AI War 2 News

One more beta for the road! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#Beta_2.814_Hotfix_For_Murder-By-Powerup

This is just a hotfix. You know, for... keeping you from getting murdered by your own collectible powerups.

Assuming there are no other major issues, we're done with this beta phase, but (cough) let's let this one get tested a bit before I pull that trigger.

Enjoy!

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#Beta_2.813_Golem_Relations

You need to use the current_beta build on Steam or GOG to see it. Assuming that all seems sane with this build, this is the end of the current beta period.

What's new in this one? There are a few bugfixes and QoL improvements (thanks to donblas for several of those). There's a new anti-spy system and some improved spy balance, courtesy of CRCGamer.

The Arks and Golems have all been made cheaper in AIP to capture, cost WAY more energy to run (they were stupidly undercosted in energy), and no longer come with any ships when you capture them. You just get them for themselves, not for the fleet they're toting along. Thanks to Strategic Sage for the suggestion about the energy costs, as well as a raft of related items.

Existing savegames that would be thrown into negative energy by balance changes now automatically get a free energy handicap that keeps that from happening, which gives us a freer hand to make large energy usage changes like this without breaking anyone's campaign.

You get one more choice again from the TSS, bringing that back into middle-balance. The Reprocessors by CRZgatecrusher has been updated to the latest code standard, and Civilian Industry has been updated to have better late game performance by ArnaudB.

I put in a ton of fixes to multiplayer, and this time I think all the last of the ghosts are gone. Thanks to Bummeri, greyhoundgames, KaleR, and Jusa for the great reports in that area.

There's some new stuff I'm planning for post-DLC2 with alternative game modes, but it will have to wait a few weeks at the moment. You can read the current iteration of that design here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PkSQoFIYZDN42jaYvjQ_pLGGWYJrYq4mfhFZvfJjNyk/ It's open for public comment.

For the next couple of weeks, I intend to focus just on bugfixing, MP, and DLC2 icons and art. Then on to game modes, etc, after DLC2.

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#Beta_2.811_Brief_Beta_For_Balance

So you do need to use the current_beta build on Steam or GOG to see it.

(I see your eye twitch! Don't worry, this won't be a beta that lasts for months.)

At the moment, we're in the middle of rebalancing a few things (as much as possible in a way to not mess with existing saves/campaigns) to allow for more valid styles of play. We may be adding a few lobby options in pursuit of that, but as much as possible I'm hoping to have a unified experience that is less power fantasy and more guerrilla warfare like the game's roots have always been. (I mean, Fallen Spire exists for the power fantasy already).

Anyhow, since we're in the middle of doing that, plus adding a bunch of mechanics and things for DLC2, there's a greater than average risk of bugs, and we also don't want the average player to get caught in the crossfire of discussion back and forth on what makes for the most wide array of ways to play. So we'll take a few days in beta to get that stuff sorted, and then pop back to the main channel again.

There's some really excellent stuff Zeus is working on mainly for DLC2 right now, so those who are testing that please do direct your attention to the Zenith Architrave. That got a major bunch of additions in this build. And it's his birthday!

CRCGamer and Strategic Sage and I, among others, are looking at a couple of axes of balance in the base game, and trying to make sure that remains as engaging as possible. The low-AIP style of play has been stifled recently, so I'm working to make that more viable, among other things. It's all this-week stuff. Hopefully mostly tomorrow-stuff.

Enjoy!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#2.810_Hotfix_for_Death

Would that it was so straightforward to hotfix actual death, yeah? At any rate, there was a bug in the prior version (resulting from some fixes to ghosts on MP clients) that was... so thorough that it was ghostbusting some living things. Sorry about that!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#2.809_Self_Optimization

This one is mostly multiplayer-focused, but it has some core speed improvements to the singleplayer simulation as well as some bugfixes that also benefit everyone (particularly those with really fast AMD processors).

This also sees a number of improvements and updates to the SirLimbo suite of mods, and Space Planes and Expatriates have gotten some solid balance adjustments from CRCGamer.

So, what of multiplayer? This release is a pretty big deal! First off, major thanks to Bummeri and abuchris and their MP groups, because this would not have been possible without them.

1. There were STILL some ghosts possible on MP clients, but those seem to be well and truly dead now from several angles.

2. There was a major amount of ship "rubber banding" happening in combat with the AI sentinels in the last couple of weeks, due to a bug I accidentally put in when optimizing bandwidth a couple of weeks ago. That's now fixed.

3. The sync and ship-check data now uses vastly less bandwidth, and is structured so that it won't ever flood the client with too much information. There's now a call and response (ack, in network terms) going on, and this helps the network self-regulate to whatever its environment is. In other words, for this part of the network data, if the connection is slow and flaky, it will slow itself to compensate. If it's a speedy lan, it will up itself to match that. Overall in most cases this results in a lot of bandwidth reduction, and even more importantly it removes cases where potentially the client could get message-logged and get a lot of command lag from that.

MP is looking a lot more reliable now, knock on wood, which is really exciting. This has been quite a journey for it.

Enjoy!