Hey folks,

Time for a new dev update! Here's what we've done in the last week. This weeks question/player concerns were all about C2. Check the answers out below.

Dev Notes

• Universe shape is done
  
  • All is left is to make sure all special gals are on the right layer

• Equipped gear glue and tech on slaves will now be reported in the slave status.
• Missiles that time out/fail to reach their target and don't return home will self-destruct.
• Too far away hint to get the player back to the solar system.
• Added tips only for bases that the new player can actually use.
• Added half a dozen player reported bugs to test track
• Fixed a long standing whiskey mission bug
• Fixed a crash bug in C1 with projectiles

• DB save work
  
  • Got souls saving into the database
  • Made global structure for the db save workbench
• New fighters are mostly done
  
  • Waiting on a player to finish some nice missions for them to put them in

• Finished setting prices on shields, which had been forgotten
• Parasites:
  
  • Parasites now do more damage based on augs and skills
  • Added fire parasites to all non-laser heat weapons
  • Made it so weapons that inject parasites list how much extra damage the do over time
• Drone Controllers:
  
  • Finished drone controllers
  • Finished drone controller BPs
  • Added BPs to shadow
• Increased range on all capship field gens so they are advantageous over short ranged DM drone aura gens
• Beefing MF revers after playtest with AcidFlame

• Client 2:
  
  • Added floaties
  • Updated network messages
  • Fixed an exception in shipvisages
• Client 1:
  
  • Fixed the transferall
  • Made is so alias shows up in target window instead of CS... or TS... for the owner

• Missiles:
  
  • Going to make missiles faster and inherit velocity to make them have a much better chance of hitting the target without being killed by random shots

Player Questions

1. The team/possessions/missions windows... want those to be resizable.. and want em to remember their size
   
   • I don't see any issue with this. All of these will be changed at least somewhat too.
2. Want to sort missionlist by status or by name, maybe even a search function ( though that probably isnt ui related anymore... )
   
   • All columns of all tables of all windows will be sortable.
   • A search/filter function for most windows with lots of stuff will be added
3. Most annoying thing for me atm is managing docked slaves...
   
   • There was a time I discussed doing a Copy/Paste config for ships, which while docked in an AI base would do its best to copy the configuration of one ship into the other by buying selling items, maybe this would help?
   • Transferring items will be much easier. I'm hoping for a drag and drop interface, with stacking optional, so say you want to configure 4 ships the same way, you buy 4 of each item you want, then disable stacking on your inventory temporarily, ctrl click the items for each slave, drag and drop to each one in the list. This would be much quicker then right click, transfer, find ship, click for each slave.
4. I also find it annoying when I want to see what route my AP will take, but until my ship takes me there, I cannot be sure which route it shall take me on. The map viewer should display this information.
   
   • The map will display this info in C2.
5. An annoyance I encounter quite frequently is that I cannot add a waypoint to my autopilot routes. As a slow zerker, I prefer to avoid large galaxies with the wormholes far apart. I am required to manually navigate away from these gals, which defeats the point of *Auto*pilot.
   
   • This sounds like a good idea, but instead of waypoint, maybe a nowaypoint. You mark enemy and long distance gals as nowaypoint and your Autopilot ignores them unless its impossible.
6. The problem with the current system of things is that we have to use the chat bar to search for galaxies, when we want to check if a friend is online, etc. It is not obvious to new players that they are required to use the /search command in the chat bar, so a search box should be implemented in the map viewer itself.
   
   • Most slash commands will be replaced with intuitive UI.
7. The friends list feature is such an obscure feature, I am sure many players don't know such a feature exists. A separate window for friends would solve this, and perhaps a little popup could tell us when a friend logs on? Or at least a notification in the Event channel.
   
   • There will be a new buddy list on the right of the chat that will have your friends in one tab, and teammates in another. This will be hide-able to save real estate.
8. Its annoying that you can't Abort a mission when you select it in a station -- you have to go all the way to the Missions list and look through your 200 or something Missions not in any order trying to find the mission to abort.
   
   • I will add abort to the station mission list.
9. All of bubba's stuff
   
   • Most of that is answered somewhere in here, or will be doable.
10. I would like to transfer items between any player base and ship, in a similar way as you can from your own ship to ship.
    
    • In C1 after this upcoming patch, as has been stated before. (if you're talking about transfer all/type)
11. Its gets really tiring having to agro drones on other drones or bases, imo if something shoots you your drones should shoot back(even against team mates in arena).
    
    • S lave/Drone controls will be as easy as clicking on a special icon representing that drone/slave and right clicking on an a target to attack or somehow interact with that target (like dock for slaves that are rightclicked on an AI base)
12. Make it possible to go back and edit the post you are making with the arrow keys.
    
    • Already possible in C2 with mouse or keyboard
13. Something that would probably fall under UI is separating items by type
    
    • Definitely.
14. I hope C2 will improve communication between players, by introducing the ability to make custom chat channels.
    
    • All types of communication will be enhanced in C2.
15. I dislike the tedium of updating shop prices, especially at the beginning of a new uni.
    
    • This will be fixed before C2 comes out, when Jey databases things. Its tough to do as of right now though, so it won't make this reset.
16. add item to trade shortcut... when right-clicking item on base...
    
    • Shouldn't be a problem
17. I dont like that there isnt visible difference between bases (except size) if different tech and type .
    
    • I agree, but this will take new models and is not my domain.
18. It would be great if you can make left part of the screen optional ( Part of the screen where map and ship gear is ..
    
    • This is already the case in C2. Double click the border of the inventory area, it hides, double click again, comes back.
19. It would be cool if all the parts of the GUI, from map, radar, and chat to the various menus...customized...
    
    • I'm hoping all UI will be fluid and customizable, if not from the start, eventually.
20. It would be great if the completed mission galaxys were standing out in the galaxy map
    
    • Sounds like a good idea. Hopefully the galaxy map will become much more useful in c2.
21. ...the events chat gets filled with spam...
    
    • I am going to try and eliminate almost everything that goes in the events chat. Like the / commands, they will be replaced by intuitive UI elements.
22. Stealth Slaves are currently unusable? Any thoughts on changing this?
    
    • As said before, Slaves will have "control icons" which you will see at any point so you can control slaves that you cant see.
    • Sidenote: I think the current patch also makes it so slaves can always see you, and you can always see your slaves anyways.
23. Ai's are visible on the left side of the screen... through the map, radar and equipment lists. Is it possible to make those items that are visible in space clickable/targetable in those sections?
    
    • Its currently possible in C2 I think, but I think it could lead to problems so I'm not sure it will stay that way. Also, as stated above, the inventory area will be hideable, so you can just hide and select.
24. I would like to see a log of what my base has been selling.....
    
    • Base logs will be revamped this coming uni, before C2 comes out (when the database save comes out)
25. Could more HotKeys be added? Up to 10 at least, or maybe use the F* keys up to 12?
    
    • Yes. Though with the new UI elements you probably wont need nearly as many.
26. Is there some way possible to edit the ship appearance so that everyone in-game might see it?
    
    • This might be possible in the future, but probably not on initial release. I'll keep it in mind though.
27. Jester_motley's stuff.
    
    • Ignored since most of it was already asked. If you don't read the thread, don't expect me to answer your questions.

Hopefully that gives you some insight into what's in store for c2.

As always, test has been updated as has the test client:
http://www.starsonata.com/StarSonata_TestClient.exe

Again, thanks for the help in tracking down bugs, please continue posting them on the forums, we're paying attention and trying to fix as many as we can before the reset at the end of the week.

Thanks,
- Pip

Hey look, yugioh got the longest answer out of all of them. Now you can't say you're hated by everyone.

Horray Pip I think I speak for all of the playerbase when we say we really do appreciate the dev updates. This allows players to be able to see what goes into the game. All the stuff I like and look forward to be able to play SS again.....(if my support ticket gets sorted )

Thanks for the update and the many hours you've spent keeping us informed, Pip. Has Jeff given any hints concerning the fate of capships?

Jey is the one working on the Capship rebalance as he has the most knowledge of them.

try and multifire 5 mass drivers, it'll speed boost you up... maybe you should do that the firing of phys weapons knocks you back, but only your max speed and not double your speed... because i fly around the uni with 164 now in my pax

I hadn't thought about this before maybe it's not too late.

We'd need a better way to do trades than toss/scoop thing...

BTW thanks for all those answers, C2 UI seems really awesome

Thx u for answering, sry for bad gramma, with my question :s

Nice Job, i like most of it, except for 2 things: 1, missiles are allready nigh on impossible for lower levels to dodge, say a level 300 SD can get owned over fairly quickly by a ruby carrier, simply because of the missiles. Making them faster is going to be making them much more mroken in that way.

2, i assume that heat is still unfinished? because right now, the urqa'ka and the DWO do pretty much identical DOT, which is fairly useless in both circumstances.... look:

damage done by you: 150
damage done by you: 150
damage done by you: 150
damage done by you: 150
damage done by you: 150
Parasite:50
damage done by you: 150
damage done by you: 150
damage done by you: 150
damage done by you: 150
damage done by you: 150
Parasite:100
damage done by you: 150
damage done by you: 150
damage done by you: 150
damage done by you: 150
damage done by you: 150
Parasite:150


at that point, the fires max out and wont do any more damage. thats 1/5th of your damage. i think you should make it so the # and power of the fires should be determined by damage (less than 100 damage is small fires, over 100 med, over 400 is large, or something), so the DOT os more in line with your damage...

DOT should be roughly equal to your damage, in my mind.

You do realize that each shot adds another parasite, right? And each of those parasites do their damage?

About the missiles, they will be much easier to shoot down now, so just do that.

yes, thats why the parasite damage was increasing. However, when it reaches about 150 damage/tick, they decay as fast as you can ut them on, and they stop doing more damage. Like i said, it gets to the point where the DOT damage is maxed out, but its still only doing about 1/6th of your total damage.

I see his point.

It gets to the point that the amount of damage done is retarded.

I think that heat based parasites should do maybe half the DPS your main weapon will do in 10 seconds.

So if you do 1000 damage in 10 seconds, the parasite will have done 500 damage in 10 seconds.

might not have much to do with this dev update, but i dunno where else to post it...


i just went on test, and noticed that: my shield bank is lowered, my shield regen is lowered, my damage is lowered, my speed is lowered, i cant 1 shot a flyflet with a vmag, i cant dent a scruple, and i can go on

The point is each parasite does a certain amount of damage. Which means each shot effectively does the total damage, just part of it is over time. I haven't looked at all the numbers though, so im not sure if they need to be beefed.

Hmm so jiji's wont add parasites?