The Blastwing rework continues, with most of the feedback suggesting it dealt too much damage, although a few edge cases in its behaviour have also been fixed. There is also an overdue Corsair buff and tweaks to make Disco Rave Party less fiddly. The big feature is a command to split large autohosts with many waiting players, so everyone gets a game, and the big graphics update is darker, faster, and better looking "terrain" beyond the edge of the map.


Balance

Blastwing gained more damage than it needed to in the recent rework.

• Health 100 -> 80
  
• Speed reduced by 5%, which also reduces bomb toss range.
  
• Damage 320 -> 300 -> 280 -> 250
  
• Burn time 24s -> 14s -> 12s

Corsair is even better against Hunter and can stand up to Siren.

• Health 1350 -> 1500
  
• Speed 81 -> 90
  
• Range 293 -> 300
  
• Spread 1500 -> 2500
  
• Damage increased by 18%

Disco Rave Party no longer innately loses spin while turning.

• Instead, DRP now turns slower at high spin. The penalty ramps up from none at 50% spin to 3x slower at 100% spin.
  
• DRP now has unit AI that voluntarily reduces spin to turn faster. The AI optimizes for the time taken to turn and then spin back up to 100%.
  
• Reduced maximum turn rate by 25% to compensate and to make the optimization work out.
  
• This DRP should be much easier to control since it will spin up to a high minimum and stay there unless large turns are required. Minor shifts such as radar wobble no longer reduce spin.
  
• Advanced DRP users also have more options. A 90-degree order can be issued to make DRP turn ASAP, or an Alt+Ctrl+Shift attack can be used to drag 1-shot orders to walk slowly through the enemy base if punctuality is not a priority.

Waiting List Split

A new command, !split, is now available in large teams autohosts.

• Anyone can do a !split when at least 40 players are waiting (so at least 8 are on the waiting list).
  
• The command sends 40% of the lobby to a new autohost, so everyone has a chance to play.
  
• The top-rated players are sent to the new host to give everyone more evenly balanced games.
  
• The uneven split is an experiment. Experience suggests it will create more games. Send feedback.
  
• Everyone needs the update for this to work smoothly, so the first day may be rough if players don't restart to get the update.

Features

• Added Battle Value Tracker, a widget that tracks kills and losses in engagements as they happen (thanks, citrine). It was useful for Blastwing. Enable under Settings/Interface/Battle Value Tracker.
  
• Reworked the off-map terrain. It is now a dark, opaque grid of uniform squares that match the resolution of the terrain rather than a stretched texture. It also costs less performance.
  
• Language can be overridden locally by copying files from the repository to LuaUI/Configs/lang.
  
• Added minimap preview tooltip.
  
• Enabled https for all external zero-k.info links.
  
• Update Italian, Polish, and Chinese/Taiwanese translations.
  
• Brightened first ally blue (in a previous patch).
  
• Improved thermite and flamethrower effects (in a previous patch).

Fixes

• Fixed various issues with Blastwing having trouble finding a place to land.
  
• Fixed Blastwing overshooting when told to attack something at the base of a cliff.
  
• Odin can no longer fire without ammo while touching down or sitting on a rearm pad.
  
• Cerberus now aims even when its current muzzle position is blocked.
  
• Reduced Cerberus and Lucifer hit volume sizes to keep them within their footprints.
  
• Lobster throw indicator no longer highlights structures and aircraft.
  
• Fixed Raise tooltip values for blocking vehicles and bots and tweaked Alt snap to match.
  
• Removed Odin's redundant reload bar for its shield cluster.
  
• Fixed invalid events in the action tracking camera.
  
• Particularly quick double-click-drag selections no longer ignore selection rank.