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AI War 2 News

5.009 Zeusathon II And DZ Sidekicks

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion#5.009_Zeusathon_II_And_DZ_Sidekicks

This continues our recent trend of Very Large Builds. There's a ton of fixes and tweaks in here from Tom Prince and SirLimbo, as is a bit usual for recently. But this time, Zeus has come back and put out his "largest patch since DLC3 released," which is almost an understatement. Tons of balance to the necromancer, the zenith architrave, and otherwise.

Badger has created his first mod, which is kind of a surprise feature here. You need to have DLC2 to use the mod, but basically what this does is give you a human-playable version of the Dark Zenith, which is... not something I ever thought I would see. This only works if you have a human empire next to them, as is the case with the necromancer sidekick, so you either need two factions in single-player, or to use this in multiplayer. You control the Dark Zenith military forces only; their economy runs without your control (controlling the economy would be very tedious and unfun)

In some respects, this is like our prior concept for vassals, except... better in some respects? This also provides a nice template that other modders could use to make sidekick versions of our other factions, or of their own modded-in factions. Very interesting indeed.

More to come soon.
Enjoy!

5.008 Xenophiles And Outguard

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion#5.008_Xenophiles_And_Outguard

v5.008 includes the fix to the lobby bug in the prior build, and thus also all the other improvements are back from the prior build. Big thanks to Tom Prince for finding that one-character bug of mine.

But also in this build are just piles and piles of new goodies. In no particular order:

Lots of DLC3 updates, many of them Necromancer-related, ranging from balancing tuning from Zeus to quality of life and bugfixes from Tom Prince.

The Skirmisher AI has been heavily nerfed after player feedback, thanks to CRCGamer.

SirLimbo has more updates on the new prototype version of the tooltips (there's a personal settings option to preview it if you want), and Tom Prince also had some new additions there.

Brutal Guardians in DLC3 now have a lot better options for configuring them, thanks for SirLimbo (their original creator).

And then holy cow, there's a whole "Xenophile" update, mostly to the base game, thanks to Arnaud B, a longtime contributor. This has a few bugfixes, but mainly a giant list of balance updates to everything from the Zenith Dyson Sphere (to bring it up to interestingness levels along the lines of the Spire Spheres), the Dyson Ships, the Dark Spire, and Risk Analyzers. He ran these changes by me first, and it's the sort of thing that looks to really enhance the existing factions versus making them fundamentally different, so that was an easy thumbs up from me.

Then we have a new mod called Outguard Party, from first-time modder, long-time tester, Dismiss. This basically makes the Outguard almost-free to acquire, so that it's a lot more fun/interesting to experiment with them. I'd always avoided doing something like this for fear of balance implications, but as a mod this is a really great way to allow more experimentation in that area... and it may not have as notable of balance effects as I had always worried.

More to come soon.
Enjoy!

5.007 The Reasonable Architrave

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion#5.007_The_Reasonable_Architrave

Heck of a lot in this one. The Zenith Architrave were accidentally still generating income for themselves while the game was paused, and that is stopped now; they should be way more consistent difficulty. Thanks to Badger for finding that rabbit hole.

Really a lot of necromancer odds and ends that constitute polish, error avoidance, better handling of edge cases, and so on. Most of that was Tom Prince. There are also some new modules in for the Necromancer now that cost a mere one module point, so you won't be forced to have remainders anymore. Thanks to Zeus.

Evidently we still have some softlock situations, and aborting all the threads was not working, so that was clearly not a thread stuck issue. That mean it was an "Exchanger variable" stuck in a wrong state. I extended the threading framework to now centralized ThreadingExchangers, and extended the "abort all threads" functionality to reset these, as well. This should definitively let us find the softlocks for anyone who still has them... knock on wood.

Oh, Elderlings are no longer such Science Pinatas for human empires. That was a nice thing to get rid of. A number of other bugfixes, some MP specific and some not, in general. Few mod updates. Experimental tooltip mode additions by SirLimbo. Improvements to the Showdown Device hacking. Dyson Sphere faction hacking scaling balance from StarKelp.

So many things!
More to come soon.
Enjoy!

5.006 End To Spontaneous Combustion

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion#5.006_End_To_Spontaneous_Combustion

More cleanup and fixes, and this also puts an end to the "my ships spontaneously combust sometimes" bug that has been around in rare reports for the last month, and then got more common with the influx of new players. Big thanks to Badger for figuring out the solution on that one.

Lots more necromancer polish bits, most of those thanks to Tom Prince, and some balance adjustments to the Migrant Fleets from StarKelp.

SirLimbo also found and fixed a strength calculation bug, which now makes it so that strength is more accurately reported (it will look lower in many cases, but it's actually just being reported more correctly; the actual underlying power is all the same).

More to come soon.
Enjoy!

5.005 Threat Properly Threatens

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion#5.005_Threat_Properly_Threatens

Lots of fixes, and some balance tweaks. The threat counter shows properly again, which is probably the most notable fix in here. That was a recent regression. The second most notable fix is that some of the AI Eyes and similar in DLC3 no longer are quite so good at taking your lunch money.

A number of multiplayer fixes in here, several of which could lead to error cascades, so that's nice to have gone. A number of UI and mechanical fixes from SirLimbo and Tom Prince, and other general cleanup.

More to come soon.
Enjoy!