AI War 2 v0.758 Released! "Release The Warden"

[x4000]

Release notes here.

A collection of bugfixes and balance fixes, mainly.

The big news is that the Warden and Hunter fleets now get off their butts again and will actually come after you in a majorly scary way.  The Dark Spire also spawn at a more menacing rate, and the minor factions no longer do the job of killing tachyon sentinels for you.  Oh, and hey, the hunter and warden types now actually have more than one entry each!

This should change up the game a ton, just on its own.  Major thanks to Badger on basically all of it.

On my end, I've been working on the stats revamp that comes prior to the procedural stats mentioned in that giant essay from last release.  It's coming along well, and I hope to have all that out this week.

The Usual Reminders

Quick reminder of our new Steam Developer Page.  If you follow us there, you'll be notified about any game releases we do.

Also: Would you mind leaving a Steam review for some/any of our games?  It doesn't have to be much more detailed than a thumbs up, but if you like a game we made and want more people to find it, that's how you make it happen.  Reviews make a material difference, and like most indies, we could really use the support.

Enjoy!

Chris

[zeusalmighty]

I thought the wardens and Hunters were being uncharacteristically indifferent to my activities. Suspect they will be quite fearsome now =)
 

[BadgerBadger]

A number of the AI Types (including Vanilla) give 25% of their income to the Warden Fleet. Before now those resources just didn't do anything. So be prepared for more of a challenge!

[zeusalmighty]

That's a lot of budget that hitherto was accomplishing nothing. But what intrigues me most is how the wardens will react to the marauders, nanocaust, dyson sphere, etc.

The AI set a massive reconquest wave again the Dyson sphere (after I liberated it) and boy was that entertaining. Dyson crushed it btw

[tadrinth]

I was hoping AIW2 could have a consistent set of 'this weapon type is good against this kind of armor', where the bonuses have a little bit of intuitive narrative so they're easy to remember.  Like, energy bombs are slow moving, unguided explosives that devastate shields and armor, so they have bonuses vs heavy armor and shields, but no bonuses vs anything that can dodge. Whereas missiles are hard to dodge so they're good against fighters and other light ships.  The earlier ship bonuses in AIWC actually make a lot of sense from this perspective if you stare at them for a while, and adding some tooltips explaining the narrative would make it obvious and therefore easier to remember. 

But if the damage bonuses are randomized, that kinda goes out the window, unless it's actually the ship weapons that are randomized.  EG, you randomly give fighters lasers instead of bullets and that gives them different bonuses.

[x4000]

Yeah, I'm still debating on that particular issue, honestly.  Other things would be randomized, either way, but I am increasingly unsure about that one.