AI War 2 News

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.757_Super_Mega_Exciting_Sidebar

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.

Wow! This one hits some bucket list items for me, in one manner of speaking. The planet sidebar tab has been a bear and not my favorite interface for like three years now. And yet it's the most primary interface you use for finding ships and such. I probably should have done this sooner.

At any rate, lots of quality of life improvements. First of all, the sidebar is just plain sorted better (it's subtle but immediately applicable), and it also never blends units from different factions together. Secondly, there are two new filter modes that you can toggle on in a new options section right on the sidebar, which lets you break things out either just by faction, or by (mobile and station) per faction. This can be a great alternate view to check relative faction strengths, or a view you use all the time.

Additionally, the game now shows you the fleets of the local planet on the planet tab, not the fleets tab. This is vastly more clear (you can still see them on the fleets tab, but it doesn't double them up anymore). There's slightly different/more info in these new fleet displays on the planet tab, in that it shows you the health of the flagship if it is damaged. It also shows crippled flagships way more clearly. You can also much more quickly click into and edit local fleets.

You can also Watch fleets, to keep an eye on them even when they are distant from you!

The crippling mechanics have been simplified WAY back down. Bail out is now off by default, as are hacking point costs. Repair cost multipliers are a flat 2x. Ships now cripple at 1 HP, not 10% health. You can adjust these settings during gameplay.

Superterminal hack is still weak, but I ran out of time. Enjoy!

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.756_Choice_OF_Injury

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.

Right now the most_recent_stable_beta points to 2.753 still, because both last builds were not great. There were some invincible ships happening in the last build, but that's fixed now.

More exciting is the new stuff. The way that ship crippling works is finally revamped, like I've been talking about for a week or so. Essentially, all of the new mechanics are optional, though; you can turn literally all of them off, and make crippling just be "it doesn't work until it's repaired back to full health." By default, though, it uses the most friendly version of the new "bail out" system (Trigger On!) to warp the crippled ship back to the nearest friendly space. It also costs more to repair until it is no longer crippled (which means 100% health now, not 10%), but it's not in a way that should bankrupt your metal. And that can be tuned. It also now costs you a few hacking points when ships get crippled; more for bigger stuff. Again that can be turned off or tuned. We wanted a variety of consequences, to have people avoid getting crippled carelessly if possible, but not to the point where people want to reload saves.

Superterminal and Dark Spire VG hacks should be way more tame now. They were too rough.

Citadels have gotten a rework, being more cheap (in AIP) and more effective in some ways, but not coming with built in turrets to start with.

Forcefield harmonics let certain very large ships fly through enemy forcefields as if they are not there, but they still can't fire at the ships under them.

If you scrap some units on planets that are friendly to you, you get back a percentage of the metal now. 15% by default, but you can customize.

Enjoy!

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.755_Hotfixes

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.

Right now the most_recent_stable_beta points to 2.753 still, because the prior build was anything but stable. Apparently I was very tired yesterday evening, because not all of my most recent changes for part of that build even compiled, and I forgot to code the last half of one. That was... a first for me, in 12 years of doing this.

But in terms of what caused stability problems, that actually had nothing to do with my oversights, and was simply a matter of the new "states of matter" feature that is mostly DLC2-oriented having some "this is new and large" standard kinds of issues. Being able to get all our new unit mechanic features in for DLC2, and pave the ground for some of that for DLC3, as part of the tail end of this beta period really speeds things up and will pay dividends for stability in the main branch in the future.

Beyond that, GregC discovered that the 4th tutorial was un-completeable in the beta branch, so that's solved. Sigma7 and Ryulong had found a strange case in the beta where your flagships could disappear, or even your home command station, now that you can mark down by refunding fleet upgrades. These were not new issues in the last day or week, but it's great to have those fixed well BEFORE we go back to the stable branch.

Enjoy!

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!