** Micro patch 28/09/2016 **

* Rosemaries are now available for capture by RadX
* added BP for Base Amplification holoprojector (+5 BvB slots) to Vervaardiger Processing
* beefed unforgone ai slightly
* Fixed the Twisted Station Kit portrait mission image.
* Adjusted Legendary Termites to deploy mounds closer.
* Beefed Termite Pro Larva.
* Removed construction timer from arena lobby kits.
* Added Twisted Tech tag to Twisted Planck Gravity Transmuter and Twisted Planck Skein Attractor.
* The Blueprints for the Kalthi Depths Commodities now all have a maximum use of 5, up from 3.
* Twisted Pest Exterminator now exterminate parasites instead of fire.
* Fixed the Bule Twisted mission.
* Fixed Blanco boss levels.

** **

Next Universe – General
+ Added Loaded station kits to common AI bases, removed previous existing kits from common AI bases.
+ Added rings to universe generation for planets and moons. 20% of gas giant planets (planets with high gravity and a gaseous atmosphere), 1.5% of non gas giant planets and 0.1% of moons will form with rings around them during universe generation.
+ Lowered the drop rate of Dementium, increased the drop rate of Dementium Fragments.
+ Changed many of the commonly unused Class Super Items acquired from The Crucible. However, their descriptions have not been updated yet.
+ Adjusted some of the lower tech drones (Venusian, Mercurian, Solarian, some of the DG dropped Tech 21 and Tech 22 drones).
+Added Completionist Mission to Sai’s Retreat in Sol

Next Universe – Kalthi Depths (PP Space)
+ Added Cyborg Dark Transport boss roamer to Kalthi Depths.
+ Added SWAT Police AIs.
+ Reduced Kalthi Stinger and Corrupted Cyborg Machine Minion radar abilities.
+ Increased the level of some Perilous Perilous Space AI to better match their difficulty in comparison to regular Perilous space AI.
+ Added new drop list to most Kalthi Depths AI, separate from current drop lists.
+ Changed Kalthi Stronghold to Danger Factor 400, from Danger Factor 420.
+ Moved PP space from Perilous Space to its own layer above and PP space and will now be called Kalthi Depths.
+ Removed Solarian blueprints from Kalthi Depths drop tables.
+ Adjusted Kalthi Depths AI static spawns to spawn in higher Danger Factors.
+ Decreased the speed of the Lunarian Avenger, doubled the charge time of their superitem (Gives double RoF) to 30 seconds from 15 seconds.

Next Universe – Subspace
+ Added Honorary Diploma Missions to Lyceum Research Concourse.
+ Added DNA Extractor Beam and Advance DNA Extractor Beam missions to Lyceum Subspace Research Station in Lyceum Research Concourse galaxy.
+ Added monthly missions to Subspace that give very desirable rewards.
+ Increased the number of Allied Commendations given from weekly missions.
+ Removed Hybridization Blueprints from the Aveksaka drop tables and put them in the Lyceum Research galaxy off of Kumari.

Next Universe – Perilous
+ Added 3 Stella Perilous roamer bosses.
+ Improved “Drop” AI loot drops.
+ Added Hotrod Ultimate to The End of the Universe.
+ Added Barrier Booster terraforming Blueprints to Blue Photon Processing. These will improve the base shield banks attached to the moon or planet.
+ Added Scan Booster terraforming Blueprints to Blue Photon Processing. These will improve the base radar attached to the moon or planet.
+ Added a bunch of shard item converters to Spymaster’s Quarters AI base in Staff Quarters. This is related to converting Shard Dusts to Swift Shards and etc.
+ Added more Shard Dusts to all Olympus bosses and minibosses, adjusted the difficulty of the Olympus Daily Mission AI.
+ Dragonslayer’s Presence no longer drops from Ancalagon the Black.
+ Dragonslayer’s Presence is now obtained from a mission located in The End of the Universe. Mission will auto start when you enter the Ancalagon’s Lair galaxy.
+ Reduced undead Jey’s ship resistance so it won’t take forever to kill.
+ Dragonslayer’s Presence is now neuro-bounded and has a Junkyard Scrappable for 5 Junkyard Scrapnotes tag.
+ Nightfury Hull Fragments at 5% chance and Nightfury Hull Remains with 3% chance to drop from Ancalagon the Black. This doesn’t affect other existing drops.
+ Tweaked Georg Ohm, Seumas Watt and James Watt to have a higher chance to drop 1 dem frag.
+ Increased Kidd level from 1.5k to 2.5k.
+ Increased Timotheus the Red level from default to 5k.
+ Moved the wormhole under the Olympus drone to the West in Olympus Entrance.
+ Adjusted Stella’s to drop Solarian gear and Solarian Blueprints.

Next Universe – Wild Space
+ Added new warp beacons to be scattered around wild space layer, for players to either use or blow up!
+ Added Legendary Grubbies to higher danger factor galaxies.
+ Revised Station Max and consumption on all tier 1-3 industrial commodities. Revised price on Girders, Fusion Cells, Chatbots, Sub-Shield Buffers, and Sub-Shield Reactors.

Next Universe – Earthforce Space
+ Implemented Lyceum Combined Augmenter missions into Acropolis, Lyceum itself and Lyceum Research Concourse. They all require various levels of Augmenter Tweaking and offer the player blueprints to build new combined augmenters. There are over 147 augmenter blueprints.
+ Added a wormhole to Lyceum that links to The Jungle.
+ Added base thruster blueprints to The Acropolis.
+ Added new Arena Lobby area (Galactic Colosseum) its relating around player bases.
+ Added exit wormholes to UZ zone.
+ Added new AI base containing missions for minor augmenters in The Junkyard galaxy.
+ Added Space Rat termites to EF layer.
+ Added some Kalthi Depths Strontium 90 missions, they are with the Platinum missions.
+ Updated junkyard AI bases to new visage.
+ Moved all base augmenter bps from common AI bases to The Acropolis (Augmenter Labs).
+ Moved all station tech upgrades from common AI bases to The Acropolis (Parthenon).
+ Moved all inhibitor and facilitator bps from common AI bases to The Acropolis (Parthenon).
+ Moved all base plating from common AI bases to The Acropolis (Parthenon).
+ Moved Stationary Defense Overloader bp from common AI bases to The Acropolis (Parthenon).
+ Moved all existing base augmenter bps from the Parthenon to Augmenter Labs within The Acropolis.
+ Fixed Defensive Ops Aptitude Augmenter mission being unavailable.
+ Put Space Blue Gamma Augmenter on Space Blue Gamma Scout.

Next Universe – Nexus
+ Wormholes for The Building Academy and Arctia have been moved to Deep Space, along with introductory missions to direct new players to these zones.
+ Adjusted the difficulty of many of the Nexus AI, increased shield bank and ship size of Rattie Moe.

Added this Patch
* Made the original Zebucart skin apply to all of the low tech variants of the Zebucart, enjoy your shiny blue and white Zebucarts!
* Gave Olympus bosses new shouts to help better inform players of what was actually happening during their fights.
* Added Neural Keysyncs to the droplist of the drone in the room before Anaconda.
* Bots can now equip and unequip their solar panels automatically to maximize their charge to the bot’s energy bank if possible.
* Bots should now follow their masters in galaxies with wormholes that connect to other wormholes in the same galaxy up to 1 wormhole away, and can travel using in galaxy wormholes when trading with a userbase.
* Added Hazard Dissipator Ultra Crate to drop tables.
* Added a Promethium Matrix Crystal for higher end DF DGs.
* Added commodity crates to Perilous Perilous Space dungeon drop tables
* Bots can now only be transferred from you to people on the same team and/or squad as you.
* Added more drops to Zailaguru Ksatracara, examples: 15% chance to drop RC20 commod, 100% chance to drop 1 t22 gear.
* Added “Butter Bean” name to bigger green names.
* New notification icons for the notification system to use.
* Added new base missile models.
* Added t20 Avesaka base augmenters to subspace drop list.
* Added Expedition Team Blueprint to dg drop lists. (terraforming).
* Added Assault Drones related to X Y Z content. Mobile permanent drones that follow you but don’t warp out with you.
* New textures to The Hanged Man and the Tortuga Ragnarok. Barbe Wrath tweaks drops as a crate instead of a single tweak. Modified the Ragnarok’s so the AI bought Ragnarok/Ragnarok+/Hybridized Ragnarok is better than the Ragnarock. The Tortuga Ragnarok is slightly better than the AI bought one, and is cappable. Increased the drop rate of the Holochart Fragment pieces. Added 2 augmenter slots to the Stalker.
* User bases can move themselves with some types of thrusters if they are equipped with a maximum speed of 3.
* Added new texture for multi firing bigger greens, Uber Forgones, UnForgones, Ice Picklers and Omega BattleStations.
* Improved Warp Beacon texture and Iq’Bana Warp Bacon texture.
* Added Egrosphere Thrusters to the Merchant Navy Contriver ship. Use /outfithull command to make items appear on your ship.
* BvB station slots are now separated from normal slots. Once bvb is over and the kit remove its bvb status, it will convert back to using normal slots. If no slots are available, you have 12 hours to either free the slots needed or abandon the kit before it auto abandon/destroy. There is a team chat warning every hour. BvB slots currently can only be seen using the chat command: “/baseslots”.
* Added Pirated Augmenter Token drops to DGs.
* Added Annihilator Assault Drone bps to the base bp packs.
* Added 50k credits to most station kits, for ease of use.
* Added Advanced Adamantiumized Fire Control Superitem weapon to Ada HQ kit.
* Added XYZ Radar lines to Adonis-Annihilator Upgrade blueprints.

Fixes this Patch
* Fixed base holoprojectors not updating properly.
* Fixed a mistake in low tech XYZ upgrade bps (didn’t take previous gear).
* Fixed the AI base visuals within The End of the Universe galaxy.
* Fixed the bug where the energy bar would show “+-<X>” when you had negative net energy gain.
* Fixed radar ring for weapon range.
* Fixed the textures for the Kalthi Commander, Kalthi Armored Commander and Kalthi Wrathful Commander so that their textures (not the glow maps) have engines on them.
* Fixed the OS6 mission.
* Made it so wild slaves will enter stasis when in battle grounds (e.g., The Colosseum).
* Fixed Termite Mound auras, they now work.
* Made it so that AI will no longer consider equipped drones in resist calculations.
* Disabled TSL on the Emperor’s Crown (item, not the hull). Also replaced decay on warp with warp-prevention behaviour and removed the neuro-bound.
* Blueprints will no longer state that they need 0 metals.
* Removes drone super items from raddexable wild bot, stops it spamming event chat with errors.
* Disabled the AI from using the Aveksaka Defender Device IV on the Hybridized Selenologica. Will stop the event chat spamming.

Adjustments this Patch
* Added in-built items back into the Hybridized Panther, Lion and Zebra. They no longer give up their in-builts for their increase in tech level.
* Added back the in-builts that some Paxian ships had.
* Improved Hephaestus Drone. Samgrahaka Akramavar, Indrakoza Akramavar and Indrakoza Amzuchidvar drones have also been substantially improved as well.
* Adjusted and improved termite mound visuals.
* Changed the Kalthi Depths blueprint requirements so that they require Industrial Commodities from T0 to T3 instead of extractable T0 to T3 commodities.
* Changed requirements for Olympus expanders and stats on these expanders.
* Capped the growth of alien invasion spawners
* Changes to Mutara Scrapyard.
* Multiple changes to base missiles to bring them more in line (higher energy/space cost, higher shield, range and all around usefulness).
* Changed Dementium drops so that more would drop in higher DF DGs rather than less.
* Reduced the DPS and increased the DPE of small, micro, and nano weapons a little bit to give more variety in higher DPE choices.
* Reduced Lightning Bolt Blueprint from size 100 to 1.
* Removed t21 modules from Hephaestus Mallet blueprints.
* Increased Overloaded Mining Laser Prototype from 15k damage to 100k damage.
* Reduced the Ancient Drone Blueprint from size 100 to 1.
* Changed respawn timer on Giant Asteroid in Mzungu Angani (Enigmatic Sector) from 15 minutes to 1 minute.
* Made Junkyard Hydroponics and Extensors take 0 workers.
* Adjusted Barbe Rouge’s drops.
* Buffed Buccaneer and Swabbie gear.
* Improved range from 200 to 500 on ENIAC Planet Scanner Sigma.
* Increased Solar Drone range from 200% to 300%. Built-in doesn’t affect astral injection.
* Reduced the build cost on Surgical, Heat and Radiation base dampeners.
* Nerfed Perilous Hybrid Panel by 33%.
* Holoprojector effects will now be recreated if they disappear at any time while they are in use.
* Buffed Berserker locked incineration weapons.
* Buffed Cherub.
* Reduced the size of Emperor’s Crown to 100 (from 200k), increased weight by factor of 10.
* Added Junkyard tags to Equanimizer Blueprint, Death Striker Blueprint, Death Striker+ Blueprint, Dark Freighter Blueprint, Pax Astrologica Blueprint, Reaver Blueprint, Emperor’s Behemoth Blueprint, Rosmarinus Blueprint, Assault Behemoth Blueprint, Absconditus Blueprint, Reaver+ Blueprint.
* Changed many Tech 20 and above mini bosses and bosses to the fixed Daily and Weekly lockouts.
* Fortified station kits now take loaded station kits.
* Repair station kit bps now take loaded station kits.
* Ruin kits, HQs and Outposts now have X gear included.
* Tech 9 junkyard will now come with Ares gear X.
* Fortified Attached Academy Kit resists have been lowered and now will come with gear when deployed.
* Brute Force hull expansions now have a internal drop list, with increased drop chances.
* Buffed Scorch’s Cleft Thorn.
* Buffed the Hell Fire, Hell Raiser, Death Warmed Over and Death Heated Over.
* Adjusted Pirate’s Mark Augmenter.
* Adjusted Subspace tech 22 skill missions so you don’t need the boss kill, you just need to turn in the kill commodity.
* Engineer Capacitor Super Item now affects Drones, Capital Ships and Bases. Just like the Shield Monkey super items!
* Altered the stats on the Strontium Cannon.

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!

Jey

Patch on monday, patchnotes alongside livetest update will be posted this week.

Bobbo

I’ve been prototyping an idea for a new layer shape for our universes which would generate clusters of galaxies with a few numbers of links between them.

The ‘webifying’ links between clusters (the extra links above the bare minimum needed to link all galaxies) isn’t quite right yet though. We won’t be seeing the new shape for the next universe, but the following universe should see the new shape. Aside from this, I’ve been on a few bug fixes and such.

Bobbo also added Harambe to the Jungle Monkey AI name list.

Pixel

Pixel’s added a new HQ superweapon, which multifires two Adamantiumized Superlasers alongside your regular weaponry.

He also added some exit wormholes in the boss instances of The Serengeti due to popular demand.

SunDog60

I’ll be adding an exit wormhole to Copper, Dark Diablo’s room in Infernal Darkness and hopefully Olympus to go with Pixel’s UZ exits.

DarkSteel

Still working on the Prawn / Wattage / Delquad reworks. Range and DPS are done, still got to get the DPE right and I’m going to have a look at the resistances on the various ships. When this is done I’ll move on to looking at Recon class strength increases to make up for the removal of MF2.

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!

Bobbo

Most of you are probably now aware we’ve decided to make some changes to how Wild Space is laid out. We’ve changed the shape to a circle, with the high danger factor galaxies in the middle. We’ve also dropped the galaxy count for Wild Space to 375 (from 600) and adjusted the quantity of AI stations appropriately. I’ve done some extra adjustments so that the minimum number of planets you get is proportional to the danger factor, maxing out at 6 planets.

Yclepticon

There will be a new station item available for construction, the base amplification device! It will cost around 20 billion credits and takes 7 days to activate once built. Once active it will give your team +5 BvB base slots to all connecting star systems.

Jeff

Jeff’s been working on finishing up the new class skills.

Ryan

Ryan’s working on the coding for the new class UI and has added the decay on reset tag, defenders, platforms and IC’s will now properly decay upon universe reset.

Pixel

Pixel’s added in a new Twisted player ship, the Twisted Vanguard. It is a stealth and range based heavy fighter for snipers. Stats are a work in progress and may be changed.

Jey

New patch is coming along nicely, current estimate is by the end of next week. Livetest notes will be available once they are complete.

On the beta client side, I am still trying to pinpoint the issue with the light flashing on low graphics.

Once that’s done, I have some major improvement ideas to rework the lagkiller since the current version is far from ideal. Thanks to the new c++ version, we get access to a more reliable and threadsafe high precision clock, on cpu where the precision is high enough, the lagkiller will allocate a % of frame to specific section and only reduce the parts actually causing lags instead of the current approach that lower everything until the fps is back up. Assuming it works as intended, it should mean that the lagkiller would be a lot less visible and react much faster than currently.

Hober Mallow

Reworked Class Super items! Their descriptions and names may not exactly say what they do, this is something that will come once everything has been nailed and set in stone. The Aveksaka dailies and weeklies should now work like the Olympus Dailies, and I added some cool new rewards that you’ll have to turn in Allied Commendations for. There are also monthly missions to do, so there should be plenty for players to explore. And, probably the biggest thing, is that the Tech 22 skills no longer require a boss kill in order for you to acquire the skill! Rejoice all those who have forgotten to pick the mission up before killing the boss, or those who were getting the skills via daily missions!

Universe Reset

Ahab has contacted us recently about the Space Rats he’s been observing. The AI attack patterns have spread to them! Before he could dispose of them, the rats have coordinated an assault on the fabric of space time itself! These tears in the fabric of space time have destabilized the universe, the universe will implode on 13:00 EDT (18:00 BST, 17:00 GMT), on the 17th of September. Fortunately in the rubble of the 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.

Hober Mallow

I’ve gone through and redone all tech 20+ ubers to use the daily/weekly lockout timers similar to the current system used by The Serengeti. I’ve also gone through and improved some underused and underpowered class super items, and plan to do more for the rest of them. I’ve also adjusted the difficulty of the Daily missions in Olympus, they should all be of relatively similar difficulty now. Eventually the Subspace Daily missions will work similarly to the Olympus Dailies. There’s a lot of other little things I’ve changed, but they don’t need to be talked about in the blog. Look out for the post I made on the forums in regards to a Video Trailer Contest! Go here for the details!

SunDog60

I’ve been working some more on Iq’ Bana, connecting all the wormholes. Aside from that I’ve also finished up the new Completionist Missions, they will be available at Sai’s Retreat next universe and will require you to complete most mission chains in the game (such as the Paxian exploration chain and the 4 Subspace mission chains). As a reward you’ll be given the Completionist Holoprojector by Pixel himself!

Blue Dwarf

The Emperor notification changes are done and are coming next patch, I’ve picked up a little bit of exciting stuff for next universe and been working on the event system save with the database.

Pixel

Pixel’s added a new boss to the Twisted Zone, to a total of 3 minibosses and 3 bosses. The boss is a giant eyeball with multiple mini eyeball guards. The items it drops are radar and cloaking based, including misc. items such as lighthouses with special bonuses.

Jey

Jey’s been trying to track down an elusive bug on the beta client where the client would flash while on low graphics. This issue has been around for a while but only happens frequently with the new compiler, as well as other bugs and crashes allowing them to be reproduced and fixed.

Hello all, this is a quick note detailing the upcoming changes to industrial commodities (effective next universe reset).  I have gone through and reduced AI base inventory size and consumption of all tier 1-3 industrial commodities. The new consumption rates are 50/day for tier 1, 15/day for tier 2, and 5/day for tier 3.  Inventory sizes are seven times these figures, across the board.  These changes were made in order to align the consumption rates of these commodities more closely to the actual extraction rates of tier 1-3 commodities.

The basic value of Metals, Nuclear Waste, and Silicon has also been adjusted. Steel Girders now price Metals at 15 credits.  Nuclear Waste is now priced at 75 credits, and Silicon is at 25 credits.  These changes were made in order to bring the credit sourcing of the system down somewhat from this uni.

The value of Promethium and Enriched Nuclear Material has also been reduced via the pricing of Sub-Shield Buffers and Reactors.  Promethium is now worth 10,000 credits and E-Nukes are worth 2,500 credits, down from 30,000 and 20,000, respectively.  Also, AI base consumption rates for these commodities have been changed to 25,000/day for Buffers and 2,500/day for Reactors.  These changes were made in order to rein in the amount of income from these particular commodities.  Our data from the current universe has shown that people were making a lot more profit than we had wanted from the Sub-Shield line of industrial commodities, so this change should rectify that issue.

As always, the calibration of industrial commodities is subject to change, usually on a once-per-universe basis. We will continue monitoring the market and make revisions to the system as needed. We welcome your input on this process.

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.

We’re back! Since last week, there was an argument over whether Poseidon’s tsunami was too overpowered or balanced. After a developer run of Poseidon on live, and then on test with tech 20 ships, we’ve come to an agreement that Poseidon’s tsunami is… balanced!

Pixel

Pixel has been working on adding visual differences between regular AI and multifiring / upgraded AI:

Additionally, if you’re an aspiring new base builder you may want to look into getting a Singularity Brake for your new Singularity Sphere or similar transport ship. Luckily for you, Pixel’s added the new Particle Brake and Quantum Brake:

Pixel’s also added new DNA beams you’ll be able to get next universe:

Bobbo

More emperor notification changes. The 24 hour waiting period after claiming the Palace has been scrapped and instead the claiming team will progress to the crowning stage once construction of the crown has been completed. Destruction of the crown during a run will push the progress back to the declared stage (and the claiming team will have to produce another crown ship).

Yclepticon

Reducing the consumption rate of tier 1-3 industrial commodities and nerfing Enriched Nuclear Material value in the Buffer line to 5k instead of 20k.

Jey

New beta client coming in today, you should see a performance improvement all around. It is a test for the new version of the compiler alongside the use of some of c++11 features. Be sure to send in your dmpfile to dmpfile@starsonata.com if you do crash. There’s a lot of low level changes in the code so new crashes and old crashes have a good chances of providing data to fix them.

SunDog60

I’ve paused my work on Iq’ Bana for a few days to create a tech 22 guide.

Hober Mallow

Been working on T22 drones, and some T21 drones. They should be updated on the test server for you to test (Hephaestus Drone, Samgrahaka Akramavar, Indrakoza Akramavar and Indrakoza Amzuchidvar, Solarian Drone). Buffed up a bunch of lower tech content from Infernal Tempest, still working on improving it. Updated the stats on the Pirates Mark Augmenter, it should be a rather interesting augmenter now.

The free Zebucart skin applies to all the low tech variants of the Zebucart! Hooray!

I finally finished implementing the Lyceum Combination Augmenters, from Tech 1 to Tech 22. The blueprints will be acquired in a variety of different ways (The Tech 22 augmenter blueprints will require the player to turn in Allied Commendations, for example) there may be other ways to acquire them as well… you’ll have to find out!

Jeff

Been working on AI formations some more, adding new options to allow for cooler formations.

Pixel

Added in new drone controllers for engineers to use as well as the Twisted Harbour, a station aura generator giving all ships, including enemies, -5% Weight and +100% Docking Speed (affected by Neurotweaking, with a lower range of 4000), all of this will be available next universe in the Twisted Zone. Here’s a quick preview of them:

Additionally Pixel has also added new missions to The Junkyard (not currently available), which will allow you to exchange 50 Junkyard Scrapnotes for 32 Minor augmenters.

Jey

Been working on a queue system for the steam launch, there will be more on that once the system is fully functional. I have also been working on updating our client code to c++11 which brings a rather large potential of performance improvements. It’s still too early in the process to see what kind of improvement we’ll get since right now its pretty unstable so it is difficult to tell if the performance gain is real or just a side effect. I am hoping for a 25-50% fps increase from it but it’s still subject to change.

Hober Mallow

I’ve added the Zebucart Mark 2 as a free skin for the Zebucart. There are also versions for the ZebuMaster and ZebuTitan. They should come in with the next patch. I’ve done anywhere between light touches to drastic changes to some more low level areas (The Jungle, Blue Outpost, Tortuga) and I plan to move on to East Vindia/Infernal Tempest/Bonnet/Protoplasmica. Let me know if I’m missing anything. Tortuga got a lot of its content changed, the gear should definitely be worth a new player’s time now.

I did a few things to the other end of the player spectrum too. Hybridization Blueprints are taken out of the Aveksaka drop tables, they will now be in the Lyceum Research Concourse AI base, it never made sense for the aliens to drop blueprints about how to Hybridize non Aveksaka ships… (There’s actually a perfectly good reason, but I guess your way makes life easier – SunDog) Anyway, you can also get Honorary Diplomas by turning in Aveksakan Tech 22 Skill Commods. Lyceum needs more research specimens, provide them. Expect this change for next universe.

I adjusted a few more things, Strontium Cannons been buffed. Kalthi Stronghold should be in DF 400. All 4 Admixium Blueprints have had their requirements tweaked, they build out of the Industrial Commodities that their previous requirements go into.

Last but not least, I’m working on a way for Gunners and Fleet Commanders to act as Tanks/Off Tanks. Many of you may not know this, but Fleet Focus gives 40% more hostility (at max level) when you’re piloting a capital ship. My thinking is, why not let the players make use of it somehow? I’ll keep you updated on this front. The augmenters I posted about in the previous developer blog have been looked over by the development team, we’ll be making changes to some of the proposed augmenter stats, thank you for your feedback!

SunDog

Finally, it is time to inform you all of what I’ve been working on. I’ve been working on redoing Iq’ Bana, and will be doing the same for other tech 20 skill zones after. The zones will have their overall difficulty raised, but there will be daily missions available which allow you to weaken the strength of the AI and/or boss if you’re trying to obtain the relevant tech 20 skill. If you would rather simply kill the boss and get the skill however, you’ll still be able to do this! These dailies will only be an option, if you are unable to find a group willing to run you through the zone.

Jeff

Over the years, many have complained that AI never do anything interesting, they simply fly at you with the hope that whoever designed them gave them good enough weaponry to take you down. Recently, Lucien Slimebottle discovered some flies in The Nexus that will circle players and coordinate a burst attack together. This is the first in a decade, where AI will work together to take players down. Unfortunately, the flies were quickly hunted to extinction in an attempt to stop more of these coordinated AI from appearing. Fortunately, this new mechanic is spreading to other AI, but will only appear next universe!

Jeff’s been working on adding attack patterns to AI, such as a group of enemies circling around you and all firing at you at the same time for a quick kill. Check out the videos below for a preview!

Bursting Video – Circling Video (shown under this)

Hober Mallow

Hober’s been busy making new augmenters with the help of players on Discord (link to discord here). The new augmenters would work similar to currently existing combined augmenters (such as the Marksman and Rage augmenter lines), giving the player more choices in how they augment their ship. If you would like to see the current work on these new augmenters, check out the design document he’s written up. If you have any suggestions for new augmenters, or changes to some augmenters he’s already written up, you can add comments to the document or talk to him on discord.

Pixel

This section is probably the reason you’re here, Pixel’s been working on a huge list of various things:

• Pixel’s recently buffed up termites to once again threaten the universe, and a chance to find a legendary termite mound. These new legendary mounds will, once nearly fully evolved, begin spawning giant termites. You can find more information in the forum thread he’s made, link to it here.
• He’s also added a new Expedition Team Blueprint terraforming project, allowing you to send a team down to a planet/moon’s surface to discover various things, such as a cavern filled with gems, or floating islands in the sky (that you somehow didn’t see), or the Garden of Eden in the middle of a blistering desert planet. You’ll also find hostile creatures and pirates, who will make living on the colony much less safe, and may even lower the amount of resources on the planet or moon!
• He’s also made a BvB colosseum for players to fight in, with special kits and permanent drones available for purchase. Now you’ll be able to test out unique station setups and practice base vs base combat, maybe even recreate a historical base battle?
• He’s added some new capacitors for the Twisted Zone, which will be available next universe.

SunDog

Sun’s been continuing his work on the UrQa race, with a new and final message to translate:

- Uj’qi urQ’oj iiuqok -
Okara qiiQa, ur qua quu’oj, ur kii iq, kii iq’ bakoqaa… kusoQa uka ur quu’iq’.
Ur vo’ba urk’uu. Iq’uu ur’bakoqaa uku jiq’q'uka, kusoQa kii’oq qok akukoiii vo’koquii.
qiiQa qua qokuji’qii, iq urko qokuji’qii. Sunqa iq’ba, iq zurk ur sunqa iq’ba, urk’nik kur.
Ib qa’ik, kak vazuk nik iq’uu, kak jiq’qi koquii urk’qii ur. Iq UrQa.
- UrQ’oj iiuqok nik -

Some information on my work will be shown on discord in english, because none of you seem to understand anything I’m trying to tell you when I say it in UrQa.

MicroCapacitor

• Making repair kits not work until after 30 minute from the death of the base.
• Planning on a t19 Support Freighter based off of Lyceum.
• Adding calculations for terraforming of BonusShields and BonusRadar. This is for Pixel’s new terraforming blueprints, allowing you to create planet-side shield generators and radar sensors to buff your bases in orbit!
• Gonna work on having bots stop shooting below 1% of their energy so they will regen their shields instead of just only shooting. (This will prevent wild bots from somehow not regening shields if they are in constant battle).

Hello, everyone! I am pleased to announce some upcoming changes to bases that should really improve the game experience, especially for newer players. These changes are on track to go live with the next universe reset.

New Base Kits

Loaded with a full complement of X gear (which now includes a Radar as well), these kits build off of the success of Junkyard bases but don’t come with augmenters installed.  You can purchase them at any AI base for an appropriate cost (2.5m at Tech 9, up to 500m at Tech 20).  The older types of base kit that do not come with gear are being phased out and will no longer be available for purchase.  Upgraded kits (i.e. Fortified, Adamantium, etc.) will now also deploy with full X gear (but still no augmenters). Also, Y and Z Upgrade projects have had their durations adjusted to 1 week and 2 weeks, respectively.

Miscellaneous Improvements

Bases have had their hull space increased substantially (100k at Tech 9, up to 500k at Tech 20). You should no longer need extensors for basic industrial activity.  Bases now deploy with a Trading Bay, 25 Rations, 25 Workers, and a sticky item that generates enough Rations to sustain those Workers.  This should eliminate most starvation-related accidents when setting up a new base.

Construction Mechanic

When deployed, Loaded base kits will be in “under construction” status for the first 10 minutes.  During this time, they will not be able to fire their weapons.  A construction animation that indicates the time remaining will play around the base.  This mechanic has been put into place to balance out the fact that bases now deploy with full gear, including a Laser.

Galaxy Assault Mechanic

Bases laid in galaxy assault (BvB) will no longer take up standard base slots. Instead, every player now has a whole new pool of slots for these bases.  Kits that are deployed into the new slots will automatically convert into standard base slots if room becomes available.  Otherwise, they will become abandoned 12 hours after deployment.  The player will receive periodic notifications about the abandonment timer.  This mechanic will help players who have fewer developed characters to compete, since they will still be able to assault galaxies even if they’ve already used most of their base slots for industry.