Metals spots has been tweaked slightly for automatic compatibility with more maps. In some cases a map was too broken for this so an override has been added.

Anti-gunship AA has been nerfed slightly in the continued attempt to make gunships more useful. Jethro is now a cloaky AA unit and hopefully some sort of Veh AA can fill Jethro’s old role.

The main UI changes are grid hotkeys for factory units and Outlaw has a button to constantly fire as well as an improved effect.

Metal Spots

UI:

• Size of minimap circle now independent of map size.
• By using larger metal icons the income visualisation can handle income up to 1000.

There are now configs for:

• Azure Rampart
• Charlie in the Hills v2.1
• EE-RiverGlade-v02
• Lava And Two Hills
• Porky_Islands
• TheBeachBeta

Fixes:

• May have fixed desync in finder algorithm.
• Fixed metal mult modoption.
• Slightly reduced spot merge detection range.
• Mexes with less than 0.2 income are discarded.

Balance

Jethro (cloaky AA):

• Now cloaks (0.1 static, 0.5 moving)
• Cost 100 -> 150
• DPS increased 50%
• Range 760 -> 700
• Speed 3.5 -> 2.9

Archangel (Jump AA):

• EMG dps is back to what it was before the XP change. This is a reduction of 30% from last version.

Cobra and Copperhead (flak cannons):

• DPS reduced 10% (to try and make Gunships better).

Quake (seismic missile):

• Cost 500 -> 400

UI

Factory build options now have grid layout hotkeys. These work a bit differently to structure grid hotkeys.

• Unit creation only requires one key press.
• The hotkeys are always active when Units tab and a factory is selected.
• Modifiers Shift (5x) and Alt (insert at start of queue) modifiers work with these hotkeys.
• These may conflict with how some current people like to use the UI so there is an is an option “Settings/Interface/Integral Menu/Disable Units Hotkeys” to turn it off.

Set Target and Cancel Target are now bindable through the menu Game/Commands tab.

Outlaw can be toggled on/off to constantly fire. Improved weapon gfx to be cleaner and more accurately depict the AoE speed.

Fixes

• Fixed some wreck names.
• ‘Anti-Armor’ units are now called ‘Anti-Heavy’
• Gauss now shoots through wreckages (it was suppose to and has done so in the past).

Today we throw off the shackles of broken metalmap layouts and confusing extractor incomes. No more will otherwise good maps be unplayable and no one can miss the clearly displayed power of super mexes. Mex placement now has a UI, is limited to specific spots and is entirely configurable game side on a per-map basis.

As far as balance goes Gunship roles have been extremified and Tremor has received quite a buff.

Mex Placement

Mex placement is now limited to specific locations on the map.

Interface:

• Mex placement snaps to mex spots.
• Spot line width and I-Beam count indicates income.
• Spot colour indicates whether the spot is under allied control.

Mechanic Changes:

• Mex constructor no longer receives 5% extra base income.
• Metalmap view cannot be used to increase scout view range.
• Mexes now start as soon as they are built (previously there was a 3s delay to gather resource data).

Compatibility:

• Cloud metal maps with large extractor radius are not supported. Examples are Bazillion Battlefield and Castles.
• Those with small extractor radius still work. For example Duck and Speedmetal.
• Game-side configs can be added to completely replace a metalmap. This can be used to fix the few liked cloud metalmaps and to fix maps that look good but have broken metalmaps.

Widgets:

• Area Mex, Mex Snap and Prospector have been removed and partially merged into a single widget.
• If you disable this widget you’re stuffed.

Communism/economy change

Base income of metal extractors is now 50% private and 50% shared when mex is built.
This ratio falls down to 0% private and 100% shared over 5 minutes.

Ready behaviour change

Start location can now be chosen at any time and there is no ready button. The game with start 4s after every player has chosen a start location.

Balance

Tremor:

• AOE increased 11%
• DPS increased 23%
• Impacts smooths terrain.

Weapononised terrain smoothing is reduced for mid air explosions (as in when projectiles impact a shield high above the ground).

Seismic missile can shoot underwater.

Brawler. It should emphasise range and not being hit by most land units.

• Speed 4.7 -> 4
• Uses more of it’s range while strafing.

Blackdawn. Should be hit and run with ground interaction.

• Speed 4.65 -> 4.5
• Health 2900 -> 3400
• Cruise Altitude 210 -> 150 (to compare Banshee is at 100)
• Range 450 -> 300

Rapier. If it is going to defend other gunships it needs to be able to keep up
with them and deal reasonable damage.

• Speed 3.8 -> 4
• Health 1300 -> 1100
• Damage 150 -> 200 (1 shot better vs Vamp)
• Range 300 -> 340

Banshee. This just needs to be a bit better.

• DPS increased 5%
• Range increased by 20

Gnat. Needs to be less extreme “completely win or die”.

• Health 90 -> 120 (This is over the Defender boundary, am I mad????)
• Range increased by 20

Strider Hub:

• Costs 550 -> 600m (for consistency)

Bantha:

• Added laser overcharge special weapon.

GUI

Structures in the build menu are ordered by cost.

Geo hightlight activates when build geo is selected. Geos are now drawn on the minimap with a big X.

Bombers now require repeat enabled to retain an attack command.

Lobby now contains “safe mode” switch that should be ultra safe even for ultra crappy video cards.

Fixed

• Rector repair speed was too high.
• Mex, wind, carrier, HLT, defender, LLT aimvolume tweaks. Allied units are better at shooting past them.
• Fix Dante script error.
• Initial state “hold position” preset should work reliably.
• Fixed Archangel DPS

v1.0.4.9GUI improvements:

new keyboard controlled main menu

new button under minimap to turn on simplified color scheme (all alies blue, all enemies red)

default interface skin is now carbon (you can change that in settings)

game treats placing …

Happy belated Easter! There are lots of gameplay adjustments in this one, but the most notable change is the new and improved???™ Quickmatch system. As always, refer to the changelog for details.

Quickmatch Improved and Enabled

The quick matching system ‘Juggler’ has had improvements and has been re-enabled. Juggler preferences can now be set with Zero-K lobby and defaults to Never. Preferences are used to automatically search/create organise games with people that also want to play that kind of game.

QuickMatch is activated by button in Zero-K lobby multiplayer tab or by joining autohosts with Stars.

People who cannot use Zero-K lobby can set their preferences on their home page – “Game preferences”.

There are now 3 levels of TEAMS host, small medium and large. These hosts will automatically start a game if the number of players is within their desired range. Automatic starting can be postponed with the command ‘!postpone’. Games which are too small can still be manually started and if a game is too large it will be split into two games with players sorted by elo. The game sizes are:

• Small 2v2 – 4v4
• Medium 4v4 – 8v8
• Large 5v5+

Please pay attention to this and configure your preferences based on your likes.

QuickMatch creates games from waiting people according to their preferences to satisfy greatest number of people.

1) It tries to make game of similar ELO skill. For 1v1 max ELO difference is 250 points.

2) It can only move you from your current game to new game if you like the new game type more than current game type, or same as current game type and moving you will allow other game to start, whilenot breaking current game.

3) Games where you are moved are always withing recommended player level for that game type (it will never move you to empty room alone etc).

Zero-K lobby/springies now also allow private hosting of unpassworded games.

Balance

Factories:

• Cost 550 -> 700
• Build Speed 5 -> 10

With the previous BP change it became a bit hard to spend at game start. This factory change is experimental so feedback would be helpful.

Penetrator, Annihilator and Sharpshooter do not fire at radar dots by default. They completely refuse to fire at a radar dot unless their ‘fire at radar’ state toggle is enabled.

Krow:

• Slows to 75% speed while dropping bombs.

Jugglenaut gets an anti unit special weapon. It can pickup all ground units around it and throw them at anything nearby.

Golliath:

• Cost 1900 -> 2200

Sumo:

• Cost 2200 -> 1900
• Jump range 300 -> 360
• Gun damage up 20%
• Stomp damage up 25%
• Stomp AOE 300 -> 340 (diameter)

Dominatrix can capture Dominatrix. This can form trees of control that completely flip when the head is killed.

Archer:

• 3xish damage
• faster projectile.

Grizzly:

• Range 550 -> 600

Clam:

• 25% faster resurrect speed. This is more of a fix because resurrect should drain 7.5 energy whereas due to an oversight it drained 6.

Commander torpedo DPS increased 50%.

Submerging a units in water puts out fires.

Overdrive Distribution

More overdrive metal is given to team members who contribute their energy. 50% of the overdrive distribution is weighted by how much energy a player contributes. The other 50% is distributed evenly between all players.

Base metal extraction sharing is unchanged, this is still evenly distributed.

Physics

In unit-unit collision both units take damage. As an aside they also take the same amount of damage (unless of course one is armoured).

Licho no longer collides with aircraft. This is to prevent mid-air catastrophes. Other aircraft are already set to not collide.

Units skid around a bit more and don’t take so much damage from sliding along the ground. Technically put speed for fall damage only uses 50% of the tangential component of velocity to the ground. The speed reduction vector is also mostly in the direction of the normal.

Pathing

Units should now stop to turn if given a movement order behind them. Slow turning units can now turn on the spot instead of wandering into turret range.

Lag Monitor

Units that the taker creates are not given to the afk player when they return. Exceptions are factories to give the afk player back their factory plop.

Afk players do not receive metal income. It is split between their teammates.

Removed sexism.

Graphics

New explosion effects for Merl and Pillager.

LOS + Radar view has been recoloured. Most importantly areas with LOS and no radar are not dark blue.

Sound

There are now game Victory and Defeat triggered music tracks.

Changed Buoy and Halberd weapon sound effect.

Fixes

• Fixed tooltips for BP 5/6 change.
• Fixed game over bug that would cause both teams to win if the last unit that died was a Puppy.
• Puppy should get stuck underground less.
• Puppy now takes 5s to self-d.
• Initial States should now correctly set states when units are received from other teams.
• Added buildpic for Bantha
• Reordered a few build menu items to obey cost ordering.
• Fixed Freaker description.
• Pillager can now shoot in all directions because it would not turn itself to shoot.

Somehow quite a few changes made it into this version. The new flow field style pathing has been enabled for almost all units (even enemy units) to see if it is an improvement. An across the board 1/6th build power reduction is now being tested. Gravity gun behaviour should be a lot more consistent. In more mundane balance Bandit has had a small nerf and Djinn is significantly cheaper.

Balance

Bandit:

• DPS reduced by 5%.
• Removed autoheal.

Djinn:

• Cost 1800 -> 800
• Speed 1.2 -> 1.4

As an experimental change all build powers were reduced by 1/6th. Repair, reclaim, resurrect and construction effectively takes 20% longer.

Gravity gun and Water Cannon power increased by an unknown factor.

Gravity Guns

Replaced the purely engine dependant implementation of gravity beams with a gadget.

• Impulse is a lot more predictable and balancable.
• Planes, Ships and Gunships are now significantly affected by gravity guns.

Known impulse capacitors have been. But do not despair that unit launching is now impossible, the partial rewrite has dramatically increased the predictability and power of ‘legitimate’ unit cannons.

Unit collision damage has been partially reinstated for units with high speed. The high speed cutoff is required to prevent collision damage during normal movement. A fast unit is damaged as if it hit the ground with that speed, the collidee is not damaged.

Pathing

Most push resistance was removed as an experiment to see if pathfinding will improve.

• Enemy units can be shunted and flowed past in the same manner as allied units.
• Crabe is the only push resistant unit. As it cannot be shunted around.

Disabled push resistance works fairly well in this version. In previous versions, packing units into a tight area was arming the mouse traps in a demonstration of fission. A little bump would cause a unit to wander 100s of elmos off it’s position which would really screw up things like cloaker and mine placement.

With this engine version, instead of moving around units merely float about when pushed. This means a well placed shield or cloaker will not be affected too much. Cloaked units such as Flea, Roach and Tick will stay cloaked while pushed. Pillager and Slasher seem to be able to fire.

Removed some Stealth/Cloak ambiguity

The obscure ability of Spy and Skuttle to stealth while uncloaked has been removed. This was inconsistent with other cloaked units and completely undocumented.

Fixes

• Tweaked some cloakybot tracks to better fit their feet base.
• Fixed Urchin gun position when placed in very shallow water.
• Removed occasional console output about pylons.
• Puppy no longer gathers wreckage while stunned or under construction.
• Transport impulse capacitor.
• Nanoframe impulse capacitor.
• Bantha missile now has a reasonable size. The triple missile pack is probably going to be fireable with a manual weapon of some sort.
• Fixed some unit tip misspellings.

v1.0.3.9

Thanks CaptianBenz for the great new Bantha model. Apart from the model there are a reasonable number of small fixes. Lastly Spring 88.0 has been released, there are few new fixes in this one since the dev version. Now that there is an official release it should be easier for Linux users to find pre-complied packages.

Engine

Spring 88.0 has been released. There are few changes since the development version (87.0.1-68-g6cefe1d) that was previously used. ZKL users will update automatically and because this release is official there should be packages around for Linux users.

Pathfinding seems to have improved in this release and units are more prone to clump together.

The workaround for area commands is now completely removed.

Balance

Archer:

• 15% more damage
• 15% more impulse

Bantha:

• Missile range increased 800 -> 950 (This is to make it equal to laser, just a usability thing).

=== UI===

Gesture menu has a few more options that can be toggled through settings or with UIkeys.

• Added a toggle to disable right-click to open.
• Added a bindable UIkey that opens the menu that does not interact with the mouse.

Small Fixes

• Fixed longstanding area mex bug related to queuing area mex and normally placed mexes together.
• Shredder now has a range ring.
• EMP healthbar and flash now displays for units on less than 1% health.
• Fixed small bug in ferry point UI.
• Fixed self-d detection with units that don’t count. For example terraform points and wolverine mines.
• Added proper wrecks for Grizzly and Djinn.
• Fixed very rare pylon bug (I could only cause it by creating all units and destroying them in the same frame).
• Might have fixed Dominatrix retargeting.
• Moderator sound is now louder. An engine change appears to have reduced it’s volume.

Important Engine Change

Spring 87.0.1-68-g6cefe1d is now in use for most of the autohosts

The next engine release looks at best a few days away. The bugs are already fixed in the development branch of spring but the engine devs are not releasing because they don’t know how broken 87.0 is. Some of the bugs are serve and have no workaround so for now we are using the development branch.

Command Inactivity – Broken area commands, guard commands, patrol commands (with reclaim and repair) are fixed.

Sea Nanoframe targeting – Torpedoes can target nanoframes in sea. The workaround for this bug was broken.

Chicken Crash – The common crashes experienced in chicken games should be fixed.

Stuck units in factory – This is fixed.

Users Zero-K Lobby do not have to worry because they will automatically update. Users of other lobbies on Windows could take this opportunity to update to ZKL (or download an installer). Linux users will have to compile the engine from source or wait at least a few days for packaged 88.0.

Windows install (for non-ZKL users) – http://springrts.com/dl/buildbot/default/develop/87.0.1-68-g6cefe1d/

Building on Linux guide – http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=27860 and http://springrts.com/wiki/Building_Spring_on_Linux

With up to this commit in develop branch https://github.com/spring/spring/commit/6cefe1d4e60432a67bcc29bd3bd252278b8ddeb6

Balance

We are honing in on a balanced Amphibious Factory. Here are the changes since v1.0.3.4

Buoy

• Range 430 -> 450
• Removed weapon AOE (it does not need this vs ships)
• Slow damage 400 -> 250
• Reduced water drag, rise is faster. It rises so fast that on an average depth map (90 deep) it pops right of the water like a cork. This causes the first shot fired by Hunter to pass right underneath it.

Convict:

• HP 800 -> 650
• Shield Regen 12 -> 10

Scalpel

Duck

• Speed 2.6 -> 2.7

Scalpel:

• Turn rate 500 -> 600
• Damage 600 -> 660
• HP 640 -> 680 (because 1 shoting each other is a bit too extreme)
• Range 440 -> 450 (still dancing around LLT range)

Scrubber:

• Cost 90 -> 85

Fixes

• Some amph units had area mex command.
• Disabled AA micro until it is fixed.
• Fixed some Pillager, Penetrator and Tremor targeting behaviour.
• Torpedo Boat and Sub both have Bouncing torpedoes so they can shoot in very shallow water.

"Bilhamil" has posted another video featuring his ongoing research:Controls look much more advanced now and allow you to do basically all normal things :)To see older videos of the multi touch RTS technology check:and

It has only taken 3 tries to fix almost all of the bugs in the last release. I’ll list them here so everyone can start reporting things for v1.0.3.4 with full knowledge of what should have been fixed.

The latest engine release badly broke area reclaim, resurrect and repair behaviour. The main fix in v1.0.3.3 is a workaround of that bug that appears to work a lot of the time.

jseah’s static AA intelligence improvement is now enabled. Static AA avoids overkill and is less baitable. It didn’t quite make it into the main stable due to time constraints.

The last 3 versions mostly fix oversights in v1.0.3.0. Here is a summary:

• Fix Penetrator damage (for a few games it did 6k damage, 2x too much).
• Tweaked new Skeeter model waterline (it looked a bit too buoyant).
• Fixed infinite duration damage over time fire.
• Newton and Jugglenaut gravity beams can target Amphibious units.
• Added factory guard toggle button for Amphibious factory.
• The “whuwhuwhwhu” teleport sound is now played locally as intended. It will not be heard map wide.
• Big Bertha can target gunships if you force it to and now prefers to target statics. It used to have no target preference.
• Fixed small bug with jumpjet velocity prediction.
• Fixed a rare and minor bug in CAI unit choice.