AI War 2 News

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:The_Great_Refactor#Beta_3.766_The_Red_Harvest

This one has a bunch of necromancer and templar and sapper improvements for those testing DLC3, plus many other balance items.

For those on the beta branch for pre-DLC3 stuff, this has a number of significant bugfixes, most notably around reloading the xml for switching what your enabled mods and/or expansions are. This is the first time that has worked since the start of the Great Refactor, and it's a relief to have that done because it was the single most complicated thing on my todo list prior to us being able to get back off the beta branch.

This build also improves raiders and raid starships a bit, and adds some exciting new foes when you're playing a fallen spire game in DLC1.

Yesterday I spent most of the day organizing items on our bugtracker so that everything is in one place and I can see what is needed to finish out the beta period, the DLC3 test period, expert mdoe, and the complete edition in general. That helps a lot!

More to come soon.
Enjoy!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:The_Great_Refactor#Beta_3.765_Easier_Upgrades_And_Necromancer_Surge

This one feels fairly game-changing just because of one QOL feature in it, which is that you can upgrade your fleets (and see more details about them) right from the techs tab. Various folks had requested that over the years, and having that in now is really awesome. You can still use the upgrade on the fleet details popout as well, but now you can basically do it whichever way is more convenient.

DLC3 is getting a ton of refinement in this build for our testers to enjoy, and the necromancer is really coming together. Metal and energy (and thus also fuel) are no longer things that necromancer needs to worry about; it's all hacking, science, essence, and hexes. The necromancer is definitely feeling increasingly great to play, and it's definitely a simpler (but potentially brutal) mode, which was the idea.

There are a fair number of bugfixes in this build as well, including some of the more prominent ones that were annoying people in the prior build. Mainly thanks to Badger and Tom for those fixes.

There's lots going on, and a lot of the new and revised factions and features are really hitting a point where they are being close to being feature complete. Quite exciting!

More to come soon.
Enjoy!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:The_Great_Refactor#Beta_3.763_Necromancer_Reanimation_And_Refinement

This one has a number of bugfixes, and a number of extensions for player types and map generation. It also has some improvements for total conversion mods, which is letting Puffin get a lot further along with his Classic Fusion mod.

The necromancer is now nearing completion, pending testing at least. They are better balanced in a variety of ways, and they are now able to reanimate AI guard posts to use for their own defenses (instead of the usual turrets), which is a really cool idea that Puffin had.

Tom has been killing it with lots of bugfixes and refactors and modding-framework extensions and so on.

I also started the behind-the-scenes data additions that are required for the upcoming ship encyclopedia, and got the first bits of data in for that. These are also useful for the search on the galaxy map for units, as we can search by thematic tag, now.

More to come soon.
Enjoy!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:The_Great_Refactor#Beta_3.762_Expert_Necromancers

This one mostly has a lot of work from Badger and Tom from over the weekend, and a lot of it is centered around making the necromancer more balanced and functional.

One notable improvement from Tom is that a lot of the build menu is now more moddable, which makes it easier for modders to customize things that they want to have happen in the future. That's a welcome addition for sure!

I also put in some improvements to Expert mode, most notably the fuel bits that are new as of last release. Strategic Sage pointed out that we needed about 5x as much Argon and Radon to start out for the game to really be feasible. There were also a number of questions about how the fuels are seeded, and I've made some adjustments there to make for a more interesting and varied set of fuel seeding. There are now some "super clusters" of fuel that you can find around the map (most maps) that are highly desirable for fuel purposes... but might have many other drawbacks. So, as usual, it's pro's and cons time.

I also added a really important new Fuel Availability galaxy map filter mode, which allows players who are playing with fuel enabled (whether in expert mode or not) to quickly see what fuels are available where, and in what aggregate quantities. This makes it a lot easier to plan the fuel side of your expansion, and it's also useful for getting a sense of how fuel is distributed around the galaxy at the moment.

The wiki is also in the process of being updated to include a lot more information, thanks to Badger and Lord of Nothing. SirLimbo also got in a couple of moddability improvements at the request of Puffin.

Lots of busy folks! More to come soon.
Enjoy!

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:The_Great_Refactor#Beta_3.761_Savegame_Safety

The biggest takeaway from this one: we're not going to be intentionally breaking savegames anymore after this version. As has been the case for most of the last 5 years, there's occasionally a version that corrupts itself or something, but aside from those rare incidents the savegames from now on should remain backward-compatible.

I had been planning on finishing up the last of my main stuff for the Necromancer Empire in DLC3 this week, but instead I wound up touring around a lot of random things to make sure that we achieved savegame stability first, instead. Necro Empire is still on my very short list.

So what's new in this version?

Well, a lot of the meat of Expert Mode is finally in place, with three fuels for three categories of ship. Argon for the normal smaller and midsize ships, Xenon for officers and elites, and Radon for turrets and forcefields. It's incredibly unbalanced and a bit janky right now, because this is just the very first prototype version hot off the presses. Please do note that this only applies if you play in Expert mode, but the idea is to give you more reasons to hold different territory, and more to lose permanently when you are attacked various places. It's going to need a number of iterations before it's ready for prime time, but I'm excited to hear what the early testers among you think. This is an addition to the base game, so anyone can test it without needing any DLC.

The Ark Empire player type for DLC1 is also better-balanced now, so that should be more fun to play. More changes are still planned for this, as noted last release.

The game now supports "total conversion" mod support, where basically a mod replaces all of the game data with something of its own. There is at least one such mod in the works (cough Puffin cough), that one being focused on a fusion of concepts between AI War 1 and 2. The game now officially supports that sort of thing, making it easier to toggle into those without having to manually replace files or something.

There's also a LOT of DLC3 work in general, and Showdown Devices continue to evolve. The necromancer and templar factions now have the first pass of their final icons (aka, they're final pending testing feedback). These factions are freaking huge -- this was 82 icons just between the two of them!

There's also some bugfixes and other goodies from the usual suspects. As always lately, thanks to tom.prince and NR SirLimbo for substantial additions to what Badger and I are working on. This one also needs a large shoutout to Strategic Sage for a lot of the expert mode design, which I'm very excited about even though we haven't gotten into the balance stages of that yet.

More to come soon.
Enjoy!