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.

SunDog

For those working on translating the UrQa SunDog gave us last week, here’s another passage to translate:

“Okara QokujiQa Ooooqi! Kasa iiuqok qui ishi UrQ’oj, ishii urko…”
“P.S.S. Dawn’s Retribution urku Qi’uka, KoQuii banuii qua! KoQuii banuii kii suqqa sunqa qua ba.”
“Ishii niq, ib Qu’ishii qui uu’ko, ur-”

“Kak! Ishi qok urko, ish’kii. Ishi uka ko.”
“Qu’ishii kii UrQa suqqa. Ur’ Qu’ishii aku qua akuq Iq’ Bana.”
“Ur’ Qu’ishii urko? Ib kii ur.”

Pixel

Pixel’s been hard at work again! He’s made some new base missile models, more Twisted content, content fixes and much more! Here’s a screenshot of an early render of the new tech 22 support freighter player obtainable ship.

Jey

New patch is in early preparation stage, should be more details on that next week. Got some new client optimisation in progress which could give a pretty good performance boost all around (new compiler and threads support).

Blue Dwarf

I’ve set the Emperor system messages to instead use the notification system instead of spamming players every 5 minutes, it won’t be in the next coming patch but should be in the one after it (I still need to test a few things to make sure it’s all working correctly).

Blue Dwarf

A while ago Pixel made us some shiny new icons to use in our notification system (the server shutdown and alien invasion messages). I’ve added support to actually use these new icons and more things will be using the system soon!

SunDog

I’ll be posting information on what I’m working on later this universe, in the meantime here’s what I’m working on in the UrQa language:

KusoQa urk’oq uka bakoqaa! Kak qa’quu Oj’qiiQa sunqa ib’ ba! Bakoqaaiii’uq vo uk’urku…
Uj’qii ak’oj vo suqqa urko UrqaQa! Uka Qa’ik! Koquii Qa’ik!
UrQa uj’Qa. UrQa uj’qii Qa’ik kii qiiQa. Vazuk ur kasa, koquii ur ib’. ib’ qok ur.
KusoQa qok urk’qiiQa’oq vazuk. Qokujiii kur KusoQa sunqa akuq’ojj!

If someone can actually translate that and message me I might reward you, depending on how well translated it is.

Pixel

Pixel’s been adding even more drones to the Twisted Zone! Pixel has been hearing that people expected more than one boss so he will start making multiple bosses over time. Here’s a brief list of what’s been added:

• Twisted Blaster & Twisted Blaster Disaster
• TBFD 9000
• Twisted Travel Field Projector
• Upgrade blueprint for Death Striker & Death Striker+

If you wanna get involved join the SS community on Discord.

On a side note he hope you all enjoy the new base holoprojectors added to The Junkyard and the ever watchful Dragon’s Eye in Fortress galaxy!

Ryan

Ryan is still working on some behind the scenes stuff for our new ingame store.