This update adds wires between structures to visually connect energy grids. This makes grids easier to use and more satisfying to build. We have also added commander eggs, which let players rebuild lost commanders. The egg can also be transported and thrown, to take advantage of its disabling explosion.

On the more regular side of things we have a revert of the Hermit regeneration experiment, and numerous features and fixes. These include a new attrition graph for the endgame stats, and a lighting system update to fix the Pylon light bug.

Balance

Fixed commander morph costs being unintentionally far too high.

Added Commander Egg.

• Buildable from the bottom right of the Special tab.
• Costs 600 metal.
• Morphs to commander for free if the team has lost commanders.
• Hatched commanders are given to players without a commander.
• Can be thrown and detonated for 20k disarm and slow damage.

Hermit loses its regeneration.

• Idle auto heal time 10 -> 60 seconds.
• Idle auto heal rate 10 -> 5 hp/s

Singularity Reactors can be built on the edge of the map again.

• Units that die outside the map explode far away, rather than on the map edge.

Discouraged movement blocking via nanoframe spam.

• Nanoframes placed in quick succession can be passed through until 15 metal is spent.
• Units can become stuck, but a move command seems to be sufficient to free them.

Features

Added grid wires between Metal Extractors and energy structures (thanks Licho and Anarchid).

• Flow shows energy use and colour shows efficiency.
• Grid thorns flash when the grid is at capacity.
• The underlying mechanics are unchanged, but the enemy will have an easier time scouting.

Other features:

• Added two attrition endgame graphs. These damaged value or killed value dealt:received ratios.
• Ronin treats Scalpel and Moderator as skirmish targets, so tries to stay at max range (thanks D0ubleD0uble).
• Solar and Wind generators are now harder to select, or easier to not select accidentally.

Fixes

• Panning with middle mouse button no longer deselects terraform commands, which is consistent with other commands (thanks Birdulon).
• Fixed Pylon lights sometimes jittering around or drawing somewhere else.
• Overhauled the entire weapon lighting system behind the scenes. Lights should render faster and generally look better.
• Fixed the first Sparrow of the match being able to hover mid air.
• Fixed incorrect burst damage for Starlight in the unit stats window.
• Added overslow information to the unit stats window.
• Fixed inconsistency between weapons and death explosions in the unit stats window.
• Fixed other scores obscuring the highlighted player in the endgame graphs.
• Fixed Locust jets angling downwards at full speed (thanks Stiofan-K).
• Windmills no longer crash all gadgets when the energy multiplier option is set to zero.
• Fixed GL parameter pollution in an unused map extension widget (thanks Helwor).
• Added framework required for rml UI support (thanks loveridge).

This is crazy/awesome! What an wonderful eggspansion for Zero-K.

It's a niche use case but if you equalcom and lose one, you cannot get it back because you still have at least one commander.

Yah that's probably intended so you don't get more than 1.

Zero-K v1.14.5.4

This is a small fix update which also has some commander tweaks. The big wire change is that the settings are now local, which means people with the graphics bugs on Linux can disable them until we figure out a fix.

• Fixed cable settings being global, i.e., the last player who toggled cables controlled cables for everyone. This is what caused the setting to look like it needed toggling to work properly.
• Put cable settings in "simple settings" while we work out the Linux graphics bugs.
• Fixed various problems with uneven teams and resigned players not allowing a team to hatch their full complement of commanders.
• Fixed Egg morph buttons being greyed out in some incorrect situations.
• Hatched commanders no longer have free radar and income. This is to retain the game impact of an early commander kill.
• Commander range module gives +25 range instead of +7.5%. This nerfs longer ranged weapons and buffs some shorter range ones.
• Commander Dgun base range 200 -> 180 to partially counteract the above.
• Eggs count as bombs for the transport drop prediction UI.
• Eggs now have Move and Attack Move, which hatched commanders inherit.
• Eggs no longer cancel their commands when completed.
• Fixed free morphs being slowed down by the state of the rest of the economy.
• Fixed EMP reference in various descriptions of the egg explosion (thanks Stiofan-K).
• Fixed SSAO widget (still disabled by default).
• Reduced the radius of a few projectile lights.

How to build wires?

good work!

quote: Nanoframes placed in quick succession can be passed through until 15 metal is spent.

do nanoframes still bait shots/intercept projectiles below 15 metal spent? is there a decay if left unbuilt? asking for my moderators.

quote: Singularity Reactors can be built on the edge of the map again. Units that die outside the map explode far away, rather than on the map edge.

I am saddened by this. While I never used the edge bombing strat myself, I liked that there was at least one reason to not build everything on the map edge. Having Singus always be built on the map edge separated by explosion radius practically nullifies the singu death explosion.

I'm sad that the hatched commanders don't provide income and radar anymore.