Hello Sonatians! The last time I spoke to you about Fighters it was to tell you that we were in the process of changing them and we needed your feedback. As a result of that feedback, we settled on some long term goals that I am about to lay out for you. While implementing the features neccessary to make those goals a reality, Fighters were left in a place that was a little too one dimensional. Now, we have finally implemented everything and I am happy to share that what looks like!

Main Objectives

1. Fighters will be more powerful when launched from the Main player ship, and less powerful from Bots. Fighters should be able to account for roughly a third of the Fleet Commanders total damage output, more if they decide to specialize.
   1. Bots that launch fighters should, roughly, output a third of the damage their Owner is able to output.
   2. Players will either be able to launch lots of smaller, weaker fighters OR a few bigger, stronger fighters.
   3. Some fighters will have secondary effects of some sort.
2. Fighters will benefit from a player actively managing them rather than passively deploying them.
   1. Fighters will no longer be generated from generators, and instead they will enter a destroyed state that can be repaired by the player.
   2. There will be rarer Fighter bays with faster deployment times to enable faster reaction to changing scenarios.
3. Fighters will have more opportunities for growth and differentiation by way of Fighter Bays, Auras, the Flight Controller skill, Advanced Class Subskills, Imperial/Kalthi skills and varied types of Fighters.

Stronger Fighters

Fighters will be situated halfway between drones and bots. This means they will fly to intercept a target of your choice (like a bot), but cost energy to deploy and enter a destroyed state that requires repair when damaged (like a drone). Fighters will generally be more resilient as well. Players should see a greater variety of fighters, with different damage types and energy requirements across said fighters, making your choice of fighters even more important.

Active Management

Fleet Commanders’ will use short duration super item aura’s to significantly increase the power of fighters, and only fighters. The deployment of the right fighter for the right situation will be important, as having your fighters destroyed will mean you need to repair them ( In order to repair your combat bot’s fighters, you must select the bot and press X. A menu will appear and at the bottom, you will see a Repair option. If you click it, your bot will repair everything on it, including their fighters). Players will be able to recall their fighters by using the fighter bay itself in the event that they need to get their fighters out of harm’s way. This will cause the player’s fighters, and also their combat bot’s fighters, to instantly be teleported back into the ship that launched them.

Growth and Differentiation

Fighters will have far more variety based on the type of weapon that they use, the type of damage they do, how resilient they are, how fast they are, and whether or not they have a powerful secondary effect. These may be further augmented in the future by Advanced Class Subskills that allow a player to really embody the roll of a carrier. At present, Advanced Flight Controller is the only skill that directly affects a Fleet Commander’s fighters. In addition: Your Fighters will inherit the same skills bonuses your Bots and Drones inherit. This means things such as Imperial Skills will affect them. All Bots, Drones and Fighters inherit 50% of these skill bonuses.

All of these changes should be coming in with the upcoming patch, keep your eyes peeled!

Greetings,

I hope everyone has had a good year behind them and enjoyed the last few days and weeks with loved ones and families.

Please enjoy this New Years Bonus event until January 6th!

We will be doubling Bindomite drops, Boss Mod chances, and XP.

Happy Holidays,

Kilando

Meeting Summary For 12/12/2019
Written by: Interwoven Enigma

Comets in Custom Galaxies
Comets in custom galaxies, or POI galaxies, are coming and will drop thematic items. The example given was comet(s) in blue outpost would drop Blue Whispers, Aethers, Vapors, and Dusts.

Bots on Follow Object
Bots set to follow an object will now check how far they are from their master, they’ll get separation anxiety if further than two jumps away and will attempt to return to you.

Kalthi Vaults
Getting removed, pending rework.

Healing Revamp
Still being worked on, however, Zen of energy, spin, and acceleration have been experimentally changed to a percentage bonus rather than flat, and shield stealing currently is capped at what shields you’re currently missing from your bank. Otherwise, it’s like the fighters rework right now, things are being experimented with, tested, and changed quite a lot, there’s still a lot of flux.

Hull Balance Sheet
While mostly complete, a few values are being tweaked, and options added, it’s getting very close to being finalized. The implementation plan is to push it to live with the healing rework, and thusly will be tested in the healing rework test server before being rolled out.

Class Skills
A proposal was tabled to push back when a new player is introduced to classes and class skills to further into the game, around level 120, along with tentative looks into how the new player experience could be improved.

Reports of flyswatters pouring out of The Nexus in hoards have been broadcast from the Earthforce Defense Relay Network. While they have been able to subdue the flyswatters for now, they warn that at the current rate of growth they will only be able to hold them back for a limited time!

Earthforce Military Officers are expecting their forces to hold steady against the waves of flyswatters as they continue to terrorize the surrounding systems. There is however some worry that they may not be able to hold the line past January 11th.

The Earthforce Logistic team warns the citizens of the universe to pack your bases and dock your bots for transport into a new universe! Make sure that you have collected your bot credit holdings as they will not transfer over to the new universe.

The universe reset will be held on Saturday, January 11th
GMT: 18:00
EST: 13:00
CST: 12:00
MST: 11:00
PST: 10:00

Hello again!

A weekend event is now active. There will be a 2x increase to augmenter drops and XP!

Enjoy the event,.
Kilando

Hello again!

A weekend event is now active! Enjoy your 2x prospecting bonus, 8x prospecting node refill rates, and 25% boost to comet drops!

Enjoy the event,.
Kilando

With the recent issues that arose from the recent galaxy assaults we would like to cover a few points in regards some of these issues.

• Using base thrusters to fly away from defenders an unlimited distance

We have known about this strategy of flying your bases out an unlimited distance for some time and it is why we implemented the current system of requiring all bases to be within 30k from system objects. At this point we believed we had resolved the issued.

It has become apparent that our original solution to issue was not satisfactory and is now occurring in the current universe.

• Using base thrusters to fly out while staying within the 30k limit, then placing new bases on the other end of the system.

It would be inappropriate to make a change to the current system mid-universe as players are not using any unknown mechanics to their advantage. They are stretching the system that was built to its limit, showing that our original concept wasn’t clever enough. We are also holding to our policy of not intervening in wars, for example the “sun tanking” controversy two years ago.

(+changes require a new uni)

[Item Changes]

• Adjusted the power of the Vaidaya Bhisajamzu, it now has more healing and less range for less size.

• Mythic Defenders have been reclassified as normal range drones, from short range drones. This increases their range while reducing their HPS/DPS. Their Subnavigator’s Augmenter has also been removed.

• Corrupted Kilobit Drones now have 20minute deployment time.

• Fixed an issue with the Seer Nanite devices not working randomly.

• Unstable overloaders no longer blow up upon failure, instead they now have a chance to damage the current weapon(s).

• Stable overloaders now take 0 electricity.

• Slight changes to several overloaders to better balance them and adjustment to power bonus given to unstable overloaders.

• Replaced crates of overloaders that drop with single overloaders.

• Negative electric tempering on overloaders was considered a penalty rather than a bonus. This will cause overloaders with high negative electric tempering to see a reduction in their other stats.

• Increased the weight/size of unstable overloaders to match the stable ones.

• Removed visibility on all overloaders.

• Midas Touch has been reclassified from a Thorax into a Clench, to better reflect the original intention of the weapon. This has increased the DPS and lowered the DPE, while also affecting other stats.

• Alterations to the Quickened Escort Device and Escort Device in line with PvP concerns:
  • Quickened Escort Device – 100% evasion to 50%.
  • Escort Device – tweak duration 5 seconds to 4 seconds, tweak charge time 30 seconds to 37.5 seconds.

• Added “Use to gain a level. ” to the description of all the epiphany items: (Faranji Epiphany, Perilous Perilous Epiphany, Bule Epiphany, Mzungu Epiphany, Bhu Ekam Epiphany, Bhu Dve Epiphany, Bhu Tra Epiphany, Bhu Katur Epiphany, Bhu Pajca Epiphany, and Bhu Sas Epiphany).

• Upgraded the look of Pulsegun and Ion Peashooter weapons.

• The Kalthi Burn super item on the Kalthi Wrathful Commander now has a visual effect to more clearly communicate when it has been activated.

• Changed Aveksaka Munitions Device’s, Cadet Missile Launch Device, Zebu Missile Device into item generators instead of super items. This will allow the player greater control over missile launches.

• Changed periodic credit cost of the Entertainment Station Suite from 45,000,000 to 450,000,000 to match initial and periodic credit cost of the Luxurious Station Suite.

• Adjusted the stats of the Defective FirstLine. This should make The Nexus slightly easier for new players.
  • 240 -> 110 bank.
  • 13 -> 0 regen.

• Fixed a bug where “Scoped” mods weren’t applying to pulse guns / mag cannons.

• Clarified the descriptions of fighter bay and missile launcher items.

• +Readded Holy Claymore Class Launcher alternative currency trade to Temple Grounds.

[Missions]

• +Added Strontium missions for the new bonnet ubers “Morgan”, “Levasseur”, “Kalos Anthos” and “Drake”.

[AI Changes]

• Removed Tarnished Imperial Chests from Drake’s drops.

• Fixed Brute Force, he will now one shot anything again.

• Cybernetic Wing Alpha/Beta/Charlie/Delta have increased maneuverability.

• Added Cybernetic interceptors to the Corrupted Cyborgs team.

• Cybernetic Support, Cybernetic Heavy Skirmisher, Cybernetic Battleship, Cybernetic Cruiser, Cybernetic Wing Alpha/Beta/Charlie/Delta, Cybernetic Interceptor, (Armored/Wrathful/Normal) Kalthi Warrior/Stinger/Deployer/Commander, Merchant Navy Seal Commander, Lunarian, and Lunarian Avenger have all had their range reduced significantly.

• Added Earthforce prefixes to the allied AI that spawn in Drake.

• AI will no longer scoop Pan-Universal Neural Plasticizers.

• Altered Drake’s terror frigates to be more responsive, lowered Drake’s weapon damage slightly, added an additional check for Drake’s “enrage” phase.

[Universe Changes]

• Deflector Drones no longer cause their target to spin, they now prevent their target from turning.

• Deflector drones now prevent players from thrusting at all.

• +Adjusted layout of Lavanite

• +Doubled the amount of iceteroid and halved the yield of the iceteroids that drop Solar Prisms, decreased the amount iceteroids that drop other commodities slightly to compensate so as not to increase overall density of iceteroids too much in Arctia.

[Typo Fixes]

• Typo fix for the Contriver’s Beam Module.

• Typo fix for the More Superior Augmenter Research mission.

• Typo fix for the Pumpkin Drone.

• Typo fixes in some Tier 6 Platinum Bounties.

• Typo fix for The Final Test mission.

[System]

• Friends list no longer shows online status if the friendship is not mutual.

• Fixed a bug where a message about repairing an item was never actually sent.

We know a lot of players are worried about the upcoming shield and healing rework that was announced. While we are still in the early stages of development for this we want to keep everyone as updated as possible. With that in mind we have decided to start doing developer video blog posts that will answer some of your questions!

The first few videos will cover a couple questions we felt that you would like answered and can be found on the Star Sonata youtube page.

We know that these will not answer all of the questions you may have, so feel free to submit those questions here!

While we will not be able to answer all of the questions you submit. We will try our best to keep everyone updated with the many changes that are coming to this revamp so that nobody is left unaware of what is happening.

~Kilando

Hello again!

This weekends event will feature a 2x increase to Mod drop chances!

Thanks again to the players who helped test Mega Moe on the 17th.
We will be giving an additional 2x increase to prospecting rates, 2x increase to aug drop chances and a prospecting refill rate boost of 8x!
Enjoy your event!

~Kilando