AI War 2 News

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.744_Scourge_Industries.2C_Inc

You need to use the current_beta branch on Steam or GOG to play this one. If you have trouble with it, there is a most_recent_stable_beta, now, too.

More refinements and bugfixes are the main items, but then we have some major updates from the community, too.

First up, ArnaudB has done a major rework of the Scourge, building on the work that he put in last build, to make their economy scale more sensibly at all the various difficulty levels. Your ability to destroy their structures and set them back should feel more notable now, etc.

Secondly, the Civilian Industries mod has gotten a large update from StarKelp, to make it compatible with the various newest features of the beta branch. This also includes some experimental changes to ship stats, which should be interesting to test.

Badger also swooped in with a surprise new feature in the form of fire teams being able to escort ships, and that is something the Scourge now use.

Overall lots of other little things, and more to come soon. Enjoy!

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.743_Scourge_Growth_Chart

You need to use the current_beta branch on Steam or GOG to play this one. If you have trouble with it, there is a most_recent_stable_beta, now, too.

More refinements, and more work on features for the upcoming DLC2. Nothing dramatic in terms of vanilla/DLC1 changes this time... well, except for the scourge balance!

Essentially, the Scourge have a number of mechanisms by which they grow in power. Mostly it is based on things the player does, like rising AIP or capturing science or whatever. It's not meant to be pacing you like rubber-band AI, but it is meant to take the pressure off of you in a time sense. In other words, these are milestones you would hit no matter what, but each player hits them at a different speed. So we made it so that the scourge ramps up on a similar timescale to you, rather than being free to ramp up on its own independent timescale. That way you're not in an all-fired rush, time-wise, which is something we prefer to avoid doing to you even with extra-dangerous secondary factions like the Scourge.

Well... the game balance has shifted a lot over the last year in general, but in particular over the last few months. Players taking more planets is more of a viable strategy now than ever, and more people do it. The Scourge balance levers were last tuned prior to some of these changes, and as a result it wound up starting very weak, and then growing too strong depending on how many planets and similar you took. Thanks to ArnaudB for looking into this and making changes, the Scourge now starts a bit stronger but then also grows in a way that is more natural-feeling in the current game meta. This keeps them strong and interesting, but not the late-game extermination force they were before on high intensities.

Several other bugfixes and balance tweaks, but other than DLC2 work things are happily calm!

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.742_Hacking_Balance

You need to use the current_beta branch on Steam or GOG to play this one. If you have trouble with it, there is a most_recent_stable_beta, now, too.

This is just further refinement, mostly focused on balance more than anything else. Hacking points were still too plentiful, and you could hack in deepstrike territory without any downsides, and battlestation science upgrades were way too cheap.

On the other hand, your lone wolf fleets and various other kinds of fleet leaders can do a variety of hacks now, and it says what kind of hackers are viable for each hack type. This makes it so that in particular in DLC1, spire fleet leaders can hack for most things (just not more ship lines).

ALSO, neutral planet science extraction is back, just more expensive in hacking points. I hadn't fully considered the range of multi-faction situations where this was relevant, particularly when allied nanocaust, or even enemy nanocaust, might take a ton of territory that you need to get science from without taking over the planet.

There were a couple of bugs related to DLC1, and I'm not sure how new they were; there's one more that I need to chase down tomorrow. And there's one more major fix now in place to prevent the dreaded cross-threading errors that have been happening for the last half dozen beta versions. Fingers crossed that nailed that one. Plus other minor fixes and tweaks.

How's balance feeling now? If folks need more time to test while this is in beta, that's fine; for the most part I'm going to shift my attention to working on DLC2 as much as possible, while dealing with the bugfixes and tuning that comes up.

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.741_Refining_The_Big_One

You need to use the current_beta branch on Steam or GOG to play this one. If you have trouble with it, there is a most_recent_stable_beta, now, too.

This is a refinement of yesterday's big new build, as you might imagine. One of the things that is unusual about this beta release is that we're breaking savegames from the prior build. They were just THAT unbalanced (in your favor), and we want to make sure that any further feedback on this beta branch is not some funky hybrid. Sorry about that; normally maintaining savegame compatibility is at the top of our list.

This new build fixes a number of bugs and tweaks a lot of things, but mostly it's just refining the same ideas into a more-balanced form, minus a few of the bugs that were also in the way. Players were having just absolute HEAPS of turrets in the prior version, and hacking points were still too abundant. So that is probably the most notable shift in balance here.

But at the same time, we're also trying to give minefields and watch standers their day in the sun, so there's a new and cheaper to hack structure that grants those. The Warbird balance changes that were supposedly in the prior version also didn't get applied, so that was still OP as heck. Now it's tuned properly.

On the other end of things, hacking ARSes and TSSes/ODSSes (the new split DSSes) no longer cause the AI response to ramp up. That was something that was too imbalanced against you.

Another interesting change is that now Relentless AI Wave units that find themselves on a planet of themselves or allies will fight there if there is at least 3 enemy strength there (aka you-strength, typically). This way, when you're hacking in enemy territory or enduring a counterstrike, the enemies don't run off for your worlds but instead fight you in place.

Hopefully this is a lot closer to the balance mark!

New MAJOR beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.740_The_Big_One

You need to use the current_beta branch on Steam or GOG to play this one. If you have trouble with it, there is a most_recent_stable_beta, now, too.

This is the last major set of features and changes from the current beta cycle. There will be further tweaks and fixes and tuning based on feedback from players, but the goal is to get out of beta this week if all seems to be well.

This new build does a lot of things, all at once.

You can hack your transports to transform them between various forms, and the same for combat factories.

The ARS is way more valuable and can be hacked multiple times.

The IGC (if you even know what that is) has been removed for being useless.

The GCA (wow a central unit) has been replaced in all new campaigns by a way cooler and even more powerful Design Schematic Server (DSS). It should feel very familiar, but the nuances are very different.

Battlestations no longer seed in the new campaigns for you to capture, but you start the game with two battlestations instead of one... and those battlestations gain any turrets you unlock via the DSS (holy cow).

Citadels are faster, more expensive, but also get the DSS unlock benefits.

Higher difficulties no longer have slower hacks. The extra intensity is now packed into the same amount of time as lower difficulties.

There's a new transport type: High Capacity. It lets you double ship lines for a few ships if you put them in there.

The other basic boring transports now give you economic benefits if you leave them on a planet for 5 minutes without them getting crippled. Extra transports are now money, not annoyance.

And a bunch of other minor balance updates, bugfixes, and some notable mod updates. There's a lot in here!