Today we erode away a bit of Total Annihilation legacy with the removal of easy nano-shielding. While it was arguably ok at the small scale we are sure everyone would agree that blocking tacnukes with Zeniths was pretty stupid.

Also a reminder; the tourney is in a few days so don’t forget to Sign Up.

Removed Nano-shielding

Nanoframe hitvolumes now grow from ground level to full height during the first 40% of construction. This makes it much harder (and possibly pointless) to block small shots and fixes the Zenith nanoframe tactical missile defense.

Targeting

Vandal now has overkill prevention. There have also been some improvements in damage tracking.

Dominatrix now really likes to target things which are partially captured. Other units have a mild aversion against targeting such units.

The aimpoints (spots that are aimed at when trying to shoot at something) of commanders are slightly higher, especially for Support Comm. This is because their weapons could be much higher than their old aimpoints which would let them shoot over walls with no retaliation.

Fixed Penetrator aimpoint and hitvolume as well.

Fixes

• Attempt to fix rare music pitch bug.
• Nuclear missile launches are now always audible.
• Fixed a rare case where undead aircraft would take up repair pad spots for eternity.
• Some sort of Central Build AI fix.

It’s time to open up this year’s supply of tournaments.

As has become customary for odd months, January will have an 1v1 tourney on its 31st day, at 09:00 UTC. The registration is open until Friday, January 30th 2015 23:59 UTC, and everyone is welcome to take part regardless of their skill.

Additionally, players can volunteer to substitute for anyone missing after the registration has been closed and before tourney itself starts. Substitutes will be used if the original signed-up players fail to arrive within 30 minutes of start without notice, in order of sign-up, based on this thread.

Tournament rules:
– Single elimination
– First map of each round is predetermined, the following maps will be selected by the loser of the previous game from the featured 1v1 map pool.
– Finals are best of 5, all other matches including the bronze match are best of 3.

The tournament bracket will be seeded randomly after registration closes. The players coming first, second and third will receive special unique collectible awards to their player profile, and receive tournament points which will at the year’s end determine the year’s altogether best tournament player.

The starting maps for each round will be announced at some later date before the tournament starts, when the number of participants will be more or less known.

You can inspect the tourney bracket at http://zk.challonge.com/zkjan2015

To sign up, post this forum thread and don’t forget to show up on time. Pay attention to the timezone, and set a calendar notification that will remind you. If you are going to be late, try to warn about this in advance.

This version mainly has a weird buff for Weaver and an easier to use UI for creating turrets on spires. Hold Alt and select a build command to use it.Weaver looked pretty shoddy compared to other constructors with its high cost for little health and ut…

This version bring much needed intelligence in the realm of missile firing as well as some buffs to marginalized missile units. As such Hovercraft may now be OP but we will deal with that when we get there. Near term balance is secondary to non-frustra…

Zero-K lobby server has been moved to a different machine.
Please restart Zero-K lobby twice (to force it’s upgrade) or use address “lobby.zero-k.info” if you are using other lobby program than Zero-K

Units now deal as much damage as is stated in the detailed unit information panel (viewable by Space+Click on a unit). If a unit says it does 200 damage then it should kill a unit with 400 HP in two shots. There are a lot of cases so if you a unit that…

Balance is ongoing for the new Sumo and Banisher has been reroled to better fit the riot role. Funnelweb, Wolverine and Swift have received some nerfs to make them more extreme within their desired role without being too good.

Overdrive allocation in teamgames has been tweaked to make an economy player more immediately valuable to the team as a whole. We also have a new economy panel which should (hopefully) be the last one.

Balance

Swift:

• Health 360 -> 300

Wolverine:

• Range 800 -> 730
• Reload Time 5 -> 5.5

Panther:

• Real Damage 220 -> 190

Banisher transformed into a dedicated riot:

• Cost 780 -> 520
• Range 430 -> 340
• Damage 650 -> 440
• Reload time 4s -> 2.3s

Halved the most recent Brawler DPS nerf:

• Before: 21.5
• Recently: 15
• Now: 18.3

Sumo:

• Cost 2000 -> 1700
• Health 12.5k -> 13.5k

Funnelweb:

• Removed weapon.
• Has only one shield (to fix charge transfer and disarm problems).
• Viper (large drone) range 450 -> 350
• Firefly (small drone) range 400 -> 250

Gauss has a regeneration rate of 20 health/second when closed. This occurs even when under fire.

Units within an area cloaker now gain the default decloak radius . Exceptions are:

• Active area cloakers.
• Units with decloak radius smaller than the default.

In effect units such as Sniper and Skuttle will have much smaller decloak radius when under an area cloaker.

Invisible scouting is now a bit harder:

• Gremlin decloak radius 75 -> 140
• Flea decloak radius 75 -> 120

Singularity Reactor’s death now causes a gravitational implosion.

Slow and Disarm damage will now always apply to shields as damage with a 1/3 modifier (same behaviour as EMP).

Overdrive Allocation

• Mexes now have a fixed return of about 90 metal to the constructor. The time it takes to do this depends on the mex income.
• Halved the payback factor for energy structures. The builder of the structure already receives some benefit through the public OD pool as well.
• Maximum privatized OD share from 50% to 33%. This means that in a team with only one person producing energy they would get 33% of the OD as well as their public share.

UI

• The latest attempt at an economy panel is now the default. This one should be the last.
• Fixed selections window text clipping and image alignment.
• Space+click menu contains more information.
• Teal team colour is now reserved for the player’s own team, meaning spectators will not see one of the teams in that colour.
• Added a RoI Tracker widget to track teammmates’ return of economy investment, disabled by default.
• The widths of elements in Deluxe Player List are now configurable by character/digit count.
• Power-user widgets now have read access to additional parameters for overdrive, ground damage and floating and can skip the “Hide engine messages” filter (see next post for details).

Bugfixes

• Fixed Dante consistently interrupting its salvo.
• Fixed Doomsday Machine and Stardust being blocked by trees and wreckage (will now attempt to blast through them).
• Fixed unit rank display.
• Fixed spectators being able to control team 0’s retreat havens.
• Fixed spectators being able to place pre-game queues.
• Fixed Zenith meteors disappearing on impact.
• Fixed outdated Sumo and Urchin helptexts.
• Fixed Solar Collectors taking damage during construction being force-opened.
• Fixed a Jump UI crash when attempting to give a jump order to a mixed jumper/non-jumper selection.
• Fixed queuing jump orders for Jumpy Factory.
• Fixed Ctrl+MMB orbit rotation in COFC not working at high zoom-in levels.
• Fixed extra drone construction that happened when attempting to spawn a drone when all slots were taken.

Time for the last tournament of the year is approaching! It will start at 09:00 UTC on 2014-12-20 and registration will be open until December 19 23:59 UTC. The current time in UTC can be seen at http://utctime.org/.

Players of all skill levels are welcome and encouraged to participate.

Tournament rules:
– Teams contain two different human players
– Single elimination
– First map of each round is predetermined, the following maps will be selected by the loser of the previous game from the featured 1v1 or team game map pool.
– Finals are best of 5, all other matches including the bronze match are best of 3.

The tournament bracket will be seeded according to players’ teams Elo after registration closes. The players in the teams coming first, second and third will receive 75, 50 and 25 kudos respectively. Please note that it is likely kudos prizes will not be given out for monthly tournament results next year. Make sure to use this last chance!

The first map of each round will be:
Round 1: Intersection_v3
Round 2: Altair_crossing_v3
Round 3: Desert Needle Small 3.1
Bronze match: Into Battle_v3
Finals: Eye_Of_Horus_v2

Check out the bracket at http://zk.challonge.com/zkdec2014

Sign up in the comments!

December’s first and Parzival‘s second tourney is to be held this Saturday, at 17:00 UTC, in 2v2 Swiss format.

You can read up on the rules and sign up here.