The Cosmonarch's Compass - April, Week 3 news

Cosmonarchy continues to grow, and as activity surges and the game improves, the first premiere tournament of 2024 has reached playoffs! Acropolis #1 has now arrived at the Throneroom stage - a best-of-five, double elimination bracket that culminates in a best-of-seven grand final.

With April's end looming, we cover the first round of the Throneroom stage, a myriad of balance adjustments in various stages of confirmation, and the latest progress made on the Zerg tutorial, Autophagy.

Also, we're nearly to 500 Discord members! Some of them are surely bots... but the number is still getting bigger! If you want to expand our community even further, pop in and introduce yourself!

The first round of Acropolis #1's Throneroom stage came and went this past weekend, with round 2 scheduled for casting this coming Saturday! We had four best-of-five matches play out, and though the top seeds took victory in every case, it wasn't without some strong showings from the underdogs!

Of particular note was Art_Of_Turtle (Zerg, USA), who took Hupsaiya (Protoss, USA) to all five games in an attempted reverse-sweep. The final match saw the people's Zerg get stuffed on the final hurdle, and it was solid macro play from both sides that delivered the most entertaining series from the first round!

With these results noted, our next matchups are already set to play. They'll be broadcast over the weekend, and are as follows:

• Upper Semifinal #1: Hamster (Protoss, Russia) vs Neblime (Zerg, Australia)
• Upper Semifinal #2: The Shambler (Protoss, USA) vs Hupsaiya (Protoss, USA)
• Elimination 1-A: Newt (Terran, USA) vs Tacocake (Zerg, Sweden)
• Elimination 1-B: Art_Of_Turtle (Zerg, USA) vs GeneralAnakin (Protoss, USA)

These series will decide the Upper Final, and see two of our eight players eliminated from championship contention. Join us on Pr0nogo's youtube channel to catch the action live!

In last week's installment, we discussed some balancing ideas for Terran bio - notably, the Shaman, Covenant, and Eidolon. In addition to these considerations, there are a few more candidates for noteworthy changes, so let's talk about them!

The Ultrokor is one of the Zerg's supreme anti-surface options, acting as a durable drain-tank with its Saber Siphon lifesteal passive. This iconic unit is even more powerful in Cosmonarchy, and can even consume corpses to gain a short-lived movement and attack speed steroid. This is certainly a unit that offers great potential, but what with it being buried in tier 3, it's not frequently leveraged - and when it is, it can sometimes feel impossible to defeat!

Reigning in some of its excessive durability would resolve the latter problem, but then the unit would become underwhelming for an endgame option, so the latest proposal involves adding an intermediate tech node between the Shroud and the Cavern, to imitate the way the Pool and Den can be upgraded. This new node would require tier 2, and unlock a buffed Gorgrokor in addition to the Ultrokor. It's a tempting proposal... so let's see if it stands the test of time!

After much consideration, the mineral cost reductions for the Shaman and Eidolon are planned to kick in before the next major release. This means that these specialist units will be more accessible in conjunction with mineral-heavy compositions, which should provide a sufficient increase in their usage during early skirmishes.

There will also be a buff coming for the Cyprian, either in the armor penetration or attack range department. An increase in armor penetration would allow it to pierce early-game units like Goliaths, Zealots, Dracadins, Gladiuses, Izirokors, and Skithrokors, but may not resolve many problems overall. This makes the weapon range buff the more attractive (and more likely) change.

Members of the community have been vocal about the rate of economic growth achievable by macro-focused Zerg. It's too early to tell if this is something to truly be worried about, and it's impossible to imagine that the other races won't develop strategies that fall into and out of favor as the game's overall meta continues to vacillate - but it's something we're keeping tabs on, all the same!

Autophagy, the Zerg tutorial, was first written about in last week's devlog. We covered some of the initial goals, like introducing players to the unique way that Zerg mutate their units and navigate their techtree - but it also establishes how the Zerg command structure works in the Krysilliant sector, Cosmonarchy's distinct setting.

This mission's script required an extensive amount of ideation - and not just because it has the most dialogue events of all three tutorials, clocking in at 69 (nice!). We have a broad affinity for the great, terrifying, and unknowable force of nature. This is what the Zerg could have been in Starcraft, were it not for the eventual humanization of the race by way of infesting Kerrigan - and it got a lot worse in Starcraft 2, with talking Zerg.

In Cosmonarchy, the Zerg's command structure is that of Tendril -> Organ -> Tissue / Cell. Tendrils are loosely-connected collections of Zerg, puppeteered by central hiveminds called Organs. Tissues (structures) and cells (units) make up the composition of Zerg hives, with tissues being chondra (production), nodes (tech), and cesiants (utility and defense). Cells, meanwhile, are denoted as combat, utility, and worker.

There's no handholding to explain all of these terms in the tutorial, but we hope that the contextual clues with which the script is laden are sufficient for attentive players that brave the Zerg tutorial. The dialogue is written in a slightly stilted manner, with diction firmly rooted in biological imperatives, all to best distinguish the limited Zerg speech from that of Terrans or Protoss. The voice of the Ataltreth Entity is now available as the default Zerg advisor on Prerelease builds, so you can play around with it to get a snapshot of what we're cooking up.

And if all that wasn't enough... you'll be attacked immediately by an instant Pool. Good luck!

Though our audiovisuals antics continued with overhauls for the Maverick's Stimpack ability, we're not done yet! With the Gladius continuing to see play in Protoss vs Zerg, it's high time it receives an overlay to indicate when it's in range of a channeling victim. This will help Protoss players know which Gladiuses to keep in the fight, while also making it clear to their opponents which units need to be focused down first.

In conjunction with the recent Zerg advisor replacement, we'll be looking to unlock the last few advisor events by hooking some missing functions. Finding these functions alone is laborious work, but we don't have too many left to isolate, so the next release should have full support for custom advisor notifications!

It'd be quite nice to achieve a playable build of the Zerg tutorial, and it's not an absurd goal to have, either - the script has been completed, and with the voice acting well underway, we'll soon be left with dialogue triggers and AI improvements. We can't promise it'll be done this week, or even before the end of April, but we're getting very close!

The balance changes discussed above will be meditated on before receiving a green or red light, and we'll continue progressing through Acropolis #1's exciting playoffs bracket. Other than that... Here are a pair of this past week's exciting 1v1 casts! Check out what the meta's been looking like lately:

• MoonHunter vs TopRamen - TvT - Qualification BO5!
• Hamster vs Newt - PvT on Impetus!