Lobsters have been taught to not fire when it would be redundant, making Lobster balls much easier to manage. Overkill prevention in general has a tweak, and some APIs were extended to make modding easier. The Artefact Control game mode which saw some testing about a month ago is now live. In terms of balance, Redback has a bit of a nerf and some of the least used units - Skuttle, Phoenix and Emissary - have small buffs.

Balance

Duck can now be dodged by a Glaive trying as hard as it can to run away.

• Missile fuel time 2s -> 1.5s

Redback is worse at taking map control and assaulting defenses.

• Cost 230 -> 240
• Speed 1.85 -> 1.75

Skuttle can see enemies before they break its cloak.

• Line of sight 280 -> 330

Emissary aims faster and no longer benefits from manually turning.

• Body turn rate reduced 105 -> 84 degrees/second
• Gun aim rate increased 40 -> 70 degrees/second
• Resets its gun between shots (as much as possible) in case it has to move.

Phoenix moves faster and hits its target sooner.

• Speed 240 -> 243
• Projectile gravity 0.7 -> 0.72

Unit AI

Overkill prevention, the system that prevents ten Scalpels firing at a single Glaive, is now available for Lobster, and is suspended for units set to hold fire. It is controlled by a state toggle that is hidden by default because there is very little reason to touch it. The state toggle can be enabled under Settings/Interface/Commands, and per-unit defaults to be set in Settings/Unit Behaviour/Default States, or by holding Space and clicking on a unit, then pressing Edit Behaviour.

Lobster is smarter, no longer firing unless there is a visible valid target.

• This prevents it from firing when it would do absolutely nothing, provided there are no invisible enemies nearby.
• As a result, telling a tight clump of Lobsters to fire causes only two to shoot.
• This behaviour can be configured with the hidden Overkill Prevention state.
• Removed the Force Fire command by default. This can be configured via another hidden state toggle.

Overkill prevention is now suspended by default when units are set to Hold Fire.

• Added the "Enable for Fire at Will" and "Enable for auto targeting" states. Previously it just had enabled/disabled.
• Most units default to "Enable for Fire at Will". The theory being that if you set a unit to hold fire you care more about its target dying than about overkill.
• Nothing defaults to "Enable for auto targeting", but it may be useful to try out.

Impaler now has an even stronger preference for targeting structures over units.

Interface

• Added a minimum wind icon and number to the left column of the wind generator tooltip during placement (thanks Porkchop)
• Cleaned up some inconsistent unit highlighting and selection. Units under interface panels cannot be clicked on by default, tooltips do not appear, and units are not highlighted.
• Selecting through the panel at the bottom of the screen can be configured under Settings/HUD Panels/Selected Units Panel.
• Drag selection can still terminate over a UI panel.
• Add some translations for the commander selector.
• Updated Global Build AI with some fixes and documentation (thanks esainane).
• Added username team colour in chat and removed white outlines for dark names (thanks Birdulon)
• Local widgets are no longer disabled for spectators on rooms with local widgets disabled.
• Added Italian translations for the main menu (thanks fvasco)

Campaign

• Tweaked campaign text and replaced some Artefacts with more suitable structures (thanks Thorneel)

Maps

• Added boxes for Onyx Cauldron 2.0
• Improved lighting on Skulduggery (thanks Shaman)
• Improved water on Cull, Lost v2 and Lowland Crossing Revised v2.
• Fixed an issue with void water with new shaders on some graphics cards.

Artefact Control

Added a control point game mode called Artefact Control under Experimental.

• Several artefacts are spawned on each side of the map.
• Each team controls half at the start of the game.
• Artefacts have 11k health and heal at 100 hp/second.
• Artefacts respawned with switched allegeance when destroyed.
• If a team controlls all the artefacts, they win.

Modding

Changed some keys in unit def files to match the lua UnitDefs table. Mods with the old keys are still supported.

• buildCostMetal -> metalCost
• buildCostEnergy -> energyCost
• energyUse -> energyUpkeep
• metalUse -> metalUpkeep (vanilla ZK doesn't use this)
• maxDamage -> health
• maxVelocity -> speed

Other changes.

• Unit defs no longer require unitname since it must match the table key, so it is redundant.
• Unit defs are now also read from subfolders of 'units'.
• Set undefined burst rates to 0 (rather than 0.1) as it can interfere with weapon modding.
• The game exits to menu when unit defs fail to load, rather than crashing.
• Added game-side GG.UnitModelRescale(unitID, scale) from Unit Level Ups.
• Added backwards compatibility for Spring.GetUnitIsBeingBuilt.
• Fixed backwards compatibility for Spring.GetPlayerRulesParams.
• Added customparams.buggeroff_angle for factories, in radians.
• Added customparams.metal_extractor_mult to support the creation of higher tier metal extractors.
• Fixed modding away the Sniper reload move penalty breaking the script.
• Cleaned up the build icon generator gadget.
• Napalm effects now contain an example of sin (replaces taylor series).
• Improved modded energy generator tooltips.
• Mexes suport morphing.

Fixes

• Fixed commshare sometimes preventing resign or causing a crash when the game ends.
• War music no longer counts morph as violence.
• Fixed missing vote resign button.
• Marginal turret overshoot can no longer be circumvented with command insert.
• Fixed a few build icons incorrectly implying that a floating structure is built underwater.
• Fixed commander selector button image.
• Fixed backwards 'motion blur' on ejected shells.
• Fixed some large structure wreckages having much too large collision volumes.

Good patch. When will the update with the new factory?

Can i test new factory? pls (the thumbnail is a game where i got destroyed by lobster, i only think it fair that i redeem me self)

uh. i thought you already did that

This is source code from 10 years ago:

quote: buildCostMetal = 280,

ur lying right

I always felt that the redback was rather weak every time I played it. Why nerfing it even more?

(I am really beginner level so my opinion is not worth much but I'd be curious why more experienced players find it OP -- for a riot it doesn't have that much of a damage output and its range is so dismal that I never find good ways to make it really useful)

Reha redback has a couple key features that make it more available/scalable than other riots, as well as some good unit matchups.

-low profile, spherical hitvolume, weapon shoots from above top, high turn and turret turn rate.
These physical characteristics make it really easy for redback to avoid blocking allied redbacks line of fire, allowing multiple redbacks in a mass losing less damage output than other units.
-hitscan laser weapon
While redback has no AOE, this sort of riot has strong single target damage instead of crowd control, like mace instead of reaver/ripper, and careful micro can allow this unit to deal full damage while staying out of range of units it only slightly outranges.
-spider pathing
High level players especially can abuse terrain to get more favorable engagements, like using terrain to close the distance with a defensive turret that has been placed properly for a ramp but not the sheer cliffface.

There's other features that promote the building of redback, like:
-good cheep dps in a factory missing it. Other riot has low dps, raider is scout that dies too quick to be general combat.
-expensive shirmisher
-fragile assault
So spider players are more likely to spam the riot than other units, which makes people more familiar with the unit in the game.

Which brings attention to redback versus other units.
-just enough HP to survive a stinger shot
-almost no overkill damage against glaive
-outranges reaver and some other riots, can gain ground/terrain against skirmishers with on-a-dime turning

And a potent spam unit. I've done this strategy before: mass riot. Fake out enemy skirmishers with good movement or peeling off a couple, and run all your riots into enemy main/factory. Turrets and factory production do not have enough stopping power against 9 riots like redback, but redback has the ability to ambush poorly paced turrets or bypass them all together with spider legs, which can make this strategy even more potent.

This is essentially my case for why redback is a good to spam unit under spider factory.