AI War 2 v0.811 Released! "Transport Ships"

[x4000]

Release notes here.

At long last, transport ships in the style of the original game have been added to the sequel!  Except we implemented them in an even friendlier fashion here.  It may be possible to do some cheesy tactics with these since they load and unload instantly, but we'll deal with that as the case arises.  I'd prefer not to make them cumbersome to use in that old style unless folks are really reporting that as needed.

As it stands, now a whole plethora of new and returning strategies are now possible: all the planet-hopping you want to do now works again, for instance.  Deep strikes... you name it.

This build also has a number of balance tweaks thanks to Puffin, and several bug fixes from Badger along with Risk Analyzer balance from him.

For those who missed the recent news, I am fully back at work now - yay!  If you were wondering what was up, I recently put together a video explanation of what happened.  I don't go into a lot of detail, for privacy reasons, but there's enough there to get the important pieces across.  Anyway, I'm back now and very happy about that.  Actually pretty happy in general, these days, which is good.

Continual thanks to Badger, Puffin, and Quinn for having held down the fort while I was away.

Problem With The Latest Build?

If you right-click the game in Steam and choose properties, then go to the Betas tab of the window that pops up, you'll see a variety of options.  You can always choose most_recent_stable from that build to get what is essentially one-build-back.  Or two builds back if the last build had a known problem, etc.  Essentially it's a way to keep yourself off the very bleeding edge of updates, if you so desire.

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

[BadgerBadger]

I wonder if we're going to need to give the AI some anti-deep-strike bonuses...

[Ovalcircle]

Wow! You've only been back for a few days and you've already released a new mechanic. This bodes well for the future of AI War 2. Keep up the great work Chris!

[RocketAssistedPuffin]

I wonder if we're going to need to give the AI some anti-deep-strike bonuses...

Possibly. I'd lean more towards yes, myself.

The mass stat being used as capacity is quite good, I like it much more than how Classic did it (with even Starships taking up one slot). Nicely done!

I might need to change some of the AI defenses...now that there is much less of a chance of being stuck behind a nasty planet. Was always worried of making Dire Guardians too strong to get past in that situation.

There are a few AI defenses like Magnifiers and Troop Accelerators prepared but think there are icons missing from most? Not that important but they're there.

[zeusalmighty]

Wow Chris, this is awesome! I love how you tied capacity to mass values, really brilliant!

AI to receive significant buffs--transport ships will certainly be a huge boon in the player's hands, like avoiding those evil eyes.

On that note, Hunters feel pretty non-present presently. Tweaks to them would go a long way to making the AI more fearsome

[x4000]

Thanks, everybody!  Glad to be back.

The Hunters should be more present now thanks to a couple of changes in the next build that Badger put in.  So we'll see what they do now, in practice.

As far as anti-deepstrike capabilities go, I definitely am open to that.  Those sorts of things where the AI is situationally aware of you are things that I'm quite fond of implementing and seeing how they act.

The new build focuses more on some longstanding things that were causing my puzzler to really puzzle.  So basically trying to hit some other Big Nasties in terms of bugs that I haven't been able to figure out how to deal with in the past.