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.

There will be a 1v1 tournament at 19:00 UTC on Saturday December 14th. Click here to see the tournament thread.

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