AI War Beta 4.051 Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2010/12/ai-war-beta-4051-released.html

For being our second release of the day, this one isn't small.  It's yet another balance/bugfix release, since we're solidly in that polish mode for the game.

This one focuses on minor factions more than anything else, and pretty heavily re-imagines the circumstances under which both marauders and resistance fighters will show up, as well as how formidable they are once they arrive (aka, way more formidable now).  The marauder buzzbombs aren't even suicide units anymore!

In terms of new features, both the rebelling human colonies and all the various types of fabricators now have foldouts in multiplayer (little copies of themselves for the non-capturing player, which are indestructible and invisible-to-the-enemy but which die if the central structure is killed).  This means that when one player captures a fabricator or similar, the entire team gets the benefit of that, as has long been the case with advanced factories.  In the past we hadn't had it work that way because of a desire for having per-player specialization, but in the end that just made fabricators less worthwhile in multiplayer, or encouraged players to micromanage them and gift them back and forth (micromanagement = yuck).

The other big thing in this version are a number of new in-game notices that clarify a few situations.  For one, it's a common question that players get caught off-guard not realizing that something like AI Eyes have the warp gate ability, and so get waves on a planet they thought was safe.  Nevermind that they could have just checked the Hostile Wormholes overlay on the galaxy map, this clearly needed to be made more clear.  Now whenever you're in a planet, if there's anything that lets the AI launch waves (or reinforcements, which was another point of occasional confusion when players captured a planet while still having a special forces guard post alive, etc), there are now counts showing that in the upper left of the screen.

There's a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff, too.  No more players farming AI Eyes or SuperTerminals.  No more AI beachheads getting launched against player homeworlds.  And so forth.  Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.  If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.

[ShadowOTE]

Awesome!

[Echo35]

Man, I step away from my PC for the day and there's TWO updates!

[TechSY730]

Hooray! Keep up the great work guys. Seeing how many bug reports you went through in a single day just shows me how much you really care about us customers. 

[Vinraith]

Spec-freaking-tacular. I especially appreciate the rebel colonies fix, as they're a favorite of mine.

[Dyers_Eve]

You missed the Youngling nanoswarm unit in your great neinzul unit re-balance. I know this because I just picked it for my extra unit and holy useless ship batman. Like a full cap of them got a mark II fighter down to 50% health. I will miss my youngling tigers though, how will I one shot a fortress now?

Shield bearer text should be changed, I'm not sure I'd consider 6k damage from a mark I ship every 6 seconds as relatively low damage. The text of ships like zenith polarizers from the patch notes need to be in the game. I'm talking about stuff like: "The multiply-damage-by-square-root-of-target-armor mechanic now gives a minimum attack multiplier of 4 even against targets with less than 16 armor, and a maximum attack multiplier of 100 even against targets with more than 10,000 armor." I never pick ships that just say well it does lots of damage to ships with lots of armor is not helpful.

I really like the new Warp gate/reinforcement counter and the zombie AI Eye ships.

[orzelek]

Thanks for the fixes... and for making marauders game breaking

Few of them spawned and proceeded to demolish some of planet turrets and whole Mk I fleet before continuing to demolish further...
Only frigates lived for some time because of aoe immunity - but not much longer.

Marauders are now meant to cleanse the planet of anything and sit there guarding it for AI?

[Ozymandiaz]

Some very nice polish being done here!

I got my frind the new expansiosn and we are about to start a new cool multi game soon.

[superking]

ohh sad face @ the buzzbomb changes, I loved the concept/name of that unit 

[keith.lamothe]

You missed the Youngling nanoswarm unit in your great neinzul unit re-balance. I know this because I just picked it for my extra unit and holy useless ship batman. Like a full cap of them got a mark II fighter down to 50% health.

No, I did not miss them, I simply wasn't aiming at them   They're not intended to do any kind of significant damage, just to provide reclamation, paralysis, engine damage, and armor damage.  The reclamation part was thrown out of whack with the recent change to parasites that actually requires decent dps.  I'll probably just buff their damage a bit (2x or 3x) and add some kind of flag that makes it act like it actually did more damage than it did for reclamation purposes.  But buffing their damage much more than that would just make them the awesomer-than-the-awesomebomb (Zenith Autobomb).

[Invelios]

Just started a new game and got attacked by Muraduers. Good job buffing those, cause they are definitely tougher than before. My fleet of 100ish ships left after killing the AI on that planet was reduced to 50ish before I ran away. Fortunately they ran into other AI worlds and not my own. Overall they make more of a difference, instead of being a minor annoyance like they used to be, which I like.

[NickAragua]

I dunno, they marauders could be pretty painful regardless if you weren't paying attention. Now, it seems like they're just plain old "AI Wave" deadly. I haven't played with the update yet, but I had trouble dealing with those buzz bombs before, where they'd wipe out my fleet ships no problem if I wasn't paying attention: they didn't really have a counter that I'm aware of (and whatever the counter was before sure as hell isn't the counter now, anyway).

That reminds me, how do people deal with those damned things anyway? The frigates are no problem, but buzz bombs... ::shudder::

[Vinraith]

Marauders were definitely too weak before, in the past their presence has been incidental to a fight at best, and almost always totally ignorable. That's not to say they aren't too powerful now, mind, I haven't played with them since the changes.

[Fleet]

Thanks for keeping up to pace with bugs and balance fixes. I know you have gotten a lot of flak about unwanted features and changes recently (from myself included, mostly grumbling about new anti-X mechanics), but somehow you find the patience to keep on working with us long enough for a solution to be found that most people are happy with (Except poor Machine  )

[Wingflier]

Machine didn't stay around long enough to see the core generator mechanic removed the very next day. That kind of overwhelming emotional response is the bane of good forum discussion, and good discussion in general. It also showed a massive distrust in the developers after they have done nothing but prove to us that they are worthy of our trust and respect.