In other news ikinz is working on a nice ZK themed Weblobby and the release of Spring 101.0 is looming. The new engine has some nice features but is hampered by ATI graphics errors. Access to ATI testing is stalling our ability to make ZK compatible.

Balance

Nerfs to Warrior as a partial reduction of the recent buff. The aim is to harden the counter by skirmishers and reduce overlap with the Zeus assault role.

• Cost 200 -> 210 (old was 220)
• Range 280 -> 270 (same as old)
• Health 880 -> 820

Commander morphing receives a design pass. Most of the effort was applied to basic weapons.

• Basic weapons are now balanced around 50 cost and have designed strengths and weaknesses[?].
• Commanders can equip duplicates of basic weapons.
• Manual fire weapon reload time increased to at least 25s to reduce their spam annoyance. Some buffs. Costs are normalized to 150.
• Cheapened morph base cost by 50 to level 3 and 100 for higher levels.
• Slightly cheaper drone modules.

Valkyrie can no longer transport Enforcer.

Fixed Slasher overkill prevention.

Djinn weight lowered:

• cost 800 -> 750
• health 2600 -> 2500

Artillery accuracy improved:

• Hammer can no longer miss a Defender [?]
• Pillager can no longer miss a Stinger [?]

Tactical AI:

• Added tactical AI for Ravager.
• More things skirmish Warrior (for example, Ravager).
• Removed broken Scorcher behaviour[?].

UI

Air Repair/Rearm Pad can now have rally points. Aircraft that leave an Air Repair/Rearm Pad or a Airplane Plant with an empty command queue will inherit the queue of their pad. This mirrors the behaviour of factory queues. Reef is unaffected.

Better team names:

• instead of “team 0”, teams now have recognizable names, for example “Team North”, “GBC” or “Team Sprung” [?]
• the game-over screen now tells spectators who won (in the above format; was just “game over” previously).

Other changes:

• Line-move now shows dots for the projected unit positions. This is option is enabled by default for new and current players. We need to know whether it works for all graphics cards.
• Loading progress bar is now more accurate.
• Added a “show always” option for armor and build-priority state icons.

Changed defaults for new players:

• Fight is now hotkeyed under A and Attack is under F. The commands are also renamed.
• Engine info screen hotkey: ‘i’ -> ‘Ctrl+i’
• LoS view toggle hotkey: ‘L’ -> ‘Ctrl+L’
• Default command visibility: always shown for selected units, hold Shift for all units (previously was hold shift for selected units, no way to see all units).

Misc

• The game can now result in a draw in two cases: everyone dies at the same time (eg. two opposing roaches blow each other), or all alive teams are dropped (eg. when the non-dropped team resigns after the other drops).
• Wreckage, rocks, trees etc. no longer disappear without a trace when destroyed/crushed/reclaimed but make a small dirt poof instead.
• Trainer comms default to HMG/radar at level 1 and ablative/regen at level 2.
• CAI no longer avoids linking its fusion reactors.
• Fix CAI having wrong idea about energy economy.

Commanders

Commanders can now be configured during the game.

• Pick the modules for each level upon upgrading your commander (with the cog command).
• Use site profiles to store and name your favorite loadouts.
• Decorations are also applied through the site. Ordinary unlocks will be removed.

We have finally removed the Strike and Battle commander models. The models were reasonable but unfortunately they were too close to OTA. The Arm Commander is the iconic face of OTA and Core is not far behind. The Strike chassis received a new model and the Siege and Battle chassis were merged into one.

The commander morph design received a shake-up in the process, some due to design changes and some for technical reasons. The changes are not balanced but they aim to be balanced eventually. Here are some changes:

• Support -> Engineer (Support is too generic as a word, could be confusing).
• Engineer and Recon can only equip one basic weapon. It makes sense as they only have one gun. They should be made powerful in other ways.
• The weapons allowed for each chassis have changed. Some weapons have been removed or modified. There are some new weapons.
• Some conversions have been removed, mostly the 0-choice ones (those that increase range).

A few experimental features are already possible with the new system. These includes:

• Commanders have no upgrade limit (base cost increases though).
• Base commanders can be built from Strider Hub (1000 metal, no economy).
• Stackable drone modules.

This is just the initial implementation. Once this system is tested we hope to add more interesting features and balance, things not seen in the previous commander system. Each chassis should be able to fulfill a few roles so pregame RPS will not be as worrying as it was before.

Balance / Mechanics

• Disarm no longer destroys wreckage and map features (trees, rocks etc).
• Resurrecting now decloaks.
• Resurrecting now costs 200% of the original energy cost (was 125%).
• Jumping with jetpack [?] now decloaks.
• Defender reload time obeys status effects [?]
• Trident, Flail and Racketeer now home onto radar dots.
• Reef:
• time between starting a new drone: 3 › 5 s (can build 4 in parallel)
• drone build time: 15 › 25 s
• drone max wander range: 1600 › 1000 elmo
• Funnelweb and Commander Companion Modules:
• time between starting a new Firefly (light drone): 10 › 15 s
• Firefly build time: 3 › 10 s
• time between starting a new Viper (heavy drone): 20 › 25 s
• Viper build time: 3 › 15 s
• Quill less annoying to use through manoeuvrability improvements:
• turn rate: 81 › 90 °/s
• time from max speed to full stop: 1 › 0.1 s [?]
• Tremor can damage itself with stray shots.

UI / Misc

• LoS view is no longer enabled in the pregame setup.
• Added time display to spectator panel.
• Added Unit Shapes highlighting to units under the cursor[?] and inside a selection box.
• Added option to Unit Shapes to show ally selections with each player’s colour while spectating.
• Selection: renamed “DGun” reload timer to “Special”.
• Added an option to hide command panel when spectating.
• Improved Blastwing explosion effect.
• Reduced Claw missile hit sound.

Fixes

• Fixed some cases where late spawning commanders spawned outside their start box.
• Cloaker and shield jitter now disable during morph (these are effects high graphics settings).
• Control groups are maintained through morph.
• Nanoframes leave the correct debris.
• Tidal generator wreckage has the correct tooltip.
• Fixed Numpad Enter not working for chat.
• Fixed a crash caused by resigning during “Wait or Win”.
• Fixed spec panel crashing on AI games.
• Fixed an UI crash when using build hotkeys with an Athena.
• Unit selection shapes and unit outlines effects now respect depth.
• Healthbars are no longer shown for dying units, EMP is drawn correctly.
• Fixed music sometimes not playing while messing with the volume slider.
• Most hovercrafts no longer create dust when cloaked (this is so they don’t give away their position).
• Improvedstartbox rendering performance.
• Teleportation noises are no longer audible in the fog of war.
• Jumpers which die in mid air now have appropriate velocity for their wreck.
• Morph no longer resets shield charge.
• Crabe has minor model and animation improvements.

Content creation

• Startboxes exposed to Game Rules Params.
• Skirmish AI can now ask whether a start position is valid.

[Spoiler]

startbox_max_n -> highest box number (boxes are numbered from 0!)

startbox_n_0 -> how many polygons in box #0 (polygons numbered from 1)
startbox_polygon_0_1 -> how many vertices in polygon #1 of box #0 (vertices numbered from 1)
startbox_polygon_x_0_1_2 -> X coordinate of vertex #2 in polygon #1 of box #0
startbox_polygon_z_0_1_2 -> Z coordinate of vertex #2 in polygon #1 of box #0

startbox_recommended_startpos -> whether recommended startpositions are available (1 or 0)
startpos_n_0 -> how many recommended start positions in box #0 (positions numbered from 1)
startpos_x_0_1 -> X coordinate of recommended startpos #1 in box #0
startpos_x_0_1 -> Z coordinate of recommended startpos #1 in box #0