Planetwars is now online for testing, with plans to run a full round within the next two months. We encourage you to join a faction and conquer some planets, with the caveat that this is just a testing round. Bugs and unexpected changes are likely and …

The most noticeable features of this versions is a balance pass for sea and a fix for the Rogue buff. The projectile speed buff for Rogue was accidentally not applied due to a bug. This has been fixed. We’ve also made other fixes and balance changes, including engine stability fixes that are not listed here.

Balance

Shogun:

• Cost 4K -> 5K
• HP 12K -> 8K
• Reload time 10s -> 15s (DPS 450 -> 300)

Corsair:

• Cost 220 -> 240
• Speed 3.2 -> 2.7
• Damage 512 -> 234
• Reduced spray angle and projectiles per shot.
• Reload time (for each shotgun) 2.4s -> 2.0s

The weapon changes make its shotgun the same as that of a Scallop.

Cutter:

• Slightly increased size.
• Reload time 1.5s -> 2.0s
• Range 330 -> 260
• Damage 34 -> 35

Hunter:

• Increased model and collision size by a bit less than 50%.

Mistral:

• Damage 280 -> 200 per rocket.

Siren:

• Health 4000 -> 3750

Envoy:

• Health 2500 -> 2000

Rogue:

• Fixed the bug that prevented the projectile speed buff from 170 -> 200 taking effect.
• Health 570 -> 580

Glaive:

• Speed 3.9 -> 3.85

Note that Glaive had 3.8 speed and cost 65 metal this time last year.

Increased Gremlin DPS by 5.4%.

Tarantula buff:

• Cost 400 -> 380.
• Damage 220 -> 260.
• Projectile velocity increased 22%.

It has much less DPS/cost than Vandal so the change is probably safe.

Phoenix:

• Health 650 -> 720
• Possibly increased the spray angle of its bombs.

Early Engineer commander nerfs:

• Level 1 buildpower 12 -> 10. Other levels are unchanged so you now consistently gain 2 BP per level up to 20.
• Build range 250 -> 220 but with a bonus of +12 per level up to a maximum of 280.

Other commanders:

• Build range 128 -> 144

Sight range buffs:

• Dirtbag 300 -> 350
• Mason 255 -> 273
• Welder 280 -> 300

Added overkill prevention for Stinger and Grizzly.

Interface

• Reduced Grizzly laser brightness.
• Reduced some spider reply volumes.
• Fixed some burst damage displays on the UI.
• Moved HUD skin options to advanced options.
• Selection rank now only inherits through commander morph.
• Updated old avatars.
• Fixed some units failing to fire at wrecks (such as Tremor).

Previous Versions

• Locust fire angle 90 -> 135
• Optimized Tremor.
• Fixed Adv. Radar animation.
• Fixed the double cloak cost bug.
• Fixed Solar AI.
• Fixed overhead icons for captured units.

The smooth aiming update from early February is paying dividends in balance disruption. Units with high turn rate (ie Reaver) and high fire rate (ie Reaver) gained the ability to jink while constantly firing at their target, effectively increasing their DPS. We’re working to address this, as well as to make Tank and Jumpbot back into real factories.

Balance

Units can now be force fired at trees, rocks and wrecks to clear paths and deny reclaim.

Reaver:

• Auto regen +30 -> +20
• DPS reduced by 7.2%

Kodachi:

• Auto regen +10 -> +15
• Burn time lots -> 5s.
• Damage 120 -> 150.
• Ground fire DPS increased by 25%.

Blitz:

• Removed unique EMP explosion as it is often detrimental.
• Normal damge 170 -> 200
• Reload time 2.6 -> 2.7 (old value was 3)

Ogre:

• Health 1650 -> 1850

Pyro:

• Increased burn chance from 10% to 40%.

For the mathematically disinclined this corresponds to a 95% chance to set units on fire after a second of continuous fire. Previously the burn chance after a second was 47%.

Made puppies not terrible:

• Removed goo inefficiency (goo cost 75m -> 50m).

Grizzly:

• Health 9000 -> 8400

Siren:

• Now hits, even if it misses (like Ripper).

Dante

• Increased Flamethrower burn chance to 40%.

Commanders:

• Build power module nerfed from 5bp to 4bp.
• Increased Flamethrower burn chance to 40%.
• Engineer commander now aims prior to firing, resulting in a slightly longer effective unpack time.

Faraday:

• Reload time 2.4 -> 2.6 (pre-buff was 2.8)

Personal shields now start at 100% charge. This affects some shieldbots and commanders.

Unit AI:

• Fencer now uses its limited AI to keep away from Ogre (default off).
• Units no longer try to jink around Kodachi.
• Kodachi tries to keep at maximum range against more types of unit.

Interface

• Added ‘Edit Behaviour’ to space+click menu opens the initial unit states menu entry for the unit.

Fixes

• Fixed random startboxes.
• Fixed Welder firing jerkyness.
• Fixed enemy cloak visual error.
• Fixed projectile lights stacking issue.
• Fixed pause button issue.
• Fixed rare Raven issue that could cause it to be stuck low.
• Fixed Cutter Debris size.

There will be a 2v2 tournament held on Saturday 3rd March at 19:00 UTC. Learn more and sign up here: http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/24838

In Zero-K v1.6.2.14 we address the rocky Tank earlygame. Welder should now live up the the name ‘Armed Constructor’ and their raiders should be a bit better at contesting the map. Thunderbirds are also slightly nerfed and there are many fixes.

Balance

Welder:

• Cost 250 -> 220
• Health 1900 -> 2000 (nice round numbers)
• DPS 42.8 -> 90
• Range 220 -> 240

Tanks seemed really hurt by the expense of their constructor and it could not even fight many raiders. This Welder can beat a lone Scorcher and, surprisingly, does not completely dominate other raiders (except for Dagger).

Kodachi:

• Cost 180 -> 160
• Increased accuracy.
• Increased weapon velocity and arc slightly, probably cancels out.

Blitz:

• Damage 190 -> 170
• Reload time 3s -> 2.6s

The damage nerf has no effect on most raider matchups so, against, raiders this is mostly a buff.

Ettin:

• Cost 550 -> 500
• Damage 81.5 -> 90

Tank AA seems terrible compared to other AA so here is a small buff.

Thresher:

• Cost 500 -> 450

Static flak is also a bit terrible.

Thunderbird:

• Rearm time 5s -> 15s

Subsequent Thunderbird strikes after a surprise switch seemed too closely spaced. The switcher could often get multiple good disarm runs in quick succession. Happily, this change should have little effect on teamgames where Thunderbirds tend to be less reusable.

Commanders:

• Level 4 morph cost 400 -> 600.
• High Powered Servos effect 10% -> 8%.

Some buffs for later level commanders would be nice but little can be done without art.

Fixed an interaction between EMP+damage weapons and disarm. Disarm is intended to be pushed up by EMP, or, equivalently, every EMP weapon is supposed to behave as if it also deals disarm damage. This was working as intended for pure EMP weapons but not for weapons which also deal a bit of normal damage.

Graphics

• Fixed Fencer missile smoke.
• Decloak is now drawn faster.
• Enemy units fade away on cloak instead of suddenly disappearing.
• Improved Kodachi ground fire effect. Increased the size of the effect to more accurately portray the danger zone.

Fixes

• Grizzly can no longer walk backwards.
• CAI no longer produces gravity gun units (to ‘fix’ overzealous recursion detection).
• Fixed Raven dive against speed module commanders.
• Fixed AI names in endgame graphs.
• Endgame graph no longer appears in coop campaign when the host leaves (for SP consistency).
• Fixed some rare bugs related to orphaning of Missile Silo and Starlight children.
• Fixed Jack and Scythe(and Dirtbag) attack range movement behaviour.
• Fixed units getting stuck on poorly shaped factories, such as the Rover factory.
• Fixed the weird decloak behaviour seen over the past few days. This was due to engine changes.

We’ve just knocked off two longstanding issues and they need wider testing.

Adoption of 4K screens seems to be slowly on the rise, so today we bit the bullet and trawled through UI framework code. The result is screen scaling which defaults to floor(max(1, screenHeight/1080)). Scaling can be applied by anyone to both the game and lobby so it can also be considered an accessibility feature. We tested as much as we could, but there are a lot of bits of UI and no dev has a 4K screen so we would much appreciate testing and feedback from those with such screens.

Recently there have been reports of crashes while attempting to locally launch replays. This issue has existed for a while but was revealed with Steam packaging. For Steam we do not use incremental game version updates because they result in longer load times and are more prone to corruption. The old fast-loading archive is deleted on updates and the lobby did not know how to do its own incremental update for older game versions. This has been fixed and we are looking to go further by adding more data to the replay menu.

This is a tiny version prompted by a failure to include the Antinuke fix in the previous release. We’ve taken the opportunity to nerf Dart, reduce the factory cost change and improve the singleplayer UI.

Balance

Factory (and Strider Hub) cost 1000 -> 800 (was 600).

Dart:

• Cost 35 -> 40.
• Damage 45/135 -> 35/140.
• Range 180 -> 150.

Singleplayer

• Added an ally to the Jumpfac mission to make it a bit easier.
• Added the load game submenu to the Singleplayer menu. Save/load still requires a lot of fixing and testing.
• Added a restart option to the ingame menu for singleplayer and coop games.

Fixes

• Actually fixed Antinuke.
• Added custom boxes for Apophis v2_3.
• Fixed rare errors with shield colour and Starlight death.

Shieldbots escaped the previous patch relatively unscathed. Here is a version to rectify this oversight.BalanceRacketeer:

Reload time 7s -> 10s.

Disarm time 9s -> 6s.

Damage 1500 -> 1800.

This is indeed a significant nerf. The intention i…

This is a balance patch that escalated. A Scorcher fix turned into widespread smooth aiming and the investigation of collisions bug lead to fixes throughout the entire collision damage system. Alongside these changes are a number of balance changes informed by feedback and recent tournaments. Ronin has a small nerf and there are buffs for some niche riot and scout units. We’ve iterated on Lobster design and mechanics to make the unit more reliably useful.

Balance

Units now aim smoothly at their target, with a few exceptions for technical reasons. This will likely disrupt a lot of balance, particularly among raiders and riot units.

Fixed/improved collision damages and velocities:

• Fixed incorrect unit-unit collision damage. There was a bug causing pairs of units to receive a lot of damage if they were of the same type and little damage otherwise.
• Fixed collision speed. Colliding units now collide in-elastically and correctly based on mass.
• Fixed ridiculously elastic unit-wreck collision as well as very low damage.
• Fixed weirdly applied velocity for unit-ground collision. Gravity guns should cause less movement stutter on heavy units.

Ronin:

• 80% movement speed for 3s after firing (55 elmo/s, normal is 69).

The slow stacks with other sources of slow (as normal) and the penalty time is tied to reload time so is increased by status effects.

Phantom:

• Increased horizontal aim speed by 71% (210 › 360 °/s).
• Decreased movement turn rate by 15% (430 › 360 °/s).

Phantom can now aim constantly at static targets. This will reduce instances of friendly fire.

Rogue:

• Slightly reduced precision at leading targets. This may be an improvement as a group of Rogue will spread their shots.

Lobster:

• Always lobs.
• Units reliably take 4.5s to arrive.
• Confers collision damage resistance upon launch. Starts to wear off after 5s.
• Can fire up much higher cliffs than the previous version and is less dependent on map gravity.
• Range 600 -> 660.
• LOS 660 -> 500 (the +10% range rule does not apply above 600 range).
• Increased aim speed by 266%.

Mace:

• Health 1200 -> 1400.
• Increased horizontal aim speed by 25% (600 › 750 °/s).
• Increased acceleration by 7.1% (126 › 135 elmo/s2).
• Increased turn rate by 7.6% (86 › 92 °/s).
• Moved its model forwards slightly (6 elmos) so that it looks more ‘balanced’.

Flea:

• Increased range 140 -> 155.

Redback:

• Cost 280 -> 250.
• Speed increased 5.8% (51 › 54 elmo/s).

Recluse:

• Increased ability to lead targets. Actual weapon physics and accuracy should be unaffected.

Dart:

• Damage 55 -> 45.
• Added 135 slow damage.

Commander modules:

• Flamethrower +10% damage.
• Lightning Gun +10% reload time (1.67 › 1.83 s).
• Disruptor Ammo cost 450 -> 300.

Hercules heavy transport (already in previous releases):

• Cost 500 -> 750.
• Health 1100 -> 1800.
• Speed 8 -> 9.

Scorpion (already in previous releases):

• Tail weapon ranges 470 -> 490 so it can reliably fire its tail when its claws are in range.

Detriment (already in previous releases):

• Gauss damage 160 -> 200 (matches Gauss turret).

Interface

Fixed/improved some unit selection:

• Clicking on a unit and releasing the mouse now selects the unit if the unit moves away from the mouse cursor before release.
• Shift clicking selected units now removes them from your selection.
• Ctrl clicking units now selects/deselects all units of that type of the screen.

Misc. changes:

• Added cumulative overdrive metal ingame graph.
• Added a time indicator to construction tooltips that shows the maximum speed at which the selected units can complete the construction.
• Increased the size of most selection hitvolumes by about 35%. Units are now easier to select and target.
• Ally unit selections are shown by default when spectating a team and when commsharing.

Fixes

• Removed the short movement orders that are issued by factories. This fixes some problems with temporary unit blocking.
• Fixed autogroup failing to include units at the end of factory queues in some situations.
• Fixed Raven dive against spherical units.
• Fixed Show All Commands options for showing your own commands but not those of your allies.
• Fixed gravity gun and Archer tooltips.
• Fixed Wind Generator interaction with the water level modoption.
• Default map boxes extend 20% into the map instead of 30%.

You can now enjoy the single-player campaign together with one or more friends in a brand new coop mode.If you start Zero-K from steam, you will find "Invite Friends" button in several places. Coop works in these places:

single player camp…