Bandit no longer exemplifies Quant's Rule with a potentially 1v1-breaking speed buff. Luckily there are still raiders with 90 speed (Duck and Pyro). Other Shieldbots have a few buffs, as well as several Spiders, with the Spider buffs being more for fun than necessity. On the other end of the game scale, space Jacks have a few mechanical nerfs and UI tweaks that should make it easier to spot and counter.

Balance is barely half this patch. A large engine update went live a few weeks ago, which seems stable by this point, and this patch includes some remaining fixes. The default music has also been changed to a track list created by the player Superintendent (look ingame under Settings/Audio). Several other community members also contributed features and fixes over the past few month, there are so many that the features overflowed into three headings.

Balance

Bandit regains most of the speed it lost in 2012.

• Speed 90 -> 93
• Reworked walk animation.

Rogue spends more patches dancing around cost and missile speed.

• Cost 130 -> 125
• Projectile speed 185 -> 190

Racketeer is cheaper because it seems like the least risky buff.

• Cost 340 -> 330

Felon loses half the speed nerf from six months ago.

• Speed 42 -> 43.5

Hermit leans into its relatively low cost.

• Cost 150 -> 145

Recluse regains some of the turn rate it lost a few years ago.

• Health 650 -> 680
• Turn rate increased by 7.1%

Crab gains more compensation for the armour multiplier nerf.

• Health 4200 -> 4800

Scallop is even worse against underwater targets.

• Torpedo reload time 2s -> 2.6s
• Torpedo AoE 48 -> 32

Ripper loses half its recent range buff.

• Range 290 -> 285
• Damage 260 -> 250

Zeno needs some encouragement to see how it fits into the game.

• Cost 500 -> 400

Singularity Reactor survives an extra Jack hit (two with any repair).

• Health 4000 -> 4500

Overkill prevention was improved for a few units.

• Raven is a bit stricter about avoiding overkill.
• Seawolf now thinks it deals 260 damage, rather than 210.

Drones no longer show up on radar. In the base game this is relevant to Reef and Commanders. This stops Guardian commanders giving away their identity on radar and makes drones resistant to long ranged anti-air.

Paladin and Detriment also aim slower when slowed. This should be the case for all units, but is labourious to implement.

Space Jacks

Jack launching received a few tweaks in addition to the Singularity Reactor buff.

• Very high units draw a vertical line and icon down on the ground, making them easier to spot.
• Units that land beyond the map edge now snap to the nearest structure-free location along the edge, rather than behind a structure (which makes them hard to access and kill).

The last change also gives Recon commanders a niche way to beat other commanders in a race.

Selection Panel

The selection panel gained a few features, so it is time for a refresher:

• Left click (LMB) a portrait to select the corresponding unit.
• Right click (RMB) a portrait to remove it from the selection.
• Shift LMB/RMB selects or deselects a unit type.
• Alt LMB/RMB selects or deselects half of the units of this type.
• Holding Ctrl defers all selection changes until Ctrl is released. This is a weird one, but it allows you to hold Ctrl, click a few units, then release Ctrl to end up with those units selected.

The new features are:

• Shift+Alt LMB/RMB selects or deselects units that are at least as healthy as the unit (by percent).
• Units are sorted by health, within unit type, when the selection changes.
• Fixed a bug with Ctrl not working properly on grouped selections.

These change can be configured Settings/HUD Panels/Selected Units Panel, with Simple Settings unticked. Why are there so many selection modifiers? Because sometimes I find myself wanting to manipulate selections in some way, without a good way to do it, so add it. In this case the application is retreating damaged Minotaurs without picking them out via Ctrl.

Settings Features

These features can be changed in the ingame menu with Simple Settings unticked.

• Changed the default music to the Superintendent track lists, which were created by a community member for Zero-K. The license is the same as the Denny Schneidemesser tracks, but won't cause Youtube issues. Existing players can switch track lists via Settings/Audio.
• Sonar units now draw their sonar range in the water when selected. Configure via Settings/Interface/Map/Sonar.
• Shift and Space can now be set to flatten selection rank (Kingstad wanted this). Configure ingame via Settings/Interface/Selection/Filtering.
• Added options to change nuke warning position and size. Configure via Settings/HUD Panels/Nuke Warning.
• Health bar progress can be inverted per bar type (thanks amnykon). Configure via Settings/Interface/Healthbars/Invert.

Other Features

• Captured units satisfy "Have" bonus objectives in the campaign.
• Slings now contribute to total burst damage on the UI.
• Unit help (space+click) now shows Tech-K adjusted stats for the level of unit clicked on (thanks cktang88).
• Innate player income now obeys battle option multipliers.
• Added pathfinder selection to battle options. It defaults to random.
• Automatic handicap mode is now more visible in battle options.
• Touched up some errors in Lance texture (thanks garfild888).
• Improved Moderator walk animation (thanks garfild888).
• Added extra random numbers to capture rays.
• Improved Bandit walk animation.
• Thug, Convict, Dirtbag, Paladin, and Detriment animate slower when slowed. This happens for many units, but not all. Finishing off the remaining units would be a good task for a new contributor.
• Added dev tools (Settings/Toolbox/Dev Commands) to spawn a test unit, set the game to max speed, and to spawn all units in order.

Fixes

• Fixed penetrating commander projectiles (ie flamethrower) not taking damage modules into account for damage vs. shields (thanks Shaman).
• Fixed a rare selection widget crash (thanks amynkon).
• Fixed switching team colour options with smooth icon zoom enabled (thanks Azim-Palmer).
• Fixed some latency-dependant issues with the Newton Firezone autojump widget.
• Improve performance of strike/guardian weapons (thanks Porkch0p).
• Fixed beam-style nano lasers sometimes disappearing.
• Patched errors related to trying to find the cost of unseen enemy commanders.
• Fixed the reset settings button for colour picking settings (such as radar colour).
• Fixed "gunshipkrow script error" caused by vectors of near-zero length (look at what they need to mimic a fraction [strike]of our power[/strike]).

The choice of chassis is far from just cosmetic, it constrains a unit's abilities and design, giving factories a distinct feel that carries through to the battle and terrain.

Read it here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/334920/view/507331952079012159

The engine of Zero-K is written in C++, but the fancy UI and mechanics are Lua. This gives us flexibility while designing new mechanics, without sacrificing speed for RTS basics.

Read it here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/334920/view/507330049932789813

Raven is the most reworked unit in Zero-K, having used lasers, rockets and ballistics. It even had a unique ability for 11 years. Read on to see what made it so hard to get right.

Read it here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/334920/view/507328146461165192