As a followup for the sucessfull quickfixing session 2 weeks ago, im starting a new one for tommorow.

For those who do not know, the quickfixing session is in essence, a day i take off my normal work and focus on fixing/adding as many small things as I can from a list I compile from player requests.

Its at my own discretion as to which bugs or features I’ll do on that day, based mostly on if its possible to do it in the day and how many people are affected/want it fixed ASAP.

For bug request, if the bug can be described precisely including a way to reproduce it in a few lines, then just posting about it in the topic is fine. Otherwise a short description and a link to a bug topic is preferred.

Similarly for feature request, if it can be described precisely in a few lines, then just write it in the topic, otherwise a short description and a link to a suggestion is preferred

This week’s update is going to mainly be a continuation of last week’s announcement of the Ship Stats window!

As a refresher, here is a screenshot of what the window looked like last Monday when I made my announcement post.

Now, here is an updated screenshot of what the window looks like.

As you can see, quite a bit is different! Firstly, I’ve added colored icons to the resistance table. This was done to further reinforce the buff icon colors used for resistance buffs, as well as provide a more consistent look and feel for the tables. I’ve also updated and added a bunch of tooltips to clarify just what everything means! If you hover over the text for things like Augmenter Tweaking and Neuro Tweaking, you’ll get an idea of what they do. I’ve also added in values for Ship Turning Rate and Ship Thrust.

The bigger addition that I made this week was the weapons stat table. This table will figure out how much DPS, DPE your weapons have. How much damage they do, how far they fire and what’s their recoil! It also displays an icon to denote what damage type they are! This table currently takes into account all of your augmented stats, including multifire when it calculates damage and should provide a fairly accurate look at just how effective your weapons are. However, it doesn’t currently include buffs in those stats. This brings us to some finishing touches I am planning on working on in the coming week.

This window is nearing completion, but there are a few things I have slated to do. Firstly, I need to refactor the messages so buff updates will update the weapon stats and resistance tables as well. This would let you see your resistances after popping a blocker or how fast you fire when that Rapid Attack goes off. Secondly, because it’s been requested quite a few times, I’d like to add an item tooltip for the ship’s base stats (like what you would see if you clicked on it in a trade bay) somewhere in the window. I am thinking this could be a button or on hovering over the ship’s name. Once those two features are finished, it’s time for testing, debugging and optimizations and it’ll be ready for deployment!

So that’s it for this week’s update. I hope you’ve enjoyed a further look at the ship stat’s window.

Heyoo! It’s time for our Monthly Event!

This time we’re hitting you up for 25% Bindomite drop chance from Dungeon Bosses and 50% extra Experience!

In addition to this, Midday Sunday (server time) will see some strangely appearing outposts across the universe.

The event will last until the 1st. Happy hunting!

This week’s update is going to mostly detail a new feature that will soon be added to the game! Keep reading to find out more!

Firstly, something I forgot to mention last week when I announced Mira. With Mira I added a new mission feature that is used there and will no doubt see a fair amount of using going forward. This feature allows a mission to randomly assign another mission to a player on completion of the primary mission. In short, it means we can do randomly assigned dailies (like we have for T21 and T22) without the bulky mission item middleman!

As for the new feature. If anyone has been watching the Suggestions system, they will have noticed that the status on the suggestion for Ship Statistics has been changed from Accepted to Underway. That’s because I’ve started working on it! Since this is the first user-submitted suggestion that’s started development, I think it would be interesting to tell everyone just what’s gone into that so far.

Everything started with the suggestion — which asked that we add in a way to view the stats of a players current ship; stuff like mods, augmenters, class skills, etc. From there, I made a mock-up in Google Docs. We tend to use Google Docs for a lot of stuff since it lets us work on designs collaboratively!

From the mock-up, the next stage was modifying the existing dialog so it could support all the new features. Since our GUI is skinnable, dialogs are saved in XML in the client folder. At this stage it’s all about re-sizing the existing window, adding a bunch of UI elements and positioning them properly. Once this is done we can start working on the signals from the client that will feed these elements, like lists and labels, all the useful information about your ship!

Before we can actually display the information though, the client needs to have it — which it doesn’t. That’s because it doesn’t have access to all the information about your ship, only what it needs to render it on the screen and display things like inventory and shield bars. It’s the server that has all the stats, buffs and other information needed to figure out things like damage. This means I had to make a few new client/server messages so the client could request the required information when the new dialog is opened, as well as ones from the server to send all that information back.

Once all this is finished, it’s time to start organizing and formatting the data so it’s a bit easier to read. To do this, I went with tables for stats and buffs and a list for the important stats you want to see at a glance, like resistances. I also added icons to the augmenter stats so you can tell at a glance what a stat modifies. For instance, a shield modifier has a shield icon since it directly modifies the values on that shield! I also colored the values so you can tell which modifiers are good and which are bad at a glance! After some internal feedback though, we decided the window was a bit cramped, so I widened it a bit so you can more easily see everything in it!

This window is still a work under construction and I am extremely open to more suggestions on how to make it even more useful for players. So definitely feel free to post feedback in the forums about this! That’s all I have for this week, I’ll be back next week with another update. Until then!

Hi everyone, it’s a surprise post from Yclepticon which means that something, somewhere, is about to get balanced!  As I hinted a few times on the forum, I have been working on a plan to rebalance user bases with the goal of bringing them up to par with all the new tech 21-22 gear that has come out over the years.  Bases are one of the most distinctive and complex features of Star Sonata, so I want to make sure to get this right.  So first, let’s hammer out what the current problems are.

Most players will agree that bases don’t feel powerful enough compared to players.  Even though their weapons are enormous, they don’t seem to pack much of a punch when up against a squad of endgame ships.  And despite special dampeners and augmenters they don’t tend to survive very long when a group of ships open fire on them.  On the other hand, an otherwise weak galaxy can become very strong if a few players show up to defend.  This is because defending players are pretty tough to kill when backed up with healing from their bases, and they can focus their damage on support classes instead of mindlessly going for the tank like bases do.

So what we have is a situation where the presence of active defenders is one of the most important aspects of galaxy defense. This is not necessarily a bad thing.  PvB and galaxy defense can be really exciting.  However, we would like to make base building more accessible to players who don’t necessarily spend 8+ hours a day online, and would be unlikely to take off work or wake up in the middle of the night to defend their bases.  The struggle for territory is an amazing part of Star Sonata and we want to bring it to a wider audience.  This means making bases stronger so that casual and less experienced players have a chance to keep their galaxies safe from PvB.

I know some of you have just put a head shaped hole in your desk after reading that paragraph.  Let me save you the breath and ask the obvious question: How are we supposed to struggle for territory if you make PvB harder?

The answer is almost too simple: we are bringing BvB to center stage.  That’s right,  BASES with frickin’ LASER BEAMS attached to their heads.

Here are the main points of the plan.

1. Base gear will have most stats increased by a factor of 2.

2. You will now be able to BvB from any galaxy you own, not just from HQ-connected galaxies (must still own the galaxy for 24 hours first).

3. The number of kits you can deploy for BvB is being raised from 2 to unlimited.

With these changes, a good PvB squad will still have no problem against weaker galaxies, or even medium-strength galaxies if the owners don’t take defense seriously.  However, if your enemies put a lot of effort into defense, BvB may be the better choice for you.  In that case, you’d better go get your Ada kits ready because you are going to need some spares pretty soon!

I look forward to reading everyone’s feedback on this project.  To get the conversation going, here are a some points I won’t cover in detail right now but which are definitely not being overlooked.

• These changes are tentatively scheduled to go live for next universe, subject to dev availability.

• Everything will be tested extensively before going live.  I will make an announcement as soon we can arrange for players to try out the new system on the test server.

• There will be cheaper, disposable alternatives to endgame base gear (which I announced informally a few weeks ago).  I will elaborate on these in a later post.

• There will be temporary outpost drones that will help you hold territory you have “liberated” with BvB.  More on these later, as well.

This week’s blog post will detail an exciting addition that will be coming to the game soon — a new custom dungeon known as Mira!

Mira, also known as Akuk’ii Suqq’ Bana in the UrQa tongue, is the site of the latest conflict between the UrQa and Paxians. During routine exploration by the Terrans at the behest of the Paxians, they discovered an UrQa stronghold under construction near the strange binary star, Mira. The Paxians dispatched a fleet and have blockaded the immediate area, trapping the UrQa inside. It is up to the combined fleets of both the Paxians and Terrans to destroy their outpost and push the UrQa back to Iq’ Bana.

This custom DG is targeted at players level 100 to 200 and contains 3 new bosses and 10 new galaxies. It will contain special unique items ranging from tech 5 to 12 from both the UrQa and the Paxians! These items will also include a brand new set of tech 5 class overloaders, something oft requested by players. The new overloaders will be added to the general dungeon drop tables, but all the bosses in Mira will have a special extra chance to drop one of them.

Players will be directed to Mira by way of a Paxian mission and the galaxy itself will have a small mission chain where the Paxians ask the players to defeat the bosses of Mira. Doing this will unlock a daily mission to kill one of the bosses which rewards a Paxian Medallion! This should encourage players coming back since they can spend Medallions on Warp Navigation training and other unique Paxian items.

Mira was originally conceived at the same time as Vulcan and Arctia and has been a side project since I started working on those two zones. In the past few weeks I’ve been able to make significant progress on Mira (in between working on bugs and further Nexus changes) and it should be ready to go in midway this universe, or at the latest, next universe reset! This zone functions as part of the initiative to make sure there are places for newer players to go to level without getting immediately swarmed. Maybe even more important, it has the added bonus of furthering the UrQa presence in game. Considering how important the UrQa and Paxians conflict is to the game’s lore, the UrQa are severely underrepresented and easily upstaged even by some of the minor factions! UrQa from the main galaxy of this zone, if able to escape the Paxians, will roam the universe at large and make Earthforce Space a little bit more dangerous if you choose to attack UrQa ships and definitely add some UrQa flavor.

That’s it for this week’s update. I’ll be back next week with another update on what I’ve been up to! Until then, feel free to post in the forums with comments, questions or suggestions.

We all know there are a lot of little things that are somewhat easy to fix, but end up forgotten in the system or ignored, so I decided I’ll try to start something.

Every 2 weeks I’ll start a new quickfixing session. Those session are essentially a period where you can shout out any and all small bugs or missing features that annoy you in the discussion bellow. On Tuesday I’ll go through the forum and fix as many of the issues listed as I can in the day.

Its at my own discretion as to which bugs or features I’ll do on that day, based mostly on if its possible to do it in the day and how many people are affected/want it fixed ASAP.

For bug request, if the bug can be described precisely including a way to reproduce it in 2 lines, then just posting about it in the topic is fine. Otherwise a short description and a link to a bug topic is preferred.

Similarly for feature request, if it can be described precisely in 2 lines, then just write it in the topic, otherwise a short description and a link to a suggestion is preferred

Only code related bug/features will be considered for now, since I do not do content. But if the concept become popular, who knows maybe a content dev will do the same !

- 07/08/2014 276.352 -
* The optimizations mentioned in my recent blog post are now in the beta client.
* Added glowmap for Shrimp
* Some more skins related data for livetest and soon live.
* new ship stat window (broken on live since it lack the proper message, but should work on livetest)
* Fixed the band at the top of the screen not being clickable
* Fixed an issue with the rightclick -> activate control bot not working sometimes when the ship had never been opened.
* the client now know if a ship has skins or not (non functional on live for obvious reasons)
* hopefully fixed the issue causing docked ships to appear when docking.
* fixed a problem with drones initliasation, causing them to sometime go out of sync.

- New micropatch 276.237 (This client contain the client side of the quickfixing session and is needed to connect to livetest).
* lower the autopilot message a bit and fix the message when traveling to unknown galaxy.
* Add an x button to the radar window
* Add a /command (/HideHuiMethod) to change the function of h from deadman switch to a toggle for the session.

* Added tooltip lightly explaining the benefit of DDS textures
* support for the first iteration (still wip) for the ship skins system. (SKIN_FEATURE_1_0)
* Added support for the server/client feature system, allowing for better retrocompatibility between different versions
* Multiple crash fixes
* Fixed the commodity tab in stations to be consistant
* Fixed an overflow causing the “owned” column in tradebay to go into the negative with more than 32k of an item.
* Fixed a flag related handle leak
* Fixed the issue that caused flags to randomly not show next to the ship nametag.

livetest will be updated soon with the first iteration of the skin system, this client will be required to connect to it (trying to connect with live client will give you an unsuported feature error and wont connect).

If you do not have the beta client and wish to install it. It can be downloaded from http://www.starsonata.com/dl/StarSonata_2_beta.exe. The installation is separated from the live client, and it is recommended you keep the live client at hand reach, in case beta client update break it for you.

This week’s post is going to be exceedingly short, but will detail a little bit of what I was up to in the past week.

I was off on holiday for most of this past week (July 4th is a big day for Americans!) but that doesn’t mean I spent the entire week sitting idly by; I did manage to get some bug fixing in. There were three main bugs that I worked on.

Firstly, I added a special check in the missile AI code to stop some exploitative behavior. Missiles will now die when the ship that fired them docks at a space station. When this goes live some players will no longer be able to fire off missiles at AI bases and dock right away to avoid retribution.

Secondly, I took a look at the Deathblossom code and added a check that ensures that targets selected are detectable by the ship that’s firing the Deathblossom. This will fix the issues related to targeting a planet, using Deathblossom and hitting targets that are too stealthy for your radar to normally detect.

Finally, I took care of a minor bug with the trade window UI in relation to augmenters. Since I added the line coloring feature (for too expensive or too high tech) augmenters weren’t displaying the proper line color and were always appearing as grayed out. With the next client patch they’ll properly respect the rules that all other trade items follow.

That’s it for this week’s update. It was a short one, but I can promise that next week’s will be much, much more exciting! Until then, feel free to post questions, comments and suggestions in the forums!

This week’s update is going to focus on some post-reset bug fixing, a few changes to the Ally AI type, an update on a mission feature and a look forward to what’s ahead for the Nexus! Keep reading to find out more.

With the reset we pushed the new Nexus — but don’t think we’re going to stop working on it. The Nexus is perhaps the most important area of the game. It’s the first thing a potential new player sees and it really needs to excite them. More importantly, it needs to make them want to keep playing. That’s why we’re committed to continually iterating it until it’s perfect. It’s in a much better state now than it was when we started this latest rework, but it’s not done yet. So expect to keep seeing Nexus changes as we move forward.

This past week I made a few changes to the Ally AI type that was developed for the Nexus revamp. I extended it so it functions with drones. Now when an allied AI drops a drone it will properly prioritize targets for both healing and attacking based on the type of ally that dropped it. For example, let’s say a pirate-allied AI drops a drone that has a healing wand and a pulse gun. If there are pirate affiliated players in the area, the drone will heal them. If there are hostile Earthforce affiliated players in the area, the drone will instead attack them. If it’s a factionless ally, say a Paxian, the drone will only heal players.

This is a pretty big change that let’s us do some pretty cool things with content. For one, we can have AI healers that will help players out. More importantly though, it further lays the groundwork for another extension of the ally system, one in which faction affiliation determines AI aggression. Eventually I’d like to be able to have neutral AI that can be attacked by either affiliation, but would lean towards one when it come to aggression. For example, one day it would be kind of cool if Space Blue AI weren’t naturally hostile towards pirate affiliated players, but Merchant AI, like Goldenboys were.

While I was in the drone code working on the new features, I also took care of a bug that I’m sure has been annoying some of you — drones shooting at immune targets. Along with that I took care of quite a few smaller issues as well, many of which have made their way to live servers already.

Finally, this past week I worked on an additional feature related to the autocomplete feature that was introduced a while back. There has been a lot of upset over the feature when it comes to turn-in missions for things like skills or other rewards, so I’ve added a new tag so we can manually flag some missions to never be autocompleted. This will be added in the very near future to all the missions in Staff Quarters, any of the T21 skill turn-in missions and other places like Strontium-90. Along with the slash-command toggle this should hopefully alleviate any of the issues some people have with the autocomplete feature.

That’s it for this week’s update, I’ll be back again next week with another update! Until then, as always, feel free to sound off in the forums with questions, comments and suggestions!