AI War 2 News

Release notes here.

Lots more stuff, and there was an intermediate hotfix build as well in here. Main new things:

• The AI now writes you a chat message as well as giving you the voice taunt. So if you have sound off, or voice off, or just have trouble understanding it in the din of battle... now you can see what the AI is saying.
  
• There was previously a big mix of funny and serious things that the AI would say, all in one big soup. The first game was always deadly serious when it came to the AI's messages, so that was a bit of a shock to some folks; and humor is subjective, so some of the jokes fall quite flat for some people. The humorous AI messages are still there, now, but have to be turned on via a specific option in the audio settings. The AI is dryly sarcastic at times now, but nothing over the top.
  
• If you've set priorities for an intel item (higher or lower than usual), you can now see that on the galaxy map!
  
• There are now multiple naming schemes for fleets, just as there are multiple naming schemes for planets. There's the original list (now called "random," and there are others based on US States, Ancient Gods, Mathematicians, Cowardly Words, and so on. Thanks, donblas!
  
• The start of having an in-game journal of important (and recent less-important) chat messages is now in place. This will be important for the Fallen Spire campaign in the first expansion, and it's useful in general. Also nice for multiplayer.
  
• There's a whole heck of a lot of bugfixes, including most of the ones that Badger had noted as what he felt like were the most critical things affecting the most people.
  
• The Bomber Fleet that you could start with is now gone, as it was really overpowered.
  
• Major Data Centers are now balanced a bit differently, too.
  

Please Do Report Any Issues!

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

We're also really keen on your feedback in general, as the last couple of releases hopefully demonstrate. Achievements are creeping up my shortlist on things to do, thankfully, now that a lot of the rest of my shortlist is cleared out. I then need to really get a move-on with the first alphas of the multiplayer for people to playtest. One thing at a time!

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. At the moment we're sitting at Overwhelmingly Positive on the Recent Reviews breakdown, and have been for the last three days, which feels really good. 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!

Problem With The Latest Build?

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.

The Usual Reminders

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 big one, in terms of having a lot of items. They fall into six main categories:

• Continued UI polish.
  
• Some experimental changes to group-move from a new volunteer dev.
  
• Tweaks to the Intel screen and some new beginner objectives for ARS, GCA and flagship capturing to teach people that those are critical early objectives.
  
• Continued balance work, including making AI homeworld assaults harder and adding a new "Turret" tech.
  
• Owning Major Data centers now causes Exos against the player for higher difficulty games, in the ongoing arms race between very skilled players and developers.
  
• Lots of other bugfixes and balance tweaks.
  

There's stuff from three sources beyond the usual developers and volunteer devs: donblas, Eagleheart, and StarKelp have all made notable code contributions in this one.

There was a bit more of a gap between this one and last one because I was sick AGAIN last week, this time with norovirus that landed me in the ER. I'm all better now, but it managed to get everyone my kids and my fiancee as well in the end (though not as bad), and we had to skip the Thanksgiving gatherings to not infect others. Fun times!

But good grief, coming back to to see what everyone had been up to, after monitoring some of it off and on during the worst of my illness, it's quite shocking just how much was done. It's got me itching to get some more changes of my own in there.

Beyond that, let's talk about some other specific items from the release notes:

• Wormhole invasions have been nerfed, so that they don't hit you so hard.
  
• A bunch of fleet designs have been tweaked or improved, as have a number of ship designs.
  
• Hey, you can upgrade battlestation/citadel fleets via spending science now, just like you can planetary fleets!
  
• Bounty Hunters are now far more interesting.
  
• Pulsar Tanks are now far more frightening.
  
• Spire Frigates now perform better (StarKelp's improvements) as well as being more dangerous in general. Please check how the balance of this kind of beam weapon feels now.
  
• Alarm posts now actually work -- yet more danger for you.
  
• Drones now work better and are reabsorbed and after battle.
  
• You can see AI Eyes on the galaxy map, for easier planning of routes, now.
  

Please Do Report Any Issues!

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

We're also really keen on your feedback in general, as the last couple of releases hopefully demonstrate. I've got a shortlist of items to work on from Badger, and hopefully I can get to the achievements and whatnot sooner than later. I then need to really get a move-on with the first alphas of the multiplayer for people to playtest. One thing at a time!

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. At the moment we're sitting at Overwhelmingly Positive on the Recent Reviews breakdown, and have been for the last three days, which feels really good. 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!

Problem With The Latest Build?

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.

The Usual Reminders

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 be much more detailed than a thumbs up, 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.

Relatively small release, and honestly the largest improvements are to the metal flows detail screen. But something about hacking, and in particularly spire archives, always makes me think of this scene from Star Trek TNG.

"I just love scanning for life forms" pops into my head in daily life much more often than I should probably admit. ;)

So what's new in this one in general?

• Brownouts should now be more obvious in the interface when you're facing one of those. I still have some plans for making "really dire situations" way more obvious in the UI in general, but this is a solid step.
  
• The metal flow planning popup, as mentioned, is much improved yet again.
  
• Spire Archive Extraction hack now only takes 5 minutes at base, rather than 15 -- so at difficulty 10 it no longer takes (shudder) an HOUR.
  
• Units under construction take bonus damage from being shot, which should really adjust the flow of things quite a bit when you're trying to rebuild under fire, and in general fixes a balance issue/exploit that could be present.
  
• Other bugfixes and balance tweaks and visual polish.
  

Please Do Report Any Issues!

If you run into any bugs, we'd definitely like to hear about those, particularly after such a large change as was required for the duplicate fleets stuff.

We're also really keen on your feedback in general, as the last couple of releases hopefully demonstrate. I'm definitely not going to be getting to my originally-planned todo list of achievements this week, simply because there have been more important things that folks have brought up instead, and we've been focusing on those. The achievements will hopefully be something I have time to get in next week, but some of that depends on what reports come in between now and then.

The release 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. 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!

Problem With The Latest Build?

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.

The Usual Reminders

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 be much more detailed than a thumbs up, 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.

Lots of stuff in this one! Also, there's a new interview with me and Rob chatting over at the eXplorminate's podcast, if you're interested.

• There's a new option under the debug settings that lets you forcefully change the difficulty of the AIs if you want to, after having already started the game. Later on this will make it so that achievements aren't valid during that savegame if you use this sort of thing, but it's a nice tool to have if you're enjoying yourself but want to up (or down) the challenge belatedly without starting all over.
  
• Fixed a bunch of bugs, including a number of cross-threading ones that were relatively rare but definitely annoying when they happened.
  
• The hacking difficulty has been rebalanced a bit, to make it easier early on and harder later.
  
• A whole heck of a lot of balance changes in all sorts of areas of the game based on feedback, but let's highlight a few specific areas:
  
• Arks and Golems and "Lone Wolf" fleets are much easier to actually find sooner in the game. They're also cheaper (in AIP) to capture, and more powerful.
  
• Outguard can now be hired at no hacking cost, and all of them now have flagships, and in general they are all much stronger. Some can also be hired twice now!
  
• And then lastly, unrelated to balance, we did a lot of work to get the game to load mods a bit more gracefully, and to be able to load expansions (the first of which is now in the earliest stages of work), and to be able to have mods of expansions, etc.
  

Please Do Report Any Issues!

If you run into any bugs, we'd definitely like to hear about those, particularly after such a large change as was required for the duplicate fleets stuff.

We're also really keen on your feedback in general, as the last couple of releases hopefully demonstrate. I'm definitely not going to be getting to my originally-planned todo list of achievements this week, simply because there have been more important things that folks have brought up instead, and we've been focusing on those. The achievements will hopefully be something I have time to get in next week, but some of that depends on what reports come in between now and then.

The release 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. 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!

Problem With The Latest Build?

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.

The Usual Reminders

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 be much more detailed than a thumbs up, 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.

• Some players have noted that they're able to deep-strike way into enemy territory with what feels like too little response from the AI. So... now the AI has a new AI Reserve force (in new campaigns only) that it can bring in to help defend its planets when it detects you deep-striking.
  
• A lot of the hacks in the game are now quicker to run (and thus also have a lower total output of scary AI ships as you do the hack), and they have either a lower or zero increasing cost for repeat use of a specific hack type. So this counterbalances things quite a bit, making certain hacks that were too hard to pull off before now possible.
  
• The time it takes to hack (and thus the scary ship count that results) now increases starting on difficulty 6 and up, rather than being the same on all difficulty levels. It's still lower on all difficulty levels than it was in the last two builds, but now there's more of a gradation depending on your chosen difficulty level.
  
• Engineers are faster at their jobs, and transports cost less metal.
  
• Fixed a variety of bugs, most of which were really rare things that only happen if you have a processor running at a certain very high speed (at least that seems to have been the common theme).
  

Please Do Report Any Issues!

If you run into any bugs, we'd definitely like to hear about those, particularly after such a large change as was required for the duplicate fleets stuff.

We're also really keen on your feedback in general, as the last couple of releases hopefully demonstrate. I'm definitely not going to be getting to my originally-planned todo list of achievements this week, simply because there have been more important things that folks have brought up instead, and we've been focusing on those. The achievements will hopefully be something I have time to get in next week, but some of that depends on what reports come in between now and then.

The release 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. 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!

Problem With The Latest Build?

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.

The Usual Reminders

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 be much more detailed than a thumbs up, 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