Sonar

In short: all sea units and Urchin can see underwater units, underwater units are not detectable by radar and long-range sonar sources do not exist. Being underwater functions like radar jamming does on land, except you can’t be seen by economy structures or land units.

In principle, being underwater is a lot like radar jamming, except that you are also invisible to non-Urchin structures, non-Vulture planes, and amphibious-pathing units from land factories. Here are the details:

• All units produced by the Ship, Amphibious and Hovercraft factories, and the ship Striders, have sonar equal to their sight range.
• Urchin has sonar equal to its sight range.
• Commanders have sonar equal to their sight range.
• Vulture has sonar range equal to its jamming range (700).
• Other units and structures do not have sonar. Notably this includes Gauss, Aspis, Eraser, Ultimatum and Detriment.
• Sonar Station has been removed.

We’ve investigated some preexisting sonar interactions and cleaned up some weirdness. One thing of note is that cloak and jamming on fully submerged units is penetrated by sonar (perhaps a recent engine change). To make this interaction more obvious we’ve made fully submerged units unable to cloak. This change barely affects game mechanics aide from saving energy and removing the underwater radar dot.

We also noticed that sufficiently deep units do not have any surface vision. This is an engine change and not part of the current design. However, it probably works so we’ll not put effort in to work around it for the time being.

Ships

Ship Factory has been substantially reworked. We’ve also taken the opportunity to remove a lot of conflicts with TA unit names (though some renames are just for consistency with reroles or for some theme). Overkill prevention and Unit AI has been implemented, but you may find bugs and foibles. Report these so they can be fixed please 🙂

Constructor – Mariner is a little more expensive and has sonar, but mostly unchanged.

Scout (Disarming) – Skeeter is renamed to Cutter and has increased range to be able to destroy any land mex reachable by Mariner. Be aware that the Scout Boat’s overkill prevention defaults to disabled, because it also tries not to hit disarmed targets. Under some circumstances you may wish to enable it.

Raider (Torpedo-Boat) – Hunter is now a torpedo-boat raider; it is much cheaper, smaller and faster, but is individually weaker in combat and no longer has a large area-of-effect.

Skirmisher Frigate (Missile) – Enforcer is renamed to Mistral and completely reworked. It is much cheaper and functions like a mobile Slasher. It fires weak guided missiles from long range (in particular it outranges Urchin, Scalpel, Defender and Stinger).

Riot/Raider Corvette (Shotgun) – Typhoon is renamed to Corsair; it is a little cheaper and faster, and armed with shotguns instead of machineguns. The shotguns make it effective against large targets at short range, however, its toughness has been reduced.

Riot/Assault Destroyer (Sonic Gun) – Siren (a new unit based on the old Daimyo model) has a sonic gun with some area-of-effect which is effective against lighter-weight surface and underwater targets. It also has a mini-Impaler missile for attacking statics. It is quite slow.

Artillery Cruiser – Crusader is renamed to Ronin; it is more expensive, more resilient, has slightly improved range and has more area-of-effect. It no longer has a depth charge sidearm.

Submarine Raider – Snake is renamed to Seawolf; it fills the same role as before, with a few numbers tweaks. The changes to how sonar works have affected its best use somewhat.

Anti-Air – Shredder is renamed to Zephyr and now has sonar but is otherwise unchanged.

Transport – Surfboard is unchanged, besides new sonar. Some bugs with transporting cloakers and jammers have been fixed.

Submarine Artillery – Serpent has been removed.

Strider Ships

The large ships have recieved some changes. Reef has some role issues which require improved drone control to fix.

Battleship – Renamed to Shogun and has a little more range and sonar. Otherwise unchanged for now; this needs some teams game testing but its overall role seems okay.

Carrier – Instead of its previous cruise missile, the Carrier stockpiles tactical missiles in 60s at 10 m/s, and fires them like a D-gun. This change is largely to avoid the current overload of weapon and drone controls. The Carrier currently retains the name Reef but this may be subject to change, as are the other properties of the unit. If and when the drone controls are improved there is some potential for adding a light carrier to the Ship factory. Something interesting and large (think Crabe or Grizzly) should go in the remaining build slot for the Shipyard and that could possibly be a miniature carrier.

Tactical Missile Sub – Renamed to Scylla. Now stockpiles in 30s at 20 m/s, twice its old rate. Similarly to the Carrier, this unit could potentially see further changes but needs more data from teamgames (and FFA).

Other Sea Units

Amphibious and hovercraft units are unchanged except that they all have sonar range equal to their sight range. Sea has changed around these units though so reevaluate their new place in sea. The sea interactions of these factories is open to change in the future, especially Duck torpedo range as well as everything about Scallop, Archer and Claymore.

After some testing we think that more amphibious units are viable than before. Buoy and Archer seem to be decent units to fight the reduced weight Hunter and Scallop is a bit less powerful. Hovercrafts are mostly unchanged except that Dagger is worse against the new raiders. Penetrator and Halberd are still powerful, unique units and Claymore has its uses.

Sea is not designed for Hovercrafts and Amphs to be 1v1 viable start factories. It seems that they might be viable on small maps, such as 8×8. However, we’ve found it useful to switch to these factories and teamgames should see many different factories ploped. This makes sea distinct from land in that there is one main factory and four support factories. We’re not too worried about this as the ship factory has a lot of complexity with its dual domain and 3 or 4 raiders. Sea 1v1s feel harder than land 1v1s which is probably a good spot for it.

Urchin range has been reduced a little and has slightly more health.

Ultimatum and Detriment no longer have sonar.

Sonar Station no longer exists.

Other Changes

Tactical AI:

• Improved Penetrator, Pillager and Impaler AI. They are now less prone to wiggling at max range to match the exact wiggling of their opponent.
• Scorchers now hug most unarmed or undodgable enemies instead of runing around them in tight circles.
• Many things now keep their distance from death explosions. Only appies to Fight command.

Morph:

• Morph no longer purges slow damage upon completion.
• Status effects (EMP, disarm, slow) now affect resource drain.
• Commanders can now morph on Surfboards. They need to disembark to complete the morph in case they are no longer transportable.
• Non-commander morph is now cancelled if the unit is loaded into a transport.

Interface:

• New UI chat is wider, backlog automatically toggles when entering chat.
• Area reclaim is now back to reclaiming trees by default. Holding Ctrl while issuing an area reclaim order now ignores trees. The recent new behaviour can be enabled through Game/Unit Behaviour.

Fixes:

• Chicken and player timeout windows no longer persist through different games with Chobby.
• Fixed initial queue structure visualization on some maps.

Balance

• Duck torpedoes are slightly better at homing.
• Completely submerged units can no longer cloak.
• Fixed Commander surface visibility and vulnerability. They should now be visible exactly when they can be damaged by weapons with no AoE.
• Buffed Support Commander’s ability to shoot at things very close to it. In other words, added a workaround for its poorly thought out gun length as compared to its height.

Unit AI

• Added Global Build Command. It is currently disabled but can be toggled through Game/Worker AI.
• Added overkill prevention for Ravens against structures.
• Fixed Raven diving insufficiently low against Commanders with speed modules.
• Fixed jumpjet activation when retreating.

Interface

Rewrote the command menu:

• Command menu hides itself if no units are selected.
• Bound Priority to Ctrl+Q and Repeat to Ctrl+R.
• Added consistency between clicking and hotkeys. Grid hotkey display is now consistent.
• Reorganized factory production tab to group units by role and ease of use.
• Added a command to clear the factory build queue.
• Fixed Aspis icon border. It used to be bordered as if it were armed.
• Added an option to make factory queue Alt insert put the new command behind the current construction instead of canceling it when repeat is not enabled. Repeat already has this behaviour.
• Added an option to make Ctrl disable grid hotkeys while held.
• Space+Click on command buttons now shows the command hotkey configuration menu.

Rewrote quick unit selector:

• Factory selection can now be bound to hotkeys. They are unbound by default, I am experimenting with Alt+Q for my first factory, Alt+W for my second factory etc..
• Selector panel can now be aligned vertically.
• Fixed some really stupid things related to quick selection positioning itself.
• Fixed flash upon switching between teams while spectating.
• Selector supports spacing, padding etc..
• Selector can now be skinned.

Economy panel:

• Added warnings for metal excess and energy stall.
• Changed the metal storage mechanics to make the resource bar actually full when you are excessing metal.
• Fixed incorrect reporting of energy reclaim.

Reorganized main menu panel:

• Removed tweak mode, FPS and game flag.
• Made the menu behave properly when resized, removing or squishing its options.
• Made the menu able to reduce to 32 pixels high to save space.
• Rebound widget selector from F11 to Ctrl+F11
• Removed binding to hide the menu. Esc now opens the menu identically to F10. Hiding the menu can still be bound with hotkeys.
• Added a button to switch to the lobby, for Chobby users.

Chat:

• Added an option to disable the backlog arrow when not chatting.
• Added an option to show the backlog arrow on the left.

Terraform:

• Build height selection used to queue a terraform command and later queue a construction, based on your ping. Now terraform is properly queuable so both construction and terraform commands are sent simultaneously. This allows for much faster and bug-free structure placement.
• Improved persistent build height visuals.
• Persistent build height now works well when constructing floating structures.
• Each type of terraform now has its own mouse cursor and queue icon.
• Terraform now split builds, if you tell a spread out line of constructors to make a wall they will each work on their closest block.
• Added a widget to replace the buttons underneath the minimap.
• Fixed lasso terraform UI interaction with water.

Misc:

• Non-Mex structures can no longer be placed on metal spots. This isn’t quite a mere interface change because it is enforced in game mechanics.
• Fixed docking API position remembering for non-docking widgets and added an option to only dock with the screen edge, not other widgets. Commander upgrade windows now remember their position.
• Removed Stop and Repeat commands from units that have no use for them (such as Solar Collectors).
• Added an option to toggle whether the mouse cursor is confined to the game window.
• Fixed nuke launch warning location.
• Tooltip healthbar display now updates instantly when a new unit is moused over.
• Trees are no longer reclaimed by basic area reclaim. To reclaim them with area reclaim either hold Ctrl while giving the order or give the order with a tree at the center (left click and drag on a tree).
• Fixed Space+Click being non-functional on anything underwater.
• Fixed floating structure placement (Spring change, thanks hokomoko).
• Recon Commander replaces old Strike Commander on the Commander Selection icon.

Graphics

• Grid outlines now merge instead of adding their transparency on overlap.
• Added HDR rendering widget. It is not fully featured so the HDR option is disabled and marked as experimental. Try it on in Settings/Graphics/HDR (experimental).
• Claw ghosts are now much easier to see.

Fixes

• Fixed a lups error.
• Lightning spark effects now form a circle, not a square.
• Debris is now more consistent in inheriting unit momentum, it no longer drops vertically.
• Fixed old Reef naming conflict.
• Fixed invisible Crane wreck.
• Fixed edge extension with water level modoption.
• Fixed initial queue mex positions with water level modoption.
• Added/fixed start boxes for Flooded Valley v2 and Onyx Cauldron 1.7.
• Removed the little flags that sometimes appear in the top left corner of the map.
• Removed some deprecated unit tags.