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 3.175:(Cumulative release notes since 3.120 are here
http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Beta)
-------------------
* X-shaped and Concentric-Circle maps now have a roughly 1/3rd chance of putting the eligible starting planets in the center, instead of always on the outer parts.
* Some rebalancing of Hybrid Hives:
o Reduced Hybrid Hive move speed from 50 to 30.
o Reduced Hybrid Hive hull strength from 2 million to 1.5 million.
o Changed Hybrid Hive main gun, machine gun module, and laser cannon module damage against forcefields and heavy-defense from 100% to 20%, and against command stations from 20% to 10%.
* Added support for more selectivity (including Hybrid-class-based selectivity) on which ships are generated as drones. Notably, melee ships and autobombs will no longer be chosen, and stuff like Sentinel Frigates will be chosen much less often.
* Added 2 galaxy map display overlays: detected hybrids and detected hybrid facilities. Only displays info on planets that you current have visibility.
* Added the "builder" Hybrid classes, some of which build defensive structures on AI planets, some of which build Hybrid-supporting facilities. Roughly 5% of neophytes will become builders instead of attackers or defenders.
* Concentric Circles maps with fewer than the maximum number of rings (7-8) will have the rings spaced out a bit more to make use of the extra space.
* Added "Advanced Hybrids" AI Plot; if the base Hybrids plot is enabled and the Advanced one is not, then the highest tier of Hybrid classes will be disabled (including stuff like the re-coloinzer, which is not quite implemented yet). Also slightly influences the tech level of equipment available to the lower classes, for instance the first Attacker type will only be able to get a mkI forcefield (instead of mkII) if Advanced Hybrids is off. If you select Advanced Hybrids and not the base Hybrids plot for an AI player, once you start the game it will act as if you had checked both.
* Hybrid Hive spawn time changed from 15 to 20 minutes.
* Hybrid Hive maturity times increased slightly (Neophyte -> level 2 takes 35 instead of 30 minutes, etc).
* Fixed missing texture for Hybrids in far-zoom (apparently last time only the close-zoom texture was added).
* Fixed a bug that was causing move orders of thousands of ships to take more processing time than necessary.
* The lobby will now display the actual number of planets in the generated map, which can be less than the player-designated number on spokes, tree, and grid maps (and perhaps others). Those types sometimes run out of places to put planets according to their logic, so this indicator is provided to notify the player of the difference and let them decide whether they want to play the map or generate another one.
* Fixed ambiguity in unexplored planets option description.
* Gifting multiple units at once now combines into one game command, preventing hangs when gifting rather large amounts of units at once.
* Fixed bug where the Zenith Trader's buy menu would display "X of Y in service" numbers for one of the AI players instead of the local player.
* Regenerator golems now no longer regenerate ships if they are in low-power mode or are out of supply.
* Gravitation turrets no longer have any effect if out of supply.
* All tractor-beam generating units are now immune to paralysis.
* Previously, ship modules would still show up via the still-show-stationary-ships-if-scouted logic if the player did not have ships on that planet. Fixed.
* Shield hit effects were showing up as visually offset in recent prereleases. Fixed.
* A bug in the last prereleases were causing regeneration chambers to actually kill the ships put inside them, instead of healing them. Fixed.
* Previously, any ships taking attrition (even self-attrition) would stop at 1 hp, rather than dying outright. That logic made sense for the cursed golem, but for most other ships (especially the new Neinzul ships, but also Dyson Gatlings), it's mainly annoying. Now ships actually fully die from attrition, except for Cursed Golems (and even they can be killed via an attrition emitter -- this only applies to their self-attrition).
* Units out of supply (that require supply) will no longer try to attack, chase, etc.
* Fixed bug where loading a game with inbound schizo waves would display the wave alerts like a non-schizo wave.
* A substantial new performance improvement has been made to units on "cold storage" planets with no enemies present: basically, the entire processing of the planet is skipped except every other turn (even for things like special forces or free units on those planets, if other ships on that same planet are in cold storage), which reduces background simulation processing (in other words, not human player ships or battles) to a pretty enormous degree.
o To clarify, a turn is 200ms long.
o The "statistics" for things like the number of attacking ships, threatening ships, etc, are also now only recalculated every other turn, which also helps with load to a much more minor degree.
o Any ships that are moving on planets of this sort now move twice as fast, since they are artificially only moving half as often. This keeps it from actually altering gameplay in meaningful ways (though players will likely still find something!).
* Warhead silos now only cost 10,000 energy to maintain rather than 80,000.
* Fixed bug where Zenith Autobomb could aoe-damage secondary targets that normally are not auto-targeted (because they cause AIP on death, or whatever). Will still damage the target if directly targeted at it. Also did a sweep to ensure this behavior for other forms of aoe.
* Fixed bug where auto-explore (and auto-gather-knowledge) would sometimes stop working when playing a second game within a given run of the application.
* Added missing -100% value to handicap dropdown.
* Fixed obsolete Munitions Booster tooltip.
* Previously there was a bug in auto-knowledge-gather that would lead to the science stations bouncing endlessly against the command station in a rather amusing fashion. Fixed to be less amusing.
* Previously superfortresses were inconsistent with normal fortresses in that they would box-select with other military ships while the fortresses would not. This was due to the fortresses having the IsScout flag, which has now been added to super-forts as well.
* Removed some extra padding at the bottom of the mouseover text for buy and tech buttons.
* The graphics for the Mercenary Space dock have been overhauled so that it now looks like an evil version of the regular space dock.
* The Mercenary Space Dock now costs 0 energy to use (this is a mercenary outpost, after all), but the players are now limited to having two of them.
* There are new Mercenary Parasites and Mercenary EtherJets which allow for new strategic options in any game, but with the usual overly-high costs of mercenary ships.
* In Zenith-Remnant-Enabled games, there are now Mercenary Beam Frigates.
* In Children-Of-Neinzul-Enabled games, there are now Mercenary Neinzul Enclave Starships (mark I). That lets you always build Mark I ships anywhere if you're willing to pay 300k metal/crystal for one of these. Of course, a much cheaper alternative is to spend the knowledge to get some actual regular Enclave Starships from the main Starship Constructor.
* Players now get a Starship Constructor, Warhead Silo, and Mercenary Space Dock at the start of every game, to encourage experimentation and use of these other buildings.
* Fixed bug where ship caps would display in the lobby as if there were always 8 human homeworlds. Changed to display the cap according to the actual selected number of homeworlds (or 1, if none selected) and to multiply the result by the number of homeworlds currently selected by the local player (or 1, if none selected). This may still result in some misleading cases, but may be the best that can be done for now.
* The strong/weak vs data shown in-game has been recalculated to show for the new ships through this point.
* The ship cap of lightning warheads has been reduced from 8 to 6.
* The ship cap of EMP warheads has been reduced from 4 to 2.
* The old lightning warheads are now lightning warheads mark II. New lightning warheads mark I and III have been added. The lightning warhead mark I does much less damage but in a larger area, and for one less AI Progress point. The lightning warhead mark III does much more damage but in a much smaller area, and for only one more AI Progress point.
* EMP warheads mark II and III have been added. For extra AI Progress points, they will paralyze enemy ships for longer intervals. The higher-mark EMPs are more AI-Progress-cost-effective than using multiple of the existing mark I EMPs.
* Warhead silos and starship constructors were seeded onto enemy planets as a capturable for human players to take over in the past, mainly so that players would be sure to eventually discover these constructors if the players were not diligent in exploring the build menus. However, now that these constructors are seeded at the start, this is no longer needed, and it was sometimes confusing to players anyway (some thought that the silos or starship constructors would be used against them, which was not the case). These will no longer be seeded into new games on AI planets.
* Previously, there were only 4 types of command stations that could be built by players. Now there are 10, providing vastly more functionality and branches for varying strategies.
o The previously-existing warp jammer command stations have not been touched.
o The prior Mark I-III command stations have been renamed to Economic command stations, but their functionality is unchanged.
o There are now Mark I-III Military command stations.
+ Military Command Stations provide very little in the way of economic gain, but have much more health and the ability to shoot at enemy ships.
o There are now Mark I-III Logistical command stations.
+ Logistical Command Stations provide very little in the way of economic gain, and can't shoot at enemy ships, but they vastly increase the speed of all allied ships in the current system. They also have middling armor and a smallish force field.
o Mark I of the Military, Economic, and Logistical command stations are all available at any time, and have no ship cap. Marks II and III have to be individually unlocked per branch, and each branch has a ship cap of 6 per mark II/III command station.
