What am I supposed to do in the game?

[Kahuna]

So I started AI War II for the first time today and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do or even better what I can do. Because it seems like I can't do anything. All I can do is control my units, destroy the AI ships and turrets and go trhough wormholes. I can't seem build buildings nor ships. First the Ark was building ships non stop but then it stopped for no apparent reason. What is the sate of the game? What can the player actually do in the game atm?

EDIT: Also every time I close the game the game crashes.

[BadgerBadger]

Did you wind up using version .300 for this? .300 has some nasty bugs that sound exactly like what you dealt with (crashes on game exit, and build menus being messed up). .301 should have fixed those; it did for me at least.

[keith.lamothe]

Welcome

I can't seem build buildings nor ships.

This part of the UI will be changing soon to be more straightforward, but for now you select the Ark or other unit producer, then click on Commands and then Build (pressing 5->3 works, too). The build menu that pops up is similar to AIWC's in layout.

What is the sate of the game?

Very rough. Still finishing adding the non-stretch-goal content (currently working on batch 6 out of 7 on that), and still trying different graphics pipeline stuff to get the right performance, appearance, moddability, etc.

What can the player actually do in the game atm?

You can actually play a whole game, ending either in your own destruction or the destruction of the AI's master controller. You'd have to:
- capture enough planets to get enough science to unlock enough ships to be a threat
- capture enough advanced-research-station/fabricator/advanced-factory/advanced-starship-constructor/etc type stuff to gain more strength
- scan enough of the galaxy (by finding and destroying sensor scramblers) to find the master controller
- survive the various attacks that get thrown your way during all of the above (waves, CPAs, special forces crashing your attacks, etc)
- actually attack and destroy the thing

In practice the AI probably gets too aggressive at too low an AIP for you to pull that off, though I might be surprised.

The greater opponent right now is the UI, which is functional but too inconvenient to want to play for hours on end.


My next thing after finishing batches 6 and 7 is to try to play through the above flow myself, find the things that make me pull my hair out (primarily UI), and fix them. The rest of development will probably be mostly repetitions of me doing that, and y'all doing that. There are design changes that will likely be necessary (I was very aggressive at combining civilian functions so you don't have to spend time making the exact same decisions every game, but the sweet spot is probably more of a middle ground, etc) as well, but it's hard to evaluate a design as things are now.