Spring Info

Somehow quite a few changes made it into this version. The new flow field style pathing has been enabled for almost all units (even enemy units) to see if it is an improvement. An across the board 1/6th build power reduction is now being tested. Gravity gun behaviour should be a lot more consistent. In more mundane balance Bandit has had a small nerf and Djinn is significantly cheaper.

=== Balance ===

Bandit:
* DPS reduced by 5%.
* Removed autoheal.

Djinn:
* Cost 1800 -> 800
* Speed 1.2 -> 1.4

As an experimental change all build powers were reduced by 1/6th. Repair, reclaim, resurrect and construction effectively takes 20% longer.

Gravity gun and Water Cannon power increased by an unknown factor.

=== Gravity Guns ===

Replaced the purely engine dependant implementation of gravity beams with a gadget.
* Impulse is a lot more predictable and balancable.
* Planes, Ships and Gunships are now significantly affected by gravity guns.

Known impulse capacitors have been. But do not despair that unit launching is now impossible, the partial rewrite has dramatically increased the predictability and power of ‘legitimate’ unit cannons.

Unit collision damage has been partially reinstated for units with high speed. The high speed cutoff is required to prevent collision damage during normal movement. A fast unit is damaged as if it hit the ground with that speed, the collidee is not damaged.

=== Pathing ===

Most push resistance was removed as an experiment to see if pathfinding will improve.
* Enemy units can be shunted and flowed past in the same manner as allied units.
* Crabe is the only push resistant unit. As it cannot be shunted around.

Disabled push resistance works fairly well in this version. In previous versions, packing units into a tight area was arming the mouse traps in a demonstration of fission. A little bump would cause a unit to wander 100s of elmos off it’s position which would really screw up things like cloaker and mine placement.

With this engine version, instead of moving around units merely float about when pushed. This means a well placed shield or cloaker will not be affected too much. Cloaked units such as Flea, Roach and Tick will stay cloaked while pushed. Pillager and Slasher seem to be able to fire.

=== Removed some Stealth/Cloak ambiguity ===

The obscure ability of Spy and Skuttle to stealth while uncloaked has been removed. This was inconsistent with other cloaked units and completely undocumented.

=== Fixes ===

* Tweaked some cloakybot tracks to better fit their feet base.
* Fixed Urchin gun position when placed in very shallow water.
* Removed occasional console output about pylons.
* Puppy no longer gathers wreckage while stunned or under construction.
* Transport impulse capacitor.
* Nanoframe impulse capacitor.
* Bantha missile now has a reasonable size. The triple missile pack is probably going to be fireable with a manual weapon of some sort. * Fixed some unit tip misspellings.

= v1.0.3.9 =

Thanks CaptianBenz for the great new Bantha model. Apart from the model there are a reasonable number of small fixes. Lastly Spring 88.0 has been released, there are few new fixes in this one since the dev version. Now that there is an official release it should be easier for Linux users to find pre-complied packages.

=== Engine ===

Spring 88.0 has been released. There are few changes since the development version (87.0.1-68-g6cefe1d) that was previously used. ZKL users will update automatically and because this release is official there should be packages around for Linux users.

Pathfinding seems to have improved in this release and units are more prone to clump together.

The workaround for area commands is now completely removed.

=== Balance ===

Archer:
* 15% more damage
* 15% more impulse

Bantha:
* Missile range increased 800 -> 950 (This is to make it equal to laser, just a usability thing).

=== UI===

Gesture menu has a few more options that can be toggled through settings or with UIkeys.
* Added a toggle to disable right-click to open.
* Added a bindable UIkey that opens the menu that does not interact with the mouse.

=== Small Fixes ===

* Fixed longstanding area mex bug related to queuing area mex and normally placed mexes together.
* Shredder now has a range ring.
* EMP healthbar and flash now displays for units on less than 1% health.
* Fixed small bug in ferry point UI.
* Fixed self-d detection with units that don’t count. For example terraform points and wolverine mines.
* Added proper wrecks for Grizzly and Djinn.
* Fixed very rare pylon bug (I could only cause it by creating all units and destroying them in the same frame).
* Might have fixed Dominatrix retargeting.
* Moderator sound is now louder. An engine change appears to have reduced it’s volume.