This is a patch of tweaks and systems. The main balance tweaks are nerfs for Shieldbots and Hovers, while Crab and Lobster have been buffed in the form of fixes. Sea battles are easier to track with much more visible torpedo effects. Bolas is in the campaign and can be found on planet Falloway.

The patch boasts two new systems. The first is a battle proposal system which aims to solve many of the coordination issues involved with hosting a game. The second is a terraform keybinding system to make terraforming easier than ever. To counterbalance it there are some tweaks that make it easier for units to shoot into holes.

Battle Proposals

Sometimes you may want to organise a battle but find the public hosts a bit chaotic and the matchmaker a bit impersonal. To address this there is a new battle proposal system that combines the coordination of a matchmaker and customisation of a room. If there is enough interest we might even write a proper UI.

• Type ‘!proposebattle’ anywhere in the lobby to propose a battle.
• Other players can click the text to accept the proposal.
• When enough players accept the proposal a game is hosted and the other players automatically join.
• ‘!proposebattle’ can be followed by the parameters minelo, maxelo, minsize and maxsize. For example ‘!proposebattle maxelo=1600 minsize=6 maxsize=6’ would propose a six player game for players with rating (maximum of teams and MM) below 1600.
• The host of the battle can use commands as usual. ‘!password’ can be used to make the game public and !type’ can be used to select different game modes.

Balance

Glaive:

• DPS increased by 2%.

Thug:

• Cost 170 -> 175

Outlaw:

• Damage 30 -> 25
• Slow damage 90 -> 75
• No longer fires underwater.

Recluse:

• Speed 48 -> 45
• Turn rate reduced by 12.5% (still 5% more than pre-Superfluid)

We are leaning into the low-manoeuvrability aspect of Hovercraft now that there is more room at the low end of the scale.

• Dagger turn rate reduced by 20% (still 28% more than pre-Superfluid)
• Scalpel turn rate reduced by 20% (still 28% more than pre-Superfluid)
• Mace turn rate reduced by 6% (still 7% more than pre-Superfluid)

Dagger:

• Range reduced by 1.4%
• Reload increased by 1.2%

Crane:

• Health 240 -> 260
• Build Power 4 -> 5

Normalised constructor vision ranges.

• Crane 380 -> 375
• Wasp 350 -> 375
• Mariner 325 -> 375
• Weaver 380 -> 375
• Quill 325 -> 300
• Mason 273 -> 300

Other changes:

• Lobster now lobs units directly upwards and adds the horizontal velocity over half a second. This prevents Lobster lobbing lobs into itself.
• Crab no longer stops shooting under heavy fire. It can now fire while curling and uncurling (this was always the case yet nobody seemed to notice).
• Drones now heal at 10 hp/second after 10 seconds of inactivity.
• Metal Extractors and Caretakers are a bit taller and units aim at them higher up.
• Metal Extractors can no longer be built on steep cliffs.

Terraform

Terraform tends to be more common after interface improvements. Some issues with the current system have been fixed:

• Most units, including vehicle raiders, can shoot into terraformed holes.
• Walls that block particular unit types (bots or vehicles depending on height) are more expensive and look more substantial.
• The area to be terraformed is now marked while constructors spend the base cost of terraform.
• Unburrying enemy units is feasible with overwhelming buildpower.

The details of the fixes are as follows:

• Terraform near an enemy is now 20x slower instead of 50x slower. A bug that caused enemies to fully block terraform has been fixed.
• The angle of terraform supports is now 74 degrees (from 75 degrees).
• The angle of the outer edge of the terraform supports is limited to 22.5 degrees. This raises the height required to block vehicles.
• The angle of the inner edge of a subractive terrafom support is limited to 45 degrees. This rounds the base of terraformed holes, giving units the space to peer into the hole and shoot whatever is at the bottom.
• A small amount of terrain deformation occurs while the base cost of the terraform is being spent.

Interface

There is now a keybind system for issuing Level and Raise terraform commands with preset heights.

• Navigate to Hotkeys/Construction/Level or Hotkeys/Construction/Raise in the ingame menu.
• Set the parameters (height and culling) for one of the ten terraform presets.
• Click ‘None’ and press a key combination.
• Press the key combination to issue a terraform command that is executed after the drawing step – no height selection required.

Ctrl-Click can now be used on the selected unit panel to filter selections in a new way. To use it:

• Select some units.
• Hold Ctrl.
• Left click on some unit potraits (Shift+Click to select all units of a type).
• Release Ctrl.
• The units clicked on while Ctrl was held become the new selection.

Graphics

• Underwater wreckages bubble instead of smoke.
• Torpdoes and depth charge projectiles are now much easier to see. Hunter was feeling particularly lackluster due to the difficulty in discerning its targets.

Fixes

• Fixed some technology descriptions in the campaign.
• Fixed Placeholder overkill prevention.
• Djinn no longer teleports units to terrain with an impassible movement modifiers.
• Removed Seawolf impulse. This prevents it from pushing ships out of the water and carrying them on its back.
• Tweak collision volume for Minotaur wreckage and Tidal Generators.
• Envoy and Emissary avoid shooting into terrain (this was intended, the theory being that their cratering was sufficient to break down walls).
• Optimised some parts of healthbar drawing. Fiddled with the settings and made the text fade out at lower zoom levels.
• Fixed Scylla firing more than one tacnuke when the intention was to only fire one.
• Fixed cloak ranges widget crashing when an unseen enemy unit is selected.
• Fixed a crash in the construction height widget related to clicking outside the map.
• Fixed areamex construction ghost positions in the sea.
• Fixed Crane nanospray.

In this version the Tank Foundry is bestowed with two reliable raiders, there are some tweaks for Hover and Rover, and we make an attempt at diversifying the commander chassis. Amphibious units have some minor tweaks and major fixes as part of the continual attempt to make them more generally useful.

In non-unit changes, terraform can no longer be used near enemy units. This removes a source of APM frenzy and allows terraform to be buffed for other purposes. There is a new variant of Brutal AI and we have added a few hooks in the game definitions that make it easier to mod.

AI

Added a Brutal AI personally with a focus on economy and escalation.

Balance

Kodachi is now a more standard raider. Instead of a single large, high-reload, large fireball it fires a stream of small fireballs. The fireballs travel quite slowly, giving fast units a chance to get away, and only burn the ground for 1.5 seconds. It has received some health and speed nerfs to bring it more in line with other raiders.

Blitz is a little heavier and slower, since Kodachi should be able to take up more raiding responsibility.

• Cost 280 -> 300 (where it was before all the tweaking)
• Health 1100 -> 1250
• Speed 102 -> 97.5
• Reload 2.6333 -> 2.6

Ogre is better against small units and those that try to run away.

• Can shoot at retreating targets at max range.
• Fires two missiles, Picket-style, with a gap of 0.3s
• Reload 2.133s -> 2.3s
• Damage 420 -> 2×240

Scorcher regains some of the DPS it lost in the superfluid update.

• DPS increased by 5% (84% of previous, up from 80%).

Fencer became a little too manoeuverable and needs less damage if Hover is to be more viable.

• Reduced manoeuverability (still greater than pre-superfuild).
• Reload time 0.733s -> 0.766s

Ripper is still finding its place after becoming a more buildable unit.

• Health 1100 -> 1020
• Speed 66 -> 63
• Turn Rate 707 -> 624 (was 442)
• Reload 1.7s -> 1.766s
• Damage 270 -> 260
• Range 285 -> 280
• Sight Distance 347 -> 350

Dagger is one of those knife-edge units and needs small tweaks.

• Range 220 -> 215 (was 210).

Bolas is better at escorting.

• Health 720 -> 780
• Range 220 -> 230

Claymore might see use on land.

• Cost 330 -> 320
• Land Range 160 -> 220

Reaver has a tweak to make it better against Glaive.

• Range 270 -> 275
• Damage 40 -> 45
• Reload 0.466 -> 0.5
• Sight Distance 345 -> 350

Conch needs to be faster for Amph to be more generally useful, and now has a unique ability.

• Speed 51 -> 54
• Armours while idle.

Duck has room to be a decent sea raider thanks to the other changes to sea.

• Torp range 150 -> 210

Scallop deals more AoE damage to non-primary targets to make it a bit better against Ducks.

• Depthcharge Edge Effectiveness 0 -> 0.6

Lobster is finicky enough without a high fire delay.

• Multiplied aim rate by 3.

Seawolf is better at bursting down enemy ships.

• Damage 250 -> 260

Funnelweb can no longer block two Shockleys.

• Max Shield 23000 -> 19400

Terraform can no longer be worked on when enemies are nearby.

• Buildrate slows by 50x while visible enemy units are nearby.
• Made all terraform segments cheaper by 12.

Commanders

It is time to address the dominance of the Recon chassis. Instead of nerfing jumpjets, and potentially ruining the fun, we’re differentiating commanders by buildpower and buffing the other chassis.

Recon uses jump to expand rapidly and a BP nerf tones down this advantage.

• Buildpower 10 -> 8

Strike is made distinctive with more speed than Guardian.

• Speed 40.5 -> 43.5
• Regen 5/5/12.5/20/27.5/35 -> 5/5/10/16/25/35

Guardian is fairly plain so it has gained drones as an experiment.

• Added Light Drones: 1/1/2/2/3/3
• Added Heavy Drones: 0/0/0/1/1/2
• Companion Drone build delay 15s -> 12s (all chassis)
• Battle Drone build delay 25s -> 18s (all chassis)

Support needs to be faster to compete with other chassis.

• Speed 36 -> 39
• Buildpower 10/12/14/16/18/20 -> 12/14/16/18/21/24

Speed modifiers are now absolute rather than relative, and cloaking comes with a speed penalty.

• High Power Servos: Speed +8% -> +3
• High Density Plating: Speed -10% -> -3
• Damage Booster: Speed -2.5% -> -1
• Adv. Targeting System: Speed -2.5% -> -1
• Added a speed penalty of -8 to Personal Cloak.

Modding

• Maps that include gamedata/unitdefs_post.lua have it loaded in addition to the game version, instead of replacing it.
• Multiple morphs for a single unit can now be set in customParams.

Fixes

• Fixed Scallop depth charges failing to reach their target in shallows.
• Duck and Scallop torpedo projectiles hit more consistently.
• Fixed the little jump that sometimes happens to floater units when they reach the sea floor.
• Floating units thrown by Lobster now float correctly when they hit the water.
• Crab now fires while changing state and is no longer ‘stunlocked’ by swarms of units shooting at it.
• Fixed a target retention issue caused by quickly issuing Force Fire then Move orders.
• Added startboxes for Barracuda Bay, Blindsidem Oktagon v3 and TL Dropzone.
• Removed swarm AI for units fighting Knight.
• Space+Click unit information shows commander drones.
• Made some selection circles better match unit size.
• Fixed Bandit and Scorcher sometimes shooting sideways.
• Potentially fix a morph bug that allowed facplop to be duplicated.

Three units, Bolas, Puppy and Scallop, were a bit overtuned and so they are the focus of this patch. As a new unit, it is better for Bolas to be a bit on the side of OP, Puppy will be revisited later, and Scallop was too good against units intended to …

Hovercraft have a new heavy raider – the Bolas – bringing its unit count from a uniquely-low eight to a healthy nine. The question “How can Claymore be less janky when it is required to beat Scallop?” has been answered by reworking the Hover and Amph factories around a Scallop that must float to fire. Alongside this rework are changes for some of the more maligned units of the two factories, including tweaks to Dagger and Duck to bring them closer to other raiders in power.

Apart from tacking the longstanding issue of Claymore, we also tackle the longstanding issue of the general uncatachability of artillery. Additionally there are some small adjustments based on the previous update, a Ripper nerf, a Redback buff, and the matchmaker map pool has been rotated.

Balance

Metal Extractor health 750 -> 700

Hovercraft

Added Bolas, a heavy disruptor raider hovercraft.

• Cost 190
• Health 760
• Speed 94.5 (for comparison, Bandit is 90 and Blitz is 102)
• Disruptor beam with 116 DPS and 4x slow damage (essentially a Dart that shoots 3.33x faster)
• Range 225

Dagger:

• Fixed a longstanding bug that prevented Dagger and Gauss turret projectiles hitting maximum range when elevated.
• Cost 80 -> 75
• Speed 144 -> 147
• Damage 95 -> 100
• Reload 3 -> 2.8
• Range 210 -> 220

Claymore:

• Health 1650 -> 1320
• Speed 99 -> 75
• Brake rate increased by 200%
• Range 270 -> 280
• Damage 900 -> 600
• Reload 8 -> 5.5
• AoE 298 -> 160
• Depthcharges move immediately instead of floating for a few seconds first.
• Removed self-damage (this is consistent with all low-moderate AoE weapons).
• Land depthcharge now rolls along the ground towards targets at a range of 160.
• Removed manual fire ability.

Mace:

• Speed 66 -> 61.5
• Turn rate 560 -> 400 (note that the recent changes are 560 -> 896 -> 640 with the 1.6x multiplier)

Lance collision volume is now smaller and should result in less friendly fire.

Amphibious Bots

Duck:

• Damage 115 -> 130
• Turn rate improved by 75% (still 30% slower than Bandit and Glaive).
• Increased turret turn rate by 58%
• Speed 84 -> 90
• Shoots one projectile every 2s, instead of two every 4s.

Scallop:

• Floats to fire.
• Speed 45 -> 48
• Depth charge range 230 -> 300 (matches shotgun)
• Depth charge AoE 100 -> 128

Buoy:

• Cost 300 -> 280
• Speed 42 -> 51

Lobster:

• Cost 320 -> 230

Land Bots

Glaive:

• Fixed a recent bug that removed Glaive weapon spray. The fix makes Glaive slightly worse against small and distant units, making raider interactions more interesting.

Bandit:

• Health 320 -> 340
• DPS increased by 2.5%

Thug:

• Cost 180 -> 170

Puppy:

• Speed 105 -> 102
• Damage 410 -> 720 (so it can kill a mex)
• Range 170 -> 160
• Reload Time 1s -> 1.5s

Pyro:

• Health 620 -> 700
• DPS increased by 8%

Toad:

• Health 2000 -> 2100 so it unambiguously survives Likho.

Venom:

• Speed 2.7 -> 2.8
• AoE 160 -> 128
• Reload 1.73 -> 1.5
• EMP 600 -> 450
• Real damage 18 -> 40

Redback:

• Turret turn rate buffed by 22%
• Reload time 0.33 -> 0.3

Land Vehicles

Ripper:

• Damage 280 -> 270 (used to be 220)
• Reload 1.6 -> 1.7 (used to be 1.63)
• Range 300 -> 285
• Increased turret turn rate by 75%

Kodachi:

• No change, I’d just like to mention that a Kodachi 1-shot kills mexes with 700 health.

Blitz:

• Cost 285 -> 280

Air

Blastwing:

• Cost 55 -> 45 (it no longer 1-shots mexes, so it is free to find more general use).

Gnat:

• Health 420 -> 370
• Applied -0.8 target priority to shoot at Gnats. Locust is now prioritised after Gnat.

Bomber health buffs:

• Thunderbird 1000 -> 1120
• Phoenix 720 -> 900

Artillery

Most artillery is a bit easier to catch, especially heavy artillery:

• Sling 1.2% slower (for roundness)
• Phantom 3.4% slower
• Racketeer 5.5% slower
• Firewalker 3.4% slower
• Badger 10% slower (increased range 730 -> 750 to compensate)
• Lance 15.9% slower
• Impaler 11.1% slower
• Emissary 16.6% slower
• Tremor 20.5% slower
• Merlin 25% slower
• Shogun 13.6% slower
• Envoy speed unchanged
• Reef speed unchanged

Matchmaker Map Rotation

• Added: Izki Channel (1v1 only), Hourglass, Leyline, Mercurial, Banana Republic.
• Removed: Aurelian (only from 1v1), Fifteen Platforms, Wanderlust, Thornford, Gecko Isle.

Fixes

• Fixed local gesture, teamcolour, and unit marker settings.
• Fixed some aiming and ally avoidance issues for a few multi-barrel units (Gremlin, Harpy, Raptor, Bandit, Rogue and Razor).
• Fixed Mex team RoI.
• Fixed move commands sometimes being drawn on the ocean floor.
• Fixed amph float jittering caused by a hard water boundary.
• Fixed an overshoot gadget crash.
• Fixed Siren failing to fire at very close units.
• Made terraform commands more resilient to malformed input.
• Fixed Buoy (and other floating units) sometimes cancelling move orders while they sink.

There will be a 1v1 tournament at 19:00 UTC on Saturday February 22nd. Click here to see the tournament thread.

Forged in a thread of thirteen pages, shaped over many 1v1s, and tempered in a pot of lobsters. This release is about pacing, flow, and a focus on what makes ZK fun. In response to your feedback we have analysed and tested large parts of the game. The result is units that feel better to control, tweaks to some of the mechanics that were highlighted as frustrating, and more ways to make it past the earlygame. The changes are still somewhat experimental so be sure to post feedback.

In other development news, PetTurtle is developing a mod called ZeroWars where players send waves of units to push back and destroy the enemy team. He is still making sweeping changes to the gameplay, trying to find what works best, and it will be interesting to see what sort of game mode comes out of it.

Raiders and Responsiveness

To start us off we’ll make everything a bit more responsive, just so it feels better to control. There is plenty of room to make vehicle-types less unwieldy while keeping them feeling like vehicles.

• Tank, Rover, Ship and Hovercraft acceleration and brake rate increased by 20%
• Tank, Rover, Ship and Hovercraft turn rates increased by 60%
• Other ground unit turn rates increased by 20%
• Bomber manoeuvrability improved by a difficult-to-quantify amount (rudder buffs ranging from 12% to 44%, whatever ‘rudder’ means).

Now to attack the heart of the feedback – earlygame swingyness. A lot of this is down to the highly demanding interactions of light raider combat.

• Glaive health 200 -> 240
• Glaive damage reduced by 17%
• Bandit health 265 -> 320
• Bandit damage reduced by 17%
• Scorcher health 420 -> 480
• Scorcher damage reduced by 20%
• Glaive, Bandit, Dagger, Scorcher and Pyro now shoot at units running away from them at the edge of their range. This removes the situation where a Glaive chasing a Glaive could be unable to fire but still receive fire.

In an ideal world the other raiders would be rebalanced around these changes, but there is only so much time in the day, and the overall balance deemed ‘reasonable’ in 1v1 testing.

Without the “retreat bonus” it, unsurprisingly, becomes harder to retreat. Extra vision should give players more time to choose whether to engage, and besides, it gives raiders a nice bit of extra utility. Here are the changes to vision:

• Glaive, Bandit, Duck: 500 -> 560
• Flea 560 -> 620
• Puppy 560 -> 640
• Pyro 420 -> 560
• Dart 580 -> 660
• Scorcher 400 -> 560
• Dagger 560 -> 640
• Kodachi 600 -> 680
• Blitz 450 -> 560
• Hunter 450 -> 560
• Ground-Attack turrets increased by 48
• Bombers 660 -> 780

Newton, Gauss, Faraday, Stardust, Urchin, Lotus, Picket, Stinger, Desolator, Raven, Pheonix, Thunderbird and Wyvern snuck in to the list of vision buffs! Not to worry, the turret buff is to prevent radar wobble overshoot and the bomber buff mitigates some issues with bombers losing sight of their target.

Expansion and Economy

Raiding is only half of the earlygame, with the other half being economic growth. These change slows down expansion, removing the requirement to expand at a breakneck pace in every direction from the very start of the game.

• Metal Extractor cost 75 -> 90
• Metal Extractor health 400 -> 750
• Starting resources increased 250 -> 300 (to pay for such expensive Mexes)

Unarmed constructors have a bit more health to make it more difficult to lose really early in the game. Commander radar is just nice.

• Commanders start with radar (except in the campaign).
• Wind Generator health 130 -> 150
• Conjurer health 450 -> 600
• Convict health 650 -> 780
• Weaver health 820-> 980
• Mason health 900 -> 1000
• Quill health 800 -> 960

One last sweeping change: a repair nerf.

• Repair now costs 75% energy and build time (up from 50%).

Costlier repair pushes retreat-and-repair lineups later into the game, where energy is cheaper, giving early compositions more time to shine. It also nerfs those Gauss/Faraday forests that have been spotted brewing in the pots.

Speaking of Faraday.

• Faradary health 1700 -> 1600
• Faraday reload time 2.6 -> 2.7

Lets stack a bomber nerf on top of a repair nerf, especially for Raven. We’ll tell ourselves that the usability buffs make up for it.

• Rearming a bomber drains 10 energy per second.
• Raven rearm time 5s -> 10s
• Improved/fixed Raven attack and overkill behaviour so it does not need to circle so much if its initial target dies.

Like the repair change, the effect of this nerf drops off and disappears as the game goes on. Note that this is only a nerf to those players that manage to promptly reuse their bombers.

Balance and… Bugs

Time for some more sedate balance changes. Knight now 2-shots Glaive, Ripper ‘might’ not be terrible, and Constable is due a nerf.

• Knight damage 240 -> 230
• Ripper damage 220 -> 280
• Ripper reload time 1.63s -> 1.6s
• Constable cost 120 -> 140 (an unrelated nerf)

Tremor:

• Cost 1500 -> 1600
• Range 1300 -> 1200
• Area of Effect 160 -> 140

Mechanics fixes/tweaks:

• Dominatrix now reloads for 6x Build Percent seconds when it captures a nanoframe, instead of for 12 seconds.
• Metal from overflowing allies is now shared evenly between teammates. Previously it was weighted by the team member’s available storage.
• Fixed Hacksaw, Ogre and Tarantula overkill prevention values
• Raised Fencer aimpoint so it can be targeted over the lip of ramps.

Singleplayer and Coop

• Updated the skirmish AI, making Brutal harder.
• Made the Dominatrix mission (planet Ganong) fairer in light of the Dominatrix rework from prior versions.
• Made some later missions (planets Hibiliha, Lalata, Karuwal and Onsally) easier on the Easy difficult setting.
• Fixed the factory in the terraform mission (planet Kirdipan) failing to produce more than one Dirtbag.
• Improved the quality of your allies in missions on the Easy difficulty setting.
• Fixes to campaign mission briefings.

Other Changes

Here are some graphical tweaks, UI improvements, and performance fixes.

• Added Guernsey.
• Rewrote the default playerlist – the last unreasonably performance heavy UI widget.
• Jumpjet units automatically jump if they were thrown by a Newton and are about to land or leave the map. This can be toggled with the ingame setting ‘Settings/Interface/Falling Units/Jump on prediction’.
• Improved rocket trail visuals (non-homing missiles).
• Many micro-optimisations.