Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - Beta Beta Changelist 1.0.128.9727

Hi everybody,

We think that stability should now be a lot better. At least, it is in the office. Please let us know if you have any problems.

Also, we are changing the lobby system, so we are aware there are still issues there. ETA for the new lobby is friday.

Changelist 1.0.128.9727:

- Fixed stability problems in lobby screen
- AI will behave more intelligent in island maps
- Added flee behavior to units
- Fixed stability problems in card UI
- Added defensive behavior to AI
- Optimized AI performace
- Desync fix concerning battle result
- Added more tooltips to combat UI
- Fixed serious memory leak in effects
- Fixed animation issue for polymorphed units
- Correct cooldown for zeppelin cloak
- Try-out new dragon balance (it's a TRYOUT, let us know your thoughts )

Have fun!

Afraid I have nothing useful to really add, apart from something which seems to have crept in with the patch before this one: ambient sounds no longer actually play at all in about half the skirmish maps.

I think those patch notes actually mentioned a FIX to ambient sounds. Not sure if this fix actually went as planned.

Anyway, thanks for all your effort Larian!

Dragon adjustments, as far as I can tell. I have not fully tested or quantified the overheat or damage, so some of this is rough.

Mountain Dragon (Combat Dragon)

• Health: 1520
• Damage: High
• Overheat: Rapid
• Passive Skill: N/A
• Active Skill: Acid Blaze (Your fireballs become acid and do damage over time)
• Bonus Researched Unit: Hunter

Zephyr Dragon (Support Dragon)

• Health: 2520
• Damage: Low
• Overheat: Slow
• Passive Skill: N/A
• Active Skill: Purifying Flames (Your fireballs are infused with healing power, overheat is removed.)
• Active Skill: Inspire (Boost a single unit's attack and movement speed)
• Active Skill: Friends with Benefits (Shields a friendly unit, any damage that shield absorbs heals you.)
• Bonus Researched Unit: Shaman

Sabre Dragon (Generalist Dragon)

• Health: 2020
• Damage: (presumed Moderate)
• Overheat: (presumed Moderate)
• Passive Skill: Soar (Increases movement speed of the Dragon)
• Active Skill: Sabotage (Prevents a unit or building from using their abilities.)
• Bonus Researched Unit: Warlock

I'm not the biggest fan of the Zephyr dragon loadout. Purifying flames is good but due to the spammy nature of land combat coupled with the fact that land combat is most of what you get in early game Inspire and friends with benefits don't fit in too well in the very beginning. Both of those abilities are amazing with higher end units (bomber balloons, juggs, ect..) but being able to boost a grenadiers movement speed and attack or protecting a warlock doesn't really help the battle that much. Even the higher end land units need to be used in decent numbers to do much at all. Now by the time you get units that can really benefit from that skill you could have easily picked up those skills on another dragon.

In contrast acid blaze is amazing for devastating those early game trooper/grenadier hordes and soar is a very useful all round ability which can combine with sabotage to suppress a turret in the early game, and then scales up to knocking out higher end units after a few turns have passed. As a result while the dragons eventually become balanced, the Zephyr seems to be at a big disadvantage in the first few turns (which is when the difference in starting skill loadouts really matters).

As for other balancing I am really loving the new RTS AI. When I first started playing the beta the RTS AI was by far the worst part! I would never lose a battle (even on insane) unless the AI had a HUGE advantage in starting troops. Now I had to scale it back to normal to stay up with it most of the time, so kudos to the guy handling the RTS AI.

My only major reservation about this update is I absolutely despise the new shaman behavior! I don't see why it was changed in the first place as it worked fine before but now I have to manually micromanage all my shamans and keep sending them back into the fray to heal units. This means that I can't go into dragon form, and I can't use other unit abilities or manage other fronts. If I ever don't micromanage shamans I end up with all my units dead and a ton of shamans far away doing absolutely nothing. I felt they worked best mixed in with the other units so they could heal whoever needed it. Now they just run away and never heal anything.

Edited: Spacing

I played a good chunk of a campaign with the Zephyr, stacking on a lot of helpful buffs on my Dragon's skill bar. I was only playing against AI, so no enemy Dragon to worry about, but it actually worked pretty well in some cases where I had a tiny force, sometimes only a single unit to defend, and in those situations, the Zephyr saved the day and let me save my units against unfavourable odds.

The Shaman's new behaviour is not helpful, but hopefully it's the kind of thing that can be tweaked a bit so it doesn't retreat back so far. I imagine that just making them figure out the right direction to retreat was challenging enough AI to write.

Holy wall.
Paragraphs man, paragraphs!

I really like the Zephyr now. I'd normally go with Mountain because of the attack skills but this really seems interesting. In campaign mode, those three skills are a really nice way to start, and you can make up for the damage by researching damage abilities to make it versatile and a really effective all-rounder.

Sure, you take the damage penalty, but for the probably relatively short time I've been facing AI I've noticed that the zephyr can save lives. I don't know where my balloons and warlocks would be without it. Even the shamans are often just too late with healing my army themselves.

Regarding the Mountain Dragon... the HP penalty seems to fit well. High damage output, low capability of taking hits. Unlike a typical "tank", I noticed that using the Mountain Dragon is not a matter of just rushing in and letting go... it's a good one to stay with your army, close to your shamans or whatever source of healing is nearby. Just don't go alone. I... kinda regret that every single time :P

Can't say much about the Sabre as I have little experience using that specific dragon.

Do you still have this problem in the latest beta (130)? If so, can you give some specific examples of sounds and maps?