This one marks the AI's attempt to
get some of its own back. We like to say that if someone beats it on 10/10 then that's a bug. We might be laughing when we say that, but we're not joking
In this case, you know who to throw the decaying vegetation at.
That said, that's not the only thing going on in this update, here's a summary:
* As implied, the game will now be harder on higher difficulties. However, we've tried to achieve that in ways that make things genuinely more interesting, rather than just giving the AI "MOAR SHIPS" (though that is involved) :
** On Diff 8+, the
wave size formula now increases somewhat exponentially with AIP instead of linearly. The early points should be pretty similar to what they were, this just makes moderate-high AIP even more dangerous.
** On Diff 7+, the AI is now more deliberate about sending larger, less frequent waves when it has relatively few "entry points" into human territory. This is just a "cleverness" buff, rather than actually increasing the AI's total strength.
** The rule where Diff 9.3+ AIs automatically started at Tech II, long source of a tremendous difficulty-cliff between 9 and 9.3, is now gone. In it's place:
*** Diff 9.3+ AIs will reach tech upgrades faster (at lower AIPs) than before.
*** More importantly, Diff 9+ AIs that are between tech upgrades will actually send waves that are partially their current tech level and partially the next tech level. The percentage from the next tech level depends on how close to the next upgrade that AI is.
** On all difficulties, due to the intense difficulty impact of AI Homeworlds having AI Eyes, Core Raid Engines, and Core CPA Guard Posts, mapgen is now far more deliberate about how many of said structures seed on each AI Homeworld (taking into account the AI's difficulty setting).
** On all difficulties, AI Carriers are now substantially more dangerous, having gained a powerful attack proportional (in salvo size) to the number of ships inside.
* Multi-Homeworld games have also received significant balance attention, and many things that previously did not scale now do, including:
** CPA size (previously scaled by human player count, now human homeworld count).
** Reinforcements, Counterattack Guard Post spawns, Raid Engine spawns, Core Raid Engine spawns, and Core CPA Guard Post spawns.
** Also, number of waves already scaled, but now if there's more than 2 human homeworlds the AI won't go on scaling up the number of waves and instead starts scaling up the size of waves, which will probably have a better effect.
* So that players don't feel left out, the (human-player-only) Neinzul Enclave Starship now has a whole new build tab full of short lived "drones" that can add substantial firepower to a fleet action.
** One interesting twist is that the drones are actually unlocked as a side-effect of existing turret research.
** These are balanced to be a lot less powerful than "normal" fleet ships but they're basically just gravy on top of the enclave and turrets, so it's a buff to the player either way. Please let us know how these feel balance-wise
* There's also a bunch of various bugfixes and small changes.
** Notably, there's an experimental solution to the problem of not being able to tell whether the game has focus in windowed mode (we already have a solution in for fullscreen mode). Part of the "experimental" label is that it only works on windows. But if player testing shows that it really does work on windows, we may be able to find a similar solution for the mac version.
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.
