V1.3.12.1

There are more balance changes here than in recent versions. Effectively we have a Cloaky and Hovercraft un-nerf with a small change to Scalpel. Units should be a bit smarter with the unit AI and target priority improvements, especially Scorcher. Visible but non-damaging ground napalm has been removed in the case of Dante and Pyro. The aim is to remove all misleading fire effects.

Balance

Cloakybot has a reduction of the nerfs for some of its previously most powerful units.

• Rocko: Health 350 → 390 (was 450)
• Spectre: Reload time 18 → 17s (was 15s)

For Hovercraft we have a small nerf to Scalpel and minor buffs to Dagger and Mace. The changes are mostly to missile physics to give units a bit more time to fight or flee.

• Dagger:
  • Cost 85 → 80 m
  • Sight 500 → 560 elmo
• Scalpel:
  • AoE radius 96 → 80 elmo
  • Unit turn rate 79 → 73 °/s
  • Missile homing 132 → 115 °/s
  • Missile velocity 200 → 180 elmo/s
  • Missile duration 3.5 → 3.1 s (After this time the missile falls short)
  • Horizontal angle of fire 43 → 66 °
• Mace: Speed 63 → 66 elmo/s

Pyro death explosion now applies ground fire. This is to make its mechanics match the flame effect. Previously the explosion applied 21-30s of burning (315-450 damage) which tended to guarantee a kill against light raiders.

• DPS: 20
• Radius: 128 elmo (Same as before. Both the napalm and the initial damage)
• Linger time: 13s
• Burn time 25s → 2s (Kodachi bomblet is 10s)
• Initial damage: 50 (unchanged)

Duck is now slightly worse at avoiding consequences. The underwater Duck vs Duck game may also no longer be one of blindly running into each other.

• Missile range 250 → 240 elmo
• Torpedo range 150 → 120 elmo
• Sonar 250 → 350 elmo

Recluse has a buff to see what it takes to use Recluse:

• Range 540 → 570 elmo
• Sight 594 → 627 elmo (For sight = 110% range rule)

Funnelweb lost combat regeneration for consistency (Was 20 hp/s previously)

Raised most units' eye height by 10-20 elmos (This means they are less blocked by minor terrain bumps)

Terraform now has its minimum thickness more strictly enforced. No more 1-wide walls around structures. Walling mexes and fusions is now slightly more expensive.

General UI

• COFC smooth mesh just affects scrolling again.
• Build ETA has size and draw height menu options.
• Menu option paths: renamed AutoGroup to Control Groups.
• The interface for walling a structure with terraform (Ctrl + click) now gives a rectangle command(Previously it gave a line terraform command around the structure. Many people were manually selecting rectangle terraform because it reduces the cost and constructor moving required.).
• The unit lock modoption now works on AI and accepts unit names as parameters.

Unit AI

Unit AI has been improved, mostly regarding targeting. "Ignore" means the units still automatically shoot the target, but will not stop to kill and instead move on if they are on Fight command and there are no better targets.

• Spectre will now avoid all mobile ground units.
• Puppy on Fight dodges better and closes in faster.
• Scorcher will now move close to the target when on Fight command.
• Units with slow projectiles will now disprefer shooting at fast units and will ignore them. (Specifically:
  Hammer, Spectre, Racketeer, Crusader, Pillager, Tremor, Reaper, Rogue, Penetrator, Annihilator, Ravager, Hermit, Halberd
  dislike shooting at
  Puppy, Dagger, Scorcher, Dart, Bandit, Glaive, Flea)
• Units are less inclined to shoot at Fleas and Darts (Treated as if having 4 hp/cost).
• Penetrator, Sniper and Racketeer disprefer LLT and Defender.
• Airborne units no longer ignore Razors.
• Crusader will now ignore gunships.
• Armored units are now deprioritized correctly.

XP

XP has always been very unreliable as a measure of unit performance. This has been addressed. The rank of a unit now directly reflects how many times over a unit has paid for itself.

• Rank 1 = 1x cost
• Rank 2 = 2x cost
• Rank 3 = 3x cost
• Silver Star = 4x cost
• Gold Star = 7x cost
• Super Gold Star = 10x cost

Details:

• Removed the last hit XP bonus. Only dealing damage gives XP now.
• Rescaled XP gain so that it says exactly how many times the unit made cost. (For example a 100m unit killing 120m worth of enemies will have 1.2 XP)
• Changed nominal unit costs for a few unbuildable units to better reflect their worth.
  • Lamp: 800 → 100
  • Claw: 0 → 5
• All multiplayer units now have XP worth equal to cost.
  • Razor: 50 → 280
  • Swift: 50 → 150
  • Hawk: 100 → 300
  • Lamp: 100 → 100 (no XP change but cost changed)
  • Claw: 60 → 5

Content creation

• Maps can now have less than 6 metal spots.
• Custom AIs now select their own commanders. Ones that do not, are given Strike Trainer. (was a bugged moduleless Strike template previously)
• healthbar labels for features (eg. wreckage, rocks, trees) are now subject to localisation.

Fixes

• Fixed slow damage permanently increasing turn rate inertia.
• Fixed Dante incendiary rockets using napalm visuals.
• Fixed rank icons disappearing while spectating.