First of all the monthly event is live! Enjoy Double EXP through Monday!

Secondly, Jeff, Ryan (SI), and myself all went to E3 this year! This was our first time meeting Jeff in person even though we video chat all the time. It was a little awkward at first, but a total blast! We explored all the new stuff at E3 and had some cool discussions on new and current things for Star Sonata!

We explored around the convention hall trying out new games and technologies. One interesting technology of note was the Oculus Rift, the 3D Virtual Reality headset. Ryan has the first version of the developer kit, and we were able to try the prototype for the second version. It was higher resolution and absolutely stunning. SI’s fun side project is Rift support for Star Sonata but it’s still in it’s very basic stages.

We also got to play a pre-release gamemode in Titanfall (my current favorite FPS), and try out the new Super Smash Brothers games on both Wii U and 3DS. Ryan and I also got exceptionally lucky and got a rare test of Sony’s Project Morpheus (a competitor to the Rift). We also stopped by the Nvidia Booth and got to participate in a Titanfall Pro-Am competition. My team won and I got a free headset. Ryan won way too much Super Smash though. Damn Pikachu.

After the show on Tuesday Jeff, Ryan, and I had dinner at a really tasty mexican food restaurant in LA. This restaurant had exceptionally potent margaritas that nearly left me on the floor. First real life meeting with your boss and you get completely hammered… on just ONE drink? I’m such a winner.

At the dinner we discussed all manner of things Star Sonata, including a new idea we had for an alternate “speed” server with open PVP, and an insanely fast experience gaining rate. This server would only be active for a month at a time, and fully wipe at the end of a month. You’d start over from scratch each time this server resets.  Live Server bonuses would be given to people who got onto the leaderboards. Right now we’re working on our Steam launch, skin system, and catching up on some crucial bugs, but as soon as all that’s done, we’ll be discussing this idea with the rest of the team and possibly hammering out some details if it seems like an actual good idea. We’d love to know what you think of this idea!

We met up with Jeff again for a dinner on the last day of the show, where we were introduced to a really cool card game. Unfortunately my phone broke on the last day of the show so I had only one really blurry picture of the three of us as proof we actually met. Ignore the photobomber behind Ryan and Jeff, also my really derpy excited smile. Ugh.

The next blog post you’ll see from me will be July’s Suggestion Review post which probably will be published the second week in July. See you next time!

This week’s update will focus on some minor tweaks to the Nexus, a change to the TSL transfer cost formula and a change to the trade bay GUI. Keep reading to find out more!

I got quite a bit of developer feedback on the latest iteration of the Volcom side of the Nexus since I completely reworked it — and with feedback comes a lot of little bugs and tweaks that can be made. One of the biggest ‘problems’ I had with the new Pirate tutorial is that it lacked any sort of story motivation. So I came up with a fairly quick story to rectify that! The new Volcom tutorial focuses on running an Earthforce Blockade of the Mutara Nebula in order to meet up with the Volcom pirates. It’s not a groundbreaking story, but it definitely adds a bit more flavor into the introductory experience.

I’ve also taken care of a lot of smaller balance and mission issues that cropped up during our latest round of testing. Overall, the goal is to make it much harder to to get stuck and to encourage exploration. Even though the new Nexus has launched with the universe reset, I’ll be continuing to make changes and tweaks as more feedback comes in — so definitely give feedback on the experience so we can get it as polished as possible before the Steam launch!

As we’ve been working on the Nexus we’ve also constantly been thinking about the TSL. One thing that can be extremely confusing about Star Sonata to a new player is how to handle storage of items they don’t need on their main ship — but they don’t want to throw away. It’s not the most intuitive concept to buy a new ship, keep it docked and fill it full of stuff. We used that as motivation to make some changes to the TSL. The first went in a while back; it was changing the name of the station tab from TSL to Storage. That change was added to address new player comprehension. It’s much easier to figure out that the Storage Tab is for storing stuff, TSL isn’t going to have any meaning to them.

Secondly, for a bank, the TSL was prohibitively expensive. Moving it around the universe just cost WAY too much for a low level player for it to function as an adequate bank. The previous formula is as follows.

Transfer Cost = (Base + (# Transfers * Base Ratio)) * Base + Item Value * 0.5

The old formula counted the number of transfers you made throughout the universe and it got more expensive each time you moved it. It also charge a fairly prohibitive base cost — and it really wasn’t needed. As a team we decided if we’re going to encourage the use of TSL, it definitely needed to be a bit cheaper. The new cost formula only takes item values into account.

Transfer Cost = Item Value * 0.1 + Commod Value * 0.5

This drastically reduces the cost to transfer items with your TSL. During testing costs for ~10M worth of gear dropped from over 100M to transfer to around 1M. This change should make the TSL infinitely more usable for newer players.

Another very big design principle we’ve been adhering too as we’ve reworked the Nexus was to remove clutter as much as possible. We’ve been trying to cut away all the unnecessary UI elements that only serve to confuse new players. One of the biggest offenders was the Trade tab. The shear quantity of items in the trade bays in the Nexus was a bit overwhelming for new players — so we’ve been taking steps to remedy that. Firstly, Jeff worked on giving us a way to specify which categories of items should appear in the trade bays. That way we can remove item types like Misc, Base and Cloaks which a new player doesn’t really need to know about and would only find confusing. While this worked well, it didn’t entirely alleviate the confusion since it left behind entirely blank trade tabs. To fix this, I’ve worked on a change so a base will only display item tabs in the trade bay that have items listed in them! This will also make player shops a bit less cluttered so it’s really a change that affects both high and low level players.

So that’s it for this week’s update, I’ll be back again next with with another update. Until then feel free to post questions, comments and suggestions in the forums and enjoy the universe reset!

So it’s about 11:26am right now and the server’s been down for roughly 30 minutes. Jey is working as fast as he can to fix some last minute issues that creeped up in our final testing before reset. He is approximating that the server will be back up in 30 minutes from now (So roughly 12:00pm MST, 2:00pm EST).

One issue that will not be fixed prior to the universe start is the AI Outposts will not spawn. This means that neither the Faranji, Mzungu, Bule or Vazaha Bases will spawn, and neither will the Green Meanie or Iceprick bases.

We are however planning to manually load them in later and do an event on this. This would require much less work and we will announce this event in good time before it goes live!

Thanks for your patience and you’ll be exploring the universe soon!

EDIT: Live will be open at 2:20pm EST (so in roughly 15 minutes)!

Additions
* Added auto-targeting, where if you fire while having no target currently selected and there is a ship or drone in front of your ship that is either a mission kill goal, a hostile object, or a hostile AI, then that object will be automatically targeted
* Added map layers for Arctia and Vulcan.
* New Equip Item mission goal.
* Mission rewards can now be equipped to your ship by the mission rewarding them.
* New /age chat command, shows how long the character has been played
* New Ally AI type.
* New level-up sound
* New scoop error sound
* Added a special arrow for players level 20 and below that points them to the nearest mission target.
* New /itemsetdisplaytoggle command to turn on and off tooltip text for items with an item set.
* Item tooltips now display a line of text noting which kind of item it actually is (i.e. Shield, Energy, Radar, etc)
* Added a “Special” galaxy indicator on the map (purple text and says ‘point of interest’ on mouseover)
* Added power up sound and delay to target dummy super items
* Added engage sounds (special sfx when fighting an enemy) for Volcoms, Target Dummies, Earthforce Supply Ship, Vulcan, Arctia, UrQa, Rats, Flyswatters, Pirates and Star Runners
* New models for Heavy Zebucart and Zebu Gunship
* New chat command to toggle mission autocompletion: /toggleautocomplete
* All missions will now display the agent name under their portrait.
* Added new “Upgrade or Buy Ship” button to Ships Tab that takes you to the hull tab of a station’s trade bay.
* added /AlternativeTitle to change the format of the window title. From the fps / performance oriented version, to a ship shield status (add it to /savecommands to make it permanent) (based on The white wizard idea)
* made it so background window will flash in the task-bar if their shield ratio drop below 10%) (based on The white wizard idea)
*Added No RadEx tag to Pax Astralogica and Green Battleship
* Created a low level line of Zebucart ships that go from tech 0 to tech 3 starting with Zebucart and ending with Oversized Zebucart. Tweaked the stats of all the ships in the low level zebucart line, mainly giving more hull space, a little more speed, and a bunch more thrust and turning.
+ Increased the number of wild AI in all layers
* Added three new freighter fighter bays: Madman Fighter Bay, Qu’ishi Quu Qa and Hephaestus Launch Bay
* Added two new tech 21 capital ship fighter bays: Zeus Fighter Bay and Solarian Fighter Bay
* Docking in an AI base now gives a static shield and energy regen bonus.
* new Contact Agent button for station mission list
* New models for Heavy Zebucart and Zebu Gunship
* new chat command /toggleautocomplete. setting this will turn the mission autocomplete on or off.
* Ambush Spawners can now be triggered by multiple missions.
* New “Fire” mission goal to check if player has fired weapons.
* Arctia and Vulcan added to Earthforce Space custom DG list.
* Added some new fighter and missile bays to bosses
* Added engagement sounds for pirates, rats, flys, and Star Runners.
* Added new “Upgrade or Buy Ship” button to Ships Tab that takes you to the hull tab of a station’s trade bay.
* Mission popups from autostarted missions now automatically close after their mission text is finished typing.
* Missions popups from autostarted missions now
* Added physical impact effect to Cadet Catapult
* Made it so that if one of your current lockouts gets updated to a new time (say from killing a UZ boss) it tells you instead of doing it silently.
+ added Vulcan missions.
+ added engage sounds to Arctia and Vulcan AI.
+ Added Sup. Augmenter Condensers
+ Added Sapphire, Emerald and Diamond versions of the Ruby Carrier/Transport
+ Added Piracy 22
* New PvP galaxy flag system, instead of just being allowed or disallowed PvP has different levels, which are: None, F2P (only), P2P (only), Unmixed (f2p+p2p, but no pvp between the two) and Open (normal).
* Added engage sounds for Vulcan.
* Added engage sounds for Arctia.
* New option to allow ambush spawners to specify initial velocity for the ships that they spawn.
* new mission option (OPENTRADETAB) to open trade tabs on accept.
* added Rudimentary Augmenters to Janitor’s Outpost.
*New overloader: Strontium Overloader

Tweaks
* Combined the Volcom Outpost drone’s two super items into one that shoots them both one after the other
* Made the Target Dummy Missile go way slower
* Added power up sound and delay to target dummy super items
* Repositioned some objects in Nexus a bit in order to work better with the new roaming code
* Fixed credit reward on easter turn in missions
* main inventory dialogs opened by completing missions will auto-close when you undock.
* Changed the scoops per second on all scoops that were at 1/s to 2/s. (e.g. Drone Scoop)
* Items that are too low tech will appear dark gray in the trade tab instead of red.
* Mission Agent Dialog has been streamlined
* trade bay now only shows tabs that have items
* Combined the Volcom Outpost drone’s two super items into one that shoots them both one after the other
* Made the Target Dummy Missile go way slower
* increased the smoke trail length a bit.
* Removed big “Cancel” button from mission agent dialog. Accept button now handles “Accept”, “Finish” and “Close”
* main inventory dialogs opened by completing missions will auto-close when you undock.
* Mission popups from autostarted missions now automatically close after their mission text is finished typing.
* Recruit Training Area drones now give players shield and energy charge.
* Destroyed, Inactive and Abandoned drones now have a decay timer of 48hrs + 2hrs per tech level.
* Irradiated drones now become destroyed instead of exploding.
* Reduced the shields on Destroyed FirstLine from 275 to 200.
* reduced the negative elect temp bonus on alien siege mode from +100% to +50%.
* Gave the Pax Astralogica 100% resistance to all but surgical
* Moved ship upgrade items to the ships tab of the trade bay.
* reduced shields and range on the Volcom Outpost drone.
* Made Scoop size 2 and Drone Scoop size 3
* Changed the description on launching tubes commodities to avoid confusion on their use
* Improved Bhisaj Kavaca
* Small changes to Antu Varman, Antu Varmansamvita, Dhatri Sicaya and Dhatri Sicayadeva
* Changed Demon Expansion to give less hull with less speed penalty
* Reduced the number of Reavers in the ShM crucible by 2
* changes to enable auto-open-next-mission for missions that don’t end at a base.
* completed missions will auto-open when you dock.
* moved the mission title out of the mission agent text box.
* Small changes to most tech 20-22 fighter and missile launchers to make them more balanced
* Increased the range on Solarian Pulverizer from 60 to 80 to match the Mercurian Disintegrator range
* Ambush Spawner ‘Transmission’ pop ups.
* Removed Neural Keysync and Space Oat drops from Flys in the Fly Dungeon.
* Transwarps now take Seer skill into account.
* Autopilot no longer requires Astral Travel
* Removed termite spawners from earthforce and Perilous.
* Given each character selection an explicit button to click, converting the old one into a static text box
** Changed the min and max levels and repeat times of a bunch of tutorial messages
* Fixed the bug where we had an extra tab in several different tab control UI elements
* Added the ability for some AI bases to only sell certain categories of common items (so we can simplify some of the Nexus bases)
* Rattie Moe now has a sound!
* Marked various DG bosses to give boss kill points
* Missions now autocomplete when you dock at the ending station
* text in the trade bay is now colored based on price and tech levels (green for can’t afford, dark gray for insufficient tech level).

* Increased drop rate of Infernal Faction Access Card from 10% to 50%.
* Added auto-credit scooping, where credits will be automatically scooped by peoples ships that fly over them, and for the first 5 seconds after a ship is destroyed, the credits will fly towards the person who killed that ship. Credits caused by kills by non-people will not fly anywhere, but can still be auto-scooped
* Increased the speed at which credits fly out of exploding things if killed by a person
* Made it so credits won’t fly to your ship if you’re over 2000 distance from them
* Made wormhole into shielding 22 boss stationary.
* Changed the way that AI work who are supposed to stay in a particular area. They now will no longer go and visit objects outside their area when they aren’t fighting. They won’t ever move randomly, but will sometimes get random move goals inside their area. When fighting, they will no longer stop and turn around right at the edge of their area when they get slightly outside, and then turn back around the instant they are inside. Instead, they will be willing to leave their area by a bit of a margin if fighting, and then when they get too far, will return all the way to their area before turning to fight again.
* Removed big “Cancel” button from mission agent dialog. Accept button now handles “Accept”, “Finish” and “Close”
* All missions will now display the agent name under their portrait.
* Set the Goldenboy Gold/Fool’s Gold turn in missions to have a reset timer
* Made the Golden Torpedo Device tech 5
* Increased the number of wild AI in Perilous Space, also added all the normal spawners again to Perilous Space with limited number of spawns (so as the universe progresses it gets less populated)
* You can no longer transwarp into a galaxy that is engineless
* Removed regen from Defective FirstLine and Rat Carapace Shields
* Removed the Celestial Garden layer, moved all the CG custom galaxies and dungeons to the Earthforce Layer.
* Earthforce Layer is now buildable in warp 0 and warp 1 galaxies, maximum colonial population reduced to 2b
* Deep Space now directly links to Sol.
* Made space stations which don’t vend ships can scrap your old ships, you get 0 credits for it. It mustn’t have any items on it which are removeable.
* Speed Demon Target Tracker Device now has 90 second charge time and halves range when in use
* Each end boss in The Crucible is now the relevant hull class
+ Changed commodity needed in Emphatic Biologique for Warp Navigation 4 to Microbes Warp
+ Dungeons inherit pvp permissions from their parent galaxy (EF space dungeons are no longer allowed pvp)
* Changed TSL transfer cost to be 10% of item value + 50% of commodity value
* Replaced ‘Crack Whores’ with ‘Entertainers’
* Flipped Deep Space mission structure (less mission clutter for first time fliers and more accessible from the main universe)
* Tweaked a bunch of the EF wild AI’s ranges and aggro radius (how close they have to be before they’ll attack you without hate)
* Changed the random part of a dungeon number to be a static number for the whole dungeon, branches are denoted by letters after the numbers, eg ‘DG X 4.231B’
* Reworked how team tithe works. Credits will go to team whenever you gain credits that is not from another player, a slave credit transfer, or from a user station transfer or user station selling. Team tithe now effects colony purchases directly. You are told how much goes to team tithe for colonies and space stations
* Drones can now be scooped while tractored.
*Revamped the size of all player temporary drones
* Volcom Radar is now tech 0
* Implemented Egg Carton Goal for Acropolis Augmenter Condenser missions.
* Implemented Egg Carton Goal for Lyceum Mention and Diploma Blueprint missions.
* Added new NERFSALVO tag for missiles that reduces the number of missiles launched if missile is used by an AI.

Ship Tweaks
* Changed Zebucart from 2500 weight to 10000 weight, changed it’s built in turning and thrust mods to +100% each. Changed the hull space to 75 and max speed to 100. Similar changes to weights and built in mods to most every Zebucart-like ship
* Changed hull space on Phunka.dll from 95 to 100
* Changed hull space on Volcom from 65 to 75 and max speed from 85 to 100
* Changed hull space on Wingship from 60 to 70 and max speed from 110 to 120
* Changed hull space on Scooty Puff Jr from 90 to 110 and max speed from 100 to 110
* Changed max speed on Oversized Wingship from 80 to 100
* Changed hull space on Wingship IV from 160 to 200
* Changed hull space on Helga from 130 to 180
* Changed hull space on Oversized Helga from 380 to 400 and max speed from 70 to 80
* Changed hull space on Roswell from 200 to 220, max speed from 65 to 70, and number of aug slots from 2 to 3. Also added built in tuning +20% and shield max +10%. Added Shield Salvation Device as extra built in to Roswell+.
* Changed hull space on Big Roswell from 600 to 700 and max speed from 70 to 80.
* Changed hull space on Rosfire from 400 to 500 and max speed from 70 to 80.
* Changed hull space of Rosburst from 240 to 260 and max speed from 60 to 70.
* Changed hull space on oversized Rosburst from 480 to 600.
* Changed hull space on Aether Scout from 100 to 105 and max speed from 90 to 105.
* Changed max speed of Wingship II from 90 to 120.
* Changed hull space of Wingship II Pro from 110 to 130 and max speed from 99 to 120.
* Changed hull space of Wingship III from 120 to 140 and max speed from 110 to 120.
* Changed max speed of Mini Kasper from 55 to 100.
* Changed max speed of Kasper from 70 to 100.
* Changed max speed of Mzungu Flying Disk from 80 to 110.
* Changed hull space of Kelvin from 300 to 350 and max speed from 80 to 90.
* Changed hull space of Anachron from 180 to 200.
* Changed hull space of Agamemnon from 400 to 500.
* Changed max speed of Ghostship from 90 to 130.
* Changed hull space of Banshee from 220 to 270.
* Changed hull space on Sawtooth from 225 to 300.
* Changed hull space of Ragnarok’s from 320 to 400.
* Changed hull space of Wyrm from 250 to 300.
* Changed hull space of Underscout from 150 to 250.
* Changed max speed of Zebumaster from 85 to 100. Added critical resist +50% to match other Zebu variants.
* Changed hull space of Astralantern from 250 to 350 and max speed from 80 to 100.
* Changed hull space of Pax Celestica from 450 to 500 and max speed from 85 to 90.
* Changed max speed of Paxian Peacemaker, Pacifier, and Negotiator from 85 to 90.
* Changed hull space of Space Blue Prototype from 150 to 190 and max speed from 75 to 100. Added Prototype Blue Autoblaster super item.
* Changed hull space of Space Blue Alpha Scout from 120 to 140 and max speed from 80 to 100. Added Prototype Blue Autoblaster super item.
* Changed hull space of Space Blue Hunter from 160 to 220 and max speed from 80 to 100. Added Prototype Blue Autoblaster super item. Added built in turning +30%, radar +40%, thrust +40%, and shield +20%.
* Changed hull space on Space Blue Alpha from 200 to 250 and max speed from 75 to 100.
* Changed max speed of Space Blue Alpha Interceptor from 85 to 100.
* Changed hull space of Monochrome Tint from 200 to 220 and max speed from 80 to 100. Added 30% resists to laser, energy, physical, and surgical, and 50% resists to radiation. Added new built in super item called Paint Abuser Device.
* Changed max speed of Monochrom Shade from 70 to 80.
* Changed hull space of Monochrome Hue from 400 to 450 and max speed from 60 to 80.
* Changed max speed of Monochrome Tinge from 60 to 70.
* Changed hull space of Tear from 200 to 220, added built in rate of fire modifier of -50%, and changed built in damage modifier from +15% to +50%.
* Changed hull space of Salty Tear from 210 to 230 and max speed from 75 to 85.
* Changed max speed of Serpica from 120 to 200 and added two built in super items, Phunky Gremlin Device and The Finisher.
* Changed hull space of Inferno from 300 to 360.
* Changed max speed of Absolution from 72 to 90.
* Changed hull space of Cruiser from 160 to 200 and max speed from 90 to 110.
* Changed hull space of Voltage from 380 to 450 and max speed from 85 to 95.
* Changed hull space of Ampage from 150 to 175 and max speed from 80 to 90.
* Changed hull space of Flyswatter Egg from 70 to 80 and max speed from 50 to 70.
* Changed hull space of Flyswatter Embryo from 30 to 50 and max speed from 22 to 40.
* Changed hull space of Flyswatter Larva from 120 to 130 and max speed from 55 to 80.
* Changed hull space of Flyswatter Maggot from 180 to 190 and max speed from 75 to 85.
* Changed hull space of Flyswatter Flylet from 190 to 210 and max speed from 59 to 70.
* Changed max speed of Flyswatter Flyboy from 55 to 80.
* Changed hull space of Goldenboy Pyrite from 160 to 200 and max speed from 65 to 80.
* Changed hull space of Goldenboy Nugget from 200 to 220 and max speed from 70 to 90.
* Changed hull space of Goldenboy Ingot from 220 to 250 and max speed from 70 to 80.
* Changed hull space of Goldenboy Coin from 310 to 350 and max speed from 60 to 70.
* Changed hull space of Goldenboy Sovereign from 430 to 450 and max speed from 45 to 50.
* Changed hull space of Statue from 300 to 330 and max speed from 63 to 70.
* Changed max speed of Goldenboy Bar from 50 to 55.
* Changed hull space of Enforcer from 330 to 350 and max speed from 75 to 100.
* Changed max speed of Sergeant’s Enforcer from 82.5 to 95.
* Changed max speed of Ghost Ship from 80 to 100.
* Changed hull space of Paximinus from 220 to 280 and max speed from 75 to 85.
* Changed hull space of Paximinus Scout from 220 to 280 and max speed from 75 to 90.
* Changed hull space of Cadet from 200 to 220 and max speed from 75 to 80.
* Changed hull space of Outlaw’s Volcom from 130 to 150 and max speed from 90 to 100.
* Changed hull space of Mini Mad Scientist from 300 to 500 and max speed from 85 to 100. Added additional super item called Lesser Sine.

Fixes
* Fixed up the Light Laser Barrage Device on the first target dummy so that it actually works
* Fixed a bug where sound emitter items would not work in superitems being used by drones

* Fix for not being able to properly drag the mission agent dialog from the top.
* Fixed up the Light Laser Barrage Device on the first target dummy so that it actually works
* Stopped the character selection screen from being moveable
* Fixed a bunch of auras that weren’t properly flagged to affect only players.
* Fix for drones spawned by spawners not properly dying when killed.
* Ship Upgrades now only check for piloting skill instead of both piloting and equipment.
* Fix for T21 Drone Ops Aug missions requiring Drone Mastery 21.
* Fixed the issue where Wave Spawners would either skip or say wave completed multiple times when multiple copies of the wave spawner existed (instances).
* Attempted fix for WaveSpawner’s not always crediting wave completion kills
* Fixed a bug where you could take slaves you didn’t own into instances without their owner
* Fixed it so that you can’t cap a ship with a sticky item that’s over your tech level, but can xfer them (you can xfer EFFs to someone without E20, but someone without E20 couldn’t cap it)
* equip mission goals now properly update the mission list if you are docked.
* Typo fix in Easter Egg Collector missions
* Rattie Moe and other rats are no longer Rad-Exable
* Missiles that can’t be fired due to range restrictions no longer get refunded.
* Missiles no longer display any death messages.
* Made the wormhole in shielding 22 boss galaxy stationary to avoid sync issues
* Fixed the bug causing Tractor 16 to be available for 1 Bauxite in Capella.
* AI can no longer own debris
* Changed userbase attack code so they will ignore AI warp beacons.
* Fixed a bug where you couldn’t use items which were marked as Freighter class on Support/Industrial Freighter ships
* Fixed Ancient Dragon Form device not triggering it’s Shield Salvation.
* Fixed issues with being able to bypass PvP restrictions by firing missiles manually from slaves.
* Fixed issues with newly purchased drones being placed in a destroyed stack.
* Moved damage auras in Bila Akara and Kandara Janayitri from a sun to the boss so they’ll disappear after the boss has been destroyed.
* Fixed damage aura in Bila Tra so it no longer affects drones.
* Fixed a bunch of EF Space special galaxies being improperly flagged as buildable.
* Fleet Transwarps will no longer take non-premium slaves into semi-premium areas.
* Fixed Reaver’s Breath not being neurobound
+ fix for Serengeti Blockade being set as the action galaxy for the Lyceum Paxian mission.
* Fixed a bug where all the AI with hate modifiers were not saving it correctly, so when the uni was saved/loaded, they came back unwilling to initiate an attack on anything.
* Warhead effects (like on Bunkerbusters) no longer splash damage friendly missiles.
* Gave Repair Rejigger Deployment Drones transference efficiency so they don’t heal themselves to death with other healing drones
* Created new Emperor’s Launch Tubes item to replace mistyped version
* Fixed a bug where Radiation Experts could transfer their wild slaves to non-Radiation Experts
* Fix for Herophilus 3000 Distress Call Olympus Daily Mission.

It’s been while since I’ve posted anything, and recently I’ve been up to some really cool stuff over the last couple of months. For a content developer, I must admit I don’t get up to doing much content, although Calypso does a great deal and his stuff is looking great, I get up to more server code related stuff, specifically what we call ‘content code’, like boss scripting features and extending or creating types of items, or general bug fixing. Of course, I occasionally get up to way more interesting things, like what I’m going to tell you about today.

Free Towing from Bob* (damages not included)

First on the list is the Towing system. Not extremely exciting, but should be mentioned. Quite some time ago we made it so you could tow your spaceship from stasis to the nearest tow station, at the time it was possible to tow your ship from the tow station but it was incredibly costly to do, while towing from your ship was free to do. The credit cost associated with towing has been completely removed and has been replaced with items on your ship being damaged.

From now on towing your ship will deal 5 deaths worth of item damage (and yes, Nanotech Plating will reduce the damage done), from either method. Slaves will get the double bonuses they do on death, and towing from an arena galaxy is still free.

Team Taxation Tithe

Team Tithe is the second thing, a lot of teams don’t use the team tithe, but the changes make it much more reasonable and I hope it’ll get used more often now. Previously the team tithe effected any credit transfer where the team member gained credits, be it from scooping, pulling credits off their station or selling items to an AI station. This has now changed, team tithe no longer takes credits from the following situations:

• A player giving credits to another player
• User station trading
• Taking credits from a slave ship (excludes credits gained by capturing a ship)
• Taking credits from a user station

Essentially, teams get tithe from players scooping credits and selling stuff to AI stations. Additionally teams also get tithe directly from colonial transactions now, instead of indirectly when the owner took the credits from the station, and the amount is shown in the stations’ log.

Interactions which cause you to have some credits taken by team tithe are now shown in the event chat log with the amount which was ‘donated’ to your team.

PvP and Building Permissions

A rather cool change I’ve done, which will need into my next point, is some changes in the way PvP and base building rules were handled.

Previously, these were both set for a layer globally, with dungeons getting their own hard coded open PvP and temporary only drone rules, custom galaxies overrode this rules with their own setting.

Now we can distribute rules for both of these permissions to sections of a layer based on danger factor, additionally I’ve included some new PvP options instead of the black-and-white yay or nay situation before. Although mostly unused currently, we can now set PvP to be open (as it was before), unmixed (p2p and f2p, but not between each other), p2p, f2p or none (as it was before).

In addition to this, dungeons now inherit their parents galaxy PvP rules, as such, Earthforce layer dungeons are now no PvP.

Bases Return to Earthforce Space

Continuing from the last change, since we can now hand out galaxy building permission rules based on danger factor, it was also decided to remove the Celestial Garden layer!

Don’t fear though! As you may of figured, you can now build in warp 0 and warp 1 galaxies in Earthforce Space, but not warp 2 or warp 3. All of the galaxies which were special in Celestial Gardens, such as the Building Academy, Ring and Free Market among others have been moved back to Earthforce Space too.

As an extra thing for the newbies, Deep Space now links directly off Sol, which should make getting across the space pond a bit easier.

Overall this leads to a small increase in the number of buildable galaxies for players. Along with this change, populations of colonies in Earthforce space caps out at around 2 billion now.

Dungeon Locks

We’ve decided, following some player suggestion, that dungeon bosses get a lockout. The default for this is one hour, bosses with longer lockouts will keep their longer lockouts. To make keeping track of all these lockouts easier, dungeon naming has been improved a little bit. The random number component of dungeon names has been replaced with a unique static number for that dungeon, additionally splits are identifiable by letters appearing after the unique number when the split starts.

This change also sees a slight increase in drop chances.

We’re back from E3 and powered through the skin contest winners yesterday! We didn’t accept roughly 10 of the submissions, either due to quality, or the fact that the ships were not player obtainable, or that there were more than two or three submissions for that particular ship. Winners will be given their prizes once the skin system goes live! I want to give special thanks to galzant and sabre198 for so many terrific submissions!

Here is our list of amazing winners! The following list is in alphabetical order of the submitter.

This week’s update is going to focus on some more changes with the Nexus as well as another new feature to support those changes!

Last week saw some major changes to the pirate side of the Nexus. Up until this point, most of our effort was being directed at the Cadet side… and it really showed during our new player testing. The Volcom side seemed very unpolished compared to the Cadet side. Also, some of our testers felt the Volcom side wasn’t very exciting and the motivations for the missions didn’t make a whole lot of sense. So, based on that feedback (and that from some of our other developers) I’ve entirely reworked the Volcom introduction and tutorial.

When doing this I kept a few good points in mind. Firstly, and foremost was to make sure the tutorial showcased the best parts of Star Sonata; the action based space combat. Our combat system is rather unique in that it’s largely skill based and maneuvers like kiting and dodging are absolutely essential in many cases. The currently iteration of the tutorial didn’t really get that across. Many of the enemies matched the players speed quite well so it was next to impossible to learn those kind of strategies for dealing with other ships. So the ships players are fighting for the pirate side have all been slowed down considerably. They also periodically do ‘big hits’ so the player quickly learns you can’t tank them and be effective, you have to bob and weave!

Secondly, the way the missions were structured was a bit confusing and the way the Volcom side of the map was structured could lead to players getting a little lost. So I tried to frame the new Volcom tutorial in the familiar framework of a dungeon. The idea of ‘dungeon, boss, loot’ is almost universally understood by anyone who plays games (and it’s also a framework that a player will be seeing for the rest of the Nexus, let alone the rest of the game) so reshaping the flow of the missions to fit this mold makes a lot of sense. It’s easy to understand and it flows extremely well and even more importantly, it’s exciting.

Finally, there were two things that were never properly explained in the tutorial and they are probably the two most important things to explain, shielding and energy bars on the UI. We didn’t really have a good way to facilitate a mission explaining these so I’ve remedied that. I have added a new mission type called a ‘click to continue’. It’s exactly what it sounds like. The mission dialog pops up, displays some text and when you click the continue button on the dialog the mission completes. I’ve paired this new mission type with the UI element indicator I worked on last month to create new missions that specifically point out and explain the purpose of the shielding and energy bars in the players UI.

So that’s it for this week’s update. I’ll be back again next week with another update! Until then, feel free to post feedback, comments and suggestions in the forums!

This week’s post is going to focus on a bunch of UI improvements that should help new players tremendously! Keep reading to find out more.

As we’ve been revamping the Nexus, we have been constantly getting players who have never tried Star Sonata before to play through our starting experience while we take notes on what they have trouble with and what they like. As we’ve done more and more testing and gotten more and more feedback, we’ve gotten a nice list of things we can do to make some UI elements a bit more useful for them. So that’s what I’ve primarily worked on this past week.

Firstly, I fixed up an issue with the new mission pop-up dialog. You couldn’t properly drag it around from the top bar where they title was. That’s remedied and the dialog now functions as expected.

Secondly, and perhaps a bit more useful is that I’ve added a new line to the tooltip that says in plain text what type of item an item is. A new player isn’t familiar with our icons yet and isn’t going to have any idea that a Foundry, for instance, is a shielding item from the flavor text and stat string. By having a line that says ‘Shield’ on the item, it’ll help them connect the shield icon with shields, which in turn will help them when it comes to managing inventory and navigating trade bays. It will also help when differentiating between items with similar or identical icons. This text is based on the extended item type, or the internal item type that determines the icons on an item, so that gives us access to all the miscellaneous item types and we can be pretty descriptive with it.

Finally, I’ve been working with the map. The big feature here is a way to denote ‘points of interest’ on the map for new players and veterans alike! Points of interest are special galaxies like Capella or Paxius. They’re places that are unique and usually have something there that’s worth finding out about. When you open your map, you’ll see that the name of these galaxies are a different color (it’s actually a bit lighter than the screenshot now). Also, if you mouse over them, the tooltip has an added line letting you know that galaxy is worth visiting! Ideally, as new players learn to use the map, they’re going to try to explore and visit these places and learn where to go.

I’ve also gone ahead and tidied up the galaxy map tooltips a bit, and I’ve added in a new line to let players know what warp navigation level is required to get to a galaxy. We plan on giving out more of the Earthforce Space map, and a new player isn’t going to understand our galaxy coloring system (blue for W1, red for W2, etc) so having that line is going to help them tremendously. They’ll know if they want to progress further they’ll need to find and train Warp Navigation skills.

That’s it for this week’s update, I’ll be back next week with another update on what I’ve been working on! As always, post questions, comments and suggestions in the forum post! Until next Monday!

It’s that time of year again, the aliens have invaded, the colonies are getting stagnant and base managers are getting antsy to micromanagement new multi star systems. It’s time for the universe TO END! *enter dramatic music here*

But don’t worry, it will be rebuilt anew!

The server will be going down at 1:00pm EST on Saturday June 21st for approximately 30 minutes.

Don’t know what a universe reset is? Check out this handy guide to be prepared for THE END OF THE WORLD!

Hey guys! So we ran through a lot of the suggestions and here’s some updates for you! For now I’m just going to go through the top three player submitted suggestions and give our thoughts on these.

Ship Statistics by nukacow

This is a fantastic suggestion and we couldn’t agree more with it. That’s something that has always been missing from Star Sonata is a good run down of your total stats. Many great games have some form of consistent character sheet that gives you your totals from all your equipped gear. The dev team wholeheartedly approves of this suggestion, and we’re accepting it. However, since we’re approaching a universe reset, implementation won’t begin for a few months since our devs are currently assigned to other higher priority tasks. We’ll definitely keep you posted and try to give an update in July’s Suggestion Update. I don’t know who this will be assigned to yet but we will post that in July’s update.

Improve Base Logs and Trade Slave Orders by andezrhode2a

This suggestion is currently “rejected” but we really just need to hash out way more details first. It’s not because it’s not a great idea (it totally is) but because there are so many ideas jammed into one suggestion! I’ll break down each idea for you so you can see why we rejected it and make an even better suggestion next time!

“A set of improvements to base logs that allows players to actually control any flow of goods in a station and filter where needed” What sorts of improvements? What would you like to filter by? This isn’t very specific and is very vague, we know the logs suck but it’d be preferred if the suggestion had very specific ideas for the improvement of the logs so our devs know exactly what you’re looking for.  I know there’s been tons of discussion on new base logs on the forums and this is such a pain in the ass issue for everyone. We all got fired up in dev chat just minutes ago talking about it. What I’m going to do is create a dev notes topic immediately after this post is created so we can hash out exactly what we want the new logs to look like, and then get the improvements underway. 

“Trade slave orders would need an addition so that it allows slaves to transfer commodities without having to buy them, and set max limits for certain commodities.” This is much better, it’s very specific and we know exactly what you’re looking for. This could be a suggestion all on it’s own. Great idea, but again lumped in with too many other ideas. For right now this isn’t high enough priority and I think base logs take precedence over this.

“Another improvement to base logs that could be ideal is a window that shows the current extraction rates of commodities on the base, and the current worker ration consumption.” This is also very specific and I like it a lot. There’s nothing wrong with this suggestion but that it’s lumped in with too many ideas. Once we have a concrete idea on what we want the new base logs to look like, we might add this in as well.

To conclude on this suggestion, there’s nothing wrong with the ideas and we totally approve of it, but the problem is the vagueness of the log improvements, and the lumped ideas all in one. Like I mentioned, we will create a thread that will discuss what we want the base logs to look like in the end game and you can put your specific suggestions there. I’ll force our devs to look through it and provide feedback, they have all been warned that I will annoy and bother the hell out of them daily to get this discussion underway. AS adum IS MY WITNESS I SWEAR THE BASE LOGS WILL GET IMPROVED!!!!!!!!!!

A final note though, when submitting suggestions try to break it down and isolate it into a singular suggestion. Like with Nukacow’s suggestion on the ship statistics screen it’s very specific to revamp an existing window with very specific stats. Be specific, it really helps us if we have specific and concrete ideas.

New Process for Referral Rewards by istriker

So many of you have asked for some sort of reward for subbing accounts. The idea here is very nice, so basically when you subscribe an account all you do is type in the account name of whomever would receive the credit.

Our current referral system… sucks. In order to get credit for it, you have to send someone your referral link, and then they have to download the game from that link alone and immediately create an account. Then when they subscribe you get credit. This suggestion is very simple in it’s use (maybe not so much in the implementation) because you can give credit when you actually subscribe.

First things, referrals only work once. An example I own the A account and the B account, and I want to sub B. When I go to sub I will put the A account name in a field and A will get credit for it. When the sub expires on B, and I resubscribe, I won’t get credit again on A. We haven’t discussed yet if this is something we want to keep or if we want to basically give points each time someone resubscribes (essentially giving perks to players who own multiple accounts).

So we’re “sort of” accepting this suggestion. We’re going to take the core idea which is adding a field when you subscribe for the first time that allows you to give credit to whomever referred you. We will discuss possibly revamping how referrals work to give more perks to people who have multiple accounts. This task will most likely be assigned to Jey, but he is currently working on the new skinning system and some updates to the space point system along with SI.

Conclusion

These were all great suggestions and we’re excited to see what else you guys will come up with! Next month we will only accept one suggestion since we’re in a uni reset month and putting the finishing touches on current projects and won’t start any new projects until July. We are also suddenly having to prep for the Steam Launch which is causing some project shuffling and reprioritization.  We don’t want to over commit to too many kickass ideas and not give each idea the attention it deserves.