Zero-K v1.3.1.0

Balance is ongoing for the new Sumo and Banisher has been reroled to better fit the riot role. Funnelweb, Wolverine and Swift have received some nerfs to make them more extreme within their desired role without being too good.

Overdrive allocation in teamgames has been tweaked to make an economy player more immediately valuable to the team as a whole. We also have a new economy panel which should (hopefully) be the last one.

Balance

Swift:

• Health 360 -> 300

Wolverine:

• Range 800 -> 730
• Reload Time 5 -> 5.5

Panther:

• Real Damage 220 -> 190

Banisher transformed into a dedicated riot:

• Cost 780 -> 520
• Range 430 -> 340
• Damage 650 -> 440
• Reload time 4s -> 2.3s

Halved the most recent Brawler DPS nerf:

• Before: 21.5
• Recently: 15
• Now: 18.3

Sumo:

• Cost 2000 -> 1700
• Health 12.5k -> 13.5k

Funnelweb:

• Removed weapon.
• Has only one shield (to fix charge transfer and disarm problems).
• Viper (large drone) range 450 -> 350
• Firefly (small drone) range 400 -> 250

Gauss has a regeneration rate of 20 health/second when closed. This occurs even when under fire.

Units within an area cloaker now gain the default decloak radius . Exceptions are:

• Active area cloakers.
• Units with decloak radius smaller than the default.

In effect units such as Sniper and Skuttle will have much smaller decloak radius when under an area cloaker.

Invisible scouting is now a bit harder:

• Gremlin decloak radius 75 -> 140
• Flea decloak radius 75 -> 120

Singularity Reactor's death now causes a gravitational implosion.

Slow and Disarm damage will now always apply to shields as damage with a 1/3 modifier (same behaviour as EMP).

Overdrive Allocation

• Mexes now have a fixed return of about 90 metal to the constructor. The time it takes to do this depends on the mex income.
• Halved the payback factor for energy structures. The builder of the structure already receives some benefit through the public OD pool as well.
• Maximum privatized OD share from 50% to 33%. This means that in a team with only one person producing energy they would get 33% of the OD as well as their public share.

UI

• The latest attempt at an economy panel is now the default. This one should be the last.
• Fixed selections window text clipping and image alignment.
• Space+click menu contains more information.
• Teal team colour is now reserved for the player's own team, meaning spectators will not see one of the teams in that colour.
• Added a RoI Tracker widget to track teammmates' return of economy investment, disabled by default.
• The widths of elements in Deluxe Player List are now configurable by character/digit count.
• Power-user widgets now have read access to additional parameters for overdrive, ground damage and floating and can skip the "Hide engine messages" filter (see next post for details).

Bugfixes

• Fixed Dante consistently interrupting its salvo.
• Fixed Doomsday Machine and Stardust being blocked by trees and wreckage (will now attempt to blast through them).
• Fixed unit rank display.
• Fixed spectators being able to control team 0's retreat havens.
• Fixed spectators being able to place pre-game queues.
• Fixed Zenith meteors disappearing on impact.
• Fixed outdated Sumo and Urchin helptexts.
• Fixed Solar Collectors taking damage during construction being force-opened.
• Fixed a Jump UI crash when attempting to give a jump order to a mixed jumper/non-jumper selection.
• Fixed queuing jump orders for Jumpy Factory.
• Fixed Ctrl+MMB orbit rotation in COFC not working at high zoom-in levels.
• Fixed extra drone construction that happened when attempting to spawn a drone when all slots were taken.

Yay!

Neat! Can't wait to try the new Banisher. The Gauss buff is... odd, but it obviously needed *something*.

All good!
Two comments:
"Invisible scouting is now a bit harder:
* Gremlin decloak radius 75 -> 140
* Flea decloak radius 75 -> 120"
Why this?

And after funnel, maybe it's time to review Dante? Maybe its D-gun could be improved? (there's already the bugfix with salvo being fixed, thanks!)

Another point: you can safely remove Hacksaw, cannot remember when I last saw it ingame. One less hard-limit weapon.

With the Gauss change: how about using the green Zombie-mode-revive-effect to indicate that a unit is currently actively using autorepair? This would provide a nice helpful visual feedback.

On balance changes:
Yay air is even more volatile now!
Is the "default" decloak radius visible for areacloaked units?
Why do mex builders get 90m for building a 75m structure? Are you missing fights over metal spots that badly? Anyway, now I need a widget that automatically queues mexes to be reclaimed and reconstructed when my allies' average elo is below x (configurable). Anyone up for the task?

There is an undocumented change in that the OD Allocation modoption (communism / RoI) and the Ranked / Unranked play modoption (no Elo) are now in the "Important" tab at the beginning of the modoption tabs list.

quote: Why do mex builders get 90m for building a 75m structure? Are you missing fights over metal spots that badly?

This is 1.2x returns. Previously it was whatever the mex base income was, so for most maps it was ~2x (and ~5x for ubermexes) so it used to be much "worse".

quote: how about using the green Zombie-mode-revive-effect to indicate that a unit is currently actively using autorepair?

Instead of zombie glow, some + signs emanating from the unit would perhaps best convey what is happening. Regardless, the problem is that idle regen (which is the more important one) is done through engine and there is no direct call-in when it starts happening (would need to be done "manually" by tracking damages which is a performance hit), and having an effect for one and not the other would be actually less intuitive.

On Gauss regen: if the Gauss is open it's likely under heavy fire, so the added 20/s shouldn't be that much - why not use combat regen? The main concern here is that this introduces a new autorepair type.

quote: No, we can't have pluses.

We have the technology but it wouldn't fit with ZK aesthetics imo.

Repair order wrenches or nanoclouds, then. Whatever, something that conveys repair better than spooky zombie glow.

Don't spam particles. Wreckage already smoke for a little while then stop.