AI War 2 News

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.727_Tech_Refunds_And_Balance_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.

Feels like this one took forever, and it's absolutely huge. The headline feature #1 is that now you can spend 2 hacking points to undo the science investments you have put into a tech line or a fleet. This is a HUGE deal, because now you can safely invest your science in the early game, and if the RNG is "not in your favor" later, or you didn't plan well, or heck your priorities just changed, you can re-spec. This ability to adapt as you go is pretty important, and I'm kind of shocked I never even thought of this prior to now. Hacking points are still a finite thing, so you can't do this endlessly, but they are generally plentiful enough that this won't be too painful of a cost.

A number of ships have been updated to be in different technologies now, too, with this release. Without the re-spec ability, this would likely completely break a number of savegames since you might have science committed to places that are now pointless. But these adjusted tech memberships for ships help to make all the techs more balanced and sensible.

We are also continuing to finalize the tech descriptions and what techs have new names at all. You also can't swap ship lines out of a fleet you've not fully claimed yet, too. Oh good grief! This release also has the ability to gift fleets and planets between empires in MP. This release has been that long inwork I forgot that was still new.

There's a new Ambush Carrier Frigate in the base game, donated by CRCGamer. Astro trains got more exciting. Many mod updates. Major pathfinding improvements for giant games in particular, but it benefits everyone. Many of these features are huge on their own, but almost get lost in this release.

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.726_Tech_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.

This one is a smaller tuning release. It further tweaks the names of the techs based on a lot more feedback (see that discord channel linked in the release notes if you want to participate), including renaming a couple of the new name back to the old ones. The idea is to have the new names not fluctuate anymore shortly, so that we are settled onto the new naming scheme and everyone is hopefully happy. Think we're close now!

There are new mod updates as well, including to more system defenders to make them fit with the new station keeping tech style.

MLRS Turrets have become Fusion Turrets and gotten a small buff/rebalance, and DLC1's Fusion turrets are now Dispersion Turrets (since that's what their mechanic already was).

Plus other minor fixes, and The Reprocessers mod making targeting of homeworlds super unlikely.

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.725_Techs.2C_Metal.2C_Energy_And_Ceasefires

You need to use the current_beta branch on Steam to play this one. If you have trouble with it, there is a most_recent_stable_beta, now, too.

This one has some substantial changes to the NAMES of techs, which also now get descriptions. We are still probably going to make some more changes to those based on discussion in the naming_and_balance section of our discord: https://discord.gg/snQBW4g9Gr The idea is to make sure that they are as clear as possible while also being nice to read and say.

There are some substantial economic boosts for players in this build as well, and coprocessor are now reserved for multi-AI games only.

Brownouts are less easy to trigger, but last a bit longer.

Several mods got updates, and a variety of small balance changes are included.

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.724_Mod_Bonanza

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 a bug in the prior version that was preventing AI Reserves from sending ships against you, and also changes up how the AI sends waves against other factions (basically they go straight Hunter now).

This new version also includes a ton of updates to our settings menu to make things more easy to find, and organize all sorts of categories of options so that you can actually focus in on specific items that otherwise were just kind of lost in an overwhelming soup of words. Like that sentence!

We also introduced explicit mod prerequisites, so that mods can define both what expansions and what other mods they require. When you enable such a mod, it now does its best to enable any other mods it depends on without you having to worry about it. Since we have a "modder framework" mod in place by NR SirLimbo, this makes it easier for other modders to use that without it confusing players.

The mods themselves now are visually broken out into their own tab, and into their own categories (normal, cosmetic, and framework). This new build includes three new cosmetic mods by ArnaudB, all of which are actually balance adjustments (but which don't break savegames to be turned on or off).
There's also another new mod, this one by CRZgatecrusher, called The Reprocessers. This is a new faction by the same name that organizes attacks, then does research, builds, has a lifecycle, and replicates.

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.723_AI_Accountant_Fired.2C_And_Relentless_Waves

You need to use the current_beta branch on Steam to play this one. If you have trouble with it, there is a most_recent_stable_beta, now, too.

WOW this one changes a lot in terms of balance. It turns out that about a month ago, I accidentally capped the Warden and the Praetorian Guard factions HARD. So hard that they have barely been present in the game during this time. They had the budget, but they just had nowhere to spend it. There's a bunch of new math in place that now gives them appropriate better caps depending on the AIP and the difficulty level of that AI subfaction in question.

The original release where the budgets changed and these caps got reduced too low was called "The AI Visits An Accountant," which by and large was a great release that moved things forward. But it is amusing that this big mistake was in there, and so this release referring to that accountant being fired was an immediate joke on discord.

Beyond that, though, waves also got some major balance changes. Gone is the code that makes them try to "make sure they can win" with each wave. That would lead to situations where if you were too well-defended in certain spots, you could guarantee you'd never be attacked there. And if you were equally well-defended everywhere, then you could guarantee you'd see no waves until an apocalyptic one showed up. Now that doesn't happen, waves are more common and less targeted, and this gives the Hunter some interesting potential openings as well as making things a lot more lively and actually testing your defenses in all parts. Someone on discord a few weeks ago described this as like "raptors testing the fence."

There's also a new AI subfaction, "relentless waves," which keeps the Hunter from getting any of the wave forces. They're here to fight and die. Hunter was fine on its own.