We are planning on doing a large rebalancing of several game mechanics this uni. Since rebalancing these things will require us to check the resulting difficulty and level of every AI, we are going to do them all at once. As we work on them, these changes will be on test for a good amount of time for everyone to try out and give their feedback before they go live.

The document that describes the rebalancing plan is at http://wiki.starsonata.com/index.php/Big_Rebalance.

maybe i've read over it.... but what will happen to Titan drones?
and, if you have DM20 and DR3, how many t20 drones can you dep? i'm really crap at reading stuff well xD

I look forward to seeing this go to testing.. should be very interesting. Couple questions though.

1]Will players that are having their classes altered drastically, mine (DM), be allotted aug resets or something similar? This is a MASSIVE overhaul to the drone master class.

2] Will the engineer class be given +%elec recovery?

3] What about drones like BFD's; is their base damage ok as is, or will all drones be rebalanced vs. certain lvl'ed AI?

4] And what of the dreaded titans? It wouldn't be such a bad thing if their resists were stripped to at least half of what they are now and lower their Shield bank a bit. If not that, then boost their cost by at least 5x or so and leave them how they are to counter the cost of a gg20.

5] Will there be more T20 DPS drones added in the future? Only 3 t20 drones are usable without Infinite Knowledge. Titans, BFD's, and BMBD4's are t20 as well.

On a side note, I like how the 'Party Drone' System was implemented... with the drones giving bonuses to other drones. Should be very interesting if carried out in a controlled manner..

All in all, well done on the new balancing ideas.

In essence, you could deploy 6 t20 drones. Some drones will take up 2 slots, ie: charge drones, and others possibly.

No matter what DD you have you can deploy 3 drones. DM 20 gives you 3 more slots. DR doesnt help you deploy temporary drones, it just makes them stronger.
So with DD 20 and DM 20 you can deploy 6 tech 20 drones, assuming all those drones only takes up 1 drone slot. I have no idea which will take up more.

even though im rather new to this game i can see this will just make it harder for us newer players to level up as much or as easily as the older gen players have. plus the not being able to deploy tech lvl 20 drones without having a tech 20 ship should be across the WHOLE player base as in you cannot have slaves higher than your piloting skill i recon this should also apply to droners if u have pil 20 but are not flying a teck 20 ship it mostly because drones cost so damn much and do not go into stasis when killed unlike slave with stasis generators and so we generally cannot afford a nice new ship at times.all in all from what ive read my personal opinion is your trying to balance the game far to far and to fast for most newer people to replace there current set ups were not all super rich in game.i recon alot of us who just joined and are pay to play will think stuff it and go elsewear thatll be your loss

My first thought is that you may need to give everyone an aug reset - this is a massive, though possibly very positive, change to augs.

What about storage ships - Thatches etc. are about to get a great deal smaller, will base gear see any change in size to lets folks store it?

Otherwise looking forward to testing some of the new ideas

Don't forget to rebalance the hull space on all freighters, such as thatches, dark freighters, (emperor's) behemoths, levis and so on. People still need to carry their 30k sized base gear, and levi slaves still need to transport commods.

I don't like drastic changes, but oh well...

Astral Injections should still apply to temporary drones.

I love drastic changes



tharkunash, This really wont effect lower level players as much as you think. The negative effects on players will also effect the AIs. There are also easier ways to level then using drones, maybe not as fast but sure as hell easier and cheaper.

I like the thought of this rebalance. However, I can't help but notice that my favourite class, DM, is covered with nerfs over half that post on wiki.. You do know what the result of the drones rememembering shield thing will be don't you? As if drones weren't costly enough as it is we will now either be forced to find a way to run around with 2 or 3 times as many drones or risk losing them all because they got redeployed with no shield. Thats my main concern with this atm, how it will affect other factors such as playability (yes I play mostly alone, and I like it that way) we will have to see when it comes and I shall keep an open mind to that. Just please don't fuck it over completely, I know a large portion of the cash that has vanished from ingame lately has been from DM's. I think I've spent (and possibly lost) about 100 billion credits on my DM in a couple universes now, please don't ensure that was a complete waste and set me back a couple years work...

Thanks, Willy

considering aug math will get hammered, everyone should get all augs on all of their ships unequipped...

Well Voomy, admins will have to rebalance everything. They will have to change hull on most trade freighters, stats of all shields and energies, EPS of all weapons in game (because everyone will have substantially lower energy regeneration) and so on and so forth. And the more changes there are, the greater the chance of them missing something important. I hope I will have as much fun figuring a way out of this mess as admins will have programming it in.

Limpa's suggestion is even better than aug resets, since people may also have multiple combat and/or trade slaves to change.

classes that dont get hull bonuses, will have 22k hull on their 6 heph thatches...

HOORAY!!!!

You uberguys know: this wil lower your LF's hullspace;)

haha, i like this alot.
but are you going to do something with the stable OL's? seems like they are being rendered useless after this patch.

5 Heph thatch, AT25 with the old system would be 5500*2^5 = 176000 hull, with the new system it would be 5500+5500*2+5500*2+5500*2+5500*2+5500*2 = 60500 hull, does that mean we have to double/triple our amount of storage thatches to store base gear?