Greetings! I’m excited to share some more details on the Wild Space Conflict project that will go live along with the 2-week temporary universe on April 30. A working version of this project is available on the Test server for those who are curious to get an early look–just be advised that we’re still putting the finishing touches on a few minor components. Fair warning: this is a long post that dives into some really detailed design and stats. For a lighter overview of the project, you can check out this post from February.

Controlling Territory

Back in February, I shared the following details about controlling Wild Space territory in the new system.

• Instead of merely controlling a galaxy for ten minutes, you must deploy a new type of base and complete a resource-intensive construction project in order to establish ownership. This process may take a couple hours.

• Once ownership is established, a steady stream of resources will be consumed to maintain it.

Figure 1: The equipment you’ll use to own galaxies.

I’d like to follow up on this with some details so you know what to expect well in advance of Universe Reset.

• You need a Command and Control Station Kit. It’s a tech 16 base that cannot be attached to planets and moons. You’ll be able to purchase this base kit in Building Academy.

• Your team can deploy just one single Command and Control Station in each galaxy. Once it’s deployed, you can start the Nullification Generator construction project. This takes two hours at standard build speed and carries a periodic cost of 10,000 Steel Girders and 10,000 Sentient Chatbots. For reference, this resource cost roughly equates to seven ideal tech 9 Extraction Expert bases for Metals, and half that for Silicon. Of course, it’s also possible to build the Nullification Generator over a longer period of time if your resources are spread thin at the start of the universe. Just make sure to actively monitor your space and rebuff any hostile players who try to steal your territory!

• The Nullification Generator is the device that actually establishes and maintains your team’s ownership of the galaxy. It is a base-bound factory that consumes 100 Fusion Cells every ten minutes. This cost roughly equates to one ideal tech 9 Extraction Expert base for Nuclear Waste. Every time the Nullification Generator consumes a batch of Fusion Cells, it establishes or re-establishes your team’s ownership of the galaxy. If the Nullification Generator fails to re-establish ownership for any reason (e.g. if the Command and Control Station is destroyed or abandoned), there is a grace period of up to 24 hours before ownership is lost (the grace period is shorter for galaxies that have been owned for less than a day). During the grace period, the owning team’s chat channel receives warning messages. To resolve the problem, simply feed the Nullification Generator enough Fusion Cells to catch up with the deficit (it will consume however much it’s owed).

Contesting Territory

Once a galaxy is owned, no one is allowed to take any PvP actions there. This includes hostile actions by the team that owns the galaxy! It’s no longer possible to manually toggle ownership status, so there is no practical way for the owning team to temporarily cede ownership status in order to PvP. From now on, ownership essentially means that the territory has been successfully claimed and fighting can move on to another theater.

This change means that fighting in Wild Space is much more straightforward with very few hidden or counterintuitive mechanics to get in the way of gameplay. If you want to contest another team’s ownership attempt, you need to stop them from building and activating a Nullification Generator before you. Here are some strategies you can try:

1. Interrupt enemy shipments of Steel Girders and Sentient Chatbots to their Command and Control Station.

2. Find and destroy the enemy’s extraction bases that are sourcing these Industrial Commodities.

3. Destroy the enemy’s Command and Control Station outright (but these are pretty tanky!)

Don’t forget that you’ll also need to complete a Nullification Generator on your own Command and Control Station while you’re busy slowing down your enemy’s attempts to do the same! As soon as any Nullification Generator activates, all unaffiliated bases and permanent drones are immediately destroyed and any such bases that were attached to planets or moons become unattached as well. This puts an end to the contest and awards the galaxy to the winning side.

Figure 2: Three enemy bases enter destroyed state as a different team establishes ownership. Note: the bases also detach from the planet but our tester needed an updated client to show this.

The only non-intuitive rule in the system is that unattached bases are not allowed until the galaxy is owned (with the exception of the Command and Control Station, of course). Allowing unattached bases in territory contest instantly necessitates a huge number of hidden rules and mechanics, as anyone with experience in BvB knows all too well. It’s best if we avoid the problem entirely by ruling out their use in PvP.

AI Empires will continue to exist in the new system, but the method for contesting their territory is slightly different. Since you can’t deploy bases directly in their galaxies anymore, we’ve introduced the following behaviors:

• A galaxy owned by an AI Empire will automatically lose ownership if a different team owns an adjacent galaxy.

• Deploying a base in the presence of an AI Empire will turn the AI hostile toward you.

Simply put, if you want to take territory away from an AI Empire, you must first own a neighboring galaxy (disabling the AI Empire’s ownership next door), then take over the freshly unowned galaxy by whatever means you choose. Remember that you won’t be able to use unattached bases for this task, though.

Figure 3: A player team establishes ownership in Tuscany Verge, causing the neighboring AI Empire galaxy Tyro to lose ownership.

Changes to Base Combat

Aside from the restriction on the use of unattached bases, we’ve made some other changes that will greatly affect the mechanics of base combat.

Bases no longer use healing weapons and any base augmenters the used to grant healing-related stats have been repurposed (check out Spirit of the Rhino!).

Figure 4: Spirit of the Rhino has been repurposed.

We realized that the main purpose of base healing has always been to keep your galaxy safe–particularly from enemy players–while you’re away. With the new ownership mechanic, this insurance is no longer necessary. To keep your galaxy safe from players, you only need to be on high alert during the few hours it takes to establish ownership. Granted, base healing was also helpful to protect against termites; more on this below.

Bases have a lot less range than before. When I announced this back in February, some people assumed we were reducing the base weapon range cap from 10k down to 3k. This is not correct. Instead, we’ve compressed the range stat spread on base weapons, reduced the magnitude of the Range augmod on base augmenters, removed the range bonus from Station Mastery, and reduced the strength of the Volatile Projectile Overcharger. Putting everything together, your pulse gun bases will probably hit between 1,500 and 3,000 range, while some specialized long-range magcannon bases can probably reach around 6,000 range. As with the removal of base healing, we make this change with the idea that you no longer need 10,000-range bases to keep your galaxy safe from players since ownership will do that job for you. And yes, this change impacts termite defense too. So let’s talk about termites.

Termites are being made to spawn a lot more frequently and pose a bigger threat than before. Also, it’s no longer possible to enable a protected galaxy state and thereby keep the termites out. Coupling this with the removal of base healing and the reduction in practical base weapon range, how exactly are you expected to keep your bases safe from termites? Here are some key points to know:

• In our testing, three tech 20 non-Station-Mastery bases were narrowly defeated by the strongest possible swarm of termites. We used competitive setups for the bases but I’m sure our expert community theorycrafters can do better than we did.

• In lowish danger factors, the termites have their damage reduced by half. With resources being more equitably distributed across danger factor (more on this below), this is a pretty valuable consideration.

• One new termite infestation spawns every hour, meaning that the average galaxy can expect to experience around six infestations over the course of four months. Some will get unlucky, though!

• Termite nests mature over a period of 24 hours and can be destroyed by handful of properly equipped bases (and maybe also by a player squad).

Figure 5: A maximum-strength wave of Termites assaults three tech 20 Adamantium industry bases.

One thing I’m confident about is that it will no longer be safe to use low tech industry bases on outlying planets and moons. Even if chaperoned by a “fully operational” Station Mastery base, low tech bases will probably die before the termites get cleaned up. This means that to fully exploit the resources of a galaxy, you will most likely need to use more industry base slots than you’re used to. Here is what we’re doing to make that more palatable. Just as powerful, high tech extractors make high tech bases viable for extracting tier-0 commodities, we’re introducing new content that will make high tech bases advantageous in other aspects of industry as well:

1. Every tier 1-3 commodity extractor is getting a new higher-tech upgraded version that grants a substantial extraction power boost. The tech and power of each new version depends on the tier of the commodity. Tier-1 commodities get a tech 9 extractor with 50% more power; for tier 2 it’s a tech 12 extractor with 100% more power; and for tier 3 it’s a tech 16 extractor with 150% more power. You can pick up the new extractors in exchange for a regular one plus some credits.

2. Higher-tech Colonial Administrator bases can now grant extra benefits to suitability in the following way. We are introducing new base-specific items that increase suitability and max suitability when equipped, as long as the base owner has the Colonial Administrator skill. For example, a tech 20 Colonial Administrator base can build and equip an item that grants +10% suitability and raises the maximum suitability of the colony to 140%. Be warned: the first iteration of this new item type will decay upon universe reset! If it’s well received, we may release reusable alternatives down the road.

These buffs to industry bases certainly improve the value proposition of using higher tech bases (possibly with augmenters) for your outlying industry. We want you to experiment and decide for yourself how to build optimally in the new system. One thing to remember: it is fully possible that some planets are just not worth industrializing. For example, a low-gravity planet with no moons that orbits 15,000 away from your main operations would be difficult to defend due to the lack of base slots. Depending on its industrial value, you will have to decide whether it’s worth spending the resources to exploit that planet and keep your operations safe. This is intentional design. We want the game to pose complex problems and we don’t want the designers to solve them all in advance.

Another point about base combat: base weapons have been made a lot more interesting. Beams have been redesigned for medium-damage AoE with the same range stat spread as pulse guns. Magcannons keep their long range profile but have received a variety of impactful  on-hit effects. I’m really looking forward to seeing what cool new strategies emerge from the greatly increased base weapon diversity.

Lastly, we’re making some changes to the “IC” base content that’s currently obtained through Industrial Commodities.

1. During the 2-week temporary universe, “IC” base kits and augmenters will be available for purchase at the cost of 1 credit. Remember that these items will decay at the end of the temporary universe.

2. After the temporary universe, “IC” base kits will no longer be obtainable, while “IC” base augmenters will have a new cost and acquisition method: the Z-tier versions will be available for direct purchase in exchange for 4 theme-and-tech appropriate augmenters and a credit cost comparable to the price of a normal Z base augmenter. Be mindful that these augmenters will still decay on reset for the time being.

3. “IC” base gear (e.g. Annihilator Shield Z) will continue to exist but with an added “can’t-jump” tag to prevent players from moving it between galaxies. The associated research projects will also have to be conducted anew in every galaxy where “IC” base gear is desired.

4. “IC” permanent drones will continue to exist in their current form.

Resource and Territory Abundance

In February, I explained the basics of mid-universe galaxy reveals. To recap:

1. Every 9 days and 17 hours, a fresh batch of galaxies will appear in Wild Space, connected in some way to the existing map.

2. These galaxies will have higher average resource abundance to make up for lost time.

3. Since ownership is a time- and resource-intensive process, it no longer requires a connection to your team’s HQ. Anyone with spare base slots will be able to compete for the newly revealed galaxies no matter where they appear on the map.

Figure 6: Time lapse of galaxy reveals.

For convenience, Jeff has coded it so that whenever a new galaxy appears, it automatically appears on the map for anyone who’s online at the time.

I also want to tell you about some changes we’ve made to the code that distributes resources across the universe. In the current system, we have a drastic resource imbalance between the lowest and highest danger factors. I’ve worked closely with our code dev Bobbo to design a completely new process for distributing resources. The new process uses principles from probability to apply various distribution rules, ensuring that the correct amount of each resource is apportioned and that the resource value of galaxies in the highest danger factor should only be 2-3x that of galaxies in the lowest danger factor. There is still a fair bit of variance in the process, but the upshot is that it won’t feel as bad if you get stuck with suboptimal territory for a universe. Keep in mind that termites in the lower danger factors have their damage reduced by half, meaning that you might be able to find some real sweet spots to maximize your income per defense budget.

Upcoming Changes to Capital Ship Shield and Energy bank bonuses

Shield and energy bank augmod bonuses on some Capital Ships are being significantly reduced. Here is a sampling of commonly used Capital Ships so you can see the effect this will have on you.

Capital Ship Shield and Energy Bank Adjustments – April 2, 2022

Note: the % difference may be different depending on the amount of shield or energy bank augmods you have from augmenters and Items. The values in the table assume no augmod bonuses.

Due to the significant nature of the changes, we will be giving augmenter resets to every Capital Ship significantly affected by the changes. In order to receive your augmenter reset, all you have to do is open the ship while docked and use the /FreeAugReset command in the chat.

The Changes Explained

One of the main ways we give “flavor” to a ship is to assign some modest negative stats that are then counterbalanced with extra bonuses in other areas. The Kalthi Wrathful Warrior is an example of this.

If I assign a tradeoff of -20% capacity for +50% energy bank to a Light Fighter, Heavy Fighter, and Support Freighter then these ships will end up with -20% capacity, 50% energy bank.

However, if I assign that same trade off to a Capital Ship then the Capital Ship would receive -20% capacity and +200% energy bank.

Note: This also affects the Thrust augmod bonuses on a few Industrial Freighters, since they were given scaling thrust based on their tech level. 

This was not what we had in mind when coming up with the tradeoff, and these tradeoffs can stack in ways that quickly become distorting.

This all happened because of a single Excel formula that has a * instead of a +. Capital Ships that had more bank than others will still have more bank, but it won’t be as drastic. For example, instead of the Vaziayu having 2.1x more Shield augmods than the UrQa’qa Qu’ishi Qa it will have 1.26x more.

While this resulted in very “flavorful” capital ships, the magnification of the stat spread is so high compared to other ships that it makes it very hard for us to balance around. We made this change because the native bank bonuses on Capital Ships were synergizing with the bonuses from the tradeoff which led to extreme stat spreads that were further compounded by gear, skill, and consumable choices.

Timing and Next Steps

We have been discussing the best way of handling this interaction for a very long time (more than a year) before deciding to pull the trigger. We’ve wanted to address this from the moment we realized what was going on, but it didn’t seem appropriate to make changes to them due to a variety of dependencies (For example, Fighters were a significant consumer of energy for both Players and Bots). We wanted to wait until some of those dependencies were addressed before making these changes, and since we’ve already taken significant steps towards addressing them in the previous patch we are taking the opportunity to get this fixed.

Some players will choose to stick with a bank setup on the ships that have a larger shield or energy bank bonus than others. Other players may choose to move to a more regenerative based setup. We are open to both setups, and are not doing this to drive players away from bank setups. We want them to be appropriate based on the content you’re doing, with clear upsides and downsides.

Lyceum Bulletin:

The Blue Pirates have stumbled upon a temporal wormhole and unloaded munitions into it. Lyceum scientists have inspected the wormhole and discovered that it is destabilizing rapidly and will rupture into a temporary unstable universe on April 30th.

This unstable universe will collapse on May 14th giving way to a stable one. Scans indicate that there are many changes to these universes that can be examined in a coming message.

However, preliminary scans indicate that the temporary universe goes through daily changes to its structure that increase varying fields of exploration, combat, and production.

Radiation is flooding into our universe from the rift and will cause alterations to the foundations of our universe as the end of our current universe approaches. Earthforce has stated that the radiation will halt all purchasing and extraction of material on April 23rd, followed by a reduction of all weekly lockouts on April 28th!

After extensive examination of the radiation leaking from the explosion site, top scientists predict the collapse of the universe to be on April 30, 2022. Citizens are asked to ensure all personal assets and fleets are properly stored.

Schedule

• April 23rd: All AI base consumption and player extractors stop functioning
• April 28th: All weekly lockouts now reset with the daily timer
• April 30th: Temporary Universe Reset, Daily Events begin, Weekly Lockouts restarted
• May 14th: Universe Reset, Daily Events end

Event Schedule

• Saturday (30th April and 7th May): 500% Augmenter Drop Rate Increase
• Sunday (1st and 8th May): 500% increase to Bindomite Drop Rate
• Monday (2nd and 9th May): 300% Increase to Mod Chances on Dropped Gear
• Tuesday (3rd and 10th May): 500% Increase to Prospecting Extraction
• Wednesday (4th and 11th May): 2000% increase to comet drops
• Thursday (5th and 12th May): 1600% Increase to prospecting node respawns
• Friday (6th and 13th May): 500% Increase to XP

Along with a daily event, there will be two week long events occurring throughout the temporary universe as well.

• April 30th – May 7th: AI will drop Halloween drops
• May 7th – May 14th: AI will drop Christmas drops

The AI that spawn normally during these events will not spawn. Normal AI will drop the event items.

Dev Notes

• Bases, permanent drones, and the credits on active bots will be lost.
  • Player ships will not be affected.
• If you’re docked during the reset, you will spawn into the new universe using your docked active ship.
  • Careful not to spawn into the new universe in an immobile ship!
• Wild Space will be scrambled and receive a new map shape.
• All other layers will have the systems scrambled but contain the same shape.
• After a universe reset, all of your docked ships will be in a state of limbo allowing you to dock them all at any non-player station. For the first 72 hours of the new universe, you can use the /limbo chat command only once to bring all of your docked ships back into limbo to dock them elsewhere.
  • For those familiar with the limbo command, going forward the timer has been extended from 24 hours to 72.

Second Ship Skin Contest

The contest will be held on our Discord in the #skin_competition channel, and will be available for anyone who wants to participate. The contest will be held in 3 rounds and will end with 2 winners. The winners of the contest will be given a free copy of the ship skin after it is implemented into the game.

You do not need to make the skin for the competition, only have an idea you think you’d enjoy!

If you have a fully developed skin that you are interested in getting into the game, feel free to message Kilando#9002 on Discord to submit it! You don’t have to go through the skin contest for a chance.

The first round of the contest will be open submissions for skin ideas from the following list of ships. Each player may have two submissions.

Rules for Submission

• Each player may have two submissions
• Submissions must follow all in-game rules
• Skins can’t change models

This Skin contest will feature the following ships:

• Empyreal Equinox
• Empyreal Perihelion
• Empyreal Aphelion
• Empyreal Estelle
• Empyreal Aelia
• Empyreal Saros
• Empyreal Ascension
• Empyreal Apex
• Empyreal Zenith
• Empyreal Eclipse
• Empyreal Noctis
• Empyreal Analemma
• Divine Behemoth

The second round of the contest will be an open vote on all of the eligible submitted ideas. Voting will happen on Discord and be handled with reactions on the submissions!

The third and final round will take the top 5 ideas from the previous round and run another open vote to decide the final 2 winners!

Schedule of the Contest

Start of the Contest: March 21st at 7pm PDT
End of Round 1: March 28th
End of Round 2: April 4th
End of Round 3: April 11th

Rewards will be distributed by May 31st.

[FIGHTER AND DEATHBLOSSOM CHANGES]

• Item form Fighters now provide information about their weapons, shield, speed and resistances.
• Bots can no longer use Fighters or Deathblossom.
• Deathblossom will no longer target fighters.
• Fighters no longer have evasion to direct shots but have 90% evasion to non-targeted damage (splash, collision code, warhead effects from missiles, ect.)
• Removed fighter auras from Death of the First Born and Panther Kitten.
• Removed the debuff effect from Death of the First Born.
• Chihuahua Fighters no longer give a mining damage debuff.
• Fighter Bay slots: Capital Ships have 2 slots, Freighters have 1 slot.
• Capital Ship fighter bays now have 2x the aug stat budget of Support Freighters.
• Adjusted the Quality, Damage, Ship Diameter, and Launch Energy of all fighters. All fighters now take 1 slot to launch.
• Inbuilt Fighter Bays on Capital Ships and Support Freighters are now ship bound instead of sticky.
• Projectiles that are fired by fighters will not inherit velocity.

[Skill Changes]

• Changed Advanced Flight Controller to grant +15% damage to fighters instead of granting 2 fighter slots.
• Increased bonuses granted by Flight Controller from 15% to 20% for listed stats.
• Updated Bot Mastery and Radiation Expert skill descriptions to reflect the previously unlisted damage bonus.
• Radiation Expert provides 15% Radiation Damage and 25% Damage per level instead of 50% Radiation Damage. No longer passes to fighters.
• Zen of Support Freighter, Zen of Light Fighter, Zen of Heavy Fighter, Equipment, and Flying Monkey now pass on to bots.
• Bot Mastery no longer gives capacity bonus for bots.
• Bots now get 100% of capacity bonuses all skills (except for augmenter tweaking) but will not fire when overhulled.
• Zen of Engineer now states that it gives 1% of Resistance to Damage per level to Temp Drones. These bonuses were added in a previous patch, but were not listed on the skill.
• Shield Monkey level 1 now grants +30% Shield Bank on Support Freighters.

[UI/Client Changes]

• Added glowmaps for the Steam Gold Zebucart.
• Added Normal maps for a bunch of low level ships.
• Added red lightning to center hole of Dogeage model.
• Extended Battle Sphere skins to Zaphragi Ark.
• Added tech, description, weight and size to base construction preview window.
• Inventories can now be sorted to only show cargo items via button at the top of the window.
• “copy ap link” now copies “/ap” as well, making the copied result a directly usable command.
• Possessions menu now lists bots as either “Combat Bot” or “Trading Bot”.

[Item Changes]

• All weapons, except for Torpedoes, have had their recoil clamped. The highest recoil sits at around 5 seconds for beam weapons.
• Transferences weapons now have double the HPE. But Stealing also takes 100% more electricity then before.
• Surgical weapons have had their DPS increased but their DPE reduced slightly.
• Tripled the time it takes for Fires/Parasites to ramp up to max damage.
• Removed the Neurobound Tag from the class locked super items sold in lyceum.
• Spiced up the descriptions of various Kalthi gear.
• Increased the mobility factor of Empyreal Piercer Drone from 1.0 to 1.75.
• Hephaestus Research Module Blueprint has had its Copper requirement reduced from 2000 to 1000.
• Hermes Research Module Blueprint has had its Mercury requirement reduced from 1000 to 300.
• Semi-Blackhole Pulse Generator no longer is affected by Zen of Devices and charge time increased from 20 seconds to 30 seconds.
• Aphelion’s Overwhelming Darkness super item has had its Beam resistance granted to allies and self reduced from 50% to 25% and for enemies reduced from -33% to -15%.
• Added tags to Demented Delquad, Spice Pirates and Nightfury loot.
• Fix the description on the `Coordinator Gemini Support Platform` super item inbuilt to Kalthi Armored Deployer to correctly reflect the tweak effects granted.
• Empyreal Experimental Drone Controller no longer is Neurobound.
• Updated wording on Field Generators to clarify if it works when “equipped” on bots.
• No longer shows “works when equipped on bot” messages on base Field Generators.
• Demented Modules are now set to the Rare Quality.
• Imperial Seals, Unclean Seals, Tarnished Imperial Chests and their variants are now labeled as Exalted.
• Added Scyonara Pod to Kalthi Depths Exotic drop pool.
• Zeus Engine now has proper particle effects.

[AI Changes]

• Made Empyreal Fleet Leaders have constant names to prevent instance board havoc.
• Added a large number of new generic AI names.
• AI should no longer wander out to inspect comets.
• Normalized the drop rate of the Olympus boss fragments to 2 100% drops each instead of having random rates.
• Powerful Alien Deathblossom (On Antu minibosses, and Space Anomalies from RNF/BNF) now has 9 targets instead of 20.
• Increased Kalthi Armored Commander and Kalthi Wrathful Commander roaming AI bosses’ shields to 60 mil and 50 mil, respectively.
• Increased Kalthi Armada Commander shields to 20 mil.
• Increased the protection of the Envelopement used by the Kalthi Commander bosses during phase transitions to 1.5mil.
• Added an upgrade to the Kalthi Planetary Demolisher sourced from Kalthi Armored and Wrathful Commanders.
• Changed aura effects of Kalthi Armored Commander and Kalthi Wrathful Commander AI bosses’ invincibility auras not allowing the player to run away and leave a galaxy effectively (now buffs the radar on spawn so they can chase you down anywhere).
• Increase shield drain of Kalthi Armored Commander’s radiation field.
• Buff Kalthi Commander fighter super to allow its use more frequently like regular fighters.
• Nerfed Kalthi AI only drones’ damage and range significantly.

[Next Universe Changes]

• Reduce the quantity of Kalthi to make them more manageable to fight in the field.
• Fixed issue with Imperiled Shield Revitalizer being unlocked with the wrong mission.
• Electrified Georg Ohm no longer gives a global shout on spawn.
• Entering Protoplasmica will now pop-up the mission chain.
• Fixed issue with Merchant Navy in Kalthi Depths not attacking or fighting back sometimes.
• Imperial Polishing Machine will be available for purchase at Earth Central in Sol.
• Adjusted Dark Sun in Blue Outpost to allow easier detection of Space Blue Alpha AI close to sun.

[Mission  Changes]

• Added a second start point for the “Finding Mommy” intro mission for the Protoplasmica mission chain to the base in Biopsy.
• Converted Strontium missions from 21 days from completed date to the standard Monthly reset cycle. Will now appear in lockout tab.
• Fixed a spelling error in the mission “A Strange Sun?”.

[System]

• Cargo items are now capped at a weight of 1 mil.
• Ships no longer weigh x10 when in item form.
• Abandoning Temporary Drones now put them in a destroyed state.
• Can tractor your own and team assets in Wild Space now.
• RTS Command for your bot to follow you was updated to state “them” instead of “him”.
• Damage on tweaks/auras affect Transference Weapons again.
• Added new line to All Chat login message stating the Star Sonata Discord invite link.
• Possessions tab now lists bots as “Combat Bot” or “Trading Bot”.

[Bug Fixes]

• Fixed bug with unable to tractor your own bases/perma drones if the player or the base is unteamed.
• Fixed a bug where anything unteamed would always be considered visible to anything else unteamed.
• Celestial Destabilizing Beam and Celestial Protection Beam now work on ships and drones, instead of just drones.
• Squad menu will now update properly when you switch to an unsquadded character
• Fixed issues with Bila and Akhara instances.
• Fixed issue with the Kalos Anthos instance.(will be unlocked within 48 hours of patch.)

Welcome to another Star Sonata Dev Diary!

Today we’re going to talk about the Merchant Navy! Most players are going to associate this group to either the Merchant Navy Contriver or Merchant Navy Seal Commander. We hope to expand this association to be a presence within Terran space and a notable player contact for various missions and storylines.

The Merchant Navy, the future administrators of Strontium-90, pay most of their bills by hunting pirates and defending trade routes in the Terran heart worlds. Visually identified by their Paxian-like but not quite boomerang ships, the Merchant Navy maintains peace while Earthforce itself deals with more universal threats. This means that the Merchant Navy will take over from Earthforce as the primary player contact for missions in the lower levels while Earthforce interactions pick up later in progression. Orca and Porpoise will now be retextured to be Merchant Navy variants and will visually move away from the Paxian look but we will keep original look as a free skin for those that prefer that style.

Outside of Strontium-90, this will be slow transition as we move through the early game and readjust our protagonist allies in various missions, zones and content. Earthforce will still have player interactions but Merchant Navy will provide another key mission vendor.

Greetings! I’m reaching out to update you all on the release schedule for the next universe cycle and the upcoming changes to PvP in Wild Space. My aim here is to provide high-level information on the planned changes and communicate when you may expect more detailed information and a concrete universe reset announcement. If you’re just here for the basic information, here it is:

1. The next universe reset will occur in April at the earliest.

2. Once decided, the reset date will be announced with four weeks’ notice.

3. Upon universe reset, there will be a two-week temporary universe so that players can get accustomed to the new ownership mechanics in Wild Space.

4. After the two-week temporary universe, another reset will occur and we will have a full 4-month universe.

If you have any questions or clarifications, you can feel free to send me a DM on Discord at enk#3571.

Controlling and Contesting Territory

While contesting territory is an iconic part of Star Sonata, too often it takes place in a cynical manner where the actual value of the territory is irrelevant and the true aim of the conflict is to inconvenience one’s opponent. To make matters worse, the rules and restrictions surrounding galaxy assault are impossibly complicated to the point that even the devs are not always certain of every detail of the system. It is clear that we need to drastically simplify the process of contesting territory, and do so in a way that prioritizes genuine conflict over resources.

One of the greatest obstacles to this vision is the current ownership system. Simply put, it’s too quick and easy. In a short ten minutes, you are capable of greatly reducing your opponent’s ability to assault your territory, and any assault they would make would be subject to the arcane rules of BvB. We are going to have to make some big changes to galaxy ownership if we are going to realize our vision for Wild Space conflict.

We have prepared two major changes to the process of claiming and contesting territory in Wild Space:

1. Establishing ownership will take longer than before, and carry an initial and periodic resource cost. Instead of merely controlling a galaxy for ten minutes, you must deploy a new type of base and complete a resource-intensive construction project in order to establish ownership. This process may take a couple hours. Once ownership is established, a steady stream of resources will be consumed to maintain it.

2. There is no PvP possible whatsoever in owned galaxies.

Note that these changes work together to focus all territory conflict on the first few hours after an initial claim, as this is the time when it’s most typical to see genuine conflict over resources. The rules of engagement are also drastically simplified since all fighting takes place in an unowned galaxy state.

Changes to Base Combat

Focusing all territory conflict into the unowned galaxy state means that we need to make some changes to how base combat works. Otherwise, it would be too easy for people to deploy effectively unlimited numbers of bases (especially unattached bases) and cause the same kind of lag and frustration that led us to take this project on in the first place. We have prepared a couple changes to base combat that will address this concern:

1. Unattached bases can’t be deployed in unowned galaxies.

2. Base weapon ranges are greatly reduced (maxing out around 3k overall).

3. Bases no longer use healing weapons.

The reason base weapon ranges are so long is to allow bases to effectively defend against players while the base owners are offline. This is no longer necessary since ownership confers absolute defense against PvP. In the new system, base combat (against other players) only takes place in a window of a few hours, during which time the base owners are online and actively working to establish ownership. Therefore, it’s no longer necessary for bases to be able to “take care of themselves” to the same extent as they do on Liberty. A similar explanation holds for the removal of base healing: this is something that helps bases stay alive while their owners are offline, but that won’t be a concern anymore in the new system.

These changes mean that contesting territory is all about surgical PvB against your opponent’s isolated industry bases, all the while fending off PvP from that opponent and potential PvB incursions against your own growing territory. The best thing about this is that the time scale of each fight is on the order of an hour or two, not a 12-hour BvB slog or a universe-long war of attrition. I’ll never forget the time my EU friends made me get up at 2 AM Eastern to organize a BvB and then teased me six hours later for wanting to take a break for breakfast.

Mid-Universe Reveals

Changing the ownership mechanics as detailed above has some serious knock-on effects to other aspects of Wild Space. By ruling out any PvP in owned galaxies, we could be making Wild Space too safe and boring. Not only that, but someone who had an unlucky reset or joined mid-universe would not have any way of taking territory away from those who got there first. It turns out that these two concerns share a common solution: mid-universe galaxy reveals.

1. Every 9 days and 17 hours*, a fresh batch of galaxies will appear in Wild Space, connected in some way to the existing map.

2. These galaxies will have higher average resource abundance to make up for lost time.

3. Since ownership is a time- and resource-intensive process, it no longer requires a connection to your team’s HQ. Anyone with spare base slots will be able to compete for the newly revealed galaxies no matter where they appear on the map.

*Bonus points if you can figure out the logic behind this timing!

Release Schedule

We will continue the precedent of giving four weeks’ notice of universe resets. This means that April is the earliest that the current universe can end. You can expect detailed information on the Wild Space Conflict project to be released along with the universe reset notice. In order to give players time to familiarize themselves with the new ownership mechanics, the next universe reset will enter a 2-week temporary universe after which we’ll reset into a full 4-month universe.

I’m sure that many of you have questions and concerns about the information I’ve shared here. That is completely natural and expected since I’ve glossed over the details and left out a lot of nitty-gritty considerations and adjustments we’ve got planned. Rest assured: you’ll get your hands on all that information when we make the 4-week universe reset notice. However, if you are fired up about this and can’t wait until then, you are more than welcome to reach out to me via Discord DM and share your comments, questions, and concerns.

[Empyrean Zone]

• Added additional drops to bosses and added additional gear exchanges at the Celestial Encampment base (new AC will be added within 48 hours after patch).

[Engineer Changes]

• Engineer Class Skill 3 now gives 33% Resistance to Damage when in a Support Freighter.
• Zen of Engineer gives 1% of Resistance per level to Temporary Drones (the skill doesn’t currently list – will be fixed in future patch).
• Took 1 of the shields off of all non-super item bubble drones. Reduced the diameter of all non-super item bubbles. Each Bubble drone now gives nearby drones a chunk of flat shield bank, starting at 30k with the Droplet Drone and reaching 500k with the Twisted Galactic Bubble Drone.

[UI/Client Changes]

• Generic Gear and Augmenter debris now have visuals that reflects the quality of the item.
• Client now takes player’s level of nanotech plating into account when calculating repair costs instead of giving wrong costs
• Cargo hold tooltip no longer goes negative when out of cargo slots.
• Added a new Neon Blue Delquadrikamdon skin.
• Added a new Neon Red Phoenix skin.
• Added a new Jelly fish Model and texture.
• Added a new Space Grey skin for the Space Blue family of ships.
• Added a new Kelvin Advanced skin for the Kelvin.
• Fixed Delquadrikamdons engine placement.
• New models and textures, and glowmaps for the following: Goblin Family, Cleft Thorns, Voltage Family, Inferno Family, Kelvin Family, Constable Family, and Monochrome Family.
• Missiles no longer appear in the squad/assets bar.

[Skill Changes]

• Update description of Bot Ph.D. to clarify that it gives 2 extra combat/wild bots on swarm limit.
• Fixed skill description of team roster skill to say starts with 70 slots.

[Item Changes]

• Faranji Pulse Charger aura on Unt Faranji Wingship now works on combat bots.
• Adjusted stats on Astranomologica Augmenter so that it is strictly an upgrade.
• Platform Augmentation Alpha, Beta and Gamma blueprints no longer require Drone Mastery to install.
• Reduced Galactic Junk Station Kits starting credits from 10 mil to 100k.
• Reduced the manhours from 400,000,000 to 100,000,000 for the blueprints for Kalthi Commander, Kalthi Deployer, Kalthi Stinger and Kalthi Warrior.
• Shattered Celestial Core again decays on universe reset per previous patch notes now there’s a use for it.
• Reduced Particle Stream augmod from 30 flat speed to 25.
• Coordinator Gemini Support Platform class-specific super item inbuilt to the Kalthi Armored Deployer has had the 20% damage reduction buff granted by the Sub Drone removed.
• Renamed Small Pax Cosmologica Fighter Generator Crate to Small Pax Cosmologica Fighter Crate.
• Fixed the Sas mission to give proper Pax Cosmologica Fighter Crate.
• Kalthi Armored Sanctuary, inbuilt to Kalthi Armored Warrior electric cost reduced from 2,500 per second to 300 per second.
• Kalthi Blazing Engagement, inbuilt to Kalthi Armored Warrior, has additional damage and -range, +vis debuffs if you manage to charge straight into an enemy.
• Updated description on the Kalthi Blazing Engagement.
• Adjusted the Wrathful Snare Mine’s effects: Additional +4500 vis to enemies within the drone’s active range, Resistance reduction increased from +10% to +20%, Speed reduction increased from -85% to -95%, increased drone lifetime to last 10 minutes, fixed the visibility adjustments so it stealths better; still susceptible to suns and detection like Seers.
• Changed the Wrathful Snare Mine Device to have a cooldown of 2 minutes and updated the description.
• Reduced the maximum opacity of the Deployer Weak Point Cover Up super item’s visuals (used to be a blinding green).
• Increased all the Kalthi Warrior Focus super items charge time from 90 seconds to 120 seconds.
• Kalthi Heart Focus superitem: add a -electric tempering at the end along with new visuals. Consumes shields instead of reducing Shield Max.
• Kalthi Warrior Focus super: grant immunity to grem and critical hits while in regen phase. Extra 5% life steal afterwards. Fixed the visual color to blue.
• Kalthi Warrior Mind focus super item: removed the -energy max penalty, deploy a huge electron cloud revealing surround objects.
• Kalthi Armored Commander’s Fighter Overdrive Blitz class-locked superitem fixed to actually work. Drawback effects are no longer a separate aura tweak, so only the fighters that receive the benefits suffer the drawbacks of the ability.
• Kalthi Armored Commander’s Commander Coordination Array cooldown was reduced from 5 minutes to 3 minutes.
• Converted Pax Stratos & Heliosoleta ships and Grand Navigator capital augmenters in “Allied Staging Sector” to trade bay exchanges (will need to be live edited shortly after patch).
• Added new super item to Voulge, Gravity Well Stabilizer, that reduces speed of self, allies and foes greatly and gives a forced thurster tweak.
• Reworked Voulge Thruster and Flamberge Thruster super items to be powerful Oilheart Afterburners, with the electric regen utility from the old version preserved.
• Adjusted the Voulge and Flamberge Charge Drones: Increased the electric regen tweak, Increased the HPS on the drone, now gain Energy Damage resistance when healed.
• Zeus’ Energizing Beam will no longer be Neurobound on purchase.
• Crawl Wyrm Blueprint now requires 50 Petroleum, instead of 5000.

[AI Changes]

• Ruined Sanctuary and Empyrean zone bosses are now listed on the Instance Scaling Leaderboard.
• Fixed issue with Darkerhole’s reflectivity so its harder to see then Darkhole.

[Universe Changes]

• Added Translator Droid for purchase on Earth Central in Sol.

[Next Universe Changes]

• Preventing the placement of Warp Beacons in Emphatic Biology and Empathy Field. You cannot transwarp to an engineless galaxy anyways and prevents players from wasting warp beacons.
• Removing planets in Building Academy Entrance.
• Increased the drop chance of Holochart Fragment Epsilon within Tortuga.
• Renamed “Undergrowth” in the Protoplasmica to “The Undergrow” due to being a duplicate name to a galaxy within The Jungle.
• Added additional loot to Kalthi.
• Adjusted some Kalthi Armada Commander’s minions’ attack patterns to work properly.
• Moved Imperial Tweaking level one to Earth Central with other Imperial Skills and removed the AI Base from Anatolia.

[Mission Changes]

• Fixed the “Get Piloting 7″ mission to require “Get Piloting 5″ to be completed prior to becoming available.
• Removed some improper xml tags from the description for the Constable mission “Undercover Investigation”.

[System]

• Expanded base log system. See this dev diary for more information.
• New fuzzy Market Check search. See this dev diary for more information.
• Attempting to transfer, capture and/or dock bots/wild bots will now list all of the items that have skill levels too high to the prevent the action from occurring.
• Changed use condition for base upgrading to be using a kit while docked in a base, rather than while targeting a base. Will allow players to place bases without having to deselect another base.
• Can now upgrade bases within the same tech without the owner needing to be online, tech increasing will still require them to be online. Error messages now communicate this better.
• Transwarp no longer factors in avoided galaxies when determining distance.
• Negative Transference resistance reduces healing again.
• Resistance to Damage auras reduces healing.
• Wild Bots can no longer scoop items via RTS command.
• Made AI/bots think faster when they are in combat. This should result in better and quicker weapon choices if the target’s resistance profile changes.
• For items that have a tech requirement, their info box now properly states “base” instead of “ship” when it is a base only item.
• Dungeons will now reflect the premium status of the galaxy they’re in.
• Bases will now consider envelopments at the same weight as the target they were trying to hit if they expect to hit the envelopment instead of the target when prioritizing targets.
• Galaxy scanners can no longer be used remotely.
• Reduction of excessive graphical and network spam with warhead effects.
• Event chat now includes the new buy/sell price on ‘Updating prices for’ message when updated.
• Updated self-destruct error message when already in spirit form.

[Bug Fixes]

• Fixed a bug where player assets wouldn’t update with team skill changes on galaxy state changes (ownership).
• Fix for monthly mission reset timer not using the right time zone as the rest of the time resets when determining the current month.
• Fixed bot order limit using the programming characters order limit rather than the bot owners order limit.
• Fixed a bug with re-centering not working correctly sometimes.
• Fixed certain AC trade or normal sales being blocked for items with no scrap value.
• Fixed a issue where super items would still work if already equipped even if the hull tech exceeded the limit the super states.
• Controlbots will now auto unequip if somehow equipped on anything but a bot or if multiple are equipped.
• Fixed a bug where Outpost Drones did not respect the team Outposts skill limit.
• Fixed a bug with bases unequipping items into multiple stacks.
• Fixed a bug with base extenders not unequipping if there’s an unequipped stack of it already.
• Bot fighter/missile selection will no longer select a missile/fighter too high tech for the bay to use, preventing launching.
• Fixed a bug that made you lose the TSL storage bonus during the last 24 hours of a subscription.
• Fixed a bug where drone resists could be included in ship scan results.
• Trade bots are no longer affected by /botsfight or /botsattack.
• Fixed an bug with Concourses at universe generation not properly linking.
• Fixed juxtaposition being able to randomly choose the same gal twice making a dead end.
• Fixed a bug that causes certain custom galaxies to overridden to no PvP rules due to layer settings during universe generation.

Welcome to another Star Sonata Dev Diary!

Today we’re going to talk about an upcoming backend expansion, Base Logs and Market Check! One of the most sought after and longest asked for things in the history of Star Sonata!

Base Logs

Currently on the live server, base logs are divided into 4 categories that store 15 logs each – Trade, Construction, Management, and Important (trades over 100 million credits). None of which saves when the server crashes or is restarted currently. Most important gets washed away by docking, bot purchases or various odd-ball tasks.

We’ve taken that and expanded it to 9 categories and 15 logs per category. Some categories retain memory while the server is up but on restart or crash are not retained due to being lower priority.

List of Items that display and save with server crash/restart:

Trade: Buying and Selling under 100 million credits.

Important Trades: Trades greater than 100 million credit but lower than 10 billion credits.

Very Important Trades: Trades greater than 10 billion credits.

Management: Equip/Unequip, Use Item, Toss Item, Set Trade Bay

Ledger: Construction Started/Finished, Transfer Item, Install Blueprint, Cancel Construction, Add/Remove Credits.

Status: Set Name, Changed Rank Access, Set Team, Transfer Base, Hostile Takeover, Abandoned.

List of items that are retained in memory but don’t save:

Construction Misc: Pausing/Resuming/Setting Description.

Bots: Docking and Buying/Selling of Bots.

Docking: Docking by players.

While not a radical departure from the current state and the interface remains the same – we hope to add additional features that are able to build off this first iteration to help players better manage their shops, production hubs and have greater insight into past events.

Market Check

Next up is the market check search, which can now perform “fuzzy” searches. When an exact match can’t be found the client will present a selection dialog with a list of up to 50 similarly spelt items, ordered by how similar they are to the search term. The algorithm is fairly simple, looking at the number of matching words and letters.

We also optimized the interface to ignore capitalization as some items (Artifact) were picky about exact matches in the past. These changes should help players spend less time focusing on exact spelling.

This morning a bunch of duplicate credit card charges accidentally went out to our credit card processor.  We have refunded all of the duplicate charges.

Our two old servers were supposed to have been taken offline and wiped.  One of them was, but the old web and database server was mysteriously brought back online by our hosting provider this morning unwiped after being offline for many days, and it ran our recurring billing process as soon as it came up based on its stale data.  Jey has connected to it and completely wiped it.

Our apologies for any problems or inconvenience that this may have caused.