AI War 2 News

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#2.903_Journals_For_Miles

(Reminder that if you have trouble with the build, you can always go into betas and choose most_recent_stable to go one build back. This is how I sleep at night after making some major changes.)

This has a lot of a refinement of a lot of things. Lots of bugfixes, particularly for multiplayer, based on tester feedback. Thank you everyone who is running through those! It seems like there is a certain category of bug that is just way more common on AMD machines right now, since AMD is apparently ahead of intel in doing really fast multithreaded context swtiching. I'm experimenting with some new ways to reduce the error count without us having to be reactive to what people find (yay being proactive instead).

There are a number of new journal entries in this release which are meant to be a help for new or returning players, or even to highlight features you might not know about in general. There's going to be more of those coming over the next week, largely thanks to the feedback of folks, some of them press, who had questions we had not encountered before.

DLC2 has a lot more balance changes, to the DZ, ZA, and Spire Hammer in particular. These are extremely welcome, but I feel like not getting into the details because... spoilers. The release notes are unredacted, so read those sections at your own risk.

I also took some time out today to make a new video, which turned out to be much longer than intended. The first 17 minutes or so are really packed with information that a new player would want, and that even an experienced player might have missed. Do you direct upgrade your fleets? Do you use the blue and green strength icons in the tech tab? How quickly do you hit 200 strength? Etc.

But I was having fun and got sucked in, and so wound up making a hour+ video that shows the entire early game: https://youtu.be/5N1XgZ9Donc

Hope it helps!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#2.902_Rather_Refined_Ghosts

(Reminder that if you have trouble with the build, you can always go into betas and choose most_recent_stable to go one build back. This is how I sleep at night after making some major changes.)

Lots of new things in here! Multiplayer has gone through the wringer, and a metric ton of fixes are in place for it. I believe I also got "the big one" that was causing all the ghosts in the first place, and the subsequent "all my stuff exploded and then reappeared" bug.

This version also completely recodes how "ship to ship lines" (beam weapons, repair beams, chain lightning, lasers, etc) work. They are more efficient, and look better, and there was a minor memory leak with them that is now gone. My testing so far has no strangeness with them, but I'm deeply uncomfortable with how much code I had to change for these (during a press build of all things), so if you see oddities please do report them.

There's a lot more help in here for new players in the form of tips-style journal entries, and even more coming on Monday and Tuesday. Huge thanks to Vincent for lots of outsider feedback that helped us rush forward with this.

The Dark Zenith and the Svikari factions in DLC2 also got a major rebalance for the low difficulty levels (mostly under 5). The mid and high difficulties were great, but they were super overpowered when low. The ZA got some tweaks as well, but it was less extreme.

Some other balance tweaks for the base game make turret counts better and keep carrier guardians out of waves against you. Exos also now should act more like exos and less like waves.

Whew, that was a much larger set of changes than expected, but we're really grateful to all the testers and volunteers who are helping make it possible to parse all this new information and do something about it. More soon.

Enjoy!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#2.901_AIP_Reduction_Clarity

First up: a reminder that if you have trouble with the most recent build, you can always go into betas and choose most_recent_stable to go one build back (or more if there was a problem build). This is how I sleep easily at night after making some major changes.

The changes in this one aren't too major overall, aside from some fixes to multiplayer that needed to happen, and that don't seem to affect single player negatively in my testing.

When AIP is reduced really early in the game (lucky datacenter find) and your AIP floor is hit, it's now much more clear about what is happening and why.

A handful of small bugfixes and DLC2 tweaks are in this one as well.

There is currently a known issue that some of the starting turret counts and similar are a bit off. We're looking into that, but will do another update in the morning once we've figured out what exactly the intent is there. Too many cooks, sometimes, and we don't want to just change that repeatedly.

In the main, things are looking quite smooth, which is good!

Enjoy!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#2.900_First_Press_Build

This one is the first to be available to press for looking at the upcoming Zenith Onslaught DLC (launches May 18th). I still have a lot of art to finish before launch (but all the icons are done!), and there are some remaining MP issues that need attention, but this is getting extremely solid.

This particular build also solves a couple of different ways that could let you accidentally get killed during tutorials. I still haven't been able to reproduce it other than wandering into the wrong planet, but I can see some ways in which it could come about. The tutorial now keeps the AI from moving between planets, and also keeps you from going into planets that would kill you in the earliest tutorials in particular.

Badger also made a lot of quality of life updates that should be helpful for both experienced players and new ones. And then of course lots of behind the scenes goodness from Zeus, CRCGamer, and ArnaudB on actual DLC2.

This version includes some notable updates to turret balance to make them simpler to use while still keeping their essence. And the More System Defenders mod got a few upates.

And lastly, the "Next Steps" journal has a great selection of actual useful advice now, thanks to Strategic Sage.

So many folks helping this come together cleanly. Thank you to everyone! There will likely be another release later today with more tweaks. And lots more over the next two weeks with art drops, balance tuning from our beta testers, and more MP fixes.

Enjoy!

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#2.899_Almost_Press_Build

We're a day out from sending press copies of Zenith Onslaught out, so that's very exciting. You can see some of the very first graphics related to DLC2 in this update, even in the base game, since the Zenith Trader got a facelift to match the new Zenith theming. Other base game Zenith units will be getting that sort of treatment in the coming weeks, though not all of them before ZO actually launches.

This version also relaxes some of the restrictions on how many helpful buildings can seed around the galaxy. Basically, you can make it easier by having more things to capture. We're going to be working on some post-DLC2 content that involves Game Modes that are more restrictive versus more freeform, and for the default mode that we have right now (which will be called Humanity Ascendant), we may as well lean into being more permissive and freeform. The more hardcore modes will not allow such luxuries, but that's the nature of having two modes: two different audiences. We don't want folks to feel like we only cater to the really expert players.

There's a bunch of little UI updates in QoL features in this build, most of them kind of random but definitely very handy. Badger did a lot of those. For modders, you might be interested to know that the Test Chamber now works again, and has a number of helpful utility methods with it. That makes it way easier to test out new units for the main game or DLC or a mod, if you're designing them visually in particualr.

Couple of bugfixes in here, but not much. I'm aware of some other outstanding multiplayer issues that I need to resolve in the morning, and a couple of things that could be more clear, and apparently the tutorial can still kill you if you take your time reading. So those things are for the morning for me. If you see anything else, please let us know.

Enjoy!