AI War 2 News

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.

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.722_AI_Wave_Balance

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 a few last performance improvements (this time just for when you are showing ship ranges), and it also includes some mod updates and a few fixes like not letting you go into negative hacking points anymore (thanks, Dominus!).

The star of the show with this one is definitely the faster, stronger waves from the AI. As documented in the release notes at some length, waves were incredibly underpowered before to the point that they were all but a non-presence in the game. This version changes that, substantially, so that waves are now actually a factor and you have more than the Hunter to worry about when it comes to defending border worlds. I experimented with a number of other changes, such as more aggressive mark-leveling for the AI, but backed off of those. I did give the player more forcefields on their homeworld, though -- that is needed in the case of early bomber assault waves.

Overall there's a huge amount of extra danger in the game now, from different angles of attack than we've been seeing for a while. Given the insane boosts to the players' power, particularly in the early game, this should hopefully balance that out a bit AND make waves an interesting part of the game again. There has been talk of also increasing the number of guardians the AI gets, but that feels like overkill to me at this particular moment.

I'll be very curious to hear how balance feels, in a broad sense, to folks who play at different difficulty levels. This beta branch is not intended to make the game harder (per se), but is intended to make more strategies viable, more techs viable, and have more varied games as a whole. How's it feeling this build?

New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.721_Histiocytes_And_Circles

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 fixes a major performance problem that has crept in for some graphics cards, for some OSes, on the latest driver versions. Essentially, the selection circles around ships were stupidly bad performing lately. They now perform vastly better, and also look way more modern and clean. Other things like the range circles still need to be updated, but it's been a lot of work to get the framework in general here.

Also, there's a lot of updates to game balance. Turrets in particular got some love from ArnaudB, who helped make the new turret balance make more sense and be more consistent. NR SirLimbo and CRC Gamer also updated their mods.

StarKelp also has an entirely new mod available, called Macrophage Histiocytes, which basically greatly extends the base-game Macrophage faction and gives them a ton of new options and powers. As friends or foes, this is a pretty cool new item to be able to play with!