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 3.055:(Cumulative release notes since 3.000 are attached at the bottom)
-------------------
-Previously, area of effect shots could hit cloaked ships, which caused numerous problems with scouts and other units being hit when they seemingly should not have been. This has been changed so that cloaking now provides immunity from being hit by area of effect attacks.
-Fixed a bug where AI taunts were ignoring the "Disable Sound" setting.
-Previously, free-roaming defender mode (which all minor factions use) could really slow down battles because of the extra compuation involved. Ships now weight frd computation as a higher issue, thus causing them to appropriately slow their target acquisition based on that to thus avoid such slowdown. This makes it far more feasible (if still inadvisable) to use frd mode on enemy planets, and also makes it so that minor factions don't slow down the game as they could before.
-Devourer Golems now have 9x as much health as before.
-Transports now have about 4/5 as much health as they have in recent times, as they were making it a tad too easy to do really long-range raiding.
-Bombers now do only 3/4 their prior damage to force fields and heavy defenses (fortresses, etc).
-Dreadnoughts now only do about 2/3 their prior damage to heavy defenses, teleport battle stations, and zenith bombardments.
-Infiltrators now have much lower bonuses against those ships they specialize against, with the largest drop being against heavy defenses and force fields.
-Eyebots now do half their prior bonus against heavy defenses, force fields, scouts, and engineers.
-Zenith Electric Bombers now have much lower damage bonuses against tanks, force fields, and heavy defenses.
-Zenith Chameleons now have halved damage bonuses against all ships, except for resource ships, which they now have a doubled bonus against.
-The way that line breaks are handled for the Strong/Weak data is now much improved so that it no longer leads to odd wrapping. This is particularly notable in non-English versions of the game.
-Astro Train Stations now only have 5/8 as much health as before.
-Riot Control Starship's module buy menu now color coded by hardpoint type to make somewhat clearer which modules "compete" with each other for space.
-Minor buffs to Riot Control Machine Gun and Laser structural damage.
-Fixed some bugs with icon grouping that drew icons in strange places when some of the ships in a group were renderable (onscreen and visible) and some were not.
-In the last few versions modules were back to sometimes drawing under the parent ship rather than on top. Should be fixed again.
-Added some very basic graphics for the Riot Shield and Riot Control Tazer modules, since the previous placeholder art (while good in other contexts) really didn't fit the Riot.
