Balance

Gunships now have their own constructor: Wasp. Crane is unchanged and is now restricted to Planes. It compares the Crane as follows:

• Cost 220 › 300
• Speed 180 › 93 elmo/s [?]
• Build Power 4 › 7.5 M/s
• Health 240 › 600

This change fixes the inconsistency dual-factory nature of Crane and is also is meant as a nerf to earlygame Gunships. The new constructor is slower and bulkier so is a better fit to the theme of its factory.

Claws (Wolverine mines) now spawn if their Wolverine died before impact. Previously they did not.

Target Behaviour

There are a lot of target behaviour improvements/fixes in this version so we’ve given them their own section.

• Heatrays now have a significant preference for nearby targets. They previously had a preference but it was weaker than most other factors. Heatrays still target armed units before unarmed ones.
• Gravity guns no longer target nanoframes. Gravity guns never affected nanoframes so this is a fix. Note that gravity guns have never targeted structures, regardless of whether the structure is a nanoframe.
• All weapons now prioritize identified radar dots as if they were a full health unit of their type. Previously all radar dots were given uniform priority.
• Spectre, Annihilator, Penetrator and Impaler now have an additional priority penalty to target radar dots of mobile units.
• Outlaws move closer to their target when firing.
• Slashers now target everything with a fight order. This is to make them stop and fire at things which other units consider not worth stopping for (Razor, Solar and Dirtbag).

Interface

• Tooltips now have an option to make them larger, for larger screen resolutions.
• Many menu categories and subcategories now have icons.
• All menus have a consistent size, left justified category text.
• Changed HUD Skin and Gesture Menu paths.

Misc

• Freaker is now called Constable.
• Improved Crane, Rapier and Vindicator wingtrail and jet effects.
• Fixed CAI artillery production.
• Added startbox to Seth’s Ravine.
• Fixed ATI error with map edge extension.
• Fixed aircraft constructors turning around when construction is initiated.

Highlights from v1.4.5.0

We missed the release notes from the previous version so here are some highlights:

• Swifts now pull up near the end of their strafing run. This is a buff against low ranged ground units, especially those with AoE weapons.
• Smoothing weapons (Quake, Big Bertha etc..) now have smoother terrain at the edge of their smooth radius. This makes tanks more likely to be able to climb a Quake ramp. In addition, Quake impacts now jiggle units and can cause them to fall off cliffs.
• Double pressing ‘L’ with a mixed selection of transports and units will cause the transports to load the units. This command is an action which can be rebound through ‘Game/Command Hotkeys’.
• Right clicking a geothermal vent with only constructors selected will queue a Geothermal Plant.
• Geothermal vents now have a tooltip.
• Added a toggle to make cloaked units (exept Gremlin and Spectre) automatically hold fire when cloaked. [?]
• Endgame graphs now have a toggle between individual players and entire teams.
• Commander initial unit state now works for priority.

In other news ikinz is working on a nice ZK themed Weblobby and the release of Spring 101.0 is looming. The new engine has some nice features but is hampered by ATI graphics errors. Access to ATI testing is stalling our ability to make ZK compatible.

Balance

Nerfs to Warrior as a partial reduction of the recent buff. The aim is to harden the counter by skirmishers and reduce overlap with the Zeus assault role.

• Cost 200 -> 210 (old was 220)
• Range 280 -> 270 (same as old)
• Health 880 -> 820

Commander morphing receives a design pass. Most of the effort was applied to basic weapons.

• Basic weapons are now balanced around 50 cost and have designed strengths and weaknesses[?].
• Commanders can equip duplicates of basic weapons.
• Manual fire weapon reload time increased to at least 25s to reduce their spam annoyance. Some buffs. Costs are normalized to 150.
• Cheapened morph base cost by 50 to level 3 and 100 for higher levels.
• Slightly cheaper drone modules.

Valkyrie can no longer transport Enforcer.

Fixed Slasher overkill prevention.

Djinn weight lowered:

• cost 800 -> 750
• health 2600 -> 2500

Artillery accuracy improved:

• Hammer can no longer miss a Defender [?]
• Pillager can no longer miss a Stinger [?]

Tactical AI:

• Added tactical AI for Ravager.
• More things skirmish Warrior (for example, Ravager).
• Removed broken Scorcher behaviour[?].

UI

Air Repair/Rearm Pad can now have rally points. Aircraft that leave an Air Repair/Rearm Pad or a Airplane Plant with an empty command queue will inherit the queue of their pad. This mirrors the behaviour of factory queues. Reef is unaffected.

Better team names:

• instead of “team 0”, teams now have recognizable names, for example “Team North”, “GBC” or “Team Sprung” [?]
• the game-over screen now tells spectators who won (in the above format; was just “game over” previously).

Other changes:

• Line-move now shows dots for the projected unit positions. This is option is enabled by default for new and current players. We need to know whether it works for all graphics cards.
• Loading progress bar is now more accurate.
• Added a “show always” option for armor and build-priority state icons.

Changed defaults for new players:

• Fight is now hotkeyed under A and Attack is under F. The commands are also renamed.
• Engine info screen hotkey: ‘i’ -> ‘Ctrl+i’
• LoS view toggle hotkey: ‘L’ -> ‘Ctrl+L’
• Default command visibility: always shown for selected units, hold Shift for all units (previously was hold shift for selected units, no way to see all units).

Misc

• The game can now result in a draw in two cases: everyone dies at the same time (eg. two opposing roaches blow each other), or all alive teams are dropped (eg. when the non-dropped team resigns after the other drops).
• Wreckage, rocks, trees etc. no longer disappear without a trace when destroyed/crushed/reclaimed but make a small dirt poof instead.
• Trainer comms default to HMG/radar at level 1 and ablative/regen at level 2.
• CAI no longer avoids linking its fusion reactors.
• Fix CAI having wrong idea about energy economy.

Commanders

Commanders can now be configured during the game.

• Pick the modules for each level upon upgrading your commander (with the cog command).
• Use site profiles to store and name your favorite loadouts.
• Decorations are also applied through the site. Ordinary unlocks will be removed.

We have finally removed the Strike and Battle commander models. The models were reasonable but unfortunately they were too close to OTA. The Arm Commander is the iconic face of OTA and Core is not far behind. The Strike chassis received a new model and the Siege and Battle chassis were merged into one.

The commander morph design received a shake-up in the process, some due to design changes and some for technical reasons. The changes are not balanced but they aim to be balanced eventually. Here are some changes:

• Support -> Engineer (Support is too generic as a word, could be confusing).
• Engineer and Recon can only equip one basic weapon. It makes sense as they only have one gun. They should be made powerful in other ways.
• The weapons allowed for each chassis have changed. Some weapons have been removed or modified. There are some new weapons.
• Some conversions have been removed, mostly the 0-choice ones (those that increase range).

A few experimental features are already possible with the new system. These includes:

• Commanders have no upgrade limit (base cost increases though).
• Base commanders can be built from Strider Hub (1000 metal, no economy).
• Stackable drone modules.

This is just the initial implementation. Once this system is tested we hope to add more interesting features and balance, things not seen in the previous commander system. Each chassis should be able to fulfill a few roles so pregame RPS will not be as worrying as it was before.

Balance / Mechanics

• Disarm no longer destroys wreckage and map features (trees, rocks etc).
• Resurrecting now decloaks.
• Resurrecting now costs 200% of the original energy cost (was 125%).
• Jumping with jetpack [?] now decloaks.
• Defender reload time obeys status effects [?]
• Trident, Flail and Racketeer now home onto radar dots.
• Reef:
• time between starting a new drone: 3 › 5 s (can build 4 in parallel)
• drone build time: 15 › 25 s
• drone max wander range: 1600 › 1000 elmo
• Funnelweb and Commander Companion Modules:
• time between starting a new Firefly (light drone): 10 › 15 s
• Firefly build time: 3 › 10 s
• time between starting a new Viper (heavy drone): 20 › 25 s
• Viper build time: 3 › 15 s
• Quill less annoying to use through manoeuvrability improvements:
• turn rate: 81 › 90 °/s
• time from max speed to full stop: 1 › 0.1 s [?]
• Tremor can damage itself with stray shots.

UI / Misc

• LoS view is no longer enabled in the pregame setup.
• Added time display to spectator panel.
• Added Unit Shapes highlighting to units under the cursor[?] and inside a selection box.
• Added option to Unit Shapes to show ally selections with each player’s colour while spectating.
• Selection: renamed “DGun” reload timer to “Special”.
• Added an option to hide command panel when spectating.
• Improved Blastwing explosion effect.
• Reduced Claw missile hit sound.

Fixes

• Fixed some cases where late spawning commanders spawned outside their start box.
• Cloaker and shield jitter now disable during morph (these are effects high graphics settings).
• Control groups are maintained through morph.
• Nanoframes leave the correct debris.
• Tidal generator wreckage has the correct tooltip.
• Fixed Numpad Enter not working for chat.
• Fixed a crash caused by resigning during “Wait or Win”.
• Fixed spec panel crashing on AI games.
• Fixed an UI crash when using build hotkeys with an Athena.
• Unit selection shapes and unit outlines effects now respect depth.
• Healthbars are no longer shown for dying units, EMP is drawn correctly.
• Fixed music sometimes not playing while messing with the volume slider.
• Most hovercrafts no longer create dust when cloaked (this is so they don’t give away their position).
• Improvedstartbox rendering performance.
• Teleportation noises are no longer audible in the fog of war.
• Jumpers which die in mid air now have appropriate velocity for their wreck.
• Morph no longer resets shield charge.
• Crabe has minor model and animation improvements.

Content creation

• Startboxes exposed to Game Rules Params.
• Skirmish AI can now ask whether a start position is valid.

[Spoiler]

startbox_max_n -> highest box number (boxes are numbered from 0!)

startbox_n_0 -> how many polygons in box #0 (polygons numbered from 1)
startbox_polygon_0_1 -> how many vertices in polygon #1 of box #0 (vertices numbered from 1)
startbox_polygon_x_0_1_2 -> X coordinate of vertex #2 in polygon #1 of box #0
startbox_polygon_z_0_1_2 -> Z coordinate of vertex #2 in polygon #1 of box #0

startbox_recommended_startpos -> whether recommended startpositions are available (1 or 0)
startpos_n_0 -> how many recommended start positions in box #0 (positions numbered from 1)
startpos_x_0_1 -> X coordinate of recommended startpos #1 in box #0
startpos_x_0_1 -> Z coordinate of recommended startpos #1 in box #0

Balance

Cloakybot has a reduction of the nerfs for some of its previously most powerful units.

• Rocko: Health 350 -> 390 (was 450)
• Spectre: Reload time 18 -> 17s (was 15s)

For Hovercraft we have a small nerf to Scalpel and minor buffs to Dagger and Mace. The changes are mostly to missile physics to give units a bit more time to fight or flee.

• Dagger:
• Cost 85 -> 80 m
• Sight 500 -> 560 elmo
• Scalpel:
• AoE radius 96 -> 80 elmo
• Unit turn rate 79 -> 73 °/s
• Missile homing 132 -> 115 °/s
• Missile velocity 200 -> 180 elmo/s
• Missile duration 3.5 -> 3.1 s [?]
• Horizontal angle of fire 43 -> 66 °
• Mace: Speed 63 -> 66 elmo/s

Pyro death explosion now applies ground fire. This is to make its mechanics match the flame effect. Previously the explosion applied 21-30s of burning (315-450 damage) which tended to guarantee a kill against light raiders.

• DPS: 20
• Radius: 128 elmo [?]
• Linger time: 13s
• Burn time 25s -> 2s [?]
• Initial damage: 50 (unchanged)

Duck is now slightly worse at avoiding consequences. The underwater Duck vs Duck game may also no longer be one of blindly running into each other.

• Missile range 250 -> 240 elmo
• Torpedo range 150 -> 120 elmo
• Sonar 250 -> 350 elmo

Recluse has a buff to see what it takes to use Recluse:

• Range 540 -> 570 elmo
• Sight 594 -> 627 elmo [?]

Funnelweb lost combat regeneration for consistency [?]

Raised most units’ eye height by 10-20 elmos [?]

Terraform now has its minimum thickness more strictly enforced. No more 1-wide walls around structures. Walling mexes and fusions is now slightly more expensive.

General UI

• COFC smooth mesh just affects scrolling again.
• Build ETA has size and draw height menu options.
• Menu option paths: renamed AutoGroup to Control Groups.
• The interface for walling a structure with terraform (Ctrl + click) now gives a rectangle command[?].
• The unit lock modoption now works on AI and accepts unit names as parameters.

Unit AI

Unit AI has been improved, mostly regarding targeting.
“Ignore” means the units still automatically shoot the target, but will not stop to kill and instead move on if they are on Fight command and there are no better targets.

• Spectre will now avoid all mobile ground units.
• Puppy on Fight dodges better and closes in faster.
• Scorcher will now move close to the target when on Fight command.
• Units with slow projectiles will now disprefer shooting at fast units and will ignore them. [?]
• Units are less inclined to shoot at Fleas and Darts [?].
• Penetrator, Sniper and Racketeer disprefer LLT and Defender.
• Airborne units no longer ignore Razors.
• Crusader will now ignore gunships.
• Armored units are now deprioritized correctly.

XP

XP has always been very unreliable as a measure of unit performance. This has been addressed. The rank of a unit now directly reflects how many times over a unit has paid for itself.

• Rank 1 = 1x cost
• Rank 2 = 2x cost
• Rank 3 = 3x cost
• Silver Star = 4x cost
• Gold Star = 7x cost
• Super Gold Star = 10x cost

Details:[Spoiler]

Content creation

• Maps can now have less than 6 metal spots.
• Custom AIs now select their own commanders. Ones that do not, are given Strike Trainer. [?]
• healthbar labels for features [?] are now subject to localisation.

Fixes

• Fixed slow damage permanently increasing turn rate inertia.
• Fixed Dante incendiary rockets using napalm visuals.
• Fixed rank icons disappearing while spectating.