V1.6.1.6

Amphbots and Lobsters

Forum thread Zero-K v1.6.1.6 - Amphbots and Lobsters

This release is primarily a balance patch with some much-needed love for Amphbots. They have finally received an "artillery" unit and, as is tradition among the Bot factories, it has new and unusual mechanics. This artillery, the Lobster, throws allies (and enemies) at its problems and should have many creative uses. Limpet and Archer have also received buffs and there are nerfs for Siren, Racketeer and Blastwing.

Balance

Added Amphibious 'artillery', the Lobster.

• Uses nearby units as ammo, launching them at its target.
• 340 cost.

Removed the water tank mechanic from Archer. Now it constantly fires at full capacity.

Slow waves no longer deal damage to ally units in order to buff Limpet and for consistency with Outlaw. This affects Limpet, Commander Slowbomb and Disco Rave Party.

Racketeer:

• Health 950 → 780
• Reload 6s → 7s
• Timer 8s → 9s

Siren main gun reload time 2s → 3s.

Gunships now ram and climb cliffs instead of teleporting to the top.

Mechanics

• Made overdrive not spend all excess energy unless every player has full storage. Hold back some energy from overdrive to be given to players who have less energy income and energy in storage than their teams average spare energy.
• FFA maps now default to shuffle even when played with 2 teams.

Interface

• The default Ctrl+Z hotkey no longer ignores builders. Settings for current players are unaffected.
• Allies now have more vivid and distinct teamcolours in small teams.
• Energy economy breakdown now shows overall overdrive efficiency.
• Added a large cursors option, mostly for an issue with 4k screens.
• Structure terraform up/down mouse hold very slightly more lenient with regard to movement.
• Added Artemis to Unit Marker.
• Made all units easier to select, particularly factories.
• Rearranged the ingame menu. Most importantly, moved Hotkeys and Unit Behaviour to root. Fleshed out the simple settings menu.
• Commander shock rifle now shows directional particles (same as Phantom sniper).

Fixes

• Fixed Crab attack jittering issues (#2693).
• Fixed icon distance settings being overridden to the default (#2715).
• Fixed a rare resource bar crash at game start (#2692, #2252).
• Fixed Gesture menu hold threshold being 0.5s if you set it to 1.0s (#2679).
• Fixed startbox editor crash (#2694).
• Fixed Gesture menu preventing minimap clicks (#2677).
• Fixed extraneous lobby button when there is no lobby (#2127).
• Fixed the language list being spammed with untranslated languages (#2614).
• Fixed Quake enabling buildings to be stacked in the same spot (#2650).
• Fixed Libyan flag being the old green one.