The balance sheet containing pulse guns and mag cannons has undergone a significant revamp and upgrade to bring it into the newest format that we are using for balance sheets.  A lot of DPS values, sizes, and ranges for these weapons will have slightly different numbers as a result of simplified and refined formulas and new look up tables. All the new values can be found on the test server, and here I want to point out some of the bigger changes.  So far, these changes are only to pulse guns and mag cannons, but the general ideas will be applied to other weapon types in the future.

Under the previous version of the balance sheet, range gave a lot of size to the weapons and there were some weird interactions possible.  The range and size classifications have been simplified, but the main effect is that very long range weapons aren’t necessarily so big and very short range weapons aren’t necessarily so small.  Some short range weapons, like Venusian Jackhammer, were taking advantage of a quirk of the previous formulas to gain more power than they should. Such weapons will be a little bit weaker, while more normal weapons with normal ranges, like Solarian Pulse Gun has gained significant power so there isn’t as much of a DPS gap between short range and normal range weapons.

The parasite damage was previously very erratic and hard to account for.  There is a new parameter that weapons can have that specify an exact percentage of damage that should be inflicted via the parasite versus upfront and new balance formulas to balance parasite weapons.  Some that were previously very powerful by accident, like Kalthi Fiery Pulse, are slightly weaker than previously, while most weapons that inflict parasites are much stronger. All fire weapons in this sheet will now inflict fire parasites, including the fire burst.

Bursts, which were originally Sebastapols, and then mag cannons, are now going to be pulse guns, since that fits their niche a lot better.  Their tracking has been reduced to where their bullets will converge at the edge of their range if a player has no tracking augs or skills, but they will now inherit the velocity of the ship firing them.  The power bonus from self-damage has been reduced significantly, but Bursts, probably being the most important pulse gun/mag cannon, have had their DPS help constant, while on average, all other weapons in this sheet got about a 35% increase in DPS to close the gap.

Augmenter stats on weapons used to just make the weapon do less DPS.  For example, if a weapon had a +10% damage stat on it, then that weapon would do 10% less DPS to compensate.  This lead to weapons as stat-sticks and people just equipping weapons that they would never use. Going forward, weapons with aug stats on them won’t lose DPS because of it.  Instead they will gain in size. In addition, several new aug stats were added to the sheet to potentially be used on weapons, including “weapon slot” for theoretically externally mounted weapons.

Projectile movement and tracking has been standardized into several categories now instead of just whatever random numbers were typed in before.  The main effect that you’ll see is much higher speed on high level weapons as well as generally higher tracking. Weapons with low speeds or tracking will now get a power bonus to compensate.

Lastly, all of the “+” and “Micro”, “Oversized”, “Gigantic”, etc weapons have been removed from the balance sheet and replaced with options for the code to generate those variants.  This will result in slightly different stats, but a leaner and more maintainable balance sheet. There is now the option to easily add “+2″, “+3″, etc gear which might start showing up as very rare drops.

Wild Space is about to get a whole lot more wild! In addition to the primitive and easily dispatched mini-bases that inhabit Wild Space during a fresh universe, some of the richest parts of Wild Space will need to be taken by force.

Starting next universe, AI Empires will inhabit Wild Space. While in this first iteration, they are merely (very pretty) obstacles, they are in truth the beginning of a new dynamic sweeping through Wild Space.
Prepare for the opportunity for an opportunity to smash into an AI controlled team that follows all the rules of a normal player team, but doesn’t hold a grudge!

They will expand, attack, trade, and offer unique rewards for both killing their assets and leaving them alone. Their assets, barring a few minor quality of life changes (such as killed bases disappearing instantly), follow all the same rules that player bases do: Irradiate them and see what goodies they hold (though be aware that currently these goodies are purely visual goodies that are in-line with existing gear)!

Current Features

AI Empires! 4 unique factions with visually distinct themes, ripe for the killing.
Each AI Empire follows the same rules as normal teams: Declare war and start the attack!

Planned Features

On the offensive: AI Empires will attack galaxies they consider valuable with massive assault ships. Put your defenses to the test.
Better be prepared for what lies beneath: The “civilized” AI empires are quite predictable, but new fledgling (“Termite”) empires might just decide that the ill-defended galaxy in your team’s territory might make for a great new Headquarters.
Good Neighbours: Certain AI Empires may buy and sell rare items, attract rare AI not usually seen in Wild Space and might even be diplomacized into attacking mutual foes. Good relations can lead to good things!

Likely Questions and Answers

“Wild Space is already pretty crowded, won’t it be worse now?” – Wild Space will be quite a bit bigger! The AI Empires will take roughly 40 galaxies, Wild Space will however have far more than 40 extra galaxies available.

“Can you kill off an empire completely?” – Yes! No invincibility shenanigans. They’ll be dead. And I will only be a little bit sad about it.

“When are the new features coming?” – Offensive empire capabilities are likely coming mid-uni. Termite Empires shortly afterwards.

On April 27, the universe will implode and a new amazing and wonderful universe will be reborn from the ashes.  The size of Wild Space will be increased, but there will be new established civilizations there, guarding some of the best galaxies.  Take care, because some of them will be aggressive!

With the return of monthly bonus weekends, we’re also announcing a change to the frequency of them! Bonus weekends will now happen twice a month and last from Friday to Sunday! Announcements will be made on Wednesdays before the events to give everyone fair warning on what to plan for the weekends.

To start, this weekend’s bonus event will be doubled augmenter drop rates and a 50% increase in dropped item mod chances!

== Typo’s ==
* Fixed a few “an” instead of “a” typos in extractor blueprints.
* Fixed “Aniihilation” typo in superitems.
* Fixed “Seta” typo in place of “Sets”.
* Fixed East Vindia fighter bay mission summary asking for a Trader Badge when it wants an insignia.
* Fixed some Paxian Battle Frigate mission typos.
* Fixed incorrect French grammar in Biologique’s AI base description (Elle est pas belle > Elle n’est pas belle).
* Changed the fighters used by space blue gammas from regular fighters to a fighter generator
* Fixed a typo in the Shielding 22 boss warning.
* Fixed Advanced Fire Control Drone description typo.
* Fixed Subspace Tra Blue Photon’s final mission endpoint, it should only end in Lyceum Wormhole Research.
* Added entrance information for some Strike Force Zeta chain missions.
* Fixed Subspace mission typos, including correcting some misnamed bosses in the mission text for tech 22 skill training.
* Fixed Infernal Tempest mission typo.
* Stilletto missile launchers have been renamed to Stiletto missile launchers.
* The Psionic Wave Amplifire Gamma has been renamed to Psionic Wave Amplifier Gamma.
* Fixed blueprint requirements for Capital Selenite Envelope Device Blueprint, Selenite Envelope Device Blueprint and Selenite Transwarp Blueprint from Selenite ship to Selenium commodity
* Fixed Hyperdrive Squad Transwarp blueprint to take selenium (the commod) instead of selenite (the ship).
* Fixed typo in Hyperdrive Squad Transwarp Blueprint description.
* Fixed seer mission name typo.
* Fixed some typos in mission “Assist the Nexus Station”.
* Additional Twisted boss shout typo fixes.
* Fixed Hyperion mission typo.
* MIRV Torpedo Productions and their blueprints have been renamed to MIRV Rocket Productions and associated blueprints.
* Fixed Beta Antares Paxian exploration mission typo.
* Fixed typos in Infernal Tempest missions.
* Fixed Golagoay Vazaha Defense Unit description typo.
* Replaced most instances of ellipsis that were not displaying correctly for the player.
* The Antuayu’s Alien Siege Mode inbuilt superitem now properly states it also reduces Electrical Tempering by 30%.
* Fixed typo in description of Large Paxian Missile ammo crate.
* Fixed a mistake in the description of the Sniper Analyzer
* The inbuilt superitem on kelvins no longer has an extra instance of the word “device” in its name
* Fixed spelling errors in “War on Earthforce” missions
* Updated Shield Remodulation and Missile Mastery descriptions
* Fixed typo in level name for players level 10,000 and up

== Cosmetic ==
* The Pax Stratos and Pax Heliosoleta can now use the Assassination and Rainbow Boomer skins from other Paxian ships.
* Added Zeus’s Banu skin to UrQa’qa Qu’ishi Qa
+ Fixed rings around various celestial objects from being too large.
* Added Eridiumized Paxian Battle Frigate skin
* The Paxian Probe for the Paxian Exploration Missions has been redesigned and improved. It can be found immobilized to the north of Reflector’s star.
+ Icy Redoubt pillbox in Snake Visions (Snake Hole) will no longer first appear as being 500 size, and will now stay at a consistent 200 size.
* The asteroids containing the Twisted Nikola’s Advance Protection Drone and Twisted Nikola’s Advance Command & Control Drone items have had their visages swapped correctly.
* Added rarity tiers to hull expansions
* Drones now have Quality tags.
* Kandara Dvarata will no longer have an intense, pulsating planet in the background. The effect is now smaller and more subtle.
* Updated rarities on Drone Controllers

== Quality of Life ==
* Increased the number of non-commodities that you can buy at a time from 50 to 1000
* Added base certificates to the other 2 academy stations
* Added prefab mission tab to remove all fighters. This will allow you to remove all ship bound fighters from your ship through the Alternate Currency system in The Junkyard.
* Experimental Fusion, Prototype Fusion, Fusion, Subterranean Fusion, Sky Farm Fusion, and Planetary Core Fusion extractors can now be unequipped. They will still decay on universe reset, and are still unable to be sold to AI bases.
+ “Return to Infernal Darkness” mission has had its endpoint in Sol removed. It will no longer autocomplete itself whenever you dock at Earthforce Headquarters. You can still start the mission and abandon it later to go back to Infernal Tempest.
* Items that take zero space when equipped (expanders and sticky items) will indicate it in the description
* AI’s and bots will intelligently turn their cloaks on and off depending on their visibility and current energy. They will turn it on if they aren’t short of energy and the cloak would actually make them reasonably stealthy. They will turn it off if they don’t have full energy and are not stealthy even with it on.
* Bots with cloaks in the same galaxy as their owner (the player) who has a cloak will turn on their cloak if their owner turns on their cloak, and turn off their cloak if they are less than 100% energy and their owner turns off their cloak.
* Improvement to V-formation code for when bots have “attack enemies” off but “attack my target” on (If the designated target is in range, they will keep facing it, rather than turning back the way the master is facing between each shot.)
* Allow alts access to all the ‘x’ menu options of bots and drones on the same account.
* Removal of Shard Tokens and Unstable Shard Dusts. All encounters that previously dropped Unstable Shard Dusts now drop the stable Shard Dusts. Neurobound tag was removed, you can trade them or place them in your TSL.
* Elemental Shards (Swift, Fire, Storm, Strife, Lightning) have been converted to Commodity items, you can now put them in your TSL and trade to alternate characters on the same account.
* All Unstable Shard Dusts have been converted to Shard Dusts, all Shard Tokens have been converted to Shard Dusts
* Updated Staff Quarters missions to no longer require Shard Tokens, instead requiring Shard Dust which tokens have been renamed to. Removed the conversion mission for 10 Shard Dust to 2 Shard Tokens.
* Converted the Shard Dust turn in and neurobound item mission to Alternate Currency system, the tractor beam turn ins were not converted as the missions describe the tractor.
* Increased the Weaponry 20 commodity half-life to 24 hours to match the Equipment 20 commodity half-life
* Fixed bug where decaying commodities on bots would show up in the player’s event chat
* Converted the turn in missions for Earthforce, Blue Outpost, Tortuga, Paxian, Infernal Tempest, Strontium-90, Subspace, and Arena Lobby Gear/Tokens to their respective AI bases.
* Station Repair kits are now available for purchase at the Shadow AI station.
* Converted the Station gear building missions to reward Tokens instead of gear, Tokens are turned in at The Junkyard. Also converted the dg drops of these items to station gear tokens as well. This means players can choose what station items they want.
+ The Junkyard’s Creaky’s Junkquarters station once more sells the Mobile Nuclear Waste Furnace.
* Fixed Mobile Metal, Silicon, and Nuclear Waste Furnace portable convertors; they should now properly convert resources.
+ Comet name list has been greatly expanded.
* Greatly improved Auto Mining Drones
* The two Bila Katur systems in the Bila Subspace region have been renamed to Bila Katur Namna and Bila Katur Upari.
+ The Compressed Dampener Blueprints have been moved from Lyceum’s Locus of Support station to Perpetual Motion, the Compressed Energy Dampener Blueprint has also been added to Perpetual Motion which was missing from Lyceum.
* The Pax Christmasicus has received an inbuilt update, you can use the /outfithull command to receive three new super drone devices. The Christmasicus’s Red Trick Device deploys a three minute lifespan heat drone every three minutes, the Christmasicus’s Green Trick Device deploys a two minute lifespan mining drone every three minutes, and the Christmasicus’s Blue Trick Device deploys a one minute lifespan surgical drone every three minutes. The Christmasicus’s Blue Trick Device also has its tech level and drone deployment requirement reduced from 8 to 5 from the regular Blue Trick drone, allowing Pax Christmasicus pilots to take advantage of the higher tech Blue Trick early!
* The Bulk Trader II and Bulk Trader II+ have had their second built-in Freighter Defense superitem replaced with an identical, differently-named Secondary Freighter Defense. You can use the /outfithull chat command to receive this new inbuilt device.
* The Kalthi Minion Protection Drone, available as a built-in drone device for the Kalthi Armored Commander, will now despawn once inactive. It also has a bigger diameter.
*The Big Roswell, Big Roswell+, and Reconditioned Big Roswell have had their second Roswell Drone Device renamed to Secondary Roswell Drone Device. You can use /outfithull to update your Big Roswell’s superitems and use both with ease now.

== Bug Fixes ==
* Player bases will no longer be tractorable in Earthforce layer if you were squadded with the owner
* Stacked items that can have mods will now stack any augmenter stats that they have.
* Combat bots scooping things will now show what they scooped in squad chat
- Fixed UrQa’qa Qu’ishi (Bana King’s) spawner, there was a phase after boss spawner events, which blanked all the events causing bugs.
* Fixed a major bug with a lot of high end drones that had a certain tag that was accidentally giving them a bunch of +100% aug stats that was not intended
* Changed how item generators use their timers to better accommodate lag and other situations where their output might be delayed.
* Fixed multiple cases of missions wanting multiple sets of augs but only saying 1 set
* The Strontium-90′s silver Drop kill mission can no longer be started, any characters with this mission can still turn it in for their final reward from it. Players can still start and complete the gold Drop mission.
* Fixed the Uparaksana Atiguru in Uparaksana Tra (in Tra petal), it will no longer launch Zebras as fighters and will instead launch Rahnti.
* Mausoleum minions have had their experience gains from killing them removed. The Mausoleum bosses will still give the same amount of experience as before.
* Fixed active missions no longer displaying their descriptions
* Zauron’s Mask field generator has had its increasing aura strength fixed.
* Nexus Drone Fighter Prefab is now shipbound.
+ The Aveksaka in Dark Jungle will no longer attack the Primal Elephant Wreckage blocking entry to the Cave system.
* Changed cadet nexus mission chain so that “Meet the Mole” doesn’t show up for pirate characters. The starting location of this mission has been moved to Janitor’s Outpost in the Nexus as well.
+ Fixed problems regarding comet resources not being correctly distributed.
+ More comets should now have resources.
+ Prevented resources, apart from Pyrite Dust, from spawning on the Pyrite Comet in Capella.
* The Roscap, Pax Lyrae, and Pax Vega have been given custom turret configs to fix their faulty default weapon positions. The Roscap has had them set up in a line near the front, while the Lyrae and Vega have their weapon positions set up in a V at the front of the ship.
+ Queen Hive’s shield aura (affecting both her and her Royal Hives) has been replaced with a +25% Resistance aura. Their healthbars will no longer desync near the end of the fight.
+ Fixed missing Tractoring 16 mission from Bipolar (the mission in question trains Tractoring from 15 to 16 at the cost of a Profane Thirst and Blasphemous Fervor).
* The Tractoring 22 Subspace uber, Janayitriadhara, will now continue to spawn bombs until 9% shielding from the previous 10%.
* Fixed bug where capped fighters would retain fighter specific stats
* Fixed Infinite Knowledge skill requirement for the Ult. Lyceum Combined Augmenter Blueprints.
* Fixed Depot Harvesting Dynamo that was under producing rations as well as Twisted Harvesting Dynamo and Harvesting Dynamo which were over producing rations
* Fixed Apollo Energy Capacitor and Arcadian Energy Capacitor not in the blueprint packs
* Fix for the drop table for UrQa’qa Qu’ishi (roaming Bana King)

== Content ==
+ Gold and Platinum can now appear in prospecting nodes.
* The Expedition Team Blueprint now builds into a Pre-Fabricated Expedition Team Blueprint similar to other terraforming projects.
+ Deep Space no longer has a warp beacon.
* The Kasper can once more be bought at most AI stations.
+ Reduced Ares Drone respawn time in Low Branches (Protoplasmica) from 120 seconds to 30 seconds. Reduced the Neural Keysync (gate keys) requirement from 3 to 1 in that room.
+ Ruby Carriers in Ruby Steppes will now target players based on the same level ranges as the Ruby Transports in the previous room, previously they were docile unless their team was attacked.
+ Reduced Blue Beta Drone respawn time in Rotting Leaves (Protoplasmica) from 120 seconds to 30 seconds. Reduced the Neural Keysync (gate keys) requirement from 3 to 1 in that room.
* Eridium Dust from Dungeon bosses has been replaced by Eridium Ore. Instead of only 5 Eridium per drop, you can now get between 5 and 10 Eridium from the new drop. Eridium Dust will still drop from comets.
* Shielding 22 Miniboss now has a more appropriately sized drone visage, changes weaknesses properly, and uses the appropriate damage type to signify said weaknesses.
* Added new hull expansions as rare loot
* Adjusted environment damage for Engine T22 boss, drones are no longer affected by environmental fire damage or fires. Environmental fire damage and fires no longer apply to ships within bubble from boss, retaining +99% fire resist within boss bubble.
* Fixed solarian gear and the twisted engines to have blueprint tech level require the tech level of item
* The AI base price for non-common cloaks greatly increased
* Added some new high level rare cloaks for next universe
* UrQa’qa Qu’ishi in Akuq’ba should now properly unequip its deathblossom when resetting.
* Baniq Jiqazuk’Qo in Akuq’ba will no longer attempt to execute the weakest enemies.
* Items with the “Junkyard Scrappable” tag have had that tag removed.
* Removed drops from Qokuji’qi in Bana Queen’s boss room, Bana Queen now has an extra 25% chance to drop an Urko Qa alongside her existing item drops.

== Balance ==
* Aku’ Qa has had its stats changed 471 Regeneration, 4500 Bank, 95 Size, 380,000 Weight, -7% Electric Tempering
* Some changes to cloaks: most aug stats on cloaks were doubled. Aug stats on cloaks will now only apply to the ship when the cloak is active. Aug stats on cloaks now cause their activation energy to be greater rather than their cloaking effect to be worse. Mods on cloaks still apply regardless.
* Adjusted how super item damage works with negative damage auras. Now just apply the negative aura to the final calculated super item damage, but before was something more complicated taking augs into account
* Organic Exterminators dps increased and organic parasites health increased to match the fire extinguishers and fires.
* Removed aug stats on a couple of exterminators that had them.
* Balanced DPS and DPE of exterminators. Drastically reduced activation energy of exterminators.
* Added two new, larger more powerful fire extinguishers as rare drops.
* Removed the Zeus Missile Launcher from Zeus and all Zeus minis
* The Agamemnon Fighter (used by Green Battleship AI) can now retarget like most other fighters.
* Created AI versions of the Kalthi ships, some of the weapons, and super items for the Kalthi to use. I have also included specific Exc. and Sup. augmenters in various Boss level Kalthi AI (Commanders, Destroyers, Terminators). This is the first in a series of changes aimed at making the AI more interesting to fight, more dynamic, and more rewarding.
* Slight adjustments to a few base lasers to conform to formulas
* Fixed Burning Blossom and Lacerating Blossom not having Mutalisk effects.
* Combat Bots will inherit half of their owners imperial and bar skills
* Kikale Mzungu Extractors have had their Mzungu Lore skill requirement removed.
* Expanders will now give a lot more constant hull space, but it will be constant, applying after augs and skills
* Expanders will now take zero hull space when equipped
* Added new missile launchers: Holy Claymore Class Launcher, Zeus Olympios Missile Launcher, Amped Zeus Olympios Missile Launcher
* Added Claymore Class Launchers to Hyperion.
* Increased size of Bule Abadi Blaster, this will increase the DPS and decrease the DPE and make it better than a regular Bule Blaster 4.
* Added a new tag for drones allowing devs to easily balance them by specifying a “goal dps” and having the game automatically adjust stats to wind up at that dps regardless of equipment and augmenters on the drone. This goal DPS will be further modified in-game by drone controllers, skills, and drone ops, as expected.
* Massive changes to many drones, all of the details were explained here (http://forum.starsonata.com/viewtopic.php?f=107&t=63489)
* Drones with specified DPS will display that DPS in their tooltip
* Drones will display any super items and the super item DPS in their tooltip
* Drone Controllers will no longer be affected by Imperial Tweak skill
* Drones are no longer affected by environment damage ticks
* Transference Facilitator Beam (Tech 5 to Tech 20) has been buffed to give Transference Vulnerability +66% – +100%, and the electricity costs have been drastically increased. This means that any target affected by this tractor beam will take increased healing.
* Changed Kalthi Planetary Blaster and Defective Kalthi Planetary Blaster from a magcannon to a pulse gun. They have less tracking and range, in exchange for more DPS.
* Nightfury Rage Generator and Nightfury Focus Generator now have a Damage Tweak tag, this means they cannot be used with other damage tweaks. Their charge time and energy costs have been reduced to 40 seconds and 4000 energy as well.
* Reduced the electricity costs of the Demon Tracking Device to 100 per second for 30 seconds, Quickened Demon Tracking Device to 200 per second for 30 seconds
* Small, Medium and Large Burst Missiles have been buffed to the level of other missiles. They are now AoE missiles that do Mining damage.
* Slight rebalance of engine sizes. Increased power for stealthy engines and engines with aug stats.
* Exterminators and parasites have been re-balanced.
* Hephaestus Ultimate Doomsday Weapon now fires 3 projectiles at a time.

Hello Sonatians! There have been whispers amongst the playerbase that Fighters, and by extension Fleet Commanders, would see some sort of adjustment sooner or later. I am here to confirm that Fighters are definitely being rethought and redesigned in some very specific ways. The first step towards these changes are now available on the Test Server.

(You can select the Test Server from the drop down menu within the Beta Client.)

On the Live Server, there are a few Fighters that are powerful and sought after by the playerbase, but many Fighters go unused due to exhorbitant energy costs or because they just aren’t worth using over a higher tech Fighter due to said fighter always doing more damage. As such, we have taken the first step towards significantly shifting the way Fighters work within Star Sonata. These changes will affect both overpowered Fighters and underpowered Fighters. The overarching plan is to make Fighters more of a reactionary and flexible tool within a Fleet Commander’s arsenal, and allowing that Fleet Commander to quickly react to the changing battlespace without draining their entire energy bank to do so.

An added bonus is that those who fly Freighters will now be able to launch far more fighters as well. These Fighters will be nowhere near as strong as a Fleet Commanders fighters, but should a Fleet Commander be nearby their fighters will be a solid addition!

We have spent weeks working to get the math just right so that there is still a strong sense of progression and differentiation between Fighters, but your feedback is neccessary to ensure that all Fighters feel usable.

Click here for the latest information.

As most of you know from Jeff’s post, and my recent work, I have been placed in charge of the QA department. I would like to announce a restructuring of the Quality Assurance Team as it stands, to have official rankings in the group. These individuals will be joining the Dev Team as a whole and bringing them out of the dark as a proper subdepartment of the Development Team. These changes are hopefully going to allow us to better move forward and provide fixes/issue resolution in a more structured manner. If you would like to join this team feel free to pm NCCIntrepid#0664 on Discord. These new ranks, a summary of their responsibilities, and roles that are similar to ranks on the content side of the dev team are as follows:

QA Lead: This individual is in charge of the entire QA team. The primary focus of this role is personnel management and issue resolution. Anything that someone else needs assist with on the team. This individual is also in charge of being the final decision maker on policies and bug tracking handling. If you have any feedback for the QA team etc, please PM this individual. As of this moment it is ran by myself, NCCIntrepid#0664.

QA Coordinator: These individuals are of the highest rank other than the QA Lead itself. They are responsible for assisting in bug fixing. They will have access to the content documents to allow them to be able to perform this bug fixing. Some may be coders, but some won’t as many bugs simply require us to make content changes. These individuals are also in charge of coordinating the Investigators on testing the Livetest patches for bugs by managing patches that cannot be parsed through their notes to properly test. They would be akin to a Content Developer in the Content department. Individuals joining this rank are newman233 and Tornado.

QA Investigator: These individuals are provided with Test/Livetest server panels. They are in charge of probing the livetest patch cycles for any bugs they can locate. Secondarily, they also are to assist the Correspondents with verifying repeatability of bugs reported, provide fallback on the Correspondents if there are times that bugs are not being forwarded at a proper rate. They can also be used by Coordinators to assist in larger bugs requiring multiple people. Individuals joining this rank Jv2, Dark_soul, and Joshua.

QA Correspondent: These individuals are provided access to the QA chat channels, and in charge of forwarding/finding bugs on the live server to our bug report sheets. They are also tasked with assisting the Investigators with testing things on test/livetest when required. Any new members to the team start here. Individuals joining this rank are Cammy, Maxathron, Blizz, Keef, and Sammeth.

Discuss in Forums

While converting the engines balance sheet to the new style, we are making a few small systematic changes to the stats of engines in Star Sonata.

All stealth engines are being given a significant increase in engine power, and the medium-stealthy ones are getting reductions in their engine visibility. I understand that stealth engines aren’t used much at higher levels because we don’t have a lot of good high tech stealth engines and because people can use the “tapping” technique with regular engines, but we are also adding a few high tech stealth engines and we will be looking at the tapping issue as part of the upcoming visibility revamp. For now, a stealth engine should be much more viable for stealthy ships, and should be more maneuverable than using a high vis engine and tapping.

Sizes of engines are getting slightly adjusted.  Engines with very strong aug mods used to just have worse engine stats to make up for it, but that created a weird situation where players would just use the engines with the best aug stats they could and just suffer the bad engine stats because DPS trumps all.  The old Hydra Engine was a prime example of this.  This didn’t feel right, so engines will no longer be worse for having aug stats, but rather be bigger.  At the same time, the overall sizes of engines have been reduced such that the new average size of all player-obtainable engines is 2 size less than before.  Engines with a lot of aug stats will now be bigger and more powerful and engines without aug stats will be smaller and with the same power.  I think this creates much more balanced engines and the possibility of more interesting and powerful engines, since giving up hull space for aug stats makes a bit more sense than giving up quality of life maneuverability.

The price curve on engines has been adjusted to give higher tech engines higher prices so when you get something as DG loot that you want to sell, you can sell it for more credits.

We have created 6 new tech 22 engines, 2 as DG drops and 4 as KD loot, including class 1, 2 and 3 stealth engines.

Happy 2019, Star Sonata!

2018 brought with it a lot of new things. Enkelin was named as lead content developer and he created the Press Corps to give more transparency to the player base. NCCIntrepid took the lead of Quality Assurance and has been adding more rigor to our testing and bug tracking processes. The dev team as a whole is probably more vibrant and active than ever before.

We had a galaxy assault / BvB revamp to make BvB more interesting and balanced. We added Electrified Georg Ohm. We added several new specialized base kits. AI’s and combat bots gained many improvements to their AI, and combat bots gained the new “V Formation” where they form up on your wing to fight, rather than fly all over the place. There was a major change to the shape of Kalthi Depths, with lots of roaming mini-bosses dropping KD dg loot. We revamped the way that planet terraforming blueprints work. Energies and shields were both buffed and rebalanced, making fuel much less necessary on energies and regen much stronger and less costly on shields. We revamped Junkyard and the junkyard tweaks, and added a new “alternate currency” system, where items can be bought and sold at AI bases for commodities in addition to credits. Gunner class received some tweaks and was made more offensive. We had a “Mega Moe” world boss event for Halloween, pitting the player base against the toughest boss ever for special Halloween prizes. Hull extensions and cloaks have had improvements and rebalances that are on the test server and will be patched soon. Jey has done a lot of improvements on the back end, and the server is running faster than ever, and aside from a few days of crash bugs, has been very stable.

Some of the most exciting things that the dev team worked on in 2018 haven’t been seen yet. We have been doing a ton of design work on an upcoming expansion for 2019 that will bring both a tech 23 expansion with a bunch of new bosses and areas as well as some sweeping gameplay improvements. We have scores of pages of finalized design docs on the upcoming expansion and spent hours and hours in meetings finalizing much of what we have planned. I’m going to leave some of the details about the theme and content of the tech 23 part of the expansion for another blog post, but for now, I want to write about a few of the big gameplay changes we have in mind.

Healing

We have designs to reduce the strength and the efficiency of healing while simultaneously increasing player shield regen, increasing shield banks by a factor of 10x, and greatly increasing out of combat healing. Instead of gaining massive shields from healing efficiency and cross healing, Shield Monkeys will have to steal shields from enemies to redistribute to their team and engineers will actively use a much stronger +100% transference vulnerability beam to buff the healing from their drones and allies on a single target. We hope that these changes to healing will make healing much more balanced and a more active component in playing the game.

Resistances

The current state of resistances in Star Sonata is more like a weird Pokemon rock-paper-scissors thing than anything else. The planned change with resistances is two-fold. First to bring almost all existing resistances into a new “Armor” stat on ships, where each ship will have an armor that represents the average resists to all damage types, and then have at most one vulnerability or resistance to a specific damage type. Capital ships, heavy fighters, and bases will get the most armor and other classes will have much less. We will also make it so that the game remembers what ships you’ve scanned with a ship scanner, and for those ships already scanned, present the armor and resistance information in the target box.

Second, we will be revamping the damage types to make them more about the utility that each damage type brings and less about rock-paper-scissors.

• “Laser” damage will be removed.
• Energy damage will be the default damage type for both pulse guns and non-ethereal lasers.
• Surgical damage will cause onboard item damage as you damage the target, potentially disabling them over time, and cause an increase in credit, augmenter, and item drops (including from drop lists) when an AI is killed based on how much surgical damage he took in the battle.
• Heat damage will remain the damage-over-time damage type of choice and the amount of DoT will be increased and standardized across all heat weapons.
• Mining damage will still be used on asteroids, but gain the additional property of being armor piercing, and ignore the armor stat on the target.
• Physical damage will continue to knock things back and have a high DPE. It will gain even more DPS than it currently has, but also become subject to double armor mitigation.
• Radiation will be the ethereal damage type, with ethereal lasers being radiation, and possibly radiation bullets being ethereal. Hitting an enemy who is below some fraction of shields with radiation will irradiate them and no longer require the killing blow to irradiate.

Mod Rework

The mod rework that has been talked about in the past is almost completed, and will be released along with the big 2019 update. The two most exciting things about the mod rework are the addition of “primary” mods, which are much stronger and have a strength associated with them, and “re-modding” an item, where a modded item can go back to the neurodoc, and a player can pay increasing amounts of credits to have a chance to increase the strength of the primary mod, add another secondary mod, change a secondary mod, or even change the primary mod. This brings a very fun mini-game of continually crafting and refining your best equipment, but the increased cost each time you do it means that you want to pick carefully from the options presented in re-modding. Existing mods will remain as secondary mods, and existing modded items that are eligible for primary mods will be able to be remodded and gain a primary mod, though if already neurobound, they will lose their current secondary mods. Un-neurobound items with mods can be modded and retain their existing mods.

New Cargo System

We’ve developed a more straightforward design of a cargo system than previously talked about which will be released with everything else. The new cargo design is where items will drop with a “cargo” tag, similar to a mod, such that any item with the cargo tag will always take exactly 10 space. Equipping, using, or transferring an item will remove the cargo tag, but tossing will retain it. Items with the cargo tag will have square brackets around the item name in your inventory. This should hopefully free up a lot of hull space for some people, and let others feel like they can DG in whatever ship they want without sacrificing too much for holding loot.

Improved Visibility/Cloaking System

Enkelin has a complicated but elegant design on revamping the visibility and cloaking system that will make things much easier to balance for stealthy ships.

Giving the Skill Trees more Impact

We want to make the skill trees have more impact and each skill change the way you play the game, rather than just give some stats. Focus skills will give different damage mitigations and add extra slots for different equipment types. Advanced sub-skills will all have large effects and make your choices even more meaningful.

More and stronger super items

We are planning to add a lot more, powerful, super items. This will give those extra slots in capital ships a lot more meaning. Keep an eye out for “broadside” super items built from dg drops and doing massive damage to the left or the right.

Overloaders

Overloaders will no longer self-destruct, but instead cause item damage to your weapons as you use them.

Rebalance of Fighters

Another rebalance of the fighters, giving more fighters useful side-effects, giving more power to fighters launched from a players ship, and making more noticable difference between fighters that take different amounts of slots.

Rebalance of Drones

Drones have a new balance sheet with rarity, range, mobility, and other factors that give a desired DPS for each drone. We’ve already done a quick balance pass on drones that is on test, but there will be a more in-depth look at drones for the big update.

And Much More

And lots of other little things are planned, as well as a light rebalance to the power of classes, with an overall balance between offense, defense, and utility for each class and trying to hit those targets for a fully kitted out player of each class. A lot of the work done in 2018 was actually preparing for a big branch in our source code so that we can work on this upcoming release while maintaining a main branch for small changes and bug fixes. Look for a post about the tech 23 stuff in the near future!

Universe Reset

The Paxians have been busy this Christmas keeping many of the strongest Aveksaka forces at bay around the Subspace dimension. In a show of poor holiday spirit, the Aveksaka have activated the device in Kumari to destroy the universe in return! Lyceum scientists calculate the destruction of our universe to occur on the 12th of January, 13:00 EST (server time). With the destruction of our old universe, a new one will be created! All characters, their skills, ships, and bots will be transferred over, but deployed drones and userbases will be lost, as well as anything on the userbases! You’ll have to re-explore the universe to map everything out once again.