Very sorry to hear you've been laid off, I hope you find your way through that challenge without great difficulty. Glad you like the game, though
One thing that may help with more than one of these questions: you can take the license key you got with your Steam copy and use it to activate a non-Steam version (like the one downloaded from our website), in case you ever want to be able to play without the Steam overlay. Conversely, anyone who got the game via some other way than steam can use their license key to register the game in Steam and play the Steam version. Basically whichever way you start you can switch, and even have both installed on your system (though you'll need to remember where you put the other install, etc)
1) This may sound odd but can Steam and non-Steam owners of AI War play together? We have one friend that bought EU3 via Steam and he has a slightly different checksum than the rest of us who got it via disk or other online store and he can't play with us.
There should be absolutely no problems in multiplayer regardless of the vendor. You'll all need to be on the same version number of the game, but I figure that goes without saying.
2) I was considering gifting it to some friends once I'm back to work, but I have one friend who only has internet when he visits someone else. If I get him a non-Steam version (i.e. I send him the money to buy codes after he DLs the game at someone else's house), can he play the game without the internet? He would love this game and would need to be able to play minus the connection when he's home.
No internet connection is required to play single-player; I recommend installing and activating the non-steam version (which, again, you can do with the license key regardless of whether you purchased it through Steam or not).
3) How far ahead can you send Scouts? They die often to the AIs higher rated world defenses for me to send them too far ahead it seems like, but being able to check things far ahead would also help in longterm planning.
Yes, simply sending MkI scouts out won't get past the nastier AI planets. However, there are _several_ techniques to get around that
a) A brute force method is MkIV scouts, which you can get with a straight-up knowledge investment and are basically able to scout anything with impunity (at least, if I recall correctly).
b) A bit less expensive but equally less immune are the MkII and MkIII scouts. Scout Starships are also hardier than the MkIs, though certainly not invincible.
c) Even MkIs can get surprisingly far if you send them all in as a group on a beeline for that next wormhole. If you can send other ships through to distract enemy fire that helps too, though obviously that doesn't work so great for really deep scouting. Sending a full cap of MkIIs in a group is even more likely to get through.
d) You can also load whatever scouts you like into a transport and use the transport as a sort of ablative shield to get the "payload" past a tough planet. Bear in mind that transports lose health making wormhole hops outside supply, so there's a limit on how far that gets though.
So if you put a cap full of MkII scouts in a transport and bunch of fleet ships in another transport, move the transports through as many wormholes as you can, unload the fleetships to tie up enemy firepower (and hopefully kill any AI tachyons in the area so they can't uncloak the scouts), then unload the scouts and make a beeline... you can get pretty far
4) I've seen mention of 'skipping' planets. But you can't build where you don't have supply, so while I can see going around a planet if the branching works out that way, you still have to have a contiguous supply chain to actually get around don't you?
A colony ship can build a command station on any planet, supply or no supply, and it thus establishes supply for its system and its neighbors (unless the planet has been nuked).
So far I'm loving the Riot Control Starships
Those have a special place in my heart too
and the Autocannon Minipods
That cluster bonus makes for quite an advantage, yea.
