Zero-K v1.5.7.1 - Limpet, sea balance and cheaper Defender

Sea has a balance update, with a more interesting Reef and less dominant Ronin. The amphibious bots are fleshed out with their own crawling bomb. There was mixed feedback on the Defender cost increase. Personally, I missed the choice of light turrets but appreciated the lack of large Defender forests. The cost increase has been reduced to 100 metal and will likely persist to see how people adapt.

Zombie mode is seeing some use so it has been slightly improved. The "Set AI Spawns" modoption is now active, previously it was a placeholder. Other improvements and fixes from previous stables last month, such as to terraform and stats graphs, are included in the notes for completeness.

Balance

New unit: Limpet, an Amphibious Bomb. Unlike other bombs this unit does not cloak (in any case, cloak is disabled underwater). It has higher health and a large range to compensate.

• Cost: 180
• Health: 400
• Speed: 117 e/s
• Damage: 150 normal, 1500 slow. Maximum slow persists for up to 5 seconds.
• Damage radius: 250

Defender:

• Cost 120 -> 100 (was 80 previously)

Gauss turret:

• No longer overshoots.
• Reduced projectile speed by 45%.

Moderator:

• Maximum slow persists for up to 2 seconds.

Claymore:

• Health 1350 -> 1650
• Projectile is planted for two seconds before moving (in sea) or exploding (on land).

Ronin:

• Health: 3000 -> 2500
• Reload time: 4 -> 5 (Effective DPS 150 -> 120)
• Weapon velocity: 400 -> 350
• Turret traverse rate 150 -> 50

Siren:

• Sonic gun range: 380 -> 340

Reef:

• Cost: 3500 -> 3000
• Tacnuke replaced with disarm missile
• Stockpile cost: 600 -> 150
• Stockpile time: 60 -> 30
• Damage: 15000 disarm for a maximum of 10 seconds
• Range: 3000
• Damage radius: 140

Shogun:

• Cost: 3800 -> 4000

SLAM rocket:

• Cost 200 -> 150m

Zombies are no longer immune to slow damage. The 50% zombie slowdown is applied independently so now slow damage against zombies can cause them to move at 25% the speed of a normal unit.

Behavior

• Claymore tactical AI now runs away whenever it fires.
• Fixed a bug which prevented Reef and Bantha from moving close enough to their target.
• Units moving in groups now clump less at their destination.
• Overkill prevention now takes shields into account.
• High damage weapons now prioritize healthier units over unhealthy units when both units can be killed in a single shot.

Interface

The modoption "Set AI Spawns" is now active. Enable it to select the start positions for every AI in the game.

Map/Graphics:

• Limpet, Roach, Flea and Tick now leave tracks.
• F4 eco view: enemy mexes marked.
• F4 eco view: use colour of owner instead of hardcoded teal.
• Added more quality settings to LUPS.
• Added a menu toggle which controls whether dropped/lagging players units flash.
• Start position ranks now use the shiny ranks.
• Mace weapon now has sparks.

Terraform:

• Skydust UI can now be used to flatten and build on otherwise unbuildable terrain.
• Added 'D' as a hotkey to cancel blocks of terraform.
• Fixed the occasional long delay when building on a terraformed platform.

Stat graphs:

• Graphs now only go up to game over.
• Simplified the graph window when the game is ongoing.
• Added a toggle to show stat graphs to the global commands bar.

Other changes:

• Rewrote the selected units panel as the old version was a drain on performance.
• Hotkeys now available in simple menu mode.
• Constructors no longer inherit factory priority.
• Added a rate limit for incoming chat and ping noises.
• Dragging orders in the factory build queue no longer removes the Alt modifier.
• Radio buttons look more like radio buttons.
• Added a chicken panel toggle to the global command bar.
• Improved trainer commander selection UI and options.

Fixes

• Fix inheriting land/fly state.
• Fix missing endgame window
• Setting a hotkey no longer causes the window to replace itself.
• Fixed Racketeer getting stuck shooting at disarmed targets.
• Reduced graphs performance usage, especially when not enabled.
• Wreckage fixes, some units would leave full wreck when supposed to leave debris.
• Fixed move-repeat interaction.
• Fixed a delay caused when giving a move order to a jumping unit.
• Fixed units doing a Circle Guard getting confused and breaking the formation.
• Fixed ballistic scatter prediction position in the attack AoE display widget.
• Fixed menu search.
• Pause no longer delays the end of the game.
• Fixed unit XP display and it is no longer gathered on damage dealt outside LOS.
• Fixes for zooming the camera to a startbox.
• Fixed missing fighter jets.
• Fixed "Wait or Win" placement.
• Fixed mex placement with command insert.

> run limpet at enemies which it can get close to (many units can't do 400 damage quickly and reliably at range)
> follow up with buoy which can now catch slowed enemies and maintain slow
> profit
B461616 6 on DunePatrol_wip_v03

It's not as though Gauss was never built, and it probably still does most of the things it should.

quote: I don't see why we had to nerf Gauss.

From the commit:

quote: Gauss bullet speed 73 → 40 elmo/frame. The reach of a weapon is always range + 1 frame's worth of velocity in the worst case. We can't remove the bullet at <range because then it can shoot things and fail to reach them, and we can't reduce granularity below 1 frame (well, technically we can manipulate the speed or something like that but I don't think that's worth the cost). Gauss has 560 range, Stinger 620 and Defender 610; but their models also have some width so I made the reach 600 (560+40). The weapon is still pretty fast, it's probably worse at hitting planes but it can still reliably hit Glaives. I don't think it's going to be impactful on "regular" Gauss use but if it shows to be it can be rethought.

why SLAM buff?