The latest beta is available via the Updates window in version 3.000 or greater of the game. Just open the game and you can quickly download the prerelease through the updates tab. If you don't yet have 3.000 or greater, you can download 3.000
here. This prerelease version is compatible with any vendor's version of the game -- Steam, Impulse, whatever.
Note: If you have bug reports related to this release,
please log them in the
bug reports subforum with one bug per topic. It makes things infinitely easier for us. Thanks!
Looking for a Patch That Can Be Manually-Installed?Because of the time involved in creating multiple versions of each patch, we only create manually-installable patches for official versions of the game, not each beta prerelease. But, if you're running version 3.022 of the game or higher, you can easily create your own manually-installable beta patch! If you don't yet have 3.022, but do have 3.000 or greater, you can download a simple zip containing the files of 3.022
here. Simply unpack those on top of your existing files in your AI War folder, and voila -- you're on 3.022.
To create your own manual beta patch, you'll want to go
here. This folder contains all of the beta updates. You just need whatever the most recent one is at the time (probably the same version number as this post). Download that zip file, which if you try to open will say it's corrupt -- that's okay, it's not really a zip file. Next download the updated
Director.Xml file from that folder. Finally create a new zip file on your computer, and put both the director and the fake-zip-file inside it. Call your outer zip file something that starts with Beta and ends with an extension of .zip. Beta.zip will work just fine, or you can name it after the specific version number if you want to hang onto it. And that's it! Now you have your very own manually-installable package of the AI War beta version of your choice, which you can install by simply selecting via your Updates window in the game.
What's new since 3.055:(Cumulative release notes since 3.000 are attached at the bottom)
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-Ships are now put into cold storage as part of the sync process, which takes extra time but prevents lag at the start of the game (aside from the lag of transferring data to the AI thread). Additionally, it now shows a status counter as part of the "Linking FG Objects" part of the sync, to make it clear what progress is being made during that period.
-The little starship icon underneath planets on the galaxy map is no longer used, now it just shows the regular ship icon always.
-Putting AI Ships into cold storage, and loading savegames with large numbers of AI ships in general, is now faster.
-Previously, there was still a bug with cold storage interfering in some cases with cross-planet attacks. Fixed.
-Autotargeting has been much improved in terms of better accounting for targets that are killed or recloaked, which is especially notable for FRD mode but also relevant in general for all battles. It makes ships act with more purpose, and avoid lulls where they were just sitting around.
-When hovering the selection box over ships, the game now only shows military units in the main count, and shows non-military units parenthetically after that.
-Previously, when a raid engine finished counting down on a planet with no command station, it would cause the game to crash.
-Previously, ships that were being transported would show up in the count of the quick buttons at the bottom of the screen, but not directly in the list itself. Now they show up as normal in the quick button lists of ships, with a flag of "Transported" behind them.
CHANGES TO PAST PRERELEASES
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-Riot Starship knowledge costs changed from 1500/2500/3500 to 1500/2250/3250.
Update in 3.059:-Fixed another crash bug relating to raid engines.
