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Zero-k v1.3.1.8 - Overpowered Missile Update

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9 years ago

This version bring much needed intelligence in the realm of missile firing as well as some buffs to marginalized missile units. As such Hovercraft may now be OP but we will deal with that when we get there. Near term balance is secondary to non-frustrating unit behaviour.

We have had a recent breakthrough in diagnosing the performance problems with the new engine. There is already a version available and early test games are very promising. The engine devs have taken notice and it looks like a version better than 91.0 will be out quite soon.

Wolverines have a much nicer mine projectile and model. As always there are a bunch of fixes.


Overkill Prevention



Most homing missile bearing units are now more intelligent about when they fire their missiles. A pack of Scalpels is now smart enough to figure out the most prudent method of killing a lone flea. The following units have gained this skill:
Defender, Hacksaw, Chainsaw, Screamer, Crasher, Angler, Flail, Tarantula, Swift, Rapier, Trident, Puppy, Scalpel.

Puppy and Scalpel know how bad they are against fast moving units (Planes, Crane, Blastwing, Gnat and Banshee) so fire willy-nilly at them in the hope that one of them hits.

Their intelligence has some drawbacks. Units are still not able to outsmart the confusing 3D nature of shields and as such completely ignore their existence (Scalpels may end up looking stupid when up against a lone Thug). Luckily armour is taken into account. Sometimes you may want to throw away finesse and just fire all the missiles, for this purpose there is a state toggle.

Relatively low reload time units such as Vandal and Slasher were considered not worth smartifying. This could change in the future.


Balance



Reintroduced Hacksaw. Do not think of this as a buff (or nerf?), think of it as the reimplementation of an owled unit.
  • Cost 400 -> 220
  • Health 1500 -> 580
  • Damage 1180 -> 1050
  • Range 850 -> 420
  • Reload Time 13 -> 15
  • Time between missiles 1.4s -> 0.7s
  • Shrunk model by 15%.

Angler change:
  • Cost 220 -> 200
  • Damage 580 -> 600
  • Reload 10 -> 12
  • Range 800 -> 600

Crasher buff:
  • Cost 260 -> 220

Gunships now fare better against Raven and Hawk (one less shot required to kill).
  • Trident Damage 190 -> 200
  • Rapier Damage 190 -> 200

Sharpshooter:
  • Speed 1.7 -> 1.45

Scalpel crater depth reduced by 30%.


Visuals/UI



Anarchid has made Wolverine a new projectile model and mine.

The tooltip while placing structures now shows an estimated payback time from overdrive for energy structures. Mexes show how long it takes for them to pay for themselves with just their base extraction.

Sumo is able to settarget friendly units.


Fixes



  • Bombers no are no longer forced to fly straight for a few seconds after takeoff. This was especially bad for Raven and it would sometimes become stuck.
  • Racketeer missiles timeout faster after they miss and do not accelerate to ridiculous speeds.
  • Sonar Station, Radar, Advanced Radar and Sneaky Pete lose their abilities when reclaimed.
  • Initial queue is now disabled for spectators before the game starts.
  • Fixed some invisible units in dev engine.
  • Sumo range ring now matches its actual range.
  • Krow no longer sometimes causes dust while under construction.
  • Tweaked many damage values slightly to make them nice round numbers.
  • Terraform construction points are no longer killed by lava (or, in fact, anything).
+14 / -0
Looks great!

Just for me to understand, at which point would a pack of scalpels decide to shoot a flea a second time if the first shot misses for some reason? When the projectile hits or after a fixed timeout?
Does the closes (non-reloading) unit fire the shot?
+0 / -0


9 years ago
For Scalpel they try again after 2.3 seconds. Each unit has a hardcoded value between about 1s and 2.5s depending on how long missiles generally take to hit. The unit that fires first fires the shot. It's just a race.

Also I forgot to mention that if a unit is doomed (by all the missiles that are flying at it) then all other units treat it as a low priority target.
+0 / -0
quote:
Also I forgot to mention that if a unit is doomed (by all the missiles that are flying at it) then all other units treat it as a low priority target.

...but they will still fire at if it's the only one around?
+0 / -0

9 years ago
Yes.
+0 / -0
Good job overall.

I'd like to propose few improvements:
1) Add banisher to the new gadget. It may well hit planes so makes sense to "fire willy-nilly", they also may overkill
2) Add special code to handle Racketeer "overkill". It's annoying that they all seem to shoot one target, even though it's sometimes known in advance that target will stay disarmed, even if less racketeers shoot at it.
a) So for units in LoS (where the actual GetUnitRulesParam(uId,"disarmed") is known) it will be desirable to keep amount of shooting racketeers to the required minimum.
b) For units out of LoS but in withing the radar coverage, which UnitDef has been seen, it might be desirable to follow procedure from a) but with slight overkill, say 1.2 factor, to take into account possible radar wobble.
c) For units on Radar of unknown type it may be desirable to preserve old behavior. It may be a glaive, could be a detriment, who knows...
d) If type is known again, targetting priority should probably be given to static defence units, commanders, long range and assault things and less to more common stuff like raiders.
3) As for shielded units/units under shield. It's really impossible/hard to predict what kind of shield configuration it will be, when projectile start hitting shields one after another. So I would guess that if we know in advance that a target unit has shield/can be covered by nearby shields, then the behavior should be same as with fast units, i.e. everyone should shoot the target.


Added later: ducks are also good to have OK prevention behavior
+1 / -0
I'm glad to see that ATrankhokomoko 's leads have lead to a probable solution to the performance issue, kudos
+3 / -0
9 years ago
Finnaly Wolverines do not shoot some kind of discs but acctual mines.
+0 / -0
quote:
Finnaly Wolverines do not shoot some kind of discs but acctual mines.

https://www.google.com/search?q=landmine&tbm=isch
+0 / -0
quote:
* Initial queue is now disabled for spectators before the game starts.

?

If disabled spectator won't able to see what players is doing in pre-game & won't see them in Replay either.
+0 / -0

9 years ago
I reckon that means the specs can't queue things themselves...
+0 / -0
spec queueing stuff is not bad, they couldn't effect the game.

But I guess maybe it will be fixed later :)
+0 / -0
Skasi
9 years ago
Wow! A lot of these changes sound very nice and promising. Many annoying bugs were fixed, units are more intelligent and performance may see a big improvement soon.

Looking forward to spamming Ropiers.
+3 / -0


9 years ago
Hopefully that spec queue bug is fixed later, it's always handy to show what the players have planned in the warmup of a tournament match.
+0 / -0
quote:
Finnaly Wolverines do not shoot some kind of discs but acctual mines.

quote:
https://www.google.com/search?q=landmine&tbm=isch


But zero-k is not real life .-.
+0 / -0
sounds awesome. great work, thank you.

till
quote:
Racketeer missiles timeout faster after they miss and do not accelerate to ridiculous speeds.
+0 / -0
quote:
spec queueing stuff is not bad, they couldn't effect the game.

But I guess maybe it will be fixed later :)


I've already made a pull request that should've disabled that.
(was merged)
+1 / -0


9 years ago
v1.3.1.9:
  • Revert initial queue change.
  • Double Rogue turret turn rate.
  • Attributes for dev engine fix.
  • Claw buildpic.
  • Attrition counter fix.

+1 / -0

9 years ago
Wish there was some way around adding yet-another-state-toggle, but sounds great otherwise.
+0 / -0


9 years ago
The plan is to merge a bunch of firing-related state toggles into a single firestate toggle. "Return Fire" would be replaced with "Be Smart". So we would have "Fire at Will" for willy-nilly firing, "Be Smart" for things like overkill, firing at radar and not firing when cloaked and "Hold Fire" for not firing at all (unless forced).

There are a few problems. For example currently it makes sense to set a unit to hold fire, tell it not to fire at radar dots and then force fire a radar dot. The intended behaviour is that the unit would fire if the target enters LOS. So my 3 states as outlined above need more consideration.
+1 / -0
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