Every past month of this year there has been a one day Zero-K tournament. September will be no different. The tournament will start on the 20th at 10:00 UTC and registration will be open until September 19 23:59 UTC. As usual, keep in mind to take into accout daylight saving time, so UK time is UTC+1, Central Europe UTC+2, etc. Current time in UTC can be seen here: http://utctime.org/

Tournament will be streamed and casted by Shadowfury333 on his Twitch channel: http://www.twitch.tv/shadowfury333

Players of all skill levels are welcome to take part.

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 according to players’ 1v1 Elo after registration closes. The players coming first, second and third will receive 75, 50 and 25 kudos respectively. Tournament maps will be announced at some later date before the tournament starts.

Bracket can be seen here: http://challonge.com/zk1v1september#

To sign up simply leave a post in the comments and don’t forget to show up on time.

This version has many fixes and some small changes to UI and balance. Economy Panel now displays net income so if you were someone who thinks that is a vital feature you can now try it out. Superweapons are now “balanced” and mobile AA knows how to use mobility to beat Brawler.

“Balance”

Increased Disco Rave Party weird utility effects:

• Red: Boring old damage, unchanged.
• Orange: 25% larger napalm.
• Yellow: 20% more impulse.
• Green: 50% or so larger smooth radius.
• Blue: 50% more EMP damage and 150% more time.
• Violet: 100% more slow damage.

General Starlight nerf:

• Cost 35k -> 40k
• Health 12k -> 10k
• Groove Cutter damage reduced by 10%. This weapon is the source of almost all Starlight’s damage.

Unit AI

• Added support for units to skirm a unit until it enters range and then swarm it.
• Added Brawler to the swarm list of mobile AA.
• Added tactical AI for Crasher.

Interface

• Enabled the centralized default UI enabler on the first run of ZK. This has been in place but inactive for the past week. If you have not run ZK in the last week your interface panels will be moved around.
• Economy Panel now has the old Net displayed below the resource icon. Storage is displayed on the storage bars and these bars have customizable width.
• Slow damage is displayed in the Space+Click menu.
• Fixed waypoint dragger widget and renamed it. If anyone had it enabled they need to reenable it.
• Deluxe player list respects visibility setting on load.
• Reduced the Claw (Wolverine mine) radar icon.

Fixes

• Fixed Air Repair Pads (all types) repairing 50% faster than normal repair for the same energy cost.
• Fixed bug with morphed nanoframes dropping wreckage.
• Drone build progress obeys status effects (Slow, Disarm, EMP).
• Starlight obeys Disarm (Groove Cutter does not yet obey Slow).
• Thunderbird obeys status effects after it starts a run (Slow reduces the fire rate, EMP and Disarm prevent firing).

Notable changes between v1.2.8.11 and v1.2.8.17

• Fixed flame effect. Units which are on fire now look like they are on fire.
• New attack sound for Scythe.
• Added many options to the new chat.
• Fixed paralysis threshold. It was accidentally based on maximum health for 2 month. It is now back to current health. Zeus, Panther and Venom were unaffected by the bug.

This release brings new UI features, further sea balance tweaks, and a lot of bugfixes.

Balance

Some sea units have had their roles further defined, Sonar ranges were increased, and a few units became more reliable:

Raven: cannot target planes anymore.

Duck:

• Torpedo Range 120 -> 150

Skeeter:

• Turn rate 698 -> 740
• Sonar 300 -> 350

Conch:

• Sonar 250 -> 400

Hunter: hits more reliably.

• Projectile speed 160 -> 400
• Increased projectile turn rate

Urchin: should be better at actual protection due to increased sonar.

• Cost 100 -> 120
• Sonar 320 -> 550

Scallop:

• Sonar 280 -> 300
• Torpedo turnrate 3000 -> 3600

Snake: should fire more reliably; one shots other raiders.

• Health 600 -> 375
• Turnrate 440 -> 600
• Range 310 -> 290
• Fire arc 45′ -> 180′
• Damage 250 + 500 slow -> 350 + 700 slow
• Reloadtime 3.8 -> 7.5
• Torpedo turnrate 12000 -> 20000

Crusader: refined its role as artillery.

• Movement velocity 1.9 -> 1.7
• Range 900 -> 1000
• Projectile speed 300 -> 270

Enforcer: better at anti-unit bombardment.

• Turn rate 190 -> 210
• Range 660 -> 690
• Reload time 6 -> 5.5

Warlord:

• Cost 4000 -> 3800
• Movement velocity 2.7 -> 2.2

Miscellaneous Gameplay Fixes

• Crashing planes and gunships leave full wreckage instead of debris when they hit the ground.
• Idle self-repair standardized: most standard units except Banshee, Glaive, Scythe and Kodachi now take 60s to start regenerating at 5 HP/s.
• Djinn’s Lamp placement channeling obeys status effects.
• Puppy leaves no wreckage because it seemed to be broken.
• Nuclear missiles no longer collide with features (eg. wreckage or trees).
• Sea units’ tactical AI tweaked and improved.

Trainer Commanders

There are new Trainer commanders available for selection, meant to help newbies get familiar with custom commanders. They’re available for everyone in addition to their own custom commanders in the new selection menu.

UI

Economy Panel

The new Economy Panel is now available. It is an alternative to the classic resource bars that puts focus on the resource flow. Make sure to try it out!

HUD Presets

We have introduced HUD presets. These presets automatically set up a decent UI based on various classic RTS UIs. These presets should help us refine the UI as it is easier for people to define a UI and receive feedback. In the future this widget will set the UI to the default on the first run, this bit is currently disabled to let our current players get past the ‘first run’ without messing up their UI. The new default UI includes a much better chat widget so try it out.

Miscellaneous

• Team colours are more distinct.
• Cleaned up the new chat ‘ProConsole’ which is now enabled by default.
• Added On/Off state to New Unit States.
• Added Colourblind mode to resource display.
• Mission Objectives button goes grey if no unread objectives are present.
• Added a non-UI tooltip delay (units and features in the game world). This defaults to 0.5s and can be configured through the HUD Settings menu.
• Facpanel now shows proper unit queue.
• Facpanel has drag’n’drop like integral.
• Incomplete Protectors’ coverage is shown with a washed out teal circle instead of a white one .

Bugfixes

• Fixed Outlaw closing allied Solars.
• Fixed Outlaw wave being visually larger than actual AoE.
• Fixed bombers set to “always low” rising after bombing.
• Fixed Razor lacking wreckage.
• Fixed Brawler wreckage orientation.
• Fixed Starlight working under EMP.
• Fixed an overdrive exploit with Energy Investment Payback mode.
• Fixed Djinn teleport not resetting progress on external movement (eg. transport or Newtons).
• Fixed Amph Regen ignoring slowdamage.
• Fixed broken diacritics in some Polish translations.
• Fixed slowdamage permanently reducing cons’ repair speed and increasing resurrection speed.
• Fixed resource generation for Mariner, Athena and most factories.
• Fixed ship hitvolumes.
• Fixed Ada’s Commander (campaign) leaving Strike wreckage.
• Fixed terrain obscuring mex circles.

This month’s tournament, in 2v2 format, will be held on 23rd August 2014, starting at 10:00 UTC (10AM). The winners will receive the usual awards of 75, 50 and 25 kudos for gold, silver and bronze places respectively.

Registration is open until 23:59 UTC of August 22nd. Keep in mind that due to daylight savings time in UK is UTC+1, in Central Europe UTC+2, etc. Current time in UTC can be seen here.

Players and teams not present at the start time will have a 30 minute grace period, after which they will have a choice of accepting a substitute, forfeiting, or playing as possible (e.g. 2v1).

The bracket will be seeded and sorted by teams’ average elo after the registration closes.

You can view the current bracket here.

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.
– Default ZK version of Spring Engine will be used. If both teams in a round agree to use a different version, it may be used for that round.

As always, there are no skill restrictions on signing up and any teams of two players are welcome to participate. To sign up, make a post indicating so in this thread!

The main changes in this version are for the ongoing sea rework. Duck has significantly less range underwater which should make it counterable.SeaAmphib* Duck torpedo range halved.Hover:* Claymore recieved a number of small buffs, most notably to its h…

In this version we try to bring back Vehicles by half undoing some nerfs from a few months ago. Hovercraft have recieved a bit of a hit to try to bring them into line. Hopefully the changes do not overshoot.

Balance

Dagger:
* Cost 85 -> 90

Mace:
* Speed 2.2 -> 2.1

Slasher:
* Cost 150 -> 140 (undoing the cost part of the nerf which also lowered damage).

Ravager:
* Speed 2.9 -> 2.95 (undoing the speed part of the nerf which also lowered projectile velocity).

Wolverine:
* Can fire backwards.
* Slightly lower ballistic arc height.

Geothermal Power Plants can be built underwater.

Unit AI

Everything that skirms Glaives now skirms Skuttle. This was an oversight.

Everything that skirms Bandits now skirms constructors, mobile AA, Eraser and Aspis. Placing these units at the front of an army was able to trick skirmishers into not moving away from the entire army. This came up in a battle when a group of Rockos did not skirm a ball of Outlaws and Convicts.

Dart is now considered a less important target than Scorcher and Slasher.

Interface

Added a setting for the initial value of reserve. Energy has 5% reserve by default. Resources below the reserve threshold will not be used by constructors on normal and low priority.

Fixes

* Shield link behaviour should make more sense. It used to have strange link limitations. This version has no strange rules and only takes charge from neighbours.
* Fixed commander skin drawing.
* Fixed epicmenu search showing duplicate result of same options if that option use radiobuttons
* Removed A Magnificent Journey and Freedom’s Calling peace tracks. They start too slowly.
* Fixed the appearance of a singleplayer ready button.
* Fixed Battleship death.

This month’s tournament will begin in just over three hours. The rules are:
– 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.
– Default ZK engine version will be used. If both players in a round agree to use a different versionit may be used for that round.

The following maps will be used for the first game of each round:
Round 1: Desert Plateaus
Round 2: Red Comet
Round 3: Onyx Cauldron v1.6
Semifinals: Quicksilver v1.1
Bronze match: Valles Marineris v2
Finals: Trojan Hills v2

Shadowfury333 will be casting the tournament at http://www.twitch.tv/shadowfury333

Good luck everyone!

This month’s 1v1 tournament will take place on the 26th starting at 09:00 UTC (9AM). Registration is open until July 25th 23:59 UTC. Keep in mind that due to daylight savings time in UK is UTC+1, in Central Europe UTC+2, etc. Current time in UTC can be seen here.

The tournament is open to players of all skill levels.

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.
– Default ZK engine version will be used. If both players in a round agree to use a different versionit may be used for that round.

The tourney racket will be seeded according to players’ 1v1 Elo. The players coming first, second and third will receive 75, 50 and 25 kudos respectively. View the bracket here.

Maps for the first games in every round will be the following:
Round 1: Desert Plateaus
Round 2: Red Comet
Semifinals: Quicksilver
Bronze match: Valles Marineris v2
Finals: Trojan Hills v2

Sign up in this thread!

2v2 Tourney

The month’s 2v2 tourney concluded this weekend. If you missed it (sadly, there were no news posted before it started), you can find more information about it in the tourney thread, view the results on Challonge, and review the commentated replays on ShadowFury’s youtube channel.

Balance

This release has some small and no so small changes. The small changes are minor tweaks to bot factories and the large changes are to sea and gunships.

Shieldbot

Bandit is due a minor buff and Dirtbag is now armed to add options to the Shieldbot opening. The aim is to increase Shieldbot diversity. This may involve an eventual Felon nerf.

Dirtbag:

• Cost 35 -> 30
• Is now armed with a 25 DPS melee attack.
• Sight distance 200 -> 300

Bandit:

• Cost 80 -> 75
• Range 240 -> 245

Outlaw:

• Speed 1.5 -> 1.9

Jumpjets

Jumpjets is becoming a reasonable factory but is carried by Pyro. The solution is to hobble the one trick pony. Pyro has only recently become a legitimate raider so this change is experimental.

Pyro:

• Health 700 -> 620

Moderator:

• Range 410 -> 420
• Significantly increased turnrate and turret turnrate.

Jack:

• Cost 650 -> 600

Gunships

Now that Planes work well we have set our sights on a reasonable Gunship factory. The main thrust of these changes is to make Gunship AA stand up to fighters so a Gunship switch is not instantly countered by opponents who simultaneously switch to Planes.

Plane HP and dedicated AA damage were both reduced by 9%. This effectively makes dedicated AA worse against Gunships and flex AA better against Planes. Krow HP was also reduced by 9% as it mostly interacts with dedicated AA.

Rapier:

• Reload time 4s -> 5s
• Deals 570 Slow Damage.

Brawler flies a bit higher and

• Speed 4 -> 3.7
• Range 500 -> 600
• Weapon velocity 450 -> 420
• Projectiles explode at range (like Flak, Warrior and Stardust).

Trident rework:

• Cost 400 -> 270
• Health 1500 -> 900
• Shoots 540 burst damage with 10 second reload.
• Speed 3.6 -> 3.8

Drones

Drones (Funnelweb, Companion, Reef):

• Drones now spawn as nanoframes suspended above the parent unit.
• The nanoframe builds itself and completes after 3 seconds.

Spiders

Tarantula:

• Reload Time 2 -> 1.9
• Damage 200 -> 220

Cloakybot

Another minor Rocko nerf (the last one was 5% projectile velocity). This should be the last nerf for a long time.

Rocko:

• Health 480 -> 450
• Range 460 -> 455

General Sea Changes

Sea has been reworked with promises from RyMarq to track how it plays and make future improvements. Ships have been rewritten and the sea aspects of Amph and Hover have had changes as well.

Sonar ranges are now significantly lower. This is to increase the sneakiness of underwater units.

Sonar Station:

• Cost 120 -> 40
• Sonar Range 1600 -> 600

Urchin tweaked to be lighter. It is still powerful, but far less defining of sea gameplay.

• Cost 160 -> 100
• Range 590
• Sonar Range 300
• Damage 295 -> 180
• Now has some AoE

Ships

Many ships with particularly low turn rates have had their turn rate increased to be more usable. Many more ships have been reworked.

Skeeter has has a disarm effect and slightly lower normal DPS.

Hunter has become more of a traditional riot unit. It has fairly traditional riot attributes such as AoE and low range. No longer will it dominate everything forced to travel in the water.

Snake is now properly setup as a raider. Less cost and lower stats with more speed.

Enforcer is now a powerful artillery/skirmish unit, capable of firing a salvo of powerful missiles at long range. Weak tracking makes it effectively countered by raiders and other fast units.

Typhoon is more of a traditional assault unit with a slower speed but powerful damage output and increased toughness.

Serpent is much cheaper so should see use earlier. Is now more cleanly countered by those units which can close on it, especially raiders like Duck and Snake. It has had most aspects of it reduced to compensate, including range and speed.

Amphibious

Most notable as far as amphib is concerned are the Sonar range reductions and improvements to the Claymore (which now effectively counters many of their units). The Scallop’s underwater weapon is reworked into a salvo of easy to miss explosives.

Conch:

• Cost 210 -> 180

Scallops now fires a burst of explosives underwater. They gradually accelerate to high speed and have trouble tracking fast enemies.

Hovercraft

Hover primarily had the Claymore adjusted to be more effective against underwater units.

Claymore is now less suicidal with an improved turnrate and slower depth charge. To compensate it deals less damage.