AI War Beta 5.014, "Bulk Rate Starships," Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2011/08/ai-war-beta-5014-bulk-rate-starships.html

This one is a much smaller release than the last, but I predict that its effect on gameplay will actually be just as large.  The main change here is that starship costs have been driven down substantially -- reduced about 33%, in most but not all cases.  This makes the average combined metal/crystal costs of mark I starships closer to 80k rather than 120k, meaning that players can deploy more of them earlier in the game, more of them overall, and that they build faster.

Given the role that siege starships are intended to play against large aggressors, that's important.  Excuse me -- antimatter starships.  After running our poll for a while, that became the clear winner for a new name for sieges that would be more descriptive and less misleading.  The description text for the animatter starship also makes it abundantly clear right from the start that their role is "capital killer," rather than their former (long ago) role as a siege cannon.

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.

[chemical_art]

This will definitely get me using starships again. Despite being tough and powerful they just were too expensive for their uses for me to commit them aside as reservists. But now they'll see some frontline action. This will also prevent them from being absolutely overshadowed by other larger vessels who may be more expensive but are also more efficient.

[x4000]

Great!  That was the goal.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

This will definitely get me using starships again. Despite being tough and powerful they just were too expensive for their uses for me to commit them aside as reservists. But now they'll see some frontline action. This will also prevent them from being absolutely overshadowed by other larger vessels who may be more expensive but are also more efficient.

I have to "word" you as well, as I found that I was waiting too long to build starships, but this should help alleviate that problem

King

[Coppermantis]

Yay, now I can get starships earlier on which will help taking out the initial waves when I don't have a lot to defend with. Thanks for updating so often, so many companies don't do that, and it makes me happy when someone does.

[Shardz]

Outstanding as always guys! It's always a pleasure to see a new update awaiting me when I fire up the Kraken for some real gaming, but it's rarely a surprise. 

[Lancefighter]

Yay more starship buffs

i actually have pretty much no concerns with this patch, as it pretty much was just straight up buffs. Except for nerfing the siege starship, but I guess I completely missed a poll somewhere.




(i dont suppose youd consider a new siege starship similar to siege tanks of sc2? - mobile with shortrange decent gun, or set up for a longrange aoe cannon..)

[x4000]

Siege starships weren't actually changed that recently, but they were just renamed to fit what they've been.

(i dont suppose youd consider a new siege starship similar to siege tanks of sc2? - mobile with shortrange decent gun, or set up for a longrange aoe cannon..)

Sounds like something good for the next expansion, yeah.   That will take some trickier balancing, and a couple of new game mechanics if it's deployable, etc, but could be fun!

[Lancefighter]

Siege Starships renamed to Antimatter Starships

Youve completely gutted my favored Dreadnaughts once before, must you do it again?

[Zeba]

Yay! \o/

Cheap starships ftw.

The beginning game should have nearly every mk I ship unlocked with a cheap upgrade to mk II and possibly III.

Stick it to us on mk IV so we have a challenge on 7+ difficulty games.

[Buttons840]

Great changes!  Just be sure to do an official release before you start making experimental changes.  I'd love for the next official release to actually be more balanced and stable than the betas.  ;-)

[x4000]

Yup, of course.

[doctorfrog]

I know it's said fairly often around here, but it really is unique how frequent and how thoughtful the game updates are for AI War. They're not just bug fixes or half-assed apologetic game balancing, it's real refinement, at this point, years after the initial release. Arcen clearly treats this game and its community as an investment. Kudos.

[x4000]

We try!  And we really appreciate people's patience with this slower period in the game updates -- we've been averaging a patch a month for the last half year at this point, which is insanely slow for us.  But the game was definitely in a place where it was ready to go into that state for a while, with 5.0.  The ramp-up with a new game is always slow, and AVWW is an even larger game than AI War in basically every respect, but the plan is that we'll be able to focus on AI War and AVWW updates and expansions for another couple of years once AVWW is fully up and running.  There's still quite a bit of stuff that we'd like to do with AI War, and AVWW is basically a treasure trove of potential game design for us at this stage.

To me, it only makes sense to invest in the games and the community over the long-term like that if there's actually long-term player interest in the game.  That's where you really get to explore interesting and unique things, and I think that AI War at 5.0 just blows 1.0 or 2.0 out of the water.  We'd have never got to that point if we hadn't kept going with it.  Or look at Dwarf Fortress, and all the updates it has had -- totally different game now than even back with Boatmurdered.  That's a worthwhile way to explore a design space, I think, that you just don't get if you're leaping from sequel to sequel or franchise to franchise.

Tidalis is a bit of a funny case because, for its genre, it was already incredi-massive even at 1.0.  So even for the people that love it, I haven't heard real clamoring for more of it because there's so much in the base package.  With AVWW, that's something we've been bearing in mind when determining how broad or how deep to make the basic structure of the world and gameplay -- so we made it extraordinarily broad, so that opportunities for new modes of gameplay right within the main game are all over the place.  It's not like Diablo where it's all the same thing the entire time.

Anyhow, the kind words are much appreciated, but I wouldn't do it any other way.  It's too much fun this way, and it's made excellent business sense for us, and the way it's made the game and the community grow has been really rewarding as well.

[zoutzakje]

cheaper starships, very nice. You know, I've had several games now where I haven't even used a single starship, just fleetships and golems (never play with the spire stuff besides the regular fleet). But now I think I can finally use them again, at least until I've found myself a golem or two.