Zero-K v1.2.3.0 - Sea, Spider and Capture the Flag

Capture the Flag mode is now live and sea has received a significant rework. The Ship factory has been redesigned and torpedoes can hit hovercraft. Spiders have a new unit and there are some tweaks to other units. Performance should be improved, especially in the lategame.

New Spider Unit

The Redback has been added to act as a conventional riot unit for the Spider factory. It is armed with a particle beam. Beefy wheeled raiders will give it trouble so use terrain (and Venoms) to your advantage.

Capture the Flag

Capture the Flag mode can now be enabled. The default mode adds flag capture as a victory condition. Additionally there are options to add Commander respawn and flag based resource income. See the wiki page for more information: http://zero-k.info/Wiki/CaptureTheFlag

Sea Rework

All Ships and Subs are effectively new units so their changes will not be stated here. They are generally cheaper and have better defined roles.

Torpedoes can now hit hovercraft. Amphibious unit health regeneration is now based on water depth, not unit height. The main effect is that floating units heal at their full rate.

Balance Changes

Scallop

• Cost 350 -> 280

Buoy

• Health 1200 -> 1250

Scalpel

• Damage 330 -> 310
• Can shoot into water.
• Always turns at full speed, this will significantly reduce time spent accelerating after small turns.

Puppy

• Range 155 -> 170

Tick

• AoE 320 -> 352

Panther

• Reload Time 2.5 -> 3

This was the value before the previous version. There was a small nerf to other attributes in the previous version and reload time was reduced accidentally.

Fixes/Tweaks

• Significantly improved overdrive performance. This will be noticeable lategame.
• Razor's Kiss -> Razor
• Disarm damage is transferred when you morph.
• Capture hierarchy is preserved through morph.
• Fixed Mace and Lotus beam stutter.
• Minor unit selection shapes fixes.
• Minor fixes to aircraft rearming.
• Raise terraform snaps to increments of 6 when Alt is held. This is the height required to block vehicles.
• Fixed a delay in updating the movement speed of slowed ground units.

Sweet, new spider!

SO - how about that hermit cost reduction!

Also you can enable "Announcer" widget and hear killsound when a lot of metal or strategic unit/structure dies or is killed.
CTF discussion topic.

Strongly Resent Razor Kiss rename

Other then that I love it

don't know how redback is gonna change up spiders, but depending would still like to see a small cudgel cost reduction experiment

aurgh, i smell GBConspiracy among GBConspirantians!

quote: it was a joke by sprung "valentines day is over, remove kisses" seems to have been overlooked to be corrected

The joke was only in commit message. This was discussed in #zkdev and vetted by the core iirc.

The reason is that the name was too long, uncomfy to pronounce, and everyone was already shortening it to "razor" or "rk" anyway.

I don't have strong opinions about that change, but i found the old name's end syllables hilarious. "skiss", so much sss!

EDIT: now that the "skiss" part is gone, there should be some other unit to have all those consonants. I propose to rename Puppy to čtvrthrst.

quote: The reason is that the name was too long, uncomfy to pronounce, and everyone was already shortening it to "razor" or "rk" anyway.

Now calling it RK is irrelevant! Dang!

quote: How on earth are you meant to pronounce that? It doesn't have a single vowel in it.

Try Brzęczyszczykiewicz.

quote: Does this mean that you can capture a lvl 1 comm, morph it to lvl 5, and then if you lose the domi its old owner gets the lvl5 morphed unit? Sounds hilarious

Sounds great. Becasue before u just needed to cap lvl 0 com and if u spent 250 metal to morph it to lvl 1 u get it forever. THAT realy sounds hilatrious.

quote: aurgh, WHY WOULD YOU RENAME RAZKISS!

Don't ask me, it was just sitting in the changes.

This will reverb hilariously when/if Saktoth adds the Capture Spider with raider weight, given how the Spider factory already has all the EMP it wants for both light targets (venom) and heavies (infi).

Suddenly you have to keep a glaive-weight mind-controller from dying so you maintain the leash on a 2k metal warmachine... :D