AI War 2 News

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.746_Release_The_Warden

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 one was a minor detour, but I think you're really going to like what we've cooked up for you in this one. There are some general bugfixes, and things like tachyon beams working again. Some last scourge tuning to get them to fully behave as intended. A lot of the hacking cost increases that I put in last build have been lowered back down, but the number of hacking points you start with is also now a bit lower. Ships under construction now only take 3x as much damage, rather than 10x as much.

Then the big item: the Warden fleet. The Warden has been supremely cowardly for a while now, often parking near you and -- in its fear -- amassing ludicrously powerful fleets that could crush you like a bug... but are afraid to come near you. When they finally would, they would just leave no trace left (of your offensive fleet). This wasn't a good feel for playing with, so the Warden has been recalibrated rather substantially.

The Warden is now aggressive, reckless, splits itself into multiple parts as needed, lurks when needed but still enjoys the occasional strike in just when it's inconvenient (and then sometimes runs away after beating some minor bit of your armada senseless). It's never going to hit you with something game-ending at this point, probably -- that's the Hunter's job, anyway -- but it's now a dynamic and surprising force to reckon with out there on the map. The AI suddenly seems a lot more alive.

The AI got a few other buffs. When you assault their homeworld, and AI now goes to mark 3 no matter what. Shark B is integrated more tightly into the AI. Beachheading against the AI is now slower at higher marks.

This feels fun and vibrant so far to us -- hope you enjoy!

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.745_The_Unsmothering

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.

Sooo... a lot of what's new in this one won't affect you fully unless you start a new campaign, not that that means you have to stop your old campaign. But essentially, players were just being absolutely bombarded with choices to the point that multiple people noted how off-putting that was (on several levels -- new players being overwhelmed, and experienced players always have access to everything). This also led to giant turret death balls, in particular, because the turrets were way too cheap AND too plentiful.

Hopefully the new balance here feels more appropriate, so that there's always interesting things to find, but it's not like you're stumbling over diamonds with every step you take. Getting rewards at quite that frequency makes them feel downright devalued in general. Not to mention, doing quite so many hacks can sometimes make things like the late game spire response even more terrifying, but that may still be the case, not sure.

Speaking of the fallen spire, your cities no longer upgrade inappropriately early, and they no longer upgrade automatically. Before, it was really frustrating where if you had two cities become upgrade-able at the same time, you couldn't choose which it would be. It would default to the oldest, but you had very little control. Now you have complete control. Also better info in the tooltips on why you can't upgrade yet, or why you can, depending on what the circumstances are.

Various bugs were fixed, some out of control turrets were balanced to be more on par with others in general power, sentry frigates are not flooding you, and lots of work on features for DLC2 (not out yet).

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.