v0.3.0
The competitive release: press FIND MATCH and the matchmaker pairs you by skill and latency; every game becomes a rewatchable replay; and a second map brings expansions into the game.
- One button: pick your race, FIND MATCH. The matchmaker (a Durable Object on the relay) pairs players whose Elo gap and combined latency both fit — and both windows widen the longer you wait, so close matches happen fast and a match always happens.
- Latency is real, not guessed: the client probes its RTT to the relay edge, and cross-continent pairs get a penalty.
- Ratings are Elo (K=32, start 1200) keyed to an anonymous ID generated on first launch — no accounts. Your MMR shows on the button and on the end-of-match screen.
- Both players report the result; agreement updates ratings, a rage-quit resolves against the quitter on a timeout, and quitting a ranked game is a forfeit. No bots in the queue — every entry is a live human.
- Ranked games are played on a random map from the pool.
- Every game (vs AI or online) auto-saves to
~/.orion-replays/— a replay is just the seed + command stream, a few hundred KB at most, and reproduces the game bit-exactly. - The main menu gained REPLAYS: recent games listed by date, matchup and length. Watching gives pause (SPACE), speed (1/2/3 = 1×/2×/4×), fog perspective per player or reveal-all (TAB), free camera, and a neutral "NAME WINS" banner.
- Determinism is enforced by test: a recorded game re-simulated from its file must land on the identical checksum.
- An homage to SC2's Xel'Naga Caverns: NE/SW high-ground mains, a natural expansion below each ramp with its own mineral line and geyser (first map with expansions), and cavern rock formations that split the center into a tight middle lane and two wide edge routes.
- Bots understand expansions: they take their natural at ~13 workers.
- Map select on both the vs-AI and multiplayer pages; the host's choice travels in the match handshake.
- Siege micro: Breakers deploy inside working range and pack up when the field clears.
- Storm micro: casters storm the biggest visible enemy clump (3+ units), avoid friendly fire, and never stack storms. Fog-honest — the bot only reacts to what its player can actually see.
- Scouting: a worker pokes the enemy main around 1:20.
- Decisive endgames: maps mine out around minute 15 and the bots go permanently aggressive at 13, all-in at 16 — turtle stalemates ended.
- Plasma Storm nerfed: 100 energy (was 75), 48 total damage over 8 pulses (was 72 over 9), and overlapping storms no longer stack — the stacked version deleted whole armies with no counterplay.
- Spawn fairness overhaul: a mirror-covariance probe proved the two spawns weren't playing the same game — fixed-point multiply rounded toward the northwest, flow-field tie-breaks preferred the northwest, the starting worker arc wasn't point-symmetric, and building-spiral mirroring was off by a footprint. All fixed; the Kyth mirror went from 0–7 for the SE spawn to even, verified by swapping spawns.
- Gather traffic robustness: approach fields now seed from every open tile around a destination, so a walled-in base can't strand its workers (found by the soak harness as a full economy freeze).
- Meridian mineral patches: 1500 → 1000 (mines out by ~15:00 by design).
- The QA soak alternates both maps; map symmetry is audited by a dedicated example across terrain, elevation, resources, expansions and starts.