Lobsters have been taught to not fire when it would be redundant, making Lobster balls much easier to manage. Overkill prevention in general has a tweak, and some APIs were extended to make modding easier. The Artefact Control game mode which saw some testing about a month ago is now live. In terms of balance, Redback has a bit of a nerf and some of the least used units - Skuttle, Phoenix and Emissary - have small buffs.

Balance

Duck can now be dodged by a Glaive trying as hard as it can to run away.

• Missile fuel time 2s -> 1.5s

Redback is worse at taking map control and assaulting defenses.

• Cost 230 -> 240
• Speed 1.85 -> 1.75

Skuttle can see enemies before they break its cloak.

• Line of sight 280 -> 330

Emissary aims faster and no longer benefits from manually turning.

• Body turn rate reduced 105 -> 84 degrees/second
• Gun aim rate increased 40 -> 70 degrees/second
• Resets its gun between shots (as much as possible) in case it has to move.

Phoenix moves faster and hits its target sooner.

• Speed 8 -> 8.1
• Projectile gravity 0.7 -> 0.72

Unit AI

Overkill prevention, the system that prevents ten Scalpels firing at a single Glaive, is now available for Lobster and disabled for units set to hold. It is controlled by a state toggle that is hidden by default because there is very little reason to touch it. The state toggle can be enabled under Settings/Interface/Commands, and per-unit defaults to be set in Settings/Unit Behaviour/Default States, or by holding Space and clicking on a unit, then pressing Edit Behaviour. Lobster is smarter, no longer firing unless there is a visible valid target.

• This prevents it from firing when it would do absolutely nothing, provided there are no invisible enemies nearby.
• As a result, telling a tight clump of Lobsters to fire causes only two to shoot.
• This behaviour can be configured with the hidden Overkill Prevention state.
• Removed the Force Fire command by default. This can be configured via another hidden state toggle.

Overkill prevention is now suspended by default when units are set to Hold Fire.

• Added the "Enable for Fire at Will" and "Enable for auto targeting" states. Previously it just had enabled/disabled.
• Most units default to "Enable for Fire at Will". The theory being that if you set a unit to hold fire you care more about its target dying than about overkill.
• Nothing defaults to "Enable for auto targeting", but it may be useful to try out.

Impaler now has an even stronger preference for targeting structures over units.

Interface

• Added a minimum wind icon and number to the left column of the wind generator tooltip during placement (thanks Porkchop)
• Cleaned up some inconsistent unit highlighting and selection. Units under interface panels cannot be clicked on by default, tooltips do not appear, and units are not highlighted.
• Selecting through the panel at the bottom of the screen can be configured under Settings/HUD Panels/Selected Units Panel.
• Drag selection can still terminate over a UI panel.
• Add some translations for the commander selector.
• Updated Global Build AI with some fixes and documentation (thanks esainane).
• Added username team colour in chat and removed white outlines for dark names (thanks Birdulon)
• Local widgets are no longer disabled for spectators on rooms with local widgets disabled.
• Added Italian translations for the main menu (thanks fvasco)

Campaign

• Tweaked campaign text and replaced some Artefacts with more suitable structures (thanks Thorneel)

Maps

• Added boxes for Onyx Cauldron 2.0
• Improved lighting on Skulduggery (thanks Shaman)
• Improved water on Cull, Lost v2 and Lowland Crossing Revised v2.
• Fixed an issue with void water with new shaders on some graphics cards.

Artefact Control

Added a control point game mode called Artefact Control under Experimental.

• Several artefacts are spawned on each side of the map.
• Each team controls half at the start of the game.
• Artefacts have 11k health and heal at 100 hp/second.
• Artefacts respawned with switched allegeance when destroyed.
• If a team controlls all the artefacts, they win.

Modding

Changed some keys in unit def files to match the lua UnitDefs table. Mods with the old keys are still supported.

• buildCostMetal -> metalCost
• buildCostEnergy -> energyCost
• energyUse -> energyUpkeep
• metalUse -> metalUpkeep (vanilla ZK doesn't use this)
• maxDamage -> health
• maxVelocity -> speed

Other changes.

• Unit defs no longer require unitname since it must match the table key, so it is redundant.
• Unit defs are now also read from subfolders of 'units'.
• Set undefined burst rates to 0 (rather than 0.1) as it can interfere with weapon modding.
• The game exits to menu when unit defs fail to load, rather than crashing.
• Added game-side GG.UnitModelRescale(unitID, scale) from Unit Level Ups.
• Added backwards compatibility for Spring.GetUnitIsBeingBuilt.
• Fixed backwards compatibility for Spring.GetPlayerRulesParams.
• Added customparams.buggeroff_angle for factories, in radians.
• Added customparams.metal_extractor_mult to support the creation of higher tier metal extractors.
• Fixed modding away the Sniper reload move penalty breaking the script.
• Cleaned up the build icon generator gadget.
• Napalm effects now contain an example of sin (replaces taylor series).
• Improved modded energy generator tooltips.
• Mexes suport morphing.

Fixes

• Fixed commshare sometimes preventing resign or causing a crash when the game ends.
• War music no longer counts morph as violence.
• Fixed missing vote resign button.
• Marginal turret overshoot can no longer be circumvented with command insert.
• Fixed a few build icons incorrectly implying that a floating structure is built underwater.
• Fixed commander selector button image.
• Fixed backwards 'motion blur' on ejected shells.
• Fixed some large structure wreckages having much too large collision volumes.

[ 2023-08-26 07:12:48 CET ] [ Original post ]