The latest prerelease is available at
http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1202L.zipThat version is an upgrade from version 1.201, so you have to already have 1.201 (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 1.202K:
(Cumulative release notes since 1.201 are attached at the bottom)
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-The in-game menu has been condensed slightly, and has been given some color updates to make some of the buttons more at-a-glance visible.
-There is now a Manage Players button in the in-game menu for the host in all non-tutorial games. This new panel allows the host to rename players, add/remove players, and change player colors. A full sync is required after the contents of this panel are saved.
When a new player is added to an in-progress game, they start out with the basic starting resources, and a random bonus ship type (which may or may not be the same as any other player's bonus ship type), but no ships. They do not get a home planet command station, and they are dependent on whatever the existing game players choose to give them in order to get started. Players that are never given any ships can simply watch in a basic spectator mode.
When an existing player is disabled, nothing much happens. All of their ships remain, and are simply controllerless. However, as noted below, the remaining players can interact with those left-behind ships in a variety of useful ways.
-Home command stations can now be gifted between players. It is also now possible to give away your last controlled command station.
-Now that it is possible for home command stations to be gifted between players, the HOME LOST message is now dynamically set based on whether the player controls and home planet command stations at the time or not.
-The Give button is now shown even in single-player games, and allows players to give ships to themselves.
-It is now possible for any player to select ships that are not owned by active players, and to then give them to other players, or scrap them. It is also possible to give a number of other commands to these sorts of ships, just mainly as a sort of quick ability to manage them in the case that a player has had to leave the game for a while but will later return.
Also, the normal rules of gifting ships still apply, so if the recipient player has not unlocked the gifted ship, the gifted ship will not make the transition. Thus if the remaining players want to control the ungiftable ships, they will need to do it via issuing orders to the ungiftable ships while they still belong to the original player. This is simpler in practice than it sounds, and simply lets the human players control all of the needed ships on the map without allowing for exploits that would let them take advantage of these new mechanics to get around ship caps or ship unlock requirements.
To quickly gift all of the ships from a planet from one player to another, just zoom way out, hold Ctrl, and select all the ships. Or select fewer numbers of ships to divide the ships up more precisely. This makes dividing up control of the ships of an absent player extremely flexible and straightforward.
CHANGES FROM PRIOR PRERELEASES
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-Only 1/5 the prior number of gravitational turrets can now be created.
