Lots of buffs to the Dyson Empire, and bugfixes for the Dark Zenith Empire.
Armada Empire now needs to use Multi-Phasing flagships to attack new AI installations that hide in multi-phase. (Badger has been wanting something like this for a while; there's a lot of cool things one can do with phasing).
Other Updates
Performance improvements to the marauders; they were notorious for bogging down the game when they got strong. Thanks to CRCGamer for this.
Improvements to the Exodian Blade mod.
The steamworks integration has been updated for OSX and linux, which should make it so that silicon-based macs are now able to use steamworks features. It's unclear if intel-based macs will still work with this or not, but it has not effect on windows and should not affect linux either.
Heart of the Machine
Heart of the Machine is continuing to evolve, and is racking up positive reviews. It's currently on discount for 35% off during the summer sale!
This is basically an unofficial DLC4, and it's free, and it's created by one of the main developers of the game (Badger). Originally, the Sidekicks mod started life as something a lot more modest, but it grew to a degree where the name was really no longer relevant. So... what is this thing:
4 new player empires.
Dyson Empire: 4 races unite to create dyson spheres to help resist the AI
Scourge Infused Empire: Control your scourge allies as they help you fight the AI
Dark Zenith Empire: Lead the Dark Zenith as they seize the galaxy
Armada Empire: 2 races fight the AI and their new allies, while making friends along the way.
13 AI Types, including the brand new "Hateful" AI type, that just uses people's least favorite AI ships
Other New Pieces
Mod organization: Featured Mods are now shown at the top of the mod list, along with Forge of Empires, with the goal being to make it easy for players to find interesting and exciting mods to enhance their gameplay.
Four mods are featured to start with:
Points of Interest and Generator are both cool mods to increase the variety of your galaxies.
DPSHud gives you a new way to understand combat.
Extended Ship Variants gives you a lot of new ship lines to play with.
Heart of the Machine
Heart of the Machine is continuing to evolve. It's currently on discount for 35% off for the first time ever! Update 18, Update 19, and Update 20 all went live this week, and are each notable in their own way. They've been in progress for a while. Update 21 will be out later tonight, in just a few hours, and has the new The Executive Tomb side story. This is a great time to dive into the game if you haven't yet!
[p]The full notes are here. There are a bunch of balance adjustments from CRCGamer in this one for units that were over-performanc or under-performing, a couple of fixes from Dismiss, a few quickstarts from Erenussocrates, and then a bunch of additions to the Sidekicks mod from Badger.[/p][p] [/p]
Balance Adjustments
[p]Long-time contributor CRCGamer has done a pass on some of the more exotic ships that were just a bit too powerful, or more frequently, not quite useful enough to warrant their cost.[/p][p][/p][p]Just to set your mind at ease, the only real nerfs were to Electric Bombers and Phantasmal Hosts, and they needed it. The Electric Bombers are a bit worse at crowd control now, but still excellent. And Phantasmal Hosts don't have so many decoys, which will help with performance as well as their general balance.[/p][p][/p][p]Pretty much everything else is some level of buff, a lot of them slight. Fusion Bombers in particular got a big buff against shields, because some years-old balance changes had put them in kind of a not-great spot. But Agravic Pods, Grenade Launcher Corvettes, and Ablative Gatlings are some of the other common ships that are now a lot more useful.[/p][p][/p][p]There are other changes as well, so please see the release notes for details.[/p][p][/p]
New QuickStarts
[p]The new quickstarts from Erenussocrates are mod-heavy and help you get your bearings with some of his mods, which is really nice.[/p][p][/p]
Sidekicks Mod
[p]Badger has been adding lots of cool things. Once again, if you're not familiar with this mod, be sure to check it out! As one of the main developers on the game, Badger has essentially created a fourth DLC, for free, for you to check out. Don't miss it![/p][p][/p][p]Exo Badger is a new difficulty level that focuses on having a reduced ship budget, but seeing lots of exo war ships early and often.[/p][p][/p][p]Dyson Sidekick now gives both the Templare and the Spire unique moons with their own turrets.[/p][p][/p][p]Armada Empire is ANOTHER whole new player type in this mod! It's a coalition of races that will fight the AI. Please bear in mind that this is a first build of this, and Badger notes that it's not particularly well-balanced yet. It's under active development, so expect savegames including this feature to break a few times in the near future. Normally that's not something we do, but for a mod that's in active development, that's up to the modder. Anyway, the purpose of this being released at the moment is for people to try it out and give early feedback.[/p][p][/p]
Heart of the Machine
[p]Heart of the Machine is continuing to evolve. Be sure to keep an eye on it this month. Update 17 just went live yesterday, but there's even more cool stuff coming in the near future.[/p]
The full notes are here. Everything in this build is courtesy of long-timer Dismiss and newcomer Erenussocrates.
Fixes
The prior build had an off-by-one error that was giving free first hacks on ARSes. That has been rectified!
There are a few other formatting improvements and things, but that's the main item on fixes.
There are also a number of other improvements to existing mods -- worth taking a look!
More Additions For Coders
If you're a volunteer or mod coder for the game, there are more additions here. In particular Dismiss added a number of things to make hooking in via Harmony (a C# modding tool, basically) a lot easier.
Three New Mods By Erenussocrates!
Visible CPA Bunkers is a simple one that lets you keep track of CPA bunkers, since they can be hard to find.
Exodian Blade is notably more involved, and brings back a feature from the original AI War that Badger, Puffin, Zeus, StarKelp, and I had opted not to touch. The Exodian Blade was always an AIWC feature that had stirred mixed feelings in player. A very powerful ship that you can lose permanently? Count a lot of people out. But for people who are into that sort of thing, this mod finally brings that sort of flavor to this sequel. Erenussocrates created it in a way that ties it to the Fallen Spire campaign, which is quite smart, as it probably makes the idea more palatable for more people, and it also gives more variety to the Fallen Spire campaign in the process. Very clever way to get around how naturally risk-averse some folks can be!
AIP for ExoWar Units is kind of a nightmare situation in terms of kicking you when you're already down, but it's likely to make really galaxy-ending conflicts even more exciting. I expect this one will be just something that catches on with advanced players, but the concept is really cool.
Heart of the Machine
Heart of the Machine is actually on sale at the moment as part of LudoNarraCon! If you haven't grabbed it yet, now is an excellent time. The massive Update 15 is currently in beta, and should be coming to the main branch of the game late this week.
This includes a fix to the "prior" button not actually working properly in the prior build. It now does.
A couple of tooltips have seen some improvements, and there's protection against a couple of possible errors.
Mods
The NecroParty mod has had a lot of balance updates and corrections to how well it gives you a starting spot.
The Generator mod now makes better choices for AI homeworlds.
The Reclaimers mod has had a few balance tweaks.
More Additions For Coders
If you're a volunteer or mod coder for the game, there are a number of additions to make life easier to you.
Heart of the Machine
Heart of the Machine just passed 700 reviews by players! Exciting milestone. The game continues to grow, with a lot of exciting things in work for the next couple of months. April is me reworking the prologue and chapter one a lot, and then May will be a focus on tier one and two goals in chapter 2+.
The first thing that I should note is that Steam multiplayer should now be a lot more reliable. It seems that I did not have the flags for that set up correctly, based on the documentation provided by Steam. This is something discovered by long-time contributor Dismiss, and it probably explains a huge amount about reliability problems with the Steam networking. If it seemed like some messages were just disappearing into the ether, it's because they were, because of the way that Steam was set up to send.
On the other hand, LiteNetLib and GOG networking were set up properly, and so never had these problems. But some of the problems that were reported were originally reported on both LiteNetLib and Steam, which is a bit confusing for me. It's possible that there were originally problems that were more at the application layer, and we all cumulatively fixed all of those. If that's the case, then my and Badger's ongoing feeling that this was transport-layer-agnostic may have been out of date. This would be fantastic news if true, because if that's true then it should mean that they all just work fine now. Fingers crossed.
The issues that were reported would fit the solution that Dismiss found, though, so there's that. It's a truly huge find if it's truly what it is. Not that I'm doubtful, but just... well, I'm a certain amount cynical after chasing multiplayer with this game for so long for so many years. Again, fingers majorly crossed, and giant thanks to Dismiss either way.
Other Main Game Stuff
There's a long list of fixes in the link above.
Several of them are performance fixes, like to the Human Resistance Fighters warping in pre-stacked to avoid a hit from them spawning a ton of things and then despawning them to stack.
Some flickering ui was fixed.
Some ui elements that were not shown for all clients in multiplayer now are.
Formatted tooltips (which are optional, and another of the many things by Dismiss) have gotten a wide variety of fixes.
Both the lobby and encyclopedia have gotten a slate of fixes.
Two new personal settings have been added, and one galaxy setting is now changeable during the game rather than being marked as a cheat if you were to change it.
There is then a really long list of nice things for coders, either volunteers or modders, included in this build.
Existing Mods
The Generator mod now works with Sidekick players.
The Sidekicks mod has a nerf to one enemy unit's resource yield, and a fix to another pair of structures not being buildable by a certain kind of player.
The Points of Interest mod has had a lot of rebalancing.
The Necro Party mod has had a really major update. Please try out this rework of the Necromancer faction, with a focus so far on rebalancing of rift hacks to make each galaxy feel more unique, make planets have strategic value, and rebalance costs to make more lines/flagships useful. Come to the discord to offer your thoughts and ideas.
New Mods! All Three By Erenussocrates
Fuel Rebalance
This rebalances the Logistician campaign type and the games that have the Fuel setting enabled, by making the regular forcefields, tractor arrays, tachyon arrays, most minefields and some of the basic turrets cost no Radon at all. Most turrets will cost around 450 Radon, and the sniper turrets will cost 1800 Radon. Anything that costs above 10k Radon and the station keepers are unchanged.
In Fallen Spire campaigns, the player will be able to build a Spire version of the fuel stations on planets with a mark 7 Spire city. These fuel stations also have a strict per-planet and per-galaxy limit.
Zenith Traders will also be able to sell Minor Fuel Stations, a previously deprecated item in the base game. These also have a per-galaxy limit.
In exchange of this, all fuel stations have a 60k energy consumption to maintain. That also makes them more realistic too.
This rebalances the game in a way that if the player loses a Radon station, they don't insta-lose the game, or that it makes it possible to grab an expansion even if you have no Radon available, since only the awesome turrets are expensive now. It would also be close to impossible to play a Fuel game together with Fallen Spire campaign without a rebalance, since the Spire City buildings also cost Radon, and a lot of Radon, mind you.
Keep in mind that if there are new turrets that are added by another mod, this mod might not make any changes to them.
Dyson Sphere Leech
It always bothered me how the player couldn't gain anything from holding a system with a Dyson Sphere in it, even though it's supposed to be a structure that is so potent that it creates nearly limitless energy. With this mod, the player will be able to draw 2m power from a Dyson Sphere for as long as they can hold a Command Station on the same planet.
Biblical Angel Names for ExoWar Units
This mod just changes the names of 40+ Exogalactic War Front units into biblically accurate angel and demon names, it's just for cosmetic flair.
Maybe the humanity wanted to name their strongest previously-thought-to-be-allies after their biblical protectors before they decided to turn their weapons on their own masters?
Maybe the AI has a god complex and that's why they named their most powerful minions after the angels?
Or maybe you are a Neon Genesis Evangelion fan, and really like the idea of potentially world-ending AI agents named after the angels.
In any case, be prepared to feel the fear of seeing something unfamiliar and scary, all over again.
If you have the mod "ExoWar Overhaul" by Lord of Nothing enabled, this mod will also rename the newly introduced exowar units by that mod too.
Heart of the Machine
Heart of the Machine just passed 700 reviews by players! Exciting milestone. The game continues to grow, with a lot of exciting things in work for the next couple of months. April is me reworking the prologue and chapter one a lot, and then May will be a focus on tier one and two goals in chapter 2+.
This build has a number of updates to quickstarts in general, and to the Sidekicks mod, and a few generalized fixes.
On the quickstarts side of things, Dismiss has fixed up a number of the descriptions, and has added a new "Full Campaign Start" type of save. This is a very interesting way for players to provide really hyper-specific scenarios (down to the seed and all the other bits) for others to try and play.
There's also a new community quickstart, called the Marshal Plan, by Corpserule. This is the first of those new kinds of full campaign quickstarts.
Badger has been hard at work on his sidekicks mod, and has a number of balance changes and improvements relating to the Dyson Empire, Scourge Infused Empire, and more. He also updated the player type descriptions in the game to make those a lot more informative in general.
There are a handful of other minor tweaks and fixes to the main game from both Dismiss and Badger.
Full release notes here: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.618_More_Quickstarts_And_Sidekicks
Other News
Heart of the Machine has been in Early Access for slightly over a month now! Big thank-you to everyone for all of the support and the excellent reviews.
Here is a link to prior recent HotM updates in case you missed them. https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/524210308312468720 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2001070/view/530965072572320673 https://steamcommunity.com/games/2001070/announcements/detail/530965072572317985
5.617 Minions And Fixes
This build updates the scourge infused empire so that they can now summon their scourge minions to join in a particular fight, which helps to set them aside from regular scourge allies. This is with the Sidekicks mod, which is free and totally something you should try if you still haven't! It's by one of the devs of the game (Badger), and is basically an unofficial and free DLC4.
In other areas, there are a number of more bugfixes and tweaks in here. Big thanks to both Badger and Dismiss for those.
Back in the Sidekicks mod, there are also another two new custom AI difficulties, to go with the two that were added last update. Shark and Lumbering Badger are both very amusing and intriguing.
Full release notes here: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.617_Minions_And_Fixes
Other News
Heart of the Machine released into Early Access a few weeks ago! Big thank-you to everyone for all of the support and the excellent reviews.
Here is a link to prior recent HotM updates in case you missed them. https://steamcommunity.com/games/2001070/announcements/detail/530965072572317964 https://steamcommunity.com/games/2001070/announcements/detail/578252481832681480
AI War 2 - 5.616 Fixes And Difficulties - And Heart of the Machine Released!!
New build for AI War 2! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.616_Fixes_And_Difficulties
This one has been a bit longer coming, because I've been slammed with the launch prep for the new game. Everything in here is from Badger and Dismiss, and there's a lot of goodies.
There's been a bug with flagships lingering with a "tractored" debuff in some cases that were really annoying, and that should now be fixed. Big thanks to Dismiss on that.
A couple of fixes to some other edge cases with ships stuck outside the gravity well or regenerating improperly.
Another couple of edge cases with ships losing behavior mode when being loaded into transports and then having that order canceled, and things of that nature. All Dismiss on these items and the above!
Badger has made a number of fixes to the Sidekicks mod factions, most notably the Scourge Empire and Ark Empire.
And then the most exciting feature of all, which had me facepalming that I had not thought of it: Badger has added four new AI Difficulties that can be used with any AI, as part of the Sidekicks mod. (If you have not tried this mod yet, you really should. It's free, and basically a giant DLC4.) Anyway, the general goal of these is both to be interesting, but also to use fewer ships than normal. This is highly valuable for multiplayer games that are large and have a lot of players in them, to reduce the amount of data transferred and otherwise keep things running smoothly. That said, even in solo play, these give a different experience that should be quite interesting.
Reviews are always greatly appreciated, as they really help out. Also extremely cool, there's a new video that shows you some of the time travel shenanigans you can get up to in chapter 3 and onwards of the game. That's 10-15 hours in for most people, so it's nice to be able to see that before you even start the game -- it is very spoiler-lite, and just gives you an idea of what you're in for:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbndNdmJOdQ
As a final note for this build, let me just say thank you for all the years of support for Arcen in general, from AI War 1 all the way through many other titles to AI War 2, and now on to Heart of the Machine! It means a lot, and I've been so happy to see so many familiar faces from 14, 15, or even 16 years ago for the first time in a while!
Sidekicks Mod Updates
Full release notes: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.615_Sidekick_Mod_Updates
For the most part, this is just some balance and bugfixes so the Dark Zenith Empire, plus in general a fix to the Scourge Bane. All of these are part of the excellent Sidekicks mod, aka the 4th unofficial (free) DLC for the game, by Badger.
