For years we’ve gotten so many requests to accept various currencies from across the world and haven’t been able to accommodate all players that wanted to play. We’ve been following the bitcoin trend closely for the past year and we’re proud to announce that we’re accepting bitcoins for payments for subscriptions and services like augmenter resets, and item forms! You can find out more information about bitcoin here.

And while we’re on the subject of news I’m officially beginning the class rebalance testing phase WITH PRIZES! The top five contributors to testing will get CUSTOM SHIP SKINS for the ship of their choice (much like the beta contest). All the juicy details are available over at the newly created testing forum.

And here’s a preview of the trophy ship! It is much win. wow.

Thanks to Jey he has found and isolated the cause of the crash. It was something related to Micron, and until a fix gets in it will be locked. We are expecting the fix to go in today (Monday, January 27th). The Event weekend will be extended through the end of next weekend (Monday, February 2^nd), subs will be extended by three days, and the class rebalance contest that was going to launch Friday will now launch Tuesday. Thank you guys for your patience and understanding!

This week’s update will focus primarily on the newly announced advanced class skills. It will give a few more details about the skills and detail how we are handling training them. Keep reading to find out more!

First, I’d like to give a few more updates about the new advanced subskill system, as it’s been my primary project for the last few weeks. In all, we are adding 42 new skills to the game. There are six general skills, four focus locked skills (one per focus) and 32 class locked skills (four per class). All of these skills will reset with a Skill Reset.

If you remember last week’s post; in it I detailed transference resistance and evasion augmenter stats. From what I have seen in the forums, there has been a fair bit of speculation on how they are going to be used. Since we have finally announced the new advanced subskills, I think it’s safe to give a few more details on these new stats. Both of those will see use in the new subskills. Specially, the following three;

• Lucky Devil (Speed Demon) – +10% evasion, +5% critical hit chance
• Advanced Flight Controller (Fleet Commander) – +75% evasion for fighters, +2 fighter slots.
• Civil Engineer (Engineer) - +20% transference resistance, -15% tractor beam energy cost.

The design for advanced subskills calls for leveling up your focus to unlock the ability to train a new skill. For example, training focus 21 unlocks the ability to train one new skill, training focus 22 unlocks the ability to train another, etc. Using the current skill training and mission systems we have in place there was no easy way to accomplish this. We considered a token system, where your focus training mission would grant you a token to train the skill, but unfortunately there is no way to remove tokens on a skill reset (which would allow players to get extra tokens). So, we hit on the idea of ‘Advanced Skill Points’.

Advanced Skill Points can be received as mission rewards, and are used as mission goals and mission requirements. Each time you complete a focus training mission for a tech 21+ focus skill you will get one of these points to spend on an advanced subskill. You can then go to your focus base to find a set of new missions unlocked that offer advanced subskills. These skill training missions only appear if you have a token to spend.

For players who already have their focus skill trained to level 21, they will be able to find a set of missions to grandfather them into the new system so they don’t have to skill reset to get their first advanced skill point. Players will also be able to train tech 22 focus and class skills. Much like with tech 21, each focus will require the player to have already obtained two different tech 22 skills.

So that’s it for this week’s update. We’ll be starting a series of blog posts detailing the new skills this week, so be prepared for that. And as always, if you have an questions, comments or suggestions on the material covered here, feel free to post in the forums!

For this month’s event we’ve got +30% Mod chance on dropped items, +30% Aug drop chance, and +50% experience gained!

The event will start roughly around 12:30pm EST on Friday, January 24th and end Monday, January 27th at 12:30pm EST!

Client
Additions
* Added buff icons for Dampening and Critical Hit Immunity Tweaks
* Added /lkc distortion for those who dont like the distortion effect on laser / trans applied at veryhigh, /lkc 1.1 would disable them completly. (already live)
* New news viewer in the client.
* New context menu for the Possession tab of the Character dialog.
* New options for slaves in the Possesions tab context menu; “Follow Me”, “Leave Stasis”, “Open Inventory”, and “Repair Ship”

Tweaks
* Particles system change, higher fluidity and shorter trails all around (smoother animation as well), on very high especially (lower graphic also gain smoothness but not as much) (already live)
* Particles system massive performance increase. This patch improved the performance of the particles rendering system by nearly 300% (which allowed us to make most existing case much smoother without impacting performances) (already live)
* Greatly improved memory bandwidth and rendering efficiency (speed if it was your bottleneck) on all dynamically generated meshes, (like the suns and the spheres used in some projectiles), also fixed a memory leak on that side which was one of the last remaining known client crash (already live)
* More debug data to help me pinpoint the last known crash still existing (the one where you alt tab during an autopilot jump and it sometime crash). I am sure there are other crashes left, but the 2 mentioned here are the last 2 i was able to prove existed. (already live)
* Moved “Release Slave” button in the Possession tab to the new context menu.

Fixes
* Multiple client crashes fix (already live)
* Fixed a bug that caused engine particles to not update after an engine change until you undocked a second time. (already live)
* Fixed a client crash in the map flags (already live)
* Fixed a client crash in the warp effect. (already live and there is still one crash remaining on warp while alt-tabbing)

Server
Additions
* New item type: Field Amplifier – Amplifies aura projectors
* Added support for parasites on missile warheads.
* New Chain Bullet weapon effect.
* New Repair Slave Option in the X Menu
* New Boss Condition to count unequipped items in the boss inventory.

Tweaks
* Made it so AI’s/Slaves thinking about using offensive super items will check the range of the first weapon in the super item, wherever it is in the order of actions, whereas before, they would only check the range if the first action in the super item was a weapon.
* (dev stuff) Asteroid spawners can now spawn named asteroids.
* Added new subtype for class items like Deathblossom, Sniper Analyzer, etc.
* Sniper Analyzer now uses the Overloader icon.
* AI bases without skills won’t display a skills tab.
* Seperated Missile and Fighter bays.
* Seperated Missile and Fighter slots.
* You can have a missile and a fighter bay equipped at the same time.
* Shield Tweaks now affect shield regeneration provided by shield chargers.
* Changes to repair messages.
* Improved layer filtering for loading wild AI and applied it to holiday AI (no more holiday AI in The Nexus for example)

Fixes
* Fixed a bug where combat slaves were not using offensive super items
* Fix for auto-start mission errors.
* Fix for Janitor’s Outpost not showing a skills tab.
* Irradiated AI will no longer use Superitems.
* Transwarp now properly reduces the shields of the user.
* Splashing laser effect now acts as ethereal even if the starting laser is corporeal.
* Fixes to the Chain Laser weapon effect.
* Ships under the effect of an invincibility aura (+100% resistance all aura) are no logner affected by resistance reducing auras.
* Fixed a bug where it was sometimes not possible to crit a husk
* Fixed a typo in the ship repair confirmation dialog.
* Fixed issue where the server wouldn’t tell the client when a fighter docked with it’s owner’s ship.
* server change to remove support from uncrypted connection (will check for update but wont let you fully connect using an uncrypted version).
* fix for the rts order feedbacks not working.
* server crash fix.

Content
Additions
* New client map layers for Holiday content and Color Empire zone.
* Zeus’ Throne has a new inbuilt Missile Bay.
* Shrimp has a new inbuilt missile bay.
* Battle Sphere has a new inbuilt missile bay.
* Assault Behemoth has a new inbuilt missile bay.

Tweaks
* Reduced the prices on the Seer Mine factories to only consome field obtainable (or producable) commodities
* Unteamed the End of the Universe Beacon.
* You can now only tow to Janitor’s Outpost if you are towing from the Nexus.
* Changed price on Blue Photon Stock Missile crates.
* Damage fields in Bila no longer affect drones.
* Akara Adhara now drops a protection field emitter at 5% shields so players don’t die after they kill it.
* Paxian Bombs no longer spawn after 10% on the tractor boss. The final 10% must be done by the player.
* Incendiary Missiles now do half their damage in Napalm Fire.
* Gave Olympus a minimum level requirement of 750 to enter
* Changed all the Olympus wormholes to require Warp Navigation 3 (some of these won’t be in effect until new uni, but all of the instanced holes and the entrance one are done)
* The Zarkara at the dead end in the Akhara instance is no longer invincible.
* Goldenboy ships in Rumble Arena now have self-destructors.
* The Pest Drone Device acquired in the Nexus now properly drops Small Pest Drones instead of Blue Scout Drones.
* Changed Red Photon Prototype Remote Weapon Augmentation to give -20% Recoil
* Alien Outposts in Pajca and Sas arms now count the number of miniboss fighters in inventory before creating more.
* Changes to Saluna Psu to make it more usable.
* Buffed most T22 alien shields.
* Fixed an error with Dhatri Zaktirasa and Dhatri Devazaktirasa weapons which were incorrectly marked as pulse guns in the balance sheet and had way too much DPS for their type of weapon.
* Drone Scoop is now tech 0

Fixes
* Fixed Ares’ War Cry and Hephaestus’ Flame Tractors.
* Lots of various spelling fixes in missions
* Fixed a typo in the Compact Colony Blueprint description
* Fixed Undead Helro’s Vultures counting for Strontium 90 missions
* Infernal Darkness Access mission no longer autocompletes.
* Fixed Alien Siege Mode superitem.
* Fix for MIRV missiles.
* Fix for Vihara Sapta.
* Fix for Small Disintegrator Missile Production Blueprint.
* Fix for Zeus’ Energizing Beam not affecting player ships.
* Beefed the Bear tractors

New uni stuff
+ New Blue Photon Testing Range galaxy.
+ Fixed a bug that caused L Suns to not effect solar panels correctly
+ Added two new testing drones to Blue Photon Test Range.
+ Added two new missile types, Incendiary and Surgical Strike.
+ Added factories for the new missile types.
+ Added new missile blueprints to Hyperion.

= CLASS REBALANCE – Not live yet
= Added -1% Electric Tempering bonus to Speed Demon Class Skill.
= Reduced Speedy Firing subskill from +4% Rate of Fire to +3% Rate of Fire.
= Increased Speedy Firing subskill from +1% Damage to +2% Damage.
= Added +2% Damage to 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.
= 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 Arsenel Expertise subskill.
= Added +2% Damage to Arsenel Expertise subskill.
= 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)
= Added +2% Damage to Stalking subskill.
= 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 vunerability 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.
= Fix for not taking item durability damage if you had drones on board.
= New Critical Hit Immunity Tweak
= Berserker Engagement Devices
= Moved some of the splash damage on Lancer Missile to a Napalm Fire DoT
= Sniper Flak Device
= Sniper Ricochet Device
= Stacked Missile Bays no longer grant a firing cooldown bonus.
= Fleet Commander fighter recall devices.
= Using a missile launcher will clear the queue.
= Changed Missile Mastery to +2.5% Damage per level.
= Updated missiles with Salvo Counts for testing.
= Added Prototype and Ultimate Deathblossoms.
= Fix so AI drones still explode on death.
= Missile Bays now have a max queue.
= Deathblossom now uses the proper amount of energy while multifiring.
= Deathblossom damage bonus removed.
= Deathblossom energy use reduced from 200% to 60%.
= Fix for undestroyed drones getting placed in the destroyed stack.
= Berserker Shield Redistribution device.
= Missile Changes for class rebalance.
= Deathblossom now properly targets AI teamed with your target.
= New Seer Ambush Overloaders.
= Splash Damage Warhead support for parasites.

This week’s update is going to detail some general changes coming with the class rebalance. They include two new augmenter stats and a new client animation to go along with one of them. Keep reading to find out more.

As I mentioned earlier, we’re adding two new augmenter stats; the first of these is Transference Resistance. Transference resistance added by the new augmenter stat is handled in the same way transference resistance added by the Resistance augmenter stat is — that is to say it only affects positive transference damage (from an AI that uses transference damage weapons or an outgoing heal). Right now there is only a specific usage of this stat in mind, but it may make its way onto augs or gear sometime down the line.

The second new augmenter stat is one that I think is a lot more exciting; Evasion. The evasion augmenter stat gives the user a chance to dodge damage; that is the damage source will pass right through their ship without hitting them and potentially hit something behind them.

In order to keep this stat from becoming too powerful a ships evasion will scale based on the damage source.

• For projectiles evasion will scale based on the speed of the evading ship relative to the speed of the projectile. So the faster the projectile and the slower the evading ship, the lower the chance to evade.
• For laser beams evasion will scale based on the evading ships distance from the shooter. The closer the evading ship, the less likely to evade.
• For warheads evasion is ignored. That means to escape missile damage you need to kill the missile or fly away from it.

Evasion also has one other condition and that is the evading ship needs to have an equipped engine to evade. That means no evasion on your Thatches, sorry! Evasion is applicable on all lasers and projectiles fired normally. It also is applied to projectiles and lasers created by splash, chain, ricochet, spray and chain bullet weapon effects. Evasion is not applied to AoE or Warhead weapon effects.

With the mechanics out of the way, I am sure people are going to ask something along the lines of “How do I know a shot has been evaded and it’s not just lag?”. This is handled in two ways. First, the evader and the evadee will get a damage pop up reading “Miss”. The pop up will only display if you have damage pop-ups enabled. Secondly, the ship evading will do a barrel roll.

Barrel rolling will only be enabled for players who play using the perspective camera mode.

That’s it for this week’s update. As always, feel free to post your comments, suggestions and questions in the discussion topic! Until next week.

Yclepticon here with a surprise post about a new facet of the class rebalance.  Some of the older players may remember when we first put in class skills past level 20.  This was largely well received as it allowed endgame players to get a bit more hull, speed, and DPS out of their setups.  However, it was noted at the time that some classes made out a lot better than others with that addition.  For example, Sniper got about 7% more DPS while Berserker and Gunner got little to none (since 5% more Multifiring doesn’t do anything).  Here is how we are going to fix that problem.

First: class subskills will now only train up to level 20, and players who still have them higher than that will no longer receive the extra bonuses.  But don’t stop reading!

Second: each class now receives four new advanced subskills.  You can train one advanced subskill each time you level up your main class skill past 20.  So players with Berserker 21 can choose one advanced subskill, and then another one once they get Berserker 22.  And yes, the main class and focus skills will now go up to 22.  In addition to the four advanced subskills of your class, you will also have access to around ten subskills that are available to everyone.

Now some of you are probably thinking, “why should I trade in all three of my level 21 subskills for a single skill?”  The answer is self-evident when you see what the new skills are like.  So without further ado, let’s see some numbers!

Say you’re a Speed Demon with level 21 in all the subskills.  When we scale back Speedy Movement to level 20, you’ll lose a small amount of speed (about 1.4%).  That’s like unequipping a tech 4 sleek item–not that big a deal–but suppose you really want that extra edge in PvP.  You may be interested in the following advanced subskill:

Master Scout: +10% Speed, +25% Radar, -50% Scanner Energy Cost

That’s right, you’ll get a full 10% Speed increase, multiplicative with all your other skills and gear.  On top of that, you’ll pick up some extra Radar to find those pesky Snipers and Seers, and using an ENIAC Omega will suddenly be a lot easier as well (if you can fit it!)

Now suppose you have a Berserker with level 21 in all the subskills, which currently gives you some small bonuses to Resistance (2.4%), Damage (1%), and Hull Space (based on equipped weapons).  First of all, the Hull Space bonus is now moved completely over to the main Berserker class, so your hull won’t change even after subskills are scaled back to level 20.  But suppose you really want that extra Damage.  You may be interested in picking up:

Berserker Classic: +200% Multifiring, -30% Rate of Fire

If you don’t fancy carrying so many weapons around, there’s another new Berserker skill that also boosts DPS… but I’ll leave that for another day.

Finally, let’s say you have an Engineer with level 21 subskills.  One thing you can’t currently get from any skill is the ability to charge your equipped drones faster.  That’s changing now with:

Electrical Engineer: Equipped drones charge 10% faster

There are a few other new ways to improve your drone-juggling skills but I’ll leave those for a later day as well.

* Changed the client random number generation to use a greatly optimised version for performance increase on some os (windows 8 used especially should see a performance increase by about 10%, wine user by nearly 25% (depending on the kernel) and windows 7 used by about 5%. (depending on the scenario)

* client side code to handle connecting using an encrypted user/pass beta client 266.* will still send both encrypted and uncrypted connection message in parallel, to remain compatible with old and new server. Once version 267 roll in, support for uncrypted login will be dropped from the client.

* fixed 2 crash fixes from dmp files sent.

If you do not have the beta client and wish to install it. It can be downloaded from 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 update is going to focus on some new items that will be released with the Class Rebalance. More specifically, a set of three new super items that will be available for Berserker.

The first item available to Berserkers will be the Engagement Device. This super item comes in tech 5 and 17 varieties. By overcharging the engines and focusing an energy shield at the front of the ship, it grants the Berserker vastly increased speed and thrust, as well as immunity to knockback and critical hits — allowing them to boldly charge into the fray. The result of the massive shift of energy when the overcharge ends results in spatial concussion pulling all nearby enemies in closer! This will function as an engagement or escape item giving Berserker some needed mobility as well as a nice way to quickly establish spawn control.

The second item is the Shield Redistribution Device. This super item is available at techs 9 and 20. This device harmonizes the Berserker’s shielding systems with that of their weapons allowing them to transfer some of the damage dealt back to the Berserker in the form of shields. This effect unfortunately will cause the Berserker’s ship to become immune to other forms of shield transfer, so it will be best used in situations where one doesn’t need to rely on a Shield Monkey! This device should give Berserker’s a little bit of self-regeneration, making solo endeavors a bit more manageable for them.

Finally Berserkers will be able to obtain the Reactive Hull Explosion. This device is available at techs 13 and 22. Unlike normal super items, which can only charge via energy, the Reactive Hull Explosion can use incoming damage to charge up. This means as the Berserker takes more damage, the device will be able to be used with a higher frequency. When fully charged, the device increases the hostility of the Berserker and releases a spray of energy plasma around the ship followed by a concussion knocking all nearby enemies away. This device should give Berserkers a nice tool to help establish and keep better spawn control.

That’s it for this week’s update, I’ll be back again next week for another update! Hopefully everyone has enjoyed a look at what we have in store for Berserkers. Question and comments, as always, can be directed to the forums!

* new ingame news system
* multiple small performance improvements for some low end hardware. (15% improvement in ideal scenario, 2-5% is more likely for most people)
* many client crash fixed
* rendering issue with the target ring fixed
* targetring will no long spin crazily when you are on top of your target.
* added the beta version indicator. If the current beta is identical to live client it will also be indicated.
* added support for livetest / test new server version (both in client code and assets).
* New context menu for the Possession tab of the Character dialog. (functional only on test/livetest)

If you do not have the beta client and wish to install it. It can be downloaded from 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.