Note: This prerelease is intended for both customers of the expansion AND customers of the base game. Please see below for details.Note: This release includes a MAJOR performance improvement for games with high ship counts. But there's a chance that it might cause some undiscovered oddities. If you see anything, please let us know, as always.The latest prerelease is available at
http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar2201.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 2.001:(Cumulative release notes since 2.000 are attached at the bottom)
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-The official game manual can now be launched via the tutorial screen -- its omission was an oversight previously.
-New ShotImpulseReactive sound effect.
-The Advanced Factory and Space Dock have been updated and are now much larger and more visually impressive. Space docks and advanced factories also now have more health.
-The radii of force fields have been greatly increased to accomodate the larger space docks, and make them a bit more useful in general.
-Added a new "cmd:toggle hud" command that allows the game hud to be turned off and on (useful for screenshots and videos).
-Mark I Engineers, and Cleanup Drones nad Remains Rebuilders, all now have teleportation.
-Engineers and other economic ships that have teleportation are no longer disabled when teleportation is disabled. Instead, they simply switch to regular propulsion.
-Teleporting engineers now ignore the range to their targets (assuming that the target is within their effective range), instead preferring to repair ships that are most damaged.
-There is now a sound effect that plays when alarm posts are set off.
-All golems and astro trains are now immune to black hole machines.
-Dreadnought Starships no longer have multiple shots per attack, but now have a stronger attack. They also do much more engine damage now. They also will try to disable the engines of all ships before trying to finish ships off.
-The cost of all the lightning turret techs have been reduced by 1500 each.
-Shots that are incoming from longer than 20,000 distance are now not used in short-range overkill prevention, which leads to quicker kills in most cases. Previously it had to be a sniper shot.
-Astro Train stations are now only attacked by player ships when given a direct order.
-Mobile builders now count as constructors instead of engineers.
-All of the attack bonuses of fortresses and superfortresses have been removed, as their shots are so powerful on baseline that is no longer needed. This is particularly relevant for when they are facing starships. Note that their penalties against tanks and bombers remain.
-A new "Networking Help" section has been added to the Game tab of the settings window to aid new users in setting up multiplayer games of AI War. Covers port forwarding, finding a public IP, and so on.
-A new updater has been put in place for the game. This new updater does not use MSI patches, and so does not require that the game have been installed via our MSI installer -- this lets the updater work with the game regardless of what source it was pulled from (Impulse, Steam, anything).
The updater is no longer simply for official updates -- it now lets users check for official updates, beta updates, and updates to content for any expansions to the game (right now just The Zenith Remnant).
The updater automatically checks for updates in the background when the application is started, so players always know when there is something new (this can be turned off in the settings interface). Players can also manually check for updates to download via the updater, or they can manually load an update into the updater from their file system (useful for computers without a direct connection to the Internet).
-Command stations now automatically rebuild 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.
-The AI is no longer able to issue movement or attack orders to its ships if they are stuck in tractor beams. This lets low-level autotargeting make better short-term decisions.
-Ships that stuck in tractor beams now always have at least a 25% chance of hitting the tractor beam that is holding them if they would normally be able to hit the tractor beam from closer range. This makes tractor beams no longer so instantly fatal to bombers and other shorter-ranged ships.
-Ship bonuses against turrets no longer ocunt against tractor beams or ion cannons. This levels the playing field a bit for all ships with these, without making some ships absolutely useless against them and others ridiculously overpowered against them.
-A new "cold storage" backend ship code technique is now implemented, leading to massive performance gains with high ship counts. In benchmarks with a 202k unit game the performance boost was 500%, while in a benchmark with a 104k unit game the performance boost was right at 1000%. The performance increase will vary by the scenario, and scenarios with very few ships will see no gain at all, but in general maps with more than even just 20k units should see some gain, both in simulation speed and (at times) in targeting performance. This performance boost does not really help in large battles, except insofar as it leaves the CPU freer to process said large battles -- but battle performance itself is not directly improved by these changes. In games with very many ships, the performance will be the same as it was previously for approximately 1 second per 4k ships in the game -- then it will jump greatly upwards. The special forces captain AI Type, it should be noted, sees particularly little gain from this new technique.
Changes from prior prereleases.
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-Many more font improvements to maximize readability.
-Fixed the offsetting issue with transports in the last prerelease.
-There is now an alert shown at the top of the screen when traders are visiting a player planet.
-The fog of war message at the bottom of the galaxy map was being clipped in recent prereleases. Fixed.
-The list of normal ships was showing up as blank in the lobby in recent prereleases. Fixed.
-Other minor overlaps and issues with the new fonts in the main menu and settings have been fixed.
-In the last prerelease, the game was crashing immediately in trial mode. Fixed.
-Previously, Mark III force fields were rotating when moving. Fixed.
-The descriptions of the fleet and alien starships were previously misleading. Fixed.
-The MLRS turret and mlrs descriptions were off in recent prereleases. Fixed.
-The raptor description was out of date. Fixed.
-In the last prerelease, colony ships could not build command stations outside of supply. Fixed.
-In recent prereleases, the enemy counts were overlapping the planet levels in the galaxy map. Fixed.
-In the last prerelease, permamines had way too little health. Fixed.
-Rally posts are once again perma-cloaked, and also now blind and immune to black hole machines.
-Golem and starship attacks are no longer reflected by mirrors.
-Control nodes now have ship caps, and are once again perma-cloaked. They are also now blind.
-The Control Node for auto-rebuilding rebuilders no longer costs knowledge to unlock.
-The control node for auto-rebuilding harvesters has been removed, and this is now the default behavior.
-A new control node has been added: FRD Limited To 8000.
-Marauder health has been halved, and attack power has been reduced to 2/3.
-Grenade Launchers are no longer marked as complex ships, but now are normal since they do not do friendly fire damage anymore.
-Light Starships and Flagships now have 2000 munitions boost range, rather than 250 and 500 respectively. This is higher than the Alien starships, to make the fleet starships more of a specialist class in supporting other ships. The health of fleet starships has also been doubled.
-The MkI and MkII cloaker starships have had their knowledge costs reduced by 1000 each to match the dreadnought costs.
-Previously, fortresses and superfortresses were set to act as mobile repair stations, but they were not actually repairing any ships. Fixed.
-The new 40% speed boost to human player ships was causing them to be able to outrun shots. Fixed.
-Previously Zenith SpaceTime Manipulators were giving an instant speed boost before the structure was completed. They were also not previously stopping their boosting when paused. Both fixed.
Changes in 2.201-Ships that are in cold storage were previously not being drawn at all when the players were looking at them with hidden scouts or with complete visibility turned on. Now these ships are shown with a black border.
-In the last prerelease, there was an immediate deync in multiplayer games. Fixed.
-In the last prerelease, FRD mode was broken. Fixed.
-In the last prerelease, leaving a cloaked scouts sitting on enemy planets could negate any benefits from cold storage on that planet. Fixed.
-In recent prereleases, gather points were not being loaded properly from newer savegames. Fixed.
-The advanced factory graphic was showing up incorrectly in the last prerelease. Fixed.
