AI War 2 News

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#2.906_Journaling_Along

(Reminder that if you have trouble with the build, you can always go into betas and choose most_recent_stable to go one build back. This is how I sleep at night after making some major changes.)

Wow there's a lot in here! And I am super duper tired, so I'm not sure I can do it justice. DLC2 continues to get massive updates based on feedback. And there's a ton of journal updates thanks to donblas and Tzarro for people who are running into new situations that might be challenging for them.

In DLC2, multiple Zenith Architrave factions will only get into civil war with one another if you enable that option. Those wars can be... uh... challenging to work around for a new player. So having that optional is definitely nice.

There are a variety of bugfixes, and I've also been working on some major new visual components for the game as well as specific new stuff for DLC2. Expect to see new warp gates and so forth (visually) tomorrow. You can also check out the non-animated version on the watch_chris_art subsection of our discord channel, although it also has a lot of DLC2 spoilers.

Also a number of mod updates in here.

No multiplayer updates yet. There are a couple of known issues that are serious and which make playing MP an exercise in frustration for the client right now. I'm having to juggle multiple things, so will hopefully have that resolved over the weekend or on Monday by the latest. Balancing that around the needs of the trailer work and related things is really tough.

Multiplayer is going to continue to see weekly updates, and continue to make rapid improvements (this past week or two has been a backslide in stability as I chased the ghosts problem), but it looks unlikely to be ready to call final on the 18th. We're going to stick with accurate names. Right now it's beta, and rapidly getting better. We'll call it done when it is.

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#2.905_Alien_Homes

(Reminder that if you have trouble with the build, you can always go into betas and choose most_recent_stable to go one build back. This is how I sleep at night after making some major changes.)

This one includes some notable visual upgrades for the Zenith territory in DLC2, and adds some features for visually-distinct areas that can be used in future mods and expansions (or the base game if we want).

This fixes a couple of bugs as well, including one major one with military command station strength being very underestimated in various parts of the UI (so it was not clear to you how much better they were from that standpoint), and for the AI (so it could be baited into those worlds in high level play).

This version also fixes a couple of the more hard to read icons, in particular differentiating the ODSS and the TSS visually more.

Also new is the Exotic Ships mod by NR SirLimbo! He's been working on that one for a while, and it includes a lot of new stuff all in one mod that can hook into the base game, DLC1, and DLC2. It's pretty cool to be heading towards a DLC launch where there's a day 0 mod that already works with the new content.

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#2.904_Dragon_Hotifx

(Reminder that if you have trouble with the build, you can always go into betas and choose most_recent_stable to go one build back. This is how I sleep at night after making some major changes.)

This one is mostly a hotfix for a mistake in the prior version that caused errors for anyone with both DLC1 and DLC2 installed and running. It also includes some balance tweaks that just happened to also be done around the same time and would have been in the next patch.

Fun fact, since we're chatting: did you know we're actually going to split the third DLC into two parts as well? We already had to do that with DLC2 (coming out on May 18th), but now it's happening again. Essentially lots of folks (well, okay, mainly Badger for this one specific problem) stuffing in so many things that it makes sense to split.

In the case of DLC3, what that means is that we'll be pulling forward the "roguelike options" stuff and the vassals into a sooner release, paired with some other unannounced stuff, and that will be both sooner and at a lower price point. Then the (now fourth) DLC called Neinzul Abyss will be focused around the Neinzul and Obscura factions, and Champion and Necromancer player modes.

There's a bunch of other stuff also slated for the intermediate DLC3, and if DLC2 is an example then we will also have a large amount of random other additions that are awesome (example: cruisers, minefields, and a bunch of new golems, none of which were in the specs even for the post-split DLC2. This was instead a case of Zeus, ArnaudB, and CRCGamer being the ones who added a ton of stuff -- with input from Democraft as well). I really like working in this sort of loose collective like this, because it is really turning out some quality content drops that are stupidly large.

I also have sizeable free base game updates planned for the next few months, from me.

Enjoy!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#2.903_Journals_For_Miles

(Reminder that if you have trouble with the build, you can always go into betas and choose most_recent_stable to go one build back. This is how I sleep at night after making some major changes.)

This has a lot of a refinement of a lot of things. Lots of bugfixes, particularly for multiplayer, based on tester feedback. Thank you everyone who is running through those! It seems like there is a certain category of bug that is just way more common on AMD machines right now, since AMD is apparently ahead of intel in doing really fast multithreaded context swtiching. I'm experimenting with some new ways to reduce the error count without us having to be reactive to what people find (yay being proactive instead).

There are a number of new journal entries in this release which are meant to be a help for new or returning players, or even to highlight features you might not know about in general. There's going to be more of those coming over the next week, largely thanks to the feedback of folks, some of them press, who had questions we had not encountered before.

DLC2 has a lot more balance changes, to the DZ, ZA, and Spire Hammer in particular. These are extremely welcome, but I feel like not getting into the details because... spoilers. The release notes are unredacted, so read those sections at your own risk.

I also took some time out today to make a new video, which turned out to be much longer than intended. The first 17 minutes or so are really packed with information that a new player would want, and that even an experienced player might have missed. Do you direct upgrade your fleets? Do you use the blue and green strength icons in the tech tab? How quickly do you hit 200 strength? Etc.

But I was having fun and got sucked in, and so wound up making a hour+ video that shows the entire early game: https://youtu.be/5N1XgZ9Donc

Hope it helps!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#2.902_Rather_Refined_Ghosts

(Reminder that if you have trouble with the build, you can always go into betas and choose most_recent_stable to go one build back. This is how I sleep at night after making some major changes.)

Lots of new things in here! Multiplayer has gone through the wringer, and a metric ton of fixes are in place for it. I believe I also got "the big one" that was causing all the ghosts in the first place, and the subsequent "all my stuff exploded and then reappeared" bug.

This version also completely recodes how "ship to ship lines" (beam weapons, repair beams, chain lightning, lasers, etc) work. They are more efficient, and look better, and there was a minor memory leak with them that is now gone. My testing so far has no strangeness with them, but I'm deeply uncomfortable with how much code I had to change for these (during a press build of all things), so if you see oddities please do report them.

There's a lot more help in here for new players in the form of tips-style journal entries, and even more coming on Monday and Tuesday. Huge thanks to Vincent for lots of outsider feedback that helped us rush forward with this.

The Dark Zenith and the Svikari factions in DLC2 also got a major rebalance for the low difficulty levels (mostly under 5). The mid and high difficulties were great, but they were super overpowered when low. The ZA got some tweaks as well, but it was less extreme.

Some other balance tweaks for the base game make turret counts better and keep carrier guardians out of waves against you. Exos also now should act more like exos and less like waves.

Whew, that was a much larger set of changes than expected, but we're really grateful to all the testers and volunteers who are helping make it possible to parse all this new information and do something about it. More soon.

Enjoy!