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98 players online: 67 of them fighting in 19 battles, 5280 on discord



Commander wanted!


Drive giant robots, build an army of a thousand Fleas, move mountains if needed, bury the enemy at all cost!

  • Real time strategy.
  • Physically simulated units and projectiles.
  • Terrain manipulation.
  • 100+ varied units with unique abilities.
  • Singleplayer campaign.
  • Challenging, non-cheating AI.
  • Multiplayer 1v1 - 16v16, FFA, coop.
  • Multiplayer online campaign.
  • Really free, no in-game currency, no unfair multiplayer.

Fully Utilized Physics

Simulated unit and projectile physics is used to a level rarely found in a strategy game.


  • Use small nimble units to dodge slow moving projectiles.
  • Hide behind hills that block weapon fire, line of sight and radar.
  • Toss units across the map with gravity guns.
  • Transport a battleship to a hilltop - for greater views and gun range.

Manipulate the Terrain

The terrain itself is an ever-changing part of the battlefield.

  • Wreck the battlefield with craters that bog down enemy tanks.
  • Dig canals to bring your navy inland for a submarine-in-a-desert strike.
  • Build ramps, bridges, entire fortress if you wish.
  • Burn your portrait into continental crust using the planetary energy chisel.

Singleplayer Campaign and Challenging AI

Enjoy many hours of single player and coop fun with our campaign, wide selection of non-cheating AIs and a survival mode against an alien horde.


  • Explore the galaxy and discover technologies in our singleplayer campaign.
  • Face a challenging AI that is neither brain-dead nor a clairvoyant cheater.
  • Have some coop fun with friends, surviving waves of chicken-monsters.
  • Cloaking? Resurrection? Tough choices customizing your commander.

Casual and Competitive Multiplayer

Zero-K was built for multiplayer from the start, this is where you can end up being hooked for a decade.

  • Enjoying epic scale combat? Join our 16v16 team battles!
  • Looking for a common goal? Fight AIs or waves of chicken-monsters.
  • Prefer dancing on a razor's edge? Play 1v1 in ladder and tournaments.
  • Comebacks, betrayals, emotions always running high in FFA.
  • Want to fight for a bigger cause? Form a clan and join PlanetWars, competitive online campaign with web-game strategic elements, diplomacy and backstabbing.

Power to the People

We are RTS players at heart, we work for nobody. We gave ourselves the tools we always wanted to have in a game.


  • Do what you want. No limits to camera, queue or level of control.
  • Paint a shape, any shape, and units will move to assume your formation.
  • Want to spend more time on tactics? Use construction priorities.
  • Want to focus on economy? Order units to kite, strafe or zig zag bullets.

Plenty of Stuff to Explode Explore

Zero-K is a long term project and it shows, millions hours of proper multiplayer testing and dozens of people contributing ever expanding content.


  • Learn to use all of our 100+ units and play on hundreds of maps.
  • Invent the next mad team-tactics to shock enemies and make allies laugh.
  • Combine cloaking, teleports, shields, jumpjets, EMP, napalm, gravity guns, black hole launchers, mind control and self-replication.
  • Tiny flea swarm that clings to walls?
    Jumping "cans" with steam-spike?
    Buoys that hide under water to ambush ships?
    Mechs that spew fire and enjoy being tossed from air transports?
    Carrier with cute helicopters?
    Jumping Jugglenaut with dual wielding gravity guns?
    Meet them in Zero-K!

or just view the media

Cold Take #46 - Giving and Taking Feedback

Zero-K is driven by player feedback but not all feedback is created equal. Here are some tips for giving good feedback and for how to use it most effectively.

Read it here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/334920/view/693144755752665606
Posted by AUrankAdminGoogleFrog 111 minutes ago - comment

Cold Take #45 - Automatic Dodging

Zero-K is designed around dodging projectiles and has the most powerful UI of any RTS, so why is the unit AI barely able to dodge projectiles by itself?

Read it here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/334920/view/671750754888843965
Posted by AUrankAdminGoogleFrog 21 days ago - comment

Zero-K v1.14.8.0 - Unit Icons and Magpie Nerf

This update improves the command menu by adding larger build icons at a higher resolution. The bottom of the UI also has a scale setting as we move towards better support for increasingly large screens. There are also a few fixes and a setting that automatically disables cables for Linux users with ATI graphics. Anyone coming forward to reproduce, and potentially even fix, the cable bugs would be appreciated.

The main balance change is a slight Magpie rework, and it is probably the last rework before we attempt to do something else with the unit. The main goal is to give it a proper set of counters, which in this case are fighters and dedicated anti-air. Magpie is now slower and has a lot less health to give anti-air more of a chance to retaliate. It also has a slower missile, which makes it worse against fighters and speedy units. The numbers here are a bit conservative, but hopefully they give us a sense of whether the approach works.

Balance



Magpie is worse against dedicated anti-air and has trouble hitting fast units. To compensate it has more range and is slightly cheaper.
  • Cost 210 -> 200
  • Health 740 -> 440
  • Speed 252 -> 234
  • Rearm time 12s -> 10s
  • Range 550 -> 660
  • Fire tolerance 45 degrees -> 60 degrees
  • Missile average speed 400 -> 180
  • Missile starts slow then accelerates.

Ettin receives the Thresher buffs from the previous patch to make it better at shooting while clumped.
  • Changed the collision volume from a cylinder to an ellipsoid.
  • It is now better at aiming when one of its guns is blocked.

Tarantula is also better at shooting while clumped.
  • Flattened its collision volume by 25%.
  • It now shoots in a slight arc, which also helps when behind hills.

Interface



  • There is now a unified scale setting for the bottom of the UI. It is ingame under Settings/Interface (Settings/HUD Presets with simple settings disabled).
  • Increased unit icon resolution from 64x64 to 96x96 to support larger UI sizes. This applies to the command menu, unit selections, and wherever else unit icon appear.
  • Construction icons are now square and take up the whole button. This can be toggled with Small construction icons under Settings/HUD Panels/Command Panel if you prefer the old look.
  • Added an Autodetect setting for energy grid cables. They are now disabled by default for Linux users with ATI cards.
  • Iris and Aspis on Attack Move now try to prevent every non-air unit and structure from entering their bubble.
  • Disabled the shield guard widget now that the default engine behaviour has improved.
  • Unit marker timestamps now include hours in hour-long games (thanks SteelBlue).

Fixes



  • Probably fixed black lines around radar icons on some ATI cards (engine update).
  • Fixed overkill prevention unit behaviour customisation not being applied.
  • Level 1 campaign commander now uses the correct death clone (thanks SteelBlue).
  • Fixed a crash mods could cause by checking whether a not-existent unit type is a commander (thanks SteelBlue).
  • Removed a large meaningless circle drawn around Odin when Show selected unit range is enabled.

Posted by AUrankAdminGoogleFrog 27 days ago - comment

Cold Take #44 - Choice vs. Automation

Zero-K uses automation to empower players to engage with the strategy instead of drowning in micromanagement. But automation can be bad and even reduce strategic choice if misused.

Read it here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/334920/view/679630151248512264
Posted by AUrankAdminGoogleFrog 42 days ago - comment

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