Zero-K v1.7.8.2 - Superweapon Balance and Gunship Buffs

In this version we take a closer look at superweapon balance and buff some gunships. As is the way with superweapons, they ended up more expensive but also more awesome. The gunship buffs are more experimental and aimed at producing more variety in air play.

The new save/load system has been fixed and re-enabled. This system saves many more details about the game, so report any new issues you find. Some other notable other changes are the performance improvement for Tremor, fancier unit textures, friendly fire fixes, and Ravens that are better at bombing on tall cliffs.

Matchmaking

• Added Frosty Cove, Crubick Plains, Frostburn, Shimmershore.
• Removed Into Battle, Onyx Cauldron, Shifting Sands, Izki Channel.

Balance

Some of the gunships have been left behind by the evolving nature of balance and meta. Some (Revenant) were never that good. With these changes we may see more than Nimbus, Trident, and Krow.

Wasp:

• Cost 260 -> 240
• Health 600 -> 850
• Speed 3.1 -> 3.2

Gnat:

• Health 350 -> 420
• Damage 600 -> 700
• Range 180 -> 160

Locust:

• Turret arc 160 degrees -> 180 degrees
• Buffed DPS by 4%

Harpy:

• Speed 3.65 -> 3.8

Revenant:

• Cost 900 -> 850
• Health 3400 -> 3600
• Manoeuvrability buffed by 11%
• Range 300 -> 270

Many players noticed last month's Zenith buff so we have taken a closer look at the balance between superweapons. Disco Rave Party, at 36k cost, is now the cheapest, which is appropriate for its relatively low range and DPS. Starlight is no longer countered by terraform and has a healthy range advantage over Zenith, so it is a bit more expensive.

Disco Rave Party:

• Reload time (for each weapon type) 6.1s -> 6s

Zenith:

• Cost 32k -> 40k
• Damage 2000 -> 1600
• Stockpile rate 1.2s -> 1s
• Fixed a bug that caused it to be unable to fire at max range, resulting in a range buff of 8800 -> 9000

Starlight:

• Cost 40k -> 45k
• 'Aiming' Laser DPS 5400 -> 4500
• Main Laser damage 5400 -> 18k
• The Main Laser is now extremely good at cutting through terrain.
• Range 9000 -> 10500. The build UI shows 10000 range to account for the effect of shooting a laser from high in the sky.

Light Particle Beam Commander weapon:

• DPS 180 -> 210
• Range 310 -> 300

Made Light Particle Beam and Heavy Particle Beam consistent with the -25% DPS of Disruptor Ammo.

The line of sight of land units launched into the sky is now larger. In terms of a 3D shape, line of sight is now an elongated sphere whereas previously it was an inverted cone.

Graphics/Interface

• Increased the highlight of small wrecks.
• Added a shader that automatically infers normals for units and features that lack them. It makes the units look more detailed when viewed close up.
• Increased the minimum shield transparency as they would be near-invisible at very low values.
• Improved the effect of the Starlight main laser.
• Fixed broken unit information entries (space + click) of Disco Rave Party, Zenith, and Starlight.
• Added a state toggle to Lobster to make it ignore attack commands.

Fixes

• Fixed and applied the improved save game system.
• Reduced the CPU load (due to terraform) of Tremor by around 50% and allocation load by around 99.5%.
• Increased the amount Raven can climb against targets on cliffs. It is now much better at hitting units on tall terraform hills (up to around 1000 elmos).
• Blocking the the Starlight beam from the ground station to the satellite now interrupts the beam from the satellite.
• Maps with completely impassible areas now have those areas applied.
• Fixed some dual-weapon friendly fire. This fixes Detriment, Envoy, Ogre, Hermit, and Siren.
• Fixed a case in tactical AI behaviour that caused Scorcher to jink out of its own range.
• Fixed cautious riot units (Mace, Ripper, Ogre) backing out of range of explosive structures.

If Revenant loses the burst then it is a cheap Krow, or possibly an expensive Harpy. Some units are difficult to balance against their unwieldy nature, but I'm running on the theory that it is worth doing.

Rhade, developers use the elmos/frame value for speed. This is multiplied by 30 in the wiki to get the elmos/second value.

quote: Fixed some dual-weapon friendly fire. This fixes Detriment, Envoy, Ogre, Hermit, and Siren.

And Thug, Thug was first.

Nuke isn't supposed to be on the same scale as the three big superweapons. Nukes are meant to introduce single points of failure into your opponents base and fortifications. They make sniping something (an antinuke) worthwhile. I wouldn't put them on the same scale of viability as it is fine for them to show up in the midgame and they don't end the game in the same way.

That could work well, I'll add 700 damage of OKP for 12 frames. I don't want there to be too many cases of units surviving a salvo.

Thanks @Googlefrog . Anything that prevents 10 revs blowing everything on a flea is an improvement.

quote: Wait, so you can now effectively disable Starlight just by flying an Athena over it?

Yes. With the 600 health of Athena you can disable the Starlight this way for a whole 8 frames.

terve886, that could be interesting, but the area damage could be too rioty and randomly flying rockets would be affected by luck too much. The missiles could be homing for that reason. Each missile could do 850 damage, the max number of missiles could be 8 and a full stockpile could take about 90 seconds. However, there could be a reloading time of one to one and a half seconds between each missile as a burst of 6800 damage would possibly be unhealthy for such a relatively cheap unit. Two of these Revenants with full stockpiles would be able to destroy a Dante at full health. Sorry for any mistakes in the description as I don't have more time left to improve the design.

I added the following later by editing the post: The missiles don't have to be homing actually. There just shouldn't be inaccuracy through weapon randomness in my opinion. The rockets can also be fairly slow to help raiders kill the Revenant.

Revenant spam again?

I hate this topic allowing single shot from Rocket salvo, why not let Merlin in the topic?

So what is more important here? Tactics and Strategy.

Sometimes I really got confused, Bertha need direction, raiders need micro. APM matters a lot still.

I cannot handle them for sure.