Some help for leafcutters in freeplay with regenerating leaves now being a thing (in freeplay only - campaign level leaves do not grow back). This is an optional beta - if you’d like to join the beta whilst it’s still running, follow the instructions in the box near the top of this previous post. If you're already on the beta branch you won't need to do this; the game should update by itself. NOTE: The beta will only run on Windows. Once we've finished the beta period Mac and Linux will get the full finished update!
Freeplay Balance Changes
- Leaves will now regenerate in freeplay five minutes after some have been harvested (saplings regenerate 100, red rusty plant 200 and green plant 300)
- Food reduction in freeplay now kicks in at 200% difficulty (up from 50%) and drops to a minimum at 960% difficulty (up from 150%).
- Creatures in freeplay will more rapidly get to scale level 5 between difficulty values of 100 and 200% but will then only increase 1 level per 20% after that point (up from 10%)
- Physical creature size now increases slower and caps totally at triple size (in practice it should never reach this value)
- Chance of uber spawning now increases the longer one has not spawned. At max at 45 mins after last spawn. This will cause more ubers to spawn at lower difficulties or if one has not spawned in a while
Fixes and Optimisations
- Minims should now appear on both sides of carried leaves by level 3 majors and mediae
- Creatures should no longer get stuck in pickup state (appearing static picking up food)
- Some tweaks to creature movement
- Possible fix for issues where creatures can end up inside ramps
- Corrected an error that could cause creatures to get stuck at the entrance to ramps
- Fixed an issue (again) with the scientists hand not squashing ants
- Can no longer see water in tunnels during cinematics in 2.1 and 2.2
- A patrol route behind the players nest has been reactivated in 3.2
- Tweaked some patrols in 3.2
- Phorid flies will now display little health bars to make them more visible
- Fixed an issue where a creature could get stuck trying to harvest a resource if combat started and ended briefly during it heading to the resource
- Fixed an issue where workers could survive their tiles being deleted if they have the “evasive” skill
- Fixed a crash caused by placing markers in banned areas using the minimap
- After purchasing a queen ability, all queen cool-downs need to recharge (prevents switching queen abilities during formicarium challenge exploit)
- An ant may only remove one phorid fly every three minutes to prevent clearing a patch by a single level 3 ant
- The huge whip spider will now walk normally again in 3.2
- Food visually can only be 40% its default size so small food items are more visible and scales slower at the upper end of values
- Fixed an issue where loaded eggs could be tiny if saved in their frozen state
- Update to how markers work fixing an exploit where you could use two markers to completely empty a trail
- Updates to markers to pull ants from more old marker locations and changed these locations priorities. It should feel smoother and is more forgiving to army repositioning
- Ladybirds now immune to many crowd control effects to prevent them being affected whilst eating an aphid
- Camera now correctly exits victory animation after continuing freeplay post victory
- Music restarts when continuing freeplay post victory
- Fixed a crash that could occur on maps that have tiles removed such as the second lab formicarium
- Got rid of some buried harvestable beetles in 3.1
- Fixed a crash with swarm point in underground only maps
- “Attack when favourable” creatures (such as mantis and jumping spider) now takes nearby allies into account when deciding to attack or not
- Optimisations added to path following
- Improvements to ant crowd movement - particularly in combat
- Fixed an issue where leafcutters were not making digging noises
- Fixed a rare crash in path finding
- Fixed an issue where building and upgrading was no longer making noise
- Mole crickets now take room size into account when selecting a room to spawn in
- Fixed issues with funnel web movement