Four small releases and engine news

The past 5 days have seen versions 1.3.4.2 to 1.3.6.5 that have gone mostly unannounced. Releases are easy when nothing big and scary is hiding unreleased in the repository. It is much harder to take screenshots and write release posts. The following sections cover all the changes for these releases.

In other new; the latest engine is almost ready for use. The engine devs have been focusing on bug fixes and performance improvements. The results from the human trials last week are promising and all known bugs have been fixed. We are likely to permanently adopt the new version, which is great because recent benchmarks say to expect quite a performance boost.

Balance

Hunter is now smarter. This is to try to make Hunter vs Scallop balance reasonable at all levels of skill and attention.

• Increased cowardliness of unit AI. Fight now reliably avoids Scallop damage (except when the scallops have a concave).
• Increased Sonar Range 390 -> 450 so it is a bit less blind.

Scallop has reduced DPS and burst to try to make it worse against things it should not beat.

• Damage 180 -> 90
• Reload time 2 -> 1.4

Blastwing is now more usable in ordinary situations and less effective with Newton.

• Acceleration and Deceleration 0.1 -> 0.25

Balance affecting fixes:

• Fixed incorrect and inconsistent BP for commander morphs. Morphs are now about 20% slower.
• Added overkill prevention to Duck and Scallop torpedoes.
• Fixed target priority for kamikaze units. They are no longer targeted as if harmless.
• Moderator is now skirmished by long ranged things (Rogue, Recluse etc..)

Interface

• Transport AI no longer automatically transports units from factories by default (so it just implements the embark command). The automatic factory behaviour is too intrusive.
• Cleaned up graphics area of ingame menu and edge extension widget.
• Spectators can now see player reserve settings.
• Queued Solars look like Solars.

The following affect the default interface. Old players will not be affected but can reset their interface to the default in order to see the changes.

• Wait hotkey changed to Ctrl+W
• Area Mex hotkey changed to W
• Left click on Quick Selection Bar now selects the unit. Right click selects and focuses.
• Disabled cloak/firestate widget. Most cloaked units tend to want to fire from cloak. The widget also tends to fail.

Fixes

• Reduced occurrence of units becoming stuck in/on Shipyards.
• Improved/fixed construction priority.
• Fixed stockpile gadget error.
• Fixed antinuke coverage widget crash for spectators.
• Fixed antinuke coverage widget crash related to mobile antinukes.
• Fixed state icons not displaying.
• Fixed Gauss damage (200 -> 200.1)
• Improve delayed commander spawn position.
• Fixed Rogue script.
• Fixed Win Counter.

Thanks guys!

Zomg epic OP spam incomming!

GoogleFrog, might wanna clarify which weapon the Scallop damage change affects.

quote: Scallop has reduced DPS and burst to try to make it worse against things it should not beat. Damage 180 -> 90 Reload time 2 -> 1.4

Ahhh, this feels so good. The best generalist unit in the game has finally been dethroned, or at least weakened.
I dont even care which weapon this applies to, the change is awesome either way.

quote: Transport AI no longer automatically transports units from factories by default (so it just implements the embark command). The automatic factory behaviour is too intrusive.

OH GOD YES, finally! This behaviour has been there for ages, making me reluctant to use air transports. It feels so good now that its gone.

Thank you for your hard work, GoogleFrog .


My personal list of gameplay/balance issues is now pretty much limited to the following points, in the order of importance.

•Phoenix still being shit, both in its bomb run AI behaviour and terrible scaling due to napalm not stacking.
•Starlight and Detriment strength (Its a FFA thing, the prohibitive cost stops being a factor there, and those things have insane cost efficiency once built)
•Spider fac being too slow and unable to raid making it not viable in 1v1 for maps bigger than 8x8
•Athena swarms being extremely prevalent in FFA lategame due to nearly unlimited energy suply that point.
•Sumo being shit. The recent moderator change is very welcome, but the sumo just feels so extremely situational ;_;


But regardless, i am very happy with your recent surge of activity, GoogleFrog, almost makes me wanna try and help somehow.

Yogzototh

Fix for FFA problems:

Resurrect KOTH, replace FFA with KOTH.

quote: I assume the scallop nerf is the shotgun in an attempt to discourage the scallop drop.

Nope. Torpedo.

Most annoying thing was construction priority broken.

quote: I forgot that Scallop had a balanced half

If just half of a unit is balanced, how strong is the entire unit?

Version 1.3.6.6

• Wyvern missile homes to fix the embarrassingly frequent misses. Enters the realm of flex-AA.
• Surfboard is now never transportable.
• Puppy damage 410 -> 410.1.
• Fixed antinuke coverage in context menu.
• Fixed the buggy interaction of slow damage and Dante salvo reload missile blocking.

Engine deals epsilon damage less than nominal so things with X health would survive X damage with 0 hp.