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 create 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 3.043:(Cumulative release notes since 3.000 are attached at the bottom)
-------------------
-(From 3.043: Transports now move vastly faster, have almost doubled shields, have 10x more health, and cost 2x as much crystal.)
-Transports are no longer of a higher priority than any other ships.
-Ships that are placed into cold storage are no longer removed and re-added to their planet's secondary rollups (they are just kept in those rollups the entire time). This removes the lag at the start of games from ships going into cold storage, as well as about all of the lag when ships are coming into and out of planets that are in cold storage. This makes transports that are traveling through many large planets that are in cold storage no longer cause the game to repeatedly hitch for about 2 seconds every time they enter or leave the planets of that sort, while still keeping practically all the benefits of cold storage itself.
-Solving one of the more annoying pockets of micromanagement of the game, manufactories now auto-optimize their on/off states to keep resources flows as positive as possible (assuming there is enough free energy to turn them on).
-A new control node has been added to disable the new auto-management of manufactories, so that players can continue to manually manage them as before
-modified the "don't chase teleporting units" code to prevent a problem causing human player ships in FRD mode to do nothing because they were constantly picking a teleporting target and dropping it again.
CHANGES TO PAST PRERELEASES
=======
-changed name of "Remains Rebuilders" unit to "Remains Rebuilder".
-Modular ships (just the Riots, right now) now properly flag their build queues as non-assistable when they don't contain any queue items that are currently buildable (i.e. queued modules with no hardpoint to fit on).
-Engineers can now assist an MRS's build queue.
-Made planetary shield booster description clearer.
-Modified evade-at-wormhole-end logic so that ONLY the following ships use this behavior: Scout I-IV, Scout Starship.
-Cloaking boosters now boost ships not in low-power-mode before ships in low-power-mode.
-Fixed the ship mark icons on the tachyon beam emitters.
-A better-looking small explosion effect (for shot hits) has been added by Hans-Martin Portmann.
CHANGES TO PAST PRERELEASES
=======
-Made Marauders and Resistance Fighters able to damage guard posts and command stations again, since they are much less likely to trigger an early "wave" of high-mark AI units against the players.
-SpiderIV's brought back down to previous stats, but engine damage buffed a fair bit to maintain progression from II to III to IV.
-If the player has a very low store of a resource, the game will no longer automatically turn on manfuactories to convert away from that resource even if the outflow of that resource is the lower of the two.
