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:

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!

Also, this badass mining weapon superitem.

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!

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!

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It had been a rather long period since the last patch, mostly due to rather long to optimise performance issues and a few crashes fix but here it is.

Additions:
* Multiple Server performance improvements, especially in large scale bvb scenarios. 30 vs 30 bases should not affect the server nearly as much as it currently does.
* Client performance improvements all around the board, between 2% to 50% performance improvement during heavy scenario depending on specific hardware (cpu with a lot of cpu cache won’t see as big an improvement).
* Ship tech upgrade items for techs 1-19 added.
* Added Cabbage and Potato Singularity Sphere skins.
* Added SWAT skin to Enforcers.
* Added Annihilator Pulse Gun (for drones only).
* Added new UrQa base weapons (for drones only).
* Added a range of new MRE blueprints to drop tables.
* Added support in the base item list to show the “*” to indicate modded status.
* Added new subspace augmenter blueprints to subspace droplist.
* Item mods can now be searched for in the inventory search bar.
* Added support for item quality(color) tiers. Not all item types will have tiers assigned to start, but we’ll work to expand it to as many items as we can, as quickly as we can.

Changes:
* Station Mastery doesn’t affect permanent drones anymore, instead permanent drones now receive an equal bonus to StM from Drone Deployment (maxed at level 20).
* New tooltip format. Tooltips are in a list format, rather than a run-on sentence format.
* Changed Extraction Expert to increase extraction linearly, rather than exponentially. This is essentially a beef for levels 1 through 29, while 30 remains the same.
* Reworked how mods are given to items, possible fluctuations in chances but all mods now have equal chance (they didn’t before).
* Tweaked numbers for mod rates from various locations to account for how mods are now chosen.
* Improved transference weapon graphic.
* Reduced cost of Jungle Drone, repair was 100m for a T12 drone.
* Beefed the spawn rate of Gabriels Neurolichs in Penance.
* Changed subspace aliens to not leave the galaxy or become scared of attackers.
* Made translocators (e.g., Singularity Brake) unable warp to escape pods or spirits.
* Bases can no longer use items not marked as “base only”.
* Increased T18 stationary kit price 40m -> 60m to make it more in line with the rest.
* Removed T18/T20 kits junkyard scrapnote status.
* Removed T18, T20 kits from all drop tables.
* Removed base Augmenter Blueprints from drop-lists.
* Removed lore skill requirements from ruin user bases.
* Reduced the amount of bullets a Kikale Mzungu Mining Rig to one big pulse, as a work around for sound issues.
* Altered Engineer mission in Lyceum “From the beginning… Blueprints.” to require drones instead of blueprints.
* Removed the cloaking (- visibility) bonus from Station Mastery (and now Drone Deployment).
* Replaced vision and detection in the Station Mastery description with radar, as in this context it is the same thing.
* Changed Adamantium Kit BP’s to 10 size.
* Removed the neurobound tag from the Olympus chargers.
* Bhisaj’a (avesaka wild slave) now have 0% transference resistance instead of 150% transference resistance.
* Zebra UZ lockouts changes has been changed to a new lockout type system. The main boss will reset every week on Friday and the mini boss will reset every day at the same time for all players.
* Updated CA description to show its effect on commodity trades.
* Explain the true aspects of peacemaking (Full effects on ship scanners).
* Base transferences now have different colors.
* Improved tutorial bot mission giver images.
* Slaves are now referred to as “bots”.
* Improved some existing temporary drones: BFD 9000, Ares drone.
* Perma drones were updated across the board, see http://forum.starsonata.com/viewtopic.php?f=107&t=61674 for details. Already deployed drones should not be affected but newly deployed ones will have the new equipments.
* Improved user interface across the board, see http://forum.starsonata.com/viewtopic.php?f=107&t=61529 for details.

Fixes:
* Fixed a bug where extractors would not extract as much as they should while sleepy during server lag.
* Galaxy background effect fixes: Manyara Mire, Manyara Dam and Lake Manyara,Emperor Peak, Crater Highland, Temple Grounds and Graveyard.
* Fixed a bug where certain energies were getting more power than they should have from their fuel (or wastes). Affects energies consuming or generating Nila Rakta, Distilled Life Force, Quartz Crystals, and Space Whisky.
* Made the Hope aura more visible in The Searing Rift (King Khan Kilrathi).
* Fixed Blue Emperor’s drop lists.
* Haunted House holoprojectors have been fixed.
* Bule ruin kits have been renamed to fix ruin extraction issues.
* Existing kits with non-base gear inside has been resolved.
* Removed max workforce from Achilles Energybank Blueprint.
* Added a check when owning galaxy for your HQ being destroyed, instead of reporting the confusing message that your Outpost must be connected to your team space, now reports ‘Your team’s headquarters are in ruin. You must have an active team HQ to own a galaxy’.
* Fix capacitance item keeping charge when unequipped.
* Fixed an issue with the berserker item, Reactive Hull Explosion, de-charging on healing damage.
* Fix sniper analysis not resetting when item is unequipped.
* Fixed a bug where resetting missions (e.g., Strontium and Olympus dailies) didn’t save their start time.
* Fix for Subspace Enforcer resistances.
* Added support for resetting missions to not forcibly abandon themselves when their timer elapses repair if in progress.
* The lock for the wormhole in Kandara Tra (Before Drone Deployment 22 Boss) is now on the correct wormhole.
* Fixed Mad Scientist instance and Brute Force instance map layers.
* Fix an issue where you could not transfer non-RadX wild slaves to non-RadX characters.
* Fix for transference damage weapon related to T22 wild slaves.
* Fixed the erroneous percentage population reported by the OmniCensus PDP.
* Fixed the transference power mod for the Kalthi Healing Device.
* Fixed a bug where you could repair a stack of drones for the price of one.

Next Universe:
+ Moved the specialised trade goods mission from randomly scattered around the universe to tortuga main station. Still dailies.
+ Added the concept of “gas giants” to the universe generation, and made planets have more variety of sizes inside their own gravity classes.
+ Added New Base Holoprojectors purchasable from Creaky’s Junkquarters in The Junkyard.
+ Added Hybridized Demon Expansion and Ultimate Demon Expansion missions in Lyceum.
+ Added Recon Loot superitems to Locus of Recon station in Lyceum.
+ Added Warptastic+ Drone obtainable in Ruby Steppes via mission.
+ Added T18, T20 kits to Iq’ Bana and End of the Universe.
+ Added New Base Aura Blueprints to Free Market and Sol Towing Stations.
+ Fixed Trade Skill missions in Free Market (you no longer need to do the mission 30 times after a reset) and added Trade Skill reset missions. This may go in this universe if a developer has time to add manually.
+ Made available to players some skills that were long ago unavailable. Can be obtained in Kalthi Stronghold. This may go in this universe if a developer has time to add manually.

Jey

Jey has finally tracked down our memory corruption bug and has started patch preperations (I’ve even got a set of patch notes). Full details should be here Friday evening.

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 fancy stuff involving buying space points directly in game and other things. He also contacted Steam on monday inquiring about progress, but no reponse as of yet.

Theodore

Theodore has been through the roaming Olympus AI and removing the anti farming tags from them.

Pixel

Pixel made a really cool looking drone, seriously.
Look at it.

He’s also been doing even more tweaks to the user interface, the most recent victim is the options dialog.

Auxilium

Auxilium has been working on tweaking missiles, but I don’t know enough to tell you because he missed the meeting!

Blue Dwarf

I’ve been working a little more on my event system, but nothing excessively fancy has happened since last week. I’ve done a few little bits and piece which you already knew about, such as the change to Station Mastery and Drone Deployment.

I’m also looking into changing the squad size limit from 10 to a higher number (around 20 or 30, on trial). We’ll be setting the default instance size limit to 10.

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

We’ve picked a date for our universe reset and you’re getting lots of forewarning on it! The chosen date for the reset is the 7th May. A proper announcement will come nearer the time.