Zero-K v0.9.3 + Spring engine 95.0 dual christmas release!

Christmas comes early for good boys and girls! Santa's bringing a new version, with lots of bugfixes and an awesome increase in framerate!

(Unfortunately, we also had to reset your widget settings and keybinds. Sorry about that. You should back up Documents/My Games/Spring/uikeys.txt if you modified it manually.)

Engine
Should no longer crash on default settings with Intel cards
Implemented a new terrain rendering system (much much faster)
Improved pathfinding


General
Added awards for building mexes and doing damage with commanders


Modules
Added a torpedo module


Balance
Felon: HP 1000 -> 1400, cost 700 -> 650
Dominatrix works faster on damaged units; cost 400 -> 420
Typhoon (corvette): HP 2400 -> 2200, damage per shot 11 -> 10
Shipyard HP increased 50% (4000 -> 6000)


Graphics
New Welder (tank constructor) model
Fixed missing subs and precision bomber weapon effects when hitting underwater targets
Improved Skeeter, Pillager and Crabe weapon FX
Krow corpse scaled down to fit unit


Interface
Fixed crashes in player list and unit XP display
Added Map category to widget list

PLEASE!! ALL DEVS!! STOP BUFFING OR NERFING UNITS MASSIVELY!! PLEASE!!
Use SMALL stat changes for things that are not completely destroying the game with how they are now. Any change from 5-20% is super nice and fine, they're cute little adjustments to make the game just that bit more awesome. The -30% or +50% I see every now and then are a tiny little bit extreme when things are not obviously super duper mega broken.

That's kinda my only complain, everything else sounds super nice! Yay for mex award! I hope it takes base output of mexes into account and not "empty" ones. Does it?

I disagree with the nerfs to Corvettes. I already feel like they are maybe a little underpowered compared to Mace for the following reasons:

Plasma shots have less range when CHASING an enemy since they must shoot "ahead" of where the enemy is now. This gives the Mace the ability to kite. Mace laser does not suffer from this affect.

Mace laser has longer range. This gives ability to kite.

Corvette can only do half damage when chasing an enemy and is WAY more micro intensive, since you have to position each one sideways in order to fire both guns. Mace does same damage in all directions without having to be microd.

The last few times I played sea I had greater metal in Corvettes than an enemy had in Mace, but the mace were STILL used to kite my Corvettes. They would sit just outside of Corvette range and shoot, and the instant I would chase them they would turn away and kite my Corvettes.

Corvette was a bit good at everything and beat all hovercraft. It could easily catch and kill Mace and has better map control. Mace should at least make cost vs Corv and hopefully it now will.

The capcar thing is a bad idea, this unit is just massively underused because it has virtually no synergy. It only stacks with itself, because capture damage is its own kind of damage. If you spam these things, about the only counter is bombers or a very few units with the range/speed to kite them. Its a threshold thing: If you have enough to overcome the capture and start destroying the capcars, they're useless as things become un-captured again, but if you dont, you lose your whole army and it gets used against you.

Maces where already quite effective vs corvettes while boats should make 2x cost. I think this only promotes making more expensive units like warlord and reef.

Some hotkeys broken CTRL+C no longer works also unit groups aint working too, also broken toggle AI never ever worked.

Is it linux only problem?

Thanks for helping us Intel graphic card users!
My suspension form PW has finally ended!

Did you replace/merge uikeys.txt as well?

>Really, if you are fighting vs hover as sea, just spam enforcer.

I'm TIRED of seeing explanations like this when people are trying to justify sea balance. You know what the problem with this is? You know what the fucking problem is?

SEA IS REALLY FUCKING EXPENSIVE.

There, I said it. It's true. Everything, EVERTHING, costs so much fucking metal that in early game it's impossible to change your units and switch to other units. The extreme Rock-Paper-Scissor game that is Naval Warfare really just sucks. In every other lab, if you build rock and your enemy builds paper, you just switch unit types. The units are cheap enough that you start getting them to the frontline quickly.

So waldo, what is that you say? If enemy has Mace I need to make enforcer? Oh great, that only costs TWELVE HUNDRED METAL. Based on early-game income (about 8 metal/s per player) I'll get my first enforcer in only 2.5 minutes! What a GREAT counter. Oh yeah, those Mace can raid my sea base but I can't touch their lab because it was built on land.

Sea balance is OK in later game because metal income (both natural + reclaim) is high enough that unit type-switching isn't so cost prohibitive. But damn, early game is almost ENTIRELY a blind RPS match in which whomever guesses the correct unit type wins.

Somehow, sea units need to be balanced around cheaper units like every other lab uses, or there needs to be two sea lab similar to how vehicles are balanced (light veh vs heavy tanks).