In this update you will find jack-o-Lanterns and pumpkins are now scattered around different maps, use them to your advantage with buffs for your army, or to help explode your enemy!

You'll also find updated army movement and large performance improvements for big battles.

Check out the full patch notes here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1605850/view/670631830781695975

Ngl, the 41€ box price feels kind of steep with less than 100 players at daily peak. Watching Clem and other SC2 pros on YT got me pretty excited, but I have a hard time buying a game where I won't be able to learn against other people.

Tried to incorporate merc into the build but fa xian regular faction units already can perform what a merc does for the majority at least and even for some that are hen hao it feels like it just automatically bian cheng instant must have almost irreplaceable and merc just feel like I have only 1 choice instead of 4.

Spoiler Free:

Loved the campaign. Gave Very Starcraft vibes. While the dialogue and voice acting are rough in some places, in others they shine. Narrative itself is great so far! Excited for more!!

- Decisions totally bugged. Choices made are not the ones referred to later in the narrative. Almost always opposite?

- Weird voice stuttering at the end of a "file" of spoken dialogue. Consistent enough to be a real problem in cutscene style dialogue. Didn't seem to happen in most mission dialogue.

Example (as heard):

Character 1: I did a thing and i like the way that it turned out. (subtitle flash) turned out.

Character 2: Hey cool, maybe you could do a thing I like to do. (subtitle flash) to do.

Mission Bugs:

That one with the uhhh multiple bases you gotta defend from waves? I don't know what I did, but somehow I broke the enemy AI and it just stopped trying.

Visual Problems:

On the final mission, friendly attack waves and non friendly ones have the same icon. Not a good idea.

I like the calldowns cooldown reduce for planetary slot if calldowns cooldown long and li hai and cooldown for heroes helping vynthra infused more and spam more stun rally and jump for aster and spam endless lightning for galavax. Merc taking up one general slot really hen bu ying gai and really not planning to use merc since mostly pointless or just simply good against ground er yi otherwise only that one merc good and the rest kinda nth and so many armament need merc to enable which is really just taking up 2 slots on its own so don't use the merc specific one. Calldowns having customization is good but again some need merc and mu qian no have much choice so again default to commander specific original.

Check out a video of the effects as well as a full list of changes, including performance updates, a balance patch, and a large list of bug fixes here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1605850/view/686393795070133017

I estimated that the replication costs bases on infusion rates are-

RepC_roller=3.1+0.8*n_r+1.65*n_x+1.95*n_s

RepC_xyther=6.1+1.39*n_r+1.70*n_x+3.11*n_s

RepC_spectron=6.7+1.50*n_r+3.30*n_x+3.10*n_s

where n_r=number of infused rollers, n_x=number of infused xythers, and n_s is the number of infused spectrons.

The income on a 2 base 3 flux deposit map fully filled is 600 hexite (300/Edibase) a minute 300 flux a minutes (100 flux/vein) This is based off some testing so it leads me to some theoretical ideas of when to start infusing and how to use it. But roughly this is my testing data to try understand how much flux i'm using for the infusions so I'm not floating it and using enough t2 units to get their added benefits in smaller numbers.

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My logic around my builds has mostly been to infuse to save units, I like to have a single synapse to heal the army after I get my first 2 unit upgrades, I don't actually think the healing is that helpful without super units. I do think you lose damage from assimilating in general, but you gain a bit of survivability. Once replicate comes up I think it's super valuable to replicate off cooldown powerful units to target specific buildings or units. My logic has been to try and get the Anrubic increase only when I'm going to replicate a unit.

Continuing on when to infuse Anrubic, I think off the base start just infusing with an infused xyther that has like 6 -8 rollers and 3 xythers (57.6 damage+ damage on the base xyther) for the initial infusion does a lot to scale him up in terms of attack damage. I prefer the xyther infused opener. But if the teammate is already clearing things, I'm not even sure if it's worth it, especially on the mission to clear the dreadnaughts. Since the attack speed of Anrubic is relatively fixed and only the spectron shoots up and the spectron infusion inherently gives more damage, it kind of makes sense to infuse Anrubic with a super spectron after replicating it originally. I think that both styles tend to lead into a different mid game. Using a superspectron kind of hurts when going into defiants because of the shield. This seems to imply it's bad getting many upgrades before this process. Additionally a spectron adds about 9 damage each assimilated where a defiant adds about 10.2. (Edit: I saw someone else just keep eating tier 1 spectrons and his number continually went up, so that's clearly the best strat rather than infused ones)

So the first question seems to be when do you infuse with a spectron. Using spectrons to infuse a spectron feels like the stronger strat in general once you get there. What is your baseline for a good count of units to mix, and how do you micro them into the circle when doing your first massive assimilation. I'm guessing that it's around 14 rollers and 11 spectrons with a replication cost of about 55 after. I get to that around 6 minutes. and it's a huge power spike once I'm there, but the rest of the start kind of feels bad before getting there. Where do you guys feel is the powerspike to shoot for off the spectron assimilation for Anrubic?

2nd question is about the mass defiant style. What are the counts on the units you're infusing with it? It seems like maybe you're using about 8 echos, 4 xyther 3 defiants. (with one of those defiants being the one that you infuse. It's about 47.1 replication cost after 117 damage per attack). You could just try to infuse fewer early and use the assimilation cooldown. Even using like 4 xyther, 4 echoes maybe is better just to work on getting a base count quicker.

Third, is about what is the scaling. At certain value they are strong aginast the units in the game. Is 50 replication cost about the sweet spot for replicating cost massing super units by my theory, but i'm not confident in reality. I think around a 35-40 rep value may actually be better. (I.e. using 12 rollers and 5 spectrons to infuse into a spectron for 59.4 damage a hit and costing about 40 to replicate, because it would be a better breakpoint than the 88 damage from ther other infusion) It's just more tankyness for the army, and there's not many missions where there's enough big units like dreadnaughts or Juggernauts that could need the higher 88 damage to nuked after the blink. Because you do lose some damage it may be better to just sit on spectrons for longer before the infusions, or there may just be sufficient survivability with tires, that you don't need them to be huge. In your experience or does it tend to be higher or lower than that?

The ease of remembering to make 6 pairs of rollers and 6 spectron in a group, then infusing one of the spectron to hit a good break point may just be the play.

As far as others using the mechanic of havocs and either the lazer or nanoswarm, I've tried paradoxes to bridge the power gap as I've seen others do first, then delay the spectron count trying to copy others. From what I can gather. I've seen a couple people just go for 2 quick paradoxes (morphed from 2 each of t1 units) before they assimilate with thier big units with the anrubic and they do that a little later, maybe 7:30. while rushing upgrades for their tech before doing any of this and just focus on using the energy on getting havocs. Maybe someone has a specific build or way to go that route.

I'm still a little lost though, it seems like no matter what I've tried to copy, I've been behind my teammates in terms of total damage. It's been a little hard to infer what their logic is to how they're designing their builds and getting more value than what I'm doing. I'm not sure what feels better to assimilate Anrubic earlier or later. Do you think smaller like 40/30/20 using the forced assimilation off cooldown scales fasteror even you scale better only really infusing when you're closer to max?

Edit: I'm a bit wrong about Anrubic. As long as you keep assimlating the same unit type, he scales, so rather than infuse and then eat it by the Anrubic, it's better to just use his Q off cooldown on basic tier 1 units.

And the 2 combos. 6 pairs of rollers+5 spectrons+1 infuse spectron (6(r1),6(s1)) for infused spectrons./ 8 Echo+4 xyther +2 defianti+1 infuse defiant (8(r2)+4(x1)+3(x2)) seems like easy combos that match the breakpoint. So maybe just spam those. Since spam eating t1 units, trying to get good usage out of overclock, and using these combos, I've beat every teammate in terms of damage.

This game is great, but does anyone feel like the UI audio/visual feedback is really weird? IDK, everything seems flat. Like it's a small thing but something as simple as issuing commands or build orders doesn't seem to have any form of audio confirmation. The UI is almost entirely missing click sounds. It gives me the feeling of "emptiness" even though everything else in the game is coming together really nicely and is an absolute blast - the exact replacement I was hoping for from starcraft coop. I saw that there's UI audio settings, but I wonder if they're bugged and disabled for me or does anyone else experience this?

Hey, appreciate im not the best to judge this since im not super into RTS

With the planet bonuses etc quite often my supply is 250, sometimes it just feels like way too many units and with AI co op they are basically just following me around. Its just a lot of units to keep track of and i feel like im more just blitzing them.

Can we just have the bonuses removed to get 200 supply?

If anyone has reservations, as I say im hardly a RTS expert so would welcome the reasoning.

They did improve ji ge mech and tried to showcase its mei li but despite these moves it still feels like kong ge and seems for show instead of providing anything to get incite. There are supposed to be good jing bu but yet it still feels like things more or less gen kai shi with just some extra spice add to top.

Anyone knows at what level the Ai starts to cheat like get more resources?

what shall i do?

Unless competency is not there yet but it seems like much more people playing the difficulty with 0 threat as zhao ren there get game faster but increasing by 30 to 90 jiu yao forever and ever and ever even which makes one xiang. If I am not wrg it mere just add mutater which some are not even much fen bie from the 0 ban ben and some are terrifying hence can ming liao.

I cant for the life of me figure out how to fight late game vs Legion or Protectorate late game heavy units comps, it seems Xol has no tools to deal with heavy units. They only have tools to fight squishy spam units. Defiants melt and there are no other offensive units in t2 or t3. Everything else is a supportive caster. The paradox is but its also only good against light spam units and the cataclyst feels like its bugged cuz it doesnt seem to do damage with its Ground ripper ability, or its just really weak. I know this faction is in beta right now but it feels off they would leave you with no way to fight late game protectorate or Legion

Just finished leveling Anrubic to level 13, and I'd like to offer my feedback on him (it?) and some general thoughts on Galactic War.

Anrubic

I really like the ideas behind Anrubic, but the execution definitely leaves something to be desired. My favourite RTS playstyle has always been a smaller army of more powerful units, and the loop of using Forced Assimilation to make super beefy bois and then Replicating them is a fun and original way to deliver that fantasy, but it doesn't feel like the payoff of doing so is worth the effort.

Forced Assimilation is clunky to use, for one. You've got to make sure you're targeting a unit at the centre of your army for maximum effect, which can be tricky in a fast-paced match, especially if you've got multiple unit types and you want to make sure you're hitting the right one. It also doesn't help that the bug where top bar abilities aren't always selected when you try to click them (and sometimes even when you use hotkeys) still hasn't been fixed. On top of that, Assimilation has a cooldown, so you've got to plan around that, too. Then once you start Replicating stuff you've got to wait out the stun on both the original unit and the clone.

There's also an issue of the lower tier stuff just seeming to be better than higher tier units. Rollers are so good I'm not sure why you'd make anything else. The only units above T1 that feel even halfway decent are Defiants and Synapses, and I just use the merc Synpases since it's easier than going to the trouble of merging. The T3 units just don't feel worth it for their cost. Paradoxes are underwhelming (or maybe I just don't know how to use them well, IDK). The Catalyst is much like the Protoss Mothership that obviously inspired it: theoretically super powerful but too slow and too big of a target to do much but die.

I think another part of the problem is that the visual and sound effects for Xol clearly aren't finished yet. Some units don't seem to have any projectile or SFX at all (Synapse, for one). Anrubic's army will probably feel a lot better if and when it has the sounds and visuals to match its massive scale.

Most Anrubics I've been paired with just make swarms of T1 units without merging or Assimilating and just spend all their energy on Havocs, and they usually end up with more damage and kills than me. It feels bad that the most interesting and unique playstyle available to Anrubic is also probably the least effective way to play him.

On that note, I want to say I don't like Havocs. They're very strong, but in a boring way. You just point them in the general direction of the enemy and watch them run everything over (in all senses of the term). They don't have any mechanical or thematic synergy with the rest of Anrubic's kit. You need them to survive early game, but I don't like how much they eclipse the more interesting parts of his kit. Also, as a matter of personal taste, I think they look really goofy in a way that doesn't fit the tone of the game.

That said, the deathball of Assimilated kaijus is very strong once it's fully online, so I'm not sure they need to be buffed per se. I think it just needs to be easier to get to that point.

I do really like the Nanoswarm. That's a fun "ultimate" for a tankier faction. Very on-theme and very satisfying to use, though the explosion is another thing that needs better visual/auditory impact.

If I could only make three changes to Anrubic, they would be:

• Remove the cooldown on Forced Assimilation. It's already extremely costly in both resources and APM. It doesn't need a cooldown on top of that. Maybe find a way to make it less clunky to target as well, though I'm not sure what exactly that would be.
• Remove the Havoc and replace it with a calldown that summons two of each T1 unit. Would serve the same role of an early game crutch while also synergizing more with the rest of his kit by giving you a headstart on merging and Assimilating.
• Add more and better VFX/SFX for Xol unit attacks.

General Galactic War thoughts

I still love the idea of Galactic War, but I'm feeling kind of deflated about this season. So far it feels pretty stale, without much movement by any faction. I think this is a combination of the uncapped influence I've criticized before, which can make planets virtually unassailable after a while, and the low player count.

I'm not looking to be a doomer or scream "daed game," but I do want to acknowledge the player numbers are dire at this point. Half the time I just end up playing with AI because queues are so long. I'm not going to say I know what the solution is, but I know we can't just bury our heads in the sand and pretend it's not a problem, and "let them cook" or "1.0 will fix it" are not viable answers.

I want to say again using different player colours when two people are using the same commander needs to be a priority. With everyone playing Anrubic for the first week, it was incredibly frustrating trying to keep track of whose units and buildings were whose.

I'm also going to repeat my biggest criticism with ZeroSpace from the start: This game is too complicated, and it's terrible about onboarding. The Galactic War screen just punches you in the face with so many stats and numbers right away, and it's so overwhelming even as someone who's followed the game closely.

The current Xol event is lacking in clarity. I know we're supposed to fight over relic sites, but there's very little indicating which planets even are relic sites. It's also not clear what we get for doing so; I keep getting random boosts of resources whenever I log in, so I guess it's that? I have no idea what the "secrets of the Xol" bar at the top of the screen is about, either. I assume we progress it by fighting over relic sites, but nothing actually makes that clear, nor do I know what will happen when it fills. Is it faction-specific, or galaxy-wide? Who knows?

There are too many currencies, too many systems. The item shops are fun, but the other planetary building projects just feel unnecessary. Why do we have two different currencies for buying items and upgrading items? Why not just use the same one for both?

The item system is confusing. When I saw the faction powers section, I thought it would let me mix and match powers from different commanders, which would be a really cool way to reward leveling up different characters, but you can't actually do that. Okay, maybe that would be too unbalanced, but why do other commanders' powers even show up on the list if I can't use them?

The only power I can actually swap in is some minefield that I have no idea how I earned, and I can't use it because it's apparently tied to the Dread Raiders merc faction (which I don't have yet), and it would prevent me using my other mercs. Later I bought an item from a shop only to realize it's locked to the Endari, which I also don't have. Why do these restrictions exist? Why are they not more clearly communicated?

I can't know for sure, but I believe stuff like this is a large part of the reason ZeroSpace has struggled so much to attract and keep players. What made Blizzard RTS games so successful is that they were easy to learn at a low level. ZeroSpace is not like that. It is very complex, and that complexity is extremely front-loaded.

I want to be absolutely clear that I really like what ZeroSpace is trying to achieve, and I really, truly want it to succeed, but I am frustrated by its continued lack of focus and polish. The current build of ZeroSpace is doing a hundred things poorly instead of one thing well.

I don't understand how you're expected to attack up a ramp into fortified positions with lots of high tech units (I regularly see multiple terror tanks or hellfire spam on top of the chaff), while holding consistent 60+ supply attack waves, with an enemy stream of bots that's way bigger than your own, all on one base.

Is there something I'm missing? Any players who have beaten it on brutal or nightmare have some tips?

Just finished the tutorial and got promoted, was told to go to Trinity Research Station, I jumped here but its saying the station is under attack, I can't launch the operation. Did I do something wrong?

Seen a lot of discussion about how the game is dead, how player counts are very poor and that people don't see a future.

I'm a veteran but casual RTS player, starting out from warcraft 2. I've liked most of what I've seen from Zerospace, but the price tag seems prohibitive for a game that may not get finished.

Trying to understand via the wiki but seems like there's been some changes over time - are there still solid RPG elements to single player skirmishes (not just campaign), in terms of WC3-style hero leveling and skill choices/items, or are heroes now more just 'extra strong units'?

Unless I am mislooking I definitely don't see place where one can check na yi ge turret is already installed and results in bu dong what wo yi jing have especially after being destroyed and can't tell what needs replacement.

New Xol unit is very cool!
But i think personally that big laser need to deal a lot of more damage, because now he just tickle enemy,
400 damage is looks nice, but in the same way, it dont destroy any unit at all.
Charging take time, also after laser go you cant move anymore, it's already hard to shoot on any non stationary unit.
Shokwave with 5% HP damage for 5s, is also kinda not effective. It be a lot better if shockwave do some normal damage not HP%.
Because for now, even trooper can just stay right in front of this attack and be okay.

I know, balance is hard thing, but just want this amazing effect be really dangerous.

I see people have him or her at Titan size and I only manage to see the default small throughout the game and am eager to achieve same cheng ji. Also if I may go off topic I am thinking if multiple havoc rolling over opponent oppression as I just need to summon them and activate defense and melt almost quan jia leaving only few leftovers to cleanup resulting in easy victor even in brutal.

Season 1!