Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of 0 A.D. Alpha 24: “Xšayāršā” (pronounced: Khsha-ya-ṛsha), the twenty-fourth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source real-time strategy game of ancient warfare. The release is named after Xerxes the Great, ruler of the  Achaemenid Empire from 485 to 465 BC. Youtube: … Continue reading →

This is a balance patch, with changes to raiders, artillery, turrets, cloaking and drones. Each of the medium turrets has been nerfed, with a large nerf for Stinger, a fancy nerf for Stardust, and small nerfs for Faraday and Gauss. Most of the raiders with high burst damage have less range, as they may have been buffed a bit too much by the aiming improvements of last year. Some of the more oppressive artillery is a little worse, area cloaking is harder to use in general combat, and commander drones should be less annoying to fight.

Other changes include an excellent new walk animation for Outlaw and some behaviour fixes for Attack-Move.

Units

Duck reliably hits units as small as Glaive, but lost a little range. It is a little sad to see a physics trick go, but Amphbots should not be balanced around around swingy raider interactions.

• Land range 240 -> 235
• Projectile velocity increased by 10%
• Projectile turn rate increased by 39%

Venom lost some range and health.

• Range 245 -> 240
• Health 750 -> 740

Dagger lost the most range because it is the fastest.

• Range 212 -> 205

Blitz didn’t lose any range because it is not as popular as other burst damage raiders.

Claymore is more reliably useful, but we are taking care to not make it too powerful too quickly.

• Health 1260 -> 1300
• Projectile speed increased by about 50% (both on land and sea)
• Range 300 -> 280 (both on land and sea)

Sling loses some damage in sympathy with Stinger.

• Damage 150 -> 140

Badger loses most of the 25% damage buff caused by fixing its 5th Claw bomblet.

• Mine damage 200 -> 170.

Tremor finally loses the ability to fire while moving, and must pack up to move.

Turrets

Stardust now ‘heats up’ as it fires, reducing fire rate as it does so. This allows it to retain most of its power against raiders while dealing less sustained damage to tankier assaults.

• Gains 3.8% heat per shot.
• Loses 14.3% per second.
• Slow scales up to 50% at max heat.
• Starts with 100% heat.

Faraday is more of a weighty choice.

• Cost 250 -> 260

Gauss deals less damage to lean into its anti-artillery role.

• Reload 2s -> 2.1s

Stinger is less efficient and easier to assault.

• Cost 420 -> 450
• Health 2475 -> 2250

Mechanics

Starting metal is lower to give small units a bit more space to breathe.

• Income +6 metal, +8 energy -> +5 metal, +8 energy (-1 metal income for commanders).
• Initial resources 300 metal and energy -> 250 metal and energy.

Cloaking an army for general combat is now harder and less effective.

• Iris radius 440 -> 400.
• Increased recloak time for area cloaking 5s -> 6s.
• Default decloak radius for area cloaking is now 12*footprint + 56, instead of 75. This means most units have a decloak radius of 80, 92 or 104.
• Imp and Snitch, which have their decloak radius increased 75 -> 80. Other units with personal cloak are unaffected by the decloak radius change.

Companion Drones are cheaper and easier to catch with raiders.

• Cost 300 -> 200
• Range 180 -> 150
• Cruise Alt 100 -> 85
• Guardian progression 1/1/2/2/3/3 -> 1/1/2/2/2/3

Battle Drones are also cheaper, but Guardian Chassis only receives one for free.

• Cost 500 -> 350
• Range 240 -> 200
• Cruise Alt 100 -> 95
• Guardian progression 0/0/0/1/1/2 -> 0/0/0/0/1/1

Fractional reload times resulting from status effects are now rounded to the nearest frame, rather than round down. This buffs units with slow damage, particularly against units with a high rate of fire.

Behaviour

• Moving now consistently grants immunity to being kidnapped by enemy transports.
• Units on Attack-Move now periodically reset their target. This ensures that they don’t end up chasing retreating enemies through enemy lines.
• Improved Emissary movement packing.
• The Alt+N default terraform hotkey makes slightly higher walls.
• Added a Caretaker deathclone, it blocks movement like most deathclones.
• Made it a little easier to shoot Lotus and Stinger from the bottom of cliffs.
• Tactical AI is off by default for Emissary.

Visuals

• Improved Outlaw walk animation.
• Increased Bulkhead icon size slightly.
• Added checkbox options for unit halos, platters, selection halos, and selection shapes.
• Teamplatter widgets use the same base scaling as selection shapes.
• Map dimension and type are now shown below the map in the lobby.

Fixes

• Fixed EMP breaking factories.
• Fixed Archer unit AI sometimes closing range inappropriately.
• Fixed Puppy Gather settings under Unit Behaviour not being applied.
• Damaging or killing drones no longer counts towards endgame stats.
• Reduced the permeability of the side walls of Shielbot Factory, Cloakbot Factory and Hovercraft Platform.
• Fixed camera state recall and ctrl/alt+MMB rotation jitters for COFC (the advanced camera).
• Fixed build spacing widget crash on rapid camera rotation.
• Disabling a selection widget no longer enables the basic selection squares if any other selection widget is enabled.
• Fixed Area Mex with Space, and no other modifiers, held.
• Fixed map terraform masking not applying to smoothing.

Tanks have been oppressive lately, with their ability to exert a lot of early pressure. Bakuhatsu suggested a slower Kodachi and organised some testing, which went fairly well, so we’re going with this large yet simple change. In other news, playing new mods is now as simple as a single button on the mod page, Dirtbag is the guinea pig for a new animation system, bombers are a bit easier to control, and various lingering bugs have been fixed.

Balance

Kodachi no longer outruns Glaive and Scorcher.

• Speed 117 -> 108

Features

• Bombers are smarter about rearming. They now temporarily skip to their next Move command after bombing, ignoring intervening Attack commands. This makes queuing a safe retreat after bombing a group of units much easier.
• Added a ‘Play This Mod’ button to mod pages on the site. See Future Wars for an example.
• Improved Dirtbag walk animation.
• Added Disarm Award.
• Added some Portuguese translations.
• Updated Russian translations.

Interface

• Save channel topic to avoid re-displaying it multiple times a session.
• Added a filter field for the map list.
• Added a toggle for excess metal flash under ‘Settings/HUD Panels/Economy Panel’.
• Added a toggle for Attrition Counter under ‘Settings/HUD Panels/Extras’ so it can be bound to a hotkey.
• Added free stockpile to ‘/luarules nocost’.
• Added a few tip window settings under ‘Settings/HUD Panels/Unit Stats Help Window’ – useful for tutorial videos.

Fixes

• Fixed a premature victory bug on Planet Tempest (as well as a few other missions).
• Fix terraform mex placement UI.
• Fixed airpads not working slower under slow/emp/disarm.
• Fixed a few poorly configured projectile lights.
• Fixed Slow Award damage calculation against commanders.
• Fixed team names on Adamantine Mountian.
• Fixes for the WIP Caretaker AI. It can be tested by enabling the widget ‘Auto Patrol Nanos v2’.

Here are a few fixes to round out the year. Seawolf behaves better around coasts, Metal Extractor placement is smoother, and a lingering graphics bug has been resolved. This is probably the last patch of the year so I’d like to thank the community for helping each other through an otherwise difficult year.

Fixes with multiple dot points

Submarines can no longer traverse shallow water, reverting a recent experimental change. Unfortunately it resulted in Seawolf needlessly revealing itself to surface weaponry while skirting islands.

• Minimum depth 5 -> 15.
• Seawolf now has a higher aim point and fire point. This solves various weapon blocking bugs that could occur around coastlines.

Metal Extractor placement is now consistent with other structure placement.

• If you click where a mex can be placed, the mex is placed, otherwise the click is ignored.
• Previously, whether the click was used depended on the ghost under the mouse cursor.
• This caused issues such as being unable to click on a blocked location near a free metal spot to place a mex.

Fixes with one dot point each

• Writing a report description is now mandatory.
• Replaced the ‘Clan List’ button in the Profile tab with ‘Contact Admins’ as this seems more useful.
• Fixed reclaim failing to be highlighted during start position selection.
• Filtered out the low quality part of the construction unit reply.
• Fixed the problems stemming from the outline shader update, possibly even correctly. This fixes the non-default widgets that were missed by the previous patch, such as Bloom and Blob Shader.
• Modding in extra shields is now a bit easier.

This patch started out with a slew of graphical and interface improvements, but grew to include a few balance tweaks as well. To start with, the main menu is a bit sharper and the panels on the right are more welcoming. Players can be now reported with a convenient form via the lobby or through the Tab Playerlist ingame. Other ingame improvements include instantly updating state toggles, a greatly improved outline shader, and hotkeys for terraform presets.

On the balance side of things, mexes are slightly weaker to reward early raiding and factories are bit cheaper to make switching easier. A few other units have been tweaked, with the biggest being nerfs for Funnelweb and Ultimatum, which should open up the mid-lategame options in large teams.

Balance

Metal Extractor is slightly more vulnerable to light raids.[list]

• Health 700 -> 640

Factory switching can afford to be easier now that air is less dominant in 1v1.[list]

• Cost 800 -> 700

Outlaw is worse against units that keep their distance.[list]

• Cost 250 -> 260
• Further increased AoE damage falloff.

Knight is also worse against units that keep their distance.[list]

• Range 350 -> 340

Pyro is slightly weaker because it is dominant in some matchups and we are not ready to look at Jumpbots. This is a partial revert of a buff from February, in which it gained 80 health and 8% DPS.[list]

• Health 700 -> 670
• DPS reduced by 4%

Jack and Dirtbag deal extra damage due to a bugfix.[list]

• No longer deal ‘around’ 25% less than their stated damage against targets ‘near’ max range.

Tarantula is better at hitting planes.[list]

• Missile turn rate increased by 17%.

Swift is less able to dodge missiles.[list]

• Thickened by 37.5%.

Raven swarms are slightly easier to rearm.[list]

• Rearm time 10s -> 8s
• Rearm cost 100 -> 80 energy

Likho has more downtime between bombing runs.[list]

• Rearm time 20s -> 25s
• Rearm cost 200 -> 250 energy

Ultimatum is more specialised against striders.[list]

• Cost 2000 -> 2500
• Decloak Radius 100 -> 120
• Reload 1.5s -> 2s

Funnelweb loses the ability to outrun many armies.[list]

• Cost 3500 -> 4000
• Speed 54 -> 40

Rover Assembly has a slightly smaller collision volume.

Airplane Plant no longer covers its construction and rearm pads with its collision volume.

Mechanics Fixes

• Lobster-bestowed fall damage immunity prevents cloak for its duration.
• Fixed a bug where burrowing units (Snitch, Imp and Flea) sometimes remaining cloaked when launched into the air.
• Fixed units sometimes retaining their full LOS when launched high into the air.
• Raven and Impaler overkill prevention is more lenient against targets that they do not kill in one shot.
• Overkill prevention for many burst weapons has been improved and some failure cases have been patched. In particular, burst anti-air should be a little better at finishing off damaged bombers.

Main Menu

• Clicking on a player and selecting ‘Report’ is now done entirely in-lobby.
• Decluttered the Community tab by removing the profile and ladder subwindows. Renamed to ‘Welcome’.
• Added profile and profile links (such as commander editing and ladder ratings) to the Friends tab. Renamed to ‘Profile’.
• Moved the first-launch tutorial prompt popup into the top of the news section of the new Welcome tab. Since a new entry is significantly less intrusive than a popup, it only disappears after completing the the tutorial or by toggling Settings -> Lobby -> ‘Hide welcome tutorial prompt’.
• Tweaked the button alignment and skinning of the main menu and top right status buttons.
• Reskinned the top bar to make it clear that the lobby can be toggled while ingame.
• Fixed a bug with updating subheadings of the main logo.
• Reduced the default command opacity in Settings -> Game.

Interface

• State toggles now react to commands instantly rather than waiting for the changed state to reach the server.
• Replaced the kick button in the Tab Playerlist with a report button, that brings up an in-lobby report form. The form has a kick option, but it should be used sparringly.
• Added a smarter Caretaker widget called ‘Auto Patrol Nanos v2’. It is not enabled by default as it requires more testing and fixes.
• Closing the mission objectives panel no longer unpauses the game if the game was already paused when it was opened.
• Space+Click can now be used on the factory queue, the selection panel, the mission objectives panel and morph commands.

Terraforming presets now come with some default hotkeys. These keys allow you to terraform areas with a set height, skipping the height selection step, and can be configured under Hotkeys/Construction. If you already created hotkeys then you may need to check your settings.[list]

• Alt+V makes the smallest wall that Vehicles cannot pass.
• Alt+B makes the smallest wall that Bots cannot pass.
• Alt+N makes a wall units such as Rogue can use to hide from Stinger.
• Alt+G levels the terrain to the height of the ground where the cursor was initially clicked.
• Alt+H is useful for putting a Crab high on a spire.
• Alt+J just makes a deep hole. This was more useful back when enemies could be burried.

More keybinds and unit behaviours can be set.[list]

• Trajectory mode toggle is bindable under ‘Hotkeys/Commands/State’.
• Unusual keys, such as 2, are now bindable.
• Added Overkill Prevention to ‘Settings/Unit Behaviour/Default States’.

Graphics

• Reduced strength of projectile lights by 13%. This multiplier can be tweaked in Settings/Graphics/Lighting.
• Upgraded the outline shader. The edges of the outlines are now smooth and they make units occluded by water and effects more visible.
• Improved Cerberus weapon effects.
• Improved the water on Folsom Dam.
• Death explosions are slightly less overexposed.
• Fixed missing explosion decal for Jugglenaut jump.
• Fixed missing amphibious sinking bubbles.

Fixes

• Added startboxes for BlackStar v2.
• Limpet now counts towards the kamikaze award.
• Fixed a bug with the factory plate placement visualisation when switching between multiple factory blueprints.
• Fixed right clicking on units with a command selected erroneously issuing the default command rather than cancelling the selected command.
• Fixed unit failing to reply to area reclaim and selection rank commands.
• Fixed a COFC crash caused by unbound hotkeys.

This update addresses the slightly overpowered stats on the reworked Venom. While we’re at it, here are some improvements and fixes for Detriment. There is also a tournament this weekend which is open for anyone to join or watch. Details can be found here.

Balance

Venom no longer two-shot stuns Redback, and is slightly more vulnerable to raiders.

• Range 250 -> 245
• Damage 70 -> 65
• EMP Damage 450 -> 400

Detriment has shorter reload and repair downtimes, as well as better pathfinding.

• Autoheal 20 -> 100
• Jump reload 120 -> 100
• Obliterator reload 45 -> 40
• Obliterator AoE 212 -> 256
• Obliterator no longer smooths terrain under structures (so turrets on spires no longer ‘dodge’).
• Footprint 6×6 -> 4×4 (This lets it move around terrain without issues)
• Hitvolume width reduced by 15.2%
• Hitvolume height reduced by 11.4%
• Fix AA laser only shooting with one barrel.
• Face beam is now unable to fire too far sideways.

Detriment is now a bit more resistant to Ultimatum because the Disingerator deals damage for each frame it is inside the target. In perfect circumstances Ulti removes 20.5% of its health per shot, down from 23.5%, but in reality Ultimatum will often require an extra shot to kill a Detriment.

Tremor is potentially a bit oppressive in dense team games.

• Speed 40.5 -> 37.5
• Range 1220 -> 1160

Gauss turret now has a much larger hitvolume. It was 12.5% thinner than Lotus, which was just silly.

Fixes and Features

• Knight, Thug and Hermit now jink at half the frequency, giving them time to aim.
• Added a Construction Effect graphics setting to the main menu.
• Increase Ultimatum target priority.
• Fix Phoenix effect on sea impact.
• Updated Unit Level Ups custom mode preset.
• Added support for unitdefs_mod.
• Fixed support for modding in extra weapons to units.
• Improved econ hint formatting slightly.
• Added live water configuration under ‘Settings/Graphics/Sun, Fog & Water/Water’ ingame.
• Fixed the sun and water on Skulduggery and Mechadansonia.
• Fixed Dante flamethower aiming visuals.