Zero-K News

This version contains a few important fixes, compatibility for an upcoming engine update, and a reduction of the previous Outlaw buff.


Added to 1v1 and Teams pool:

• Rogues River v1.2
  
• Shifting Sands v1.5
  
• Badlands 2.1
  

Added to 1v1 pool only:

• Izki Channel v1.0
  

Removed from 1v1 and Teams pool:

• EvoRTS-New_Iammas-v05
  
• Intersection v4.1
  
• Living Lands 4.1
  

Removed from 1v1 pool, still in Teams pool:

• Aurelian v1.0
  

• Outlaw damage 35 -> 30 (was 20 previously) with the corresponding change to slow damage (105 -> 90).
  
• Paladin manual fire now fires 12 missiles (increased from 10) to match its model.
  
• Raven thinks units are thinner than they are, causing it to dive lower and hit more consistently.
  
• Welder defaults to hold position.
  

• Fixed units failing to reveal themselves if they fire from behind terrain while inside an enemy units LOS range. This primarily makes buried defenses targetable.
  
• Fixed units with attack orders not having their attack order overridden by some commands. This mostly affected issuing reclaim orders to fighting Welders.
  
• Fixed a case of tactical AI not working for units on hold position.
  
• Blocked the ability to give gunships orders off the edge of the map.
  
• Zenith now gains XP and can shoot through allied shields.
  

• Fixed issue where the autofocus would incorrectly weaken when zooming in after a certain point.
  
• Fixed colours blending to a mush (unfortunately this means some banding in dark regions, not sure how to fix without ruining the more pronounced circles).
  
• Normalized depth calculations to Spring unit distances, so blur power is no longer map-dependent.
  
• Fixed projectile lights rendering on top of DoF (this involved changing priority, and this seems like a blunter fix than necessary).
  
• Expanded blur radius limits so near-to-camera objects blend more nicely.
  
• Made the transition from in-focus to out-of-focus a bit smoother.
  

Most of the work for this release is in performance improvements related to saying up to date with the Spring engine. The more visible change is to Dominatrix, which escaped the previous big balance release.


Dominatrix:

• Speed 2.2 -> 1.95
  

Dominatrix can come out very early in the Rover vs. Tank matchup. The speed nerf will make it slightly harder to deploy, and easier to out-maneuver.


The jumpjet UI now draws the jump arc to the sea floor (instead of the surface) and indicates when a jump command would be blocked by terrain.

Unit AI:

• Scalpel, Mace, Dominatrix and Mistral now start skirmishing before they have fired their first shot if they are facing towards their target. This allows them to start turning earlier, but stops them from running away forever without firing.
  
• Tweaked Dominatrix skirmish AI numbers to make it better at fighting units like Mace and Ogre.
  
• Tweaked Knight tactical AI numbers to make it prioritise firing over turning.
  
• Raven now dives based on the maximum of {target speed, target jump speed/2}. This primarily makes it dive against jumping Recon commanders more successfully.
  

Other changes:

• Added a new disruptor bomb sound for Commanders and Disco Rave Party.
  
• Added the ability to hotkey toggling the depth of field shader.
  

• Fixed a new graphical glitch that could occur when tilting the camera.
  
• Fixed nano turret aiming.
  
• Fixed overhead unit state icons not displaying.
  
• Fixed a bug that momentarily interrupted weapon firing while using Attack-Move. The most affected units were Mace and Dominatrix.
  
• Fixed nuke explosions not occurring on aircraft or tall Funnelweb shields.
  
• Fixed Crab walking while under construction.
  
• Possibly fixed other Crab bugs.
  
• Fixed a carrier error.
  

This version addresses a few problematic units, has further refinements to the commander income change, and includes engine-related fixes. Flea is more expensive, Shieldbots have been buffed, and players now have innate base income. Keeping up to date with the latest engine version has allowed us to coordinate and incorporate some performance improvements.


Each player now generates some base income that is not tied to any unit or structure. This makes commander sniping a little less lucrative and ensures players can always rebuild from one constructor in a FFA.

• Each team receives +2 base metal and energy income per player (technically, per spawned commander).
  
• This base income is split evenly between the active, non-resigned, players on the team.
  
• Commander income reduced +6/+8 -> +4/+6.
  
• Factories and Strider Hub no longer produce +0.5/+0.5.
  

Flea has good interactions but is a bit too cheap for its overall power. Instead of trying to make it individually weaker, we simply reduced the number of Fleas that players can field.

• Cost 20 -> 25
  

Redback is a bit bad for a riot, and should also see more use with the weaker Flea.

• Cost 250 -> 240
  

Bandit has trouble raiding due to its low speed, however, it has too much range for a speed buff to be feasible. Instead, we buffed Bandit within the Shieldbot theme by increasing its survivability.

• Health 250 -> 265
  

Outlaw was more powerful years ago, but was nerfed down to the level of other riots. Many other riots were subsequently buffed, but Outlaw missed out and is now considered to be a relatively poor riot.

• Damage 20 -> 35
  
• Slow Damage 75 -> 105 (multiplier 3.75 -> 3)
  
• Buffed explosion speed by 9% because it seems to match the graphics better.
  

Felon aim delay has been removed, although it appeared to be non-functional previously.

Racketeer now has improved targeting AI. It is now able to keep high cost units permanently stunned against mixed armies.

Mace is a little too good at catching skirmishers and is by no means a weak riot.

• Range 350 -> 345
  

Duck gained an arc in the previous release, but also gained the ability to miss raiders in some situations. This has been fixed.

• Halved arc angle.
  
• Increased missile turn rate by 12.5%.
  

Ronin now moves a little faster while reloading.

• Reload movement speed modified 75% -> 80%.
  

Zenith now has few, more powerful, meteors to help with performance.

• Damage 1000 -> 2000
  
• Meteor rate 0.7s -> 1.2s
  
• Maximum capacity 500 -> 300
  

The Commander Disintegrator damage has been increased by 42% to match the Ultimatum buff from the previous release. Previously the Commander Disintegrator dealt more damage than Ultimatium.

The terrain smoothing fall-off exponent of weapons such as Quake and Tremor has been reduced from 2 to 1.5. The effect is that weapons with a smoothing effect now create smoothed areas with gentler slopes around the edges.

• Added a depth of field shader.
  
• Added/improved start boxes for Anteer Strait and Server.
  
• Added reload time to Dominatrix ingame stats window.
  

• Fixed a recently introduced engine bug in which constructors would sometimes walk around their construction order without starting construction.
  
• Fixed a bug in which constructors building spaced lines of buildings could become stuck deciding how to move out of the way of their own construction.
  
• Fixed a texture crash on old hardware.
  
• Fixed some crashes on launching Speed Metal map variants.
  
• Fixed an method of circumventing bonus objective unit losses in the campaign missions via reclaim.
  
• Fixed a shield merge crash related to using a non-default shield link setting.
  
• Fixed a transport error related to picking up floating amphibious units.
  
• Fixed AI memory usage, which should fix a few crashes.
  
• Potentially improved performance in various ways, introduced bugs.
  

There will be a 1v1 tournament at 19:00 UTC in two weeks, Saturday 30th March. The format is round robin or Swiss followed by tiebreaks or finals.

Sign up by posting in this thread: https://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/27979

Funnelweb is the focus of this release, alongside fixes for related to the engine update. The community member dyth68 has been working on a Funnelweb rework for a while and it is finally time to try it out ingame. There are also a few other miscellaneous balance changes and fixes.

The engine update from last week was fairly smooth, but did identify a few bugs. Most of these bugs were since fixed by the engine developers, so this release updates the engine version to Spring 104.0.1-1085-gfc6d80e. This update also contains potential improvements to pathfinding around structures. Comment and give feedback on the new behaviour if you notice a difference.


Reworked Funnelweb to be the ultimate battlefield constructor. It may also find a role in missile defense, as it can now block two EMP missiles.

• Cost 4500 -> 3500
  
• Speed 45 -> 54
  
• Health 11K -> 6K
  
• Can construct at long range with 40 buildpower.
  
• Shield now has 28K maximum change, a large increase from 3.6K.
  
• Shield recharges at +200/second, but not if it has taken damage in the last 10 seconds.
  
• Shield is larger and does not link.
  
• Removed drones.
  
• Added radar.
  

Ultimatum:

• Speed increased by 6.8%
  
• Damage increased by 66%
  

Constable:

• Range 320 -> 240
  

Duck:

• Now shoots its land weapon in an arc, a bit like Rogue.
  

Changed light transportability rules.

• Charon is now able to transport units that cost 1000 metal or less.
  
• The old rule was based on mass, which made it a bit opaque.
  
• The effect of the change is that Charon can now transport Jack, Minotaur, and Siren.
  

Detriment:

• Fixed a mismatch between when it is considered submerged for targeting and for LOS.
  

Raven now dives mobile targets when following Area Attack commands.

Reef and Shogun have smaller footprints to make them less likely to become stuck on Tidal Generators and Urchins.

Factory and commander innate energy income is now pooled and shared between all players on the team. This will provide players who lost their commander with some base energy income to help them rebuild.


Initial unit behaviour configuration:

• Fixed Commander retreat state.
  
• Added repeat for Athena and Strider Hub.
  

Added Chicken Roosts and Spires to unit marker configuration.

The area command drag threshold has been increased to issuing single target commands easier. This threshold is now configurable.

• Extended maximum chicken queen spawn time modoption from 200 minutes to 300 minutes.
  
• Added a "Enable Inactivity Sharing" modoption that can be used to disable automatic unit transfer for inactive players.
  
• Fixed tutorial missions.
  
• Fixed a rare inconsistency with the order of matchmaker queues.
  

• Fixed units occasionally failing to revert to their normal speed after being slowed. The most commonly affected unit was Crab.
  
• Fixed units set to hold position with ballistic weapons failing to automatically target units that are only in range due to the elevation bonus. The most commonly affected unit was Crab.
  
• Fixed an air repair pad crash.
  
• Fixed a rare crash on game launch.
  
• Fixed a crash on saving with AIs.
  
• Fixed a failure to allocate memory caused by loading bad ambient map sounds.
  
• Fixed a desync likely caused by game file caching
  
• Fixed ferry routes and quick load widgets.
  
• Fixed reclaiming of live units sometimes reducing their health.
  
• Improved minimap performance.
  
• Fixed area reclaim sometimes issuing a unit target command.