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 via the Updates window in version 2.201 or greater of the game. Just open the game and you can quickly download the prerelease through the updates tab. If you don't yet have 2.201 or greater, you can get 2.300 (the last full package released) here:
http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,3029.0.htmlExpansion 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: Steamworks integration should turn on automatically in the latest beta versions, but if it doesn't you can enable it manually: Dimply 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 2.801:(Cumulative release notes since 2.000 are attached at the bottom)
-------------------
-There is now a Close button on the game sync window to let players cancel out of syncs that have failed due to network conditions or host cancelation or similar.
-Previously, it was possible for clicking through a wormhole to cause unintentional ship selections on the far side of the wormhole. Fixed.
-Previously, scrapping in-progress ships would give back too many resources. Fixed so that it simply gives back 10% of the resources equivalent to the current health of the self-bulder being scrapped, as with any other ship.
-A new "Use Simple Render For Far Zoom Icons (Slower, But Prevents Invisible Icons On Some Graphics Card Drivers)" option has been added to Settings, Graphics. A very few graphics card driver / directx combinations have trouble with the way that icons are normally written in memory before they are drawn, which in those instances leads to invisible icons. This new option lets players bypass the invisible icons issue (which can also usually be solved with a graphics card driver update), but at some performance penalty (the in-memory writing is present specifically to be a speed improvement).
Changes from prior prereleases.
-------------------------------
-In the previous version, command stations could sometimes shift on load because of their new, larger size. Fixed.
-In recent prereleases, the protection of forcefields was blinking on and off. Fixed.
-Previously, the "your income" section of the galaxy map intel sumaries was incorrect. Fixed.
-Previously, ships that were issued orders while they were still constructing would then forget their orders upon completion. Fixed.
-Harvesters are now only automatically rebuilt when there are no enemy military ships in the system that player ships would auto-attack (so, stuff like astro trains has no effect).
-Fixed another bug relating to FRD ships chasing teleporting ships.
-Previously, devourer golems could be located using certain galaxy map display counts, such as knowledge (K). Fixed.
-Previously, waves to unknown AI planets were not functioning correctly because of cold storage. Fixed.
-Previously, AI SuperTerminals would start being active as soon as a player command station was started at their planet. Fixed so that they do not start until after the command station is finished.
-SuperTerminals can no longer have their shields boosted.
-Previously there was a bug causing the AI ships in high-ship-count games to skyrocket even more. Fixed.
