Features:

• Text localization for Portuguese and Spanish (Latin America)
• New map preview and map editor icons
• New grass tileset mountains
• New configurable hotkey mappings for panning the camera (default: arrow keys)

Bug Fixes:

• Hotkey remappings to non-alphabetical keys such as the "-"/"=", numeric, and numpad keys now work. Note: some hotkeys mappings that happened to work to non-alphabetical keys previously may be reset with this update (such as the bracket keys) if you were using them; re-assigning the hotkey back will fix it.
• Performance improvements in map editor

Balance:

• Initial resources increased from 140 to 160 minerals
• First building construction time reduced 16 seconds

This speeds up the early game by making the first building construct in 2 seconds (barracks/factory/airport) or 4 seconds (refinery). All interactions remain the same in terms of relative timings, just everything starts 16s faster. The increased initial resources makes up for the lost passive income during those cut 16s, and provides a few more resources than previously to make some openings a little bit smoother (especially surrounding second refinery timings).

• Protura harvester health increased 10%
• Repair cost (buildings and harvester) reduced from 90% to 50% of building cost

Harvesters are slightly too easy to kill right now, so this change gives them a little bit more survivability. Furthermore, once you're on the defensive often you have to repair your buildings/harvesters and thus fall even further behind repairing them. This drastically reduces the drain on your economy to repair things, while still retaining the interesting tradeoff of repairing vs. being vulnerable to future attacks. While reduced, it also preserves the economic benefit to harassing even when unable to fully kill harvesters so it's still not all-or-nothing, especially now that it takes ~10% more time to kill harvesters.

• All units' additional locked-on range increased from 10% to 50% of the hex
• Stinger, Armadillo, Blazer, Goliath, Buffalo, Stratus, M.A.D. trooper, Devastator, Earthshaker, Engineer turret, Fossa, Hailstorm, Hellbender, Nimbus, Sprite, and Tempest lock-on delay decreased

A lot of units have issues chasing and getting shots off against moving enemy units. These changes address this first by increasing the lock on range so units can fire on fleeing enemy units that are further outside of the 'normal' range -- for example 1 range units need to be within 1 hex in order to lock on, but then can continue to fire on the locked-on unit as long as it stays within 1.5 hexes (previously this was 1.1 hexes). This change allows units to get a few more shots off when the enemy is fleeing, and helps when pursuing a unit where before often a unit would stop to fire with the enemy unit at max range but by the time the unit was ready to fire the target had already moved out of range resulting in the pursuing unit never actually firing. Secondly and to improve those interactions further, this reduces the lock-on times for a lot of units which previously which were in the 300 - 500ms range. A couple of units retain long lock-on times, but generally things that were 300ms before are now 100ms (along with the majority of units not on this list) and units with 500ms lock-on times now are 250ms. This should make the units much more responsive and be able to get more shots off on moving/fleeing enemy units. The lock-on times changes do not affect DPS.

• Infantry movement speed penalty on forests reduced from 10% to 5%
• Infantry movement speed penalty on rivers reduced from 50% to 40%

The barracks has the worst mobility of the three buildings, and is being balanced accordingly in terms of unit power. However, these are aspects where infantry are unique from vehicles and this further accentuates that differentiation. This should help infantry catch fleeing units easier in certain circumstances and better take advantage of their unique mobility options.

• Engineer turret build time decreased from 12s to 9s
• Engineer health increased 10%
• Engineer turret missile damage vs. harvesters doubled from 40 to 80
• Engineer unit description now reflects the turret's DPS and stats as being good against vehicles and air while being bad against but able to target infantry

The engineer is intended to be a more defensive alternative to the Stinger trooper, but the amount of setup time required precluded using them even on defense as pretty much any unit could kill the expensive engineer with no threat of retaliation before the turret could go up. This is a sizable buff, and we'll be keeping our eye on the engineer's performance as we do not want it to become oppressive and choke out other units. Turrets do a lot damage over time, but the goal is that turrets still need supporting units past the early stages of the game. While the buff vs. harvesters might seem like a lot, it still doesn't do very much damage to harvesters and reflects more the comically small damage it was doing before.

• Stinger trooper health increased 10%
• Jackal cycle damage vs. infantry decreased 10%
• Sprite damage vs. infantry decreased 8%
• Hellbender cost increased to 45

The Stinger vs. Jackal/Sprite matchups were balanced such that whoever was on defense would win. However, both the Jackal and Sprite are more maneuverable than the Stinger and thus almost always were on defense or could get potshots off while the Stinger couldn't really retreat. This changes those matchups so that the Stinger wins reasonably handily on defense and just barely wins on offense when on plains or better. This now requires the factory/airport player to use their maneuverability to their advantage (e.g. taking a communication tower, getting 2-on-1's, or catching Stingers on roads/pads) to trade more effectively rather than just being able to just roll over barracks openings. This also means that it's harder for the factory/airport player to save up for Hellbenders and Cloudbursts giving the barracks player more time to perpare for the anti-infantry tier 1.5/2 units that still do quite well against Stinger troopers. This relationship perhaps has the most impact on what buildings and openings are good right now, and so we will be monitoring this and continuing to adjust the utility/speed vs. combat power tradeoffs among the buildings.

• Bully cycle health decreased 10%
• Bully cycle damage vs. vehicles decreased 5%
• Bully cycle damage vs. air decreased 15%

Bully cycles did it all. They're fast, lots of effective HP due to how the model destruction breakpoints worked, and had a large frontloaded DPS that among other things effectively shut down all the early game air units. These changes adjusts the breakpoints and drastically change several matchups while leaving others mostly untouched -- in particular now on regular terrain it takes 2 Stinger or Engineer missiles to kill a model (down from 3), and 4 instead of 5 Nimbus missiles while most other things (Tigers, Tempests, the mirror, etc.) are unchanged. Bully cycles now take just over 2 missiles to kill a Nimbus model and all 4 missiles to kill a Sprite model. While the Bully still beats these air units (and the matchup vs. the tempest is mostly unchanged), it beats them slower, requires more micro, and leaves less models left over. The vehicle damage has a smaller impact to matchups, but does make them take a little bit longer to kill things like harvesters.

• Pronghorn tank health increased 10%
• Buffalo tank attack speed increased 10%
• Riptide transport cost decreased from 35 to 30
• Sunshade patcher cost decreased from 40 to 35
• Blazer trooper attack damage increased 10%
• Officer cost decreased from 50 to 45
• Stratus missile reload time decreased 10%
• Gorgon artillery setup delay decreased by 10%

These units are niche units or otherwise are outperformed by their alternatives making them hard to get onto the field. These are some small buffs to make them easier to get out and more competitive with their alternatives.

• Selina Bribery ability now only bribes the target unit for 30s before the unit reverts to the owning player
• Selina Bribery ability cost reduced from 80 to 40

This ability was, to put it mildly, a little bit strong and while it's fun to steal your opponent's units it's a lot less fun to be on the receiving end with almost no counterplay available. These changes modify the ability entirely into a tempo ability and give both players opportunities to out-maneuver and play around when the bribed unit will revert back. We're watching the overall power balance of this ability to refine it more as we want the defending player to have options but also give the Selina player the time to use the bribed unit effectively. This may not be balanced yet, but with the revert we're more confident we have the appropriate levers to tune and balance this moving forward.

• Marshall Tank Drop ability no longer can be used within 2 range of an enemy building
• Marshall Tank drop ability cost increased from 70 to 80
• Chaeya can no longer construct buildings outside of 'normal' build radius within range 1 of an enemy building.

Most abilities in the game are balanced to not do very much damage to buildings/harvesters compared to units. An exception to this is the tank drop where the resulting effect is just a regular Tiger tank that is very good at killing harvesters. This change makes it so that the defending player has a little bit more warning time when the ability is used before the Tiger is potentially on top of their harvesters, and more counterplay for guarding the paths the tiger tank could come from. Furthermore, with a Tiger costing 50 minerals this ability was effectively "pay 20 extra minerals to instantly build anywhere on the map" which is a lot of value. This increases that slightly to 30 extra minerals to bring the value statement more in line with other abilities. In a similar vein, Chaeya now can no longer build next to enemy buildings except where normally any commander could. Chiefly, this prevents you from building next to enemy refineries.

• Chapman Conscription ability cost reduced from 90 to 70

This ability is a late-game ability as it scales with the number of buildings you have and thus is pretty bad in the early game. However, it was taking a few too many buildings before the tempo gained from having the extra chaff was worth it. This brings that point a little sooner so that it should be more viable sometime in the late midgame as you approach the 5-6 building count (e.g. 2 refineries + 3 production structures + headquarters is roughtly the breakpoint where it 'pays for itself').

[ 2024-09-27 05:21:46 CET ] [ Original post ]