The community has done great work over the last two weeks exploring the new and improved Warrior. This version has a nerf to Warrior which reduces the previous buff while retaining the unique parts of the warrior; regeneration and damage. We have begun the promised commander weapon design fix with an attempt to equalize their power levels and give each weapon a distinct purpose.
Other nice changes include a fix to the longstanding Slasher overkill prevention issue, reasonable team names and rally points for rearming bombers. Use of rally points should improve bomber turnaround.
In other news
ikinz is working on a nice ZK themed Weblobby and the release of Spring 101.0 is looming. The new engine has some nice features but is hampered by ATI graphics errors. Access to ATI testing is stalling our ability to make ZK compatible.
Balance
Nerfs to
Warrior as a partial reduction of the recent buff. The aim is to harden the counter by skirmishers and reduce overlap with the Zeus assault role.
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Cost 200 -> 210 (old was 220)
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Range 280 -> 270 (same as old)
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Health 880 -> 820
Commander morphing receives a design pass. Most of the effort was applied to basic weapons.
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Basic weapons are now balanced around 50 cost and have designed strengths and weaknesses[?].
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Commanders can equip duplicates of basic weapons.
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Manual fire weapon reload time increased to at least 25s to reduce their spam annoyance. Some buffs. Costs are normalized to 150.
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Cheapened morph base cost by 50 to level 3 and 100 for higher levels.
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Slightly cheaper drone modules.
Valkyrie can no longer transport
Enforcer.
Fixed
Slasher overkill prevention.
Djinn weight lowered:
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cost 800 -> 750
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health 2600 -> 2500
Artillery accuracy improved:
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Hammer can no longer miss a Defender [?]
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Pillager can no longer miss a Stinger [?]
Tactical AI:
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Added tactical AI for Ravager.
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More things skirmish Warrior (for example, Ravager).
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Removed broken Scorcher behaviour[?].
UI
Air Repair/Rearm Pad can now have rally points. Aircraft that leave an
Air Repair/Rearm Pad or a
Airplane Plant with an empty command queue will inherit the queue of their pad. This mirrors the behaviour of factory queues. Reef is unaffected.
Better team names:
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instead of "team 0", teams now have recognizable names, for example "Team North", "GBC" or "Team Sprung" [?]
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the game-over screen now tells spectators who won (in the above format; was just "game over" previously).
Other changes:
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Line-move now shows dots for the projected unit positions. This is option is enabled by default for new and current players. We need to know whether it works for all graphics cards.
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Loading progress bar is now more accurate.
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Added a "show always" option for armor and build-priority state icons.
Changed defaults
for new players:
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Fight is now hotkeyed under A and Attack is under F. The commands are also renamed.
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Engine info screen hotkey: 'i' -> 'Ctrl+i'
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LoS view toggle hotkey: 'L' -> 'Ctrl+L'
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Default command visibility: always shown for selected units, hold Shift for all units (previously was hold shift for selected units, no way to see all units).
Misc
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The game can now result in a draw in two cases: everyone dies at the same time (eg. two opposing roaches blow each other), or all alive teams are dropped (eg. when the non-dropped team resigns after the other drops).
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Wreckage, rocks, trees etc. no longer disappear without a trace when destroyed/crushed/reclaimed but make a small dirt poof instead.
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Trainer comms default to HMG/radar at level 1 and ablative/regen at level 2.
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CAI no longer avoids linking its fusion reactors.
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Fix CAI having wrong idea about energy economy.
