• Zero-K now has an official discord server and we’ve linked it to our main server chat. Join us here: https://discord.gg/suJfSc5
• Steam testing is underway. We have a steam package and test keys to give to those willing to help us test it. Players can now log in to the site or lobby using their steam account instead of with a password.
• We’ve tightened the crash report loop which has yielded a high rate of engine bug fixes (as seen in the image).

Balance

Balance work has fallen by the wayside with our focus on polish. That said, we’ve been balancing for so long that little needs to be done. The Defender change is mostly madness and the other changes are fixes for consistency.

Defender:

• Reload time 11.5s -> 12.5s.

The aim is to reduce their effectiveness as sustained fire support against Skirmishers or LLTs without impacting their burst damage against small raids or aircraft.

Puppy:

• Sight range 425 -> 560 (same as Flea)

This makes Puppy a better scout.

Moderator:

• Sight range 660 -> 473 (110% weapon range, like most units)

The large sight range was a holdover from when it had more range.

Goliath:

• Slowbeam range reduced by 10.

This is mainly a unit AI fix. Previously it could stop at max range without being able to fire its main gun.

Engine

Last month, Kloot and hokomoko (two engine developers) were active in fixing some performance issues introduced in the last 6 months. Much of the performance has been brought back and there are even improvements – such as faster loading for midgame rejoin. We’ve implemented automatic crash reporting (opt-in) and have entered a phase of tracking the development versions of the engine to report crashes and use the latest fixes. Thanks to Kloot these fixes come in quite rapidly.

Some performance offenders have also been tracked down and removed from Zero-K code and the game seems to run smoother as a result. Our near term plan is to continue following the engine version to fix the most common crashes. Once that is done we would like to call players to test the 64 bit windows builds of Spring as they seemed to yield further performance improvements.

AI

We now have deployment support for third party AIs. Circuit AI was added a few weeks ago and has since been updated from 0.9.11.b to 0.9.12 to fix a few crashes.

Interface

Most (all?) the extra windows that occur throughout the game now have the techpanel skin and fixed spacing. The new UI skin is now basically complete.

Command menu:

• Improved the logic of when grid hotkeys are available and when the menu switches back to the order tabs.
• Grid hotkeys now hide when not available (for example during structure placement position selection).

Fixes

Here are some fixes since Zero-K v1.5.2.5

• Game end “Overwhelming advantage” reveals cloaked units
• Disabled click-and-hold structure terraform by default. It is scary upon discovery. Use ‘B’ to set structure height or enable click-and-hold in the settings.
• Translated the factory assist widget to a gadget. This fixes some cases where user orders on incomplete constructors would be overridden. Also fixes factory assist with commshare.
• Fixed some energy spending and distribution problems in overdrive. There were edge cases to do with team games that would make low storage players have too much of their energy income sent to overdrive.
• Fixed some errors upon loading saved games.
• Fixed some units failing to emit smoke when damaged.
• Fixed some cloaked units which were smoking when cloaked (cloaking is supposed to block smoking).
• Improved the reliability of reserve.
• Fixed an issue with resigning before the game starts (it’s now blocked).
• Fixed settings search hanging Spring.
• Fixed large terraform performance hog with it’s new smooth update rate by reducing the update rate when the terraform becomes large.
• Fixed Trident sometimes closing while airborne.

Balance

Tremor has needed a change for years and with the recent discussion I decided to do something.

• Increased smoothing significantly.
• Increased edge effectiveness to 0.5. Previously it basically needed a direct hit to do any significant damage.
• Increased damage 135 -> 145.

Cloak now blocks detection by sonar. This removes the unintuative behavior in which shallow water could be used to detect cloaked units. Remember that fully submerged units cannot cloak so there is no need to worry about completely invisible underwater invaders.

Fixes

• Structures placed on in-progress terraform now interact with the terraform correctly.
• Fixed some smoke positions and units that failed to smoke while damaged.
• Made spectator mode switchable with the single button/hotkey. Improved some options menu structure.
• Fixed Jumpjet Factory collision volume and pathing.

Lobby (and Server)

Much work has been done on the lobby and server, apart from skinning.

Parties

Matchmaker now has party support. Queue with friends to play as a team, as is standard with many games. Parties also override your clan membership for the purpose of balancing custom games so you are more likely to be on a team with members of your party.

Links

• The minimap name is now a clickable link to its site page.
• Map votes show a little clickable minimap near the vote buttons.
• Links can now automatically log users onto the site.
• Fixed URL click detection.

Fixes

• Added a scrollbar to chat channels (for users who open too many channels).
• Fixed Join Queue state bug.
• Further reduced idle CPU usage.
• Fixed redraw rate for fading screens.

Changes from Zero-K v1.5.1.6 to Zero-K v1.5.1.11

These were mostly quick fix releases. Here are some highlights:

• Fixed ghost site colour.
• Fixed command insert for blocks of structures.
• Fixed terraform texture visual when zoomed out.
• Improved and simplified commshare UI.
• Added class options for Unit Initial States.
• Fixed capture breaking the cloak effect.
• Fixed some playerlist bugs.
• Improved resource bar display of no storage.
• Added save and load game UI. It’s highly experimental so feel free to try it but don’t expect everything to work.

The most noticeable change of this version is the removal of global storage. Commanders are now the source of your initial metal and energy storage so losing them hurts a bit more (this gives it the Shadowfury333 seal of approval). However, the pain shouldn’t be too great because your economy should run with no storage, just with no ability to absorb fluctuations.

Part of the motivation of the storage change is consistency. There are no no global sources of storage and nothing is tied to any particular player. There is now no need for special rules about who, if anyone, gets extra storage in cases such as resigning allies, uneven teams and commshare. The storage just follows the owner of the commander. It should also make commanders a juicer target, which is nice.

Other notable contributions are from Sprung with various fixes and cleanups, Aquanim with the improved drone controls, @_Shaman with commshare and aeonios with the improved halo selections widget.

Balance/Behaviour

Commanders:

• Now have 500 storage to offset to lack of global storage.

Scorpion:

• LOS 440 -> 517. This matches the rule that most units with less than around 600 range should have LOS equal to 110% their maximum range.

Stinger and Lotus:

• Lowered aim points, except when near a cliff. This makes them more vulnerable to ballistic units and in particular improves Hammer vs raised Stinger.

Rapier:

• Improved skirmish AI to take its own velocity into account. Riots such as Warriors have a much harder time hitting it.

Goliath:

• Slowbeam range 350 -> 450 to match the main gun. This is intended to help against heavy targets such as Dante. Of course, it helps against smaller units as well but there are many anti-small nerfs available to the unit.

Vindicator:

• Range 300 -> 325. This enables it to reliable target the ground.

Moderator:

• Removed gun because it can’t be trusted to not teamkill.
• Powered by clockwork.

Screamer:

• Reduced cratering by a factor of 10.

Construction:

• Reduced the number of nanoframes placable per second from infinity to 30.

Buffed new players against the Spider, Jump, Amphib and Ship factories. These factories are now open on the sides such that you can block the entire front and still extract your units. This will be applied to the other land factories, pending models.

Interface

Fixed command insert interaction with the construction of blocks of structures (lines, rectangles etc..). Command insert now adds blocks of structures as a chunk instead of potentially inserting them between many commands. The construction order of the block now matches the order of construction when command insert is not used.

Added commshare. In the default mode it can be access with a WIP interface using the hotkey ‘h’. Players can merge and unmerge control throughout the game. The commshare modoption can also either enforce full commshare throughout the game or disable optional merge.

Improved drone controls.

• Drones now hold fire if their carrier is set to hold fire.
• Attack commands for the carrier are better at causing the drones to attack a particular target.
• Drones respond to set target commands on their carrier in the same way they respond to attack commands.
• Added a command for carriers to recall their drones.

Improved the blurry halo selections widget, as seen above. It should now run on more graphics cards and look better.

Tick, Roach, Skuttle and Blastwing are now detonated by manual fire (hotkey D) in addition to the usual method.

Improved Felon and Clam walk animations.

Fixes

• Fixed nonfunctional reserve truncation upon storage loss.
• Fixed reserve display fighting when commsharing.
• Fixed malfunctioning Brawler rear fan.
• Windgen nanoframes can no longer be told to jump.
• Fixed a button in the menu which would hide the map.
• Fixed terraform cursor with F5 (hide UI).
• Fixed new capture visual.
• Fixed stockpile display missing from the menu.
• Fixed cloak effect on so called ‘advanced’ models (.dae).
• Fixed Doomsday Machine description to say that its heatray requires power.

Sonar

In short: all sea units and Urchin can see underwater units, underwater units are not detectable by radar and long-range sonar sources do not exist. Being underwater functions like radar jamming does on land, except you can’t be seen by economy structures or land units.

In principle, being underwater is a lot like radar jamming, except that you are also invisible to non-Urchin structures, non-Vulture planes, and amphibious-pathing units from land factories. Here are the details:

• All units produced by the Ship, Amphibious and Hovercraft factories, and the ship Striders, have sonar equal to their sight range.
• Urchin has sonar equal to its sight range.
• Commanders have sonar equal to their sight range.
• Vulture has sonar range equal to its jamming range (700).
• Other units and structures do not have sonar. Notably this includes Gauss, Aspis, Eraser, Ultimatum and Detriment.
• Sonar Station has been removed.

We’ve investigated some preexisting sonar interactions and cleaned up some weirdness. One thing of note is that cloak and jamming on fully submerged units is penetrated by sonar (perhaps a recent engine change). To make this interaction more obvious we’ve made fully submerged units unable to cloak. This change barely affects game mechanics aide from saving energy and removing the underwater radar dot.

We also noticed that sufficiently deep units do not have any surface vision. This is an engine change and not part of the current design. However, it probably works so we’ll not put effort in to work around it for the time being.

Ships

Ship Factory has been substantially reworked. We’ve also taken the opportunity to remove a lot of conflicts with TA unit names (though some renames are just for consistency with reroles or for some theme). Overkill prevention and Unit AI has been implemented, but you may find bugs and foibles. Report these so they can be fixed please 🙂

Constructor – Mariner is a little more expensive and has sonar, but mostly unchanged.

Scout (Disarming) – Skeeter is renamed to Cutter and has increased range to be able to destroy any land mex reachable by Mariner. Be aware that the Scout Boat’s overkill prevention defaults to disabled, because it also tries not to hit disarmed targets. Under some circumstances you may wish to enable it.

Raider (Torpedo-Boat) – Hunter is now a torpedo-boat raider; it is much cheaper, smaller and faster, but is individually weaker in combat and no longer has a large area-of-effect.

Skirmisher Frigate (Missile) – Enforcer is renamed to Mistral and completely reworked. It is much cheaper and functions like a mobile Slasher. It fires weak guided missiles from long range (in particular it outranges Urchin, Scalpel, Defender and Stinger).

Riot/Raider Corvette (Shotgun) – Typhoon is renamed to Corsair; it is a little cheaper and faster, and armed with shotguns instead of machineguns. The shotguns make it effective against large targets at short range, however, its toughness has been reduced.

Riot/Assault Destroyer (Sonic Gun) – Siren (a new unit based on the old Daimyo model) has a sonic gun with some area-of-effect which is effective against lighter-weight surface and underwater targets. It also has a mini-Impaler missile for attacking statics. It is quite slow.

Artillery Cruiser – Crusader is renamed to Ronin; it is more expensive, more resilient, has slightly improved range and has more area-of-effect. It no longer has a depth charge sidearm.

Submarine Raider – Snake is renamed to Seawolf; it fills the same role as before, with a few numbers tweaks. The changes to how sonar works have affected its best use somewhat.

Anti-Air – Shredder is renamed to Zephyr and now has sonar but is otherwise unchanged.

Transport – Surfboard is unchanged, besides new sonar. Some bugs with transporting cloakers and jammers have been fixed.

Submarine Artillery – Serpent has been removed.

Strider Ships

The large ships have recieved some changes. Reef has some role issues which require improved drone control to fix.

Battleship – Renamed to Shogun and has a little more range and sonar. Otherwise unchanged for now; this needs some teams game testing but its overall role seems okay.

Carrier – Instead of its previous cruise missile, the Carrier stockpiles tactical missiles in 60s at 10 m/s, and fires them like a D-gun. This change is largely to avoid the current overload of weapon and drone controls. The Carrier currently retains the name Reef but this may be subject to change, as are the other properties of the unit. If and when the drone controls are improved there is some potential for adding a light carrier to the Ship factory. Something interesting and large (think Crabe or Grizzly) should go in the remaining build slot for the Shipyard and that could possibly be a miniature carrier.

Tactical Missile Sub – Renamed to Scylla. Now stockpiles in 30s at 20 m/s, twice its old rate. Similarly to the Carrier, this unit could potentially see further changes but needs more data from teamgames (and FFA).

Other Sea Units

Amphibious and hovercraft units are unchanged except that they all have sonar range equal to their sight range. Sea has changed around these units though so reevaluate their new place in sea. The sea interactions of these factories is open to change in the future, especially Duck torpedo range as well as everything about Scallop, Archer and Claymore.

After some testing we think that more amphibious units are viable than before. Buoy and Archer seem to be decent units to fight the reduced weight Hunter and Scallop is a bit less powerful. Hovercrafts are mostly unchanged except that Dagger is worse against the new raiders. Penetrator and Halberd are still powerful, unique units and Claymore has its uses.

Sea is not designed for Hovercrafts and Amphs to be 1v1 viable start factories. It seems that they might be viable on small maps, such as 8×8. However, we’ve found it useful to switch to these factories and teamgames should see many different factories ploped. This makes sea distinct from land in that there is one main factory and four support factories. We’re not too worried about this as the ship factory has a lot of complexity with its dual domain and 3 or 4 raiders. Sea 1v1s feel harder than land 1v1s which is probably a good spot for it.

Urchin range has been reduced a little and has slightly more health.

Ultimatum and Detriment no longer have sonar.

Sonar Station no longer exists.

Other Changes

Tactical AI:

• Improved Penetrator, Pillager and Impaler AI. They are now less prone to wiggling at max range to match the exact wiggling of their opponent.
• Scorchers now hug most unarmed or undodgable enemies instead of runing around them in tight circles.
• Many things now keep their distance from death explosions. Only appies to Fight command.

Morph:

• Morph no longer purges slow damage upon completion.
• Status effects (EMP, disarm, slow) now affect resource drain.
• Commanders can now morph on Surfboards. They need to disembark to complete the morph in case they are no longer transportable.
• Non-commander morph is now cancelled if the unit is loaded into a transport.

Interface:

• New UI chat is wider, backlog automatically toggles when entering chat.
• Area reclaim is now back to reclaiming trees by default. Holding Ctrl while issuing an area reclaim order now ignores trees. The recent new behaviour can be enabled through Game/Unit Behaviour.

Fixes:

• Chicken and player timeout windows no longer persist through different games with Chobby.
• Fixed initial queue structure visualization on some maps.

Balance

• Duck torpedoes are slightly better at homing.
• Completely submerged units can no longer cloak.
• Fixed Commander surface visibility and vulnerability. They should now be visible exactly when they can be damaged by weapons with no AoE.
• Buffed Support Commander’s ability to shoot at things very close to it. In other words, added a workaround for its poorly thought out gun length as compared to its height.

Unit AI

• Added Global Build Command. It is currently disabled but can be toggled through Game/Worker AI.
• Added overkill prevention for Ravens against structures.
• Fixed Raven diving insufficiently low against Commanders with speed modules.
• Fixed jumpjet activation when retreating.

Interface

Rewrote the command menu:

• Command menu hides itself if no units are selected.
• Bound Priority to Ctrl+Q and Repeat to Ctrl+R.
• Added consistency between clicking and hotkeys. Grid hotkey display is now consistent.
• Reorganized factory production tab to group units by role and ease of use.
• Added a command to clear the factory build queue.
• Fixed Aspis icon border. It used to be bordered as if it were armed.
• Added an option to make factory queue Alt insert put the new command behind the current construction instead of canceling it when repeat is not enabled. Repeat already has this behaviour.
• Added an option to make Ctrl disable grid hotkeys while held.
• Space+Click on command buttons now shows the command hotkey configuration menu.

Rewrote quick unit selector:

• Factory selection can now be bound to hotkeys. They are unbound by default, I am experimenting with Alt+Q for my first factory, Alt+W for my second factory etc..
• Selector panel can now be aligned vertically.
• Fixed some really stupid things related to quick selection positioning itself.
• Fixed flash upon switching between teams while spectating.
• Selector supports spacing, padding etc..
• Selector can now be skinned.

Economy panel:

• Added warnings for metal excess and energy stall.
• Changed the metal storage mechanics to make the resource bar actually full when you are excessing metal.
• Fixed incorrect reporting of energy reclaim.

Reorganized main menu panel:

• Removed tweak mode, FPS and game flag.
• Made the menu behave properly when resized, removing or squishing its options.
• Made the menu able to reduce to 32 pixels high to save space.
• Rebound widget selector from F11 to Ctrl+F11
• Removed binding to hide the menu. Esc now opens the menu identically to F10. Hiding the menu can still be bound with hotkeys.
• Added a button to switch to the lobby, for Chobby users.

Chat:

• Added an option to disable the backlog arrow when not chatting.
• Added an option to show the backlog arrow on the left.

Terraform:

• Build height selection used to queue a terraform command and later queue a construction, based on your ping. Now terraform is properly queuable so both construction and terraform commands are sent simultaneously. This allows for much faster and bug-free structure placement.
• Improved persistent build height visuals.
• Persistent build height now works well when constructing floating structures.
• Each type of terraform now has its own mouse cursor and queue icon.
• Terraform now split builds, if you tell a spread out line of constructors to make a wall they will each work on their closest block.
• Added a widget to replace the buttons underneath the minimap.
• Fixed lasso terraform UI interaction with water.

Misc:

• Non-Mex structures can no longer be placed on metal spots. This isn’t quite a mere interface change because it is enforced in game mechanics.
• Fixed docking API position remembering for non-docking widgets and added an option to only dock with the screen edge, not other widgets. Commander upgrade windows now remember their position.
• Removed Stop and Repeat commands from units that have no use for them (such as Solar Collectors).
• Added an option to toggle whether the mouse cursor is confined to the game window.
• Fixed nuke launch warning location.
• Tooltip healthbar display now updates instantly when a new unit is moused over.
• Trees are no longer reclaimed by basic area reclaim. To reclaim them with area reclaim either hold Ctrl while giving the order or give the order with a tree at the center (left click and drag on a tree).
• Fixed Space+Click being non-functional on anything underwater.
• Fixed floating structure placement (Spring change, thanks hokomoko).
• Recon Commander replaces old Strike Commander on the Commander Selection icon.

Graphics

• Grid outlines now merge instead of adding their transparency on overlap.
• Added HDR rendering widget. It is not fully featured so the HDR option is disabled and marked as experimental. Try it on in Settings/Graphics/HDR (experimental).
• Claw ghosts are now much easier to see.

Fixes

• Fixed a lups error.
• Lightning spark effects now form a circle, not a square.
• Debris is now more consistent in inheriting unit momentum, it no longer drops vertically.
• Fixed old Reef naming conflict.
• Fixed invisible Crane wreck.
• Fixed edge extension with water level modoption.
• Fixed initial queue mex positions with water level modoption.
• Added/fixed start boxes for Flooded Valley v2 and Onyx Cauldron 1.7.
• Removed the little flags that sometimes appear in the top left corner of the map.
• Removed some deprecated unit tags.

Balance

Advanced Radar no longer reduces radar wobble. The mechanic broke with an engine update, is barely used, and only existed due to legacy.

Removed Reef antinuke. Lets see how it goes.

Bantha can now shoot its Tachyon Accelerator at planes.

Commander Balance

Lightning Gun:

• Damage – 256/640 -> 220/550 (EMP with flux 960 -> 825)
• Reload Time – 1.83 -> 1.66

This has two main effects:

• Bandit no longer 1-shot
• Common units around 800 health (eg LLT, Warrior, Banshee) no longer stunned on the first shot

Derived stats:

• DPS 140/350 -> 132/330
• stun uptime 55% -> 60% (duration is 1s)

Also, fixed the Flux Amplifier upgrade accidentally reducing Lightning Gun’s accuracy.

Unit AI

Raven is now conservative about diving, carefully considering the size and maximum speed of its target and only diving as low as required to (almost) guarantee a hit. Previously it would dive as low as it could go against all targets.

Burst beam lasers (HLT, Penetrator etc..) now aim better against fast targets. Previously they would aim such that the unit would be hit in the middle of their beam time. This caused them to lead fast targets to a ridiculous extent and allow them to dodge and escape damage.

Buoy, Impaler, Rogue, Thug, Hermit, Rocko, Reef and Detriment (missile) now have overkill prevention against structures. Their in-flight projectiles project an aura of doom towards their target and cause potential assailants from thinking twice about increasing the doom further than necessary. This is basically an extension of the same change for missiles from the Overpowered Missile Update. Hammer, Ravager, Reaper, Crabe and Goliath (main gun) missed out for technical reasons but should gain the same overkill prevention in the future.

Units with slow moving projectiles now de-prioritize fast moving targets based on their current speed. For example, Hermits may now shoot stunned Glaives before unstunned Glaives just because they are much more likely to kill a stationary target. Scalpels are more likely to shoot at slow aircraft than fast aircraft.

User Interface

We’ve had a few interface improvements. Mostly to bombers and transports.

• Alt+r is now a hotkey for Repeat.
• Cleaned up the selection key hotkey menu and added a few more options.
• Double pressing L with a mixed selection of transports and units now causes the selected transports to pick up the units and, if the units have orders, ferry them to their destination.
• Bombers now set themselves to Fire at Will or Hold Fire depending on whether they have an Attack Move or Patrol command.
• Bombers with a single Attack Move command will fire at the first target they come across and not return after reloading. Set bombers to retreat, patrol or queue multiple commands to override this behaviour. The aim of the change is to make Attack Move for bombers behave a bit more like Attack.
• I was surprised to discovered that Air Repair Pads can have a command queue, like factories, which are applied to aircraft when they are let go. I remember implementing this and apparently did so eight months ago yet completely forgot.

Fixes

Removed almost all of the weapons from Zero-K (around 6400) to significantly improve load times. Also, removed about 400 units.

• Reduced Firewalker and Racketeer firing and impact sound volume.
• Fixed Recon commander breaking if Personal SHield and Disruptor Bomb are equipped.
• Cloaked Warlord no longer gives its position away with wakes.
• Fixed some wreck values and names.
• Fixed Claws incorrectly being set to hold fire when cloaked.