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 3.113:(Cumulative release notes since 3.060 are attached at the bottom)
-------------------
-AI Progress Alert box will now report AI progress reductions from ship destruction (basically just data centers, or the last co-processor) and holding of the super-terminal.
-At some point in the recent past, scrapping stopped giving resources because it was restrained to only AI ships rather than only non-AI ships. Fixed.
-Added single-planet versions of the auto-build-engineerI|II|III|remains-rebuilder nodes.
-Removed ClosesAttackDistanceTo value from fortresses and superfortresses since they were causing very non-optimal closing behavior, particularly against engine-dead bombers.
-Paralysis time now capped at 2 minutes, to prevent emp minefields and the like from getting too extreme.
-The planetary summary was no longer updating when ships were placed while the game was paused, due to the "only recalculate once per GameSecond" logic and no GameSeconds passing while paused. Changed to use a separate real-second calculation while the game is paused, so that it should update every second or two while paused.
-Rally posts now have a 900 collision priority (only below immobiles and ShipTypes Force_Field, Command_Station, Command_Station_Core)
-ShipType Heavy_Defense moved down to same collision priority as transports and golems (was up with Command_Station, etc), since the only non-immobile ships in that type are the fortress, superfortress, and astro train, which fit more in the transport tier. Immobile Heavy_Defense ships still have the normal 10000 immobile CollisionPriority.
-Added new Control Node: No Rallying to allied Rally Posts.
-Added new Control Node: Reclaimed Units Rally to Rally Posts.
-AI ships trapped by a black hole machine will now try to destroy that device rather than just sitting there doing nothing (will sometimes attack other targets in the system first, if available).
-Previously PlanetaryShieldBooster, PlanetaryShieldInhibitor, BlackHoleMachine, RadarJammer, and RadarJammerIIs would continue having their system-wide effects in low-power mode. Since the effect is based off their presence in the system and actually checking them for low-power mode every cycle would add a non-trivial load to the simulation, they can no longer be put in low-power mode. They can still be paused during construction, though (and they should not be having their system-wide effects while under construction).
CHANGES TO PAST PRERELEASES
=======
-In previous versions the load-game process was incorrectly discarding most (if not all) traverse-wormhole orders of ships and constructors in the save file, fixed to process those correctly.
-In previous versions the planetary summary mouseover has not been drawing the tooltip for ship types seen recently but not actually present (recently destroyed ships, etc), fixed.
