Prerelease 3.024 (Basic Keep-Formation Movement, Scouts vs AOE buff, bugfixes)

[x4000]

The latest beta is available via the Updates window in version 3.000 or greater of the game.  Just open the game and you can quickly download the prerelease through the updates tab.  If you don't yet have 3.000 or greater, you can download 3.000 here.  This prerelease version is compatible with any vendor's version of the game -- Steam, Impulse, whatever.

Note:  If you have bug reports related to this release, please log them in the bug reports subforum with one bug per topic.  It makes things infinitely easier for us.  Thanks!

Looking for a Patch That Can Be Manually-Installed?
Because of the time involved in creating multiple versions of each patch, we only create manually-installable patches for official versions of the game, not each beta prerelease.  But, if you're running version 3.022 of the game or higher, you can easily crete your own manually-installable beta patch!  If you don't yet have 3.022, but do have 3.000 or greater, you can download a simple zip containing the files of 3.022 here.  Simply unpack those on top of your existing files in your AI War folder, and voila -- you're on 3.022.

To create your own manual beta patch, you'll want to go here.  This folder contains all of the beta updates.  You just need whatever the most recent one is at the time (probably the same version number as this post).  Download that zip file, which if you try to open will say it's corrupt -- that's okay, it's not really a zip file.  Next download the updated Director.Xml file from that folder.  Finally create a new zip file on your computer, and put both the director and the fake-zip-file inside it.  Call your outer zip file something that starts with Beta and ends with an extension of .zip.  Beta.zip will work just fine, or you can name it after the specific version number if you want to hang onto it.  And that's it!  Now you have your very own manually-installable package of the AI War beta version of your choice, which you can install by simply selecting via your Updates window in the game.

What's new since 3.023:
(Cumulative release notes since 3.000 are attached at the bottom)

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

-Control nodes can no longer be paused.

-Changed Electric Shuttle damage against tele-raiders from 30% of normal to 50%

-When a human player captures a advanced factory, one additional advanced factory will be spawned nearby for each other human player (so no effect in single player).

-There is now a maximum of 4 advanced factories created during map generation.

-Modified maximum value of "Show Icons At" slider on Settings -> Interface menu from 800 to 100; as any value about 97 or so basically means "never show icons". (if you have a setting higher than 100 it will be set to 100 when you open the settings screen to prevent a crash).

-Fixed bug where giving an attack order during execution of a move order would cause a complete stop before re-accelerating (move during move just changed direction, no slowdown).

-Made the ControlNodeFRDLimitedTo80000 node apply to non-military ships as well.

-Scouts and scout starships are now immune to area of effect attacks.

-Previously, only the direct targets of area-of-effect attacks were being damaged if they were fully cloaked. Fixed so that cloaking is no longer a protection from area damage in those cases.

-Added J+right-click combination for new "formation-move" order that maintains each ship in the selection's relative offset from their weighted center.

-Fixed bug where auto-frd node was overwriting AttackMovePoint with LocationCenter even when AttackMovePoint was not empty.

-Previously, if a player tried to connect to a game with the same name as the game host, it was failing silently instead of giving them the appropriate duplicate player message.

[HellishFiend]

Looking forward to trying formation movement, and to scouting being a bit easier. 

[deMangler]

I was just looking for a way to get my scouts past all those electric wotsits.

Formation move! My vote does count!
<calming down...>

[x4000]

[Lancefighter]

I noticed earlier that AI voice taunts finally work again.. was rather scary the first time 

[HellishFiend]

Yeah, last night the AI destroyed two of my fabricators when I wasnt looking, and then called me pathetic. Sad thing is, I really did feel pathetic...

[deMangler]

It seems with the formation move that if you have an FRD control node that right after formation moving the ships go into to FRD  - perhaps not ideal behaviour.
dM

[Lancefighter]

I agree; the game needs a 'stop' command, as in 'move here and stop'.

For engineers, it would be nice to tell them to stop without turning them off, or vampires/cutlasses/shredders that i want to sit somewhere instead of target seeking.

[keith.lamothe]

It seems with the formation move that if you have an FRD control node that right after formation moving the ships go into to FRD  - perhaps not ideal behaviour.
dM

It shouldn't be any different than a normal move (really it's just multiplexing your move order into separate move orders for each ship while maintaining the current offset to the center of the selected group).  Does this happen after a normal move?

And iirc the "stop" command is the end key, but I don't think it's a queue-able command.

Edit: ah, you mean that it does happen in normal move but that this is fine, you would like the group to remain in formation despite the presence of the node and enemies (whether that means it doesn't frd or frd's as a formation)

[deMangler]

It seems with the formation move that if you have an FRD control node that right after formation moving the ships go into to FRD  - perhaps not ideal behaviour.
dM

It shouldn't be any different than a normal move (really it's just multiplexing your move order into separate move orders for each ship while maintaining the current offset to the center of the selected group).  Does this happen after a normal move?

And iirc the "stop" command is the end key, but I don't think it's a queue-able command.

OK, I guess I was expecting it to be consistent with the way other movement metas like alt-move override the control node thing.
But of course it is a formation move command. The alt-move is a move and then..... command.
So I can do alt-j-move and it formation moves but keeps the alt-order when they stop.


My mistake.

Edit: ah, you mean that it does happen in normal move but that this is fine, you would like the group to remain in formation despite the presence of the node and enemies (whether that means it doesn't frd or frd's as a formation)

It would be good if there was a way to get them to remain in formation upon stopping..... 

[Echo35]

-Modified maximum value of "Show Icons At" slider on Settings -> Interface menu from 800 to 100; as any value about 97 or so basically means "never show icons". (if you have a setting higher than 100 it will be set to 100 when you open the settings screen to prevent a crash).

Glee!

[Spikey00]

-When a human player captures an advanced factory, one additional advanced factory will be spawned nearby for each other human player (so no effect in single player).

Is there any other way of handling this, because it sounds a bit too odd and cheap in theory--can't it be made universally controllable by all players, but have different, multiple queues for each player so everyone can build at the same time without interference from other player control?

-Made the ControlNodeFRDLimitedTo80000 node apply to non-military ships as well.

Can this be split into two:  military and utility?


Great news on the formation, however.

[x4000]

Is there any other way of handling this, because it sounds a bit too odd and cheap in theory--can't it be made universally controllable by all players, but have different, multiple queues for each player so everyone can build at the same time without interference from other player control?

No.  This would require rather a large rewrite, and various other logical problems when it comes to disabled players and so on.  I'm not real worried about this being cheap or odd.

[Black]

Could it be made so that the map generator places N advanced factories together on the same planet, where N is the number of players, and then the game distributes them automatically on planet capture? It would make it more clear to the players, and I think it's more elegant than spawning them when the planet is taken over.

[Kalzarius]

-Added J+right-click combination for new "formation-move" order that maintains each ship in the selection's relative offset from their weighted center.

Perhaps this could be made another movement mode like Lone and Group move mode.  I know I certainly don't want to be holding down J for 99.9% of my movement orders.