Prerelease 1.014T (parasite cheat, font inclusion, energy rebalance, waves up)

[x4000]

The Latest prerelease is now out: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1014T.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 1.014S:
(Cumulative release notes since 1.013 are attached at the bottom)

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

-A new cheat has been added: "parasite this"  This cheat lets players ignore the ship build cap with ships that are being reclaimed by parasites.

-The Arial font is now included with the game, since before in rare cases where the player's computer did not already have the arial font installed, this would cause the game to crash until the font was installed.

-The energy costs of the following ship types has been mildly-to-greatly increased: force field generators, fortresses, tractor beam turrets, counter-turrets, lightning turrets, engineers, mine layers, mobile builders, cruisers, all of the docks and constructors, science labs, metal/crystal manufactories and harvesters.  This helps to create the imperative to take more planets to thus have more available energy.

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

-Fixed a bug where the "more more more" cheat was not working with directly-placed ship types.

-Mercenary Ships no longer require any techs to be unlocked prior to their use.

-The cross planet attacks are now around 30% larger than before.

-The AI waves are once again 8x larger than before, rather than just 4x larger than before, to compensate for the increased economy of the human players.  This should help the balance more.

[liq3]

Heh... Players start with -2,100 energy, so it takes at least a minute before they can anything besides power plants... might wanna fix that. xD

I just died to teleport stations and teleport raiders because I couldn't build anything at the start.

[Kalzarius]

-The AI waves are once again 8x larger than before, rather than just 4x larger than before, to compensate for the increased economy of the human players.  This should help the balance more.

D'oh!

Well, I suppose we'll find out how well these new changes work on a 40 hour game Monday evening.  I pray that we survive.

On a slightly-related note, if I wanted more raids, I'd just turn on 2X raids. 

[liq3]

Only been playing for 20 minutes, but so far I like it. :]

[Admiral]

-A new cheat has been added: "parasite this"  This cheat lets players ignore the ship build cap with ships that are being reclaimed by parasites.

Thanks, X!

[x4000]

Heh... Players start with -2,100 energy, so it takes at least a minute before they can anything besides power plants... might wanna fix that. xD

I just died to teleport stations and teleport raiders because I couldn't build anything at the start.

Whoops!  I had not yet tested the start with that prerelease.  In the next one, it will double the energy from the home planet command stations from 10,000 to 20,000.  So that will resolve that.

-The AI waves are once again 8x larger than before, rather than just 4x larger than before, to compensate for the increased economy of the human players.  This should help the balance more.

D'oh!

Well, I suppose we'll find out how well these new changes work on a 40 hour game Monday evening.  I pray that we survive.

On a slightly-related note, if I wanted more raids, I'd just turn on 2X raids. 

Hopefully you do survive!  I would point out that this is mostly a direct counter to the increase in available resources to the human players, so hopefully the balance will be similarish to before.  Although, trying to take every planet in this game is supposed to make you lose, since half the strategy is to choose which planets to take, etc, so then again if the AI is overwhelming you in that strategy then it's doing it's job.

Oh, and to be clear -- this doesn't create twice as many (like 2X raids does), but rather just creates waves that are 2x larger.  I totally agree that the players don't need to be attacked any more frequently, the attacks on them just need to be made more interesting.

[x4000]

-A new cheat has been added: "parasite this"  This cheat lets players ignore the ship build cap with ships that are being reclaimed by parasites.

Thanks, X!

You bet!

[Echo35]

I'll have to try it when I get home, but I'm happy spiraling costs are implemented. I was going to suggest that the ships incurr some sort of upkeep cost in the other thread, but I kinda like the power plants costing, because you kinda HAVE to build those anyway.

[x4000]

I'll have to try it when I get home, but I'm happy spiraling costs are implemented. I was going to suggest that the ships incurr some sort of upkeep cost in the other thread, but I kinda like the power plants costing, because you kinda HAVE to build those anyway.

Excellent!

[CautiousChaos]

Hello,
Just loaded up T and found that the lines connecting the planets are missing.  And there's an error message in the upper right corner about a value that is out of range.  I had to laugh a bit as well because using "S" my energy balance was around 41k and then using "T" it was -115k! 
-cc

[x4000]

Hello,
Just loaded up T and found that the lines connecting the planets are missing.  And there's an error message in the upper right corner about a value that is out of range.  I had to laugh a bit as well because using "S" my energy balance was around 41k and then using "T" it was -115k! 
-cc

There should be an error message in your game data folder.  Can you post it?  Also, if you can post the save file that would be helpful. I'm not sure what the cause is, I can't duplicate that in any of my saves.

[RogueDeus]

Hello,
Just loaded up T and found that the lines connecting the planets are missing.  And there's an error message in the upper right corner about a value that is out of range.  I had to laugh a bit as well because using "S" my energy balance was around 41k and then using "T" it was -115k!  
-cc

Ditto that...

Hello,
Just loaded up T and found that the lines connecting the planets are missing.  And there's an error message in the upper right corner about a value that is out of range.  I had to laugh a bit as well because using "S" my energy balance was around 41k and then using "T" it was -115k!  
-cc

There should be an error message in your game data folder.  Can you post it?  Also, if you can post the save file that would be helpful. I'm not sure what the cause is, I can't duplicate that in any of my saves.

Here is mine.
BTW, my DATA folder is empty, so I posted the SS.

[x4000]

Okay, thanks, that's what I needed.  I should have a fix out in the next 20-30 minutes or so.  Great catch!

[x4000]

New version, with the fix:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,932.msg5734.html#msg5734

[Bleek]

I noticed that version T makes power requirements a LOT higher, is this correct?

I loaded up versus a 6 and 7 AI, the 7 start with around 700k points, after about an hour the wave of 2,500 ships wiped me out because I simply couldn't build and support that many!