FROM THE BLOG

[KAG] Build 1233 – Builders and Archers

Another balance and fix build, this time addressing builders and archers much more than knights.

Be wary of falling spikes!

Builders

• Repairing
  Builders can now repair damaged blocks for the cost of a full block, which helps avoid structures collapsing and makes maintenance much more convenient. Doesn’t work on doors/platforms/traps/spikes etc yet – just solid wood/stone blocks.
• Spikes
  Spikes now pass cleanly through 1 wide holes, and shouldn’t get “stuck” on background walls any more.
• Buggy Hitting
  A few more bugs have been fixed in builder hitting – there are a few more that will be getting attention in the next build, but most notably you should be able to attack enemy structures through team-mates again (no more asking knights “please move i cant hit the door”)
• One Hit Kill Mines
  Builders can now more easily defuse mines without mishap to allow offensive mines to be sensibly countered without interfering with their utility elsewhere.

Archers

• Triple Shot Changed
  The triple shot is no longer an inaccurate streaming 3 shots, instead it’s a 3 shot “shotgun”. Charge times are the same.
  This serves 2 purposes:
  • a little easier to use in support and CQC, as there’s more tolerance missing with a cone of shots than 3 relatively straight shots.
  • Reducing tower spam, as the enforced cone of fire means that firing mindlessly from a tower is hopelessly inefficient – firing at groups still works but you need to focus your single shots if you want to snipe, not just mindlessly overcharge.
• No “pierced” sprites
  We felt that this was just unneeded clutter and took the opportunity to remove the “stuck in arrows” – they were hurting FPS and sometimes obscured the team of various units (not to mention had crazy results with siege engines and boats)
• Can climb arrows in all structures
  Arrows should stick into all structures in such a way that you can use them as arrow ladders, this includes platforms, traps and doors.

Knight

• Only real knight relevant change is very slightly slower jabs – they may be able to be slowed more but they’re almost back to the previous build rates currently, going to move slowly on this one.

Fixes and Tweaks

• Clantags displayed differently
  They’ll show up in chat and on mouse hover, but not in the scoreboard; this is an experiment to see if it helps player identification, we might need a separate column in the scoreboard for clantag, feedback here is welcome, leave it in the forum thread. Clantags are also accessible by script for modders now.
• Arrows hit mines again (this was a bug).
• Flag blocks building in slightly smaller space.
• Fixed water stunning teamies on direct hit.
• A lot of stuff doesn’t decay or decays much more slowly.
• “Recent Damage” is tracked a little longer – no more missing kills for fire arrows.
• Pickup priority tweaks – still not perfect by any stretch but should be more predictable now at least, as it’s based on your position instead of a weird combination of cursor and player.

Have Fun!

Max/Geti