This update follows the Corsair buff from last month with a wider range of ship tweaks. The largest are that Siren and Envoy are much heavier, and that Reef drones capture units. This should give smaller ships time to shine and make the larger ships more impactful. Many ship hitboxes have been fixed to better match their size and shape, some visual sizes were tweaked, and ship wakes have been improved for look and consistency.

Beyond the shipyard there is an experimental Ronin buff that makes it much faster when out of combat, as well as buffs for Grizzly and Magpie. There are a few more Cloakbots buffs, foreshadowed by the matchup chart in last week's Cold Take. In terms of features, the ingame menu can be brought up over the Victory/Defeat screen in the campaign, and Comet Catcher Redux/Remake has the classic corner start boxes for 1v1.

Balance

Siren is larger and heavier. Even though its average damage output is unchanged, the increased range, rate of fire, and explosion radius are a noticeable buff against swarms of light units.

• Cost 600 -> 900 (+50%)
• Visually 20% larger
• Physically about 18% larger
• Health 5200 -> 7800 (+50%)
• Range 270 -> 290 elmos
• Now prepares to aim at units about to enter range.
• Reload time 1.7s -> 1.066s
• Damage 280 -> 175
• Explosion radius 95 -> 100 elmos

Envoy is larger, heavier, and fires in a burst. It can 1-shot Lance but is still vulnerable to them.

• Cost 850 -> 1200 (+41%)
• Visually 20% larger
• Physically about 9% larger
• Health 2000 -> 2600 (+30%)
• Turn rate reduced by 7%
• Burst 1 -> 2
• Reload time 5s -> 7.3s (damage output increased by 37%)

Reef size matches its model and drones now capture enemy units.

• Physically about 20% larger
• Each drone captures at 55% the rate of Dominatrix
• A drone reloads for 5 seconds after capture
• Capture control is transferred to the Reef
• Drone health 180 -> 260
• Drone altitude 150 -> 120 elmos
• Drone weapon range 360 -> 250 elmos
• Maximum drone count is still 8.

Hunter looked too large but was physically too small.

• Visually 10% smaller
• Physically 7% larger

Mistral now looks like it costs more than Hunter.

• Visually 15% larger
• Physically 42% larger

Corsair has the AI improvement many riots and raiders received a while ago.

• Now prepares to aim at units about to enter range.

Ronin is much faster when out of combat and half a recent health nerf has been reverted.

• Health 380 -> 400
• Speed 69 -> 84 elmos/s
• Reload slowdown 80% -> 66% (55.2 -> 55.4 with the base speed buff)
• Fixed the reload animation so it shoots as soon as it reloads, except when firing backwards.
• It is now slowed for the full reload, rather than speeding up for a split second at the end.

Reaver has a few of its recent nerfs partially reverted. The focus is on making it easier to build early.

• Regen rate 15 -> 20 hp/s
• Range 265 -> 270 elmos

Gremlin is better overall and cloaks for free.

• Cost 140 -> 130
• Cloak cost 0.1e/0.5e -> 0e
• Decloak radius 140 -> 125 elmos
• Speed 87 -> 93 elmos/s

Grizzly is healthier and cheaper to move it out of the Cyclops cost range.

• Cost 2000 -> 1900
• Health 8400 -> 8700
• Turn rate increased by 5%

Magpie is yet to break the game so can try rearming faster.

• Rearm time 18s -> 15s

Features

• Improved the look and consistency of most ship wakes.
• The mission Victory/Defeat screen is now displayed behind the ingame menu.
• Added N to toggle hold fire to the default hotkeys.
• Added classic corner 1v1 boxes to Comet Catcher Redux/Remake.
• Improved lighting on Izki Channel v1.0 and MiniChess_v2.
• Incidental ability sounds (such as Djinn) are now controlled by the battle volume slider.
• Added support for modded Push/Pull weapons on units with On/Off toggles.

Fixes

• Shielded Chickens now float, since shields are disabled underwater.
• Fixed Reef looking peculiar when it tries to beach itself.
• Fixed visual jitter for capture and Lobster effect lines on moving units.
• Fixed initial queue mid-queue removal.
• Fixed Battle Value Tracker rounding for numbers less than 10.
• Tweak map extension grid thickness to avoid triggering a hardware bug with GoogleFrog's screen.
• Modded tint and glow now survives reloading lua.
• Fixed some issues with shutting down the depth of field shader.
• Update json library for a bit better performance.
• Fixed a very rare healthbar bug.
• Fixed an overhead icon bug.

raven can bomb underwater targets, but you need constant vision for its bomb to home in on the target

This Reef change now functionally allows them to siege shorelines far better than before, steal enemy units and pull them back to reclaim or form an army, going to be fun to experiment with now that it's a double function unit.

Interesting update=) Love the refactoring of reef, it will be more "fun" even if it is not directly more useful.

Siren should not be transportable with charon... Arguably, even envoy should not be=)

In other notes - hitting subs with ravens is VERY tricky in practice. Vision offered by Owl is very limited compared to owl sight range, so actually arranging a strike is kinda tricky. I'd suggest giving owl slightly more sonar range, or alternatively giving raven a bit of its own sonar. Also if sub is a seawolf and actually moves at all, raven always misses, which is counterintuitive, as ravens turn out to be mostly useless as counter to seawolf raids.

Well if magpie gets antisub function to snipe lone ducks and sea wolves, I might actually end up building them.