Halloween Event

I hope everyone had a great Halloween! If you’re still looking for more Halloween goodies, the Halloween event has not yet ended! Until the 5th of November you can still find time-exclusive Halloween items and special missions in Graveyard, as well as encounter the Undead Narwhal in Perilous Space!

Jey

Jey wasn’t able to make it to the meeting, though he did give us a quick report on his work! He was able to track down and fix a slowdown issue some players have had with particles, though is still attempting to find a memory leak issue and the engine graphic displacement bug. On the server side of things, he’s preparing some changes to reduce server lag in the future.

MicroCapacitor

Nerfing Amplified Field Amplification Device. At the moment with both Bravado and Enlightenment amped, it gives ~13x dps modifier. Changing the Field Amplification Device to be 100% and the Amplified Field Amplification Device to be 300%. This would make with both Bravado and Enlight. amped you’d get ~5x dps modifier. Worry not! Hober and I will be changing fighters to help with the lack of FC dps!

DarkSteel

DarkSteel’s been fine tuning the Twisted Zone content with Pixel recently.

Pixel

Pixel’s been tinkering with the sensor factories and could possibly make the system much more easier but keep the existing system intact to provide optionality.

– Content changes –
* Increased Alien Healing Burst, in-built Superitem Bhisajayu.
* Increased mobility movement of the Mobile Transfer Station.
* Increased the Solarian Drone’s damage and energy bank but reduced the electrical charge to give more differentiation between the Solarian Drone and Mercurian Drone.
* Removed drone deployment ability from Bhisaj’a roaming subspace alien in perilous space. This will stop the event chat spamming of this wild bot from trying to deploy its drones.
* Made Pumpkin Drone a mobile drone again.
* Decreased the spawn delay on the roaming t20 ubers to 1 day
* Increased the distance at which you have to fly to spawn a Giant Space Alien from the southern spawner in Ngorongoro Crater
* Increased lifespans on Engineer Transfer Station and Mobile Transfer Station to 10 and 12 minutes respectively
* East Vindia NCC-Bulk spawner count increased from 4 to 5, excluding Ismail and the two roaming NCC-Bulk spawners.
* Barbe Rouge respawn timer decreased from 20 minutes (give or take 50% of that), to 5 minutes (give or take 50% of that).
* Added “Only follows the ship used to deploy.” to all assault perm drones descriptions and reduced size to 10.
* Weakened Wild Warp Beacon resis and shield bank.
* Removed the synergy between Bot Ph.D. and Wild Man, Wild bot slots are now the same as trade slots, *2 for Wild Man
* Beefed Iceprickler and Unforgone AI slightly so they’d be more competitive as Wild Bots
* Zebu Masuta is now available for RadEx
* Added sunglasses holoprojector.
* Removed Twisted Token requirements from DESPICABLE and SUBTLETY skills from the Ai Base in Twisted Zone.
* Reduced the droprate of the Bana King DG version from 100% to 33% with a weekly lockout
* Increased the droprate of Ancalagon the Black from 25% to 33% with a weekly lockout
* Increased the amount of time it takes for the Bana King roamer to respawn
* Decreased the amount of time it takes for Timothy the Red to respawn.
* Reduced Ambrosia Base Gear Pack cost
* Added Industrial Commodity and Industrial Commodity Factory tags to their respective items. This will make it easier to search for them.
* Beefed Twisted CnC drones.
* Changed Blanco Uber Station’s Monochrome Tint specialized trade goods to drop Monochrome Hue specialized trade goods.
* Beefed the Twisted Death Augmenter
* Slightly nerfed the Ult. Vanguard Augmenter
* Slightly nerfed the Grand Moff Augmenter
* Reworked the Nightfury’s Patience
* Reworked the Pax Stratos and Heliosoleta.
* Adjusted the Grand Navigator’s Offensive and Defensive augmenters.
* Adjusted the Grand Moff Augmenter.
* Removed Tractor Power from the Nightfury Patience Augmenter. Nerfed the Ult. Vanguard augmenter, and tweaked the stats of Sup. and Exc. Vanguard of augmenters.
* Added a 33% range reduction to the Samgrahaka Akramavar, Indrakoza Akramavar and Indrakoza Amzuchidvar. Also adjusted resistances to give them clear strengths and weaknesses.
* Adjusted the drop table for the Urqa Capship DG and roamer boss in Kalthi Depths. *Adjusted the requirements for the Grand Moff Augmenter Blueprint.
* Reduced range of Twisted Extensive Charge Drone from 300% range to 260%.
* Improved Twisted Earth sub boss area.
* Improved Nikola main boss area.
* Removed key requirements from Twisted Zone.
* Adjusted the drop rates of the Graveyard Souls and Spirits.
* Decreased the size of Fighter crates, and increased the weight.
* Lowered the maximum amount of Allied Commendations obtainable from the Paxian Supply Crates, removed Bindomite from the Paxian Supply Crates.
* Edited the mission text for the Graveyard missions, letting players know they should capture the Restless Souls.
* Reduced the costs on the lower level Lyceum Combined Augmenters.
* Lowered the weight of all Industrial Commodities
* Adjusted the stats of the Pax Stratos and Heliosoleta.
* Reduced the Red Photon Warship Transference Vulnerability to -10%.
* Rebalanced the Art of ___ Augmenters and Ultimate Art of ___ Augmenters
* Added skins to the Twisted Fate of Death ship.
* Added skins to the Twisted Honey ship.
* Changed ruin base gear to be on par with X Gear and +1 their tech level.
* Reworked the requirements on the Art of ___ Augmenters, as some of them required items that nolonger existed
* Removed the level requirement on the Honorary Mention for Jungle Armada Crests mission in The Jungle.
* Gurujana Ekam’s Zarkara, Hantr and Raurava minibosses will no longer drop their respective augmenters.
* Beefed Mythic Defender.
* Reduced Annihilator Thruster Blueprint from 100 size to 10.
* Changed the nerf capacitors to be tech 0. This was preventing people from capturing the Zobitan’s Hareem since it had a t22 nerf capacitor equipped when captured.
* Increased Massif III roamers.
* Changed the price of copper and tin to 750k.
* Adjusted Subspace Invasions so that they last for 24 hours instead of 4 hours.
* Hantr, Raurava and Zarkara minibosses spawned by Gurujana Ekam no longer drop their respective augmenters.
* Nexus AI no longer have -50% shield bank.
* Lowered the cost of Doomed gear from Infernal Tempest.
* Changed the Seer virus weapons to superitems.
* Changed the Seer virus blueprints to require/accept the new seer superitems.
* Adjusted numerous spawners in Blue Outpost, Bonnet, Absolution, Arctia, Tortuga and a few other places. The AI should now give experience no matter how many times you kill them.
* Adjusted Subspace Invasions so that they last for 24 hours instead of 4 hours.
* Removed Tech 19 ruin ships from their respective ruins, those ships will still continue to exist in game.
* Added Tech 20 versions of those ruin ships to their respective ruins, these ships have different stats.
* Increased wormhole opening time from 10 minutes to 1 hour in Twisted Zone.
* Adjusted the repair costs of various Tech 20 through 22 drones (Armada Drones, Chidz, Twisted Drones and Armada Inferno and Charge Drones in particular).
* Tweaked the Nightfury’s Patience augmenter
* Converted the Inferno Drone requirement to Armada Inferno Drone on the Twisted Condemnation Drone Blueprint.
* Tweaked some Twisted missions to take more Twisted Tokens.
* Added exterminators to the twisted AI.
* Added Self Destructor to Mini Vulcanite Fighters.
* Added 3 Nikola skins.
* Improved Termite Rat Speed.
* Improved Mobile Transfer Station speed by 10%.
* Made all exchange scrap item missions reward raw scrap notes.
* Scrap notes are now 0 size.
* Beefed the Fuzz’s aura.
* Given Twisted Rage Resonance 5% rate of fire.
* The Nexus Urqa are no longer on the same team as the higher level roaming Urqa.
* Anaconda has better turning.
* Decreased the Jungle Armada Crests required for an Honorary Mention, from the “Jungle Armada Crests” mission, from 5 to 2.
* Increased the number of Honorary Mentions obtained from turning in 5 Lyceum Mention Blueprints from 1 to 3.
* Tweaked Twisted Solar Panels.
* Tweaked Perilous Solar Panels.
* Added new different looks to the Slumberchrome, Rosie and Basils.
* Adjusted Twisted Main boss drop rates.
* Leopard Missile Launcher is now Light Fighter locked.
* Bule Abadi Sidhe has had its resistances adjusted some more.
* The Mzungu Frigate’s shield and energy bank bonuses have been increased to 650% each.
* The Monkey and Leopard’s resistances have been swapped, the Leopard has 4 augmenter slots as well. The Primal versions carry those changes as well.
* Oversized Wingship’s hullspace has been increased, and it’s resistances have been tweaked as well.
* Equaminizer’s inbuilt Juice Gen has been increased to 150, it’s build cost now includes an item form Equanimizer.
* Added upgrade item methods for Silent Night and Twisted Nikola.
* Beefed the splash range and nerfed the splash damage on the Amplificative Oscillation Ion Emitter
* Added Candy Corn visual for Neurotweak debris.
* Glacial Freeze has been altered from 90% resis to mining to 60%.
* Super Shield Soother now has no charge timer but does negative 8% to energy charge.
* Power Doughnut has no charge time but does 15% negative recoil instead of 50%.
* Aptitude Doughnut has no charge time.
* The rate of fire cap for userbases is now 500ms, rather than the standard 100ms for everything else
* Multiplied all base wep damage, energy, and recoil values by 5. DPS, DPE and EPS will be the same, but this should reduce the lag caused by high rof bases significantly.
* Reduced the restriction in distance between attached bases by 40%

– Misc Changes –
* Renamed Slave Master Pod to Bot Master Pod
* Renamed Perilous Expanse to Kalthi Depths
* Added two new names to the Monkey name list for The Jungle
* Removed basebound tag on base thruster manual.
* Added decay on universe reset tag to base thruster crates, Zaphragi Communique I to III, Jungle Communique I to III.
* Update skill descriptions for bot slot changes
* Wild bots will name be named “WB” instead of “CB”
* Reworked bot slots so that bots take their tech in slots:
** Trade slots: (Remote Control + Bot Research) * 2
** Combat slots: Trade + 8 (if you have Bot Ph.D.)
** Wild slots: Combat * 2 (if you have Wild Man)
* Reworked (slightly) the maximum number of bots you can have
** Trade bots: Remote Control + Bot Research – Minimum of two.
** Combat bots: Half trade (rounded up) + 2 (if you have Bot Ph.D.)
* Bots require their hull’s tech level in slots, at a minimum of 1 slot.
* Improved the Twisted Harbour bp and aura.
* Added extraction per day to extractor tooltips
* Wild Man nerf: Wild bot slots are now `Remote Control * 2` and Wild Man adds 50% slots
* Speed Demon Overdrive Device’s electric regeneration bonus has been lowered (Due to it being neurotweakable, players were receiving more electricity than they should have.)

– Misc Fixes –
* Fixed a typo in the Big Banker mission summary text
* Fixed a typo for Interial Dampening in the ship info window
* Changed it so that scoops will report errors if the message is different to the previous error, instead of if the error was greater than two seconds ago.
* Fixed a typo in the crowning notification message
* Coordinate info from Treasure Holochart corrected from 5000/1000 to 5000/1850.
* Fixed Kalthi Depths strontium missions.
* Fixed hate rollover (causing hate to reset to 0 if you did too much)
* The size and tech for the “Hesediel’s Augmenter Blueprint” was backwards. Changed to size:5 tech:11.
* Changed the ai in the crucible to not be able to jump to different galaxies.
* Fixed the sorting of the Level column in the character skill menu to sort as a number instead of a string

– Changes requiring a new universe –
+ Increased Rhino and Lion Aspect Augmenter drops.
+ Added a new tag to spawners to disable AI from scooping items and applied it automatically to dungeon AI
+ Reduced termite amounts.
+ Reduced drop rates in Kalthi Depths on generic drop items.
+ Fixed problem with L, T and Y class suns having planets and asteroids orbiting too close to them.
+ Fixed Twisted Fate of Death Roamer.
+ Added MagCannon Base Weapon Blueprint Pack to Free Market and The Acropolis.
+ Added mission auto start to Twisted roamer.
+ Added Mad Kidd Drones.
+ Added Hybrid Kidd Drone.
+ Added Honey Badger Drone.
+ Added Heavy Kidd Drone.
+ Added Armada Kidd Drone.
+ Added Captain Bling Drone.
+ Redone termites and unlocked all features to highest tier mounds.
+ Improved Twisted Zone entrance galaxy layout.
+ Changed the Seer Lyceum base to sell the correct blueprint/changed the missions to give the correct item.
+ Fixed UrQa’qa Qu’ishi boss scripting.
+ Added more Strontium 90 Kalthi hunting missions.
+ Added UrQa’qa Qu’ishi (UrQa King) Strontium priority target mission.
+ Added Twisted Fate of Death Strontium priority target mission.
+ Moved Bonnet and the Enigmatic Sector to the Earthforce layer.
+ Nerfed the offensive strength of the Subspace Outposts, but increased the buffs they give to the surrounding Aveksaka.
+ Added Twisted background music for Twisted Zone.
+ Changed the Kalthi Deployers to not bunch up early on in Peril Depth Dgs.

– Client changes –
* Fix for a corruption that occured at the gpu memory level (some drivers were unaffected but to others the impact was pretty varied).
* Small performance improvement in galaxies with lots of objects.
* Fix for 17 different crashes.
* Support for planet glowmap added.

Halloween Event

The Halloween event has already begun! Be aware, it will end on the 5th of November! Be sure to head out and hunt some space trolls and vampyres for sweet Halloween loot before the event is over! Graveyard has a collection of special Halloween missions available for you to check out and complete for rewards available only around this time of the year.

Official Discord Server

In light of recent events, we’ve launched an official Discord server for people to join. You can access it through either your browser, or by downloading the Discord application. Here’s a link you can use to access it: https://discord.gg/bKtX3CK

For those of you unaware, the previous Discord server in use was shutdown by the player who owned it, this new one is run by the admins and developers and will not be shut down in a similar fashion as the last one.

Pixel

The Slumberchrome, Basil and Rosemary ships have been given some new graphics for their multifiring counterparts to better differentiate them. Their weapon colors have also been modified to match their colors shown in the image below, as seen with the Rosemary ships.

The ships found in that image are, in counter-clockwise starting with the leftmost Slumberchrome:

• Awakened (Triple MF Slumberchrome)
• Roused (Quad MF Slumberchrome)
• Basilus (MF Basil)
• Rosemaries (MF Rosemary)
• Prog Rosemary (Quad MF Rosemary)

JeffL

Jeff’s working on finishing up the new class skill system, some issues were found during testing and are being remedied.

Jey

The micropatch scheduled for yesterday had to be delayed due to an issue, and has been rescheduled to arrive tomorrow. Besides this, Jey has also found and fixed several more crash issues using dmps players have sent him.

Halloween Event

The Halloween event has already begun! Be aware, it will end on the 5th of November! Be sure to head out and hunt some space trolls and vampyres for sweet Halloween loot before the event is over! Graveyard has a collection of special Halloween missions available for you to check out and complete for rewards available only around this time of the year.

Pixel

Pixel has added 11 more Strontium missions with the help of Daedalus and SunDog60!

He has also improved the Ares Sapper built versions: Bloodstained from 1s to 0.9s recoil, Heavy from 1k to 1.1k range and finally the Heavy Bloodstained (combined) with 0.9s recoil and 1.1k range.

Hober Mallow

Please keep in mind, all ships and items shown here are a work in progress and are subject to change before release!

I’ve still been working on Tech 20 and below ships and I’ve also worked on a slew of Jackhammer like weapons. The latest ship I’ve worked on is the Mastadon, a tech 20 Zaphragi capital ship that will be available as a blueprint drop from Emperor Shaddam Kilrathi IV.

If Zaphragi ship design is not what interests you, there is also the tech 16 Lyceum Exploration Cruiser.

Additionally, four old ships have been given some attention and have been updated with additional ancient tech. They are the Bule Abadi Spectre, the Unt Faranji Wingship, the Golagoay Vazaha Archetype and the Kikale Mzungu Frigate.

These X ships will take the place of the old ship ruins, but old ships will be left as they are to be relics of ancient times long forgotten.

I’ve also continued my work on the jackhammer-like series of weapons, adding in two additional tiers of them. In order of tech level, they are: Shiv, Tusks, Cestus, Talon.

Jey

New beta client out (see: http://www.starsonata.com/client_news_beta/beta-client-298-513/). Still preparing full patch, currently planned for next week but its not final yet. I also added some new improvements to our server profiler (its code that let me track down lag sources) so that once its patched live ill be able to find the sources of the lags live has been experiencing lately and hopefully fix them.

Ryan

Finally got a test server running with the new class skill system, once we get a few final issues ironed out we’ll be giving everyone instructions on how to access it to test for yourselves. Its shaping up nicely, and I’m excited to share it with everyone soon.

DarkSteel

I finished the reworks to the (Ultimate) Art augmenters. The new stats can be viewed here: http://forum.starsonata.com/viewtopic.php?p=761158#p761158

Halloween Event

Starting on the 15th of October and ending on the 5th of November, the Halloween event will begin! Plaguespace rifts will open around the universe, spawning an endless stream of undead space rats, special missions will appear in Graveyard and special ubers like the Undead Narwhal will appear in Perilous Space! You’ll be able to find special Halloween loot on just about any AI, including DG AI!

Pixel

Pixel been working on Twisted zone some more and has removed all neuro-keys from the dungeons and instead just need to kill the boss(s) to unlock the wormhole. The back tracking from the main boss zone is still an issue until Pixel can figure out how to make a dual lockout system work in the way players want.

To also mention Prejudice has been altered to make it more player friendly with more AI stations situated in the center with the middle holding the kill boss missions while the three outta stations contain exchange missions related to their dungeon branches.

While tinkering with making more AI be more better wild bots for Fleet Commanders the weapon color was changed from generic titan pulse+ color to yellow variant on the Unforgone.

Ryan

Ryan is working on getting the beta for the new class skill system live. He also got a fix in for high update super items on AI, so that they will function on bots or new bosses and we can design exciting new content.

MicroCapacitor

• Changed Kalthi Deployers to not bunch up in Kalthi Depths Dgs early on.
• Changed Tin and Copper’s price to 750k since Bronze is 2 million.
• Changed the Hesediel’s Augmenter Blueprint from tech:5 size:11 | to tech:11 size:5.
• Change the ai in the crucible to not be able to warp to different galaxies so they don’t leave while you fight them.
• Changed the nerf capacitors to be t0. This was preventing people from capture ai.
• Going to change the seer virus weapons to superitems and make the parasites last 1 minute so players using the seer class can buff an ally while still being able to fight.

DarkSteel

Fine tuning the final values on the Art and Ultimate Art augmenters. Should be ready for next patch and I’ll make sure the post the values somewhere before the patch happens.

Bobbo

I’ve added tracking and speed stats to weapon descriptions, lasers have simply a tracking value, which is how much they can rotate (180 is therefore full tracking). Projectiles will give their turning and maximum speed, and torpedoes (including thoraxes) give their delay, burn and flight times.

Hober Mallow

I’m working on Jackhammer type weapons to add, a whole line of them by the way. They’ll be pretty rare and expensive to acquire, you won’t acquire these through Daily Missions. I’m going to go over the other lower tech Jackhammer weapons to make sure they’re all relatively useful.

My work on the Tech 20 ships is coming to fruition, I plan on adjusting the Tech 19 Ruin ships to Tech 20 so that they are interesting and viable options for both players and their Combat Bots. I also have some ideas for further Tech 20 and below ships: a Lyceum Capital Ship, a Serengeti Capital Ship, a Paxian Heavy Fighter, an Earthforce Freighter and a Blue Photon Light Fighter. I may add more Support Freighters between techs 5 and 10 and a few more Capital Ships between Techs 5 and 20.

It was brought to my attention that there are several low level areas in the game (Blue Outpost for example) that doesn’t give players full experience. I will be fixing these areas. I will also be going over the requirements for special gear (Like the Enforcer’s Stamina or the Sgt. Enforcer’s Stamina) to make sure that they follow a pattern tech and power wise, as well as requiring more reasonable amounts of faction specific currency.

I do not have anything to share in regards to the Gunner Analyzer yet, we’re still in the process of getting everything just right so that it functions the way we want it to. I will keep you posted.

Last but not least, I will be addressing the issue with Honorary Mentions. There are currently very few sources of Honorary Mentions for players who cannot kill Zebra’s in The Serengeti. I will probably add missions involving research for Lyceum in exchange for Honorary Mentions, expect to see more from me on that in the future.

 MicroCapacitor

• Changing Ruin Base gear to be the same as X gear, except let them have the small buffs so they are an alternate for endgamers.
• If the players are ok with it, +1 to all the ruin base gear tech/kits so they are not messing with slots/stats.
• Creating new base augmenters, which would be combined avesaka augs (Not the base ones but the normal augs that are used to make the base ones) Mainly to have an alternate to the SoL resist stat and give other augs like Burst hps aug, and a hps aug that gives -weight to help move the base around.
• Going to look through many ruin base weapons/built weapons and make many of the weapons towards Anti-Player (besides the mzungu since they are mining).

Hober Mallow

After reviewing the Pax Stratos with DarkSteel, we’ve decided to nerf the ship slightly as well as the transference resistance on the Red Photon Warship (-25% to -10%). Additionally, I’m going to be adding more Tech 20 ships that are worth using, will take some time though.

Pixel

Pixel’s added some sunglasses for the next universe and he’s also been working on some new shiny drones, prawn related.

DarkSteel

I’ve been busy reworking the Art of ___ and Ultimate Art of ___ augmenters: http://forum.starsonata.com/viewtopic.php?p=760730#p760730 . These augs represent the core stats of the class and in many cases, the stats are already received by the player from their class skills. In addition to being locked by class they will now also be locked by hull type. For instance, an Art of Destruction can’t be used on a Light Fighter, only on a Heavy Fighter. This change was made to allow this particular series of augs some extra power (don’t worry, we won’t be doing this anywhere else). I’ve also reworked the Nightfury’s Patience to be a much more desirable aug since it was very underutilized.

Oh, and I’ve also nerfed some of Hober’s augs (he wasn’t pleased), which was fun.

These changes should be in the upcoming patch.

Ryan

Ryan fixed a few exploits that came up over the last few days, including an item dupe bug and a case of extractors going haywire (extracting T2 commods at the speed of metals). Luckily, the items weren’t spread around and were easily cleaned up without any damage to the economy. Unfortunately, this slowed work on the new class acquisition system but it is nearing the final stages.

Bobbo

I’ve fixed some droprate issues on Ancalagon the Black and the Bana King. The Bana King was locked for a day or two but he’s available again now. Both of them have a 33% chance to drop a piece of loot from their roaming counterpart. Happy hunting!

Max_Whynd

Max_Whynd worked with DarkSteel to re-work Capital Light of Peace to better reflect the cost of creating the weapon. (Mini, lower-tech Ball-Lightning comes to mind.) Added tech 6 Capital-ship only splashing energy weapon which will drop from a boss in Arctia, tech 10 splashing capital-ship only weapon which will drop from random DG bosses, tech 14 multi-chaining mining weapon built from a new boss-drop bp in The Jungle.

Hober Mallow

I’ll be working on Anatolia with Auxilium and yclepticon to try to get it ready for testing and fine tuning. I’ve also asked one of our programmers to prototype a “Gunner Analyzer”, the purpose of which is to give Gunner’s resistances for shooting lots of targets. If things work out as planned, and I don’t see why they wouldn’t, Gunner’s would be a viable way to hold the attention of AI while simultaneously becoming tanky enough to survive the onslaught. I should have more information for you all in the upcoming week or so.

JeffL

Jeff’s been finishing up some details about the new class system.

SunDog60

I’ve added Star Sonata 2 to Twitch, if you plan on streaming the game it will finally be available.

DarkSteel

I’ve been busy making a list of content that’s eligible for rebalancing due to the Prawn change and the removal of MF2 (it’s a pretty long list) that is planned for next universe. I’ve also made an estimate of how much the content in question should be nerfed. From my testing we’re looking at values varying from 20% to 40% depending on the current difficulty of the content.

I’ve also increased the times you can use the blueprints for Kalthi Depths commods such as Admixium and Perilium to 5 up from 3.

Bobbo

A couple of weeks ago we discussed changing how bot slots work, and these changes have now been done!
From next patch, bots will take their tech in slots and the skills will give double what they did before. Players with Wild Man will get twice the number of wild bot slots instead of their slot cost being halved. Also the quantity of bots you could have is changes, slightly.

• Slots:
  • Trade slots: (Remote Control + Bot Research) * 2
  • Combat slots: Trade + 8 (if you have Bot Ph.D.)
  • Wild slots: Trade * 2 (if you have Wild Man)
• Reworked (slightly) the maximum number of bots you can have.
  • Trade bots: Remote Control + Bot Research – Minimum of two.
  • Combat bots: Half trade (rounded up) + 2 (if you have Bot Ph.D.)
  • Wild bots will name be named “WB” instead of “CB”

Pixel

Mainly been tweaking Twisted content, ensuring everything is working and fixing any related problems players give Pixel feedback on.

Ryan

Working to get the new class stuff ready for test server, it took a little longer than expected but should be available for testing very soon.

Jey

Trying to track the client freeze some players have reported and begun work on the next full patch.

Max_Whynd

Max has recorded a completely new tutorial bot, which will be added soon. He has also been working with other devs on improving wild bot choices within the game, and some balance changes are coming to newly-available wild bots. Two more previously non-capturable AI ships will be available as wild bots after next patch.

Hober Mallow

I addressed some of the issues with the the Subspace Daily Missions, the ones that give you Allied Commendations which you can turn in for rewards and Tech 22 skills, but the missions are currently a little bit broken. All of the missions, except for one, should be working just fine now. I’m waiting for a micropatch from Jey in order to address the issue with their lockouts. If things turn out to work very well, I will look into making more repeatable Daily Content for rewards and things of that nature.

All of the Lyceum Combined Augmenters I added are now in game as well, you can find the Tech 1-17 augmenters turn in missions in Acropolis, the Tech 20 ones in Lyceum, and the Tech 22 ones in Lyceum Research Concourse. If you don’t see them, you need to be a higher level.

I’ve made a post in the Suggestions forum about some tentative changes to Class locked augmenters, check that post out and give me feedback on it so it won’t be a surprise: http://forum.starsonata.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=62336

I’ve got some more ideas I’m kicking around to address the disparity between new and old players, one of them being reworking Augmenter Tweaking. My current idea is to make augs twice as strong as they currently are, and change Augmenter Tweaking to work in a different way. What that is, I do not know. If you have any suggestions feel free to PM me on the Forums, Discord, or reply to the Development Blog thread.

DarkSteel

I’m going to start looking at what content should receive a nerf for the removal of MF2 and the rebalance to the Prawn that will go into effect next universe.

Bobbo

Fixing bugs and general post uni reset fixes.

JeffL

Class rescaling will hopefully be available for testing by next week, we’re still working on fixing bugs and making sure everything is working together nicely.

Update: The system has been patched onto live and applied to the current universe, resulting in the following amount of resources added to the buildable territories in the universe.
Wildspace
metal: 8850
oats: 2776
baob: 1154
nuke: 1795
silicon: 1951

earthforce:
metal: 1378
oats: 447
baob: 210
nuke: 260
silicon: 348

As we increased rather dramatically the number of planets in the universe by adding a minimum number of planets per galaxy, this resulted in a greatly thinned out resource spread. The resource distribution system attempted to keep a similar amount of resources available in the uni but this resulted in a lot of rounded down 0, all in all less lower tier commodities (metal, oat, nuke etc) all around.

To improve on the situation, all the while adding a bit of “style?” to the universe generation, we are adding a resource explosion pass to the universe generation (and will be also done on the currently running universe). This pass is designed to increase the number of valuable t0 planets all the while create a bit of separations in the resource distribution. The goal is for some resources to be more present in different regions of the universe without completely segregating the resources.

Each resources explosion come with method to control how likely/strongly and what type of planet they may impact. How quickly they degrade over distance and some other details. This way we can ensure no oat end up on a blistering and more oat can occur on high suitability planet for instance (since oat is a plant). This is used for all resources type with varied settings but is kept pretty lax on common stuff like metal and silicon

Each explosion are positioned randomly and if in the same pass, explosion must be at a minimum of 3 quarter the size away from other explosion. This ensure that no region end up with tons of explosions bringing more resources in a single point than intended.

Each resources added from an explosion are scaled by the df/200 (so df400 would get twice the gain compared to a df 0), pass in earthforce layer see the resource divided by 2 on top of it.

Currently there are four explosion passes applied on both earthforce and wildspace separatly (so total of 8 pass but 4 per layer)

1. A single very large spaceoat explosion covering the whole layer adding a very small amount of oat randomly, add between 2 and 1 oat to random planets in the layer, the closer to the center of the explosion, the more likely planet matching conditions get oats.
This is to compensate directly for the multiple galaxies with 0 oat even tho they have perfectly habitable planets and for all intent and purpose should have at least 1 oat.

2. 8 smaller explosion adding between 4 and 1 spaceoat to matching planets in its area. The amount scale down from 4 to 1 linearly according to the distance from the center of the explosion, each matching planet have an identical chance of being affected. This add a rather large number of “bit” and “little” amount of spaceoats in a variety of locations, helping colony and base network to develop in those area.

3. 4 large sized explosion adding between 12 and 1 metal to matching planets in its area. This also scale linearly. This should add a lot of metal to some random regions of space, without adding it all on a single planet/galaxy. Like everything else, rng is involved but this could mean regions of 3-4 galaxies seeing an increase in 180 metal resources in high df.

4. 10 small explosion of either silicon, metal, nuke, baobabs. Adding between 60 and 8 of said resources onto matching planets in the area. Also scaling linearly from the center of the explosion. This is where the actual “good t0″ galaxies get added. The area are small enough that only the galaxy on which the explosion happen will get a large amount of resources, the neighboring galaxies will also see an significant increase but not as much.

Those images are provided only as an example. The actual distribution is done randomly following the set of rules described in this post.

Universe Reset

Quick reminder to everyone, the universe will implode on the 17th of September, be sure to pack your userbases, temporary and permanent drones! Characters, skills and ships will all be transferred over. Industrial commodities and platform/defender drones will be deleted at the reset, remember to sell your industrial commodities before then!

Jeff

Jeff’s finished up his work on the new class skill system, converting all the old class skills to the new system.

Pixel

Pixel’s added in a new skin for the Argeiphontes Hermes(+) ship, the Hermes Black Racer skin.

Bobbo

Fixing lots of bugs! Error reporting on scooping has been changed to suppress error messages that are the same as the previous, squelching the issue where players wouldn’t be told why they couldn’t scoop stuff. The new Emperor notifications are live as some of you may have noticed last night when enkelin completed his coronation.

This weekend is supposed to be our next bonus weekend, however due to the uni reset I’ll postpone it a week.

DarkSteel

I’ve finished testing and refining the Tech 21 heavy fighters as well as the Resistance: https://postimg.org/image/3ypsxr033/

I’ve put the -20% Range that the Prawn was getting on the Prawn’s Claw. This was to avoid having to put -75% Range as a ship inbuilt stat to counteract the Sniper skills that grant range, because that would severely hurt any other class that’s trying to make use of the ship. The -Vulnerability on the Prawn’s Claw has been removed because it was basically a flat increase to effective shield bank with Transference damage.

The Prawn has also received a new inbuilt item called Boarding Hooks. This superitem is a stream of mags that, if they hit the target, pull the target towards the Prawn (like Kidd’s mags). It also recharges faster if you are taking damage.

The Red Pill for the Delquad has been reworked. It’s now a transformation that lasts 18 seconds and has a 2 minute cooldown. In testing, it was doing about 30% more DPS at the cost of Range, Resistances, Visibility and Tracking.

The three ships compare to each other as follows:

1. The Wattage is 20% more efficient vs the Delquad (50% more efficient vs the Prawn)

2. The Prawn does 20% more DPS vs Delquad & Wattage at the cost of 20% Range (vs the Wattage) and 20% efficiency (vs the Delquad)

3. The Delquad (Blue Pill)  has 20% more Range vs the Wattage (50% vs the Prawn)

Testing was done with a 2 Emp 1 CaL setup.

These changes will be applied the uni after next, together with the removal of MF2 and content rebalance.

Hober Mallow

I will be going over all of the Class locked augmenters (Tech 5, Tech 10, Tech 15, Tech 20, Art of Augmenters, etc) to make sure they all line up properly and make sense under the new class system. I had to fix an issue with lockouts as well (which resulted in most tech 20+ ubers being locked for a short amount of time after the patch, since then they have been fixed and unlocked – SunDog60).

Jey

Jey is preparing for our universe reset this Saturday. He’s also managed to track down and fix an old bug causing souls to duplicate occasionally. Players who were suffering from flashing lights will be happy to hear that Jey has managed to track down and fix the bug.