AI War Beta 5.017, "Return of the Hunter/Killers," Released!

[chemical_art]

ool   How are the stats on them feeling?  I did halve their dps from their previous incarnation, but doubled their health.  Seemed like a decent first guess, based on how badly a previous-stats mkI was shredding my spire city/fleet defenses in my tests.  But even now a MkIII has 1.5 times what a previous MkI had in dps, so that must have been a bit intense.

What I guess happened was that a fallen spire exo...which often breaks up into at least 4 groups in that game...decided to instead use the "most of the points into one ship" logic...which then led to all the separate points instead go into one ship leading to a bristling point of attack. It blitzed through a spire city but fell to implosion reserves guarding the route to the homeworld combined with allied fleet.


Implosion artillery suddenly is a good idea to keep on near your homeworld...nothing else mobile sans battleships can touch them.

[keith.lamothe]

Implosion artillery suddenly is a good idea to keep on near your homeworld...nothing else mobile sans battleships can touch them.

Yea, Implosions are a great trump card against many of the really nasty things the AI likes to throw at you.  And while BBs are obviously nice, I doubt anything in the game can sneeze at 40 of the FFs during that opening salvo.

[chemical_art]

Implosion artillery suddenly is a good idea to keep on near your homeworld...nothing else mobile sans battleships can touch them.

Yea, Implosions are a great trump card against many of the really nasty things the AI likes to throw at you.  And while BBs are obviously nice, I doubt anything in the game can sneeze at 40 of the FFs during that opening salvo.

40 FF's you mean 40 ff worth of hp? Anyway, of course you wouldn't have the BB on its own. You'll have its escort fleet of DD and FF's to support it as well. You'll also need your human fleet there optimally as well to act as a shield (they won't last long but its still cheaper then replacing spire vessels)

[keith.lamothe]

Implosion artillery suddenly is a good idea to keep on near your homeworld...nothing else mobile sans battleships can touch them.

Yea, Implosions are a great trump card against many of the really nasty things the AI likes to throw at you.  And while BBs are obviously nice, I doubt anything in the game can sneeze at 40 of the FFs during that opening salvo.

40 FF's you mean 40 ff worth of hp? Anyway, of course you wouldn't have the BB on its own. You'll have its escort fleet of DD and FF's to support it as well. You'll also need your human fleet there optimally as well to act as a shield (they won't last long but its still cheaper then replacing spire vessels)

Oh, right, abbreviation conflict   I meant 40 of those photon lance frigates (I think I called them heavy beam frigates in the game, should fix that).  They're relatively weak compared to the other continuous beam weapons but they have a longer range and a ton of them all at once just melts stuff.

[indarien]

A few days ago I decided to reinstall AIWar and the associated expansions.  I downloaded the snazzy latest and greatest AIWar + Expansions from the website, and ten minutes later, everything was up and working again.  Good job, like always in that regard - a game that does not soak up 10GB+ on my computer, what a nice change.

Then I clicked the "3 Beta Updates" available message to get the latest version.
At that point, it begins downloading "update packages" at a rate of about 1 per second.  Which seems fine, except for the fact that there is no way to know how many thousands of these things it wants to download, and somewhere in the 10000-28000 range, the update fails with a "General Heap Error" that crashes AIWar.

So...Is the in-game update option broken?
I'm fine playing whatever the latest stable version of the game is, albeit some of the sound bugs get on my nerves.  But if it is broken for everyone can I kindly ask that someone look into it?  If you need any logs from my computers, let me know.  Obviously this is a fresh install, and I have tried it on my Windows 7, Windows XP, and Linux box and get the same affect.  Guess maybe next I should see if it will fail on a Mac also.

Thanks.

[Echo35]

AI War patches always amuse me.

Us: "This game isn't hard enough."
Chris: "Okay, here."
Us: "Well, that's pretty cool, but I have this bug where I can still win, can you fix that?"

 

[Entrenched Homperson]

AI War patches always amuse me.

Us: "This game isn't hard enough."
Chris: "Okay, here."
Us: "Well, that's pretty cool, but I have this bug where I can still win, can you fix that?"

 

I lold. 

[keith.lamothe]

I don't think I've ever seen a mantis record titled "Bug: I can still barely win", but the sentiment has been there

[Zeba]

AI War patches always amuse me.

Us: "This game isn't hard enough."
Chris: "Okay, here."
Us: "Well, that's pretty cool, but I have this bug where I can still win, can you fix that?"

 

Hahaha.

This has to be the only rts game that I actually enjoy losing at as its usually a stupid mistake that I made an hour or so earlier that does me in.

Though there was that one time when we had that glorious bomber/fighter/ff bearer/mrs combo that made even a difficulty 8 game a cakewalk.

I think we tell on ourselves a bit too much for our own good. 

[keith.lamothe]

I think we tell on ourselves a bit too much for our own good. 

Yea, most major nerfs originate from players talking about their strategies and saying it makes the game too easy

[chemical_art]

Reading the updates, I'm excited that the spire craft option will provide more direct firepower. As great as siege towers are, they can't do it alone.

Now with sieges and ion cannons leading the front and attritioners in the back the spire craft option can finally compete in fleet combat's usefulness compared to golems. And that's cool.

[Nenad]

Hey guys, I have a question.

I was always skeptical about the AI War patches because of the "Beta" in it's name. But now I've seen how AVWW is better after just a couple of patches, so I was wondering: Is it worth it to patch AI War 5.000 to 5.017?

[@B0FH]

Hey guys, I have a question.

I was always skeptical about the AI War patches because of the "Beta" in it's name. But now I've seen how AVWW is better after just a couple of patches, so I was wondering: Is it worth it to patch AI War 5.000 to 5.017?

Especially with AI War being "mature" now, I'd never play anything BUT the latest betas myself.
It has been said many times (and I agree) that for the most part Arcen betas are better than other companies official patches.

[Nalgas]

Hey guys, I have a question.

I was always skeptical about the AI War patches because of the "Beta" in it's name. But now I've seen how AVWW is better after just a couple of patches, so I was wondering: Is it worth it to patch AI War 5.000 to 5.017?

Very much so.  It's a good deal more balanced now, particularly a lot of the ships from LotS, which were fairly aggravating in 5.000 and shortly after, and a few little things here and there were fixed or added that make it nicer to play.  It's not beta as in "untested and may or may not work or set your computer on fire", it's just not an official release that anyone's had time to push out to Steam and other places like that yet.

[zebramatt]

What they said!

Basically, the rule of thumb is: if an AI War beta patch has been around for more'n a couple of days, it's going to be pretty damn solid.