Zero-K v1.0.4.1 - v1.0.4.6 + Quickmatch

Happy belated Easter! There are lots of gameplay adjustments in this one, but the most notable change is the new and improved™ Quickmatch system. As always, refer to the changelog for details.

Quickmatch Improved and Enabled

The quick matching system 'Juggler' has had improvements and has been re-enabled. Juggler preferences can now be set with Zero-K lobby and defaults to Never. Preferences are used to automatically search/create organise games with people that also want to play that kind of game.

QuickMatch is activated by button in Zero-K lobby multiplayer tab or by joining autohosts with Stars.

People who cannot use Zero-K lobby can set their preferences on their home page - "Game preferences".

There are now 3 levels of TEAMS host, small medium and large. These hosts will automatically start a game if the number of players is within their desired range. Automatic starting can be postponed with the command '!postpone'. Games which are too small can still be manually started and if a game is too large it will be split into two games with players sorted by elo. The game sizes are:

• Small 2v2 - 4v4
• Medium 4v4 - 8v8
• Large 5v5+

Please pay attention to this and configure your preferences based on your likes.

QuickMatch creates games from waiting people according to their preferences to satisfy greatest number of people.

1) It tries to make game of similar ELO skill. For 1v1 max ELO difference is 250 points.

2) It can only move you from your current game to new game if you like the new game type more than current game type, or same as current game type and moving you will allow other game to start, whilenot breaking current game.

3) Games where you are moved are always withing recommended player level for that game type (it will never move you to empty room alone etc).

Zero-K lobby/springies now also allow private hosting of unpassworded games.

Balance

Factories:

• Cost 550 -> 700
• Build Speed 5 -> 10

With the previous BP change it became a bit hard to spend at game start. This factory change is experimental so feedback would be helpful.

Penetrator, Annihilator and Sharpshooter do not fire at radar dots by default. They completely refuse to fire at a radar dot unless their 'fire at radar' state toggle is enabled.

Krow:

• Slows to 75% speed while dropping bombs.

Jugglenaut gets an anti unit special weapon. It can pickup all ground units around it and throw them at anything nearby.

Golliath:

• Cost 1900 -> 2200

Sumo:

• Cost 2200 -> 1900
• Jump range 300 -> 360
• Gun damage up 20%
• Stomp damage up 25%
• Stomp AOE 300 -> 340 (diameter)

Dominatrix can capture Dominatrix. This can form trees of control that completely flip when the head is killed.

Archer:

• 3xish damage
• faster projectile.

Grizzly:

• Range 550 -> 600

Clam:

• 25% faster resurrect speed. This is more of a fix because resurrect should drain 7.5 energy whereas due to an oversight it drained 6.

Commander torpedo DPS increased 50%.

Submerging a units in water puts out fires.

Overdrive Distribution

More overdrive metal is given to team members who contribute their energy. 50% of the overdrive distribution is weighted by how much energy a player contributes. The other 50% is distributed evenly between all players.

Base metal extraction sharing is unchanged, this is still evenly distributed.

Physics

In unit-unit collision both units take damage. As an aside they also take the same amount of damage (unless of course one is armoured).

Licho no longer collides with aircraft. This is to prevent mid-air catastrophes. Other aircraft are already set to not collide.

Units skid around a bit more and don't take so much damage from sliding along the ground. Technically put speed for fall damage only uses 50% of the tangential component of velocity to the ground. The speed reduction vector is also mostly in the direction of the normal.

Pathing

Units should now stop to turn if given a movement order behind them. Slow turning units can now turn on the spot instead of wandering into turret range.

Lag Monitor

Units that the taker creates are not given to the afk player when they return. Exceptions are factories to give the afk player back their factory plop.

Afk players do not receive metal income. It is split between their teammates.

Removed sexism.

Graphics

New explosion effects for Merl and Pillager.

LOS + Radar view has been recoloured. Most importantly areas with LOS and no radar are not dark blue.

Sound

There are now game Victory and Defeat triggered music tracks.

Changed Buoy and Halberd weapon sound effect.

Fixes

• Fixed tooltips for BP 5/6 change.
• Fixed game over bug that would cause both teams to win if the last unit that died was a Puppy.
• Puppy should get stuck underground less.
• Puppy now takes 5s to self-d.
• Initial States should now correctly set states when units are received from other teams.
• Added buildpic for Bantha
• Reordered a few build menu items to obey cost ordering.
• Fixed Freaker description.
• Pillager can now shoot in all directions because it would not turn itself to shoot.

Wow, great changes! This version has a lot of cool things that I've been wanting for a while, most especially submerging units to put out fire. Neato!

Bravo, this changelog looks fantastic! Thanks to all the devs who make this game so fun!

Like the changes, though I might be a little concerned about the increased fatory BP (more intense early game, easier to destroy your eco early game, makes rushing larger units earlier easier in team games). I havn't really played any games yet but this is what I predict.

"Removed sexism."

What?

To expand on my point: give players a fraction of mex income instead a fraction of overdrive income. This places the emphasis and reward on expansion, not teching.

But in most cases the guy spamming the fusions is NOT the guy helping the team fight. Sure, he is helping the team with overdrive, but most good players would agree that overdrive is less helpful than units. It's even in the manual: http://zero-k.info/Wiki/AggressionGuide

So now, instead of the fusion spamming player helping his team somewhat by giving team 100% of OD income, you're helping team even less by only sharing 50% of OD income.

Most importantly: it simply rewards the wrong type of gameplay. I already have a hard enough time convincing noobs to stop their 8th fusion and start making units. Do we want to add another reason for them to sit back and play SimCity?

I don't mean this to be overly critical, but I WANT players to fight over mex spots. There NEEDS to be an insane rush to the front to grab as many mexes as possible. One thing that BA does well is forcing early game aggression when two enemy Commanders meet at a mex spot in the center of the map. Each player is FORCED to fight for that metal spot because the difference in income can mean the difference of them winning or losing. In ZK, when you're relying on metal from the rest of the team, you rarely see those insane compushes over a single mex. More often than not I'm willing to simply let the other guy have it.

I'm not saying that communism is bad - I love it! But I do think that teching is bad. So instead of rewarding fusion spammers, we need a way to reward mex spammers!

> thats a valid strategy.

Sure, if you design it that way, ANYTHING can be a valid strategy. I could give Glaives 100000 HP and 100000 DPS and force game into a spam-Glaives-to-win game, but we don't do that, do we?

My point is that if I moved to ZK from BA because I got tired of being steamrolled when I played front because the same guys sat in back every game, teching and spamming fusions and watching porn until front players were wiped out, then unleashing their massive economy to win the game. It also encouraged games to routinely last 45 minutes to an hour.

As it stands right now, spamming fusions IS a valid strategy, because it was designed that way. Let's design it to reward those who fight instead.

In the old non-shared system, connecting grid with wind was still very good. I played air one game where I used my highly mobile cons to reclaim and spent about a third of my metal in more winds/tidals to connect mexes and repair broken connections.

Now you need to give it to allies for them to benefit. More micro-management...

EDIT: I say bring back full communism.

The grid is owned by the allyTeam. Individual players only contribute energy and in most situtations the grids are not maxed. Because only half is proportionally shared any extra energy will increase everyone's metal income

I'm unsure about the change, on one had it lets players gain more metal without reclaim and gives people and incentive for overdrive which would otherwise have a very long personal pay off time. On the other hand the econ player is not that useful unless they eventually use it.

Also factory cost is probably a bit high. I have tried it for a bit and think it could be reduced.

good work devs! thx!