the Allied Staging Sector.

[Typo Fixes]

• Fixed Typos in “Cleaning House” Mission.

• Fixed Typos “A Blue Connection” Mission.

• Updated the description of the Hidden Nanite Infusion Device to correctly state 175% instead of 200%. The damage has been 175% but the description just falsely states 200%.

[System]

• Added the no discount indicator to blueprint tooltip from construction tab.

• AI Empires now follow galaxy lockdown.

• Unattached bases can now be used as attached bases if you have an acceptable solarbody selected to attach them to.

• Fixed a bug when attempting to cancel a build for which no blueprints are on base.

• Expired premium players can now login as a free to play.

Overview

We have been working on finalizing our proposal for an Engineer revamp to go live alongside the Shield Monkey and healing revamp (which is nearly finalized) and a rebalance of all the support freighters. Our proposed changes aim to make Engineers more engaging to play. We are especially focusing on making each new skill immediately impactful and gameplay-changing. In order to get a feel for our proposed changes to the class, we will be implementing the items listed below on the test2 server for playtesting and player feedback. Nothing is set in stone, but at least this is what we’re going to start with.

Skill Changes

Engineer Skill

Engineer Class 1: 1 Additional energy slot in support freighters and capital ships
Engineer Class 2: +25% drone ops. (More on how drone ops will now work below.)
Engineer Class 3: 1 Extra aug slot.

Drone Mastery

+1 drone slot per level (no drone ops anymore)

Beam Mastery

+33% tractor power, +33% tractor range, drones will prioritize your tractor target (both friend and foe if applicable), and do 33% more crit damage against that target (all per level for 3 levels)

Damage Control

Engineer overloads his shield with extra electricity. 20% of incoming damage per level is absorbed by the energy bank, scaled with current energy percent. When maxed at level three, this skill will grant the Engineer up to 60% damage mitigation, although that figure will scale down as their energy bank drains. Provided the Engineer has good energy stats, this skill will outperform the current Damage Control skill for mitigation.

Adv Subskills

Mechanical Engineer: +3 temporary drone equip slots, can repair while in combat

Computer Engineer: Your attacks leave a computer virus, causing your drones to do up to double damage to target up to 100% of the value of your attacks. Also works with healing.

Electrical Engineer: Your weapons do 10x damage, but take 10x more energy per damage to fire, scaled with your energy bank percent.

Civil Engineer: +100 armor on temp drones (done)

Changes to Drone Ops

Drone ops will no longer give drones a bunch of stats, but instead give drones 1% of your ship’s augmenter stats. All four drone ops bonuses are converted into this new stat.

How this will play out is that instead of Engineers trying to maximize for the most Drone Ops possible, almost at the expense of everything else, they will need to get a mixture of Drone Ops and the stats they want their drones and ship to actually have. We estimate that (with the extra aug slot) drones will overall be a little bit more powerful under this system, but also much more specialized. Drones will also have access to stats they didn’t have before, like electric tempering and transference power. Players will be able to specialize for burst DPS, sustain, tankiness, range, etc. much more than they could before with only a single drone controller. Of course, we will make sure to thoroughly test this change on the test2 server in order to verify our theorycrafting, and make changes accordingly.

Drone controllers will still work the same, to get dynamic changes in drone abilities, but the new Drone Ops will allow a much more personalized baseline and create much more interesting augmenter choices than before. In addition, the Engineer’s ship will share a lot of stats with their drones now, making it possible for Engineers to actually use their weapons in combat.. Hello, spacebar!

Item Changes and New Items

Elec Beam

Instead of giving a constant elec amount to target, elec beams link the two ships’ energy, sending a portion of the elec consumption of the target to the Engineer’s ship to be consumed there instead. If either ship banks out, the beam disconnects. Different beams have different percentages that go to the engineer, with higher constant additional elec cost for higher percentages. We came up with this concept because we weren’t happy with the lack of scaling in the current elec beam mechanic. Once the Engineer can power their end of the beam, there is no advantage to further developing the character’s energy stats. While this new concept will take a lot of testing to balance, it will encourage Engineers to really develop their energy stats, rewarding them with potentially even higher energy support abilities than they can currently get with the highest-tier elec beams.

Repair Drone

Repair Drone generates a short range field around the drone with nanobots that repair allied ships at a rate of 1% per second as long as the ally can pay the docked repair cost. Can be used in combat. Requires Mechanical Engineer

Tesla Field Generator

Tesla Field Generator is a new type of field generator that will wirelessly transmit elec to allies in range (500ish) at a rate of 1% of their missing bank per second scaled by the engineers energy bank percent, doubly effective with drones. (With lightning graphical effects) Rename Super Capacitor and Super Capacitor Mk II to be Tesla Field Gens. Disallow use on slaves.

New High Tech Non-Mobile Drones

Create new high tech non mobile drones that do more DPS and more HPS than the current high tech mobile drones so that mobile drones will no longer be best DPS or HPS for any given tech or damage type.

New God Aug Drone Controllers

Zeus, Ares, Athena, and whatever else looks appropriate. Possibly also create plus versions made out of the God+ augs.

Questions and Comments

Please direct all questions and comments about this blog post to the forum here: http://forum.starsonata.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=63599

(+changes require a new uni)

[Item Changes]

• Unt Faranji Gatling Laser X has had its size and stats adjusted.

• Almost every Tech 0 to Tech 20 engine makes use of the new particle system.

• Jujo’qii Augmenter was not sticky, changed to be sticky like it should.

• Moved excessive initial prom requirements on the Andaman, Achilles, and Annihilator Station Exterminator Blueprints to periodic.

• All energies have been given appropriate rarities, for most energies this will result in no change. For some energies it will result in an improvement. For other energies it will result in a reduction.
  • Low tech AI base energies have had their stats shifted a bit so that there is more variety in Energy Bank sizes.
  • Amped Zeus Olympios Energy and Amped Jupiter Olympios Energy have been changed from Ultralight to Normal, increasing their power beyond the base versions instead of them being weaker.
  • Primal Lion Heart now uses 1 Promethium every 300 seconds, this brings the electricity regeneration back to where it was previous to the energy rarity changes.

• Vulcaroid Missiles are no longer shipbound.

• Updated Missile Crates descriptions to list the Tech and Damage Type of the missile they contain.

• The Rainbow Force Field holoprojector is no longer neurobound.

• Fixed a bug preventing planetary expedition from working.
  • This was already pushed in a hotfix.

• Adjusted the IC Extractor BP’s to properly show build amount in the build menu.

• Wasp Chamber is now a factory that produces Tamed Killer Wasps.

[AI Changes]

• Added credit drops to UZ mini ubers.

[Missions]

• Fixed issues with Bule and Vo’kii ship missions start and end points being missing from the Twisted Agent station.
  • This was already pushed in a hotfix.

[Universe Changes]

• Fix to Blue Emperor’s stadium arena exit using a red wormhole visual instead of blue.

• +Moved Bipolar from DF220 Perilous to DF160 of North Arm of Earthforce Layer.

• +Locked Iq’Bana to the South Arm of Earthforce Layer.

• +Removed Ship Tech Upgrades from common AI base tradebays. You can still acquire all of them from Beta Antares.

• +Converted the Christmas letter turn in to AC turn in at the station in Lapland.

• +The Z axis values of Enigmatic Sector objects have been set to zero. This will stop ships from flying below the planets and stars in that system.

[Typo Fixes]

• The mission “Marco’s Demise” now correctly states it requires 20 Paxian Pacifier Fighters in its summary in place of the old generator requirement.

[System]

• Added command “/ShowStatSources” to list where the different components of your ship stats come from.

• Converted /showsquaddamage info to a dialog box.

• Reduced rank required to abandon your own base in team territory from operator+ to soldier+

• Removed the concept of galaxies “freezing” when no one is in them for 5 minutes. Instead replaced by a deep sleep state, when in deep sleep objects in the galaxy can still act in a limited fashion, traveling, trading etc will continue working albit much slower than normal. This means bots will no longer end up trapped in DGs because they froze while they were coming out, nor will AI get stuck in a sleeping galaxy while they travel.

• AI (and by extension combat bots) will now only unpack 1 missile/fighter crate of every type that isn’t already unpacked in its inventory.

• Fix for destroyed fighters not updating quantity when added to player ship inventory.

• Added a failsafe to handle cases where an AI drifted too far out and got lost. This will only bring the AI back to the center if there are no players in the galaxy or any galaxies near it, this is not meant to simplify recentering after a failed fight and instead to reduce the likelihood of stumbling into a galaxy with no visible boss because it went too far and never came back.

(+changes require a new uni)

[Item Changes]

• Small Bulker Guard Fighter Generator now properly converts into a crate.

• Zarkar’ayu Cloning Vat now makes a Fighter instead of a Generator.

• Space Blue Alpha Prototype Fighter Generator is now AI Only.

[AI Changes]

• High tier Perilous Space AI (Delquads, Battlestations, Rocs, etc.) no longer spawn in the lower danger factors of Kalthi Depths.

[BvB Siege Changes]

• Added notification to the team chat when a bvb kit is placed in one of their gals.

[Universe Changes]

• +Kalthi Stingers, Warriors, and Deployers now spawn in Kalthi Depths again. They are not able to warp to other galaxies.

• +Unlocked Spartan Garrison Station in Serengeti Blockade to Free to Play.

• +Locked Serengeti Missions Except for Lyceum Guardian, Investigate the Pretenders, and Zaphragi Tractors (Tractoring 19) to Pay to Play.

• +Change Leveasseur, Morgan, Asteroid Being, dungeon Pheonix, Glaucopenia, and DG James Watt, Georg Ohm, Marcus Columbo, Nutty Sputty, Black Bart, Captain Albatross, Dark Curse, Barbe Noire and Iggy Bang to have 10 minute respawn times instead of 30 minutes.

• +The following zones have been manually set to no PvP (some may not be pvp already but weren’t defined in the XML): Iq’ Bana zone, Snake Hole zone, Copper zone, Ruby Steppes zone, Steppe Zone, All Rumbles, Prism, Colored Empires zone, Bonnet zone, Enigmatic Sector zone, Underworld, Nihilite, Hyper (will be reviewed later if we want to keep basing here), Tortuga, Blue Outpost boss areas, Strontium-90, Absolution Zone, The Junkyard, Graveyard, Blanco, Plaguespace, Liberty zone, Vulcan, Bipolar, Arctia, Lapland, Vervaardiger Processing, Capella, Fortress, Gargan, Jungle zone, Labyrinth

[Typo Fixes]

• Typo correction for /endwar error sent back from user, changed text from /war [player] to /endwar [player]

[System]

• Tweaked the /war declaration error to display how much funds you need in team funds (previously it did not tell you and you had to guess)

With the upcoming Universe Reset on January 11th, there will be some changes that are coming that will be important to keep in mind.

Galaxy Assault

Notifications

Deploying a BvB station against another team will result in a warning notification in that team’s chat.

Off-Team Healers

We discovered a longstanding bug in the code that controls hate generation through healing. The upshot of the bug was that off-team healers did not receive hate from the enemies of the people they were healing. We have corrected this bug, so healing someone who is in a fight will automatically mark you as a participant as well. This will include AI fights as well. There is a warning message now to let you know if healing a person will generate hate from another player. Also, safety lock will not let you heal someone if it generates player hate.

Lockdown

Destroying a defending station during BvB will trigger a 2-hour lockdown* that prevents the defenders from creating additional fortifications in that galaxy. Lockdown covers actions such as deploying permanent drones and bases, repairing bases, and commandeering abandoned bases. Also, the defenders cannot unown a galaxy that is in lockdown. The purpose of these changes is so that defenders cannot indefinitely prolong defeat by deploying new kits and repairing destroyed ones.

*Edited from 1 hour! Since this post went live, players expressed concerns that a 1-hour lockdown would cut things pretty tight for the attackers. This change is designed to benefit attackers, not make their lives more difficult, so that feedback had us worried. We have decided to debut the lockdown mechanic with a 2-hour timer instead. We apologize for the last-minute change and will do our best to get your feedback earlier next time.

EF Layer

The remaining systems in EF layer that allow pvp are being changed to not allow pvp. This will largely affect Hyper as you will no longer be able to contest the system from the owning team.

Instance Scaling

Thanks to some hard work from Ingendum, we’ve released Instance Scaling!

When running your normal instance dungeons and bosses, you now have the option to increase the difficulty, and loot drops, of the ai in them! With the increased difficulty, the loot drops will increase by a rate of sqrt(N), up to +231% with a 11x modifier, where N is your difficulty modifier. This can currently go from 1x difficulty to 11x! To increase the difficulty of your instance, all your squad leader needs to do is a few easy steps.

Go into your squad window and create a squad.

Click on the Instance Difficulty button on the bottom of the window.

Use the scaling tool to determine how much harder you want the fight to be and click Confirm!

Happy 2020, Star Sonata!

2019 was a busy year for us, with an active dev and QA team and lots of little improvements that have been patched in. In addition there are some huge changes and improvements that are currently on test2 server being thoroughly tested before an early 2020 release. Some of the things that we added in 2019 are:

• AI Empires
• Instance Scaling
• Improved the graphics for many weapons and engines using a new particle system
• We fought Rattie Moe by the hundreds, and the server is running so fast now, there was almost no lag
• Bonnet Expansion
• Lots of conversions of clunky trade in missions to the new alternate currency system
• Revamp of Strontium-90 missions
• Ongoing improvements to Kalthi Depths
• Comet improvements
• Market check improvements
• V Formation improvements and other bot AI improvements
• Improved Zebucart boss fight
• Revamp of cloaks
• Revamp of overloaders
• Rebalance of exterminators
• Rebalance of fighters and fighter bay improvements
• Rebalance of drones
• Rebalance of engines
• Torpedo rework and rebalance
• Rebalanced Pulse Guns and Mag Cannons
• Improved parasite code and balanced parasite damage

We have some major changes to BvB that will be added with the new universe this month, and termites 2.0 to be patched mid-uni.

Healing Revamp and Other Things on Test2

On test2 are the exciting changes we’ve been working on revolving Shield Monkey and healing changes. Healing no longer manufactures shields by big reductions to the shields lost with resistances, so you don’t get the weird situation where cross healing is super efficient. HPS has been generally increased, but those shields have to come from somewhere. At level 1 of Shield Monkey, ShM’s get 1 extra shield slot in support freighters, and at level 2, they gain the ability to steal shields from enemies with shield transference weapons.

Zen of the Shield has been changed to +5% shield max and +1% shield regen per level, so everyone can have a much higher shield bank and not be so worried about being 1-shot by bosses and in PvP. Long battles will still be about shield sustain, but with more margin for safety. Shield Monkeys can alternate between healing and stealing without needing to worry about constantly healing the tank without him dying. Shield chargers have been made incredibly stronger, but now only operate out of combat. They won’t suck up your energy during a fight, and when the fight is over, you can quickly fill back up again. For recon class, that means they can even dip in and out of fights to fill up their shields if they can get away from the enemies for long enough.

Transference Power now increases the strength of shield transference lasers while healing, and Transference Efficiency increases the strength of shield transference lasers while stealing. Damage tweaks and buffs now only apply to shield stealing and not healing, but overall, HPS has been increased, as the intended bottleneck is not how fast you can heal, but how fast you can get the shields with which to heal. Many augmenters with transference power and/or efficiency have had their stats slightly altered.

Most resistances have been removed from most ships and replaced by a combination of a new armor stat and higher shield banks from Zen of the Shield. This is in an attempt to move away from the Pokemon-like system where you have to memorize what is vulnerable to what and the only difference between the damage types is just needing the right type for the right enemy. Armor works mostly as a “resist all” stat, with the exception that it is doubly effective against physical, and half effective against mining and transference stealing.

Since the various damage types are no longer as useful as ways to bypass resistances, some types have been increased in power and/or utility. Physical weapon strength has been increased in power by 22%, making them the strongest damage type, generally, though higher in DPE and lower in DPS than energy. Radiation weapons have been increased in power by 33%, and are now the ethereal type of damage. “Laser” damage type no longer exists. Surgical damage on a target is now tracked, and when an AI dies, it has up to twice as much change to drop augmenters and items (but not items from drop tables) based on how much surgical was used to kill it, with the last hit being slightly overvalued in the calculation. Kills against players and their possessions can cause up to twice the item damage and drop up to twice the credits based on how much surgical was used.

For now the way that bases heal will be left mostly how it is on live as to not disrupt the current BvB meta. Base healing will probably get changed at the uni reset following this one, but we will be sure to let you know.

Road Ahead

We had some lofty goals at the beginning of 2019, mostly a full class rebalance and release of tech 23 content. Those got delayed because we wanted the ability to fully branch code and content in order to really test and polish and not hold up our regular patch schedule for minor improvements and bug fixes. But being able to fully branch like this is dependent on me converting all of our many balance sheets over to a new system that I devised, which is powerful, but takes a lot of work. All the various rebalancing of engines, cloaks, weapons, shields, etc that you’ve seen over the last year or so are the results of the new balance sheets. It just takes a ton of time, and I spent almost the whole year personally working on Excel sheets and VBA macros. What I thought would take about a month has been about a year and a half now, but a lot of the changes to the sheets have really improved the way we can make and design items, and should pay off in the years ahead.

Because it was taking so long, we decided to do the Shield Monkey and healing first, rather than waiting for everything to go in one gigantic update. The Shield Monkey rebalance has gone really well and received very good feedback from testers. It will be ready to go soon, and possibly will be paired with some minor changes to Engineer class skills and rebalancing of all of the support freighter hulls. We have a new balance sheet for ships that is really cool, using a “perk” system, but it will result in a lot of changes, since our current stats for ships are largely unbalanced. To minimize disruption for the players, but to push updates out without waiting for everything to be done, we are thinking to rebalance classes two at a time by related hull type, and rebalance ships of that hull type together.

Our nearterm roadmap for 2020 is to release the Shield Monkey and possibly minor Engineer changes described above very soon, finish the few remaining balance sheets, release the mod rework and the new cargo system, and then proceed with the other class rebalance two at a time. We have a lot of design work done of the tech 23 stuff, but we want to get the class rebalances done before that can be released.

(+changes require a new uni)

[Instance Scaling]

• Squads now have the ability to bump up the difficulty of instanced content and get more loot for their troubles! Head over to the Squad dialog and see what new buttons and sliders are available. Even older bosses will give Squads a run for their money at the higher difficulties! And for those who want to push their squad to their limits, even if the extra loot is not appealing, next uni may have something in store for you. More information soon!

[Healing Aggro]

• Fixed bug with healing aggro, so now as long as a ship in the same galaxy as something being healed has aggro towards the healing target, it will now get aggo towards the healer as well. Safety lock will prevent getting new aggro towards people from healing.

[Class Changes]

[Fleet Commander]

• Fighter Rebalance.

• There are no longer dedicated aura fighters. Except for some small exceptions (Panther Kitten, Jovian Guard) fighters that previously had an aura no longer have one. As a result they do more damage.

• There are now new superitems in Lyceum (At the Fleet Shipyards base) that provide the auras for your fighters.

• The Olympus fighters are no longer super items, they are instead actual fighters.

• Some fighters had their ranges/GOALDPS adjusted as a result of beam changes.

• Most fighter generators have been removed, they have been replaced with a crate of fighters.

• Sizes of fighters across the board have gone down.

[Shield Monkey]

• Corrected Shield Monkey skill: Shield Manipulation. Previous intention was 20% combat bot damage per level, was under-performing with only 3% per level. Corrected back to 20%.

[Item Changes]

• Adjusted the Dhatri Bhisaj stats to reflect the fact that its parasite isn’t a big part of the weapon.

• Removed the lyceum diploma tag from Apollo Eyes Blueprint so they can no longer be turned in for Diplomas as they are now acquired via Station Gear Tokens.

• Unidyne Core Leach, Unidyne Core Drain, Unidyne Core Drain Prototype now all use the Core Dump Device parasite.

• Attackable allied AI can be healed by (allied) players.

• All “Gigantic” and some excessively large items have had a power reduction.

• Added fancy new particle systems to most low tech engines.

• Added some new plus and size variations of existing engines as rare drops.

• Changed Mad Expander BP to 1 use.

• Twisted Extensive Charge Drones have significantly more range.

• Reworked stats of the Gargantuan Gigo Laser to have less damage, less range, and less size.

• Improved visuals of Gigo Laser, Oversized Gigo Laser, Gigantic Gigo Laser, and Gargantuan Gigo Laser.

• Removed max uses from most planetary project bps that make the prefab items like the Dark Matter Injection Planetary Blueprint that adjust colony suitabilities.
  • Standardized Blueprint costs to 1 million credits.
  • Standardized build costs of the Prefabs at 50 million for the Tier 1, 250 million for Tier 2, and 500 million for the Tier 3 projects.

• Added some new rare unstable overloaders.

• Urquan Uppercut has had its chain range cut in half and its DPS increased.

• Removed electricity cost from Googly Eyes and Unstable Googly Eyes.

• Changed manhours and max workforce on Mad Expander to 20000000 manhours and 10000 workers, should take 5.5 hours at full speed.

• Changeed the Matter/Antimatter device from -100% energy and shield recharge for 5 seconds, to -2200 energy and shield recharge for 5 seconds.

• Corrected periodic credit cost of Mercurain Ramjet Blueprint to match the other Mercurain items.

• All Overloaders have had their rarity changed to better reflect how difficult they are to obtain.

• Corrected a 1 too few zero on initial credit cost of Armada Bastion Drone Blueprint(was 50m, should be 500m, all other armada drone blueprints have matching initial and periodic credit costs)

• Adjusted the weight of all base missile shotguns.

• Adjusted the Neutronia Big MagCannon rarity. Uncommon > Rare

• Adjusted cost of Large Field Hospital to buy and sell for correct amount.

• Changed Solarblast Pulse Cannon and Solarlance Pulse Cannon.
  • Solarlance Pulse Cannon gained a bit of dps but lost all of its tracking. This should make it be a very situational use weapon now instead of being generally good due to it having 8 pellets with a large spread.
  • Solarblast has its size adjusted down to Normal from Large. This is to make it be a “sidearm” weapon instead of being generally good.

• Lowered Dark Thruster Blueprint to T20.

• Removed Test Particle Gun from AI bases.

• Lowered the -Turning on Sawtooth Laser to -85%.

• Lowered the -turning on SawtoothX Laser to -90%.

• Increased Bule Covert base and Bule Attached Base to have 4 augmenter slots instead of 3.

• Increased Weapon Count on Bule Ruin bases to 6.

• Added the 2016 and 2017 Christmas letters.
  • Created Turn-in missions for the 2016/17 Letter Missions.

• Lowered Critical Hit Chance on Katja’s System Disruptor.
  • Removed Can’t unequip tag on Katja’s System Disruptor.

• Removed Can’t Unequip tag and Failure Rate from Zaraka Isika.

• Adjusted descriptions on some upgrade blueprints to say what they upgrade.

• Adjusted rarities of various commodities and crates.

• Added BFE, Oversized BFE, Gigantic BFE to crates.

• Added the UrQa Kasa and UrQa Kasa Akka stations to crates.

• Added Bacteria Vat to crate.

• Corrupted Missile now properly debuffs the targets Rate of Fire instead of buffing it.

• Added ping time to radars.

• Changed the major stat increases on generated plus items to be 5% instead of 10%.

• Moved Sleet Sludger into the balance sheet, changed tech to 16, and changed all its stats accordingly.

• Changed Aveksaka Munitions Device’s, Cadet Missile Launch Device, Zebu Missile Device, Carcass Missile Generator from Sticky to Shipbound. This will allow the player to unequip them if they want. The missiles that they create are also shipbound, meaning that you will not be able to move them off of your ship in order to generate more than the maximum capacity. (This was added in a previous hotfix)

[Missions]

• Change the Sup. Lyceum Augmenter Research! mission to need 10 Shard Dust instead of a deprecated Shard Token.

• +Changed the missions to obtain Gargantuan gear in Gargan, to Alternative Currency trade ins at the same base.

• +Changed the missions to obtain Twisted gear in Prejudice, to Alternative Currency trade ins at their respective bases.

• +Moved the location of the Rogue Researcher blue fighter mission end and start of A narrow escape mission from The End of the Universe, to either of the earthforce wild space sanctuaries to remove a pay to play block as eotu is in perilous space and unvisitable by free to play players.

[AI Changes]

• Changed Knight Ghorah Khar’s and Prince Sutaghi Kilrathi’s lockout names to correctly show Prince Sutaghi Kilrathi.

• Added new drops to Delquad boss.

• Reworked drops of Anaconda, Copper, Mother, Bana, Mad Scientist.

• Adjusted Demented Delquad’s laser super item to ramp up over time more.

• Added new visuals for RNF/BNF.

• Added Credit drops to the T22 Subspace bosses.

• Pretender Zeus and his minions no longer have hard hitting Bolt of Lightning missiles.

• Added a 100% chance of 1 Dementium drop and an additional 25% chance of a 2nd Dementium drop to Mad Scientist.

• +Reworked DG version drops of Marcus Columbo, Sputty Nutty, Captain Bartholomew Roberts, Captain Albatross, Nathaniel Courthope, Dark Curse, Barbe Noire, and Iggy Bang.

• +Removed Tarnished Imperial Chest drop chance from EF layer zebucart boss.

• +Added a Hidden Compartment expander to Pretty Girl ais so they can be more easily captured as bots.

[Universe Changes]

• Updated system visuals and added asteroids to the Dragon Eye boss and miniboss arenas in Twisted Zone.

• +The eleven Copper Drones in Copper 4 have had their respawn timers reduced from 15 minutes to 2.5 minutes.

• +The Icy Redoubt pillbox in Snake Visions (Snake Hole zone) has had its respawn timer reduced from 15 minutes to 2.5 minutes. It will still randomize its spawn timer by up to 25%.

• +Added Support Drone Device, Forward Operating Base Deployment Device(Fleet Focus), Combat Focus Defensive Device, to there respective ai station in Lyceum. These superitems were for sale in Nexus.

• +Paxian Stronghold no longer allows PvP.

• +Earthforce Perilous Outpost no longer allows PvP.

• +Fixed the wormholes in the Pirate tutorial area to have infinite visibility.

• +Changed the deliver 10 OS/+/Micro item missions to reset on new uni.

• +Moved all Junkyard Extractors, Hydros and Expanders to the new AC system so they can only be purchased for credits and not have a “sell” field. This prevents reselling back to the base at the end of the uni for 50%..
  • +Added Missing “Junkyard Jelly Beans Extractor”.

• +Added + Versions of Burst weapons to Paxian Stronghold Base

• +Ancalagon the Black and UrQa’qa Qu’ishi are now instanced, starting from their lobbies. As a result of this change, the Lunarian Wreckage in Bakii’qa has been moved to Akuq’ba.
  • +The wormhole from Akuq’ba to Bakii’Qi will now lock if there are at least ten UrQa AI alive, from the previous three. This should make traversing the lobby an easier process.
  • +The wormhole leading back out of Black Depths, the second system on the way to Ancalagon the Black, no longer has a locked wormhole visual.

[Typo Fixes]

• Typo fixes for Cleaning House mission and Shielding Formula missions.

• Corrected the skill description of Shielding Wisdom in missions to acquire skill (was +6% bank per level, Should of been 3% per level)

• Fixed Typo of “Partical Acceleration Overloader” to “Particle Acceleration Overloader”.

• Fixed Typo in Bedevere’s Blessing description “annoint” to “anoint”.

• Renamed Alien Bactery Extractor Blueprint to Alien Bacteria Extractor Blueprint.

• Fixed “May be” typo to “Maybe”. Changed an incorrect mention of Station Mastery to Station Management in mission text of the STRIKE! STRIKE! mission to get station management 17 and 18.

• Renamed “Katja’s System disruptor” to “Katja’s System Disruptor”.

• Fixed typos and punctuation errors in Paxian Stronghold missions.

• Adjusted description of Sniper Analyzer to properly show no tracking boost.

[System]

• Enabled interval fix code. This will fix the bug which causes high levels of Extraction Expert to extract far more commodities than either intended or the tooltip displays.

• Nameplates are now hidden for most fighters and missiles.

• Fixed a visual bug with multifiring torpedoes.

• Repairing items will now cause them to look for other valid items to stack with (essentially going back into the repaired stack).

• Removed the ability to scrap or sell the Junkyard Extractors, Hydros and Extractors.

• Updates to the /mc UI.
  • All prices are rounded to 3 sig figs and sorted by the rounded amounts, with secondary sorting by the quantity offered.
  • Rearranged the display of the information in the MC dialog to be more succinct and display longer base names.
  • Displays number of jumps away from each shop.
  • /mc now mentions whether an item is neurobound or not.

• Fixed a tooltip error when a weapon has a parasite that dealt 0 damage.

• Fixed a bug where auto-generated “micro” and “nano” pulseguns and missile shotguns were not calculating their end damage correctly.

• Fixed projectile velocity auras/tweaks being incorrectly applied.

• Fixed parasite weapons incorrectly calculating the expected DPS when shooting targets that get healed by the damage type.

• Show chain jump range on chain lasers in tooltip.

• Made all parasites have at least a 1 sec halflife, otherwise they won’t get their full damage.

• Fixed an optimization bug from June 2018 that broke healer aggro code.

• Made it so that healing someone will also get you team hate from anyone else in the galaxy who hates who you’re healing.
  • Added safety lock check preventing a person from getting new aggro from another person via healing if their safety lock is on.

• Fixed two minor bugs involving AI weapon choosing with low shield targets and weapons with multiple parasites.

• Duration of side effects on weapons now show more significant digits (i.e. no more rounding down to “0s” for very short effects).

• Fixed a bug where credit costs for AC items that you can buy in bases were getting wiped out in the save.