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
Zero-K v1.14.5.3 - Eggs and Wires
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.
Fixed commander morph costs being unintentionally far too high.
Added Commander Egg.
Hermit loses its regeneration.
Singularity Reactors can be built on the edge of the map again.
Discouraged movement blocking via nanoframe spam.
Added grid wires between Metal Extractors and energy structures (thanks Licho and Anarchid).
Other features:
Posted by 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).
GoogleFrog 24 hours ago - comment
Cold Take #41 - Deathballs and Auras
One huge army is much more powerful than two smaller ones, but risks being less interesting to use and fight. Zero-K wants multi-army action, so is careful with helping deathballs.
Read it here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/334920/view/679624547358474678
Posted by Read it here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/334920/view/679624547358474678
GoogleFrog 12 days ago - comment
Planetwars Ends In Ceasefire
The most recent planet war ended in mutual ceasefire just over an hour ago. Humanity Rising took an early lead with three artefact planets, but could not quite clinch the victory before the other factions rallied and dislodged them. Then Free Machines had a surge of activity which saw them expand their territory while carefully curating a large bomber fleet. Finally, the Synthetic Hegemony rose up and struck the other side of the galaxy, briefly controlling all four artefacts, but could not power them before they were pushed back.
In the end, after 49 hours and 375 hard-fought battles, the faction heads settled on a ceasefire, citing the massive bomber stockpiles, exhaustion, and the rapidly approaching working week. I would like to thank everyone for taking part and forgiving the issues we encountered while beating the design into shape. We learnt a lot from this round and made quite a bit of progress.
I want to see lots of experiences, opinions, and feedback, on the forum or on Discord in the planetwars channels. I was not awake for the full two days and could only directly see the Machines experience. I have a general idea of how it played out, but the more we know about what worked and what didn't, the better the next round will be.
Posted by In the end, after 49 hours and 375 hard-fought battles, the faction heads settled on a ceasefire, citing the massive bomber stockpiles, exhaustion, and the rapidly approaching working week. I would like to thank everyone for taking part and forgiving the issues we encountered while beating the design into shape. We learnt a lot from this round and made quite a bit of progress.
I want to see lots of experiences, opinions, and feedback, on the forum or on Discord in the planetwars channels. I was not awake for the full two days and could only directly see the Machines experience. I have a general idea of how it played out, but the more we know about what worked and what didn't, the better the next round will be.
GoogleFrog 26 days ago - comment
Zero-K v1.14.5.0 - Planetwars Playtest Command Tweaks
Planetwars is live right now. The second open playtest is in full swing, with 240 invasions launched in the past 26 hours. We designed the round to last the weekend, although it is hard to dial in, although we are considering pausing it during the week. This forum post summarises the changes since the last test.
This patch makes command structures easier to kill, which is the main secondary ingame objective of Planetwars. This objective only occured in 6% of the games so far, so representatives from each of the factions agreed that it was worth trying a change to make things more interesting. The patch also has a few smaller features and fixes, we have notable changes in the works, but they will get their own release.
Main Command is weaker and harder to repair.
Extra Command is just harder to repair.
Command structures now spawn further from each other and closer to the enemy, on average.
Posted by This patch makes command structures easier to kill, which is the main secondary ingame objective of Planetwars. This objective only occured in 6% of the games so far, so representatives from each of the factions agreed that it was worth trying a change to make things more interesting. The patch also has a few smaller features and fixes, we have notable changes in the works, but they will get their own release.
Command Structures
Main Command is weaker and harder to repair.
- Health 10k -> 8k
- Cost 150 -> 350
- Repair health/BP while under fire 25.25 -> 8.65
- Now requires 40 nearby BP to out-repair an Odin.
Extra Command is just harder to repair.
- Health remains at 6k
- Cost 100 -> 250
- Repair health/BP while under fire 22.73 -> 9.09
- Now requires 50 nearby BP to out-repair an Odin.
Command structures now spawn further from each other and closer to the enemy, on average.
- They now avoid spawning in the back 40% (the safest part) of their structure spawn box.
- They now spawn at least 1200 elmos away from each other (ally and enemy).
Features and Fixes
- Scouted command structures radar dots no longer wobble around like units. They are treated like normal structures.
- Added all Planetwars structures to the unit marker system, ingame under Settings/Interface/Unit Marker.
- Added categories and more presets for the unit marker settings menu.
- Scylla now stows its tacnuke correctly (thanks Stiofan).
- Improved Wind Generator performance.
- Fixed pew-pew laser trail offset for the new engine.
GoogleFrog 27 days ago - comment
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