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 3.053:(Cumulative release notes since 3.000 are attached at the bottom)
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-Fixed a longstanding bug with cross-planet attacks (CPAs). Basically, a CPA is always uses ships that are the same level as the current tech level of the AI, but it won't use ships from any planets that have significant player presence on them. And if there were too few ships -- well, too bad, the CPA would just be undersized. Now the game will go back for subsequent passes at higher tech levels to fill out the full roster of the CPA. So if you've been playing a particularly long game and all the planets have been upgraded to Mark IV simply because of densityof the ships (this would be 30+ hours of gametime, usually), then you're in for much more wicked CPAs than before, even if your AIP is low.
CHANGES TO PAST PRERELEASES
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-Riot Control Tazer now no longer does engine damage (actually that never worked) but instead does a 1 second paralyze attack to all ships in range. Recharge time is 6 seconds, range reduced from 4000 to 3000.
-Riot Control Lasers and Shotguns normal damage significantly reduced.
-Engine damage "floor" mechanic introduced for Riot Control Starship modules (not the main guns), such that shots cannot reduce target engine health below a set threshold:
Laser MkI/MkII: 25%/10%
Machine Gun MkI/MkII: 50%/30%
Shotgun MkI/MkII: 25%/10%
-Revised preconfigured templates of the Riot.
-Previously all modules were essentially ignored by autotargetting, now tazers, tractor modules, and shotgun modules will be considered like any other ships, since they are generally worth destroying even though it would strictly speaking be more efficient to target the parent ship.
-In previous prereleases you could sometimes still see enemy ships in a system where you had lost visibility (with icon grouping disabled, incidentally). Fixed to properly stop drawing those ships.
Updates in 3.055:-Fixed a desync that would previously occur in multiplayer games when a game with multiple advanced factories on one planet was loaded.
