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SPHERE "Nova" form commanders holding back the CLAW invaders
2018/08/19 ------------------ NOTES v0.997 ----------------------
--- balance / mechanics
GENERAL
- roughly doubled the speed of blast waves from explosions
- self-damage in general is reduced to 33% of the original value
- Large Fusion reactors explosion radius increased from 275 to 325 and damage from 2000 to 2500 and get a 5% cost reduction
- increased the cost of GEAR "Big Bob" by about 50% and removed the high-trajectory mode
(was unusually low due an error on the balancing algorithm related to having high trajectory option and two weapons - oops)
- fixed an issue with aircraft debris "shaking" on the ground
- fixed heat-rays not having the stated 30% damage drop over range
(the auto-balancer wasn't fooled so now the units get about 10% cheaper as a result)
SHIELDS
- large area shields regenerate faster by draining up to 10% (1% from small shields) of maximum shield charge per second from shields within its radius
- shields are only shared above half the maximum charge
WALLS
- increased the cost slightly and build/repair time by about 10% for fortification wall sections
- changed the armor type from L to M but reduced the hit points from 4800 to 2500
- walls no longer change to "features" when built, so they can be repaired
(this also makes it easier for your units to use own walls as cover as they won't attempt to fire through)
COMMANDERS
- added Sphere "Nova Form" commander : slow but heavily armored. Weapon has huge area of effect and can shoot in high-trajectory mode.
- GEAR "Infernal Form" commander has high-trajectory mode
(it can shoot its fireballs uphill and over walls)
AIRCRAFT / SPHERES
- AVEN "Twister" now has "L" damage emg/laser combo (better vs light units and air)
- AVEN "Tornado" made a bit slower, tougher and has "M" damage rockets
- SPHERE sphere factory can build air transports
- SPHERE flying spheres are generally set to hold position to avoid wasting energy
- modified way that energy cost when moving is calculated for the flying spheres to avoid draining the full amount when repositioning vertically while idle
- advanced construction drones are now automatically set to "high priority"
- doubled maneuverability of scout aircraft
- aircraft flying way off the map are "teleported" back to a spot on the nearest corner
(workaround for a Spring engine bug)
(click here for unit details)
UPGRADES
- increased the general limit of commander upgrades from 2 to 3
- increased the cost of hp, range, damage and speed commander upgrades from 500 M to 750 M, but increased own limits from 1 to 2
- increased own limits on commander regen and drone upgrades from 1 to 3
--- UI
- changed the default side from "AVEN" to "RANDOM"
- moving mouse over chat box position if it's no longer visible shows it and scrolls to latest message
- 15s after the latest "scroll up", automatically scrolls down to the latest message
- show a warning message if the Spring engine version is different from the recommended (currently 104.0)
- show a warning message if game starts without any opponent and disable victory conditions
- show a warning message if game starts with unsupported AI players instead of MFAI
- show a warning overlay whenever the commander is damaged while out of view of the player
- fixed an issue with resource drain wrongly rounded to integer on the tooltip
- moving mouse over orders menu buttons shows default hotkey information in most cases
- do not assign "perfect" efficiency award when players resign early before any units are killed
--- AI / MFAI
- builds scout pad and uses air scouts
- improved targetting for attacking forces to be more sensitive to the direction of threats and allied units
- added ability to detach a ground raiding party which will try to sneak around enemy defenses and hit vulnerable targets
(fast ground units are assigned to it by default)
- the attack aircraft group also behaves like a raiding party and will try to sneak around defended areas
- more likely to target metal extractors and construction units in general
- set long range units to hold position to avoid them chasing fleeing targets into range of enemy fire
- construction units are less likely to run into enemies when trying to build metal extractors
- use offsets when processing game state,etc. for multiple AI instances to spread the load across multiple frames and avoid "hickups"
- reduced the amount of free metal and energy income the brutal AI gets (50 to 35 M/s) and the scaling over time
- attack aircraft group takes into account enemies which are bad anti-air when considering where to attack
- normal MFAI builds the first factory earlier so it grows faster
- avoids building factories on places which do not have a soft-sloped land connection to the base center