v0.95.41

This patch brings 2 new big things, which deserve some text in front of the bullet points:

The first thing is a complete rework how the Phasing Palette effect works. This is what one sees when applying Iron Curtain, Suppression, Frenzy, Shield, Radiation and some other things to a unit. In the future more effects will move into this behavior, which are currently rather static. The change was motivated by a bug that happened with voxel units, where their shadow popped through the unit, once such an effect was applied. This is fixed and the Phasing effect now phases the color of the unit from the remapped team colors, where in the past it would directly remove the team colors and strip over its own colors (of the Phasing effect). This means players can still see the team colors when a unit is under such an effect and the transition happens more natural. This includes some changes to the engine, so crashes may happen, where I did not test enough, sorry, please report crashes, so I can fix fast.

In contrast the second big change gives helicopters infinite ammo or the better wording is it removes ammo. This is a drastic change to balance in some cases and of course cannot just go by itself but needs balance changes along with it. This means those helicopters fly slower and deal less damage or shoot less often. The basic idea is to have 3 classes of aircraft, where the first class are the helicopters, the second class are the jets (or planes) and the third class are the airships. Scrin was a testing field as their aircraft never had ammo, so they could lay sieges from air very effectively, since Scrin is no longer overpowered, but most helicopters are never used in competitive play, it made sense to make changes here. So this means helicopters are units that are fragile but can lay a lot of damage on an enemy who does not have air defense. In the past helicopter strikes would deal about as much damage as a helicopter costed and the next time after reload the enemy was prepared and shot down helicopters. In contrast aircraft are faster, deal more burst damage and were often used in competitive play, most notable the A-10 warthogs and Aurora bombers. This class remains as is, their speed allows to overwhelm air defenses easily and deal effective strikes where the enemy is unprepared, may it be armies or bases. The helicopters now aim to fulfill a role where they can go together with the regular army or completely win a game, when a base is overrun and a player forgot to scout the helicopter armada. The airship class remains also as is, where Scrin excelled most and this class is certainly not fragile, but very slow. In the future some other factions will also gain access to this class, for example with more Kirov variations. It is very likely some things here will be broken, such things will be fixed fast, please report if you find overpowered.

New Features

• Phasing Palette effect now works completely different. Phasing effects now phase out of the remapped team color into the effect for most units and effects.
• Voxel units now have more saturated colors to match the old sprites style.
• Voxel Turrets now have recoil.
• Helicopters no longer have ammo pool and can fire indefinitely.
• Mammoth now has a new model, the old model did not really fit the GDI style.
• Longbow is now Eurocopter and gets a new voxel model.
• Black Hawk gets a new voxel model and is now Sea Hawk.
• Sea Hawk has an upgrade now for Bunker Buster missiles, this is to take out a single defense building fast and suits the role of recon and spec ops missions with the Sea Hawk.
• Hind gets new voxel model.
• Chinook gets new icon.

Balancing

• Most helicopters have infinite ammo now.
• Katyusha Launcher turns faster to make it more mobile.
• Venom Heavy Laser can now also shoot other aircraft (like other Venoms).
• Torpedos from helicopters are buffed.
• Chainneler Tank (Scrin) no longer throws chained rifts at allied units and gets a small damage buff.
• Force Shield now also applies to defense buildings and the cooldown has been reduced (for normal and Nukular mode)

Bug Fixes

• Fix shadow of voxel unit shining through unit after Flickering Palette effects were applied.
• Fix Blackhand Trooper icon.
• Fix Comanche icon in Commander Tree.
• Fix Venom icon in Commander Tree.
• Fix Cryo Blast palette bug.
• Fix crashes for voxel vehicles that leave a husk after destruction.
• Fix a bug that made Spec Ops infiltrate without any effect.
• Fix a bug that applied poison to drivers of vehicles after hit from energy weapon.