Battle Options

Multipliers

Team X Income Multiplier

Multiplies the income of team X. This option is intended to be used as a handicap system. The values affected are:

• Innate income (defaults to +2/+2).
• Commander income (defaults to +4/+6).
• Base metal extractor income. Overdrive is multiplicative with team income multiplier.
• Energy structure income. Overdrive grid contribution is affected too as it depends directly on energy income.
• All buildpower (commander, constructor, factories, plates, Athena, Puppy, Artemis, Trinity, Scylla)

By increasing incomes uniformly, the multiplier can (mostly) be seen as dividing costs. Buildpower is multiplied because time is a cost, and so that ratios of production capacity to income are unaffected. If the system directly reduced cost, then cheaper units would drop smaller wrecks and have lower mass, which would be messy. Multiplying incomes lets combat units behave identically regardless of their teams handicap.

The main difference between decreasing cost and increasing income is reclaim. A reclaim field is worth the same amount of "potential expenditure" (aka unit construction) to all teams regardless of handicap, but it is proportionally less valuable for teams with a higher income multiplier. A team with a handicap can reclaim faster due to increased buildpower, but doesn't get any extra total metal from the field.

Combat oriented abilities such as autorepair, drone construction, and shield charge rate are not affected by income multipliers. Captured or resurrected units gain the income multiplier of their new team, it is not retained.

Income multipliers are unrelated to AI difficulty as none of the AIs cheat.

Automatic Handicap

Automatically sets Team 1 and 2 Income multipliers based on the gap in average rating. This modoption is used by the handicap matchmaker queue.

Experimental

Tech-K

Zero-K with unlimited tech levels. Units of a higher tech level have the following modifiers.

• Double cost, mass, build power, shield regeneration and health regeneration.
• They shoot twice as many projectiles, with slightly more spread, dealing approximately double damage.
• 10% more weapon and jump range.
• 25% more metal extractor income.
• 200% more energy income (so 3x the income).
• They drop twice as much wreckage.
• They are slightly larger, and are tinted various scary colours.

Tech levels are multiplicative, so an Advanced Advanced unit has 4x the cost and health of the basic version.

Players climb tech levels by upgrading their factory. Every constructor (aside from the Commander) has a new command call Tech Up. This command has two uses.

• Use Tech Up on a matching factory to upgrade it to the level above that of the constructor.
• Use Tech Up on any other structure to upgrade it to the same level as the constructor.

There are modifier keys in the tooltip of the command to help advanced constructors only upgrade mexes or energy structures.

The gadget for the option is can be found here, and contains examples of how to apply these modifiers.