Space Clouds

New Universe Patch – May 7, 2016

Universe Reset Patch – May 7, 2016

The Universe is now reset, let the landgrab begin! We had a patch earlier today, but we still needed to get a few more things in.

Additions
*Added EF Warp Beacon to Glass Matrix.
*Added factories for the “Industrial Commodities” in Capella
*AI Bases in wild space are now themed around individual commodities, and will buy the “Industrial Commodities”
*Added subspace mined commodity compressor for extend mining sessions
*Added mobile nuclear waste, metals, silicon mobile furnaces
*Added Programming skill training to level 60
*Added tech 1-19 ship upgrades to Beta Antares

Changes
*Subspace AI no longer count towards ownership of Aveksaka owned galaxies (this excludes the Aveksaka Outposts themselves)
*Missile launch tweaks
*Lowered the cooldown on Heavy Capacitor Device from 7.5 min to 5 min
*Universe generation changes
*Suns are now significantly larger
*Planets now have random sizes (within their gravity class), and occasionally become gas giants, which have 5 station slots and 50% chance of having 6.
*Fixed the “concentric” galaxy type to no longer generate planets with overlapping orbits
*Added a small chance for T1 commodities to spawn in asteroid belts, and made each asteroid belt have varying levels of metals/silicon/nukes/fermium (these were previously fixed amounts for all belts).

Fixes
*Fixed a bug where moons could spawn too close to their planet (sometimes inside)
*Fixed a bug where ai bases were spawning inside of suns
*Fixed a bug with the new tractor rules

Server/Client Patch 05.07.2016

Additions:
* Many previously unrepeatable missions are now repeatable.
+ New look for the dummy drone mk II in nexus.
+ Updated Serengeti Blockade wormhole and fixed some rotational background effects.
+ Visual improvements to Searing Rift, Serengeti Nebula and Serengeti’s Eye.

Changes:
* Made item set text searchable in the inventory search field.
* Lowered Nihilite range from 200% aug mod bonus to 100%.
* Increased the speed of the Very Slow Missile Hull used by the Volcom base in Nexus from 30 to 45.
* Made it so that certain tutorial events will not pop up if the player has fired recently so as to be less annoying.
* Made Crate of Stolen Parts items that you get from a mission in nexus disintegrate if you cancel the mission before delivering them.
* Changed the drop rate of the Aveksaka Echoes holocubes from the Zailaguru Ksatracara.
* The roaming Timotheus the Red will no longer spam All chat. Instead he will yell in all chat only once per phase.
+ Updated Ruby Steppes and Steppes to be separate galaxies with some fun changes.
+ Sun graphics improved.
+ Added Argonaut MagCannon Blueprint to MagCannon blueprint pack.
+ Improved background cloud effect textures.
+ Improved Expanding Ring Texture.
+ Renamed from “TSL” to “storage” in dialogue related.
+ Altered all ruby steppes drones to look ruby.
+ Tweaked Super Phunki Aura.
+ Altered Olympus entrance galaxy.
* Changed range on “Station Point Defense Array” from 300 to 750.
* The Imperial Protector (Emperor’s Palace) now has 15.000.000 Shield bank as well as 5000 Shield Regen
* Fix for the weapon range circle in radar.
* Caracara now uses the Flaming Harrier Skin.
* Removed t18, t20 kits from all drop tables. Added t18, t20 kits to Iq’ Bana and The End of the Universe.
* Fixed Kalthi Wrathful Commander superitem. Now correctly does +heat vul. rather than -heat vul.
* Tweaked Kalthi Wrathful Warrior superitem ‘Kalthi Paralysation’ to have a Nightfury’s Vacuum Effect.
* Changed the Kalthi Wrathful Warrior’s base speed to 100.

Fixes:
* Made stations consider range tweaks when calculating what they can hit
* Fixed Volatile Projectile Overloader not giving projectile speed properly
* Fixed certain item types not becoming usable with ship tech upgrades
* Fixed a bug where ships could only upgrade their tech once.
* Fixed a bug where docking tweaks were multiplying with themselves to give crazy high values.
* Fixed a bug where slaves could equip ship tech upgrades while undocked (and bypass ship slot restrictions)
* Fixed the total slave slot display in the character window
+ Sun texture clipping fixes.
+ Fixed Tiled Cloud Texture.

Most fixes from the bug fix pass did not make this patch but will be patched in the first patch after the uni reset.
Those are already sure to be fixed in the next patch. More will probably be fixed at the same time
- user bases not updating their elect drain if you unequip capacitance gear (like wep) while it’s charging.
- pwi / sing brake fail if the client is sending position update at the same time (usually occur while aping)
- small target are no longer considered hotkeyable item on drag / drop client side
- fixed holoprojector remaining after transwarp / forced galaxy jump and fixed holoprojector not coming back on after a disconnection / reconnection.
- fixed issue with ships being at angle 0.0 causing them to invert due to a rounding issue.
- fixed TSL not updating the first time you dock.
- /show*damages not listing damage anymore and the damage popup not always working properly.

Weekly Dev Blog – 4th May

Blog

Jeff

Jeff made Crate of Stolen Parts items that you get from a Nexus mission disintegrate if you cancel the mission before delivering them.

He’s been working on a design to make the pirate half of Nexus be more open-world style and less hand-holdy so we can compare and see how that does versus the cadet side and working on another design doc for potentially adding a battleground type to Star Sonata.

Jey

Jey’s been preparing for our universe reset patch and, of course, the universe reset itself!

Theodore

Theodore has continued to be very busy making even more one time missions to be repeatable.

Auxilium

Auxilium removed the mechanic where the alien AI in subspace count towards the galaxy ownership. As of next uninverse only the alien Outposts will hold the ownership of a Subspace galaxy.

He also finished the missile rebalance and gave nearly all missiles special launch mechanics to make them feel more like actually launching a missile or torpedo:
Fancy missiles

Pixel

Pixel’s has been continuing to work on visual effects now covering vapor clouds and the olympus drone has been totally altered visually! No more the olympus drone can hide on top the sun avoiding projectiles!
Olympus Drone
Olympus wormhole

Also, this badass mining weapon superitem.
Mining laser

Morat

Morat is working on making fighters a more viable choice across all tech levels.

Universe reset is this Saturday

The end is nigh, very nigh, this Saturday at 1PM EDT (UTC-04:00, 6PM BST) is when, good luck!

Volunteer to Help Star Sonata Grow

Hello!

The dev team has decided to put out a call for volunteers who are interested in helping Star Sonata grow.  We are especially looking for folks in the community who can help us record or edit promotional content for the game.  If you have skills along those lines, please send me a forum message and we’ll go from there.

We are also interested in expanding our referral system.  If you are interested in promoting Star Sonata on commission, please also get in touch with me about that!

Weekly Dev Meeting – 27th April

Bloggy

Ryan

Ryan has been fixing a few bugs some players revealed when using the Ship Upgrades on bots. He’s also been working on the new cargo slot system, it’s definitely taking shape but still requires a lot of work.

Jeff

Jeff’s has been going through his childhood days of playing Star Sonata and has improved quite a few issues within the Nexus, whilst tidying some of the code making it easier for everyone else to work with.

Jey

Jey’s been making progress with his bug fix spree. Here is some of the fixes:

  • Player bases not updating their electrical drain if you unequipped a weapon while it’s charging.
  • PWI type items when failing was sending unnecessary information.
  • Fixed holoprojectors remaining after a transwarp.
  • Fixing the issue with ships being at an angle of 0.0 causing them to face the wrong direction.
  • Finally fixed the TSL not updating when the first time you dock.

Theodore

Theodore has continued to be very busy juggling missions to become repeatable, expect these to appear within the next universe. Enjoy!

Pixel

Pixel’s been very busy again! He’s added a variety of new tech 21-22 to the existing ruins! Here’s some appetizers: Mzungu Ethereal Transwarp, Bule Outbreak, Vazaha ENIAC Planet Scanner Sigma, Paxian Bloodstone and many more! This should make finding ruins in wildspace have more potential to be valuable instead of the existing few ruin types that are currently about. As a side note some people from the community helped with deciding and creating some of these items!

Other areas Pixel’s been busy with is the graphical department regarding to improving existing textures. Here’s an example of the serengeti blockade wormhole
Serengeti Blockade Wormhole

Steppes and Ruby Steppes will have their own individual galaxies as you progress through them from next universe, resulting in no more issues with bots! Did attempt to do this to Labyrinth but couldn’t get it to work properly (may have a solution in the future).

Just in-case this was missed in the patch notes, a series of base field generation blueprints will become available next universe within the Free Market and Sol towing stations. These are focused around improving the performance of trading bots.

Last addition is new purchasable station holoprojectors available via The Junkyard next universe. These are experimental to see what you think of them!

Blue Dwarf

I’ve not had much going on, coursework and exams! Yay. Our next bonus weekend is this weekend and I’ll be looking to setup the first version automatic event system to run the events from then on. More news will come closer to the time.

Also, Pixel has put together some very cool looking skins and holoprojectors for me to hand to people with outstanding competition prizes

Just a reminder on universe reset

Don’t forget the universe reset is the 7th May.

Universe Reset – 7th May 2016

Ladies and gentlemen, please collect your belongings and prepare to depart as this is the last stop of the universe.

This universe is coming to a close. Scientists predict the full collapse will occur on the 7th of May at 13:00 EDT (18:00 BST, 17:00 GMT).

Earthforce would like to remind you to pack your stations, recover your drones and for the paranoid, dock your bots before the collapse.

We hope to see you on the other side!

Weekly Dev Meeting – 20th April

Bloggy

Ryan

Ryan has fixed a few bugs with his new ship upgrade items where you could only use one on a ship and some items (like drones) didn’t treat upgraded ships correctly. He’s also fixed a bug where docking bonuses would get repeatedly multiplied with themselves, effectively giving the player infinite docking.

Jeff

Jeff’s been going through our server code fixing some of the warnings emitted by the compiler during compliation (funnily enough) and fixed a few bugs.

Jey

Jey’s been doing some back stage stuff making sure software is up to date with security fixes and is going to focus on bug fixing. He has a blog post requesting for players to tell him about their most annoying bugs to get fixed.

Theodore

Theodore has been working on changing a bunch of missions which give one time only, or specialist gear repeatable, at an increased price. Missions such as the Stable Overloader missions, if you know any of any items/missions that this’d apply to, he’s asked that you post about it in forum topic here.

Pixel

Pixel has been working making some awesome new AI bases for us.

new AI bases

Auxilium

Auxilium has been making good progress on his missile changes, he’s also nerfed the Burst weapons, removing their practically infinite tracking.

Blue Dwarf

Auxilium mentioned issues to me about the Volatile Projectile Overcharger device, in turn I fixed two issues, firstly bases didn’t take any range tweaks into account when calculating what they can shoot and secondly that the projectile speed bonus didn’t work (or rather, it did, but it was only +1 speed).

Just a reminder on universe reset

Don’t forget the universe reset is the 7th May.

Bugs Fixing Pass

It’s been too long since I did one so here we are.

Post in this blog discussion whatever game bug has been annoying you and you’d like to see fixed first. I’ll commit to fix all those i can over the course of the week

This can include any actual bug, please provide as much information on the bug as possible. As a rule of thumb, if I can make the bug happen on my side, I can fix it rather easily. Bugs that can’t be reproduced can sometime be fixed but its a lot less likely to be fixed until I stumble on a way to make it happen or can figure out the cause of the bug by guesswork.

Content issue can also be brought up, although keep in mind, while I can fix typos, broken missions and the likes. I will not address stats or balance issues.

New Lockout System

A week ago, we rolled out a new lockout system to all 5 bosses in the Serengeti UZ. There has been a little bit of confusion how this works, so I’m here to clear that up!

Emperor, Lion, Rhino, Panther, and Zebra bosses now on weekly resets. This means that no matter when you kill the bosses during the week, your lockout will expire at midnight (US east coast, not following dst) on Friday. This should make it much easier to coordinate runs, as well as meaning that you can kill these bosses at any time during the week without losing out on any loot.

Because of the fact that 3 of the 5 bosses were not already on a 7 day lockout, we had to change loot chances to compensate. The Panther and Zebra bosses gained extra or higher loot chances to compensate for their longer lockouts, while the Emperor received a slight nerf to his “extra” non-unique loot to compensate for his shorter lockout.

Existing lockouts from before the old system have mostly expired by now, but once the few that are left expire then everyone will be on the new system.

Future Plans

In the near future, we’ll be adding a lockout UI. This will show current boss lockout timers as well as the upcoming daily and weekly lockout times for all bosses on the new system.

We rolled this out to Serengeti UZ initially as a trial, if everyone is happy with it we will be rolling it out to more instanced content. We’ll probably be leaving this off of un-instanced content, to prevent situations where too many players might pile up as they unlock at the same time.

Weekly Dev Meeting – 13th April

Bloggy

MicroCapacitor

MicroCapacitor has tweaked the subspace aliens so that they should not leave the galaxy or attempt to run away from the player. He’s also fixed a mistype with one of the Platinum Strontium missions for Rajanicara Sahistha Scout and done the next four subspace augmenters for T16 stations.

Ryan

Ryan has been working on some bug fixes for a few of the issues that have popped up in the patch and plans to do a micropatch to get the fixes in tomorrow night.

Jey

Jey’s been working on fixing an optimization that bugged and is currently disabled, I don’t know any details of what this optimization is unfortunately.

Theodore

Theodore has been looking through and tweaking the number of commodities required to build the items for the Kalthi Skills to make the skills easier to obtain.

Pixel

Pixel has changed Junkyard Kits to come loaded with X gear for the tier below them, e.g., the T16 Junkyard Kits now comes with Ambrosia X gear and Ambrosia Y and Z blueprints.

Auxilium

Auxilium has finished up the stats of the Missile rebalance. Over the next week(s) he’ll be implementing it into the game files as well as testing the rebalanced missiles. More detailed information can be found in his forum topic about it.

Blue Dwarf

On Saturday when we had our patch I fixed a couple of bugs related to extractors.
I’ve implemented the changes required to allow larger squad sizes, with defaults of 10 for max instance size and squad size. After the next patch we’ll be able to change the maximum squad size as when we wish, so we’ll be able to trial various settings without too much trouble.
I’ve also been working on fixes for Sniper Analysis, which should be included in tomorrows micropatch.

Just a reminder on universe reset

Don’t forget the universe reset is the 7th May.