The big feature in this update is bait prevention. Units and turrets, such as Artemis, should be significantly better now that they can more precisely obey your wishes. Felon is a beneficiary as it can be told to avoid armoured units, but it may be kept in check by another new behaviour: Most units now fire at the edge of small shields if there is nothing else in range.
There are few actual balance changes to better observe the ramification of the latest advances in unit command. Apart from that there are a few features and fixes, such as the ability to click on names in the endgame stats to highlight a line, and improved map filtering.
Balance
Advanced Radar moves towards justifying its cost, as an experiment.
- Cost 500 -> 400
- Sight 800 -> 1120
- Range 4000 -> 5600
Claymore has a smaller collision volume.
Duck missiles have less fuel, but still enough to hit land targets.
Jugglenaut and Newton now have aim lookahead (aiming towards targets that are about to enter range).
Behaviour
Units and turrets with reload time or costly projectiles can now be told to avoid low value targets. This can be configured under Settings/Unit Behaviour or controlled with the Avoid Bad Targets state, which is shown by default. The states are:
- Disabled.
- Free - Avoid light drones, Wind, Solar, Claw (Badger mines), Dirtbag, nanoframes up to 50 metal and armoured targets (except Crab).
- Light - As above, as well as units costing less than 90, Razor, Sparrow and unidentified radar dots.
- Medium - As above, as well as units costing less than 240, except Stardust, with the addition of Raptor.
- Heavy - As above, as well as units costing less than 420.
Some units default to Free and a few default to Light. The behaviour is overridden by Attack Move as well as manual targeting.
Units are also more opportunistic when it comes to fighting shields, now firing at nearby small shields if nothing else is in range. Most non-artillery do this and it is essentially a range buff against shieldballs. This behaviour, called Ward Fire, can be configured in Settings/Unit Behaviour or enabled as a state toggle under Settings/Interface/Commands.
There are also a few improvements to Attack Move.
- Siren brings its main gun into range on Attack Move.
- Most skirmishers and assaults no longer engage drones on Attack Move, however they will still fire at them if nothing else is in range.
Interface
- Individual players can now be highlighted in the endgame graphs by clicking on their name.
- Improved the filter box of the map list.
- Renamed 'Map Selection' to 'Set Map Bans' in the Matchmaker Tab.
- Selecting Puppy, Athena, Caretaker and Strider Hub enables the reclaim highlight overlay.
- Unit info screens now show movement type.
- Clarified Reaver and Hercules helptext.
Fixes
- Greased Tremor rotary drive.
- Fixed Crab curling?
- Fixed Adamantine Mountain team names.
- Fixed newly constructed units sometimes not following factory waypoints.
- Fixed overkill prevention sometimes knowing too much about unidentified radar dots.
- Fixed trouble toggling Puppy Goo.
- Fixed some parts of long terraform queues being cancelled prematurely.
- Removed Leaper Chickens from planets Sapphire and Vis Ragstrom.