This update introduces two new bombers to fill out the aircraft roster. One is a bit like a light Likho, and another is like a heavy Raven, but there is a lot more to each. Other planes have tweaks and buffs, such as an area reveal ability for Sparrow, and a heavier Phoenix. Some gunships even got in on the action, with the most notable being a sizeable buff for Krow.

Other balance changes include a bit more health for light assaults, and better spinning for Disco Rave Party. In terms of features, bombers are well-served here as well, with selection icons for whether a bomber needs ammo, as well as smoother landing paths.

There are a few extra features for modding, such as scaling and tinting, which were technically in the previous hotfix. The campaign has the new bombers, a few features, and a new Records page which displays and aggregates your best stats for each mission. How fast can the campaign be completed, and with how few units lost?

New Bombers

Magpie is a light nimble bomber armed with a pair of missiles. It deals less damage than Raven, but makes up for it with speed, precision, and the ability to shoot from the edge of AA coverage.

• Cost 220
• Health 900
• Speed 252 (between Raven and Likho)
• Rearm time 20s
• Range 550
• Damage 180 x 2
• Can hit small raiders most of the time, and most aircraft.

Odin is a heavily armoured rocket zeppelin that can fire a slow moving disintegrator bomb or a cluster of temporary shields.

• Cost 1500
• Health 5200
• Speed 185 (between Raptor and most gunships)
• Rearm time 35s
• Bomb range 200
• Bomb damage, it's a disintegrator (5-shots Detriment)
• The bomb is very slow, even Detriment can dodge it.
• Special weapon fires seven shields at 550 range.
• Each shield has 3400 charge and a radius of 200.
• Shields decay at 40 charge/s, expire at zero charge, and do not link.

Aircraft Changes

Sparrow can now boost, and reveals and decloaks everything in an area when it dies.

• Boosts by 5x for 3 seconds.
• Destroys itself after boost.
• Reveals an area of radius 400 for 12 seconds when it dies.
• Revealed area scales up during boost, to a maximum of 640.

Phoenix is heavier and deals more damage over a longer run.

• Cost 360 -> 460
• Health 1060 -> 1450 (90 more than if just scaling by cost)
• Reduced turn rate slightly
• Rearm time 5s -> 8s
• Drops 15 -> 18 bombs over 0.93 -> 1.7 seconds
• Area of Effect 216 -> 320
• Damage per bomb 25 -> 40
• Burn time 10s -> 12s

Krow manoeuvrers a bit better and fires beam lasers with more damage.

• Improved brake rate by 25%.
• Pew pew lasers replaced with burst beam lasers.
• Damage increased by 22%

Raptor is more manoeuvrable and slightly more deadly.

• Increased turn rate while firing, to counteract the effect of slowing down.
• Firing cone angle 90 degrees -> 100 degrees
• Damage increased by 4.2%

Locust is a tiny bit better as raiding, as a great Locust is scary.

• Speed 207 -> 212
• DPS increased by 2.5%

Thunderbird is slightly healthier.

• Health 1120 -> 1200

Balance Changes

Bolas has 4.5% more DPS and can 1-shot Flea.

• Reload 0.366 -> 0.433
• Damage 34 -> 42

Ravager is tankier.

• Health 2000 -> 2200

Knight is a bit tankier.

• Health 2400 -> 2500

Hermit is tankier and faster.

• Health 1500 -> 1550
• Speed 51 -> 54

Skuttle can survive a single Jack poke.

• Health 250 -> 380

Zephyr is also tankier, and now has missiles.

• Health 1900 -> 2200
• Replaced its front laser turret with missiles.
• Missile damage 72 x 2
• Reload time 1.6 seconds
• Range 1000 (same as lasers)
• The missiles have 30% less DPS, but fire in a burst.

Disco Rave Party has an interpolation of its May spin rate nerfs.

• Aim speed 4 -> 2.5 -> 3 degrees/s.
• Spin up time 60 -> 120 -> 90 seconds.
• Spin drop while turning is unchanged, but less spin is lost for any given turn due to the increased turn rate.

Campaign

• Magpie is unlocked on Fel Diacia (the Thunderbird mission) and Odin is unlocked on Bavhakya (the Likho mission). Anyone with these missions complete will have their units unlocked.
• Added a Records tab to the Profile menu on the campaign screen. This screen can sort and display your victories with least units lost, in the shortest time, with bonus objectives and difficulties. Unfortunately the data is not retroactive.
• Removed a few Lucifers from easier difficulties on Onsally (the Phoenix mission).
• Worked around the Dominatrix build options bug for the Rover Assembly on Ganong (the Dominatrix mission).
• Clarified Lalata main objective text (the Jugglenaut mission).

Features

• Added Units Lost to endgame graphs.
• Unit pictures for bombers now have an icon showing whether it is ready to fire.
• Aircraft now smoothly glide and stop when landing on airpads. This is technically a nerf as they take slightly longer to land.
• Improved shotgun visuals, with minor balance implications.
• Grizzly now aims smoothly and holds its gun steady as it fires.
• Tweaked the automatic handicap mode to give lower handicaps for ratings above 2000.
• Moved Raptor to the AA slot (D) of the Airplane Plant and Sparrow to secondary scout/raider (S).
• Taught the opponent AI about Magpie.

Modding

• Units can now be tinted, rescaled and made glowing via the customparams model_tint ("R G B"), model_glow ("R G B A"), and model_rescale. Colour values are from 0 to 1.
• Free units (0 metal and energy cost) no longer need to explicitly specify a non-zero buildtime (previous release).
• Added a function to effects/napalm for generating generic fireballs ala Inferno.
• Air pads now call ReammoComplete, if it is a units script, when bombers are rearmed.
• Added command AIR_MANUALFIRE for aircraft, since they cannot use the in-engine type.

Fixes

• Fixed Tremor wheels not spinning.
• Gravity guns push and pull a bit more consistently.
• Jack can no longer pretend to be a missile in enemy Missile Silos.
• Slow damage makes shields charge slower again (it broke at some point)
• Fixed bombers sometimes seeming to ignore a move command.
• Attack Move on bombers is now is now removed after they shoot, unless the bomber is set to repeat. Previously this only worked for some bombers.
• Bombers are now much better at landing on Reef. Much better. Horrific things could happen before.
• Fix sun on Mercurial and Rogues River.

This is a hotfix release for an engine bug that could be used to place geos anywhere.

Modding

• Units can now be tinted, rescaled and made glowing via customparams:

model_tint = "1.0  0.5  0.0" -- R G B
model_glow = "0.1  0.2  0.3  1.0" -- R G B A
model_rescale = 1.23,

• Free units (0 metal and energy cost) no longer need to explicitly specify a non-zero buildtime.
• Support some recently added engine interfaces, see `engine_compat.lua`. Note that ZK hasn't yet migrated.

Fixes

• Fix an exploit to do with geo placement.
• Fix the "Enable Force Fire Command" default state for Lobster.
• Fix Dominatrix breaking when capturing very low completion nanoframes of very expensive units.
• Fix awards for sharing and capture to consider nanoframes at their real value.
• Fix a chat crash if using the "color labels the player colour" option.
• Fix Onyx Cauldron using incorrect boxes in coop comp stomps.
• Fix cloaked constructors revealing themselves by reclaiming if using the automated constructors widget.
• Land units now eventually give up when ordered to move deep into an inaccessible place (such as a large sea).

Lobsters have been taught to not fire when it would be redundant, making Lobster balls much easier to manage. Overkill prevention in general has a tweak, and some APIs were extended to make modding easier. The Artefact Control game mode which saw some testing about a month ago is now live. In terms of balance, Redback has a bit of a nerf and some of the least used units - Skuttle, Phoenix and Emissary - have small buffs.

Balance

Duck can now be dodged by a Glaive trying as hard as it can to run away.

• Missile fuel time 2s -> 1.5s

Redback is worse at taking map control and assaulting defenses.

• Cost 230 -> 240
• Speed 1.85 -> 1.75

Skuttle can see enemies before they break its cloak.

• Line of sight 280 -> 330

Emissary aims faster and no longer benefits from manually turning.

• Body turn rate reduced 105 -> 84 degrees/second
• Gun aim rate increased 40 -> 70 degrees/second
• Resets its gun between shots (as much as possible) in case it has to move.

Phoenix moves faster and hits its target sooner.

• Speed 8 -> 8.1
• Projectile gravity 0.7 -> 0.72

Unit AI

Overkill prevention, the system that prevents ten Scalpels firing at a single Glaive, is now available for Lobster and disabled for units set to hold. It is controlled by a state toggle that is hidden by default because there is very little reason to touch it. The state toggle can be enabled under Settings/Interface/Commands, and per-unit defaults to be set in Settings/Unit Behaviour/Default States, or by holding Space and clicking on a unit, then pressing Edit Behaviour.

Lobster is smarter, no longer firing unless there is a visible valid target.

• This prevents it from firing when it would do absolutely nothing, provided there are no invisible enemies nearby.
• As a result, telling a tight clump of Lobsters to fire causes only two to shoot.
• This behaviour can be configured with the hidden Overkill Prevention state.
• Removed the Force Fire command by default. This can be configured via another hidden state toggle.

Overkill prevention is now suspended by default when units are set to Hold Fire.

• Added the "Enable for Fire at Will" and "Enable for auto targeting" states. Previously it just had enabled/disabled.
• Most units default to "Enable for Fire at Will". The theory being that if you set a unit to hold fire you care more about its target dying than about overkill.
• Nothing defaults to "Enable for auto targeting", but it may be useful to try out.

Impaler now has an even stronger preference for targeting structures over units.

Interface

• Added a minimum wind icon and number to the left column of the wind generator tooltip during placement (thanks Porkchop)
• Cleaned up some inconsistent unit highlighting and selection. Units under interface panels cannot be clicked on by default, tooltips do not appear, and units are not highlighted.
• Selecting through the panel at the bottom of the screen can be configured under Settings/HUD Panels/Selected Units Panel.
• Drag selection can still terminate over a UI panel.
• Add some translations for the commander selector.
• Updated Global Build AI with some fixes and documentation (thanks esainane).
• Added username team colour in chat and removed white outlines for dark names (thanks Birdulon)
• Local widgets are no longer disabled for spectators on rooms with local widgets disabled.
• Added Italian translations for the main menu (thanks fvasco)

Campaign

• Tweaked campaign text and replaced some Artefacts with more suitable structures (thanks Thorneel)

Maps

• Added boxes for Onyx Cauldron 2.0
• Improved lighting on Skulduggery (thanks Shaman)
• Improved water on Cull, Lost v2 and Lowland Crossing Revised v2.
• Fixed an issue with void water with new shaders on some graphics cards.

Artefact Control

Added a control point game mode called Artefact Control under Experimental.

• Several artefacts are spawned on each side of the map.
• Each team controls half at the start of the game.
• Artefacts have 11k health and heal at 100 hp/second.
• Artefacts respawned with switched allegeance when destroyed.
• If a team controlls all the artefacts, they win.

Modding

Changed some keys in unit def files to match the lua UnitDefs table. Mods with the old keys are still supported.

• buildCostMetal -> metalCost
• buildCostEnergy -> energyCost
• energyUse -> energyUpkeep
• metalUse -> metalUpkeep (vanilla ZK doesn't use this)
• maxDamage -> health
• maxVelocity -> speed

Other changes.

• Unit defs no longer require unitname since it must match the table key, so it is redundant.
• Unit defs are now also read from subfolders of 'units'.
• Set undefined burst rates to 0 (rather than 0.1) as it can interfere with weapon modding.
• The game exits to menu when unit defs fail to load, rather than crashing.
• Added game-side GG.UnitModelRescale(unitID, scale) from Unit Level Ups.
• Added backwards compatibility for Spring.GetUnitIsBeingBuilt.
• Fixed backwards compatibility for Spring.GetPlayerRulesParams.
• Added customparams.buggeroff_angle for factories, in radians.
• Added customparams.metal_extractor_mult to support the creation of higher tier metal extractors.
• Fixed modding away the Sniper reload move penalty breaking the script.
• Cleaned up the build icon generator gadget.
• Napalm effects now contain an example of sin (replaces taylor series).
• Improved modded energy generator tooltips.
• Mexes suport morphing.

Fixes

• Fixed commshare sometimes preventing resign or causing a crash when the game ends.
• War music no longer counts morph as violence.
• Fixed missing vote resign button.
• Marginal turret overshoot can no longer be circumvented with command insert.
• Fixed a few build icons incorrectly implying that a floating structure is built underwater.
• Fixed commander selector button image.
• Fixed backwards 'motion blur' on ejected shells.
• Fixed some large structure wreckages having much too large collision volumes.

This is mostly a small fixes update for the previous patch. It has a few balance chanegs and features though. Most notable are a slight Redback nerf and a sudden death mode. The sudden death mode might see use in the upcoming tournament to put a cap on very long games, but we are still waiting to see what people think of it. In any case, it seems like a useful mode to have.

Balance

Redback is worse at dodging projectiles.

• Increased collision shape width by 11% and length by 25%.
• Reduced turn rate by 5%.

Ogre now ignores terrain and wrecks when aiming and firing. It has sufficient AoE and arc for making the attempt to often be beneficial.

Zeno now homes onto the actual position of a radar target earlier - early enough to hit it.

Features

• Holding Alt while selecting units now filters out rank 3 (ie army units).
• Added a sudden death mode game option, under Map. It causes the game to end shortly after a specified time via a contracting death circle.

Fixes

• Fixed a missile impact indicator error.
• Fixed a pathfinding issue to do with construction orders on terrible terrain.
• Tactical missiles no longer have inconsistent half-prediction of enemy velocity. They now fire exactly where they are aimed.
• Fixed contrast adaptive sharpening scaling with zoom level.
• Fixed moderator tooltip colour in the lobby.
• Improved Pylon collision and selection volumes.