Category: News

These changes bring a nerf to some heavy static defenses and a bunch of fixes. Non-rectangular starboxes continue to be applied to more maps. Zeus is slightly more accurate in an attempt to tune Cloakybots.

Balance

DDM:

• cost: 1200 › 1600
• power now required to use heatray
• open/close approx. time: 4s › 15s

DDM, Annihilator, Behemoth:

• power required to aim weapons and open/close.

Stardust:

• minimum firing angle 30° below.

This has no effect on flat land but elevated Stardusts have a sizable minimum range depending on height.

Zeus:

• inaccuracy 2.8° › 2.4° [?]

Miscellaneous

• Wait pauses non-free Stockpile. [?]
• COFC camera scrolling obeys Smooth Mesh option and is FPS independent.
• Units undergoing an orbital drop [?] can no longer jump.
• Added a startbox creation tool for mappers. Consult the wiki for usage.

Fixes

• fixed non-dedicated Radar sources [?] being blocked by minor terrain irregularities.
• fixed EMP timer being inaccurate [?].
• fixed facplop being wasted when resurrecting a factory.
• fixed fall damage not being applied if the drop was perpendicular to the ground.
• fixed Outline effect not working on machines without shader support
• fixed Outline effect and X-ray effect to be more consistent with above water rendering when underwater [?].
• fixed the SI notation for tooltips and space-click menu.
• fixed Retreat causing a desync when used by a skirmish AI.

There are two large balance changes in this release. The Blastwings weapon is now a fireball similar to a small Firewalker (or large Kodachi). It is unlikely to be balanced but at least it should be possible to make the unit more useful lategame without dominating early.

The second balance change is more subtle. An exploit that could give permanent invisibility to HLTs lead us down a path to removing air LOS. Air units are now harder to see which is surely going to make them more powerful, somehow.

Apart from that there are fixes, area-mex-solar and a WIP arbitrary start volume system which has been enabled for some maps.

Balance

Blastwing

Blastwing now has a fireball explosion. It is comparable to a single Firewalker projectile but with larger AoE. Reduced Blastwing damage and gibs.

• Direct damage: 250 › 80
• Giblets: 15 › 3 [?]
• Fireball DPS: up to 16
• Fireball time: 20s
• Fireball AoE: 256 [?]
• Sets units on fire for 2s [?]

Line of Sight

• Reduced air LOS range by 33% to match LOS range.
• Any unit which fires in air LOS will be revealed (structures for 5s, units for 2.5s).

In effect, enemies are revealed in they fire within a units sight radius but were not previously visible because terrain was in the way.

The consequences are that:

• This works around the LOS calculation issue which causes tall units to be invisible to the enemy even though they can see and fire. They are still not visible until they fire but now it is possible to fight back.
• Shields and particles (such as Sumo footsteps) are no longer visible earlier than the unit itself.
• Air units are are harder to detect. Previously they could be seen 50% earlier than ground units (this was one of the purposes of air LOS). Radar and other vision is now more important for fighters and AA.

Kodachi out-of-combat regeneration time: 1.66s › 5s

UI

• holding down Alt when giving an Area-Mex command will surround the mexes with 4 Solars. Will surround pre-existing mexes too.
• Spotted enemy Aegis (static area shields) now draw a radius circle. [?]
• Game over display now clearly shows the match result.
• Circle Guard and Repair commands are now retained on morphing units. [?]

Miscellaneous

• Rename: Sharpshooter › Spectre
• Chicken Queen now ignores defences and moves straight into the base.
• Updated Polish helptext translations and added some UI translations.

Content creation

• Widgets now have access to winner data in the GameOver call-in. [?]
• Widgets: added gl.Utilities.DrawGroundTriangle [?]
• Added localisation support to a few widgets [?]. You can help translate them through Transifex.
• Added a powerful API for maps to define their own arbitrary startboxes. See the wiki page for details on how to use them in your maps.

Fixes

• Fixed DDM cannon sometimes getting stuck inside another building.
• Fixed plasma cannons (eg. Thug, Hermit or Goliath) being unable to hit tall targets (eg. HLT) on some maps (eg. Geyser).
• Fixed crashes in ETA and Fac Panel.
• Fixed Conch prematurely leaving its building animation.
• Fixed unit state display working on hidden units. [?]
• Fixed enemy tacnuke silos not having their range circles drawn.
• Fixed Spectator Panels delay when updating win count.
• Fixed game over award display using old names.
• Fixed Context Menu showing wrong transportability for some ships.
• Fixed some units leaving incorrect wreckage. [?]

Halloween is around the corner and so is the October 2v2 tournament.

The tournament is going to take place at 10 AM UTC on the 31st day of October. Registration is open up until 1 hour before the start time of the tournament.

Format and rules, as usual:
– 2 human players per team
– Double elimination
– Random seeding
– First map of each round is predetermined, the following maps in the winners bracket will be selected by the loser of the previous game from the featured 1v1 map pool.
– All winners bracket games will be best of 3 (including finals). All losers bracket games will be best of 1 with the exception of the losers finals (bo3).

It is possible to substitute for players who don’t show up. If you have signed up, make sure to show up on time. Those who fail to show up will likely be subbed out by 10:30 UTC.

The players coming first, second and third will receive special unique collectible awards to their player profile as well as tournament points which will be used to determine the yearly champions of 1v1 and 2v2.

Link to bracket.

Maps will be announced soon.
Sign up in the comments!

As usual, the tournament is scheduled to take place on the last Saturday of the month at 10 AM / 10:00 UTC.

Tournament format & rules:
– Registration is open until 1 hour before the official start time of the tournament, at which time the bracket will be shuffled.
– Double elimination
– Random seeding
– First map of each round is predetermined, the following maps in the winners bracket will be selected by the loser of the previous game from the featured 1v1 map pool.
– All winners bracket games will be best of 3 (including finals). All losers bracket games will be best of 1 with the exception of the losers finals (bo3).

It is possible to substitute for players who don’t show up. If you have signed up, make sure to show up on time. Those who fail to show up will likely be subbed out by 10:30 UTC.

The players coming first, second and third will receive special unique collectible awards to their player profile, and receive tournament points which will at the year’s end determine the year’s altogether best tournament player.

The list of predetermined maps will be announced on Friday when the approximate number of participants is known.

The bracket can be seen at this link.

Sign up in the comments!

September has been a bit slow with game-side development. Regardless, we have accumulated enough fixes for a decent sized release.

=== Game Mechanics ===

Jumping out of water is now blocked (except for Recon Commander). However jumping into water is allowed (to enable Skuttling underwater units).

Drones can now be captured by Dominatrix. Captured drones still follow their carrier and take up a drone slot. Capturing a carrier no longer captures the drones.

Removed personal radar-invisiblity. This affects Swift and all drones (they had the feature, yet nobody noticed). Athena and Vulture are slightly affected because their personal radar-invisiblity was mostly redundant. The change for them is that a landed Vulture or Athena is visible to radar provided the Athena is not cloaked.

Removed Snake and Serpent tactical AI. It was broken on them because their limited fire arc needs manual control.

=== Interface ===

* Messed with many unit descriptions for the sake of consistency. Structures with long names have had their name shortened to fit on the construction tooltip.
* Drones no longer contribute to airforce general.
* Line Special Fire now requires Alt. This fixes the bug in which special weapons could not target aircraft (eg Scorpion vs Krow).
* Removed useless Flail on/off toggle.
* Added icon set manager.
* Added/Updated Strike Commander, Zenith, Placeholder, Conch, Leviathan and Hunter death clones.
* Fixed attrition counter.
* Added low quality fallback for unit outlines.
* Moved loading bar out of the way of the loading screen tips.
* Zenith meteor tooltip is now a bit more useful.
* “Exit to desktop” no longer causes resign.
* Facpanel improvements.
* Build ETA display improvements. Now works for stockpile.

=== Fixes ===

* Fixed Mex glow.
* Fixed a CAI crash.
* Outlaw debris is not longer resurrectable.
* Removed water level modoption. Changed typemap removal implementation. This is to fix a possible cause of desync.
* Reduced landship bounce.
* Slow damage now reduces gunship brake rate.
* Nukes now have enough fuel to fly along maps of ridiculous size.
* Solars no longer produce energy when closed. * Fixed incorrect bounce for ground collisions.

The summer is nearing its end (at least in northern hemisphere) and with that setting sun this month’s tournament will be held in theme of tropics on a Saturday of August 29th at 12:00 UTC, that is a bit later that the usual (all for our dear American players of course). Keep in mind that the tournament will be held by Orfelius and I am just a blind and deaf relay for his words.

Tournament format and rules:
– Double elimination
– Random seeding
– First map of each round is predetermined. The losing team will suggest the next map that is featured for teams.
– All winners bracket games will be best of 3 (including finals). All losers bracket games will be best of 1 with the exception of the losers finals (bo3).
– Due to semi-late announcement of the tourney the registration will be available until one hour before the tourney will start.
– It is possible to substitute for players who don’t show up. If you have signed up, make sure to show up on time. Those who fail to show up will likely be subbed out by 12:30 UTC.
– The players coming first, second and third will receive special unique collectible awards to their player profile, and receive tournament points which will at the year’s end determine the year’s altogether best tournament player.

The tourney will also feature a FFA map which was included due to shuffle option being implemented into the server allowing randomizing positions of the starting positions.

Map pool:

Round 1: Aquatic Divide
Round 2 & losers round 1: Conquest of Paradise
Round 3 and losers round 2: Sands of Time
Semifinals & losers finals: Ternion
Finals: Tropical

The bracket can be seen here.

Grab your partner, sign up in the comments and we will see you this Saturday.

The last few releases each seemed too small individually for a full release post. But now there is a balance change so here is a release post.

Tank raider buffs, informed by Veh vs Tank testing last week, is the main change for v1.3.8.12. In other versions Area Shields gained priority and an off button as well as a few extra weaknesses. Intel structures also gained priority. Air transport behaviour and logistics automation has been improved and fixed to make them much more rewarding to use.

=== Balance ===

Tanks:
* Kodachi – Line of Sight 520 -> 600
* Panther – Health 980 -> 1100

Area Shields:
* Lose all their charge when disabled (disarm, morph, emp, nanoframed).
* Charge rate now obeys slow damage.
* Moved base upkeep to unit cost (+50 cost for Aspis, +45 cost for Aegis).

Other:
* Significantly buffed Valkyrie acceleration and brake rate.
* Windgen can be built anywhere.
* Vulture has 700 range radar jamming.
* Raven no longer dives through Detriment.

=== Interface ===

Priority:
* Added priority for Radar, Sonar, Jammers, Area Cloakers and Area Shields.
* Priority is high by default for Radar, Sonar, Jammers and Area Cloakers.
* Misc Priority can be set in Initial Unit States.
* Added on/off toggle to shields to toggle charging.

Terraform:
* Only raise/lower is now possible to toggle during rectangle terraform selection.
* Smooth can only raise/lower.

Transports:
* Fixed air transports becoming stuck near the target when trying to load/unload.
* Transports guarding a factory will assist built units in reaching their desired destination.
* Fixed transport AI not obeying an unticked “transport from factory”.
* Transport AI Time benefit threshold is now configurable.

Other:
* Right clicking on a Aircraft Plant or Airpad with a Crane now does the normal constructor thing (previously it gave a “land to repair” order, messed up assist).
* Disabled clippy.
* Ctrl+Repair now ignores nanoframes in the area.
* Manualfire orders can be given in a line (Dante salvo etc..)
* Nuke warning no longer pushes other bits of the UI out of its way.

=== Fixes ===
* Gauss turret is properly vertically immobile.
* Area mex queues at correct height.
* Fixed reserve values in extended tooltip.
* Fixed Zenith meteor metal bug.
* Fixed Starlight aiming (it now aims at things perfectly) and range.
* Morphed Capturiees draw their capture line correctly. * Prevented landships.

Inspiration hit to both create Circle Guard and make Zenith !Fun!. Circle Guard tells units to walk around their target in a protective manner. Zenith now captures and stores meteors to be released all at once in a devastating volley.

Dynamic tooltips (ones that change while the unit is selected) have been improved and the annoying chat backlog spacing bug has been fixed.

=== Balance ===

Zenith:
* Meteor Nudger -> Meteor Controller.
Now that Zenith is no longer boring it will be worthwhile putting the effort in to make all three superweapons approximately balanced.

=== Circle Guard ===

The circle guard command causes units to circle defensively around their target. To issue one, select the guard command then left click on the target unit and drag a circle. Hold Alt to make the units defend a direction instead of circling. There are other modifiers which will be shown off in a video in the near future.

=== Interface ===
* Terraform cost tooltip updates without reselecting the unit.
* Improved the clarity of grid tooltips.
* Unbound FPS mode (Alt+V).
* Added key and mouse state display widget. Intended for tutorial videos.
* Area Guard commands which includes teleport beacons will not give guard commands to units. Instead it will tell the units to teleport, split between the beacons in the area.
* Teleport beacons can be placed with custom formations.

=== Fixes ===
* Removed TargetMoveError from Commander Lightning, this was the last case.
* Annihilator etc.. no longer have a low power icon while under construction.
* Fixed lagmoniter setting share levels incorrectly.
* Fixed chat backlog spacing bug when the panel is first opened.
* Fixed waited constructors thinking that they are constructing.
* Fixed edge case in spectator panel. * NullAI is now treated like a real person.

Here is a release with some minor balance changes and fixes. Very little has changed because it appears that very little is broken.

In other news; ClanWars is well underway. Get a clan and follow the thread to play.

=== Balance ===
Raven:
* Slightly faster while diving (44% -> 50% speed). The weird value of 44% was in place to make it slower than Bandit.

Dagger:
* Range 205 -> 210 (was 220 ages ago)
* Line of Sight 450 -> 500. This is almost as much as Kodachi. Hovercrafts felt too hard to scout with.

Pillager:
* Accuracy doubled(?) (600 -> 300, what does that mean?) so it can now reliably hit Stardust.

Panther:
* Range 250 -> 260

Lightning Accuracy:
* Zeus is a bit more accurate.
* Bantha and Scorpion are quite a bit more accurate.

Overkill Prevention
* No longer has perfect information about identified radar dots. Instead it assumes the worst case scenario. An identified dot is assumed to have full health, no status effect and armour (if it is a unit which can armour).
* Groups of units with slow projectiles no longer fire all their shots at aircraft in a futile attempt to hit it. Instead a few will fire just in case they get lucky.

Autorepair module:
* Removed idle time requirement.
* HP/s 20 -> 10
* Cost 250 -> 150

=== Interface ===
* Improved attrition counter. Added teamgame support.
* Added spectator UI panels with a resource bar for each team. Extra panels and hud presets support are still to come.
* Context menu improvements. One shot weapons do not show DPS.

=== Fixes ===
* Fixed queued underground solar boxes.
* Fixed Tidal energy generation.
* Fixes to economy breakdown in resource panel.
* Fixed wreck transitions for some factories and Impaler.

=== Previous Versions ===
* Added Accept Victory by Default panel which appears if the entire enemy team disconnects. Previously they would just explode. Mainly to save 1v1s from connection issues.
* Fixed energy display on Deluxe Player List.
* Added win counter increment. * Reduced Thunderbird camera shake (a lot).