AI War 2 v0.775 Released! "Unit Stacking"

[x4000]

Release notes here.

Surprisingly large amount of stuff in this one!  Unit stacking is every bit the godsend I'd hoped it would be, performance-wise, and I'm really pleased with that.  We don't have any remaining savegame cases where performance dips below 100% for long on my machine, and the targeting cycle keeps to sub-second times in every instance now for me, too.  That's a really big win, and lets me finally stop looking at anything performance-related for a while.

This also has a lot of tooltip/icon tweaks to show you when ships contain something in general, which is really nice.  Before you couldn't tell that the guard posts were filled with nasty confetti waiting to pop out and bite you!

We also have some automatic strength calculation code in place now, which may mess with the way the AI spends its budgets and how it feels about opportunities and risks.  It's meant to fix that up long-term, and overall it seems positive already, but that may break a few things in the short term.

There's some new hotness possible with unique variants of ships for specific AI types, like giving extra-awesome snipers to the sniper type, and unlocking them from the start, etc.  It's actually a really powerful system that can be used for a lot of things, but I've basically just set up some example entries for now.

Puffin has reworked quite a few units pretty heavily, making Fusion Bombers and V-Wings both a lot more interesting and effective.

Badger swung in and fixed a bug when entities were transforming types, so upgrading command stations will probably work now -- please just let us know.

Lots more to come this week!  Though, frustratingly, I have to be out on Thursday.  So nothing on that day.  But all the others!

Reminder: RocketAssistedPuffin has stepped into a volunteer balancer role, and he is not only looking for feedback, but he's actively integrating lots of things that other people are suggesting on our forums and Discord, as well as things that he's finding and coming up with himself.  The more feedback the better, for sure.

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 introduced that bug during ship transformations with my Eye code, so it seemed only appropriate I should fix it.

[x4000]

Oh, I hadn't realized that was yours; I assumed it was another of mine.  Well -- thanks!

[BadgerBadger]

The game needed to have the ability to create multiple units on transformation, to allow for things like the Fragmenting Guardian. This was fallout from that.

[x4000]

Ah, okay, makes sense.

[Draco18s]

Man, I wish I had the time flexibility to really sit down and dig into the code like Puffin and Badger.

(Is it me, or do the volunteers this time around all have animal names?)

[RocketAssistedPuffin]

I only do XML really. The others are the heavy lifters in terms of code.

(I think two of us have animal names).

[x4000]

Well, there's a wild Eric on the team, too.  I mean, those critters really infest the eastern deserts, you know?

[Draco18s]

I only do XML really. The others are the heavy lifters in terms of code.

Still more than I've done lately.

I did a couple of map generators and then got ejected into space by an unexpected gravitational flyby.

[etheric42]

Yeah, if I'd known there was a theme, I'd have swapped out my usual screen name (reference to old tabletop RPG plus Douglas Adams) for something more fitting.

Now I'll just need to get a sub to dive to the ocean bottom and name a new species to try and retroactively fit in.