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 3.184:(Cumulative release notes since 3.120 are here
http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Beta)
-------------------
* Fixed bug where some minor faction units (like the mining golem) were getting orders from the AI thread that conflicted with their proper behavior. The AI thread now no longer issues orders for those units.
* Some players were running into cases where tractor beams were not acting for a number of seconds after enemies exited a wormhole due to throttling, so moved tractor-beam target-checking throttle into central throttle logic, made more intelligent about how much load the operations actually involve.
* Now when a constructor is unable to complete the item at the front of its build queue due to insufficient energy, any engineers assisting it will be properly flagged as failing to assist. Assuming they were not directly ordered to assist that constructor, they will shortly start looking for other building projects they can assist (like, hopefully, a new energy reactor).
* Fixed crash bug from 3.184 that would happen when a unit holding more than one unit in a tractor beam then died.
* Fixed bug in 3.184 that was setting all the "counter shooter radius" of all tractor beams, forcefields, gravitational turrets, and cloaking boosters to 0. In some cases these abilities were still working (albeit more slowly) but in others like the grav turrets they were not working at all. This was also preventing these units from drawing their proper area during placement, etc.
What's new since 3.185:(Cumulative release notes since 3.120 are here
http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Beta)
-------------------
* Previously when placing a construction template with cloaked enemy ships obstructing one of the placements, that placement would be randomly bounced away to some place that did fit. It will now simply not build that placement.
* Tugs are now much less likely to stop hauling a ship just inside MRS repair range (which can be quite a ways off), and instead get closer to the MRS before releasing the towed ship in order to make the repairees easier to defend.
* "Mines" have now become "minefields." The following changes now apply to all mines, including regular, EMP, and Area mines.
o The max health of mines is now 8x higher, as is their regen rate.
o The metal and crystal costs of mines are now 6x higher.
o The ship caps on mines are now 4x lower.
o Minefields are now 16x larger than the older mines used to be (256x256 instead of 64x64).
o The damage dealt by an individual minefield is now 3x what it was before, and is now shown in the tooltip.
o Minefields now take 3x longer to build.
* These changes will affect existing savegames, but human players may still have a large number of mines in play that will suddenly look all overlapped and be way above the ship cap for the player. Once these mines are exploded, they won't rebuild if the player would be over ship cap. It's a bit of an advantage to mine-loving players who upgrade older savegames; the mines can simply be scrapped to counteract this.
* Individual ships are now only able to hit any minefield once per second. So, for example, if Ship A hits minefield 1, and if it survives that hit, it then has 1 second of immunity to pass by minefields 1, 2, 3, etc. If it moves so slowly that it is still touching minefield 1 after a second has passed (and minefield 1 and Ship A are both still alive), then Ship A will hit minefield 1 again. This would also happen if a ship was tractored or paralyzed on top of a minefield -- it would keep getting hit once per second until either the minefield or the ship was exhausted.
o This is PER SHIP only. So if Ship A hits minefield 1 and gains immunity, that doesn't matter for Ships B or C, which could also hit minefield 1 on that exact same instant.
o This also does not apply to area effects. So if Ship A hits minefield 1, and minefield one does area damage or paralysis to Ships B, C, and D, then B, C, and D still can hit minefield 1 or other minefields. In fact, Ship B could collide with minefield one, damaging itself and doing area damage to Ships A, C, and D.
* Mines are no longer all-or-nothing damage, now that they are minefields. If their damage would overkill the ship that hits them, they now only deal the actual damage that would kill the triggering ship. This in turn reduces the amount of damage taken by the minefield itself, and if there is an area damage effect, it also reduces how much area damage is taken by the other nearby enemy ships.
* Fixed an occasional crash bug in 3.185 relating to waves being generated.
* On difficulty 5 and up, the AI will now build nests of sniper turrets every so often (like the spider turret nests, except larger).
o The random occasional sniper turrets are still seeded as normal, because these have some desirable effects such as "pinging" larger ships every so often in order to prevent their healing, as well as knocking off tachyon-revealed scouts, and similar.
o These will be seeded into existing savegames.
* On difficulty 7 and up, the AI will now build occasional gravitational turrets of varying marks. These will be seeded into existing savegames.
* Only the Mark V AI guard posts are now immune to snipers, EMPs, nuclear explosions, and being insta-killed. Previously, it was Mark IV and up.
* Wormhole guard posts now have 20 million health instead of 2 billion, which means that they can be killed after being stunned via an EMP, but they take a lot of firepower to do so.
* Special Forces Guard Posts now have 4 million health instead of 400k. Their attack range has been reduced from 1500 to 1000.
What's new since 3.186:(Cumulative release notes since 3.120 are here
http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Beta)
-------------------
* The AI will no longer send homogenous waves of Zenith Paralyzers.
* (Really) fixed a bug where stuff caught by etherjets and then killed and regenerated by the AI on another planet was being snatched back to the original planet in a totally different position. Now will not be snatched back.
* Some players were encountering situations where the throttle on control node sweeps (shared with a lot of other stuff) was preventing control nodes from functioning. Split control node logic onto its own throttle so that up to 20 planets will be processed per game second, which should be more than sufficient.
* Fixed bug where the galaxy-map planet intel overlay would not display the top two rows of icons (if any) for planets that were not owned by the players and did not have enemy ships.
* Previously, there was a constant rate of engine repair, which meant that ships with high engine health would take a REALLY long time to have their engines repaired. Now the rate of engine repair scales up so that ships with high engine health don't take extra time any longer. The base rate of engine repair has been halved, though.
o Additionally, the repair speed bonuses of higher-level engineers now also apply to engine repair, whereas before they did not.
* The various messages that show near the top of the screen (Paused, Game Does Not Have Focus, You Win, etc) can now show more than one of these messages at once (like if you're paused after you've won and/or the game does not have focus).
* Fixed bug where out-of-supply AI units would display a message intended only for player ships (talking about too far from "your" planets, etc); now has an AI-only message.
* Fixed a few bugs that would sometimes allow the placement of harvesters on resource points that were still covered by AI guard posts.
* Core Fabricators, Experimental Fabricators, and Experimental Starship Fabricators are now listed with space docks, starship constructors, etc on the "Space Dock" button at the bottom of the screen.
* Made engineers, cleanup drones, and rebuilders blind.
* Fixed bug where only mark I warp-counterattack guard posts were actually launching waves when triggered.
* Fixed bug where it was possible to see a dyson sphere on the planetary summary sidebar of a planet where you had never had any visibility.
* Dreadnought I/II/III renamed to Siege Starship I/II/III and given much more distinctive role:
o Speed from 12 to 8.
o Shields from 1500 to 200.
o Base health from 300,000/600,000/900,000 to 1000,00/120,000/140,000.
o Attack rate from 80/70/60 to 160 for all 3 marks (this means it used to fire once per 4/3.5/3 seconds, and now all fire once per 8 seconds).
o No longer able to fire on fleet ships (this actually makes its autotargeting behavior much more efficient at its real job).
o Base attack power from 3200/4800/6400 to 6400/11000/15000.
o Engine damage per shot from 150/250/350 to 5000/7500/10000.
o Multiplier against normal forcefields from 1 to 30.
o Multiplier against starship-based forcefields from 1 to 15.
o Multiplier against turrets from 1 to 30.
o Multiplier against heavy defense from 21 to 30 (this includes fortresses, and 1/2 bonus against guard posts and 1/3 against ion cannons).
o Multiplier against hybrid facilities from 1 to 10.
o Multiplier against warheads from 0.2 to 1.
o Removed multipliers against Fighter, Bulletproof-fighter, Microfighter, Zenith Autobombs, Zenith Bombardment, Raider, Teleport Raider, Teleport Battlestation, and Munitions Boosters.
o Autotargeting now prefers starships (the 30x multiplier against them is still there).
o Knowledge unlock cost from 2500/4000/6000 to 3000/5000/7000.
* Hybrid Hive forcefields Mk III and IV strength doubled.
