Back in February we reduced the starting resources and commander income, with the aim of extending the early game slightly. After six months of data and feedback we suspect balance suffered as a result, so the income change has been reverted. We also addressed another ongoing balance project - Shieldbots - with a few buffs.

This patch has the usual smattering of fixes and UI improvements, with the most notable being improvements to Area Mex and fixes for the AI. Area Mex now works pregame and has a terraforming mode. To counteract the terraforming mode a few units have been given wall-defeating behaviours. The AI fix is more of an update that started as a fix, and includes tweaks to the difficulty levels. Feedback about the difficulty progression would be appreciated.

Balance

Increased starting income back to pre-February 2021 levels.

• Initial metal income 5 -> 6.
• This was done via increased commander income (3 -> 4).
• Initial stored resources is still lower than before (300 -> 250).

Bandit DPS is now closer to Glaive than Duck.

• DPS 83.5 -> 86 (+3%)

Outlaw slows more rapidly.

• Real damage 26 -> 27 (+3.5%)
• Slow damage 78 -> 81 (ratio unchanged).

Rogue regains its weapon from a few months ago, but not its body.

• Projectile velocity 185 -> 192
• Damage 340 -> 350

Felon aims faster and can tank a Phantom shot.

• Health 1400 -> 1600
• Removed artificial 133ms aim delay.

Sling is slower.

• Speed 48 -> 45

Badger is slower and more expensive.

• Cost 260 -> 270
• Speed 65 -> 60

Bulkhead is less tanky, now dying to two Stinger shots.

• Health 1720 -> 1650

Cutter is better at picking off Hunters.

• Range 260 -> 265

Stardust fires at full speed for longer.

• Heat decay 14.28% -> 16.67% per second.

Reaver, Pyro, Crab, Archer, Ripper, Claymore, Kodachi and Ogre now automatically shoot towards obscured or terraformed metal spots. Some of these units bypass or smooth terrain, while others simply have the AoE to deal a bit of damage through walls.

Reaver, Archer, Venom, Crab, Firewalker, Badger, Kodachi, Scalpel, Dante, Merlin, Mistral and Siren now aim through terrain when told to target the ground.

Matchmaker Rotation

• Removed Jurassic Sands and Calayo.
• Removed Aurelian from 1v1 (still in Teams).
• Added Ravaged and Frostburn to 1v1 and Teams.
• Added Izki Channel to 1v1.
• Added Banana Republic to Teams.

Interface

Area Mex has the following improvements.

• Added Area Mex to the pregame queue.
• Point clicking now snaps to the closest point, the same as using a metal extractor blueprint.
• Point clicked Area Mex commands have the same key modifiers for queuing adjacent energy.
• Shift-release behaviour is now consistent with structure placement (it deselects if an order has been issued).
• Added a terraform mode.

Area Mex terraform works as follows.

• It exists as a separate command (default hotkey Alt+W).
• By default it does not appear as a UI button.
• The basic command builds a wall after the mex is complete.
• Issue with Alt to dig a hole prior to placement instead of a wall.
• Issue with Ctrl to increase height/depth of terraform.
• Configure the height/depth in Settings/Interface/Building Placement.
• Has the same point click improvements as base Area Mex.

Other interface changes.

• Unit markers report the progress of things under construction.
• Freed up F6 and F7 for hotkey binds.
• Starlight and Disco Rave Party now have a directional placement arrow (like factories).
• Claymore has anti-bait against free units by default.
• Unit descriptions now consistently say 'Anti-Sub' for units that can reasonably fight submerged Ducks and Seawolves, and 'Undersea Fire' for units that can fire while submerged.
• Tweaked the default Alt+N terraform wall slightly higher.
• Added a Alt+M default terraform hotkey, which is like Alt+N but high enough to protect Stinger from Lance.

Modding

• Local widgets can no longer use Spring.GetVisibleProjectiles.
• Local widgets no longer receive enemy projectiles from Spring.GetProjectilesInRectangle.
• Ploppable factories now have the 'ploppable' customparam, rather than ploppability being determined by a config file.

Fixes

• Fixed AI factories sometimes 'breaking' lategame. This required an AI update, so post feedback about the migrated difficulty levels. Beginner and Novice are unaffected.
• Removed Economist AI as it is now bundled into Brutal.
• Fixed Quake (seismic missile) being able to crash Glint (Starlight's satellite) back to earth.
• Fixed Raven sometimes failing to dive against Aegis.
• Fixed unit AI internal commands sometimes cancelling user commands via duplicate orders.
• Fixed uneven and misnamed startboxes on Stronghold_V4.
• Fixed Conjurer wreck being indistinguishable from Gremlin.
• Fixed dying terraform anchors dealing 0.0001 damage.
• Fixed garbage being rendered with Outline Shader enabled.
• Fixed the cheat menu not appearing on its own if the Null AI had a different name.
• Fixed spectator panel numbers bobbing up and down.
• Fixed mex placement widget eating too many mouse buttons.
• Fixed some gray labels in missions with locked units.

feels a bit like another fragment of unitques is lost and everythings moving bit closer to uniformity.

Why do we even have different Units? Why not directly replace bandits with glaives? Buffing dps instead of health/firerate what makes bandits unique... im worried by this developement.

Dislike the promotion of mex terraform cancer. Hasnt there been a statement regarding the dislike of games becomming WW1 Trench wars some weeks ago?

quote: Local widgets can no longer use Spring.GetVisibleProjectiles. Local widgets no longer receive enemy projectiles from Spring.GetProjectilesInRectangle.

Very nice.

quote: Area Mex now works pregame and has a terraforming mode.

How does this terraforming mode work?

Darn com gains even more importance.

Badger lost the unique fastest arti.

dyth68 oh no, you can't see units that you don't see.

quote: Then don't use the UI. Use your ears whilst panning around. That's how I find tremor.

That's actually a good suggestion, so thank you. But it's yet another way that there's a tedious manual task that's required for winning play... :sigh:

TinySpider : Thing is that you CAN "see" them in this sense. It just requires some tedious UI/UX fighting.
Imagine the difference between a game where there's no income display at the top of your screen (requiring you to ctrl+z after selecting a mex to see how much metal income you have) and one like Zero K where there is.
In both cases the information is there, just in one case it's annoying to get at.

Hm, not sure about the bandit dps-changes, it was quite annoying to fight them with glaives before already...

quote: Added a Alt+M default terraform hotkey

Not working for me.

screen stays black, I get the usual ZK mouse cursor

quote: Why do we even have different Units? Why not directly replace bandits with glaives? Buffing dps instead of health/firerate what makes bandits unique... im worried by this developement.

I generally have this concern too, but it was lessened by realising that Bandit was closer to Duck than Glaive.

quote: I'm really intrigued as to whether the endgame with terraformed mexes is that it is easy to do and widely used, or easy to do and nerfed so that people don't - because I just don't see how making mexes partially invisible, armored and requiring increased attention budget to displace improves the game.

The way I see it, walling mexes is already in the game but is gated behind a finicky UI. If it is powerful then the following progression might have happened:

• 1. Someone develops a good workflow for using the finicky UI.
• 2. They go on to win in ways that are frustrating to play against and replicate.
• 3. UI and unit AI is developed to make the mechanic feel fairer and less finicky.
• 4. The mechanic is rebalanced or maybe even redesigned with all the feedback from step 3 in mind.

We just skipped straight to step 3*. I don't know whether step 2 would have happened or whether step 4 will be necessary, but I don't see a reason to not find out.

*(Well technically we'll be at step 3 when people figure out the new UI, as it is less finicky but not completely transparent.)