Zero-K v1.0.4.17 - Mex control and Gunship balance

Today we throw off the shackles of broken metalmap layouts and confusing extractor incomes. No more will otherwise good maps be unplayable and no one can miss the clearly displayed power of super mexes. Mex placement now has a UI, is limited to specific spots and is entirely configurable game side on a per-map basis.

As far as balance goes Gunship roles have been extremified and Tremor has received quite a buff.

Mex Placement

Mex placement is now limited to specific locations on the map.

Interface:

• Mex placement snaps to mex spots.
• Spot line width and I-Beam count indicates income.
• Spot colour indicates whether the spot is under allied control.

Mechanic Changes:

• Mex constructor no longer receives 5% extra base income.
• Metalmap view cannot be used to increase scout view range.
• Mexes now start as soon as they are built (previously there was a 3s delay to gather resource data).

Compatibility:

• Cloud metal maps with large extractor radius are not supported. Examples are Bazillion Battlefield and Castles.
• Those with small extractor radius still work. For example Duck and Speedmetal.
• Game-side configs can be added to completely replace a metalmap. This can be used to fix the few liked cloud metalmaps and to fix maps that look good but have broken metalmaps.

Widgets:

• Area Mex, Mex Snap and Prospector have been removed and partially merged into a single widget.
• If you disable this widget you're stuffed.

Ready behaviour change

Start location can now be chosen at any time and there is no ready button. The game with start 4s after every player has chosen a start location.

Balance

Tremor:

• AOE increased 11%
• DPS increased 23%
• Impacts smooths terrain.

Weapononised terrain smoothing is reduced for mid air explosions (as in when projectiles impact a shield high above the ground).

Seismic missile can shoot underwater.

Brawler. It should emphasise range and not being hit by most land units.

• Speed 4.7 -> 4
• Uses more of it's range while strafing.

Blackdawn. Should be hit and run with ground interaction.

• Speed 4.65 -> 4.5
• Health 2900 -> 3400
• Cruise Altitude 210 -> 150 (to compare Banshee is at 100)
• Range 450 -> 300

Rapier. If it is going to defend other gunships it needs to be able to keep up
with them and deal reasonable damage.

• Speed 3.8 -> 4
• Health 1300 -> 1100
• Damage 150 -> 200 (1 shot better vs Vamp)
• Range 300 -> 340

Banshee. This just needs to be a bit better.

• DPS increased 5%
• Range increased by 20

Gnat. Needs to be less extreme "completely win or die".

• Health 90 -> 120 (This is over the Defender boundary, am I mad????)
• Range increased by 20

Strider Hub:

• Costs 550 -> 600m (for consistency)

Bantha:

• Added laser overcharge special weapon.

GUI

Structures in the build menu are ordered by cost.

Geo hightlight activates when build geo is selected. Geos are now drawn on the minimap with a big X.

Bombers now require repeat enabled to retain an attack command.

Fixed

• Rector repair speed was too high.
• Mex, wind, carrier, HLT, defender, LLT aimvolume tweaks. Allied units are better at shooting past them.
• Fix Dante script error.
• Initial state "hold position" preset should work reliably.
• Fixed Archangel DPS

The concept of metal patches and extractor radius has been removed. There are just specific spots on the map that mexes can be placed to give income. Mexes cannot be placed anywhere else.

Many balance changes tweak the unit but keep it in it's role. The gunship changes aren't exactly like that. Instead they try to tweak the roles to create a more differentiated set of units. So they look a bit more extreme and may not be balanced.

Google forgot to mention important communism/sharing change .. mexes now start 50%private and go to 0% over 5 mins.

Too bad my proposed Slasher buff didn't make it into this version.

NeonStorm: No. PW structure placement will have to be improved.

That reminds me; there's that high, thin map with hills east and west. It has map features that block metal spots. Dunno the name.

why metal multiplier dont work?

Ick, we're going to have to go through a lot of maps with slightly odd metal patches to check how this thing works.

When you see a broken map just fix it, I have only seen 4 so far and only 2 of them were seriously broken. It only affects some maps with strange values that let you partially overlap metal spots or maps with weird metal shapes.

Connetable: sort of. As of v1.0.4.6 overdrive is 50% shared equally between teammates, and 50% distributed based on how much energy each player contributes. See http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/2170

Prior to that change, overdrive was 100% shared equally between teammates.

If there is a spot with 0.1m/s or less just delete it.
You can make 0.2m/s with any con - or not?

How about spawning reclaimable things at metal spots which are auto-reclaimed by extractors or any con?
Overdriven extractors multiply the reclaimed metal or start generating metal by their own.
Because you can't place mexes everywhere, this would not be like BA-makers.
If an enemy dies next to an extractor, the extractor reclaims it.
It would be nice if we could transport wreckages to extractors and get more out of it (like 100% of unit cost).

How is tremor OP?