AI War 2
4.002 Macrophage Live!
This one is on the main branch and the beta branch. If you have any issues, you can always go back to most_recent_stable, or most_recent_stable_beta to get the prior build.
The macrophage have been essentially braindead on the beta branch since September, and nobody noticed it until we came out of beta. Poor unpopular phages! They are all fixed back up now, so that's nice.
There are a number of various bugfixes in this one, and one of those is related to how gamecommands were seemingly getting corrupted on MP clients some of the time. The fix to the flicker in the hacking sidebar items is also really nice.
More to come soon.
Enjoy!
4.001 Autobuild Automation
This one is on the main branch and the beta branch. If you have any issues, you can always go back to most_recent_stable, or most_recent_stable_beta to get the prior build.
This one has a number of bugfixes that came up over the weekend (it's inevitable with such a larger group of players coming in, much as we try to avoid that issue).
This also includes automation options for the automation game settings thanks to NR SirLimbo. Basically, any mod can now much more easily add settings to auto-build units of specific types at planets without having to go in and add special code for each one.
Marauders now use a lot fewer drones, but their drones are more powerful, so they should perform better and still be just as powerful. Big thanks to CRCGamer for getting those worked out.
Lots of new DLC3 things to test and play with thanks to Badger and StarKelp in particular.
The Macrophage Histiocytes mod by StarKelp is also back in action, which is exciting to see!
I wound up creating a lot of the framework today that is required for getting beacon factions back into the game (the old way those worked was super inefficient and not extensible, so I had to take those out during the refactor, and it's been on my todo list to add them back in in a better way that can work with any faction without custom code; in the meantime we have the new roguelike features in the base game, like random faction additions). This was in service of a fix to nomad galaxy having a few issues if you didn't already have nomads directly added, but it wound up doing double duty for getting through the trickier half of the beacon code.
Several other bugs were also fixed, among the various other tweaks and typo fixes.
More to come soon.
Enjoy!
v4.0 - Return From The Endless Beta
So... please know that this is super-abbreviated, however long this turns out to be. Let's talk big picture, first:
Why did we go into beta at all?
The short version is that I wanted:
- The code to be able to monitor itself, and in particular mods, to look for bad behavior (memory leaks or performance issues, in particular).
- The performance to be better than we had before, despite the extra monitoring we were going to be doing.
- The data structures that we were using to make sense in the context of the way factions and faction modding had turned out, which was way more robust than I'd ever expected.
- And for all this to work equally well in multiplayer or single-player.
I figured this might take about a month. The core of this took two months, and then cleanup took another half year while also developing out new and improved features. If we had halted all development, that process would have been faster, but it also would have more bugs at this point. Instead, we put all the new-feature development alongside the fixing-fallout-from-the-refactor, and that was a much better way to handle that.
All Old Savegames Do Not Translate Forward!
Hopefully everyone knows that I'm a really big proponent of keeping savegame compatibility, so I don't break something like that lightly. AI War Classic went through 6 years of development and never broke long-term savegame compatibility.
With AI War 2, we hit a point where there were simply too many architectural gains that we could make by reformatting things, and so this beta is the singular long-term save breaking build we're going to do. If you have existing games you want to finish from prior to this build, you will need to do that via the Betas tab. There's a y_historical_3_309 that will let you finish older games from pre-4.0, and that will be left in place indefinitely.
Big Picture, What Is New?
This has been a technical revolution for the game, and performance is better than ever, a well as using however many cores you have. Multiplayer works better than ever before. There are multiple new modes of play, called "Campaign Types." There are a bunch of new features for the base game, and for DLC1, all available now (the price of DLC1 is also rising today to match that of DLC2 and 3). Modular ships are a thing now, as one example of new stuff.
How about a list? I am going to omit everything that is from DLC3 development, because that gets even longer.
- "The Great Refactor" has new code structures, with BaseInfo and DeepInfo, and there are guides to programming mods in thathere on youtube.
- The threading model has been reworked three separate times, improving each time, and here are some conceptual diagrams that help make it clearer how that works.
- Multiplayer works on an entirely new premise, and here's a conceptual diagram for how that works. It's wonderfully effective.
- Wormhole Invasions have been completely reworked from scratch by Badger, and are a lot more fun now.
- The unit tooltips have been almost entirely reworked by -NR-SirLimbo, and the number of readability improvements in them is voluminous.
- Raid Engines now have a ton more features, thanks again to -NR-SirLimbo.
- The number of balance improvements made to the base game and DLC1 and DLC2 is just hard to really overstate, and that's mostly been the work of Zeus Almighty and CRCGamer, with some assists from a number of other folks.
- DLC1: New map type! "Classic" has been added by Badger, and it provides an experience a lot like the Realistic map type did in AIWC. Instantly a favorite for me.
- DLC1: Mods and otherwise can now define "GameEntityTypeData Extensions", which is very useful for mods.
- DLC1: New Chaotic map type, created by tom.prince!
- The game now has support for Total Conversion mods, which in turn also support mods of those mods. RocketAssistedPuffin is working on a giant first TC mod, called Classic Fusion, which blends aspects of the first and second games together. That is not yet out, but it's cool that it works.
- DLC1: There is a new Ark Empire player type, which lets you have a powerful Ark instead of your normal home command station. It's a more nomadic, challenging way to play. It's a lot like the earliest versions of the game that were closer to the original kickstarter design document, but more fun (if a bit less like traditional AI War).
- DLC1: Spire-Infused Empires provide a new way to experience the Fallen Spire campaign without having to do relic chases or any of that business. You just have spire cities from the start and start duking it out with the AI from moment one. Big thanks to Badger for implementing this design.
- DLC1: Modular ships have been added! The first ones to get this are the Spirecraft ships, but you can also find this on the CRCGamer's Riot Control Cruiser in DLC2, and on many ships in the upcoming DLC3.
- DLC1: Doomsday Mode. This was an idea from Puffin, implemented by Badger, which sees the galaxy collapse into oblivion around you as you play. Win fast or perish along with your foes!
- Ironman Mode has come to the game, allowing you to play games where you can't save-scum. Big thanks to Badger for adding this.
- Roguelike Additions have also been added to the base game, including things like adding random factions, or adding some random game features. Again big thanks to Badger.
- There have been so many quality of life features that I can't even really go over them all. Notifications, intel, and so many other things now work better than ever.
- There's a new in-game Ship Encyclopedia, which automatically includes data from any mods you have enabled. It has a varied of helpful categorizations of ships (big thanks to Puffin for filling out all that data!), plus the ability to filter, search, and sort by various types of data.
- The game is now able to detect when specific NPC factions are behaving in a way that will be draining to the performance of the game, and shows that.
- DLC1: Warheads and Interplanetary weapons have been added, but more about that in another section.
- DLC1: New Spire Dyson Spheres factions implemented by StarKelp, along with a big overhaul to the Zenith Dyson Sphere in the base game, and a new Splintering Spire faction. More about those below.
- DLC1: New Chromatic Horror faction that wanders around and causes chaos as it goes.
- A CPU Load Estimator in the lobby now lets you know what level of CPU Load the game you are contemplating is likely to require in the late game. The early game pretty much always performs great (better than ever now, too), but if you're setting yourself up for a choppy late-game experience, you now can see that.
- A bunch of art from the base game, and DLC1 got major improvements! Also a lot of new art for DLC2!
There are some major omissions from that list, which I'm going to talk about separately:
Campaign Types: Expert Mode and Beyond
This is a huge topic all on its own, but essentially these are new ways to experience the general content of the game. These have increased complexity, or more formalized rules, or both. They also tend to get increasingly difficult, but you can use lower-difficulty enemies in concert with a more complex campaign type, so it's not purely a matter of difficulty. This is more about the complexity of strategic thinking, if that makes sense.
Humanity Ascendant is the default gameplay mode, and the one you've known for quite some time. HA campaigns are dynamic, aggressive, and reward the seizure of territory with powerful features even if they are difficult to defend. Your primary challenge will be assembling a force that can crack the AI Homeworld(s) without allowing the AI to scale beyond your means to defend against. Other than your home command station, there are few strategic locations that are critical to defend, making HA campaigns more of a cat-and-mouse war.
Challenger is a new mode, which basically just disables some of the more cheat-style configuration options from the lobby, as well as enforcing a few things like Distributed Economy (making your metal harvesters worth defending), as well as a few other minor tweaks.
Expert is an alternate, more difficult, official campaign type for AI War 2. Expert campaigns are tense and complex, where you must choose your strategic targets very carefully and have many fronts that you must defend. You must fight a minimum of two AIs, like in the original game -- a lot of the complexity of the game is lost when you only have one AI, because you don't get that ramp-up in challenge after defeating the first one, and have to figure out how to still deal with the second one.
In addition to everything that Challenger mode adds, this mode forces on mechanics that make beachheading harder to cheese. You also get only one Battlestation at the start, rather than two. There are some other features that are only forced on for Expert, but you can enable most of those features in lower modes as well.
Logistician is basically Expert mode, but with the addition of Fuel to manage. Fuel is a complex new system, and we encourage you to give it a try, but it's not going to be for everyone. Fuel makes you have to take more planets, has a major impact on the general flow of your game, and requires you to manage logistics in a way that the game otherwise does not ask of you. Expect some new Strategic Sage videos on this subject shortly, as he was one of the primary architects behind this and the other higher-complexity game modes.
Deathwish is the final new campaign type, and it is meant for brutalizing people with permanent losses of key items when they make a mistake, restricted map types, enforced ironman, and other not-for-mainstream-play type of features. This is basically the "Full Sage" mode.
Mod Updates!
In general, we don't directly maintain mods ourselves, but here's what is going on with all the mods:
New Mods
- From Spire Frigate to Dreadnought by ArnaudB, adds the ability to upgrade the Lone Spire Frigate to upgrade in various ways.
- Lost Humans by StarKelp adds a whole host of cool things that are actually only possible because of the new code framework. This was StarKelp's way of creating some cool stuff while experimenting around in the new framework.
- Strategic Rebalance by Zweihand, gives an experience a bit more like the original AI War. There are also line items for DLC1 and DLC2 for this.
Substantially Updated Mods
- AMU - a lot of the "cheat engine" type of features from this have been moved from this mod by NR SirLimbo into the base game itself, and the rest of the parts of this mod have been updated to work with the new code framework.
- Civilian Industry by StarKelp has been massively overhauled to better code standards and the new code framework.
Unaffected Mods
- Capturable Dreadnoughts by Zweihand
- Exotic Ships by -NR-SirLimbo
- Extended Ship Variants by -NR-SirLimbo
- Frigate Focus, by CRCGamer
- Micro Mod Collection by -NR-SirLimbo
- More Frigates by Zweihand
- More Starting Fleets by Zweihand
- More System Defenders by CRCGamer
- Powerful Command Stations by ArnaudB
- Raising The Floor Multi AI Adjustment by ArnaudB
- Supercharge Raiders by ArnaudB
- Tame Dark Spire by ArnaudB
Discontinued Mods
- AI Shield Generators, by cml. Originally we were going to fold this into the main game for Expert mode, and I did some official art for shield generators, but we decided to not make this a part of the main game. I believe cml is planning to resurrect this mod with some new options at some point.
- Kaizer's Marauders by -NR-SirLimbo was a very popular faction, but for now it's disabled as it has never been ported to the new code framework.
- More Starting Fleets Plus by Zweihand. I believe that the contents of this contextually turn on as part of the main More Starting Fleets mod, now, so this one was just redundant,
- Spire Railgun Shop by Lord of Nothing has been discontinued, because the titular railguns are now available as a part of DLC1 as modules on the new modular Spire. Done with permission from Lord of Nothing!
- The Reprocessers by CRZgatecrusher. This hasn't been updated to the new code standards, and it's the one other big code-based mod other than Kaizer's Marauders that has been left behind in this way.
- Correction: Devourer Chrysalis by NR SirLimbo, which adds devourer golems that can evolve and change, is also out of commission for now.
- Correction: Super Saiyan Overlord by Zweihand is also out for now.
New DLC1 Features
A lot of these were mentioned above, but basically it's two new map types, modular ships (fallen spire particularly, but the feature in general for modding purposes), Ark Empire and Spire-Infused Empire player types, and then the new Spire factions from StarKelp. About those new factions...
Splintering Spire
A large scale war between the Dark Spire and all Sphere factions in the galaxy. Sphere factions will unleash small task forces that band together in an attempt to dismantle Dark Spire VG for parts, while the Dark Spire VG will be far more likely to expand. As Dark Spire VGs are destroyed, they will leave behind Derelicts, that Sphere factions will than fight over for extra income for their respective factions. Yesterday's friend is tomorrow's foe.
A Gray Sphere, a Chromatic Sphere, and a Dark Spire faction will be automatically included when this Faction is enabled, and these factions will use the Intensity set on this faction.
If you help either the Gray Spire or Chromatic Spire become suitably dominant, you will be able to hack them in order to get either Warheads (Gray Spire) or Interplanetary Weapons (Chromatic Spire), respectively.
HIGH IMPACT: By enabling this, not only are you adding in two Sphere factions and a Dark Spire faction, but every single one will be stronger than normal, and be actively aiming to fight. You will have a whole other war to worry about during your own.
Most notably, the Dark Spire do not care who attacked them, and will be out for blood. You'll want to shore up your defenses more than usual to account for this.
Spire Dyson Spheres
In addition to the Zenith Dyson Sphere, you can in general choose to have Gray Spire Dyson Spheres, or Chromatic Spire Dyson Spheres without getting the entire Splintering Spire thing going. They are beautiful and deadly and really cool to have around.
Oh, and there's also the Chromatic Spire, too. Man there's so much!
Multiplayer!
Technically I'm still noting that part of the game as being in beta (as it always has been), but that status will be gone within the next month. Most of the serious issues are gone now, but there are still enough nits that I want a last bit of extra testing before I call that non-beta.
It's quite playable now, though, and the worst thing that might happen is that a client might need to disconnect and reconnect to solve some passing issue. This is a major milestone for us!
Conclusion!
Yeah, we've been really busy on this. And there's more to come soon. We're also going to do a Developer Supporter Pack DLC before too long, because the fact is that we don't make a living from this game (I have a huge financial loss from it actually). But I'm really proud of how this is shaping up, and the Complete Edition with the truly giant third DLC is also coming within about six weeks, give or take a tiny bit.
Enjoy!
Beta 3.907 Release Candidate 4
Release Candidate 4 is just final bugfixes, really. Unless something really dire comes up over the next 10 hours or so, this will pretty much be the version that becomes v4.0 tomorrow, with us finally out of beta. If there are any last minute fixes or tweaks other than this that are needed, please let me know within that next short period!
After v4.0 and us coming out of beta, then it's just a month and a half or so until we fully release DLC3 and the Complete Edition for AI War 2, so this is an exciting time!
More to come soon.
Enjoy!
Beta 3.906 Release Candidate 3
This one took a bit longer than expected to get working, but that's because there are some multiplayer issues that I'm trying to iron out at the last here, and those tend to be the most time-consuming types of bugs to sort out. Overall there are a huge number of bugfixes in this new build, for both singleplayer and multiplayer. Arguably a lot of these are not important enough to warrant not coming out of beta, and I'm not sure that the remaining issues that exist cross that line, either. So the beta exit will either be tomorrow or (more likely) Friday.
But this isn't just a bugfix build!
There are a bunch of new FRS options from CRCGamer, all of which are very powerful but don't give fleet-wide bonuses. This makes them work very well on Expert+ mode, and they're interesting in the other modes as well.
The lightning and storm warheads have been revised in DLC1, again by CRCGamer, to be a bit more like AIWC's counterparts. Essentially, these do even more damage to groups now, but they can't concentrate that damage into single targets to snipe an exo war unit (or similar) now.
Expert mode and above now treats the player power level as being higher, and so the AI is more likely to deploy Exo War units against you. Great idea by Badger.
NR SirLimbo has been working hard on the tooltips, further refining them so that they are easier to read than ever -- with fuel, without fuel, both are improved.
There's a handful of other new things, including some new bughunting tools, a few new cheat codes, and so on.
I had to substantially change the serialization format (for the network and savegames) as part of this build, just FYI. Things seem to be working fine in that area, but there's a slightly higher chance of issues, including corrupt savegames, compared to usual. This is a big step forward for improving multiplayer stability across the board, however.
More to come soon.
Enjoy!
Beta 3.905 Release Candidate 2
This one has a number of bugfixes, some balance fixes to DLC3 in particular, and then a split to the campaign types so that Expert is now split between Expert and Logistician. This release also includes a minor new "Civil Authority" metal gifting and repayment mechanic, although it's a fairly small detail.
Tomorrow I hope to get through more of the relevant bugs that are left and preventing beta exit, and then Wednesday for release? That seems like good distance from Elden Ring, but it's all about the feedback on these builds. Some folks were really put off by their experience with Expert, and handling that a bit better should hopefully be a thing that makes it more enjoyable for more folks, rather than frustrating.
More to come soon.
Enjoy.
Beta 3.904 Release Candidate 1
Happy Elden Ring Day, I guess? We'll just post this as a release candidate for now, and hop off the beta branch on Monday unless something dramatic comes up over the weekend.
This build puts even more finishing touches on multiplayer, and it's now truly the best it's ever been in this title, which is really gratifying to see.
This build also fixes a bug with our random number generator in general, which was causing mapgen in the lobby to not give you consistent results given the same seed.
"Pull" shots (reverse knockback) and attractant fields also both work again. And the Dark Zenith better at linking their planets.
There are some various other bugfixes, and balance adjustments for DLC3 and also DLC2.
More to come soon.
Enjoy!
Beta 3.903 Multiplayer Polish
We're getting SO close to being out of beta. The plan was tomorrow, although it's International Elden Ring Day, so maybe that's not the wisest move? Regardless, there are a lot of major strides here. We might come out of beta tomorrow but not fully announce until Monday, we'll see.
New in this build, factions now have an icon next to their name in the lobby when you're choosing one to add, which adds a lot to making them easier to choose and tell apart. Does not apply to the DLC3 factions just yet.
Lots more balance to DLC3 in general.
Lots of bugfixes across the board, too. Some particularly notable ones:
A number of notable multiplayer stability improvements. Multiplayer client-side ship jitter/lag gone. Multiplayer clients no longer have disappearing ships. (These were the most major remaining MP issues!)
Tachyon beams and similar now show up properly in tooltips again, unlike the last few builds.
If you weren't playing with distributed economy on, it was erroneously still giving you metal harvester bonus income if you were using any command station type other than military. This is now fixed, which prevents players in the more basic game modes from having an excess of income to the same degree.
The game now properly calculates overall power level, which means that exowar units will actually show up again.
More to come soon.
Enjoy!
Beta 3.902 Spire Onslaught
The Chromatic Spire Dyson Sphere, Gray Spire Dyson Sphere, and Splintering Spire factions (all in DLC1) are now available for everyone with that DLC! Previously, these were gated to just DLC3 testers while we ironed out the most notable kinks in them.
These are very interesting factions, because they can be used a few different ways. For a very low impact method, you can simply enable the new dyson spheres and they'll have some minor impact on their local neighborhood, and not much else. Low impact factions can be quite nice for adding flavor!
On the other hand, if you add the Splintering Spire faction, then a whole bunch of things happen: the dark spire, plus all the dyson spheres, are automatically added. The chromatic and gray spire are busy harvesting some dark spire remains that they are slingshotting in from outside the wormhole network, and in general they have a bit of a war going on with that. If you help one side become suitably powerful, this unlocks the ability to hack for either warheads (Gray Spire) or Interplanetary Weapons (Chromatic Spire). This is an exciting new war front that you can turn on in your game, and it unlocks some powerful new tools for you, as well, if you engage with it. Major thanks to StarKelp for the excellent implementation of this, and to Ovalcircle for a lot of early feedback on it.
Also regarding spire, the fallen spire have gotten a bit of a nerf compared to what they've been since gaining modular capabilities. Their power had roughly quintupled, but now it should be more back in line with what it is supposed to be. Big thanks to CRCGamer for fixing that up.
Lots more DLC3 updates, some bugfixes, and a variety of new pieces of art. The new DLC1 spire features now all have proper icons, and the last of the base-game art updates that I had planned (command stations, data centers, battlestations, and more) are now in place. Additionally, some more DLC2 are is implemented.
More to come soon.
Enjoy!
Beta 3.901 Modular Forcefields
Lots is happening around here these days!
The modular units feature is now feature-complete, mainly needing bug reports and testing now. Any weapons can be set up and used in whatever combination, and the same with a variety of features like cloaking and tachyon and tractor beams. The game now supports modular hull and shield health, and also bubble forcefields. It's possible that at some point more types of modules will be added, but realistically this is plenty and quite large already; it matches everything that AIWC could do, I believe, except that it's easier to use and can support (a lot) more modules per ship.
Expert mode and the others like it now have fancy new introductions thanks to Strategic Sage, and a few more balance items tweaked in them.
DLC2 now has a new Prototype Assault Frigate that is CRCGamer's first modular unit, and quite cool to see. Additionally, his Riot Control Cruiser was always intended to be modular, but was just waiting for the modular code to arrive. Now that it has, the RCC is also fully modular! This only applies to new games, but old ones will still function, just minus the modular RCC.
Zeus and Badger have been working hard on DLC3's factions, with lots happening in the Necromancer, Templars, and Elderlings in particular today.
And then the bugfixes... so many bugfixes! Bonus Random Factions working again is one of the big ones, but forcefields also are up properly instantly when you load from savegames, versus having to unpause for a moment first to see them. Actually, in the area of forcefields there are a number of quality of life improvements (like showing their boundaries, built or unbuilt, when you are in construction mode).
Beta exit will hopefully happen this Friday, and at the moment we seem on schedule for that. It's less about new stuff and more about polish and fixes at this point, for the remainder of the week.
More to come soon.
Enjoy!