AI War 2 News

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.754_Buffs_And_Bugfixes

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.

Hmm, nothing overtly new in here to get us closer to DLC2, but there was a lot of planning on some of the last unit gameplay features for that done in the morning, which is good.

This build starts off with some nice buffs that ArnaudB created for some units that have been a bit undervalued in the beta period. Things that just lost their luster relative to their counterparts.

It moves on into a large number of bugfixes, clearing out a large portion of things on our mantis bugtracker that needed to be dealt with before we head back to the stable branch.

Then it adds two interesting twists for you.

First, some immobile force fields. These aren't everywhere, but these are FFs that are immune to the Norris Effect, enemy bullies can't push your shields out of the way and then wreck your stuff. Before you had to just hope you had enough firepower to kill a Norris-wielding enemy. Now you can plan around them.

Secondly, stationary flagship mode. I coded it a while back, and it worked almost the opposite of how I thought it did. Shows how much passes in and then back out of my own personal memory. At any rate, I updated it to work in such a way that it is actually useful, and can have stationary flagships as rally point sources, etc.

Still more to come on the crippling front in general, plus a big pile of new features relating to DLC2, post-DLC2 base game features, and even DLC3. Then it's going to be art and bugfixes for me for a while, which I'm very happy about.

Enjoy!

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.753_Interplanetary_States_of_Matter

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 has a number of mod fixes from over the weekend thanks to SirLimbo, and ArnaudB has also made some excellent updates to Interplanetary Engineers to make them a lot more functional and present. He also adjusted the balance for beachheading in general, as the build times there were getting a bit on the long side.

We have some other changes coming tomorrow relating to crippled centerpieces and letting you control a few different ways of having that work with the lobby, but most of that was in the discussion stage today. Right now it's maybe a bit on the cruel side with how expensive crippled golems are, but crippled transports are a nonissue.

SirLimbo also fixed up a missing tag on the devourer golem's gun, which was letting it shoot anything and everything, not just limiting it to mobile combatants. The result was that it was eating far too much of enemy worlds, heh.

Battlestations now cost a proper amount to repair, and citadels now cost a proper amount to claim.

The rest of the name of this release comes from some features that are mostly forward-looking to DLC2 and 3, but which are backported a bit into how the spire relic phases in and out in DLC1. Essentially, "states of matter" for ships are going to be an increasing thing, for certain factions anyhow, and also relating to champions in DLC3. So this lets us have one big shared framework that works for all of those purposes, versus just having a bunch of individually-coded features. It's of course worth noting that this data-driven approach means that mods can have an easier time coming up with their own states of matter...

Enjoy!

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.752_Golden_Devourer

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 brings in a new golden ring laser that is mostly a feature for DLC2, and adds it onto the Devourer Golem. That Golem was looking kind of pathetic compared to more recent dangers in the galaxy anyway, but now it has a strong new danger level to it: https://youtu.be/IckDa6s_7j0

Fireteams in general now are a lot less timid, and thus most factions in the game (base and DLCs) are likely to seem more active. It's hard to cut of the Praetorian Guard as much, but there's a nice interplay where you still CAN... but not as firmly.

A couple of bugs were also fixed, and several new features for DLC2 were added. The AMU mod works once again, having been updated to support the new features relating to repair that were added last version.

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.751_Repairs_And_Clarity

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 fixes up the way that repairs work after ships are crippled so that it is no longer the old exploity way, nor is it the new annoyingly-slow way. If you didn't know what the old exploity way was, then that was the old annoyingly-slow way also. Either way, now there's an economic impact from having a transport cripple, but not a slowdown in gameplay. That's a big win for everyone, since it keeps things moving without confusing new players or making anyone wait wall-clock time.

Guardian balance has been adjusted a lot (them in waves at mark 3 baseline was intense, whoops), and some various mapgen fixes are in (insufficient bastion worlds are no longer, etc).

There are still a few known issues from recent stuff, including that the AIP from warp gates is still given to you if you did the hack to try to avoid that. Didn't quite have time for that one today. Also in this build the AMU mod and thus also Kaizer's Marauders no longer work, because we made some changes to the base game features (repair) in a way that it let you override. Hopefully that mod will be updated tomorrow or so, but I can't speak for the mod author.

All in all, this is meant to be a polish release, where the focus is making things less annoying or less confusing, in the few places where those traits were present. Enjoy!

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.750_Bastions_And_Tuning

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.

It's been 6 days since the last release, which feels like a lifetime, and it shows in this release. Most of what is new in this one is just tweaks and fixes and tuning (and features for DLC2), but the release notes are REALLY long for it, and it really shows how much polish this adds. This one also adjusts balance fairly substantially in a few areas, though, so let's talk about that.

First of all, the AI homeworlds were getting to be nuts in terms of their power on high difficulties in particular. A number of changes have been made to make the end battles more versatile and give you more options. Against a single giant planet, you only have a few types of ships that work. So instead, we now have split out things a bit into the homeworld and some surrounding "Bastion" planets. The dire guard posts are divided between those now, versus all being on the single homeworld planet. All you have to do is kill those dire guard posts to then go for the guardian, but the fact that they are not all on one planet now is both making it easier and more challenging at the same time, somehow. It opens up more places for you to use multiple potential strategies, too.

You also can't cheese running transports back to friendly territory to make them instantly repairable. Note that when in stationary mode, transports can be given orders to move to another planet and they will stay put while their ships rally there. We'll make that more clear in the interface next build, but it means you can park small transports next door to your attack target.

Guardians now appear in waves, if the wave is powerful enough to warrant that. TONs of mod updates, too. Enjoy!