This week we explore the Shieldbot region of the galaxy, with five shieldbot missions and a bonus mission. We have also released a Zero-K update, as well as some fixes and tweaks to the mission from week 2. Make sure to post feedback as these mission tweaks would not have occurred without it.

Post feedback here: http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/24441

Balance/Behaviour

Fencer:

• ‘Buffed’ by raising its aim point by 10 elmos. Now it aims from the extended position of its missile launcher. It is technically now able to shoot over allies, wrecks and reclaims in more situations.
• Fixed ‘The Slasher Bug’ (in the engine, applies when the engine is updated in the next few days). This also affects other units on Attack Move.

Hovercraft footprints:

• Dagger now pathfinds like a 2×2 unit (previously it thought it was 3×3).
• Increased the footprints of Lance and Mace from 3×3 to 4×4. Might reduce Lance teamkill
• Extended the Hovercraft factory to fix factory blocking, similarly to Shieldbot and Cloakbot factory.

Interfaces/Fixes

• Added Impulse Mode preset to Settings/Hotkeys/Commands.
• Added an option to filter out ally commands in show all commands.
• Improved manual fire tooltip.
• Improved state toggle consistency. All grey icons now use the same grey.
• Fixed Shogun wake.
• Added a drone construction toggle state.
• Improved retreat state tooltip.

Missions

Tweaks:

• Fixed Avalanche version on the Gremlin mission.
• Adjusted the Phantom mission. The enemies now make Thug and Felon to encourage Phantom use. Added some terraforming to fix the maps poor pathfinding.
• Added enemies that drop in midway through the Stinger/Stardust mission to increase the challenge later into the mission.
• Made the Knight/Windgen mission more difficult on harder difficulty levels.

Fixes:

• Hide chat box until it is first opened.
• Fixed a case where the commander tab could fail to highlight.

For this week of campaign missions we are rounding out the Cloaky Factory. These missions continue to teach unit roles and also show off some of the infiltration capabilities available to the factory. They are a bit tougher than the previous missions, …

This release marks the beginning of open testing for the Zero-K campaign. Every Sunday we will polish and release a new set of missions for fun and testing. The current release contains five early missions and can be found through Singleplayer -> Ca…

This month we mostly have fixes and interface improvements. The engine itself has also received a lot of work and is looking quite stable. Notably, unit movement was improved within the engine so now units move in straight lines over short distances wi…

The circuit AI difficulty levels are now Beginner – Novice – Easy – Normal – Hard – Brutal. Thanks to everyone for their feedback and patience as we dial in appropriate difficulty levels and names. There should be no further big changes to names becaus…

Thanks to recent work and feedback we now have tentative AI difficulty levels. Aside from AI, we have been working on smarter and newbie friendly defaults for unit AI and, as always, miscellaneous bug fixes.

AI Difficulty Levels

Renamed the AI difficulty levels for descriptiveness and because ‘Very’ is unimaginative.

• Beginner: A new AI that barely attacks. It is easier than the old Very Easy.
• Easy: The old Very Easy.
• Normal: The old Easy.
• Hard: The old Medium.
• Brutal: The old Hard.
• Insane: The old (well, quite recent) Brutal.

Beginner is very much a sandbox AI for getting the hang of units and controls. It slowly makes a base and after about 8 minutes sends a Flea (or equivalent unit) to wander around the map. Easy and Normal correspond to AIs recently configured by CrazyEddie. Easy is like Beginner but, instead of a Flea, it makes an army out of a few units and sends them to wander around the map. It also has a faster buildup.

Brutal is the old Hard. The new Normal and Hard are effectively Brutal but with a delay on all their construction and less self preservation for their units. Insane is a recent configuration which I was recommended to place as harder than the old Hard. Many thanks to lamer for writing Circuit AI and [GBC]1v0ry_k1ng for configuration, as well as to everyone else who has given feedback.

We have also added a beginner level chicken to match the Circuit AI difficulty levels.

Balance

Athena:

• Moved to Strider Hub, no longer buildable by constructors.
• Cost 500 -> 600
• Build power 7.5 -> 15 (notably this doubles resurrect speed)

The intention is to buff resurrection and sneaky unit production while nerfing it as a second factory.

Faraday:

• Cost 200 -> 250
• Health 1000 -> 2200 (It is supposedly beefy)
• Damage 1000 -> 1200
• Reload time 2.8 -> 2.4.

Note that the reload time doubles its stun uptime because it has an EMP timer of 2 seconds. The intention is to avoid swapping Faraday and Stardust in the build menu as well as an attempt to revive a generally ignored turret.

The Cloaky and Shield factories now have a an unbuildable section in front of them to make them harder to accidentally block.

Unit Behaviour

Tactical AI

• Rockos now try to shoot Stardust from outside its range.
• Added tactical AI for Goliath.

Skirmishers and particularly long ranged riots are now smarter about skirmishing occluded units. They now detect when their line of fire is blocked and, after a few seconds, stop skirmishing and try to move such that they can fire. This behaviour is disabled for units set to Hold Position because this is the “don’t get baited” movestate.

Disabled hold position by default for skirmishers, now that they are smarter about being blocked. The affected units are Buoy, Hammer, Rocko, Sniper, Scalpel, Firewalker, Placeholder, Moderator, Racketeer, Felon, Recluse, Wolverine and Dominatrix.

Here are the remaining things with hold position by default.

• Anti-Air – Angler, Gremlin, Flail, Archangel, Vandal, Zephyr, Tarantula, Copperhead, Crasher.
• Cloaked ‘melee’ – Scythe, Flea, Infiltrator.
• Expensive artillery – Penetrator, Ronin, Catapult, Pillager, Tremor.
• Deployable stuff – Crabe, Slasher.
• Weird stuff – Claymore, Aspis, Scylla, Dart.

These changes should only affect new players.

Targeting

• Cheap units [?] given slightly more attention by long-reload, heavy-hitting units [?]
• Fixed identified radar dots getting overkilled, especialy by disarm
• Hammer now has overkill prevention vs static targets.
• Racketeer now correctly anticipates that disarm is about to wear off.
• Racketeer now longer unwilling to target mobile units.
• Racketeer now has a fairly strict priority hierarchy: in-LOS active > out of LOS > in-LOS inactive.

UI

• Activated “Settings/HUD Presets/Stay up to date” so non-hardcore UI editing players are not left behind as the UI improves.
• Swapped Defender and LLT in the build menu (yes, everything is ruined).
• Moved camera hotkeys to the hotkeys submenu.
• Camera zoom to startbox on comm selection is now configurable [?]
• Units no longer retarget when their target completes a morph.
• Default Wind/Tidal Generator build spacing 3 › 2.
• Units of lagging players no longer flash by default.
• Double click selection ignores selection filtering (except for rank 0).
• Alt + Area Mex now creates Wind/Tidal Generators if Solar Collectors don’t fit.
• Added a unit icon for Infiltrator. Previously it looked like Scythe, now it has spider legs.

Fixes

• Fixed Wyvern being able to shoot as soon as it starts rearming.
• Fixed jumpies being unable to jump directly from their factory.
• Fixed newly teleported units with a move order being temporarily stuck.
• Fixed Sumo gravity guns sometimes causing light in the other direction.
• Fixed the tooltip in the middle of the screen issue.
• Fixed some cases where the tooltip was cut off.
• Fixed the facplop graphical effect being covered in lines.
• Fixed Recon Commander moonwalking during and after jumping.
• Fixed Dart sometimes standing at an angle.
• Fixed cloaked units setting themselves to fire at will when they decloak.
• Fixed “Catching up” panel showing up after game over.
• Fixed mex ghost showing in economy view regardless of the ability to build it.
• Fixed wrong units being highlighted for selection when the mouse was outside the game window.
• Fixed Strider Hub, Wind Generator and Solar Collector ambient occlusion.
• Fixed an error with zombie mode.
• Fixed an error when a unit dies during teleporting.
• Fixed an error when a plane dies when it is just about to sit on an airpad.
• Fixed an error when changing transport orders near a drop point.
• Fixed an error causing invisible units when using shiny units without shadows.
• Fixed an error where stockpiled tacnukes don’t explode on silo death.
• Fixed a build ETA UI bug.
• Fixed a transport AI issue with constructor following.
• Fixed commanders occasionally failing to continue their construction when they morph.