Today there has been a server update. There have been changes to the way autohosts and the rating system work as well as many minor changes.

Known issues

• The ladders are missing many players and display unranked players as rank 2147483647. Will be fixed on the next downtime.

Autohosts

Autohost voting has now been streamlined to avoid long vote periods:

• Directly after each battle there is a 35 second discussion time with no polls.
• Afterwards, a map majority vote is called. Vote for one of two maps using Yes/No, the map with the most votes wins after 25 seconds. This will be extended to four maps as soon as the UI has been updated.
• Once the map is selected and if there are more than 6 players a start vote will be called.
• If the game hasn’t been started, normal votes can now be called as usual.

There’s also a new option to join small team battles. If there are more than 12 players in the big teams host when a game ends, players will be offered to join small team games. If a player declines he won’t be asked again for 10 hours. The team games are created using a modified version of the matchmaker. People waiting in the teams matchmaker will be included if possible.

Ratings

• Ladder ratings are now chosen such that the rating system is 75% confident that the player has at least that rating.
• Ratings now have higher variance, meaning they will allow for bigger changes between days.
• Ratings will change faster the more games are played.
• Fixed an error in the formula to calculate ratings from team games.
• Rating uncertainty has been replaced by standard deviation. The +- numbers shown represent one standard deviation.

Minor changes and fixes

• Fixed some user flags being incorrect.
• Prevent users from vandalizing empty autohosts by setting custom maps on multiple of them.
• Only count custom matches for Elo if the teams are even.
• Spectate afk players on game start.
• Allow anyone to call !spec to spectate afk players.
• Only allow allies to vote on in-game kicking.
• Abort MM battles if a player doesn’t load in and ban that player, use !force to circumvent this.
• Reduce force start time from 180sec to 160sec.
• Fix autohosts getting deleted on every server restart.
• Add the logged in player to the end of the ladder if he isn’t on it.
• Add a searchable ladder page with the full ladders.
• Make sure the Space Lobster rank is unreachable.
• Prevent an exploit where players could spoof awards and force start games.
• Fix XP not being given out for some battles.
• Disallow joining matchmaker if the player is still fighting in another battle and that battle has been going on for less than five minutes.

We really need people to be using the 3.3.0 (beta) versions of the game for multiplayer.Please report any issues you may run into!We would like to fix things ASAP, so, if something is wrong, SPEAK UP!Thanks!Statistics: Posted by vexed — 11 Feb 2019, 0…

After some much-needed life maintenance, the summer (or ‘????ns’) Zero-K development break is over. During the break we received a Hunter model and some much improved animations for the Cloakbots. The major changes of this version are to Flea, in the form of a nerf, and Space Lobsters, in the form of a physics tweak.

Flea:

• Range 155 -> 150
• DPS reduced by 7.3%
• Decloak radius 120 -> 200

Other changes:

• Put a cap on Space Lobster by setting a limit on the projected flight time of lobbed units.
• Halberd can no longer change armour state while disarmed.
• Improved the walk animations of the Cloakbots.
• Replaced the Hunter model.
• Hid the modoptions window in matchmaker games.
• Potentially fixed an undead Outlaw error.
• Chicken Queen health multiplier modoption can now be set higher.
• Reworked Into Battle startboxes for 1v1.

This year again, 0 A.D. will be at FOSDEM, in Brussels, this weekend! FOSDEM is “a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate”. It attracts thousands of people and we hope to make 0 A.D. known to all of them. We are going in full force to the 2019 edition. bb, … Continue reading →

There will be a 3v3 tournament at 16:00 UTC on the coming Saturday, January 26th. Click here to see the tournament thread.

Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, is happy to announce the re-release of 0 A.D. Alpha 23 “Ken Wood”, the twenty-third alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source real-time strategy game of ancient warfare. This version is a maintenance release. Blocking bugs were fixed and security and legal issues were addressed. … Continue reading →

It’s time for a Matchmaker map pool rotation to introduce new maps (and give some old ones some love too).

Removed from 1v1 pool:

Shimmershore v1.0
Zed 2.3
Obsidian_1.5
Comet Catcher Redux v3.1

Added to 1v1 pool:

Something old: Into Battle v4
Something new: Thornford 2
Something borrowed: EvoRTS-New_Iammas-v05
Something blue: Aurelian v1.0

The same changes apply to the teams MM pool with one exception – Comet Catcher remains a MM teams map.

All of these changes are now in effect except for Into Battle, which will be added to the map pool after the next stable fixes its 1v1 startboxes.