>>> Star Sonata Development Diary #3 <<<

What's NEW in the development pipeline for Star Sonata? We dish some details.

Q: What Star Sonata game issue would you most like to see addressed?

What you have neglected over time is mostlikely Engines 20.
And i really would like to know the future of the Engineer and DM class.

Good to know things are progressing in the right direction.

I like the idea of having the chat client alert you of ingame events. Features like that will be very useful once the chat client is complete. To be honest, though, I'm not sure I like the idea of the skill-based team message boards. It seems a little pointless to me since most serious teams already have team forums up and running. On the other hand, if some really unique features were introduced I might change my mind about it.

As for unaddressed game issues, one thing that has annoyed me for a long time is bug where slaves that dock and deactivate when you are undocked send out a copy of their ship with your name and don't appear in the ship list until you log out or warp. When you dock, the copies are sent out again. This bug was in the bug tracker for months and then was removed without ever being fixed.

An even worse, more annoying bug is the one where you tell slaves to dock and deactivate, or warp and dock and deactivate, and for some reason they decide somewhere along the line to stop following orders and to follow you, which makes no sense unless somehow they can't see warps or AI bases right next to them 10% of the time. This has happened to me dozens of times a day while capping and annoyed me to no end.

an fyi i will be posting a reply to jons video on youtube so keep your eyes peeled for that!

Make sure you set it as 18+ since it involves you and video's.

Something really needs to be done about DM.

MFs aren't a problem once tweaks are nerfed.

Fix FC already, do something with the slaves please. Like elec tempering. Please. Pretty please?

Engines 20 definitely needs to be done. Been said and said all over but just in case someone forgot.

Hardcode all the PvP bullshit. Frankly these "rules" are becoming rather annoying. If all else fails make custom PvP limits for each player.
For instance:

- Killing over 3 people per hour adds an aggro point for each kill that is over the limit.
- 1 aggro point will diminish you pvp range by some %.
- it takes 2 hours (or more) for one aggro point to dissipate.
- Each levelup dissipates 1 aggro point (optional).
- Killing someone over 3 times per hour causes you to get 3 aggro points per any kill
- Killing someone over 5 times per hour causes you to to loose the ability to shoot that person for some time
- Killing a slave/drone/base adds 1 aggro point if owner is not in the gal
- Killing a slave/drone/base adds 0.5 aggro points if owner is in the gal
- Healing someone that is gaining aggro points causes you to gain them them too
- These rules do not affect war targets
- These rules work on base kills too
- War takes 1 hour to declare.
- War takes 24 hours to undeclare (red tape is a bitch).
- Cannot leave a team if team has declared war on another team (you started the fight, finish it)
- Cannot leave a team that has war declared on it for 24 after declaration (you pissed someone off, you take the heat)
- Cannot join a team that is at war or has war declared on by other team.
- Cannot join a team that had declared war for 48 hours after war has been undeclared
- Only teams with more then 10 active P2P accounts on them can declare war.

- This list is not complete

Numbers and penalties are to be decided by those that implement, this is just an example.

looks good except for the bit with accumulating aggro on slave/drones while owner is in gal, then it just makes killing dm and sm a bigger annoyance to kill. otherwise, I say put this in suggestions

I'm pretty sure he meant perma-drones, and I like that suggestion a lot... seems fair to me. That would even avoid the uber low level base problem, after a couple hours it wouldnt be able to shoot anything except players of its own level.

Thanks for the video Jon, it was great to see again some admin outreach.

I would have to agree with Yurble, Eng20 is a big deal but I think that's being covered?

I definatly agree with one thing Q said, and that is the things about pvp. And rules in general. Alot of things are subjective atm, up to the good judgement of the admin or mod in question. If things are more concrete, people might still complain, but they'll have alot less reason to complain.

However, I am going to say my most pressing issue is with the drastic nature of nerfs and the imbalances that need a beef to correct. There are a number of ruin items that aren't salable because nobody in a right mind would pay the extract for. I really, really like the idea of ruins. However, I think they really, really need an overhaul. I would be glad to provide a list of some items I think have a great ammount of potential to make players happy and the game more fun, if they recieved a small tweak or a reduced extraction cost. monies in game atm are tight, it seems people are having alot of trouble making cash. This is not good for the long term, since peeps will get bored, or they'll just use the cookie cutter gear and weapons instead of something that could be better, but is unaffordable.

That video was really great

Programmers keeping in contact

I agree with Yurble-- Engine 20 needs to be implemented.

There is also the balance issue.

I think there are too many classes and a good start would be to get rid of some of the "lame-duck" classes. Look at the ones most characters choose and run with them.

Lay off nerfs and give some classes beefs.

Ruin items need to be looked at some are very old and out of touch with the current game.


Finally a BIGGEE--- galaxies, last reset several senior players failed to get galaxies despite taking part in the reset rush.

For most top end players a decent galaxy is a necessity as the top end costs are enormous. We need either more galaxies, or a system that will provide an equitable distribution, or Splitting SS and running two games.

BTW the nett result is 3 players in my team have suspended playing SS and MAY be back for the next reset.

its true its not easy to get a gal with reset. i ended up never getting one so i kinda share with yurble this uni. its not easy at all..perhaps split the spawn points for players to multiple different locations in the uni at opposite corners of W0? possibly add the other two arms we are missing from our universes? XD another possibility i have talked about with my team mates but i don't belive i ever put on the forums was splitting the universe. make one whole universe spiral with W0,W1,W2 and the buildable parts of W3. then make another universe spiral that has W3. anchor them to eachother using special warps at the end of buildable w3 that lead to the center of the new W3 universe spiral.

maybe a bit much..might not be useful until we have many many more players and ofc w4-w5 would need to be re-evaluated and restructured so that people don't spend 3 hours to get anywhere.

ahh one more thing! if the chat client is going to warn you when your bases are attacked could you please PLEASE, remove the attack warning bases get if their planet flys through a sun? or would it be restricted to attacks that make it to the team chat warnings?

overall sounds good. and UDP will help quite a bit as well. if i understand correctly TCP/IP sends a packet then waits for a response before sending another one. whereas UDP sends a packet, then the next without requiring a response to the first packet? this should speed things up quite a bit and may even make it more reliable for those times of day when everyone and their aunt's,mother's,daughter's first cousin's brother's gay lover's pet pidgeon's monkey's whore is on the internet. XD

and THANKS FOR THE VID! hope to see more soon. i am deeply gratefull that our admins are giving us more updates. even if its a brief note saying stuff is progressing and a little detail sprinkled in to pacify us its totally worth it and is totally the best! thanks again.

just a warning i was tired (up for 36+ hours) so theres a bit of rambling, also i used a webcam (could not find my digital camera) so quality isnt the best. but ya!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFY2XJ5gf-w

lol Julian, that tiredness was just an excuse for you being stoned, wasn't it?!

Daaaaaaamn!

Julian thats fucked up!

I didnt even look at the video, i just went for Audio cause the quality was so shitty.

I say, remove the warning if an ATTACHED base goes through a sun.

Keep the warning if a non attached base goes through a sun.

That way you will still know if someone tractors your base into a sun.

Yes you said planet, but just to make it clear.
It would probably be easier to program that way too...