I have been collecting various skins that have been posted on the forums at various places, as well as creating new skins myself. In this latest client and server patch, here is a list of new skins that players will be able to use. This list is in alphabetical order of skin name, with columns specifying the ship/s that the skin applies to (some skins will work on multiple ships), and what the account name of the creator of the skin is.

The skins  Earthforce Police Battlecruiser,  Earthforce Police Battleship, Earthforce Police Cruiser, Earthforce Police Destroyer,  Earthforce Police Dreadnought,  Earthforce Police Zebra, HM1080, Rainbow-imizer and Rainbow-imizer+ have animations on them, and the images below corresponding to those ships have a link to a GIF file where you can see the animation that is featured in the skin. All of the areformentioned skins’ animations play continuously through a loop, the animation for the HM1080 plays when a weapon is first used after undocking, and resets once docked again.

The skins except from Adamantiumized Samgrahak’ayu, Ember Vazi, Frozen Zeus, Hybridized Black Paxian Battle Frigate, and the Neon Machine + may have their engine mounts not appearing correctly where they should be; I do not know if the problem was fixed in the latest client and server patch, but I will tell you when it does get fixed if it has not been already. The Zebucart Mark 2 skin I believe appears approximately 3% smaller than it should be on the ships, due to the volcom model being scaled to the size of the ships the skin applies to; this is something that I will try to fix.

I plan to add more skins in the future, such as a skin for the Battle Sphere and Singularity sphere that changes their model to have a slightly cubic shape compared to what they are now, and a skin for the Wattage and Resistance each that replaces the glowing spheres on the back of the ships with a miniature version of a star that is seen in the galaxies in Star Sonata. Also, any players who have not received a free copy of the skin that they designed that is currently in the game please send me a forum pm.

Skin name	Image of skin	Ship/s that the skin can be used for	Account name of creator of skin
Adamantiumized Samgrahak’ayu		Samgrahak’ayu	xcrunner5
Earthforce Police Battlecruiser		Earthforce Battlecruiser	egrosphere
Earthforce Police Battleship		Earthforce Battleship	egrosphere
Earthforce Police Cruiser		Earthforce Cruiser	egrosphere
Earthforce Police Destroyer		Earthforce Destroyer	egrosphere
Earthforce Police Dreadnought		Earthforce Dreadnought	egrosphere
Earthforce Police Zebra		Zebra	egrosphere
Ember Vazi		Vaziayu	Sk1rm1sh
Frozen Zeus		Zeus Throne	grimer
Hephaestus Machine Frame		Hephaestus Machine	egrosphere
HM1080		Hephaestus Machine	thecrazygamemaster (combat mode animation made by egrosphere)
Hybridized Black Paxian Battle Frigate		Paxian Battle Frigate	joku1999
Neon Machine +		Hephaestus Machine+	Tomzta09
Rainbow-imizer		Equanimizer, Equaminizer	egrosphere
Rainbow-imizer+		Equanimizer+	egrosphere
Zebucart Mark 2		Zebucart, Zebucart+, Advanced Zebucart, Oversized Zebucart, Micro Zebu	egrosphere
Zebu Master Mark 2		Zebu Master, Zebu Master+	egrosphere

Server/client Patch 12.24.2014

+ Added Warp Beacons to Staff Quarters and Temple Grounds
+ Removed Common items from the base Friedman in Free Market
* Fixed the issue with DPE on Molten Chain
* Made 5 new T21-T22 tractors
* Added in another mission chain for tweaks to Junkyard
* Added Blueprints for new T21 and T22 tractors
* Added 18 new Neurotweaks
* Don’t automatically complete a mission if the user is in a pod
* Changed it so that you can always attack enemy bvb kits in gals your team owns, even if your HQ is dead.
* Removed Astral Travel from various space stations
* Field Generator items now have to “warm up” after you equip them for an amount of time equal to the length of the longest aura that they bestow. For most, this is about 1 second. This is to prevent people from rapidly cycling through a bunch of different field generators in order to get the effect of multiple ones at the same time.
* Changed rules for deploying drones so that they no longer get block
* Multiple crash fixes and performances improvements both server and client

And offcourse, this patch also include the new xmas letters and some other xmas related things

It’s finally here!

All things are a go in the universe for Christmas. Lapland has appeared, Astro-Santa is giving gifts in Earthforce Space and Sol has been donned it’s santa hat, unfortunately it brings with it that reject of a Grinch roaming Perilous Space in a pair once again.

A slight change of plan

Due to requiring a patch to add this years christmas letters from the competition and there’s no one to do it right now, I’ve pushed ahead with the main event, using last years letter’s. These will be replaced soon, and the missions will change when they do. To remind you, last year’s winners were:

• epicninja
• Tom Daedalus
• reaper pride
• Platinum
• AfriendlyCanadian

Once this year’s winners have been picked, things will be sorted for their letters to go live and I’ll update this post with the winners

That’s it, so from everyone at Star Sonata, Merry Christmas! Have fun!

King Midas is pissed off that you players keep farming him for Imperial Chests, so he has recruited a giant mob of various Big Greens and Green Battleships to warp into Perilous Space and exact revenge!

As part of our month-long celebration of the 10th anniversary of Star Sonata, tonight, the invasions of the Midas Goons is beginning. Approximately every half hour, somewhere in Perilous Space, up to 25 ships will spawn. If you can manage to fight them off, they will each have a small chance to drop an Imperial Chest, Dementium Fragment, or Bindomite.

But if you think that you’re so leet that fighting off hordes of Green Battleships is easy, well, this *is* Perilous Space, and you might have to PvP other players for the drops.

Just for fun, here is the XML code we used to add this event. You may notice that this is limited to 4000 spawns. Once this spawner has produced 4000 children, it deletes itself and the event will be over. This should take somewhere between 3-5 days, depending on how vigilant people are at killing Goons.

<WILDAI>
  <WILDSPAWN name="SuperGreenSpawner">
    <QUANT>1</QUANT>
    <WILDSTART>3.8</WILDSTART>
    <WILDEND>99.0</WILDEND>
    <LAYER>4</LAYER>
    <USETEAM>Midas Goons</USETEAM>
    <SPAWNOBJ typename="SpawnNasty">
      <SPAWNER>
        <SPAWNBASE>
          <NAME>SuperGreenSpawner</NAME>
          <INTERVAL>1800</INTERVAL>
          <NUM>25</NUM>
          <LIMITSPAWNS>4000</LIMITSPAWNS>
          <LEVEL>-1</LEVEL>
          <MINATTACKLEVEL>0</MINATTACKLEVEL>
          <ATTACKFRACMINAI>0.5</ATTACKFRACMINAI>
          <ATTACKFRACMAXAI>0.0</ATTACKFRACMAXAI>
          <ATTACKFRACMINPLAYER>0.0</ATTACKFRACMINPLAYER>
          <ATTACKFRACMAXPLAYER>999.0</ATTACKFRACMAXPLAYER>
          <SCAREDYCAT>0.0</SCAREDYCAT>
          <DROPITEM chance="0.01">Imperial Chest</DROPITEM>
          <DROPITEM chance="0.02">Dementium Fragments</DROPITEM>
          <DROPITEM chance="0.05">Bindomite</DROPITEM>
          <SPAWNATONCE>true</SPAWNATONCE>
          <RANDOMIZED>1</RANDOMIZED>
          <NAMELIST>BigGreens100.txt</NAMELIST>
          <NAMEPREFIXLIST>UberPrefixes.txt</NAMEPREFIXLIST>
          <NAMESUFFIXLIST>UberSuffixes.txt</NAMESUFFIXLIST> <!-- extra suffixes for identification -->
          <BOUNDTOLAYER>true</BOUNDTOLAYER>
          <HATEMODIFIER>3.0</HATEMODIFIER> <!-- hate on the haters -->
        </SPAWNBASE>
        <PERIPATETIC>25</PERIPATETIC> <!-- jump reasonably often -->
        <SWARM>1</SWARM> <!-- birds of a feather ... -->
        <ALLOWJUMP>1</ALLOWJUMP>
        <GROUPATTACK>1</GROUPATTACK>
        <GROUPATTACKDIST>3000</GROUPATTACKDIST>
        <RALLYFACTOR>10000</RALLYFACTOR> <!-- fight everyone -->
        <CANUPGRADE>0</CANUPGRADE>
        <DONTDOCK>1</DONTDOCK>
        <ADDITIONALBRAVERY>200</ADDITIONALBRAVERY>
        <SHIPCONFIG weight="1.0">Green Meanie</SHIPCONFIG>
        <SHIPCONFIG weight="1.0">Titan Green</SHIPCONFIG>
        <SHIPCONFIG weight="1.0">Green Battleship</SHIPCONFIG>
        <!-- pooling all the skills all versions of the Greens get for a particularly nasty combo, +50%-->
        <XTRASKILL lvl="30">SKILL_COMBAT_FOCUS</XTRASKILL>
        <XTRASKILL lvl="15">SKILL_SNIPER_EFFICIENCY</XTRASKILL>
        <XTRASKILL lvl="15">SKILL_FLEET_FOCUS</XTRASKILL>
      </SPAWNER>
    </SPAWNOBJ>
  </WILDSPAWN>
</WILDAI>

Hey guys!

So, a while ago I asked you guys which AI ship you would fly, if you could. Now you can know the reason! I’m actually planning on making one of these player available! 

You can cast your vote over at the forum, at http://forum.starsonata.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=60171

I’m looking forward to the results. Of course, I’m not going to tell you guys how it’s going to happen. But you’ll see soon enough.

So, that’s it for my little update. Stay tuned, there’s some cool things coming your way soon!

Regards,

The classiest Dev alive.

So this blog post has some awesome new; firstly about Christmas!!

Christmas is here

But as always, the rite of passage to Astro-Santa’s goodies is sending him your letters!

That’s right! It’s time for our annual Astro-Santa Christmas letter competition. Send Astro-Santa (or maybe the Astro-Elves) a heartfelt (or hateful) letter, for what things Astro-Santa should get people, or just to raise (or ruin) their Christmas spirits.

You have until Friday 19th of December, 00:00 server time to get your entries in.

Five winners will be chosen later that day and prizes will be handed out during the event.

Prizes:

• A unique item (permanent holoprojector or soundprojector).
• Their letter added to the game.
• 5 Kotonjatas
• 5 Candy Mints
• 5 Triple-Chocolate Candy Cane Kisses
• 5 White Chocolate Candy Pretzels
• 5 Gigantic Stockings
• 5 Good Deed Tokens
• A collection of holoprojectors and soundprojectors

Dates:

• Entry deadline: 19th December (midnight server time).
• Winner’s announcement: 19th December (or later that weekend).
• Event start: At Winner announcement time

Rules & Judging:

• Entries should be posted to the forum thread titled ‘Astro-Santa Letter Competition Entries’ (link is at the bottom) before the end date.
• The submissions will be judged on creativeness and relevance to the holiday and of course, bonus points for Star Sonata themes.
• Your letter must be original work belonging to you; if found otherwise you may be disqualified.

Competition Entry topic

And secondly, December!

We’re 10!

That’s right; Star Sonata is 10 years old! For those of you who’ve been with us since the start, you may know that this actually occurred a few months ago around the same time we were being plagued by memory corruption issues.

It was decided that we’d delay the celebration until December, to wrap it up with Christmas and New Year’s celebrations.

From now through till the 5th of January; we’ll have various bonuses for you in game and as time progresses, some special party items.

The bonuses will start small and stack up over the month, some bonuses will be temporary, check here for current details

The bonuses:

• +25% mod chances
• Green Goons
• +50% artifact mod chance
• +100% experience
• +100% worker speed
• A respawn of Astro-Santa

We are looking into possible revamps of the way base slots work, and we need your help! Before we can move on with the project, we need some basic information from the player base, which is where we need help from you guys

All we need are some questions to be answered, so please take a minute and help us out, and post the information in the forum thread related to this blog post If you want the information to be kept private, send it in a private message to The Vert or yclepticon!

1. How many accounts do you have?

2. How many Extraction Expert, Colonial Administrator, and Station Mastery characters do you have?

3. How many colonies do you have?

4. How many Extraction Expert kits do you have extracting basic materials such as Metals, Space Oats, Silicon, Nuclear Waste and Baobabs?

Once again, my apologies for forgetting to do it sooner. Novembers Monthly event will run until Tuesday, 5PM server time. The bonus is +150% experience and the wild outposts, that is, the Green Meanie and Iceprick bases, as well as the ruin outposts; giving access to specialist station gear in Sol.

Hey guys/girls! So, I’ve taken over the blog again. Now with some fun little news. I’ve taken over the Star Sonata Facebook as well. With this, I’m planning to do some fun Q&A’s, some updates and last but not least, giveaways!

Be sure to follow us (me) at http://www.facebook.com/Star.Sonata !

First idea…. If you could have any AI ship ingame… Which would it be, and why? Be sure to reply on our Facebook page! I may or may not use the answers for something fun in the future…

~Suit

A new feature that I’ve just finished coding is a global XP boost item type. Each of these items will bestow a certain amount of bonus XP to the universe for a certain amount of time. The most common ones that you will see will give +5% XP to all players for 30 minutes.

Each account can only have one XP boost active at a time, but as many people who want can theorectically activate simultaneous XP boosts which are additive with each other, and multiplicitive with any other XP bonuses, such as bonus XP from a weekend event. So if 4 players manage to trigger XP boosts simultaneously, then every player in the game will get +20% XP for the duration.

Whenever anyone triggers an XP boost, a message is sent to all players in the event text so they know that the XP boost has commenced. In addition, when you log in, it will tell you the current amount of XP boost, and which players have caused it.

To start with, there will be two sources of global XP boosts available, called “Pan-Universal Neural Plasticizer” and “Pan-Universal Neural Artificial Plasticizer”. The first will be generated by a power up spawner randomly placed somewhere in Perilous Space, and it will change galaxies every time it spawns. It is use-on-scoop, so no storing up a ton of them, and will be kind of an easter egg hunt to find it. The second will be tech 10, available in Free Market, and require 1 Space Point to trigger. Remember that this gives bonus XP to every player in the game, so it’s not “pay to win”, but maybe gives you something to spend that extra Space Point on that you have sitting around from verifying your email address.

This should be going into the game sometime after the next major patch. I’ll have to manually add them in after a patch, so there will be some delay.