Forged in a thread of thirteen pages, shaped over many 1v1s, and tempered in a pot of lobsters. This release is about pacing, flow, and a focus on what makes ZK fun. In response to your feedback we have analysed and tested large parts of the game. The result is units that feel better to control, tweaks to some of the mechanics that were highlighted as frustrating, and more ways to make it past the earlygame. The changes are still somewhat experimental so be sure to post feedback.
In other development news, PetTurtle is developing a mod called ZeroWars where players send waves of units to push back and destroy the enemy team. He is still making sweeping changes to the gameplay, trying to find what works best, and it will be interesting to see what sort of game mode comes out of it.
Raiders and Responsiveness
To start us off we'll make everything a bit more responsive, just so it feels better to control. There is plenty of room to make vehicle-types less unwieldy while keeping them feeling like vehicles.
- Tank, Rover, Ship and Hovercraft acceleration and brake rate increased by 20%
- Tank, Rover, Ship and Hovercraft turn rates increased by 60%
- Other ground unit turn rates increased by 20%
- Bomber manoeuvrability improved by a difficult-to-quantify amount (rudder buffs ranging from 12% to 44%, whatever 'rudder' means).
Now to attack the heart of the feedback - earlygame swingyness. A lot of this is down to the highly demanding interactions of light raider combat.
- Glaive health 200 -> 240
- Glaive damage reduced by 17%
- Bandit health 265 -> 320
- Bandit damage reduced by 17%
- Scorcher health 420 -> 480
- Scorcher damage reduced by 20%
- Glaive, Bandit, Dagger, Scorcher and Pyro now shoot at units running away from them at the edge of their range. This removes the situation where a Glaive chasing a Glaive could be unable to fire but still receive fire.
In an ideal world the other raiders would be rebalanced around these changes, but there is only so much time in the day, and the overall balance deemed 'reasonable' in 1v1 testing.
Without the "retreat bonus" it, unsurprisingly, becomes harder to retreat. Extra vision should give players more time to choose whether to engage, and besides, it gives raiders a nice bit of extra utility. Here are the changes to vision:
- Glaive, Bandit, Duck: 500 -> 560
- Flea 560 -> 620
- Puppy 560 -> 640
- Pyro 420 -> 560
- Dart 580 -> 660
- Scorcher 400 -> 560
- Dagger 560 -> 640
- Kodachi 600 -> 680
- Blitz 450 -> 560
- Hunter 450 -> 560
- Ground-Attack turrets increased by 48
- Bombers 660 -> 780
Newton, Gauss, Faraday, Stardust, Urchin, Lotus, Picket, Stinger, Desolator, Raven, Pheonix, Thunderbird and Wyvern snuck in to the list of vision buffs! Not to worry, the turret buff is to prevent radar wobble overshoot and the bomber buff mitigates some issues with bombers losing sight of their target.
Expansion and Economy
Raiding is only half of the earlygame, with the other half being economic growth. These change slows down expansion, removing the requirement to expand at a breakneck pace in every direction from the very start of the game.
- Metal Extractor cost 75 -> 90
- Metal Extractor health 400 -> 750
- Starting resources increased 250 -> 300 (to pay for such expensive Mexes)
Unarmed constructors have a bit more health to make it more difficult to lose really early in the game. Commander radar is just nice.
- Commanders start with radar (except in the campaign).
- Wind Generator health 130 -> 150
- Conjurer health 450 -> 600
- Convict health 650 -> 780
- Weaver health 820-> 980
- Mason health 900 -> 1000
- Quill health 800 -> 960
One last sweeping change: a repair nerf.
- Repair now costs 75% energy and build time (up from 50%).
Costlier repair pushes retreat-and-repair lineups later into the game, where energy is cheaper, giving early compositions more time to shine. It also nerfs those Gauss/Faraday forests that have been spotted brewing in the pots.
Speaking of Faraday.
- Faradary health 1700 -> 1600
- Faraday reload time 2.6 -> 2.7
Lets stack a bomber nerf on top of a repair nerf, especially for Raven. We'll tell ourselves that the usability buffs make up for it.
- Rearming a bomber drains 10 energy per second.
- Raven rearm time 5s -> 10s
- Improved/fixed Raven attack and overkill behaviour so it does not need to circle so much if its initial target dies.
Like the repair change, the effect of this nerf drops off and disappears as the game goes on. Note that this is only a nerf to those players that manage to promptly reuse their bombers.
Balance and... Bugs
Time for some more sedate balance changes. Knight now 2-shots Glaive, Ripper 'might' not be terrible, and Constable is due a nerf.
- Knight damage 240 -> 230
- Ripper damage 220 -> 280
- Ripper reload time 1.63s -> 1.6s
- Constable cost 120 -> 140 (an unrelated nerf)
Tremor:
- Cost 1500 -> 1600
- Range 1300 -> 1200
- Area of Effect 160 -> 140
Mechanics fixes/tweaks:
- Dominatrix now reloads for 6x Build Percent seconds when it captures a nanoframe, instead of for 12 seconds.
- Metal from overflowing allies is now shared evenly between teammates. Previously it was weighted by the team member's available storage.
- Fixed Hacksaw, Ogre and Tarantula overkill prevention values
- Raised Fencer aimpoint so it can be targeted over the lip of ramps.
Singleplayer and Coop
- Updated the skirmish AI, making Brutal harder.
- Made the Dominatrix mission (planet Ganong) fairer in light of the Dominatrix rework from prior versions.
- Made some later missions (planets Hibiliha, Lalata, Karuwal and Onsally) easier on the Easy difficult setting.
- Fixed the factory in the terraform mission (planet Kirdipan) failing to produce more than one Dirtbag.
- Improved the quality of your allies in missions on the Easy difficulty setting.
- Fixes to campaign mission briefings.
Other Changes
Here are some graphical tweaks, UI improvements, and performance fixes.
- Added Guernsey.
- Rewrote the default playerlist - the last unreasonably performance heavy UI widget.
- Jumpjet units automatically jump if they were thrown by a Newton and are about to land or leave the map. This can be toggled with the ingame setting 'Settings/Interface/Falling Units/Jump on prediction'.
- Improved rocket trail visuals (non-homing missiles).
- Many micro-optimisations.