Zero-K — patch notes and updates
Stored observation / content update:
Dated developer announcements recorded from Steam. Open the source for the complete update.
| Update | Date | Excerpt / source |
|---|---|---|
| Zero-K v1.14.6.0 - By Popular Demand | 2026-06-13 | 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 f |
| Cold Take #42 - Reclaimable Wrecks | 2026-06-07 | 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 dynamic |
| Zero-K v1.14.5.4 - Wire and Egg Fixes | 2026-05-31 | 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 bei |
| Zero-K v1.14.5.3 - Eggs and Wires | 2026-05-28 | 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 fr |
| Cold Take #41 - Deathballs and Auras | 2026-05-17 | 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 i |
| Zero-K v1.14.5.0 - Planetwars Playtest Command Tweaks | 2026-05-02 | 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 fixe |
| Planetwars Lobby Update | 2026-04-29 | 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 | 2026-04-25 | 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 |
| Zero-K v1.14.4.0 - New Music and Brawny Dante | 2026-04-12 | 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 o |
| Cold Take #39 - Special Abilities | 2026-04-04 | 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 abilit |
| Cold Take #38 - Avoid State Toggles | 2026-03-15 | 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 |
| Cold Take #37 - Scouting Trouble | 2026-02-21 | 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 you |
| Zero-K v1.14.2.0 - Lobster, Magpie, Venom, and Engine | 2026-02-07 | 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 smoo |
| Cold Take #36 - Bounding the Strategic Triangle | 2026-01-31 | Strategic freedom is a fragile thing, yet the feeling of devising your own plans is something that many games try to instil. The issue is that, as players explore and refine their strategies, the space of viable strategies can narrow down to a few options. This is usually seen as a problem with competitive multiplayer, but singleplayer games are not immune. Any game that offers strategic exploration and mastery risks revealing itself to have only a single best approach, and if the challenges become great enough, players will resort to it. This problem is never fully solved, only managed, but there is still quite a bit in the managing. This po |
| Zero-K v1.13.12.1 - Mostly Graphics Fixes | 2025-12-29 | The Huge Graphics Update of last week was a huge success and only introduced a few minor issues. This update fixes the ones that we are aware of. Fixed a texture detail issue that made units slightly pixelated and a bit harder to distinguish at medium zoom levels. Tweaked outlines to be a bit more visible when zoomed out, by default. Fixed status effects clipping into undamaged nanoframes. The status effect shader thought that nanoframes should be deformed, but they are not. Fixed grid hotkeys missing from most build menus. Added Colemak keyboard layout preset (thanks allentiak). Factories now open automatically when completed. Amph and Spide |
| Zero-K v1.13.12.0 - Huge Graphics Update | 2025-12-22 | This update overhauls the tech behind drawing units, wrecks and map features on your screen. This has many advantages. To start with, it allows for more and better looking fancy unit rendering effects, many of which are showcased in gif form below. It should also be less performance hungry on most hardware since it makes much more use of the GPU. The deeper impact is that the new tech (physically based rendering) gives artists more tools to make units look even better. Tweaking textures to work with the new tech is an ongoing process, and one that would be much improved by the help of a volunteer artist or two. Another task is that of improvi |
| Cold Take #35 - Shields as Spherical Shells | 2025-11-16 | Shield generators are a mainstay of sci-fi across mediums, and RTS is no exception. Games tend to use shields as an extra type of hitpoints, one that tends to have some advantage or is at least easier to replenish. They also make for great eye candy. So it is weird that Total Annihilation lacks shields, and understandable that almost every game it spawned includes them. Even TA modders got in on the action, although reportedly the shields were quite laggy as they reused the nuke interception system. Zero-K uses shields both in close quarters combat and as defence against long ranged artillery. Very long-time players, or just those with some k |
| Cold Take #34 - Build a Navy | 2025-10-26 | This is a guest post by Aquanim, who led the 2016 sea rework. Over two thirds of our own planet is covered by oceans. Therefore, strategy games which are played on planetary landscapes have some reason to consider how to handle bodies of water. The simplest approach is to treat water bodies as an impassable barrier to land units and leave it at that. In games where units can interact with water, often this is reserved for a special class of ship-type units, but beyond this distinction “water” is just another terrain type. The physics-driven mechanics of Zero-K require us to give some deeper thought to how units ought to behave on and around w |
| Cold Take #33 - Give It Slow | 2025-10-05 | Slow damage is the more prolific, yet less dramatic, cousin of EMP and disarm. It is weaker than EMP in that it never fully disables a unit, but the effect gradually ramps up from the very first instance of damage, making it useful in more situations. This gradual but persistent effect let us spread slow across more weapon types and roles, to the point it became a meme. But whereas EMP was inherited from pre-Complete Annihilation modding, slow was created from scratch, and upon reviewing the history it is somewhat surprising that it came to exist at all. Last time we covered the development of EMP, and how it became synonymous with lightning. |
| Zero-K v1.13.9.5 - Hotfixes and Jump Stun | 2025-09-20 | This update has tweaks and fixes for the update from two weeks ago. Detriment now responds to status effects while winding up its jump, and being transported cancels the jump entirely. Racketeer is also better at keeping large units disabled. Tweaks Status effects and transportation interact with the jump windup of Jugglenaut and Detriment. Stun and disarm pause windup progress. Jump cannot be cancelled or re-targeted this way. Slow makes the windup take longer. Picking up a winding up unit in a transport cancels the jump and wastes the reload. Racketeer overkill prevention works better against Detriment and Paladin. Previously its goal was j |