AI War Beta 5.023, "Plasma Siege Starships," Released!

[Shrugging Khan]

That might've very well been me.

Or just about anyone, for that matter 

[HellishFiend]

I apologize if this is ignorance, but arent engineers supposed to not auto-repair broken golems? My auto-FRD engineers are auto-repairing a broken artillery golem, and I'm not yet wanting them to do that.

[BobTheJanitor]

I apologize if this is ignorance, but arent engineers supposed to not auto-repair broken golems? My auto-FRD engineers are auto-repairing a broken artillery golem, and I'm not yet wanting them to do that.

It's a constant fight. I suggest turning off the 'engineers assist low power units' control (or whatever it's named; it's something like that) and then just powering off the golems you don't want fixed. There's an engineer control for not fixing things with high cost, but I don't like using it because it leads to them not fixing other things you might want fixed and I don't like having to babysit them that much. You'll still have to babysit your active golems if you want to be able to low-power them when you're not using them while still ensuring that they do get repaired at the same time, but that's the least micro-intesive option, I find.

[Cyborg]

I'm not going to update until the replacement starship is improved. I can wait until the next release.

[c4sc4]

Previously Sniper and Spider turrets cost 8 to 10 times as much metal+crystal to build a cap of compared to all other turret types, so:

    * Base Metal Cost from 1500 => 300.
    * Base Crystal Cost from 7500 => 1500.

Did I misunderstand this part of the patch notes? Are the spider turrets suppose have their cost reduced as well? Right now they cost 12k metal and 30k crystal which I think was their prepatch cost. The sniper turrets definitely have had their price reduced though.

[festa_freak]

Thanks for the updates these past few weeks.  I'm still trying to get my strategy gaming buddy into this game (he likes RTS a little more like sup com) but I'm gonna keep trying!

[Ktoff]

I feel you, Ktoff. I can't bring myself to not start a new game, too

FWIW, unless there's something more severe than the siege's being able to take out ARS's and the such, we probably won't be doing another AIW release for at least a few days.  That particular bug is borderline severe enough, but in the short term it should be easy enough to avoid having those specific units shooting at ff's that have critical capturables under them.  I could be wrong, of course, with that enormously-longer-range-than-I'd-intended

At least for a couple of days? Curse you developers of heavily maintained games! Where are the good old days where you could wait for months before a developer deigned to fix even critical bugs....

The main problem is of course that I don't have enough time to play AI war. If i'm lucky I find 5 hours gaming time a week and then, heretic that I am, this is not exclusively AI war...

The frequent patches are the main reason I keep coming back to AI War, though, so don't listen to closely to my rants ;-) (as if you would, anyways)

[keith.lamothe]

Ah, yes, the spider turrets were being a little sneaky about their costs, will fix for next version.

[Shrugging Khan]

I was wondering about that and wrote it off as "Probably because they're so much more useful" 

[keith.lamothe]

I was wondering about that and wrote it off as "Probably because they're so much more useful" 

Yea, spider turrets will still be 2x as expensive as snipers, which is massively more expensive than other turrets, but no longer so incredibly high.  21k m+c per turret on high caps, good grief...

[Ktoff]

I was quite surprised how hard they tanked my economy as I put 20 spider-towers to prepare for a counter-wave....

[Volatar]

The Shards recovered in the Fallen-Spire events are no longer cloakable. Previously they could be cloaked via a cloaking starship; this was not deliberate on our part and made those recoveries way easier than they really should be.

Darnit! Wish I had known that was possible before now, I totally would have exploited that. 

Previously Sniper and Spider turrets cost 8 to 10 times as much metal+crystal to build a cap of compared to all other turret types, so:

    Base Metal Cost from 1500 => 300.
    Base Crystal Cost from 7500 => 1500.

YES. THANK YOU. I have pretty much never built Sniper Turrets for, well, I guess years now, solely due to their cost. I always had better ways to spend my crystal, and the problem only got worse when I had to spend boatloads of crystal on Spirecraft.

Plasma Siege Starship

Woah... Thats....awesome. I would never have thought of that design. That sounds amazingly useful, especially against shield ninnies. Definitely will be using those.

I pop in to check on you guys and see how things are going, and lo and behold, a new pre-release patch released today. Glad to see the development efforts are still going strong.  I hope you guys are doing well financially too - you definitely deserve it!

The other day I thought about the old community poll and wondered if you'd pop in some time again

Yea, things are going very well in general.  Just need to make AVWW a success; AIW expansions are good for delivering fun and making money, but can't do those back-to-back or players (and us) get really tired, even if (especially if) it's genuinely new and improved stuff.  So having at least two games to do new stuff for will help give people a chance to play while not in a "patch storm"

Anyway, good to see you

Any chance of hints from you guys of what you might be planning for the next AI War expansion?

[BobTheJanitor]

Any chance of hints from you guys of what you might be planning for the next AI War expansion?

I have no idea, of course, but you might get hints at least from the top vote-getters on Mantis. I'm holding out hope that the in-game IRC client will make it in sometime soon. I think that would be a huge game changer and give those of us who normally play solo some much-needed sense of community in-game. (Feel free to vote that up )

[keith.lamothe]

I don't want to give hints on the expansion yet as we don't know for sure what's going to be in there and while I'm playing with some ideas I don't want to get anyone's hopes up

[Cyborg]

I have entered some new expansion ideas that will not only increase the excitement level but also raise the skill ceiling on this game. Go to mantis and check them out/show your support!