Update - new research, a bigger Hydra, and smoother crowds

AUTOMATE DEATH · published · build 26323729

Weapons
- Hydra Rocket Pod: every rocket's blast is 50% wider. The pod was by far the smallest-blast area weapon and it showed.
- Incendiary Projector: the burn now does 120 damage over 5 seconds (was 70), and the stream itself hits a little harder.
- Loitering Drones: fly faster, wait less over an empty aim point, and rearm in 3 seconds instead of 4. Salvos land about a second sooner and come a third more often.
- TOW: the lock-on lines and brackets are now thin and faint instead of a bright web across the map.
- Weapon rank chevrons now sit in the world next to the gun and zoom with it, instead of floating at a fixed screen size.

New research
- Hydra — Bursting Charges (3 ranks): +20% blast radius per rank.
- Hydra — Seeker Heads: each rocket homes onto the nearest goblin within 40 units of where it would have landed. No rocket wasted on empty road.
- TOW — Spalling Warhead: hitting an armoured goblin throws its armour as shrapnel into the goblins behind it.
- TOW — Nerve Agent: the warhead vents a cone of yellow gas out the far side of whatever it hits, poisoning everything in it for a few seconds.
- TOW — Burning Wake: the missile's motor flame burns every goblin it passes over on the way to its target.
- TOW — Wire Lightning (mastery) now also fields two extra launchers while switched on.
- Mortar — Creeping Phosphorus: each patch of white phosphorus spreads as it burns, ending 50% wider than it was laid.
- Harpoon Gun — High Mount: the gun stands above the storm surge. A wave never swamps it and never makes it drop its catch.
- C-RAM — new mastery, Interlocking Fire, replaces Back to Back. Two C-RAMs whose arcs overlap link up: a goblin standing in both takes double damage from every round and is slowed, and rounds punch through 15 more bodies. It also fields four extra C-RAMs while switched on, six in total with full deployment. If you had Back to Back switched on, Interlocking Fire is on for you.

Damage numbers
- Damage numbers are now drawn in the world, so they stay over the goblin that took the hit as you pan and zoom.
- Settings > Battlefield has new controls: how many numbers to show (Off through Unbounded), their size (Small, Normal, Large, Huge), and whether to show numbers, status effects, or both.
- Default size is half what it was. Changing any of these mid-battle now applies immediately.

Crowds
- Goblins no longer drift sideways in a jam. Pushes from the crowd move a goblin but no longer carry into its walk.
- Goblins face the direction they are actually moving, not the direction they intend to turn next.

Coast maps
- The strip of sand between a coast road and the sea is now paved road: goblins landing from boats walk straight onto it and you cannot build there.
- Storm surges now sweep goblins off beaches into the sea, the same as off fords and bridge decks.

Fixes
- Zoomed-in miniguns no longer flicker between dry and muffled sound.