Prerelease 1.014L (Drag-build, planetary sumry grouping, flow econ granularity+)

[x4000]

The Latest prerelease is now out: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1014L.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 1.014K:
(Cumulative release notes since 1.013 are attached at the bottom)

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

-Mark II and Mark III dreadnoughts now have slightly faster firing rates.

-Ship autotargeting has been mildly improved.

-It is now possible to drag-build all ships that work with placement mode.  From controls.txt:

Ship Placement Mode Controls:
--------------------------
Left click:          place new ship
Shift + Left click:       place new ship and stay in mode
Shift + Left click + drag:    place a series of ships
Ctrl + Left click:       place 5x of ship
Ctrl + Shift + Left click:    keep placing batches of 5x of ship until released
Right click:         exit ship placement mode

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

-The dreadnought mark III was erroneously set to have 200 attack power instead of 1200.

-The wormhole graphics were offcenter.  Fixed.

-Black Holes on the galaxy map now rotate more slowly.

-When selecting a ship type on the planetary summary palette, it would highlight the borders of enemy/allied/empty ships with the same icon.  Fixed.

-Updated version of the controls image by Calvin.

-The new per-color planetary summary is now primarily grouped by color -- red (enemy), then yellow (allies), then blue (local player).  This makes it much quicker to see relative strength analysis.

-Engineers were trying to auto-assist paused docks.  Fixed.

-The granularity of the resource outflows has been increased 24x, resulting in better outflows in low-resource situations.

-Rockets have been renamed to Warheads, after discussion on the forums.

[Admiral]

Ship Placement Mode Controls:
--------------------------
Left click:          place new ship
Shift + Left click:       place new ship and stay in mode
Shift + Left click + drag:    place a series of ships
Ctrl + Left click:       place 5x of ship
Ctrl + Shift + Left click:    keep placing batches of 5x of ship until released
Right click:         exit ship placement mode

I will finally remark on this which seemed too unimportant to do so in the past...

I feel that the main PLACEMENT click should be a RIGHT CLICK, not a LEFT CLICK. Why? Because for everything else in the game, left click is SELECT and right click is ACTION.

Placing a unit should be an "action."

Just my feeling.

Cheers!

[x4000]

Ship Placement Mode Controls:
--------------------------
Left click:          place new ship
Shift + Left click:       place new ship and stay in mode
Shift + Left click + drag:    place a series of ships
Ctrl + Left click:       place 5x of ship
Ctrl + Shift + Left click:    keep placing batches of 5x of ship until released
Right click:         exit ship placement mode

I will finally remark on this which seemed too unimportant to do so in the past...

I feel that the main PLACEMENT click should be a RIGHT CLICK, not a LEFT CLICK. Why? Because for everything else in the game, left click is SELECT and right click is ACTION.

Placing a unit should be an "action."

Just my feeling.

Cheers!

Sorry, that's just the RTS way of doing things.  I don't want to break convention with the genre in the such a fundamental control scheme thing like this.

[Revenantus]

Minor issue - I don't seem to be able to use the mouse wheel to scroll on the shortcuts page.

Would it look better if the window resized its width to fit the image and centred itself?

[x4000]

Minor issue - I don't seem to be able to use the mouse wheel to scroll on the shortcuts page.

Ah, yeah -- forgot to reimplment that now that it is now a textbox.

Would it look better if the window resized its width to fit the image and centred itself?

Definitely.  Before now, it was wider than the image itself, though, so that was not a concern.  But I'll definitely do that now.

[Kalzarius]

Speaking of the shortcuts page, I keep forgetting to ask if this was a bug or if it was intentional.  Whenever I go into the shortcuts page, the other system goes 'Waiting for players.'  Is that intentional or is there something going wrong there?

[x4000]

Speaking of the shortcuts page, I keep forgetting to ask if this was a bug or if it was intentional.  Whenever I go into the shortcuts page, the other system goes 'Waiting for players.'  Is that intentional or is there something going wrong there?

Definitely a bug, although I have never seen that -- I don't tend to be checking the controls, though.  Added to my list to investigate, thanks!  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,828.0.html

[Revenantus]

Attached is an updated copy of the shortcuts.png image containing the new ship placement controls.

I'll update the printable shortcut reference once 1.014 is officially released - I don't want to confuse anyone by making them think those commands exist in the current version of the game.

To update to the new version, place the png file in your Images/ShortcutKeys directory.

EDIT: Minor modification, I've separated LC+Ctrl+Shift and LC+Ctrl+Shift+Drag to make it consistent with the LC+Shift section.

[x4000]

Wicked, thanks for putting that up there.  I'll make sure that is in the next prerelease.

[Kalzarius]

- Engineers were trying to auto-assist paused docks.  Fixed.

I'm not sure if this issue was fixed as part of this as I won't get a chance to test L until Thursday or Friday, but when I was playing earlier, my auto-assisting engineers all flocked to one space dock.  It would be nice if they could spread themselves out a bit.  Admittedly, with how fast they can produce, it probably won't be an issue in the long run, but I tend to specialize my docks to produce only certain units.

[x4000]

- Engineers were trying to auto-assist paused docks.  Fixed.

I'm not sure if this issue was fixed as part of this as I won't get a chance to test L until Thursday or Friday, but when I was playing earlier, my auto-assisting engineers all flocked to one space dock.  It would be nice if they could spread themselves out a bit.  Admittedly, with how fast they can produce, it probably won't be an issue in the long run, but I tend to specialize my docks to produce only certain units.

I'll check it out: http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/board,11.0.html

[Kalzarius]

 

I noticed this a few times with some of the previous 1.013 pre-releases, but until now I haven't had a save to demonstrate it.  Attached is a saved game you may have to leave running for a few minutes, but the bug I'm encountering is that the incoming raid or attack formation sound is playing, but no timer is being displayed and no raid occurs.  Is this intended behaviour or is it a bug?

Well, this is a bug, but it is also intended behavior.    Awesome savegame by the way, that let me duplicate it really easily, and a fix will be in M.

So here's the deal, basically, it was incorrectly triggering this logic:  http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_No_Warning_On_Waves%3F

It was triggering that logic for one of the AIs, but not the other, because they AIs were mistakenly only warping into your planets from planets that they individually controlled (not by planets that the AI team as a whole controls).  So in situations where you have only one warp gate adjacent to your planets, one of the AIs would start coming in with no warning from their other planets on the higher difficulties.  This bug has been in there for a while, incidentally.  Thanks for reporting it!  You're quite the bug-hunter.

So, I started up L tonight, since I thought I could squeeze in a little bit of game time.  I took my control group 1 and wiped out the dozen bomber starships, then went and wiped out the warp gate and command station (oddly, there were no guard posts in this system).  A short while later, I heard the attack/raid sound but had no timer show up.

D'oh!

Save forthcoming.

[Kalzarius]

I think taking the control group and wiping out the warp gate will probably reproduce this bug.  Hopefully.

EDIT: This is probably due to the fact that once this planet is taken out, there are nothing but clear planets on either side of my two.
EDIT2: I'm going to quote this in bugs, as an unhandled divide by zero exception occurred a few minutes after the evil planet attack sound sans timer.
EDIT3: Turns out that divide by zero was a whole other bug already covered by liq3.

[eRe4s3r]

OK, now in the right topic ;p 

I absolutely love drag + build - Finally its in. The single most important feature ever to be thought of.
Shift + Ctrl + Drag - is easily the most powerful tool for defense build up ever.

Just placed all my turrets and mines with 6 clicks

[keith.lamothe]

Wow, Drag-build sounds like a serious power tool.

This game updates more often than I can play it, and just keeps getting better