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