AI War 2 News

Full release notes here.

Another suite of improvements thanks as always to Badger!

Also, as a side note, Heart of the Machine 1.0 is coming up on March 6th!

[h2]Strength Calculation[/h2]

• Change the strength calculation code to allow weapons that fire only on death to contribute much less to strength estimates. These weapons fire very infrequently and are often very powerful by comparison to "regular" weapons.
  
• This was causing corrosive ships in particular to have significantly inflated Strength values.
  

[h2]Manual strength rating adjustments[/h2]

• These changes are mainly hidden within the XML and serve to better represent actual versus perceived value to the AI. The following had their hidden adjustments changed:
  
• Beam Cannon 2 -> 1.7
  
• Holocene Missile Turret 3 -> 2.3. With how slow the projectiles are they often arrive late. Thereby wasting some damage potential.
  
• Fuseball Turret 3.2 -> 2.5. Still an incredibly strong turret, but often has its damage forcibly spread out into nearby strikecraft.
  
• Solar Flare Turret 3 -> 2.4. This particular turret also has received additional changes, but lost significant maximum target allotment.
  
• Minefield 0.1 -> 0.05. Outside of a select few AI types that only utilize guardians or very large ships these mines often waste a lot of their potential damage output.
  
• Ambush Carrier Frigate 1.0 -> 1.4. Very long ranged engine stun and creates sub-units dealing most of its damage.
  
• Phantasmal Host Frigate 2.0 -> 2.3. The decoys with shot attraction really do need more accounting for within the base unit.
  
• Darker Mirror Frigate 1.0 -> 1.2. A light tap to strength rating to better let the AI account for the inevitable reflected damage.

[h2]Balance Changes[/h2]

• Corrosive Frigate on-death Finale weapon damage lowered from 9,000 to 5,850 at mark one.
  
  • The effect on Mk7 damage is 50,400 -> 32,760 for this weapon.
    
  • Keep in mind this can hit up to 15 targets so the potential damage is still quite high.
    
  • Still quite strong but is less efficient when it comes to just throwing these ships through a wormhole to die and remove defenders via on-death guaranteed damage.
    
• Solar Flare Turret weapon revised for reliability.
  
  • Changed from standard beam to point-beam attack logic.
    
  • Target count per salvo standardized at 10 max. Previous range was potentially 3 to 27 depending on stacks and some luck.
    
  • Paralysis duration for each target hit increased from 2 to 5 seconds.
    
  • Damage per hit doubled from 11,400 to 22,800.
    
  • Maximum DPS attainable without buffs reduced from 37,800 to 28,000.
    
  • End result is a turret that can far more reliably control a portion of swarm. Far more consistently applies an expected degree of crowd control. The previous version varied between 6 to 54 effective seconds of CC per salvo depending on if it could fill its target allotments for each of the three beams. And often it would fail to do so.

[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]

• Phantasmal Host Decoys will no longer get immediately de-spawned by the game as invalid. But will again contribute towards AI counter attack progression when killed.
  

[h2]Heart of the Machine[/h2]
https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/742666698308452998 https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/742666698308452854

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/

Full release notes here.

A suite of improvements thanks as always to Badger!

The name of this update is actually a reference to a Normal Rockwell painting by the same name. The kid holding his dad's hand in that particular painting is actually my uncle!

[h2]Main Game Updates[/h2]

• Previously the game was assuming that multiple-shots-per-salvo ships only ever shoot 1 shot per salvo when calculating the ship's Strength. This meant that these ships were be consistently underrated in strength. Instead, we now allow the game to assume multiple hits are possible. There's a little math done also to make sure that small ships with a lot of shots per salvo don't suddenly have very high strength numbers (since the ships die quickly).
  
• Fix some problems in the "How To Play" in-game documentation.
  
• The Fleet overview for a necromancer fleet will now tell you how many units have been killed by the various ship lines (when holding Ctl to see detailed tooltips). This count resets on game load. The goal is to give a necromancer player some additional insight into how their units are performing.
  
• Fix a bug where the DZ Svikari didn't have an Overall Power Level.
  

[h2]Forge Of Empires (Formerly Known As Sidekicks)[/h2]

• Tweak some of the journal entries for Forge of Empires to improve new user experience.
  

[h2]Heart of the Machine[/h2]
https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/742666698308452591 https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/530996781696156232 https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/515233548718835625

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/

Full release notes here.

Just one bugfix to a mod, based on player feedback.

[h2]Forge Of Empires (Formerly Known As Sidekicks)[/h2]

• Fix a bug where using the Tiberium faction without the Armada would cause errors.
  

[h2]Heart of the Machine[/h2]
These are all the updates since the last AI War 2 updates:
https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/519736513892713021 https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/497217247660475729

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/

Full release notes here.

Anyone else ever play that old map on Unreal Tournament back in the day? The description of the new map reminds me of that one.

[h2]Forge Of Empires (Formerly Known As Sidekicks)[/h2]

• Armada Locusts no longer attrition while moving between planets.
  
• Armada Empire can build mines on hostile planets, not just AI-owned planets. This allows marauders or other factions that clear out the AI to no longer be such hard counters to the Armada.
  
• Add a new map type that's essentially "two large cluster with one connection between them".
  

[h2]Heart of the Machine[/h2]
These are all the updates since the last AI War 2 updates:
https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/497217247660475729 https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/497215345380035328 https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/497215345380035094 https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/497215345380035089 https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/497215345380034905

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/

Full release notes here.

[h2]Forge Of Empires (Formerly Known As Sidekicks)[/h2]

• Buff AI Locusts.
  
• Tweak the Ark Sidekick/Empire Aprahanti and Gaunt arks based on player feedback.
  
• Update the Huntrix AI a bit.
  
• Add an Objective for the Armada Empire to use their sockets.
  
• Add an AI type that should have the reserves more willing to help their overlord.
  
• Add galaxy map views to show the net energy and metal per-planet.
  

[h2]Heart of the Machine[/h2]
https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/497215345380033936 https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/518606895910489482 https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/518606895910487435

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/