New AI War description text for stores, etc.

[x4000]

What do we think?  I think a narrative approach is much superior to our old way of doing these.

"You are outgunned.  You are massively outnumbered.  You must win."  These are your orders.

Humanity has already fought its war against the machines -- and lost.  AI death squads stand watch over every planet and every wormhole that we ever controlled, the few human settlements still standing are held captive in orbiting bubbles for who knows what purpose, and the AIs have turned their attention outward, away from the galaxy, to alien threats or opportunities unknown.

This inattention is our only hope, for unnoticed by the AI central processing, a small resistance has survived.  These are the forces you will command.  Oh, the AI subcommanders will fight you to the death when they see you -- but your glimmer of opportunity comes from quietly subduing those subcommanders without alerting central processing to the danger until it's too late.

We do have a few things going in our favor.  Our ships are much faster.  We've developed our own safe AI routines to automate defenses and mining outposts.  We have production techniques that can churn out fully-outfitted unmanned fighters in seconds.  There are only a few thousand of us versus tens of thousands of them, but through careful strategy we can reach and destroy the heavily-guarded AI cores.

Go forth into the galaxy, steal AI technology, recapture those planets you must in order to achieve your ends, and save what remains of humanity.  Without you, our story ends here.

[Arcain_One]

Personally I liked the original story better, most of all I liked the hopelessness of what humans needed to do.

If you must improve upon the narrative, I think you should combine the two.

[x4000]

Bear in mind that the old story was never in the stores.

[Mánagarmr]

I actually like the new one. For reference, where can I find the old In-Store text?

[x4000]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/40400/

Specifically, this would replace this:

AI War is an entirely unique large-scale RTS with aspects of TBS, tower defense, and grand strategy. It features single or cooperative play with as many as 8 humans against a pair of powerful, intelligent AIs. These AIs are driven by an AI Progress stat that players contribute to through aggressive actions such as taking control of planets and destroying key units, forcing tough decisions regarding which targets are worth capturing or destroying. Human fleets are usually several thousand ships in size or larger, with games often featuring 30,000 units at any given time across galaxies of anywhere from 10 to 120 planets. Some games have reached as many as 90,000 units!

Despite this, players retain powerful control over their fleets in a macro-sense, ignoring painful micromanagement present in other games in favor of actual tactics like flanking. Meanwhile, ships themselves attempt to target enemies as intelligently as possible so the player can focus on the tasks that really matter. Scouting also plays a major role in the game, supplying an intel 'snapshot' about important capturable units, enemy fleet sizes, and planet ownership. Designed by RTS veterans and backed by strong, responsive support on the official forums and elsewhere, AI War is an exciting and refreshing experience.

[x4000]

What about making it a tad more bleak at the very end:

"You are outgunned.  You are massively outnumbered.  You must win."  These are your orders.

Humanity has already fought its war against the machines -- and lost.  AI death squads stand watch over every planet and every wormhole that we ever controlled, the few human settlements still standing are held captive in orbiting bubbles for who knows what purpose, and the AIs have turned their attention outward, away from the galaxy, to alien threats or opportunities unknown.

This inattention is our only hope, for unnoticed by the AI central processing, a small resistance has survived.  These are the forces you will command.  Oh, the AI subcommanders will fight you to the death when they see you -- but your glimmer of opportunity comes from quietly subduing those subcommanders without alerting central processing to the danger until it's too late.

We do have a few things going in our favor.  Our ships are much faster.  We've developed our own safe AI routines to automate defenses and mining outposts.  We have production techniques that can churn out fully-outfitted unmanned fighters in seconds.  There are only a few thousand of us versus tens of thousands of them, but through careful strategy we can reach and destroy the heavily-guarded AI cores.

Go forth into the galaxy, steal AI technology, recapture those planets you must in order to achieve your ends, and save what remains of humanity.  But draw too much attention to yourself, and the full might of the AI overlords will come crashing down.

[Mánagarmr]

I like the new ending better. But then I'm rather partial to bleakness

And yeah, that was the text I thought. It's honestly quite boring, and the narrative text works much better. At least for me.

[x4000]

Indeed, I quite agree.

[Vaos]

Sounds good, maybe just seed a little more Human Settlements in the game to support the background.

[x4000]

Sounds good, maybe just seed a little more Human Settlements in the game to support the background.

Well, they're always there, but having too many would be annoying gameplay-wise.  But with rebel human colonies and other things like that (which are optional-on, certainly) that's also supporting it.

[NickAragua]

Looks pretty good to me. Snappy, and definitely accurate. Of course, I already bought the game, so I'm not really in the target audience any more.

The old one reads way too much like the abstract of a comp-sci grad student's paper. I doubt that "The polynomial running time of this algorithm on a non-deterministic, multi-tape turing machine is O(log(n^2))" is going to really move copies, so this is a solid step in the right direction.

[x4000]

The old one reads way too much like the abstract of a comp-sci grad student's paper. I doubt that "The polynomial running time of this algorithm on a non-deterministic, multi-tape turing machine is O(log(n^2))" is going to really move copies, so this is a solid step in the right direction.

Hahahaha. 

[Gallant Dragon]

Sounds good, if a little (just a little) cliche'd.  As long as the box also has a few notes about what sets this game apart from your average space strategy game, I think you guys are ready to sell!

[RooksBailey]

I like the new narrative (with the darker ending), too.  It's a good start for the inevitable AI War: Fleet Command, the novel.  

[TheMachineIsSentient]

suggestion, can we add this as a scrolling blurb on the main title screen like the old version?

Or would this be too much…