The latest prerelease is available at
http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar2001N.zipThat version is an upgrade from version 2.000, so you have to already have 2.000 (or greater) installed. Just unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else). Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.
F.A.Q. Answers:Note: This prerelease is intended for both customers of the expansion AND customers of the base game only. Please see below for details.1. If you have the base game, and install this, you will go into trial mode of the expansion. Feel free to explore the expansion that way, but if you want to go back to full mode without buying the expansion, simply go into Settings, Expansions, and turn off the expansion.
2. All upcoming prereleases for the next few months (until the expansion fully releases) will have a mix of both expansion and non-expansion content. If you just want the latest non-expansion content, see #1.
3. If you want to preorder the expansion (and get your full license key), see
this page. It's $9.99 USD (or equivalent), and requires a valid copy of the base game to play.
4. If you want to know all about the expansion in general, see that same page.
5. This prerelease version is compatible with any other version of the game -- Steam, Impulse, whatever.
6. If you use this with your Steam copy of the game, however, you will be asked to enter your AI War CD key (which Steam provides, but normally you do not have to enter), and also the integration with Steamworks leaderboards and achievements may be disabled. So you may want to make a separate install of the preorder version if you use Steam, at least for the moment.
7. PLEASE NOTE: The new ships for the expansion are extremely preliminary at this stage. They are fully functional when added, but they are not well balanced at all just yet. The balance takes time, playtesting, and a fuller view of more of the ships. So certain expansion ships are currently underpowered, while others are overpowered. Your feedback on this is extremely valuable, as this is something we are adjusting at present based on community feedback as well as our own testing, but we don't expect to have things even close to perfectly tuned until sometime in December. Our first priority is to get everything working and implemented, while honing the balance as much as possible, then to really heavily polish the balance once all the ships are in place. Just FYI!
8. If you want to update an old savegame to the expansion, simply type "cmd:activate expansion 1" (without quotes). This includes enabling the expansion ship classes, as well as enabling golems and other new capturables, although the population of those capturables is likely to be different from what it would have been if the expansion had been turned on from the start of the campaign given the same seed and other settings. There is no way to disable the expansion for an existing game, however, so be sure not to save over your existing file if you want to go back to the non-expansion version of the game.
What's new since 2.001L:(Cumulative release notes since 2.000 are attached at the bottom)
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-It is now possible to run the AI War simulation from the command line by using the "runsim" command line argument. When running it this way, it splits up the work into multiple processes for multi-core machines, and it runs faster than the in-game simulation in general.
-Previously, there was an error with the time taken for conflicts to resolve in the simulation data (it was showing about half the time it really took). Fixed.
-Previously, the threshold for player ships to trigger an Alert on AI planets was 50 units. Starships and Golems were not weighted any more highly in the past, but now Starships will count for 25, and the Golems and other "major weapons" (the heavy defense category in general) will trigger the alert all by themselves.
-The internal logic for AI reinforcements has seen a number of internal shifts to make them more intelligent in caes of over-full planets in particular.
-A new performance improvement has been introduced for when players are attacking enemy planets with lots of guarding ships.
Changes from prior prereleases.
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-In the last prerelease, there was some glitchiness with ship targeting when switching a ship from free-roaming defender to attack-move and back. Fixed.
-Fixed a variety of bugs with the target acquistion logic, and improved the time-to-find for attack and repair targets. Yet more performance improvements relating to this, too.
-There may have previously been an issue with incoming fire going through force fields. Fixed.
-Previously, Beam Frigates were unable to hit must-be-directly-targeted ships.
-In the last prerelease, player ships were unable to hit must-be-directly-targeted ships if there were no autotargetable ships on the same planet. Fixed.
-In recent prereleases, Backdoor Hackers were not properly getting exo-galaxy wormholes on player planets. Fixed.
Update: Fixed a few things in a new version N.-Since the addition of the unified command queue, queing of wormhole commands has sometimes created some invalid travel paths. Fixed.
-In version M, there was a bug that could cause AI reinforcements to go uncapped at a planet. Fixed.
