Zero-K v1.5.8.2

Thanks to recent work and feedback we now have tentative AI difficulty levels. Aside from AI, we have been working on smarter and newbie friendly defaults for unit AI and, as always, miscellaneous bug fixes.

AI Difficulty Levels

Renamed the AI difficulty levels for descriptiveness and because 'Very' is unimaginative.

• Beginner: A new AI that barely attacks. It is easier than the old Very Easy.
• Easy: The old Very Easy.
• Normal: The old Easy.
• Hard: The old Medium.
• Brutal: The old Hard.
• Insane: The old (well, quite recent) Brutal.

Beginner is very much a sandbox AI for getting the hang of units and controls. It slowly makes a base and after about 8 minutes sends a Flea (or equivalent unit) to wander around the map. Easy and Normal correspond to AIs recently configured by CrazyEddie. Easy is like Beginner but, instead of a Flea, it makes an army out of a few units and sends them to wander around the map. It also has a faster buildup.

Brutal is the old Hard. The new Normal and Hard are effectively Brutal but with a delay on all their construction and less self preservation for their units. Insane is a recent configuration which I was recommended to place as harder than the old Hard. Many thanks to lamer for writing Circuit AI and [GBC]1v0ry_k1ng for configuration, as well as to everyone else who has given feedback.

We have also added a beginner level chicken to match the Circuit AI difficulty levels.

Balance

Athena:

• Moved to Strider Hub, no longer buildable by constructors.
• Cost 500 -> 600
• Build power 7.5 -> 15 (notably this doubles resurrect speed)

The intention is to buff resurrection and sneaky unit production while nerfing it as a second factory.

Faraday:

• Cost 200 -> 250
• Health 1000 -> 2200 (It is supposedly beefy)
• Damage 1000 -> 1200
• Reload time 2.8 -> 2.4.

Note that the reload time doubles its stun uptime because it has an EMP timer of 2 seconds. The intention is to avoid swapping Faraday and Stardust in the build menu as well as an attempt to revive a generally ignored turret.

The Cloaky and Shield factories now have a an unbuildable section in front of them to make them harder to accidentally block.

Unit Behaviour

Tactical AI

• Rockos now try to shoot Stardust from outside its range.
• Added tactical AI for Goliath.

Skirmishers and particularly long ranged riots are now smarter about skirmishing occluded units. They now detect when their line of fire is blocked and, after a few seconds, stop skirmishing and try to move such that they can fire. This behaviour is disabled for units set to Hold Position because this is the "don't get baited" movestate.

Disabled hold position by default for skirmishers, now that they are smarter about being blocked. The affected units are Buoy, Hammer, Rocko, Sniper, Scalpel, Firewalker, Placeholder, Moderator, Racketeer, Felon, Recluse, Wolverine and Dominatrix.

Here are the remaining things with hold position by default.

• Anti-Air - Angler, Gremlin, Flail, Archangel, Vandal, Zephyr, Tarantula, Copperhead, Crasher.
• Cloaked 'melee' - Scythe, Flea, Infiltrator.
• Expensive artillery - Penetrator, Ronin, Catapult, Pillager, Tremor.
• Deployable stuff - Crabe, Slasher.
• Weird stuff - Claymore, Aspis, Scylla, Dart.

These changes should only affect new players.

Targeting

• Cheap units [?] given slightly more attention by long-reload, heavy-hitting units [?]
• Fixed identified radar dots getting overkilled, especialy by disarm
• Hammer now has overkill prevention vs static targets.
• Racketeer now correctly anticipates that disarm is about to wear off.
• Racketeer now longer unwilling to target mobile units.
• Racketeer now has a fairly strict priority hierarchy: in-LOS active > out of LOS > in-LOS inactive.

UI

• Activated "Settings/HUD Presets/Stay up to date" so non-hardcore UI editing players are not left behind as the UI improves.
• Swapped Defender and LLT in the build menu (yes, everything is ruined).
• Moved camera hotkeys to the hotkeys submenu.
• Camera zoom to startbox on comm selection is now configurable [?]
• Units no longer retarget when their target completes a morph.
• Default Wind/Tidal Generator build spacing 3 → 2.
• Units of lagging players no longer flash by default.
• Double click selection ignores selection filtering (except for rank 0).
• Alt + Area Mex now creates Wind/Tidal Generators if Solar Collectors don't fit.
• Added a unit icon for Infiltrator. Previously it looked like Scythe, now it has spider legs.

Fixes

• Fixed Wyvern being able to shoot as soon as it starts rearming.
• Fixed jumpies being unable to jump directly from their factory.
• Fixed newly teleported units with a move order being temporarily stuck.
• Fixed Sumo gravity guns sometimes causing light in the other direction.
• Fixed the tooltip in the middle of the screen issue.
• Fixed some cases where the tooltip was cut off.
• Fixed the facplop graphical effect being covered in lines.
• Fixed Recon Commander moonwalking during and after jumping.
• Fixed Dart sometimes standing at an angle.
• Fixed cloaked units setting themselves to fire at will when they decloak.
• Fixed "Catching up" panel showing up after game over.
• Fixed mex ghost showing in economy view regardless of the ability to build it.
• Fixed wrong units being highlighted for selection when the mouse was outside the game window.
• Fixed Strider Hub, Wind Generator and Solar Collector ambient occlusion.
• Fixed an error with zombie mode.
• Fixed an error when a unit dies during teleporting.
• Fixed an error when a plane dies when it is just about to sit on an airpad.
• Fixed an error when changing transport orders near a drop point.
• Fixed an error causing invisible units when using shiny units without shadows.
• Fixed an error where stockpiled tacnukes don't explode on silo death.
• Fixed a build ETA UI bug.
• Fixed a transport AI issue with constructor following.
• Fixed commanders occasionally failing to continue their construction when they morph.

Hammer overkill? Why? It barely damages...

how i imagine hammer (ff to 1:30):



(from worms 2)

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the faraday changes halve stun downtime instead?
Up time went from 2/2.8 -> 2/2.4

An immediate priority should be working on having more than 3 people logged on during prime time weekend.

As I understand it, the practical existence of Athena as a second factory was felt to be violating some design principles. For instance, in my experience the existence of Athena as a factory meant that switching to Cloaky was a nearly strictly inferior choice.

I used Athenafac and enjoyed it but I can understand the reasons why it was felt to be a bad idea.

In the few cases where i got to use Athena recently i've found its current superior buildpower very nice.

The intention is to move Athena later into the game. It is currently still a sort of second factory, just it is a second factory that requires you to have a Strider Hub. The tech requirement is nowhere near your doom-saying arisen of 'late to very late'. 1200 is not that expensive, especially not when you get a Strider Hub as part of the package.

The issue was that it looked almost strictly better than a tech switch in the midgame. The most specialized units (eg Scythe, Sniper, Infiltrator) are in Athena and it hurts the viability of those factories as a second factory. This reduces diversity. For example if the best way to switch into Scythe is with a factory we are more likely to see some other cloaky units pop up in the midgame.

As an action of protest I suggest to build ALL available factories in clusterfuck games from now on ^^

you seemed to make a point out of calling it secondary and youre defending that. at 1200 cost it is non-viable at expanding your build options and it is strictly a tech requirement, which hurts another design principle.

quote: GoogleFrog I'm just giving the other factories more space to exist as niche second factories and removing some ugliness.

quote: Klon youre just forcing the player to make factories they dont want to build when they want a particular unit, which ends up making that unit less attractive.

quote: GoogleFrog Athena was basically strictly better than making a factory.

there were a select few situations where that was the case. in general, i would disagree with this. i used athena a lot, but i fairly often built cloakie or spider facs as a second even when i needed only a single unit from them, mostly because of the many disadvantages athena has. clunky to use, easy to kill, slow build.