Prerelease 1.202O (Cutlass/FF/Fort balance, Big GPU efficiency+, more new art)

[x4000]

The latest prerelease is available at http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1202O.zip

That 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 1.202N:
(Cumulative release notes since 1.201 are attached at the bottom)

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

-Ships are now back to having selection circles in far zoom instead of having their icon color get lighter.  However, now the selection circle is white instead of the color of the player, and is layered on top of any indicators for force field protection, cloaking, etc.

-A new system of render caching is now used for far zoom icons, which reduces the load on the GPU by 1/2 to 2/3 in large battles when zoomed out.  This is particularly notable with 3,000+ onscreen ship icons at once, but it also has an effect on smaller groups of ships, too.

-The images for metal and crystal have been made a bit more distinct in shape.  Additionally, the icons for the metal and crystal harvesters now match the actual resource icons.

-The balance of cutlasses has been changed significantly.  They now have more health and do much more damage, but their base attack now has damage equal to their health.  So if they are going up against high-health targets, they will kill themselves in one hit;if they are going up against multiple weaker targets, they will be able to kill several of the smaller targets before they themselves are killed.  Additionally, cutlasses are now much less effective against resources, constructors, and command stations/posts, but are much more effective against turrets.  This prevents them from being the scourge of human players when the AI is using them, but should make them a lot more useful for players and AIS to use on the battlefield.

-Regular fortresses are now mobile, but are unable to go through wormholes the same as their superfortress cousins.  This makes the fortress a lot more distinct from just building a bunch of turrets, and should make it more useful in general for players.

-The Mark I and II force fields are now mobile, but are slower than the already-mobile Mark III force fields.  This will help players correct for bad forcefield placement, and also make for more consistency with this line of ships; in the past, often new players did not realize that any of the forcefield levels were mobile.

-Force fields and fortresses are now immune to tractor beams.  Force fields also no longer have regen, but now can be repaired by engineers.

-Ships that are firing out from under allied force fields (which are protecting them), now damage all the protecting force fields by 2x the amount of damage they are dealing to the enemy ships.  Thus it becomes much better to place the turrets and other stronger ships outside of force fields unless you want to hurriedly repair them after an assault, while leaving weaker ships and defenseless ships under the force fields for maximum protection.  This also acts as a serious nerf to the player practice of clustering hundreds of turrets under a force field to make an unstoppable force.


NEW ART - Philippe Chabot
--------------
Updated Galaxy Map Planet Icons
New Icons For Metal/Crystal Harvesters
Update Icons For Metal/Crystal

[liq3]

-Ships that are firing out from under allied force fields (which are protecting them), now damage all the protecting force fields by 2x the amount of damage they are dealing to the enemy ships.  Thus it becomes much better to place the turrets and other stronger ships outside of force fields unless you want to hurriedly repair them after an assault, while leaving weaker ships and defenseless ships under the force fields for maximum protection.  This also acts as a serious nerf to the player practice of clustering hundreds of turrets under a force field to make an unstoppable force.

You also nerfed my late game tactic of sticking my entire fleet under 4 Mark III shields. Going to be completely impossible now, since my starships will just bust them up nearly instantly. Was already hard enough getting my entire fleet under them. D:

I could see force-fields still being useful for protecting turrets (and important stuff), but are now useless for protecting anything with decent force field damage (all starships, bombers, etc etc).

[x4000]

Yeah, it makes force fields heavily nerfed as a force-multiplier in pretty much all circumstances.  That was never really their intention.  They are mainly for protecting soft targets, which they still excel at.  This will make AI force fields all that much easier to fight against, too, so it's a win on both ends.

[tals]

I didn't try the next stuff in this ver but previous version n.

Firstly with the manage players I saw that as a way of changing my colour. I did this and then I got the above message in the screen till I saved, exited and then we rejoined



I believe that the syncing also got stuck till I restarted.

I then had a friend who wanted to join us. I went into manage players and made him active. But where should he join - everytime he tried it said game in progress, even tried reloading to no avail. On my screen it showed as waiting for players

Tals

p.s with the friend joining I noticed Huw got stuck on 99% till I saved and restarted but the other friend couldn't join.

[Huw]

-Ships that are firing out from under allied force fields (which are protecting them), now damage all the protecting force fields by 2x the amount of damage they are dealing to the enemy ships.  Thus it becomes much better to place the turrets and other stronger ships outside of force fields unless you want to hurriedly repair them after an assault, while leaving weaker ships and defenseless ships under the force fields for maximum protection.  This also acts as a serious nerf to the player practice of clustering hundreds of turrets under a force field to make an unstoppable force.

Wow, that's quite a change!  Will this apply to the AI too?

[Volatar]

Wow. I am glad for the cutlass changes. The forcefield changes are HUGE! I will have the move my sniper turrets to outside my forcefield on my current game 

...mk III forfields could move before? 

[darke]

...mk III forfields could move before? 

Yes. And that reaction is reason that all forcefields are getting movement now.

[Thasero]

Doesn't the force field change make the Shield Bearer bonus ship pretty useless?  Protecting other mobile ships (without chaining them to a slow Mk. 3 forcefield) was pretty much their only purpose, and they were definitely defined as being "force multiplier" ships.  I tried using shield bearers a few times and found that they fit the role pretty well - they weren't nigh-invulnerable like quad-stacked Mk III force fields, but made your fleet noticeably more resilient when used properly.

[Fiskbit]

I have mixed feelings, myself. Thasero's concerns are interesting and seem pretty valid to me, though shield bearers do have a rather high speed compared to force fields. Does the force field nerf affect them, too?   (As a side note, I'm looking at shield bearers right now and really wishing that the force fields could overlay in a better way. I'm not sure if this was deemed impossible or not, but having a lot of shield bearers in one spot looks very strange with the current method, and because some fields are entirely blocked out of view by others, it removes information that would be there if they blended graphics without becoming more opaque)

One idea that was tossed around in IRC was making it so you can't build a force field such that one will be under another, which would prevent stacking them. This doesn't directly translate well to mobile forcefields, but it could be done such that the mobile generators can't go under any other force fields. This only prevents stacking fields, though, to make an even-better covered area.

[Valarauka]

Unstackable forcefields would be great, I think, specially with the new mechanics. One concern would be when building a new forcefield, the bounds should be checked against the maximum sizes of any pre-existing forcefields, instead of the current (possibly damaged) size; otherwise damaged fields could start intersecting once they're repaired.

Another possibility is to make "under-repair/construction" forcefields just push any others to the side while they're expanding - although, this might be abusable to push AI forcefields out of the way of important structures - just start building your own forcefield at the edge of the AI field covering its Command Station.

As far as the Shield-Bearers go, yeah, they only make sense as part of an army if their forcefields aren't damaged by shooting from within - otherwise they're nerfed pretty terribly; they'd only remain useful for protecting Mobile Builders / Repair Stations / etc.

[tals]

I think these changes have improved the game, certainly the ability to move all forcefields around mean the early game is easier and allow for moving your mobile builders easier. I'm not really sure what use the transport ship is anymore? Maybe it needs to be got rid of for good and changed to a more offensive carrier

One thing I would like, would it be possible for an option, maybe like the lone/group one. Where if enabled attach ships would surround the force field rather than enter it so they can protect it without damaging it.

Tals

[Volatar]

I'm not really sure what use the transport ship is anymore? Maybe it needs to be got rid of for good and changed to a more offensive carrier

It is till useful. Navigating past perma mines for example.

[Echo35]

Wow. I am glad for the cutlass changes. The forcefield changes are HUGE! I will have the move my sniper turrets to outside my forcefield on my current game 

...mk III forfields could move before? 

I did not know that!

[ckessel]

Is the game update pace going to stabilize anytime soon? Seems like new versions are still being released every day or two so I'm a little reticent to put major time into the game if it's still in a state of flux (be it gameplay or bugs).

[x4000]

Is the game update pace going to stabilize anytime soon? Seems like new versions are still being released every day or two so I'm a little reticent to put major time into the game if it's still in a state of flux (be it gameplay or bugs).

The official updates are only coming out weekly or biweekly, what you are seeing coming out more quickly are prerleases (beta versions of the game).  I wouldn't consider frequent updates to be a reason not to play the game, and I also wouldn't consider it to be in a major state of flux as far as the core mechanics and such go.  The only real significant core gameplay change of late has been the economy, and everything else has been incremental improvements and extensions.  Granted, the cumulative effect of all of that is pretty huge, but a lot of the "it's like a whole new game" differences in terms of how the strategy play out only are going to be overly apparent to expert players.

I don't know, it's a living game for sure, but I don't think that's any reason to be wary.  It's the same cycle you get with any other game that has good post-release support, just vastly faster and more extensive.