This week’s update is going to detail a pair of new skills that will offer some much requested bonuses to Transwarp devices, some updates to the Weapon Effect system as well as a new Fleet Commander class super item! Keep reading to find out more.

Transwarp devices were added with our last universe reset and they offer players a very convenient way to traverse the vast distances between galaxies. Based on the feedback so far, I think it is safe to say they are very appreciated means of travel. The only complaint I’ve really heard is that some people feel the cooldown is too long! To those of you who feel that way, I am introducing some new Transwarp specialty skills! Very soon I will be adding two new skills to Beta Antares; Transwarp Turbocharging and Advanced Transwarp Nagivation.

Transwarp Turbocharging will increase the charge rate for transwarp devices by 20% per level. This skill has a maximum of five. That means maxed out, this skill will reduce your transwarp cooldown to five minutes! Advanced Transwarp Navigation will increase the jump distance of your transwarp devices by 5 per level, up to a maximum of 25 extra jumps. Both these skills will require a new commodity called a “Transwarp Coil” that can be built from a blueprint in Beta Antares. Like the Bar Skills, these specialty skills are rather pricey, but for the added convenience, I am sure some players will find them worth it.

This past week I also made a few changes to some of the effects in the weapons effect system, notably the Ricochet and Chain Bullet effects.

Currently the Ricochet effect works by ‘bouncing’ a projectile off your target at a random angle in a 180 degree arc towards your ship. This means that unless you are threading the needle between two ships to hit one behind it, the device is largely useless. Using a little trigonometry and some physics, I’ve changed the way they work to be a little more natural and predictable. Now the bullet will ricochet at an angle based on where you shoot the target (it reflects the bullet’s velocity across a vector drawn from the center of the object hit to the impact point). This means if you shoot the target dead on, the ricochet will come back towards your ship; but if you hit the target at an angle, it will bounce at an angle. This will allow ‘trick shooting’ with these devices which I think is extremely cool.

The Chain Bullet effect has been updated as well. There were a few bugs in the implementation. Firstly, it wasn’t properly inheriting the auto-aim (or tracking) from it’s weapon. Secondly, a slow moving projectile with the effect did some interesting and unintended things if you fired it and warped into another galaxy. This has also been fixed. Finally, there has been a slight mechanic change. Currently when you fire a chain bullet weapon at a target, if it can’t locate other available targets, it won’t bounce at all. It’s been updated to bounce at a random angle away from the target hit regardless of if it finds a target or not. This is a pretty useful change since it means the effect isn’t dead, it can still hit something that might wander into it’s path and get another bounce.

Finally, the new Fleet Commander class super item! The original design for class super items called for the Fleet Commander Squad Transwarps to be one of the special items obtained by doing the Crucible. However, they were way too cool an item to hold until the class rebalance was finished. Instead of that item, the Fleet Commander’s third super item is the Dirty Bomb.

The Dirty Bomb item is a low cooldown radiation damage explosion that will hit all targets within its range. It can be used to finish off larger enemies or completely destroy a group of smaller enemies. The idea behind this item is that with the newest changes to irradiation (irradiated AI will now activate their space break) a medium damage, AoE radiation device could make it a lot easier to get a large group of wild slaves quickly!

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

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New Universe Required: +
Available Now: *

These patch notes may be adjusted. A post will be made if changes are made to the patch notes.

Additions:
* Added two new augmenter stats: Evasion and Transference Resistance.
+ New MIRV Rockets (these will replace MIRV Torpedos)
+ New MIRV Rocket Factories located in Beta Antares to convert MIRV Torpedo crates into MIRV Rocket crates at no cost.
+ Added new MIRV factories to Lyceum and Hyperion
+ New T22 Subspace Missiles and Missile Crates
+ New T22 Subspace Missile Factories
+ New T22 Subspace Missile missions.
+ Added Phoenixes and Glaucopennia to DGs/PSpace
* Added the ability for items to charge using shields in addition to energy
* Added stat string for Chain Projectile weapon effect.
* Added a new Barrel Roll animation for evaded attacks.
+ Added Prototype Deathblossom, Deathblossom and Mighty Deathblossom.
+ Added Sniper Analyser & New Seer Jammers
+ Added new subskills to skill reset system
+ Added new subskills to Lyceum.
+ Added T22 Focus and Class Skills.
+ Added new echo to Free Market detailing the T22 Focus and Class Skills.
+ Added Platinum level Strontium missions
* Added Divine Behemoth blueprint
+ Added T5 Capital Ship, Pax Lyrae
* Added Evasion tweak type.
* NoTweak flag for Neurotweaks is now properly applied.
+ New Slave Deathblossom.
+ Lyceum Revamp – Lyceum has relocated to the sectors surrounding the wormhole leading to the Serengeti. They have spread out their university from a single galaxy to a four galaxy sector.
* Enabled new repair cost formula for drone repairs.
* Added a check for missile ranges on launch.
* New chat commands /droneslots and /teamslots
* New dialog for books
* New galaxy flag to disable prospecting node spawn
Rebalance from previous patches
+ Added Surgical Strike Missiles.
+ Gatling Platform, Burst, Disruptor, Decoy, and Interference missiles factory blueprints removed from Hyperion.
+ Missions for AP, Kinetic, Surgical Strike and Incendiary MK III factories depreciated.
+ AP, Kinetic, Surgical Strike and Incendiary MK III factories for sale in Hyperion.
+ MIRV Rocket Upgrade Factories for sale in Hyperion, Lyceum and Beta Antares.
Skill Changes
General
+ New Advanced Skill Point system.
+ Added Tech 22 Focus and Class Skills.
+ Class Subskills no longer grant bonuses or can be trained beyond level 20.
+ New General Advanced Subskills, Shake it Off, Strategic Deployment, Centered, Droney, Resilient and Slave Ph.D.

Remote Control
+ Remote Control 19 mission added to Beta Antares.
+ Remote Control 20 mission added to Lyceum Subspace Research Concourse.

Fleet Focus
* Increased Fleet Focus Hull Space bonus from +1% to +1.5%
+ New Recon Focus Advanced Subskill, Expansionist (+1 Hull Expansion slot)

Recon Focus
* Changed Recon Focus from +1% Capacity to +1.5% Capacity per level.

Speed Demon
* Added -1% Electric Tempering bonus to Speed Demon Skill.
* Reduced Speed Demon Speedy Firing subskill from +4% Rate of Fire to +3% Rate of Fire.
* Increased Speed Demon Speedy Firing subskill from +1% Damage to +2% Damage.
* Speed Demon Speedy Firing subskill is no longer scaled by speed.

Seer
* Psionic Shrouding now gives up to a 50% chance to evade damage while cloaked and unseen.
* Added +2% Damage to Seer Psychic Sight subskill.
* Added +1% Critical Hit Chance to Shadow Ambush subskill.
* Reduced Shadow Ambush subskill Backstab passive from +3% Critical Hit Chance to +2% Critical Hit Chance.
* Reduced Shadow Ambush subskill Backstab passive from +3% Damage to +2% Damage.
+ New Seer Advanced subskills, Wraith, Clairvoyant, Assassin and Brooding Gaze
+ New Seer Jammer items for sale in Lyceum.

Combat Focus
+ New Combat Focus Advanced Subskill, Big Banker (+1 Capacitor Slot)

Berserker
* Removed Electric Tempering from Ordnance Supremacy subskill.
* Added +3% Damage to Berserker Class skill.
* Added -1% Space on Equipped Weapons to Berserker Class skill.
* Removed -1% Space on Equipped Weapons from Arsenal Expertise subskill.
* Added +1% Damage to Arsenal Expertise subskill.
+ New Berserker Advanced Subskills, Berserker Classic, Weapons Master, Berserking Berserker and Eye for an Eye

Sniper
* Reduced Sniper Class skill from +3% Physical Damage to +0.5% Physical Damage.
* Changed Sniper Class passive, Sniper Analysis to +10% Critical Hit Strength, +3.75% Damage (+200% Critical Hit Strength, +75% Damage after 5 minutes)
* Sniper Analysis now requires the use of a Sniper Analyzer
* Added +2% Damage to Stalking subskill.
+ New Sniper Analyzer item for sale in Lyceum.
+ New Sniper Advanced Subskills, Quick Scope, Long Scope, Grooved Bores and Marksman

Support Focus
+ New Support Focus Advanced Subskill, Really Super (+25% charge rate on Super Items)

Shield Monkey
+ New Shield Monkey Advanced Subskills, Funky Monkey, Tank Monkey, Flying Monkey and Enveloping Monkey

Engineer
* Temporary drones that are scoopable no longer explode on death or disappear when they expire. Instead they enter a destroyed or an expired state. Destroy drones can be repaired like normal items.
+ New Engineer Advanced Subskills, Mechanical Engineer, Computer Engineer, Electrical Engineer and Civil Engineer

Fleet Focus
+ New Fleet Focus Advanced Subskill, Extra Tweaked (+20% (+40% for slaves) Augmenter Tweaking scaled by the number of equipped augs)

Gunner
* Added +2% Damage to Gunner Class skill.
* Increased Big Guns subskill from +3% Mining Damage to +3% Damage, +1% Mining Damage.
* Destruction subskill now only triggers on missile attacks.
* Destruction subskill now grants vulnerability to all damage types.
* Increased Destruction subskill from +0.5% (1 Weapon) / +1% (2 Weapons) to +2% (Missile Strike).
* Destruction can now be applied by splash damage from missiles.
* Missile Mastery changed from +5% to most missile stats to +2.5% missile damage.
+ New Gunner Deathblossom items for sale in Lyceum.
+ New Gunner Advanced Subskills, Advanced Targeting Computers, Automated Reloading, Gunboat Diplomat and Mass Destruction

Fleet Commander
* Wild Slaves have their own slot pool.
+ New Fleet Commander Advanced Subskills, Advanced Flight Controller, Wild Man, Fleet Admiral and Fleet Protector
Advanced Subskills:
More on these can be found in this blog post: http://www.starsonata.com/blog/calypso-update-1-27-14/

+ Engineer Advanced Subskill Mechanic Engineer (+3 Drone Equip slot, +15% Energy)
+ Engineer Advanced Subskill Computer Engineer (Single Target Transference Beams Splash heal)
+ Engineer Advanced Subskill Electrical Engineer (Equipped Drones charge 10% faster, +5% Energy Charge)
+ Engineer Advanced Subskill Civil Engineer (+20% Transference Resistance, -15% Energy used for Tractor Beams)

+ New Gunner Advanced Subskill Advanced Targeting Computers (+2 Targets to Deathblossom)
+ New Gunner Advanced Subskill Automated Reloading (Missile Launchers recharge 20% faster, +2 missile queue slots)
+ New Gunner Advanced Subskill Mass Destruction (+100% Range on Weapon Effects)
+ New Gunner Advanced Subskill Gunboat Diplomat (+100% Shield and Energy and +1 Super Item Slot while in Heavy Fighters)

+ New Fleet Commander Advanced Subskill Advanced Flight Controller (+75% Evasion on fighters, +2 Fighter Slots)
+ New Fleet Commander Advanced Subskill Fleet Admiral (Field Generators affect allied Capital Ships)
+ Fleet Commander Advanced Subskill Wild Man (+100% Wild Slave Slots, +50% Resistances on Wild Slaves)
+ Fleet Commander Advanced Subskill Fleet Protector (+100% Transference when healing your own possessions)
+ Shield Monkey Advanced Subskill Funky Monkey (+100% Shield Regen while in stasis, +100% Transference to targets in stasis, Critical Hits with transference proc a -10% transference resist buff on the target for 2s)
+ Shield Monkey Advanced Subskill Flying Monkey (+50% Hull Space in Light Fighters, -25% Hostility)
+ Shield Monkey Advanced Subskill Tank Monkey (50% of damage to slaves is transferred back to the shield monkey, +5% Resistance)
+ Shield Monkey Advanced Subskill Enveloping Monkey (+30% damage when not healing scaled by the targets shields)
+ New Berserker Advanced Class Subskill Berserker Classic (+200% Multifire, -30% Rate of Fire)
+ New Berserker Advanced Class Subskill Weapons Master (+20% Hostility, +3 Weapons Slots)
+ New Berserker Advanced Class Subskill Berserking Berserker (+30% Speed, +10% Rate of Fire)
+ New Berserker Advanced Class Subskill Eye for an Eye (+33% bonus to damage-to-shield transference effects, +10% resistance)
+ New Sniper Advanced Class Subskill Long Scope (Analysis builds for 10% longer)
+ New Sniper Advanced Class Subskill Quick Scope (Analysis builds 20% faster)
+ New Sniper Advanced Class Subskill Grooved Bore (+25% Projectile Speed, +10% Physical Damage, +25% Tracking)
+ New Sniper Advanced Class Subskill Marksman (+10% Damage if over 2k distance from target, -15% Visibility)
+ New Seer Advanced Class Subskill Wraith (-15% Visibility, +8% Ethereal Damage)
+ New Seer Advanced Class Subskill Clairvoyant (+20% Radar, +5% Critical Hit Percentage)
+ New Seer Advanced Class Subskill Assassin (+15% Backstab Damage, -25% Charge Time on Microwarps and Translocators)
+ New Seer Advanced Class Skill Brooding Gaze (+10% Energy and Shield Recharge when cloaked if you haven’t attacked in the last 2 seconds)
+ New Speed Demon Advanced Class Subskill Fighter Ace (+15% Rate of Fire, -25% Range)
+ New Speed Demon Advanced Class Subskill Acrobat (+25% Thrust, 50% reduced critical hit debuff duration, -50% Inertial Dampening)
+ New Speed Demon Advanced Class Subskill Lucky Devil (+10% Evasion, +5% Critical Hit Percentage)
+ New Speed Demon Advanced Subskills, Fighter Ace, Master Scout, Lucky Devil and Acrobat
+ New Advanced Subskill Shake it Off (+500 shield and energy regen while in stasis)
+ New Advanced Subskill Strategic Deployment (+50 speed if no hostile actions within the last 30s)
+ New Advanced Subskill Centered (+500 shield and energy regen if no hostile actions in the last 15s)
+ New Advanced Subskill Slave Ph.D. (+4 Combat Slave slots)
+ New Advanced Subskill Droney (+1 temp drone slot)
+ New Advanced Subskill Resilient (100% chance to get +50% resistance (+90% resistance for slave) for 1s. effect can only happen once per 30 seconds)

+ New Advanced Focus Subskill Expansionist (+1 Hull Expansion slot)
+ New Advanced Focus Subskill Big Banker (+1 Capacitor slot)
+ New Advanced Focus Subskill Really Special (+25% charge speed on super items)
+ New Advanced Focus Subskill Extra Tweaked (+20% divided by the number of equipped augmenters extra augmenter tweaking)

Due to the enormous patch size we’re breaking this up into a few patches. These major content additions will be implemented approximately two weeks after the reset. Some pieces of these additions may be included at the reset, and locked until the two week patch. The reasoning behind it is that these new additions may not have been fully tested prior to the reset, and we don’t want broken additions added to the universe.

+ Temple Grounds – A two-part tech 22 instance featuring the Trials of adum, a single player puzzle instance and the High Priest’s Chamber, a new and exciting boss fight.
+ Color Empires – A large, lower level instance featuring content ranging from level 40 to 120.
+ Crucible – A new single player instance to fight off waves of enemies. Awesome new class superitems are rewards.
+ New Class Locked Super items! Three new super items for each class are will be available as rewards for the Crucible.
Tweaks:
* Most missiles no longer locked to Gunner. (Decoy, Burst, Interference, and Blockbuster are Gunner locked)
* Most missiles no longer locked to Capital Ship. (Vor, Flare are Gunner Capital locked)
* Most missiles are now size 1.
* Berserker travel fields no longer work on slaves.
* New slave only berserker travel fields. These equip when you equip yours on your main ship automatically.
* Lifesteal aura now blocks incoming transference damage but not outgoing transference damage.
* Missiles now get range and radar bonuses.
* Freighter split into 2 hull types Support Freighter and Industrial Freighters, see details on the blog  http://www.starsonata.com/?p=829
* Changed team slots to be account based, instead of character based. Teams now start with 50 account slots which is increased by the Roster skill by 5 per level.
* Made new tweaks that affect shield regen show up on the client immediately, rather than being delayed up to 2 seconds
* Changed summary text of ‘Resistance, not so futile’ mission to make it more clear where players have to finish the mission.
* Converted Nightfury Focus, Nightfury Rage and Red Photon Remote Weapon Augmentation into superitems
* AI will no longer attack destroyed drones.
* Destroyed drones can no longer be hit by collision code.
* Alien Shields now take Shield Lattice Intensifiers instead of Harmonic Shield Focusers.
* Nanite Blueprint now produces 1000 Nanites instead of 500.
* Super Items can now be charged from damage taken.
* Lifespan on most missiles reduced.
+ Increased the number of Reaver dg spawns a bit
+ Sniper Analysis doesn’t scale by Sniper Class level anymore.
* Entanglement Missile now does a Sludge parasite
* Fighters and Missiles launched by super items no longer check the tech of the equipped launcher, just that it exists.
* Splash healing now costs shields for all targets hit.
+ Added Strategic Deployment and Centered advanced subskills to slaves
* Damage Fields in Piloting 22 now affect all players regardless of aggro.
+ Updated Copper to use the automatic gate locking system.
* Lifesteal now only applies to positive damage.
* Weaponry to 8 can now be trained in Blue Outpost for 1 Blue Aether.
* Critical Aug stats now apply to bases.
* Merchant Fleet Master now also gives +1 slave order.
* Slave Ph.D. is now properly accounted for when transferring a slave.
* Skill Resetting now checks slave slots used, etc, and will deny the reset if you would exceed limits after the reset.
* RP Warship uses weaker missiles.
* Using a demo kit on a destroyed base will kill you if you couldn’t normally undock in that ship.
* Drone Operations augmenters now take Engineer skill instead of Drone Mastery.
* Tweaked Activity score to penalize large teams less.
* AI Ghostships will no longer use their torpedo superitem.
+ Mighty Deathblossom and Ultimate Deathblossom now Capital Ship only.
* Hotkey for missile / fighter launchers now displays queue count.
* New cost for many missiles and missile factories.
* Launching a missile or fighter is now properly considered a hostile action.
* Slaves now only queue one missile at most.
+ Shake it Off and Centered now apply to slaves.
Transwarp Tweaks:
* Transwarp Missions now have an Equipment skill requirement.
* Transwarp Devices no longer warp slaves in stasis.
* Transwarping now destroys die on jump items.
* Transwarps that don’t immediately find the destination beacon from their list will now search the galaxy for a beacon and jump to it.

Subspace Assault:
* Janayitrideva no longer despawns the miniboss adds when players warp into and back out of Devalaya Deva.
* Zarkara Adhara no longer despawns the miniboss adds when players warp into and back out of Bila Zarkara.
* Subhatt’ayu inbuilt reduced from -33% recoil to -20% recoil
* Praheti, Praheti Sahistha, Prahetivijarjara now give Praheti DNA when the Basic DNA Extraction beam is used on them.
* Increased lifespan on T22 instance entrance galaxy spawn.
* increased the spawn time on the dead end guard in the Akhara maze.
+ Removed Distruptor, Decoy, Interference, Burst and Gatling missile blueprints from Hyperion. With the class rebalance these missiles will be depreciated.
* Reworked the Great Open Uu Quu Excommunicator, giving it a surgical parasite, better range, speed and less self damage
Fixes:
* Fixed prospecting scanners displaying a blank message.
* Fixed super item stat strings having extra ‘,’ characters when hiding items in the description.
* Fixed a crash bug with Fighter and Missile Bays.
* Fixed Dampening Buff giving players full dampening when they didn’t have it.
* Fixed Warhead Effects using the wrong range attribute.
* Fixed Zarkara Adhara guard spawners.
* Fixed cost on the repeatable 4000 series transwarp mission.
* Fixed ‘Higher Remote Control’ mission to request remote control instead of warp navigation.
* Fixed a bug where parasites created by missile warhead explosions were not doing the proper amount of damage.
* Fixed a bug where ships would do a barrel roll animation when entering galaxies or leaving space bases.
* Fixed a bug where the timer for new players joining teams attempting Emperor would report incorrect times.
* Fixed a bug where Crown Ships could be transwarped.
* Fixed some typos in the skill reset messages.
* Fixed Superintelligent mod giving too much Critical Hit Percentage
+ Fixes for Seer Psionic Shrouding evasion ability.
* Fixed a bug involving bosses equipping/unequipping stuff
* Fixed the Red Photon Oversized Turret not always using it’s super weapons correctly.

This week’s update is going to focus primarily on a restructure of Lyceum and some UI changes for holobook (storybox, echo, etc) items! Keep reading to find out more.

Lyceum is one of the most important galaxies in the game and because of this, over the years it’s gotten increasingly cluttered. It now houses infinite knowledge training, class skill training, module factories, Guardian of the Lyceum and the Serengeti. There is a lot of stuff all tossed in a really small space. It might make sense to older players who are used to it, but honestly, I can’t imagine how confusing it would be for a new player when they first arrive there.

A few weeks ago I hit on the idea of splitting it up; going from a custom galaxy to a custom zone. Each aspect of Lyceum would be broken off into its own, separate galaxy, essentially uncluttering the mess Lyceum has currently become. Also, it would allow us to move The Acropolis, a Lyceum affiliated zone, closer to Lyceum. This would make Augmenter Tweaking easier for new players to find, as well as making Aug Tweaking more convenient for older players to train. Overall, it would make Lyceum a lot less confusing.

With the new design the new Lyceum would be a four galaxy zone. There would be Lyecum, reserved for Class Skill training, Reboot Modules and the Lyceum Library. We’d also have the Platonic Academy, where all module factories, blueprints, mention and diploma turn-in missions and Infinite Knowledge training would go. The Acropolis would be moved in and could be made a bigger hub for Augmenters and tweaking training in general. Finally, there would be the Serengeti Blockade, a PvP enabled zone housing all the missions for and the entrance to the Serengeti UZ. The Guardian of the Lyceum would roam this entire area looking for trouble makers!

Other than splitting the galaxy up into this new zone, there are some additional notable changes being made, mainly the addition of the Lyceum Library. The main base in Lyceum will sell guide books to help players with various aspects of the game from inside the game. To better facilitate this idea. I’ve also revamped the way echos (or holocubes, whatever) look and function.

I changed the dialog they use from a small box with a scroll bar to a taller, more readable box. I’ve also added the ability to make multi-page echos. Now content developers, when making echo items, can create versions that collect a series of echos together or create books. The first use will be a set of three echo items containing explanations for what core skills do, and where you can train them, to supplement the progression missions Blue Dwarf recently added. In the future the Lyceum Library will contain quite a few of these books, ranging from topics like mining and prospecting, to building their first station and even to the rules regarding claiming the universe as Emperor. This will transform Lyceum into an ideal place for newer players to go if they need in game help and give us a way to get some of the excellent guides players have posted on the forums into the game.

As a bonus, I’ve added a fly through of the work in progress Lyceum Restructure. Each of the galaxies is getting it’s own unique theme and I think it’s turning out extremely well.

That’s it for this week’s update. As always, feel free to post questions, comments or suggestions in the forums! I’ll be back again next Monday with another update!

Hello players! For my first blog post on the new site, I’m going to share some exciting new changes we have coming up soon.

I’m very excited to announce that we will be splitting Freighters into 2 new ship types! Currently, classes outside of support focus have a very difficult time being involved in base building and other non-combat activities that require large amounts of hull space.  We would like to fix that so that all players can participate in base building, without the need to level up a new Engineer or Shield Monkey alt. Both ship types will be able to equip all of the current “Freighter only” gear.

Industrial Freighters are ships designed to store and transport large amounts of items most often for the purpose of creating user bases. They have extremely high hull space, but relatively low defensive abilities. The Thatch, Dark Freighter, and Singularity Sphere are great examples of this new class.  They will no longer be affected by any class  hull bonus, and will have their hull increased to balance that out. They will also have an inbuilt effect to lower weight to match the support focus bonus that they will lose out on.  They will still get bonuses from classes that affect all ship types though, so we hope that will provide some interesting diversity.

Support Freighters are the ships that are currently flown in combat roles by the support focus. They have tend to have decent defensive abilities as well as much higher hull space than other combat oriented ships.  Ships such as the Pax Astronomica and Apprentice Ward are classic examples of this new ship type. All skills currently effecting freighters will be changed to effect support freighters, so the transition should be seamless for everyone currently flying one.

The following freighters have been changed to Industrial Freighters. If you feel there are any other ships that should be moved to the new hull type, we’ll be watching the discussion topic so please let us know. Additionally, MFM will provide 5% to Industrial Freighters rather than the standard 10%.

In other news, we’re also making some changes to how team slots work. After some recent discussion resulting from us fixing a bug with perma drones and owning galaxies, we’ve decided to make team slots based off of accounts instead of characters!  This should alleviate the issues caused by our previous changes by allowing all those off team Merchant Fleet Master alts to join their main teams. Based off of the number of accounts on teams out there in the universe, we’ve decided to set the base number of account slots on a team to 50 and the Roster team skill will give 5 slots per level. This means that teams grandfathered into the team skill system with 10 in Roster will have 100 account slots, which is just above what the largest teams current have. We’ve checked all the teams out there, and everyone will have plenty of account slots to fit all their current characters.

Both changes are currently on test.starsonata.com:3032, and will be in for the reset.  I hope everyone enjoys these changes, and has a great reset!

This week’s update will mainly focus on class rebalance changes and bugfixes, but will also contain a new ship announcement! Keep reading to find out more!

With the Class Rebalance testing phase in full swing, you guys have been doing a really good job of bringing issues to my attention. I’ve been trying to do just as good a job at getting fixes rolled out for every bug you guys find! There have been some pretty big bugs that have been squashed and I figured I’d go over a few of them here.

• Slaves not getting class skills.
• Slave Ph.D. not properly giving extra slave slots.
• Issues with Psionic Shrouding ability proccing too often.
• Lots of implementation changes for Deathblossom.
• Fleet Admiral not being applied at all.

These are only a few of the issues that have been fixed in the last week and I applaud you guys for finding all these bugs. Because of your testing the eventual roll out to live is going to be considerably smoother!

Along with bug fixing, I also worked on a lot more missile changes. One of the biggest projects this past week was reworking missile production. Right now missiles that no one even uses, some missiles that don’t even work and almost all the specialty missiles are a pain to make. That doesn’t even cover the confusion of factories. This has all been simplified and given a minor rework.

Firstly, we are eliminating a few missiles and factories. Disruption, Gatling Platform, Decoy, Interference and Burst are all being depreciated and having their factory blueprint removed from Hyperion. Most of these missiles have seen very little use and a few of them don’t even work properly (I am looking at you Decoy). We are also eliminating Mark I and Mark II factories for Kinetic and Armor Piercing Missiles. Having three different crates per missile just is item bloat. The crates will still exist, and the factories will still work (if you have them), but you won’t be able to get blueprint for them from Hyperion anymore. All missile factories that used MKI and MKII crates have been changed to use MKIII crates. MKIII factory blueprints are also now sold directly in Hyperion and you don’t have to do the annoying mission to kill UrQa to obtain them anymore.

Secondly, we are making some missiles more easily available. Cheetah Missile factories are having their cost significantly reduced and the missiles crates will no longer require Vis or Copper. Red Photon missile crates will no longer require Plasma Crystals, but Promethium instead. Vortex Missile factories are having their Vortex Pellet requirements drastically reduced, Medium Lancer Factories will only take 2 Reach of Prometheus, down from 5, and finally Large Disinegrator Missile factories will no longer require Amoetroidizodal’s Acid Blood, just Acidic Remains like the previous two tiers. Missile factories have also had their production time cut in half, down to five minutes. All of these changes should increase the availability of missiles to all players.

Finally,  a new ship announcement. Next universe we will be introducing a tech 5 capital ship, the Pax Lyrae, as part of the class rebalance. This is a hole in content that sorely needed filled, as players who selected a Fleet Focus class couldn’t use a ship that would give them full bonuses until tech 10. Players will be able to find this new, 2 augmenter capital ship in Paxius or the Fleet Focus base in Lyceum.

That’s it for this week’s update. As always, feel free to post questions, comments or suggestions in the automatically generated forum post! I’ll be back next week with another update!

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

The universe as we know it is going kaput on February 22nd at 1:00pm EST.

We expect the server to be back online around 1:30pm EST, but that is an estimate. It can occur before or after that time.

If you don’t know what a universe reset is, check out this handy guide for more info.

- Fix for a crash during jump (there is still at least one alt-tab related crash with jumps, maybe more).
- Fix for a crash with weapon switch.
- Fix for a crash in inventory tab.
- Fix for a crash in certain stations if you docked just after jumping.
- Fix for a crash when transfering items
- Fix for a crash when transfering credits.
- Fix for a crash when setting descriptions on userbase.

In a nutshell… this is a crash fix patch !

So i’m being told i need to make a blog post to answer those questions, here we are.

My questions this week are from starwyrm:
1. hours of SS played weekly?
2. what recently released content have you worked with?
and just for you:
3. so you’re Canadian, Eh? east or west? either way, shoutout from New Brunswick!

The number of hours I spend playing SS vary greatly from week to week. Depending mostly on how many major problems I have to fix. But on average i would say I spend about 20hours playing ss (Not counting afk time)
I do spend quite a good share of this time on secret unteamed alts that i just enjoy leveling and meeting random people.

I very rarely work directly on content or content code, my role is more of a code management thing. Bug and crash fixing, performance improvements, security implementation, backup systems, server configuration and such.
I am especially the one stuck with being awake for days when the server experience major problems… extreme lags, hardware failure / replacement, external attacks, patch going wrong, memory corruption errors and the likes. Mostly because well… if i dont do it, who will ?
It takes a special kind of mental illness to have the instinct needed to figure those weird issues that make very little sense up to the point where you do track it down, and apparently, I am affected !

As for the last question, I am east Canadian, more specifically from Quebec. I live in Saguenay but thats about as precise as you’ll get .

This week’s update is going to cover a few different things including; new Tech 22 missiles and factories, some changes to Tech 22 Alien Ships and an update on the new zone launching next universe, the Temple Grounds. Keep reading to find out more.

As promised, with the class rebalance we are going to be making a new set of tech 22 missiles available. We would have done this earlier, but it didn’t make sense to make a set of new missiles only to rework them a few months later. These new missiles will come from factories available from Mitchell Sparks in LACS S2637 once you have done the introduction mission available in the Blue Photon Subspace Facility.

There are three new missiles that will be available.

• The Ksaravis’ayu is a physical damage missile similar to the rotten eggs launched by Raurava in Equipment 22 or Janayitri Sahistha in Piloting 22. While flying they will damage nearby enemies and on impact they will impart a caustic parasite. These launch in salvos of three.
• The Matra Markata Prahetiayu is a standard missile, the twist being that is is a radiation damage missile. These launch in salvos of 5.
• The Visphotakapad Ksaravis’ayu is a small, fast missile that does a low-damage but sizable area-of-effect on detonation. All ships caught in the blast zone are infected with a caustic parasite. These launch in salvos of 10.

In addition to adding the new missiles, you will not be able to use the Basic DNA Extraction Beam on on a variety of missiles launched by the Aveksaka in Subspace. Extracting from a missile is going to be challenging, and as such, you will get a high return from each DNA extracted. Currently, each factory will produce 5 crates of the new missiles per DNA used.

Tech 22 ships will be seeing a few changes as well. Firstly, all tech 22 player ships are getting nameplates. Currently they don’t have them and it can get a little confusing when you can’t tell the aliens and the players apart! Secondly, there are goign to be a few changes coming to both the Vacohar’ayu and the Rajanicar’ayu.

It’s important that these ships are viable alternatives to the high end Olympus ships and at the moment they are a little lacking.  As such, both are getting new in-built superitems. The Vacohar’ayu will be getting “Alien Evasive Maneuvers.” This device will give a short duration 75% evasion buff on a fairly lengthy cooldown. This will add some much needed survival utility on the ship. The Rajanicar’ayu will be getting the “Alien Translocator”. This is a super item that uses a translocator, effectively allowing the ship to have two. Finally, both ships are also having their resistances reevaluated. Energy and physical resistances are lacking and will see some buffs.

Finally, I’ve been doing some serious work on making sure the new tech 22 boss, The High Prophet, is ready for launch with next universe. The boss fight has seen quite a few changes from it’s previous iteration and will be available for testing in the next week. This boss fight is unlike anything currently in game and I’m very excited to see how players handle him.

That’s it for this week’s update. As always feel free to post questions, comments and suggestions in the forums. I’ll be back again next week with another update!