AI War Beta 5.020, "Nanoswarm Fortress," Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2011/11/ai-war-beta-5020-nanoswarm-fortress.html

This one has a couple of pretty significant balance tweaks that folks should really appreciate.  Firstly, the Fallen Spire exogalactic strike forces are a bit better tuned.  Secondly, the youngling nanoswarms now really are better at their job of hitting a lot of targets.  And thirdly, the AI fortress health has been halved, making them not remotely such a grind as they were.

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.

[TechSY730]

Finally, thank you. I'm fighting a fortress baron AI, and as such the AI fortress nerf is greatly appreciated.

Did you remember to half the health of the AI Superfortress too?

[x4000]

Cheers!  No idea on the superfortress, Keith would know as he was the one who did it.  Those are separate places in the code, so I could see it either way.

[TechSY730]

Actually, AI Superfortresses still have 5x the health of human Superfortresses. However, seeing as how rare superfortresses are, I'm not going to raise too much stink about it. I guess just find a better value for them (2.5x health of human versions?) for the next version, but no need to rush it.

[x4000]

Fair enough.

[Hearteater]

Looks very nice!

Also, a Nanoswarm Fortress sounds very cool.  I envision an AI Fortress with the same health as human fortresses that is made up of a swarm of tiny nano ships.  For every 0.4% of its maximum health it takes in damage, one nano ship is released (their health is 0.4% of the fortress's maximum health).  Fully "killing" a Fortress would release 250 nano ships.  When no threat remains, the nano ships return to the fortress (if it doesn't exist, they return to the fortress's location) and add themselves back into the fortress, increasing its health by their own remaining health.

As an added bonus, nano ships deal 50% "disassembler" damage.  Any ship killed with disassembler damage spawns new nano ships when it dies.  One for every X points of disassembler damage where X is the health of the original nano ships.  New nano ships are part of the original fortress and can recombine allowing the fortress to reach up to double its original health.

That should satisfy those people who get bored killing fortresses .

[Shardz]

Thanks for the update, it's always appreciated!   

[x4000]

You bet!

[beginattackrun]

I'm still too new to the game to be appreciating the recent updates as much as the veterans, but it's cool that AI War is still being updated regularly. Thanks for all the hard work!

[festa_freak]

Whew!  I'm STILL in my first game vs a tank and fortress baron.  those forts were getting crazy near their homeworld.

Thanks, from a new player.

[x4000]

Our pleasure. And welcome!

[Nalgas]

Also, a Nanoswarm Fortress sounds very cool.

Oh great.  You strapped rockets onto the grey goo.  Now it exists on a galactic scale.

[Vinraith]

As a matter of academic curiosity (not remotely a complaint, to be clear) how many times have we been through the buff fortresses/nerf fortresses cycle? It seems like it's been a lot.

[x4000]

As a matter of academic curiosity (not remotely a complaint, to be clear) how many times have we been through the buff fortresses/nerf fortresses cycle? It seems like it's been a lot.

I couldn't say for sure, but I'm positive it's somewhere in the teens, heh.  I think the core problem with fortresses is that the rest of the game has been changing around them quite a lot, and they tend to lag behind in getting updated since they are a bit less frequent.  So then we have to kind of reinvent them periodically to make better sense with the newer balance of the rest of the game.  Just something simple like changing the ranges of a lot of the ships of the game really wrecks fortress balance, for example.  They're usually the victim of changes that seem unrelated but turn out to really impact their balance.

[Coppermantis]

I forget, is there a way to get the updates manually? My computer is having an off day and for some reason it hated me. I'd already updated but it deleted whatever it needed apparently, and It says I need to get 5.020 before I can play any of my saves, and yet the auto-updated doesn't report an update available. It also completely deleted AVWW demo.

Nevermind, It solved itself on it's own. That was odd.