Zero-K v1.9.11.0 - Hover Handling and Map Rotation

The November patch is a large one, with four new maps added to the matchmaker pool, numerous balance tweaks, and many other improvements and fixes.

The most notable balance changes are:

• Armour now reduces damage by a factor of 3 rather than 4. This is to increase counters to armoured turrets and Crab, and to give Halberd space to be tankier while firing.

• Hovercraft have their uniquely terrible slope climbing replaced with uniquely fast speed while turning. A bonus feels better than a penalty, and the old penalty was pretty obscure as well as limiting for map diversity.

• Limpet received its prophesied nerf now its power and general utility has been discovered.

• The ongoing small tweaks to vehicle raiders continue in an attempt to share some of the success of Rover with Hover and Tank.

• Swift no longer fires while landing. Its weapon maybe have to be buffed in the future to compensate.

New features include a command for easier factory plate placement and improved effects for Halberd and Buoy. Modding for many niche special abilities is much easier and a few edge case bugs have been fixed.

Matchmaker Pool

**1v1 **pool:

• Added Faultline, Doldrums, Random Plateaus, Shimmershore, Trojan Hills, Mecharavaged.

• Removed Intersection, Ravaged, Crubick Plains, Frostburn, Izki Channel, Anvilwood.

**Teams **pool:

• Added Faultline, Doldrums, Random Plateaus, Shimmershore, Trojan Hills, Mecharavaged.

• Removed Intersection, Ravaged, Crubick Plains, Frostburn, Aurelian.

Balance

**Armour **damage reduction reduced 75% -> 66.6%. The following units were partially compensated.

• **Halberd **health 1250 -> 1600

• **Crab **health 4000 -> 4200

• Solar Collector health 500 -> 600

**Hovercraft **have increased mobility.

• Rather than slow to 60% while turning like other vehicles, they keep all their speed.

• They climb slopes as quickly as other vehicles, rather than climbing much slower.

**Quill **turns faster because large turning circles are needlessly annoying on constructors.

• Turn rate 920 -> 1100.

**Dagger **deals more damage, but not enough to affect its matchups against most raiders.

• Damage 100 -> 110

**Scalpel **is smarter.

• Overkill prevention fires less often at targets that are probably going to die.

**Dart **swarms are slightly less deadly.

• Damage 35 -> 32

• Slow damage 140 -> 128

**Fencer **is the backbone of Rover, which seems particularly powerful, so can afford a small nerf.

• Cost 140 -> 145

**Kodachi **is cheaper but finds it harder to deal free damage.

• Cost 175 -> 170

• Range 215 -> 210

**Limpet **took years to be noticed, and it is finally time for its first nerf.

• Cost 150 -> 160

• Speed 123 -> 120

• Damage 150 -> 120

• Slow damage of 1200 unchanged.

• Overslow 5s -> 2s (matches Moderator)

Cutter should not be outclassed by Hunter so early.

• Cost 70 -> 65

**Swift **is no longer a form of artillery, and boost is consistent with other abilities.

• Can no longer fire while landing.

• Boost recharge rate now obeys status effects.

**Faraday **has less damage and stun uptime, on top of the general armour nerf.

• Damage 1200 -> 1100

• Reload 2.7s -> 2.9s (stun uptime 74% -> 69%)

**Faraday **and **Gauss **have more appropriate collision shapes.

• They now have flatter collision volumes when closed.

• If they can shoot over a wall, their aim point is now adjusted so that enemies can shoot back.

Commander Disruptor Bomb is now consistent with Limpet.

• Damage 350 -> 210

• Slow damage of 2100 unchanged.

• Added 2s overslow to Violet Slugger for consistency with Limpet.

Disco Rave Party is now consistent with Limpet.

• Added 2s overslow to Violet Slugger.

All slow pulses, besides the more continual pulse of Outlaw, now have a slow to damage ratio of 10:1, and 2 seconds overslow.

Interface

Dagger and Bolas radar icons are now consistent with other light/heavy raider pairs.

• Icon type Raider/Support -> Scout/Raider.

• This will be confusing at first, but the consistency should be worth it in the long run.

Factory plates are easier to place with the new factory plate command.

• Added a generic factory plate command that turns.

• It turns into the factory plate of the nearest factory in range of the mouse.

• It exists in the grid construction menu with hotkey BV.

Fixed some texts:

• "defense" -> "defence" (rather than a mismash of the two options)

• "minimun" -> "minimum"

• "stun time" -> "max stun time"

Other features.

• Self-destructing a selection of units costing less than 1000 now never triggers autoresign.

• Rectangle terraform now turns red when too large.

• Added Swift boost and jumpjet cooldown to selections panel.

• Landed Swifts refund their boost.

• Add Fire Towards Enemies to the hotkey menu.

Graphics

• Improved projectile effect and muzzle flare for Buoy and Halberd.

Modding

Many previously hardcoded abilities now have customParams or are configurable in LuaRules/Configs. While it was possible for mods to copy gadgets to configure such behaviour, it is now easier to do so in a configurable way. This includes:

• Dirtbag mound.

• Full interactions for sonar, radar and radar jamming (eg being disabled when disarmed).

• Phantom firing while cloaked.

• Air transports.

• Teleport beacon.

• Overshoot prevention for turrets.

• Gravity weapons being allowed to Set Target allies.

• Torpedoes not jumping out of the water when they hit the shore.

Fixes

• Fix ward fire error spam on metal maps.

• Krow and Thunderbird now decloak during bombing runs. Previously Thunderbird would only decloak when bombing via attack order.

• Clean up metal spot detection code.

• Improved base64 encoding memory usage.

• Fix Scylla firepoint offset/clipping.

• Fix special weapons not updating their image and text in some cases (eg select a Swift then a Charon).

• Fix SLAM rocket model.

• Fix stretched Dart track texture.