Greetings Commanders,
Celebrating 10 years since we originally announced the game on Kickstarter, new battle lines have been drawn across the galaxies - 7 new maps, balancing updates, local multiplayer support, and a host of improvements have come online.
Dive back in to annihilate the enemy. Good luck out there.
General
- Added 7 new WPMarshall maps.
- Samar's Sands - 1v1
- Unhelpful Habits - 1v1
- Experiencia - 1v1,2v2,3v3 (Multi-Planet))
- Inconceivable Field - 5v5 (includes Gas Giant)
- Phang Shores - 1v1,2v2,3v3,4v4 (Naval Island Spawns)
- Phang Shores XL - (Phang Shores, but with an extra planet!)
- The Major Grump - 3v3,4v4,5v5 (Multi-planet, includes Gas Giant)
- Added Queller AI 5.23.1 - this is no longer a mod, but is now a full part of the game.
- Added UPnP support on Windows builds, required so the local servers can see out into the world and get incoming connections from other clients.
- Unit balancing tweaks.
- Retrained AI values, so the AI will play more competitively with the new balancing tweaks.
- Games are hosted by default locally (instead of remote servers) and limited to 6 slots. Use --local-server-max-players flag on the client to override this limit. Remote servers are still available for larger games, just the game defaults to local servers for smaller games.
Fixes
== Hardcoded unit names:
Units usually get their behaviors from their classes (e.g. Orbital & Transport & Interplanetary) but the Astraeus unit had its behavior locked to its name instead.
That blocked derivative units of the same type (e.g. Chariot from Legion) from having the same behavior.
== First factory blocks metal spots:
Fix a bug where the code ignored the metal spots location when building new factories, the locations are now properly detected.
== AI doesn’t play until the 20 second mark in certain conditions
Sometimes the AI fails to start playing the game (just idling instead) before the 20 second mark. We determined that initially the game handles strategic map locations (like metal spots and base locations) in batches. Those batches were too small, which caused the AI to wait until the next update cycle to start processing locations.
We increased the batch size a little so the AI handles more spots in one go but still keeps CPU usage low.
== AI crashes server with Legion Expansion Starcannon
Sometimes the game would crash when a game engine entity had a parent that was unreachable (like a temporary). This was the case sometimes with transporters that were used by the Starcannon to send units to a planet. We patched the engine to ignore those parents instead of doing a hard check.
== Fighters and Galata built to fight an air presence that doesn't exist
The AI builds fighters when the enemy has no air, leading it to use fighters in Galactic War against players who don’t even have air tech, let alone an air presence.
We created a "GalacticWar" personality tag for the AI in the GW mode and gave units a way to check for the air presence as well as the tag, which fixed the issue.
== Doesn't recognise Unit Cannon as an orbital threat
Sometimes the game handles some units individually, because of their odd behavior. That's the case with the Unit Cannon, however it wasn't being consistently checked everywhere. We patched the AI brain to recognize the Unit Cannon individually and it fixed the issue.
== FocusTargetThreatRatio always returns true
The condition FocusTargetThreatRatio used to return true even when the target wasn't available. We fixed it to return false when there is no target.
== Presence booleans not set by radar or factories
The presence booleans were set according to the threat model used by the game, which failed in certain conditions (like evaluating buildings).
We added a new system internally that keeps track of enemy and friendly presences without using the threat model, which fixed the issues.
Balance Notes
Commander
- move_speed increased from 6 to 8
[b]Air
Angel
- anti_entity_targets updated to include Narwhal AA (pa/units/sea/frigate/frigate_ammo_aa.json)
- anti_entity_targets updated to include Stingray AA (pa/units/sea/missile_ship/missile_ship_aa_ammo.json)
Hornet
- max_health reduced from 600 to 500
- rate_of_fire reduced from 0.5 to 0.4
Icarus
- aggressive_distance reduced from 70 to 60
- brake increased from 20 to 30
Pelican
- build_metal_cost reduced from 160 to 140
- brake increased from 20 to 60
Phoenix
- system_velocity_multiplier increased from 15 to 30
- gravwell_velocity_multiplier increased from 6 to 10
Land
Advanced Laser Tower
- max_range reduced from 130 to 120
- rate_of_fire reduced from 5 to 3 shots/sec
- damage increased from 150 to 250
Advanced Metal Extractor
- observer items radius reduced from 100 to 75 for surface_and_air
- observer items radius reduced from 100 to 75 for underwater
Bluehawk
- max_range reduced from 220 to 200
Colonel
- max_health increased from 6000 to 8000
- target_priorities updated to:
- Mobile - Air
- Air & ( EnergyProduction | Transport | Bomber | Gunship | Titan )
- Structure - Wall
- Mobile & Air
- Wall
Gil-E
- max_range reduced from 200 to 180
- target_priorities updated to:
- Air & (Tactical | Heavy | MissileDefense)
- Mobile - Air
- Structure - Wall
- Mobile & Air
- Wall
Grenadier
- firing_standard_deviation reduced from 1.5 to 0
Leveler
- max_range reduced from 130 to 120
Locust
- max_health increased from 60 to 80
Metal Extractor
- observer items radius reduced from 100 to 75 for surface_and_air
- observer items radius reduced from 100 to 75 for underwater
Nuclear Missile Launcher
- system_velocity_multiplier increased from 20 to 30
Unit Cannon
- system_velocity_multiplier increased from 20 to 30
Naval
Stingray
- target_priorities for the tactical missile updated to include the Angel (MissileDefense) as a top priority
- Added UNITTYPE_AirDefense to unit_types
Orbital
Advanced Radar Satellite
- system_velocity_multiplier increased from 15 to 30
- gravwell_velocity_multiplier increased from 6 to 10
ARKYD
- system_velocity_multiplier increased from 15 to 30
- gravwell_velocity_multiplier increased from 6 to 10
Artemis
- system_velocity_multiplier increased from 15 to 30
- gravwell_velocity_multiplier increased from 6 to 10
Astraeus
- useable range increased from 10 to 20
- move_speed increased from 25 to 50
- brake increased from 25 to 30
Avenger
- system_velocity_multiplier increased from 15 to 30
- gravwell_velocity_multiplier increased from 6 to 10
Helios
- system_velocity_multiplier increased from 15 to 30
- gravwell_velocity_multiplier increased from 6 to 10
Hermes
- system_velocity_multiplier increased from 22 to 30
- gravwell_velocity_multiplier increased from 9 to 10
Orbital Factory
- build_metal_cost reduced from 6000 to 4200
SXX-1304 Laser Platform
- system_velocity_multiplier increased from 15 to 30
- gravwell_velocity_multiplier increased from 6 to 10