There will be a 1v1 tournament at 10:00 UTC on Saturday August 24th. (Note this is ~8 hours earlier than recent tournaments!) Click here to see the tournament thread.

In this version we take a closer look at superweapon balance and buff some gunships. As is the way with superweapons, they ended up more expensive but also more awesome. The gunship buffs are more experimental and aimed at producing more variety in air play.

The new save/load system has been fixed and re-enabled. This system saves many more details about the game, so report any new issues you find. Some other notable other changes are the performance improvement for Tremor, fancier unit textures, friendly fire fixes, and Ravens that are better at bombing on tall cliffs.

Matchmaking

• Added Frosty Cove, Crubick Plains, Frostburn, Shimmershore.
• Removed Into Battle, Onyx Cauldron, Shifting Sands, Izki Channel.

Balance

Some of the gunships have been left behind by the evolving nature of balance and meta. Some (Revenant) were never that good. With these changes we may see more than Nimbus, Trident, and Krow.

Wasp:

• Cost 260 -> 240
• Health 600 -> 850
• Speed 3.1 -> 3.2

Gnat:

• Health 350 -> 420
• Damage 600 -> 700
• Range 180 -> 160

Locust:

• Turret arc 160 degrees -> 180 degrees
• Buffed DPS by 4%

Harpy:

• Speed 3.65 -> 3.8

Revenant:

• Cost 900 -> 850
• Health 3400 -> 3600
• Manoeuvrability buffed by 11%
• Range 300 -> 270

Many players noticed last month’s Zenith buff so we have taken a closer look at the balance between superweapons. Disco Rave Party, at 36k cost, is now the cheapest, which is appropriate for its relatively low range and DPS. Starlight is no longer countered by terraform and has a healthy range advantage over Zenith, so it is a bit more expensive.

Disco Rave Party:

• Reload time (for each weapon type) 6.1s -> 6s

Zenith:

• Cost 32k -> 40k
• Damage 2000 -> 1600
• Stockpile rate 1.2s -> 1s
• Fixed a bug that caused it to be unable to fire at max range, resulting in a range buff of 8800 -> 9000

Starlight:

• Cost 40k -> 45k
• ‘Aiming’ Laser DPS 5400 -> 4500
• Main Laser damage 5400 -> 18k
• The Main Laser is now extremely good at cutting through terrain.
• Range 9000 -> 10500. The build UI shows 10000 range to account for the effect of shooting a laser from high in the sky.

Light Particle Beam Commander weapon:

• DPS 180 -> 210
• Range 310 -> 300

Made Light Particle Beam and Heavy Particle Beam consistent with the -25% DPS of Disruptor Ammo.

The line of sight of land units launched into the sky is now larger. In terms of a 3D shape, line of sight is now an elongated sphere whereas previously it was an inverted cone.

Graphics/Interface

• Increased the highlight of small wrecks.
• Added a shader that automatically infers normals for units and features that lack them. It makes the units look more detailed when viewed close up.
• Increased the minimum shield transparency as they would be near-invisible at very low values.
• Improved the effect of the Starlight main laser.
• Fixed broken unit information entries (space + click) of Disco Rave Party, Zenith, and Starlight.
• Added a state toggle to Lobster to make it ignore attack commands.

Fixes

• Fixed and applied the improved save game system.
• Reduced the CPU load (due to terraform) of Tremor by around 50% and allocation load by around 99.5%.
• Increased the amount Raven can climb against targets on cliffs. It is now much better at hitting units on tall terraform hills (up to around 1000 elmos).
• Blocking the the Starlight beam from the ground station to the satellite now interrupts the beam from the satellite.
• Maps with completely impassible areas now have those areas applied.
• Fixed some dual-weapon friendly fire. This fixes Detriment, Envoy, Ogre, Hermit, and Siren.
• Fixed a case in tactical AI behaviour that caused Scorcher to jink out of its own range.
• Fixed cautious riot units (Mace, Ripper, Ogre) backing out of range of explosive structures.

This version is primarily aimed at large team games. The big exception is the Sparrow nerf which should address concerns about scouting being a bit too easy in 1v1. The large game changes focus on performance, interesting energy choices, and curtailing Berthas. Additionally, some of the poorer Commander weapons received buffs.

On the technical side, many bugs were fixed and the shader rewrite is ongoing. Report any issues that you experience as we were unable to test across all potential hardware setups.

Balance

Sparrow was being built too early. By making it much more expensive we hope that it will mostly appear in the midgame, and it may even be worth countering with a small amount of AA.

• Cost 135 -> 235
• Radar morph build power 5 -> 7.5 (20s -> 24s)
• Buffed maneuverability, tightened turn circle.

Wind Generators are now much worse at high altitudes. This addresses the trivially good choice of Wind Generation on maps with large base plateaus. Singularity Reactors are now always more efficient.

• The best wind range is now 1.0 – 2.5.
• The minimum increases at 0.25 energy per 100 height on most maps.
• The rate of increase is scaled down on maps with height difference that exceed 600.
• The minimum wind height is now based partially on height of the lowest metal extractor.

Singularity Reactor is now more scoutable, snipable, and leave Fusion with the unique strength of underwater construction.

• No longer able to be built underwater.

Big Bertha was a bit oppressive on maps of a particular size. Lower range forces a choice between a safe Bertha or a Bertha that can reach into your opponents base.

• Range 6200 -> 5600
• Aims 20% slower

Commanders

Light Particle Beam:

• DPS 165 -> 180

Riot Cannon:

• Range 275 -> 300
• Reload 2s -> 1.63s

Heavy Rocket:

• AoE 75 -> 96

Riot Cannon with Napalm Warhead:

• DPS 86 -> 100
• AoE 144 -> 170

Heavy Rocket with Napalm Warhead:

• DPS 180 -> 135
• AoE 128 -> 144
• Leaves craters

Disruptor Ammo:

• Increased Heavy Machine Gun and Shotgun normal damage DPS by 50%.

Napalm Warhead and Disruptor Ammo now consistently reduces direct damage by 25% when applied.

Interface/Graphics

• Reworked the unit shading system. This allows for fancy things like emissivity and fallbacks for older hardware. Report any issues.
• Disabled the click-and-hold terraform UIs by default.
• The space+click unit information window now shows how much damage a status effect deals to shields, and even shows the breakdown in the case of mixed normal and status effect weapons.
• All main objectives in the campaign complete when ‘Victory’ is declared. Note that you can still fail protection objectives if you die in the victory lap.
• Zenith tooltip says that it controls 300 meteors, the correct amount.
• Very low value wrecks are now less highlighted by wreck highlight.
• Shields become more transparent at very low charge.

Lobby

• Added a modoption to disable AI resign.
• Added a modoption to disable Overwhelming Advantage.
• Fixed factory rebuilding on Planet Bavhakya.
• Updated the benchmarks.

Fixes

• Fixed the performance regression of last week thanks to player benchmarking and updates by the engine devs.
• Raven now predicts height changes when targeting units on spires or cliffs, and dives appropriately.
• Terraform construction points are no longer revealed upon Overwhelming Advantage.
• Added some leeway to possibly fix Widow missing (along with other melee and almost-melee units).
• Fixed the Commander and factory selection bar being empty upon loading saved games.
• Increased the priority of the Set Target command over Attack commands.
• Significantly reduced the number of projectiles tracked by Lua, improving performance.
• Fixed metalhead Gauss turret.
• Applied some useless optimisation to the wind gadget and animation.
• Fixed a FacBar error.
• Fixed a ‘spotter’ unit ground halos error.

This is a fairly large update with some balance changes, fixes, and performance improvements. We have also featured 78 maps to add to the variety in the teamgame autohosts. Some maps are new and some are old classics. The main balance changes relate to…

UltraGodzilla has decided to host a tournament this Sunday with a small cash prize to the top 2 finalists in the tournament. These tournaments will be best 2 out of 3 Single Elimination Format. There is no losers bracket. The two divisons are

Brown …

It is time for another engine update. We have recently experienced trouble updating, but, after running some multiplayer tests, this update has a decent chance at success. Due to the time between updates there are more notable changes than usual.

Sav…

This version contains a few oblique plane nerfs and a simple Raven nerf. The biggest such ‘nerf’ is a new scout plane, the Sparrow, that can be morphed from a Radar Tower. This new scouting option loosens the Plane Factory’s monopoly on effective scouting.

In other news, Scalpel can now kill Mace in two shots and a few campaign missions have been improved.

Balance

Added Sparrow, a light scout plane that is morphable from a Radar Tower.

• Cost 120. Note that it costs 65 when morphed from a Radar Tower.
• Speed 225
• Health 400
• LOS 950

Raven is slightly more expensive

• Cost 300 -> 320

Scalpel now kills Mace in two shots.

• Damage 622 -> 660

Blastwing can see further

• LOS 380 -> 450

Interface

• Added an option to control when wreckages and rocks are highlighted. The options are always, when reclaiming, or when constructors are selected, which is the new default.
• Improved some depth of field details.

Campaign

• Replaced planet Aspiris, the Tank Foundry mission, with a more interesting Tank Foundry mission.
• Added Sparrow unlock to planet Cygnet, the Sling mission.
• The patrolling units on Kirdipan, the terraform mission, no longer chase the players units.

Fixes

• Fixed some bugs with heathbar LODing.
• Clamp instead of block off-map commands. These commands should not normally be issuable, but when they are issued it is good to give players feedback.
• Fixed units set to guard shields or cloakers ignoring custom formation orders.
• Fixed a performance issue with lobby UI scaling and fullscreen switching.

@_Shaman is once again organizing a tournament! It will be on Saturday the 27th April 14:00 UTC, exactly one year following the initial Steam release.

Sign up and find more information here, or watch Shadowfury’s cast or my POV stream.