Welcome to another Star Sonata Dev Diary! Today we’re going back into the Emperor system, talking about new Wild Space improvements and the new ways to target farm for augmenters.
How to become Emperor?
Let’s dive into the mechanical details of the new Emperor system. To be crowned emperor you need points called Influence.
These points are gained from 3 types of Anatolian bosses that spawn within the Anatolian Expanse:
Polemarchos gives 300 Influence
Starategos gives 30 Influence
Taxiarhos gives 3 Influence
The harder the boss and the more influence it gives, the longer it takes to respawn. Influence is awarded on a teamwide basis and any team that participates in killing an Anatolian boss gets some Influence from the total pool. Because Influence is apportioned for different things, any time spent dealing damage to a boss will make you eligible for points; however, getting the finishing blow is also worth a heavy portion of the bosses Influence pool. Influence is awarded instantly upon kill via an event chat notification of your team’s share and does not require scooping anything or having to turn anything in.
Once a team has greater than 9000 Influence and a sufficient lead in Influence over any other contenders, they will automatically be awarded the Imperial Throne and the contest will be over. After crowning an Emperor there is a cooldown period of three weeks during their reign where no Influence can be earned. After the cooldown period all teams have their influence points set to zero and the cycle starts again. However the incumbent Emperor remains in position and still gets the perks of being Emperor until a new one succeeds them.
Fighting for Emperor up until the very end is still worth it, even if there are only a few weeks left in the universe. This is because the majority of the rewards for becoming Emperor are granted immediately upon claiming the throne.
[h2]After being crowned Emperor[/h2]
Once crowned Emperor, the Director of the winning team will take ownership of the Imperial Palace, which is invulnerable and takes up no base slots. Only members of the reigning team can dock at the palace and management access is set to Councillors. A Splendid Imperial Trove, a crate with the following unbound items will be placed in the palace awaiting the Emperor’s team once crowned:
150 Imperial Chests
3 Imperial Augmenter Resets
3 Imperial Ship Dry-Dock Modules
Additionally, members of the ruling team will receive win points: three for directors, two for councillors, and one for everyone else. The director also gets Leadership 3 if they do not already have it, granting access to the exclusive Emperor’s Club in Sol. Lastly, a universal 5% tithe on colony profits and scooped credits accrues in the reigning team’s funds until the next Emperor is named.
[h2]PvP Items[/h2]
There is a new item tag on the Anatolian Crest that drops from Midas’ Fleet within the Anatolian Expanse, with the following unique properties:
Drops on death.
Drops on layer change (tow or jump).
Drops on ship evaporation (1 minute after logoff).
Decays on new uni.
Prevents Transwarp.
Bots cannot scoop.
Debris has high visibility.
Gives high visibility if you scoop.
Debris is persistent for 48 hours via any action other than tossing.
Once docked, it cannot be transferred to another ship or tossed; it must be used or destroyed (scrapped) before undocking is possible.
Wild Space Changes
We have heard loud and clear from the community that obtaining a foothold in Wild Space at the beginning of the universe was frustrating due to the relatively small number of galaxies revealed at the start. We have recalibrated the reveal process in two important ways: it is now front loaded with substantially more galaxies appearing on Day 1, and the rate of new reveals is much higher early on in the universe as well.
We have also touched up the resource distribution code to make galaxies that reveal later considerably more desirable.
[h2]Ownership Process[/h2]
We also made a number of changes to the Command & Control Station Kit which should provide more depth to Wild Space territory control, especially between teams looking to snag the same galaxy. No longer will your only recourse be to kill the opposing teams Command & Control base.
Command & Control (C&C) bases cannot be irradiated. This means that you are unable to capture an enemy’s C&C base without the owner of the base intentionally abandoning it.
Command & Control bases must be deployed within 3k distance from the edge of a sun. The universe generation code been updated accordingly so that at least 3 suns are found in every Wild Space galaxy.
The Nullification Generator build time has been increased from 2 hours to 3 hours, but a new system has been introduced that can accelerate the build speed back down under 2 hours (see #4 below).
We have added a basebound factory called Nullification Generator Construction Support. This factory automatically constructs Ownership Booster Drones as long as it is equipped and supplied with materials. Ownership Booster Drones auto-deploy upon being built and orbit the station at a distance of 8k.
Each deployed drone provides a 16.7% build speed increase to the man-hours required to complete the Nullification Generator Blueprint. In theory, a team can reduce the build time for a Nullification Generator to approximately 100 minutes by constantly building these drones.
[h2]Colony Changes[/h2]
We’ve implemented a few new features and expansions to existing Colony content. We’ve buffed the colony enhancement items (Mobile Mani-Pedi SolonBot Housing, Optimo-Life (TM) Curation Station, Atmospheric Robotic Vacuum Dock) to increase the storehouse of the colony which will increase the number of items it will buy and sell every interval.
We have also added a new toggle within the Colony tab to disable specific bases from trading with that colony. For example, if you have 3 Extraction Expert bases and one Colonial Administration base attached to a planet, you can disable colony trading from the Extraction Expert bases to help maximize profits. You can only toggle this on bases you own.
Common Augmenter Sourcing
Common augmenters (Minor, Basic, Std, etc.) are some of the most iconic items in Star Sonata. They are used extensively throughout the game: countless builds, ship improvements, and outfitting bases for combat are all reliant on these items. Dungeons have always been a great way to gather augmenters, but the variety of augmenters was always inconsistent (looking at you, Good Electric Augmenter). This led to scarcity of certain augs that weren’t commonly found equipped on AI, not to mention a variety of unintuitive farming locations.
To alleviate this disparity and refocus gameplay on DGing, we are taking a new approach to the sourcing of common augmenters. Starting at universe reset, you will be able to “target farm” the augmenters of your choice to a much greater extent than ever before. Dungeon bosses will gain extra loot rolls that are dedicated to Common augmenters, and will often drop several augmenters at once. Each boss is capable of dropping four “flavors” of Common augmenter and the tech level of the augmenters dropped is determined (along with some RNG) by the subjective strength of the dungeon boss. For example a Green Battleship boss might drop from a pool of Damage, Speed, Targeting and Docking Augmenters. Whatever specific augmenters you’re looking for, you will be able to find many different DG bosses that can provide them. To make doubly sure of this, we are also greatly increasing the number of DGs in the game. One final note: ordinary AI ships will continue to spawn with random augmenters but they will no longer carry dedicated augmenters as in the past.
