The main balance change is a slight Magpie rework, and it is probably the last rework before we attempt to do something else with the unit. The main goal is to give it a proper set of counters, which in this case are fighters and dedicated anti-air. Magpie is now slower and has a lot less health to give anti-air more of a chance to retaliate. It also has a slower missile, which makes it worse against fighters and speedy units. The numbers here are a bit conservative, but hopefully they give us a sense of whether the approach works.
Balance
Magpie is worse against dedicated anti-air and has trouble hitting fast units. To compensate it has more range and is slightly cheaper.
- Cost 210 -> 200
- Health 740 -> 440
- Speed 252 -> 234
- Rearm time 12s -> 10s
- Range 550 -> 660
- Fire tolerance 45 degrees -> 60 degrees
- Missile average speed 400 -> 180
- Missile starts slow then accelerates.
Ettin receives the Thresher buffs from the previous patch to make it better at shooting while clumped.
- Changed the collision volume from a cylinder to an ellipsoid.
- It is now better at aiming when one of its guns is blocked.
Tarantula is also better at shooting while clumped.
- Flattened its collision volume by 25%.
- It now shoots in a slight arc, which also helps when behind hills.
Interface
- There is now a unified scale setting for the bottom of the UI. It is ingame under Settings/Interface (Settings/HUD Presets with simple settings disabled).
- Increased unit icon resolution from 64x64 to 96x96 to support larger UI sizes. This applies to the command menu, unit selections, and wherever else unit icon appear.
- Construction icons are now square and take up the whole button. This can be toggled with Small construction icons under Settings/HUD Panels/Command Panel if you prefer the old look.
- Added an Autodetect setting for energy grid cables. They are now disabled by default for Linux users with ATI cards.
- Iris and Aspis on Attack Move now try to prevent every non-air unit and structure from entering their bubble.
- Disabled the shield guard widget now that the default engine behaviour has improved.
- Unit marker timestamps now include hours in hour-long games (thanks SteelBlue).
Fixes
- Probably fixed black lines around radar icons on some ATI cards (engine update).
- Fixed overkill prevention unit behaviour customisation not being applied.
- Level 1 campaign commander now uses the correct death clone (thanks SteelBlue).
- Fixed a crash mods could cause by checking whether a not-existent unit type is a commander (thanks SteelBlue).
- Removed a large meaningless circle drawn around Odin when Show selected unit range is enabled.
