The November patch is a large one, with four new maps added to the matchmaker pool, numerous balance tweaks, and many other improvements and fixes.

The most notable balance changes are:

• Armour now reduces damage by a factor of 3 rather than 4. This is to increase counters to armoured turrets and Crab, and to give Halberd space to be tankier while firing.
• Hovercraft have their uniquely terrible slope climbing replaced with uniquely fast speed while turning. A bonus feels better than a penalty, and the old penalty was pretty obscure as well as limiting for map diversity.
• Limpet received its prophesied nerf now its power and general utility has been discovered.
• The ongoing small tweaks to vehicle raiders continue in an attempt to share some of the success of Rover with Hover and Tank.
• Swift no longer fires while landing. Its weapon maybe have to be buffed in the future to compensate.

New features include a command for easier factory plate placement and improved effects for Halberd and Buoy. Modding for many niche special abilities is much easier and a few edge case bugs have been fixed.

Matchmaker Pool

1v1 pool:

• Added Faultline, Doldrums, Random Plateaus, Shimmershore, Trojan Hills, Mecharavaged.
• Removed Intersection, Ravaged, Crubick Plains, Frostburn, Izki Channel, Anvilwood.

Teams pool:

• Added Faultline, Doldrums, Random Plateaus, Shimmershore, Trojan Hills, Mecharavaged.
• Removed Intersection, Ravaged, Crubick Plains, Frostburn, Aurelian.

Balance

Armour damage reduction reduced 75% -> 66.6%. The following units were partially compensated.

• Halberd health 1250 -> 1450
• Crab health 4000 -> 4200
• Solar Collector health 500 -> 600

Hovercraft have increased mobility.

• Rather than slow to 60% while turning like other vehicles, they keep all their speed.
• They climb slopes as quickly as other vehicles, rather than climbing much slower.

Quill turns faster because large turning circles are needlessly annoying on constructors.

• Turn rate 920 -> 1100.

Dagger deals more damage, but not enough to affect its matchups against most raiders.

• Damage 100 -> 110

Scalpel is smarter.

• Overkill prevention fires less often at targets that are probably going to die.

Dart swarms are slightly less deadly.

• Damage 35 -> 32
• Slow damage 140 -> 128

Fencer is the backbone of Rover, which seems particularly powerful, so can afford a small nerf.

• Cost 140 -> 145

Kodachi is cheaper but finds it harder to deal free damage.

• Cost 175 -> 170
• Range 215 -> 210

Limpet took years to be noticed, and it is finally time for its first nerf.

• Cost 150 -> 160
• Speed 123 -> 120
• Damage 150 -> 120
• Slow damage of 1200 unchanged.
• Overslow 5s -> 2s (matches Moderator)

Cutter should not be outclassed by Hunter so early.

• Cost 70 -> 65

Swift is no longer a form of artillery, and boost is consistent with other abilities.

• Can no longer fire while landing.
• Boost recharge rate now obeys status effects.

Faraday has less damage and stun uptime, on top of the general armour nerf.

• Damage 1200 -> 1100
• Reload 2.7s -> 2.9s (stun uptime 74% -> 69%)

Faraday and Gauss have more appropriate collision shapes.

• They now have flatter collision volumes when closed.
• If they can shoot over a wall, their aim point is now adjusted so that enemies can shoot back.

Commander Disruptor Bomb is now consistent with Limpet.

• Damage 350 -> 210
• Slow damage of 2100 unchanged.
• Added 2s overslow for consistency with Limpet.

Disco Rave Party is now consistent with Limpet.

• Added 2s overslow to Violet Slugger.

All slow pulses, besides the more continual pulse of Outlaw, now have a slow to damage ratio of 10:1, and 2 seconds overslow.

Interface

Dagger and Bolas radar icons are now consistent with other light/heavy raider pairs.

• Icon type Raider/Support -> Scout/Raider.
• This will be confusing at first, but the consistency should be worth it in the long run.

Factory plates are easier to place with the new factory plate command.

• Added a generic factory plate command that turns.
• It turns into the factory plate of the nearest factory in range of the mouse.
• It exists in the grid construction menu with hotkey BV.

Fixed some texts:

• "defense" -> "defence" (rather than a mismash of the two options)
• "minimun" -> "minimum"
• "stun time" -> "max stun time"

Other features.

• Self-destructing a selection of units costing less than 1000 now never triggers autoresign.
• Rectangle terraform now turns red when too large.
• Added Swift boost and jumpjet cooldown to selections panel.
• Landed Swifts refund their boost.
• Add Fire Towards Enemies to the hotkey menu.

Graphics

• Improved projectile effect and muzzle flare for Buoy and Halberd.

Modding

Many previously hardcoded abilities now have customParams or are configurable in LuaRules/Configs. While it was possible for mods to copy gadgets to configure such behaviour, it is now easier to do so in a configurable way. This includes:

• Dirtbag mound.
• Full interactions for sonar, radar and radar jamming (eg being disabled when disarmed).
• Phantom firing while cloaked.
• Air transports.
• Teleport beacon.
• Overshoot prevention for turrets.
• Gravity weapons being allowed to Set Target allies.
• Torpedoes not jumping out of the water when they hit the shore.

Fixes

• Fix ward fire error spam on metal maps.
• Krow and Thunderbird now decloak during bombing runs. Previously Thunderbird would only decloak when bombing via attack order.
• Clean up metal spot detection code.
• Improved base64 encoding memory usage.
• Fix commander name tags displaying the AI host's name instead of the AI's.
• Fix Scylla firepoint offset/clipping.
• Fix special weapons not updating their image and text in some cases (eg select a Swift then a Charon).
• Fix SLAM rocket model.
• Fix stretched Dart track texture.

Great stuff all around here. Well done to all contributors. Here's hoping hover isn't a little too much but time will tell as always.

quote: Dagger and Bolas radar icons are now consistent with other light/heavy raider pairs.

But their positions in the fac haven't been made so.

They are:

Dagger (W), bolas (S)

Scorcher (W), dart (S)

Blitz (W), kodachi (S)

Should be:

Bolas (W), dagger (S)

Scorcher (W), dart (S)

Blitz (W), kodachi (S)

or

Dagger (W), bolas (S)

Dart (W), scorcher (S)

kodachi (W), blitz (S)

Excellent. Now air in lobpot is literally just Lichos and Radar plane.

Can we PLEASE be allowed to use kestrel at the very least.

LANCE IS EVEN MORE KITEY =[

GJ WITH EVEYTHING ELSE =]

TAAANKS !

thanks! also, you had me at

quote: Violet Slugger

Thank you for the Swifts change, it was very frustrating to play against since that's not actually how airplanes work

Swift landing was a niche, counter-intuitive mechanic that was frustrating to play against not just because those things had long range even on ground level, but they could also leave to fly again almost immediately. They required really, minimal effort from the swift player. Turn flies when stationary off, don't land next to raiders/AA and run when anything with a gun approaches.

Removing that and leaving Swifts only able to strafe ground targets is a welcome change in my book.

Nobody seems to be talking about Halberd, so I will:

Previously having 4x HP when closed and 1250HP open meant that Halbs were, not porc breakers like traditional assaults, but their speed and closed HP made them able to raid. Having them open at 1600HP makes them better at killing porc, but makes them better at killing comms too. That is, they were good at what assaults aren't (raiding) and bad at what they were supposed to do - killing porc.
The increase of 350HP does not allow it to survive another direct Stinger shot, but it takes another ~4.6s to kill for Lotus and another 4 shots to kill by Picket. They can finally kill light porc without being ripped to pieces/be nothing more than distractions.

There was a stealth nerf to Halbs, 1600 -> 1450 This means Lotus time to kill is increased by only 2.66s and tanks only 2 more Picket shots.

Faraday nerf is also welcome, they stunned Halberds like crazy. However, this means Jacks are more of a threat since Faradays aren't as good at stopping them.

Hovers being able to climb slopes improves their plopability on many maps. Amazing change!
Full speed turning matters not for Daggers or Bolas, but rather for Scalpel and Lance, which should now be able to skirmish properly without being hit by, say, Knight or Ogre as often.


Kodachi being cheaper probably helps tank a lot, they have no cheap units throughout the entire game. Shorter range might let Bandit/Glaive get closer and deal damage, along with possibly letting Daggers be useful aaginst them rather than simply transitioning to Bolas.

Did Fencer need a nerf? I think buffing Ravagers would be required now, hardly see them anymore.

Yeah Halb is technically buffed to 1450, but the armored status has been nerfed by going to only 3x, so Halb only has 4350Hp when closed and not 5000HP

Landed swifts were never a real problem - just vindictive to remove the mechanic for the 10 or so players that actually knew how to do it.

Was already playing this game less, now probably much much less.