Prerelease/Expans 2.001ZK (Botnet Golem)

[x4000]

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/AIWar2001ZK.zip

That 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 2.001ZK:
(Cumulative release notes since 2.000 are attached at the bottom)

-------------------

-New Botnet Golem (expansion only):  Reclaims enemy ships it kills (reclaimed ships have health = full damage inflicted by reclamator). Reclaimed ships come back as Zombie Bots, which cannot be controlled but which will attack enemy ships mercilessly until they die.  Zombie bots will travel to enemy planets if no enemies present.  This golem damages itself with zombie-creating shots, and cannot attack ships that are immobile, have no attack, or are immune to reclamation.

-Two new cheats have been added for spawning broken or fully-functional versions of the new botnet golem: busted zombie bots, zombie bots.  These only work when the first expansion is enabled for the current game.

-Previously, if any ship killed a target that had taken damage from a reclamator, then the target would be reclaimed.  Fixed so that a reclamator must actually deal the killing blow.

-Previously, there was a bug where reclaimed ships always came back with 50% health no matter how much damage had been dealt to them by reclamators.  Fixed.

-Previously, ships could be manually targeted onto ships that they could not hit at all (due to shot immunities, mainly), which was problematic.  Fixed.

Changes from prior prereleases.
-------------------------------

-Control nodes can no longer be gifted between players, as this was undesirable.

-Turret trains are no longer directly attacked by player ships, but instead have to be manually targeted like all astro trains.

[quickstix]

-Turret trains are no longer directly attacked by player ships, but instead have to be manually targeted like all astro trains.

I'm sure I'm not the only person looking out for this one. Thanks again.

Also, Botnet Golem sounds like all kinds of fun.

[Shardz]

Mucho Awesomos! This is quickly becoming one of my favorite games of all time. Thanks for the effort and maintenance - even on the holidays!

[RCIX]

-Previously, if any ship killed a target that had taken damage from a reclamator, then the target would be reclaimed.  Fixed so that a reclamator must actually deal the killing blow.

I forsee the last few good strategies for these ships going out the window...

[Fiskbit]

-Previously, if any ship killed a target that had taken damage from a reclamator, then the target would be reclaimed.  Fixed so that a reclamator must actually deal the killing blow.

I think this nerf makes reclamators pretty useless, unfortunately. I think they got overnerfed:

-parasites: extremely high cost
-leech starships: nerfed against all reclaimable ships

-reclamation limited to unit ship caps
-reclamation limited positive energy balance
-can't reclaim turrets
-can only reclaim if dealing the final blow

Some of them were necessary to avoid exploits, but the list is too much, overall. The turret one was a huge blow, since that made it so that you couldn't use leech starships (the only sure-fire way to have reclamation in a game) to make beachheads in enemy territory using enemy turrets; at this point, they can only take over mobile military ships, which they're also bad at killing. As for parasites, the costs (particularly energy) and build times already make them really unappealing. This latest change makes it harder to reclaim ships, which turns these into really expensive ships that are slow, have a short range, and might maybe capture an enemy ship now and then. I feel like reclamation has simply become uninteresting because so much of what it was good at is gone now. Also, this newest change seems to me like it's welcoming heavy micromanagement, inviting users to try to control which ships get the last shot off by issuing attack commands at the right time and disabling ships at the right time. I'd be really frustrated if I were trying to reclaim a ship and another ship automatically took the final shot at that ship, and so I'd be micromanaging like mad to make sure that the reclamator got that shot.

If there really is a need to have something like this, I vote for a minimum amount of damage required to reclaim a ship (maybe 20%), which would make reclaimed ships less likely to die immediately (though one drawback is that it's less transparent to the user whether enough damage has been dealt for it to be reclaimed). It seems unnecessary and problematic, though. In addition, I think both the leech starships and parasites need to be unnerfed in other ways (and I really think leech starships should be balanced on their own in a reclamator line of starships, since the raid aspect of them is worthless if they share the raid mentality. Starships that can capture enemy ships also seems like something that should be in its own line and the focus of that line).

[Lancefighter]

Silly question - when i first read about reclaimators, I assumed that the damage by a reclaimator was kept track of, and the reclaimed ship had 1/2 of the damage dealt by the reclaimator..

[Revenantus]

Silly question - when i first read about reclaimators, I assumed that the damage by a reclaimator was kept track of, and the reclaimed ship had 1/2 of the damage dealt by the reclaimator..

That's correct. The issue was that if a reclamator scored even a single hit, then the ship would be reclaimed upon destruction, this meant that reclamators could often be used to capture vast numbers of ships fairly easily. The solution proposed a while back (and now by Fiskbit) was to require a minimum amount of damage sustained by the ship to have been inflicted by reclamators in order for it to be reclaimed upon destruction.

http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,673.0.html

[Oewyn]

-Turret trains are no longer directly attacked by player ships, but instead have to be manually targeted like all astro trains.

My AI Progress thanks you :-)  These were causing little gifts of +8 AI progress randomly to my games.

[Spikey00]

I have to agree with Fiskbit on this where this may be the turning point of the parasites' usefulness--since they cannot reclaim turrets anymore due to them leaving remains, their usefulness has decreased.  While I love the leech/stealth leech starships, I find the specialized ships for parasites are far too costly in power, are highly destructible themselves, and overall cost and construct for an excess amount.  Leech starships I at times observe, will be easily destroyed by a large enough group of enemies--more so with defenses, if not supported by other ships, eg. Raid.

Anyhow, an interesting addition to the game--I probably will enjoy the Botnet Golem.

[x4000]

Glad most of the stuff here is a hit.

For parasites, I have started a new thread to discuss that in more depth: http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,2875.0.html

[Echo35]

-Previously, if any ship killed a target that had taken damage from a reclamator, then the target would be reclaimed.  Fixed so that a reclamator must actually deal the killing blow.

I think this nerf makes reclamators pretty useless, unfortunately. I think they got overnerfed:

-parasites: extremely high cost
-leech starships: nerfed against all reclaimable ships

-reclamation limited to unit ship caps
-reclamation limited positive energy balance
-can't reclaim turrets
-can only reclaim if dealing the final blow

Some of them were necessary to avoid exploits, but the list is too much, overall. The turret one was a huge blow, since that made it so that you couldn't use leech starships (the only sure-fire way to have reclamation in a game) to make beachheads in enemy territory using enemy turrets; at this point, they can only take over mobile military ships, which they're also bad at killing. As for parasites, the costs (particularly energy) and build times already make them really unappealing. This latest change makes it harder to reclaim ships, which turns these into really expensive ships that are slow, have a short range, and might maybe capture an enemy ship now and then. I feel like reclamation has simply become uninteresting because so much of what it was good at is gone now. Also, this newest change seems to me like it's welcoming heavy micromanagement, inviting users to try to control which ships get the last shot off by issuing attack commands at the right time and disabling ships at the right time. I'd be really frustrated if I were trying to reclaim a ship and another ship automatically took the final shot at that ship, and so I'd be micromanaging like mad to make sure that the reclamator got that shot.

If there really is a need to have something like this, I vote for a minimum amount of damage required to reclaim a ship (maybe 20%), which would make reclaimed ships less likely to die immediately (though one drawback is that it's less transparent to the user whether enough damage has been dealt for it to be reclaimed). It seems unnecessary and problematic, though. In addition, I think both the leech starships and parasites need to be unnerfed in other ways (and I really think leech starships should be balanced on their own in a reclamator line of starships, since the raid aspect of them is worthless if they share the raid mentality. Starships that can capture enemy ships also seems like something that should be in its own line and the focus of that line).

Agreed entirely.

[Lancefighter]

:\ i just noticed that having the fortresses as a rally point didn't go so well. I go away for a week and thats what i get? jk jk

are there any particular plans for them (havent the chance to play a game recently), or are they optimal as they are now?

[Spikey00]

I'm quite sure they were stripped of their rally point attribute.

[x4000]

I'm quite sure they were stripped of their rally point attribute.

That's what he was saying.

Well, so it goes, not all of my ideas pan out, either (plenty of evidence of that around here), and you've had a number of good ones, Lancefighter.  So no worries, eh?  I am sure Fortress balance is not fully done, most ships of that stature tend to evolve a bit over time, but for now I'm calling it good for the short term unless there's some major new findings from someone's testing.

[Spikey00]

(I must be drunk.  =\)