AI War 2 v0.761 Released! "A Badger And A Puffin"

[x4000]

Release notes here.

This particular release is about refinement in the wake of the huge changes that came out on Friday.  It needed it, very much so, but still surprisingly not to the degree I would have expected.  That was a pleasant surprise! :)

A huge portion of these fixes and balance tweaks were actually done over the weekend while I was off with family, which is kinda crazy and cool -- volunteer developer Badger, and prolific community member RocketAssistedPuffin directly made a lot of the most important changes here (Puffin was even releasing his fixes as mods over the weekend so that folks could have those changes prior to this new official build rolling out -- soooo coooool!).

This one breaks all the savegames, like most of the new releases over the next 2ish weeks are likely to.  Apologies in advance, but it's just a very tumultuous time for a lot of the ships and their mechanics.

I'm not really even sure what to say to summarize this version.  Basically it's "those things that bugged you the most last release are fixed."  There's also a new auto-kite feature that Badger added, which I think is super helpful.

There are still some issues with the AI not acting properly because the strength values on ships are a bit haphazard, so the AI (and you, if you read the UI) will think that certain matchup are more or less balanced than they really are.  Basically some of the ships you have have too much strength and are freaking out the AI because of that (but that strength number isn't backed up with actual power, it's all a bluff, basically).  I'm going to be redoing how strength is calculated and put in starting tomorrow, and that should solve that issue.

One of the big upcoming things (aside from lots more ships reinventions like you see in this build and the last one) is procedural ships.  Semi-procedural, at any rate.  Since seeing just how easy the creation and tweaking of existing ships are right now, I'm feeling less inclined to go super-crazy with that, but I do want some element of it there.  I'm most excited about the handfuls of new ship abilities that are still outstanding to be added.

Lots more to come this week.  Thanks for your support!

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

[PokerChen]

Double checking:
- Mobile Space docking now cannot build fleetships in enemy territory. Bug?
- About the unit selection circles, I think it's more just my hands spazzing a little since I have my sensitivity very high.
- As a byproduct of the tesla radar dampening fix, ships will stand there and fire at immune things.
- Double-clicking one a unit seems to briefly select all of the units of that type, but then switches immediately back to selecting just that unit.

[RocketAssistedPuffin]

It feels...weird to be named in the title of an update. But nice.

I'd like to say that the new ship traits are pretty neat. Looking forward to experimenting with them, coupled with the balance changes allowing this. I'm curious how my suggested traits will go, if any of them make it in.

For zharmad:

The Mobile Docks bug you mentioned might be the same bug affecting the Gryn Void Home Ark. The double clicking a unit bug has been on Mantis for a while, but if you hold Shift and  double click, it'll work as expected.

[chemical_art]

First stab in a while, did about 20 minutes:

Could not set control groups for groups of units. The settings tab is greyed out, so I couldn't look that up.
Do military command stations still have translocation like they did in AIW 1? If not then they are weak and are not worth their trade offs, and I say this as an enthusiast of them, that was a part of their worth.
On an ancillary note, do station upgrades still provide a "module" that assists the home command station?
I didn't notice a difference in altering speeds. The firing animations as a whole felt fast so I couldn't notice relationships such as "this hurts" or "this doesn't"
With the lack of starship options or mercs I felt flooded with metal and yet was sitting around waiting on ships to group up. I know with judicious use of mobile docks I could change this around, but I'd rather have I and II's have less defenses (at start, they can fill up) and have the starting metal rates drop. Can't comment on how this feels mid game.

[BadgerBadger]

Which maps were you looking at where seeds didn't make a difference? Did you click "Generate" after changing the map type?

I'm baffled by the failure of setting control groups; they work for me. Were you using ctl-shift-number while having units selected to set them as part of the control group?

I hope that either Starships come back to the game start or we get more ARSs; without starships my fleet is very squishy.

I agree that right now it feels like you have too much metal/not enough things to spend it in on the early game.

If you have control-groups and control-group-rally set up from your builders then hopefully that will alleviate the "waiting around"

[chemical_art]

I'm baffled by the failure of setting control groups; they work for me. Were you using ctl-shift-number while having units selected to set them as part of the control group?

No I was using ctrl-number, which was the norm of RTS's and of AIW1. Now that I have added the shift it works, thanks! Although is there really a reason for the shift? It is not the norm in games such as this and it is a break from AIW1, is there a very specific reason for it? If not then it just seems a roadblock to a new player.

[Draco18s]

No I was using ctrl-number, which was the norm of RTS's and of AIW1. Now that I have added the shift it works, thanks! Although is there really a reason for the shift? It is not the norm in games such as this and it is a break from AIW1, is there a very specific reason for it? If not then it just seems a roadblock to a new player.

I think Ctrl-[num] selects the group. The reason for it I think had to do with the fact that in AIWC the number keys were already in use by the time control groups were added.

[BadgerBadger]

I feel pretty strongly that AIW2 needs to use the ctl-number convention to create control groups like everything else. Otherwise it will hurt new player adoption

[zeusalmighty]

I feel pretty strongly that AIW2 needs to use the ctl-number convention to create control groups like everything else.

I suspect almost everyone here feels that way. It's a pretty universal convention and intuitive control groups is going to matter for players of all skill levels and experience

[RocketAssistedPuffin]

Yeah, agreed. Causes pain in my hand to use the current version.

Though...when making this I looked at the hotkey bindings file, and it's not changeable in there. It only lists shift as the only thing to do this.

<map bind="ModifyControlGroup" key="LeftShift" />

Maybe you can just use Shift alone? Doing something with a friend so can't test right this moment.

EDIT: Turns out yes, it actually uses Shift + X, CTRL is not included at all. Got a minimod for it going up.

[x4000]

Will respond more in a bit, but first up coming tonight:

* Altered the game to use Ctrl+Num instead of Shift+Num for setting control groups.  Aka to be like every other RTS, including AIWC.

* Fixed up the tooltip for the control groups button in the dock so that it tells you the correct keybinding to use even if you've rebound the keys.

[x4000]

More notes:

- I think that pretty much all of the things noted here are fixed in the new release, which will be out either tonight or early tomorrow mornign.

- The translocation ability on military command stations is not there; but that would be a great thing to bring back for that, and for the Ark One.  It's on my short-term list now.  Doesn't that just scatter AI units randomly in the gravity well?  I can't recall if that ever was changed or something.

- The speed shifts are to movement speed, not shot speed.  Can anyone confirm if those are working with some experimentation, actually?

- There are definitely going to be more starships, and the broad ARSes will be going away and will be replaced by more-specific structures for starships, fleetships, etc.  I just haven't gotten to that part yet, but it should solve a lot of the early game metal overabundance.  THAT said, I'm hoping that if this is balanced roughly correctly in the near future that the extra goodies won't be needed for bare minimum pushes against the AI in the early planets.

- RocketAssistedPuffin: happy to name you in the title of the release, you definitely deserved it, heh.  And in terms of your other ship abilities that you suggested, a lot of them are still planned for the near future.  I've just been sidetracked with bugs and balance in the short term, but given how engaged folks have been that's a problem I'm happy to have.

[Toranth]

The Military Command Station translocation was changed to fix-distance knockback a while back (vice random teleport), and made it much better.  I'd love to see that come back.

And it'll be great to see Ctrl-# make a comeback.  Even when I knew the correct control, I still pressed the wrong buttons half the time.

[x4000]

Got it -- I like that, too, with the fixed distance knockback.  I hope to get to it tomorrow.