Prerelease 1.014I (Def/Tur knowledge costs down, Tur range up, parasite caps)

[x4000]

The Latest prerelease is now out: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1014I.zip

That version is an upgrade from version 1.013, so you have to already have 1.013 (or greater) installed. Just unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else). Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.

What's new since 1.014G (I was an internal release):
(Cumulative release notes since 1.013 are attached at the bottom)

-------------------

-Starships now all have 100,000 engine health instead of infinite.

-The game now supports multiple sound effects for a single shot type, to be played at random, to add greater variety to the soundscape of battles.

-Parasites are no longer able to reclaim ships that would cause them to exceed the ship cap of the type to be captured.  It still does not matter whether or not the other type has been unlocked yet (or whether they can be unlocked at all, as in the case of core ships), but the ships cannot exceed the would-be cap.

-Mark V ships now have a proper ship cap set, which will make them act more correctly both with the relative strengths analysis, and with the new parasite limitation.

-The ship caps in the tutorials are now equal to that of a regular 1 player game (default 170 instead of 100).

-The range of all the offensive turrets has been increased very significantly -- to cruiser level or greater in all cases.  This makes turrets a lot more useful for both the AI and human players, and will greatly increase the utility of bombers another other ships that are strong against turrets in these sorts of combat situations.

-The range of tractor beam turrets and tractor beam turret IIs has also been greatly increased.  This will be a particular help with wormhole defense, and the greater increase in range on mark II tractor beams is an even bigger help.

-The knowledge costs of all turrets have been reduced to a fair-to-significant degree.

-The knowledge costs of all starships have been halved.

-The knowledge costs of the defensive techs have been reduced quite significantly in most cases.

CHANGES FROM PAST PRERELEASES
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-The size of enemy waves is now 4x instead of 3x, due to the increased power and lowered knowledge cost of turrets, but the multiplier also now only applies to non-starships.

NEW ART - Philippe Chabot
--------------
Planet - Neptune

UPDATED SOUND EFFECTS - Pablo Vega
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ShotBomb
ShotBomb2
ShotBlades
ShotFlare

[Kalzarius]

-The knowledge costs of all turrets have been reduced to a fair-to-significant degree.

-The knowledge costs of all starships have been halved.

-The knowledge costs of the defensive techs have been reduced quite significantly in most cases.

For those of us continuing games, are these changes retroactive in the case that we already have them?

[dumpsterKEEPER]

NEW ART - Philippe Chabot
--------------
Planet - Neptune

The new planet looks amazing

[Haagenti]

Now that turrets are becoming more powerful, you may want to look into their build times (note: I'm still playing an older v0.13 patch: this might influence this).

One of the key defenses in my game is to use II/III Engineers to speedbuild defenses against stuff like Raiders and EtherJets. I can see which direction they fly to, and by the time they uncloak, there are a few shiny turrets waiting for them.

[eRe4s3r]

Not sure i call that turrets more powerful, with longer range that means they still have huge problems against shields.

What you describe sounds like a valid tactic to me haagenti , if you have 50+ raiders incoming i highly doubt you can outproduce them without some serious investment ;p (Or 200 MKIII teleport battle stations) ~.~

I feel the balance is pretty good now in that area - raiders are still something you have to take care off but they don't run away as easily from wormhole defenses anymore (longer range of missile turrets is a godsend)

Aside that, micromanagement tactics like that are not imbalanced imo. You can only stop the weakest of raids with that kind of defense planning ^^

[Haagenti]

I usually play schizo raids so I never get 30 raiders

[x4000]

-The knowledge costs of all turrets have been reduced to a fair-to-significant degree.

-The knowledge costs of all starships have been halved.

-The knowledge costs of the defensive techs have been reduced quite significantly in most cases.

For those of us continuing games, are these changes retroactive in the case that we already have them?

Unfortunately not, if you already have them.  There's not a real easy way for me to handle that, given the way these particular values are handled...

[x4000]

NEW ART - Philippe Chabot
--------------
Planet - Neptune

The new planet looks amazing

Yeah, I thought so, too.  He does incredible stuff.

[x4000]

I think I'm with eRa for now on the turret balance thing.  But you do make a good point, Haagenti, so we'll just have to look at it more as it goes on.  Right now I just don't have enough data about it to want to make a change, but you could be right.

[Echo35]

-The game now supports multiple sound effects for a single shot type, to be played at random, to add greater variety to the soundscape of battles.

-Parasites are no longer able to reclaim ships that would cause them to exceed the ship cap of the type to be captured.  It still does not matter whether or not the other type has been unlocked yet (or whether they can be unlocked at all, as in the case of core ships), but the ships cannot exceed the would-be cap.

-Mark V ships now have a proper ship cap set, which will make them act more correctly both with the relative strengths analysis, and with the new parasite limitation.

-The range of all the offensive turrets has been increased very significantly -- to cruiser level or greater in all cases.  This makes turrets a lot more useful for both the AI and human players, and will greatly increase the utility of bombers another other ships that are strong against turrets in these sorts of combat situations.

-The range of tractor beam turrets and tractor beam turret IIs has also been greatly increased.  This will be a particular help with wormhole defense, and the greater increase in range on mark II tractor beams is an even bigger help.

-The knowledge costs of all turrets have been reduced to a fair-to-significant degree.

-The knowledge costs of all starships have been halved.

-The knowledge costs of the defensive techs have been reduced quite significantly in most cases.

Downloading right now! particularly fond of the parasite and defensive updates.

[x4000]

Great!

[x4000]

New version:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,802.msg4730.html#msg4730

[Admiral]

I would really like an option perhaps at game start to restore parasite behavior. Or even a slider from 1x to 5x to unlimited. Or, a cheat code to disable parasite caps at least, please.

[x4000]

It bothers you that much?  I mean, it was a huge loophole before.  At best I would make it a cheat code.

[Revenantus]

You could create a general no ship caps cheat code, then you could build as many ships as you have energy for too.