AI War Beta 4.064 Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2011/01/ai-war-beta-4064-released.html

This one simply has a laundry list of bugfixes and balance tweaks, as we push onwards toward having the new version release-ready.  It also has a very cool new forcefield hit effect animation by longtime community member Hans-Martin Portmann, which adds to his long list of graphics submissions (he was responsible for our original explosion improvements back in the 1.301 days, for example).

The biggest fix in this version is to an issue that could cause a lot of AI ships to show up as invisible in far zoom mode in the last version if you were on a planet where the AI was still in cold storage.  But, there were also a bunch of interrelated bugs with speed boosting, gravity effects, and group move that are from the last few versions and which are now fixed, too.

The biggest balance change is to the fortresses and superfortresses for the AI players.  They are no longer mobile, but in the case of the regular fortresses they now have slightly more health but substantially less range.

There's a fair list of other stuff in this one, too, but it's all just small miscellaneous stuff.  Important, but difficult to summarize -- check out the release notes if you're curious!  More stuff is coming next week in terms of polish, and then we'll be all set for AI War 4.4 and Light of the Spire.  We'll be doing a Tidalis official release next week, too.  Then we're finally going to be ramping up real development on A Valley Without Wind! We're quite excited about that, and about the state that AI War is in (or almost in), too.  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.

[Wingflier]

Awesome update! I can't wait for the final version. For Tidalis too!

Are you guys planning on finishing the bonus ship balance before release? A lot of us are still excited about that 

[KingIsaacLinksr]

First off, I actually like that you made the fortresses immobile.  For the AI anyway.  And it still makes sense that the humans would have mobile fortresses.  Less health, but better mobility, to go along with your idea of humans .  So definite win there, never liked their implementation before now.  Bad enough we have to shoot through mobile Guardians, fleet ships, starships and then to have this giant hammer come along wrecking your fleet since you can't move fast enough...well....yeah. 

And then keep up the great work on fixing the bugs

King

[KPJZKC]

So many updates!

I have a question though, in the game I just started with this new patch (4.064), half of my scouts were swallowed by an AI ship in the first 10 minutes. However I'm now about 40 minutes into the game, and the health indicator for the swallowed ships has been at 87% for at least 30 minutes - is this normal?

[Salamander]

I'll do a mantis track on this one, but a side-effect of your GUI changes is causing shift to place multiple units to force you to release the shift key to select a new unit or it tries to place the current unit on the screen 'under' the build window. I had to detonate several oddly placed things after noticing it. Also when mouse-wheel scrolling in the ship stats display it is also zooming in and out on the system map simultaneously.

Neither of this are major but I felt they needed mentioning.

[Goekhan]

When can we get LotS via Steam? Is it on there already? ^_^

[Reality]

LOTS is apparently coming out for official release soon (i.e. in January) - it'll be on steam sometime (hopefully shortly) after that

[Burnstreet]

from the release notes:
* The damage output of the spider turret now properly matches that of the spider turret.
Huh?

* Hive Golem Wasps now have 10x more health and attack power.
I was just going to report that.

[TechSY730]

I didn't want to start a whole new topic over this.

From the 4.065 release notes:

The following ships now have immunities to antimatter bombs, shifting the balance around some in a way intended to prevent too-easy sniping on both sides in a way that was formerly not interesting because of bombards and siege starships:
...
    * All of the standalone force fields for both players and AIs (a benefit for both the humans and the AI).

Does this mean that siege starships will no longer be able to attack forcefields or stuff under forcefields?

Also, what was the reasoning behind removing sniper's ability to shoot through forcefields? Will this extend to sniper fleet ships and sniper guardians too? Its not that big of a deal, as I don't think many players took advantage of it.

[Mánagarmr]

This issue is reported fixed from the last version. It certainly is not. We're currently in a game where ships are moving agonizingly slow on friendly planets.

[Echo35]

Aww, you made the Z Mirrors much less hilarious.

[TechSY730]

This issue is reported fixed from the last version. It certainly is not. We're currently in a game where ships are moving agonizingly slow on friendly planets.

Are you able to reopen it? If not, make a new report and EXPLICITLY state that what it is a duplicate of has not really been solved.

[Mánagarmr]

This issue is reported fixed from the last version. It certainly is not. We're currently in a game where ships are moving agonizingly slow on friendly planets.

Are you able to reopen it? If not, make a new report and EXPLICITLY state that what it is a duplicate of has not really been solved.

While the issue is still reported as "Resolved", it has the solution "Reopened", so yeah, I opened it. I hope it shows up that way for Chris and Keith.

[Vinraith]

I didn't want to start a whole new topic over this.

From the 4.065 release notes:

The following ships now have immunities to antimatter bombs, shifting the balance around some in a way intended to prevent too-easy sniping on both sides in a way that was formerly not interesting because of bombards and siege starships:
...
    * All of the standalone force fields for both players and AIs (a benefit for both the humans and the AI).

Does this mean that siege starships will no longer be able to attack forcefields or stuff under forcefields?

Also, what was the reasoning behind removing sniper's ability to shoot through forcefields? Will this extend to sniper fleet ships and sniper guardians too? Its not that big of a deal, as I don't think many players took advantage of it.

To be honest, in light of the list of things immune to antimatter bombs I'm trying to figure out what siege starships are good for under .065. 

[TechSY730]

To be honest, in light of the list of things immune to antimatter bombs I'm trying to figure out what siege starships are good for under .065.  

Yea I know. Especially now that AI ships will try to stay under a force-field when it can, combined with that, severely limits the usefulness of siege starships.

It seems that you would only want to build one if there many big targets you have to face and bomber starships alone aren't killing them fast enough. In other words, despite their pathetic range, bomber starships are pretty much completely superior to siege starships, even before this change.

Also, about the AI trying to keep units under force-fields, isn't that basically reversing a change made several versions back, where that behavior was turned off to keep the AI from throwing away their force-fields?

EDIT: Oh, and we can't forget the Siege starship's pathetic durability, which does TOO good of a job preventing it from becoming overpowered.