Everything should go just a bit smoother with this update. The AFK detector now has a countdown and disables construction, bringing harmony to teams. A number of unruly fonts and boxes have been brought into line, bringing harmony to the interface. The normal difficulty AI has chilled out. Singleplayer and multiplayer can be as one with skirmish and campaign autosaves during matchmaking. Most harmoniously, maps can now (effectively) be nice smooth circles rather than pointy squares.
Balance
Flea has a bit more map presence to make up for the previous Venom nerf.
- No longer slightly leads its target, removing a small retreat disadvantage.
- DPS increased by 7.1%
Conjurer is in slightly more danger from its own cloaked bombs.
- Area cloak and jammer range 192 -> 184
Scorcher is slightly worse at poking other raiders.
- Range reduced by 1.9%
- Projectile speed reduced by 1.9%
Badger is more vulnerable and has a slower rate of attrition.
- Speed 67.5 -> 65
- Reload time 5.5s -> 5.6s
Quill gains more speed advantage.
- Speed 84 -> 87 (2.8 -> 2.9)
Dagger has another range change.
- Speed increased by 0.35% to a round number.
- Range 205 -> 210
Bolas is slightly cheaper and faster.
- Cost 190 -> 185
- Speed increased by 0.53% to a round number.
Mace regains its old range.
- Range 340 -> 345
Halberd has a better matchup vs. Metal Extractors.
- Damage 150 -> 160
Claymore has more burst and has 13.8% more DPS.
- Reload 2.8 -> 3.2
- Damage 400 -> 520
- Increased edge effectiveness.
Singleplayer
- Normal AI is now noticeably easier, with the goal of reducing the jump from Easy to Normal.
- Hard AI is slightly easier. Brutal is unchanged.
- The player has more defenses in campaign mission 2 to give them more breathing space.
- Added a few extra things to destroy in campaign missions 2 and 3.
- Singleplayer games are now automatically saved when a matchmaker match is found, for players that would like to play singleplayer while in the queue.
Unit Behaviour
- Added Anti-Bait toggles for Knight, Dagger, Cutter, Hunter, Blitz.
- Fix Bandit unit AI, it now idle flees itself and Duck.
- Urchin can no longer Force Attack the ground (both on land and underwater).
- Gauss now aims down cliffs properly.
- Units can no longer guard themselves.
- Fixed retreating Attack Move units occasionally returning with Move after being repaired.
- Fix Ronin and Rogue on Attack Move jinking too fast to aim and fire.
AFK Detection
- Renamed the lobby option toggle to "Inactive Player Unit Sharing" and added a default that enables it in PvP while disabling it for Coop.
- Increased AFK threshold from 30s to 40s.
- Added a visual warning that start at 32s of inactivity.
- Fixed typing in chat erroneously not counting towards activity.
- Shared constructors and factories are now given a Wait command, which is removed when they are shared back.
Mapping
- Maps can now define a playable area, restricting unit movement and construction. Circular maps can be created with a config file and functions for arbitrary shapes have been exposed.
- Added a circular playable area to BlackStar.
- Cleaned up metal spot inconsistencies on Pinewood Derby, Archsimkats Valley and Altair Crossing.
- Added startboxes for Stronghold, Throne, Tundra, Rysia, Battle for Planet XIV, Vernal 3-way, and Small Supreme Battlefield Dry/Islands/Original.
Added the following two functions for dynamic start boxes and metal configs, but technically they can be used for all mapping and modding.
- Spring.Utilities.Gametype.isCompStomp() returns true if there is exactly one team that only contains humans.
- Spring.Utilities.Gametype.isTeamFFA() returns true if there are more than 2 teams and at least one of them has multiple players.
Modding
- Added warnings about LaserCannons with ranges not equal to a multiple of their speed. The next release they will get turned into erroring on load
- Script.IsEngineMinVersion returns true correctly on bleeding edge (i.e. versions X.1.Y-Z).
- Projectiles are no longer filtered for spectator widgets.
- Added a detonate command to an unused kamikaze submarine.
Fixes
- Tweaked numerous ingame and menu font sizes and button dimensions for consistency.
- Improved font management to cut down on memory usage.
- Improved the load time of the map list in the game lobby.
- Fixed map and mod downloads occasionally needing to be retried near completion.
- Made cost and time more prominent in construction tooltips.
- Right mouse button now takes precedence over Alt on the factory build queue.
- Fixed large build queues adding units uncontrollably with Alt and some rapid clicking.
- Improved Fusion, Antinuke and Trinity smoke effects and Zenith beam effect.
- Fixed Antinuke and Area of Effect visualisation being slightly off-position when targeting water.
- Fixed a bug with persistent build spacing with non-default settings.
- Fixed how the ingame abuse report window reports FFA.
- Fixed a rare commshare bug that could break team FFA.
- Fixed negative damage showing up in endgame graphs.
- Fixed Strider Hub not aiming correctly.
- Fix the Wait indicator not appearing over factories.
- Fix the Wait indicator not appearing over transferred units.