This version bring much needed intelligence in the realm of missile firing as well as some buffs to marginalized missile units. As such Hovercraft may now be OP but we will deal with that when we get there. Near term balance is secondary to non-frustrating unit behaviour.
We have had a recent breakthrough in diagnosing the performance problems with the new engine. There is already a version available and early test games are very promising. The engine devs have taken notice and it looks like a version better than 91.0 will be out quite soon.
Wolverines have a much nicer mine projectile and model. As always there are a bunch of fixes.
Overkill Prevention
Most homing missile bearing units are now more intelligent about when they fire their missiles. A pack of Scalpels is now smart enough to figure out the most prudent method of killing a lone flea. The following units have gained this skill:
Defender, Hacksaw, Chainsaw, Screamer, Crasher, Angler, Flail, Tarantula, Swift, Rapier, Trident, Puppy, Scalpel.
Puppy and Scalpel know how bad they are against fast moving units (Planes, Crane, Blastwing, Gnat and Banshee) so fire willy-nilly at them in the hope that one of them hits.
Their intelligence has some drawbacks. Units are still not able to outsmart the confusing 3D nature of shields and as such completely ignore their existence (Scalpels may end up looking stupid when up against a lone Thug). Luckily armour is taken into account. Sometimes you may want to throw away finesse and just fire all the missiles, for this purpose there is a state toggle.
Relatively low reload time units such as Vandal and Slasher were considered not worth smartifying. This could change in the future.
Balance
Reintroduced Hacksaw. Do not think of this as a buff (or nerf?), think of it as the reimplementation of an owled unit.
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Cost 400 -> 220
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Health 1500 -> 580
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Damage 1180 -> 1050
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Range 850 -> 420
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Reload Time 13 -> 15
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Time between missiles 1.4s -> 0.7s
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Shrunk model by 15%.
Angler change:
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Cost 220 -> 200
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Damage 580 -> 600
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Reload 10 -> 12
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Range 800 -> 600
Crasher buff:
Gunships now fare better against Raven and Hawk (one less shot required to kill).
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Trident Damage 190 -> 200
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Rapier Damage 190 -> 200
Sharpshooter:
Scalpel crater depth reduced by 30%.
Visuals/UI
Anarchid has made Wolverine a new projectile model and mine.
The tooltip while placing structures now shows an estimated payback time from overdrive for energy structures. Mexes show how long it takes for them to pay for themselves with just their base extraction.
Sumo is able to settarget friendly units.
Fixes
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Bombers no are no longer forced to fly straight for a few seconds after takeoff. This was especially bad for Raven and it would sometimes become stuck.
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Racketeer missiles timeout faster after they miss and do not accelerate to ridiculous speeds.
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Sonar Station, Radar, Advanced Radar and Sneaky Pete lose their abilities when reclaimed.
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Initial queue is now disabled for spectators before the game starts.
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Fixed some invisible units in dev engine.
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Sumo range ring now matches its actual range.
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Krow no longer sometimes causes dust while under construction.
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Tweaked many damage values slightly to make them nice round numbers.
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Terraform construction points are no longer killed by lava (or, in fact, anything).
