AI War 2 News

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:The_Great_Refactor#Beta_3.902_Spire_Onslaught

The Chromatic Spire Dyson Sphere, Gray Spire Dyson Sphere, and Splintering Spire factions (all in DLC1) are now available for everyone with that DLC! Previously, these were gated to just DLC3 testers while we ironed out the most notable kinks in them.

These are very interesting factions, because they can be used a few different ways. For a very low impact method, you can simply enable the new dyson spheres and they'll have some minor impact on their local neighborhood, and not much else. Low impact factions can be quite nice for adding flavor!

On the other hand, if you add the Splintering Spire faction, then a whole bunch of things happen: the dark spire, plus all the dyson spheres, are automatically added. The chromatic and gray spire are busy harvesting some dark spire remains that they are slingshotting in from outside the wormhole network, and in general they have a bit of a war going on with that. If you help one side become suitably powerful, this unlocks the ability to hack for either warheads (Gray Spire) or Interplanetary Weapons (Chromatic Spire). This is an exciting new war front that you can turn on in your game, and it unlocks some powerful new tools for you, as well, if you engage with it. Major thanks to StarKelp for the excellent implementation of this, and to Ovalcircle for a lot of early feedback on it.

Also regarding spire, the fallen spire have gotten a bit of a nerf compared to what they've been since gaining modular capabilities. Their power had roughly quintupled, but now it should be more back in line with what it is supposed to be. Big thanks to CRCGamer for fixing that up.

Lots more DLC3 updates, some bugfixes, and a variety of new pieces of art. The new DLC1 spire features now all have proper icons, and the last of the base-game art updates that I had planned (command stations, data centers, battlestations, and more) are now in place. Additionally, some more DLC2 are is implemented.

More to come soon.
Enjoy!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:The_Great_Refactor#Beta_3.901_Modular_Forcefields

Lots is happening around here these days!

The modular units feature is now feature-complete, mainly needing bug reports and testing now. Any weapons can be set up and used in whatever combination, and the same with a variety of features like cloaking and tachyon and tractor beams. The game now supports modular hull and shield health, and also bubble forcefields. It's possible that at some point more types of modules will be added, but realistically this is plenty and quite large already; it matches everything that AIWC could do, I believe, except that it's easier to use and can support (a lot) more modules per ship.

Expert mode and the others like it now have fancy new introductions thanks to Strategic Sage, and a few more balance items tweaked in them.

DLC2 now has a new Prototype Assault Frigate that is CRCGamer's first modular unit, and quite cool to see. Additionally, his Riot Control Cruiser was always intended to be modular, but was just waiting for the modular code to arrive. Now that it has, the RCC is also fully modular! This only applies to new games, but old ones will still function, just minus the modular RCC.

Zeus and Badger have been working hard on DLC3's factions, with lots happening in the Necromancer, Templars, and Elderlings in particular today.

And then the bugfixes... so many bugfixes! Bonus Random Factions working again is one of the big ones, but forcefields also are up properly instantly when you load from savegames, versus having to unpause for a moment first to see them. Actually, in the area of forcefields there are a number of quality of life improvements (like showing their boundaries, built or unbuilt, when you are in construction mode).

Beta exit will hopefully happen this Friday, and at the moment we seem on schedule for that. It's less about new stuff and more about polish and fixes at this point, for the remainder of the week.

More to come soon.
Enjoy!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:The_Great_Refactor#Beta_3.900_Modular_Ships_.2F_Ship_Loadouts

Not a lot exciting in this one... I mean, there are modular ships / ship loadouts now, but it's not like that's the most-requested feature or anything.

Right! So, modular ships -- actually, quite exciting indeed. There are a few more pieces I still need to add to those, and we need actual data for many of the ships (actual modules, etc), but the core framework is there now, and it works well. I've been mentally rehearsing this code for like two years, so in the end it went a lot more smoothly than I was expecting.

At the moment the only modular ships are the Fallen Spire ones, which now blend over the Spire Railgun Shop mod's weaponry into the main game as modules. Thanks to Lord of Nothing for the designs in that mod, and for allowing us to fold in his work as modules and retire his mod. It's really nice to see all the spirecraft not just having coilbeams. Of course, we'll be adding more! In terms of the spire area, and otherwise.

DLC3 balance has been seeing a ton of updates and improvement today in this build, too, thanks to the hard work by Zeus and Badger. There's really quite a lot in there.

There's a few notable bugfixes, including some to mods in general, and to wormhole invasions acting a bit off.

There are also more updates to the Splintering Spire faction/scenario, with lots of hard work by StarKelp in that area. It's still locked to only DLC3 testers for the moment, but that should end soon.

In general the expectation is that we'll be coming out of beta in this coming week.

More to come soon.
Enjoy!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:The_Great_Refactor#Beta_3.807_Spire_And_Neinzul

This one has many exciting things! The most exciting new thing in this one is the Splintering Spire, which is a new DLC1 group of factions that is presently in preview. It should see a wider release within the next week, but right now we're just seeking feedback on it from DLC3 testers. So please give it a try! StarKelp has been doing awesome work with that.

Secondly, there's a lot of balance updates, mostly to DLC3 but a bit to DLC1, thanks to Zeus, and a number of fixes from Badger. The necromancer and elderlings have seen a lot of good balance here.

Lastly, there's a solid set of bugfixes in here, including some beam weapon math fixes from NR SirLimbo. Also a few nullref and other protection fixes thanks to Badger.

More to come soon.
Enjoy!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:The_Great_Refactor#Beta_3.805_Bolstering_Spire

This one has a metric ton of art, a lot of which is focused on the spire, in both the base game and DLC1. Some of the rest is focused on the neinzul in DLC1 and DLC3. In general just making things look better, and adding new art for some of the new units that are coming to DLC1 as it expands shortly.

The Fallen Spire and Spire Infused Empires both work better than ever, and also are more clear, thanks to Badger. In particular, the bolstering mechanics are a lot more clear, and you get your third fleet when you are supposed to, rather than super late. Also more journal entries and other general help text.

On the bugfix front, there's more related to MP, and a few related to SP, again largely thanks to Badger.

There's also a shift with golems knocking smaller units out of the way, including your own units. Let me know how that feels; if it seems off, then I'll disable that except for giant things like the devourer golem.

There are several new spire factions coming to DLC1 in the near future, and those are drawing closer to creation thanks to StarKelp: Chromatic Spire, Gray Spire (both of which are dyson spheres), and then the Spire Shattering faction which sees... them at war including with the zenith dyson sphere, and also some dark spire involvement in a new and exciting way from the base game. I'm also going to be adding a Chromatic Spire Horror small faction in DLC1, because I had a series of cool ideas and some art that was cool that I made by accident while trying to make something else, and so it seemed like a good fit. It is a small faction, but should be neat.

In general there are now a lot more spire factions in this game: rather than just "regular" and "imperial" (which looked the same) and dark spire, we now have regular spire, imperial spire (which are visually distinct now), gray spire, dark spire, and chromatic spire. The chromatic are new in AI War 2 (all of the others had at least some presence in the original AI War), and they're by far the meanest and to some extent scariest out of them. They've been really fun to work on visually.

More to come soon.
Enjoy!