AI War:1.006 Release
-The in-game scores screens now have interactive graphs of ship counts, income rates and resource totals, and things of that sort. These graphs are only relevant for human players, so AI players are not included on them. Additional metrics may be added for tracking in future releases. The metrics are currently only captured every 5 minutes (given the extended length of the game, this prevents save files from getting too huge). Existing savegames will work with the graphs that are currently here, but will have no data prior to the time the savegame was loaded into the new version of the program.
-The tutorials and in-game hover text have been updated to make it clearer that bombers have a substantial bonus against force fields and other hardened targets.
-The online Mini Strategy Guide has been changed into an easier-to-read, more comprehensive Wiki. In the game, the link to this has been updated and now reads "Online: Manual / FAQ Wiki (Game Knowledgebase)." The Tutorials button on the main menu now also says "Tutorials / Manual" to be more clear.
-The enemy player in the tutorials is now red, while the local player is now yellow.
-The end of the economic tutorial now touches on the issues of harvester efficiency.
-It is now possible to reorder items in the build queues. Hold down Alt and left click to send an item to the front, or hold down alt and right-click to send an item to the rear.
-The "Game Does Not Have Input Focus..." message is now more accurate, telling you when the scroll wheel and keyboard inputs will not function (such as while you are in the controls subwindow, things like that).
-Closing the "View Controls" window now properly returns focus to the main game. There were a few other windows (graphs, for one) that also had this problem. All fixed.
-The buttons for metal and crystal harvesters now show up as red when being shown on a planet that the human team does not control (since those cannot be built except on team planets).
-Scouts are now excluded from the comma and ctrl+comma selections.
-The sorting of ship icons in the planetary summary palette is now better.
-In recent releases, the player color selection dialog in the lobby, and in the profile screen, was showing all of the colors twice. Fixed.
-The dark gray player color was too hard to read, and so has been swapped out for bright orange.
-There are now options in the settings which makes the default pan and/or zoom speeds fast (holding shift will then make the panning/zooming slow to the usual speed).
-There is now an option in the settings to always show the planet names in the galaxy map (holding Ctrl then hides them, rather than showing them).
-Previously it was sometimes possible for the names of planets in the galaxy map (lobby and in-game) to get cut off at the right side of the screen. Fixed.
-Holding the Ctrl key now shows the name of a wormhole in front of any ships or icons that are on top of it. There is also now an option in the settings to make it so that this always shows on top by default (and holding Ctrl then hides the name).
-The text size in the scores screen has been reduced to be more consistent with the other fonts in the game, and to reduce the amount of horizontal scrolling needed. The scores screen is also now wider, even on 4:3 monitors, to make for as much visibility and as little horizontal scrolling as possible.
-The economy tab of the scores screen now includes values for the number of producers and the efficiency loss per player. This is to help players balance their incomes in multiplayer, for those players who are inclined to do so.
-The graphs screen now uses a listbox along the left, instead of using a dropdown at the top, so that it is easier to find and select the various graphs there.
-There is now a minimize button in the lobby, which makes it easier to go out of the game and look up your ip address.
-When in the lobby, it is now possible to click a planet and switch directly to it from another chosen planet, rather than having to deselect the old planet first.
-The priority buttons in the galaxy map are now activated with Alt+0-9 instead of just 0-9. Control groups are now fully functional in the galaxy map.
-The circle around the current planet in the galaxy map is now shown as filled instead of just a bare outline, which makes it much easier to see.
-There is now a "selected ships" button on the galaxy map, same as there is in the main planetary view. It has all of the same functionality, allowing sub-selection, ship removal, etc.
-The planetary summary now shows a yellow border around the icons of all ship types that have any ships selected (in other words, all of the ships of that type don't have to be selected in order for it to show yellow, just some of them do).
-Only the game host can now click the the combat style button during a game.
-When space docks, starship constructors, missile silos, or advanced factories are put into a control group, activating the control group no longer selects these constructor-type ships. However, any ships that are produced by the constructor will automatically be in the control group of the constructor.
-Engineer IIs can now be unlocked for 3,000 knowledge. They are identical to regular engineers, except that they have teleportation, which is a huge advantage.
-Astro Train Stations are now immune to reclamation by parasites.
-AI Home planets now show up as Tech V in the galaxy map.
-Holding the I key now shows the Hit Percent and Damage for all selected ships, or ships that you have the mouse over. This only works for ships that are on the same team as you (enemy targeting data is of course not available to you). The text here is colorized, which makes for easy at-a-glance viewing of how good the targets are. It is also relatively easy to spot ships without targets selected, since they have no targeting info in this view.
-There was previously a crash bug if players tried to Ctrl-click an exo-galaxy wormhole. Fixed.
-SuperFortresses and AI Troop Accelerators no longer appear as secondary objectives, since that didn't really make sense.
-Mine Layers are now a part of the Mobile Builders quick button list.
-The number of hostile wormholes count on the galaxy map was previously not taking into account destroyed warp gates. Fixed.
-The text for enemy wormholes now shows up as light salmon in the main planetary view, or it shows up as bright red if the enemy wormhole is hostile (in the sense of being able to produce waves through a warp gate).
-Previously, no resource-type ships could be built on planets not belonging to the local team. Now, only harvesters are restricted in this way.
-Scout Starships are now selected via the O shortcut key.
-The way that resource producer efficiency reductions are calculated is now more friendly to the player, and is no longer dependent at all on build order of producers (it was unintended that this was previously the case to a degree).
-Mark II and Mark III versions of the Command Stations can now be unlocked. They each produce 6 more metal/crystal than their prior tech level, but also use much more energy and take longer to build. Only 8 of each of the new types can be built, as well. The two types cost 5,000 and 8,000 knowledge respectively to unlock (and are then available as choices at any colony ship). To "upgrade" a command station, the old one must first be deleted and then the new one added.
-A "Warp Jammer" command station can now be unlocked for 5,000 knowledge. Only 5 of these can be built, and they use 30,000 energy as well as -8 metal and crystal per second. However, they prevent the AI from warping any waves into the planet that has this command station present.
-In prior versions, there was a bug wherein the junk/rock clusters and wormholes would sometimes get scrambled in a savegame after one player had lost a home planet, but the game was not yet over. Fixed.
-Lesser compression is now used in saving games (as opposed to what is used for state transfers), which much improves save performance. Also sav.dmp files are no longer saved along with actual savegames, which slightly improves save performance over even the compression change. The way that bools are saved into the savegames is now more storage-efficient for large games, which also makes these easier to compress. In total, the performance of saving games with many ships (60,000+) has about tripled from these changes.
-During saves, the game now pops up a message showing what it is doing, rather than just silently hanging the game during the save.
-The scale of the AI Progress meter has now been multiplied by 10. This makes it possible for the game to now support smaller increases and decreases in the scale.
-The AI Progress now goes up by 10x as much as before when an AI player loses their home planet.
-the AI Progress now goes up by 2 when core command posts are destroyed (this is on the new scale, so it is relatively a very small amount). This, plus the prior change noted above, are intended to make the very end of the game more intense.
-The AI Progress now goes up by 1 when special forces command posts and Astro Train Stations are destroyed (this is a very tiny amount on the new scale). This is intended to make a mild disincentive to destroying key routing points for the AI, even though most of the time it is not expected that this will be a deterrent.
-There was previously a bug wherein ships in Free-Roaming Defender mode who were on a planet with hostile ships would just freeze when given a wormhole command instead of going through the wormhole. Fixed.
-There is now a sound effect when a new incoming enemy wave is added.
-There was previously a bug with loading saved games after a certain point in the third basic tutorial. Fixed.
-The way that ships, especially teleporting ships, collide with the sides of the planetary areas is now much better.
-Mine Layers were not covering their entire planet in Free Roaming Defender mode. Fixed.
-The "Find Multiplayer LAN Games" button is now called "Join Multiplayer Game." It now includes links to the AI War Meeting Grounds forum, and the AI War IRC channel, in addition to the existing LAN game detection and direct IP connect ability.
-The occasional "ships forgetting their orders while in attack-move mode and given a wormhole command" bug is hopefully now fixed.
-The home hit sound is now played less frequently.
-The tech level of the technologist waves was one tech level too high compared to its reinforcements. Fixed.
-There was previously a bug wherein if the computer was put into suspend right as text was being written during a tutorial, the game would crash. Fixed.
-In recent releases, there was a bug where the resources and wormholes would get shuffled around when loading a saved tutorial. This would only happen after the first saved version, and then it would be fine after that.
-There are new settings options for forcing software mixing of sound and/or music.
-In recent releases, it was possible for ships to sometimes stop on top of one another if they were chasing a target that later destroyed. Now they will always properly collision-detect, and will de-clump in this situation.
-Ships that are currently protected by a force field now show up with a green circle underneath them (similar to the purple circle under ships that are cloaked).
-It is no longer possible to maximize the game when it is running in windowed mode. Maximization was causing click detection and graphics scaling issues in most cases, and if you want to play maximized then simply not using windowed mode would be the simplest solution.
-Apparently in the most recent versions of the game, there was a super-rare bug wherein some ships might become un-shootable. This should now be fixed.
-The game no longer allows players to load a savegame from a newer version of the game into an older version of the game. This can cause all sorts of non-bug crashes and issues simply due to the version mismatch. The players are now shown a message asking them to upgrade to at least the appropriate version of the game to load the save. To be clear, savegames as still completely forward-compatible and always will be, but backwards compatibility won't be possible simply because the game changes and expands over time.
-If the shift key is not held during priority-setting mode, the game now goes back to normal input mode.
-The AI will now try to steer its superfortresses and electric shuttles into strongly-defended areas since their area attacks will do the most damage there as opposed to outlying areas.
-AI starships and superfortresses now have a special affinity for striking player command stations, making them even more dangerous than before.
-The AI will now do a better job of retargeting when it has a nonideal target.
-The AI is now even smarter with its target selection, and will thus avoid having ineffective ships beat on force fields, etc, unless there is just nothing else for it to do.
-The AI will now keep its idle engineers under force fields or at command posts for protection, rather than just leaving them idle wherever they currently are.
-The autosave message is now in the form of a brief message in the upper right. The autosave frequency is now based purely on the host, with all of the players in the game doing their autosaves in sync with one another.
-A display filter button has been added to the galaxy map under the display modes button. This lets players filter to All (default), My, Allied, or My And Allied for the relevant counts in the display modes button.
-There should now be no chance of the game using hotkeys while the in-game text chat window is up.
-The harvester build buttons now show up as red when no more harvesters of that type can be built at the current planet.
-X+0-9 now works as a shortcut for selecting the constructors in a control group (which are not selected by the normal 0-9 presses). This also works with double and triple taps of 0-9.
-Ships that have been firing at the same target for more than 15 seconds will now look around for a better target every 15 seconds, just in case smaller stuff has snuck up on them. This generally only comes up when attacking large targets like force fields or fortresses. Ships that have been explicitly given a target will not use this logic, only ships that auto-chose a large target.
-The "Play Music While Paused" option in the settings screen has now become "Play Music And Don't Dim Screen While Paused," and is part of a new "Turn-Based Strategy Style Settings" section of the pause menu.
-There is a new "Use TBS-Friendly Pause" option (default to on) in the settings window. With this new mode, the game keeps processing turns and animations while paused, making for full ability to issue and reissue any commands. However, the timer, resources, ship movement, and ship attacks are all paused as normal. This should be helpful for all players, but especially those who want a TBS-style of play. This mode will need to be turned off when sending data for desyncs.
-Flares have been recoded under the hood to better work with TBS-friendly pauses.
-The game now shows the pause message in the upper left for galaxy view, so that it is not obstructing any of the planets.
-The in-game graphs now include values for score, the number of technologies unlocked, number of planets held, and mark v ships.
-Vampire Claws and Core Demon Hands now move around 4x faster than before, thus greatly increasing their combat value (which has still been too low until now).
-Sniper turrets are now able to fire through force fields.
-ExoShields were still drawing their lines to their protected units after being scrapped. Fixed.
-Previously it was possible that, when the toolbar for the window was shown, the bottom of tooltips in the lobby could be cut off. Fixed.
-The color of the icons in the intel summary are now handled more accurately.
-When the game window does not have focus, the tip windows are no longer shown, since that was commonly causing a high degree of flicker. The display of tooltips is also now a bit more efficient when moving the mouse a lot, hopefully reducing flicker in general.
-Contextual information is now popped up about each ship type that is hovered over in the lobby's galaxy map.
-Snipers should now have a stronger preference to not fire at ships under force fields. Ships in general should also now generally pick ships that aren't under force fields whenever possible to do so.
-The actual underlying types of random AIs are now revealed when the players lose or win (the name of the AI players change to reflect their underlying types).
-The Score button now flashes when the game is over, to remind players that they can look at their final stats and graphs.
-With parasites, it is possible to go over your ship cap for a certain ship. In those situations, previously the build buttons for that ship would show a negative number, which was confusing. Now it will just stop at 0 (the "Number In Service" on the hover menu will still reflect the overflow as you would expect).
-Previously, when the music was enabled while the game was in progress, the music would take quite a while to actually start. Now it starts immediately, though this means that it pauses execution of the game for a second or two while it loads the first track.
-Previously, the names of planets in the galaxy view were incorrectly shown above hover menus and tips from the buttons on the left. Fixed.
-Previously, the names of planets in the galaxy view would disappear when the popup menus were opened from the buttons on the left. Fixed.
-The priority indicator for planets is now included at the end of the name of wormholes in the main planetary view.
SPECIAL THANKS
Thanks to Quitch for suggesting the graphs be added to the scores screens, for suggesting that the bomber bonuses against hardened targets be clarified, for suggesting that the tutorial player colors be made lighter, for suggesting the queue reordering, for reporting the issues with the input focus in the View Controls window, for suggesting the metal and crystal harvester button interface improvement, for suggesting the scout exclusion from ctrl+comma, for suggesting improvements to the planetary summary sort, for suggesting that the dark gray player color be replaced, for suggesting the settings options for reversing pan/zoom speed, for suggesting the settings option for always showing planet names, for suggesting the improvements to the wormhole name display, for suggesting that control groups continue to work in the galaxy map, for suggesting that AI home planets show up as tech 5, for making a suggestion that led to the new I key functionality, for suggesting that Superfortresses were not really a secondary objective, for suggesting that mine layers be added to the mobile builders list, for suggesting the enemy wormhole text colorization, for pointing out the old restriction logic for non-harvester resource construction, for pointing out that Scout Starships were not selected with the O key, for suggesting the sound effect for incoming enemy waves, for pointing out the issues with teleportation at the edge of the planetary area, for pointing out the error with mine layers in FRD mode, for suggesting the improvement to the play/pause buttons, for suggesting that the priority-setting mode use shift the same as other placement modes do, for suggesting that the autosave message be less obtrusive, for suggesting the display filter, for suggesting the speed increase for vampires, for pointing out the issue with the exoshield lines, for suggesting the improvement to the icon colors in the intel summary view, for suggesting changes to how snipers target ships under force fields, for suggesting that AI types get revealed after games are over, for reporting the issues with the planet names and the buttons on the left in galaxy view.
Thanks to netwilk for reporting the bug with the planet names sometimes being cut off in the galaxy map, for suggesting the harvester buttons be shown in red when fully used, for suggesting the X+0-9 key combo, for suggesting the auto-retargeting after 15 seconds, for reporting the bug with the tooltips being cut off, for reporting the tip window flicker, for suggesting the hover tips over ship types in the lobby, for suggesting the priority number be included at the end of wormhole names.
Thanks to Bridger for suggestion the Minimize button in the lobby.
Thanks to Quitch and netwilk for suggesting the improvement to planet selection on the lobby map.
Thanks to Blam Stokel for suggesting the Alt+0-9 functionality for priority buttons in the galaxy map, and for suggesting the teleporting Engineer IIs.
Thanks to Sowelu for suggesting the selection border around ships in the planetary summary.
Thanks to keith.lamothe for inspiring the changes to the AI Progress, and for inspiring Mark II and III command stations.
Thanks to Zulgaines for suggesting the in-game links to the Meeting Grounds forum and IRC channel, for reporting an issue with hotkeys being activated while in the in-game text window.
Thanks to Cougar_DK for reporting the issue with the tutorial savegames scrambling the resources.
Thanks to Larry Parker for reporting the issue with the game crashing in tutorials when the computer was coming out of suspend mode, for reporting the issue with loading savegames from basic tutorial 3 after a certain point in the tutorial, for suggesting the TBS-friendly improvements to pause for reporting the issue with enabling the music in-game.
Thanks to TheWesDude for inspiring the options to force software mixing of sound and music.
Thanks to KibbeZero for reporting the issue with maximization of the game in windowed mode.
Thanks to Ekkosangen and Zulgaines for reporting the "unshootable ship" bug.
Thanks to netwilk and keith.lamothe for suggesting the revisions to how control groups work with space docks and advanced factories.
