Patch 2.6 Reloaded (28 August 2014)

NEW: Removal of the loadout and introduction of ZORK’S MEGA SHOP!

At Ronimo we love to criticize our own work and improve where we can, even if it means making large changes. Making Awesomenauts a better game is our #1 priority!

For a long time now we have evaluated the loadout system and recently we came to the conclusion that the game needed something better.

From a design perspective the loadout system was meant to increase item build options, but what we found was that it actually works quite the opposite. With the ever increasing size of the Awesomenauts team, new gameplay, situations, added mechanics and with no information on enemy team composition or selected level players were forced to pick the best items for every situation before the battle. This limited options, effective builds and created frustration when the situation in game was not optimal for your chosen build and reduced overall fun.

So we made the radical decision to remove the loadout completely and came up with something better and what is better than a loadout you ask?... ZORK’S MEGA SHOP that’s what’s better!

With a completely new interface and expanded shelves, you now have 6 options in the shop per skill row. You still can buy 3 items per row, but you will have all the items available to you to choose from during the game. This will give you more control over your build, allows for situational items to become a lot more interesting and hopefully we’ll see more items being picked..*cough*baby kuri mammoth*cough*! We are certain you are going to enjoy this major overhaul! :)

NEW: AI Station 205

This is a revised version of AI Station 404 with two lanes, a new hazard and pimped graphics. The original AI Station 404 is still playable in Practice and Custom Games, but will not be selected in online public matches anymore. Stats are not actually recorded during the beta because you cannot play public matches in the beta!

NEW: Bots made by the community!

A whopping nine new bots have been added to the game, and the four existing ones have been improved! These are:

• Ayla by Veanko
• Coco by nailclipper
• Genji by thesilverskull190
• Gnaw by Veanko
• Raelynn by Pirate-Rob
• Skree by Veanko
• Swiggins by hurleybird
• Ted McPain by Gatronix
• Vinnie & Spike by TheMesp
• Clunk by Veanko
• Froggy by gmfreaky
• Leon by Veanko
• Lonestar by Veanko

Online bots now use difficulty level 3, which means they cheat half as much as they did before. In Custom and Practice modes you can still set bots to difficulty levels 4 and 5 to make them cheat more for extra challenge.

NEW: Profile screen BETA

In the new profile screen you can keep track of many more stats than before, including lots of information per Naut. (Note that this feature is still in beta for the moment, so it might contain some bugs. We store these stats on a Ronimo server and this might give some problems at first.)

NEW: Removed Rematch option after public matches

Since only part of the players in a match used the Rematch option, this resulted in lots of half-filled matches. We expect matchmaking will function better if instead all of these players just enter the matchmaking pool again, giving the matchmaker a chance to put them in the matches that fit their location and rating best. This also removes the irritating timers from post-game chat.

NEW: modded AIs can now spawn new characters using the new SpawnCharacter block

This makes all kind of cool mods possible, including awesome defence mode mods.

NEW: Autocam and graphs in replays

• Replays can now show graphs of things like kills, damage and Solar.
• Replays now feature a new camera mode that automatically follows the action. This is now the default camera when a replay is opened

Replays

These fixes also affect replays that were recorded before this patch

• Fixed that replay menu become very slow when there were many replays in the list
• Fixed that scrollwheel made very big jumps when there were many replays in the list
• Fixed that the camera would sometimes stutter when following a player
• Tooltips have been added for the replay buttons, showing keyboard shortcuts
• Button to customise shortcuts for replays has been added to the replay browser menu (keys could previously already be configured through the normal controls configuration menu)
• Fixed that character glows, when hit or healed, would stay unnaturally long
• Replays menu now shows whether a match used modded AIs
• Added an option to hide names and healthbars of players
• Replays now show an error when opening a replay that was recorded with a newer version of the game (this can happen when switching from beta back to normal game)

These fixes only affect newly recorded replays

• Fixed that moving platforms were not positioned correctly in the replay anymore after five minutes
• Fixed that Penny’s combobar was not shown
• Fixed that most status effects lacked visuals (stun, snare, silence, slow, DoT)
• Fixed that “reconnecting” icon was not shown
• Fixed that in replays overlays recoloured with damage/heal/blackhole (they don’t in-game either)
• Fixed that when Genji shot a neutral creep, the impact graphic would look like a white square
• Fixed that when anyone shot an enemy, the impact graphic would have the colour of the enemy instead of the damage dealer’s own colour
• Fixed that Ravishing Raelynn and Bionic Raelynn had an extra arm floating half a screen in front of them during the start and end of a snipe
• Fixed that glows on Sentry’s arm were in front of Sentry while the arm was behind him (this probably also fixed tons of other depth bugs in replays)
• Fixed that Ted McPain’s arm+gun sometimes disappeared
• Chatlog now also shows events like kills and such (similar to the in-game chatlog)
• Fixed that replays also skipped the first 10 seconds of the match when Droppods were disabled in Custom Games

AI modding

• Made many fixes and improvements to the path graphs of the levels, mostly based on AI modder suggestions. Check these two lists for all changes: here and here.
• Path nodes now also show their ID number. This is only relevant for the new spawnCharacter block.
• Jumppads that are only accessible for one team are ignored in the path finding of the other team now.
• Fixed that AIs sometimes chose the waypoint they were already standing on as the next waypoint to walk towards, which would cause them to get stuck. This specifically happened in Ribbit IV when a bot for a tall character (like Raelynn or Voltar) was standing at the healthpack on the glass platform just behind the front turrets at top lane.
• Fixed that AIs failed to load if root node had a comment
• Fixed that if if you played the same class as a modded bot and had Allow Same Naut On Team enabled, the game would destroy and recreate all bots every frame.
• AI editor is now also included with the game on Linux (there is no Linux port so this requires Wine to run)

Network

• Fixed that host migration failed if the new host left the game during host migration (host migration can still fail for other reasons, like if players don’t have a connection with the new host)
• Important gameplay data (like bullet creation info) is now sent twice, greatly reducing the impact of packet loss on gameplay. This increases bandwidth by around 5%. (Explanation: if a packet is lost it takes a while before the game can know this. The game waits with resending until it knows the packet is likely lost, which results in lost data on a really bad internet connection getting a very high delay. Now important data is immediately sent twice, so even if the packet is lost, another packet comes in immediately after that also has the data.)
• Improved throttling

Design notes on bots

We want to remove as much bot cheating as possible, with the new improved AI’s the bots are a lot smarter and don’t need to cheat that much anymore, so we have removed most of the cheats and in some leagues the bots won’t cheat at all and in the lowest leagues they even get negative cheats. So this is quite the improvement. The full breakdown on botcheats is as following:

Practice/custom games

• Difficulty 0: really dumb, 3x as high cooldowns, items 3x more expensive, 15 seconds OtherSkillCooldown, never buy utility items, don't buy any upgrades in first 5 minutes (bothandicap1+2)
• Difficulty 1: much less smart, 2x as high cooldowns, items 2x more expensive, 5 seconds OtherSkillCooldown, never buy utility items, don't buy any upgrades in first 3 minutes (bothandicap1)
• Difficulty 2: less smart
• Difficulty 3: maximum smartness, 19% lower cooldowns (botlevel1+2)
• Difficulty 4: maximum smartness, 35% lower cooldowns (botlevel1+2+3)
• Difficulty 5: maximum smartness, 55% lower cooldowns (botlevel1+2+3+4)

Online

• Leagues 7-9: maximum smartness, 2x as high cooldowns, items 2x more expensive, 5 seconds OtherSkillCooldown (bothandicap1)
• Leagues 5-6: maximum smartness
• Leagues 3-4: maximum smartness, 10% lower cooldowns (botlevel1)
• Leagues 1-2: maximum smartness, 19% lower cooldowns (botlevel1+2)

OtherSkillCooldown means that if a bot uses skill 1, skill 2 goes on cooldown, and the other way around. So Froggy cannot do tornado and dash immediately after each other.

Bots

• Bot difficulty changed see design notes above
• Bots don't respawn quicker anymore
• Bots don't deal increased damage against turrets anymore
• Bots don't receive extra max health

Design notes on game length

Games tend to take quite long at the moment, a bit too long for our taste, we are aiming at 15-20 min per game. Sorona is by far the most time consuming map, because of the length the droids needs to bridge to get to the turrets, so we reduced the health of the front turrets a bit as well as an increase of sawblade droid hp and sawblade droid regen. These last two will also help to reduce gametime on the other maps

Sorona

• Reduced the health of both front turrets on Sorona by 10%

General

• Five skins permanently reduced in price (officer lonestar, grandmaster splash, coco mcfly, double-o yuri and bionic rae are now all $1.49, down from $2.49)
• Can now keep page up/down pressed to scroll through chat quickly (also in replays)
• Fixed that game crashed when joining a game from practice mode
• Removed ‘How to play’ menus from the game
• Adjusted scroll speed for all scrollable UI elements in the game
• Fixed an issue with the hints not showing correctly
• Fixed an issue where droids could get stuck on Ribbit and Aiguillon
• Blind has been changed.

General balance

• Space Air Max values of Ayla, Gnaw, Derpl, Swiggins are now showing the correct value in the description
• Killing spree bonuses for killing Penny, Vinnie, Genji, Swiggins, Ted McPain, Skree and Sentry now work
• Super droids, will now be affected by blind
• Fixed an issue with super droids getting stuck above enemy team jumppads
• Sawblade droids, health increased from 60 to 70
• Sawblade droids, health regen increased from 120 to 150 health per min.

Design notes on Ted McPain

Over the past few patches we have tried to make stimpack better, but overall the skill was lacking enough uhmpf to get picked over shot upgrades and airstrike. This is the reason why removed the self inflicting damage on stimpack to remove the downside of the skill. Obviously this made the skill a no-brainer with the short cooldown, so we increased the cooldown to give players more choice when to use the skill, instead of just activating it after every cooldown. With the longer cooldown it made sense to bring back the full clip angel wing toilet paper, and to balance the removal of selfdamage on ammo weekly we increased the price a bit. Armpit shaving cream could not stay as damage reduction obviously, so we went with a shield instead. Puffed spider eggs was an underused item and doesn’t really fit shotgun ammo theme so instead we went with an extra shell to increase your burst with the shotgun and with the side effect of increasing the stimpack duration while holding the machine gun, to make stimpack work better with machinegun mode and reduce the pain of having to wait on the gun switching animation. Grenaide pour homme, was one of the worst items in the game. Very underused, so we did a revamp as well to a short stun pulse to give ted either a better escape or a great opener.

Ted McPain

• Stimpack, removed the self damage
• Stimpack, changed the description of stimpack
• Stimpack, removed the healthrestriction on stimpack
• Armpit shaving cream, now adds a damage reducing shield for the duration of stimpack, 2 stages 10% damage reduction per stage
• Armpit shaving cream, price increased from 135 to 165 Solar per stage
• Machine gun, increased base range from 6.4 to 7.5
• Puffed spider eggs, replaced the reload time reduction with a max ammo increase +1
• Puffed spider eggs, price reduced from 190 to 135 Solar
• Slightly increased the acceleration on Ted's boots
• Sniper toothbrush, price reduced from 220 to 200 Solar
• Ammo Weekly, removed the old selfdamage stat
• Ammo weekly, price increased from 160 to 175 Solar per stage
• Fixed an issue where holding airstrike while firing your machinegun would cancel the movement penalty for shooting
• Added ammo setting to base stats shotgun
• Double RPG, cooldown between airstrikes reduced from 2s to 1s
• Angel wing toilet paper, now fully reloads shotgun
• Grénaide pour homme, now emits a stun of 0.2 seconds
• Grénaide pour homme, price reduced from 185 to 160 solar
• Ted McPain now spawns with machine gun so you can use the extra movement speed to get to the action
• Switching stance icon now shows the right cooldown (0.6s)
• Tedris Ville, damage reduced from 20 to 15. (Undocumented change)
• Tedris Ville, price reduced from 280 to 250. (Undocumented change)

Design notes on Sentry

Basically Sentry is one of the strongest nauts in the game at the moment and he excels at being a tank, in our opinion his sustain was a bit too much with the lifesteal on tactical vest, that’s why we nerfed it a bit. Also the damage reduction shield of microfilm was a bit too much. The idea of Sentry was to make him tanky but his main survivability must come from his teleport beacon, which requires skill to time correctly instead of just plain health/shield/lifesteal. So we buffed the cooldown of beacon by 25%. We also reduced his main shot damage a bit with not so serious tank, he did a bit too much damage as well combined with his tankiness. The same reasoning goes behind the nerf on circuits of time. Lastly we did some changes to counter intellligence cross. Although we liked the original idea on paper, practically it felt clunky and gimmicky to detonate the mines. With the turrets being able to counter outranging we did some changes to long range attacks. Counter intelligence is one of them, but you will find other changes in the patchnotes, machine gun range, for instance got buffed for the same reason.

Sentry X-58

• Tactical vest, lifesteal reduced from 20% to 15%
• Dog tags, attackspeed reduced from 20% to 15% per stage
• Dog tags, price reduced from 190 to 170 solar
• Not so serious tank, removed a stage
• Not so serious tank, damage increased from 1 to 2 per stage
• Not so serious tank, price increased from 145 to 180 Solar
• Counter-Intelligence cross, removed the detonate, mines will now automatically start homing after time out
• Counter-Intelligence cross, price reduced from 295 to 200 Solar
• Counter intelligence cross, homing bullets now also deal aoe damage
• Counter intelligence cross, homing bullets now also deal 50% damage to turrets
• Counter intelligence cross, homing bullets will now fly to same direction as they are shot in, when no target is found
• Circuits of Time, removed a stage
• Teleport beacon, cooldown reduced from 20s to 15s
• Microfilm, damage reduction reduced from 15% to 10% per stage
• Microfilm, price reduced from 160 to 140 Solar per stage

Design notes on Vinnie & Spike

Overall Vinnie & Spike have been the character(s) with the highest winrate in the game for a long time now. We don't think he is overpowered though but there were some concerns that the pricing of his items were a bit too cheap, giving him early access to endgame strength, this is the reason why we nerfed a bunch of items we think were a bit too cheap and did some small damage nerfs here and there. Also the range of his main gun was a bit too much, and made poking at enemies a bit too easy. Mammoth sock was worthless at 1 stage so we combined that one into 1 item and last but not least, the beloved double dive found its way back. This time we replaced the rigged casino games with something more appealing: the double dive. The big difference with the old double dive is that this one reduces the damage of both dives with a flat amount to be able to make it not too strong.

Vinnie & Spike

• Spike dive, cooldown increased from 7s to 8s
• Sharky & Remora, range reduced from 4 to 3
• The Codfather, damage reduced from 3 to 2
• The Codfather, price reduced from 175 to 150 Solar
• Smoke screen, will now hit faster, which should counter some issues where players would be able to do skills even while they should be silenced by Red bandana
• Antique machinegun, price increased from 160 to 175 Solar
• Alien abduction kit, lifesteal increased from +25% to +30%
• Red bandana, price increased from 185 to 220 Solar
• Rubber mask, price increased from 70 to 100 Solar
• Withered president mask, price increased from 150 to 185 Solar
• Rocketeer, now also increases duration by +1s
• Mammoth sock with holes, removed a stage
• Mammoth sock with holes, duration increased from +1.2s to +2.5s
• Mammoth sock with holes, price increased from 175 to 235 solar
• Rigged casino games, removed a stage
• Rigged casino games, now adds a second Spike Dive 2 seconds after the first for -20 damage
• Rigged casino games, price increased from 125 to 225 solar

Design notes on Swiggins

Swiggins is definitely the ‘naut with the most changes this patch, and you are probably going to love the complete overhaul on the way anchor drop now works. A lot players complained about not being able to pick the anchor up when you wanted instead of the automatic return of the anchor after a set amount of time. With the new system you can decide when you want your anchor back, creating new ways for Swiggins to play instead of the hook & drop combo. You can throw down your anchor and get the movement speed increase to get into the action, wait for the best opportunity to get your anchor, recall it and hook, and if you planned it correctly you can drop it right after that. Also, losing the anchor to get away and you won’t have to worry about a returning and slowing anchor: you can safely run away and recall your anchor when needed. Treasure lotery map was a really crappy item and with debuff immunity on it, it will hopefully make it more attractive in fights against strong teams with cc’s. Bovinian skimmed milk now adds amplify damage which is going to make teamfights a lot more interesting. We put the old speed increase from Bovinian skimmed milk on Krill biscuits, because we liked the upgrade but it fits better in that row. It should also give some incentive to divert from the cookie cutter damage build. Last thing, the double glazed royal porcelain was an upgrade we didn’t find very suiting for Swiggins, so we went with a chain utility item for it instead.

Admiral Swiggins

• Drop anchor, duration of the chain reduced from 4s to 3s
• Royal toy castle, damage reduction reduced from 12.5% to 10% per stage
• Treasure Lottery Map, now adds debuff immunity for 1 second after hitting an enemy 'naut with Anchor Hook
• Treasure Lottery Map, price increased from 80 to 175 solar
• Ancient octant, fixed an issue where it wouldn't trigger when both anchor drop and hook were used at the same time
• Anchor drop, fixed an issue where it dealt double damage
• Bovinian skimmed milk, now adds damage amplification of +10% per stage for the duration of Anchor Drop (2 stages)
• Bovinian skimmed milk, price increased from 145 to 160 Solar per stage
• Krill biscuits, now has the old effect of bovinian skimmed milk where it increases movement speed when not holding Homboldt
• Magnetic Anchor, damage increased from +3.3 to +5 per stage
• Double Glazed Royal Porcelain, now reduces the lenght of the chain by 25%
• Drop anchor, base range of chain increased by 10%
• Not seeweed, increase blind duration from 0.2s to 0.4s
• Inkshot, Slightly increased the collision size of the inkshot bullets
• Anchor drop, the anchor will now stay on the floor until the cooldown has run out. After that you get a new skill (anchor recall) that when activated returns your anchor to your hand. When you touch the anchor when anchor drop is on cooldown the anchor recall skill becomes directly active. If you pick up the anchor before the end of the cooldown you will still need to wait until the end of the cooldown to throw another anchor drop.

Gnaw

• Weedlings, health reduced from 45 to 40
• Weedlings, max health gained during the course of a game reduced by 6
• Weedlings, health regen reduced from 240 to 200 per min.
• Aggressive acid, removed the additional lifetime
• Aggressive acid, increased the spawnrate of drips (3 drips total)
• Tentacle Soup, slow power reduced from 20% to 15% per stage
• Fertilizer, stats now show the correct amount of max health (32)
• The health of weedlings increase over time during a game, there was an issue where the timing wasn’t correct for some of these increments, they have been altered to trigger at the correct times (300s.-600s.-900s.)
• Weedlings, fixed an exploit where weedlings could be used to block droids
• Fixed a double text in Gnaw's backstory in French
• Fixed a text issue in Gnaw's backstory in English

Leon

• Hungry Sword, lifesteal reduced from 25% to 20%
• Changed the outward travel speed of tongue from 80 to 60
• Tongue can be used out of stealth again
• Party mask, price increased from 140 to 160 solar per stage
• Clover of honor, now works on the 2nd hit instead of the third
• Clover of honor, damage reduced from +6 to +4 per stage
• Clover of honour, removed damage reduction against turrets

Coco

• Chuck's board, removed a stage
• Super conductor, attackspeed reduced from 200 to 160
• Super conductor, price increased from 170 to 180 Solar per stage

Derpl

• Trap, lifetime increased from 9s to 11s
• Hollowpoint bullets, added a stage
• Deployment pads, added a 0.1s stun to the pulse
• All Derpl skins now have teamcolour glows on their traps

Raelynn

• Gryc Lubricator, removed a stage
• Casettedeck Magazine, reduced cooldown reduction from 1.5s to 1s per stage

Voltar

• Euphoric Throughs, price reduced from 360 to 250 Solar
• When being cocooned by Genji, your drones will not die anymore
• Suicide drones, removed the text about the detonation of the drones

Skree

• Lightning rod, using the rod will now slow your movement by 20%
• Steeldrum, price increased from 160 to 190 solar per stage
• Air Freshener, price reduced from 185 to 140 solar per stage
• Mask of Fear, range increased from 8 to 10
• Saw blade, collision size is now correct with the animation
• Spare blade and air freshener's particles now work together

Penny Fox

• Claw, now has a very small unnoticable knockback, which will allow Penny to deactivate flying enemies, same way as other melee nauts can
• Chicken in lunchbox, price reduced from 180 to 145 Solar per stage

Skølldir

• Earthquake, reduced the duration of particles when they hit the floor

Froggy G

• Mutant worms: limited ninja edition, whirlwind will now also increase the damage of your next shot for 5 sec

Ayla

• Fixed an issue where you could use rage to fly out of the landing area

Genji

• Removed delay on shooting cocoon