Zero-K News

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Here is the Zero-K news for October.

• GoogleFrog talks about the background and design philosophy of Zero-K in an interview by StealSpeaks. This is the first Zero-K developer interview, and there was a lot to cover, so expect part two in a few weeks.
  
• There will be a 1v1 tournament at 19:00 UTC on Saturday 23rd October. It is open to everyone. To sign up post in this thread. Here is a countdown timer for timezone conversion.
  

We've finally solved a minor bug that caused anti-air missiles to sometimes penetrate aircraft. While quite rare, it was causing Vandal to make unfortunate mistakes against Thunderbird. Besides the fix, there are a few buffs for Hover and Shieldbots, and nerfs for Rover and Amphbots. Badger is of particular concern as it needs adjusting after its unit AI improvement. We are also experimenting with extra initial resources, with the goal being to give players more freedom in the early game.



Increase starting resources slightly as an experiment.

• Initial resources 250-> 325 metal and energy.
  

Metal Extractor is lighter and cheaper for quicker and riskier expansion.

• Cost 90 -> 85
  
• Health 640 -> 600
  

Felon is better shielded and matches Thug's recharge time.

• Max shield 1600 -> 1800
  
• Recharge rate 16 -> 21
  

Convict matches Thug recharge time too.

• Recharge rate 9 -> 10.5
  

Vandal is better at shooting in dense clumps.

• Shorter collision volume.
  
• Higher angle of fire.
  

Limpet is a little worse against assaults.

• Slow damage 1500 -> 1200
  

Bulkhead is even less tanky.

• Health 1650 -> 1540
  

Dart aims faster.

• Turret speed 200 -> 320 degrees/second
  

Scorcher has regained the status of 'very good' so it can be returned to its previous price.

• Cost 125 -> 130
  

Badger is easier to catch.

• Speed 60 -> 55.5
  

Claw (Badger's mine) is worse at hitting small nimble units

• Sight radius 64 -> 120
  
• Decloak radius 50 -> 80 (consistent with 2x2 footprint units).
  
• Flight time 1s -> 1.7s.
  
• Initial projectile speed 50 -> 70
  
• Final projectile speed 300 -> 130
  
• Projectile acceleration 200 -> 50
  
• Turn rate reduced by 28%
  
• Toned down projectile lighting
  

Dagger fully loses some nerfs from last year. Its price nerf (75 -> 80) remains.

• Speed 143 -> 144
  
• Range 210 -> 212
  

Bolas has small buffs as it is easy to overdo.

• Cost 185 -> 180
  
• Speed 95 -> 96
  
• Range 230 -> 232
  

Engineer chassis is slower.

• Speed 39 -> 36
  

Lotus is slightly worse when built under fire.

• Added 0.8 second post-construction deploy time.
  

Planes have some important fixes.

• Fixed all anti-air, Ogre and Picket projectiles sometimes passing right through aircraft.
  
• Reduced the size of plane hit volumes to better match their model now that the underlying issue with anti-air inconsistency resolved.
  

• Added modoptions to set innate income and initial resources.
  
• Added a modoption to randomly set initial resources.
  
• Added a modoption to set seeds for random maps.
  
• Added support for weapondefs_mod and explosiondefs_mod. Mods can define these files to act on the weapon/explosions tables as they are loaded.
  

This update solves a few recent issues with ground targeting. The easy fix was for Duck, which was previously able to fire torpedoes out of the sea and onto land. The trickier changes solve the unfairness of ground targeting widgets by making the interface more powerful in ways relevant to humans, while reducing its power for widgets.

Other balance changes include Felon tweaks and slower transport speed for Jack. The AI has been updated to fix a bug, and all the configs are now based on the previous bleeding edge test version.

Duck is no longer able to ground fire torpedoes. This is consistent with other torpedo and depth charge weapons.

Bandit now leads targets at close range correctly.

Felon has improved burst and DPS, but less efficient charge to damage conversion.

• Reload 0.16s -> 0.13s
  
• Damage 110 -> 94 (DPS 660 -> 705)
  
• Shield energy per shot 80 -> 75 (damage/charge 1.38 -> 1.25)
  

Reaver aims more smoothly and is smarter.

• Aim period 5 -> 3 frames.
  
• No longer automatically fires at walls protecting enemy mexes.
  
• Jinks when fighting units such as Rogue.
  

Phantom aims faster than it turns to cut down on firing mishaps.

• Turn rate reduced by 5.4%.
  
• Aim speed 360 -> 480 (no scope).
  
• Aim period 5 -> 1 frames.
  

Added the state toggle Fire Towards Enemies for the following units. The toggle is off by default.

• Kodachi fires towards nearby enemies that are behind it, to avoid running into its own fire.
  
• Badger fires in the direction of the closest enemy, whatever the distance.
  

Many units that could deal damage slightly beyond their maximum range, usually by using area of effect damage, now have reduced range for ground firing with the Set Target command.

Added a weight category - medium - to further differentiate transport speed penalties.

• Light units cost up to 500
  
• Medium units cost more than 500 and at most 1000.
  
• Heavy units cost more than 1000.
  

Transports carry units of each weight at the following speeds.

• Charon transports Light/Medium units at 70%/50% speed.
  
• Hercules transports Light/Medium/Heavy units at 75%/65%/50% speed.
  

The light and heavy speed penalties existed previously, they are unchanged. The medium units that were previously light are Jack, Skuttle, Felon, Phantom, Minotaur, Emissary, Lance, Impaler, Siren, Envoy, Aspis, Iris and Djinn.

• Updated the skirmish AI to fix an idle factory bug - for real this time.
  
• Removed time constraints on bonus objectives for the first five planets of the campaign.
  

• Units can now be told to fire towards an enemy or location. To do so, issue a non-area Set Target order with the Ctrl modifier. This behaviour is paused when enemies are nearby, unless the unit is set to hold fire.
  
• Improved the smart nano turrets widget Auto Patrol Nanos v2. This is still disabled by default, pending more live testing.
  
• Improved some widget descriptions.
  
• Added an option to hide chat.
  

• Added explode on victory modoption.
  
• Fixed the example model scaling gadget for dae.
  
• Added an unused root to the piece hierarchy of Glaive, Iris, Conjurer, Gremlin, Scythe to allow for easy model scaling.
  
• Exposed Spring.Utilities.CommandNameByID(cmdID) and Spring.Utilities.Traceback() to widgets.
  

• Saved some memory in the UI framework.
  
• Fixed torpedoes sometimes falling through the map.
  
• Fixed imaginary numbers in the ballistic projectile solver.
  

Back in February we reduced the starting resources and commander income, with the aim of extending the early game slightly. After six months of data and feedback we suspect balance suffered as a result, so the income change has been reverted. We also addressed another ongoing balance project - Shieldbots - with a few buffs.

This patch has the usual smattering of fixes and UI improvements, with the most notable being improvements to Area Mex and fixes for the AI. Area Mex now works pregame and has a terraforming mode. To counteract the terraforming mode a few units have been given wall-defeating behaviours. The AI fix is more of an update that started as a fix, and includes tweaks to the difficulty levels. Feedback about the difficulty progression would be appreciated.



Increased starting income back to pre-February 2021 levels.

• Initial metal income 5 -> 6.
  
• This was done via increased commander income (3 -> 4).
  
• Initial stored resources is still lower than before (300 -> 250).
  

Bandit DPS is now closer to Glaive than Duck.

• DPS 83.5 -> 86 (+3%)
  

Outlaw slows more rapidly.

• Real damage 26 -> 27 (+3.5%)
  
• Slow damage 78 -> 81 (ratio unchanged).
  

Rogue regains its weapon from a few months ago, but not its body.

• Projectile velocity 185 -> 192
  
• Damage 340 -> 350
  

Felon aims faster and can tank a Phantom shot.

• Health 1400 -> 1600
  
• Removed artificial 133ms aim delay.
  

Sling is slower.

• Speed 48 -> 45
  

Badger is slower and more expensive.

• Cost 260 -> 270
  
• Speed 65 -> 60
  

Bulkhead is less tanky, now dying to two Stinger shots.

• Health 1720 -> 1650
  

Cutter is better at picking off Hunters.

• Range 260 -> 265
  

Stardust fires at full speed for longer.

• Heat decay 14.28% -> 16.67% per second.
  

Reaver, Pyro, Crab, Archer, Ripper, Claymore, Kodachi and Ogre now automatically shoot towards obscured or terraformed metal spots. Some of these units bypass or smooth terrain, while others simply have the AoE to deal a bit of damage through walls.

Reaver, Archer, Venom, Crab, Firewalker, Badger, Kodachi, Scalpel, Dante, Merlin, Mistral and Siren now aim through terrain when told to target the ground.

• Removed Jurassic Sands and Calayo.
  
• Removed Aurelian from 1v1 (still in Teams).
  
• Added Ravaged and Frostburn to 1v1 and Teams.
  
• Added Izki Channel to 1v1.
  
• Added Banana Republic to Teams.
  

Area Mex has the following improvements.

• Added Area Mex to the pregame queue.
  
• Point clicking now snaps to the closest point, the same as using a metal extractor blueprint.
  
• Point clicked Area Mex commands have the same key modifiers for queuing adjacent energy.
  
• Shift-release behaviour is now consistent with structure placement (it deselects if an order has been issued).
  
• Added a terraform mode.
  

Area Mex terraform works as follows.

• It exists as a separate command (default hotkey Alt+W).
  
• By default it does not appear as a UI button.
  
• The basic command builds a wall after the mex is complete.
  
• Issue with Alt to dig a hole prior to placement instead of a wall.
  
• Issue with Ctrl to increase height/depth of terraform.
  
• Configure the height/depth in Settings/Interface/Building Placement.
  
• Has the same point click improvements as base Area Mex.
  

Other interface changes.

• Unit markers report the progress of things under construction.
  
• Freed up F6 and F7 for hotkey binds.
  
• Starlight and Disco Rave Party now have a directional placement arrow (like factories).
  
• Claymore has anti-bait against free units by default.
  
• Unit descriptions now consistently say 'Anti-Sub' for units that can reasonably fight submerged Ducks and Seawolves, and 'Undersea Fire' for units that can fire while submerged.
  
• Tweaked the default Alt+N terraform wall slightly higher.
  
• Added a Alt+M default terraform hotkey, which is like Alt+N but high enough to protect Stinger from Lance.
  

• Local widgets can no longer use Spring.GetVisibleProjectiles.
  
• Local widgets no longer receive enemy projectiles from Spring.GetProjectilesInRectangle.
  
• Ploppable factories now have the 'ploppable' CustomParam, rather than ploppability being determined by a config file.
  

• Fixed AI factories sometimes 'breaking' lategame. This required an AI update, so post feedback about the migrated difficulty levels. Beginner and Novice are unaffected.
  
• Removed Economist AI as it is now bundled into Brutal.
  
• Fixed Quake (seismic missile) being able to crash Glint (Starlight's satellite) back to earth.
  
• Fixed Raven sometimes failing to dive against Aegis.
  
• Fixed unit AI internal commands sometimes cancelling user commands via duplicate orders.
  
• Fixed uneven and misnamed startboxes on Stronghold_V4.
  
• Fixed Conjurer wreck being indistinguishable from Gremlin.
  
• Fixed dying terraform anchors dealing 0.0001 damage.
  
• Fixed garbage being rendered with Outline Shader enabled.
  
• Fixed the cheat menu not appearing on its own if the Null AI had a different name.
  
• Fixed spectator panel numbers bobbing up and down.
  
• Fixed mex placement widget eating too many mouse buttons.
  
• Fixed some gray labels in missions with locked units.
  

This is a small update to the matchmaker and planet Kirdipan - the terraform mission. Kirdipan is a bit fairer with tweaks such as clear Pylon lines, Owls to scout the map, and no underwater units.

The 1v1 matchmaker now looks like a single queue with two option for a wider search range (handicap and ranked). The 'Match Available' status should reliably report the game type, with '1v1' corresponding to a narrow search range game, and '1v1 Handicap'/'1v1 Wide' corresponding to the two options. Both can be ticked to accept both types of game. The standard search range has also been increased from 330 to 345.