Author Topic: Prerelease 3.103 (Transport repair nerf, melee buff, bugfixes)  (Read 3400 times)

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
The latest beta is available via the Updates window in version 3.060 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 3.060 or greater, you can download 3.060 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 you can easily create your own manually-installable beta patch!  Please note that current betas can only be successfully applied to version 3.060 of the game or later (if you later wish to revert to the official version for any reason, you can download the full raw files from the above link to do so).

To create your own manual beta patch, simply download these two files:
1. Current Beta Director Xml File.
2. Current Beta Zip File.

If you try to open that zip file, it will say it's corrupt -- that's okay, it's not really a zip file.  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.  Please note that "Beta" in the filename is case-sensitive.

What's new since 3.101:
(Cumulative release notes since 3.060 are attached at the bottom)

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

-Leech starships are now all immune to tractor beams, like other starships.

-The ship caps are now slightly higher for all single player ship classes, and scale down by slightly more than before for each added human player, back to the prior existing base number of ships for 8 player games (typically the base ship cap in 1 player was 180, but is now 190, and for 8 player was and still is 100).

-Positive handicaps now affect negative metal and crystal resource costs for manufactories.

-Transports can no longer be repaired directly, but only have their regen on friendly planets.

-Vampires and Cutlasses both now have regen that fully heals them in 90 seconds.

-The metal and crystal costs of cutlasses have both been halved.

-Cleanup Drones now have about twice the health that they previously did.

CHANGES TO PAST PRERELEASES
=======

-In the last version, the ship caps were working incorrectly.  Fixed.

-In the last version, starting a new game with an expansion ship would not grant the ship to the players.  Fixed.

-In the last version, killing a zenith reserves store would crash the game.  Fixed.

Updates in 3.103:

-Fixed another issue with the smaller ship caps (like forcefields) being far too small.

-Mostly unrelated to the above fix, the ship caps of smaller fleet ships has also been increased slightly yet again (198 instead of 190 for single player, etc).
« Last Edit: April 22, 2010, 05:37:16 pm by x4000 »
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline jonasan

  • Jr. Member Mark III
  • **
  • Posts: 97
Re: Prerelease 3.102 (Transport repair nerf, melee buff, bugfixes)
« Reply #1 on: April 22, 2010, 04:59:44 pm »
fast work, cheers

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Prerelease 3.102 (Transport repair nerf, melee buff, bugfixes)
« Reply #2 on: April 22, 2010, 05:03:00 pm »
My pleasure. :)
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline jonasan

  • Jr. Member Mark III
  • **
  • Posts: 97
Re: Prerelease 3.102 (Transport repair nerf, melee buff, bugfixes)
« Reply #3 on: April 22, 2010, 05:15:39 pm »
erm sorry but on my game i have 4 mk1 force field generators. I need to destroy one to rebuild on another system - but unfortunately the cap is 3. So right now it says 4 out of 3 in service?! sorry to be a pain

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Prerelease 3.103 (Transport repair nerf, melee buff, bugfixes)
« Reply #4 on: April 22, 2010, 05:37:30 pm »
Thanks for the report. :) Now out:

Updates in 3.103:

-Fixed another issue with the smaller ship caps (like forcefields) being far too small.

-Mostly unrelated to the above fix, the ship caps of smaller fleet ships has also been increased slightly yet again (198 instead of 190 for single player, etc).
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline RCIX

  • Core Member Mark II
  • *****
  • Posts: 2,808
  • Avatar credit goes to Spookypatrol on League forum
Re: Prerelease 3.103 (Transport repair nerf, melee buff, bugfixes)
« Reply #5 on: April 22, 2010, 06:46:42 pm »
Uh, in all the games i've been playing, the base ship caps have been 170. ???
Avid League player and apparently back from the dead!

If we weren't going for your money, you wouldn't have gotten as much value for it!

Oh, wait... *causation loop detonates*

rubikscube

  • Guest
Re: Prerelease 3.103 (Transport repair nerf, melee buff, bugfixes)
« Reply #6 on: April 22, 2010, 07:12:37 pm »
Uh, in all the games i've been playing, the base ship caps have been 170. ???

me too, make it easier to count like 200 , and then we can start flaming about how over powered that is

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Prerelease 3.103 (Transport repair nerf, melee buff, bugfixes)
« Reply #7 on: April 22, 2010, 08:43:18 pm »
Uh, in all the games i've been playing, the base ship caps have been 170. ???

Oh, yeah, my math was off by a bit.  Well, no worries.  Now it's 198.  The performance has been improving so much that I thought it was time to throw more ships in there so it will start choking again. ;)
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline Rustayne

  • Full Member Mark II
  • ***
  • Posts: 180
Re: Prerelease 3.103 (Transport repair nerf, melee buff, bugfixes)
« Reply #8 on: April 22, 2010, 11:39:26 pm »
I found a bug in the new patch.  Both me and a friend updated, and when we did we were unable to connect to each other to play a game.  We wound up having to uninstall and reinstall AI war to be able to connect to each other.  We aren't sure what exactly happened, as we were running one of the .80's patch before and it was all good.  We were using direct connect on actual IP's instead of a 3rd party program.  All network settings were fine before, and now after as well.  We got the error of couldn't establish connection or lost it.  Hope this helps you.

Offline Doddler

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 287
Re: Prerelease 3.103 (Transport repair nerf, melee buff, bugfixes)
« Reply #9 on: April 23, 2010, 01:09:44 am »
Did the handicaps use to increase AI Progress reduction from datacenters prior to the patch?  I thought I saw it happen in a previous game but I might have been mistaken.

Very nice on the quick patching btw! :)

Offline superking

  • Hero Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,205
Re: Prerelease 3.103 (Transport repair nerf, melee buff, bugfixes)
« Reply #10 on: April 23, 2010, 03:16:24 am »
so vampires can regen and vampire HP? tasty  ;D

Offline keith.lamothe

  • Arcen Games Staff
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 19,505
Re: Prerelease 3.103 (Transport repair nerf, melee buff, bugfixes)
« Reply #11 on: April 23, 2010, 06:22:18 am »
The performance has been improving so much that I thought it was time to throw more ships in there so it will start choking again. ;)
*Bangs head against wall repeatedly* I'm reminded of the frog hopping 2 feet up the well and falling 3 feet back...

Oh, wait, I think in the anecdote it was actually possible ;)

Ah well, will just have to do even more crazy aggressive aggregation stuff ;)
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games? Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Prerelease 3.103 (Transport repair nerf, melee buff, bugfixes)
« Reply #12 on: April 23, 2010, 11:43:44 am »
I found a bug in the new patch.  Both me and a friend updated, and when we did we were unable to connect to each other to play a game.  We wound up having to uninstall and reinstall AI war to be able to connect to each other.  We aren't sure what exactly happened, as we were running one of the .80's patch before and it was all good.  We were using direct connect on actual IP's instead of a 3rd party program.  All network settings were fine before, and now after as well.  We got the error of couldn't establish connection or lost it.  Hope this helps you.

Hmm, I can't duplicate this issue.  On the latest patch, I was just able to successfully connect to the game lobby, as well as to an existing savegame.  Nothing has changed in the networking area for... a few months at least.  So there shouldn't be any difference, not that that's foolproof.

I think what you are running into is actually a longstanding minor issue with the game, which is that sometimes it will simply say that for reasons unknown.  We aren't sure if this is an issue with the network library we are using, or something we are doing, or what (we've looked, multiple times).  But at any rate, this has been around for the better part of a year if not longer, I think.  The good news is that it's entirely transient.  Often it is no problem at all, but when it is a problem you just try again and it tends to work on the second try.  In really rare cases it might take 3-4 tries at most, but then that's that, and things are normal once connected.

This issue seems to affect specific people more than others, which is particularly curious.  So I don't know i there is some NIC/ISP/router/whatever involvement in it, or what.  I can duplicate the issue even with just running two copies on my same machine, though, so it's not just any of those other factors.  But they may have some influence, I am not certain.

At the moment we are headed for a whole new network stack in the July/August timeframe when we make the switchover to Unity 3D for AI War (assuming all goes well with that).  So my hope is that this rather transient issue will disappear on that new platform, honestly. ;)

Let me know if you still see any issues with the latest patch, but I think that it was just a fluke, not a new bug.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Prerelease 3.103 (Transport repair nerf, melee buff, bugfixes)
« Reply #13 on: April 23, 2010, 11:45:12 am »
Did the handicaps use to increase AI Progress reduction from datacenters prior to the patch?  I thought I saw it happen in a previous game but I might have been mistaken.

Very nice on the quick patching btw! :)

No changes on the AI Progress based on handicaps, never were -- the handicaps are resource-related-only.  Glad you're enjoying the recent flurry of quick patches! :)

so vampires can regen and vampire HP? tasty  ;D

Thought people might like that. :)
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Prerelease 3.103 (Transport repair nerf, melee buff, bugfixes)
« Reply #14 on: April 23, 2010, 11:49:40 am »
The performance has been improving so much that I thought it was time to throw more ships in there so it will start choking again. ;)
*Bangs head against wall repeatedly* I'm reminded of the frog hopping 2 feet up the well and falling 3 feet back...

Oh, wait, I think in the anecdote it was actually possible ;)

Ah well, will just have to do even more crazy aggressive aggregation stuff ;)

Well, in all seriousness, the increases are pretty token.  That's an extra 18 ships per mark I ship class, so that's around 162 extra mark I ships by the game.  The gains for Marks II-V are in decreasing stairsteps, so in the end that's around 600 more ships for the human players in single player if they unlocked EVERY mobile fleet ship and got all the ARSes.  Of course, with some of the ships that naturally have a higher ship cap (autocannons, etc), the effect is twice as pronounced or so, but that's still probably 900ish extra ships extra in all at most in a typical game.

And with multiplayer, the effects of this scale down, until you hit 8 player where this makes no change whatsoever.  So really all it does is normalize the solo experience a tad more with the multiplayer experiences, but it's a pretty minor adjustment overall.

I know you were kidding to a certain extent at least, but I wanted to make sure you knew I wasn't just wanting to throw away all the performance gains in favor of MOAR SHIPS.  Just a slight tweak, mostly to solo and the other low-player-count multiplayer games. :)
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!