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 3.106:(Cumulative release notes since 3.060 are attached at the bottom)
-------------------
-On multiplayer games with three players and up, there are now slightly more resources seeded into game maps (including existing savegames, and increasing as the number of players increases) to make the experience more consistent with that of the 1-2 playr games.
-Raid Starships and Leech Starships are now immune to dark matter, to blades, to missiles, and to snipers.
-Sniper and Spider Turrets, and all the Counter-Whatever Turrets, are now immune to dark matter, to blades, and to snipers.
-Armored Missiles now only cost 20 AI Progress instead of 40.
-The slowing that happens to player ships that leave the gravity well now happens further out (16 at 80k, 8 at 100k, 1 at 160k, rather than the prior 16 at 60k, 8 at 80k, and 1 at 160k).
-Orbital Command Stations Mark II now produce 28 metal/crystal instead of 24.
-Orbital Command Stations Mark III now produce 40 metal/crystal instead of 32.
-Zenith Power Generators now only produce 200k energy instead of 300k (for the same metal/crystal cost as before), but also now only cause 10 AI Progression on loss instead of 20.
-The number of my/allied ships inside transports is now shown on the counts at each planet on the galaxy map view, same as it already was being shown when searching for ships using the Find tool.
-Colony ships no longer have an elevated priority for the AI targeting, now take 1/3 as long as before to build, and now move 3x as fast as before. They are also now immune to dark matter attacks.
-Transports are now a low priority target for the AI (which means the AI will never even bother attacking them directly), and are now immune to reclamation.
-Regular mark I-III engineers now have "En" as text hovering over them. This makes them far easier to pick out of a crowd, and easier to find on the planetary summary to the right of the screen.
-Turret Trains no longer cause an AI Progress cost increase when destroyed.
-Major new AI Mechanic: AI planets with more than X number of units in cold storage (basically, sitting idle as guards) will now set the excess units above X to be free. Usually planets would be capped around 4000ish in the first place, but on the lower difficulties this provides incentive for players to at least partially neuter really high-guard-post-containing planets that are near to the player's area. On the higher difficulties, it makes neutering way more important, and also gives the AI more latitude for interesting attack vectors. The number "X" varies by difficulty level in the following way:
>= 10 = 3200
>= 9 = 3400
>= 8 = 3600
>= 7 = 3800
>= 6 = 4000
>= 5 = 4200
< 5 = 5000
-Additional improvements have been made to the speed of linking fg objects when loading savegames. This is particularly notable with larger savegames.
CHANGES TO PAST PRERELEASES
=======
-In recent versions, the text labels for ships was not showing up in the planetary summary. Fixed.
