Note: This prerelease is intended for both customers of the expansion AND customers of the base game. Please see below for details.The latest prerelease is available at
http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar2001S.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.
Expansion F.A.Q. Answers: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. 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!
6. 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.
Steam/Impulse/GamersGate/Direct2Drive/etc F.A.Q. Answers:1. This prerelease version is compatible with any other version of the game -- Steam, Impulse, whatever.
2. 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.
3. If you have preordered through Impulse, you should now have access to your beta key (as of 12/9). They also provide direct beta downloads through their Impulse Client.
4. Steam will carry the expansion later on, and will have (probably beta-less) preorders, but they don't yet have that online.
5. GamersGate is also currently offering the expansion on preorder, and you do get a beta key, but you'll have to download the beta versions from our forums here.
6. Direct2Drive will be offering the expansion on preorder in a manner very similar to GamersGate, but they are not doing so quite yet.
What's new since 2.001R:(Cumulative release notes since 2.000 are attached at the bottom)
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-The planetary summary has once again been updated, to an even-more-readable colorized layout that makes finding ships easier than ever.
-The health of all the ships in the raid starship line have been reduced. Additionally, their general-purpose attack power has been vastly reduced, but their specialist attack power against force fields, turrets, and heavy defense has been doubled. Additionally, they no longer have a penalty against resources, constructors, or heavy defenses. The net effect of this is a nerf for how humans are able to use Raid starships (though keeping them very useful in many specialist roles), while boosting what the AI is likely to be able to do with them by a small amount (as the AI was previously not all that effective with them).
-Perma-cloaked enemy ships now show up as "Perma-Cloaked" on the galaxy map intel summaries. The only ship that is this way for AIs presently is Wormhole Guard Posts, which will be enabled even when cloaking is disabled in the lobby (perma-cloaked ships don't really function like other cloaked ships, and so don't count for purposes of that feature).
-When ships go through a wormhole into a planet, if they don't have other orders they tend to just sit at the wormhole and wait for more orders, fighting with whatever is there. That is great for most ships, but disastrous for scouts. Scouts in that situation will now flee to the outer border of the planetary area, where they are almost sure to be out of range of tachyon beams and thus can wait for further player orders in relative safety.
-A new ship has been added to the defensive tab: Rally Post. Allied ships that are sent to this planet will gather at this rally post. If there are multiple allied rally posts on a single planet, entering ships will pick one of them at random.
