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/AIWar2001ZJ.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 will be disabled by default.
New: To enable steamworks integration with the beta versions, simply run the game with the command line argument "steam" (no quotes). If you put the argument in correctly, you'll then see your Steam interface pop up correctly.
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 2.001ZG (ZH was an internal release):(Cumulative release notes since 2.000 are attached at the bottom)
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-The way that the names of technologies are loaded is now more efficient for localization, and also prevents a redudancy in the notification-of-unlock message text that is now shown.
-New Control Node: Auto-Build Engineers Mark II. Each command station you control will automatically maintain one Mark II Engineer at each planet you control. Building multiple of this control node causes multiple engineers to be maintained at each planet. Replacement engineers will only be built if there are fewer than 100 mobile enemy ships on the planet.
-New Control Node: Auto-Build Engineers Mark III. Each command station you control will automatically maintain one Mark III Engineer at each planet you control. Building multiple of this control node causes multiple engineers to be maintained at each planet. Replacement engineers will only be built if there are fewer than 100 mobile enemy ships on the planet.
-New Control Node: Auto-FRD Engineers. Automatically places all of your engineers (including secondary engineers such as remains rebuilders) into Free-Roaming Defender mode if they are on planets you control.
-New Control Node: Auto-FRD Mobile Military. Automatically places all of your mobile military ships into Free-Roaming Defender mode if they are on planets you control.
-New Control Node: Auto-Build Remains Rebuilders. Each command station you control will automatically maintain one Remains Rebuilder at each planet you control. Building multiple of this control node causes multiple rebuilders to be maintained at each planet. Replacement rebuilders will only be built if there are fewer than 100 mobile enemy ships on the planet.
-New Control Node: Auto-Rebuild Harvesters. Automatically rebuilds metal and crystal harvesters on all planets you control. Replacement harvesters will only be built if there are fewer than 100 mobile enemy ships on the planet.
-New Control Node: Engineers To Not Auto-Assist Queues. Prevents your engineers from automatically assisting build queues (keeping them on repair duty only, unless they are given explicit orders to accelerate a queue).
-New Control Node: Engineers To Not Auto-Assist Allies. Prevents your engineers from automatically assisting any allied ships (though you can still manually assign them to assist specific allied ships).
-The intel summaries on the galaxy map now include labels for all of their icons to make it easier to tell what planets might deserve more investigation without having to use the help palettes in the planetary summary.
-Ships that are rebuilt from remains now start out with 50% health when they are starting to be rebuilt. This both makes them half as expensive as they were to build the first time, as well as making them take half as long to rebuild. This makes it much cheaper to maintain well-designed defenses.
-Previously there was a bug that would sometimes cause AI ships -- most notably bombers -- to act indecisive when they are generally outnumbered but also still have a target of value that they can kill. This is now fixed.
-On difficulty 7 and up, the AI is now smarter about taking out key targets when it is outnumbered; now sometimes managing suicide runs instead of always falling back in this situation.
-The list of scouts in the scouts button now only includes the specific scout ships (Scout I-IV) and the Scout Starship. Other units that provide scout intel, such as eyebots or command stations, are not included in this list.
-Fortresses now provide scout data on the planet they are on if that planet changes control from the player with the fortress.
-Transports now use the scout-style logic at their last wormhole and move away from the wormhole to avoid taking so much direct fire.
-In the spirit of minimizing micromanagement, when transports are destroyed they now safely eject their cargo, rather than losing all of it.
Changes from prior prereleases.
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-Bombers now have 1000 less shields at all levels.
-Fighters now have a bigger bonus against bombers.
-Fixed a bug with mines not being properly cloaked.
-Fixed a crash bug with rally posts.
-Ships in free roaming defender mode or attack-move mode were coming out of their mode inappropriately when ending at a planet with a rally post present. Fixed.
-Rally posts no longer have cloaking and can now be moved through wormholes.
-Control nodes are no longer perma-cloaked and no longer have quite so much health. The AI is not very interested in these or in rally posts, but area damage will still strike them.
-Fixed the blinking fortresses from the last prerelease.
Changes in 2.001ZJ:-The count of the number of enemy ships at enemy and neutral planets are now calculated the same way that the counts on local player planets are: only including "dangerous" enemy ships (not non-attacking ships, astro trains, mines, or remains, etc).
-Instead of showing a percent full, transports now show how many ships are inside them out of how many they can hold in total.
-Previously, if the low-energy count was shown over a ship that had a countdown timer or a transport text, the text was all overlapping. Fixed.
-Mobile Repair Stations now move at speed 12 instead of 8, have about 4x more health than before, and regenerate their own health about twice as fast. The AI also now cares much less about these now.
-It is now possible to gift ships to disabled players.
-In the last prerelease, a bug with the control nodes for auto-building engineers and remains rebuilders was causing far too many of them to be built at once. Fixed.
-The build times were off for a lot of the non-queue-constructed ships in recent prereleases. Fixed.
-In the last prerelease, the text was not being drawn correctly for ships with purple text in the planetary summary sidebar. Fixed.
