AI War 2 News

Another week, another six beta releases which now are officially out here. This is a big one! For the full story, you'll want to start reading at 1.310, if you haven't been on the beta branch.

• First up, the Warden fleet of the AI now uses fire teams. This is... a complete game-changer for them. You can't trick and trap them like you used to, although you can still mess with them in various ways. They're just way smarter and more fluid in how they respond to your messings.
  
• We went through a ton of code and fixed up any potential problems that we found during a code review. This cleaned up a few rare bugs that may or may not have actually been seen in the wild by players yet.
  
• Fixed a variety of achievements that were not properly triggering -- huge thanks to Quinn for putting in those fixes for us!
  
• Fixed a bug where in certain circumstances, NPC factions could cause AI ships to turn threat against you, leading to your unexpected doom.
  
• Improved some more of the fire team logic so that they don't get distracted by things like command-station-remains (which are already shot to death and do not require further shooting at this time). Prior to this, certain fire teams could get stuck waiting around to kill something that was already dead, thus letting you avoid the consequences of the hunter being after you.
  
• The debug menu has been updated heavily to show which items are considered cheats and which are not. One item that was previously a cheat -- revealing the entire map -- is now just considered a "lifestyle choice." In the first game you could choose to play with the entire map revealed from the start, after, all, so why not here?
  
• We also added an option that lets you scout the entire map but not have each planet permanently watched. Neither of these count as cheats.
  
• We also made several substantial improvements to how we read in xml from mods, enabling some new functionality for modders.
  
• Fixed a couple of cross-threading issues that could see drones get lost when they went back into their hub ship, or which could see stacks dying incorrectly in terms of the actual number of lost units. This was majorly weakening some units previously, particularly if you had your stack caps set unusually low.
  
• Some re-balance to the marauder empires, which could get overlarge and slow things down -- now that they are so much smarter, they don't need quite as many units to mop the floor with enemies, anyway.
  
• Exos (of a certain strength) are now able to launch against you on multiple planets simultaneously, splitting their forces and then coming for you from several angles. This makes them look better as they swarm in, being less stacked up, and also makes defending against them more challenging.
  
• A variety of other bugfixes, tweaks, UI refinements, and so on.
  
• If this doesn't sound quite as large of a release as I made it out to be at the start of the post... just wait until you see the difference in the warden and the hunter fleets and how that changes the game for you. It's a whole new ballgame these days.
  

More to come soon!
[h3]Please Do Report Any Issues![/h3]

If you run into any bugs, we'd definitely like to hear about those.

The release of this game has been going well so far, and I think that the reviews that folks have been leaving for the game have been a big help for anyone passing by who's on the fence. For a good while we were sitting at Overwhelmingly Positive on the Recent Reviews breakdown, but there have been a lot fewer reviews lately and so that has definitely had a material negative effect. Go figure. Having a running selection of recent reviews definitely is helpful, but at least we have a pretty healthy set of long-term reviews. If you've been playing the game and enjoying it, we'd greatly appreciate it if you'd drop by and leave your own thoughts, too.

More to come soon. Enjoy!
[h3]Problem With The Latest Build?[/h3]

If you right-click the game in Steam and choose properties, then go to the Betas tab of the window that pops up, you'll see a variety of options. You can always choose most_recent_stable from that build to get what is essentially one-build-back. Or two builds back if the last build had a known problem, etc. Essentially it's a way to keep yourself off the very bleeding edge of updates, if you so desire.
[h3]The Usual Reminders[/h3]

Quick reminder of our new Steam Developer Page. If you follow us there, you'll be notified about any game releases we do.

Also: Would you mind leaving a Steam review for some/any of our games? It doesn't have to super detailed, but if you like a game we made and want more people to find it, that's how you make it happen. Reviews make a material difference, and like most indies, we could really use the support.

Enjoy!

Chris

Release notes here. This is a small one, mainly hotfixes.

• The Devourer now eats the Trader, as it should.
  
• Instigator bases now spawn much closer to you until 600 AIP, after which they can get fully cheeky again. Previously they could really mess with you at random starting at only 300 AIP.
  
• There were a couple of brand-new bugs that you could run into thanks to the new pathfinding code, and those are fixed.
  
• There were several longer-standing bugs that are also fixed.
  
• The top-of-screen notifications for Cross Planet Attacks are more succinct and don't have a largely-useless subscreen.
  

More to come soon!
[h3]Please Do Report Any Issues![/h3]

If you run into any bugs, we'd definitely like to hear about those.

The release of this game has been going well so far, and I think that the reviews that folks have been leaving for the game have been a big help for anyone passing by who's on the fence. For a good while we were sitting at Overwhelmingly Positive on the Recent Reviews breakdown, but there have been a lot fewer reviews lately and so that has definitely had a material negative effect. Go figure. Having a running selection of recent reviews definitely is helpful, but at least we have a pretty healthy set of long-term reviews. If you've been playing the game and enjoying it, we'd greatly appreciate it if you'd drop by and leave your own thoughts, too.

More to come soon. Enjoy!
[h3]Problem With The Latest Build?[/h3]

If you right-click the game in Steam and choose properties, then go to the Betas tab of the window that pops up, you'll see a variety of options. You can always choose most_recent_stable from that build to get what is essentially one-build-back. Or two builds back if the last build had a known problem, etc. Essentially it's a way to keep yourself off the very bleeding edge of updates, if you so desire.
[h3]The Usual Reminders[/h3]

Quick reminder of our new Steam Developer Page. If you follow us there, you'll be notified about any game releases we do.

Also: Would you mind leaving a Steam review for some/any of our games? It doesn't have to super detailed, but if you like a game we made and want more people to find it, that's how you make it happen. Reviews make a material difference, and like most indies, we could really use the support.

Enjoy!

Chris

Release notes here. This is another huge one, which is why it took us a week to get it to you.

• The top item here is performance, as the name of the release implies. The new fire teams are awesome and make the AI so much smarter, but we were having late-game performance problems with very long-running threads that would actually stall the AI and all the other factions for minutes at a time if your galaxy was large and populous enough. Badger and I went through all of this with a scalpel and made performance improvements on the order of a 2000% increase for some of the savegames in question.
  
• There are still the occasional savegames with a very over-active set of marauders or nanocaust that don't perform as we'd prefer them to, but the vast majority of our test cases (with usually hundreds of thousands of ships) moved from being insanely sluggish to running at full speed.
  
• Exos have gotten much craftier about how they pursue their targets across planets. This is something... that will come in handy in existing savegames but also with features-to-come. (Cough)
  
• Cross Planet Attacks (CPAs) have been massively reworked to be more efficient on your CPU, as well as to be more clear in how they work and to not cheat the AI out of higher-mark ships. The CPA is now an event worthy of the name, without completely emptying the AI larder so to speak.
  
• Puffin has made enormous numbers of changes to fleet designs that you'll find throughout the galaxy, making them less mono-tech, and also has added 15 more fleet designs in general. We were noticing some unfortunate trends in how people use techs, and we're trying to encourage synergies rather than deep investment into a single thing over all else. This is the first step in that direction, but it's a strong one.
  
• Instigator bases stressing you out? That's now a setting you can turn off to not have them. They add mild time pressure that is good for the game as a whole, but which some people don't appreciate. We try to accommodate as many playstyles as possible.
  
• Astro Trains AND the Macrophage got some buffs. The AI and player strength levels had been growing and outpacing these.
  
• The Zenith Trader has been revamped a bit in terms of the wares it offers, no longer letting you exploit it to just get way too many goodies. It now works more like the first game, where you have to really consider what you want a bit more, rather than just putting everything everywhere.
  
• Bunches of other bugfixes and AI tweaks and improvements and balance tweaks have also been included, plus other interface clarity improvements. This is a pretty huge list of stuff.
  

More to come soon!


[h3]Please Do Report Any Issues![/h3]

If you run into any bugs, we'd definitely like to hear about those.

The release of this game has been going well so far, and I think that the reviews that folks have been leaving for the game have been a big help for anyone passing by who's on the fence. For a good while we were sitting at Overwhelmingly Positive on the Recent Reviews breakdown, but there have been a lot fewer reviews lately and so that has definitely had a material negative effect. Go figure. Having a running selection of recent reviews definitely is helpful, but at least we have a pretty healthy set of long-term reviews. If you've been playing the game and enjoying it, we'd greatly appreciate it if you'd drop by and leave your own thoughts, too.

More to come soon. Enjoy!


[h3]Problem With The Latest Build?[/h3]

If you right-click the game in Steam and choose properties, then go to the Betas tab of the window that pops up, you'll see a variety of options. You can always choose most_recent_stable from that build to get what is essentially one-build-back. Or two builds back if the last build had a known problem, etc. Essentially it's a way to keep yourself off the very bleeding edge of updates, if you so desire.


[h3]The Usual Reminders[/h3]

Quick reminder of our new Steam Developer Page. If you follow us there, you'll be notified about any game releases we do.

Also: Would you mind leaving a Steam review for some/any of our games? It doesn't have to super detailed, but if you like a game we made and want more people to find it, that's how you make it happen. Reviews make a material difference, and like most indies, we could really use the support.

Enjoy!

Chris

Release notes here. This one really is just a laundry list of tweaks and fixes.

• First up, lots of folks noticed that combat engineers and combat sentry frigates were not constructing in the prior build. This was the unfortunate intersection of some new (good) logic and some old (bad but not harmful until now) xml inheritance. That's now fixed!
  
• The right hand blank chat/log window in the lobby is now removed, making forumite Sounds much happier but possibly also frustrated since he was going to mod it out.
  
• The main menu no longer chugs with bad performance. That had to do with achievements resubmission to Steam, and didn't affect the GOG version of the game (but would have as we get GOG galaxy support in soon).
  
• We also are hunting an obscure performance drain that happens on the late game in super-high planet count games (200ish planets) with a few hundred thousand units and 8+ factions, etc. It's still a playable game on the savegames we have found there (about 40% speed at baseline), but we're hoping to clear that up so it performs as well as anything else. So far it's been investigation more than solution.
  
• The nanocaust now can use fire teams! (Oh dear.)
  
• Marauders can consolidate their planets a bit faster.
  
• Sabotage hacks are now less aggo and cheaper -- good for you.
  
• Beyond that it's just a handful of more bugfixes and tweaks.
  

More to come soon!


[h3]Please Do Report Any Issues![/h3]
If you run into any bugs, we'd definitely like to hear about those.

The release of this game has been going well so far, and I think that the reviews that folks have been leaving for the game have been a big help for anyone passing by who's on the fence. For a good while we were sitting at Overwhelmingly Positive on the Recent Reviews breakdown, but there have been a lot fewer reviews lately and so that has definitely had a material negative effect. Go figure. Having a running selection of recent reviews definitely is helpful, but at least we have a pretty healthy set of long-term reviews. If you've been playing the game and enjoying it, we'd greatly appreciate it if you'd drop by and leave your own thoughts, too.

More to come soon. Enjoy!


[h3]Problem With The Latest Build?[/h3]

If you right-click the game in Steam and choose properties, then go to the Betas tab of the window that pops up, you'll see a variety of options. You can always choose most_recent_stable from that build to get what is essentially one-build-back. Or two builds back if the last build had a known problem, etc. Essentially it's a way to keep yourself off the very bleeding edge of updates, if you so desire.


[h3]The Usual Reminders[/h3]

Quick reminder of our new Steam Developer Page. If you follow us there, you'll be notified about any game releases we do.

Also: Would you mind leaving a Steam review for some/any of our games? It doesn't have to super detailed, but if you like a game we made and want more people to find it, that's how you make it happen. Reviews make a material difference, and like most indies, we could really use the support.

Enjoy!

Chris

Release notes here. This is another followup to the epic one from a couple of days ago, mainly focused on some bugfixes and yet even more AI deadliness.

• First up, the Hunter fleet was previously only using the exciting new fire teams feature if you chose the new "Assassin" option. That's not something most people would know to do, and it wouldn't automatically kick on in existing quick starts, or existing savegames, and so on. That's no fun!
  
• So we've made it so that all of the Hunter fleets now use fire teams, instead, and we took away the Assassin option since it would now have been identical to Normal. All of the existing savegames will work, and now have scary fire teams doing all the fun things I talked about in the epic update. Not opting-in required.
  
• We also made a number of general improvements to AI threat and the hunter fleet IQ/logic, letting them make better decisions on several fronts. Loading existing savegames where they waffled about now has them hulk smash.
  
• There's a general feature called "group move" that can be used by players or by NPCs/AIs. There were some awesome improvements made to this functionality by Eagleheart a few months back for player purposes, but they just didn't work well for AIs, which caused exos and fire teams to sometimes be on the slow side or staggered strangely. Now something closer to our old logic is used for AIs/NPCs, making them formidable again, while Eagleheart's logic is used for players like it was intended to be.
  
• Beyond that it's just a handful of more bugfixes.
  

More to come soon!


[h3]Please Do Report Any Issues![/h3]

If you run into any bugs, we'd definitely like to hear about those.

The release of this game has been going well so far, and I think that the reviews that folks have been leaving for the game have been a big help for anyone passing by who's on the fence. For a good while we were sitting at Overwhelmingly Positive on the Recent Reviews breakdown, but there have been a lot fewer reviews lately and so that has definitely had a material negative effect. Go figure. Having a running selection of recent reviews definitely is helpful, but at least we have a pretty healthy set of long-term reviews. If you've been playing the game and enjoying it, we'd greatly appreciate it if you'd drop by and leave your own thoughts, too.

More to come soon. Enjoy!


[h3]Problem With The Latest Build?[/h3]

If you right-click the game in Steam and choose properties, then go to the Betas tab of the window that pops up, you'll see a variety of options. You can always choose most_recent_stable from that build to get what is essentially one-build-back. Or two builds back if the last build had a known problem, etc. Essentially it's a way to keep yourself off the very bleeding edge of updates, if you so desire.


[h3]The Usual Reminders[/h3]

Quick reminder of our new Steam Developer Page. If you follow us there, you'll be notified about any game releases we do.

Also: Would you mind leaving a Steam review for some/any of our games? It doesn't have to super detailed, but if you like a game we made and want more people to find it, that's how you make it happen. Reviews make a material difference, and like most indies, we could really use the support.

Enjoy!

Chris