- Cold Take #47 - Scale and Escalation - 20 September 2026
Strategy games are seemingly synonymous with scale. The focus on scale is a bit less for real-time strategy, at least if the fact that my RTS games are not marketed as "epic" is any guide. But even "small" RTS games scale up, or escalate, as the game goes on, and doing so is a powerful pacing tool. So in this post we will look at some ways to approach scale and how we handle scale in Zero-K. Contrast is an important part of imbuing a sense of scale. A game that is entirely about huge armies of huge units may feel big for a while, but players will acclimatise to it so the scale ends up feeling somewhat superficial. Big things need to be near small things to reinforce their bigness, at least in a genre where the player looks down at everything from above. Lumbering units and massive armies can definitely help sell scale, but they should not be the whole game. This seems to be widely accep…
- Cold Take #46 - Giving and Taking Feedback - 30 August 2026
A lot of the polish in Zero-K is driven by player feedback. A single complaint can be enough to spark a re-investigation of some part of the game to check for improvements. Case in point, the recently upgraded build icons are a result of someone complaining that the icons were too hard to see. But it takes good feedback to see this kind of result, so today it is time for some advice on how to give feedback. Then, for balance, I'll talk a bit about how to use feedback. Do not read this post as a strict demand. Giving good feedback can be difficult and not everyone has the time. My hope is just to avoid a few common types of bad feedback. Also, "good" and "bad" does not mean positive (praise) and negative (complaints). Good feedback is useful feedback, and complaints are often useful. Positive feedback can be bad in this sense, but it has additional psychological value, so my advice focus…
- Cold Take #45 - Automatic Dodging - 9 August 2026
Simulated projectile physics is a core part of Zero-K, both for the aesthetics and as a balance tool. Rather than using armour classes, light units are nimble enough to dodge most of the projectiles meant for heavier targets. We also want to create powerful controls, so players can fight their opponents rather than the UI, and automation is part of achieving this goal. So you might expect us to have effective automation that lets units dodge automatically, but in fact dodging is barely automated at all. The apparent contradiction here is the subject of this post. Technically, Zero-K units cannot even see projectiles. Our limited form of automated dodging happens when units expect to be shot at with slow projectiles, rather than based on the presence of projectiles. Sufficiently nimble units dodge by jinking from side to side as they approach enemies with certain weapon types, provided t…
- Zero-K v1.14.8.0 - Unit Icons and Magpie Nerf - 2 August 2026
This update improves the command menu by adding larger build icons with a higher resolution. The bottom of the UI also has a scale setting as we move towards better support for increasingly large screens. There are also a few fixes and a setting that automatically disables cables for Linux users with ATI graphics. Anyone coming forward to reproduce, and potentially even fix, the cable bugs would be appreciated. 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 hopefull…
- Cold Take #44 - Choice vs. Automation - 18 July 2026
Automation means making tasks complete themselves without player intervention. The concept has a bit of baggage, at least in RTS, as people worry it means that a game will play itself. Some spin-off genres have found success in automating away large parts of RTS, such as DotA and autobattlers, but Zero-K wants to retain the core RTS sense of full player control. Sometimes we are accused of automating too much with our powerful UI, but we hold that the value of automation depends on how it is used, as it is not inherently good or bad. What people consider to be automation can be quite hard to pin down since, technically, almost everything in RTS is highly automated. These games run at dozens of frames per second, with many units using their abilities on every single one of them. The player is not consulted about every incremental step their units take when told to move to a position or e…
- Zero-K v1.14.7.0 - Guard and Pulsing Balls - 11 July 2026
This update polishes a few mechanics and includes quite a few fixes. Singularity Reactors get their wobbly balls back and the guard command should be much more useful. Disarm no longer hard-disables jumpers while winding up and some pathfinding problems with cheap nanoframe spam have been resolved. Some of the changes are due to an engine update, which should stick as the engine is close to the end of a stable release cycle. Features Enabled fancy guard handling. This is an engine change that causes guards to maintain their relative position, rather than just trail behind. Disarming a unit during jump windup now cancels the jump, rather than freezing the unit as long as it is disarmed. Added quaternion scaling to reinstate the functionality of the previous matrix manipulation system. Reinstated Likho and Singularity Reactor ball pulsing. Singularity Reactor ball and light disappears whe…
- Cold Take #43 - Levels of Customisation - 28 June 2026
Zero-K is extremely customisable, which is great but risks making the game unapproachable. The problem with customisation is that it asks players to optimise their own experience without necessarily giving them the background required to make an informed choice. In general, an option is useful if players understand it well enough to sort themselves into the various versions of the game implied by the option. Good examples are colour blind modes and language settings, but Zero-K has far more options than these. Another issue is that of overwhelming players with too many options, even if they are all good. Zero-K was designed on the fly, with the UI coalescing out of a hodgepodge of experimentation, so it has been a challenge to make our options reasonable. Most people stick with the defaults. Of those that touch the settings, many will stay in the shallow end with the language selector a…
- Zero-K v1.14.6.0 - By Popular Demand - 13 June 2026
Space clicking wrecks and build options is back by popular demand ( https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K/issues/5742, https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K/issues/5747 and https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K/issues/5750 ). Thanks to everyone who opened tickets to remind us that this probably should have been a hotfix earlier. Fixes Fixed space+click context menu crash when activated on a non-unit. Fixed map download for Planet Karuwal. Commander egg can be built underwater. Fixed Pheonix. Fixed some weird edge cases in grid cable flows. Fixed a rare landing pad bug that the previous patch allowed to trigger for any bomber, rather than just the first bomber built in a game.
- Cold Take #42 - Reclaimable Wrecks - 7 June 2026
The basic reclaim mechanic is as follows: units leave wrecks when they die, and these wrecks can be harvested by constructors for extra metal. This sounds like a simple enough mechanic, but the more I think about it, the more I feel like Zero-K would not work without it. Reclaim is common to most games inspired by Total Annihilation, although its importance varies depending on how lucrative it is. As always, I am only intimately familiar with the design of one of these games, so while the ideas that follow are likely to be widely applicable, I focus on how and why reclaim works the way it does in Zero-K. The main role of reclaim is to dynamically create areas of interest around the map. Some units die in a skirmish, leaving a few hundred metal on the ground, which makes holding the area slightly more enticing. This leads to more battles that drop even more wreckage, which can even snowb…
- Zero-K v1.14.5.4 - Wire and Egg Fixes - 31 May 2026
This is a small fix update which also has some commander tweaks. The big wire change is that the settings are now local, which means people with the graphics bugs on Linux can disable them until we figure out the problem. Fixed cable settings being global, i.e., the last player who toggled cables controlled cables for everyone. This is what caused the setting to look like it needed toggling to work properly. Put cable settings in "simple settings" while we work out the linux graphics bugs. Fixed various problems with uneven teams and resigned players not allowing a team to hatch their full complement of commanders. Fixed Egg morph buttons being greyed out in some incorrect situations. Hatched commanders no longer have free radar and income. This is to retain the game impact of an early commander kill. Commander range module gives +25 range instead of +7.5%. This nerfs longer ranged weap…
- Zero-K v1.14.5.3 - Eggs and Wires - 28 May 2026
This update adds wires between structures to visually connect energy grids. This makes grids easier to use and more satisfying to build. We have also added commander eggs, which let players rebuild lost commanders. The egg can also be transported and thrown, to take advantage of its disabling explosion. On the more regular side of things we have a revert of the Hermit regeneration experiment, and numerous features and fixes. These include a new attrition graph for the endgame stats, and a lighting system update to fix the Pylon light bug. Balance Fixed commander morph costs being unintentionally far too high. Added Commander Egg. Buildable from the bottom right of the Special tab. Costs 600 metal. Morphs to commander for free if the team has lost commanders. Hatched commanders are given to players without a commander. Can be thrown and detonated for 20k disarm and slow damage. Hermit lo…
- Cold Take #41 - Deathballs and Auras - 17 May 2026
The term "deathball" comes up whenever players complain that roaming around the map with a single army is too powerful. The complaint conflates whether deathballs are unfun to use, or just unfun to fight, but it is worth keeping both possibilities in mind. Most RTS designs address deathballing to some extent, but vary on how much they mitigate its issues or just outright discourage it. Deathballing is the natural state of RTS, in the same way that without a balanced strategic triangle, players would end up playing either all-in rushes or greedy economic booms. Another way to think about it is if you randomly throw together a generic RTS, it is going to be a game of deathballs. In fact, the deathball would probably consist of one unit type. This is a result of Lanchester's Square Law, which states that an army of ten units is more than twice as powerful as an army of five. Without any re…
- Zero-K v1.14.5.0 - Planetwars Playtest Command Tweaks - 2 May 2026
Planetwars is live right now. The second open playtest is in full swing, with 240 invasions launched in the past 26 hours. We designed the round to last the weekend, although it is hard to dial in, although we are considering pausing it during the week. This forum post summarises the changes since the last test. This patch makes command structures easier to kill, which is the main secondary ingame objective of Planetwars. This objective only occured in 6% of the games so far, so representatives from each of the factions agreed that it was worth trying a change to make things more interesting. The patch also has a few smaller features and fixes, we have notable changes in the works, but they will get their own release. Command Structures Main Command is weaker and harder to repair. Health 10k -> 8k Cost 150 -> 350 Repair health/BP while under fire 25.25 -> 8.65 Now requires 40 nearby BP…
- Planetwars Lobby Update - 29 April 2026
This is a small lobby update to prepare for the next Planetwars test round. The round is starting in a little over 45 hours from this post (2026/05/01 at 12:00 PM UTC). More information on the changes is to come shortly. Factions can now be joined via the in-lobby faction selection UI.
- Cold Take #40 - The Retreat Range Bonus - 25 April 2026
Cold Takes usually cover a concept used in the design of Zero-K, but this one is about a term invented by players to describe an issue with the game. This issue involved the "retreat range bonus", but the term was initially perplexing because it describes something that is both emergent and ubiquitous. Nobody could tell me how other games dealt with it, and it seemed very hard to remove without breaking some of the basic rules of Zero-K. The retreat range bonus is the apparent range gained by units as they retreat from a battle. Consider two identical units called Chaser and Runner, locked in a battle where Chaser follows Runner while Runner tries to retreat. The retreat range bonus is the observation that, at a certain distance, Runner will be able to fire, while Chaser cannot. In other words, it appears as if Runner gained bonus range on Chaser merely by retreating. Taken at face valu…
- Zero-K v1.14.4.0 - New Music and Brawny Dante - 12 April 2026
This release includes an amazing new soundtrack by Vladislav Lapochkin (D.700). It is the new default, and all previous soundtracks can still be selected ingame under Settings/Audio. Big thanks to everyone who contributes music, eventually we will have enough to give each factory its own theme. The contributions don't stop with an hour of new music. This release also has some Gunship tweaks by Ixzine and a Dante rework based on a mod by StiofanKingofAwoo. The Dante changes are designed to turn it into a brawler, rather than a standoff missile platform, and will require feedback. There are even a few Planetwars balance changes that have come out of our ongoing live testing. This release also includes an unknown number of unintentional balance changes. It all started when some units were found in violation of a few subtleties of weapon design, which let them fire early at targets entering…
- Cold Take #39 - Special Abilities - 4 April 2026
A conflict has been brewing over the course of this series. Half the cold takes, those on general design principles, often imply that Zero-K avoids special abilities, while the other half shatter this impression by being about specific special abilities. In this post we will try to resolve this apparent disagreement by exploring how special abilities work and what makes an ability suitable for Zero-K. The set of design principles arrayed against special abilities is truly daunting. To start with, abilities that require frenetic or precise clicks are rejected by the idea that players should not have to fight the UI. Many other potential abilities are ruled out for being too numbery, making units too stupid, or for imposing arbitrary target restrictions. Atomic unit design pushes us towards having few abilities, special or otherwise. But despite all these restrictions, Zero-K has many mor…
- Cold Take #38 - Avoid State Toggles - 15 March 2026
Almost everything players do in RTS is done by issuing direct commands or by toggling states. Direct commands give units a temporary goal, and include classics such as "move to this location" or "shoot at this enemy until it dies". State toggles make more permanent changes to how a unit behaves, at least until the state is toggled back. Examples include auto-cast toggles, toggleable abilities, and the stance and formation buttons used in the Age of Empires series. Toggles can be fine when used sparingly, but Zero-K did the opposite, to the point that we might have more than any other RTS. The upside is that we learned a lot about how and why to avoid state toggles. The allure of state toggles is that they seem to epitomise the idea of Fight Your Opponent, Not The UI. Players should be able to express their wishes with minimal commands; in Warcraft III you want a Priest to use its extra…
- Cold Take #37 - Scouting Trouble - 21 February 2026
Most strategy games have tools for spying on the enemy, often at the cost of resources. This is known as scouting, and it is a tricky thing to design since its balance depends on the usefulness of information. Scouting is a waste of resources if you know the enemy's plans, or if your response would not be changed by knowing them. On the other end of the scale, games with large strategy spaces rely on strong scouting to keep strategic RPS in check. To complicate things further, the power of scouting changes over the course of a game as the strategy space expands. Scouting is always competing for resources that could be spent on building up your economy or deploying a larger army. Small differences early in a battle can snowball into a large advantage later, which makes scouting a hard sell for the early game. In Zero-K this is reflected by a lack of dedicated light scout units. Early sco…
- Zero-K v1.14.2.0 - Lobster, Magpie, Venom, and Engine - 7 February 2026
This release is mainly about tweaking a few overused units. Venom is slightly worse at stunning to counteract the overstun change, and other Spiders were buffed to compensate. Lobster now gives the enemy a little more time to react and Magpie should be easier to scare away. Terraform is also UI-nerfed against Missile Silo, as the Force Fire UI now warns you about unintended terrain interactions. The engine was also updated, and it should stick this time as it was found to be quite stable in testing. The big feature is the adoption of quaternions for unit animation (just in the backend, no API changes), which makes units move and aim more smoothly. Missile trails are also much smoother, replacing the old jagged lines. These changes were blocked behind the game-side graphics update of a few months ago, and the work is ongoing. For example, this release includes a new shiny Likho texture b…
