Prerelease 1.014K (econ/tur build times, planet sumry, perf, 8 new ships)

[x4000]

The Latest prerelease is now out: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1014K.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 1.014J:
(Cumulative release notes since 1.013 are attached at the bottom)

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

-Deflector Drones now have a heavy attack penalty against turrets.

-Tractor Beam turrets now have vastly more health each and capture twice as many ships as before.  They also now cost twice as much as before, and take much more time to build.

-All of the turrets now take much longer to build.

-All of the resource producers now take much longer to build.  Harvesters in particular take 10x as long to build and cost twice as much.  This is offset by the much larger amount of resources that they and other producers produce, and it helps to create more of a penalty for losing harvesters.

-Mines and colony ships now take 10x as long to build.

-Missiles and Missile Silos have been renamed to Rockets and Rocket Silos to help make these clearly more distinct from the missile ammo type (and the associated counter-missiles, which block the missile ammo type not the rocket unit type).

-Command Posts have been renamed to Guard Posts to make them more clearly distinct from Command Stations.

-Three new starships have been added for players and the AI:  Dreadnoughts I through III.  These starships are very slow, and only have a moderate attack strength against most ships, but they have a huge range and a high strength against heavy defenses, command stations, force fields, and especially other starships.

-A new Tractor Beam Mark III turret has been added.

-New Missile Turret Mark II and III has been added.  The Missile Turret Mark I has had its strength reduced somewhat to compensate.

-New Laser Turret Mark II and III has been added.  The Laser Turret Mark I has had its strength reduced somewhat to compensate.

-Area-of-effect shots will no longer hit mine remains, which will prevent AI electric shuttles from messing up player minefields with a mine layer present.

-The controls window now shows a vastly nicer image set rather than loading the strictly-textual document it had been using.

-A number of performance improvements to ship targeting, etc, have been added.  Massive battles perform better than ever, now.

-Immobile ships now all have infinite engine health displayed (this makes no difference either way.

-SuperFortresses now have infinite engine health.

-The background gas has been improved in look once again.

-The planetary summary palette has been much improved.  It now shows a separate entry for icons belonging to allies, enemies, and the local player -- rather than combining them.  It also shows a count of how many ships belong with each icon.  Both of these can be turned off through the Interface tab of the settings.  The counts can be toggled on/off by holding the Alt key.

-The actual resource outflows are now shown instead of the maximum resource outflows.  Holding Alt now shows the maximum.

-Instead of showing a selection circle when in far zoom, the game now lightens the icons.  This makes it easier to see which ships are selected, and also lowers GPU load when there are lots of selected ships onscreen at once.

CHANGES FROM PAST PRERELEASES
--------------

-The waves are back down to 4x size instead of 8x.

[eRe4s3r]

Wow that is an absolutely amazing pre-release! New Turrets ftw!

I just wish drag build would be in that massive changelog too to make placing all those new turrets easier  

Dread MK3 has only 200 Attack (i guess that should be 2000 ?) Also they might need a "bit" faster firerate each MK stage
Dreads show Error in the tooltip (guess it needs some combat calcuations ,p)

[liq3]

Wow that is an absolutely amazing pre-release! New Turrets ftw!

I just wish drag build would be in that massive changelog too to make placing all those new turrets easier  

Yes yes yes yes. We NEED drag build. Trying to place 300 mines is just annoying. xD

[eRe4s3r]

aNother bug - MK2 Engineers in free roaming defender mode sometimes get "jittery" when locking onto shipyards, the beam appears for 1 second then reappears, and they have 0 effect on the build speed, only actually ordering them to support a shipyard causes them to .. support it

[Revenantus]

*Dons his Cap of the Pedant*

This is purely a semantic issue, but I suggest that they should instead remain Missile Silos, and the ammo type should be referred to as rockets.

In terms of modern weaponry, a rocket is specifically an unguided weapon. While the ammo type in question does home, it's significantly 'dumber' that the units produced in the silos.

Alternatively, the structure could remain a Missile Silo, but the units it produces could be termed Warheads, this would allow cruisers and the like to retain missile type ammo.

*Removes Cap*

Okay, I'm done complaining.

Great pre-release, really liking the changes here!

[keith.lamothe]

Wow, this is incredible stuff.

By the way, I agree that a rocket is for dumbfire weapons; you don't find much in the way of Inter-Continental Ballistic Rockets

(though some friends and I did develop the Inter-Continental Ballistic Trebuchet for Empire Earth co-op games)

[Admiral]

When is the iPhone version ready???

[Kalzarius]

Some cool new updates. 

I think the Lightning Turrets should be on their own now instead of having Laser Mk III as a pre-requisite.  Seeing as how they also apparently only do 600 damage, Lightning Turrets II and III would be nice.

On the topic of ERROR, there are ERRORs for the Spider Turrets and Laser Turrets II and III.

When I select a type of ship from the planetary summary (blue for my ships), it selects the grey or red ones as well.  There also seems to be something fishy with the greyed out, no longer present ships, as they will occasionally take on the number of an incoming raid. 

Alternatively, the structure could remain a Missile Silo, but the units it produces could be termed Warheads, this would allow cruisers and the like to retain missile type ammo.

Which is the suggestion I made that prompted the current change. 

[Revenantus]

Alternatively, the structure could remain a Missile Silo, but the units it produces could be termed Warheads, this would allow cruisers and the like to retain missile type ammo.

Which is the suggestion I made that prompted the current change. 

Ah, in which case you deserve all the credit.

[x4000]

Wow that is an absolutely amazing pre-release! New Turrets ftw!

I just wish drag build would be in that massive changelog too to make placing all those new turrets easier  

All right, all right, clearly this is becoming increasingly important for a lot of people.  I'll make this my next priority.

Dread MK3 has only 200 Attack (i guess that should be 2000 ?) Also they might need a "bit" faster firerate each MK stage

Oh, good catch -- that was supposed to be 1200.  The main benefit of having more dreadnoughts is, well, having more dreadnoughts.  The attack bonuses are also more than they seem like, too, since each one fires 5x shots (so that small 200 increase of Mark III over Mark II is effective a 1000 increase total).  The slightly improved fire rate is also a good idea, added in the next prerelease.

Dreads show Error in the tooltip (guess it needs some combat calcuations ,p)

Yeah, that always happens with any new ships until I run the calculations.  There's little point in me doing that repeatedly while balance shifts are still frequent, though.  And there's still at least one more ship I need to get added in for this 1.014 release, so I want to hit them all at once.

[x4000]

*Dons his Cap of the Pedant*

This is purely a semantic issue, but I suggest that they should instead remain Missile Silos, and the ammo type should be referred to as rockets.

In terms of modern weaponry, a rocket is specifically an unguided weapon. While the ammo type in question does home, it's significantly 'dumber' that the units produced in the silos.

Alternatively, the structure could remain a Missile Silo, but the units it produces could be termed Warheads, this would allow cruisers and the like to retain missile type ammo.

*Removes Cap*

Okay, I'm done complaining.

Great pre-release, really liking the changes here!

To me, warheads has too much of a connotation of nuclear weapons, which is not what all of these rockets/missiles are.  I don't fancy renaming missile cruisers to rocket cruisers or somesuch, nor all the accumulated data about missiles the ammo type.  The missile ammo type has primacy and won't be renamed.  And I like rockets better than warheads, so that's what it's called there.  If someone has something better than rockets or warheads, then that's cool, but that's my reasoning anyway.

[x4000]

When is the iPhone version ready???

When they make a 2.4 Ghz dual-core iPhone that can run C# apps.

[x4000]

I think the Lightning Turrets should be on their own now instead of having Laser Mk III as a pre-requisite.  Seeing as how they also apparently only do 600 damage, Lightning Turrets II and III would be nice.

Yeah, I intend to actually make them all one big class.  Thanks for the reminder.

On the topic of ERROR, there are ERRORs for the Spider Turrets and Laser Turrets II and III.

Yep, see my note to eRa.

When I select a type of ship from the planetary summary (blue for my ships), it selects the grey or red ones as well.

Do you mean the yellow border shows for those?  I'll check for that.  Great catch.

There also seems to be something fishy with the greyed out, no longer present ships, as they will occasionally take on the number of an incoming raid. 

There's no way that they take on the number of anything that is not on the planet.  I'm not sure what is going on there, I'll have to watch for that.  If you can find a way to duplicate it, please let me know.  How's the performance updates helping your huge long game?  A lot of my tuning has been with that one in mind.

Alternatively, the structure could remain a Missile Silo, but the units it produces could be termed Warheads, this would allow cruisers and the like to retain missile type ammo.

Which is the suggestion I made that prompted the current change. 

It was a great suggestion, I just feel like the word warhead isn't right.  Maybe rocket is not right, either, but it needs to be something other than missile, and warhead is too specific a "sub-genre" of missile for me.

[Echo35]

All right, all right, clearly this is becoming increasingly important for a lot of people.  I'll make this my next priority.

My mouse hand and Shift key will love you forever.

[Kalzarius]

There also seems to be something fishy with the greyed out, no longer present ships, as they will occasionally take on the number of an incoming raid. 

There's no way that they take on the number of anything that is not on the planet.  I'm not sure what is going on there, I'll have to watch for that.  If you can find a way to duplicate it, please let me know.

Maybe it was the number for whatever was below it.  I think the counts and the icons could use a bit of padding.  It seems a bit cluttered right now.

How's the performance updates helping your huge long game?  A lot of my tuning has been with that one in mind.

Some of the changes made to 1.014B did help some GPU-related slowdowns recently added for all the nebulas and whatnot.  However, we haven't been able to go any higher than that for our long game, which we only get the chance to play on Mondays, because we have no fewer than 40 zinth and 40 spire starships on ever world, plus 240+ raids and 1000+ cross-planet attacks.  Given the recent changes to starships and raids, we're very hesitant to try the new version for that game.  The prospect of 960-ship raids and the super-powerful starships has us quaking in our boots given the survival rate of our fleets in the current game. 

It was a great suggestion, I just feel like the word warhead isn't right.  Maybe rocket is not right, either, but it needs to be something other than missile, and warhead is too specific a "sub-genre" of missile for me.

Technically, and not to be pedantic, a warhead is "the forward section of a self-propelled missile, bomb, torpedo, or the like, containing the explosive, chemical, or atomic charge." (source: Random House Dictionary Unabridged).  Unfortunately, I don't have any other recommended names at this time.  Rockets just don't seem as powerful as missiles (and actually, according to the aforementioned dictionary, rockets are merely the propelling engine of a missile or similar body).  ... This is what happens when I use thesaurus.com looking for an alternative for you. 

I was searching for something more powerful than the common fare of missile that ships fire.  Oh well, I suppose what we have now works.  At least we can tell the difference without having to really read it.