Difference between pages "AI War:4.000 Release" and "AI War:6.000 Release"

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== Statistics For The Curious ==
 
== Statistics For The Curious ==
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AI War 5.0 - 6.0 spanned from Feb. 15th, 2011 through Oct. 18th, 2012 and it was full of some HUGE changes!  895 distinct changes were made as part of 97 different releases over the course of 611 days.  [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11809.msg125187.html#msg125187 One does not simply stroll through AI War patch notes], indeed.
  
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* Between 3.120 and 4.000, we pushed out 81 distinct public beta releases over 170 days.  That's an average of one release every 50 hours.  This is with a major chunk of Tidalis's development happening in the middle (it was released July 16), AND a signficant period with no public releases while we ported AI War from .NET/SlimDX to Unity3D.
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Even though this was during the period that A Valley Without Wind was developed and released, we managed to keep up an average of 1 release every six days (though some periods were very light with releases and others were very dense with them, if you look at the actual dates; the average makes it sound more regular than it was).  Given the length of time between 5.0 and 6.0, it's essentially the same length of time that was between 1.0 and 5.0.  So that's certainly a good reason to have such huge patch notes and so many changes!
  
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* Community contributors assisted us with over 800 distinct bugs and suggestions-that-were-implemented (counting 95 distinct contributors).
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A full 149 Players are thanked in this series.
  
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* The combined release notes for those 81 betas total over 300 kilobytes of text.
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This document is the ''abbreviated'', organized version of the full release notes ([[AI War:Current Post-5.000 Beta|here]]).
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* Believe it or not, this massive document (which is just under 31,000 words long) is the ''abbreviated'', organized version of the full release notes ([[AI War:Current Post-3.120 Beta|part I]] and [[AI War:Current 4.0 Beta|part II]], which were over 55,000 words—or, 222 pages of a novel.
 
  
 
== Highlights ==
 
== Highlights ==
  
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This release is unreservedly huge.  It's a full re-imagining of AI War, practically a sequel (but free to existing customers). Frankly there were more updates here than in a lot of sequels we've seen.  So it is with some difficulty that we compile these highlights, as even the list of highlights is enormous, yet omits a lot of major changes.  Listed here are just the things that have changed in the base game itself, this isn't even including all the stuff that was added as part of the new Children of Neinzul micro-expansion.  So here we go:
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=== Huge ===
  
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* A grand total of 147 new ships have been added to the game. Again, this is NOT counting the new ones added as part of CoN.  Most of these new ships went to the AI or are things that the players must capture, but there are also dozens and dozens of goodies for the players in the form of new warheads, new mercenaries, new turrets, and new lines of command stations.
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* Ancient Shadows, an entire new (paid) expansion, has been added to the game!  Briefly summarizing the additions:
 +
** Champions! Optional hero units that can be added at the beginning of the game or midway through, these have the unique ability to fly through special wormholes into the new nebulae.  In those new areas, champions encounter both friendly and hostile human, zenith, neinzul, and spire splinter factions.  As your champion gains experience and recovers artifacts, you can guide its progression from a super-starship to a truly awesome powerhouse.
 +
** 9 New Bonus Ship Types, including the hilarious Tackle Drone Launcher and the first-ever bonus starship.
 +
** A New Minor Faction: the Dark Spire.  These only awaken when many ships die near their spawners, but once they really get going neither the AI nor player will find them easy to stop.
 +
** Modular Fortresses, a long requested addition to the player's heavy defensive lineup.
 +
** 2 New AI Types: The tough-as-nails Heroic AI that throws champions at you, and the modular-fortress-happy Fortress King AI.
 +
** 2 New Map Types: The long-requested "Clusters" map type and a more advanced "Microcosm Clusters" variant.
 +
** 3 _Nasty_ new Core Guard Post types for the AI to defend its homeworlds with.
 +
** Over 90 minutes of new music from Pablo Vega.
  
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* An enormous graphical overhaul has taken place. Every special effect in the game has been replaced and majorly improved, the HUD and GUI has been completely redesigned and has a cleaner feel to it, and the starfields/nebulae have seen a rather startling improvement as well.  Those new ships come with a bunch of new prerendered-3D graphics, as well.
+
* Hacking! We finally found a solution to knowledge-raiding that's both balanceable and fun:
 +
** Knowledge raiding and Superterminal hacking now both increase the same "hacking antagonism" value on the AI, and as that value gets higher the AI's response to any hacking activity gets increasingly powerful and erratic.
 +
** On top of this, we added a new "Ship Design Hacking" mechanic whereby you can hack an AI-controlled Advanced Research Station so that when you later capture it you can select from one of three randomly-chosen bonus ship types to unlock, instead of just being given one of them.  This shares in the hacking-antagonism mechanic used by knowledge hacking and superterminal hacking.
  
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* The soundtrack to both AI War and The Zenith Remnant have been completely remastered and re-edited, and in a number of cases have new live performances for trumpet and electric guitar (adding to the existing live vocals and piano).  The soundtrack for Children of Neinzul was also done at this new quality level, of course.  Additionally, two completely-new bonus tracks have been added for free to the base AI War game, and an old track ("Thor") that had been dropped due to quality issues is back and awesome with a live performance.
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* Completely redid the AI's Special Forces to make them an extremely important defensive mechanic that adapts to the player's offensive deployments and tries to thwart them where it counts.
  
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* The interface has been streamlined all over the place, in ways that have really been exciting our hardcore fanbase (who helped design some of the changes).  The biggest amongst these changes are perhaps the more-readable galaxy map, the new context menu (alt+right-click) with things like Auto-Gather-Knowledge and special Transport-Unloading logic, the complete removal of "control nodes" in favor of a much cleaner set of menus, and a larger display-on-demand minimap replacement (hold T).
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* Added a new AI mechanic: the Strategic Reserve.  The AI gradually adds strength to this reserve and deploys ships from it to critical defense actions, especially homeworld defenses.  It also uses the reserve to contribute to Cross Planet Attacks, taking some of the burden off local defense forces.
  
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* Many new teach-yourself-to-play-better features have been added: or, as we like to call them, "discoverability features." The new Objectives and References tabs provide a lot of guidance for players without hand-holding them, a new Tip of the Day system on the main menu shows player-submitted tips, and all of the tutorials in the game have been completely redone and updated, and are more helpful than ever before.  A fan even did some awesome new video tutorials for us, which replaced our older 2.0-era series of the same.
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* Added another new AI mechanic: the Threat Fleet.  "Freed" AI ships will still do their normal stalk and attack behavior for about half an hour, but after that the AI figures that they've probably been stymied by strong human defenses and pulls them into a cohesive offensive fleet that waits for an opportunity to strike the human where it hurts.
  
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* Along the theme of streamlining: Knowledge raiding has been completely rebalanced to no longer be easy or necessary, returning it to the proper role of "last ditch effort to get out of a hole".  This was a really tedious activity since players were embarking on it too often. Similarly, the endgame was ALWAYS a grind in the old versions, to the point where very few players actually won games, but now the endgame has been completely redone and is more exciting and full of back-and-forth power struggles than ever.  Gameplay activities that were tedious have been cropped and replaced with something more fun, with a great deal of public player testing and feedback.
+
* Massively reworked the energy system to cut out the "trivial to compute, time-consuming to do" micromanagement that the previous system encouraged:
 +
** There's no such thing as an inefficient reactor anymore: you can have one free-to-run energy-collector on each planet, and as many high-but-constant-cost matter-converters as you want anywhere.
 +
** Putting units in low-power-mode no longer reduces their energy cost (or ongoing m+c cost, for the energy-producers), so there's no motive to micro them up and down to pay the minimum m+c for the minimum energy necessary.
 +
** The free-energy collectors scale up with the number of homeworlds so that a multi-HW player doesn't have such an energy disadvantage compared to multiple single-HW players.
  
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* Brace yourself: but the entire combat, repair, economic, and construction models have been almost completely rewritten.  To the novice player these changes are subtle enough that it feels like basically the same game. To the more experienced player, these changes are a dream come true, shaving off rough edges left and right and leaving something simpler and more elegant in its place. We had a corps of 95 community members giving us feedback, after all, so there's been a lot of vetting of this from both newer and experienced players.  The main benefits of these particular changes are simplicity, transparency-to-the-player, and internal accuracy in outlier situations.
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* Several minor factions and AI plots now have variable intensity that allows more game variety: want to play a game with TONS of human resistance fighters? Or where the Dyson Sphere has a dominant impact?  Want just a few human marauders?  Or hybrids on, but in much lower numbers? Or hybrids on, and massively amplified?  It's all there.
  
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* As part of the new combat model, the old concept of "shields" (as distinct from "force fields") has been removed, and the random-hit-chance and range-related components of the hit chance calculations are gone. In place of this is a new, simpler, and far better "armor" system that affects damage output instead of hit chance.
+
* Totally revamped AI Carriers:
 +
** When there's too many AI ships on the planet for them to fully deploy (without unduly hurting game performance), they're no longer invincible but if you pop them they combine their contents into nasty mkV ships and mkV guardians.
 +
** Can no longer shoot through forcefields (but can still fly through them).
 +
** Now get more shots-per-salvo based on the ships being carried, so they're not so much less a threat when not-yet-deployed (previously high-carrier waves tended to be like several waves in series, which is much easier than intended).
 +
** There's now a toggle on the CTRLS window to tell your ships whether to auto-target carriers or not.
  
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* One key simplification in this new version is the removal of all the internal ship-specific damage multipliers.  In their place, we now have a small number of new "hull types," and ships get visible bonuses against them.  This also removes the "Strong Vs and Weak Vs" display in favor of both the raw hull attack multipliers display and a new Reference tab when really detailed data is needed (presumably not often).
+
* Cross-Planet Attacks have been substantially reworked to be a much more serious threat.
  
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* Following on with those massive changes, every last ship in the game has been rebalanced to a heavy degree, sometimes pretty much completely.  With a game of this scope, we expect there are still some rough edges in there, but overall it's far better balanced—and easier to understand the balance in a meaningful way—than ever before.  As part of this, the turrets and starships have both become a lot more specialized and interesting, and more of them are available to players right from the start of the game.
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* Each AI planet now picks 3 ship types to focus its reinforcements on, making each planet feel more distinct.
  
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* Performance has gotten a major boost in general with the new version, but additionally we now have new "Performance Profiles" that let the game more easily run on a variety of hardware.  Best of all, these profiles can be swapped in and out in realtime while playing.  This lets borderline computers lower their simulation/graphics load temporarily during a massive battle, then turn those factors back up when the battle concludes.  The game in general also now does a better job of degrading its framerate instead of its overall run speed, which is an enormous boon for multiplayer games where one player is on iffy hardware.  And as if all that wasn't enough, we also have a variety of simple new performance-diagnosing tools right in the Players tab that lets players see each others' framerates, how fast the game is running at the moment compared to realtime, and other helpful things like that.
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=== Big ===
  
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* This next change is also a shocker: we've reduced the default ship caps in the game.  The game has always advertised having 30,000+ ships in realtime, but the truth was that often players were running more like 70,000 to 120,000 ships in large games.  This was simply more of a CPU drain than it needed to be, and tended to make a lot of the AI worlds a grind.  We now have Unit Cap Scales that you can set in the lobby—and the old "High" option is still there—but the new default uses about half as many ships, which is still significantly more than we've ever advertised as supporting.  And for iffy hardware, you can actually quarter the number of ships in the game, which is ideal for slower laptops or similar.
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* Re-implemented custom galaxy layouts for each player, so you can move planets around the map to get the strategic view looking the way you want.
  
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* Part of the reason for the shift away from just huge numbers of fleet ships is our new emphasis on larger centerpieces. The AIs have massive new command stations and guard posts, as well as mobile Guardians that not only defend but launch often-brutal counterattacks.  Going along with these are the exciting new AI Eye that emphasizes de-blobbing, the new AI Barracks that lets the AIs store up overflow reinforcements for later use, and the AI Carriers which are the late-game AI equivalent of transports.  All of these new things take the place of turrets, which the AI no longer uses at all, and in general they lead to a vastly different feel of game. It's a lot quicker to resolve battles (without making you rushed—just no longer a grind), and in general it makes planets feel more unique and fun before you even get into the various special weapons that have always been a cornerstone of AI War.
+
* Substantially rebalanced waves, particularly on the higher difficulties.
 +
** Notably, 10/10 used to be totally lethal... unless you somehow pulled out some massive cheese and survived the first couple waves to get a foothold.  Now the early 10/10 challenge is a much better "advertisement" for the kind of challenge that lies beyond the initial period.  Accordingly, 10/10 has been massively rebalanced to be harder in those later parts of the game, as certain players have displayed the temerity to _win_ on that difficulty.
 +
** Also smoothed out several "difficulty cliffs" along the 7-to-10 range where one difficulty step was massively more significant than either the one just below or just above.
  
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* The AIs aren't the only ones who have been getting a makeover, though.  We already mentioned that players now get a lot more starting turrets and starships for free (and both of those unit classes are now far more central to the game).  Players also now get a lot more knowledge in general (3,000 per planet now, instead of 2,000), and the player economy—especially in the early game—has had a massive boost.  Your typical income without economic upgrades will be almost double what it used to be, meaning you can field far more ships, faster, including starships.  Speaking of faster, the player ships used to be 1.4x faster than the AI ships, but now they are a full 2x faster.  This asymmetry plays well into the enhanced feel of the player as a guerrilla warrior against a superior foe.  This unique aspect of the game is really emphasized a lot more, now, and players have responded really well to it in beta.
+
* The Botnet Golem has been split off into an entirely separate minor faction with its own costs/risks because it was so powerful.  We could have just nerfed it down near the other golems, but this way is much more fun.
  
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* Did we mention Mac OSX support?  Thanks to our switch to the Unity 3D engine, AI War is no longer just for Windows.  And while Linux isn't directly supported, we have word that it runs flawlessly in the latest versions of WINE.  And, along these lines, AI War no longer has any prerequisites—installation and setup is far more painless than in the past.
+
* The starfield backgrounds have been completely redone with something much more interesting.
  
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* And these were just the highlights. Read on if you want all the gory details: it's taken us 170 days, 81 releases, 95 testers, and untold man-months to get this awesome new version out.  We're really excited not only about what is represented here already, but what this re-launch of the game will enable us to do both with future free updates and future paid expansions.  Thanks to everyone for their support during this long process!
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* Rebalanced... honestly, it might be easier to list the units that were _not_ rebalanced during the 5.0-to-6.0 run than those that were.
 +
** Thanks to all the participants who contributed nominations, discussion, and votes to our "what's the worst unit?" (and other) community polls!
  
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== AI Updates ==
+
* Added a devious super-hybrid plot to Advanced Hybrids (on high enough intensity).  That's a nice Dyson Sphere you've got there, it'd be a shame if anything happened to it.
  
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* A semi-major new "Scrap Wave" mechanic has been added for the AIs.  Any time there are more than 100,000 ships currently in the game, and comparably little is going on in terms of threat/attack/wave counters, the AI will scrap a large number of its ships and then send a wave that is half the size of the number of ships scrapped.
+
* Finally found a way to detect loss-of-focus from within the Unity engine, allowing us to auto-pause the game when this happens (there's a toggle to suppress the auto-pause, if you like).
−
** The AI is prejudiced toward scrapping and sending the lowest-tech mobile military it has, but that will really vary based on what it has available.  If all the AI has is Mark V stuff, this will be a much worse event than if the AI still has a lot of lower-tech stuff.
+
** Note: this doesn't work on the Mac in windowed mode, but it does work on the Mac in full-screen mode and on Windows in either mode.
−
** In general, the size of these waves is 1,000 ships multiplied times the difficulty of the first AI player.  The number of scrapped ships will be about twice that.
 
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** Generally if there are more than about 1,000 threat/attack/wave ships already out in the galaxy, then the AI won't do a scrap wave.  Otherwise it will do continuously scrap waves, one after the next, until it is back down to fewer than 150,000 ships.
 
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** In the end, if you're like most AI War players you'll never-ever see this mechanic at all.  But if you've got a beast of a machine and love playing 30+ hour-long games on the largest maps, then this will help keep things from bogging down completely.
 
  
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* AI players are no longer allowed to reinforce their planets if there are more than 175,000 ships currently in the game.
+
=== Important ===
  
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* There are now AI-specific versions of the following golems that are used by the Golemite: Armored, Artillery, Black Widow, Regenerator, Botnet.
+
* AI War engine upgraded to Unity 3.3 from Unity 3.1.  
−
** Those versions don't have some of the restrictions that the human-controlled versions do, but neither do they buff reinforcements or waves, and they have 1/2 the normal health for golems of those sorts.
 
  
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* The AI, on difficulty 7 and up, will now use Mobile Repair Stations on some of its planets.  These are pretty rare, but add to the challenge of those particular planets like the addition of a mark I or mark II fortress does.  The chance for these goes up with higher difficulties.
+
* The Siege Starship (formerly known as the Dreadnaught) was too effective as "park at extreme range and pick off the enemy" ship so it was nerfed into the Antimatter Starship.  That couldn't really hit anything, so it was re-imagined again into the Plasma-Siege Starship, which is much shorter ranged than the old siege starship but fires special ammo that does aoe damage, engine damage, and causes extra splash damage to targets under any forcefield it hits.
  
−
* New "AI Barracks" have been added.
+
* The MkIII Riot Control Starship was given some new exclusive module possibilities (grav tazer, etc) to better set them apart from the MkI and MkII.
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** Built by the AI to contain offline overflow units from its planets when it has too many units to keep online.  Each barracks contains 200-1200 ships that will come active when the barracks is attacked or destroyed, or when the planet of the barracks no longer belongs to the AI.
 
  
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* The internal calculations for border aggression have been revamped extensively in the wake of the recent AI ship cap reductions.  It's hard to express exactly what effect these calculation revamps will have, since it varies by AI Progress, difficulty level, and other factors, but in general it should make border aggression not happen until later, while at the same time making it more pronounced for high AI Progresses on higher difficulties.
+
* Added Hardened Forcefields: an alternate form of human-tech forcefield that relies on reducing incoming damage more than absorbing it.
  
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* The thresholds for the number of AI units that can be in cold storage before becoming part of border aggression and attacking the human players has been reduced by 2000 overall.  This puts it into equivalency with the new, lower ship caps, but it also is going to lead to... well, pain, in the case of some existing savegames with massive numbers of ships already in place out in the galaxy.
+
* Added the ability to switch your UI to display what another human player sees, making team control significantly more convenient and paving the way for other features.
  
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* Previously, Border Aggression could be really vicious, sending vast quantities of ships cumulatively into threat when there are a lot of planets all with fewer than 200 excess ships on them (the minimum to make a barracks).  And it could also be really vicious in sending a lot of core or mark IV ships at the players when they were used to seeing mark I or II ships in a game.
+
* Added the "Helper" player role which is much like the "observer" or "spectator" role from other RTS games but they can also control the units of any human player allowing team control.
−
** Now the Border Aggression will never kick in at all if the attack + threat level is already 500 or more.
 
−
** Additionally, when ships would be released via border aggression, and those ships have a tech level that is more than 2 marks higher than the current tech level of that AI player (so, mark IV/V ship with a mark I AI tech level, or mark V ship with a mark II AI tech level, basically), then these excess ships are simply exploded rather than being released.  This keeps the ship caps pruned as needed without causing a ridiculous spike in difficulty and without having players ever get swarmed with core ships early in the game.
 
  
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* Previously it was possible for the AI to get an inordinate number of MRS's on a single planet; it is now generally limited to 2 per planet.
+
* Added a new Ultra-Low unit-cap-scale with 1/8th the caps of High, for folks on low-end hardware or wanting to play something crazy like a 16-homeworld game.
  
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* AI's no longer use any form of turrets, and any turrets that the AIs did have are now removed from old savegames (including turret remains).  This includes sniper turrets, spider turrets, tractor beams, the works.
+
* Added a scripting language for generating lobby game-setups within a set of desired parameters, and a number of default scripts that ship with the game (including a few "Beginner Game" scripts, a few scripts for randomized minor factions, and a few scripts for randomized _and undisclosed_ minor factions).
−
** Larger-form AI-only replacements for some of the more notably types of turrets will see a resurgence, but they will be easier to see (and thus to strategize against).  This will also have a positive performance impact, with fewer AI units doing the job of a larger number of older turrets.
 
−
** The emphasis is instead on letting the AIs make use of their ship caps with mobile ships that actually pose a natural form of counterattack risk to players (and which are more interesting, anyway, in the hands of the AI).
 
  
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* Decoy drones are now capped at 4 per planet for the AI, and speed boosters are now capped at 10 per planet for the AI.  Decloakers and tachyon drones are now capped at 4 and 2 per planet for the A (and the ship caps for the human players have also been reduced to those levels from 10 and 10).
+
* Added short-lived "Drones" that the player's Neinzul Enclave Starships can build.  These are based on unlocked turret technology and provide more of a "carrier with fighters" feel.
  
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* The AIs now have a per-planet ship cap of 6 engineers of each mark level.
+
* Made defending multiple planets much more viable (relative to the viability of defending one planet) by changes to wave interval (which impacts wave size), re-imagining the Military Command Station's weaponry, and adding the new per-planet-cap'd Minifortress.
  
−
* The Ship cap scales now affect the size of the maximum allowed wave size per-wave for the AI.  Before it was always 2000, but now that gets affected by each ship cap scale as you'd expect.
+
* AI Eyes now have 3 varieties: Sentry Eyes (the old behavior), Ion Eyes, and Parasite Eyes.  Each is pretty lethal against no-thought-blob attacks, in a different way.
  
−
* There is now a separate ship cap for starships in a wave compared to fleet ships, to ensure that starships don't get excluded if there are a ton of ships in the wave (while at the same time ensuring that they don't get absolutely gigantic because of the golems or similar).
+
* The ramp-up from one AI tech level to the next is now much more gradual, with waves containing a percentage of the next-higher tech level that increases as you approach the threshold.
  
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* Most AI-controlled wormholes now have a Tachyon Guardian at them, putting the scouting balance approximately back to where it was before the AIs lost turrets.  The difference now, however, is that if these tachyon guardians are destroyed, the AI is very unlikely to rebuild them (though it sometimes will).  This makes it possible to "carve paths" for scouting, whereas before it wasn't really feasible to do that.
+
* Reclamation damage is now much more likely to have a consistent impact because any reclamator nanites unable to reclaim their host when it dies "hop" to another nearby eligible target.
  
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* A certain number (varies by difficulty) of guardians are now seeded at each command station and guard post belonging to the AI, except for special forces guard posts.  These ships are mobile and powerful, and present a more serious counterattack threat than the recently-added new guard posts, which are stationary.  In other words, if you launch an attack and botch it, then you it's possible you might have a bunch of guardians turning offensive and coming after you.
+
* Exogalactic strikeforces can now contain Hunter/Killers.  Be afraid.  And throw the rotten fruit at chemical_art for suggesting it.
−
** The AI does not get any guardians at all on planets adjacent to the player home planets.  This is consistent with ion cannons, AI Eyes, etc.
 
  
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* During each reinforcement of a planet, the AI is now allowed to add a single guardian to either the command station or one of the guard posts.  It is only allowed to add a single guardian per reinforcement, and the command station or guard post in question can't already have its cap of guardians.  If the AI is unable to add a guardian, it does not get any recompense.
+
* Exogalactic strikeforces are now more wily about picking targets.  Get used to defending your outlying assets if you play with any exo sources.
  
−
* The AI will no longer abandon guard posts to pursue the scout starships of the player.
+
* Several golems have been substantially buffed, to provide an appropriate reward for the costs/risks of playing on Golems-Medium or Golems-Hard.  Enjoy your new "has tractors that paralyze!" Black Widow Golem and "that thing can kill anything, once every 8 seconds!" Artillery Golem.
  
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* The logic for border aggression now scales with the unit cap scale, and also is vastly more tame during the early game in particular, but also pretty much in general.  UNLESS you have a mega ton of ships, then it gets a bit more aggressive than before, so it now is more reactive to what you do.
+
* The game's RAM usage has been substantially reduced in many cases, leading to far fewer out-of-memory errors in remotely-sane scenarios (and even some clearly-insane scenarios, we've noted).
  
−
* The AIs now send leech starships in waves and reinforcements at lower tech levels than they did in the past.
+
* Massively reworked the way the AI determines how many ships it gets in a reinforcement, so that it properly pays attention to how much a ship should "cost" relative to others (based on relative ship cap, mainly).  This makes it much less likely that the AI will pile up huge amounts of low-cap ships on a planet, and if it does create such a pile up at least the proper price (in terms of fewer other ships elsewhere) was paid.
  
−
* The AI players no longer build anti-starship arachnids on their planets in response to player starships arriving.  That's outmoded thinking, as the AI already has plenty of stuff around for the starships.
+
* Fixed all remaining desync bugs; haven't had a reported desync in months.
  
−
* Fixed bug where minor faction ships firing upon AI guardians (and other AI ships guarding a guard post) could lead to those AI ships turning into threat, by no fault of the human player.
+
* Now when a forcefield is damaged, every other overlapping allied forcefield also takes a minimal amount of damage, preventing the old far-too-effective-to-be-balanceable tactic of having engineers repair inner forcefields while the outer ones tanked the damage.  It was fun, but properly micro'd it was effectively invincible before.
  
−
* It is definitely now not possible for starships or guardians to be part of cross-planet attacks or border aggression.
+
* AI Homeworld structure seeding now distinguishes between normal and "brutal" structures: the core raid engine, core CPA guard post, and AI Eye were far more significant than the other structures being considered, and the difference between an AI HW with none of them and an AI HW with 5 core raid engines could be the difference between "pushover" and "impossible".
  
−
* In recent releases, AI ships that were guarding could still "break their tether" at the end of their guard radius, which would turn them free and into threat.  Now they remain tethered unless fired upon.  This does not apply to coordinator-ships, namely hybrid hives.
+
* Made fortresses, forcefield generators, and command stations drop rebuildable remains when they die, greatly reducing the need for micro when rebuilding after a significant AI breakthrough.
  
−
* The ship ability "AI Will Abandon Post To Pursue," and its related functions, has been removed.
+
* Added the first per-control-group control options so you have finer control over auto-Free-Roaming-Defender and auto-kiting behavior.
  
−
* The per-guard-post cap of guardians is difficulty-dependent:
+
== AI Updates ==
−
** On difficulty 5 and below, the only guardians that the AI gets are the "freebie" tachyon guardians.
 
−
** These are always there at every difficulty level mentioned hereafter.
 
−
** On difficulty 6, the AI only gets a single guardian at each guard post, and it cannot ever rebuild these when they die.
 
−
** On difficulty 7+, the AI can rebuild guardians, but only gets a single one per guard post (and only starts with one).
 
−
** On difficulty 8+, the AI can rebuild guardians and gets two per guard post (and starts with two).
 
−
** On difficulty 10+, the AI can rebuild guardians and gets three per guard post (and starts with two).
 
  
−
* If the AI sends reinforcements to guard something that turns out to be dead (which happens legitimately, if somthing dies at just the wrong time), those reinforcing ships now fizzle and disappear.
+
* Previously, allied minor faction and zombie ships would just patrol around player planets endlessly, which was helpful for defense, but problematic for two reasons: first, that it could cause massive amounts of slowdown after many hours of them stacking up, and second, that it could cause massive buildups of AI stalkers, who never dare to attack the planets with so many defenders, which leads to something akin to stalemate situations.
 +
** Thus the allied minor faction and zombie logic has been adjusted as follows:
 +
*** Neutral planets are now considered the same as allied planets, and the ships will patrol to them like any others.
 +
*** If there are more than about 100 of AI threat ships on an adjacent planet, the ships will also patrol to that planet to clean them off.
 +
*** If the human-allied team has more than a token military force (more than about 10 ships) on a planet, then these ships will patrol to there, to help aid in that attack.
 +
**** This allows for small raids to still happen with raid starships or whatever without assistance from these minor factions, but it enlists their help for larger-scale engagements.
  
−
* AI Waves in general are now more of an interesting event, like they were in the pre-2.0 versions.
+
* Attack Hybrids now use a variant of the behavior the standard AI free (threat) ships use to avoid charging a human planet with insufficient firepower.  Combined with other hybrid changes in this release this may result in hybrids being a lot harder (and/or a lot more annoying) than they used to be.
−
** On difficulty 6+, waves are 3x larger.
 
−
** On difficulty 7+, waves are 6x larger.
 
−
** On difficulty 8+, waves are 9x larger.
 
  
−
* Also, the single-starship-with-every-wave is now only included on difficulty 6 and up.
+
* Reworked the CPA formula to be more aggressive on higher difficulties, since it's been sadly anemic lately.
−
** However, on difficulty 8+ it now includes two of them.
+
** Also added cpa-size calculations to the wave logs, when advanced logging is enabled.
−
** And on difficulty 9+, it now includes three of them.
 
  
−
* Added a "grace period" where the counters for roaming enclaves and preservation wardens don't start counting up until a certain time has elapsed. Currently it's 20 minutes * (10 - AI Difficulty) for the roaming enclaves, and the same (except 15 instead of 20) for the wardens. So for Diff 7 that's 1 hour, and 45 minutes, respectively.
+
* Removed a "go for the command station over everything else when AI" behavior from a number of units, including:
 +
** Leech Starships.
 +
** Flagships.
 +
** Zenith Starships.
 +
** Spire Starships.
 +
** Riot Starships.
  
−
* AI ships now automatically come into existence out of waves in FRD mode. This gives them a faster reaction time in their first few seconds of life, rather than waiting a second or two for commands from the AI thread.
+
* Barracks are now seeded on some AI planets at the start of the game (and retroactively into old saves):
 +
** The higher the difficulty, the more planets get them.
 +
** The higher the difficulty, the more ships in them.
 +
** None are placed closer than 3 hops from a human homeworld, to not be too cruel.
 +
** These serve two purposes:
 +
*** Making it far less likely that the AI will simply not have enough ships for a CPA, while still letting players whittle away at "the reserve" if they want to.
 +
*** Making the AI's defensive response to the loss of a planet (with a barracks on it) something more of an event.
  
−
== General Large Gameplay Additions ==
+
* AI planets now pick a primary, secondary, and tertiary type of ship to focus their reinforcements on. 
 +
** It's not purely random, sometimes it picks ships that fit certain roles.
 +
** When picking a new reinforcement ship for the central pulse or a non-special-forces guard-post-pulse, it has a 10% chance to pick any available ship like usual, and a 90% chance to pick one of its focus types.  When picking a focus type, it has 3 times as much chance to pick the primary as the secondary, and 3 times as much chance to pick the secondary as the tertiary.  If that doesn't make sense, don't worry about it.
 +
** Whenever the AIs unlock new ship types due to AI progress, all AI planets "reroll" their focus types.
  
−
* The starting human outpost now contains:
+
* The AI now has a "strategic reserve" it can deploy to defend critical planets (the homeworld, the core worlds, and the superterminal world; though it still holds onto most of it when defending the latter two) and pulls back up (off the board) if the attack goes away.
−
** Home Command Station
+
** Reserve ships are basically just normal mkV fleet ships, but they are not allowed to leave the planet so they can't be easily baited to their doom.
−
** A special MkI forcefield that covers a much larger area (but has the same durability as a standard MkI),
+
** The reserve starts at zero and increases periodically, so it can be whittled away.
−
** A Space Dock.
+
** The max size of the reserve and its increase rate are proportional to the difficulty of the AI player in question (each AI has its own reserve) and AIP.  On Diff 7 with non-insane AIP it's pretty tame.  Higher up, it gets more intense.
−
** A Starship Constructor.
+
** If you're curious about the numbers, with advanced logging on they go into the special forces log (since the concept is somewhat similar, and didn't seem to need a separate log; might change that).
−
** One each of Energy Reactor MkI, MkII, and MkIII.
+
** Thanks to Faulty Logic and others who voted on [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11578.75/viewresults.html this poll] for inspiring this change (more coming eventually in response to that, for that matter).
−
** Ten each of metal and crystal manufactories.
 
−
** On higher difficulties, a mobile builder and a mercenary space dock.
 
−
** Depending on difficulty (the higher the more), a number of the new Home Human Settlements and Human Cryogenic Pods.
 
  
−
* This one is a HUGE and exciting change to the base game: the endgame has been completely overhauled for AI War.  Previously, the home planets for the AI were always very similar to one another, and often they were something of a grind.
+
* AI Special Forces:
−
** The chief problem was that things were too centralized on a single unit on those planets: the AI home command stations.  You had to destroy those, and that was really the only goal; therefore, that was super hard if you didn't have enough firepower, or really easy if you did.
+
** Now get periodic extra spawns (in addition to the usual trickle from reinforcements) if under a "special forces population cap" determined by difficulty, AIP, etc.
−
** Now the emphasis is on a distributed network of specialized, much stronger guard posts, as well as a much weaker central home command station.  However, the central home command station can't be touched until all the new AI Core Guard Posts have been destroyed, which means that there are many goals on the planet before you actually get to the final goal of killing the command station itself.
+
*** The spawns are spread out among all special forces posts (and special forces guardians) in the galaxy, except those in non-AI territory.  Each post in non-AI territory instead increases the special-forces-population-cap by about 5%.  So there's a reason to kill them, in tension with the +1 AIP from killing them.
−
** There are 9 new types of these specialized guard posts, with various abilities.  Rather than enumerate those here, we'll let you discover those in-game.  Some are more rare than others, and your seeding is different every time, which makes each AI home planet quite unique now.  There is also room for expansion over time with more specialized guard posts in addition to the first 9.
+
*** If you're curious about the math, etc, turn on Advanced Logging and check SpecialForcesLogicLog.txt in your RuntimeData directory after the game has run for a bit.  There's some minor spoilers in there about what ships each AI has, but nothing you probably won't find out looking at a few AI planets anyway.
−
** The overall net effect is that you can take on the home planet a chunk-at-a-time now, and you can successfully destroy a chunk and then come back much later without having lost any progress.  This is a big improvement over the old system, where you had to build up overwhelming force and win all in one big push; again, that tended to be either too hard or too easy (usually too hard).
+
** Will now rally to defend an AI planet that is under significant attack and at least mildly important (AI Homeworld, core world, or a planet with a CSG, ARS, Advanced Factory, Super Terminal, or Broken Golem on it, giving priority to HWs/core-worlds).
−
** Going along with the above, there is now quite a bit of strategy and puzzle-style challenge to figuring out the best attack pattern and order for actually clearing the guard posts on the AI home planets.  Some of the guard posts are likely to support one another, and so your success depends on your ability to make and execute plans here.  The goal is to make the endgame as strategic as the early and middle game, rather than it always devolving into a grind or a cakewalk right at the end.
+
** Now keep the special-forces flag even when they have encountered the enemy, so that rallying to a planet does not just dump all the special forces there as normal threat.
−
** Lastly, the AI home planets previously had really inflated ship caps, in that even if you destroyed guard posts it was impossible to neuter the AI home planets at all.  This is no longer the case, and the AI home planets can now have their effective ship caps whittled down over time. This way the battles remain epic, but not laggy or grindy, hopefully.  More tweaks may be needed to this over time, too.
+
** When not rallying to defend a planet, will select a staging planet about 3 hops deep into AI territory and rally there until an eligible AI planet is attacked.
−
** All of the above DOES affect all existing savegames loaded in the new version. Enjoy!
+
** To prevent a player's first attack from running into several hundred AI ships out for blood, as entertaining as it was during testing, special forces ships are no longer seeded during the initial map seeding.
  
−
* Added "Blitz" combat style which is like Fast and Dangerous but the ship speed is doubled again. Also, "Normal" has been renamed to Epic/4X-like and "Fast and Dangerous" has been renamed to "Normal".
+
* Since "make the threatballs fish or cut bait" was #1 on the second round of the 6.0 poll:
 +
** Threat ships behave as they used to for about 30 minutes after being freed, but after that they are switched to an alternate "Threat Fleet" behavior that is somewhat similar to the new Special Forces mechanic.
 +
*** Note: this only happens on Difficulty 6+, as it's not the AI getting anything extra, it's just behaving more intelligently (in theory) with what it has.
 +
** If an AI homeworld or core world is under attack, the threat fleet will rally to defend it.
 +
** Otherwise, if it sees an accessible non-AI planet with a significant human presence that it thinks it can take out, it goes to attack that (it will still pool up at the entry wormhole in some cases, until enough of them are there to pass the threshold, so they don't march in to the grinder one-by-one).
 +
** Otherwise, it picks a planet in AI territory to hang out at until either of the two above conditions are met.
 +
** If a carrier is spontaneously formed from ships that have a significant threat-fleet population, the carrier (and anything it spawns) is also considered threat-fleet.
 +
** When a special forces alarm post is triggered it converts all special forces in the galaxy directly into threat-fleet, and then blows up the alarm post (not causing AIP, unless it was triggered because it was shot to death).
 +
** For the curious who have advanced logging on, the target-planet selection process is logged in the special forces log file.
  
−
* Added "Blitz" combat style which is like Fast and Dangerous but the ship speed is doubled again.  Also, "Normal" has been renamed to Epic/4X-like and "Fast and Dangerous" has been renamed to "Normal".
+
* Fixed a relatively longstanding bug where AIPerPlanetShipCap and AIPerGuardPostShipCap were generally not being enforced when loading a game (either just-starting or loading later).
  
−
* The keyboard bindings are now able to be edited.  The editing interface is on the settings menu, and the bindings themselves are stored in inputbindings.dat, separate from all other settings for ease of sharing, etc.
+
* Fixed a bug where hybrids were... basically completely broken.  Sigh.  The "don't let hybrids rebuild modules if they've recently been damaged" code was inverted in such a way that they could never build modules. And because they could never get modules, they were never satisfied that they were ready to go attack or defend or whatever.
  
−
* The way that the "Game Speed" options (+/-) on the keyboard work is now completely different.
+
== General Large Gameplay Additions ==
−
** Previously, the options went from 0 to 10.  Now, they go from -10 to 10... meaning that time can be slowed down as well as sped up.
 
−
** Additionally, in the past when the speed was increased from 0 to 1 it more than doubled the speed of the simulation, whereas increasing it all the way to 10 had very little change compared to the initial shift with 1.  Now the speed scaling is a lot more linear, which is quite helpful.
 
  
−
* There is a new "AI War Pre-4.0 Settings Importer" application that allows players to import pre-4.0 settings files into the new 4.0 version. Unfortunately, the new versions of AI War can't directly read the legacy settings files because of a bug in the Mono framework (regarding deserializing generic collections, if you're curious).
+
* Advanced Research Station Hacking:
−
** Our settings importer tool also moves across savegame files as a convenience, although there is no compatibility issue with them.
+
** Added the "Ship-Design Hacker" (for lack of a better name, let us know if you think of one): a 4th ship to the "science lab" line, very similar to the "Knowledge Hacker".  It gathers no knowledge, but has another ability.
 +
** If you keep a Ship-Design Hacker on an AI-controlled planet with an AI-controlled ARS for 10 minutes (it must remain stationary during this time; it's one of those kinds of countdowns), it will "hack" the Advanced Research Station and reprogram it such that when you capture the planet:
 +
*** Instead of being immediately granted a new bonus ship type, you will be able (from the tech menu of the ARS, or of a Ship-Design Hacker) to select one of three bonus ship types.
 +
*** Note the hacker does not have to survive after the hack has been completed, and the ARS does not have to survive after the planet is captured, but you will need a science lab, ARS, or SDH (anything with a tech menu that normally lets you unlock II/III versions of fleet ships, basically).
 +
** However, the AI will react to Ship-Design Hackers the same way they react to Knowledge Hackers.  Also, the number of previous ship-design-hacks you've pulled off will increase AI response to future hacking (of all 3 kinds).  Each subsequent ship-design-hack makes things a lot worse than the previous one did, such that 1 isn't a big deal, 2 is a big deal, 3 is a huge deal, 4 is probably death if you hack seriously again, and 5 is really going to mess you up if you so much as look like you're hacking the rest of the game.
  
−
* For CoN:
+
* Superterminal Hacking:
−
** Added Hybrid Hives AI Plot.
+
** Now the superterminal never seeds on an AI homeworld or core world (can still seed next to a core world which is mean, but not nearly so mean as having to permanently alert a homeworld, or capture one, in order to use the superterminal).
−
** Added "Advanced Hybrids" AI Plot; if the base Hybrids plot is enabled and the Advanced one is not, then the highest tier of Hybrid classes will be disabled (including stuff like the re-coloinzer, which is not quite implemented yet).  Also slightly influences the tech level of equipment available to the lower classes, for instance the first Attacker type will only be able to get a mkI forcefield (instead of mkII) if Advanced Hybrids is off.  If you select Advanced Hybrids and not the base Hybrids plot for an AI player, once you start the game it will act as if you had checked both.
+
** Also, the superterminal's response is now based only on the reduction achieved through the superterminal, not total AIP-reduction, so it's no longer very important to do the ST before getting reduction from other sources.
−
** Added Neinzul Nester (harder) AI type, which starts the game with Neinzul Nests on most of its planets (half of them on Diff 10, scaling down for lower difficulties).
+
** Now the antagonism generated by knowledge raiding feeds into the strength of superterminal spawns, and the number of times a superterminal has "ticked" feeds into that same antagonism (thematically, they're both "hacking" and the AI dinnae like it).
−
** Added Neinzul Rocketry Corps minor faction that initially seeds Neinzul Silos on roughly 8% of the AI planets on the map (fairly distant from any human homeworld, with the mark level of the planet on which they are placed.  On higher difficulties the silos can be of higher level (indeed, IV and V only ever show up on diff 8+).
+
*** Reducing AIP via superterminal hacking is significantly more "efficient" than knowledge raiding in terms of what you gain in return for making future hacking efforts more dangerous.  The disadvantage is that this requires the superterminal, and doesn't stop if you lose control of the system (unless you destroy the superterminal).
−
** Added Neinzul Youngster (moderate) AI Type.  Its waves' fleet ships are always Neinzul younglings (a mix of all 5, so basically always schizo), and it launches 2 times as many waves as normal.  Its planets are defended pretty lightly.
+
** Now also uses a "wild roll" system like what k-raiding uses, but it's somewhat more tame in terms of what kinds of crazy it can throw in there.  Right now all it can do is surges (10% of the time, the same effect that was added in the previous version), and the "short range warp jump" (15% of the time, spawns the units away from the superterminal itself) wild-effect that the k-raid spawns can get.
−
** Added Support Corps (easy) AI Type.  It launches no waves of its own but mixes support ships (MRS's, decoy drones, etc) into the waves of its ally.  Support ships are also mixed into normal reinforcements for all AI planets.
+
** If you have Advanced Logging enabled, each spawn will generate an entry in the "CounterSaboteurSpawns.txt" log file; it may not make sense to players but is very helpful to us if you submit it with your feedback.
−
** Added Warp Jumper (hard) AI Type.  It can launch waves against any human planet without a warp jammer on it.  If a wave is "remotely" warped in, it will spawn on the edge of the planet (50000-70000 range out from the center), rather than on a wormhole.  As a consolation, this AI's planets will not have warp gates, and thus will cost 15 AIP instead of 20 to take.
+
** The rationale for this is trying to make both k-raiding and superterminal-hacking more interesting and more of a strategic choice (since now using one makes the other more dangerous), but also to make it harder to use the superterminal for arbitrarily-high AIP reductions (we've seen cases where players could kill 400 AIP with it without even being in much danger).
−
* Added Neinzul Preservation Warden minor faction.  When this is enabled:
+
*** As with k-raiding: In general, the balance of all this is tentative.  It looks right in our testing, but it may be too easy or (perhaps more likely) too hard.  Please give us feedback and we will continue to refine towards better balance and more fun :)
−
** The game will periodically check if it should spawn one of these enclave starships.  They are always allied with the AI.
 
−
** The original spawn points are generally on AI core worlds.
 
−
** The enclave starship will then wander towards human territory and be antagonized by any extractors on nearby planets and release its younglings to attack the humans.
 
−
** Once it reaches human territory it typically thinks that the place is a dump and starts on a journey back to an AI core world.
 
−
** The chance of enclave spawn and the rate of youngling production is directly related to the number of extractors currently running in the galaxy.
 
−
* Added Neinzul Roaming Enclave minor faction.  When this is enabled:
 
−
** The game will periodically check if it should spawn one of these enclave starships. 
 
−
** When spawning, it randomly picks between AI-ally, Human-ally, and Enemy-to-all versions of the roaming enclave starship. 
 
−
*** The AI-ally ones will spawn somewhere in AI territory and move towards human territory to raid it (typically having had time to build up a few youngling squadrons).  When damaged to 50% or less it typically retreats to AI territory to regen.
 
−
*** The Human-ally ones will spawn on a human planet, produce (internally) at least one squadron of younglings, and then try to raid AI planets.  When damaged to 50% or less it typically retreats to human territory to regen and rebuild its squadrons.
 
−
*** The Enemy-to-all ones will spawn on an AI planet that borders a non-AI planet, and typically run away as it gets shot at by lots of stuff.  These don't really have anywhere to run and tend not to last long, but they can still spice things up a bit.
 
  
−
* Not really gameplay, but this is huge: completely remastered soundtracks for AI War and TZR!
+
=== Lobby Setup Scripts ===
  
−
* There is now a Unit Cap Scale lobby option that allows players to choose between the following options (Normal is now the default, and is applied to all existing saveganes; players may recognize that High was the previous default):
+
* Preface: over the years we've had requests accumulate on a number of different fronts that couldn't easily be handled the way things were, like:
−
** Most large-cap ships have half the standard cap (Fighter MkI = 50), and are roughly twice as expensive, twice as strong, etc.
+
** Numerous new players asking "What's a good setup for my first game?"
−
*** This puts the lowest possible load on the your CPU when you have the biggest-possible battles.
+
** Variable-strength minor factions and AI plots (which could be handled just by the above changes, but read on)
−
** Normal caps (Fighter MkI = 99), costs, and strengths.
+
** Randomized minor factions and AI plots, particularly combined with variable-strength.
−
*** This puts a moderate load on your CPU when you have really large-scale battles.
+
** Randomized and hidden minor factions and AI plots (so you don't know what's there until you run into it in the game, with potentially hilarious results).
−
** Most large-cap ships have double the standard cap (Fighter MkI = 198) and are roughly half as expensive, half as strong, etc.
+
** Some kind of overall "difficulty ranking" for a particular game setup.
−
***This puts a lot more load on the your CPU when you have the biggest-possible battles.
 
  
−
* A new in-game music track, "The Last Chapter," has been added to the base game.
+
* So, from a small scripting language that was written for (and actually not ultimately used for) AVWW, a Lobby Setup Scripting system has been cobbled together.  The actual scripting language is likely to completely change in the next version (it's really verbose, cumbersome, etc, but it does work), but the short story is it's now possible to define external scripts which populate the settings in the lobby.
 +
** Please note, those of you with scenario-building aspirations, that this really only sets stuff in the lobby.  It cannot directly influence mapgen (placement of planets, units, etc) in any way.
 +
** To use a script, start a new game, and in the lobby on the Map tab pick an option from the Setup Script dropdown.  It will then immediately execute the script and apply the changes to the lobby.
 +
** The following scripts are available in this version:
 +
*** Beginner Game
 +
**** A fairly simple, fairly easy scenario that may be a good next step for new players who have just completed the intermediate tutorial.
 +
*** Beginner Game 2
 +
**** A bit harder than the scenario generated by the Beginner Game script.  May be a good next step for new players who have just completed the intermediate tutorial and are feeling confident.
 +
*** Random Factions 1
 +
**** This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game (no expansions required).
 +
***** Note (this goes for the rest of these scripts, too): it's not purely random, it starts with a certain number of "points" and randomly picks factions/plots to allocate them to.  Friendly factions (in this case, human resistance fighters) actually increase the point total when chosen, rather than decreasing it.  The point is that while there's simply no way to get any kind of overall "difficulty score" of a particular scenario, it is possible (with significant effort) to make a script which produces scenarios within a particular range of difficulty.  Which, hopefully, scratches the real itch behind the "difficulty score" request.
 +
*** Random Factions 2
 +
**** This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game and The Zenith Remnant expansion.
 +
*** Random Factions 3
 +
**** This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game and the The Zenith Remnant and Children Of Neinzul expansions.
 +
*** Random Factions 4
 +
**** This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game and the The Zenith Remnant, Children Of Neinzul, and Light Of The Spire expansions.
 +
*** Unknown Factions 1
 +
**** This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game (no expansions required), and then hides them so that you cannot see what has been selected either in the lobby or in the game.  If you then pick another script (or none) the hidden status will be reset.
 +
*** Unknown Factions 2
 +
**** This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game and The Zenith Remnant expansion.  It then hides them so that you cannot see what has been selected either in the lobby or in the game.  If you then pick another script (or none) the hidden status will be reset.
 +
*** Unknown Factions 3
 +
**** This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game and The Zenith Remnant and Children Of Neinzul expansions.  It then hides them so that you cannot see what has been selected either in the lobby or in the game.  If you then pick another script (or none) the hidden status will be reset.
 +
*** Unknown Factions 4
 +
**** This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game and The Zenith Remnant, Children Of Neinzul, and Light Of The Spire expansions.  It then hides them so that you cannot see what has been selected either in the lobby or in the game.  If you then pick another script (or none) the hidden status will be reset.
  
−
== Co-Op Improvements ==
+
=== Energy System Rework ===
  
−
* The effect on overall ship caps from having more players is now more severe; this keeps the performance more in line even in larger multiplayer games.
+
* The motivation here:
 +
** The previous energy system was settled on after a series of different models were tried, and has been around for over 2 years, and has served pretty well.
 +
** But there were a number of problems pointed out by players over the years, the most bothersome being:
 +
*** There's significant motive to maintain as close-to-zero positive net energy balance because energy costs metal+crystal per second and a positive net energy balance provides no real benefit.
 +
**** A positive balance did protect against having your forcefields shut off in case of losing a reactor, but that could be easily protected against by a big pile of low-powered reactors that you can bring up as needed; or you can go low-power a hundred spider turrets, or whatever.
 +
*** And maintaining that low-wasted-energy state involved _tons_ of micro.  A couple of "automated energy hamster" hotkeys were added to greatly reduce that micro (by making the "low-power least efficient 'on' reactor" and "power-on most efficient 'off' reactor" operations a single keystroke instead of minutes of scrolling and clicking), but that was really just a bandaid.
 +
** Many people have requested automated energy management as a solution to all this, but whenever the game is simulating something that it then turns around and plays optimally without your involvement... that means something is wrong.  In this genre, anyhow.
 +
** Thanks to Cyborg and other players for making this point, and being patient as we tried to find a better model.
  
−
* The "would you like to reconnect to the disconnected server?" message now only pops up once every 60 seconds at most, rather than immediately popping up again after you are disconnected.  This makes it actually possible to use the menus to quit and do something other than reconnect, etc. It also will no longer actually pop up when the player has the in-game menu or the settings menu open.
+
* The overall result is that the energy/econ game should actually be easier, unless you were relying on low-efficiency reactors or low-powering tons of stuff to make ends meet.  In those cases it shouldn't be much harder.
 +
** But please let us know if the new model really messes you up in some way, or if you have other feedback.  It's not like this model can't be changed, it just seemed a definite step in the right direction from where we were.
 +
** If you're curious about the comparison math, check out this post: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11031.msg110117.html#msg110117
 +
** Anyway, on to the specific changes:
  
−
== Performance Improvements ==
+
* Removed the Energy Reactors (all of them, MkI, MkII, MkIII).
  
−
* Some internal networking changes have been made as the start of phasing in a new, more memory-efficient network/savegame format over time. These first changes add a very slight bit of memory/CPU efficiency on the game host, including in single-player games, but mostly they are laying the groundwork for more extensive future changes.
+
* Added the "Energy Collector", which is like the energy reactors were except:
 +
** Produces 150,000 energy.
 +
*** For reference, in the previous model an EnergyI+EnergyII+EnergyIII produced 125,000.
 +
** No ongoing m+c cost.
 +
*** For reference, in the previous model an EnergyI+EnergyII+EnergyIII cost 57m+57c per second to run.
 +
** Can only build one per planet per player.
 +
** Output scales up with that player's number of homeworlds (to scale up for the extra stuff multi-HW players can build, similar to how reactors used to do it but without spamming lots of them).
 +
** Cannot be low-powered (there'd be no point).
  
−
* Made a rather notable performance improvement to ship explosions (which are just visual, not part of the simulation itself):
+
* Added the "Matter Converter", which is like the energy reactors were except:
−
** Explosions on other planets or otherwise out of your view no longer actually happen, thus saving a goodly amount of sim CPU load when taken in aggregate.
+
** Produces 50,000 energy.
−
** When in far zoom, the little debris is too small to see with explosions anyway, so it now doesn't render that, either. That only happens on larger ships anyway, but this saves the GPU and CPU load of both generating and then rendering this. A much more minor update than the first, but still notable.
+
** Costs 100m+100c per second to run.
 +
** No construction cap, and also no efficiency penalty for stacking.
 +
*** Yes, this does mean that for now it's best to just pile these all up in a defensible place (much like manufactories); that will probably change in the future but probably not through an efficiency penalty.
 +
** Cannot be low-powered, since the main point of this rework is to avoid "player-time-tax" micro.
 +
*** This can still result in mid-battle micro if you just lost a collector or whatever and need to build another converter, but that's real in-game costs at a critical moment rather than the only difference between optimal and sloppy play being how much wall-clock-time you personally want to spend "making change for a dollar" throughout the game.
 +
** In general, these are very inefficient compared to the old reactors, but more efficient than deeply-stacked low-efficiency reactors.  The idea is that the collectors replace the output you used to get from normal-efficiency reactors, and the converters fill the role of the low-efficiency reactor piles.
  
−
* A significant new early-out performance improvement has been made for range checks.  Especially when there are a lot of ships that are out of range of a battle on a planet (such as those at other guard posts), this now has a notable boost to performance.
+
* Putting units in low-power mode now no longer reduces their energy use.
 +
** Again: removing the motive to micro stuff for energy purposes is one of the driving motivations here.
 +
** Renamed "Low Power mode" to "Stand Down mode", since it's no longer for the purpose of reducing energy.
 +
** The mechanic for reducing energy use in stand-down mode is still there, just unused.  It may be used for golems or stuff like that later, we'll see.
  
−
* Some performance increases, notably for cases where there are a ton of human ships on a planet with no AI ships.  These changes may result in it taking a little longer for a ship's protections (being under a forcefield, counter-shooter, etc) to update, and for engineers to find something to auto-assist when idle.
+
* Removed energy costs from Human Home Settlement and Cryogenic Pod structures, since you can't low-power the settlements anymore (and 8000e a pop isn't much fun in a tight early-game situation).
  
−
* A number of small performance improvements all throughout the application, moving away from the System.Drawing structs to custom ArcenPoint, ArcenRectangle, and ArcenSize structs.  These structs are more efficient in terms of RAM and CPU, and are Unity-compatible, which the others were not.
+
* Removed the auto-build-energy-reactors controls, and added toggles at the galaxy-level and planet-level for autobuilding collectors, and sliders at the galaxy-level and planet-level for autobuilding converters.
  
−
* The seek CPU efficiency of teleporting engineers has been increased significantly.
+
* Added new slider to galaxy-wide per-player-controls screen: Energy Buffer To Maintain
 +
** If this is set above zero, the game will try to maintain that amount of "buffer" energy above zero.  A few examples:
 +
*** Docks will not build ships that would take you below the buffer amount.
 +
*** Ships will not be reclaimed if it would take you below the buffer amount.
 +
*** Broken Golems will not be activated if it would take you below the buffer amount.
 +
** This can be restrictive, but it can also help if you're deliberately trying to keep all your defenses operational in the event of the AI destroying one or more of your energy producing units.
 +
** Note that this will not stop you from scrapping energy producing units (however low that may take your net energy), so be careful.
 +
*** This is because going negative energy never stopped scrapping before, so that part wasn't changed.
 +
** Thanks to chemical_art for the suggestion.
  
−
* TryFindAssistTarget (engineers looking for something to repair or assist) is now separate from the TryFindOtherTargets throttle, and has been cranked down since those searches can take so long.
+
* When upgrading saves from 5.039 and earlier:
 +
** For all EnergyI, EnergyII, and EnergyIII units:
 +
*** If that player already has an Energy Collector on that planet, the reactor is replaced by a Matter Converter.
 +
*** Otherwise, the reactor is replaced by an Energy Collector.
 +
** After that, while the player has > 60,000 spare energy and any remaining Matter Converters:
 +
*** Scrap a Matter Converter on the planet with the most remaining Matter Converters controlled by that player.
 +
** The result should be that:
 +
*** If you had a positive energy balance before this version, you will have a positive energy balance when you load the save in 5.040+.
 +
*** It won't give you a lot of Matter Converters you don't need.
 +
*** You'll still want to look at your energy situation and make adjustments for the new model. Particularly if this version-upgrade logic somehow messes up in your case ;)
  
−
* TryFindTachyonTargets (tachyon emitters checking for cloaked ships in rage) is now separate from the TryFindOtherTargets throttle, and is fairly generous since even a partial second's delay can make a difference between your turrets eating the raptors for lunch and the raptors eating your command station for theirs.
+
* The automated energy hamsters have taken off without giving notice, but we suspect they're on vacation in Bermuda.
  
−
* Some performance improvements to collision checking, target list filtering and sorting, and the generic basic range checking function.
+
* In case you were wondering, all the tooltips and relevant tutorial components have been updated for the new model, but please let us know if we missed something.
  
−
* Some performance improvements to the "move ship" logic that handles a lot of every-cycle logic for non-cold-storage ships.
+
== Co-Op Improvements ==
  
−
* A minor performance improvement to CheckForTargetListUpdate.
+
* Fixed another rare desync that would occur when the "ship to kill" logic was loaded from savegames that were saved during a big battle.  Not many people save DURING a big battle, so this one didn't come up much.
  
−
* Added a separate throttle category for ships that have only overkill targets, so that those ships are more likely to update their target lists in a timely fashion when non-overkill targets show up.
+
* Added in a new "aggregate hash" that sums up a few key integer stats from non-cold-storage ships (location xy, destination xy, is destination settled, "ship to kill" object number), to provide a sort of early warning system against desyncs.
 +
** This makes the game much likely to actually desync quicker when there is a desync going on under the hood, which will make them easier to find, and hopefully also easier to reproduce when a player does run into a desync.
 +
** This adds a bit to the CPU load, but since it's all addition, it's nothing particularly notable, which is one of the plusses of this.
  
−
* Some small performance improvements in overall main loop code and AI determination of "how much strength is protecting ship X".
+
* Fixed a bug where helper players were getting the overflow from other players resources income-past-cap.
 +
** The resources were basically being lost since helpers cannot gift resources, which is intentional as otherwise this overflow case would represent an in-game bonus from having slots devoted to "helper", which would invalidate the assumption that the game can be balanced as if they weren't there and thus the AI's strength doesn't have to go up due to the presence of helpers, etc.
 +
** Along with this: apparently in the past overflow was going to ALL human player slots, even those that had never had any players in them, causing the resources to be split more ways than necessary in MP games with fewer than 8 human players.  Fixed now.
  
−
* A major refactoring in the internal codebase has taken place, fixing a number of bugs and also leading to some performance gains (mainly RAM more than CPU, but also some CPU).
+
* Fixed a bug in multiplayer where hacking an ARS and having the first player pick an unlock on that planet would cause the other human players to be given a random unlock about a game-second later.
  
−
* Some more efficiency improvements to the AI thread.
+
== Performance Improvements ==
−
 
 
−
* More internal optimizations that make loading savegames faster than ever, reduces RAM use a bit more, and somewhat lowers the overhead of having a lot of ships moving around in the galaxy.  Also makes rendering lots of ships on the screen slightly more efficient, and corrects a few display-related bugs.
 
−
 
 
−
* Changed normal wormhole exit behavior to automatically set destination to a point on a (filled) circle around the wormhole.  Previously ships would sit directly on the wormhole and wait for a collision check; many versions ago this just meant the game slowed to a crawl while the collision checks ran, and in more recent versions the collision-checks-allowed-per-cycle throttle meant that ships just sat on the wormhole forever and got eaten by AOE.  Now they should immediately fan out a bit and check for collisions when they stop.
 
−
 
 
−
* TryFindAssistTarget throttle made more sensitive to the cost of the actual target searches, so that engineers on planets with smaller allied unit counts will be able to get through faster.
 
−
 
 
−
* Previously it was possible for the automatic AI engineer retreat logic to place an undue load on the CPU, fixed to pace these calculations.
 
−
 
 
−
* A substantial new performance improvement has been made to units on "cold storage" planets with no enemies present: basically, the entire processing of the planet is skipped except every other turn (even for things like special forces or free units on those planets, if other ships on that same planet are in cold storage), which reduces background simulation processing (in other words, not human player ships or battles) to a pretty enormous degree.
 
−
** To clarify, a turn is 200ms long.
 
−
** The "statistics" for things like the number of attacking ships, threatening ships, etc, are also now only recalculated every other turn, which also helps with load to a much more minor degree.
 
−
** Any ships that are moving on planets of this sort now move twice as fast, since they are artificially only moving half as often.  This keeps it from actually altering gameplay in meaningful ways (though players will likely still find something!).
 
−
 
 
−
* Converted some remaining string.concat list-building blocks to StringBuilder.Append, to prevent some (non-impossible) cases that would cause out-of-memory crashes.
 
−
 
 
−
* There are no longer any prerequisites for running the game.
 
−
 
 
−
* The game no longer uses GDI+, so it is no longer at all dependent on system fonts, and programs like FRAPS are able to record the menus as well as the actual gameplay.
 
−
 
 
−
* Thanks largely to the removal of the GDI+ components, the game application itself opens markedly faster now.
 
−
 
 
−
* The draw-framerate is now independent from the simulation-framerate.
 
−
** This is a huge benefit, because now the draw framerate automatically drops under serious load (like a big battle), which lets the actual simulation speed stay at 100% during play in many cases.
 
−
*** Thus the game doesn't slow down to a crawl during big battles (it just gets briefly choppy, if that), which passes much more quickly and is markedly less frustrating.
 
−
*** Also, if one player has a slightly underpowered machine during a network game, it is less likely to slow down the simulation for the other players, which is also excellent.
 
−
 
 
−
* In-game textures are now streamed into the game in a queue, rather than loaded-all-at-once when first encountered.  This avoids choppiness and momentary lag when loading savegames and similar.  This does cause images to be invisible and then pop-in during that same time, but that's much preferable in the main.
 
−
 
 
−
* The methods for rendering general in-game shots is now 1/5th as GPU-intensive as before.  The method for rendering missile shots is now 1/9th as GPU-intensive as before.  The method for rendering explosions are now about 1/2 to 1/4 as GPU-intensive as before.  The method for rendering the new uv-animated line effects is about 1/5 as GPU-intensive as the old "fuzzy line" effects.  Paired with new graphics, they also look better, which gives a double bonus to this shift.
 
−
 
 
−
* There is now less apparent lag when first loading a game, as the AI thread is started right at the tail end of the load process rather than during the first frames of the game.
 
−
 
 
−
* In general, the lobby is now vastly faster and more responsive, whereas before it was rather laggy because it had some logic being run many times more than it needed to be.
 
−
 
 
−
* The planetary summary now combines various icon layers into intermittent textures, which makes it use on average 5x fewer draw calls to the GPU, and lower transient per-frame memory as well.\
 
−
 
 
−
* The buttons along the bottom of the screen (and buy buttons, etc) have been massively upgraded to be far more efficient.
 
  
−
* Performance Profile can now be changed from the Scores tab of the Stats screen.
+
* HUGE Memory breakthrough.
 +
** Bad news first: the bad news is that this touched 63 different code files, and has resulted in approximately 4500 disparate lines of code being changed in a spiderweb pattern all throughout the application.  So... expect some bugs.  So far we haven't seen any, but with an organization change this drastic some are inevitable.  Why, oh why, would we do this?
 +
** Well, that brings us to the good news: the baseline heap memory usage for the application has been literally HALVED, and in large savegames it's also... well, about halved in most cases.  For those players that had been experiencing the dreaded "Too Many Heap Sections" error (thanks to Unity 3D's less than stellar garbage collector bounding capping out at about 900MB), this is tremendous news.
 +
** As a small ancillary bonus, this also makes both the program itself and individual savegames load a bit faster.  The older your CPU, the more you will notice this effect (on older CPUs, it could shave off multiple seconds, actually).
 +
** As another not-so-small bonus, this restructuring cuts down on some confusing cases with the spirecraft and how some of the by-unit-scale stuff works.  Long-term, this should mean a lot fewer bugs related to the unit cap scales, which is also welcome news.  Some subtle bugs related to the armor rating have already been fixed as just part of making this transition, though we don't think anyone reported these specific ones.
  
−
* Added Performance Profile dropdown to Game Options tab of Lobby.
+
* Put in a small code change that might lead to more efficiency during really large battles with a lot of things being drawn as well as a lot of sound effects being played. It might also make no difference, but it's a good precaution either way; our tests so far have not really been clear as to whether there is any benefit.
  
−
* Added "FPS" and "Viewing" columns to the Scores tab of the Stats window; FPS so you can see what kind of performance other players are getting locally, and Viewing so you can tell what they are looking at (and switch to that view yourself by clicking the button).
+
* Added new unit cap scale option: Ultra Low
 +
** Most large-cap ships have roughly a quarter of the standard cap (Fighter MkI = 24), and are roughly four times as expensive, four times as strong, etc.
 +
** This puts the lowest possible load on the your CPU when you have the biggest-possible battles.  Also helpful if you're playing a game with 8 human homeworlds (in multiplayer or otherwise).
  
−
* The AI now keeps its guarding ships (except for the really ultra-long-range-ones) in low-power mode until there is actually a need to use them, and then it brings them out of low power mode and often puts them into free mode.  This makes those ships more of a counterattack risk, as well as in general keeping the CPU usage of huge battles on AI planets to a minimum when a bunch of the ships wouldn't be involved in the battle, anyway.
+
* Backported the draw order sorting from AVWW after all.  This should help with the performance of lots of shots, lines, forcefields, or similar being on the screen at the same time.  Or far zoom icons for ships, for that matter.  It won't help for the ships themselves when you are very zoomed in, but that's comparably rarer.
  
−
* Some fair performance improvements have been made to large battles on AI planets with a lot of low-power ships.
+
* Removed the usage of Graphics.DrawMesh (which helped performance in AVWW, but seemed to harm performance in AI War for some people) in favor of Graphics.DrawMeshNow (which is what we've been using in AI War up until the last couple of releases).  If you were seeing performance problems in the last few versions, please let us know if you continue to do so.
  
−
* We're now taking steps to "stretch" the mono Garbage Collector at game start, so that it won't garbage collect quite so frequently during normal gameplay. This doesn't solve the every-8-second jitter, but it does make it only about every 19 seconds from what we've seen.  More info: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/23223/how-to-stop-sound-from-skipping-during-gc-collection
+
* Added a memory optimization to the aggregate-targeting system to only initialize the data structures as it needs them rather than all up front.  This may cause some slowdown when fighting on a planet for the first time or with a bunch of new ship types at once, etc, but in general that shouldn't be too bad and will "work itself out" during the early phase of a battle.
 +
** Memory had been pretty ok, but every time we add new ship types that's more memory footprint all around so it was good to counterbalance that a bit.
  
−
* A huge amount of extra performance (in certain cases) has been gained by setting a maximum time-per-sim-frame that causes fewer sim frames per draw frame to be rendered when there is severe lag.  This makes it so that in situations of extreme lag, the game will remain responsive (though running slower), while in situations of mild to moderate lag, the game will remain at full speed (though drawing fewer frames).  Note to other Unity developers: Time.maximumDeltaTime is awesome.
+
* Removed the sprite pooling, including the sprite pooling option in the settings menu, and greatly improved both RAM use and CPU load with this and related underlying functions.
  
−
* The FPS line from the F3 Debug menu now includes a "Game vs Realtime Speed" that shows the correlation between the system clock and the game clock. 100% would be a perfect correlation, and in general the game hovers close to that.  However, when the game is running faster than realtime, it will go above 100%, and when it's running slower than realtime it will be below 100%.
+
* In particular, improved the batching of things like destination lines, ship-to-ship beams, and so forth.  These should now perform better than they did before we even started the backporting (which then caused a performance hit on these operations).
  
−
* A new Game Speed label has been added to the Players tab of the Stats window (where you can adjust your performance profile).  This label shows how well the game is running at the moment, as well as giving advice on if you need to use a lower performance profile or not.
+
* Fixed a longstanding (since March 2011) bug where several per-unit computations were being done every frame instead of every 6 or so frames as designed.
−
 
 
−
* A memory/CPU performance improvement has been added relating to when gamecommands are compressed or not.  Actually, this is a slight savings on network bandwidth, too.
 
−
 
 
−
* Added code to clear various static temp-working lists right after they are used to prevent them from holding on to references to ships from previous games (and thus planets from previous games, and the ships on those planets, etc; technically it shouldn't still have a reference the planet but you never know), and dead ships from the same game.  All this would have lead to the game requiring more memory than necessary.
 
−
 
 
−
* Significant reduction in transient memory allocation on the AI thread, to reduce the frequency of Garbage Collector activity in the app in general, and thus the frequency of hiccups in the music and input handling, etc.
 
−
 
 
−
* Saving and loading of games is now going to cause a small bit more of a hiccup in game execution, but will also use massively less memory and should have almost no chance of causing out of memory errors.
 
−
 
 
−
* There is now a bit better of a speed throttle on the way that data is sent to the AI thread, leading to less lag on the main game thread when there is a bunch that needs to be sent to the AI.
 
−
 
 
−
* The way that the AI thread gets updated data about units in the game is now through a separate data channel from the way that it gets commands to send waves, updates about planet ownership, and other things.  This has several advantages.  First, because we're able to avoid boxing some structs, this is much more memory-static.  Secondly, it prevents the AI thread from getting sluggish on processing things like waves because of a backlog of units to update in ultra-high-unit-count games (north of 70k).  Third, it allowed for the better speed throttle mentioned above, without causing a more general lack of correctness on the part of the AI thread.
 
−
 
 
−
* An ENORMOUS performance improvement has been made for the game host in large unit-count games in particular.  The AI thread sync logic is now using generic queues instead of lists, resulting in state-sync operations happily taking under 8ms for 15,000 synced units, rather than taking 8ms for only about 20-30 synced units.  This effect will be most pronounced in games with more units.
 
−
 
 
−
* Another similar large improvement has been made to the pooling of explosions, shot graphics, etc.
 
−
 
 
−
* A similar, but smaller improvement has been made to the sending of large, mult-part network messages.
 
−
 
 
−
* Yet more work has been done to improve the rate of memory utilization in the mono gc.
 
−
 
 
−
* The game is now strictly limited to 12 open disk threads at a time.  Previously it would usually be that few or fewer, anyway, but in a few cases it could get higher and this could lead to jerkiness on windows and potentially crashes on OSX.
 
−
 
 
−
* The last of memory-rootedness fixes, for now, has been put in place.  The amount of permanently-added memory after loading a savegame is now only about 2mb.
 
  
 
== Interface Improvements ==
 
== Interface Improvements ==
 +
* The "selection description" window in the bottom right of the hud that shows the count of each type in the selection now shows two percents: the first is the average percent-of-max-health of the living ships of that type (this used to be there before the Unity port, and it's back now!), the second is the lowest percent-of-max-health of the living ships of that type.
  
−
*Added context menu; the default context menu for your current context can be opened via Alt+Right-click.  There is also a keyboard-only bind that you can set if you want to be able to open it at one keypress.
+
* The selection description window will now try to display up to 30 entries without resorting to a scrollbar, instead of only 5.
  
−
*Added "Special Move" item to context menu (when you have ships selected, on planet view) that allows setting of group/formation/attack/frd/queued flags via mouse rather than the various (and sometimes obscure) key combinations.
+
* Replaced the old "if CanUseNeinzulRegenerator then multiply by 2" wave-size rule with a more general UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier UnitData field.
 +
** Everything with CanUseNeinzulRegenerator (which is just the 5 youngling types), gets a 2 for this.
 +
** As an experiment, Bombers get 0.8 and Fighters and Missile Frigates get 1.2.  Bomber waves will probably still be more dangerous (as is intended) but it might make the difference in "interestingness" less.  Not planning to touch the bonus ship types because if the AI has a particularly bomber-like bonus ship type that should just be a characteristic of the kind of difficulty you'll be facing in that game, etc.
  
−
*Added "Stop" item to context menu (when you have ships selected, on planet view) that emulates the "end" key command that cancels all standing commands, formation (if you're on sticky formations, those don't clear with normal moves), etc.
+
* On to #2 on the vote tallies list: The mouseover tooltip for the AI Progress display on the resource bar now displays each of the tech level thresholds for each AI Player.
 +
** Thanks to wyvern83 for the suggestion.
  
−
*Moved Auto Explore command from the A+E+X key combination to the context menu (only when you have selected ships and at least one is a scout).
+
* Courtesy of being really high on the vote tallies: previously double-clicking a single unit would select all (your) units of that exact type on the screen.  Now triple-clicking will do the same thing except it will include all units of the same general type (ShipType).  Meaning that triple-clicking a fighter of any mark will select all your fighters of any mark on the screen.
 +
** Caveat: the general categorization being used is sometimes more general than mark; notably remains rebuilders have the same ShipType as engineers.  Requests to make triple-clicking an engineer not also select remains rebuilders are likely to be ignored ;)
 +
** Also, we have to do this triple-click detection manually, so basically it's looking for a third click within 3 tenths of a second after the double-click selection.  If this timing is problematic, let us know.
  
−
*Auto Explore now functions in the absence of unexplored planets (either you've explored them all or you started with all explored), and applies similar auto-pathing logic to unscouted or not-scouted-recently planets (preferring the unscouted, then the not-scouted-for-5-hours, then the not-scouted-for-1-hour, etc).
+
* In response to the number-one-on-the-vote-tallies mantis issue:
 +
** Added new PlanetView KeyBind: "Show Strong/Weak Info":
 +
*** Defaults to Alt+W.
 +
*** When this is active and the mouse cursor is over a ship, each planetary summary sidebar entry will display Win/Lose/Draw (and a % indicating intensity of win or loss, if it's not a draw) as a rough indicator of how effective a cap of the ship type under the cursor would be against a cap of the entry's ship type.  Since planetary summary entries frequently include multiple distinct types of ships, this is perhaps most useful in conjunction with the "Guide" mode of the planetary summary that shows all ships of a given mark level (the default key for switching to guide mode is F1).  However, even in normal mode this can be useful to at least get a rough feel for which of your ships on the planet are the best you have on hand against a specific target.
 +
*** Caveat: this is not using a full simulation or anything like that, it uses the same simplified formula as the reference tab uses.  So stuff with modules won't really get accurate results (because it's only counting the base hull), etc.
 +
*** Suggestions on text color, default keys, etc, are quite welcome; we're not totally happy with the effect right now but don't have a lot of time to fiddle with alternatives.
 +
** Added new PlanetView KeyBind: "Strong/Weak => One Vs One":
 +
*** Defaults to Alt+E (so the full combination would be to hold Alt+W+E).
 +
*** When both this and the "Show Strong/Weak Info" keybind are active, the strong/weak info shown will use a one-ship vs. one-ship comparison instead of the normal cap vs. cap comparison.
  
−
*Auto Exploring scouts no longer try to evade after exiting a wormhole, instead they should shortly pick a new exploration/scouting destination and get moving that way.
+
* Courtesy of the new #2 item on the mantis vote-tallies: Added "Auto-Scout-Picket" command to the context menu (there's also an key bind, unbound by default):
 +
** Tell all cloaking scout units in the selection to try to station themselves on a planet where you do not currently have scout intel.  Basically it:
 +
*** 1) Makes a list of all scouts with cloaking in your selection.
 +
*** 2) Makes a list of all planets you do not have current (less than 5 seconds ago) scout intel.
 +
*** 3) Sorts that list of planets by distance (ascending) to the planet with your selection.
 +
*** 4) Tells the first scout in the first list to go to the first planet in the second list, and so on.  If it runs out of planets it loops back to the beginning of the planet list and thus it will double up, etc.  When it runs out of scouts it stops.
 +
** Please remember that this order (and auto-explore) are only intended to automate simple scouting situations and thus save you time giving otherwise trivial orders.  If your scouts all die before accomplishing anything that means that it's not a simple scouting situation and you'll need to take manual control to get good results.
 +
** Thanks to Malibu Stacey for the suggestion that inspired this command.
  
−
*Auto-explore is now non-random and much more even in deciding between equidistant planets of the same level of "I need to scout this".  So if you have 5 unexplored (or unscouted, in an everything-starts-explored game) planets connected to your home world and build 10 scouts there and put them on auto-explore, 2 each will go to each of those 5 planets.  At least, that's the idea.
+
* Previously the controls window was not fitting vertically on 1024x600 (which isn't officially supported but we try to make it playable).  Fixed to fit better.
 +
** Thanks to Talaraine for the report.
  
−
*Existing "counter-shot radius" drawing logic (which also draws tractor range, tachyon range, etc) will now draw engineering range if the ship has one and does not have a counter-shot or other auxiliary range.
+
* Courtesy of the current #1 on the mantis vote tallies: Added "Copy To Disk" and "Copy From Disk" buttons to bottom of the controls screen.
 +
** Copy To File creates a copy of your global controls (excluding per-planet stuff, but including ship designs) as "copiedGlobalControlSet.dat" in your RuntimeData directory.
 +
** Copy From File prompts you to confirm first, and if you confirm it overwrites all your global control (excluding per-planet stuff, but including ship designs) from what's in "copiedGlobalControlSet.dat" in your RuntimeData directory.  If you don't actually have such a file it doesn't do anything when you confirm.
  
−
* Added "Auto Gather Knowledge (Science Only)" to the context menu. When executed, selected science ships will be automatically issued the following orders:
+
* Courtesy of the new #2 item on the mantis vote tallies list: Added "Mobile Tractors With Full Load Rally" toggle to the global tab of the controls screen.
−
** if not on friendly planet, no orders
+
** If this toggle is checked, when one of your mobile units with tractor beams (notably Etherjets, Spire Tractor Platforms, Spirecraft Martyrs, and Black Widow Golems) has a "full load" (all tractors active), it will look for a rally post to rally to.  If that rally post happens to be a redirector, that will work as it normally does, etc.
−
** else if on friendly planet but there's knowledge left to get, and not under a strong forcefield:
+
** When the rally trigger kicks in, all other orders (including FRD and attack-move, etc) will be canceled on the tractoring unit.  But if you give the ship an order after the rally behavior is triggered, it won't retry the rally unless it it loses one of its tractor targets and then fills up again.
−
*** if command station is under strong forcefield, set destination to that forcefield
+
** Note that this does not apply to Riot Control Starships with tractor modules, because the modules themselves are not mobile units.
−
*** else if there are allied forcefields on the planet, set destination for the one nearest to the command station
 
−
*** else set destination for the command station
 
−
** else if there's a planet I can reach through a friendly-planet-only path that has knowledge left to get, set destination to the nearest one (if there are more than one equidistant it picks the first one in the list every time, no random, so groups on one planet will all go to the same other planet).
 
−
** else no orders (but periodically check again)
 
−
** (note: friendly planet is defined as a planet with an orbital command station owned by a player on the same team as the science ship's owner)
 
  
−
* When the energy count is being shown for ships (either by pressing Alt+A, or via the net energy being low for you), transports now show their own energy plus that of all the ships inside themselves.
+
* Fixed the close-zoom image for the AI Core Neinzul Spawner Guard Post having a height that wasn't a power of 2.
 +
** This would only impacted you if you were all the way zoomed in on one of these, and would have led to it looking stretched or (on older graphics card) looking gibberish-like.
 +
** But in the recent backporting we added some extra sanity checks that catch this when the player tries to look at it.
  
−
* Command Stations are now shown on the Planetary Summary icon lists on the galaxy map.
+
* An all-new, much higher-quality starfield/nebulae background effect is now drawn behind planets.  These are vastly more varied and interesting, and require a similar amount of CPU/GPU processing to render as the old ones did.
  
−
* The DEF build category was really a misnomer at this point, and has been renamed to SUP instead (Support instead of Defense, which more accurately describes those ships).
+
* The game no longer scrolls the nebulae at the start of the game, instead giving you a really good static look at a really interesting nebulae background.
  
−
* The lobby tooltips now show the costs for each of the starting ship classes (mark I only, but still).
+
* A completely new method for rendering the planets has been put in place, and they are now more a part of the background starfield/nebula than anything else.
 +
** As part of this, 14 of the pre-existing planets have been kept although scaled down, and 40 new planet graphics by Eldon Harris have been added to the game. It makes quite a difference when combined with the new nebulae!
  
−
* The ship costs (complete with icons and coloring, etc) are now always shown in the ship tooltips, rather than only in the buy menus.  This makes it so that players don't have to go to the buy menus in order to make construction decisions.
+
* The graphics of planets 3, 8, 11, and 16 have been substantially improved so that they have better borders and look more convincing as planets.
−
** Additionally, this gets rid of the need to have energy use on the line with the ship caps, etc.
 
−
** And lastly, it now lets the repair cost move out of the abilities section and into the costs line.
 
  
−
* Hovering over the net energy display at the top of the screen now shows the positive and negative energy amounts that factor into that, for the local player and any teammates.
+
* Fixed a graphical bug with the border drawn around barracks icons in some contexts.
  
−
* In the tooltips for ships, AI Progress increase/decrease conditions are now shown in highlighted yellow on the same line with resource production, to emphasize this more since AI Progress is essentially a very important resource.
+
== New Ships ==
  
−
* In the tooltips for ships, the immunities are now split out from the other normal abilities to make it so that they don't crowd out the rest of the abilities for things such as golems, etc.  Now the immunities are shown in a slightly more concise notation, on a separate line, in a different color.
+
* Added new unlockable support unit type: Hardened Forcefield Generator MkI-III.  Basically the same as normal human generators except:
 +
** 1/4th the HP.
 +
** 1,000,000 Armor Rating instead of zero (this effectively reduces all incoming damage to 1/5th its normal power, unless the attacker has extremely high armor piercing or very high damage-per-shot).
 +
** They do not shrink as they take damage, making it easier to know how long a given target will be protected, etc.  On the other hand this may make it harder to tell "at a glance" how long the generator has left to hold, so we might need to do something else here.
 +
** The first mark is not available by default, but costs 1000 knowledge (mkII and III are 2000 and 4000 knowledge each like the normal line).
  
−
* The "Number of Simultaneous Shots" is no longer treated as a special ability for display purposes. Instead, when a ship has multiple simultaneous shots, there is now simply an "x2" (or whatever number) notation next to the main attack power.
+
* Science Lab III:
−
** This makes it quicker to gauge the real attack power of a ship without having to dive into the abilities, and also takes up less visual space.  The actual functionality it describes is unchanged.
+
** Has been renamed to "Knowledge Hacker"
 +
** Is now mobile, cloaked, and significantly more durable.
 +
** Now has a 15-second setup-after-moving time (similar to the MRS's 60-second setup time before it can repair) during which it cannot gather knowledge.
 +
** Since you can now build them off-planet where they're not triggering spawns, these changes significantly reduce the amount of player-hassle and wall-clock-time spent on a single knowledge raid; the raids themselves (beyond the first raid) are far more dangerous so it should balance out difficulty-wise, but be less annoying.
  
−
* Added 2 galaxy map display overlays: detected hybrids and detected hybrid facilities.  Only displays info on planets that you current have visibility.
+
* Added new type of AI Eye: the Parasite Eye.
 +
** Has same trigger conditions. 
 +
** Instead of spawning ships it powers on (it's in stand-down except when actively triggered) and starts firing.  You really don't want that to happen.  Multiple hyper-powerful railcannons that reclaim what they hit.
 +
*** Standard "what can be reclaimed" rules apply.
 +
*** Has the extra flag to prevent it from firing on non-reclaimable targets thanks to a test where multiple starships were dying every two seconds.
 +
*** Note that this has a kill rate about 1/2 that of the Ion Eye, so the overall rate of "evening the field" should be similar.
 +
*** In case you're curious, the results are not zombies and can be re-reclaimed if you're so inclined.
  
−
* Control Nodes have been removed and replaced with a Controls interface, accessed via the CTRLS button in the lower-left corner of the screen.
+
* Added new type of AI Eye: the Ion Eye.
 +
** Has same trigger conditions.
 +
** When seeding an eye, the game has an equal chance of seeding each type of eye, and only one eye is seeded per planet that's supposed to get one.
 +
** But when triggered, instead of spawning ships it powers on (it's in stand-down except when actively triggered) and starts firing.  You don't want that to happen.  It has the firepower of four MkV Ion Cannons.
  
−
* Added new galaxy-wide control: Engineers Do Not Auto-Assist Low Power Ships; it doesn't interfere with directly targeted repairs and can be useful in preventing your engineers from spending your entire economy on repairing a golem that's been damaged in battle.
+
* A new Ancient Shadows bonus ship class has been added: Neinzul Scapegoat (Mark I-V).
 +
** Mature Neinzul organism without the short lifespan of a Youngling.  Capable combatant in its own right, but also sacrifices itself to regenerate military fleet ships on the same planet when they take critical damage.
  
−
* External invincibility for command stations (provided by certain destructible guard posts) is now visually shown on the command stations, and shown in the hover info for the command station with a count of how many external guard posts are contributing to that invincibility.
+
* Another new Ancient Shadows bonus ship class has been added: Spire Railcluster (Mark I-V).
 +
** Large Spire fleet ship mounting multiple short-range railcannons.  Highly effective against very small ships.
  
−
* The icons that are shown at the top of the intel summary are now sorted by short name (displayed in the line below), rather than just being ordered effectively randomly as they were before.
+
* New Ancient Shadows Bonus Ship Type: Zenith Reprocessor:
 +
** A larger, specialized version of the Acid Sprayer, this ship's shots actually "metabolize" the enemy target.  When the target dies, a percentage of the target's metal+crystal construction cost will be granted to the player that did the most reprocessing damage to it.  The more reprocessing damage the ship has taken, the larger the percentage of resources reprocessed.
  
−
* The ships that show up with an icon on the intel summary view have their own text line directly below in purple, but they were also still showing up in the larger lists of my/allied/enemy ships further down.  Now they have been removed from those lower lists (but not the counts of enemy ships by mark level), so as to make those lists more focused and easier to read.
+
* New Ancient Shadows Bonus Ship Type: Zenith Siege Engine:
 +
** Moderately large vessel built around an outsized plasma siege cannon.  The ship does not have enough power to both move and keep the weapon online, so it must remain immobile for a full reload cycle before it can fire.  When it fires, however, the enemy will feel it.
  
−
* Command Stations and Guard Posts now get their own line of icons in the intel summary in the galaxy map.  This prevents them from completely overwhelming all of the other special ship icons by their presence.
+
* Added new Ancient Shadows bonus ship: Spire Corvette.
 +
** A starship-sized vessel developed by retrofitting the smallest Imperial Spire combat design with human technology.  Has a moderately powerful photon lance, but can also mount a small number of modules.
 +
** Built from the SCRV tab of the Starship Constructor.
  
−
* Refactored the ship category buttons at the bottom of the main screen to a two-tier model letting the player drill down to either the full list, the low-power list, the non-low-power list, or a list of a specific ship-type.
+
* Added new Ancient Shadows bonus ship: Saboteur.
 +
** Fires hostile nanites at enemy ships.  Unlike reclamation nanites, these focus on overloading the target's power systems with the goal of causing it to explode violently.  This target does not go critical until its health is reduced to zero normally, but once that happens it will explode and damage up to 40 nearby friendly (to the exploding ship) units.  The damage done to each victim of the explosion is based on how much damage the exploding ship took from overload-nanites, and generally cannot exceed one-tenth the maximum health of the exploding ship.
  
−
* Added some basic alert messages when a human planet is under attack by Hybrids, Preservation Wardens, (hostile) Roaming Enclaves, or hostile warheads.
+
* Added new Ancient Shadows bonus ship type: Youngling Firefly.
 +
** Small, shortlived ship that builds up a charge as it successfully attacks other units.  When it dies it explodes violently to damage up to 20 nearby enemy units.  The explosion damge done to each victim starts at about the same strength as the Firefly's normal shot, but increases with the charge the ship has accumulated, up to a maximum of 20 times that.
  
−
* The lobby has been completely reworked, and avoids potential rendering problems that a minority of players were suddenly seeing based on the old way the lobby was redirecting window output from one window handle to another.
+
* Added a new "Mini-Fortress" unit to the SUP tab of the command-station/mobile-builder buy menu (this is a base-game unit, not tied to an expansion).
 +
** These are basically a MkI fortress on a 1/10th scale (stat-wise), and you can only build 2 per planet (per player, also scales with multiple homeworlds), but there's no galaxy-wide cap so putting them on your satellite worlds does not take away any cap your main defenses could be using.
 +
** Unlocking these costs 1000 knowledge (for reference, MkI forts cost 3000 knowledge to unlock, and provide 25x as much firepower at cap for your main line but not the per-planet-cap flexibility of these).
 +
** These don't have the penalty vs polycrystal (or scout) hulls, making them actually able to deal with bombers.
  
−
* The way that links between planets are drawn in the galaxy map has been altered substantially:
+
== Ship Logic Updates ==
−
** Previously, supply was shown via a darker thicker line underneath the main link lines.  That has been removed, and now the main lines normally draw a bit thinner, and then become thicker to denote supply.
 
−
** The relationship between the two linked planets are now shown via the color of the line.
 
−
*** Gray lines now denote unknown relationship, or a link between two neutral planets.
 
−
*** Yellow lines now denote links between friendly and neutral planets.
 
−
*** Green lines now denote links between friendly planets.
 
−
*** Orange lines now denote links between friendly and enemy planets.
 
−
*** Red lines now denote links between enemy planets or enemy and neutral planets.
 
  
−
* Core Fabricators, Experimental Fabricators, and Experimental Starship Fabricators are now listed with space docks, starship constructors, etc on the "Space Dock" button at the bottom of the screen.
+
* Changed the targeting logic for AOE units (that don't already use the alternate logic for engine damage, paralysis, reclamation, or insta-kill) to prefer non-AOE-immune targets.  This is necessary because of the recent change to let flaks and some other aoe units be able to damage an aoe-immune ship they fire directly at, but since an aoe-immune ship is likely to be in a pile of other aoe-immune ships most of the dps is wasted when there are non-aoe-immune targets available.
 +
** Note that if the flaks are already locked on to something aoe-immune (like a missile frigate) and something non-aoe-immune (like a fighter) comes into range, the flaks will probably take a few seconds to retarget since the game only does the target logic every so often.
  
−
* The various messages that show near the top of the screen (Paused, Game Does Not Have Focus, You Win, etc) can now show more than one of these messages at once (like if you're paused after you've won and/or the game does not have focus).
+
* Ships with engine damage now automatically repair their own engines, such that it takes a bit over four minutes to go from 0% engine-health to 100% engine-health.
 +
** Basically, until now it's been too easy to long-term-disable AI ships via engine damage.  Not many players abused this thoroughly, but some definitely did, to hilarious (and disappointing, from a challenge perspective) results.
 +
** But tactical usage should still be very viable for kiting around a planet, spreading out an incoming attack, etc.
  
−
* A number of keyboard control changes have been made.  If you don't like them, the beauty is that you can now remap them as you wish, but we wanted to take this opportunity to clean up the keycodes to make them as sensible as possible—they grew up a bit unevenly as the game has developed, and there were a few things that have been bugging us for a while.
+
* The logic for when a carrier is popped early now tries a lot harder to produce something similar to what's actually in the carrier, and tries to avoid exo-like spawning logic.
−
** Ship contruction keycodes have been made consistent:
+
** Regardless of what it winds up spawning, it no longer scales up with difficulty level (since the ship numbers that led to the generation of the carrier were already a result of difficulty level).
−
*** It is now possible to build queue-constructed ships in groups of 10 by holding alt.
+
** If its contents fit under a certain threshold (under 150 if there are < 2000 AI ships on the planet, under 50 if there are < 3000 AI ships on the planet, etc), it just spawns whatever is in the carrier.
−
*** It is now possible to build directly-placed ships in groups of 50 by holding ctrl.
+
** Else, it promotes all triangle/bonus fleetships in the carrier to max mark (mark 5 for most types, mark 4 for some) and scales down the quantity accordingly (mkI to mkV divides quantity by 5, etc).
−
** Ship selection modifier keycodes (when using hotkeys such as S to select science labs, or when clicking items on the planetary summary) have been made more consistent with the general selection modifiers (when just dragging selection boxes):
+
** If that's still not enough to get the quantity under the threshold, it divides the quantities in the carrier by some number (determined by how badly over-count it still is) and uses that extra strength to add mkV guardians to the carrier instead.  Since a single mkV guardian is worth about the same as ~2.2 full caps of mkI fighters, that's pretty good compression.
−
*** When holding Shift, it now adds the new ship to the selection rather than centering on it.
+
** If that's somehow still not enough, it falls back on the exo-like population it's used in the past, but without the extra multiplier from difficulty.
−
*** When holding Space, it now centers on the ship.
+
** For the curious, having advanced logging on when a carrier does early-pop logic like this will generate a log entry in the corresponding log file in your RuntimeData directory, explaining the computation.
−
** The button for showing control group assignments, and for showing ship movement/attack lines, and for toggling on all the attack power modifier overlays, has been changed from Ctrl to Alt.
 
−
*** This keeps the lines, etc, from getting in the way when players are just using the Ctrl key normally, which is a lot—and still makes it readily accessible to see these lines and control groups at an easy click of the button, though.
 
−
** The keyboard shortcuts for "frame skip" have been removed, as that feature no longer exists (it's no longer needed).
 
−
** The keyboard shortcuts for "game speed" can now go between -10 and 10, rather than 0 and 10.  This allows players to slow down time as well as speed it up.
 
  
−
* The glow around planets that are alerted to the human presence is now red instead of yellow, as with the new blending, etc, the yellow was extremely hard to see.
+
* Engineers have had a "what to assist" logic overhaul such that:
 +
** If is Prefer-Non-Military toggle is on, and one is military and the other is not, prefer the non-military one.
 +
** If one has more currently assisting engineers than the other, prefer the one with less.
 +
** If the repairer is not a teleporter and the difference in distance to each unit is larger than about 4000 range units, prefer the nearer.
 +
*** Also, distance is now considered zero if the target is already within range, which helps a lot because previously it was masking other considerations.
 +
** If one object is a damaged irreplaceable unit and the other is not, prefer the damaged irreplaceable.
 +
** If one object is in stand-down and the other is not, prefer the one not in stand-down.
 +
** If one object's remaining-health-percent is less than half the other's, prefer the lower-health one.
 +
*** This was being considered before (it always went for the lowest percent-health), but only by teleporting repairers.
 +
** If one object has taken more than 25% engine damage and the other has not, prefer the engine-damaged one.
 +
** If one object's metal+crystal cost is more than twice the other's, prefer the more expensive one.
 +
** Thanks to Wanderer and the other voters for inspiring these changes.
  
−
* The resource bar has seen some rework, making it a bit more concise and relying on icons and tooltips instead of spelling out things like "knowledge" in it.  On the flip side, a few things that were previously unlabeled (like the number of planets under attack at the moment) now have a label.
+
* Human-player teleporting units now use normal engines when group-moving.
−
** Warnings about energy levels are now shown directly in the resource bar, and more concisely, with a tooltip over them to explain further.
+
** Along with this, increased the normal-engine speed of all teleporting units to the speed of a fighter, for those lower than that
−
** The game speed modifier is now shown right next to the game clock in the upper left, and the game clock flashes red and white when slowed down, and green and white when sped up.
 
  
−
* A new ship selection scrollable window now shows up whenever ships are selected, making for a significant update to the old selected ships button and dropdown.
+
* Advanced Fabricators and Fabricators now use the same "don't put this near a wormhole" logic as human home command stations.
  
−
* The Planetary Summary window on the right-hand side of the screen has seen significant visual improvements that make it easier to quickly read, especially during battles or multiplayer games.
+
* Removed energy cost from Logistics and Military command stations, since the cost was pretty minor and the units certainly aren't in danger of overshadowing the econ station at this point, and the costs were interfering with the logic for rebuilding their remains in some cases.
 +
** Also removed it from warp-jammer stations, but since that wasn't so minor also increased that station's direct per-second m+c cost.
  
−
* The position and styling of both chat messages and alert messages have been changed a bit, emphasizing readability and keeping the screen as clear as possible for actually showing gameplay.
+
* Fixed a longstanding bug where attack-move units with no other orders would auto-target stuff that should not be auto-targeted (wormhole guard posts, AIP-on-death structures, etc) if the unit in question shot them first.
  
−
* The main menu is now nigh unrecognizable, it's seen so much rework.
+
* Fixed a bug where Spire Blades, Spire Minirams, and Spire Rams would not actually automatically die (but just self-damage by some amount) when attacking.
  
−
* Our license key screen is now miles better, as well.  It lets you enter all of your license keys on one screen, rather than having a separate screen for each (with the expansions buried in an expansions tab of the settings window).  Now it's all on one place, accessible directly from the main menu, and should cut down on confusion as to which license key the application is asking for at any given time (a fair number of people tried to enter their expansion keys as a main key, for example, if they bought the game and expansions at the same time).
+
== Balance Updates ==
−
 
 
−
* The current combat style is now shown on the galaxy stats screen, since that's now the only way to see that data while in the game itself.
 
−
 
 
−
* The "Hide Ship Recharge Bars" settings option has become a "Show Ship Recharge Bars" option, because these bars really don't need to be shown for most people and they cause significant visual clutter and extra graphical load.
 
−
 
 
−
* The "Show Ship Bars In Far Zoom" settings option has become a "Hide Ship Bars In Far Zoom" option, because these bars are really important to being able to see the battlefield at a glance from far zoom, and need to be on unless people specifically want to disable them for performance reasons (which isn't likely to be needed, these days, anyway).
 
  
−
* It is now possible to see the AI Plots in the Galaxy Stats window (before it wasn't possible to see what AI Plots were enabled in-game, which was a problem of sorts).
+
* Exogalactic strikeforces provoked by the Broken-Golems-Hard or Spirecraft-Hard minor factions (but not Fallen Spire ones) now have a chance (50% for Broken-Golems, 20% for Spirecraft) of using an alternate composition distribution that heavily favors a large lead ship and a single battlegroup.
  
−
* The Debug window (hit F3 to see) has been reworkd a bit to be more compact and yet more helpful. 
+
* Broken-Golems-Hard and Spirecraft-Hard exogalactic strikeforce initial-strength, per-minute-increment-amount, and maximum-strength all increased roughly 10%.
−
** It includes one new line of particular interest, under the GAME SPEED header, that is FPS / Draw Calls.  The FPS number gives a pretty good indicator of the frames per second (averaged from the last 3 seconds), and the Draw Calls tells how many sprites were actually drawn to the graphics card for the non-GUI parts of the game (So all the ships, backgrounds, explosions, all that). 
 
−
*** Both of these help to give a more empirical look at both graphics card performance and graphics card load.\ for when players report that something seems laggy.
 
  
−
* Added a new context menu: Special Unload.
+
* The Armored, Black-Widow, Artillery, and Regenerator Golems used in exogalactic strikeforces are now different than the "standard" AI golems (like those used by the Golemite AI Type). The main difference is that they lack the 1/10th-health-of-a-normal-golem rule (but the Armored variants still have a 1/2 health modifier, since they're so buff).
−
** Two ways to open: right-click the Unload button (left-click still does the usual basic unload), or use the new OpenSpecialUnload keybind (context: with-selection, defaults to LeftCtrl+U); if your selection does not contain any transports with ships in them, the special unload menu won't display.
+
** Thanks to Shrugging Khan for continuing to provoke the golems.
−
** Displays 1 button with the total number of ships loaded into transports in your selection.
 
−
** Displays 1 button for each distinct ship type (so fighter I, fighter II, bomber I, etc), with the number of that type.
 
−
** If you left click one of the buttons, it will give the order to unload 1 ship of that category.
 
−
*** If the SpecialUnload_MakeUnload_10 keybind (defaults to LeftShift) is active, it does 10 ships instead.
 
−
*** If the SpecialUnload_MakeUnload_50 keybind (defaults to LeftCtrl) is active, 50.
 
−
*** If the SpecialUnload_MakeUnload_All keybind (defaults to LeftAlt) is active, all of that category (so Alt-clicking Fighter I will unload all fighter Is held by all the transports in your selection, and Alt-clicking the top catch-all button will act very much like the basic unload operation).
 
−
** While the window is open, the SpecialUnload_CancelUnload keybind (no default binding) is also available; it will cancel any unloading of the ships in your selection, without cancelling any other orders.
 
−
** Note that this works with fortresses, etc, not just "Transports" proper.
 
  
−
* Added UnloadAll keybind (context: with-selection, no default binding) that is just an alias for the basic Unload button.
+
* Black Widow golem health and Attack Power boosted a bit (15%-ish).
  
−
* It is now possible to hide the tutorial instructional messages by holding down the Alt key.
+
* Regenerator Golem health doubled, in response to various concerns that they're less useful than other golems.
  
−
* Since there is a bug in Unity where keys can get into a held-down state permanently (until that key is again pressed and released) after an alt-tab or similar window switching, we've now put in a safety feature: whenever keys are held down for more than four seconds, the name of the key being held down is shown.
+
* The "shot travels at least 40 speed faster than its target's current speed" logic has been extended to include "shot travels at least 40 speed faster than its target's tractor-er's current speed", since in the "tow" case the target's current speed is almost always zero.
−
** During normal play, except in a few cases such as holding down to see some sort of overlay (ship lines, attack ranges, etc), this would never even come into practice.  But when someone can't understand why no ships are clickable, etc, and it's because the alt key is behind-the-scenes being held down, now there's an easy visual cue that should get most people to automatically tap the key in question, which solves the problem.  Should save a lot of frustration for folks down the line.
 
  
−
* The Select Starship Constructor key (T) has been removed.  The Select Space Dock key (D) now also selects Starship Constructors, fabricators, missile silos, and mercenary space docks in addition to the prior function of selecting space docks and advanced factories.
+
* Spire Blade Spawner:
 +
** Ship cap from 0.05 of normal to 0.03 of normal (in practice, from 9 to 5 for mkI).  Note that this impacts AI usage as well as human.
 +
** BaseAIPerGuardPostShipCap from 2 => 1.
  
−
* The attack-move function has been moved to X, and the "open move menu" function has been moved to left alt.
+
* Spire Gravity Drain:
 +
** Grav range from 3000*mk => 8000 (flat).
  
−
* There is now a Master Sound Volume slider on the audio tab of the settings screen. This allows for the relative volumes of all the various sound effects to be left alone, while the overall volume of all sounds are adjusted.  This affects everything except the volume of music.
+
* Spire Gravity Ripper:
 +
** Attack power from 1000*mk => 2000*mk.
 +
** Seconds-per-salvo from 1 => 2.
 +
** So basically the gravity ripping effect is being nerfed to 50% of what it was, and the normal attack is better against armor.  We'll see where to go from there.
  
−
* Objectives tab of Stats screen now handles all the stuff the old mission display did (and a bit more), and also provides mouseover-tooltip and click-to-view-object (where applicable) support.
+
* Spire Miniram:
 +
** Ship cap multiplier from 0.25 => 0.20.
  
−
* Removed Pause-All-Constructors and Lone/Group-toggle button from the bottom global button row, replaced with:
+
* Spire Stealth Battleship:
−
** Map button, toggles between galaxy and planet view (will also be used for showing the minimap, when that is implemented).
+
** Effective Attack range from 6500 + (500*mk) => 7000 flat (thus, they can no longer engage while still protected by their 8000 radar dampening range).
−
** Controls button, opens a new window for changing a variety of galaxy-wide and planet-specific settings.
 
  
−
* All Control Nodes have been removed and replaced with the Controls window.  Grief and career counseling is available to those engineer drones suffering existential angst as a result.
+
* Spire Tractor Platform:
 +
** Hull Type from Turret => Heavy.
  
−
* Implemented a replacement for the minimap.  It is not part of the normal GUI but rather an overlay that you can trigger by holding either the Middle Mouse Button + the MakeMiddleMouseScrollingUseMiniMapScale key (context: PlanetView, defaults to LeftShift), or the ShowMinimap key (context: InGame, defaults to T).
+
* Previously, turtle AI types had over 13 times as many AI Eyes as "normal".  Moderately defensive ones (Shield Ninny, Grav Driller, and Peacemaker) had only 2 times as many as normal.  Turtles now have about 2.6 times as many as normal.
−
** The ShowMinimap keybind (not the middle-mouse-scrolling one) can also be used to "peek" at a planet by holding it and either mousing over a planet in the Galaxy View (it will display the minimap for that planet) {{OBS}} or a wormhole in the Planet View (it will display the minimap for the planet on the other end of the wormhole){{OBS}}.  The peek displays obey the usual rules for visible intel, etc.
 
  
−
* The count of enemies at the current planet is now shown as an alert in the upper left, rather than as a hard-to-see flashing number on top of the command stations quick button.
+
* Light Starship:
 +
** Base Health from 1.5m => 2m.
 +
** Armor Rating from 500 => 1000.
 +
** Given Radar Dampening of 8000 (to make it harder to deny a fleet its fleet starship munitions boost by ganking the fleet starships from long range).  For reference, its munitions boost range is 3000.
  
−
* The current wave multiplier and reinforcement multiplier, if any, are also now shown at the upper left as an alert.  That way players aren't surprised by massive waves if they have a golem at a planet, etc.
+
* Flagship:
 +
** Base Health From 4,875k => 6m.
 +
** Given Radar Dampening of 8000.  For reference, its munitions boost range is 6000.
  
−
* The pause function is now mapped to both the pause key and the p key.
+
* Neinzul Youngling Commando:
 +
** Base Health from 6600*mk => 8000*mk.
 +
** Base Attack Power from 1000*mk => 1200*mk.
  
−
* Low-power ships now show up as grayed out even in far zoom, which is quite helpful.
+
* Impulse Reaction Emitter:
 +
** Now has a minimum multiplier of 5 (roughly what it would get vs a ship with 5,000 energy cost).  This might be excessive, we'll see, but the ship was having significant "used as a paperweight" issues against anything at all small.
  
−
* Implemented Special Move context menu section, and the Unit Commands context menu section.
+
* Zenith Mirrors:
 +
** When a shot is reflected, the returned shot's power is now increased 4x.  Thought to be a perpetual motion machine until the first power bill arrived.  More seriously, this is an attempt to correct for the fact that things now tend to have a higher ratio of hp to damage (particularly against their own hull type) than when the mirrors were first added.
  
−
* The "Random" options are now highlighted in light red in the lobby AI type dropdowns. This makes it significantly easier to see them, and to tell the groups of AI types apart from one another (the randoms divide them up into sections). The Technologist AI Types, meanwhile, are shown in full red as a warning.  
+
* When a ship is translocated away from its current location, all incoming projectiles now are also immediately translocated to its new destination, and thus will hit it instead of fizzling.  This makes the military command stations a lot less unwieldy.
  
−
* Added Messages tab to Stats window, displays all messages (chat log, AI Progress alerts, etc) received during the session. Those messages do not persist into a savegame, so when you load a game this log will be blank.  
+
* Raid starship rebalance, thanks to many players for various suggestions:
 +
** Raid Starship health has been increased from 1.6 million health * mark level to 2 million health * mark level.
  
−
* The mouseover tooltip on the "Planets" section of the resource-display now displays the name, orbital-command-station-type, and number-of-attacking-ships for each planet under attack.
+
* Guard posts, fortresses, superfortresses, force fields, and exo-shields are all now immune to regeneration from regenerator golems/trains.
  
−
* The Strong/Weak data is no longer shown in the tooltips for ships.  It is still possible to generate this data (we use it for internal ship balancing purposes), but it's no longer exposed through the UI.  There were several problems with it in this past: 1) it was difficult to understand; 2) it was overwhelming to new players; 3) it was often misleading even to advanced players; 4) for anyone playing the betas, it was pretty much perpetually out of date, as it takes us 40 minutes to generat the strong/weak data and we don't do that too often.
+
* AI Motherships are now considered large ships for purposes of bomber starships and siege starships being able to hit them.
  
−
* In place of the removed Strong/Weak lines in the tooltips, there is now an "Attack Multipliers" line.  This shows the multipliers that ships have against other hull types.  Many players have wanted to have this for a long time, but in the past it was always too much data (and too complex) to show effectively in-game.  Now that it's been simplified down to vs-hull-type rather than vs-ship-type, it's a lot less data and a lot easier to quickly parse and understand. The hope is that it will also be less overwhelming to new players, and promote more strategic fleet building in general, as the older strong/weak approach was just too nebulous for anything except immediate decision making ("what do I have that's good against X," etc).
+
* When an engineer is repairing a ship, and it was not set to repair that ship explicitly by the player, and it's not in free-roaming defender mode or attack-move mode, it will no longer try to chase the ship it is repairing. Instead it will just find a better target and keep its position.  This allows for players to exercise more tight control over their engineers now that engineers have a huge repair range and no longer teleport.
  
−
* The number of starships included with each enemy wave is now shown in the alert for the wave.
+
* Astro Trains are now immune to translocation and gravity effects, since both of those cause more problems for players than they would ever solve
  
−
* Added new Reference tab to the Stats screen, it's a fairly powerful tool for seeing which ship types are strong against which.
+
* The radar dampening range of marauders and resistance fighters has been changed to be about 1000 greater than their attack range in all cases, soo that they always have to come into range of their targets in order to fire on their targets.  This makes it so that turrets and other fixed-position defenses are not completely powerless against them.
−
** Added a "View Reference" option to the when-ships-are-selected context menu, it opens the Reference tab for the selected ship's type (if multiple ships selected, the first ship's type is used).
 
  
−
* The per-second costs of metal and crystal are now shown in a smaller parentheses in the ship costs line in tooltips.  This will help with planning economic expenditures without diverting attention from the total fixed cost of these ships.
+
* Spire Civilian Leader Outposts are now included in the galaxy map filter for Detected AI Progress Reducers.
  
−
* Previously, the max zoom level was determined based on the screen resolution.  Changed to be resolution-independent.
+
* Spire Civilian Leader Outposts previously did not have their minor faction stance properly set, so they could not be attacked.  Now they are properly noted as AI Allies until captured by the human team.  They are still direct-only to attack, though, so unless you accidentally mis-click on them your ships won't attack them.
  
−
* Clicking the Map button in the lower left hand corner will now (if on the planet view) pop-up a brief menu with a button for switching to the galaxy map, and a button for displaying the minimap.  This method of displaying the minimap differs from the existing button (T) in that the minimap will remain displayed until you click the Map button again, or hit T (or whatever you've bound that one to).
+
* Armored Warhead health reduced from over 2 billion to 40 million.  This is still a huge amount of health, but they are no longer infinitely survivable.  This also fixes a bug where the interface was having an overflow exception and rendering their health as 1.
  
−
* There are now separate sliders for the mouse wheel zoom speed and the keyboard zoom speed.
+
* When planet-wide EMP or tachyon detonations occur, as from a warhead or an EMP guardian, a chat message is now sent to the human players telling them who detonated what, and where.  This message is also clickable.  The goal here is preventing EMP guardians from punching QUITE so impenetrable a hole in player defenses without notice.
  
−
* There is now a "MESSAGE LOG" button in the upper-right corner of the screen during the game, which goes straight to the messages tab of the stats window.
+
* Warhead Interceptors have been nonfunctional since slightly before 5.0 of the game (I disabled them, but never did get around to re-enabling them.  They should work once again, but I haven't had a test case to work on it to be sure.  If anyone has a save with them not working after this version, please let us know.
  
−
* The planetary summary overlay in the galaxy map has gotten a bit of a visual revamp.
+
* The efficiency of gravitational slowing (gravity drains, gravity turrets) has been greatly improved, such that big  battles that previously would  grind to a halt because of them can now be played at 3x their prior framerate in one test case in particular.
−
** It is now tall and thin, rather than fat and wide.
+
** One major improvement was to exclude checking of gravitational slowing for ships that can't move or aren't moving at the moment (since they don't need to be slowed!), and the other was to skip redundant gravitational slowing checks for gravitational sources that are the same and which are too close together. This last is very similar to how the speed improvements on the range data display (from way back pre-2.0 days) works.
−
** The counts for the icons at the top are actually now legible.
 
  
−
* Added a small helper window to the right of the global game-button window on the galaxy map, that displays the current galaxy-display and current galaxy-filter, clicking them allows you to change them.
+
* The devourer golem is now completely invincible—it was never meant to be killable in the first place, but recent changes to the game made that so that it was possible post-5.0.  Like the dyson sphere, the devourer is more intersting when it is indestructible.
  
−
* Tachyon Guardians are now shown as icons on the intel summary for planets, as they are very relevant for scouting.
+
* Minor factions now shoot low-power ships without prejudice, which means that devourer golems actually will devourer more again.
  
−
* Added several features to the Reference tab of the Stats window:
+
* Zenith SpaceTime Manipulators, like forcefields, now have the ability to move very slowly but not to go through wormholes, to allow for better repositioning of them.
−
** Filter By "Scope" can be used to restrict the compared types to:
 
−
*** Ships in My Selection
 
−
*** My Ships On This Planet (empty if you have no scout intel)
 
−
*** Friendly Ships On This Planet (empty if you have no scout intel)
 
−
*** Hostile Ships On This Planet (empty if you have no scout intel)
 
−
*** My Ships (anywhere you have scout intel)
 
−
*** Friendly Ships (anywhere you have scout intel)
 
−
*** Hostile Ships (anywhere you have scout intel)
 
−
*** Ships I Can Build (default) (currently doesn't account for fabricators or advanced factory)
 
−
*** Ships I Can Build Or Unlock
 
−
** Filter By "Category"
 
−
*** Noncombatants
 
−
*** Non-warhead Combatants (default)
 
−
*** Fleet Ships
 
−
*** Starships
 
−
*** Turrets
 
−
*** Warheads
 
−
** The ship types now use TypeName instead of ShortName for description, and so are easier to identify.
 
−
** Also, mousing over a ship name (either the select-dropdown or the first column of the grid) will display the buy-menu detail tooltip for that type.
 
−
** Clicking one of the names in the first column of the grid will select it in the dropdown.
 
−
** Scrollbar on the grid has been removed in favor of paging buttons, this is important for performance when the actual data set is very large.
 
−
** In addition to the "View Reference" context menu item when you have ships selected, if they have a target-to-destroy there will be a "View Target Reference" item that will open the reference tab with the target selected in the dropdown.  If there are multiple targets amongst the ship in your selection, it picks the first one it finds.
 
  
−
* A new Tip of the Day feature is now on the main menu, providing player-provided randomized tips on each startup, which players can cycle through.
+
* Gifting a ship now copies across its current attack recharge, cloaking recharge, and similar, preventing a few exploits related to that and penetrators in particular.
  
−
* The game itself has been updated so that on first run on Windows it now prompts players if they want to run the importer or "begin fresh," and the importer can be launched via a button in the settings window for those players who will be playing the game via a distribution service that doesn't use our start menu shortcuts.
+
* Dyson Gatlings are now immune to paralysis attacks.
  
−
* Added Mouse tab to the Input Bindings screen; it's just a static listing of controls and cannot be edited, but it is necessary for completeness.
+
* Slightly improved the targeting handling when a ship is targeting a teleporting ship that is out of range.
  
−
* By default, the screen no longer dims and the music no longer stops while paused.  That option can still be unchecked in settings to go back to the old default if players wish.
+
* Spirecraft Penetrator balance:
 +
** Mark I moved from pysite to xampite.  Mark II moved to ebonite, and now produce two per asteroid.  All the other marks not moved around.
 +
** Penetrator health reduced 8x.
 +
** Penetrator perma-cloaking replaced with normal cloaking
  
−
== Graphical Improvements ==
+
* AI ships that are spawned in response to saboteurs, such as the human mark III science lab, are now zombie bots
  
−
*Updated icon for Heavy Beam Cannons to a new graphic donated by HitmanN.
+
* Zenith SpaceTime Manipulators can no longer be swallowed or regenerated.
  
−
* The graphics for the Mercenary Space dock have been overhauled so that it now looks like an evil version of the regular space dock.
+
* Human-allied zombies and minor factions were not being properly limited in their pool of planets to fix, thanks to a typo in their logic.  It should now be fixed.
  
−
* The borders of the far zoom icons have been made consistent between all the various screens, including the lobby and the intel summaries, and in general look a little less ragged.
+
* Zenith Electric Bombers:
 +
** No longer use scaled caps (due to the 0.1 ship cap multiplier, that can make the additional /2 or /4 from normal and low caps cause a more significant truncation than is desirable).
 +
** Event attack cost (used for exogalactic strikeforce computations) tiers increased from "Medium Corvette" through "Heavy Frigate" to "Light Frigate" through "Medium Destroyer", since the previous placement was putting mkIII zelecs at the same place as a mkV bomber.  It's not a goal to balance the event attack costs terribly precisely, but that was a bit excessive.
  
−
* The accuracy of drawing angled lines has been improved fairly substantially.
+
* Sentinel Frigates:
 +
** Event attack cost (used for exogalactic strikeforce computations) tiers increased from "Heavy Corvette" through "Light Destroyer" to "Light Frigate" through "Medium Destroyer".
  
−
* The following modules now use a new shot-movement mechanic to fire their multiple-shot bursts in a brief sequence rather than all at once, to give more of the desired visual effect (gameplay impact should be minimal) :
+
* Spire Blade Spawners:
−
** Riot machine gun modules now fire 12 shots per salvo with a reload time of 4 seconds, instead of 3-shot salvos with a 1-second reload.
+
** Now have an attack again (not having an attack was causing all kinds of bugs and unintended behaviors), with a base power of 1000 per shot, 8 shots per salvo, 2 seconds per salvo, and effective range of 6000 (for reference, that's the same as the spire stealth battleship except it's 25% the base power and 1000 lower range).
−
** Riot laser modules now fire 8 shots per salvo per 8 seconds instead of 4 shots per salvo per 4 seconds.
+
*** Notably, this should make the BaseAIPerGuardPostShipCap flag work correctly again for them (it's set to 1 for them).
−
** Hybrid machine gun modules (I-IV) changed from firing 2/3/4/5 shots per 1-second reload to 10/15/20/25 shots per 5-second reload.
+
*** But since they were unable to guard stuff in the past due to zero attack, to correct old saves the AI ones just being completely stripped out when loading something from 5.009 or earlier.  Human ones are not affected.
−
** Hybrid laser cannon modules (I-IV) changed from firing 1/2/2/3 shots per 4-second reload to 2/3/4/5 shots per 8-second reload.
+
** Have the new DoesNotMoveToPursueUnlessOrderGivenByPlayer flag, which prevents human ones from chasing an auto-targetted target (in FRD or not).  Hopefully this will deal with the complaint that lead to the original removal of their guns.
  
−
* A new and better-looking game HUD visual style is now in place.  This new visual style is also intended to improve readability while also increasing performance.
+
* Made Cloaker Starships mark I knowledge-free now, instead of costing 1k knowledge.  This helps to compensate players a bit for the generally-increased difficulty of the Zenith expansion.
−
** The GUI for the game no longer uses bordered text—this both aids in readability for some players, as well as improving performance, and with the higher-contrast window backgrounds this is more readable than ever.
 
−
** All of the in-game fonts have been replaced and improved with prettier, sharper, more-legible fonts that also contribute better to the sci-fi theme and feel less spreadsheet-like.
 
  
−
* The status text over most of the in-game ships (poor efficiency, exhausted, knowledge income, etc) now appear with a nice little bounding box that makes them look better and also easier to read.  These boxes now conveniently disappear when moused-over, so that they are never in the way of what the player is trying to click on.  When the Alt key is held, all of these also now disappear, which makes it even more convenient.
+
* Same with the Neinzul Rnclave Starships mark I.  They were 2k knowledge, but now they are knowledge-free.
  
−
* The galaxy map has seen a number of improvements.
+
* Mercenary Neinzul Enclave Starships, which would now be pretty well pointless, have also been revamped. Now they are the equivalent of the mark II Neinzul Enclave Starship, rather than the mark I starship.  This is very powerful, but they are also now limited to only a single ship in their shipcap, rather than 6 ships.
−
** The planet graphics in the galaxy map are now much-improved, and make use of shaders and rotation to make themselves look much more realistic.
 
−
** The lines between the planets on the galaxy map also now use shaders and have a much more modern, realistic look to themselves.
 
−
** The little row of ship icons below each planet has been removed from the galaxy map, as that was useless clutter that made the galaxy map harder to read and which most people didn't notice anyway.
 
  
−
* Flares are now shown on top of player ships, rather than under them. This is a longstanding request from players who found them too hard to see when under ships. Holding the alt key now hides the flares, so you get the best of both worlds.
+
* Starship costs tweaked around a bit:
 +
** Bomber starship metal cost reduced from 120k to 80k.
 +
** Fleet starship metal cost reduced from 60k to 40.
 +
** Siege starship crystal cost reduced from 120k to 80k.
 +
** Riot Control starships crystal cost reduced from 80k to 60k, and metal cost reduced from 30k to 20k.
 +
** Enclave starship costs reduced from 30k metal and crystal to 20k each instead.
  
−
* A completely new starfield generation algorithm is now used—it looks a lot better, is incredibly more varied (not every planet has the same kind of starfield background), and has nice parallax depth to itself. It is way faster to draw than the old SlimDX style of starfields, which is another excellent bonus.
+
* Zentih SpaceTime Manipulator energy costs reduced to 20k from 60k
  
−
* A completely new nebula generation algorithm is now used—it also looks a lot better, and is way way faster to draw than the old SlimDX style of nebulae.  The nebulae no longer have parallax scrolling, but the starfields themselves do a plenty fine job enough of that, and this overall effect looks better.
+
* Due to widespread feedback that the martyr is very OP, we've drastically increased the asteroid "cost" of building them:
 +
** Previously Reptite could be used to build 2 MkI Martyrs.  Now it cannot build martyrs at all.
 +
** Previously Pysite could be used to build 4 MkI Martyrs or 2 MkII Martyrs.  Now it can only build 1 MkII (can't build MkIs).
 +
** Previously Xampite could be used to build 4 MkII Martyrs or 2 MkIII Martyrs.  Now it can only build 1 MkIII (can't build MkIIs).
 +
** Previously Ebonite could be used to build 4 MkIII Martyrs or 2 MkIV Martyrs.  Now it can only build 1 MkIV (can't build MkIIIs).
 +
** Previously Adamantite could be used to build 4 MkIV Martyrs or 2 MkV Martyrs.  Now it can only build 1 MkV (can't build MkIVs).
 +
** Note that the units themselves are just as incredibly powerful as before (we really want them to be highly useful), but hopefully this change puts their real cost more in line with their utility and also puts a saner limit on the total number the players can have in a game.  More changes may follow if necessary.
 +
** For reference, previously the total number of martyrs that could be produced from all asteroids in an average 80-planet galaxy was about 2200 on average (so someone holding 15% of the galaxy might reasonably field 220 over the course of the game, if they didn't use many other spirecraft).  Now that total-possible number average about 480 (so that same martyr-happy player would probably only have about 48 to use, unless they take more planets).
  
−
* The way that the galaxy map in the lobby is drawn has been completely reworked to look better.
+
* Zenith Viral Shredders:
−
** The "obstacles" (black holes, asteroid belts) are no longer shown at all, as they were distracting and just getting in the way of the relevant visuals, anyway—they are still shown in-game, though, of course.
+
** Simplified the scaling of replication costs (how much damage a shredder has to do to replicate) and made it better at preventing game-breaking swarms of shredders.  Now instead of it using a linear multiplier based on the owner's number of shredders on that specific planet, it quadruples the replication cost for every full cap of that mark of shredder owned by that player anywhere in the galaxy (but if they own less than or equal to a full cap, there is no extra cost).
−
** The scale and quality of the lines and graphics shown in the galaxy are now far superior to what they previously were, making them easier to read.
+
*** So if the mkI cap is 98 (normal cap scale) and you have between 99 and 195 (inclusive) mkI shredders they will have to do 4x as much damage to replicate as normal.  If you have between 196 and 293 (inclusive) mkI shredders they will have to do 16x as much damage to replicate as normal.  And so on (maximum multiplier is 1024 to avoid arithmetic overflow; at that point a mkIV on low caps would need to do over 376 million damage to replicate).
−
** The galaxy map in the lobby now scales on both the X and Y axes individually, again to allow for the maximum visibility on varying scree resolutions.
+
** Base Energy Use from 100 => 50 (note: all mkI types use half normal energy).
 +
** Replication-created shredders now copy the FRD, Attack Move, and any unit commands (movement waypoints and whatnot) of their "parent".  Note that they already copy the control groups and "am I currently selected" status of their parent.
 +
** The end result of all this should be that if you play your shredders well you'll be able to maintain maybe 2 or 3 caps worth of them (a pretty significant advantage over other bonus ship types) but it's going to be difficult to get into the really absurd numbers. On the other hand, maintaining that swarm won't cost as much energy as it used to and it should require less micro due to the commmand copying.
  
−
* Every last shot/weapon visual effect in the game has been completely redone in a much higher-res, fancier fashion.
+
* For a very long time it's been possible to ward off almost any amount of damage through sufficient micro of a pile of forcefield generators and engineers (to repair the ff's as they collapse within the protection of other generators, or go on low power mode, or are being newly built).  While ff's are supposed to be extremely helpful in protecting stuff, it wasn't intended that they be able to do so indefinitely while under constant attack.  So:
 +
** When a forcefield is damaged by enemy fire, all allied forcefields whose fields are in contact (or very close to it) with the damaged ff will take 1 point of damage from the energy conducted along the surface of the field.  The damage itself is inconsequential since the ff's have millions of hp, but it will trigger the "cannot be repaired less than 6 seconds after being damaged" logic.  This also applies to forcefields currently under construction or in low-power mode.  So it won't be possible to repair some forcefields in a ff-pile while others in the same group are under fire.
 +
** Forcefield generators now cannot be assisted during construction if they have been damaged recently.
 +
** When a new forcefield is placed for construction, if it is in near any allied forcefields (low power or not) that is currently unrepairable due to recent damage, the newly placed forcefield inherits the longest assist-delay present among those neighbors.  So it won't be possible to speed-build new generators under other fields that are currently under fire.
 +
** This also applies to all the "shield bearer" and module type shields.
 +
** If this leaves some situations unreasonably hard other changes can be made to compensate, we just wanted to close this "micro to dodge anything" loophole.
  
−
* The explosion visuals have been completely replaced and upgraded.
+
* Due to very widespread feedback that ion weaponry is very underpowered, all Ion Cannon and Spirecraft Ion Blasters now fire 4 shots per salvo instead of 1.
  
−
* In recent releases, damage smoke had been unintentionally disabled.  It has now been re-enabled, and has been notably upgraded to look a lot more realistic at the same time.
+
* For the ships listed below, armor piercing increased from "really high" (6 figures) to 999,999.  They're really supposed to just flat out get through any armor, excepting maybe some of the ships so large we don't mention them in release notes because it would be a spoiler.
 +
** Zenith Polarizer
 +
** Spire Armor Rotter
 +
** Youngling Vulture
 +
** Youngling Nanoswarm
 +
** Raid Starship
 +
** Lightning/Armored/EMP/Tachyon-warheads
 +
** Botnet Golem
 +
** Devourer Golem
 +
** Sentinel Frigate
 +
** Spire Blade
 +
** Spire Gravity Drain
 +
** Spirecraft Siege Tower
 +
** Sniper
 +
** Electric Shuttle
 +
** Lightning Turret
 +
** Sniper Turret
 +
** Spider Turret
 +
** And a variety of lesser known but related types.
  
−
* The shot hit effects have been revamped so that it is much easier to tell when a shot has hit (and it just looks cooler, too).
+
* AI Hunter/Killers are now eligible to be chosen for exogalactic battlegroups.  The MkI is considered one notch above the Armored Golem cost-wise, and proceeding up from there.  For anyone who remembers the slaughter those things could perform before, their number of shots-per-salvo has been halved but their health has been doubled.
  
−
* Shield blocks now have a much more distinctive visual look, so that it will hopefully be more obvious to players that something is actually happening out of the ordinary there.
+
* Added a new ability to the Spirecraft Attritioner in hopes of making it more generally useful.  From the new tooltip:
 +
** One unique side effect of Spire attrition technology is that when an enemy ship is destroyed by any cause all its allies (that aren't immune to attrition) take a certain percent of that ship's maximum health as feedback damage.  This feedback damage is cumulative with multiple Spirecraft Attritioners and higher mark attritioners cause a higher percentage, but this feedback damage is divided evenly across all affected targets and thus does not greatly damage any one target.
 +
** Basically, this functions as a small boost to overall fleet dps (averaged out over time), and thus makes the attritioner useful in short engagements where previously its contribution would have been minimal.
 +
** Current percentages are 0.5%/1.0%/1.5%/2.5%/5.0% for the 5 marks of attritioner.  Also, this effect does trigger on enemies killed by attrition/feedback (otherwise it motivates micro to make sure a triggering-source kills big targets).  In our tests this has not seemed overpowered though it is likely that further balancing will be needed.  Bear in mind that mkV attritioners require the extremely rare Titanite, and mkIVs require the not-much-more-common Adamantite.
 +
** Thanks to Hearteater and many other players for weighing in with feedback that led to this change.
  
−
* All of the old "fuzzy line" effects have been replaced with much fancier and better-looking uv-animated special effects.
+
* Spirecraft Ion normal shot damage from 700 => 14000, and armor piercing from 0 => Max.
 +
** Previously their damage was just token, but this brings them up to roughly the DPS of the Spirecraft Siege Tower (which, for reference, also has max armor piercing), but can't target anything that's immune to insta-kill (which is basically anything bigger than a fleet ship).  The result is that a cap (8) of MkI Spirecraft Ions is capable of doing well against a single cap of even MkV fleet ships unless those fleet ships have a bonus against them (bombers, chameleons, raiders, IRE's, etc), and so on.  In general, a lot of these together can put some serious hurt on fleet ships (particularly low health ones) even when they can't insta-kill.
 +
** Related note: since their seconds-per-salvo is higher on the lower cap scales, and since their shot damage now actually matters, and since just about everything they can target scales with the caps, their damage will now be scale upward on the lower caps.
 +
** Updated the tooltip, which is reproduced here since it probably helps understand what we're doing here:
 +
*** Like Zenith Ion weapons (which AI Ion Cannons use), Spire Ion weapons insta-kill most ships with a mark level equal to or lower than its mark value, and cannot fire at all on ships immune to Ion weapons (i.e. immune to insta-kill).  Unlike Zenith Ion technology, these ships are mobile, much shorter-ranged, and actually do decent damage to higher mark ships.
  
−
* Beam weapon effects are now animated, and have a different color and animation per mark level (from 0 to V).
+
* Fallen-Spire city-provoked exogalactic strikeforces "buildup" rate (this only impacts the time between attacks, not their size or composition) redistributed a bit:
 +
** Spire City Hubs now generate 1/4 the "aggro" they used to.
 +
** Spire Shard Reactors, Habitation Centers, and Shipyards now, instead of generating zero "aggro", generate 1/8th what the Spire City Hub used to generate.
 +
** So a city with all 6 building slots taken up causes exactly the same amount of buildup as before.
 +
** But the advantage is that if your cities get really beat up in an AI attack and you lose city structures you have more time to rebuild before the next exo.  Not exactly smart of the AI, but the alternative is often a game that is fundamentally lost but just a matter of time.
  
−
* Improvements to angled line drawing accuracy.
+
* Youngling Nanoswarm:
 +
** Fixed bug in targeting logic that was making it focus on single targets when the intent was that they would aggressively spread themselves out across all available targets.  The new behavior still doesn't reach quite the desired behavior (they still tend to only spread out over a subset of the available targets) but it's still a significant improvement.  Hopefully more can be done later.
 +
*** Note that this overrides the Non-Sniper-Focus-Fire control; there's very little reason one would ever want these the auto focus-fire since they do so very little damage.  Of course if you really want a bunch of nanoswarms to all attack the same target you can give them a normal attack order.
 +
** Explosion range from 200/225/250/275/300 => flat 1000.
 +
*** They still only hit a max of 3/5/7/9/11 targets when they explode, so this makes it more likely that they'll actually get multiple hits.
  
−
* A completely new way of drawing the savegames on the save and load pages is now in place.  This new method is a lot easier to read, and is by-column instead of by-row.  It also manages to show the last-modified date of each file in a very compact and attractive format, and allows quickly sorting by date with the press of a single button.  The save and load have never looked so good.
+
* AI Fortress health from 6x human fortress equivalents => 3x human fortress equivalents.
 +
** Previously it was easy to take out an AI Fortress with just bombers (and other polycrystal stuff, since fortresses can barely scratch the paint on polycrystal) but it could take a really long time.  We want the fortresses to be challenging but not in the "how long do I have to wait before it dies" sense.  Hopefully we can find some other more interesting (and not very time consuming) way of making them more challenging
  
−
* Starship Constructors now have their own icon in far zoom, which a lot of people have been asking for for a while.
+
* Ships that generate attack (munitions) boosts now show the magnitude of the boost in the tooltip, not just the range.
 +
** Thanks to SpaceBrotha for the question that reminded us that this info wasn't directly displayed anywhere.
  
−
* Recharge bars no longer show for ships that have fewer than 2 seconds total recharge, even if the recharge bars are turned on.
+
* Ships that are not immune to attack boosting but have a attack-boost-ceiling below the default (which is 4, i.e. 5x or 500% of normal damage) now display their maximum receivable boost in their tooltip.
  
−
* Ships no longer blink in far zoom when they are shot.  The health bars are so efficient to draw now (and are now on by default) that this was no longer needed.  And the blinking seems not to have been working for a while, anyway.
+
* Higher mark Hybrid Drone Spawners now spawn drones more quickly in addition to being capable of spawning higher mark drones (a mkIV drone spawner still only spawns mkI drones for a hybrid at the first maturity level, and so on).
  
−
* "Niche icons" have replaced all the older "niche text" instances on ship icons in far zoom.
+
* Hybrids: second-stage and third-stage maturity now takes less time (about half what it used to, still longer than first-stage), as previously most hybrids died either before or during the first stage.
  
−
* Force fields have been updated with a new visual look that is very transparent except at the edges, which solves the issue  of them stacking and looking opaque, as well as just plain looking better.
+
* Neinzul Youngling Tigers:
−
** A huge thanks to I-KP for providing the base image that was used for this.
+
** Time-to-live from 2 minutes => 4 minutes, which is the same as other youngling types.
 +
** Metal and Crystal cost from 50/50 => 40/40.
 +
** Base Armor Rating from 300*mk => 600*mk.
 +
** Base Health from 11k*mk => 13k*mk.
 +
** Thanks to chemical_art for suggesting/inspiring these changes.
  
−
* The effect that goes around individual ships under a force field now matches that of the force field itself, which looks incredibly better and also is tons more clear. No more mysterious green circles to denote this!
+
* Neinzul Youngling Vulture:
 +
** Metal and Crystal cost from 50/50 => 40/40.
  
−
* The visual look for non-attack ranges such as counter-shooting radii, etc, has been updated to look better.
+
* Spire Teleporting Leech:
 +
** Base Energy Cost from 400 => 200.
 +
** Base Metal Cost from 2200 => 1200.
 +
** Base Crystal Cost from 800 => 500.
  
−
* Added "Reduce Visual Stimulation" toggle to the Graphics tab of the Settings window. Not intended for general use as it really cuts down the graphical quality by disabling many of the animations, but helps some players who are sensitive to strobing effects, etc.  No guarantees that it disables everything it should; if you use this feature and find something that it should be disabling, please let us know.
+
* Science Lab MkII:
 +
** Base Health from 120k => 500k.
 +
** Base Armor Rating from 1500 => 5000.
 +
** Now has cloaking.
 +
** Long story short: they're still more expensive than MkIs, but now they actually are significantly easier to keep alive in dicey situations than MkIs.
  
−
* The expansion logos are now drawn on the main menu in addition to the main game logo if the expansions are installed and enabled (full or trial mode).
+
* AI Superfortress:
 +
** Base health from 750 million => 450 million.  This brings it from 5*human-version to 3*human-version, putting it in line with the other fortresses.
 +
** Health regen halved.
  
−
* The explosions and shots now render under the far zoom icons in far zoom, making it easier to see what's going on clearly in that strategic view.
+
* AI Fortress I/II/III: health regen halved.
  
−
* Shots and explosions now won't shrink beyond a certain size in far zoom, which makes the battles a lot easier to see from very far zoomed out.
+
* Neinzul Preservation Warden spawn counts now scale up with AI Difficulty (the higher of the two is used, this is 1 at diff 7, 1.5 at 8, 2 at 9, 3 at 10) and AI Handicap (again, the higher of the two, negative handicaps don't apply to this), similar to other non-AIP-based threats.  Previously it only scaled with the number of human players/homeworlds, and of course the number of human-controlled resource extractors.
  
−
== New Ships ==
+
* Sentinel Frigates and Zenith Electric Bombers are now considered large enough targets for ships like the Antimatter Starship.
  
−
* Added a new "Home Human Settlement" unit that is only found on the starting human home planets.
+
* The earliest time that an AI player can even check for sending a wave has been changed to avoid both AIs sending their first waves on the exact same second on higher difficulties (which artificially increases the difficulty of the first wave, giving a false impression of how hard the second will be).  Specifically, it's still (( 14 - Difficulty ) * 100) seconds for the first AI player, and 1.5 times that for the second AI player.
−
** One of the last free civilian cities, filled with living humans.  They aid your cause by producing a moderate amount of metal and crystal, but the AI Progress will go up by 5 if the city is destroyed.
 
  
−
* Added a new "Human Cryogenic Pod" unit that is only found on the starting human home planets.
+
* Black Widow Golem:
−
** Due to overcrowding in the last human cities, a good portion of the remaining human population has to remain in cryogenic sleep.  After the war is over they can be brought back to life, but for the meantime they contribute to the war effort through the excess solar energy produced as a byproduct of their freeze chambers.
+
** Number of tractors from 100 => 200.
−
** The AI Progress goes up by 1 if these are destroyed.
+
*** Tractors on non-scaling ships do need to be made to scale with unit caps, but we don't have time to implement that just yet.  Bear in mind that when that scaling comes, the current number of tractors will be the _highest_ value: corresponding to "high" caps, because that's what the caps were before scaling was added (when the tractor numbers were established to begin with), so it won't make them any better.  For now, enjoy :)
 +
** This golem's tractors now do 2 seconds of paralysis damage per second to each held ship.  Ships immune to paralysis are not affected.
 +
** Base Health from 80M => 200M.
 +
** Basically just trying to make this golem a lot more useful and a lot less likely to die when not baby-sat.
  
−
*Added Flak Turrets: mkI, mkII, and mkIII. Graphics donated by HitmanN (with preliminary work and idea by superking, many thanks to both). The Flak Turrets have only received preliminary balancing, intended to be good against zenith viral shredders, cutlasses, and vampires, and mediocre against other very light ships, and only minorly effective against anything much bigger)
+
* Some further adjustment to high-difficulty wave size calculation, this time not changing diff 10 much at all but making the 9.3-9.8 stretch build up more gradually rather than 10 being more than 2x as hard as 9.8.
 +
** Previously in step 8 any difficulty greater than 7 received a 2.5 multiplier (7 got 2.25, and lower the lower you went).
 +
** Now:
 +
*** 7.3 through 9 still get 2.5.
 +
*** 9.3 gets 2.75 (10% harder than before).
 +
*** 9.6 gets 3.00 (20% harder than before).
 +
*** 9.8 gets 3.80 (52% harder than before).
 +
*** 10 gets 4.5 (would be 80% harder than before, but see next change).
 +
** Previously each wave on diff 10 would actually cause 2 separate waves.  This was from an old rule where 8 through 10 got double waves, but that was changed to just 8 due to the challenge-cliff it caused between 7.6 and 8.  Now this rule has been entirely removed, since 10's waves are now so much larger than before.
 +
** We're very much open to more feedback on this; basically diffs 9.3 through 10 aren't really where we expect people to play (indeed, we may need to make them harder if someone actually beats 10 in a fair fight again), but we want it to be fun for those who do.
  
−
* Two new units have been added: Fortress, and Fortress Mark II, which are scaled down (and cheaper) versions of the Fortress Mark III.
+
* Previously Sniper and Spider turrets cost 8 to 10 times as much metal+crystal to build a cap of compared to all other turret types, so:
 +
** Base Metal Cost from 1500 => 300.
 +
** Base Crystal Cost from 7500 => 1500.
 +
** They're still the most expensive turrets, that's intentional, but they're no longer quite so punishing (before you could have built a fleet of starships for the cost of a cap of sniper turrets).
  
−
* There are now three separate levels of basic AI command stations, same as the basic human command stations have three levels.
+
* Antimatter Starship:
−
** The AI command station variants have 5X more health than their human counterparts, and no longer have the human-specific abilities such as resource/energy production, warp detection, build menus, etc.
+
** Yes, this one is getting _another_ revamp. Some background:
−
** The AI command stations are now the only ones that cause AI Progress to increase.  That was previously already the case (the AI Progress went up only when a command station controlled by the AI was destroyed), but now that these are two separate units the tooltips are substantially briefer and clearer.
+
*** First, they were called dreadnoughts.  They did tons of engine damage.  Too much.  Nerfed.
−
** Existing savegames and new games now use only AI command station variants for the AIs, as follows:
+
*** Then, they were called useless.  For a long time.
−
*** On the AI home planets, they use AI Core Command Stations (same as always).
+
*** Then, we made them hit like a train from long range, but unable to fire upon anything remotely small.  They were called Siege Starships (alias: "awesome").
−
*** On Mark I and II planets, they use AI Command Stations Mark I.
+
*** But this broke a lot balance because you could just camp around your siege starships from across the planet and bomb everything to bits.
−
*** On Mark III planets, they use AI Command Stations Mark II.
+
*** So they were given antimatter bombs that can't hit forcefields, fortresses, or... well, much of anything.  In fairness they do great against starships and guardians, but that's proven too small a niche to really please their users.  They were renamed "Antimatter Starship", which has since become a dire insult in 75% of the inhabited galaxy.
−
*** On Mark IV planets, they use AI Command Stations Mark III.
+
*** But the solution was unclear: we could shorten their range, but Bomber Starships (which were made normally available shortly after these were changed to Siege Starships) already fill the short-range big-stuff-killing niche.
 +
*** And now, the next episode...
 +
** Base range from 16000 => 4000.
 +
** Shot type changed back from Antimatter Bomb => Energy Bomb (same basic type as bombers use, so no one is specifically immune to it like some are to antimatter bombs).  Still cannot fire on small ships, like before.
 +
** If it hits a forcefield, it will also damage up to 200 units protected by that forcefield (or forcefields physically near that forcefield) with 1% (to each target) of the damage done to the forcefield.
 +
*** Note: even stuff the starship itself cannot aim at (small units and cloaked units, etc) can be hit by the splash damage.
 +
*** The 200-count doesn't change between low, normal, and high unit caps because that would change the dps of the unit pretty significantly.  If it proves to be a problem we can try a few things.
 +
** Has been renamed to the Plasma Siege Starship.
 +
** The end result:
 +
*** Still longer-ranged than the bomber starship, but much shorter than before, so not worrying that it will break balance in that way.
 +
*** Still only about 1/3 of the bomber starship's single-target dps, but can up to triple the total damage output in a "siege" situation against a forcefielded group of targets.  Still not the better choice in terms of raw damage, but the utility of being able to get at the protected targets should counterbalance that and create its own niche.
  
−
* Previously, there were only 4 types of command stations that could be built by players.  Now there are 10, providing vastly more functionality and branches for varying strategies.
+
* Plasma Siege Cannon Modules (the ones for Fallen Spire modular stuff) now also have the forcefield-splash-damage attribute. Thematically, the Siege starship is (using) a plasma-siege-cannon now.
−
** The previously-existing warp jammer command stations have not been touched.
 
−
** The prior Mark I-III command stations have been renamed to Economic command stations, but their functionality is unchanged.
 
−
** There are now Mark I-III Military command stations.
 
−
*** Military Command Stations provide very little in the way of economic gain, but have much more health and the ability to shoot at enemy ships.
 
−
** There are now Mark I-III Logistical command stations.
 
−
*** Logistical Command Stations provide very little in the way of economic gain, and can't shoot at enemy ships, but they vastly increase the speed of all allied ships in the current system.  They also have middling armor and a smallish force field.
 
−
** Mark I of the Military, Economic, and Logistical command stations are all available at any time, and have no ship cap.  Marks II and III have to be individually unlocked per branch, and each branch has a ship cap of 6 per mark II/III command station.
 
  
−
* The old lightning warheads are now lightning warheads mark II. New lightning warheads mark I and III have been added.  The lightning warhead mark I does much less damage but in a larger area, and for one less AI Progress point.  The lightning warhead mark III does much more damage but in a much smaller area, and for only one more AI Progress point.
+
* Zenith Beam Frigate Base Range from 7500+100*mk => 6500+100*mk.
 +
** They're supposed to be long-ranged, but some marks were outranging their main triangle counter (missile frigate, which has 6500+500*mk base range), which isn't appropriate given the beam frigate's very high damage when it hits several targets per shot.
  
−
* EMP warheads mark II and III have been added.  For extra AI Progress points, they will paralyze enemy ships for longer intervals. The higher-mark EMPs are more AI-Progress-cost-effective than using multiple of the existing mark I EMPs.
+
* Turret base energy costs:
 +
** Basic Turret from 150 => 100.
 +
** MLRS Turret from 150 => 100.
 +
** Flak Turret from 300 => 200.
 +
** Missile Turret from 150 => 100.
 +
** Counter-Dark-Matter Turret from 4000 => 1000.
 +
** Counter-Missile-Turret from 4000 => 1000.
 +
** Counter-Sniper-Turret from 4000 => 1000.
 +
** Sniper & Spider Turrets from 250 => 150.
 +
** Grav Turret from 500/8000/10000 => 400*mk.
 +
** Tractor Turret left alone (150/240/300).
 +
** Laser Turret (150) and Heavy Beam Cannon (750/1300/2000/20000) left alone.  They're energy weapons.
 +
** Lightning Turret from 500/1000/2000 => 400 flat.  Energy weapon, yes, but that was a bit high.
 +
** These really aren't that big a deal, but it does help rein in some numbers that were set long ago, and bring the energy-per-dps ratio of the main attack turrets under the stuff that shoots and has engines.
  
−
* In Zenith-Remnant-Enabled games, there are now Mercenary Beam Frigates.
+
* Artillery Golem:
 +
** Base Armor Rating from 0 => 4000.
 +
** Base Recharge Time from 30 => 8.
 +
** Basically: when you see an Artillery Golem you can get on your side, we want you to be happy.  When you see an Artillery Golem on the enemy side, we want you to be sad.  Previously it wasn't doing a whole lot of either.
 +
** Thanks to Orelius and others for feedback on golems.
  
−
* There are new Mercenary Parasites and Mercenary EtherJets which allow for new strategic options in any game, but with the usual overly-high costs of mercenary ships.
+
* Regenerator Golem:
 +
** Repair cost reduced by 90% to make regeneration not "cost" quite so much more than simply producing the ships from scratch, in metal+crystal terms.
  
−
* Previously, there was only a mark I scout starship.  Now new unlockable mark II, III, and IV scout starships have been added.  Each has progressively better tachyon beams, health, and movement speed, as well as higher costs and progressively lower ship caps.  The mark IV scout starships also are perma-cloaked like the regular mark IV scouts.  The difference is that these scout starships can be unlocked at any time, unlike the regular scouts.  But on the other hand, to unlock all the way through tech IV with regular scouts only requires 3,000 knowledge (and you get a single mark IV scout).  In the case of the scout starships it requires 9,000 (and you get two mark IV scout starships).
+
* Cursed Golem:
−
** These are in no way intended to replace the main scout line, but they do provide a new similar-but-different-in-the-specifics alternative for some circumstances (for one example among many: if there are no advanced factories remaining on the map, and you REALLY need a perma-cloaked scout).  Unlike regular scouts, these are also useful for combat support because of their counter-sniper flares, tachyon beams, etc.
+
** Self-attrition reduced by 50% (now would go from 100% to 0% in 60 minutes instead of 40).
  
−
* Previously, there were only mark I and II ion cannons.  Now, mark III, IV, and V ion cannons have also been added.  These new ion cannons can be purchased by humans from the trader for an exorbitant fee, and can be captured from the AI but apply significant wave multipliers against that planet.  Like their lower-level cousins, they insta-kill all non-insta-kill-immune ships with a mark level equal to or lower than their own mark level.  In the case of the mark V ion cannons, this basically means that the best way to take them out is starships.
+
* Lightning Turrets
−
** These will be seeded into existing savegames, but the seed rules in general are as follows:
+
** Attack changed to function like electric shuttles: Hits up to 200 targets, and if hits are left over can hit each target up to 5 times (meaning that groups as small as 40 take the full power of the attack).
−
*** Mark III ion cannons are only ever seeded for AI players of difficulty 6 or higher, and at most with 1 per planet.
 
−
*** Mark IV ion cannons are only ever seeded for AI players of difficulty 7 or higher, and at most with 1 per planet.
 
−
*** Mark V ion cannons are only ever seeded for AI players of difficulty 8 or higher, and at most with 1 per planet.
 
−
*** Even though there can only be one ion cannon of each mark level per planet, you could indeed see situations where you have a mark III and a mark IV ion cannon both on the same planet.  The likelihood of each mark level of ion cannon appearing is diminishing as the mark level increases.  However, the likelihood of each is increased as the difficulty of the AI player is increased.
 
  
−
* Mark II and III metal and crystal harvesters have been added as four new unlockable technologies.
+
* Lighting Turrets/Electric Shuttles: The per-planet-per-player-per-type-per-mark delay has been reduced to a very minimal duration, generally allowing a full cap of lightning turrets to unload its full power before the first one finishes reloading.   
−
** The mark II technologies cost 2000 knowledge each, and the mark III technologies cost 2500 each.  Combined, therefore, they equal the cost of unlocking mark II and mark III economic command stations, respectively.  However, these can be unlocked piecemeal, or in addition to the economic command stations, which adds a lot of flexibility.
+
** This still prevents a total alpha strike, but that also helps avoid a situation where the entire lightning turret cluster unloads on a couple of leading fighters before the rest of the wave shows up.
−
** The gather rate of the mark I harvesters is 12 (same as before), and the new mark II gather rate is 13, and new mark III gather rate is 14.  That might not sound like a big improvement, but when you have a lot of harvesters throughout the galaxy that can add up to a serious degree.  When you don't have many harvesters, however, that's not all that worthwhile.
+
** It also looked really cool in testing.
−
** There is, however, a second benefit to these new harvesters: they cost the same to build as the regular harvesters, but they build significantly faster (2x as fast at mark II, 4x as fast at mark III).  On highly-contested planets where harvesters are frequently getting killed, this makes these an attractive alternative to harvester exo-force-fields.
 
−
** Command stations will automatically build the highest tier of harvester available, which is always desirable since the higher tiers of harvester don't cost any more than the lower-tier ones (aside from the knowledge cost to unlock them in the first place).
 
−
*** However, please note that the existing harvesters will NOT automatically be upgraded, as the destruction and reconstruction of them could tank your economy at a bad time.  To upgrade all your harvesters, simply go to each planet, click the select all the harvesters from the planetary summary, and delete the old ones.  New, higher-mark ones will appear in their place.
 
−
** Please keep on the lookout for any odd behavior related to the new harvesters, as these were rather intensive to add to the game in a code sense.  The chance of subtle bugs with these is pretty high, because a lot of various ships interact with them in a lot of various ways.
 
  
−
* Transport Ships Mark II have been added:
+
* Player-Ally Dyson Gatlings are no longer unable to shoot mkV units.
−
** These cost far more energy to operate, but they slowly heal all ships contained within themselves; Neinzul Younglings are healed faster.
+
** In previous iterations this rule was necessary because player-ally dysons were clearing off AI homeworlds and/or core worlds.  Since player-ally dysons rarely wind up on AI planets anymore the rule no longer seems necessary, and "why are my dysons not shooting X?" questions have been happening on a regular basis for quite some time.
  
−
* New Mark II and Mark III Tachyon Warheads have been added in addition to the existing Mark I Tachyons. The new higher marks cost more AI Progress (and more metal and crystal), but have far more health (better for deep strikes), do more localized damage, and cause enemy ships to be decloaked for much longer.
+
* Hybrids:
 +
** If either player has Advanced Hybrids enabled, hybrid maturity-xp contributions to the central dirty-tricks "bank" are now doubled compared to Normal Hybrids.
 +
** The first couple stages of the only such dirty-trick progression currently implemented now happen a bit faster, but the first and second nasty bits have been made less nasty
  
−
* New Mark I and Mark II Armored Warheads have been added in addition to the existing one, which was renamed to Mark III. The new lower marks have the same level or armoredness, but cost a lot less to build, cost only 10 or 15 AI Progress to use respectively instead of 20, but do less damage to a smaller area.  When you can't get lightning warheads to a target that you're unable to kill any other way, these guys are the way to go, but they're definitely very costly and not to be used casually.  The new lower marks at least provide some more flexibility when going after smaller groups of ships, or lower-health ships.
+
* Spirecraft Shield Bearers:
 +
** Ship cap doubled.
 +
** Amounts produced:
 +
*** Reptite: from 0 => 1 mkI (so can now be built from Reptite)
 +
*** Pysite: from 1 => 2 mkI
 +
*** Xampite: from 1 => 2 mkII
 +
*** Ebonite: from 1 => 2 mkIII
 +
*** Adamantite: from 1 => 2 mkIV
 +
*** Titanite: from 1 => 2 mkV
 +
** Hopefully this will bring their costs more into line with their actual utility (as non-repairable shields).
  
−
* Nuclear warhead mark II has been added (costs 750k metal and crystal):
+
* Plasma Siege Starship
−
** Causes a multi-planet nuclear explosion when destroyed by enemy forces or by scrapping.  Destroys all resources and most ships on the planet on which it is set off and all adjacent planets.  Does not affect core ships or starships.  Also causes supply to be permanently lost for all teams at that planet, meaning you then cannot use science labs, docks, etc.
+
** Shot now has a traditional (lightning-type) aoe that does 6.25% of normal damage to up to 14 extra nearby targets.
−
** Be VERY careful not to detonate it on OR adjacent to a planet belonging to your team!  AI Progress jumps upward by 500 every time a nuclear warhead is detonated, so this is something to be done with extreme care.
+
*** In order for this normal aoe to work, the restriction from firing upon fleet ships has been removed.  Previously it was there primarily to keep the autotargeting from "wasting" shots on small stuff, but this has become less important.  It still prefers targeting starships, etc.
 +
** Still has the "siege" effect when hitting a forcefield, but that's been changed from 1% of the damage done to up to 200 ships to 6.25% to up to 25.  That's less total, adjusting somewhat for the addition of the traditional aoe and the greater ease of getting the whole bonus.
 +
** For reference, the Siege's dps (per unit, not per cap) against a single target is about 71% that of the Bomber Starship (previous version notes said 1/3rd, that was actually inaccurate).  If the traditional aoe hits the full 14 targets, that brings it up to about 133% that of the Bomber Starship.  If the shot also hit a forcefield that's protecting other units, that extra "siege" damage is just gravy on top (potentially up to a total of 245% or so).
 +
*** If this proves to be too much, adjustments can be made, but typically we get more useful feedback for a new/changed unit that's stronger than it should be than if it were weaker.
  
−
* Nuclear warhead mark III (doomsday device) has been added (costs 7.5 million metal and crystal):
+
* AI Carriers:
−
** When this warhead is destroyed by enemy forces or by scrapping...  the effect is nothing short of a galaxy-wide catastrophe that destroys all resources and most ships on EVERY planet.  It still does not affect core ships or starships, but it causes supply to be lost for all teams on all planets.
+
** Are no longer invincible if there's >= 2000 AI ships already on the planet.
−
** You can still win the war after using a weapon of this magnitude, but be wary of the terrible cost!  There is not much of a galaxy left to inhabit after an event such as this, and the AI Progress will jump upward by 5000.  This chilling piece of hardware truly belongs amongst the weapons we wish we could disinvent.
+
*** Previously this was necessary to avoid too many AI ships on a planet at once for decent cpu/ram performance.   
 +
** Now, when a carrier deploys (it deploys when destroyed):
 +
*** If there are fewer than 1400 AI ships already on the planet, and another carrier has not deployed in the last few seconds, it deploys normally as before.
 +
*** Otherwise, it "combines" its contained units into a fairly small assortment of ships and deploys those.  The population of this group uses similar logic as exo waves, but is not itself an exo wave (there's no leader, no beeline-human-homeworld logic, etc), it behaves as normal threat.
 +
**** The more AI ships there are on the planet, the more "condensed" it tries to make this deployment, so in those cases you'll see more enemy starships, etc but far smaller quantity.
 +
** Also, if there are less than 500 AI ships already on the planet, and it is a non-AI planet and there's at least one enemy military (non-mine) unit, and another carrier has not deployed in the last few seconds, it automatically deploys.
 +
** Rationale: Previously it was possible to have carriers slip through otherwise impenetrable defenses because there were simply too many AI ships (which may have been somewhere else on the planet) to quickly kill.  This was desirable from a design standpoint because we don't want a single layer of impenetrable defenses to be the end-all defensive strategy in the game.  However, it has proved consistently frustrating (in a non-fun way) for some players so it seemed a good time to try something different.  Now the presence of a ton of other AI ships doesn't make the carriers invincible, it just makes them very dangerous to destroy. Hopefully in an interesting way :)
  
−
* 9 New types of Special AI-Homeworld Guard Posts that have to be destroyed before the home command station itself can be destroyed.
+
* Spider turrets:
 +
** Base Metal Cost from 6000 => 1200.
 +
** Base Crystal Cost 15000 => 2400.
 +
** These weren't actually changed in last patch because they weren't inheriting the sniper turret costs.  This is actually a good thing as spider turrets are substantially more useful than sniper turrets.  They now cost 2x as much m+c as the sniper turret (3600 vs 1800).
  
−
* Five marks each (I-V) of nine new guard posts have been added to the game.  These are specifically NOT for the AI homeworlds, but are now used in place of all of the previously-existing guard posts and stealth guard posts that used to be in the game (special forces guard posts have not been altered.
+
* Riot Starships:
−
** These new, specialized guard posts vary in rarity and effect just as do their counterparts on the AI homeworlds, but these have very little overlap in terms of specific function with the homeworld-specific guard posts.  Also, with the exception of the "AI Command Station Shield Guard Post," none of these new guard posts protect the command stations from being destroyed.
+
** Ship Cap from 4/3/2 => 4 flat.  Most of the special starship types have non-decreasing caps already.
−
** The primary function of these specialized guard posts is to make the assaults on AI non-homeworld planets more interesting and varied. These first 45 new guard posts should be considered the first steps into this new design paradigm for guard posts, rather than the end-all designs.  In other words, there is lots of room for growth in terms of variety and function with these, same as with the guard posts for the homeworlds.
+
** Base Health from 900k*mk => 1.8M*mk.  This brings their just-the-hull health up to just below the squishy end of the current target zone for starships (7.5M*mk cap-hp, though Raids and Leeches are currently way below that for other reasons).
−
** The secondary function of these new guard posts is to raise the difficulty on the non-homeworld planets.  Or, more specifically, to counteract the lowered difficulty that is also contained in this release in the form of the lowered AI per-planet ship caps. These guard posts now form the centerpieces of more varied sub-battlefields within the larger battlefields of each planetary area.
+
** Shield mkI/mkII Base Health from 500k*mk => 1.8M*mk.  This brings their hull+shield health up to the middle of the target zone.
 +
** Base Speed from 20/17/14 => flat 20.
 +
** Base Energy Cost from 3000/4000/5000 => flat 3000.
 +
** Base mkI Metal+Crystal Cost from 20k+60k => 30k+50k (mkII is 2x, mkIII is 4x).
 +
** Knowledge Cost from free/3500/4500 => free/4000/5000.  DPS starships run 0/5k/7k, more specialized ones like the raid run 0/4k/4k, etc.
 +
** Base Attack Power from 3600/5200/6800 => 4000*mk.  This brings their non-bonus-dps up to the very low end of the current target zone for starship (20k*mk cap-dps).  So it's really low (even with module damage), but it's a utility type.
 +
** Base Engine Damage from 40/55/70 => 40*mk.
 +
** Multiplier vs Medium from 2 => 4.  Its other 4 bonuses were already 4.
 +
** All Modules:
 +
*** No longer have an energy cost.  12k cap-e for the hulls is enough.
 +
** Machine Gun Modules:
 +
*** Engine Damage Percent Floor from 50%/30% => 40%/20%.
 +
** Laser Modules:
 +
*** Engine Damage from 17*mk => 30*mk.  The machine guns are still 3x as efficient for total EDPS but have shorter range and cannot bring engines as low as these.
 +
*** Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 5 => 4.
 +
*** Multiplier vs Neutron from 3 => 4.
 +
** Shotgun Modules:
 +
*** Base Attack Power from 40 => 400.
 +
*** Engine Damage from 28 => 36.  Makes these 2x as efficient as MGs for total EDPS.
 +
*** Shots per salvo from 25/49 => 25*mk.
 +
*** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 6 => 4.
 +
*** Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 5 => 4.
 +
*** Multiplier vs Refractive from 5 => 4.
 +
** Tazer Module:
 +
*** Multiplier vs Medium from 3 => 4.
 +
*** Multiplier vs Artillery from 3 => 4.
 +
*** Now has a planet-wide stagger time of 2 seconds, to prevent permanently stunlocking 4000+ ships in a multi-hw setting with 4 Riot IIs.  They can still be used to effectively halve the attack power (due to prolonging reload time) of non-paralysis immune enemies.  Also tends to interrupt them while they try to get away.
 +
*** Thanks to Wanderer for being the one to confirm the long-held suspicion that these were horribly exploitable.
 +
** Tractor Modules:
 +
*** Tractor Range from 1700*mk => flat 4400.  Same as mkIII tractor turrets.
 +
*** Tractor Count from 10/40 => 72*mk.  Same as mkII/mkIII tractor turrets (but mobile and not needing supply).
 +
**** Note that this doesn't scale with unit cap scale and really should, but that's a bit out of scope for this time frame and these would be the numbers on high caps so you're not losing anything.
 +
** For reference, total cap-EDPS with all MG/SG builds firing within main-gun range is now 3080/4720/7080, compared to the spider turret's 7833 (from infinite range, insta-fire, and able to take engines down to 1%, but immobile and way more expensive).
 +
** This was another long-overdue rebalancing, hence the magnitude of changes.
  
−
* Dreadnought I/II/III renamed to Siege Starship I/II/III and given much more distinctive role:
+
* Orbital Mass Drivers:
−
** Speed from 12 to 8.
+
** Now when under a firepower-reducing forcefield they retain 75% of their attack power instead of the customary 25%.
−
** Shields from 1500 to 200.
 
−
** Base health from 300,000/600,000/900,000 to 1000,00/120,000/140,000.
 
−
** Attack rate from 80/70/60 to 160 for all 3 marks (this means it used to fire once per 4/3.5/3 seconds, and now all fire once per 8 seconds).
 
−
** No longer able to fire on fleet ships (this actually makes its autotargeting behavior much more efficient at its real job).
 
−
** Base attack power from 3200/4800/6400 to 6400/11000/15000.
 
−
** Engine damage per shot from 150/250/350 to 5000/7500/10000.
 
−
** Multiplier against normal forcefields from 1 to 30.
 
−
** Multiplier against starship-based forcefields from 1 to 15.
 
−
** Multiplier against turrets from 1 to 30.
 
−
** Multiplier against heavy defense from 21 to 30 (this includes fortresses, and 1/2 bonus against guard posts and 1/3 against ion cannons).
 
−
** Multiplier against hybrid facilities from 1 to 10.
 
−
** Multiplier against warheads from 0.2 to 1.
 
−
** Removed multipliers against Fighter, Bulletproof-fighter, Microfighter, Zenith Autobombs, Zenith Bombardment, Raider, Teleport Raider, Teleport Battlestation, and Munitions Boosters.
 
−
** Autotargeting now prefers starships (the 30x multiplier against them is still there).
 
−
** Knowledge unlock cost from 2500/4000/6000 to 3000/5000/7000.
 
  
−
* For CoN:
+
* Leech Starship:
−
** Starship Class: Neinzul Enclave Starships Mark I-IV.
+
** Base Energy Use from 10k/14k/18k => flat 5k. So cap-e is same now as Raids (the next highest for combat starships)
−
** Bonus Ship Type: Neinzul Youngling Commandos Mark I-V.
+
** All vs-hull-type bonuses removed, to allow for a bit more of an overall damage buff and thus more general reclamation utility.
−
** Bonus Ship Type: Neinzul Youngling Tigers Mark I-V.
+
** Base Health from 1.6M*mk => 3.2M*mk. Was well below the target range for starship cap-health, is now just on the low-end (bottom is 7.5M*mk).
−
** Bonus Ship Type: Neinzul Youngling Weasel I-V.
+
** Shots per salvo from 1 => 3.  That brings it up to the target range for starship-with-no-bonuses cap-dps (about 66k*mk), and should help it reclaim more.
−
** Bonus Ship Type: Neinzul Youngling Vulture I-V.
+
** Hull type from UltraLight => Heavy because UltraLight tends to be a major pain to kill when in the hands of the AI (see: raid starships) and the health just doubled.
−
** Bonus Ship Type: Neinzul Youngling NanoswarmI-V.
 
−
** Neinzul Regeneration Chamber.
 
−
*** Stationary structure with the capacity to contain 500 Neinzul Youngling ships inside itself. The player cannot manually load the regeneration chamber, but Neinzul Younglings will automatically seek shelter inside the Regeneration Chamber when their health drops below 30% if they have no other orders. While inside, Neinzul ships are regenerated at the inverse of their normal self-attrition rate, and then are automatically ejected when their health is fully restored.
 
−
** Mercenary Neinzul Enclave Starships (mark I).  That lets you always build Mark I ships anywhere if you're willing to pay 300k metal/crystal for one of these.  Of course, a much cheaper alternative is to spend the knowledge to get some actual regular Enclave Starships from the main Starship Constructor.
 
−
** Neinzul Cluster (I-V versions) AI defensive structure; also added Neinzul Cluster-Bomber AI type (moderate) that starts with a cluster on every one of its planets that isn't right next to a human homeworld.
 
−
** Neinzul Privacy Cluster, a rare form of Cluster that emits tachyon beams and is antagonized by scouts as well as normal military (no other cluster is antagonized by a mere scout).  This type of cluster is seeded on roughly 1 out of every 20 planets of a Neinzul Cluster Bomber AI.
 
−
** Neinzul Nest (I-V) structures, which are like clusters except that they are also angered by the humans controlling their planet or an adjacent planet, or killing AI units on their planet or an adjacent planet.  They also have a greater capacity than normal clusters.  They also differ from clusters in that they have no attack of their own but can take vastly more damage and cost 10 AIP if destroyed instead of 2.
 
−
** Neinzul Viral Swarmer (only one mark) and Neinzul Viral Cluster I-V (which is a cluster that only has the swarmers), and Neinzul Viral Enthusiast (which has viral clusters on every wormhole).
 
−
** Neinzul Bomber (only one mark) and Neinzul Bomber Cluster I-V (which is a cluster that only has the bombers), and extended the Neinzul Cluster-Bomber to pick Bomber Clusters half the time and normal Clusters half the time during initial map generation.
 
−
** Neinzul Silo (I-V) structures.  When a Silo's planet is on alert, it periodically generates minor-faction-controlled warheads that will target human planets and cost no AIP when used (since the human is not using them).
 
  
−
* 50 new types of Guardians have been added to the game (5 each of 10 different overall types): Sniper, Spider, Tractor, Tachyon, Lightning, Flak, Artillery, Heavy Beamm, Laser and Raider.  As with the guard posts, the variety of types of guardians will grow with time.
+
* Light Starship/Flagship/Zenith Starship/Spire Starship/Core Starship
 +
** Ship Cap from 5/3/2/2/2 => 4 flat.
 +
** Base Speed from 15/18/18/24/22 => 22 flat.
 +
** Base Armor Rating from 1000/2500/2500/2500/2500 => 1000*mk.
 +
** Base Energy Use from 2k/10k/20k/20k/20k => 4k flat.
 +
** Base Attack Range from 1500/4800/3000/10000/500 => 3000+(200*mk).
 +
** Base Health from 2M/6M/14,625k/12,675k/25,350k => 3.75M*mk.  This brings them to 15M*mk cap-health, and the target range for starships is 7.5M-40M*mk (though there aren't any "Armor Starships" or whatever that would actually use the top of that range, etc).
 +
** Shots-per-salvo from 5/9/14/4/5 => 5 flat.
 +
** Seconds-per-salvo from 4/4/2/2/5 => 4 flat.
 +
** Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 12/12/1/1/1 => 4.
 +
** Multiplier vs Medium from 8/8/1/6/1 => 4.
 +
** Multiplier vs Light from 6/6/1/1/1 => 1/1/4/1/4.
 +
** Multiplier vs Polycrystal from 1/1/0.01/4/1 => 4/1/1/4/4.
 +
** Multiplier vs Artillery from 1 => 1/4/1/1/4.
 +
** Multiplier vs UltraLight from 1/1/1/4/1 => 1.
 +
** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 1/1/1/1/0.1 => 1.
 +
*** Part of this is to make each of the mkI-IV varieties good against one triangle ship type, and the mkV good against them all (not that you can get the mkV normally, but the AI can!).
 +
** Base Attack Power from 3600/12k/30k/60k/60k => 8k*mk.  This brings them to 40k*mk non-bonus and 160k*mk bonus cap-dps, which is about right for a 4x-bonus starship.
 +
** Munitions boost range from 3k/6k/5k/8k = 2k+(1k*mk).
 +
** Most of the mark-specific quirks (flagships do a little engine damage, zeniths and up have warp detection, spires are immune to gravity, different ammo types, etc) are still there.
 +
** There've been a lot of balance problems with this line for a while, and we've held off from comprehensive changes partly since they're really two separate lines (fleet starship and alien starship) and we'll probably split them up at some point.  We'll probably still split them up later since that would be cool, but for now it's easier to balance them as a cohesive line according to the guidelines used for the other combat starships.
  
−
* A new AI Eye unit is now seeded throughout the galaxy.  Raider-type aggressive AIs use fewer of these, turtle-type AIs have one on pretty much every planet.
+
* Flak Turrets:
−
** AI Eyes are a direct feed back to the AI core network: when player ships gang up on the AI overwhelmingly, alarms are tripped and higher-level AI ships come pouring out of the Eye. Either kill the eye first, before bringing in your gigantic fleet, or just do guerrilla-style raids on planets with an Eye.  Specifically, the AI Eyes make sure that your ships only ever outnumber the AI ships 2:1.
+
** Effective range from 4000/5000/6000 => 4500/5500/6500 to make them a little easier to place around a wormhole.
 +
** Now when under a firepower-reducing forcefield they retain 75% of their attack power instead of the customary 25%.
 +
** Hopefully they'll now be closer to the general usefulness of other turrets in that they don't have to die immediately (if protected).
  
−
* A new AI Carrier unit has been added to the game:
+
* Lightning Turrets:
−
** Built by the AI to contain offline overflow units from its planets when it has too many units to keep online, and to then deliver those units as a payload to key human planets.  Each carrier contains 200-1200 ships that will come active when the carrier is destroyed.  After a single barracks is built at a planet, the AI builds carriers instead.
+
** Now when under a firepower-reducing forcefield they retain 75% of their attack power instead of the customary 25%.
  
−
== Ship Logic Updates ==
+
* Heavy Beam Cannons (just the human standalone ones, not any of the spire variants, though the spire variants were impacted by the m+c and knowledge cost changes) :
 +
** All marks:
 +
*** All vs-hull-type bonuses removed, these are just straight damage now, which is more thematically appropriate.  Also, it's nice to have at least one turret type that doesn't have that kind of bonus.
 +
*** For reference, these aren't really "aoe", they're "blast-through"; a beam loses strength as it does damage.
 +
** MkI
 +
*** For reference, MkI unit cap is 12 for these, and each fires 3 beams every 7 seconds.
 +
*** Base Health from 250k => 850k.  This brings cap-health a bit higher than missile turrets, which are the squishy end of turret types.
 +
*** Base Energy Use from 750 => 1650.  This brings cap-energy to just slightly above MLRS and several other turret types.
 +
*** Base Metal/Crystal Cost from 8000/14000 => 6500/11000.  This brings cap-mc to slightly below most turret types.
 +
*** Base Attack Power from 50000 => 140000.  This brings cap-dps to be second highest turret non-bonus-dps (lightning being highest) but well below the any turret's bonus-dps.
 +
*** Knowledge cost from 2000 => 500. The other mkI turrets are free.
 +
** MkII
 +
*** For reference, MkII unit cap is 8 for these, and each fires 6 beams every 6 seconds.
 +
*** Base Health from 1.25M => 2.55M.  Basically: mkI health * (2 for being mkII) * (1.5 for smaller unit cap)
 +
*** Base Energy Use from 1300 => 2500. (roughly mkI * 1.5 for cap)
 +
*** Base Metal/Crystal Cost from 16000/28000 => 13000/22000.  (mkI * 2, customary for mkII)
 +
*** Base Attack Power from 50000 => 180000.  Basically: mkI damage * (0.429 for rate-of-fire-difference) * (2 for mkII) * (1.5 for unit cap)
 +
*** Knowledge cost from 3000 => 2500. Most other mkII turrets are 2000-3000.
 +
** MkIII
 +
*** For reference, MkIII unit cap is 4 for these, and each fires 12 beams every 5 seconds.
 +
*** Base Health from 2.25M => 7.65M.  Basically: mkI health * (3 for mark) * (3 for unit cap)
 +
*** Base Energy Use from 2000 => 5000. (roughly mkI * 3 for cap)
 +
*** Base Metal/Crystal Cost from 32000/56000 => 26000/44000.  (mkI * 4, customary for mkIII)
 +
*** Base Attack Power from 50000 => 225000. Basically: mkI damage * (0.179 for rof diff) * (3 for mark) * (3 for cap)
 +
*** Knowledge cost from 3500 => 3000.  That's pretty normal for a mkIII turret.
 +
** MkIV
 +
*** For reference, MkIV unit cap is _1_ for these, and it fires 40 beams every 4 seconds.
 +
*** Base Health from 3.25M => 40M.  Basically: mkI health * (4 for mark) * (12 for unit cap)
 +
*** Base Energy Use from 2000 => 20000. (roughly mkI * 12 for cap)
 +
*** Base Metal/Crystal Cost from 64000/112000 => 52000/88000.  (mkI * 8, customary for mkIV)
 +
*** Base Attack Power from 50000 => 290000.  Basically: mkI damage * (0.043 for rof diff) * (4 for mark) * (12 for cap)
 +
*** Knowledge cost staying at 3000.  Thought about 3500, but it really is just one unit.
 +
** These haven't seen a real rebalance in... a long time, and had fallen behind pretty drastically through the various changes since the 3.x days.  Hopefully this will make them statistically competitive with other turret types (that have much larger caps).  Feedback on how it all actually works out in practice is very welcome.
  
−
* Previously there was just a single "engineering rate" for ships that could assist construction or do repairs.  Now there are separate repair rates and construction rates for engineers.
+
* All modules (except those that generate forcefields) are now invincible and thus untargetable, etc.
−
** This lets them do construction at the same rate as always, while doing repairs much faster than in the past, which in turn makes them more viable once again as an alternative to Mobile Repair Stations.
 
−
** This also makes a clearer delineation on not allowing Mobile Repair Stations to assist the construction of units.
 
  
−
* Snipers and sniper/spider turrets now use a new Railgun ammo type that strikes its target instantly, leaving a faint white line flashing in its wake as it does so.  This fixes the issues with overkill and wasting incoming sniper shots, as well as simultaneously making it easier to see where sniper shots are originating from.
+
* When computing the number of reactors of a specific mark controlled by a specific player on a specific planet for the purposes of reactor-inefficiency, that number is now divided by that player's number of homeworlds (if that player has more than 1).  This allows them to get basically the same energy output per m+c cost as an equivalent number of separate players with the same total number of homeworlds.
 +
** On the same note, the "auto build energy reactor" toggles on the CTRLS window (both galaxy-wide and per-planet) have been converted to sliders allowing you to specifying that more than one should be auto-built.  If both the galaxy-wide one and a per-planet one are greater than zero, that planet will auto-build the higher of the two numbers (but not the sum, unlike with engineers).
 +
** The energy difference between multi-HW and multi-players has been known for a long time and not considered a priority.  However, recent scientific analysis has concluded that multi-HW AARs have significant potential entertainment value, hence the change.
  
−
* EMP Warheads and Tachyon Warheads all now do a small, localized amount of area damage when they explode, in the manner of a lightning warhead but with a much smaller area of effect and level of damage.  This gives an added bonus to the use of these warheads, just to sweeten the deal a bit.
+
* Everything that fires Siege Plasma (Plasma Siege Starship, Plasma Siege Cannon modules), Flak grenades, grenades, or self-explodes (autobomb, nanoswarm) can now fire directly upon aoe-immune targets, but the resulting aoe will still not hit any aoe-immune targets (just the directly hit target).
 +
** Notably, this restores the Plasma Siege Starship's ability to target Raid Starships, which was unintentionally lost in the previous version.
  
−
* "Mines" have now become "minefields."  The following changes now apply to all mines, including regular, EMP, and Area mines.
+
* Youngling Nanoswarm:
−
** The max health of mines is now 8x higher, as is their regen rate.
+
** Paralysis time from 1*mk seconds to 3*mk seconds. Partly because really short paralysis times work a bit oddly, partly because these needed to be more useful.
−
** The metal and crystal costs of mines are now 6x higher.
+
** Engine damage from 2*mk => 10*mk.
−
** The ship caps on mines are now 4x lower.
 
−
** Minefields are now 16x larger than the older mines used to be (256x256 instead of 64x64).
 
−
** The damage dealt by an individual minefield is now 3x what it was before, and is now shown in the tooltip.
 
−
** Minefields now take 3x longer to build.
 
−
* These changes will affect existing savegames, but human players may still have a large number of mines in play that will suddenly look all overlapped and be way above the ship cap for the player.  Once these mines are exploded, they won't rebuild if the player would be over ship cap.  It's a bit of an advantage to mine-loving players who upgrade older savegames; the mines can simply be scrapped to counteract this.
 
  
−
* Individual ships are now only able to hit any minefield once per second. So, for example, if Ship A hits minefield 1, and if it survives that hit, it then has 1 second of immunity to pass by minefields 1, 2, 3, etc.  If it moves so slowly that it is still touching minefield 1 after a second has passed (and minefield 1 and Ship A are both still alive), then Ship A will hit minefield 1 again.  This would also happen if a ship was tractored or paralyzed on top of a minefield—it would keep getting hit once per second until either the minefield or the ship was exhausted.
+
* The "The Tank" AI-type wave multiplier from 0.5 => 1, as the intent behind it is that it be actually stronger on offense than usual, rather than weaker.  The average should be fine, but possibly another increase can come later.
−
** This is PER SHIP only.  So if Ship A hits minefield 1 and gains immunity, that doesn't matter for Ships B or C, which could also hit minefield 1 on that exact same instant.
 
−
** This also does not apply to area effects.  So if Ship A hits minefield 1, and minefield one does area damage or paralysis to Ships B, C, and D, then B, C, and D still can hit minefield 1 or other minefields.  In fact, Ship B could collide with minefield one, damaging itself and doing area damage to Ships A, C, and D.
 
  
−
* Mines are no longer all-or-nothing damage, now that they are minefields.  If their damage would overkill the ship that hits them, they now only deal the actual damage that would kill the triggering ship.  This in turn reduces the amount of damage taken by the minefield itself, and if there is an area damage effect, it also reduces how much area damage is taken by the other nearby enemy ships.
+
* Vorticular Cutlass:
 +
** Base Health from 7000*mk => 10500*mk.  This puts them at the top of the target fleet ship range with 30M*mk cap-health (Armor Ships and Shield Bearers were the only other ones up there before this).
 +
** Base Speed from 16 => 54.  So from slower than a fighter to slightly faster than an etherjet.
 +
** Base Metal/Crystal cost from 200/50 => 30/30.  Now the same price as infiltrators, a bit lower than tele-raiders, etc.
 +
** Base Energy use from 100 => 20.
  
−
* Previously, there was a constant rate of engine repair, which meant that ships with high engine health would take a REALLY long time to have their engines repaired.  Now the rate of engine repair scales up so that ships with high engine health don't take extra time any longer.  The base rate of engine repair has been halved, though.
+
* Acid Sprayers:
−
** Additionally, the repair speed bonuses of higher-level engineers now also apply to engine repair, whereas before they did not.
+
** Base Attack from 450 => 600.  This puts the non-bonus cap-dps pretty exactly at the fighter's.
 +
** Base Movement Speed from 40 => 50.  Now same as the ether-jet; this is a very short range ship and needs to be able to close the distance.
 +
** Vs Hull Type Multipliers from 6 => 8.  The fighter's vs-polycrystal bonus is 5, for reference.
 +
** Base Metal/Crystal cost from 0/300 => 40/180.  So 10% more expensive to build to cap than a fighter (though it's still twice as much energy).
  
−
* The recharge rate of ships is no longer affected by fast & dangerous or blitz combat styles.
+
* Riot Tazer:
 +
** Paralysis Time from 1 => 3 (internally 2 => 4, but the first second generally gets eaten due to processing order).
 +
** Reload Time from 2 => 8.
 +
** Per-planet stagger from 2 seconds => 6 seconds.
 +
** This helps prevent some transient (and difficult to reproduce) stunlocks due to processing order, while maintaining the ability to keep things locked down 50% of the time.
  
−
* The way that ships that have a failed shot that disappears (because of a dead target/overkill) get a "freebie" has been updated so that they always do, rather than only if their shot was fired in the last second.
+
* Anti-Starship Arachnid V:
 +
** Has become Spider Bot V, which it has been internally since the beginning but had a bunch of special changes to make it an anti-starship unit.
 +
*** Long ago this was a really important unit for the AI because it would spawn them in response to human usage of starships, but that hasn't been the case for rather a while.
 +
*** In the meantime, they generally only see service if a human player captures a fabricator that produces them, and while the AI does use some starships generally these units are very, very low on usefulness to a human player because they literally can't hit anything that isn't a starship.  So now they're just Spider V.
  
−
* The paralysis penalty for after teleporting ships move is now a bit more severe, but is capped at 5 seconds.  People had complained a bit about the balance with them, and this was something I'd been meaning to do for a while.
+
* Spider Bots:
 +
** Engine Damage per shot from 15 => 60.
 +
*** This brings mark I cap-engine-damage-per-second to about 30% of a cap of Spider Turrets; a cap of mkII (which has fewer ships) to 50-55%, and so on.
 +
** Base Health from 3600*mk => 7200*mk.  They were right at the flimsiest end of fleet ship cap-health (5M), now just in the lower 3rd (10M).
  
−
* The internal mechanics of cloaking, recharge, tachyon, emps, and paralysis have all been altered significantly in a way that is now performance-profile-indepdendent, as well as requiring less processing overhead in general.
+
* Beam Starship:
 +
** Rebalancing as a MkV starship, since the fleet ship fabricators produce MkV stuff.
 +
** Base Move Speed from 14 => 22.
 +
** Base Health from 4.5M => 22.5M.  Now on par with the Core Starship for cap-health.
 +
** Max targets hit per shot from infinite => 9.  Same as Zenith Beam Frigate.
 +
** Seconds-per-salvo from 5 => 2.  Not the same as Zenith Beam Frigate.
 +
** Base Attack Power from 28k => 44k.  If it hits 9 targets every 2 seconds, that puts cap-dps at about 3/4 that of the Core Starship's bonus cap-dps.
 +
** All vs-hull-type multipliers removed; the "bonus" for ships like this is typically obtained by hitting more than one ship; max bonus is against large clumps where you can always hit the max.
 +
** Energy and m+c costs looked ok; energy a bit high, m+c rather low for mkV but since you have to get a fabricator to build these we can let it slide unless it becomes a problem.
  
−
* An entirely new method of doing ship repairs is now in place.  The old method was uneven, and would often result in too-high costs for some ships and too-low costs for others.  Now the cost of repairing ships is simply 1/4th the metal and crystal it costs to build them, over a span of a half as long as it took to build them in the first place.
+
* Warbird Starship:
−
** Note that this is prorated by how much the ship is actually damaged. Assuming that a ship was damaged down to basically zero hitpoints (not possible without it exploding), the above costs would be true.  Assuming that a ship is less than fully damaged, it will cost only the percent time/damage to repair equivalent to that. So, a ship that is half-dead would take only 1/8th the metal and crystal that it would have taken to build it, and one quarter the time it would have taken to build it.
+
** Rebalancing as a MkV starship, since the fleet ship fabricators produce MkV stuff.
 +
** Made eligible for spawning in exos again; were originally removed from that because if they were lead ships they made the whole group go terrifast.  Well, Raid Starships are even faster and are still eligible, so these are going back in.  Generally these won't be picked to lead all but relatively early exos with lighter overall firepower.
 +
** Base Health from 3M => 17M.  Now about 70% of Core Starship for cap-health (or: a bit over 10M*mk, where 7.5M*mk is about as low as any combat starship should go in the current approach).
 +
** From no vs-hull-type multipliers => 4 vs polycrystal, heavy, ultra-heavy, and structural.
 +
** Seconds-per-salvo from 5 => 2.
 +
** Shots-per-salvo from 40 => 16.
 +
** Base Attack Power from 2k => 8k.  This brings non-bonus/bonus cap-dps to a bit under 200k/800k, very similar to the core starship in that regard.
 +
** Energy and m+c costs looked ok; energy a bit low, m+c rather low for mkV but since you have to get a fabricator to build these we can let it slide unless it becomes a problem.
  
−
* An entirely new method of doing ship construction costs is now in place behind the scenes. The actual effect on gameplay is hopefully going to be minimal (unless we introduced bugs with it), but it's a lot more efficient and is performance-profile agnostic, and fixes a number of prior bugs.
+
* Paralyzers (specifically, zenith paralyzers, but also nanoswarms to some extent) are now much more aggressive about spreading out their fire across available targets to make better use of the paralysis effect.
 +
** It still will focus more than is optimal in cases where a group of more than 100 paralyzers (of the same mark, controlled by the same player, relatively near one another) has more than 100 non-paralyzed targets in range (they'll generally all focus on 100 of the targets in the first volley, and spread out afterward) due to our desire to not have target lists longer than 100 for RAM-consumption reasons.  But it's a lot better than it used to be.
  
−
* Regeneration, attrition, and self-attrition are now dealt out in per-second bursts, rather than as a continual stream.
+
* AI Super-Terminals:
 +
** Previously these became active after you finished building a command station on the planet, and went dormant again as soon as your command station was destroyed.  Now they never go dormant after becoming active: now, the only way to shut down an active superterminal is to destroy it.
 +
*** Thanks to Atomjack for pointing out that it was too easy to keep turning the terminal on and off previously.
 +
** Now each super-terminal "pulse" has a 10% chance to be a "surge":
 +
*** It puts a message in the chat log letting you know there was a surge.
 +
*** It intensifies the pulse by (highest AI difficulty / 2) (so diff 7 means that pulse will be 3.5 as strong in terms of enemy ships generated).
 +
*** It sets the time until the next pulse to 1 second instead of the usual 15.  "Chain surges" are therefore possible, albeit fairly unlikely.
 +
** Previously when the super terminal reached a certain size of mkV pulse it simply didn't get any more dangerous; now it will start shortening the time between pulses as the strength goes past that point.
 +
** In all, super terminals were being a little too tame.  It's great that proper playing of an ST can make the difference between winning and losing, but they seemed to need more danger and unpredictability to balance out their fairly powerful advantages.  It's more like "riding the bull" now, and if it gets out of control it can kill you.
  
−
* Though the overall ship caps have been reduced by about half in the normal cases, the ability for players to get lots of higher-level ships has never been better (and the challenge posed by higher-level AI waves has also never been higher):
+
* Mapgen will no longer put the dyson sphere adjacent to an AI core world, because having a core world on alert the whole game was nearly an automatic loss on some more intense scenarios. It's better if you die because of something you actually had influence over.
−
** The ship caps on mark III ships (for humans only) are now about 114% of their prior values.
 
−
** The ship caps on mark IV ships (for humans only) are now about 280% of their prior values.
 
−
** The ship caps on mark V ships (for humans only) are now about 330% of their prior values.
 
−
** The size of mark II waves of ships (for AIs only) are now about 112% of their prior values.
 
−
** The size of mark III waves of ships (for AIs only) are now about 133% of their prior values.
 
−
** The size of mark IV waves of ships (for AIs only) are now about 175% of their prior values.
 
−
** The size of mark V waves of ships (for AIs only) are now about 171% of their prior values.
 
  
−
* The base move speed of teleporting ships is no longer 1, but instead is 10.  Thus they aren't quite so painful to use in situations where their teleporting ability gets stripped away (such as with gravity drills).
+
* Science Labs I/II/III, the Survey Ship, and the new Ship Design Hacker are now all immune to the maw's swallow effect.
  
−
* Electric shuttles are now a lot more effective about not getting right on top of their targets.
+
* Impulse Reaction Emitter, in recognition of winning the 3rd "worst ship" award:
 +
** Effective Range from 4200 => 6000.
 +
** Base Move Speed from 20 => 30.  This makes it slightly faster than a fighter.
 +
** Base Metal+Crystal cost from 300+300 => 250+250.  That's mkI; other marks use normal progression.
 +
** Minimum multiplier from 5 => 8.
 +
*** The base-cap-dps was already high at 73k and is now in the top 10 among fleet ships (including self-destructing ships and ships with no bonuses) at 117k, but this helps counterbalance the fact that it doesn't get more than the minimum multiplier against most fleet-ship targets.
 +
** Multiplier from (target energy use)/1024 => (target energy use)/256.  So it starts getting a higher-than-minimum bonus against ships using 2049+ energy, up to the max multiplier of 30 against targets using 7680+ energy (note that the IRE is not any better damage-wise against max-multiplier targets, since it was already very powerful there).
  
−
* Players are now limited to a pair of mark I, II, and III cloaker starships.  However, the unlock costs for the mark II and III cloaker starships have been dropped from 3000 and 5000, respectively, to 1000 each.
+
* Space Plane, in recognition of doing really well in the 3rd "worst ship" poll:
 +
** Vs-Hull multipliers from 2.4 => 3.2.
 +
*** For reference, that's against Light (Fighter), Polycrystal (Bomber), Heavy (... a lot of things), and UltraHeavy.
 +
*** Eyebots have 3.2, and a somewhat lower base-dps, but can shoot through forcefields.
 +
** Seconds-per-salvo from 3 => 9.
 +
** Base Attack Power from 600*mk => 1800*mk.   
 +
*** So that's the same dps as before (aside from the multiplier increase), but higher alpha capacity for hit-and-run using their radar dampening, etc.
 +
** Base Energy Use from 100 => 50, because with the 1.75x ship cap the default energy use (100) was kind of excessive.
 +
** Base Metal+Crystal cost from 90+90 => 75+75 (that's mkI).  More in keeping with the dies-due-to-light-breeze-when-it-can-catch-them nature of the ship.
 +
** And the AI is really happy about this part: the Space Plane is now immune to AoE damage.  That's bargained down from immune-to-gravity, so be happy.
  
−
* Ships are now all constructed twice as fast for players, in all combat styles, game speeds, etc.  Now docks actually have some utility without engineers, and it takes fewer engineers to make them really do what one would want in terms of time-to-build.
+
* Vampire Claw, also in recognition of runner-up-for-worst-ship:
 +
** Base Health from 5000*mk => 10000*mk. 
 +
*** Previously they only had 4M cap-health, which was below even stuff like eyebots.  Kind of rough for a melee ship even with self-regen.  Now at 8M they're still really low compared to most fleet ships.
 +
** Now have cloaking.  Be afraid.  Bring tachyons.  And garlic.
 +
*** Note that this means that games with cloaking ships disabled won't have claws.  But any game already started that has them will continue having them, regardless of that setting.
 +
** Base Energy Use from 200 => 160.
 +
** Base Attack Power from 650 => 850.
 +
** Added Artillery to the hull types this has a bonus against (om nom missile frigate tasty).
 +
** Now has a 0.3x multiplier against the command-grade hull type.
  
−
* All of the move speeds in the game have been increased by a linear 10.  The main effect of this is to make the slowest ships not seems SO slow, but in general it still increases the speed of everything by a slight bit so that it's not too sluggish.
+
* Youngling Tiger:
−
** This does affect Epic/4X, Normal, and Blitz combat styles.  For normal this is actually an increase of 20, and for Blitz it's an increase of 40.
+
** Base Metal+Crystal from 40+40 => 25+25, same as commandos and weasels.
  
−
* Space tugs have been removed from the game, as they have always been fiddly and problematic, as well as a moderate micromanagement need.
+
* Youngling Vulture:
−
** The Mobile Repair Stations now have 5x more health, 2X the repair boost rate, and 2X the move speed.  They are definitely now the pinnacle of battlefield repair support, but without the fiddly-ness.
+
** Base Metal+Crystal from 40+40 => 25+25, same as commandos and weasels (and tigers, now).
  
−
* The old "Shields" mechanic (not to be confused with force fields) has been removed.
+
* Spire Gravity Drain:
−
** Previously, this caused ships to have a reduced chance of hitting targets depending on their range.  Now shots always have a 100% chance of hitting if the ship is in range (which simplifies the use of range circles greatly, and also reduces the need for ships to close range).
+
** Base Metal+Crystal from 0+3000 => 500+1000.  These were tied for most expensive fleet ship, and 2x (or more) as expensive as all but 6 other fleet ship types. Wasn't really anything to justify that.
−
** This also removes the random element from attacks, which is a positive thing for a strategy game of this style.
 
  
−
* A new Armor Rating reduces the power of all shots by its value, but not below 5% of the incoming shot.
+
* Spire Gravity Ripper:
 +
** Base Metal+Crystal from 1800+1200 => 1000+500.  Was similar to the grav drain's situation.
  
−
* The old "Attack Min Range" that was preventing snipers from firing if a target was too close (and causing them to back up if they could) has been removed.
+
* Spire Armor Rotter:
 +
** Base Metal+Crystal from 800+1900 => 450+900.  Was 3rd most expensive.
  
−
* A new "Retreat Range" has been added for mobile snipers (in other words, not sniper turrets) as well as Raptors, sentinel frigates, and zenith bombards.  This causes those ships to try to keep a certain distance between themselves and the enemy they are firing at, thus preserving themselves.
+
* Space Tank:
 +
** Base Metal+Crystal from 1100+0 => 600+100.  Was 5th most expensive, and more expensive than bombers, now slightly less expensive than bombers.
 +
** Base Attack Power from 2600*mk => 2300*mk.
 +
** Vs-Hull-Type multipliers from 3.2 => 6. 
 +
*** Bombers have 6.  Space Tanks now have a roughly 30% higher base-dps, since the general idea is for bonus ship types to be 30-50% more useful than triangle types.
 +
** Effective range from 4800+200*mk => 6300+200*mk.  Since they're so slow.
  
−
* A new "Hull" field is now shown by the Armor field.  The Hull and Armor fields don't have any impact on one another.
+
* Grenade Launcher:
−
** The Hull type is one of the following: Scout, Light, Medium, Heavy, Artillery, Neutron, Swarmer, Ulra-Light, Close-Combat, Command-Grade, Refractive, Composite, Turret, Ultra-Heavy, Structural, or Polycrystal.
+
** Base Energy Use from 400 => 150.  It had twice the cap-energy-use of the next highest fleet ship type.
  
−
* The old system of ship type bonuses has been removed, replaced by simpler (and fewer) bonuses against hull types, instead.  This is a lot easier to keep track of for everything, and while it does represent a simplification that we'd been reluctant to make in the past, the other recent added complexities make this a welcome change.
+
* Sentinel Frigate:
−
** As a side effect of this, the balance of ALL ships has been altered quite heavily.  With all the other recent changes, that was inevitable anyway, so we thought it was a good time to also slip this in, while we were rebalancing anyway.
+
** Base Attack Power from 14000*mk => 31000*mk.  It had a cap-dps (base=max for this one) of 44k, which was really laughable.  100k is bit on the low end for a type with no bonus of any kind, but it is an infinite-range ship.
  
−
* Cluster bonuses and penalties to attacks have been removed.  This affects autocannon minipods, fortresses, zenith electric bombers, sentinel frigates, and microparasites.  These ships have all be rebalanced significantly to account for the removal of these abilities.
+
* Made end-of-Fallen-Spire spawns yet more enthusiastic, due to the opposition they sometimes face on 10/10.  That AI sure is stubborn...
−
** These abilities were ones that were just not all that fun, and were a bit fiddly, and which didn't add anything much to strategy. Hence their being pruned.
 
  
−
* The behavior of certain "planetary roamer" AI ships, mainly starships but also melee ships and a few others, has been overhauled. The planetary roamer status is now not a permanent condition, and means that the AI can use the starships in a more intelligent offensive-oriented fashion.
+
* Dyson Antagonizer (hybrid plot) :
 +
** Now tries to be built somewhat closer to the AI's border.
 +
** Health from 80M => 40M.
 +
** The more dangerous values may be restored for Advanced Hybrids or some other option in the future, but the previous string of buffs to this plot was proving too much for normal.
  
−
* Astro Trains moved from optional-ship-category to AI Plot.  This plot is automatically enabled for Train Master AIs (it is no longer possible to start a new game against a Train Master without trains; we may add a "Vanilla" AI Type later on to fill that role).
+
* Knowledge Raiding:
 +
** Now scales more granularly with difficulty (for example,previously 9.3, 9.6, and 9.8 all had the same intensity of response as 9; no longer).  This somewhat increases the difficulty of k-raids on non-integer difficulties.
 +
** Now considers the ship cap of ships being spawned when deciding how many to spawn, so a laser gatling doesn't "cost" as much as a fighter, but a Maw "costs" quite a lot more.  This makes the difficulty of k-raids not nearly as variable based on what bonus ship types the AI has, or the unit-cap-scale being used.
 +
** Now only the AI controlling the planet spawns response ships, but spawns twice as many, rather than both AIs spawning ships separately.  This makes the composition different if the AIs have different bonus types.
 +
** Now the spawns happen every 10 seconds instead of (11 - Difficulty) seconds, and the strength is multiplied by 2.5 to roughly normalize it to what diff 7 was doing.  The base strength of the spawn is still linearly proportional to difficulty, but this second difficulty-based factor which made it heavily higher-than-linear is no longer there.  That really steep ramp-up at the end was good before, but would be excessive with the other changes below.
 +
** Now, the more knowledge you raid for, the more intense the response.  Up to 1 planet's worth of knowledge there is no change, after a full 2 planet's worth of knowledge the response is 1.5x as intense (having increased linearly during the raids after the first planet's worth), at 3 planet's two times as intense, at 4 2.5x, and so on.
 +
*** In multiplayer games this ramping-up is adjusted, e.g. if 3 players have raided 9000 total knowledge (3000 each), the ramp-up is the same as in a single-player game where that player has raided 3000 knowledge.  Multi-homeworld players only count as 1 for this purpose.
 +
*** Now each spawn makes a number of "wild rolls" which apply various effects to what happens.
 +
**** These range from "nothing" to "make it spawn around the planet edge" to "multiply it by 1.5" to "make it all raid starships" to "make it spawn on a neighboring planet", etc.
 +
**** At first there is only 1 roll per spawn, but this goes up by 1 for every 1500 knowledge raided.
 +
** If you have Advanced Logging enabled, each spawn will generate an entry in the "CounterSaboteurSpawns.txt" log file; it may not make sense to players but is very helpful to us if you submit it with your feedback.
 +
** For the detailed discussion see http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9906.0.html , but in brief the rationale is:
 +
*** K-raiding's main purpose is to let players dig themselves out of a hole by gaining power without increasing AIP.
 +
*** K-raiding also needs to not be a way of circumventing normal AIP-gain on a wide scale.  To some extent it's good; avoiding 200 AIP via it is a bit much.
 +
**** If a player gets in a hole multiple times in a row, it's ok if the k-raiding gets harder and eventually either they die to it (sparing them a longer game) or they have to bite more AIP (making progress, probably towards sparing them a longer game).
 +
*** If possible, K-raiding also needs to not be boring.  Partly that means making it so that "playing optimally" doesn't involve 10+ k-raids in a game, and partly that means making the actual AI response to the raids more interesting.
 +
*** In general, the balance of all this is tentative.  It looks right in our testing, but it may be too easy or (perhaps more likely) too hard. Please give us feedback and we will continue to refine towards better balance and more fun :)
  
−
* Self-building units with either a metal-cost-per-second over 1100 or a crystal-cost-per-second over 1100 will no longer be auto-assisted during construction (but you can manually order units to assist).
+
* Scout Starship:
 +
** Base Health from 120k/480k/960k/1.2M => 300k*mk.
 +
** Base Armor Rating from 1500 flat => 1500*mk.
 +
** Tachyon Range from 750/950/1150/1550 => 2000*mk.
 +
** Ship Cap from 5/4/3/2 => 5/5/5/2.
 +
** Energy Use from 2000/4000/6000/6000 => 2000/2000/2000/5000.
 +
** Base Move Speed from 224/464/704/704 => 240/480/720/720.
 +
** Now can cloak-boost up to 20*mk allied cloaked ships (range: 4k/5k/6k), except the MkIV which isn't being given cloak-boosting due to potential issues with a tachyon-immune ship having a lot of cloak-boosting.
 +
** The MkIV Scout Starship:
 +
*** Now provides counter-missile coverage.
 +
*** Will now not use the evade-after-exiting-wormhole logic at all, since it is permacloaked (the non-starship MkIV Scout has the same attribute already).
  
−
* Ships being unloaded from a transport now must go through the full reloading process before they can fire.  This is not normally a big deal but does make it harder to insta-gib stuff with Sieges unloaded from a transport.
+
* Spirecraft-Medium and Broken-Golems-Medium no longer have a score penalty.
  
−
== Balance Updates ==
+
* Fortresses (mkI, II, and III; human and AI) now have a radar dampening range of 30000.  Since most ships have ranges lower than that it doesn't affect them, but this prevents sniping them (notably with zenith-bombards and sentinel frigates) from way out of range.
  
−
* Orbital Command Station upgrades now provide more metal/crystal income, in order to make those upgrades more worthwhile.  If you consider that an individual harvester produces 12 of metal or crystal, and if you consider how many harvesters can be built on most planets versus how much knowledge is required to get the command station upgrades, the upgrades were previously of lesser value than they should have been.
+
* Now when a unit dies while under the influence of a parasite infestation ("reclamation damage"), those parasites will behave far more efficiently:
−
** Mark II now provides 40 of each instead of 28 of each.
+
** If there are enough of them on the ship to take it over (that is, reclamation damage is >= half the ship's max health) then enough will remain to perform the takeover.
−
** Mark III now provides 64 of each instead of 40 of each.
+
** Any remaining parasites (which means all of them, if there aren't enough to take the dying ship over) will spread to nearby (within 2000 range units) valid targets that have not been fully infested.
−
** For the sake of comparison, the Mark I still produces 16 of each, and the Home command station still produces 80 of each.
+
** The end result is that while the exact same amount of reclamation damage is being done, the efficiency of it actually doing something in condensed fighting is way more satisfactory, particularly towards the end as all the partially-reclaimed ships die off and the parasites all pile up on the survivors.
 +
*** In fact, it's possible that reclamators are now back to being OP, but not nearly as much as in the days when a single leech-starship salvo could "tag" 40 ships for guarunteed reclamation. Your feedback on the new balance will be appreciated.
  
−
* Science Lab, Science Lab Mk II,and Advanced Research Station can no longer gather knowledge from AI-held planets.
+
* Youngling Nanoswarm:
 +
** Base attack power from 400*mk => 800*mk.  Still not much at all, but it allows:
 +
** Inherent "damage does 2x as much reclamation damage" rule removed.  So it does the same amount of RD as before, just without the fiddly rule (which is now completely gone, the  nanoswarm was the only thing using it).
  
−
* Added Stationary Science Lab (Mk III) that can gather knowledge from AI-held planets, but costs nearly 4x as much as a MkII lab and normal construction takes half an hour.
+
* Mines:
−
** Also, it doubles the reinforcements of the AI at that planet, and enrages all of their ships so that they'll attack the lab.  You really need a solid beachhead and a lot of incentive (or to have neutered the planet already) to do a knowledge raid now.
+
** Base Health is now 16 times the damage done, to allow 16 detonations before "wearing out" instead of the 2/3 that were probably common before.  There are 16 mines in the graphic: the logic is unassailable, no?
 +
** Standard Mines:
 +
*** Base Metal+Crystal cost from 360+1200 => 20+40, which puts them at about 2x the cap m+c cost of zenith autobombs (which are in many ways simply mobile mines).
 +
**** Note that the build time for all 3 mine types is still 90 seconds.
 +
** Area Mines:
 +
*** Base Metal+Crystal cost from 1080+3600 => 40+80.
 +
*** Now hit a maximum of 10 targets with their aoe.
 +
*** Base Damage per hit from 7500 => 52500 (half as much damage as a normal single-target mine).
 +
** EMP Mines:
 +
*** Base Metal+Crystal cost from 720+2400 => 60+120.
 +
*** Fixed an error in the tooltip: it said the paralysis was 60 seconds long, but it's really only 10 seconds.
  
−
* Science Lab Mk II move speed from 16 to 20, knowledge gather rate from 2 to 3.
+
* Harvester Exo-Shields, in honor of winning the 4th "Worst Unit" poll (and the first one for which it was eligible) :
 +
** Now has cloaking.
 +
** Now cloaks the protected harvester.
 +
** No longer halves production of protected harvester.
 +
** Energy Use from 1000 => 5000.  At maximum non-ZPG energy efficiency (running everything off mkIIs) that's a bit under 4 (m+c)/s to run, or 1/5th of a mkI harvester.
 +
** The result is that:
 +
*** They have a much lower operational cost which no longer scales up with higher harvester marks or with your energy efficiency.
 +
*** More importantly, they allow a new tactical choice: do you want attacking enemies to potentially be distracted some/all of the harvesters in the system, or do you want to make sure they stay focused on the command station or some other objective?  Some defensive setups get much higher efficiency when the enemy stays focused in a particular radial or linear area, and this can help with that.  On the other hand, sometimes the AI's tendency to split up after harvesters is a big help.
  
−
* The amount of available knowledge per planet has been increased from 2,000 to 3,000 to account for the influx of all the cool new technologies that people are able to play with.  This also rebalances the game a bit in light of recent difficulty increases, and further marginalizes the need for knowledge raiding on any sort of regular basis.
+
* Metal/Crystal Harvester II/III, in honor of getting 2nd place (by one vote) in the first "Worst Unit" poll in which they were eligible:
 +
** A bit of background:
 +
*** Unlocking Econ Station II costs 4000 knowledge and gives a total of 576 m+c above the "standard" command station (econ I) if you build all 6, and that bonus is still relevant if you unlock Econ III. That's about 0.144 (m+c)/s per knowledge point.
 +
*** Unlocking Econ Station III costs 5000 knowledge and gives a total of 1536 m+c above the "standard" command station.  Benefit/K Ratio is about 0.3072.
 +
*** Previously, unlocking mark II of either metal or crystal harvester cost 3250 knowledge and, assuming a mid-game situation of 13 total planets (i.e. all 6 of econ II and econ III could be placed) with an average of 2 spots of that resource per planet (ymmv, but it's probably not far off) gave a total of 208 resources above mkI harvesters.  Benefit/K Ratio was about 0.064.
 +
*** Previously, unlocking mark III of either harvester cost 4000 knowledge (but really 7250 since you don't get the benefits of mkII and mkIII at the same time like you do with econ stations) and, across 26 ressource spots, gave a total of 416 resources above mkI harvesters.  Benefit/K Ratio (assuming 7250 "real" K cost) was about 0.0574.
 +
** So, to do something about this pretty vast disparity:
 +
*** Harvester II:
 +
**** Knowledge cost from 3250 => 2000.
 +
**** Production from 28 => 31 (so +8 => +11).
 +
*** Harvester III:
 +
**** Knowledge cost from 4000 => 2500 (so 4500 total).
 +
**** Production from 36 => 73 (so +16 => +53).
 +
***** Yes, that's a lot, but that's what parity with econ III looks like.  And nerfing econ III would have been an outrage considering how much waiting-for-resources happens on challenging games _with_ econ IIIs.
 +
** In short, harvester upgrades should now be competitive with econ station upgrades.  Getting mkIII in both harvesters also now costs the same amount of knowledge as getting mkIII econ stations, but has a somewhat lower "barrier to entry" in that the individual knowledge costs are smaller.
 +
*** Further balance feedback is, of course, welcome.  This change will have a fairly dramatic impact in favor of harvesters on multi-HW games, for one, but it's primarily important that choices be interesting in single-HW games and adjustments can be made for the less common scenarios (as long as multi-HW doesn't become excruciating, of course).  Of more concern is the impact on multiplayer games if all players gift all their harvesters to one player who upgrades to mkIII harvesters (and gives resources back) and other such tomfoolery, but that can also be adjusted for as the need arises.
  
−
* Transports are now such a core part of the game that they are something to always unlock.  Thus that was simply a penalty of 1000 knowledge that always had to be incurred.  Transports no longer have to be unlocked.
+
* Warp Jammer Command Stations, in honor of tying for third in the first "Worst Unit" poll it was eligible for:
 +
** Now prevent their planets from putting adjacent AI planets on alert.   
 +
*** Those adjacent planets can still be put on alert any other way (for example, but another bordering human world without a jammer or by a significant human presence on the planet or a different adjacent planet).
 +
*** But this still allows a new strategic choice in shaping the AI's response to your presence.
 +
*** Notably, this could be used on a planet adjacent to a particularly hard-to-crack AI planet to allow you to get supply on the target planet and thus deploy turrets and such without putting the target planet on permanent alert (which is normally a distinct no-no for core worlds and homeworlds).  But beware, if the jammer is destroyed, its effects go away.  Also, jammers are far from free.
 +
** Also fixed a longstanding bug where these counted (for display purposes only, apparently) as an AI reinforcement warp gate.
  
−
* Mobile Repair Stations are far more powerful than they once were; their knowledge cost has been increased from 2,000 to 4,000.  Their metal and crystal costs have also been tripled, to 18,000 and 9,000, respectively.  Their health has also been reduced from 390k to 300k. This encourages players to not lose them, and keep them near but not right on top of the front lines, which thus makes them not so overpowered.
+
* Missile shots (from the missile frigate, MLRS fleet ship, MLRS turret, Missile Turret, Anti-Armor Ship, etc) now can acquire a new target from their firing ship's target list if their current target is destroyed or otherwise no longer available (note that all shots insta-hit a ship trying to leave the planet, but missiles now won't "overkill" them in that case).
 +
** Bear in mind that the parent ship's target list does not necessarily include all viable targets, and is often limited to 50 nearby targets, but this still significantly decreases DPS wastage for missiles (which generally move fairly slowly)
  
−
* The knowledge costs of engineer drones mark II and III have now been reduced by 1,000 each.
+
* Mobile Repair Stations, in belated honor of doing well in the last "worst unit" poll
 +
** Maximum simultaneous repairs from 100 => 20.
 +
** Repair rate reduced.
 +
** Time it must remain stationary before starting repairs from 60 seconds => 5.
 +
** Now has cloaking.
 +
*** This doesn't break when repairing, but beware AI tachyons.
  
−
* Mobile builders now use 100 energy instead of 1500. Cleanup Drones now use 25 energy instead of 150, and Remains Rebuilders now use 25 energy instead of 1500. Engineer drones now use 1000, 500, and 250 energy for marks I-III instead of 4000, 2000, and 1000. The experimental engineer now uses 4000 energy instead of 12000.
+
* Metal/Crystal Harvester Upgrades:
−
** These changes all make it more effective to keep a larger fleet of the various sorts of engineers around, whereas before there was too much incentive to need to micro them when energy was low.
+
** MkII production from 31 => 30.
 +
** MkIII production from 73 => 55.
 +
** Results/Rationale:
 +
*** Assuming 12 resource spots on the homeworld and 4 resource spots per captured planet (the latter is a well-attested average, to the author's surprise).
 +
*** MkII upgrades are better than EconII if you have 1, 2, 3, or greater than 12 planets, but are worse from 4 to 11.
 +
*** MkIII upgrades are better than EconIII (plus EconII since it's unlocked on the way) if you have 1-4 or greater than 13 planets, but are worse from 5 to 12.
 +
*** Harvesters still have the advantage of not occupying the command station "slot" but also still have the disadvantage of being at the mercy of mapgen: sometimes you don't have the luxury of picking a planet with 4+ resource spots instead of a planet with 1-2.
 +
*** All in all, the question of "do I upgrade harvesters or econ stations?" should now be more situational and map-based.
  
−
* The energy cost of the missile silo from 40k to 10k.
+
* Fixed a null exception that happened when gifting a spirecraft mining enclosure to another player.
  
−
* The energy cost of all the starship lines has been doubled, except for the raid and leech starship lines.
+
* Neinzul Enclave Starships, in honor of winning the fifth "Worst Unit" poll.
 +
** Base Armor Rating from 1000 flat => 1000*mk.
 +
** Base Health from 500K*mk => 3M*mk.
 +
*** This gives an individual one 80% the health of an individual corresponding fleet-boosting starship; not using cap comparisons here since these are not military ships (i.e. ships with an attack), but for reference those fleet-boosting starships have 2x as much cap.
 +
** Now have radar dampening of 8000/7500/7000/6500.
 +
*** Between this, the armor, and the health it should be a lot more reasonable to keep these alive unless you get overwhelmed, in which case these should die (cloaking was experimented with, but was way too exploitable; that much cheese requires cloaker starships).
 +
** Knowledge Costs from 0/3000/5000/10000 => 0/2000/2000/14000.
 +
*** This is because the first two upgrades are purely for in-the-field construction (which is worth something) and the last is a game-changing ability to have mkIV production capacity without an advanced factory.
 +
** The rate at which they construct ships used to be the same as a space dock, and is now 4*mk as fast as a space dock (so 16x for a mkIV).
 +
*** This is because previously using these efficiently basically required engineer support (specifically, engineer mkIII support).  Engies still help, but it's not as critical.
  
−
* The attack power of the fortress has been halved, but the number of shots it gets has been quadrupled.
+
* Armored Warheads, in honor of placing second in the fifth "Worst Unit" poll:
 +
** Base Attack Power from 300k/1.5M/2.4M => 1M*mk.
 +
** Explosion Size from 1500/1250/750 => 1500*mk.
 +
** Now do 10k*mk armor damage, enough to strip all the armor off most units that aren't some kind of boss fight.
 +
** In general you still aren't going to want to use these a lot, it's still a "rot your teeth" sort of unit where heavy use is rarely a good sign for how well your game is going.  But these should be more useful than they were, for sure.
  
−
* The number of shots that the superfortress gets has been doubled.
+
* Lightning Warheads:
 +
** Base Attack Power from 300k/1.5M/2.4M => 800k*mk.
 +
*** Just keeping up with the armored warhead changes; only a significant change to the mkI, really.  So the armored ones pack about 25% more punch, for whatever that's worth.
 +
** Explosion size changed to match the new armored warheads: 1500/1250/750 => 1500*mk.
  
−
* The knowledge cost of unlocking the flagship has been reduced from 2000 to 1000.
+
* Metal/Crystal manufactory input and output scale multiplied by 10 (so consumes 200 of a resource to produce 140, instead of 20 for 14), in honor of placing 3rd in the fifth "Worst Unit" poll.
  
−
* The knowledge cost of unlocking the spire starship has been increased from 4000 to 6000.
+
* There's now a galaxy-wide population cap on each of the three types (enemy-to-all, player-ally, and ai-ally) of Dyson Gatling, equal to the current effective AIP.
 +
** So if AIP is 80, there could be 80 enemy-to-all gatlings, 80 AI-ally gatlings, and 79 player-ally gatlings and if the Dyson was currently player-ally it would still spawn another player-ally gatling before ceasing to spawn until either the player-ally gatling count went down or the AIP went up
  
−
* The knowledge cost of unlocking the Mark I dreadnought has been increased from 1000 to 1500.
+
* Amended the "if base max health >= 1,000,000, then immune to fusion cutters" rule to exclude fleet ship types whose mkI versions don't pass that >= 1,000,000 threshold (to prevent situations where fusion cutters were getting way less useful against higher-mark AI planets, etc).  The fleet ship types that still have the immunity due to health:
 +
** Spire Stealth Battleship
 +
** Spire Blade Spawner
 +
** Spire Maw
 +
** Spire Tractor Platform
  
−
* The knowledge cost of unlocking the Riot Control Starships have been increased from 1500, 2250, and 3250 for Marks I-III to 2500, 3500, a 4500.
+
* Ships killed by a zombie-reclamator no longer spread any excess reclamation damage they have to other ships. The spreading mechanic was intended to make non-zombie-reclamators more reliable; the zombie reclamators were already plenty powerful enough :
  
−
* The knowledge costs of Tractor Beam II and III turrets have been increased from 1000 and 2000 respectively to 2000 and 4000.
+
* Teleport Battlestations, in honor of doing pretty well in the last worst-unit poll:
 +
** Base Max Health from 14k*mk => 28k*mk (bringing it from 4.8M cap-hp, which is basically the minimum for a fleet ship, to 9.6M cap-hp where about 18 other types will be lower than it).
 +
** Base Attack Power from 400 => 700 (bringing it from 39.2k cap-base-dps and 94k cap-max-dps, where some ships have a base dps higher than that max-dps, to the midst of the respectable-attack types)
  
−
* The knowledge costs of Gravitational Turrets III and III have been reduced from 4000 and 6000 to 3000 and 4000.
+
* Marauders and Resistance Fighters can now be targeted by ships that cannot target small units (Bomber Starship, etc).
  
−
* The knowledge costs of Laser Turret II and III have been increased from 2000 and 3000 to 2500 and 3500.
+
* Since the Riot Starship MkIII did pretty well in the last worst-ship poll:
 +
** Gave them tachyon coverage matching the MkIII scout starship.
 +
** Added a couple additional options for its highest-level hardpoint:
 +
*** Grav Tazer
 +
**** Similar to the Riot IIs tazer but also applies the "halt" effect (same as the grav ripper) to everything hit, making it take longer for even paralysis-immune ships to get away.
 +
**** Note that these share the same planet-wide stagger category as Riot II tazers, to prevent these making permanent tazer lock possible again.
 +
*** Grav Generator
 +
**** Basically a ship-mounted grav turret, requires research of Grav Turret Is.
  
−
* The knowledge costs of MLRS Turrets II and III have been reduced from 2500 and 3500 to 2000 and 3000.
+
* CPAs now don't get queued up if the result based on difficulty, AIP, etc would be way too small (under 200 ships, for high caps, adjusted appropriately) (once a CPA is announced, however, it will happen).
  
−
* The knowledge cost of the Counter-Missile Turret has been increased from 2250 to 4000.  The effective range of counter-missile turrets has been increased from 1400 to 6000.
+
=== Rebalancing High (and-not-so-high) Difficulties ===
  
−
* The effective range of Counter-Dark-Matter Turrets has been increased from 1400 to 8000, and the effective range of Counter-Sniper Turrets has been increased from 1400 to 4000.
+
* Since the many changes to high-difficulty wave calculations a few months ago the 9+ difficulty range has gotten a fair bit of play and generally looks easier than it has been.  And just recently the game was [http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=8373 beaten fair-and-square on 10/10].  In response to that bug:
 +
** A Diff 9+ player will seed 1 less data center than normal (but no fewer than 1 if it would have seeded any).
 +
** On Diff 8+ the first step of the [[AI War:Why Do Enemy Waves Get So Large?#How Wave Sizes Are Calculated|wave size formula]] has been changed from:
 +
*** ( AIProgress * AIDifficulty ) / ( 13 - AIDifficulty )
 +
*** to ( ( ( AIProgress * 0.8 ) ^ 1.1 ) * AIDifficulty ) / ( 13 - AIDifficulty )
 +
*** This produces very similar sizes in the early game but adds a gradual exponential increase as AIP gets higher, having both the effect of making later planet captures not feel as much less significant (in terms of wave size) than early planet captures and increasing the overall "throw weight" of the AI's attacks on these higher difficulties.
 +
** On Diff 7+ the randomization of wave intervals (which feeds directly into step 5 of the wave size formula) has been changed to consider the number of planets that the AI can send waves against (and thus the probable defensive power of those worlds, i.e. chokepoints, and the viability or lack thereof of smaller waves):
 +
*** If there are 6+ wave-targetable planets it uses the normal (pre-5.036) formula of adding a random number from (AIDifficulty*-60) to (AIDifficulty*120).
 +
*** If there are 5 wave-targetable planets the random is from (AIDifficulty*-30) to (AIDifficulty*120).
 +
*** If there are 4 the random is from 0 to (AIDifficulty*120).
 +
*** If 3, from (AIDifficulty*30) to (AIDifficulty*120).
 +
*** If 2, from (AIDifficulty*60) to (AIDifficulty*120).
 +
*** If 1, from (AIDifficulty*90) to (AIDifficulty*150) (making it actually able to hit single-chokepoints harder than it used to).
 +
*** The upshot is that it makes the AI a little "smarter" about figuring out that it may as well not bother sending small waves against concentrated defenses and should just save up for stronger attack forces.  Accordingly, since the AI on <7 is intentionally a bit dumb it doesn't get this new rule at all.
  
−
* The metal/crystal costs of all the Counter turrets has been quadrupled, and the energy use of them has all been doubled.
+
* Previously, an AI of difficulty 9.3 or higher would automatically be one tech level higher than normal.  This was generally fine but did cause a pretty massive difficulty cliff between 9.0 and 9.3, and we prefer to keep each step a relatively smooth progression from one step to the next.  Now:
 +
** That automatic tech level increase has been removed.
 +
** AI's with difficulty > 9 get an additional reduction to their tech thresholds (on top of the normal difficulty*10 one) of ((difficulty-9)*200). So the threshold for reaching tech 2 is:
 +
*** 9 = 210 (same as before).
 +
*** 9.3 = 148.
 +
*** 9.6 = 85.
 +
*** 9.8 = 43.
 +
*** 10 = 0 (so diff 10 starts at tech 2).
 +
*** Of course, that makes the thresholds for tech 3 and tech 4 much higher since it's using the normal base of 800 and 1200 for those instead of 300 and 800 (which they used to use due to automatically being one tech level higher), thus actually making things a lot easier for those higher AIPs.  See next change.
 +
** To add back some of the difficulty but in a more granular fashion than before, on diff 9+ (not just 9.3+) waves will have a portion of their fleet ships "promoted" to the next tech level according to how close AIP is to the next tech level.
 +
*** So if you're playing on 9.6 and have 50 AIP, approximately 50/85= 58% of the mkIs fleet ships in a wave will be promoted to mkII.
 +
*** Of course, they'll also run into the tech level multiplier which will reduce their actual numbers significantly, but roughly 58% of the wave's "strength" of that ship type was spent on the higher tech level.
  
−
* The health of Mark II Leech Starships has been increased from 160k to 320k, and the health of Mark III Leech Starships has been increased from 160k to 480k.
+
* Previously carriers were way less dangerous than the ships they contained, tending to make a wave + a stack of carriers feel a lot more like that many back-to-back waves.  This is better than the pre-carrier condition of waves capping out at 2000 ships, but still tends to cause the actual difficulty of waves to increase much much slower with the size of the wave than is desirable.  So:
 +
** Now gets +1 shots-per-salvo per 16 ships inside the carrier (that's on high caps; per 8 ships on normal, 4 on low, 2 on ultra low).  So a carrier containing 1000 ships on a high caps game has 63 shots per salvo.
 +
** Base Attack Power from 1400*mk => 19200*mk (the base strength of 16 fighters on high caps, but without the fighter's bonuses).
 +
** Seconds-Per-Salvo from 2 => 4 (same as fighter, cuts down a bit on shot-spam).
 +
** Can no longer fire as though ignoring through forcefields, but it can still move through them.
 +
** Shot type from dark matter => energy bomb as the idea is not for these to be easily counterable via counter-dark-matter turrets.
 +
** Hull-bonus against Turret from 0.1 => 1.
 +
** Hull-bonus against Structural from 0.1 => 1.
 +
** Hull-bonuses against Scout and Command-Grade staying at 0.1.
 +
** In summary, a full carrier is now pretty dangerous, but the firepower is still significantly lower (by about 3x, probably) than its total contents.  That's fine as they'll probably still feel more powerful than you want them to be.
  
−
* The following munitions boosting range changes have been made:
+
* Previously it was possible for AI Homeworlds to get really brutal combinations like an AI Eye + 3 (or more) Core Raid Engine guard posts (which is pretty much the RNG saying "good game" on higher difficulties but you don't know until you scout it), or nothing really all that threatening at all. Randomization is core to AI War, but this particular bit of it could literally be the difference between a fairly easy endgame and a mathematically-impossible-to-win situation.
−
** Light Starship from 900 to 3000.
+
** Now, for AI Homeworlds, it randomizes the three most brutal structures (Core Raid Engine, Core CPA, and AI Eye) separately from the rest of the structures:
−
** Flagship from 1100 to 4000.
+
*** On Diff 9+ it always gets two picks from this new set.  So you could get an Eye + a Core Raid, or two CPAs, or two Eyes (which is actually kind of nice to you since they don't really stack), or whatever. But not 3 Core Raids.  And not none of the above.
−
** Zenith Starship from 1200 to 5000.
+
*** On Diff 8+ it randomly rolls (per homeworld) between one and two picks.
−
** Spire Starship from 1400 to 6000.
+
*** On Diff 7+ it always gets one pick.
−
** Core Starship from 1600 to 8000.
+
*** Below Diff 7 it randomly rolls between zero and one picks.
−
** Mark I Munitions Boosters from 1200 to 5000.
+
** As the set of core guard posts expands in the future (expansions, mainly), this "brutal" set can also be added to.
−
** Mark II Munitions Boosters from 1400 to 6000.
 
−
** Mark III Munitions Boosters from 1600 to 7000.
 
−
** Mark IV Munitions Boosters from 1800 to 8000.
 
  
−
* The munitions boosters are only able to boost a certain number of ships based on the "circular area" of those ships compared to the range of the munitions booster.  By increasing the ranges so much, that would therefore have made munitions boosters vastly more powerful.
+
=== New Drones For The Neinzul Enclave Starship ===
−
** Instead, the circular area that is actually allowed has now been divided by 6.
 
−
** This actually weakens the lower-end munitions boosters by a bit (in terms of how many ships they can boost), but at the same time their vastly increased range makes it so that (such) precision placement of them is no longer needed for the optimal effect on a fleet, and the highest-tier munitions boosters are actually stronger than they were before.
 
−
** The overall effect is thus to make these far easier to use effectively, and to create more of a power gradation between the lower-tier ones and the higher-tier ones.
 
  
−
* The following shield boosting range changes have been made:
+
* Didn't want to let the AI have _all_ the fun, so: Added 4 new drone ship types that only the Neinzul Enclave Starship can build:
−
** Mark I Shield Boosters from 600 to 3000.
+
** Neinzul Laser Drone I-IV
−
** Mark II Shield Boosters from 800 to 4000.
+
*** MkI and II require Laser Turret II technology.  MkIII and IV require Laser Turret III technology.
−
** Mark III Shield Boosters from 1000 to 5000.
+
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that Laser Turrets have a bonus against.
−
** Mark IV Shield Boosters from 1200 to 6000.
+
** Neinzul Needler Drone I-IV
 +
*** MkI and II require Basic Turret II technology.  MkIII and IV require Basic Turret III technology.
 +
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that Basic Turrets have a bonus against.
 +
** Neinzul MLRS Drone I-IV
 +
*** MkI and II require MLRS Turret II technology.  MkIII and IV require MLRS Turret III technology.
 +
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that MLRS Turrets have a bonus against.
 +
** Neinzul Missile Drone I-IV
 +
*** MkI and II require Missile Turret II technology.  MkIII and IV require Missile Turret III technology.
 +
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that Missile Turrets have a bonus against.
 +
** A Neinzul Enclave Starship can build any of these up to its own mark level once you have the corresponding turret technology, just select an enclave and click the "DRONE" tab on the buy menu (similar to how the Starship Constructor has a "RIOT" tab for the Riot Control Starships).
 +
** Stat wise:
 +
*** Each drone only lives 30 seconds; no repair, no attrition-stops-on-low-power, no regeneration chambers, nada.  It's got 30 seconds to hurt something.
 +
*** Drones do not have the lightning speed of the normal Youngling types (not wanting these to horn in on what makes the younglings special).  One consequence is that the "mothership" has to be within a certain range of the stuff you want hurt.
 +
*** Drones are pretty flimsy, but dying from enemy fire isn't much of an event for these.
 +
*** Ship cap is about 25% of normal because these aren't supposed to be like a whole new ship unlock, they're just a bonus on top of what you already get for turret (and enclave starship) research.
 +
*** Drones cannot traverse wormholes.
 +
*** Drones are super, super cheap in both metal/crystal and energy.
 +
*** Attack-power-wise on an individual basis they're about as strong as a normal fleet ship with 5x bonuses, making them fairly effective against the stuff with those hull types.
 +
** The motivation behind these:
 +
*** High-difficulty play can make it feel very painful to spend knowledge unlocking something that doesn't give an offensive boost.  That's fine, but turrets in particular could get very little love due to their... very limited offensive use, shall we say.  So having turret research provide a modest amount of offensive boost (if you have CoN and thus the Neinzul Enclave Starship, anyhow) seemed like a fun way to do things.  And we've already done the cross-tech thing with having turret research unlock spire capital ship modules in LotS, so doing a bit more of it seemed fine.
 +
*** Despite the fairly massive buffs Neinzul Enclave Starships received not long ago there's still been a lot of feedback that they're underwhelming and that they don't have a lot of point.  Well, now they can build lots of little sharp points that will really annoy the AI for you, and they're the only way to build them.
 +
*** But this is also not so powerful that you have to do turret research or even use the enclaves at all, it's just making it nicer if you do.
  
−
* Previously, armor boosters (previously shield boosters) did not have any limits on how many units they could boost; they were simply limited by their incredibly small boosting ranges.  Now they follow a "circular area" limitation that is exactly like that of the munitions boosters.
+
=== Better Scaling For Multi-Homeworld Games ===
  
−
* Attrition Emitters can no longer be paused, and now only use 10k energy instead of 18k.
+
* Previously CPA size was multiplied by the number of (non-Helper-role) human players, fixed to be multiplied by the (starting) number of human homeworlds.
  
−
* The energy use of Zenith Electric Bombers has been reduced from 10k to 1k (except for the Core variant, which is now 2k).
+
* Previously if there were multiple human homeworlds (and thus human ship cap was much higher) each AI player would send that many extra waves (and various threats like normal CPAs and exo-attacks would be multiplied in size accordingly, though not always linearly). 
 +
** This was generally fine but:
 +
*** Particularly on high homeworld counts that could lead to a ton of waves all smaller than the carrier threshold that would nonetheless add up to larger than the max number of AI ships that the game generally allows on a planet (5000), causing those extra AI ships to just disappear. 
 +
*** Also, now that carriers will be more of a threat, it would be nice for them to see use in those circumstances.
 +
*** Some important varieties of AI strength were not being increased at all, like: Reinforcements, Counterattack Guard Post spawns, Raid Engine spawns, Core Raid Engine spawns, Core CPA Guard Post spawns,
 +
** So now:
 +
*** If there are one or two human homeworlds, the number of waves per AI player is calculated the same way as before: one and two, respectively.  But if there's more than that it still doesn't go above two and instead increases the size of the individual waves proportionately.
 +
**** So 3 HWs means twice as many waves as single-player (instead of three times as many) but they're 1.5x as large as they would have been. 4 HWs means twice as many waves that are 2x as large, and so on.
 +
*** Reinforcements, Counterattack Guard Post spawns, Raid Engine spawns, Core Raid Engine spawns, and Core CPA Guard Post spawns now use the same scaling-with-HW-count as is used for normal CPAs: multiply by 1 + ((HW_count-1)*0.33).
 +
**** This isn't 1:1 because the power increase from multiple homeworlds isn't (closer in MP, but the problems of coordination and efficiency are in play there).
  
−
* Cloaker Starships also now provide both counter-sniper and counter-dark-matter protection, in addition to their cloaking duties.
+
* When Spirecraft are enabled and there's more than one human homeworld, the number of asteroids seeded will go up.
 +
** The main reason is that on Hard you're facing much harder exos on multi-HW, but weren't getting any additional benefit to match.  Medium was not as much of a concern, but it could use it too.
 +
** The increase is 50% for each additional human homeworld, so 2 HHWs => 150% asteroids, 3 HHWs => 200%, 4 => 250%, etc.  A straight-up 1:1 was also possible but seemed excessive.  In general multi-HW isn't really a 1:1 increase, but let us know if this scaling feels like too much or too little.
  
−
* Scouts and Cloaker Starships now have a much-increased cloaking booster range.  This does not affect how many other ships these units can boost, however, as there was already a finite cap on that.
+
* Spirecraft Shieldbearers:
 +
** Can now be put in low power mode (shutting off their projected shield).
 +
** Now their projected shield no longer shrinks as the shieldbearer loses health.
 +
*** Something more like shrinking-to-90% had been considered, but that would still have resulted in stacks of them getting whittled down all at once (while still taking up ship cap) rather than dying one at a time while leaving the remaining ones at high health (depending on how they were stacked).
 +
** Now have AI-only variants that can be chosen for exos.
 +
*** To make them actually work with exos, this variant actually has normal guns.  They're only moderately powerful (about 1/4 as much DPS as a same-mark siege tower), but they avoid the logical problems the gunless ones had in exos.
 +
*** These still have the shrink-when-damaged behavior, to make them a bit easier to handle.
 +
*** Adding shieldbearers may make exos significantly harder, but that may not be a bad thing.  Let us know if you find it particularly fun or unfun; adjustments can be made.
 +
** Thanks to TechSY730 and others for inspiring these changes.
  
−
* Ships in transports now still cost the normal energy they would cost outside the transport.
+
* Spire Maw vacuum-recharge-seconds from 2 => 5/4/3/2/1.
−
** Previously, transports could be used to too great of effect in terms of minimizing energy needs simply by loading ships into them.
 
  
−
* The SuperFortress has been buffed again, and the Fortress line has been tweaked in general.  Fortresses now have very long range, longer than any non-sniper turrets or units, but a bit weaker attack on average than before.
+
* Knowledge Hacker and Ship Design Hacker collision priority set to 890 (below only stationary objects, standard/hardened forcefield generators, command stations, command station cores, and rally posts).
  
−
* The existing Fortress is now renamed to Fortress Mark III, and has had its stats (and costs) increased somewhat.
+
* Core CPA Guard Posts now start a timer-for-CPA instead of instantly triggering a CPA.
  
−
* The Cursed Golem can no longer drop below 1 health from self-attrition.
+
* Core CPA Guard Posts now trigger in response to >= 1 enemy human military ship being present, rather than > 1.
 +
** So that Artillery Golem won't get by on the ol' "But I'm just *one* ship!" excuse anymore.
  
−
* The health of booster trains and regenerator trains have both now been reduced 10x, to 20 million instead of 200 million. The regular astro trains still have 200 million health, while turret trains still have only around 10 million health.
+
** EMP mines:
−
** Turret Trains are now autotargeted by player ships like any other ships would be.
+
*** Health halved, which halves the number of times a single one will go off before needing to be rebuilt.
−
** The three types of Turret Trains have now had their attack increased by a linear 1000 points.
+
*** Knowledge cost from 1500 => 1000.
 +
** Area mines:
 +
*** Knowledge cost from 4000 => 2000.
  
−
* Warheads, Fortresses, Golems, Starships, and Mark V ships now all no longer absorb EMPs, but now only are immune to them instead.
+
* Vampire claws are now immune to being camouflaged by the Camouflager AI Type because the combination of melee and cloaking didn't work very well there (could wind up with non-decloakable enemy vampire claws just sitting on your planet for a long time).
  
−
* Golems have been majorly rebalanced, to create a new strategic landscape for them—they have long been the most underused units in the game.
+
* Made Maws try to vacuum their shoot-at target if for some reason vacuuming their "assist" target failed.
−
** There is no longer and AI Progress cost associated with golems in any way, from repairing them or otherwise.
 
−
** Golems now have significantly higher repair costs after being initially repaired to be operational.
 
−
** Golems now require supply, which means that they are useless for long-range raiding.
 
−
*** This encourages a (sort of) new school of strategic thought relating to adjacency to keep the golems relevant on offense.  Certainly no other units emphasize this to the same degree, anyway.
 
−
** Golems now require proximity to AI warp gates in order to function—they have to be within one hop of an AI warp gate in order to attack, etc.
 
−
*** This prevents players from using golems to play "goalie" on their home plants, which could have created impossible-to-lose scenarios for players.
 
−
*** Thematically speaking, this is related to the golems being reliant on exo-galaxy signals echoing from the ancient Zenith civilization.  These signals are normally not able to be picked up at all, but AI warp gates cause them to be amplified to the point where they are faintly available.
 
−
** The cumulative effect of these changes is that golems are no longer such a strategic risk, and they provide some new excitement on the front lines, but are not useful at deep defense or on long-range raiding.
 
  
−
* Acid Sprayers have been completely rebalanced.
+
* Carrier hull type from Scout => Ultra-Heavy.
−
** They have 10x more base damage, and 10x less bonus against Zenith ships.
 
−
** They now have 50% of Zenith bonuses against starships and resources, 40% of Zenith bonuses against engineers, and 25% of Zenith bonuses against turrets.
 
−
** They now have 10x lower shields.
 
  
−
* The ship cap of sniper turrets has been doubled, and their cost has been halved.
+
* Now when a unit is actively making progress on a build queue it loses the ability to be cloaked until 2 seconds after the last build queue activity.
−
** The cost of spider turrets has also been halved, but the cap of spider turrets is the same.
+
** Notably, this prevents neinzul enclave starships from spamming a planet with drones (and whatever else) with impunity.  Can still FRD built non-drones through a wormhole to a target planet, though, and that's fine.
−
** These changes don't affect the AI, but make the sniper turrets more useful for human players.
+
** Also this will break the cloak on modular ships that are building new modules, but since modules mostly can't die in combat anymore (except shield modules) and their internal build queue is disabled while they're in low-power mode, and if they're not in low-power mode and they're on an enemy planet they've probably lost cloak due to shooting at something... all told, shouldn't be a big change for them
  
−
* The Avenger no longer repairs nearby ships.
+
* Human Forcefield generators (including hardened ones) now drop remains and can be rebuilt.
 +
** Note that the normal under-construction-forcefield-generator restrictions still apply; namely that it cannot receive construction assistance if it is close to another forcefield that has recently taken damage (this was added a few months ago to prevent forcefield+engie stacks that were effectively immortal).
 +
** Still, the fact that the rebuild starts at 50% instead of 0% (and is automatic if there are remains rebuilders nearby, as opposed to requiring player intervention) is a buff.
 +
** Also note that this does not apply to the "player home forcefield generator" that starts next to each human home command station: those are supposed to be irreplaceable.
  
−
* Sniper attack values have been increased 10x, and their reload speed has also been increased 10x.  This makes them more of a "volley" type of unit, good at dealing a lot of damage right when ships enter their field of view, but then taking quite some time before they can do it again (about 60 seconds of reload in most cases).
+
* Human command stations (other than the home command station) now drop remains and can be rebuilt.
−
** The above applies to both snipers-the-unit and sniper turrets.
+
** Also removed the rule where colony ships and mobile builders on the planet (or in a transport on the planet) when a human command station dies also die.
 +
** That rule (and the lack of rebuildable command stations) was there to prevent exploits based around very rapidly rebuilding command stations.  It could often tie up AI attack forces much longer than would normally be possible, etc.
 +
** However, one of the most unnecessarily-micro-intensive operations in the game was rebuilding lost planets because you have to build a colony ship, select it, give it a move order to the lost planet, switch to that planet, select the colony ship, select the command station type you want, and place it.  Way more player interaction than should be necessary for "rebuild what was there".  But we couldn't make it a lot easier without making those exploits possible again.
 +
** So, to replace the previous exploit-prevention, now when a non-home human command station dies then it "stalls" the construction of any human command station on that planet for 4 minutes (1 minute if the station that died was a military station); during that time a new station can be placed or the previous one's remains rez'd by a remains rebuilder, but the resulting under-construction station will not actually make any progress on construction until the stalling timer has expired.
 +
*** Note that all ways of removing a human station will trigger this timer: being destroyed by enemy fire, being scrapped, and being replaced by another human command station.  The latter is something of an inconvenience but the thought is that it is far less than the convenience gained by being able to automatically rebuild command stations.
  
−
* Scouts are now immune to sniper shots.
+
* Remains Rebuilders no longer require supply, to make rebuilding a "satellite" planet at least possible.
 +
** If this makes some wild exploits possible please let us know, but since most of the stuff that can be rebuilt requires supply anyway..
  
−
* For a long time, shots have sped up to 10 more than the speed of the target they are chasing if the target they were chasing is faster than them.  However, now shots speed up to 40 more than the speed of the target if 40 more than the speed of the target is greater than the speed of the shot.  This makes it a bit more possible for slower shots to hit faster targets, hopefully without making it too overpowering of a change.
+
* Grenade Launcher grenade explosion radius from 200/300/400/500/600 => flat 500.
  
−
* Ion Cannons, Orbital Mass Drivers, Counter-Spies, and Core Warhead Interceptors all now have only 120,000 attack range.  This covers pretty much all of a planet anyway, but is no longer so large as to be considered a sniper shot.  Thus, ships with immunity to sniper shots are no longer immune to these weapons.
+
* Flak grenade (from guardians and turrets) radius from 300/350/400/450/500 => flat 500
  
−
* All of the fabricators now use only 0 energy instead of 10000.
+
* AI Guardians energy cost from 500*mk => 1250*mk; this is basically irrelevant (AI players don't have an energy model, really), but does help Impulse Reaction Emitters hurt them, giving the IRE another situation in which they are useful that isn't dependent on superweapons or something like that being enabled.
  
−
* The ship cap of lightning warheads has been reduced from 8 to 6.
+
* Shield Bearers (the normal ones; this was already true of the spirecraft ones) are now immune to insta-kill.
  
−
* The ship cap of EMP warheads has been reduced from 4 to 2.
+
* All non-shield modules are now immune to armor boosting (they're invincible, it'd be a waste).
  
−
* The Mercenary Space Dock now costs 0 energy to use (this is a mercenary outpost, after all), but the players are now limited to having two of them.
+
* AI Carriers:
 +
** Effective range from 6000 => 3000.
 +
** Base Health from 3M*mk => 2M*mk.
 +
** Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring these changes.
  
−
* All tractor-beam generating units are now immune to paralysis.
+
* MkII+ Basic, Laser, MLRS, and Heavy Beam Cannon turrets now have radar dampening equal to their range minus 1000 to prevent them being inevitably alpha-striked by really substantial waves.
  
−
* Gravitation turrets no longer have any effect if out of supply.
+
* The Zenith Trader has finally yielded to the threat of sanctions and now only sells no-AIP-on-death versions of structures to the AI.  The toys will still annoy you when the AI gets them (indeed, a new toy has been added to the AI-only list to maintain annoyance equilibrium) but the Trader will no longer be an indirect source of AIP.
  
−
* Regenerator golems now no longer regenerate ships if they are in low-power mode or are out of supply.
+
* In honor of it winning the latest worst-unit poll, Zenith Reserves:
 +
** AIP cost on death from 5*mk => 1*mk.
 +
** Amount of ships granted increased roughly 33%.
  
−
* Previously, any ships of radius 256 or higher would not be translocatable.  That only applied to things like golems and superfortresses, really. Now any ships of radius 120 or higher are not translocatable, so that applies to many starships, all the regular fortresses, etc.
+
* In honor of coming in second in the most recent worst-unit poll, the Decloaker:
 +
** In general, moving this from a mobile tachyon unit with outdated stats to a mobile tachyon unit with roughly mkI-starship stats.   
 +
*** Note the tachyon range of 20k was already huge, no buff seemed necessary there.
 +
*** Also note that it isn't really a starship from the perspective of starship disassemblers, etc, it's just beefed up because it has a ship cap of 4.
 +
** No longer has the IsBlind flag.
 +
** Now has cloaking.
 +
** Base Damage-per-shot from 36k => 50k.
 +
** Seconds-per-salvo from 10 => 2.
 +
** Effective Attack Range from 18k => 8k (the only reason they had such a long range was that we hadn't revisited this one since the last major range changes).
 +
** Base Health from 40k => 2M (again, in the general range of mkI starships).
 +
** Base Energy Use from 100 => 1000.
 +
** Base Metal Cost from 5000 => 10000.
 +
** Base Crystal Cost from 7500 => 20000.
 +
** Now has most common-to-starship immunities.
  
−
* The ship cap on mark I force field generators has been increased from 5 to 9.
+
* Captive Human Settlement, in honor of coming in third in the "worst unit" poll: AIP-on-death from 100 => 15.
 +
** As was understood in the discussion in the nomination/poll threads, these are supposed to be a "penalty" unit, but players had a very good point that 100 AIP was just gameshattering for something like that (rebel colonies have the same AIP-on-death, for instance).
  
−
* Flagships, zenith starships, and spire starships have all been made more 1000 knowledge more expensive.
+
* Spire Armor Rotter, in honor of coming in fourth in the latest "worst unit" poll:
 +
** The general idea is to make these pretty good combat ships in their own right, at least until armor matters more in the general case and armor rot thus means more.
 +
** Base Health from 14,500*mk => 23k*mk (this gives them a similar cap-health as fighters).
 +
** Multiplier vs UltraHeavy from 2 => 3.
 +
** Multiplier vs Heavy from 2 => 3.
 +
** Multiplier vs Polycrystal from 1 => 3.
  
−
* Mark II fleet ships now only cost 2,500 knowledge to unlock instead of 3,000 knowledge.
+
* Microparasite, because it (like other experimentals we need to get back to) had really outdated stats:
 +
** In general, rebalancing these to be something like the MkV Parasite while maintaining their distinguishing characteristics (like having twice the cap and firing 4 times as fast).
 +
** Metal Cost from 1800 => 1400.
 +
** Crystal Cost from 240 => 3400.
 +
** Base Health from 7200 => 36k.
 +
** Base Armor Rating from 500 => 1500.
 +
** Base Damage-per-shot from 8000 => 2000.
 +
*** Previously they had 6.4x the dps of a mkV parasite, even though they were considered mkIII!  This is still 1.6x the dps of a mkV parasite.
 +
** Base Armor Piercing from 0 => 3000.
 +
** Effective Attack Range from 4600 => 6000.
 +
** Multiplier vs Polycrystal from 20 => 4.
 +
** Multiplier vs Artillery from 1 => 4.
  
−
* Mark III/IV fleet ships now cost 5,000 knowledge to unlock instead of 4,000 knowledge.
+
* Special Forces Guard Posts no longer count as reinforcement-warp-gates and are no longer autotargeted (by player or player-ally-minor-faction ships).
 +
** They still get reinforcements when their planet is reinforced, and those reinforcements use the special forces behavior, but they can no longer make a planet eligible for reinforcement all by themselves. 
 +
** This removes the "cheese" that was possible by keeping them alive to trick the AI into reinforcing a planet with nothing but a special forces guard post on it (generally a waste).
 +
** With the cheese gone, there's no longer a need to make it hard to keep these alive, so the autotargeting could go away.
 +
** Which in turn removes the annoyance of getting +1 AIP from actions over which you did not have direct control (particularly with minor faction allies).
 +
** We may do something more clever with the special forces ships themselves in the future, we'll see.  In the meantime these two changes seem to be a net improvement.
  
−
* The ships that the Zenith Trader will build for the AI has been updated to give better weighting to the ships based on their level of power, and to include the new, more-powerful ion cannons at a fairly low likelihood.
+
=== Core Guard Post Rebalance ===
  
−
* The speed of the energy bombs fired by resistance fighter/bombers, neinzul bombers, and zenith bombards have all been doubled.
+
* All Core Guard Posts:
 +
** Base Energy Cost from 500 => 10000 (doesn't matter except for IRE fire).
  
−
* The health of light starships, flagships, zenith starships, and spire starships have all now been doubled.
+
* Core Heavy Beam Guard Post:
 +
** Total base attack power (this is divided amongst all its beams) from 8M => 4M.
 +
** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 4 => 3.
 +
** Multiplier vs Refractive from 3.5 => 3.
 +
** Multiplier vs UltraLight from 3.25 => 3.
 +
** Multiplier vs Medium from 2.5 => 3.
 +
** Multiplier vs Heavy from 1.75 => 3.
  
−
* The metal and crystal cost of nuclear warheads has been increased from 50k each to 75k each.
+
* Core Electric Guard Post:
 +
** Basically balancing this against a cap of theoretical-mark-V electric shuttles, but still only about half that power with less than a quarter of the health.
 +
** Can now hit a maximum of 200 units per shot
 +
*** This is the same mechanic as the electric shuttle and it can multi-hit targets up to 5 times each if hits are left over from the first pass.  So it gets more-or-less optimal DPS as long as 40 ships are in range.
 +
** Base Health from 6M => 12M.
 +
** Multiplier vs Artillery from 4 => 1.
 +
** Multiplier vs Neutron from 2 => 1.
 +
** Seconds Per Salvo from 13 => 20.
 +
** Damage Per Shot from 3k => 50k.
 +
** Base Attack Range from 13k => 8k.
  
−
* Previously, no ships had any attack bonuses against ion cannons. Now bombers and similar (anything with bonuses against "heavy defense" structures) has 1/3 their normal "heavy defense" bonus against ion cannons. This makes especially the higher-level ion cannons not quite so fearsome in the hands of the AI, as well as not so permanent-bottlenecking in the hands of the players.
+
* Core Missile Guard Post:
 +
** Basically balancing this against a cap of MkV missile frigates, but with way less durability.
 +
** Base Health from 6M => 18M.
 +
** Multiplier vs UltraLight from 8 => 4.
 +
** Multiplier vs Medium from 6 => 1.
 +
** Multiplier vs Light from 1 => 4.
 +
** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 1 => 4.
 +
** Multiplier vs Neutron from 1 => 4.
 +
** Multiplier vs Composite from 1 => 4.
 +
** Multiplier vs Refractive from 1 => 4.
 +
** Effective Attack Range from 36000 => 12000.
 +
** Seconds Per Salvo from 5 => 1.
 +
** Damage Per Shot from 80k => 200k.
  
−
* The recently-added mark III, IV, and V ion cannons can now be captured by players on planet ownership change. However, they increase the size of incoming enemy waves to that planet by x4, x6, and x10, respectively.  These are definitely not something to capture on border planets without first killing all the adjacent warp gates!
+
* Core Sentinel Guard Post:
−
** The recently-added mark III, IV, and V ion cannons can also now be purchased from the Zenith Trader, but they are ridiculously expensive in metal and crystal.
+
** Basically balancing this against a cap of MkV Zenith Beam Frigates, but with maybe half the power and way less durability.
 +
** Can now hit a maximum of 20 targets per shot.
 +
*** Using the same mechanic as the Zenith Beam Frigate: the line attack does full damage to each target hit, but gets no compensation for not hitting the full number of targets.
 +
** Base Health from 3M => 18M.
 +
** Damage Per Shot from 4k => 100k.
 +
** Effective Attack Range from 9000 => 8000.
 +
** Multiplier vs Light from 16 => 1.
 +
** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 8 => 1.
 +
** Multiplier vs Neutron from 4 => 1.
  
−
* Tachyon Warheads now have a ship cap of 2 per player rather than 4 per player.
+
* Core Leech Guard Post:
 +
** Basically balancing this against a cap of MkV Parasites, but with way less durability.
 +
*** Interestingly, the attack power was basically already spot-on.
 +
** Base Health from 6M => 12M.
 +
** Multiplier vs Medium from 3 => 4.
 +
** Multiplier vs Neutron from 1 => 4.
 +
** Effective Attack Range from 5000 => 6000 (slightly further out than its radar dampening range).
  
−
* Riot Starships are now immune to blades, which is thematically fitting for them and also makes them not so incredibly prey to vampires.
+
* Core Zenith Bombard Guard Post:
 +
** Basically balancing this against a cap of MkV Zenith Bombards, but with way less durability and about half the attack power.
 +
** Base Health from 6M => 12M.
 +
** Damage Per Shot from 60k => 900k.
 +
** Effective Attack Range from 53k => 34k.
 +
** Multiplier vs Heavy from 1.75 => 2.
 +
** Multiplier vs UltraHeavy from 1 => 2.
 +
** Multiplier vs Structural from 1 => 2.
 +
** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 4 => 1.
 +
** Multiplier vs Refractive from 3.5 => 1.
 +
** Multiplier vs UltraLight from 3.25 => 1.
 +
** Multiplier vs Medium from 2.5 => 1.
  
−
* Transports, frigates, scout starships, raid starships, and riot starships are now immune to area damage. This significantly increases their usefulness in situations against things such as grenade launchers, lightning turrets and lightning warheads, and a few other upcoming nasties.
+
* Core Zenith Fortress Guard Post:
 +
** Was going to balance this against a cap of MkV Fighters (but without the hull-type-bonuses), but with way less durability and maybe 1/2 to 2/3rds the attack power... but it's actually already there.
 +
** Shot type from (default? it doesn't appear to be set?) => Flamewave.
  
−
* Core Warhead Interceptors can now be captured by taking over the planet the interceptor is on (now that warheads could be incoming from the AI, this makes sense, but previously it did not).
+
* Core Spire Shield Guard Post:
 +
** Base Health from 392M => 200M.
  
−
* Attrition emitters, human cryogenic pods, planetary cloakers, counter spies, omega drives, rebelling human colonies, captive human settlements, home human settlements, AI troop accelerators, advanced research stations, and datacenters are all now immune to Dark Matter weapons. This protects them from astro trains, munitions boosters, and a few other similar things.
+
* Core Neinzul Melee Guard Post:
 +
** Basically balancing this against a theoretical cap of MkV cutlasses, but with way less durability.
 +
** Base Health from 6M => 36M (it's a self-damaging melee unit, it needs it).
 +
** Base Move Speed from 30 => 44.
 +
** Damage Per Hit from 106k => 300k.
 +
** Multiplier vs Neutron from 3 => 4.
 +
** Multiplier vs Light from 3 => 4.
 +
** Multiplier vs Scout from 2 => 1.
 +
** Multiplier vs Composite from 1 => 4.
  
−
* Scouts with cloaking boosters no longer will ever boost ships with a mark level lower than their ship level. Thus the in multi-level scout groups, the lower-level scouts will support the higher-level scouts, thus maximizing the chance of overall survival within the group.
+
* Core Booster Guard Post:
 +
** Base Health from 6M => 18M.
 +
** Munitions Boost and Armor Boost range from 8k => 16k.
 +
** Intentionally leaving the attack alone here: that's not really the point of the unit.
  
−
* Border aggression now only kicks in when there is Threat + Attack of less than 4,000, to avoid latency based on extreme amounts of border aggression on top of waves, etc.
+
* Buffed reinforcements a bit in general.  Judging by CPA size and other indicators since the major rework of reinforcements this has been lower than it was by a significant margin.
  
−
* Grenade Launcher shots can now only damage a finite number of ships within their explosion radius (like the Flak Turret), specifically 8, 10, 12, 14, and 16 for the mark I, II, III, IV, and V versions respectively.  The actual attack power of these shots has been increased by 50%, in hopes of maintaining the danger of the unit while removing the previous problem of them being capable of exterminating nearly infinite quantities of enemy ships (particularly when AI worlds could accumulate over 1000 core grenade launchers).
+
* When an AI gets 2 "brutal" picks for its homeworld (only happens on high difficulty), it now cannot pick 2 AI Eyes, since that's too nice.
  
−
* The reinforcement penalties on all of the golems have been massively reduced, making them significantly more powerful.
+
* Previously it was very easy to keep an AI from ever reinforcing its homeworld until the very end during the assault upon it.  This is generally desirable as part of the game is not stirring up that hornets nest until you've got the extermination squad in position.  But the complete lack of reinforcements there may be letting that end-challenge get a little too tame against careful players.  So now there's a 0.25%/0.50%/1% chance on Diffs 7+/8+/9+ (respectively) of a homeworld receiving high reinforcement priority per reinforcement pulse.
  
−
* The max starships that a starfleet commander can have are now 1/3 per planet what it was previously, hopefully making this AI type more reasonable.
+
* AIP floor minimum is now 10 instead of 1.
  
−
* Starships and warheads now build 3x faster than before, or basically an equivalent rate to space dock units.
+
* Data Center AIP-reduction-on-death is now reduced by 25% on Diff 8+, and by 50% on Diff 9+ (so 15 and 10, respectively).  If the two AIs are different difficulties, the higher is used in this case (tried using the difficulty of the AI player that owns the data center but that leads to some display inaccuracy problems as the game is pretty used to units not having stats that vary between players).
 +
** Along with this, Took out the change that reduced the number of Data Centers seeded on Diff 9+ (as pointed out, this did reduce total AIP reduction available but also reduced the challenge of getting it).
  
−
* AI planets now get fewer slots added to their ship cap per command station and guard post (it was 250, but now it is 150).  Their overall max ship cap is also now lower (1000 per AI player, rather than 2500 per AI player), and on home and core AI planets it is a little higher but still lower overall (1300 now instead of 2500).  These changes are logical given the huge new guard post strengths on the home and core planets (and the new ones coming for regular plants), making it now more about those large structures and less about the huge groups of smaller fleets grouping it out; though of course when the AI attacks the human players, you still get that same dynamic as always.  Without changing the game TOO much, this really lets us save on sim/graphics performance as well as making the offensive actions less of a grindy.
+
* Net AIP reduction for killing all the coprocessors is now reduced by 25% on Diff 8+ and by 50% on Diff 9+ (so 45 and 30, respectively; that's 105 and 90 total reduction but killing all the coprocessors costs +60 AIP).  If the two AIs are different difficulties, the higher is used in this case.
  
−
* AI planets now get only about 2/3 of the reinforcements per reinforcement wave that they used to.  This avoids having all the planets hitting ship cap (and thus running border aggression constantly, etc).  Between this and the above change, this should cut down on the occasional grindyness somewhat, and make sure that the sim speed doesn't have as much risk of dropping in battles.
+
* AIP floor no longer has a cap of 300 (not that this should impact games where you were caring about AIP anyway, that requires really high total AIP to reach).
  
−
* The infiltrator bonuses have been nerfed about 10x, especially against heavy defense units, as mid-sized groups of infiltrators could kill them in mere seconds.
+
* AIP floor was previously total-AIP-gained / 5.  Under Diff 8 that's still true.  Now on Diff 8+ it is TotalAIP / 4, and on Diff 9+ it is TotalAIP / 3.  If the two AIs are different difficulties, the higher is used in this case.
 +
** This effectively reduces the return on superterminal hacking since it does +1 and -2 AIP per trigger.
  
−
* Electric shuttle shot-stagger-time increased from 12 cycles to 22, but now tracked separately for mark I, II, III, and IV.  There is now a significant advantage from stacking different mark levels of electric shuttles together, rather than the previous penalty due to lack of control over which marks fired when the stagger was over.
+
* Zenith Electric Bomber is now immune to insta kill, like other low-cap fleet ships.
  
−
* Lightning turrets now use shot-stagger-time too, 12 cycles and tracked separately by mark I, II, and III (and entirely separately from electric shuttles).   
+
* Spire Archives, in honor of winning our seventh "Worst Unit" poll:
 +
** Now try to seed on a non-home, non-core planet adjacent to an AI core planet.  So taking one doesn't mean taking or alerting a homeworld, and doesn't mean taking a core world, but does mean alerting a core world (unless you claim the archive planet with a warp jammer, at least).
 +
** Knowledge gain rate from 1/sec => 5/sec. 
 +
*** So to get the full 9000 knowledge takes 1800 seconds = 30 minutes; can cut that down a bit by having science ships help on the first 3000 (theoretical minimum total time of 20 minutes because the science ships can't help you on the last 6000 knowledge).
 +
** When their planet is exhausted of all 9000 knowledge, they automatically die without causing AIP.
 +
** In short: instead of being literally "during the homeworld assualts" plays for knowlegde these are a mid/late-game high-risk-for-knowledge plays, but if you pull them off (holding the planet for 20–30 minutes to get all the knowledge) you get 3 planets worth of knowledge for only one planet's worth of AIP and without a permanent possible +80 AIP hanging over your head if something slips through.  If you were going to take that planet anyway, all the better.
  
−
* Wormhole guard posts now have 20 million health instead of 2 billion, which means that they can be killed after being stunned via an EMP, but they take a lot of firepower to do so.
+
* Warheads killed by warhead interceptors no longer cause AIP-on-death.
  
−
* Special Forces Guard Posts now have 4 million health instead of 400k. Their attack range has been reduced from 1500 to 1000.
+
* Spire Shield Guard Posts (the normal ones, not the Core ones), in honor of tying for second in our first "Aim The Nerfbat (AI-Side)" poll, have had their health changed from 56M*mk => 28M*mk.
 +
** Galactic Sandpaper Incorporated has already filed for bankruptcy.
  
−
* Made engineers, cleanup drones, and rebuilders blind.
+
* Spire Stealth Battleship, in honor of tying for second in our first "Aim The Nerfbat (AI-Side)" poll:
 +
** Radar Dampening from 8000 => 10000.
 +
** Base Move Speed from 18 => 16. (for reference, a fighter's is 28, this is before a variety of other calculation steps)
  
−
* Bonuses against heavy defense now give a bonus against Avengers too.
+
* The Player Home Forcefield Generator:
 +
** Now projects a grav well of 6600 radius (3 times its forcefield radius, 1600 more than the MkI Grav turret's radius) that allows a max speed of 8 (same as the MkI Grav turret).
 +
** Now projects tachyon coverage of 6600 radius (3 times its forcefield radius, 600 more than a MkIII Scout Starship).
  
−
* Metal and Crystal Harvesters no longer require energy to operate—they produce enough energy for themselves directly.
+
* Since the Botnet Golem won (by a landslide) our first "aim the nerf bat" poll, a plan was set in motion.  The Botnet, however, saw it coming.  Pulling a koolaid-man, it busted out of its former niche into a whole new minor faction, to wit: Botnet Golem.
 +
** This is basically like the Broken Golems faction except:
 +
*** It only seeds the Broken Botnet, and it only seeds one of them (Broken Golems no longer seeds any botnets, needless to say).
 +
**** It tries to seed on a planet 4 or 5 hops from the human homeworld(s); if it can't it tries 3, 2, and then 1.  This is a far more controlled distance than normal golems (which is just 3+ from human homeworlds) because it's best that the challenge of having this faction on not vary so widely as a simple 3+ distance seeding would.
 +
*** The botnet's energy cost on Moderate went from 400k => 800k.
 +
*** The broken-botnet's AIP-on-metamorphsis on Moderate went from 40 => 100.
 +
*** The exo response on Hard is the same as Broken Golems, but it's separate from that so you're really getting all that pain just for the one unit.
 +
** Also increased the Botnet's health from 36M to 100M (still 1/5th of an Armored Golem) to make it less likely you'll lose the sole advantage granted by this faction to a silly mistake.
 +
*** Note: the golemite AI's version of the Botnet's health is still what it was.
 +
** We're still very open to further balance changes; the main thing this move enabled was balancing the botnet separately from the other golems: we could have brought it down to the level of the other ones, but where's the fun in that?
 +
*** Note: none of this affects the old saves except the change in base energy from 40k to 80k (and potentially the Moderate numbers for the Botnet will automatically go up, not sure).
  
−
* When AI ships in old savegames are converted to a new type (such as all the guard posts), those now start out at full health rather than whatever their health was previously.
+
* The exos from BrokenGolemsHard and SpirecraftHard are now more aggressive:
 +
** The threshold for the first exo of each has been doubled, which means (all else being equal) it would take twice as long to happen and be twice as powerful.
 +
** The accumulation (which is AIP-based, unlike Fallen Spire exos) now acts as if effective AIP is always at least 50 + (game_second/360).  In other words, the minimum starts at 50 and goes up by 10 each hour (1 every six minutes).
 +
*** This minimum stops going up at 250 (20 hours).  (thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting that)
 +
** Thanks to Faulty Logic, Kahuna, rabican, and others for playtesting examples where even on high difficulties these exos were fairly underwhelming, at least early on.
  
−
* The engineering range on mobile repair stations has been increased from 15,000 to 20,000.
+
* Golem construction costs adjusted due to the recent fix in repair cost computation (bear in mind that golems are never built, only repaired, so these numbers only impact the cost of repairing one, which jumped about 6 fold due to that fix) :
 +
** Armored golem from 30M+30M m+c => 10M+10M.
 +
*** Combined with the halving of base repair costs in this release, this means that the armored golem now costs the same to repair as it used to take with engie 1s since those used to have a 6x repair multiplier.  The difference is now it doesn't matter if you use MRS's or EngieIIIs except in terms of how fast it happens.
 +
** Artilery golem from 10M+10M => 8M+8M (lots of feedback that these are OP lately).
 +
** Black Widow golem from 25M+25M => 10M+10M (ditto).
 +
** Regenerator golem from 60M+60M => 20M+20M (note that the regenerator's post-reactivation repair cost is 10% of what it would normally be, due to an earlier change).
 +
** Cursed golem from 10M+10M => 3M+3M (a slight buff, but these aren't all that popular in general).
 +
** Hive golem from 20M+20M => 7M+7M (a slight nerf, but these are quite strong).
 +
** Botnet golem from 40M+40M => 20M+20M (in keeping with last version's changes, trying to make the cost of these more closely equal the benefit; let us know if this is still off)
  
−
* Engineers (including mine layers and cleanup drones) no longer have teleportation.  However, they do all now move at speed 100 and they have vastly larger enginering ranges.  They also no longer automatically move toward targets to heal (they just heal what's in their considerable range).  All in all, this makes engineers vastly easier to control; something that was a learning issue for new players in the past, and an annoyance for experienced players.
+
* MkI Engineer repair multiplier from 6 => 2; this isn't because it needs a nerf but because with the repair fix people need time to adjust to how much stuff costs to repair when the math isn't bugged and it's easier to do that when the repair happens over more than a couple seconds.  If this is a problem an alternate approach can be found, but our understanding is that repair _time_ (as opposed to repair cost) hasn't really been a problem for folks, but vanishing economies have been.
 +
** MkII Engineer still has a multiplier of 9 and MkIII still has a multiplier of 12, the idea being that if you're unlocking those you specifically want them to do things quickly
  
−
* Remains can no longer be gifted.
+
* Repair cost in general is now based off half the construction cost instead of the full construction cost.
  
−
* Fortresses now have infinite engine health, as they are unable to have their engines repaired.
+
* Repairing engines now does not cost m+c (if health is also being repaired at the same time that costs m+c).
  
−
* Fortresses now only take 2 hours to fully repair themselves from nearly-dead, rather than 3.  SuperFortresses now take 3 hours to repair themselves from nearly-dead instead of 5.
+
* Spire Refugee Ship (the starship recovered in the second stage of Fallen Spire) can no longer be put in a transport, since the chase logic doesn't work right with stuff in transports and jumpships make it pretty trivial.
  
−
* Siege starships can now hit one type of fleet ship: the Force-Field Bearer.  Hard.
+
* The game now tries to seed human home command stations further away from wormholes and tries harder to find such a spot.  This should help prevent "AI says: I have a plasma siege starship, gg" situations.
  
−
* The various minor faction Neinzul ships are now all immune to reclamation.
+
* Heroic AI type balance changes:
 +
** Is now considered a technologist type for the purposes of lobby logic and display (specifically, being displayed in RED), though it does not get higher tech levels than usual.
 +
** Its non-wave champion spawns now start at Frigate-level at tech-level 1, not Destroyer-level.
  
−
* The mark I and II engineer energy costs have been reduced from 1000, 500 to 250, 200.  This makes it far easier to keep a large standing fleet of them on various planets now that they aren't teleporting.
+
* Neinzul champion hulls are now immune to black hole machines.
  
−
* The mark III and Experimental engineers are now once again teleporting, for players who really love that feature.  The metal/crystal costs of the mark III engineers have been increased somewhat to compensate, however (about a 50% increase).
+
* Plasma Siege Starship ship cap from 5 => 4.  Most of the others here were at 4 already, and it's been pretty widely considered the best of the combat starships lately.
  
−
* All mercenary ships (except the Mercenary Enclave Starship) are now equivalent to MkIV ships (instead of MkII).  They cost 10x the metal and crystal of their normal MkIV counterparts.
+
* Leech Starship:
 +
** Ship cap from 3 => 4.
 +
** Seconds Per Salvo from 4 => 2.
 +
** Shots Per Salvo from 3= > 6.
 +
** Base Attack Power from 30k => 2k (24k base-cap-dps, parasite has 12.25k)
 +
*** Previously Leech Starships had nearly _five times_ the base-cap-dps of the equivalent fleet ship type (the Parasite).  That parasite has 4x multipliers where the leech has none, so they don't need to be all that close, but the leech having a higher base dps than the parasite's bonus dps... no.
 +
**** This change was done rather than buffing the parasites because the parasites seem to be reclaiming at a good rate already; further feedback on this is quite welcome.
 +
** Base Armor Piercing from 0 => 750*mk (same as parasite).
  
−
* EMP Mines now paralyze their targets for 10 seconds instead of 3.
+
* Knowledge costs:
 +
** Flagship was 0/2000/5000.
 +
** Zenith Starship was 1000/2500/6000.
 +
** Starship Starship was 1000/2500/6000.
 +
** Bomber Starship was 0/5000/7000.
 +
** Plasma Siege Starship was 0/5000/7000.
 +
** Leech Starship was 0/5000/6000.
 +
** MkI costs (or lack thereof) unchanged.
 +
** MkII costs are now all 2500.
 +
** MkIII costs are now all 4000.
 +
** The idea being that you're paying for 1x/2x/3x the raw stats, with a 0/500/1000 "surcharge" for the fact that 2x health and 2x attack power is more than 2x as useful, etc.
  
−
* Riot control tazers now paralyze their targets for a full second instead of half a second.
+
* Health:
 +
** "Normal" cap-hp for a fleet ship type is about 15M (ranging from 10M to 30M), Normal for a starship type is about 22.5M (but normal cap-dps is lower).
 +
** Flagship from 3.75M*mk => 5M*mk (20M cap-hp).
 +
** Zenith from 4.5M*mk => 6M*mk (24M cap-hp).
 +
** Spire from 3M*mk => 4M*mk (16M cap-hp).
 +
** Bomber from 4.7M*mk => 7M*mk (28M cap-hp)
 +
** Plasma Siege unchanged at 5M*mk.
 +
** Leech from 3.2M*mk => 4M*mk (16M cap-hp).
  
−
* The zenith paralyzers i, ii, iii, iv, v now paralyze their targets for 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 seconds at a time, rather than the older 0.2, 0.4, 0.8, 1.8, 3.2 that they previously did.
+
* Metal+Crystal/Energy costs:
 +
** Cap-m+c for fleet ship types varies widely, from about 40k for fighters to about 160k for bombers even just within the triangle.  Starships are supposed to be substantially more expensive than fleet ships in exchange for being easier to keep alive.  Also, the econ part of the game has been a lot easier since changes to the energy system and harvesters. So targeting about 400k m+c for a mkI cap here.
 +
** Cap-e is more consistent for fleet ships, typically about 20k (halved for mkI types). So targeting about 40k for a mkI cap here.
 +
** The m+c costs listed are for mkI, mkII are 2x, mkIII are 4x.  E costs do not change with mark.
 +
** Flagship from 40k+24k / 4k e => 60k+40k / 10k.
 +
** Zenith from 24k+40k / 4k e => 40k+60k / 10k.
 +
** Spire from 30k+34k / 4k e => 45k+55k / 10k.
 +
** Bomber from 80k+8k / 2k e => 85k+15k / 10k.
 +
** Plasma Siege from 8k+80k / 2k e => 15k+85k / 10k.
 +
** Leech from 60k+40k / 5k e => 60k+40k / 10k.
  
−
* The recharge rate of snipers and sniper turrets has been decreased from 60 seconds to 30 seconds.
+
* Fighter (including tachyon-micro and bulletproof variants):
 +
** Base Move Speed from 28 => 32.
 +
** Multiplier vs Polycrystal from 5 => 6.
 +
** Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 2.4 => 6.
 +
** Multiplier vs Medium from 2.4 => 6.
 +
** Base Attack Power from 1200 => 1000 (similar for the variants).
  
−
* The recharge rate of spider turrets has been increased from 7.5 seconds to 15 seconds, but their attack power and engine damage have both been doubled.
+
* Bomber Base Move Speed from 28 => 26.
  
−
* The recharge times of the flak turrets and heavy beam cannons have been nerfed a bit for the lower levels, and are a tad better for the higher levels now.
+
* The following guardians now have the medium hull type:
 +
** EMP (was Neutron)
 +
** Heavy Beam (was Heavy) 
 +
** Laser (was Swarmer)
 +
** Lightning (was Composite) 
 +
** Special Forces Rally (was Heavy)
 +
** Spire Implosion (was Artillery)
 +
** Starship Disassembler (was UltraHeavy)
 +
** Tachyon (was Refractive)
 +
** Tractor (was Neutron)
 +
** Vampire (was Artillery)
  
−
* The recharge time for some of the melee ships is now worse, as there is no smaller than a 1 second delay between attacks now.
+
* Spire Starship:
 +
** Hull type from Neutron => Medium.
 +
** Base Attack Power from 120k*mk => 600k*mk.
 +
*** The previous number was the result of multiple math errors during the balancing process.  Specifically: its dps was computed using a seconds-per-salvo of 8 when it's actually 10 due to the photon lance's firing time, and its base dps was balanced as if it had 4x bonuses despite not having any bonuses.
  
−
* Various ships that had partial-second recharge times (3.5 seconds, 9.8 seconds, etc) now have been rounded to either one second or the other (not always to the nearest second—some subtle balance tweaks here).
+
* All fleet ship caps have been adjusted to be multiples of 8 (generally by rounding down, unless something was 1 away from the next higher multiple, in some cases), except for those fleet ships which don't change caps at different unit cap scales.
 +
** This involved about 5 metric tons of relatively minor changes to health, attack power, metal cost, crystal cost and energy cost. Mostly cap-health and cap-dps didn't change by more than 1% in either direction; cap-m,c,e costs vary a bit more but nothing earthshaking.  The numbers are internally arranged in a much better fashion now which should help with other changes going forward.
 +
** The main immediate benefit of this is that the ultra-low-caps setting no longer impacts the balance of fleet ship types whose caps are not multiples of 8, because, well, they are now.
  
−
* The way that mining golems work has been revamped fairly substantially.  Rather than coming in from way out in deep space (where it is difficult for players to even get to), and then exploding when they reach the planet center, they now just appear somewhere in the planetary gravity well and explode after 90 minutes of existence.
+
* Previously on Diff 9+ if you were part of the way from one AI-tech-level to the next, each wave would have a proportionate percentage of its ships "promoted" to the next tech level to make the transition in difficulty feel smoother.  Now this happens on difficulty 5+ 
 +
** Mathematically speaking this makes the game somewhat more difficult and that's why it was restricted to 9+.  In practice it seems to make the game easier because you're testing your defenses against waves more like the ones you're going to get at the next tech level, rather than getting the jump all at once.
 +
** The main motivation for changing this now is that since the double-application of the mark-level downwards-multiplier on wave sizes has been changed to only applying it once (as mentioned above), the higher-mark waves will be larger and the feeling of a "challenge cliff" between AI tech levels greater.  This really helps avoid those cliffs.
  
−
* Turrets have all had their costs, health, and attack powers have all been increased 3x.
+
* Zenith Siege Engine:
−
** MLRS turrets have also had their number of shots increased 3x.
+
** MkI-cap-health from 16.8M => 10M.
−
** Missile turrets have also had their range increased 3x (although that range no longer goes up with higher marks of them).
+
** Corrected an... interesting balance-math error where it had 720k mkI-cap-dps AND 10x multipliers (against structural, heavy, ultraheavy, and turret):
−
** Tractor beam turrets are each now able to tractor 3x as many ships as before.
+
*** Multipliers from 10x => 5x.
−
** The attack range of laser turrets has also been cut in half.
+
*** MkI-cap-dps from 720k => 360k (which is still really, really high for a base-dps even with no multipliers, but the must-reload-after-move mechanic is still really new, etc).
−
** The attack power of spider and sniper turrets has only been doubled, but their firing rate has increased 3x.
+
** Reload time from 15 => 10.
−
** These changes exclude heavy beam cannons, counter-anything turrets, gravitational turrets, and lightning turrets.
+
*** Damage adjusted to maintain dps.
−
** It has been observed that players almost always tend to build turrets only in multiples of 3, if not more.  This means that, if that's the lowest granularity of management really needed, that turrets are requiring more than 3x to 18x the cpu processing power during large battles compared to what they could be using.  Plus it's harder to keep track of 18 things compared to 3 things, and in cases where it doesn't make a strategic difference that's undesirable.  Hence this change.
+
** Now pay no attention to auto-FRD or auto-kite.
 +
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring these changes, as little consolation as that may be to the many ships (including spire capital ships)
 +
* All modular forts now pay no attention to auto-kite (previously some did, and some didn't).
  
−
* The attack bonuses of the various types of turrets (except flak turrets) have been doubled, making them a bit more specialized and also definitely more powerful against their bonus types.
+
* Zenith Reprocessor:
−
** Missile turrets have also been weakened against those kinds of ships they are particularly poor against (fighters, raiders, that sort of thing).
+
** MkI-cap-health from 8.4M => 15M (now in the neighborhood of fighters).
−
** Laser turrets have basically had all their bonuses completely redone, too.
+
** MkI-cap-dps from 17.2k => 30k (has 8x multipliers).
−
** These changes exclude heavy beam cannons, counter-anything turrets, gravitational turrets, tractor beams, and lightning turrets.
 
  
−
* Snipers mark I-IV now all have 1/5th the ship cap they used to relative to other ships, and cost 5x as much, but now also do 5x as much damage and have 5x as much health.  Even better, they also fire 5x faster than before, which makes them considerably more dangerous.
+
* The Shards in the Fallen Spire campaign now move 4x as fast (still immune to all forms of speed-boosting, combat style, etc) and the response "chase spawns" now happen about 4x as often.
  
−
* Zenith Paralyzers now fire way less frequently, but paralyze their targets for far longer.
+
* AI Type reinforcement/wave multipliers, since some of these are really old and the reinforcement ones in particular can have a disproportionately large impact on the feel of the game (to the extent that picking a particular AI type can make reinforcements look "broken", as in barely happening) :
 +
** Mad Bomber reinforcement multiplier from "you get one ship" on non-core-worlds (and 0.25 on core worlds) => 0.7, on all worlds.
 +
** Neinzul Youngster reinforcement multiplier from 0.25 => 0.8.
 +
** Vicious Raider, Extreme Raider, and Technologist Raider multiplier from 0.3 => 0.8.
 +
** Attritioner, Zenith Descendant, Spireling, Starfleet Commander, Experimentalist, and Grav Driller reinforcement multiplier from 0.4 => 0.9.
 +
** The Tank reinforcement multiplier from 0.3 => 0.9, and wave multiplier from 1.0 => 1.25 (same as the attritioner, zd, etc group above).
 +
** Feeding Parasite, Thief, Technologist Parasite, Bully, Assassin, and Speed Racer reinforcement multiplier from 1.0 => 0.9 (since they already had a 1.25 wave multiplier).
 +
** The Core reinforcement multiplier from 0.3 => 0.5 (same as its wave multiplier).
  
−
* The resource cap for players has been increased from 600,000 to 999,999 in light of some of the recent economic and gameplay changes.
+
* Corrected a balance-math problem where the game was counting the 14 "secondary hits" of siege plasma without considering the fact that they only hit for 1/16th of normal strength.  This means that the zenith siege engine's mkI-cap-base-dps is 45k instead of 360k.
 +
** The actual attack power of the unit is unchanged, this is just fixing a bug in the internal balancing model.
 +
** But since it's now clear that the numbers are more reasonable than previously thought, the siege engine's multipliers have been increased from 5 back up to 10.
  
−
* The amount of resources gathered by mark I, II, III harvesters is now 20, 28, and 36 instead of 12, 12, and 16. The research costs of mark II, III harvesters has gone up to 3000, 4000 from 2000, 2500.
+
* Human Cryo Pods and Home Settlements (the buildings that start next to a human home command station) are now immune to aoe (but not to beam weapons, i.e. not immune to linear-aoe), to avoid excessive-frustration issues with units like the firefly.
−
** The overall intent of this change is to make the capture of resource-rich planets even more worthwhile.  Also, to make there less of an imperative to HAVE to get the economic upgrades in multiplayer in particular. Let's keep things moving, not so much waiting around!
 
  
−
* Orbital command stations are no longer free in metal and crystal to build.  This makes sense, and solves the issue of not being able to build new command stations.
+
* Spire Corvette shield modules now cost 2000*mk each of metal, instead of 1m+1c to avoid the ship being effectively invincible due to immediately rebuilding its own shield.  As it is a mkI shield can be "brought back online" in less than 20 seconds, but as normal engineers cannot assist if the ship has taken damage in the past few seconds.
  
−
* Home Command Stations now generate 300/s metal and crystal rather than 80/s. The home cores now generate 320, 340, and 360, rather than 100, 120, and 140.
+
* Zenith Reprocessor:
 +
** MkI-base-cap-dps from 30k => 45k (for reference, Acid Sprayers have 58.8k, and the same bonuses).
 +
** Now immune to tractors.
 +
** Now have cloaking (and thus will not be included in future games with cloaking turned off, but will still be present in games already created with cloaking turned off).
  
−
* Economic/military/logistical I, II, III command stations now generate 32/16/24, 80/32/48, 160/64/96 rather than 16/4/4, 40/10/10, 64/20/10. This is a significant boost to both the military and logistical command stations, and an overall boost to the player economy.  These boosts are intended to keep the game moving, and players able to replenish their stores of ships that they lose in battle with the more-heavily-armed AI opposition.
+
* Military Command Stations:
 +
** Base Health from 500k/1.5M/3M => 1M/4M/9M. (puts it on the low end of a fleet ship or starship with a cap of 10, but with the mkII/mkIII versions much stronger to help justify knowledge cost)
 +
** Metal,Crystal production from 16,16/32,32/64,64 => 24,24/48,48/96,96 (the same as logistics stations).
 +
** Now do not suffer damage reduction when firing from under a normal human-tech forcefield.
 +
*** Yes, it's now just an obvious move to put a shield on these; presumably that was already true if you cared about keeping the planet.  And it still costs shield cap, so not 100% obvious.
 +
** Base Damage per shot from 3200*mk => 5k*mk. (puts it on par with a fleet ship or starship with a cap of 10, but since shots-per-salvo is also mark-based this makes mkII/mkIII versions much stronger to help justify knowledge cost)
 +
** Is now immune to radar dampening.
 +
** Shot type changed from translocating lightning to a new "knockback railgun" mechanic.  So the shots are now insta-hit, and actually still do the translocation code path but instead of sending the target to a random angle and random distance from the planet center they send the target directly away from the military station out to a distance about 2000 units short of the station's maximum firing range (assuming it wasn't further out than that already).
 +
** MkII and MkIII versions now do 200 engine damage per shot.
 +
** MkIII versions now apply 5 seconds of paralysis per shot.
  
−
* Mercenary ships previously were completely uncapped, but this led to some particualrly undesirable situations.  Now they have a cap that is 3x larger than the base cap of their ship cap (but, now that these are mark IV ships, they are a fundamentally different sort of unit, anyway).
+
* In honor of basically winning the "what most needs attention for 6.0?" poll, the remains rebuilders have received a logic overhaul and now:
 +
** Try not to target the same thing as another remains rebuilder.  If there are fewer rebuild targets than rebuilders on the planet they'll generally spread out pretty evenly across the targets.
 +
** If in FRD, they now are much less likely to "yoyo" back to the FRD-point between rebuilds until all the targets are rebuilt.
 +
** Recharge time from 10 seconds => 1 second.  The recharge time wasn't particularly easy to notice before because rebuilders would all pile up on the same target and while the ones not actually doing the rebuild would not incur the 10 second recharge time they would have to wait about 1 second to retarget.  With a pile of 20 rebuilders it was hard to notice the one that did the initial rebuild took 10 seconds before it could actually rebuild something.
 +
*** This is actually a fairly significant buff to the unit, but it's probably not a big balance impact to start the rebuilding faster.
  
−
* Anti-Starship arachnids now fire twice as fast and have twice as high of shields. They also now have half as much a bonus against starships, but twice as much attack power in general.
+
* Spire Tractor Platform:
 +
** MkI-Cap-Health from 10.5M => 8M.
 +
** Base move speed from 18 => 15.
  
−
* Ion cannons are no longer able to shoot at warheads in general (before it was just their high mark level that was preventing it).
+
* The AI Core Grav Reactor Post now no longer receives protection from the Core Shield Generator network, to avoid generating maps (mainly snake ones) that were literally impossible due the homeworld having an invincible black-hole-generator-effect unit.
  
−
* Shield Boosters have become Armor Boosters, and can increase the Armor Rating of a ship up to 200%.  A ship can only have it's armor boosted by one ship at a time.
+
* To provide a counterbalance against the player's ability to build up a powerful champion (and nebula-ally fleet) without increasing AIP much (if at all, depending on map layout and tolerance for deepstrikes), each AI homeworld now gets "nemesis" champions in proportion to the number of human champions, the highest champion hull size unlocked for human players, and that AI's difficulty.
 +
** Critically, the "population cap" of these nemesis spawns actually goes _down_ as AIP increases (bottoming out at 150 AIP) to simulate the AI having less to invest into its nemesis spawns as AIP increases and waves, special forces, strategic reserve, and other responses are being given more and more resources.  More importantly, this allows the nemesis spawns to counter an "early AIP" champion rush without making a more "normal AIP" approach massively harder to the point of stalemate.
 +
** Nemesis spawns are not immediately replaced up to the population cap (takes a little over 10 minutes to go from zero to the cap), and spawns remain even if the cap drops below the current population (but once you kill them off the extras don't come back).
 +
** Nemesis spawns never go through wormholes, so they won't ever leave the homeworld they're defending.  This is good and bad for the player, but good all around for their intended purpose.
  
−
* Shield Inhibitors are now Armor Inhibitors, and remove all the Armor Rating from all enemy ships at the planet.
+
*The tech level of the AI is now only inflated by 1 artificially when playing on greater than difficulty 9, rather than greater than difficulty 8.
  
−
* Zenith Polarizers now get a bonus based on enemy Armor Rating, since Shields are gone.
+
* Handicap now has the following effects, all of which is new unless otherwise noted:
 +
** AI
 +
*** Previously it affected the speed at which the AI reinforced. It no longer does.
 +
*** Increases the number of ships in each wave and reinforcement, and decreases when negative.
 +
*** Roaming Enclaves and Preservation Wardens are spawned sooner or later into the game.
 +
*** Scrap waves are scaled accordingly.
 +
*** Specifically "forced waves" are scaled accordingly.
 +
*** Cross planet atacks are scaled accordingly.
 +
*** Saboteur and deep strike reactions are scaled accordingly.
 +
*** For now, event attacks are NOT affected by this.
 +
*** Initial seeding of AI planets are intentionally not affected by this—same as human players get no starting benefit from handicaps.
 +
** Player
 +
*** Increases the amount of resources gathered from producers (using a new formula), and decreases when negative (also using the new formula).
  
−
* Radar Jammers now halve the effective range of all ships on their planet.
+
* Some triangle rebalancing:
 +
** The rationale here is that bombers have been having their way with forcefields a bit too much, and having fighters be so much more "general-dps" than the other two has made them much less a natural predator of the Bomber.  Also, the Missile Frigate is still being reported as the least desirable by a significant margin.
 +
** Fighters (including the tachyon and bulletproof variants) :
 +
*** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 2.4 => 5.
 +
** Bombers:
 +
*** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 10 => 6.
 +
*** Bonus vs Structural from 10 => 6.
 +
*** Bonus vs Heavy from 10 => 6.
 +
*** Bonus vs Artillery from 10 => 6.
 +
*** Base Attack Power from 1900*mk => 2400*mk.
 +
** Missile Frigates:
 +
*** Bonus vs Light from 10 => 6.
 +
*** Bonus vs UltraLight from 10 => 6.
 +
*** Bonus vs Swarmer from 10 => 6.
 +
*** Bonus vs Neutron from 10 => 6.
 +
*** Bonus vs Composite from 10 => 6.
 +
*** Bonus vs Refractive from 10 => 6.
 +
*** Base Attack Power from 1600*mk => 2400*mk.
 +
*** Base Crystal Cost from 700 => 500.
  
−
* "Immunity To Beam Weapons" is now separate from "Immunity To AOE".
+
* Tractor Beam Turrets:
−
** The following AOE-immune units are no longer immune to beam weapons:
+
** Base Health from 210k/840k/1680k => 560k*mk.
−
*** Missile Frigates
+
** Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 450*mk.
−
*** Transports
 
−
*** Raid Starships
 
−
*** Riot Starships
 
−
** The following AOE-immune units are also immune to beam weapons:
 
−
*** Scouts
 
−
*** Scout Starships
 
−
*** Cleanup Drones
 
−
*** Non-forcefield-generating modules
 
  
−
* The various turret lines are now far more specialized in what sort of ships they best counter, which makes the use of them a lot more interesting. This is also something players have been asking for for a while.
+
* Beam Guardians:
 +
** Bonus Vs Turret from 8 => 1.
 +
** Bonus Vs UltraLight from 8 => 1.
 +
** Bonus Vs Artillery from 2 => 1.
 +
** Base Attack Power from 4000*mk => 4500*mk.
 +
** Base Armor Rating from 600*mk => 300*mk.
  
−
* Fabricators (the capturable specialized factories) now cost 0 energy to run (instead of 5000), to make them a more straightforward "I want this" for the player, since they already have to balance the benefits against the costs of actually taking the planet.
+
* Laser Guardians:
 +
** Base Armor Rating from 1000*mk => 300*mk.
 +
** Base Health from 1.4*(standard guardian health) to 1.1*(standard).
 +
** Shots Per Salvo from 3 => 15.
 +
** Seconds Per Salvo from 4 => 2.
 +
** Base Attack Power from 17k*mk => 1700*mk.
 +
** Base Armor Piercing from 500*mk => 300*mk.
 +
** Base Attack Range from 7000 => 5000.
  
−
* Short-range turrets no longer have any crystal cost, and now have doubled metal costs.  MLRS turrets now have had their metal and crystal costs swapped (making them more expensive on metal than crystal, now).
+
* Raider Guardians:
 +
** Now Have Radar Dampening Range of 8000.
  
−
* Orbital mass drivers are now able to attack guardians.
+
* Lightning Guardians:
 +
** Base Armor Rating from 800*mk => 600*mk.
 +
** Now use the same "can hit up to 200 targets max, but can do max damage to as few as 40 by hiting each target up to 5 times" logic as Electric Shuttles.
 +
** Base Attack Power from 1600*mk => 2400*mk (for reference, Electric shuttles on low caps have 1600*mk, albeit somewhat slower reloading).
  
−
* Engineer drone health has been increased 10x, as has mobile builder health.  Cleanup and rebuilder health was already at or above these levels.
+
* Tractor Guardians:
 +
** Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 450*mk.
  
−
* Engineer drones, cleanup drones, rebuilders, and mobile builders all now cost 0 energy to operate.  When the player energy availability is in shambles, it's no fun not being able to build engineers to help the new reactors along.
+
* Spider Guardians:
 +
** Base Armor Rating from 1000 (flat) => 150*mk.
  
−
* Bomber starships no longer have multiple shots.  They also now have 200x higher base attack power, and no bonuses against any hull types.  They also no longer deal any engine damage, and have higher engine health.  Their reload speed has been halved.  They are simply ultra-strong raw-damage units against any target, but with a slow reload speed.
+
* Sniper Guardians:
 +
** Base Armor Rating from 1000 (flat) => 150*mk.
  
−
* Siege Starships also now have no bonuses against any other ship types, but now have 3x overall stronger attack.  This solves the problem of them not being strong against starships in recent releases.
+
* Tachyon Guardians:
 +
** Base Armor Rating from 400 (flat) => 150*mk.
  
−
* Human players are now allowed to build mark I-III bomber starships. The Bomber Starship Fabricator is now the Bomber Starship Mark IV Fabricator. AI players will also now use all these starships, too.
+
* Gravity Guardians:
 +
** Max Target Base Speed from 10/8/6/4/2 => 11/10/9/8/7.
 +
** Grav Beam Base Range from 8k/10k/12k/14k/16k => 7k/8k/9k/10k/11k.
 +
** Base Armor Rating from 100*mk => 300*mk.
  
−
* The following starships no longer require technology unlocks, and are available to the players right at the start: Bomber I, Leech I, Raid I, Siege I. The goal here is to make starships clearly more central to the game, with players having a starting selection of these as well as fleet ships, so that they can make more informed decisions when deciding what to upgrade.
+
* Zombie Guardians:
 +
** Shots Per Salvo from 2/3/4/5/6 => flat 2.
 +
** Base Armor Rating from 5000*mk => 300*mk.
 +
** Base Attack Range from 9000 => 7000.
  
−
* Similarly, the following turrets no longer require technology unlocks, and are available to the players right at the start: Laser Turret I, Missile Turret I, Lightning Turret I, Flak Turret I.  The goal here being that players start out with more of a varied arsenal, and can experiment with various turret types without having to gamble knowledge that they might not want to spend.  The idea being that then players will be able to get more familiarity with turrets in general, and can then make more informed decisions.
+
* EMP Guardians:
 +
** Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 300*mk.
  
−
* Missile Turret II and II now costs an extra 1000 knowledge each, and Flak Turrets II and III now cost an extra 750 each.
+
* Carrier Guardians:
 +
** Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 300*mk.
  
−
* Previously, there was a 5x health boost being applied to a lot of various types of ships, but now it only applies to the fleet ships built at the space dock.  This makes things a lot less confusing for us internally, and brings the starship health down substantially (they were extremely overpowered until recently).
+
* Fixed a bug with the electric shuttle "chain lightning" mechanic where it could hit a single forcefield way more times than intended.  Used to be as many as 200 per shot, but now down to 5 (anything can be hit 5 times per shot).
  
−
* The energy required for tractor beam turrets and gravitational turrets was excessive, and has been reduced by 10x.
+
* Fixed bug where electric shuttles were able to chain-hit the same target 10 times in one blast (thus getting maximum efficiency against groups 20 or larger) instead of 5 (thus needing to hit at least 40 to get full damage).
  
−
* Space Docks, Starship Constructors, Missile Silos, Mercenary Docks, and Advanced Factories all now take 1,000 energy to run. This is a 10x reduction for most of them, but it brings mercenary docks up from 0.
+
* Reclamators (excluding zombie-reclamators) :
 +
** Replaced the "cannot do reclamation damage to ships more than one mk level higher" rule: the reclamation effect of the actual damage done is multiplied as follows:
 +
*** If the reclamator is 4 mks higher than the target (mkV shooting mkI), multiply by 64.
 +
*** If the reclamator is 3 mks higher than the target, 48.
 +
*** If the reclamator is 2 mks higher than the target, 32.
 +
*** If the reclamator is 1 mk higher than the target, 16.
 +
*** If the reclamator is the same mk as the target, 8.
 +
*** If the reclamator is 1 mk lower than the target, 4.
 +
*** If the reclamator is 2 mks lower than the target, 2.
 +
*** If the reclamator is 3 mks lower than the target, 1.
 +
*** There is no 4-mk-lower case because mkV are not reclaimable.
 +
** Leech Starship base attack power from 120k*mk => 30k*mk.
 +
** Parasite base attack power from 4000*mk => 1000*mk.
 +
** Nanoswarms inherent 16x-reclamation property down to 2x, but no reduction in actual damage.
 +
** Spire Teleporting Leech base attack power also not reduced, because the general feeling is that these are pretty underpowered already.  Might nerf these later if this proves to be too much.
  
−
* Home human settlements and human cryogenic pods are now both immune to blade attacks.
+
* Parasites:
 +
** Effective range from 3700 => 6000.
 +
** Armor piercing from 0 => 750*mk.
 +
** Base Health from 7200*mk => 14400*mk.
  
−
* There is a new "Player Home" force field generator that is now seeded with the player starting position.  It has a size equal to those "Core" force fields that the AI uses on their home planets, but the strength is only that of a mark I human force field generator.  This gives a bigger protection radius, but no more protection-time-when-under-attack than in the past.
+
* Changed Engineer II and Engineer III caps from 0.75 and 0.5 of the Engineer I cap to 1.5 and 2.0 of the Engineer I cap, respectively.
−
** Once this force field is lost, you'll have to build from your standard pool of force fields, as these can't be rebuilt.
+
** Gives a bit more motivation to unlock the higher engineer marks, if you're having trouble getting enough assistance/repair out.
−
 
 
−
* Wormhole guard posts are no longer perma-cloaked, and now have a small, token attack like the passive guard posts.  These can now be seen and attacked if you wish, although they have 400 million health, so in MOST cases that's a colossal waste of time.  But in an event where you have a ton of firepower and the desire to clear a wormhole without clearing the planet, you can do so.
 
−
** Having these visible also helps to reduce confusion about spawned guardians for things like turtles, where there are multiple wormhole guard posts instead of just one.
 
−
 
 
−
* The way that the health scales up for the higher-level vampires was previously far out of balance.  Those have been nerfed back down to reasonable levels.
 
−
 
 
−
* No ships in the game now have a damage bonus of more than 50x against any hull type; this keeps things a little more sane, with things not being QUITE such hard counters, though of course it's still significant.
 
−
** Armor ships now have 10x higher attack, and 10x lower attack bonuses.
 
−
** Acid Sprayers now have 4x higher attack, and 4x lower attack bonuses.
 
−
** Resistance fighter/bombers, resistance frigates, and anti-armor ships now have 2x higher attack, and 2x lower attack bonuses.
 
−
** The AI Arachnid Guard Posts are now unable to hit smaller craft (like the siege starships cannot), but their range has been increased and their base firepower has been increased massively.  All of their hull-specific bonuses are now gone.
 
−
 
 
−
* Anti-Starship arachnids no longer have any bonuses against any type of hulls, and now have 4x higher base attack.  They were one-shotting light starships before.
 
−
 
 
−
* Players now get two mark II scouts at the start, rather than just one, and now get more manufactories of each type.
 
−
 
 
−
* The health for all fleet ships is now 40% higher.  The intent here is to make them a little sturdier, and that's hard to do when their base health is just so low.
 
−
 
 
−
* The counter-missle, counter-sniper, and counter-dark-matter turrets no longer require supply.
 
−
 
 
−
* Player ships now move 2x as fast as enemy ships, rather than 1.4x as fast.
 
−
 
 
−
* The health of captive human settlements, home human settlements, and human cryogenic pods, has all been increased 10x.
 
−
 
 
−
* The bonuses for the armor ship have been shifted around such that they are now just generally great against small, light craft in addition to turrets, command stations, and structural stuff.
 
−
 
 
−
* Core Warhead Interceptors are no longer destroyed with the AI command station.  This means that they can actually be captured now.
 
−
 
 
−
* Ion Cannon reload times now scale with the unit cap, so they still fire every 2 seconds on High, 4 seconds on Normal, and 8 seconds on Low.  This is to maintain relative balance against fleet ships. This means that they are now less effective at stopping scout swarms on Normal and Low (since scout caps don't scale), but we do not anticipate many complaints from that.
 
−
 
 
−
* Zenith Polarizer damage is now multiplied by the square root of the target's armor rating instead of by the target's armor rating.  Base damage increased by 12x.
 
−
 
 
−
* The ranges of the human tractor beam turrets have been significantly increased.
 
−
 
 
−
* Previously, black hole machines had an infinite ship cap, but they now have a ship cap of 2.
 
−
 
 
−
* The following Zenith Trader costs have changed in light of the new (more powerful) player economy:
 
−
** Black Hole Machines are now 4x more expensive.
 
−
** Ion Cannons Mark I and II are now 4x more expensive.
 
−
** Higher-mark Ion Cannons are now 2x more expensive.
 
−
** Counter Spies are now 4x more expensive.
 
−
** Super Fortresses are now 4x more expensive.
 
−
** Orbital Mass Drivers are now 6x more expensive.
 
−
** Zenith Power Generators are now 3x more expensive.
 
−
** Planetary Armor Boosters and Inhibitors are now 6x more expensive.
 
−
** Radar Jammers I and II are now 5x more expensive.
 
−
 
 
−
* Zenith Power Generators now produce 400k energy instead of 200k, owing to their increased cost.  They also now have a 4x wave bonus, rather than a 2x bonus.
 
−
 
 
−
* The ship cap of transports has been dropped from 60 to 20, but transports now only cost 1/5th the former amount of energy.
 
−
 
 
−
* The health of scouts is now 7x lower; they were overpowered, lately.
 
−
 
 
−
* The AI Progress costs of the Zenith Reserves have all been about cut in half.
 
−
 
 
−
* The AI Progress cost of the Distribution nodes has been reduced from 2 to 1.  Also, the possible and minimum amounts that they give out have both been been doubled.  And, in the case of a trojan node, the amount that they take away has been halved.
 
−
 
 
−
* On non-friendly planets, speed boosters now can no longer increase speed to more than 2x of the original value.  They can still boost stuff up to near-light-speed on planets controlled by the same team.
 
−
 
 
−
* Vampire claws no longer have armor, to make them not quite as hard to kill.  It's still necessary to use the right counter (laser turrets are good, check the reference tab), but now swarms of fighters can bring them down too, in a pinch.
 
−
 
 
−
* Sentinel Frigates are now immune to insta-kill.
 
−
 
 
−
* Harvester Exo-Shield regeneration increased so that self-healing from nearly dead to full takes 30 seconds, instead of 2 hours.
 
−
 
 
−
* The artillery golem no longer self-damages as it attacks.  It has vastly less health, though, and now only fires half as often.
 
−
 
 
−
* The armored golem is no longer self-damaging as it attacks, but also has vastly less health—but vastly more armor.
 
−
 
 
−
* The botnet golem is no longer self-damaging, but now has a lot less health and far lowered move speed.
 
−
 
 
−
* Lightning Turrets now have extremely high armor piercing ability, as well as a hefty bonus against refractive hulls.
 
  
 
== Misc Changes ==
 
== Misc Changes ==
  
−
*Extended "warp in the clowns" cheat to take 2 additional parameters (separated by commas), the first is a case-insensitive ForegroundObjectType name, the second is the base wave size (which is multiplied up down and sideways, but allows relative control).
+
* AI War engine upgraded to Unity 3.3, from previously being Unity 3.1.
  
−
*Added support for use of "any" as the second parameter of the spawn-immediate-wave cheat, so "warp in the clowns,any,1" will send in a wave of any, but will use the 1 size modifier instead of whatever the AI Progress would dictate at the time.  Note that the impact of the size parameter is very different in the "any" case than if you specify an actual ship type; generally it results in much larger numbers (so you probably want to start with using "1" as the size parameter, and work up from there).
+
* Spire Civilian Leaders are now no longer giftable, to avoid a bug whereby gifting them back and forth would repeat the AIP decrease.
  
−
*MkIV scout now no longer evades after exiting a wormhole.
+
* The alternate-victory condition on the Fallen Spire condition has been made a bit more vigorous about winning, since the recently added AI Hunter Killers were refusing to go quietly.
  
−
* added parametrized version of knowledge cheat: "Give Me K,x" (where x is an integer >= -50000 and <= 50000) changes using player's knowledge by x.
+
* Mostly as a visual improvement (via more variety of shot speed) and somewhat to make some weapons a little more effective:
−
* added parametrized version of ai progress cheat: "Get Angry,x" (where x is an integer >= -2000 and <= 2000) changes AIP by x.
+
** Laser shot speed tripled (wait, why does a laser shot have a speed?)
 +
** Minor electric shot speed doubled.
 +
** Shell shot speed increased to 1.5x what it was.
 +
** Ion shot speed doubled.
 +
** Combat style now applies to all shot speeds, not only artificially-increased ones.
 +
** Note: shots will always move at least 40 faster than their target.
  
−
* A new, Unity-friendly way of handling version numbers has been implemented.
+
* Made the "signal markers" in Fallen Spire invincible in the same sense as the Dyson Sphere (well, without a certain caveat which applies to the Dyson)
  
−
* Only a very few ships (a couple of Golems) had differing metal and crystal repair costs.  These have been adjusted so that metal and crystal costs are always the same, and the tooltip is now more concise with simply specifying the repair rate as something that is always applying equally to metal and crystal.
+
* Just under "Enable Advanced Logging" on the Advanced tab of the Settings window, added a "Enable Reinforcement Logging" toggle.
 +
** Similar to Enable Advanced Logging, this enables logging of AI reinforcements to the ReinforcementsLog_MainThread.txt and ReinforcementsLog_AIThread.txt files in your RuntimeData directory.
 +
** This is off by default because:
 +
*** This is really only for when you want to see if there is some problem with the reinforcement logic (short of logging, it is very hard for anyone to tell) and want to show evidence to the developers
 +
*** Reading one of these logs in midgame will give "spoilers" about what the AI has, etc.  It's not considered a cheat, however, because all the actually-important info it gives you would be available if you had turned off fog-of-war in the lobby before the game.
 +
*** Lots of disk I/O during the game causes instability on some systems.
  
−
* There is a new internal format for storing player data inside savegames, which makes it easier to find issues and desyncs relating to player data.
+
=== New Variety for Existing Minor Factions ===
  
−
* Immobile AI ships that were at a planet the last time the planet was scouted are now visible through the fog of war (as in many other RTS games).
+
* Human Resistance Fighters:
 +
** Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10.  0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" increment frequency, 1 is way less frequent than that, and 10 is way more frequent than that (it's not linear).
 +
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.
  
−
* The game now randomly selects from all the possible title music tracks (from the base game and any installed expansions) when deciding which title music track to use.
+
* Marauders:
 +
** Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10.  0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" increment frequency, 1 is way less frequent than that, and 10 is way more frequent than that (it's not linear).
 +
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.
  
−
* Warhead silos and starship constructors were seeded onto enemy planets as a capturable for human players to take over in the past, mainly so that players would be sure to eventually discover these constructors if the players were not diligent in exploring the build menus.  However, now that these constructors are seeded at the start, this is no longer needed, and it was sometimes confusing to players anyway (some thought that the silos or starship constructors would be used against them, which was not the case). These will no longer be seeded into new games on AI planets.
+
* Human Colony Rebellions
 +
** Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10.  0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" frequency, 1 is way less frequent than that, and 10 is way more frequent than that (it's not linear).
 +
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.
  
−
* PermaMines have been removed from the game, as the game has evolved to a point where they just didn't make sense any longer (free transports is a big part of that, plus the permamines just involved too much micro in general).  PermaMines have been changed into regular mines.
+
* Dyson Sphere:
 +
** Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10.  0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" spawn-check frequency (one check per 20 seconds), 1 is 1/4th of 4 (one check per 80 seconds), 8 is 2x what 4 is (one check per 10 seconds), and 10 is insane (one check per 6 seconds).
 +
** The galaxy-wide population caps on each of the three gatling types are modified by this 0-10 value.  4 is cap = AIP; 1 is cap = AIP / 4, 8 is cap = AIP * 2, etc (it's linear).
 +
** So if you want a game-dominating dyson sphere, you can still get it :)
  
−
* Added 24 achievements. 1 for the base game (win a game with the Avenger plot enabled), and 23 for CoN.
+
* Zenith Miners
 +
** Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10.  0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" frequency, 1 is way less frequent than that, and 10 is way more frequent than that (it's not linear).
 +
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.
  
−
* Human-controlled attrition emitters now do not damage AI-held units that cause AI progress on death (like distribution nodes and zenith reserves).
+
* Broken Golems (Hard)
 +
** Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10.  0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" strength, 1 is way less than that, and 10 is way more than that (it's not linear).
 +
** Note: the only thing impacted by the intensity value for Broken Golems (Hard) is the strength of the exogalactic strikeforces sent by the AI as a response to this faction being on.  The benefit you derive from it (number or strength of golems, etc) is not affected.
 +
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see VERY strong exogalactic strikeforces (their frequency does not change).
  
−
* Cloaker starships now prefer to cloak ships with transport capacity or buy menus over other ships.  However, this preference will not let it "kick out" an ship already chosen by the starship for cloaking in order to "make room" for a transport (or whatever) that has just come into range.
+
* Neinzul Preservation Wardens:
 +
** Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10.  0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" increment frequency, 1 is way less frequent than that, and 10 is way more frequent than that (it's not linear).
 +
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.
  
−
* The AI will no longer use the following ships as homogenous waves:
+
* Neinzul Roaming Enclaves:
−
** Forcefield Bearers
+
** Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10.  0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" increment frequency, 1 is way less frequent than that, and 10 is way more frequent than that (it's not linear).
−
** Munitions Boosters
+
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.
−
** Zenith Autobombs
 
−
** Shield Boosters
 
−
** Youngling Nanoswarms
 
−
** Zenith Paralyzers
 
  
−
* Astro trains in general (including turret trains), and also astro train stations, are now a lower priority for player ships to auto-attack.  This will help somewhat with ships getting distracted by turret trains, but if ships are already latched on and firing on it, it may still be 5–10 seconds before they decide to shoot at something else, so this may not have as large an effect as some might prefer.
+
* Neinzul Rocketry Corps:
 +
** Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10.  0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" number seeded at the beginning of the game, 1 is way fewer than that, and 10 is way more than that (it's not linear).
 +
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see a LOT of these (Would you like to play a game of... ?).
  
−
* The settings screen will never prompt players to restart the game now (previously it did on resolution changes and on expansions being enabled/disabled). Yay!
+
* Fallen Spire
 +
** Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10.  0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" strength, 1 is way less than that, and 10 is way more than that (it's not linear).
 +
** Note: the only thing impacted by the intensity value for Fallen Spire is the strength of the exogalactic strikeforces sent by the AI as a response to this faction being on.  The benefit you derive from it is not affected.
 +
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see VERY strong exogalactic strikeforces (their frequency does not change).
  
−
* It is no longer possible to manually select a starfield type in the game settings—a completely new starfield generation algorithm is now used.
+
* Spirecraft (Hard)
 +
** Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10.  0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" strength, 1 is way less than that, and 10 is way more than that (it's not linear).
 +
** Note: the only thing impacted by the intensity value for Spirecraft (Hard) is the strength of the exogalactic strikeforces sent by the AI as a response to this faction being on.  The benefit you derive from it (number of asteroids or strength of spirecraft, etc) is not affected.
 +
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see VERY strong exogalactic strikeforces (their frequency does not change).
  
−
* Same as with the starfields, it is no longer possible to select styles of nebulae, as they are now handled differently and better.  Also, nebulae detail levels can no longer be set in the game settings, but nebula can now be turned off via a toggle if desired.
+
* Note that the Trader, Devourer, Easy and Moderate Golems (which don't fit into this idea of "faction intensity", they're really just different things than Hard Golems), Spire Civilian Leaders, and Easy and Moderate Spirecraft are all still just on/off.  This isn't because we don't have any ideas on how they might be made so, just none that were very simple to implement at this stage.
  
−
* The option "Scale Game On Large Monitors (Keeps game objects the same relative size on larger and smaller monitors, but may cause lowered overall quality)" has been removed, as it no longer applies on the new platform (it looked awful on the old platform, anyway).
+
=== New Variety For Existing AI Plots ===
  
−
* The "Disable Very Far Zoom" option has been removed from settings.  It's long-since been clear that nobody in their right mind would want to do that.
+
* Hybrid Hives
 +
** Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10.  0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" number of hive spawners seeded at the beginning of the game, 1 is way fewer than that, and 10 is way more than that (it's not linear).
 +
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see a LOT of these.
  
−
* The "Disable Cleartype" option has been removed from settings because it also has no meaning on the Unity platform (text comes from prerendered textures, never from the OS, now).
+
* Amended the reinforcement logging to better reflect the impact of alert on the order that planets are checked for reinforcement.
  
−
* The "Default Frame Skip" option has been removed (as has the "frame skip" feature in general), because Unity 3D manages the render-vs-sim framerate automatically (and does a much better job of it, we might add).
+
* Renamed the AI Eye to the Sentry Eye.
  
−
* The "Extra Tooltip Font Size" option has been removed, as fonts can't be dynamically resized in the same way on Unity 3D the way we're using the fonts.  BUT, because the game now supports true fullscreen, that shouldn't ever be a need any more, anyway—this feature was added for a few players so that they could compensate for the text looking too small when viewed at their overlarge desktop resolution.
+
* Bomber Starship renamed to Heavy Bomber Starship.
  
−
* The settings option "Use Simple Render For Far Zoom Icons (Slower, But Prevents Invisible Icons On Some Graphics Card Drivers)" has been removed, as with the new Unity 3D system there is no risk of the invisible icons—again, yay.  Now it's definitely always nice and fast for everyone, and there's one fewer confusing settings options.
+
* Added 25 champion-related achievements.
  
−
* The "Always Show Selected Units Hover Text" settings option has been removed, as the new Selected Ships window has replaced the entire older way of handling selected ships (and this new way is much better).
+
* The shard seeding in Fallen Spire now only cares about how far from the human homeworlds a planet is, rather than the current border of AI territory.  This can make it easier depending on how much territory you've taken (particularly on something like a snake map, but that's something of an edge case), but in light of various recent changes this may not be a bad thing, and the seeding being relative to what you'd conquered was pretty annoying and encouraged some strange playstyles.
−
 
+
** The last shard is an exception: it still doesn't pay attention to what you've conquered, but it always tries to seed on an AI core planet (so bordering a homeworld, but never on a homeworld).
−
* The "Combine Planetary Summary Icon Colors" and "Hide Planetary Summary Icon Counts" settings options have been removed, as the planetary summary has been revised substantially enough that these sorts of options really don't have any solid purpose any longer (and we're really making an effort to weed out settings options of that sort, so that the useful ones are easier for players to look at and find).
 
−
 
 
−
* The settings options "Disable Blending of Shot/Explosion Effects" and "Use Simple Shot Effects" have been removed from the settings screen, as these were performance-boosting settings that no longer are needed with the new special effects rendering methods now employed by the game.
 
−
 
 
−
* The "Disable Explosion Debris/Embers" option has been removed, as the debris/ember emission has been taken out of the engine in favor of more complex base explosion effects (the end result looks better and runs more efficiently).
 
−
 
 
−
* The "Show Window Toolbar" settings option has been removed, as unfortunately that's not something we can control in Unity.
 
−
 
 
−
* New settings options have been added that make it possible to set the windowed resolution to anything, or to set the fullscreen resolution to a list of general resolutions, and to toggle which one is presently active.  Basically, the identical setup to Tidalis.
 
−
 
 
−
* The Unit Relative strengths is no longer compiled into the game itself, but is now in a UnitRelative.dat file that is in the RuntimeData folder.  This lets players update the relativestrengths file if they are so inclined (sometimes it takes us a while to do it).
 
−
 
 
−
* Previously, the game only ran in a "faux fullscreen" mode that was the size of the player's desktop resolution.  For many that worked very well, but for some that made the fonts unusably small.  Now, thanks to Unity 3D, the game supports both true fullscreen as well as windowed mode.
 
−
** Unfortunately this means the loss of the "faux fullscreen" mode, which we're sorry to see go, but that is not yet something Unity 3D supports.
 
−
** The game also now supports resizing (and changing between fullscreen and windowed modes) in realtime.  Previously, the game had to be restarted whenever sizing changes were made.
 
−
 
 
−
* A brand new Tidalis-style in-game updater is now included.  This beats the pants off any updaters we used in the past in terms of speed, efficiency, and overall flow.
 
−
 
 
−
* The screenshots function (F12) was previously unable to function on some computers.  It should now work for everyone.
 
−
 
 
−
* The screenshot function, plus any external video recording software (FRAPS, XFire, etc) previously would not pick up the menus in the game because of their GDI+ nature.  Now this works with all of them.
 
−
** Also previously, externally-inserted overlays like the Steam interface and XFire had to have special support (as in the case of Steam) to avoid conflicts between the overlay and our GDI+ menus.  Now that is no longer a consideration either, it all works as you'd expect.
 
−
 
 
−
* Our installer is now much better.  The old versions used MSI packages, which are clunky and extraordinarily slow.  It helps that we now have no prerequisites for the game, but the installer is miles better even discounting that.
 
−
 
 
−
* The update checker now uses the main Arcen site, rather than Amazon S3, as we have the bandwidth to spare for that sort of simple thing and it will no longer cost us anything.
 
−
 
 
−
* The update checker also now is substantially more flexible in terms of being able to download update files from any other server (as specified in the update file), rather than only from a server compiled into the game itself.  This uses a tad more bandwidth for update checks, but the added flexibility is well worth it.
 
−
 
 
−
* The old version of the "AI War Pre-4.0 Settings Importer" did not work because it was in a folder with a file called AIWar.exe in it.  Based on how .NET looks for file assemblies, that was causing it to look at the wrong file for trying to bind.  Now the importer has been updated to run instead from inside the RuntimeData folder of the game install folder, which bypasses this issue.
 
−
 
 
−
* The tutorials window has had some changes: the link to the videos page, and the link to the community wiki, have both been removed.  A direct link to the "Fast Facts: A Crash Course On AI War" has been added.
 
−
 
 
−
* A number of refinements have been made to the tutorial playback engine (scrolling messages, clickable messages, etc).
 
−
 
 
−
* All of the tutorials in the game have been revised fairly substantially.
 
−
 
 
−
* The DebugMustAuthCyclesIncrement (F4) and DebugAuthCycles (F5) key bindings have been removed, as the ability to make the game simulation run slower (and the addition of the debug log) make this pretty unneccessary now.
 
−
 
 
−
* The debug-related keybindings for F6, F9, and F10 have all been removed.
 
−
 
 
−
* The toggle score display (F2) option has been removed, as the score is no longer shown directly on the screen at all times.
 
−
 
 
−
* The main score now shown in the scores panel of the stats window is the adjusted score (which is what is mainly used on scoreboards).  The raw score is now also still shown—this was the old score that is shown in-game—but it is given a lower priority.
 
−
 
 
−
* The score benefit from using mercenary ships has now been slashed 10x.
 
−
 
 
−
* When there are multiple available title music tracks, as is the case when players have an expansion installed, the game will now pick randomly between those songs and play them at the title menu and lobby.  That way it's not always the same track just looping instantly, and all the title music tracks can still be enjoyed when you've got the expansions.
 
−
 
 
−
* Removed the Galaxy Display for starship constructors, since they are already counted in the All Constructors display.
 
−
 
 
−
* It is now possible to see the screen/viewport sizes in the F3 debug menu.
 
−
 
 
−
* AI planets with most units in cold storage and no human presence generally only process every other sim cycle (but double the movement, etc); this looks odd when viewing such a planet via complete-visibility, and now that the game actually syncs some of the local-interface data for each human player across the network, we have changed this so that an AI planet currently being viewed by a human player will never use the every-other-cycle model.
 
−
 
 
−
* Ship damaged smoke and embers have been removed.
 
−
 
 
−
* Player Home Command Stations are now considered mark V.
 
−
 
 
−
* Advanced Research Stations are now considered Mark V ships.
 
−
 
 
−
* Warheads are now actually marks I-III rather than all being mark V.
 
−
 
 
−
* The AI force fields versus the human force fields are no longer colored differently.  The reason for that has long since passed, and consistency is now more important.
 
−
 
 
−
* The ships included in the Strong/Weak data export now exclude starships, turrets, command stations, guard posts, golems, heavy defenses, astro trains, and anything that is not classified as "extended mobile military."
 
−
** This is because, for balance purposes, these various ships can't be quantified in a useful way by this export.  So it saves signficant time creating the export to ignore them.  In this specific release, for example, it cuts the number of pairings of ships down from 11,902 down to 4,877.  Additionally, it's saving some of the slowest pairings, which is even better.
 
−
 
 
−
* The "excel xml" files that were previously being exported often had problems being read in many programs, including Excel 2007.  They were using an older Excel 2003 format that was not widely supported, and that was not even working for the Arcen staff any longer.  The game has now been updated to export true .xls files in the BIFF8 format, which is supported by pretty much every spreadsheet program since Excel 97.
 
−
** Special thanks to the awesome open source [http://code.google.com/p/excellibrary/ excellibrary] component for this, which we're using a stripped-down version of for this.
 
−
 
 
−
* Previously, Mark V ships were sometimes called Core ships, and sometimes called Mark V ships.  Some of the ships even had different names at the core level: Core Predator, Core Leech, etc.  All of these have now been made consistent, using the Mark V nomenclature.  There are still some references to "Core" in the game, but that's meant as "on or adjacent to the AI home planet," rather than "Mark V."  That distinction was always there, but muddied by the fact that mark V ships were also more generally called "Core."  This should hopefully avoid some confusion in the future.
 
−
 
 
−
* Now if there is any threat within the first 60 seconds of a new game, those threatening ships are instead added to special forces.  This catches any overflow from the start of a game, just in case.
 
−
 
 
−
* Moved F3-Debug part of ship-mouseover-tooltip to the next-to-cursor tooltip box, since there wasn't room for it in the main tooltip-window anyway.
 
−
 
 
−
* If a guard post has more than two guardians assigned to it, it will automatically prune down to two guardians.  This is a safety measure just in case something happens with the normal logic for making sure that guardians don't get too plentiful per-guard-post.
 
−
** Note that there is a single "freebie" tachyon guardian at every AI-controlled wormhole that is not guarding any of the guard posts, and which therefore doesn't count.
 
−
 
 
−
* Added some "defensive programming" to prevent crashes due to occasional problems loading sound files on OSX.
 
−
 
 
−
* The old "Snap Cursor To Window" game setting has been removed, as there is no way to do this in Unity.
 
−
 
 
−
* By default, LeftShift and RightShift are now treated as the same key (same with LeftAlt/RightAlt and LeftCtrl/RightCtrl).  There is a new toggle on the interface tab of the settings screen to make the game treat those two separately.
 
−
 
 
−
* There is also a new toggle on the interface tab of the settings screen to suppress the normal "multi-building-while-holding-shift" behavior that happens when, for example, placing tractor turrets by holding down the left-mouse-button and shift.  The default behavior is the same as it's always been, but with this toggle you can use shift solely for the purpose of "do not clear the item out of my cursor when I place one".
 
−
 
 
−
* The number of available sound effects at any one given has been chopped in half, to avoid a crash issue on some OSX machines.  It shouldn't really affect playback even in large battles, as there was already a different kind of limiter, but it should prevent the crash.
 
−
 
 
−
* The pause text at the top of the screen now shows up in the same position on the galaxy map that it does on the planetary view.  It also now moves out of the way when you move your mouse cursor there.
 
−
 
 
−
* The armor booster tooltip has been updated to be more clear, saying 3X instead of 200% (they are actually equivalent).
 
−
 
 
−
* Autosave is now enabled for tutorials.
 
−
 
 
−
* The license keys entry textboxes now automatically strip out extra whitespace and newlines, making it easier to cut-and-paste into them from various external sources.
 
−
 
 
−
* Previously the loca-strings for the GalaxyDisplay and GalaxyDisplayFilter items included a description of which keys to press to trigger them.  Since the keybindings are now dynamic those were no longer necessarily accurate and have been removed.  In the future we can have them display the actually-currently-bound key like some of the other context menus but that will require some refactoring of those particular menus that will have to wait until post-4.0.
 
−
 
 
−
* The way that sound effects are pooled has been adjusted downward once again, to keep the amount of disk access and sound over-bleeding to a minimum.  This makes the battles sound a little less chaotic, which is another plus, and hopefully it will help (or fix) the remaining OSX crash.  This is a mild boost to performance on both platforms, incidentally.
 
−
 
 
−
* The "this key has been held down for x seconds" display no longer shows when the hud has been disabled (for those scenic views).
 
−
 
 
−
* The description of the Harvester Exo-Force-Field has been made more brief.
 
−
 
 
−
* The Harvester Exo-Force-Field has been renamed to Harvester Exo-Shield, its original name, since there's no longer a reason to differentiate between force fields and shields.  Also, Force Field Bearers are now back to being called Shield Bearers, for the same reason.
 
−
 
 
−
* Music is now paused during multi-step processes (GameInit, StartGameFromLobby, and LoadGame) to avoid skipping, and since the music track changes from the title screen to in-game anyway.
 
−
 
 
−
* The pdf game manual has been updated and revised.
 
−
 
 
−
* The tutorials are all now played on Normal speed rather than the former Epic.  This prevents the ship movement, etc, from feeling sluggish, and doesn't really make the game feel any more difficult since the AI ships almost never take the initiative here, anyway.  Better first impression, and all that.
 
−
 
 
−
* The intermediate tutorial in particular has been hugely revamped (even moreso than the other three, which saw huge updates):
 
−
** It now introduces the CTRLS screen, including rebuilders and engineer FRD automation.
 
−
** It now covers using starships as a key part of every offensive, as well as the benefits of scout starships.
 
−
** It now includes a LOT more offensive/defensive tips that players really ought to know when playing for real.
 
−
** The tutorial now includes a much more natural difficulty progression, so that players won't feel so lost when starting their first real post-tutorial campaign without the hand-holding.
 
−
** It now includes tips for a better economy, as well.
 
−
** Knowledge Raiding is no longer included in this tutorial, as it's now quite secondary.
 
−
** It covers getting surprised by the enemy, and instructing the player to pause to have time to react.
 
−
** It also now skips the part on ion smashing, as the other parts of the tutorial are now more interesting and basically cover that, making this a lot less interesting.
 
−
** The intermediate tutorial is also now six steps shorter than before, although a lot of the existing steps are more robust and interesting than before.  It should take about the same amount of time to complete as before.
 
  
 
== Bugfixes ==
 
== Bugfixes ==
  
−
* Fixed a couple of potential desyncs.
+
* Fixed a moderately longstanding bug where having the first AI player at tech level 1 and the second AI player at tech level 2 would actually draw as the text "II/II" instead of "I/II" on the resource bar.
−
 
 
−
* Difficulties 8, 9, and 10 were supposed to be getting 1 extra wave per difficulty level, but were only getting 1 extra wave overall.  This was a longstanding bug, and was a big contributor to why waves seemed undersized in difficulties 9 and 10 compared to other parts of the game.  Fixed.
 
−
 
 
−
*Fixed hang bug that happened when generating a 120-planet spokes (or potentially tree) map with some seeds.  In those cases it will now fail to place all 120 planets, but not by much, and the game won't hang.
 
−
 
 
−
*Fixed bug where the local player could not place a construction using an ally's builder if the local player had exhasuted the ship cap of that unit (even if the ally still had ship cap left).
 
−
 
 
−
*Fixed two internal overflow exceptions that previously could potentially have caused desyncs.
 
−
** Both of these also lead to some small speed boost, especially for games that are already running very fast.
 
−
 
 
−
* Fixed an overflow exception when ships with more than 2 billion combined health were selected together.
 
−
 
 
−
* Fixed a couple of potential overflow exceptions related to focus firing (these may have contributed to desyncs in prior versions).
 
−
 
 
−
*Fixed arithmetic overflow relating to the devourer golem's auto-target logic.
 
−
 
 
−
* Some of the internal calculations for how ships wait at wormholes have been reworked, in hopes of making them never get accidentally stuck in cold storage or stuck just waiting permanently at a wormhole.
 
−
** For super-high AI Progress games there was a check in particular that was causing issues here.
 
−
** Freed AI ships are now vastly more effective at traveling between their own planets in fluid groups now.
 
−
 
 
−
* Fixed bug where crystal harvesters were not properly auto-rebuilding if there were no _metal_ harvest points eligible for auto-rebuilding.
 
−
 
 
−
* Previously engine-damage-focused units would not sustain fire properly on engine-dead targets if there were only engine-dead targets left.  Fixed so that they should keep firing in that case.
 
−
 
 
−
* Fixed a bug where the predicted path of ships on the galaxy map (shown when hovering the mouse over another planet) was different from the path actually executed by issuing a move order via right-clicking the target planet.
 
−
 
 
−
* Fixed some potential desyncs for cases where a player played a game, quit it without quitting the application, and joined a multiplayer game.
 
−
 
 
−
* Fixed a bug in game-loading code that was confusing the values of CloakingPartialCount and CloakingRechargeCount.
 
−
 
 
−
* Fixed an obscure crash bug relating to ship movement.
 
−
 
 
−
* Fixed an overflow error in the adjusted score calculations which sometimes was resulting in players with invalid reported scores.
 
−
** Note: in the process, this also makes some subtle changes to how adjusted scores are calculated, but the effects should be minor overall.
 
−
 
 
−
* Fixed a ''very'' longstanding subtle bug (from the 2.0 days) with net energy fluctuating when ships are passing through wormholes.  This was extremely tough to track down, and in the end we completely rewrote the net energy handling to fix it.
 
−
 
 
−
* Black hole machines will no longer appear on planets with dyson spheres, as this was causing a huge build-up of non-decaying dyson gatlings that didn't want to destroy the black hole machine (since that would cause AI progress, etc) and were thus more dangerous than intended when "freed".
 
−
 
 
−
* The human-controlled Command Station Home Cores, and the AI-controlled Core Command Station, did not have their internal mark levels correctly set.  Fixed.
 
−
 
 
−
*Fixed a bug where using Manage Players to open a new Active slot with blank name or name of "???" and then having someone join in that slot would lead to an immediate desync.
 
  
−
* Cloaking starships now check for ships to cloak after loading and before the first sim cycle, to prevent embarrassing moments when you park in the wrong lot.
+
* Fixed bug on the stats window resource-flows tab where most construction/repair/etc outflows were reported as positive instead of negative.
  
−
* Units now check for protections (e.g. forcefields) and supply after loading and before the first simulation cycle, to prevent some of the significant combat differences when reloading in the middle of a fight.
+
* Fixed bug that was greatly delaying the onset of gravity slowdown on units entering grav range in some cases.
  
−
* Dyson Gatlings are now immune to black hole machines.  Removed the logic added in previous version that removes black hole machines from planets with a dyson sphere (as this could be disconcerting to the joker who builds one via Zenith Trader and sees it disappear when loading the game).
+
* FINALLY fixed a long-standing and excruciatingly rare desync that nevertheless was reliably hit by two of our players, Fleet and Tssbackus.  Huge thanks to them for their persistence in helping us figure this out.  For all the details, here's the mantis issue: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=3077
  
−
* Fixed a major and subtle desync based on floating-point precision.  A bit of floating point math recently slipped into part of the simulation based on some of the changes to our FInt struct, and this may have been the cause of the elusive desyncs that a tiny minority of players have been recently seeing.  This fix may also have some minor performance improvement implications.
+
* The Zenith Trader previously had incorrect line breaks.  Fixed.
  
−
* Fixed a bug that was causing engineers to bunch up on ships in an ineffectual manner.
+
* Previously, when command stations were replaced, colony ships and mobile builders were still dying even though they shouldn't have been.  Fixed.
  
−
* Fixed bug where heavy beam cannons could shoot at astro trains but would never actually hit them.
+
* Improved the clarity of the colony ship description.
  
−
* Previously, "experimental" ships could not get into transports.  Fixed.
+
* Previously, when a player was controlling an ally's ships and tried to put that ship into a control group, it would add it to the ally's control group instead of the local player's control group.  Having cross-player control groups is not possible without really expanding the control group data structure, which doesn't seem like a good idea to do at the present time, so for the time being allied ships simply won't go into control groups if a player tries to put them in there, at least cutting out the worst of the confusion.
  
−
* The attrition rate of transports is now shown via an ability in their tooltip list of abilities.
+
* Fixed a bug with zombie or minor faction electric shuttles, where the shuttles would just sit there.  This also should improve the behavior for any ships that explode (including warheads, etc) when controlled by a minor faction, when zombified, when in FRD or attack-move in general, and possibly when in the hands of the AI in some circumstances.
  
−
* Fixed a bug that was causing the wrong tooltip to be displayed when in ship-placement mode.
+
* Previously, zombiefied ships were being bound by player ship caps, but they should not have been.  Fixed.
  
−
* Fixed a longstanding bug with the Zombie reclamation ability (botnet golem) that was causing ships it reclaimed as zombies to come in at half health at most.
+
* Fixed a bug where Defender games were always being recorded in the high-score list as lost.
  
−
* Fixed a longstanding bug that was causing all player planets to be treated as out of supply right upon loading the game.  This was causing force fields to blink off for a second right after load, as well as tractor beams to lose the ships they were holding for an instant, etc.
+
* Fixed a bug where lightning and armored warheads were following the unit-cap-scale.
 +
** One of the side effects of this is that some Neinzul Rocketry Corps silos (only the lower-mark ones, and only on low or normal caps) were "scaling down" to a maximum internal capacity of zero, effectively making them Neinzul Rocketry Bricks.  No longer.
  
−
* Fixed a desync relating to loading multiplayer savegames with AI ships caught in player tractor beams.
+
* Fixed a bug where a self-destructing aoe weapon with a limited number of secondary targets (autobomb, nanoswarm, etc) would fail to do any damage to anything in some cases where only the main target was hit.
  
−
* Shots and explosions are no longer visible through the fog of war.
+
* Fixed bug where copying in your global controls from disk could lead to building engineer IIs and IIIs without the required tech.
  
−
* Fixed a rare overflow exception with wormhole guard posts being repaired.
+
* Fixed a bug that has been causing astro-trains to not be able to attack for the last six months or so.
  
−
* Fixed arithmetic overflow exception crash that could occur if the AI tried to launch a wave against a planet with an inordinately high total wave multiplier (multiple golems and zenith-power-generators, etc).
+
* Fixed a bug where the "I Have A Bad Feeling About This" achievement was not being awarded.
  
−
* Fixed bug where fully repaired but not activated Golems (not activated because you don't have enough energy) would revert to 25% health after save and load.
+
* Fixed bug where the command-station foldouts each player got on each ally's planet were not executing galaxy-wide or per-planet controls (like Auto-FRD, auto-build engineers, auto-build energy reactors).
  
−
* Fixed typo in the Zenith Starship description.
+
* Fixed bug where Core Starships were not immune to translocation.
  
−
* Fixed bug where ai tech level was not always properly recalculated when setting the negative AIP offset (like when loading the game).
+
* Fixed a bug that would cause ships to sometimes ignore their wormhole orders to instead stay and fight when they have a target.  This was most noticeable with astro trains since they are never supposed to stop to fight, but it actually was affecting all AI ships since sometime prior to 5.0 most likely.  Possibly as far back as 4.0.  This had serious implications to the AI's ability to effectively retreat; the AI should be a lot more swift-footed now, while still getting in pot-shots when it decides to leave.
 +
** Additionally, a potential desync was discovered where players that were using the F3 debug menu and hovering over ships might cause a desync in multiplayer.  Fixed that.
 +
*** Fixing this also reduced the per-ship memory footprint by about 8 bytes, which we're always pleased to do.
  
−
* Fixed a bug where a CPA could quietly not happen at a specific AI tech level and difficulty level.
+
* Fixed a null exception that could happen rarely when a unit was looking for the next wormhole to move to while moving from planet to planet.
  
−
* Fixed bug where units approaching an enemy strong forcefield from the left would pass through and wind up on the right side (and sometimes stop in the middle).  The forcefield still stopped their shots, but it was disconcerting.
+
* Fixed an (apparently) rare array-index-out-of-bounds error in the buy-menu "tooltip" window.
  
−
* Previously loading a game where the total AI Progress was over a tech threshold but combined with the negative modifier would be under the tech threshold would result in it acting like it was above the threshold.  Fixed to properly factor the negative modifier.
+
* Fixed a longstanding bug where modules would not always decloak their parent ship when firing.
  
−
* Previously, the addition of new expansions that a player did not have enabled in the lobby at a given time would still affect the seeding of the ship types placed on the possible starting planets in the lobby.  This has been changed so that new expansions won't affect the random seeding in this fashion when they are turned off.
+
* Fixed a longstanding bug (ever since starships were allowed to be loaded into a transport) where putting a ship with modules into a transport, saving the game, and loading the game would cause the modules to be removed from the game because the game thought they were no longer accessible (the "has a parent ship" link wasn't being checked).
−
** This may change the seeded values for some prior maps that were incorrect if players had only the base game and not the first expansion, for example.
 
  
−
* Previously, not all cloaked ships were guaranteed to be turned off when cloaking was disabled, though most were. The code for this has been changed around a lot now to make it more automatic that all cloaking ship classes are definitely turned off when the lobby option for that is selected.  Same goes for things such as tractor beams, etc.
+
* Fixed some longstanding (since introduction of group move trying to handle immune-to-speed-boosting units) bugs with group move:
 +
** Previously, for example, a speed-boostable 140-speed unit group-moving with a non-speed-boostable 152-speed unit would result in the boostable ship going 152, and the non-boostable ship going 140 (_below_ its normal speed!).  This was because the non-boostable one was taking the minimum speed of it's boostable friends, and then setting its speed limit as if those friends were not actually boostable.
 +
*** This bug has been captured, stuffed, and placed in the museum.  It couldn't get away fast enough.
  
−
* Fixed a bug where Zenith SpaceTime Manipulators previously did not have a proper metal/crystal/energy cost set.
+
* Fixed a few longstanding bugs where ships were able to fire on targets significantly out of their range because in a few places the range checking was early-out'ing with max(dx,dy).  This would have been fine if the target's current-forcefield-radius (and possibly other factors, none confirmed) were applied before the range check instead of after, but that wasn't the case and so the early-out threshold was wrong.  Well, it's right now.
  
−
* Previously, both eyebots and commandos were being selected like scouts because they have the scout ability.  Now they are instead selected like regular mobile military ships.
+
* Fixed a problem with too-low throttles on minor faction / zombie ships preventing them from even attacking at all in some cases.
  
−
* Fixed bug where ship caps would display in the lobby as if there were always 8 human homeworlds. Changed to display the cap according to the actual selected number of homeworlds (or 1, if none selected) and to multiply the result by the number of homeworlds currently selected by the local player (or 1, if none selected).  This may still result in some misleading cases, but may be the best that can be done for now.
+
* Fixed a bug where a superterminal could be "paused" by scrapping your command station, saving, and reloading.
  
−
* Fixed bug where Zenith Autobomb could aoe-damage secondary targets that normally are not auto-targeted (because they cause AIP on death, or whatever).  Will still damage the target if directly targeted at it.  Also did a sweep to ensure this behavior for other forms of aoe.
+
* Fixed the bug with two buttons for mark V fighters showing up in the mark V fighter fabricator.
  
−
* Added missing -100% value to handicap dropdown.
+
* Fixed a bug where if the AI had a pile of over 2000 zombie threat ships (and over 4000 total threat) it was possible for it to try to redeploy those zombies to carriers, and the carrier would be created with the appropriate contents, but the zombies would not actually be scrapped.  Causing the AI to redeploy them again, creating still more carriers, and failing to scrap the zombies again.  It was just carriers all the way down, leading rapidly to tens and hundreds of thousands of threat.  Fixed so that the scrapping works, and thus the duplicate redeployments no longer happen.
  
−
* Fixed obsolete Munitions Booster tooltip.
+
* Fixed a regrettably longstanding bug where it was possible for modules (notably hybrid modules) to become "stranded" without a parent ship and to basically act as somewhat buggy (and, recently, the non-forcefield ones are now invinicible) turrets.
  
−
* Fixed bug where loading a game with inbound schizo waves would display the wave alerts like a non-schizo wave.
+
* Fixed a longstanding bug where the number of spire shipyards and spire hab centers supported by a spire shard reactor was being multiplied by the number of human home command stations.  The number of spire capital ships of each type supported by a spire shipyard (or refugee outpost, for the frigates) is still multiplied by that number, as is intentional.
  
−
* Units out of supply (that require supply) will no longer try to attack, chase, etc.
+
* Fixed a bug where a ship with an inherent kiting range (raptor, zenith bombard, etc) would not correct for the radar dampening range of its target.
  
−
* Fixed bug where the Zenith Trader's buy menu would display "X of Y in service" numbers for one of the AI players instead of the local player.
+
* Fixed a bug in the auto-build-energy-reactors controls where they were trying to check for remains of other energy reactors but were not checking the right list for those.
  
−
* Gifting multiple units at once now combines into one game command, preventing hangs when gifting rather large amounts of units at once.
+
* Fixed bug where autobombs/nanoswarms/etc could now target and fly into an aoe-immune ship but couldn't actually do anything to it.  They'll now do damage and their other effects as normal, though if it's just a big pile of aoe-immune targets you'll probably want to hold them off for efficiency reasons: they'll only hit the direct target, unless there's something aoe-able in range.
  
−
* Fixed ambiguity in unexplored planets option description.
+
* Fixed a bug where if the AI had a pile of over 2000 zombie threat ships (and over 4000 total threat) it was possible for it to try to redeploy those zombies to carriers, and the carrier would be created with the appropriate contents, but the zombies would not actually be scrapped.  Causing the AI to redeploy them again, creating still more carriers, and failing to scrap the zombies again.  It was just carriers all the way down, leading rapidly to tens and hundreds of thousands of threat.  Fixed so that the scrapping works, and thus the duplicate redeployments no longer happen.
  
−
* Fixed a bug that was causing move orders of thousands of ships to take more processing time than necessary.
+
* Fixed a really, really longstanding bug where the AI got 1 bonus reinforcement at diff 8, 1 bonus reinforcement at diff 9, and 2 bonus reinforcements at diff 10, but no bonus reinforcements at any of the non-integer difficulties between those. Now it's 2 for 10 and 1 for >= 8
  
−
* Previously it was possible to attempt to save a game with an invalid filename ("CON" is not a valid windows filename, it is a reserved device name), fixed to disallow this and to give the user a clear error message as to why.
+
* Fixed a longstanding bug (since ship cap scales were added, roughly) where the ship-cap-scale multiplier was being applied twice to reinforcement calculations (so high got the normal amount, normal got half as much as it should have, low got 1/4 as much as it should have, etc).
 +
** The effect isn't as severe as it probably sounds, because most of the calculations ended in "if less than 1, set to 1" and other bugs (see below) were letting the AI get a lot more mileage than was mathematically sanitary out of that 1.
  
−
* Previously it was possible in rare cases for the CPA-like Waves option to result in the AI wave ships being spawned way, way, waaaaay out in the middle of nowhere.  Added some preventative measures to wave positioning to ensure a certain minimal sanity of the initial position.
+
* Corrected some longstanding issues where reinforcements were frequently getting stuff like Spire Blade Spawners in roughly the same proportion as Fighters; the ship cap multipliers were being used, but if a particular individual group of spawns in a reinforcement (there could be over 10 in a single reinforcement-of-planet event, and multiple such events can happen on a single planet per overall reinforcement) only had 1 ship to pick it could freely pick either a fighter or a spire blade spawner (or whatever it had unlocked) and the fact that it had just gotten something like 30x as strong as what "1" normally means was simply ignored.  If it had 20 ships to pick and picked a blade spawner that would be the end of the pick, though, so it wasn't totally ignorant of that dynamic.
 +
** Now it does a bit of arithmetic "carrying" so that if one individual spawn really picks something low-cap like that (and it still can do that, otherwise stuff like blade spawners just won't happen in most reinforcements) then it remembers that for further spawns in that reinforcement event, which can make certain reinforcements a little lopsided but in general is at least a balanceable situation now,
  
−
* Previously it was possible to add an item to a production queue that was not allowed by the technology of the constructor's owner (by multi-selecting that constructor with constructors owned by a player that did have the technology), fixed to check tech prereqs for each builder in the multi-select case.
+
* Fixed a bug where the Dyson Sphere itself was alerting its planet and neighboring planets on the AI thread, but not on the main thread.  It now does not alert on either (but the actual enemy-to-all gatlings and player-ally gatlings count for alert purposes, of course).
  
−
* Previously, transport ships mistakenly had an infinite ship cap when they were supposed to be limited to a ship cap of 60 per player.  Fixed.
+
* Fixed a bug in the handicap modifier computations that caused negative handicaps to be far harsher than they were supposed to be in some circumstances (like making CPA size zero when it was supposed to be, say, 24, because the multiplier was about 51x smaller than it was suppposed to be).
  
−
* Previously there was a bug that would cause units in cold storage not to be affected by nuclear explosions.  Fixed.
+
* Fixed a longstanding bug where AOE "canister" shots (flak, grenade, plasma-siege) were not properly hitting forcefields when targeting a ship protected by them, unless the targeted ship was also in range of the explosion from the point where the shot hit the forcefield.
  
−
* Previously teleporting units (like engineers) were completely immune to speed boosting, even if their teleportation was shut down by a grav drill or a game option.  They are now no longer "officially" immune to speed boosting, but act as such unless their teleportation is somehow shut down.
+
* Fixed a longstanding bug where an Ion Cannon killing a warhead would cause it to not properly detonate as if it had been killed by a Warhead Interceptor.
  
−
* Fixed bug where holding control could let you see the location of exo-galaxy wormholes on planets you had not scouted yet.
+
* Fixed a bug where the AI would not attack armored warheads (due to a "very low priority target" flag on those unit definitions).
  
−
* Fixed longstanding bug that was causing inordinately high threat counts to stay forever and ever, because the AI considered the Dyson Sphere a constant high-level threat and thus thousands of special forces ships would collect and gawk at it in lieu of actually shooting (since the Dyson is invincible).
+
* Fixed a bug where when the AI picked engineers or remains-rebuilders for reinforcements, it was "spending" too much on them.
  
−
* Fixed inaccuracy in science station description.
+
* Fixed a fairly longstanding bug where player ships would not autotarget an AI ship that was under a (non-module) forcefield and guarding something because that ship had not set its "angry" flag (to avoid leaving the protection of the forcefield).  Now it considers the ship eligible for shooting if either it or its guard post has been angered recently.
  
−
* Fixed bug where mines were not regenerating health if all enemies left the planet before they had a chance to regen.
+
* Fixed a bug in the last version where the laser turret upgrades could show the stats on laser drones instead of... laser turrets.  Similar for other turret techs that also unlock drones.
  
−
* Fixed bug where minor faction ships wouldn't run any "what next?" logic if no enemies were in the system.
+
* Fixed a longstanding bug where a unit could both be reclaimed and regenerated, which would sometimes lead to an AI unit being reclaimed, zombified, and warped off somewhere deep in AI territory.  Not great for threat management.
 +
** Fixed a related bug where a unit that had swallowed other units or was tractoring other units would take them with them when regenerated.  Now those units simply cannot be regenerated unless they have no such "load".
  
−
* Fixed a bug where AI ships in cold storage on a planet with a planetary cloaker would not be treated as cloaked.
+
* Fixed a bug where neinzul drones (which cannot go through wormholes) could inherit a go-through-wormhole order from the enclave starship building them, and would actually go through the wormhole.
 +
** Now they'll generally _move_ to a point near the target wormhole, but they won't try to traverse the wormhole itself.
  
−
* Fixed a bug where minor faction ships (like dyson gatlings) would sit around on a planet because some cloaked enemy units were present, despite the fact that said minor faction units could do absolutely nothing about said cloaked enemy units.
+
* Fixed the colony ship tooltip which was still saying it had to be near the target construction point, and also amended its hint about replacing existing command station to reflect recent changes.
  
−
* Scout starships are no longer counted in the "EnemyStarships" group, which prevents them from very easily making AI planets go on-alert.
+
* Fixed a bug where beam and warbird starships were still in the "Starship mk III" buy-group for the AI; they're now in the mkV group where they're actually balanced to be now.
  
−
* Fixed bug where Heavy Beam Cannons were still firing at ships immune to area-of-effect damage (like Missile Frigates, which recently were made immune-to-aoe).
+
* Fixed a longstanding bug where the "prevent construction of new command station by a different player than the current controller of the planet" rule was preventing gifting of command stations.
  
−
* Fixed bug that would make the estimated build time be wrong for a self-building unit that was being assisted by higher-than-mark-I engineers, due to the multipliers on those higher mark assistants.
+
* Fixed a longstanding omission preventing low-power ships under a forcefield protecting a passive guard post (and perhaps other guard posts) from coming out of low-power when the forcefield/post/guards were attacked.
  
−
* Fixed bug where Alarm Posts would not trigger when being killed, instead of having a 50% chance to trigger as they should.
+
* Fixed a longstanding bug where Decloakers in waves (only possible by having 1 wave-sending AI and 1 support-corps AI) were not having their ship cap multiplier applied and thus were appearing in vastly larger numbers than they should have been.  Wasn't a big deal before, but would have been devestating with their new stats.
  
−
* Transports are now always subject to the gradual-unload rule when on a hostile planet (they can still bulk-unload on a friendly planet or a neutral planet that is in-supply).
+
* Fixed some bugs with the Spire Archive gain-knowledge logic producing erratic display results (and not displaying how much it had gathered out of the total 9000, etc).
−
* Transports can no longer be scrapped on a hostile planet (they can still be scrapped on a friendly or neutral planet).
 
−
* MkII Transports gradual unload rate increased from 10/second to 20/second (mkI is still 10/second).
 
  
−
* Fixed some longstanding ants-in-the-pants issues with AI melee and autobomb units (frequent switching between destinations).
+
* Fixed a longstanding bug where repairing units with a repair boost (which is most of the ones that can repair) were repairing units faster but still "spending" metal and crystal at the rate they would have if they had no repair boost.  The cost difference between repairing with an MRS and with an EngieIII was pretty big.  No longer.
  
−
* Fixed bug where tractoring an AI Ship and then killing it while there was an AI regenerator (like a regen train) on the planet would cause it to properly respawn on an adjacent planet but then be snapped back to the original planet due to tractor (and often way out of range at that point).  Now will properly break the tractor first.
+
* Fixed a bug where multiple human homeworlds (in SP or MP) were not increasing the guard post part of reinforcements.
  
−
* Fixed a bug where the spent metal/crystal in the Economy Stats tab was often being over-reported.  This won't fix existing savegames, but should prevent the problem in new ones.
+
* Fixed a longstanding (back to the unity port) bug where the buy/tech menus would also draw the buttons from the menus above them, commonly resulting in "ghosts" of build queue buttons, etc.
  
−
* Fixed bug in auto-assist logic where repairers were not properly prioritizing lower-health-percent ships.
+
* Fixed a longstanding but very intermittent null-exception in tech-menu-button rendering.
  
−
* Fixed bug where AI engineers repaired broken golems (they couldn't activate them afterwards, and the golem would revert to original broken health if captured by the humans, so no big deal before).
+
* Fixed bug where core/starship/experimental fabricators were not being considered by the D keybind.
  
−
* Fixed bug where paralyzed ships could be put into cold storage, which would stop their de-paralyze countdown.
+
* Fixed a bug where remains currently in the process of rebuilding could get "stuck" at 1&nbsp;hp despite being under very heavy fire until its actual stored resources were exhausted.
  
−
* Fixed bug where planetary summary sidebar item mouseover was displaying a controlling player name and color despite the fact that it's generally impossible for this to be a truthful representation since units from multiple players can be combined into one planetary summary sidebar item.
+
* Fixed a longstanding bug where buy menu buttons were showing up red outside supply even when the ship doing the building can build fine outside supply.
  
−
* Added protective mechanism to prevent a crash when closing the game after disconnecting the original sound output device.
+
* Fixed a longstanding bug where the AI would only produce carriers if the target planet already had 2 barracks, instead of 1.
  
−
* Fixed bug where a ship with a target-to-kill would not clear that target if all remaining enemy ships on the planet are killed at the same time as that target and no other targets are available.  This would lead to an FRD ship converging on the target's last location and staying there until other enemies come along.
+
* Fixed a bug where Fallen Spire events would spawn the recoverable objects (and thus anything they go on to build) as belonging to the first player even when the first player was champion-only.  Now it gives them to the first normal or normal+champion player.
  
−
* Fixed bug that was allowing a hive golem to keep producing wasps in low-power mode.  It can still produce wasps outside supply, this is intentional.
+
* Fixed omission in the new CPA-size logic that was making it not consider one of the later parts of the wave-size calculations (making it a bit too high on lower difficulties and not as high as intended on higher difficulties).
  
−
* Fixed bug in the remove-ship-cap cheat that would stop a fleet ship queue when it hit the cap that wasn't supposed to be there.
+
* Fixed a longstanding bug in FRD target sorting that was sometimes being overly sensitive to differences in how far away two targets were.
  
−
* Previously there was a bug that would overwrite the first buy-tab of a multi-tab constructor (like a starship constructor) with a pause button if it was still self-building, even though it already has a pause/play button on the top button row.  Fixed to not have a pause button on the tab row.
+
* Fixed a bug where it was possible to start placement of an item (like an engineer or turret) and switch to another planet via control-group-selection and still be in the middle of placing that item (and if you had supply, actually be able to place it).
  
−
* Fixed a bug in the galaxy view planet-mouse-over metal/crystal income display that would count the last non-paused metal/crystal rates of a paused manufactory in the total, leading to inaccuracies if there were manufactories on the planet that had been paused since the game was last loaded.
+
* Fixed a bug where a bunch of science ships on auto-knowledge-gather but with no eligible targets could "clog" the auto-explore throttle such that auto-explore for scouts would stop working.  Now auto-knowledge-gather has its own separate throttle.
  
−
* Fixed bug where some minor faction units (like the mining golem) were getting orders from the AI thread that conflicted with their proper behavior.  The AI thread now no longer issues orders for those units.
+
* Made "what can I autotarget?" logic more consistent so that player-ally minor factions don't pop AI carriers.
  
−
* Some players were running into cases where tractor beams were not acting for a number of seconds after enemies exited a wormhole due to throttling, so moved tractor-beam target-checking throttle into central throttle logic, made more intelligent about how much load the operations actually involve.
+
* Fixed a bug where viewing a Core Spire Corvette Fabricator could cause unhandled exceptions (and the queue buttons to not show).
  
−
* Now when a constructor is unable to complete the item at the front of its build queue due to insufficient energy, any engineers assisting it will be properly flagged as failing to assist.  Assuming they were not directly ordered to assist that constructor, they will shortly start looking for other building projects they can assist (like, hopefully, a new energy reactor).
+
* Fixed a really longstanding bug where giving a ship an attack order against something already in range would cause it to move towards the target a little bit before stopping again.  This was mildly annoying with most units but very troublesome with units like fortresses and zenith siege engines that have to recharge (either their ability or their weapon) after moving at all.
  
−
* Fixed bug where it was possible to see a dyson sphere on the planetary summary sidebar of a planet where you had never had any visibility.
+
* Fixed a bug where minor faction and zombie ships could be affected by the player auto-kite controls.
  
−
* Fixed bug where out-of-supply AI units would display a message intended only for player ships (talking about too far from "your" planets, etc); now has an AI-only message.
+
* Fixed a bug where a cpa deploying could cause unhandled errors.
  
−
* Fixed a few bugs that would sometimes allow the placement of harvesters on resource points that were still covered by AI guard posts.
+
* Military Command Stations:
 +
** Fixed a bug where the mkII and mkIII versions no longer had a unit cap (leaving it that way was entertained, but ultimately would require more sweeping changes to command stations than is a good idea right now, if it would be a good idea at all).
 +
** Fixed a bug where the mkII and mkIII were still showing the mkI descriptive text, despite that now not being the same.
 +
** The knockback logic now launches stuff 2000 range units outside the station's effective range rather than 2000 range units inside, to help the autotargeting not get stuck on a few targets when its main use is best served by spreading shots out.
  
−
* (Really) fixed a bug where stuff caught by etherjets and then killed and regenerated by the AI on another planet was being snatched back to the original planet in a totally different position.  Now will not be snatched back.
+
* Fixed a bug where the fallen spire campaign could spawn two of the same shard-signal.
  
−
* Fixed bug where the galaxy-map planet intel overlay would not display the top two rows of icons (if any) for planets that were not owned by the players and did not have enemy ships.
+
* Fixed a longstanding bug where the galaxy-nav code of AI-ally Dyson Gatlings was getting distracted from its main purpose.
  
−
* Fixed bug where mk III harvesters were not "redding out" like mkI and mkII when no spots were available.
+
* Fixed a fairly longstanding bug where disabling an expansion from within the lobby would not properly remove several expansion-specific options (map types, setup scripts, minor factions, etc), which could lead to very odd behavior.
  
−
* Fixed bug that hid the pause button when both normal military ships and a Riot or Enclave starship were selected (since those have buy queues).
+
* Fixed a couple longstanding bugs that would cause very old saves to not load properly.
  
−
* Fixed a longstanding bug where grenade and flak ships did not realize they could not damage immune-to-aoe ships and would fire ineffectively.
+
* Fixed a bug where hybrids, exo ships, and the like could switch to threat-fleet behavior.
  
−
* Previously, regen was still taking effect when units were still under construction. Fixed.
+
* Fixed some bugs where special forces and strategic reserve spawns could result in an AI player controlling a type of ship only available to the other AI.
 +
** And a related bug where some of the special forces spawn logic could only access the special ship types of the first AI player.
  
−
* Fixed a long-standing bug with icon-grouping where ships inside one icon group that continuously "switch" which one is the lowest health would result in the health bar "jittering" back and forth.  An example is placing two tractor turrets, and the health "racing" as they grow.  Now it won't switch unless there is a >= 5% difference in health, or there is a full-refresh of the icon grouping data (which happens whenever you move the view at all, etc).
+
* Overhauled how line-place determines space between points to be closer to how the game will actually accept or reject a given placement.  Hopefully this will avoid "skipping every other one" bugs without adding excessive padding between points on a packed-line pattern.
  
−
* Previously, it was possible for starships and other planetary-roamer type ships that were included in a wave to an AI planet to simply be planetary roamers instead of actually attacking the player immediately.  Fixed.
+
* Fixed rare null exception that could happen when changing control groups.
  
−
* Previously, it was possible for the paused and similar messages to get lost behind the chat messages window.  This was particularly troubling in the tutorials.  Fixed.
+
* Fixed a bug where changing per-planet settings on one planet, then opening the CTRLS window from another planet would do the confirm-discard-changes check, which led to various other tomfoolery.
  
−
* Previously, loading a savegame from a tutorial could lead to wormhole positions being switched around, and probably some other similar stuff like that.  Fixed so that the start of a tutorial now does a full sync to make sure it's consistent with all that logic.
+
* Fixed a bug where MkV Spider fabricators were still considered experimental fabricators instead of core fabricators, which incidentally handles an issue where there was a very high chance of there being 2 of these per map.
  
−
* Fixed a longstanding bug where loading savegames of tutorials with incoming waves was resetting the wave timers.
+
* Now if you use the mid-game Manage Players interface to switch a player from the Normal role to Helper and then save that, it properly tells you that you can't do that rather than trying (and generally causing a desync).
  
−
== Community Contributors ==
+
* Fixed a moderately longstanding bug where if while starting a new game you select a planet as a homeworld, then deselect it (in favor of some other homeworld(s) ) before actually starting the game, and that planet happens to have the superterminal on it, the superterminal would start the game in "active mode".  Needless to say, that would be a short game.
  
−
* We wish to express our gratitude to our community for its tremendous help in testing, bug reporting, suggestions, patience, good humor, and encouragement.  In particular, the following members have helped us with at least one bug or suggestion (the number in parenthesis is a rough count of the number of distinct cases they helped with) :
+
* Fixed a really longstanding bug where shots on a planet were sometimes visible even through the fog of war.
−
** Adetia (7)
 
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** Affine (7)
 
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** akronia (1)
 
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** AlexV (6)
 
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** Ancestral (12)
 
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[[Category:AI War Release Notes]]
 
[[Category:AI War Release Notes]]
 
[[Category:Release Notes]]
 
[[Category:Release Notes]]

Latest revision as of 11:56, 16 September 2017

Statistics For The Curious

AI War 5.0 - 6.0 spanned from Feb. 15th, 2011 through Oct. 18th, 2012 and it was full of some HUGE changes! 895 distinct changes were made as part of 97 different releases over the course of 611 days. One does not simply stroll through AI War patch notes, indeed.

Even though this was during the period that A Valley Without Wind was developed and released, we managed to keep up an average of 1 release every six days (though some periods were very light with releases and others were very dense with them, if you look at the actual dates; the average makes it sound more regular than it was). Given the length of time between 5.0 and 6.0, it's essentially the same length of time that was between 1.0 and 5.0. So that's certainly a good reason to have such huge patch notes and so many changes!

A full 149 Players are thanked in this series.

This document is the abbreviated, organized version of the full release notes (here).

Highlights

Huge

  • Ancient Shadows, an entire new (paid) expansion, has been added to the game! Briefly summarizing the additions:
    • Champions! Optional hero units that can be added at the beginning of the game or midway through, these have the unique ability to fly through special wormholes into the new nebulae. In those new areas, champions encounter both friendly and hostile human, zenith, neinzul, and spire splinter factions. As your champion gains experience and recovers artifacts, you can guide its progression from a super-starship to a truly awesome powerhouse.
    • 9 New Bonus Ship Types, including the hilarious Tackle Drone Launcher and the first-ever bonus starship.
    • A New Minor Faction: the Dark Spire. These only awaken when many ships die near their spawners, but once they really get going neither the AI nor player will find them easy to stop.
    • Modular Fortresses, a long requested addition to the player's heavy defensive lineup.
    • 2 New AI Types: The tough-as-nails Heroic AI that throws champions at you, and the modular-fortress-happy Fortress King AI.
    • 2 New Map Types: The long-requested "Clusters" map type and a more advanced "Microcosm Clusters" variant.
    • 3 _Nasty_ new Core Guard Post types for the AI to defend its homeworlds with.
    • Over 90 minutes of new music from Pablo Vega.
  • Hacking! We finally found a solution to knowledge-raiding that's both balanceable and fun:
    • Knowledge raiding and Superterminal hacking now both increase the same "hacking antagonism" value on the AI, and as that value gets higher the AI's response to any hacking activity gets increasingly powerful and erratic.
    • On top of this, we added a new "Ship Design Hacking" mechanic whereby you can hack an AI-controlled Advanced Research Station so that when you later capture it you can select from one of three randomly-chosen bonus ship types to unlock, instead of just being given one of them. This shares in the hacking-antagonism mechanic used by knowledge hacking and superterminal hacking.
  • Completely redid the AI's Special Forces to make them an extremely important defensive mechanic that adapts to the player's offensive deployments and tries to thwart them where it counts.
  • Added a new AI mechanic: the Strategic Reserve. The AI gradually adds strength to this reserve and deploys ships from it to critical defense actions, especially homeworld defenses. It also uses the reserve to contribute to Cross Planet Attacks, taking some of the burden off local defense forces.
  • Added another new AI mechanic: the Threat Fleet. "Freed" AI ships will still do their normal stalk and attack behavior for about half an hour, but after that the AI figures that they've probably been stymied by strong human defenses and pulls them into a cohesive offensive fleet that waits for an opportunity to strike the human where it hurts.
  • Massively reworked the energy system to cut out the "trivial to compute, time-consuming to do" micromanagement that the previous system encouraged:
    • There's no such thing as an inefficient reactor anymore: you can have one free-to-run energy-collector on each planet, and as many high-but-constant-cost matter-converters as you want anywhere.
    • Putting units in low-power-mode no longer reduces their energy cost (or ongoing m+c cost, for the energy-producers), so there's no motive to micro them up and down to pay the minimum m+c for the minimum energy necessary.
    • The free-energy collectors scale up with the number of homeworlds so that a multi-HW player doesn't have such an energy disadvantage compared to multiple single-HW players.
  • Several minor factions and AI plots now have variable intensity that allows more game variety: want to play a game with TONS of human resistance fighters? Or where the Dyson Sphere has a dominant impact? Want just a few human marauders? Or hybrids on, but in much lower numbers? Or hybrids on, and massively amplified? It's all there.
  • Totally revamped AI Carriers:
    • When there's too many AI ships on the planet for them to fully deploy (without unduly hurting game performance), they're no longer invincible but if you pop them they combine their contents into nasty mkV ships and mkV guardians.
    • Can no longer shoot through forcefields (but can still fly through them).
    • Now get more shots-per-salvo based on the ships being carried, so they're not so much less a threat when not-yet-deployed (previously high-carrier waves tended to be like several waves in series, which is much easier than intended).
    • There's now a toggle on the CTRLS window to tell your ships whether to auto-target carriers or not.
  • Cross-Planet Attacks have been substantially reworked to be a much more serious threat.
  • Each AI planet now picks 3 ship types to focus its reinforcements on, making each planet feel more distinct.

Big

  • Re-implemented custom galaxy layouts for each player, so you can move planets around the map to get the strategic view looking the way you want.
  • Substantially rebalanced waves, particularly on the higher difficulties.
    • Notably, 10/10 used to be totally lethal... unless you somehow pulled out some massive cheese and survived the first couple waves to get a foothold. Now the early 10/10 challenge is a much better "advertisement" for the kind of challenge that lies beyond the initial period. Accordingly, 10/10 has been massively rebalanced to be harder in those later parts of the game, as certain players have displayed the temerity to _win_ on that difficulty.
    • Also smoothed out several "difficulty cliffs" along the 7-to-10 range where one difficulty step was massively more significant than either the one just below or just above.
  • The Botnet Golem has been split off into an entirely separate minor faction with its own costs/risks because it was so powerful. We could have just nerfed it down near the other golems, but this way is much more fun.
  • The starfield backgrounds have been completely redone with something much more interesting.
  • Rebalanced... honestly, it might be easier to list the units that were _not_ rebalanced during the 5.0-to-6.0 run than those that were.
    • Thanks to all the participants who contributed nominations, discussion, and votes to our "what's the worst unit?" (and other) community polls!
  • Added a devious super-hybrid plot to Advanced Hybrids (on high enough intensity). That's a nice Dyson Sphere you've got there, it'd be a shame if anything happened to it.
  • Finally found a way to detect loss-of-focus from within the Unity engine, allowing us to auto-pause the game when this happens (there's a toggle to suppress the auto-pause, if you like).
    • Note: this doesn't work on the Mac in windowed mode, but it does work on the Mac in full-screen mode and on Windows in either mode.

Important

  • AI War engine upgraded to Unity 3.3 from Unity 3.1.
  • The Siege Starship (formerly known as the Dreadnaught) was too effective as "park at extreme range and pick off the enemy" ship so it was nerfed into the Antimatter Starship. That couldn't really hit anything, so it was re-imagined again into the Plasma-Siege Starship, which is much shorter ranged than the old siege starship but fires special ammo that does aoe damage, engine damage, and causes extra splash damage to targets under any forcefield it hits.
  • The MkIII Riot Control Starship was given some new exclusive module possibilities (grav tazer, etc) to better set them apart from the MkI and MkII.
  • Added Hardened Forcefields: an alternate form of human-tech forcefield that relies on reducing incoming damage more than absorbing it.
  • Added the ability to switch your UI to display what another human player sees, making team control significantly more convenient and paving the way for other features.
  • Added the "Helper" player role which is much like the "observer" or "spectator" role from other RTS games but they can also control the units of any human player allowing team control.
  • Added a new Ultra-Low unit-cap-scale with 1/8th the caps of High, for folks on low-end hardware or wanting to play something crazy like a 16-homeworld game.
  • Added a scripting language for generating lobby game-setups within a set of desired parameters, and a number of default scripts that ship with the game (including a few "Beginner Game" scripts, a few scripts for randomized minor factions, and a few scripts for randomized _and undisclosed_ minor factions).
  • Added short-lived "Drones" that the player's Neinzul Enclave Starships can build. These are based on unlocked turret technology and provide more of a "carrier with fighters" feel.
  • Made defending multiple planets much more viable (relative to the viability of defending one planet) by changes to wave interval (which impacts wave size), re-imagining the Military Command Station's weaponry, and adding the new per-planet-cap'd Minifortress.
  • AI Eyes now have 3 varieties: Sentry Eyes (the old behavior), Ion Eyes, and Parasite Eyes. Each is pretty lethal against no-thought-blob attacks, in a different way.
  • The ramp-up from one AI tech level to the next is now much more gradual, with waves containing a percentage of the next-higher tech level that increases as you approach the threshold.
  • Reclamation damage is now much more likely to have a consistent impact because any reclamator nanites unable to reclaim their host when it dies "hop" to another nearby eligible target.
  • Exogalactic strikeforces can now contain Hunter/Killers. Be afraid. And throw the rotten fruit at chemical_art for suggesting it.
  • Exogalactic strikeforces are now more wily about picking targets. Get used to defending your outlying assets if you play with any exo sources.
  • Several golems have been substantially buffed, to provide an appropriate reward for the costs/risks of playing on Golems-Medium or Golems-Hard. Enjoy your new "has tractors that paralyze!" Black Widow Golem and "that thing can kill anything, once every 8 seconds!" Artillery Golem.
  • The game's RAM usage has been substantially reduced in many cases, leading to far fewer out-of-memory errors in remotely-sane scenarios (and even some clearly-insane scenarios, we've noted).
  • Massively reworked the way the AI determines how many ships it gets in a reinforcement, so that it properly pays attention to how much a ship should "cost" relative to others (based on relative ship cap, mainly). This makes it much less likely that the AI will pile up huge amounts of low-cap ships on a planet, and if it does create such a pile up at least the proper price (in terms of fewer other ships elsewhere) was paid.
  • Fixed all remaining desync bugs; haven't had a reported desync in months.
  • Now when a forcefield is damaged, every other overlapping allied forcefield also takes a minimal amount of damage, preventing the old far-too-effective-to-be-balanceable tactic of having engineers repair inner forcefields while the outer ones tanked the damage. It was fun, but properly micro'd it was effectively invincible before.
  • AI Homeworld structure seeding now distinguishes between normal and "brutal" structures: the core raid engine, core CPA guard post, and AI Eye were far more significant than the other structures being considered, and the difference between an AI HW with none of them and an AI HW with 5 core raid engines could be the difference between "pushover" and "impossible".
  • Made fortresses, forcefield generators, and command stations drop rebuildable remains when they die, greatly reducing the need for micro when rebuilding after a significant AI breakthrough.
  • Added the first per-control-group control options so you have finer control over auto-Free-Roaming-Defender and auto-kiting behavior.

AI Updates

  • Previously, allied minor faction and zombie ships would just patrol around player planets endlessly, which was helpful for defense, but problematic for two reasons: first, that it could cause massive amounts of slowdown after many hours of them stacking up, and second, that it could cause massive buildups of AI stalkers, who never dare to attack the planets with so many defenders, which leads to something akin to stalemate situations.
    • Thus the allied minor faction and zombie logic has been adjusted as follows:
      • Neutral planets are now considered the same as allied planets, and the ships will patrol to them like any others.
      • If there are more than about 100 of AI threat ships on an adjacent planet, the ships will also patrol to that planet to clean them off.
      • If the human-allied team has more than a token military force (more than about 10 ships) on a planet, then these ships will patrol to there, to help aid in that attack.
        • This allows for small raids to still happen with raid starships or whatever without assistance from these minor factions, but it enlists their help for larger-scale engagements.
  • Attack Hybrids now use a variant of the behavior the standard AI free (threat) ships use to avoid charging a human planet with insufficient firepower. Combined with other hybrid changes in this release this may result in hybrids being a lot harder (and/or a lot more annoying) than they used to be.
  • Reworked the CPA formula to be more aggressive on higher difficulties, since it's been sadly anemic lately.
    • Also added cpa-size calculations to the wave logs, when advanced logging is enabled.
  • Removed a "go for the command station over everything else when AI" behavior from a number of units, including:
    • Leech Starships.
    • Flagships.
    • Zenith Starships.
    • Spire Starships.
    • Riot Starships.
  • Barracks are now seeded on some AI planets at the start of the game (and retroactively into old saves):
    • The higher the difficulty, the more planets get them.
    • The higher the difficulty, the more ships in them.
    • None are placed closer than 3 hops from a human homeworld, to not be too cruel.
    • These serve two purposes:
      • Making it far less likely that the AI will simply not have enough ships for a CPA, while still letting players whittle away at "the reserve" if they want to.
      • Making the AI's defensive response to the loss of a planet (with a barracks on it) something more of an event.
  • AI planets now pick a primary, secondary, and tertiary type of ship to focus their reinforcements on.
    • It's not purely random, sometimes it picks ships that fit certain roles.
    • When picking a new reinforcement ship for the central pulse or a non-special-forces guard-post-pulse, it has a 10% chance to pick any available ship like usual, and a 90% chance to pick one of its focus types. When picking a focus type, it has 3 times as much chance to pick the primary as the secondary, and 3 times as much chance to pick the secondary as the tertiary. If that doesn't make sense, don't worry about it.
    • Whenever the AIs unlock new ship types due to AI progress, all AI planets "reroll" their focus types.
  • The AI now has a "strategic reserve" it can deploy to defend critical planets (the homeworld, the core worlds, and the superterminal world; though it still holds onto most of it when defending the latter two) and pulls back up (off the board) if the attack goes away.
    • Reserve ships are basically just normal mkV fleet ships, but they are not allowed to leave the planet so they can't be easily baited to their doom.
    • The reserve starts at zero and increases periodically, so it can be whittled away.
    • The max size of the reserve and its increase rate are proportional to the difficulty of the AI player in question (each AI has its own reserve) and AIP. On Diff 7 with non-insane AIP it's pretty tame. Higher up, it gets more intense.
    • If you're curious about the numbers, with advanced logging on they go into the special forces log (since the concept is somewhat similar, and didn't seem to need a separate log; might change that).
    • Thanks to Faulty Logic and others who voted on this poll for inspiring this change (more coming eventually in response to that, for that matter).
  • AI Special Forces:
    • Now get periodic extra spawns (in addition to the usual trickle from reinforcements) if under a "special forces population cap" determined by difficulty, AIP, etc.
      • The spawns are spread out among all special forces posts (and special forces guardians) in the galaxy, except those in non-AI territory. Each post in non-AI territory instead increases the special-forces-population-cap by about 5%. So there's a reason to kill them, in tension with the +1 AIP from killing them.
      • If you're curious about the math, etc, turn on Advanced Logging and check SpecialForcesLogicLog.txt in your RuntimeData directory after the game has run for a bit. There's some minor spoilers in there about what ships each AI has, but nothing you probably won't find out looking at a few AI planets anyway.
    • Will now rally to defend an AI planet that is under significant attack and at least mildly important (AI Homeworld, core world, or a planet with a CSG, ARS, Advanced Factory, Super Terminal, or Broken Golem on it, giving priority to HWs/core-worlds).
    • Now keep the special-forces flag even when they have encountered the enemy, so that rallying to a planet does not just dump all the special forces there as normal threat.
    • When not rallying to defend a planet, will select a staging planet about 3 hops deep into AI territory and rally there until an eligible AI planet is attacked.
    • To prevent a player's first attack from running into several hundred AI ships out for blood, as entertaining as it was during testing, special forces ships are no longer seeded during the initial map seeding.
  • Since "make the threatballs fish or cut bait" was #1 on the second round of the 6.0 poll:
    • Threat ships behave as they used to for about 30 minutes after being freed, but after that they are switched to an alternate "Threat Fleet" behavior that is somewhat similar to the new Special Forces mechanic.
      • Note: this only happens on Difficulty 6+, as it's not the AI getting anything extra, it's just behaving more intelligently (in theory) with what it has.
    • If an AI homeworld or core world is under attack, the threat fleet will rally to defend it.
    • Otherwise, if it sees an accessible non-AI planet with a significant human presence that it thinks it can take out, it goes to attack that (it will still pool up at the entry wormhole in some cases, until enough of them are there to pass the threshold, so they don't march in to the grinder one-by-one).
    • Otherwise, it picks a planet in AI territory to hang out at until either of the two above conditions are met.
    • If a carrier is spontaneously formed from ships that have a significant threat-fleet population, the carrier (and anything it spawns) is also considered threat-fleet.
    • When a special forces alarm post is triggered it converts all special forces in the galaxy directly into threat-fleet, and then blows up the alarm post (not causing AIP, unless it was triggered because it was shot to death).
    • For the curious who have advanced logging on, the target-planet selection process is logged in the special forces log file.
  • Fixed a relatively longstanding bug where AIPerPlanetShipCap and AIPerGuardPostShipCap were generally not being enforced when loading a game (either just-starting or loading later).
  • Fixed a bug where hybrids were... basically completely broken. Sigh. The "don't let hybrids rebuild modules if they've recently been damaged" code was inverted in such a way that they could never build modules. And because they could never get modules, they were never satisfied that they were ready to go attack or defend or whatever.

General Large Gameplay Additions

  • Advanced Research Station Hacking:
    • Added the "Ship-Design Hacker" (for lack of a better name, let us know if you think of one): a 4th ship to the "science lab" line, very similar to the "Knowledge Hacker". It gathers no knowledge, but has another ability.
    • If you keep a Ship-Design Hacker on an AI-controlled planet with an AI-controlled ARS for 10 minutes (it must remain stationary during this time; it's one of those kinds of countdowns), it will "hack" the Advanced Research Station and reprogram it such that when you capture the planet:
      • Instead of being immediately granted a new bonus ship type, you will be able (from the tech menu of the ARS, or of a Ship-Design Hacker) to select one of three bonus ship types.
      • Note the hacker does not have to survive after the hack has been completed, and the ARS does not have to survive after the planet is captured, but you will need a science lab, ARS, or SDH (anything with a tech menu that normally lets you unlock II/III versions of fleet ships, basically).
    • However, the AI will react to Ship-Design Hackers the same way they react to Knowledge Hackers. Also, the number of previous ship-design-hacks you've pulled off will increase AI response to future hacking (of all 3 kinds). Each subsequent ship-design-hack makes things a lot worse than the previous one did, such that 1 isn't a big deal, 2 is a big deal, 3 is a huge deal, 4 is probably death if you hack seriously again, and 5 is really going to mess you up if you so much as look like you're hacking the rest of the game.
  • Superterminal Hacking:
    • Now the superterminal never seeds on an AI homeworld or core world (can still seed next to a core world which is mean, but not nearly so mean as having to permanently alert a homeworld, or capture one, in order to use the superterminal).
    • Also, the superterminal's response is now based only on the reduction achieved through the superterminal, not total AIP-reduction, so it's no longer very important to do the ST before getting reduction from other sources.
    • Now the antagonism generated by knowledge raiding feeds into the strength of superterminal spawns, and the number of times a superterminal has "ticked" feeds into that same antagonism (thematically, they're both "hacking" and the AI dinnae like it).
      • Reducing AIP via superterminal hacking is significantly more "efficient" than knowledge raiding in terms of what you gain in return for making future hacking efforts more dangerous. The disadvantage is that this requires the superterminal, and doesn't stop if you lose control of the system (unless you destroy the superterminal).
    • Now also uses a "wild roll" system like what k-raiding uses, but it's somewhat more tame in terms of what kinds of crazy it can throw in there. Right now all it can do is surges (10% of the time, the same effect that was added in the previous version), and the "short range warp jump" (15% of the time, spawns the units away from the superterminal itself) wild-effect that the k-raid spawns can get.
    • If you have Advanced Logging enabled, each spawn will generate an entry in the "CounterSaboteurSpawns.txt" log file; it may not make sense to players but is very helpful to us if you submit it with your feedback.
    • The rationale for this is trying to make both k-raiding and superterminal-hacking more interesting and more of a strategic choice (since now using one makes the other more dangerous), but also to make it harder to use the superterminal for arbitrarily-high AIP reductions (we've seen cases where players could kill 400 AIP with it without even being in much danger).
      • As with k-raiding: In general, the balance of all this is tentative. It looks right in our testing, but it may be too easy or (perhaps more likely) too hard. Please give us feedback and we will continue to refine towards better balance and more fun :)

Lobby Setup Scripts

  • Preface: over the years we've had requests accumulate on a number of different fronts that couldn't easily be handled the way things were, like:
    • Numerous new players asking "What's a good setup for my first game?"
    • Variable-strength minor factions and AI plots (which could be handled just by the above changes, but read on)
    • Randomized minor factions and AI plots, particularly combined with variable-strength.
    • Randomized and hidden minor factions and AI plots (so you don't know what's there until you run into it in the game, with potentially hilarious results).
    • Some kind of overall "difficulty ranking" for a particular game setup.
  • So, from a small scripting language that was written for (and actually not ultimately used for) AVWW, a Lobby Setup Scripting system has been cobbled together. The actual scripting language is likely to completely change in the next version (it's really verbose, cumbersome, etc, but it does work), but the short story is it's now possible to define external scripts which populate the settings in the lobby.
    • Please note, those of you with scenario-building aspirations, that this really only sets stuff in the lobby. It cannot directly influence mapgen (placement of planets, units, etc) in any way.
    • To use a script, start a new game, and in the lobby on the Map tab pick an option from the Setup Script dropdown. It will then immediately execute the script and apply the changes to the lobby.
    • The following scripts are available in this version:
      • Beginner Game
        • A fairly simple, fairly easy scenario that may be a good next step for new players who have just completed the intermediate tutorial.
      • Beginner Game 2
        • A bit harder than the scenario generated by the Beginner Game script. May be a good next step for new players who have just completed the intermediate tutorial and are feeling confident.
      • Random Factions 1
        • This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game (no expansions required).
          • Note (this goes for the rest of these scripts, too): it's not purely random, it starts with a certain number of "points" and randomly picks factions/plots to allocate them to. Friendly factions (in this case, human resistance fighters) actually increase the point total when chosen, rather than decreasing it. The point is that while there's simply no way to get any kind of overall "difficulty score" of a particular scenario, it is possible (with significant effort) to make a script which produces scenarios within a particular range of difficulty. Which, hopefully, scratches the real itch behind the "difficulty score" request.
      • Random Factions 2
        • This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game and The Zenith Remnant expansion.
      • Random Factions 3
        • This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game and the The Zenith Remnant and Children Of Neinzul expansions.
      • Random Factions 4
        • This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game and the The Zenith Remnant, Children Of Neinzul, and Light Of The Spire expansions.
      • Unknown Factions 1
        • This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game (no expansions required), and then hides them so that you cannot see what has been selected either in the lobby or in the game. If you then pick another script (or none) the hidden status will be reset.
      • Unknown Factions 2
        • This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game and The Zenith Remnant expansion. It then hides them so that you cannot see what has been selected either in the lobby or in the game. If you then pick another script (or none) the hidden status will be reset.
      • Unknown Factions 3
        • This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game and The Zenith Remnant and Children Of Neinzul expansions. It then hides them so that you cannot see what has been selected either in the lobby or in the game. If you then pick another script (or none) the hidden status will be reset.
      • Unknown Factions 4
        • This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game and The Zenith Remnant, Children Of Neinzul, and Light Of The Spire expansions. It then hides them so that you cannot see what has been selected either in the lobby or in the game. If you then pick another script (or none) the hidden status will be reset.

Energy System Rework

  • The motivation here:
    • The previous energy system was settled on after a series of different models were tried, and has been around for over 2 years, and has served pretty well.
    • But there were a number of problems pointed out by players over the years, the most bothersome being:
      • There's significant motive to maintain as close-to-zero positive net energy balance because energy costs metal+crystal per second and a positive net energy balance provides no real benefit.
        • A positive balance did protect against having your forcefields shut off in case of losing a reactor, but that could be easily protected against by a big pile of low-powered reactors that you can bring up as needed; or you can go low-power a hundred spider turrets, or whatever.
      • And maintaining that low-wasted-energy state involved _tons_ of micro. A couple of "automated energy hamster" hotkeys were added to greatly reduce that micro (by making the "low-power least efficient 'on' reactor" and "power-on most efficient 'off' reactor" operations a single keystroke instead of minutes of scrolling and clicking), but that was really just a bandaid.
    • Many people have requested automated energy management as a solution to all this, but whenever the game is simulating something that it then turns around and plays optimally without your involvement... that means something is wrong. In this genre, anyhow.
    • Thanks to Cyborg and other players for making this point, and being patient as we tried to find a better model.
  • The overall result is that the energy/econ game should actually be easier, unless you were relying on low-efficiency reactors or low-powering tons of stuff to make ends meet. In those cases it shouldn't be much harder.
    • But please let us know if the new model really messes you up in some way, or if you have other feedback. It's not like this model can't be changed, it just seemed a definite step in the right direction from where we were.
    • If you're curious about the comparison math, check out this post: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11031.msg110117.html#msg110117
    • Anyway, on to the specific changes:
  • Removed the Energy Reactors (all of them, MkI, MkII, MkIII).
  • Added the "Energy Collector", which is like the energy reactors were except:
    • Produces 150,000 energy.
      • For reference, in the previous model an EnergyI+EnergyII+EnergyIII produced 125,000.
    • No ongoing m+c cost.
      • For reference, in the previous model an EnergyI+EnergyII+EnergyIII cost 57m+57c per second to run.
    • Can only build one per planet per player.
    • Output scales up with that player's number of homeworlds (to scale up for the extra stuff multi-HW players can build, similar to how reactors used to do it but without spamming lots of them).
    • Cannot be low-powered (there'd be no point).
  • Added the "Matter Converter", which is like the energy reactors were except:
    • Produces 50,000 energy.
    • Costs 100m+100c per second to run.
    • No construction cap, and also no efficiency penalty for stacking.
      • Yes, this does mean that for now it's best to just pile these all up in a defensible place (much like manufactories); that will probably change in the future but probably not through an efficiency penalty.
    • Cannot be low-powered, since the main point of this rework is to avoid "player-time-tax" micro.
      • This can still result in mid-battle micro if you just lost a collector or whatever and need to build another converter, but that's real in-game costs at a critical moment rather than the only difference between optimal and sloppy play being how much wall-clock-time you personally want to spend "making change for a dollar" throughout the game.
    • In general, these are very inefficient compared to the old reactors, but more efficient than deeply-stacked low-efficiency reactors. The idea is that the collectors replace the output you used to get from normal-efficiency reactors, and the converters fill the role of the low-efficiency reactor piles.
  • Putting units in low-power mode now no longer reduces their energy use.
    • Again: removing the motive to micro stuff for energy purposes is one of the driving motivations here.
    • Renamed "Low Power mode" to "Stand Down mode", since it's no longer for the purpose of reducing energy.
    • The mechanic for reducing energy use in stand-down mode is still there, just unused. It may be used for golems or stuff like that later, we'll see.
  • Removed energy costs from Human Home Settlement and Cryogenic Pod structures, since you can't low-power the settlements anymore (and 8000e a pop isn't much fun in a tight early-game situation).
  • Removed the auto-build-energy-reactors controls, and added toggles at the galaxy-level and planet-level for autobuilding collectors, and sliders at the galaxy-level and planet-level for autobuilding converters.
  • Added new slider to galaxy-wide per-player-controls screen: Energy Buffer To Maintain
    • If this is set above zero, the game will try to maintain that amount of "buffer" energy above zero. A few examples:
      • Docks will not build ships that would take you below the buffer amount.
      • Ships will not be reclaimed if it would take you below the buffer amount.
      • Broken Golems will not be activated if it would take you below the buffer amount.
    • This can be restrictive, but it can also help if you're deliberately trying to keep all your defenses operational in the event of the AI destroying one or more of your energy producing units.
    • Note that this will not stop you from scrapping energy producing units (however low that may take your net energy), so be careful.
      • This is because going negative energy never stopped scrapping before, so that part wasn't changed.
    • Thanks to chemical_art for the suggestion.
  • When upgrading saves from 5.039 and earlier:
    • For all EnergyI, EnergyII, and EnergyIII units:
      • If that player already has an Energy Collector on that planet, the reactor is replaced by a Matter Converter.
      • Otherwise, the reactor is replaced by an Energy Collector.
    • After that, while the player has > 60,000 spare energy and any remaining Matter Converters:
      • Scrap a Matter Converter on the planet with the most remaining Matter Converters controlled by that player.
    • The result should be that:
      • If you had a positive energy balance before this version, you will have a positive energy balance when you load the save in 5.040+.
      • It won't give you a lot of Matter Converters you don't need.
      • You'll still want to look at your energy situation and make adjustments for the new model. Particularly if this version-upgrade logic somehow messes up in your case ;)
  • The automated energy hamsters have taken off without giving notice, but we suspect they're on vacation in Bermuda.
  • In case you were wondering, all the tooltips and relevant tutorial components have been updated for the new model, but please let us know if we missed something.

Co-Op Improvements

  • Fixed another rare desync that would occur when the "ship to kill" logic was loaded from savegames that were saved during a big battle. Not many people save DURING a big battle, so this one didn't come up much.
  • Added in a new "aggregate hash" that sums up a few key integer stats from non-cold-storage ships (location xy, destination xy, is destination settled, "ship to kill" object number), to provide a sort of early warning system against desyncs.
    • This makes the game much likely to actually desync quicker when there is a desync going on under the hood, which will make them easier to find, and hopefully also easier to reproduce when a player does run into a desync.
    • This adds a bit to the CPU load, but since it's all addition, it's nothing particularly notable, which is one of the plusses of this.
  • Fixed a bug where helper players were getting the overflow from other players resources income-past-cap.
    • The resources were basically being lost since helpers cannot gift resources, which is intentional as otherwise this overflow case would represent an in-game bonus from having slots devoted to "helper", which would invalidate the assumption that the game can be balanced as if they weren't there and thus the AI's strength doesn't have to go up due to the presence of helpers, etc.
    • Along with this: apparently in the past overflow was going to ALL human player slots, even those that had never had any players in them, causing the resources to be split more ways than necessary in MP games with fewer than 8 human players. Fixed now.
  • Fixed a bug in multiplayer where hacking an ARS and having the first player pick an unlock on that planet would cause the other human players to be given a random unlock about a game-second later.

Performance Improvements

  • HUGE Memory breakthrough.
    • Bad news first: the bad news is that this touched 63 different code files, and has resulted in approximately 4500 disparate lines of code being changed in a spiderweb pattern all throughout the application. So... expect some bugs. So far we haven't seen any, but with an organization change this drastic some are inevitable. Why, oh why, would we do this?
    • Well, that brings us to the good news: the baseline heap memory usage for the application has been literally HALVED, and in large savegames it's also... well, about halved in most cases. For those players that had been experiencing the dreaded "Too Many Heap Sections" error (thanks to Unity 3D's less than stellar garbage collector bounding capping out at about 900MB), this is tremendous news.
    • As a small ancillary bonus, this also makes both the program itself and individual savegames load a bit faster. The older your CPU, the more you will notice this effect (on older CPUs, it could shave off multiple seconds, actually).
    • As another not-so-small bonus, this restructuring cuts down on some confusing cases with the spirecraft and how some of the by-unit-scale stuff works. Long-term, this should mean a lot fewer bugs related to the unit cap scales, which is also welcome news. Some subtle bugs related to the armor rating have already been fixed as just part of making this transition, though we don't think anyone reported these specific ones.
  • Put in a small code change that might lead to more efficiency during really large battles with a lot of things being drawn as well as a lot of sound effects being played. It might also make no difference, but it's a good precaution either way; our tests so far have not really been clear as to whether there is any benefit.
  • Added new unit cap scale option: Ultra Low
    • Most large-cap ships have roughly a quarter of the standard cap (Fighter MkI = 24), and are roughly four times as expensive, four times as strong, etc.
    • This puts the lowest possible load on the your CPU when you have the biggest-possible battles. Also helpful if you're playing a game with 8 human homeworlds (in multiplayer or otherwise).
  • Backported the draw order sorting from AVWW after all. This should help with the performance of lots of shots, lines, forcefields, or similar being on the screen at the same time. Or far zoom icons for ships, for that matter. It won't help for the ships themselves when you are very zoomed in, but that's comparably rarer.
  • Removed the usage of Graphics.DrawMesh (which helped performance in AVWW, but seemed to harm performance in AI War for some people) in favor of Graphics.DrawMeshNow (which is what we've been using in AI War up until the last couple of releases). If you were seeing performance problems in the last few versions, please let us know if you continue to do so.
  • Added a memory optimization to the aggregate-targeting system to only initialize the data structures as it needs them rather than all up front. This may cause some slowdown when fighting on a planet for the first time or with a bunch of new ship types at once, etc, but in general that shouldn't be too bad and will "work itself out" during the early phase of a battle.
    • Memory had been pretty ok, but every time we add new ship types that's more memory footprint all around so it was good to counterbalance that a bit.
  • Removed the sprite pooling, including the sprite pooling option in the settings menu, and greatly improved both RAM use and CPU load with this and related underlying functions.
  • In particular, improved the batching of things like destination lines, ship-to-ship beams, and so forth. These should now perform better than they did before we even started the backporting (which then caused a performance hit on these operations).
  • Fixed a longstanding (since March 2011) bug where several per-unit computations were being done every frame instead of every 6 or so frames as designed.

Interface Improvements

  • The "selection description" window in the bottom right of the hud that shows the count of each type in the selection now shows two percents: the first is the average percent-of-max-health of the living ships of that type (this used to be there before the Unity port, and it's back now!), the second is the lowest percent-of-max-health of the living ships of that type.
  • The selection description window will now try to display up to 30 entries without resorting to a scrollbar, instead of only 5.
  • Replaced the old "if CanUseNeinzulRegenerator then multiply by 2" wave-size rule with a more general UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier UnitData field.
    • Everything with CanUseNeinzulRegenerator (which is just the 5 youngling types), gets a 2 for this.
    • As an experiment, Bombers get 0.8 and Fighters and Missile Frigates get 1.2. Bomber waves will probably still be more dangerous (as is intended) but it might make the difference in "interestingness" less. Not planning to touch the bonus ship types because if the AI has a particularly bomber-like bonus ship type that should just be a characteristic of the kind of difficulty you'll be facing in that game, etc.
  • On to #2 on the vote tallies list: The mouseover tooltip for the AI Progress display on the resource bar now displays each of the tech level thresholds for each AI Player.
    • Thanks to wyvern83 for the suggestion.
  • Courtesy of being really high on the vote tallies: previously double-clicking a single unit would select all (your) units of that exact type on the screen. Now triple-clicking will do the same thing except it will include all units of the same general type (ShipType). Meaning that triple-clicking a fighter of any mark will select all your fighters of any mark on the screen.
    • Caveat: the general categorization being used is sometimes more general than mark; notably remains rebuilders have the same ShipType as engineers. Requests to make triple-clicking an engineer not also select remains rebuilders are likely to be ignored ;)
    • Also, we have to do this triple-click detection manually, so basically it's looking for a third click within 3 tenths of a second after the double-click selection. If this timing is problematic, let us know.
  • In response to the number-one-on-the-vote-tallies mantis issue:
    • Added new PlanetView KeyBind: "Show Strong/Weak Info":
      • Defaults to Alt+W.
      • When this is active and the mouse cursor is over a ship, each planetary summary sidebar entry will display Win/Lose/Draw (and a % indicating intensity of win or loss, if it's not a draw) as a rough indicator of how effective a cap of the ship type under the cursor would be against a cap of the entry's ship type. Since planetary summary entries frequently include multiple distinct types of ships, this is perhaps most useful in conjunction with the "Guide" mode of the planetary summary that shows all ships of a given mark level (the default key for switching to guide mode is F1). However, even in normal mode this can be useful to at least get a rough feel for which of your ships on the planet are the best you have on hand against a specific target.
      • Caveat: this is not using a full simulation or anything like that, it uses the same simplified formula as the reference tab uses. So stuff with modules won't really get accurate results (because it's only counting the base hull), etc.
      • Suggestions on text color, default keys, etc, are quite welcome; we're not totally happy with the effect right now but don't have a lot of time to fiddle with alternatives.
    • Added new PlanetView KeyBind: "Strong/Weak => One Vs One":
      • Defaults to Alt+E (so the full combination would be to hold Alt+W+E).
      • When both this and the "Show Strong/Weak Info" keybind are active, the strong/weak info shown will use a one-ship vs. one-ship comparison instead of the normal cap vs. cap comparison.
  • Courtesy of the new #2 item on the mantis vote-tallies: Added "Auto-Scout-Picket" command to the context menu (there's also an key bind, unbound by default):
    • Tell all cloaking scout units in the selection to try to station themselves on a planet where you do not currently have scout intel. Basically it:
      • 1) Makes a list of all scouts with cloaking in your selection.
      • 2) Makes a list of all planets you do not have current (less than 5 seconds ago) scout intel.
      • 3) Sorts that list of planets by distance (ascending) to the planet with your selection.
      • 4) Tells the first scout in the first list to go to the first planet in the second list, and so on. If it runs out of planets it loops back to the beginning of the planet list and thus it will double up, etc. When it runs out of scouts it stops.
    • Please remember that this order (and auto-explore) are only intended to automate simple scouting situations and thus save you time giving otherwise trivial orders. If your scouts all die before accomplishing anything that means that it's not a simple scouting situation and you'll need to take manual control to get good results.
    • Thanks to Malibu Stacey for the suggestion that inspired this command.
  • Previously the controls window was not fitting vertically on 1024x600 (which isn't officially supported but we try to make it playable). Fixed to fit better.
    • Thanks to Talaraine for the report.
  • Courtesy of the current #1 on the mantis vote tallies: Added "Copy To Disk" and "Copy From Disk" buttons to bottom of the controls screen.
    • Copy To File creates a copy of your global controls (excluding per-planet stuff, but including ship designs) as "copiedGlobalControlSet.dat" in your RuntimeData directory.
    • Copy From File prompts you to confirm first, and if you confirm it overwrites all your global control (excluding per-planet stuff, but including ship designs) from what's in "copiedGlobalControlSet.dat" in your RuntimeData directory. If you don't actually have such a file it doesn't do anything when you confirm.
  • Courtesy of the new #2 item on the mantis vote tallies list: Added "Mobile Tractors With Full Load Rally" toggle to the global tab of the controls screen.
    • If this toggle is checked, when one of your mobile units with tractor beams (notably Etherjets, Spire Tractor Platforms, Spirecraft Martyrs, and Black Widow Golems) has a "full load" (all tractors active), it will look for a rally post to rally to. If that rally post happens to be a redirector, that will work as it normally does, etc.
    • When the rally trigger kicks in, all other orders (including FRD and attack-move, etc) will be canceled on the tractoring unit. But if you give the ship an order after the rally behavior is triggered, it won't retry the rally unless it it loses one of its tractor targets and then fills up again.
    • Note that this does not apply to Riot Control Starships with tractor modules, because the modules themselves are not mobile units.
  • Fixed the close-zoom image for the AI Core Neinzul Spawner Guard Post having a height that wasn't a power of 2.
    • This would only impacted you if you were all the way zoomed in on one of these, and would have led to it looking stretched or (on older graphics card) looking gibberish-like.
    • But in the recent backporting we added some extra sanity checks that catch this when the player tries to look at it.
  • An all-new, much higher-quality starfield/nebulae background effect is now drawn behind planets. These are vastly more varied and interesting, and require a similar amount of CPU/GPU processing to render as the old ones did.
  • The game no longer scrolls the nebulae at the start of the game, instead giving you a really good static look at a really interesting nebulae background.
  • A completely new method for rendering the planets has been put in place, and they are now more a part of the background starfield/nebula than anything else.
    • As part of this, 14 of the pre-existing planets have been kept although scaled down, and 40 new planet graphics by Eldon Harris have been added to the game. It makes quite a difference when combined with the new nebulae!
  • The graphics of planets 3, 8, 11, and 16 have been substantially improved so that they have better borders and look more convincing as planets.
  • Fixed a graphical bug with the border drawn around barracks icons in some contexts.

New Ships

  • Added new unlockable support unit type: Hardened Forcefield Generator MkI-III. Basically the same as normal human generators except:
    • 1/4th the HP.
    • 1,000,000 Armor Rating instead of zero (this effectively reduces all incoming damage to 1/5th its normal power, unless the attacker has extremely high armor piercing or very high damage-per-shot).
    • They do not shrink as they take damage, making it easier to know how long a given target will be protected, etc. On the other hand this may make it harder to tell "at a glance" how long the generator has left to hold, so we might need to do something else here.
    • The first mark is not available by default, but costs 1000 knowledge (mkII and III are 2000 and 4000 knowledge each like the normal line).
  • Science Lab III:
    • Has been renamed to "Knowledge Hacker"
    • Is now mobile, cloaked, and significantly more durable.
    • Now has a 15-second setup-after-moving time (similar to the MRS's 60-second setup time before it can repair) during which it cannot gather knowledge.
    • Since you can now build them off-planet where they're not triggering spawns, these changes significantly reduce the amount of player-hassle and wall-clock-time spent on a single knowledge raid; the raids themselves (beyond the first raid) are far more dangerous so it should balance out difficulty-wise, but be less annoying.
  • Added new type of AI Eye: the Parasite Eye.
    • Has same trigger conditions.
    • Instead of spawning ships it powers on (it's in stand-down except when actively triggered) and starts firing. You really don't want that to happen. Multiple hyper-powerful railcannons that reclaim what they hit.
      • Standard "what can be reclaimed" rules apply.
      • Has the extra flag to prevent it from firing on non-reclaimable targets thanks to a test where multiple starships were dying every two seconds.
      • Note that this has a kill rate about 1/2 that of the Ion Eye, so the overall rate of "evening the field" should be similar.
      • In case you're curious, the results are not zombies and can be re-reclaimed if you're so inclined.
  • Added new type of AI Eye: the Ion Eye.
    • Has same trigger conditions.
    • When seeding an eye, the game has an equal chance of seeding each type of eye, and only one eye is seeded per planet that's supposed to get one.
    • But when triggered, instead of spawning ships it powers on (it's in stand-down except when actively triggered) and starts firing. You don't want that to happen. It has the firepower of four MkV Ion Cannons.
  • A new Ancient Shadows bonus ship class has been added: Neinzul Scapegoat (Mark I-V).
    • Mature Neinzul organism without the short lifespan of a Youngling. Capable combatant in its own right, but also sacrifices itself to regenerate military fleet ships on the same planet when they take critical damage.
  • Another new Ancient Shadows bonus ship class has been added: Spire Railcluster (Mark I-V).
    • Large Spire fleet ship mounting multiple short-range railcannons. Highly effective against very small ships.
  • New Ancient Shadows Bonus Ship Type: Zenith Reprocessor:
    • A larger, specialized version of the Acid Sprayer, this ship's shots actually "metabolize" the enemy target. When the target dies, a percentage of the target's metal+crystal construction cost will be granted to the player that did the most reprocessing damage to it. The more reprocessing damage the ship has taken, the larger the percentage of resources reprocessed.
  • New Ancient Shadows Bonus Ship Type: Zenith Siege Engine:
    • Moderately large vessel built around an outsized plasma siege cannon. The ship does not have enough power to both move and keep the weapon online, so it must remain immobile for a full reload cycle before it can fire. When it fires, however, the enemy will feel it.
  • Added new Ancient Shadows bonus ship: Spire Corvette.
    • A starship-sized vessel developed by retrofitting the smallest Imperial Spire combat design with human technology. Has a moderately powerful photon lance, but can also mount a small number of modules.
    • Built from the SCRV tab of the Starship Constructor.
  • Added new Ancient Shadows bonus ship: Saboteur.
    • Fires hostile nanites at enemy ships. Unlike reclamation nanites, these focus on overloading the target's power systems with the goal of causing it to explode violently. This target does not go critical until its health is reduced to zero normally, but once that happens it will explode and damage up to 40 nearby friendly (to the exploding ship) units. The damage done to each victim of the explosion is based on how much damage the exploding ship took from overload-nanites, and generally cannot exceed one-tenth the maximum health of the exploding ship.
  • Added new Ancient Shadows bonus ship type: Youngling Firefly.
    • Small, shortlived ship that builds up a charge as it successfully attacks other units. When it dies it explodes violently to damage up to 20 nearby enemy units. The explosion damge done to each victim starts at about the same strength as the Firefly's normal shot, but increases with the charge the ship has accumulated, up to a maximum of 20 times that.
  • Added a new "Mini-Fortress" unit to the SUP tab of the command-station/mobile-builder buy menu (this is a base-game unit, not tied to an expansion).
    • These are basically a MkI fortress on a 1/10th scale (stat-wise), and you can only build 2 per planet (per player, also scales with multiple homeworlds), but there's no galaxy-wide cap so putting them on your satellite worlds does not take away any cap your main defenses could be using.
    • Unlocking these costs 1000 knowledge (for reference, MkI forts cost 3000 knowledge to unlock, and provide 25x as much firepower at cap for your main line but not the per-planet-cap flexibility of these).
    • These don't have the penalty vs polycrystal (or scout) hulls, making them actually able to deal with bombers.

Ship Logic Updates

  • Changed the targeting logic for AOE units (that don't already use the alternate logic for engine damage, paralysis, reclamation, or insta-kill) to prefer non-AOE-immune targets. This is necessary because of the recent change to let flaks and some other aoe units be able to damage an aoe-immune ship they fire directly at, but since an aoe-immune ship is likely to be in a pile of other aoe-immune ships most of the dps is wasted when there are non-aoe-immune targets available.
    • Note that if the flaks are already locked on to something aoe-immune (like a missile frigate) and something non-aoe-immune (like a fighter) comes into range, the flaks will probably take a few seconds to retarget since the game only does the target logic every so often.
  • Ships with engine damage now automatically repair their own engines, such that it takes a bit over four minutes to go from 0% engine-health to 100% engine-health.
    • Basically, until now it's been too easy to long-term-disable AI ships via engine damage. Not many players abused this thoroughly, but some definitely did, to hilarious (and disappointing, from a challenge perspective) results.
    • But tactical usage should still be very viable for kiting around a planet, spreading out an incoming attack, etc.
  • The logic for when a carrier is popped early now tries a lot harder to produce something similar to what's actually in the carrier, and tries to avoid exo-like spawning logic.
    • Regardless of what it winds up spawning, it no longer scales up with difficulty level (since the ship numbers that led to the generation of the carrier were already a result of difficulty level).
    • If its contents fit under a certain threshold (under 150 if there are < 2000 AI ships on the planet, under 50 if there are < 3000 AI ships on the planet, etc), it just spawns whatever is in the carrier.
    • Else, it promotes all triangle/bonus fleetships in the carrier to max mark (mark 5 for most types, mark 4 for some) and scales down the quantity accordingly (mkI to mkV divides quantity by 5, etc).
    • If that's still not enough to get the quantity under the threshold, it divides the quantities in the carrier by some number (determined by how badly over-count it still is) and uses that extra strength to add mkV guardians to the carrier instead. Since a single mkV guardian is worth about the same as ~2.2 full caps of mkI fighters, that's pretty good compression.
    • If that's somehow still not enough, it falls back on the exo-like population it's used in the past, but without the extra multiplier from difficulty.
    • For the curious, having advanced logging on when a carrier does early-pop logic like this will generate a log entry in the corresponding log file in your RuntimeData directory, explaining the computation.
  • Engineers have had a "what to assist" logic overhaul such that:
    • If is Prefer-Non-Military toggle is on, and one is military and the other is not, prefer the non-military one.
    • If one has more currently assisting engineers than the other, prefer the one with less.
    • If the repairer is not a teleporter and the difference in distance to each unit is larger than about 4000 range units, prefer the nearer.
      • Also, distance is now considered zero if the target is already within range, which helps a lot because previously it was masking other considerations.
    • If one object is a damaged irreplaceable unit and the other is not, prefer the damaged irreplaceable.
    • If one object is in stand-down and the other is not, prefer the one not in stand-down.
    • If one object's remaining-health-percent is less than half the other's, prefer the lower-health one.
      • This was being considered before (it always went for the lowest percent-health), but only by teleporting repairers.
    • If one object has taken more than 25% engine damage and the other has not, prefer the engine-damaged one.
    • If one object's metal+crystal cost is more than twice the other's, prefer the more expensive one.
    • Thanks to Wanderer and the other voters for inspiring these changes.
  • Human-player teleporting units now use normal engines when group-moving.
    • Along with this, increased the normal-engine speed of all teleporting units to the speed of a fighter, for those lower than that
  • Advanced Fabricators and Fabricators now use the same "don't put this near a wormhole" logic as human home command stations.
  • Removed energy cost from Logistics and Military command stations, since the cost was pretty minor and the units certainly aren't in danger of overshadowing the econ station at this point, and the costs were interfering with the logic for rebuilding their remains in some cases.
    • Also removed it from warp-jammer stations, but since that wasn't so minor also increased that station's direct per-second m+c cost.
  • Fixed a longstanding bug where attack-move units with no other orders would auto-target stuff that should not be auto-targeted (wormhole guard posts, AIP-on-death structures, etc) if the unit in question shot them first.
  • Fixed a bug where Spire Blades, Spire Minirams, and Spire Rams would not actually automatically die (but just self-damage by some amount) when attacking.

Balance Updates

  • Exogalactic strikeforces provoked by the Broken-Golems-Hard or Spirecraft-Hard minor factions (but not Fallen Spire ones) now have a chance (50% for Broken-Golems, 20% for Spirecraft) of using an alternate composition distribution that heavily favors a large lead ship and a single battlegroup.
  • Broken-Golems-Hard and Spirecraft-Hard exogalactic strikeforce initial-strength, per-minute-increment-amount, and maximum-strength all increased roughly 10%.
  • The Armored, Black-Widow, Artillery, and Regenerator Golems used in exogalactic strikeforces are now different than the "standard" AI golems (like those used by the Golemite AI Type). The main difference is that they lack the 1/10th-health-of-a-normal-golem rule (but the Armored variants still have a 1/2 health modifier, since they're so buff).
    • Thanks to Shrugging Khan for continuing to provoke the golems.
  • Black Widow golem health and Attack Power boosted a bit (15%-ish).
  • Regenerator Golem health doubled, in response to various concerns that they're less useful than other golems.
  • The "shot travels at least 40 speed faster than its target's current speed" logic has been extended to include "shot travels at least 40 speed faster than its target's tractor-er's current speed", since in the "tow" case the target's current speed is almost always zero.
  • Spire Blade Spawner:
    • Ship cap from 0.05 of normal to 0.03 of normal (in practice, from 9 to 5 for mkI). Note that this impacts AI usage as well as human.
    • BaseAIPerGuardPostShipCap from 2 => 1.
  • Spire Gravity Drain:
    • Grav range from 3000*mk => 8000 (flat).
  • Spire Gravity Ripper:
    • Attack power from 1000*mk => 2000*mk.
    • Seconds-per-salvo from 1 => 2.
    • So basically the gravity ripping effect is being nerfed to 50% of what it was, and the normal attack is better against armor. We'll see where to go from there.
  • Spire Miniram:
    • Ship cap multiplier from 0.25 => 0.20.
  • Spire Stealth Battleship:
    • Effective Attack range from 6500 + (500*mk) => 7000 flat (thus, they can no longer engage while still protected by their 8000 radar dampening range).
  • Spire Tractor Platform:
    • Hull Type from Turret => Heavy.
  • Previously, turtle AI types had over 13 times as many AI Eyes as "normal". Moderately defensive ones (Shield Ninny, Grav Driller, and Peacemaker) had only 2 times as many as normal. Turtles now have about 2.6 times as many as normal.
  • Light Starship:
    • Base Health from 1.5m => 2m.
    • Armor Rating from 500 => 1000.
    • Given Radar Dampening of 8000 (to make it harder to deny a fleet its fleet starship munitions boost by ganking the fleet starships from long range). For reference, its munitions boost range is 3000.
  • Flagship:
    • Base Health From 4,875k => 6m.
    • Given Radar Dampening of 8000. For reference, its munitions boost range is 6000.
  • Neinzul Youngling Commando:
    • Base Health from 6600*mk => 8000*mk.
    • Base Attack Power from 1000*mk => 1200*mk.
  • Impulse Reaction Emitter:
    • Now has a minimum multiplier of 5 (roughly what it would get vs a ship with 5,000 energy cost). This might be excessive, we'll see, but the ship was having significant "used as a paperweight" issues against anything at all small.
  • Zenith Mirrors:
    • When a shot is reflected, the returned shot's power is now increased 4x. Thought to be a perpetual motion machine until the first power bill arrived. More seriously, this is an attempt to correct for the fact that things now tend to have a higher ratio of hp to damage (particularly against their own hull type) than when the mirrors were first added.
  • When a ship is translocated away from its current location, all incoming projectiles now are also immediately translocated to its new destination, and thus will hit it instead of fizzling. This makes the military command stations a lot less unwieldy.
  • Raid starship rebalance, thanks to many players for various suggestions:
    • Raid Starship health has been increased from 1.6 million health * mark level to 2 million health * mark level.
  • Guard posts, fortresses, superfortresses, force fields, and exo-shields are all now immune to regeneration from regenerator golems/trains.
  • AI Motherships are now considered large ships for purposes of bomber starships and siege starships being able to hit them.
  • When an engineer is repairing a ship, and it was not set to repair that ship explicitly by the player, and it's not in free-roaming defender mode or attack-move mode, it will no longer try to chase the ship it is repairing. Instead it will just find a better target and keep its position. This allows for players to exercise more tight control over their engineers now that engineers have a huge repair range and no longer teleport.
  • Astro Trains are now immune to translocation and gravity effects, since both of those cause more problems for players than they would ever solve
  • The radar dampening range of marauders and resistance fighters has been changed to be about 1000 greater than their attack range in all cases, soo that they always have to come into range of their targets in order to fire on their targets. This makes it so that turrets and other fixed-position defenses are not completely powerless against them.
  • Spire Civilian Leader Outposts are now included in the galaxy map filter for Detected AI Progress Reducers.
  • Spire Civilian Leader Outposts previously did not have their minor faction stance properly set, so they could not be attacked. Now they are properly noted as AI Allies until captured by the human team. They are still direct-only to attack, though, so unless you accidentally mis-click on them your ships won't attack them.
  • Armored Warhead health reduced from over 2 billion to 40 million. This is still a huge amount of health, but they are no longer infinitely survivable. This also fixes a bug where the interface was having an overflow exception and rendering their health as 1.
  • When planet-wide EMP or tachyon detonations occur, as from a warhead or an EMP guardian, a chat message is now sent to the human players telling them who detonated what, and where. This message is also clickable. The goal here is preventing EMP guardians from punching QUITE so impenetrable a hole in player defenses without notice.
  • Warhead Interceptors have been nonfunctional since slightly before 5.0 of the game (I disabled them, but never did get around to re-enabling them. They should work once again, but I haven't had a test case to work on it to be sure. If anyone has a save with them not working after this version, please let us know.
  • The efficiency of gravitational slowing (gravity drains, gravity turrets) has been greatly improved, such that big battles that previously would grind to a halt because of them can now be played at 3x their prior framerate in one test case in particular.
    • One major improvement was to exclude checking of gravitational slowing for ships that can't move or aren't moving at the moment (since they don't need to be slowed!), and the other was to skip redundant gravitational slowing checks for gravitational sources that are the same and which are too close together. This last is very similar to how the speed improvements on the range data display (from way back pre-2.0 days) works.
  • The devourer golem is now completely invincible—it was never meant to be killable in the first place, but recent changes to the game made that so that it was possible post-5.0. Like the dyson sphere, the devourer is more intersting when it is indestructible.
  • Minor factions now shoot low-power ships without prejudice, which means that devourer golems actually will devourer more again.
  • Zenith SpaceTime Manipulators, like forcefields, now have the ability to move very slowly but not to go through wormholes, to allow for better repositioning of them.
  • Gifting a ship now copies across its current attack recharge, cloaking recharge, and similar, preventing a few exploits related to that and penetrators in particular.
  • Dyson Gatlings are now immune to paralysis attacks.
  • Slightly improved the targeting handling when a ship is targeting a teleporting ship that is out of range.
  • Spirecraft Penetrator balance:
    • Mark I moved from pysite to xampite. Mark II moved to ebonite, and now produce two per asteroid. All the other marks not moved around.
    • Penetrator health reduced 8x.
    • Penetrator perma-cloaking replaced with normal cloaking
  • AI ships that are spawned in response to saboteurs, such as the human mark III science lab, are now zombie bots
  • Zenith SpaceTime Manipulators can no longer be swallowed or regenerated.
  • Human-allied zombies and minor factions were not being properly limited in their pool of planets to fix, thanks to a typo in their logic. It should now be fixed.
  • Zenith Electric Bombers:
    • No longer use scaled caps (due to the 0.1 ship cap multiplier, that can make the additional /2 or /4 from normal and low caps cause a more significant truncation than is desirable).
    • Event attack cost (used for exogalactic strikeforce computations) tiers increased from "Medium Corvette" through "Heavy Frigate" to "Light Frigate" through "Medium Destroyer", since the previous placement was putting mkIII zelecs at the same place as a mkV bomber. It's not a goal to balance the event attack costs terribly precisely, but that was a bit excessive.
  • Sentinel Frigates:
    • Event attack cost (used for exogalactic strikeforce computations) tiers increased from "Heavy Corvette" through "Light Destroyer" to "Light Frigate" through "Medium Destroyer".
  • Spire Blade Spawners:
    • Now have an attack again (not having an attack was causing all kinds of bugs and unintended behaviors), with a base power of 1000 per shot, 8 shots per salvo, 2 seconds per salvo, and effective range of 6000 (for reference, that's the same as the spire stealth battleship except it's 25% the base power and 1000 lower range).
      • Notably, this should make the BaseAIPerGuardPostShipCap flag work correctly again for them (it's set to 1 for them).
      • But since they were unable to guard stuff in the past due to zero attack, to correct old saves the AI ones just being completely stripped out when loading something from 5.009 or earlier. Human ones are not affected.
    • Have the new DoesNotMoveToPursueUnlessOrderGivenByPlayer flag, which prevents human ones from chasing an auto-targetted target (in FRD or not). Hopefully this will deal with the complaint that lead to the original removal of their guns.
  • Made Cloaker Starships mark I knowledge-free now, instead of costing 1k knowledge. This helps to compensate players a bit for the generally-increased difficulty of the Zenith expansion.
  • Same with the Neinzul Rnclave Starships mark I. They were 2k knowledge, but now they are knowledge-free.
  • Mercenary Neinzul Enclave Starships, which would now be pretty well pointless, have also been revamped. Now they are the equivalent of the mark II Neinzul Enclave Starship, rather than the mark I starship. This is very powerful, but they are also now limited to only a single ship in their shipcap, rather than 6 ships.
  • Starship costs tweaked around a bit:
    • Bomber starship metal cost reduced from 120k to 80k.
    • Fleet starship metal cost reduced from 60k to 40.
    • Siege starship crystal cost reduced from 120k to 80k.
    • Riot Control starships crystal cost reduced from 80k to 60k, and metal cost reduced from 30k to 20k.
    • Enclave starship costs reduced from 30k metal and crystal to 20k each instead.
  • Zentih SpaceTime Manipulator energy costs reduced to 20k from 60k
  • Due to widespread feedback that the martyr is very OP, we've drastically increased the asteroid "cost" of building them:
    • Previously Reptite could be used to build 2 MkI Martyrs. Now it cannot build martyrs at all.
    • Previously Pysite could be used to build 4 MkI Martyrs or 2 MkII Martyrs. Now it can only build 1 MkII (can't build MkIs).
    • Previously Xampite could be used to build 4 MkII Martyrs or 2 MkIII Martyrs. Now it can only build 1 MkIII (can't build MkIIs).
    • Previously Ebonite could be used to build 4 MkIII Martyrs or 2 MkIV Martyrs. Now it can only build 1 MkIV (can't build MkIIIs).
    • Previously Adamantite could be used to build 4 MkIV Martyrs or 2 MkV Martyrs. Now it can only build 1 MkV (can't build MkIVs).
    • Note that the units themselves are just as incredibly powerful as before (we really want them to be highly useful), but hopefully this change puts their real cost more in line with their utility and also puts a saner limit on the total number the players can have in a game. More changes may follow if necessary.
    • For reference, previously the total number of martyrs that could be produced from all asteroids in an average 80-planet galaxy was about 2200 on average (so someone holding 15% of the galaxy might reasonably field 220 over the course of the game, if they didn't use many other spirecraft). Now that total-possible number average about 480 (so that same martyr-happy player would probably only have about 48 to use, unless they take more planets).
  • Zenith Viral Shredders:
    • Simplified the scaling of replication costs (how much damage a shredder has to do to replicate) and made it better at preventing game-breaking swarms of shredders. Now instead of it using a linear multiplier based on the owner's number of shredders on that specific planet, it quadruples the replication cost for every full cap of that mark of shredder owned by that player anywhere in the galaxy (but if they own less than or equal to a full cap, there is no extra cost).
      • So if the mkI cap is 98 (normal cap scale) and you have between 99 and 195 (inclusive) mkI shredders they will have to do 4x as much damage to replicate as normal. If you have between 196 and 293 (inclusive) mkI shredders they will have to do 16x as much damage to replicate as normal. And so on (maximum multiplier is 1024 to avoid arithmetic overflow; at that point a mkIV on low caps would need to do over 376 million damage to replicate).
    • Base Energy Use from 100 => 50 (note: all mkI types use half normal energy).
    • Replication-created shredders now copy the FRD, Attack Move, and any unit commands (movement waypoints and whatnot) of their "parent". Note that they already copy the control groups and "am I currently selected" status of their parent.
    • The end result of all this should be that if you play your shredders well you'll be able to maintain maybe 2 or 3 caps worth of them (a pretty significant advantage over other bonus ship types) but it's going to be difficult to get into the really absurd numbers. On the other hand, maintaining that swarm won't cost as much energy as it used to and it should require less micro due to the commmand copying.
  • For a very long time it's been possible to ward off almost any amount of damage through sufficient micro of a pile of forcefield generators and engineers (to repair the ff's as they collapse within the protection of other generators, or go on low power mode, or are being newly built). While ff's are supposed to be extremely helpful in protecting stuff, it wasn't intended that they be able to do so indefinitely while under constant attack. So:
    • When a forcefield is damaged by enemy fire, all allied forcefields whose fields are in contact (or very close to it) with the damaged ff will take 1 point of damage from the energy conducted along the surface of the field. The damage itself is inconsequential since the ff's have millions of hp, but it will trigger the "cannot be repaired less than 6 seconds after being damaged" logic. This also applies to forcefields currently under construction or in low-power mode. So it won't be possible to repair some forcefields in a ff-pile while others in the same group are under fire.
    • Forcefield generators now cannot be assisted during construction if they have been damaged recently.
    • When a new forcefield is placed for construction, if it is in near any allied forcefields (low power or not) that is currently unrepairable due to recent damage, the newly placed forcefield inherits the longest assist-delay present among those neighbors. So it won't be possible to speed-build new generators under other fields that are currently under fire.
    • This also applies to all the "shield bearer" and module type shields.
    • If this leaves some situations unreasonably hard other changes can be made to compensate, we just wanted to close this "micro to dodge anything" loophole.
  • Due to very widespread feedback that ion weaponry is very underpowered, all Ion Cannon and Spirecraft Ion Blasters now fire 4 shots per salvo instead of 1.
  • For the ships listed below, armor piercing increased from "really high" (6 figures) to 999,999. They're really supposed to just flat out get through any armor, excepting maybe some of the ships so large we don't mention them in release notes because it would be a spoiler.
    • Zenith Polarizer
    • Spire Armor Rotter
    • Youngling Vulture
    • Youngling Nanoswarm
    • Raid Starship
    • Lightning/Armored/EMP/Tachyon-warheads
    • Botnet Golem
    • Devourer Golem
    • Sentinel Frigate
    • Spire Blade
    • Spire Gravity Drain
    • Spirecraft Siege Tower
    • Sniper
    • Electric Shuttle
    • Lightning Turret
    • Sniper Turret
    • Spider Turret
    • And a variety of lesser known but related types.
  • AI Hunter/Killers are now eligible to be chosen for exogalactic battlegroups. The MkI is considered one notch above the Armored Golem cost-wise, and proceeding up from there. For anyone who remembers the slaughter those things could perform before, their number of shots-per-salvo has been halved but their health has been doubled.
  • Added a new ability to the Spirecraft Attritioner in hopes of making it more generally useful. From the new tooltip:
    • One unique side effect of Spire attrition technology is that when an enemy ship is destroyed by any cause all its allies (that aren't immune to attrition) take a certain percent of that ship's maximum health as feedback damage. This feedback damage is cumulative with multiple Spirecraft Attritioners and higher mark attritioners cause a higher percentage, but this feedback damage is divided evenly across all affected targets and thus does not greatly damage any one target.
    • Basically, this functions as a small boost to overall fleet dps (averaged out over time), and thus makes the attritioner useful in short engagements where previously its contribution would have been minimal.
    • Current percentages are 0.5%/1.0%/1.5%/2.5%/5.0% for the 5 marks of attritioner. Also, this effect does trigger on enemies killed by attrition/feedback (otherwise it motivates micro to make sure a triggering-source kills big targets). In our tests this has not seemed overpowered though it is likely that further balancing will be needed. Bear in mind that mkV attritioners require the extremely rare Titanite, and mkIVs require the not-much-more-common Adamantite.
    • Thanks to Hearteater and many other players for weighing in with feedback that led to this change.
  • Spirecraft Ion normal shot damage from 700 => 14000, and armor piercing from 0 => Max.
    • Previously their damage was just token, but this brings them up to roughly the DPS of the Spirecraft Siege Tower (which, for reference, also has max armor piercing), but can't target anything that's immune to insta-kill (which is basically anything bigger than a fleet ship). The result is that a cap (8) of MkI Spirecraft Ions is capable of doing well against a single cap of even MkV fleet ships unless those fleet ships have a bonus against them (bombers, chameleons, raiders, IRE's, etc), and so on. In general, a lot of these together can put some serious hurt on fleet ships (particularly low health ones) even when they can't insta-kill.
    • Related note: since their seconds-per-salvo is higher on the lower cap scales, and since their shot damage now actually matters, and since just about everything they can target scales with the caps, their damage will now be scale upward on the lower caps.
    • Updated the tooltip, which is reproduced here since it probably helps understand what we're doing here:
      • Like Zenith Ion weapons (which AI Ion Cannons use), Spire Ion weapons insta-kill most ships with a mark level equal to or lower than its mark value, and cannot fire at all on ships immune to Ion weapons (i.e. immune to insta-kill). Unlike Zenith Ion technology, these ships are mobile, much shorter-ranged, and actually do decent damage to higher mark ships.
  • Fallen-Spire city-provoked exogalactic strikeforces "buildup" rate (this only impacts the time between attacks, not their size or composition) redistributed a bit:
    • Spire City Hubs now generate 1/4 the "aggro" they used to.
    • Spire Shard Reactors, Habitation Centers, and Shipyards now, instead of generating zero "aggro", generate 1/8th what the Spire City Hub used to generate.
    • So a city with all 6 building slots taken up causes exactly the same amount of buildup as before.
    • But the advantage is that if your cities get really beat up in an AI attack and you lose city structures you have more time to rebuild before the next exo. Not exactly smart of the AI, but the alternative is often a game that is fundamentally lost but just a matter of time.
  • Youngling Nanoswarm:
    • Fixed bug in targeting logic that was making it focus on single targets when the intent was that they would aggressively spread themselves out across all available targets. The new behavior still doesn't reach quite the desired behavior (they still tend to only spread out over a subset of the available targets) but it's still a significant improvement. Hopefully more can be done later.
      • Note that this overrides the Non-Sniper-Focus-Fire control; there's very little reason one would ever want these the auto focus-fire since they do so very little damage. Of course if you really want a bunch of nanoswarms to all attack the same target you can give them a normal attack order.
    • Explosion range from 200/225/250/275/300 => flat 1000.
      • They still only hit a max of 3/5/7/9/11 targets when they explode, so this makes it more likely that they'll actually get multiple hits.
  • AI Fortress health from 6x human fortress equivalents => 3x human fortress equivalents.
    • Previously it was easy to take out an AI Fortress with just bombers (and other polycrystal stuff, since fortresses can barely scratch the paint on polycrystal) but it could take a really long time. We want the fortresses to be challenging but not in the "how long do I have to wait before it dies" sense. Hopefully we can find some other more interesting (and not very time consuming) way of making them more challenging
  • Ships that generate attack (munitions) boosts now show the magnitude of the boost in the tooltip, not just the range.
    • Thanks to SpaceBrotha for the question that reminded us that this info wasn't directly displayed anywhere.
  • Ships that are not immune to attack boosting but have a attack-boost-ceiling below the default (which is 4, i.e. 5x or 500% of normal damage) now display their maximum receivable boost in their tooltip.
  • Higher mark Hybrid Drone Spawners now spawn drones more quickly in addition to being capable of spawning higher mark drones (a mkIV drone spawner still only spawns mkI drones for a hybrid at the first maturity level, and so on).
  • Hybrids: second-stage and third-stage maturity now takes less time (about half what it used to, still longer than first-stage), as previously most hybrids died either before or during the first stage.
  • Neinzul Youngling Tigers:
    • Time-to-live from 2 minutes => 4 minutes, which is the same as other youngling types.
    • Metal and Crystal cost from 50/50 => 40/40.
    • Base Armor Rating from 300*mk => 600*mk.
    • Base Health from 11k*mk => 13k*mk.
    • Thanks to chemical_art for suggesting/inspiring these changes.
  • Neinzul Youngling Vulture:
    • Metal and Crystal cost from 50/50 => 40/40.
  • Spire Teleporting Leech:
    • Base Energy Cost from 400 => 200.
    • Base Metal Cost from 2200 => 1200.
    • Base Crystal Cost from 800 => 500.
  • Science Lab MkII:
    • Base Health from 120k => 500k.
    • Base Armor Rating from 1500 => 5000.
    • Now has cloaking.
    • Long story short: they're still more expensive than MkIs, but now they actually are significantly easier to keep alive in dicey situations than MkIs.
  • AI Superfortress:
    • Base health from 750 million => 450 million. This brings it from 5*human-version to 3*human-version, putting it in line with the other fortresses.
    • Health regen halved.
  • AI Fortress I/II/III: health regen halved.
  • Neinzul Preservation Warden spawn counts now scale up with AI Difficulty (the higher of the two is used, this is 1 at diff 7, 1.5 at 8, 2 at 9, 3 at 10) and AI Handicap (again, the higher of the two, negative handicaps don't apply to this), similar to other non-AIP-based threats. Previously it only scaled with the number of human players/homeworlds, and of course the number of human-controlled resource extractors.
  • Sentinel Frigates and Zenith Electric Bombers are now considered large enough targets for ships like the Antimatter Starship.
  • The earliest time that an AI player can even check for sending a wave has been changed to avoid both AIs sending their first waves on the exact same second on higher difficulties (which artificially increases the difficulty of the first wave, giving a false impression of how hard the second will be). Specifically, it's still (( 14 - Difficulty ) * 100) seconds for the first AI player, and 1.5 times that for the second AI player.
  • Black Widow Golem:
    • Number of tractors from 100 => 200.
      • Tractors on non-scaling ships do need to be made to scale with unit caps, but we don't have time to implement that just yet. Bear in mind that when that scaling comes, the current number of tractors will be the _highest_ value: corresponding to "high" caps, because that's what the caps were before scaling was added (when the tractor numbers were established to begin with), so it won't make them any better. For now, enjoy :)
    • This golem's tractors now do 2 seconds of paralysis damage per second to each held ship. Ships immune to paralysis are not affected.
    • Base Health from 80M => 200M.
    • Basically just trying to make this golem a lot more useful and a lot less likely to die when not baby-sat.
  • Some further adjustment to high-difficulty wave size calculation, this time not changing diff 10 much at all but making the 9.3-9.8 stretch build up more gradually rather than 10 being more than 2x as hard as 9.8.
    • Previously in step 8 any difficulty greater than 7 received a 2.5 multiplier (7 got 2.25, and lower the lower you went).
    • Now:
      • 7.3 through 9 still get 2.5.
      • 9.3 gets 2.75 (10% harder than before).
      • 9.6 gets 3.00 (20% harder than before).
      • 9.8 gets 3.80 (52% harder than before).
      • 10 gets 4.5 (would be 80% harder than before, but see next change).
    • Previously each wave on diff 10 would actually cause 2 separate waves. This was from an old rule where 8 through 10 got double waves, but that was changed to just 8 due to the challenge-cliff it caused between 7.6 and 8. Now this rule has been entirely removed, since 10's waves are now so much larger than before.
    • We're very much open to more feedback on this; basically diffs 9.3 through 10 aren't really where we expect people to play (indeed, we may need to make them harder if someone actually beats 10 in a fair fight again), but we want it to be fun for those who do.
  • Previously Sniper and Spider turrets cost 8 to 10 times as much metal+crystal to build a cap of compared to all other turret types, so:
    • Base Metal Cost from 1500 => 300.
    • Base Crystal Cost from 7500 => 1500.
    • They're still the most expensive turrets, that's intentional, but they're no longer quite so punishing (before you could have built a fleet of starships for the cost of a cap of sniper turrets).
  • Antimatter Starship:
    • Yes, this one is getting _another_ revamp. Some background:
      • First, they were called dreadnoughts. They did tons of engine damage. Too much. Nerfed.
      • Then, they were called useless. For a long time.
      • Then, we made them hit like a train from long range, but unable to fire upon anything remotely small. They were called Siege Starships (alias: "awesome").
      • But this broke a lot balance because you could just camp around your siege starships from across the planet and bomb everything to bits.
      • So they were given antimatter bombs that can't hit forcefields, fortresses, or... well, much of anything. In fairness they do great against starships and guardians, but that's proven too small a niche to really please their users. They were renamed "Antimatter Starship", which has since become a dire insult in 75% of the inhabited galaxy.
      • But the solution was unclear: we could shorten their range, but Bomber Starships (which were made normally available shortly after these were changed to Siege Starships) already fill the short-range big-stuff-killing niche.
      • And now, the next episode...
    • Base range from 16000 => 4000.
    • Shot type changed back from Antimatter Bomb => Energy Bomb (same basic type as bombers use, so no one is specifically immune to it like some are to antimatter bombs). Still cannot fire on small ships, like before.
    • If it hits a forcefield, it will also damage up to 200 units protected by that forcefield (or forcefields physically near that forcefield) with 1% (to each target) of the damage done to the forcefield.
      • Note: even stuff the starship itself cannot aim at (small units and cloaked units, etc) can be hit by the splash damage.
      • The 200-count doesn't change between low, normal, and high unit caps because that would change the dps of the unit pretty significantly. If it proves to be a problem we can try a few things.
    • Has been renamed to the Plasma Siege Starship.
    • The end result:
      • Still longer-ranged than the bomber starship, but much shorter than before, so not worrying that it will break balance in that way.
      • Still only about 1/3 of the bomber starship's single-target dps, but can up to triple the total damage output in a "siege" situation against a forcefielded group of targets. Still not the better choice in terms of raw damage, but the utility of being able to get at the protected targets should counterbalance that and create its own niche.
  • Plasma Siege Cannon Modules (the ones for Fallen Spire modular stuff) now also have the forcefield-splash-damage attribute. Thematically, the Siege starship is (using) a plasma-siege-cannon now.
  • Zenith Beam Frigate Base Range from 7500+100*mk => 6500+100*mk.
    • They're supposed to be long-ranged, but some marks were outranging their main triangle counter (missile frigate, which has 6500+500*mk base range), which isn't appropriate given the beam frigate's very high damage when it hits several targets per shot.
  • Turret base energy costs:
    • Basic Turret from 150 => 100.
    • MLRS Turret from 150 => 100.
    • Flak Turret from 300 => 200.
    • Missile Turret from 150 => 100.
    • Counter-Dark-Matter Turret from 4000 => 1000.
    • Counter-Missile-Turret from 4000 => 1000.
    • Counter-Sniper-Turret from 4000 => 1000.
    • Sniper & Spider Turrets from 250 => 150.
    • Grav Turret from 500/8000/10000 => 400*mk.
    • Tractor Turret left alone (150/240/300).
    • Laser Turret (150) and Heavy Beam Cannon (750/1300/2000/20000) left alone. They're energy weapons.
    • Lightning Turret from 500/1000/2000 => 400 flat. Energy weapon, yes, but that was a bit high.
    • These really aren't that big a deal, but it does help rein in some numbers that were set long ago, and bring the energy-per-dps ratio of the main attack turrets under the stuff that shoots and has engines.
  • Artillery Golem:
    • Base Armor Rating from 0 => 4000.
    • Base Recharge Time from 30 => 8.
    • Basically: when you see an Artillery Golem you can get on your side, we want you to be happy. When you see an Artillery Golem on the enemy side, we want you to be sad. Previously it wasn't doing a whole lot of either.
    • Thanks to Orelius and others for feedback on golems.
  • Regenerator Golem:
    • Repair cost reduced by 90% to make regeneration not "cost" quite so much more than simply producing the ships from scratch, in metal+crystal terms.
  • Cursed Golem:
    • Self-attrition reduced by 50% (now would go from 100% to 0% in 60 minutes instead of 40).
  • Lightning Turrets
    • Attack changed to function like electric shuttles: Hits up to 200 targets, and if hits are left over can hit each target up to 5 times (meaning that groups as small as 40 take the full power of the attack).
  • Lighting Turrets/Electric Shuttles: The per-planet-per-player-per-type-per-mark delay has been reduced to a very minimal duration, generally allowing a full cap of lightning turrets to unload its full power before the first one finishes reloading.
    • This still prevents a total alpha strike, but that also helps avoid a situation where the entire lightning turret cluster unloads on a couple of leading fighters before the rest of the wave shows up.
    • It also looked really cool in testing.
  • Player-Ally Dyson Gatlings are no longer unable to shoot mkV units.
    • In previous iterations this rule was necessary because player-ally dysons were clearing off AI homeworlds and/or core worlds. Since player-ally dysons rarely wind up on AI planets anymore the rule no longer seems necessary, and "why are my dysons not shooting X?" questions have been happening on a regular basis for quite some time.
  • Hybrids:
    • If either player has Advanced Hybrids enabled, hybrid maturity-xp contributions to the central dirty-tricks "bank" are now doubled compared to Normal Hybrids.
    • The first couple stages of the only such dirty-trick progression currently implemented now happen a bit faster, but the first and second nasty bits have been made less nasty
  • Spirecraft Shield Bearers:
    • Ship cap doubled.
    • Amounts produced:
      • Reptite: from 0 => 1 mkI (so can now be built from Reptite)
      • Pysite: from 1 => 2 mkI
      • Xampite: from 1 => 2 mkII
      • Ebonite: from 1 => 2 mkIII
      • Adamantite: from 1 => 2 mkIV
      • Titanite: from 1 => 2 mkV
    • Hopefully this will bring their costs more into line with their actual utility (as non-repairable shields).
  • Plasma Siege Starship
    • Shot now has a traditional (lightning-type) aoe that does 6.25% of normal damage to up to 14 extra nearby targets.
      • In order for this normal aoe to work, the restriction from firing upon fleet ships has been removed. Previously it was there primarily to keep the autotargeting from "wasting" shots on small stuff, but this has become less important. It still prefers targeting starships, etc.
    • Still has the "siege" effect when hitting a forcefield, but that's been changed from 1% of the damage done to up to 200 ships to 6.25% to up to 25. That's less total, adjusting somewhat for the addition of the traditional aoe and the greater ease of getting the whole bonus.
    • For reference, the Siege's dps (per unit, not per cap) against a single target is about 71% that of the Bomber Starship (previous version notes said 1/3rd, that was actually inaccurate). If the traditional aoe hits the full 14 targets, that brings it up to about 133% that of the Bomber Starship. If the shot also hit a forcefield that's protecting other units, that extra "siege" damage is just gravy on top (potentially up to a total of 245% or so).
      • If this proves to be too much, adjustments can be made, but typically we get more useful feedback for a new/changed unit that's stronger than it should be than if it were weaker.
  • AI Carriers:
    • Are no longer invincible if there's >= 2000 AI ships already on the planet.
      • Previously this was necessary to avoid too many AI ships on a planet at once for decent cpu/ram performance.
    • Now, when a carrier deploys (it deploys when destroyed):
      • If there are fewer than 1400 AI ships already on the planet, and another carrier has not deployed in the last few seconds, it deploys normally as before.
      • Otherwise, it "combines" its contained units into a fairly small assortment of ships and deploys those. The population of this group uses similar logic as exo waves, but is not itself an exo wave (there's no leader, no beeline-human-homeworld logic, etc), it behaves as normal threat.
        • The more AI ships there are on the planet, the more "condensed" it tries to make this deployment, so in those cases you'll see more enemy starships, etc but far smaller quantity.
    • Also, if there are less than 500 AI ships already on the planet, and it is a non-AI planet and there's at least one enemy military (non-mine) unit, and another carrier has not deployed in the last few seconds, it automatically deploys.
    • Rationale: Previously it was possible to have carriers slip through otherwise impenetrable defenses because there were simply too many AI ships (which may have been somewhere else on the planet) to quickly kill. This was desirable from a design standpoint because we don't want a single layer of impenetrable defenses to be the end-all defensive strategy in the game. However, it has proved consistently frustrating (in a non-fun way) for some players so it seemed a good time to try something different. Now the presence of a ton of other AI ships doesn't make the carriers invincible, it just makes them very dangerous to destroy. Hopefully in an interesting way :)
  • Spider turrets:
    • Base Metal Cost from 6000 => 1200.
    • Base Crystal Cost 15000 => 2400.
    • These weren't actually changed in last patch because they weren't inheriting the sniper turret costs. This is actually a good thing as spider turrets are substantially more useful than sniper turrets. They now cost 2x as much m+c as the sniper turret (3600 vs 1800).
  • Riot Starships:
    • Ship Cap from 4/3/2 => 4 flat. Most of the special starship types have non-decreasing caps already.
    • Base Health from 900k*mk => 1.8M*mk. This brings their just-the-hull health up to just below the squishy end of the current target zone for starships (7.5M*mk cap-hp, though Raids and Leeches are currently way below that for other reasons).
    • Shield mkI/mkII Base Health from 500k*mk => 1.8M*mk. This brings their hull+shield health up to the middle of the target zone.
    • Base Speed from 20/17/14 => flat 20.
    • Base Energy Cost from 3000/4000/5000 => flat 3000.
    • Base mkI Metal+Crystal Cost from 20k+60k => 30k+50k (mkII is 2x, mkIII is 4x).
    • Knowledge Cost from free/3500/4500 => free/4000/5000. DPS starships run 0/5k/7k, more specialized ones like the raid run 0/4k/4k, etc.
    • Base Attack Power from 3600/5200/6800 => 4000*mk. This brings their non-bonus-dps up to the very low end of the current target zone for starship (20k*mk cap-dps). So it's really low (even with module damage), but it's a utility type.
    • Base Engine Damage from 40/55/70 => 40*mk.
    • Multiplier vs Medium from 2 => 4. Its other 4 bonuses were already 4.
    • All Modules:
      • No longer have an energy cost. 12k cap-e for the hulls is enough.
    • Machine Gun Modules:
      • Engine Damage Percent Floor from 50%/30% => 40%/20%.
    • Laser Modules:
      • Engine Damage from 17*mk => 30*mk. The machine guns are still 3x as efficient for total EDPS but have shorter range and cannot bring engines as low as these.
      • Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 5 => 4.
      • Multiplier vs Neutron from 3 => 4.
    • Shotgun Modules:
      • Base Attack Power from 40 => 400.
      • Engine Damage from 28 => 36. Makes these 2x as efficient as MGs for total EDPS.
      • Shots per salvo from 25/49 => 25*mk.
      • Multiplier vs Swarmer from 6 => 4.
      • Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 5 => 4.
      • Multiplier vs Refractive from 5 => 4.
    • Tazer Module:
      • Multiplier vs Medium from 3 => 4.
      • Multiplier vs Artillery from 3 => 4.
      • Now has a planet-wide stagger time of 2 seconds, to prevent permanently stunlocking 4000+ ships in a multi-hw setting with 4 Riot IIs. They can still be used to effectively halve the attack power (due to prolonging reload time) of non-paralysis immune enemies. Also tends to interrupt them while they try to get away.
      • Thanks to Wanderer for being the one to confirm the long-held suspicion that these were horribly exploitable.
    • Tractor Modules:
      • Tractor Range from 1700*mk => flat 4400. Same as mkIII tractor turrets.
      • Tractor Count from 10/40 => 72*mk. Same as mkII/mkIII tractor turrets (but mobile and not needing supply).
        • Note that this doesn't scale with unit cap scale and really should, but that's a bit out of scope for this time frame and these would be the numbers on high caps so you're not losing anything.
    • For reference, total cap-EDPS with all MG/SG builds firing within main-gun range is now 3080/4720/7080, compared to the spider turret's 7833 (from infinite range, insta-fire, and able to take engines down to 1%, but immobile and way more expensive).
    • This was another long-overdue rebalancing, hence the magnitude of changes.
  • Orbital Mass Drivers:
    • Now when under a firepower-reducing forcefield they retain 75% of their attack power instead of the customary 25%.
  • Leech Starship:
    • Base Energy Use from 10k/14k/18k => flat 5k. So cap-e is same now as Raids (the next highest for combat starships)
    • All vs-hull-type bonuses removed, to allow for a bit more of an overall damage buff and thus more general reclamation utility.
    • Base Health from 1.6M*mk => 3.2M*mk. Was well below the target range for starship cap-health, is now just on the low-end (bottom is 7.5M*mk).
    • Shots per salvo from 1 => 3. That brings it up to the target range for starship-with-no-bonuses cap-dps (about 66k*mk), and should help it reclaim more.
    • Hull type from UltraLight => Heavy because UltraLight tends to be a major pain to kill when in the hands of the AI (see: raid starships) and the health just doubled.
  • Light Starship/Flagship/Zenith Starship/Spire Starship/Core Starship
    • Ship Cap from 5/3/2/2/2 => 4 flat.
    • Base Speed from 15/18/18/24/22 => 22 flat.
    • Base Armor Rating from 1000/2500/2500/2500/2500 => 1000*mk.
    • Base Energy Use from 2k/10k/20k/20k/20k => 4k flat.
    • Base Attack Range from 1500/4800/3000/10000/500 => 3000+(200*mk).
    • Base Health from 2M/6M/14,625k/12,675k/25,350k => 3.75M*mk. This brings them to 15M*mk cap-health, and the target range for starships is 7.5M-40M*mk (though there aren't any "Armor Starships" or whatever that would actually use the top of that range, etc).
    • Shots-per-salvo from 5/9/14/4/5 => 5 flat.
    • Seconds-per-salvo from 4/4/2/2/5 => 4 flat.
    • Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 12/12/1/1/1 => 4.
    • Multiplier vs Medium from 8/8/1/6/1 => 4.
    • Multiplier vs Light from 6/6/1/1/1 => 1/1/4/1/4.
    • Multiplier vs Polycrystal from 1/1/0.01/4/1 => 4/1/1/4/4.
    • Multiplier vs Artillery from 1 => 1/4/1/1/4.
    • Multiplier vs UltraLight from 1/1/1/4/1 => 1.
    • Multiplier vs Swarmer from 1/1/1/1/0.1 => 1.
      • Part of this is to make each of the mkI-IV varieties good against one triangle ship type, and the mkV good against them all (not that you can get the mkV normally, but the AI can!).
    • Base Attack Power from 3600/12k/30k/60k/60k => 8k*mk. This brings them to 40k*mk non-bonus and 160k*mk bonus cap-dps, which is about right for a 4x-bonus starship.
    • Munitions boost range from 3k/6k/5k/8k = 2k+(1k*mk).
    • Most of the mark-specific quirks (flagships do a little engine damage, zeniths and up have warp detection, spires are immune to gravity, different ammo types, etc) are still there.
    • There've been a lot of balance problems with this line for a while, and we've held off from comprehensive changes partly since they're really two separate lines (fleet starship and alien starship) and we'll probably split them up at some point. We'll probably still split them up later since that would be cool, but for now it's easier to balance them as a cohesive line according to the guidelines used for the other combat starships.
  • Flak Turrets:
    • Effective range from 4000/5000/6000 => 4500/5500/6500 to make them a little easier to place around a wormhole.
    • Now when under a firepower-reducing forcefield they retain 75% of their attack power instead of the customary 25%.
    • Hopefully they'll now be closer to the general usefulness of other turrets in that they don't have to die immediately (if protected).
  • Lightning Turrets:
    • Now when under a firepower-reducing forcefield they retain 75% of their attack power instead of the customary 25%.
  • Heavy Beam Cannons (just the human standalone ones, not any of the spire variants, though the spire variants were impacted by the m+c and knowledge cost changes) :
    • All marks:
      • All vs-hull-type bonuses removed, these are just straight damage now, which is more thematically appropriate. Also, it's nice to have at least one turret type that doesn't have that kind of bonus.
      • For reference, these aren't really "aoe", they're "blast-through"; a beam loses strength as it does damage.
    • MkI
      • For reference, MkI unit cap is 12 for these, and each fires 3 beams every 7 seconds.
      • Base Health from 250k => 850k. This brings cap-health a bit higher than missile turrets, which are the squishy end of turret types.
      • Base Energy Use from 750 => 1650. This brings cap-energy to just slightly above MLRS and several other turret types.
      • Base Metal/Crystal Cost from 8000/14000 => 6500/11000. This brings cap-mc to slightly below most turret types.
      • Base Attack Power from 50000 => 140000. This brings cap-dps to be second highest turret non-bonus-dps (lightning being highest) but well below the any turret's bonus-dps.
      • Knowledge cost from 2000 => 500. The other mkI turrets are free.
    • MkII
      • For reference, MkII unit cap is 8 for these, and each fires 6 beams every 6 seconds.
      • Base Health from 1.25M => 2.55M. Basically: mkI health * (2 for being mkII) * (1.5 for smaller unit cap)
      • Base Energy Use from 1300 => 2500. (roughly mkI * 1.5 for cap)
      • Base Metal/Crystal Cost from 16000/28000 => 13000/22000. (mkI * 2, customary for mkII)
      • Base Attack Power from 50000 => 180000. Basically: mkI damage * (0.429 for rate-of-fire-difference) * (2 for mkII) * (1.5 for unit cap)
      • Knowledge cost from 3000 => 2500. Most other mkII turrets are 2000-3000.
    • MkIII
      • For reference, MkIII unit cap is 4 for these, and each fires 12 beams every 5 seconds.
      • Base Health from 2.25M => 7.65M. Basically: mkI health * (3 for mark) * (3 for unit cap)
      • Base Energy Use from 2000 => 5000. (roughly mkI * 3 for cap)
      • Base Metal/Crystal Cost from 32000/56000 => 26000/44000. (mkI * 4, customary for mkIII)
      • Base Attack Power from 50000 => 225000. Basically: mkI damage * (0.179 for rof diff) * (3 for mark) * (3 for cap)
      • Knowledge cost from 3500 => 3000. That's pretty normal for a mkIII turret.
    • MkIV
      • For reference, MkIV unit cap is _1_ for these, and it fires 40 beams every 4 seconds.
      • Base Health from 3.25M => 40M. Basically: mkI health * (4 for mark) * (12 for unit cap)
      • Base Energy Use from 2000 => 20000. (roughly mkI * 12 for cap)
      • Base Metal/Crystal Cost from 64000/112000 => 52000/88000. (mkI * 8, customary for mkIV)
      • Base Attack Power from 50000 => 290000. Basically: mkI damage * (0.043 for rof diff) * (4 for mark) * (12 for cap)
      • Knowledge cost staying at 3000. Thought about 3500, but it really is just one unit.
    • These haven't seen a real rebalance in... a long time, and had fallen behind pretty drastically through the various changes since the 3.x days. Hopefully this will make them statistically competitive with other turret types (that have much larger caps). Feedback on how it all actually works out in practice is very welcome.
  • All modules (except those that generate forcefields) are now invincible and thus untargetable, etc.
  • When computing the number of reactors of a specific mark controlled by a specific player on a specific planet for the purposes of reactor-inefficiency, that number is now divided by that player's number of homeworlds (if that player has more than 1). This allows them to get basically the same energy output per m+c cost as an equivalent number of separate players with the same total number of homeworlds.
    • On the same note, the "auto build energy reactor" toggles on the CTRLS window (both galaxy-wide and per-planet) have been converted to sliders allowing you to specifying that more than one should be auto-built. If both the galaxy-wide one and a per-planet one are greater than zero, that planet will auto-build the higher of the two numbers (but not the sum, unlike with engineers).
    • The energy difference between multi-HW and multi-players has been known for a long time and not considered a priority. However, recent scientific analysis has concluded that multi-HW AARs have significant potential entertainment value, hence the change.
  • Everything that fires Siege Plasma (Plasma Siege Starship, Plasma Siege Cannon modules), Flak grenades, grenades, or self-explodes (autobomb, nanoswarm) can now fire directly upon aoe-immune targets, but the resulting aoe will still not hit any aoe-immune targets (just the directly hit target).
    • Notably, this restores the Plasma Siege Starship's ability to target Raid Starships, which was unintentionally lost in the previous version.
  • Youngling Nanoswarm:
    • Paralysis time from 1*mk seconds to 3*mk seconds. Partly because really short paralysis times work a bit oddly, partly because these needed to be more useful.
    • Engine damage from 2*mk => 10*mk.
  • The "The Tank" AI-type wave multiplier from 0.5 => 1, as the intent behind it is that it be actually stronger on offense than usual, rather than weaker. The average should be fine, but possibly another increase can come later.
  • Vorticular Cutlass:
    • Base Health from 7000*mk => 10500*mk. This puts them at the top of the target fleet ship range with 30M*mk cap-health (Armor Ships and Shield Bearers were the only other ones up there before this).
    • Base Speed from 16 => 54. So from slower than a fighter to slightly faster than an etherjet.
    • Base Metal/Crystal cost from 200/50 => 30/30. Now the same price as infiltrators, a bit lower than tele-raiders, etc.
    • Base Energy use from 100 => 20.
  • Acid Sprayers:
    • Base Attack from 450 => 600. This puts the non-bonus cap-dps pretty exactly at the fighter's.
    • Base Movement Speed from 40 => 50. Now same as the ether-jet; this is a very short range ship and needs to be able to close the distance.
    • Vs Hull Type Multipliers from 6 => 8. The fighter's vs-polycrystal bonus is 5, for reference.
    • Base Metal/Crystal cost from 0/300 => 40/180. So 10% more expensive to build to cap than a fighter (though it's still twice as much energy).
  • Riot Tazer:
    • Paralysis Time from 1 => 3 (internally 2 => 4, but the first second generally gets eaten due to processing order).
    • Reload Time from 2 => 8.
    • Per-planet stagger from 2 seconds => 6 seconds.
    • This helps prevent some transient (and difficult to reproduce) stunlocks due to processing order, while maintaining the ability to keep things locked down 50% of the time.
  • Anti-Starship Arachnid V:
    • Has become Spider Bot V, which it has been internally since the beginning but had a bunch of special changes to make it an anti-starship unit.
      • Long ago this was a really important unit for the AI because it would spawn them in response to human usage of starships, but that hasn't been the case for rather a while.
      • In the meantime, they generally only see service if a human player captures a fabricator that produces them, and while the AI does use some starships generally these units are very, very low on usefulness to a human player because they literally can't hit anything that isn't a starship. So now they're just Spider V.
  • Spider Bots:
    • Engine Damage per shot from 15 => 60.
      • This brings mark I cap-engine-damage-per-second to about 30% of a cap of Spider Turrets; a cap of mkII (which has fewer ships) to 50-55%, and so on.
    • Base Health from 3600*mk => 7200*mk. They were right at the flimsiest end of fleet ship cap-health (5M), now just in the lower 3rd (10M).
  • Beam Starship:
    • Rebalancing as a MkV starship, since the fleet ship fabricators produce MkV stuff.
    • Base Move Speed from 14 => 22.
    • Base Health from 4.5M => 22.5M. Now on par with the Core Starship for cap-health.
    • Max targets hit per shot from infinite => 9. Same as Zenith Beam Frigate.
    • Seconds-per-salvo from 5 => 2. Not the same as Zenith Beam Frigate.
    • Base Attack Power from 28k => 44k. If it hits 9 targets every 2 seconds, that puts cap-dps at about 3/4 that of the Core Starship's bonus cap-dps.
    • All vs-hull-type multipliers removed; the "bonus" for ships like this is typically obtained by hitting more than one ship; max bonus is against large clumps where you can always hit the max.
    • Energy and m+c costs looked ok; energy a bit high, m+c rather low for mkV but since you have to get a fabricator to build these we can let it slide unless it becomes a problem.
  • Warbird Starship:
    • Rebalancing as a MkV starship, since the fleet ship fabricators produce MkV stuff.
    • Made eligible for spawning in exos again; were originally removed from that because if they were lead ships they made the whole group go terrifast. Well, Raid Starships are even faster and are still eligible, so these are going back in. Generally these won't be picked to lead all but relatively early exos with lighter overall firepower.
    • Base Health from 3M => 17M. Now about 70% of Core Starship for cap-health (or: a bit over 10M*mk, where 7.5M*mk is about as low as any combat starship should go in the current approach).
    • From no vs-hull-type multipliers => 4 vs polycrystal, heavy, ultra-heavy, and structural.
    • Seconds-per-salvo from 5 => 2.
    • Shots-per-salvo from 40 => 16.
    • Base Attack Power from 2k => 8k. This brings non-bonus/bonus cap-dps to a bit under 200k/800k, very similar to the core starship in that regard.
    • Energy and m+c costs looked ok; energy a bit low, m+c rather low for mkV but since you have to get a fabricator to build these we can let it slide unless it becomes a problem.
  • Paralyzers (specifically, zenith paralyzers, but also nanoswarms to some extent) are now much more aggressive about spreading out their fire across available targets to make better use of the paralysis effect.
    • It still will focus more than is optimal in cases where a group of more than 100 paralyzers (of the same mark, controlled by the same player, relatively near one another) has more than 100 non-paralyzed targets in range (they'll generally all focus on 100 of the targets in the first volley, and spread out afterward) due to our desire to not have target lists longer than 100 for RAM-consumption reasons. But it's a lot better than it used to be.
  • AI Super-Terminals:
    • Previously these became active after you finished building a command station on the planet, and went dormant again as soon as your command station was destroyed. Now they never go dormant after becoming active: now, the only way to shut down an active superterminal is to destroy it.
      • Thanks to Atomjack for pointing out that it was too easy to keep turning the terminal on and off previously.
    • Now each super-terminal "pulse" has a 10% chance to be a "surge":
      • It puts a message in the chat log letting you know there was a surge.
      • It intensifies the pulse by (highest AI difficulty / 2) (so diff 7 means that pulse will be 3.5 as strong in terms of enemy ships generated).
      • It sets the time until the next pulse to 1 second instead of the usual 15. "Chain surges" are therefore possible, albeit fairly unlikely.
    • Previously when the super terminal reached a certain size of mkV pulse it simply didn't get any more dangerous; now it will start shortening the time between pulses as the strength goes past that point.
    • In all, super terminals were being a little too tame. It's great that proper playing of an ST can make the difference between winning and losing, but they seemed to need more danger and unpredictability to balance out their fairly powerful advantages. It's more like "riding the bull" now, and if it gets out of control it can kill you.
  • Mapgen will no longer put the dyson sphere adjacent to an AI core world, because having a core world on alert the whole game was nearly an automatic loss on some more intense scenarios. It's better if you die because of something you actually had influence over.
  • Science Labs I/II/III, the Survey Ship, and the new Ship Design Hacker are now all immune to the maw's swallow effect.
  • Impulse Reaction Emitter, in recognition of winning the 3rd "worst ship" award:
    • Effective Range from 4200 => 6000.
    • Base Move Speed from 20 => 30. This makes it slightly faster than a fighter.
    • Base Metal+Crystal cost from 300+300 => 250+250. That's mkI; other marks use normal progression.
    • Minimum multiplier from 5 => 8.
      • The base-cap-dps was already high at 73k and is now in the top 10 among fleet ships (including self-destructing ships and ships with no bonuses) at 117k, but this helps counterbalance the fact that it doesn't get more than the minimum multiplier against most fleet-ship targets.
    • Multiplier from (target energy use)/1024 => (target energy use)/256. So it starts getting a higher-than-minimum bonus against ships using 2049+ energy, up to the max multiplier of 30 against targets using 7680+ energy (note that the IRE is not any better damage-wise against max-multiplier targets, since it was already very powerful there).
  • Space Plane, in recognition of doing really well in the 3rd "worst ship" poll:
    • Vs-Hull multipliers from 2.4 => 3.2.
      • For reference, that's against Light (Fighter), Polycrystal (Bomber), Heavy (... a lot of things), and UltraHeavy.
      • Eyebots have 3.2, and a somewhat lower base-dps, but can shoot through forcefields.
    • Seconds-per-salvo from 3 => 9.
    • Base Attack Power from 600*mk => 1800*mk.
      • So that's the same dps as before (aside from the multiplier increase), but higher alpha capacity for hit-and-run using their radar dampening, etc.
    • Base Energy Use from 100 => 50, because with the 1.75x ship cap the default energy use (100) was kind of excessive.
    • Base Metal+Crystal cost from 90+90 => 75+75 (that's mkI). More in keeping with the dies-due-to-light-breeze-when-it-can-catch-them nature of the ship.
    • And the AI is really happy about this part: the Space Plane is now immune to AoE damage. That's bargained down from immune-to-gravity, so be happy.
  • Vampire Claw, also in recognition of runner-up-for-worst-ship:
    • Base Health from 5000*mk => 10000*mk.
      • Previously they only had 4M cap-health, which was below even stuff like eyebots. Kind of rough for a melee ship even with self-regen. Now at 8M they're still really low compared to most fleet ships.
    • Now have cloaking. Be afraid. Bring tachyons. And garlic.
      • Note that this means that games with cloaking ships disabled won't have claws. But any game already started that has them will continue having them, regardless of that setting.
    • Base Energy Use from 200 => 160.
    • Base Attack Power from 650 => 850.
    • Added Artillery to the hull types this has a bonus against (om nom missile frigate tasty).
    • Now has a 0.3x multiplier against the command-grade hull type.
  • Youngling Tiger:
    • Base Metal+Crystal from 40+40 => 25+25, same as commandos and weasels.
  • Youngling Vulture:
    • Base Metal+Crystal from 40+40 => 25+25, same as commandos and weasels (and tigers, now).
  • Spire Gravity Drain:
    • Base Metal+Crystal from 0+3000 => 500+1000. These were tied for most expensive fleet ship, and 2x (or more) as expensive as all but 6 other fleet ship types. Wasn't really anything to justify that.
  • Spire Gravity Ripper:
    • Base Metal+Crystal from 1800+1200 => 1000+500. Was similar to the grav drain's situation.
  • Spire Armor Rotter:
    • Base Metal+Crystal from 800+1900 => 450+900. Was 3rd most expensive.
  • Space Tank:
    • Base Metal+Crystal from 1100+0 => 600+100. Was 5th most expensive, and more expensive than bombers, now slightly less expensive than bombers.
    • Base Attack Power from 2600*mk => 2300*mk.
    • Vs-Hull-Type multipliers from 3.2 => 6.
      • Bombers have 6. Space Tanks now have a roughly 30% higher base-dps, since the general idea is for bonus ship types to be 30-50% more useful than triangle types.
    • Effective range from 4800+200*mk => 6300+200*mk. Since they're so slow.
  • Grenade Launcher:
    • Base Energy Use from 400 => 150. It had twice the cap-energy-use of the next highest fleet ship type.
  • Sentinel Frigate:
    • Base Attack Power from 14000*mk => 31000*mk. It had a cap-dps (base=max for this one) of 44k, which was really laughable. 100k is bit on the low end for a type with no bonus of any kind, but it is an infinite-range ship.
  • Made end-of-Fallen-Spire spawns yet more enthusiastic, due to the opposition they sometimes face on 10/10. That AI sure is stubborn...
  • Dyson Antagonizer (hybrid plot) :
    • Now tries to be built somewhat closer to the AI's border.
    • Health from 80M => 40M.
    • The more dangerous values may be restored for Advanced Hybrids or some other option in the future, but the previous string of buffs to this plot was proving too much for normal.
  • Knowledge Raiding:
    • Now scales more granularly with difficulty (for example,previously 9.3, 9.6, and 9.8 all had the same intensity of response as 9; no longer). This somewhat increases the difficulty of k-raids on non-integer difficulties.
    • Now considers the ship cap of ships being spawned when deciding how many to spawn, so a laser gatling doesn't "cost" as much as a fighter, but a Maw "costs" quite a lot more. This makes the difficulty of k-raids not nearly as variable based on what bonus ship types the AI has, or the unit-cap-scale being used.
    • Now only the AI controlling the planet spawns response ships, but spawns twice as many, rather than both AIs spawning ships separately. This makes the composition different if the AIs have different bonus types.
    • Now the spawns happen every 10 seconds instead of (11 - Difficulty) seconds, and the strength is multiplied by 2.5 to roughly normalize it to what diff 7 was doing. The base strength of the spawn is still linearly proportional to difficulty, but this second difficulty-based factor which made it heavily higher-than-linear is no longer there. That really steep ramp-up at the end was good before, but would be excessive with the other changes below.
    • Now, the more knowledge you raid for, the more intense the response. Up to 1 planet's worth of knowledge there is no change, after a full 2 planet's worth of knowledge the response is 1.5x as intense (having increased linearly during the raids after the first planet's worth), at 3 planet's two times as intense, at 4 2.5x, and so on.
      • In multiplayer games this ramping-up is adjusted, e.g. if 3 players have raided 9000 total knowledge (3000 each), the ramp-up is the same as in a single-player game where that player has raided 3000 knowledge. Multi-homeworld players only count as 1 for this purpose.
      • Now each spawn makes a number of "wild rolls" which apply various effects to what happens.
        • These range from "nothing" to "make it spawn around the planet edge" to "multiply it by 1.5" to "make it all raid starships" to "make it spawn on a neighboring planet", etc.
        • At first there is only 1 roll per spawn, but this goes up by 1 for every 1500 knowledge raided.
    • If you have Advanced Logging enabled, each spawn will generate an entry in the "CounterSaboteurSpawns.txt" log file; it may not make sense to players but is very helpful to us if you submit it with your feedback.
    • For the detailed discussion see http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9906.0.html , but in brief the rationale is:
      • K-raiding's main purpose is to let players dig themselves out of a hole by gaining power without increasing AIP.
      • K-raiding also needs to not be a way of circumventing normal AIP-gain on a wide scale. To some extent it's good; avoiding 200 AIP via it is a bit much.
        • If a player gets in a hole multiple times in a row, it's ok if the k-raiding gets harder and eventually either they die to it (sparing them a longer game) or they have to bite more AIP (making progress, probably towards sparing them a longer game).
      • If possible, K-raiding also needs to not be boring. Partly that means making it so that "playing optimally" doesn't involve 10+ k-raids in a game, and partly that means making the actual AI response to the raids more interesting.
      • In general, the balance of all this is tentative. It looks right in our testing, but it may be too easy or (perhaps more likely) too hard. Please give us feedback and we will continue to refine towards better balance and more fun :)
  • Scout Starship:
    • Base Health from 120k/480k/960k/1.2M => 300k*mk.
    • Base Armor Rating from 1500 flat => 1500*mk.
    • Tachyon Range from 750/950/1150/1550 => 2000*mk.
    • Ship Cap from 5/4/3/2 => 5/5/5/2.
    • Energy Use from 2000/4000/6000/6000 => 2000/2000/2000/5000.
    • Base Move Speed from 224/464/704/704 => 240/480/720/720.
    • Now can cloak-boost up to 20*mk allied cloaked ships (range: 4k/5k/6k), except the MkIV which isn't being given cloak-boosting due to potential issues with a tachyon-immune ship having a lot of cloak-boosting.
    • The MkIV Scout Starship:
      • Now provides counter-missile coverage.
      • Will now not use the evade-after-exiting-wormhole logic at all, since it is permacloaked (the non-starship MkIV Scout has the same attribute already).
  • Spirecraft-Medium and Broken-Golems-Medium no longer have a score penalty.
  • Fortresses (mkI, II, and III; human and AI) now have a radar dampening range of 30000. Since most ships have ranges lower than that it doesn't affect them, but this prevents sniping them (notably with zenith-bombards and sentinel frigates) from way out of range.
  • Now when a unit dies while under the influence of a parasite infestation ("reclamation damage"), those parasites will behave far more efficiently:
    • If there are enough of them on the ship to take it over (that is, reclamation damage is >= half the ship's max health) then enough will remain to perform the takeover.
    • Any remaining parasites (which means all of them, if there aren't enough to take the dying ship over) will spread to nearby (within 2000 range units) valid targets that have not been fully infested.
    • The end result is that while the exact same amount of reclamation damage is being done, the efficiency of it actually doing something in condensed fighting is way more satisfactory, particularly towards the end as all the partially-reclaimed ships die off and the parasites all pile up on the survivors.
      • In fact, it's possible that reclamators are now back to being OP, but not nearly as much as in the days when a single leech-starship salvo could "tag" 40 ships for guarunteed reclamation. Your feedback on the new balance will be appreciated.
  • Youngling Nanoswarm:
    • Base attack power from 400*mk => 800*mk. Still not much at all, but it allows:
    • Inherent "damage does 2x as much reclamation damage" rule removed. So it does the same amount of RD as before, just without the fiddly rule (which is now completely gone, the nanoswarm was the only thing using it).
  • Mines:
    • Base Health is now 16 times the damage done, to allow 16 detonations before "wearing out" instead of the 2/3 that were probably common before. There are 16 mines in the graphic: the logic is unassailable, no?
    • Standard Mines:
      • Base Metal+Crystal cost from 360+1200 => 20+40, which puts them at about 2x the cap m+c cost of zenith autobombs (which are in many ways simply mobile mines).
        • Note that the build time for all 3 mine types is still 90 seconds.
    • Area Mines:
      • Base Metal+Crystal cost from 1080+3600 => 40+80.
      • Now hit a maximum of 10 targets with their aoe.
      • Base Damage per hit from 7500 => 52500 (half as much damage as a normal single-target mine).
    • EMP Mines:
      • Base Metal+Crystal cost from 720+2400 => 60+120.
      • Fixed an error in the tooltip: it said the paralysis was 60 seconds long, but it's really only 10 seconds.
  • Harvester Exo-Shields, in honor of winning the 4th "Worst Unit" poll (and the first one for which it was eligible) :
    • Now has cloaking.
    • Now cloaks the protected harvester.
    • No longer halves production of protected harvester.
    • Energy Use from 1000 => 5000. At maximum non-ZPG energy efficiency (running everything off mkIIs) that's a bit under 4 (m+c)/s to run, or 1/5th of a mkI harvester.
    • The result is that:
      • They have a much lower operational cost which no longer scales up with higher harvester marks or with your energy efficiency.
      • More importantly, they allow a new tactical choice: do you want attacking enemies to potentially be distracted some/all of the harvesters in the system, or do you want to make sure they stay focused on the command station or some other objective? Some defensive setups get much higher efficiency when the enemy stays focused in a particular radial or linear area, and this can help with that. On the other hand, sometimes the AI's tendency to split up after harvesters is a big help.
  • Metal/Crystal Harvester II/III, in honor of getting 2nd place (by one vote) in the first "Worst Unit" poll in which they were eligible:
    • A bit of background:
      • Unlocking Econ Station II costs 4000 knowledge and gives a total of 576 m+c above the "standard" command station (econ I) if you build all 6, and that bonus is still relevant if you unlock Econ III. That's about 0.144 (m+c)/s per knowledge point.
      • Unlocking Econ Station III costs 5000 knowledge and gives a total of 1536 m+c above the "standard" command station. Benefit/K Ratio is about 0.3072.
      • Previously, unlocking mark II of either metal or crystal harvester cost 3250 knowledge and, assuming a mid-game situation of 13 total planets (i.e. all 6 of econ II and econ III could be placed) with an average of 2 spots of that resource per planet (ymmv, but it's probably not far off) gave a total of 208 resources above mkI harvesters. Benefit/K Ratio was about 0.064.
      • Previously, unlocking mark III of either harvester cost 4000 knowledge (but really 7250 since you don't get the benefits of mkII and mkIII at the same time like you do with econ stations) and, across 26 ressource spots, gave a total of 416 resources above mkI harvesters. Benefit/K Ratio (assuming 7250 "real" K cost) was about 0.0574.
    • So, to do something about this pretty vast disparity:
      • Harvester II:
        • Knowledge cost from 3250 => 2000.
        • Production from 28 => 31 (so +8 => +11).
      • Harvester III:
        • Knowledge cost from 4000 => 2500 (so 4500 total).
        • Production from 36 => 73 (so +16 => +53).
          • Yes, that's a lot, but that's what parity with econ III looks like. And nerfing econ III would have been an outrage considering how much waiting-for-resources happens on challenging games _with_ econ IIIs.
    • In short, harvester upgrades should now be competitive with econ station upgrades. Getting mkIII in both harvesters also now costs the same amount of knowledge as getting mkIII econ stations, but has a somewhat lower "barrier to entry" in that the individual knowledge costs are smaller.
      • Further balance feedback is, of course, welcome. This change will have a fairly dramatic impact in favor of harvesters on multi-HW games, for one, but it's primarily important that choices be interesting in single-HW games and adjustments can be made for the less common scenarios (as long as multi-HW doesn't become excruciating, of course). Of more concern is the impact on multiplayer games if all players gift all their harvesters to one player who upgrades to mkIII harvesters (and gives resources back) and other such tomfoolery, but that can also be adjusted for as the need arises.
  • Warp Jammer Command Stations, in honor of tying for third in the first "Worst Unit" poll it was eligible for:
    • Now prevent their planets from putting adjacent AI planets on alert.
      • Those adjacent planets can still be put on alert any other way (for example, but another bordering human world without a jammer or by a significant human presence on the planet or a different adjacent planet).
      • But this still allows a new strategic choice in shaping the AI's response to your presence.
      • Notably, this could be used on a planet adjacent to a particularly hard-to-crack AI planet to allow you to get supply on the target planet and thus deploy turrets and such without putting the target planet on permanent alert (which is normally a distinct no-no for core worlds and homeworlds). But beware, if the jammer is destroyed, its effects go away. Also, jammers are far from free.
    • Also fixed a longstanding bug where these counted (for display purposes only, apparently) as an AI reinforcement warp gate.
  • Missile shots (from the missile frigate, MLRS fleet ship, MLRS turret, Missile Turret, Anti-Armor Ship, etc) now can acquire a new target from their firing ship's target list if their current target is destroyed or otherwise no longer available (note that all shots insta-hit a ship trying to leave the planet, but missiles now won't "overkill" them in that case).
    • Bear in mind that the parent ship's target list does not necessarily include all viable targets, and is often limited to 50 nearby targets, but this still significantly decreases DPS wastage for missiles (which generally move fairly slowly)
  • Mobile Repair Stations, in belated honor of doing well in the last "worst unit" poll
    • Maximum simultaneous repairs from 100 => 20.
    • Repair rate reduced.
    • Time it must remain stationary before starting repairs from 60 seconds => 5.
    • Now has cloaking.
      • This doesn't break when repairing, but beware AI tachyons.
  • Metal/Crystal Harvester Upgrades:
    • MkII production from 31 => 30.
    • MkIII production from 73 => 55.
    • Results/Rationale:
      • Assuming 12 resource spots on the homeworld and 4 resource spots per captured planet (the latter is a well-attested average, to the author's surprise).
      • MkII upgrades are better than EconII if you have 1, 2, 3, or greater than 12 planets, but are worse from 4 to 11.
      • MkIII upgrades are better than EconIII (plus EconII since it's unlocked on the way) if you have 1-4 or greater than 13 planets, but are worse from 5 to 12.
      • Harvesters still have the advantage of not occupying the command station "slot" but also still have the disadvantage of being at the mercy of mapgen: sometimes you don't have the luxury of picking a planet with 4+ resource spots instead of a planet with 1-2.
      • All in all, the question of "do I upgrade harvesters or econ stations?" should now be more situational and map-based.
  • Fixed a null exception that happened when gifting a spirecraft mining enclosure to another player.
  • Neinzul Enclave Starships, in honor of winning the fifth "Worst Unit" poll.
    • Base Armor Rating from 1000 flat => 1000*mk.
    • Base Health from 500K*mk => 3M*mk.
      • This gives an individual one 80% the health of an individual corresponding fleet-boosting starship; not using cap comparisons here since these are not military ships (i.e. ships with an attack), but for reference those fleet-boosting starships have 2x as much cap.
    • Now have radar dampening of 8000/7500/7000/6500.
      • Between this, the armor, and the health it should be a lot more reasonable to keep these alive unless you get overwhelmed, in which case these should die (cloaking was experimented with, but was way too exploitable; that much cheese requires cloaker starships).
    • Knowledge Costs from 0/3000/5000/10000 => 0/2000/2000/14000.
      • This is because the first two upgrades are purely for in-the-field construction (which is worth something) and the last is a game-changing ability to have mkIV production capacity without an advanced factory.
    • The rate at which they construct ships used to be the same as a space dock, and is now 4*mk as fast as a space dock (so 16x for a mkIV).
      • This is because previously using these efficiently basically required engineer support (specifically, engineer mkIII support). Engies still help, but it's not as critical.
  • Armored Warheads, in honor of placing second in the fifth "Worst Unit" poll:
    • Base Attack Power from 300k/1.5M/2.4M => 1M*mk.
    • Explosion Size from 1500/1250/750 => 1500*mk.
    • Now do 10k*mk armor damage, enough to strip all the armor off most units that aren't some kind of boss fight.
    • In general you still aren't going to want to use these a lot, it's still a "rot your teeth" sort of unit where heavy use is rarely a good sign for how well your game is going. But these should be more useful than they were, for sure.
  • Lightning Warheads:
    • Base Attack Power from 300k/1.5M/2.4M => 800k*mk.
      • Just keeping up with the armored warhead changes; only a significant change to the mkI, really. So the armored ones pack about 25% more punch, for whatever that's worth.
    • Explosion size changed to match the new armored warheads: 1500/1250/750 => 1500*mk.
  • Metal/Crystal manufactory input and output scale multiplied by 10 (so consumes 200 of a resource to produce 140, instead of 20 for 14), in honor of placing 3rd in the fifth "Worst Unit" poll.
  • There's now a galaxy-wide population cap on each of the three types (enemy-to-all, player-ally, and ai-ally) of Dyson Gatling, equal to the current effective AIP.
    • So if AIP is 80, there could be 80 enemy-to-all gatlings, 80 AI-ally gatlings, and 79 player-ally gatlings and if the Dyson was currently player-ally it would still spawn another player-ally gatling before ceasing to spawn until either the player-ally gatling count went down or the AIP went up
  • Amended the "if base max health >= 1,000,000, then immune to fusion cutters" rule to exclude fleet ship types whose mkI versions don't pass that >= 1,000,000 threshold (to prevent situations where fusion cutters were getting way less useful against higher-mark AI planets, etc). The fleet ship types that still have the immunity due to health:
    • Spire Stealth Battleship
    • Spire Blade Spawner
    • Spire Maw
    • Spire Tractor Platform
  • Ships killed by a zombie-reclamator no longer spread any excess reclamation damage they have to other ships. The spreading mechanic was intended to make non-zombie-reclamators more reliable; the zombie reclamators were already plenty powerful enough :
  • Teleport Battlestations, in honor of doing pretty well in the last worst-unit poll:
    • Base Max Health from 14k*mk => 28k*mk (bringing it from 4.8M cap-hp, which is basically the minimum for a fleet ship, to 9.6M cap-hp where about 18 other types will be lower than it).
    • Base Attack Power from 400 => 700 (bringing it from 39.2k cap-base-dps and 94k cap-max-dps, where some ships have a base dps higher than that max-dps, to the midst of the respectable-attack types)
  • Marauders and Resistance Fighters can now be targeted by ships that cannot target small units (Bomber Starship, etc).
  • Since the Riot Starship MkIII did pretty well in the last worst-ship poll:
    • Gave them tachyon coverage matching the MkIII scout starship.
    • Added a couple additional options for its highest-level hardpoint:
      • Grav Tazer
        • Similar to the Riot IIs tazer but also applies the "halt" effect (same as the grav ripper) to everything hit, making it take longer for even paralysis-immune ships to get away.
        • Note that these share the same planet-wide stagger category as Riot II tazers, to prevent these making permanent tazer lock possible again.
      • Grav Generator
        • Basically a ship-mounted grav turret, requires research of Grav Turret Is.
  • CPAs now don't get queued up if the result based on difficulty, AIP, etc would be way too small (under 200 ships, for high caps, adjusted appropriately) (once a CPA is announced, however, it will happen).

Rebalancing High (and-not-so-high) Difficulties

  • Since the many changes to high-difficulty wave calculations a few months ago the 9+ difficulty range has gotten a fair bit of play and generally looks easier than it has been. And just recently the game was beaten fair-and-square on 10/10. In response to that bug:
    • A Diff 9+ player will seed 1 less data center than normal (but no fewer than 1 if it would have seeded any).
    • On Diff 8+ the first step of the wave size formula has been changed from:
      • ( AIProgress * AIDifficulty ) / ( 13 - AIDifficulty )
      • to ( ( ( AIProgress * 0.8 ) ^ 1.1 ) * AIDifficulty ) / ( 13 - AIDifficulty )
      • This produces very similar sizes in the early game but adds a gradual exponential increase as AIP gets higher, having both the effect of making later planet captures not feel as much less significant (in terms of wave size) than early planet captures and increasing the overall "throw weight" of the AI's attacks on these higher difficulties.
    • On Diff 7+ the randomization of wave intervals (which feeds directly into step 5 of the wave size formula) has been changed to consider the number of planets that the AI can send waves against (and thus the probable defensive power of those worlds, i.e. chokepoints, and the viability or lack thereof of smaller waves):
      • If there are 6+ wave-targetable planets it uses the normal (pre-5.036) formula of adding a random number from (AIDifficulty*-60) to (AIDifficulty*120).
      • If there are 5 wave-targetable planets the random is from (AIDifficulty*-30) to (AIDifficulty*120).
      • If there are 4 the random is from 0 to (AIDifficulty*120).
      • If 3, from (AIDifficulty*30) to (AIDifficulty*120).
      • If 2, from (AIDifficulty*60) to (AIDifficulty*120).
      • If 1, from (AIDifficulty*90) to (AIDifficulty*150) (making it actually able to hit single-chokepoints harder than it used to).
      • The upshot is that it makes the AI a little "smarter" about figuring out that it may as well not bother sending small waves against concentrated defenses and should just save up for stronger attack forces. Accordingly, since the AI on <7 is intentionally a bit dumb it doesn't get this new rule at all.
  • Previously, an AI of difficulty 9.3 or higher would automatically be one tech level higher than normal. This was generally fine but did cause a pretty massive difficulty cliff between 9.0 and 9.3, and we prefer to keep each step a relatively smooth progression from one step to the next. Now:
    • That automatic tech level increase has been removed.
    • AI's with difficulty > 9 get an additional reduction to their tech thresholds (on top of the normal difficulty*10 one) of ((difficulty-9)*200). So the threshold for reaching tech 2 is:
      • 9 = 210 (same as before).
      • 9.3 = 148.
      • 9.6 = 85.
      • 9.8 = 43.
      • 10 = 0 (so diff 10 starts at tech 2).
      • Of course, that makes the thresholds for tech 3 and tech 4 much higher since it's using the normal base of 800 and 1200 for those instead of 300 and 800 (which they used to use due to automatically being one tech level higher), thus actually making things a lot easier for those higher AIPs. See next change.
    • To add back some of the difficulty but in a more granular fashion than before, on diff 9+ (not just 9.3+) waves will have a portion of their fleet ships "promoted" to the next tech level according to how close AIP is to the next tech level.
      • So if you're playing on 9.6 and have 50 AIP, approximately 50/85= 58% of the mkIs fleet ships in a wave will be promoted to mkII.
      • Of course, they'll also run into the tech level multiplier which will reduce their actual numbers significantly, but roughly 58% of the wave's "strength" of that ship type was spent on the higher tech level.
  • Previously carriers were way less dangerous than the ships they contained, tending to make a wave + a stack of carriers feel a lot more like that many back-to-back waves. This is better than the pre-carrier condition of waves capping out at 2000 ships, but still tends to cause the actual difficulty of waves to increase much much slower with the size of the wave than is desirable. So:
    • Now gets +1 shots-per-salvo per 16 ships inside the carrier (that's on high caps; per 8 ships on normal, 4 on low, 2 on ultra low). So a carrier containing 1000 ships on a high caps game has 63 shots per salvo.
    • Base Attack Power from 1400*mk => 19200*mk (the base strength of 16 fighters on high caps, but without the fighter's bonuses).
    • Seconds-Per-Salvo from 2 => 4 (same as fighter, cuts down a bit on shot-spam).
    • Can no longer fire as though ignoring through forcefields, but it can still move through them.
    • Shot type from dark matter => energy bomb as the idea is not for these to be easily counterable via counter-dark-matter turrets.
    • Hull-bonus against Turret from 0.1 => 1.
    • Hull-bonus against Structural from 0.1 => 1.
    • Hull-bonuses against Scout and Command-Grade staying at 0.1.
    • In summary, a full carrier is now pretty dangerous, but the firepower is still significantly lower (by about 3x, probably) than its total contents. That's fine as they'll probably still feel more powerful than you want them to be.
  • Previously it was possible for AI Homeworlds to get really brutal combinations like an AI Eye + 3 (or more) Core Raid Engine guard posts (which is pretty much the RNG saying "good game" on higher difficulties but you don't know until you scout it), or nothing really all that threatening at all. Randomization is core to AI War, but this particular bit of it could literally be the difference between a fairly easy endgame and a mathematically-impossible-to-win situation.
    • Now, for AI Homeworlds, it randomizes the three most brutal structures (Core Raid Engine, Core CPA, and AI Eye) separately from the rest of the structures:
      • On Diff 9+ it always gets two picks from this new set. So you could get an Eye + a Core Raid, or two CPAs, or two Eyes (which is actually kind of nice to you since they don't really stack), or whatever. But not 3 Core Raids. And not none of the above.
      • On Diff 8+ it randomly rolls (per homeworld) between one and two picks.
      • On Diff 7+ it always gets one pick.
      • Below Diff 7 it randomly rolls between zero and one picks.
    • As the set of core guard posts expands in the future (expansions, mainly), this "brutal" set can also be added to.

New Drones For The Neinzul Enclave Starship

  • Didn't want to let the AI have _all_ the fun, so: Added 4 new drone ship types that only the Neinzul Enclave Starship can build:
    • Neinzul Laser Drone I-IV
      • MkI and II require Laser Turret II technology. MkIII and IV require Laser Turret III technology.
      • Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that Laser Turrets have a bonus against.
    • Neinzul Needler Drone I-IV
      • MkI and II require Basic Turret II technology. MkIII and IV require Basic Turret III technology.
      • Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that Basic Turrets have a bonus against.
    • Neinzul MLRS Drone I-IV
      • MkI and II require MLRS Turret II technology. MkIII and IV require MLRS Turret III technology.
      • Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that MLRS Turrets have a bonus against.
    • Neinzul Missile Drone I-IV
      • MkI and II require Missile Turret II technology. MkIII and IV require Missile Turret III technology.
      • Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that Missile Turrets have a bonus against.
    • A Neinzul Enclave Starship can build any of these up to its own mark level once you have the corresponding turret technology, just select an enclave and click the "DRONE" tab on the buy menu (similar to how the Starship Constructor has a "RIOT" tab for the Riot Control Starships).
    • Stat wise:
      • Each drone only lives 30 seconds; no repair, no attrition-stops-on-low-power, no regeneration chambers, nada. It's got 30 seconds to hurt something.
      • Drones do not have the lightning speed of the normal Youngling types (not wanting these to horn in on what makes the younglings special). One consequence is that the "mothership" has to be within a certain range of the stuff you want hurt.
      • Drones are pretty flimsy, but dying from enemy fire isn't much of an event for these.
      • Ship cap is about 25% of normal because these aren't supposed to be like a whole new ship unlock, they're just a bonus on top of what you already get for turret (and enclave starship) research.
      • Drones cannot traverse wormholes.
      • Drones are super, super cheap in both metal/crystal and energy.
      • Attack-power-wise on an individual basis they're about as strong as a normal fleet ship with 5x bonuses, making them fairly effective against the stuff with those hull types.
    • The motivation behind these:
      • High-difficulty play can make it feel very painful to spend knowledge unlocking something that doesn't give an offensive boost. That's fine, but turrets in particular could get very little love due to their... very limited offensive use, shall we say. So having turret research provide a modest amount of offensive boost (if you have CoN and thus the Neinzul Enclave Starship, anyhow) seemed like a fun way to do things. And we've already done the cross-tech thing with having turret research unlock spire capital ship modules in LotS, so doing a bit more of it seemed fine.
      • Despite the fairly massive buffs Neinzul Enclave Starships received not long ago there's still been a lot of feedback that they're underwhelming and that they don't have a lot of point. Well, now they can build lots of little sharp points that will really annoy the AI for you, and they're the only way to build them.
      • But this is also not so powerful that you have to do turret research or even use the enclaves at all, it's just making it nicer if you do.

Better Scaling For Multi-Homeworld Games

  • Previously CPA size was multiplied by the number of (non-Helper-role) human players, fixed to be multiplied by the (starting) number of human homeworlds.
  • Previously if there were multiple human homeworlds (and thus human ship cap was much higher) each AI player would send that many extra waves (and various threats like normal CPAs and exo-attacks would be multiplied in size accordingly, though not always linearly).
    • This was generally fine but:
      • Particularly on high homeworld counts that could lead to a ton of waves all smaller than the carrier threshold that would nonetheless add up to larger than the max number of AI ships that the game generally allows on a planet (5000), causing those extra AI ships to just disappear.
      • Also, now that carriers will be more of a threat, it would be nice for them to see use in those circumstances.
      • Some important varieties of AI strength were not being increased at all, like: Reinforcements, Counterattack Guard Post spawns, Raid Engine spawns, Core Raid Engine spawns, Core CPA Guard Post spawns,
    • So now:
      • If there are one or two human homeworlds, the number of waves per AI player is calculated the same way as before: one and two, respectively. But if there's more than that it still doesn't go above two and instead increases the size of the individual waves proportionately.
        • So 3 HWs means twice as many waves as single-player (instead of three times as many) but they're 1.5x as large as they would have been. 4 HWs means twice as many waves that are 2x as large, and so on.
      • Reinforcements, Counterattack Guard Post spawns, Raid Engine spawns, Core Raid Engine spawns, and Core CPA Guard Post spawns now use the same scaling-with-HW-count as is used for normal CPAs: multiply by 1 + ((HW_count-1)*0.33).
        • This isn't 1:1 because the power increase from multiple homeworlds isn't (closer in MP, but the problems of coordination and efficiency are in play there).
  • When Spirecraft are enabled and there's more than one human homeworld, the number of asteroids seeded will go up.
    • The main reason is that on Hard you're facing much harder exos on multi-HW, but weren't getting any additional benefit to match. Medium was not as much of a concern, but it could use it too.
    • The increase is 50% for each additional human homeworld, so 2 HHWs => 150% asteroids, 3 HHWs => 200%, 4 => 250%, etc. A straight-up 1:1 was also possible but seemed excessive. In general multi-HW isn't really a 1:1 increase, but let us know if this scaling feels like too much or too little.
  • Spirecraft Shieldbearers:
    • Can now be put in low power mode (shutting off their projected shield).
    • Now their projected shield no longer shrinks as the shieldbearer loses health.
      • Something more like shrinking-to-90% had been considered, but that would still have resulted in stacks of them getting whittled down all at once (while still taking up ship cap) rather than dying one at a time while leaving the remaining ones at high health (depending on how they were stacked).
    • Now have AI-only variants that can be chosen for exos.
      • To make them actually work with exos, this variant actually has normal guns. They're only moderately powerful (about 1/4 as much DPS as a same-mark siege tower), but they avoid the logical problems the gunless ones had in exos.
      • These still have the shrink-when-damaged behavior, to make them a bit easier to handle.
      • Adding shieldbearers may make exos significantly harder, but that may not be a bad thing. Let us know if you find it particularly fun or unfun; adjustments can be made.
    • Thanks to TechSY730 and others for inspiring these changes.
  • Spire Maw vacuum-recharge-seconds from 2 => 5/4/3/2/1.
  • Knowledge Hacker and Ship Design Hacker collision priority set to 890 (below only stationary objects, standard/hardened forcefield generators, command stations, command station cores, and rally posts).
  • Core CPA Guard Posts now start a timer-for-CPA instead of instantly triggering a CPA.
  • Core CPA Guard Posts now trigger in response to >= 1 enemy human military ship being present, rather than > 1.
    • So that Artillery Golem won't get by on the ol' "But I'm just *one* ship!" excuse anymore.
    • EMP mines:
      • Health halved, which halves the number of times a single one will go off before needing to be rebuilt.
      • Knowledge cost from 1500 => 1000.
    • Area mines:
      • Knowledge cost from 4000 => 2000.
  • Vampire claws are now immune to being camouflaged by the Camouflager AI Type because the combination of melee and cloaking didn't work very well there (could wind up with non-decloakable enemy vampire claws just sitting on your planet for a long time).
  • Made Maws try to vacuum their shoot-at target if for some reason vacuuming their "assist" target failed.
  • Carrier hull type from Scout => Ultra-Heavy.
  • Now when a unit is actively making progress on a build queue it loses the ability to be cloaked until 2 seconds after the last build queue activity.
    • Notably, this prevents neinzul enclave starships from spamming a planet with drones (and whatever else) with impunity. Can still FRD built non-drones through a wormhole to a target planet, though, and that's fine.
    • Also this will break the cloak on modular ships that are building new modules, but since modules mostly can't die in combat anymore (except shield modules) and their internal build queue is disabled while they're in low-power mode, and if they're not in low-power mode and they're on an enemy planet they've probably lost cloak due to shooting at something... all told, shouldn't be a big change for them
  • Human Forcefield generators (including hardened ones) now drop remains and can be rebuilt.
    • Note that the normal under-construction-forcefield-generator restrictions still apply; namely that it cannot receive construction assistance if it is close to another forcefield that has recently taken damage (this was added a few months ago to prevent forcefield+engie stacks that were effectively immortal).
    • Still, the fact that the rebuild starts at 50% instead of 0% (and is automatic if there are remains rebuilders nearby, as opposed to requiring player intervention) is a buff.
    • Also note that this does not apply to the "player home forcefield generator" that starts next to each human home command station: those are supposed to be irreplaceable.
  • Human command stations (other than the home command station) now drop remains and can be rebuilt.
    • Also removed the rule where colony ships and mobile builders on the planet (or in a transport on the planet) when a human command station dies also die.
    • That rule (and the lack of rebuildable command stations) was there to prevent exploits based around very rapidly rebuilding command stations. It could often tie up AI attack forces much longer than would normally be possible, etc.
    • However, one of the most unnecessarily-micro-intensive operations in the game was rebuilding lost planets because you have to build a colony ship, select it, give it a move order to the lost planet, switch to that planet, select the colony ship, select the command station type you want, and place it. Way more player interaction than should be necessary for "rebuild what was there". But we couldn't make it a lot easier without making those exploits possible again.
    • So, to replace the previous exploit-prevention, now when a non-home human command station dies then it "stalls" the construction of any human command station on that planet for 4 minutes (1 minute if the station that died was a military station); during that time a new station can be placed or the previous one's remains rez'd by a remains rebuilder, but the resulting under-construction station will not actually make any progress on construction until the stalling timer has expired.
      • Note that all ways of removing a human station will trigger this timer: being destroyed by enemy fire, being scrapped, and being replaced by another human command station. The latter is something of an inconvenience but the thought is that it is far less than the convenience gained by being able to automatically rebuild command stations.
  • Remains Rebuilders no longer require supply, to make rebuilding a "satellite" planet at least possible.
    • If this makes some wild exploits possible please let us know, but since most of the stuff that can be rebuilt requires supply anyway..
  • Grenade Launcher grenade explosion radius from 200/300/400/500/600 => flat 500.
  • Flak grenade (from guardians and turrets) radius from 300/350/400/450/500 => flat 500
  • AI Guardians energy cost from 500*mk => 1250*mk; this is basically irrelevant (AI players don't have an energy model, really), but does help Impulse Reaction Emitters hurt them, giving the IRE another situation in which they are useful that isn't dependent on superweapons or something like that being enabled.
  • Shield Bearers (the normal ones; this was already true of the spirecraft ones) are now immune to insta-kill.
  • All non-shield modules are now immune to armor boosting (they're invincible, it'd be a waste).
  • AI Carriers:
    • Effective range from 6000 => 3000.
    • Base Health from 3M*mk => 2M*mk.
    • Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring these changes.
  • MkII+ Basic, Laser, MLRS, and Heavy Beam Cannon turrets now have radar dampening equal to their range minus 1000 to prevent them being inevitably alpha-striked by really substantial waves.
  • The Zenith Trader has finally yielded to the threat of sanctions and now only sells no-AIP-on-death versions of structures to the AI. The toys will still annoy you when the AI gets them (indeed, a new toy has been added to the AI-only list to maintain annoyance equilibrium) but the Trader will no longer be an indirect source of AIP.
  • In honor of it winning the latest worst-unit poll, Zenith Reserves:
    • AIP cost on death from 5*mk => 1*mk.
    • Amount of ships granted increased roughly 33%.
  • In honor of coming in second in the most recent worst-unit poll, the Decloaker:
    • In general, moving this from a mobile tachyon unit with outdated stats to a mobile tachyon unit with roughly mkI-starship stats.
      • Note the tachyon range of 20k was already huge, no buff seemed necessary there.
      • Also note that it isn't really a starship from the perspective of starship disassemblers, etc, it's just beefed up because it has a ship cap of 4.
    • No longer has the IsBlind flag.
    • Now has cloaking.
    • Base Damage-per-shot from 36k => 50k.
    • Seconds-per-salvo from 10 => 2.
    • Effective Attack Range from 18k => 8k (the only reason they had such a long range was that we hadn't revisited this one since the last major range changes).
    • Base Health from 40k => 2M (again, in the general range of mkI starships).
    • Base Energy Use from 100 => 1000.
    • Base Metal Cost from 5000 => 10000.
    • Base Crystal Cost from 7500 => 20000.
    • Now has most common-to-starship immunities.
  • Captive Human Settlement, in honor of coming in third in the "worst unit" poll: AIP-on-death from 100 => 15.
    • As was understood in the discussion in the nomination/poll threads, these are supposed to be a "penalty" unit, but players had a very good point that 100 AIP was just gameshattering for something like that (rebel colonies have the same AIP-on-death, for instance).
  • Spire Armor Rotter, in honor of coming in fourth in the latest "worst unit" poll:
    • The general idea is to make these pretty good combat ships in their own right, at least until armor matters more in the general case and armor rot thus means more.
    • Base Health from 14,500*mk => 23k*mk (this gives them a similar cap-health as fighters).
    • Multiplier vs UltraHeavy from 2 => 3.
    • Multiplier vs Heavy from 2 => 3.
    • Multiplier vs Polycrystal from 1 => 3.
  • Microparasite, because it (like other experimentals we need to get back to) had really outdated stats:
    • In general, rebalancing these to be something like the MkV Parasite while maintaining their distinguishing characteristics (like having twice the cap and firing 4 times as fast).
    • Metal Cost from 1800 => 1400.
    • Crystal Cost from 240 => 3400.
    • Base Health from 7200 => 36k.
    • Base Armor Rating from 500 => 1500.
    • Base Damage-per-shot from 8000 => 2000.
      • Previously they had 6.4x the dps of a mkV parasite, even though they were considered mkIII! This is still 1.6x the dps of a mkV parasite.
    • Base Armor Piercing from 0 => 3000.
    • Effective Attack Range from 4600 => 6000.
    • Multiplier vs Polycrystal from 20 => 4.
    • Multiplier vs Artillery from 1 => 4.
  • Special Forces Guard Posts no longer count as reinforcement-warp-gates and are no longer autotargeted (by player or player-ally-minor-faction ships).
    • They still get reinforcements when their planet is reinforced, and those reinforcements use the special forces behavior, but they can no longer make a planet eligible for reinforcement all by themselves.
    • This removes the "cheese" that was possible by keeping them alive to trick the AI into reinforcing a planet with nothing but a special forces guard post on it (generally a waste).
    • With the cheese gone, there's no longer a need to make it hard to keep these alive, so the autotargeting could go away.
    • Which in turn removes the annoyance of getting +1 AIP from actions over which you did not have direct control (particularly with minor faction allies).
    • We may do something more clever with the special forces ships themselves in the future, we'll see. In the meantime these two changes seem to be a net improvement.

Core Guard Post Rebalance

  • All Core Guard Posts:
    • Base Energy Cost from 500 => 10000 (doesn't matter except for IRE fire).
  • Core Heavy Beam Guard Post:
    • Total base attack power (this is divided amongst all its beams) from 8M => 4M.
    • Multiplier vs Swarmer from 4 => 3.
    • Multiplier vs Refractive from 3.5 => 3.
    • Multiplier vs UltraLight from 3.25 => 3.
    • Multiplier vs Medium from 2.5 => 3.
    • Multiplier vs Heavy from 1.75 => 3.
  • Core Electric Guard Post:
    • Basically balancing this against a cap of theoretical-mark-V electric shuttles, but still only about half that power with less than a quarter of the health.
    • Can now hit a maximum of 200 units per shot
      • This is the same mechanic as the electric shuttle and it can multi-hit targets up to 5 times each if hits are left over from the first pass. So it gets more-or-less optimal DPS as long as 40 ships are in range.
    • Base Health from 6M => 12M.
    • Multiplier vs Artillery from 4 => 1.
    • Multiplier vs Neutron from 2 => 1.
    • Seconds Per Salvo from 13 => 20.
    • Damage Per Shot from 3k => 50k.
    • Base Attack Range from 13k => 8k.
  • Core Missile Guard Post:
    • Basically balancing this against a cap of MkV missile frigates, but with way less durability.
    • Base Health from 6M => 18M.
    • Multiplier vs UltraLight from 8 => 4.
    • Multiplier vs Medium from 6 => 1.
    • Multiplier vs Light from 1 => 4.
    • Multiplier vs Swarmer from 1 => 4.
    • Multiplier vs Neutron from 1 => 4.
    • Multiplier vs Composite from 1 => 4.
    • Multiplier vs Refractive from 1 => 4.
    • Effective Attack Range from 36000 => 12000.
    • Seconds Per Salvo from 5 => 1.
    • Damage Per Shot from 80k => 200k.
  • Core Sentinel Guard Post:
    • Basically balancing this against a cap of MkV Zenith Beam Frigates, but with maybe half the power and way less durability.
    • Can now hit a maximum of 20 targets per shot.
      • Using the same mechanic as the Zenith Beam Frigate: the line attack does full damage to each target hit, but gets no compensation for not hitting the full number of targets.
    • Base Health from 3M => 18M.
    • Damage Per Shot from 4k => 100k.
    • Effective Attack Range from 9000 => 8000.
    • Multiplier vs Light from 16 => 1.
    • Multiplier vs Swarmer from 8 => 1.
    • Multiplier vs Neutron from 4 => 1.
  • Core Leech Guard Post:
    • Basically balancing this against a cap of MkV Parasites, but with way less durability.
      • Interestingly, the attack power was basically already spot-on.
    • Base Health from 6M => 12M.
    • Multiplier vs Medium from 3 => 4.
    • Multiplier vs Neutron from 1 => 4.
    • Effective Attack Range from 5000 => 6000 (slightly further out than its radar dampening range).
  • Core Zenith Bombard Guard Post:
    • Basically balancing this against a cap of MkV Zenith Bombards, but with way less durability and about half the attack power.
    • Base Health from 6M => 12M.
    • Damage Per Shot from 60k => 900k.
    • Effective Attack Range from 53k => 34k.
    • Multiplier vs Heavy from 1.75 => 2.
    • Multiplier vs UltraHeavy from 1 => 2.
    • Multiplier vs Structural from 1 => 2.
    • Multiplier vs Swarmer from 4 => 1.
    • Multiplier vs Refractive from 3.5 => 1.
    • Multiplier vs UltraLight from 3.25 => 1.
    • Multiplier vs Medium from 2.5 => 1.
  • Core Zenith Fortress Guard Post:
    • Was going to balance this against a cap of MkV Fighters (but without the hull-type-bonuses), but with way less durability and maybe 1/2 to 2/3rds the attack power... but it's actually already there.
    • Shot type from (default? it doesn't appear to be set?) => Flamewave.
  • Core Spire Shield Guard Post:
    • Base Health from 392M => 200M.
  • Core Neinzul Melee Guard Post:
    • Basically balancing this against a theoretical cap of MkV cutlasses, but with way less durability.
    • Base Health from 6M => 36M (it's a self-damaging melee unit, it needs it).
    • Base Move Speed from 30 => 44.
    • Damage Per Hit from 106k => 300k.
    • Multiplier vs Neutron from 3 => 4.
    • Multiplier vs Light from 3 => 4.
    • Multiplier vs Scout from 2 => 1.
    • Multiplier vs Composite from 1 => 4.
  • Core Booster Guard Post:
    • Base Health from 6M => 18M.
    • Munitions Boost and Armor Boost range from 8k => 16k.
    • Intentionally leaving the attack alone here: that's not really the point of the unit.
  • Buffed reinforcements a bit in general. Judging by CPA size and other indicators since the major rework of reinforcements this has been lower than it was by a significant margin.
  • When an AI gets 2 "brutal" picks for its homeworld (only happens on high difficulty), it now cannot pick 2 AI Eyes, since that's too nice.
  • Previously it was very easy to keep an AI from ever reinforcing its homeworld until the very end during the assault upon it. This is generally desirable as part of the game is not stirring up that hornets nest until you've got the extermination squad in position. But the complete lack of reinforcements there may be letting that end-challenge get a little too tame against careful players. So now there's a 0.25%/0.50%/1% chance on Diffs 7+/8+/9+ (respectively) of a homeworld receiving high reinforcement priority per reinforcement pulse.
  • AIP floor minimum is now 10 instead of 1.
  • Data Center AIP-reduction-on-death is now reduced by 25% on Diff 8+, and by 50% on Diff 9+ (so 15 and 10, respectively). If the two AIs are different difficulties, the higher is used in this case (tried using the difficulty of the AI player that owns the data center but that leads to some display inaccuracy problems as the game is pretty used to units not having stats that vary between players).
    • Along with this, Took out the change that reduced the number of Data Centers seeded on Diff 9+ (as pointed out, this did reduce total AIP reduction available but also reduced the challenge of getting it).
  • Net AIP reduction for killing all the coprocessors is now reduced by 25% on Diff 8+ and by 50% on Diff 9+ (so 45 and 30, respectively; that's 105 and 90 total reduction but killing all the coprocessors costs +60 AIP). If the two AIs are different difficulties, the higher is used in this case.
  • AIP floor no longer has a cap of 300 (not that this should impact games where you were caring about AIP anyway, that requires really high total AIP to reach).
  • AIP floor was previously total-AIP-gained / 5. Under Diff 8 that's still true. Now on Diff 8+ it is TotalAIP / 4, and on Diff 9+ it is TotalAIP / 3. If the two AIs are different difficulties, the higher is used in this case.
    • This effectively reduces the return on superterminal hacking since it does +1 and -2 AIP per trigger.
  • Zenith Electric Bomber is now immune to insta kill, like other low-cap fleet ships.
  • Spire Archives, in honor of winning our seventh "Worst Unit" poll:
    • Now try to seed on a non-home, non-core planet adjacent to an AI core planet. So taking one doesn't mean taking or alerting a homeworld, and doesn't mean taking a core world, but does mean alerting a core world (unless you claim the archive planet with a warp jammer, at least).
    • Knowledge gain rate from 1/sec => 5/sec.
      • So to get the full 9000 knowledge takes 1800 seconds = 30 minutes; can cut that down a bit by having science ships help on the first 3000 (theoretical minimum total time of 20 minutes because the science ships can't help you on the last 6000 knowledge).
    • When their planet is exhausted of all 9000 knowledge, they automatically die without causing AIP.
    • In short: instead of being literally "during the homeworld assualts" plays for knowlegde these are a mid/late-game high-risk-for-knowledge plays, but if you pull them off (holding the planet for 20–30 minutes to get all the knowledge) you get 3 planets worth of knowledge for only one planet's worth of AIP and without a permanent possible +80 AIP hanging over your head if something slips through. If you were going to take that planet anyway, all the better.
  • Warheads killed by warhead interceptors no longer cause AIP-on-death.
  • Spire Shield Guard Posts (the normal ones, not the Core ones), in honor of tying for second in our first "Aim The Nerfbat (AI-Side)" poll, have had their health changed from 56M*mk => 28M*mk.
    • Galactic Sandpaper Incorporated has already filed for bankruptcy.
  • Spire Stealth Battleship, in honor of tying for second in our first "Aim The Nerfbat (AI-Side)" poll:
    • Radar Dampening from 8000 => 10000.
    • Base Move Speed from 18 => 16. (for reference, a fighter's is 28, this is before a variety of other calculation steps)
  • The Player Home Forcefield Generator:
    • Now projects a grav well of 6600 radius (3 times its forcefield radius, 1600 more than the MkI Grav turret's radius) that allows a max speed of 8 (same as the MkI Grav turret).
    • Now projects tachyon coverage of 6600 radius (3 times its forcefield radius, 600 more than a MkIII Scout Starship).
  • Since the Botnet Golem won (by a landslide) our first "aim the nerf bat" poll, a plan was set in motion. The Botnet, however, saw it coming. Pulling a koolaid-man, it busted out of its former niche into a whole new minor faction, to wit: Botnet Golem.
    • This is basically like the Broken Golems faction except:
      • It only seeds the Broken Botnet, and it only seeds one of them (Broken Golems no longer seeds any botnets, needless to say).
        • It tries to seed on a planet 4 or 5 hops from the human homeworld(s); if it can't it tries 3, 2, and then 1. This is a far more controlled distance than normal golems (which is just 3+ from human homeworlds) because it's best that the challenge of having this faction on not vary so widely as a simple 3+ distance seeding would.
      • The botnet's energy cost on Moderate went from 400k => 800k.
      • The broken-botnet's AIP-on-metamorphsis on Moderate went from 40 => 100.
      • The exo response on Hard is the same as Broken Golems, but it's separate from that so you're really getting all that pain just for the one unit.
    • Also increased the Botnet's health from 36M to 100M (still 1/5th of an Armored Golem) to make it less likely you'll lose the sole advantage granted by this faction to a silly mistake.
      • Note: the golemite AI's version of the Botnet's health is still what it was.
    • We're still very open to further balance changes; the main thing this move enabled was balancing the botnet separately from the other golems: we could have brought it down to the level of the other ones, but where's the fun in that?
      • Note: none of this affects the old saves except the change in base energy from 40k to 80k (and potentially the Moderate numbers for the Botnet will automatically go up, not sure).
  • The exos from BrokenGolemsHard and SpirecraftHard are now more aggressive:
    • The threshold for the first exo of each has been doubled, which means (all else being equal) it would take twice as long to happen and be twice as powerful.
    • The accumulation (which is AIP-based, unlike Fallen Spire exos) now acts as if effective AIP is always at least 50 + (game_second/360). In other words, the minimum starts at 50 and goes up by 10 each hour (1 every six minutes).
      • This minimum stops going up at 250 (20 hours). (thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting that)
    • Thanks to Faulty Logic, Kahuna, rabican, and others for playtesting examples where even on high difficulties these exos were fairly underwhelming, at least early on.
  • Golem construction costs adjusted due to the recent fix in repair cost computation (bear in mind that golems are never built, only repaired, so these numbers only impact the cost of repairing one, which jumped about 6 fold due to that fix) :
    • Armored golem from 30M+30M m+c => 10M+10M.
      • Combined with the halving of base repair costs in this release, this means that the armored golem now costs the same to repair as it used to take with engie 1s since those used to have a 6x repair multiplier. The difference is now it doesn't matter if you use MRS's or EngieIIIs except in terms of how fast it happens.
    • Artilery golem from 10M+10M => 8M+8M (lots of feedback that these are OP lately).
    • Black Widow golem from 25M+25M => 10M+10M (ditto).
    • Regenerator golem from 60M+60M => 20M+20M (note that the regenerator's post-reactivation repair cost is 10% of what it would normally be, due to an earlier change).
    • Cursed golem from 10M+10M => 3M+3M (a slight buff, but these aren't all that popular in general).
    • Hive golem from 20M+20M => 7M+7M (a slight nerf, but these are quite strong).
    • Botnet golem from 40M+40M => 20M+20M (in keeping with last version's changes, trying to make the cost of these more closely equal the benefit; let us know if this is still off)
  • MkI Engineer repair multiplier from 6 => 2; this isn't because it needs a nerf but because with the repair fix people need time to adjust to how much stuff costs to repair when the math isn't bugged and it's easier to do that when the repair happens over more than a couple seconds. If this is a problem an alternate approach can be found, but our understanding is that repair _time_ (as opposed to repair cost) hasn't really been a problem for folks, but vanishing economies have been.
    • MkII Engineer still has a multiplier of 9 and MkIII still has a multiplier of 12, the idea being that if you're unlocking those you specifically want them to do things quickly
  • Repair cost in general is now based off half the construction cost instead of the full construction cost.
  • Repairing engines now does not cost m+c (if health is also being repaired at the same time that costs m+c).
  • Spire Refugee Ship (the starship recovered in the second stage of Fallen Spire) can no longer be put in a transport, since the chase logic doesn't work right with stuff in transports and jumpships make it pretty trivial.
  • The game now tries to seed human home command stations further away from wormholes and tries harder to find such a spot. This should help prevent "AI says: I have a plasma siege starship, gg" situations.
  • Heroic AI type balance changes:
    • Is now considered a technologist type for the purposes of lobby logic and display (specifically, being displayed in RED), though it does not get higher tech levels than usual.
    • Its non-wave champion spawns now start at Frigate-level at tech-level 1, not Destroyer-level.
  • Neinzul champion hulls are now immune to black hole machines.
  • Plasma Siege Starship ship cap from 5 => 4. Most of the others here were at 4 already, and it's been pretty widely considered the best of the combat starships lately.
  • Leech Starship:
    • Ship cap from 3 => 4.
    • Seconds Per Salvo from 4 => 2.
    • Shots Per Salvo from 3= > 6.
    • Base Attack Power from 30k => 2k (24k base-cap-dps, parasite has 12.25k)
      • Previously Leech Starships had nearly _five times_ the base-cap-dps of the equivalent fleet ship type (the Parasite). That parasite has 4x multipliers where the leech has none, so they don't need to be all that close, but the leech having a higher base dps than the parasite's bonus dps... no.
        • This change was done rather than buffing the parasites because the parasites seem to be reclaiming at a good rate already; further feedback on this is quite welcome.
    • Base Armor Piercing from 0 => 750*mk (same as parasite).
  • Knowledge costs:
    • Flagship was 0/2000/5000.
    • Zenith Starship was 1000/2500/6000.
    • Starship Starship was 1000/2500/6000.
    • Bomber Starship was 0/5000/7000.
    • Plasma Siege Starship was 0/5000/7000.
    • Leech Starship was 0/5000/6000.
    • MkI costs (or lack thereof) unchanged.
    • MkII costs are now all 2500.
    • MkIII costs are now all 4000.
    • The idea being that you're paying for 1x/2x/3x the raw stats, with a 0/500/1000 "surcharge" for the fact that 2x health and 2x attack power is more than 2x as useful, etc.
  • Health:
    • "Normal" cap-hp for a fleet ship type is about 15M (ranging from 10M to 30M), Normal for a starship type is about 22.5M (but normal cap-dps is lower).
    • Flagship from 3.75M*mk => 5M*mk (20M cap-hp).
    • Zenith from 4.5M*mk => 6M*mk (24M cap-hp).
    • Spire from 3M*mk => 4M*mk (16M cap-hp).
    • Bomber from 4.7M*mk => 7M*mk (28M cap-hp)
    • Plasma Siege unchanged at 5M*mk.
    • Leech from 3.2M*mk => 4M*mk (16M cap-hp).
  • Metal+Crystal/Energy costs:
    • Cap-m+c for fleet ship types varies widely, from about 40k for fighters to about 160k for bombers even just within the triangle. Starships are supposed to be substantially more expensive than fleet ships in exchange for being easier to keep alive. Also, the econ part of the game has been a lot easier since changes to the energy system and harvesters. So targeting about 400k m+c for a mkI cap here.
    • Cap-e is more consistent for fleet ships, typically about 20k (halved for mkI types). So targeting about 40k for a mkI cap here.
    • The m+c costs listed are for mkI, mkII are 2x, mkIII are 4x. E costs do not change with mark.
    • Flagship from 40k+24k / 4k e => 60k+40k / 10k.
    • Zenith from 24k+40k / 4k e => 40k+60k / 10k.
    • Spire from 30k+34k / 4k e => 45k+55k / 10k.
    • Bomber from 80k+8k / 2k e => 85k+15k / 10k.
    • Plasma Siege from 8k+80k / 2k e => 15k+85k / 10k.
    • Leech from 60k+40k / 5k e => 60k+40k / 10k.
  • Fighter (including tachyon-micro and bulletproof variants):
    • Base Move Speed from 28 => 32.
    • Multiplier vs Polycrystal from 5 => 6.
    • Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 2.4 => 6.
    • Multiplier vs Medium from 2.4 => 6.
    • Base Attack Power from 1200 => 1000 (similar for the variants).
  • Bomber Base Move Speed from 28 => 26.
  • The following guardians now have the medium hull type:
    • EMP (was Neutron)
    • Heavy Beam (was Heavy)
    • Laser (was Swarmer)
    • Lightning (was Composite)
    • Special Forces Rally (was Heavy)
    • Spire Implosion (was Artillery)
    • Starship Disassembler (was UltraHeavy)
    • Tachyon (was Refractive)
    • Tractor (was Neutron)
    • Vampire (was Artillery)
  • Spire Starship:
    • Hull type from Neutron => Medium.
    • Base Attack Power from 120k*mk => 600k*mk.
      • The previous number was the result of multiple math errors during the balancing process. Specifically: its dps was computed using a seconds-per-salvo of 8 when it's actually 10 due to the photon lance's firing time, and its base dps was balanced as if it had 4x bonuses despite not having any bonuses.
  • All fleet ship caps have been adjusted to be multiples of 8 (generally by rounding down, unless something was 1 away from the next higher multiple, in some cases), except for those fleet ships which don't change caps at different unit cap scales.
    • This involved about 5 metric tons of relatively minor changes to health, attack power, metal cost, crystal cost and energy cost. Mostly cap-health and cap-dps didn't change by more than 1% in either direction; cap-m,c,e costs vary a bit more but nothing earthshaking. The numbers are internally arranged in a much better fashion now which should help with other changes going forward.
    • The main immediate benefit of this is that the ultra-low-caps setting no longer impacts the balance of fleet ship types whose caps are not multiples of 8, because, well, they are now.
  • Previously on Diff 9+ if you were part of the way from one AI-tech-level to the next, each wave would have a proportionate percentage of its ships "promoted" to the next tech level to make the transition in difficulty feel smoother. Now this happens on difficulty 5+
    • Mathematically speaking this makes the game somewhat more difficult and that's why it was restricted to 9+. In practice it seems to make the game easier because you're testing your defenses against waves more like the ones you're going to get at the next tech level, rather than getting the jump all at once.
    • The main motivation for changing this now is that since the double-application of the mark-level downwards-multiplier on wave sizes has been changed to only applying it once (as mentioned above), the higher-mark waves will be larger and the feeling of a "challenge cliff" between AI tech levels greater. This really helps avoid those cliffs.
  • Zenith Siege Engine:
    • MkI-cap-health from 16.8M => 10M.
    • Corrected an... interesting balance-math error where it had 720k mkI-cap-dps AND 10x multipliers (against structural, heavy, ultraheavy, and turret):
      • Multipliers from 10x => 5x.
      • MkI-cap-dps from 720k => 360k (which is still really, really high for a base-dps even with no multipliers, but the must-reload-after-move mechanic is still really new, etc).
    • Reload time from 15 => 10.
      • Damage adjusted to maintain dps.
    • Now pay no attention to auto-FRD or auto-kite.
    • Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring these changes, as little consolation as that may be to the many ships (including spire capital ships)
  • All modular forts now pay no attention to auto-kite (previously some did, and some didn't).
  • Zenith Reprocessor:
    • MkI-cap-health from 8.4M => 15M (now in the neighborhood of fighters).
    • MkI-cap-dps from 17.2k => 30k (has 8x multipliers).
  • The Shards in the Fallen Spire campaign now move 4x as fast (still immune to all forms of speed-boosting, combat style, etc) and the response "chase spawns" now happen about 4x as often.
  • AI Type reinforcement/wave multipliers, since some of these are really old and the reinforcement ones in particular can have a disproportionately large impact on the feel of the game (to the extent that picking a particular AI type can make reinforcements look "broken", as in barely happening) :
    • Mad Bomber reinforcement multiplier from "you get one ship" on non-core-worlds (and 0.25 on core worlds) => 0.7, on all worlds.
    • Neinzul Youngster reinforcement multiplier from 0.25 => 0.8.
    • Vicious Raider, Extreme Raider, and Technologist Raider multiplier from 0.3 => 0.8.
    • Attritioner, Zenith Descendant, Spireling, Starfleet Commander, Experimentalist, and Grav Driller reinforcement multiplier from 0.4 => 0.9.
    • The Tank reinforcement multiplier from 0.3 => 0.9, and wave multiplier from 1.0 => 1.25 (same as the attritioner, zd, etc group above).
    • Feeding Parasite, Thief, Technologist Parasite, Bully, Assassin, and Speed Racer reinforcement multiplier from 1.0 => 0.9 (since they already had a 1.25 wave multiplier).
    • The Core reinforcement multiplier from 0.3 => 0.5 (same as its wave multiplier).
  • Corrected a balance-math problem where the game was counting the 14 "secondary hits" of siege plasma without considering the fact that they only hit for 1/16th of normal strength. This means that the zenith siege engine's mkI-cap-base-dps is 45k instead of 360k.
    • The actual attack power of the unit is unchanged, this is just fixing a bug in the internal balancing model.
    • But since it's now clear that the numbers are more reasonable than previously thought, the siege engine's multipliers have been increased from 5 back up to 10.
  • Human Cryo Pods and Home Settlements (the buildings that start next to a human home command station) are now immune to aoe (but not to beam weapons, i.e. not immune to linear-aoe), to avoid excessive-frustration issues with units like the firefly.
  • Spire Corvette shield modules now cost 2000*mk each of metal, instead of 1m+1c to avoid the ship being effectively invincible due to immediately rebuilding its own shield. As it is a mkI shield can be "brought back online" in less than 20 seconds, but as normal engineers cannot assist if the ship has taken damage in the past few seconds.
  • Zenith Reprocessor:
    • MkI-base-cap-dps from 30k => 45k (for reference, Acid Sprayers have 58.8k, and the same bonuses).
    • Now immune to tractors.
    • Now have cloaking (and thus will not be included in future games with cloaking turned off, but will still be present in games already created with cloaking turned off).
  • Military Command Stations:
    • Base Health from 500k/1.5M/3M => 1M/4M/9M. (puts it on the low end of a fleet ship or starship with a cap of 10, but with the mkII/mkIII versions much stronger to help justify knowledge cost)
    • Metal,Crystal production from 16,16/32,32/64,64 => 24,24/48,48/96,96 (the same as logistics stations).
    • Now do not suffer damage reduction when firing from under a normal human-tech forcefield.
      • Yes, it's now just an obvious move to put a shield on these; presumably that was already true if you cared about keeping the planet. And it still costs shield cap, so not 100% obvious.
    • Base Damage per shot from 3200*mk => 5k*mk. (puts it on par with a fleet ship or starship with a cap of 10, but since shots-per-salvo is also mark-based this makes mkII/mkIII versions much stronger to help justify knowledge cost)
    • Is now immune to radar dampening.
    • Shot type changed from translocating lightning to a new "knockback railgun" mechanic. So the shots are now insta-hit, and actually still do the translocation code path but instead of sending the target to a random angle and random distance from the planet center they send the target directly away from the military station out to a distance about 2000 units short of the station's maximum firing range (assuming it wasn't further out than that already).
    • MkII and MkIII versions now do 200 engine damage per shot.
    • MkIII versions now apply 5 seconds of paralysis per shot.
  • In honor of basically winning the "what most needs attention for 6.0?" poll, the remains rebuilders have received a logic overhaul and now:
    • Try not to target the same thing as another remains rebuilder. If there are fewer rebuild targets than rebuilders on the planet they'll generally spread out pretty evenly across the targets.
    • If in FRD, they now are much less likely to "yoyo" back to the FRD-point between rebuilds until all the targets are rebuilt.
    • Recharge time from 10 seconds => 1 second. The recharge time wasn't particularly easy to notice before because rebuilders would all pile up on the same target and while the ones not actually doing the rebuild would not incur the 10 second recharge time they would have to wait about 1 second to retarget. With a pile of 20 rebuilders it was hard to notice the one that did the initial rebuild took 10 seconds before it could actually rebuild something.
      • This is actually a fairly significant buff to the unit, but it's probably not a big balance impact to start the rebuilding faster.
  • Spire Tractor Platform:
    • MkI-Cap-Health from 10.5M => 8M.
    • Base move speed from 18 => 15.
  • The AI Core Grav Reactor Post now no longer receives protection from the Core Shield Generator network, to avoid generating maps (mainly snake ones) that were literally impossible due the homeworld having an invincible black-hole-generator-effect unit.
  • To provide a counterbalance against the player's ability to build up a powerful champion (and nebula-ally fleet) without increasing AIP much (if at all, depending on map layout and tolerance for deepstrikes), each AI homeworld now gets "nemesis" champions in proportion to the number of human champions, the highest champion hull size unlocked for human players, and that AI's difficulty.
    • Critically, the "population cap" of these nemesis spawns actually goes _down_ as AIP increases (bottoming out at 150 AIP) to simulate the AI having less to invest into its nemesis spawns as AIP increases and waves, special forces, strategic reserve, and other responses are being given more and more resources. More importantly, this allows the nemesis spawns to counter an "early AIP" champion rush without making a more "normal AIP" approach massively harder to the point of stalemate.
    • Nemesis spawns are not immediately replaced up to the population cap (takes a little over 10 minutes to go from zero to the cap), and spawns remain even if the cap drops below the current population (but once you kill them off the extras don't come back).
    • Nemesis spawns never go through wormholes, so they won't ever leave the homeworld they're defending. This is good and bad for the player, but good all around for their intended purpose.
  • The tech level of the AI is now only inflated by 1 artificially when playing on greater than difficulty 9, rather than greater than difficulty 8.
  • Handicap now has the following effects, all of which is new unless otherwise noted:
    • AI
      • Previously it affected the speed at which the AI reinforced. It no longer does.
      • Increases the number of ships in each wave and reinforcement, and decreases when negative.
      • Roaming Enclaves and Preservation Wardens are spawned sooner or later into the game.
      • Scrap waves are scaled accordingly.
      • Specifically "forced waves" are scaled accordingly.
      • Cross planet atacks are scaled accordingly.
      • Saboteur and deep strike reactions are scaled accordingly.
      • For now, event attacks are NOT affected by this.
      • Initial seeding of AI planets are intentionally not affected by this—same as human players get no starting benefit from handicaps.
    • Player
      • Increases the amount of resources gathered from producers (using a new formula), and decreases when negative (also using the new formula).
  • Some triangle rebalancing:
    • The rationale here is that bombers have been having their way with forcefields a bit too much, and having fighters be so much more "general-dps" than the other two has made them much less a natural predator of the Bomber. Also, the Missile Frigate is still being reported as the least desirable by a significant margin.
    • Fighters (including the tachyon and bulletproof variants) :
      • Bonus vs Polycrystal from 2.4 => 5.
    • Bombers:
      • Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 10 => 6.
      • Bonus vs Structural from 10 => 6.
      • Bonus vs Heavy from 10 => 6.
      • Bonus vs Artillery from 10 => 6.
      • Base Attack Power from 1900*mk => 2400*mk.
    • Missile Frigates:
      • Bonus vs Light from 10 => 6.
      • Bonus vs UltraLight from 10 => 6.
      • Bonus vs Swarmer from 10 => 6.
      • Bonus vs Neutron from 10 => 6.
      • Bonus vs Composite from 10 => 6.
      • Bonus vs Refractive from 10 => 6.
      • Base Attack Power from 1600*mk => 2400*mk.
      • Base Crystal Cost from 700 => 500.
  • Tractor Beam Turrets:
    • Base Health from 210k/840k/1680k => 560k*mk.
    • Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 450*mk.
  • Beam Guardians:
    • Bonus Vs Turret from 8 => 1.
    • Bonus Vs UltraLight from 8 => 1.
    • Bonus Vs Artillery from 2 => 1.
    • Base Attack Power from 4000*mk => 4500*mk.
    • Base Armor Rating from 600*mk => 300*mk.
  • Laser Guardians:
    • Base Armor Rating from 1000*mk => 300*mk.
    • Base Health from 1.4*(standard guardian health) to 1.1*(standard).
    • Shots Per Salvo from 3 => 15.
    • Seconds Per Salvo from 4 => 2.
    • Base Attack Power from 17k*mk => 1700*mk.
    • Base Armor Piercing from 500*mk => 300*mk.
    • Base Attack Range from 7000 => 5000.
  • Raider Guardians:
    • Now Have Radar Dampening Range of 8000.
  • Lightning Guardians:
    • Base Armor Rating from 800*mk => 600*mk.
    • Now use the same "can hit up to 200 targets max, but can do max damage to as few as 40 by hiting each target up to 5 times" logic as Electric Shuttles.
    • Base Attack Power from 1600*mk => 2400*mk (for reference, Electric shuttles on low caps have 1600*mk, albeit somewhat slower reloading).
  • Tractor Guardians:
    • Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 450*mk.
  • Spider Guardians:
    • Base Armor Rating from 1000 (flat) => 150*mk.
  • Sniper Guardians:
    • Base Armor Rating from 1000 (flat) => 150*mk.
  • Tachyon Guardians:
    • Base Armor Rating from 400 (flat) => 150*mk.
  • Gravity Guardians:
    • Max Target Base Speed from 10/8/6/4/2 => 11/10/9/8/7.
    • Grav Beam Base Range from 8k/10k/12k/14k/16k => 7k/8k/9k/10k/11k.
    • Base Armor Rating from 100*mk => 300*mk.
  • Zombie Guardians:
    • Shots Per Salvo from 2/3/4/5/6 => flat 2.
    • Base Armor Rating from 5000*mk => 300*mk.
    • Base Attack Range from 9000 => 7000.
  • EMP Guardians:
    • Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 300*mk.
  • Carrier Guardians:
    • Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 300*mk.
  • Fixed a bug with the electric shuttle "chain lightning" mechanic where it could hit a single forcefield way more times than intended. Used to be as many as 200 per shot, but now down to 5 (anything can be hit 5 times per shot).
  • Fixed bug where electric shuttles were able to chain-hit the same target 10 times in one blast (thus getting maximum efficiency against groups 20 or larger) instead of 5 (thus needing to hit at least 40 to get full damage).
  • Reclamators (excluding zombie-reclamators) :
    • Replaced the "cannot do reclamation damage to ships more than one mk level higher" rule: the reclamation effect of the actual damage done is multiplied as follows:
      • If the reclamator is 4 mks higher than the target (mkV shooting mkI), multiply by 64.
      • If the reclamator is 3 mks higher than the target, 48.
      • If the reclamator is 2 mks higher than the target, 32.
      • If the reclamator is 1 mk higher than the target, 16.
      • If the reclamator is the same mk as the target, 8.
      • If the reclamator is 1 mk lower than the target, 4.
      • If the reclamator is 2 mks lower than the target, 2.
      • If the reclamator is 3 mks lower than the target, 1.
      • There is no 4-mk-lower case because mkV are not reclaimable.
    • Leech Starship base attack power from 120k*mk => 30k*mk.
    • Parasite base attack power from 4000*mk => 1000*mk.
    • Nanoswarms inherent 16x-reclamation property down to 2x, but no reduction in actual damage.
    • Spire Teleporting Leech base attack power also not reduced, because the general feeling is that these are pretty underpowered already. Might nerf these later if this proves to be too much.
  • Parasites:
    • Effective range from 3700 => 6000.
    • Armor piercing from 0 => 750*mk.
    • Base Health from 7200*mk => 14400*mk.
  • Changed Engineer II and Engineer III caps from 0.75 and 0.5 of the Engineer I cap to 1.5 and 2.0 of the Engineer I cap, respectively.
    • Gives a bit more motivation to unlock the higher engineer marks, if you're having trouble getting enough assistance/repair out.

Misc Changes

  • AI War engine upgraded to Unity 3.3, from previously being Unity 3.1.
  • Spire Civilian Leaders are now no longer giftable, to avoid a bug whereby gifting them back and forth would repeat the AIP decrease.
  • The alternate-victory condition on the Fallen Spire condition has been made a bit more vigorous about winning, since the recently added AI Hunter Killers were refusing to go quietly.
  • Mostly as a visual improvement (via more variety of shot speed) and somewhat to make some weapons a little more effective:
    • Laser shot speed tripled (wait, why does a laser shot have a speed?)
    • Minor electric shot speed doubled.
    • Shell shot speed increased to 1.5x what it was.
    • Ion shot speed doubled.
    • Combat style now applies to all shot speeds, not only artificially-increased ones.
    • Note: shots will always move at least 40 faster than their target.
  • Made the "signal markers" in Fallen Spire invincible in the same sense as the Dyson Sphere (well, without a certain caveat which applies to the Dyson)
  • Just under "Enable Advanced Logging" on the Advanced tab of the Settings window, added a "Enable Reinforcement Logging" toggle.
    • Similar to Enable Advanced Logging, this enables logging of AI reinforcements to the ReinforcementsLog_MainThread.txt and ReinforcementsLog_AIThread.txt files in your RuntimeData directory.
    • This is off by default because:
      • This is really only for when you want to see if there is some problem with the reinforcement logic (short of logging, it is very hard for anyone to tell) and want to show evidence to the developers
      • Reading one of these logs in midgame will give "spoilers" about what the AI has, etc. It's not considered a cheat, however, because all the actually-important info it gives you would be available if you had turned off fog-of-war in the lobby before the game.
      • Lots of disk I/O during the game causes instability on some systems.

New Variety for Existing Minor Factions

  • Human Resistance Fighters:
    • Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10. 0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" increment frequency, 1 is way less frequent than that, and 10 is way more frequent than that (it's not linear).
    • Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.
  • Marauders:
    • Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10. 0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" increment frequency, 1 is way less frequent than that, and 10 is way more frequent than that (it's not linear).
    • Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.
  • Human Colony Rebellions
    • Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10. 0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" frequency, 1 is way less frequent than that, and 10 is way more frequent than that (it's not linear).
    • Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.
  • Dyson Sphere:
    • Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10. 0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" spawn-check frequency (one check per 20 seconds), 1 is 1/4th of 4 (one check per 80 seconds), 8 is 2x what 4 is (one check per 10 seconds), and 10 is insane (one check per 6 seconds).
    • The galaxy-wide population caps on each of the three gatling types are modified by this 0-10 value. 4 is cap = AIP; 1 is cap = AIP / 4, 8 is cap = AIP * 2, etc (it's linear).
    • So if you want a game-dominating dyson sphere, you can still get it :)
  • Zenith Miners
    • Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10. 0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" frequency, 1 is way less frequent than that, and 10 is way more frequent than that (it's not linear).
    • Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.
  • Broken Golems (Hard)
    • Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10. 0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" strength, 1 is way less than that, and 10 is way more than that (it's not linear).
    • Note: the only thing impacted by the intensity value for Broken Golems (Hard) is the strength of the exogalactic strikeforces sent by the AI as a response to this faction being on. The benefit you derive from it (number or strength of golems, etc) is not affected.
    • Don't use a high value unless you want to see VERY strong exogalactic strikeforces (their frequency does not change).
  • Neinzul Preservation Wardens:
    • Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10. 0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" increment frequency, 1 is way less frequent than that, and 10 is way more frequent than that (it's not linear).
    • Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.
  • Neinzul Roaming Enclaves:
    • Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10. 0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" increment frequency, 1 is way less frequent than that, and 10 is way more frequent than that (it's not linear).
    • Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.
  • Neinzul Rocketry Corps:
    • Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10. 0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" number seeded at the beginning of the game, 1 is way fewer than that, and 10 is way more than that (it's not linear).
    • Don't use a high value unless you want to see a LOT of these (Would you like to play a game of... ?).
  • Fallen Spire
    • Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10. 0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" strength, 1 is way less than that, and 10 is way more than that (it's not linear).
    • Note: the only thing impacted by the intensity value for Fallen Spire is the strength of the exogalactic strikeforces sent by the AI as a response to this faction being on. The benefit you derive from it is not affected.
    • Don't use a high value unless you want to see VERY strong exogalactic strikeforces (their frequency does not change).
  • Spirecraft (Hard)
    • Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10. 0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" strength, 1 is way less than that, and 10 is way more than that (it's not linear).
    • Note: the only thing impacted by the intensity value for Spirecraft (Hard) is the strength of the exogalactic strikeforces sent by the AI as a response to this faction being on. The benefit you derive from it (number of asteroids or strength of spirecraft, etc) is not affected.
    • Don't use a high value unless you want to see VERY strong exogalactic strikeforces (their frequency does not change).
  • Note that the Trader, Devourer, Easy and Moderate Golems (which don't fit into this idea of "faction intensity", they're really just different things than Hard Golems), Spire Civilian Leaders, and Easy and Moderate Spirecraft are all still just on/off. This isn't because we don't have any ideas on how they might be made so, just none that were very simple to implement at this stage.

New Variety For Existing AI Plots

  • Hybrid Hives
    • Now instead of being an on/off toggle in the lobby, it can be set to a value from 0 to 10. 0 is disabled, 4 is the previous "normal" number of hive spawners seeded at the beginning of the game, 1 is way fewer than that, and 10 is way more than that (it's not linear).
    • Don't use a high value unless you want to see a LOT of these.
  • Amended the reinforcement logging to better reflect the impact of alert on the order that planets are checked for reinforcement.
  • Renamed the AI Eye to the Sentry Eye.
  • Bomber Starship renamed to Heavy Bomber Starship.
  • Added 25 champion-related achievements.
  • The shard seeding in Fallen Spire now only cares about how far from the human homeworlds a planet is, rather than the current border of AI territory. This can make it easier depending on how much territory you've taken (particularly on something like a snake map, but that's something of an edge case), but in light of various recent changes this may not be a bad thing, and the seeding being relative to what you'd conquered was pretty annoying and encouraged some strange playstyles.
    • The last shard is an exception: it still doesn't pay attention to what you've conquered, but it always tries to seed on an AI core planet (so bordering a homeworld, but never on a homeworld).

Bugfixes

  • Fixed a moderately longstanding bug where having the first AI player at tech level 1 and the second AI player at tech level 2 would actually draw as the text "II/II" instead of "I/II" on the resource bar.
  • Fixed bug on the stats window resource-flows tab where most construction/repair/etc outflows were reported as positive instead of negative.
  • Fixed bug that was greatly delaying the onset of gravity slowdown on units entering grav range in some cases.
  • FINALLY fixed a long-standing and excruciatingly rare desync that nevertheless was reliably hit by two of our players, Fleet and Tssbackus. Huge thanks to them for their persistence in helping us figure this out. For all the details, here's the mantis issue: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=3077
  • The Zenith Trader previously had incorrect line breaks. Fixed.
  • Previously, when command stations were replaced, colony ships and mobile builders were still dying even though they shouldn't have been. Fixed.
  • Improved the clarity of the colony ship description.
  • Previously, when a player was controlling an ally's ships and tried to put that ship into a control group, it would add it to the ally's control group instead of the local player's control group. Having cross-player control groups is not possible without really expanding the control group data structure, which doesn't seem like a good idea to do at the present time, so for the time being allied ships simply won't go into control groups if a player tries to put them in there, at least cutting out the worst of the confusion.
  • Fixed a bug with zombie or minor faction electric shuttles, where the shuttles would just sit there. This also should improve the behavior for any ships that explode (including warheads, etc) when controlled by a minor faction, when zombified, when in FRD or attack-move in general, and possibly when in the hands of the AI in some circumstances.
  • Previously, zombiefied ships were being bound by player ship caps, but they should not have been. Fixed.
  • Fixed a bug where Defender games were always being recorded in the high-score list as lost.
  • Fixed a bug where lightning and armored warheads were following the unit-cap-scale.
    • One of the side effects of this is that some Neinzul Rocketry Corps silos (only the lower-mark ones, and only on low or normal caps) were "scaling down" to a maximum internal capacity of zero, effectively making them Neinzul Rocketry Bricks. No longer.
  • Fixed a bug where a self-destructing aoe weapon with a limited number of secondary targets (autobomb, nanoswarm, etc) would fail to do any damage to anything in some cases where only the main target was hit.
  • Fixed bug where copying in your global controls from disk could lead to building engineer IIs and IIIs without the required tech.
  • Fixed a bug that has been causing astro-trains to not be able to attack for the last six months or so.
  • Fixed a bug where the "I Have A Bad Feeling About This" achievement was not being awarded.
  • Fixed bug where the command-station foldouts each player got on each ally's planet were not executing galaxy-wide or per-planet controls (like Auto-FRD, auto-build engineers, auto-build energy reactors).
  • Fixed bug where Core Starships were not immune to translocation.
  • Fixed a bug that would cause ships to sometimes ignore their wormhole orders to instead stay and fight when they have a target. This was most noticeable with astro trains since they are never supposed to stop to fight, but it actually was affecting all AI ships since sometime prior to 5.0 most likely. Possibly as far back as 4.0. This had serious implications to the AI's ability to effectively retreat; the AI should be a lot more swift-footed now, while still getting in pot-shots when it decides to leave.
    • Additionally, a potential desync was discovered where players that were using the F3 debug menu and hovering over ships might cause a desync in multiplayer. Fixed that.
      • Fixing this also reduced the per-ship memory footprint by about 8 bytes, which we're always pleased to do.
  • Fixed a null exception that could happen rarely when a unit was looking for the next wormhole to move to while moving from planet to planet.
  • Fixed an (apparently) rare array-index-out-of-bounds error in the buy-menu "tooltip" window.
  • Fixed a longstanding bug where modules would not always decloak their parent ship when firing.
  • Fixed a longstanding bug (ever since starships were allowed to be loaded into a transport) where putting a ship with modules into a transport, saving the game, and loading the game would cause the modules to be removed from the game because the game thought they were no longer accessible (the "has a parent ship" link wasn't being checked).
  • Fixed some longstanding (since introduction of group move trying to handle immune-to-speed-boosting units) bugs with group move:
    • Previously, for example, a speed-boostable 140-speed unit group-moving with a non-speed-boostable 152-speed unit would result in the boostable ship going 152, and the non-boostable ship going 140 (_below_ its normal speed!). This was because the non-boostable one was taking the minimum speed of it's boostable friends, and then setting its speed limit as if those friends were not actually boostable.
      • This bug has been captured, stuffed, and placed in the museum. It couldn't get away fast enough.
  • Fixed a few longstanding bugs where ships were able to fire on targets significantly out of their range because in a few places the range checking was early-out'ing with max(dx,dy). This would have been fine if the target's current-forcefield-radius (and possibly other factors, none confirmed) were applied before the range check instead of after, but that wasn't the case and so the early-out threshold was wrong. Well, it's right now.
  • Fixed a problem with too-low throttles on minor faction / zombie ships preventing them from even attacking at all in some cases.
  • Fixed a bug where a superterminal could be "paused" by scrapping your command station, saving, and reloading.
  • Fixed the bug with two buttons for mark V fighters showing up in the mark V fighter fabricator.
  • Fixed a bug where if the AI had a pile of over 2000 zombie threat ships (and over 4000 total threat) it was possible for it to try to redeploy those zombies to carriers, and the carrier would be created with the appropriate contents, but the zombies would not actually be scrapped. Causing the AI to redeploy them again, creating still more carriers, and failing to scrap the zombies again. It was just carriers all the way down, leading rapidly to tens and hundreds of thousands of threat. Fixed so that the scrapping works, and thus the duplicate redeployments no longer happen.
  • Fixed a regrettably longstanding bug where it was possible for modules (notably hybrid modules) to become "stranded" without a parent ship and to basically act as somewhat buggy (and, recently, the non-forcefield ones are now invinicible) turrets.
  • Fixed a longstanding bug where the number of spire shipyards and spire hab centers supported by a spire shard reactor was being multiplied by the number of human home command stations. The number of spire capital ships of each type supported by a spire shipyard (or refugee outpost, for the frigates) is still multiplied by that number, as is intentional.
  • Fixed a bug where a ship with an inherent kiting range (raptor, zenith bombard, etc) would not correct for the radar dampening range of its target.
  • Fixed a bug in the auto-build-energy-reactors controls where they were trying to check for remains of other energy reactors but were not checking the right list for those.
  • Fixed bug where autobombs/nanoswarms/etc could now target and fly into an aoe-immune ship but couldn't actually do anything to it. They'll now do damage and their other effects as normal, though if it's just a big pile of aoe-immune targets you'll probably want to hold them off for efficiency reasons: they'll only hit the direct target, unless there's something aoe-able in range.
  • Fixed a bug where if the AI had a pile of over 2000 zombie threat ships (and over 4000 total threat) it was possible for it to try to redeploy those zombies to carriers, and the carrier would be created with the appropriate contents, but the zombies would not actually be scrapped. Causing the AI to redeploy them again, creating still more carriers, and failing to scrap the zombies again. It was just carriers all the way down, leading rapidly to tens and hundreds of thousands of threat. Fixed so that the scrapping works, and thus the duplicate redeployments no longer happen.
  • Fixed a really, really longstanding bug where the AI got 1 bonus reinforcement at diff 8, 1 bonus reinforcement at diff 9, and 2 bonus reinforcements at diff 10, but no bonus reinforcements at any of the non-integer difficulties between those. Now it's 2 for 10 and 1 for >= 8
  • Fixed a longstanding bug (since ship cap scales were added, roughly) where the ship-cap-scale multiplier was being applied twice to reinforcement calculations (so high got the normal amount, normal got half as much as it should have, low got 1/4 as much as it should have, etc).
    • The effect isn't as severe as it probably sounds, because most of the calculations ended in "if less than 1, set to 1" and other bugs (see below) were letting the AI get a lot more mileage than was mathematically sanitary out of that 1.
  • Corrected some longstanding issues where reinforcements were frequently getting stuff like Spire Blade Spawners in roughly the same proportion as Fighters; the ship cap multipliers were being used, but if a particular individual group of spawns in a reinforcement (there could be over 10 in a single reinforcement-of-planet event, and multiple such events can happen on a single planet per overall reinforcement) only had 1 ship to pick it could freely pick either a fighter or a spire blade spawner (or whatever it had unlocked) and the fact that it had just gotten something like 30x as strong as what "1" normally means was simply ignored. If it had 20 ships to pick and picked a blade spawner that would be the end of the pick, though, so it wasn't totally ignorant of that dynamic.
    • Now it does a bit of arithmetic "carrying" so that if one individual spawn really picks something low-cap like that (and it still can do that, otherwise stuff like blade spawners just won't happen in most reinforcements) then it remembers that for further spawns in that reinforcement event, which can make certain reinforcements a little lopsided but in general is at least a balanceable situation now,
  • Fixed a bug where the Dyson Sphere itself was alerting its planet and neighboring planets on the AI thread, but not on the main thread. It now does not alert on either (but the actual enemy-to-all gatlings and player-ally gatlings count for alert purposes, of course).
  • Fixed a bug in the handicap modifier computations that caused negative handicaps to be far harsher than they were supposed to be in some circumstances (like making CPA size zero when it was supposed to be, say, 24, because the multiplier was about 51x smaller than it was suppposed to be).
  • Fixed a longstanding bug where AOE "canister" shots (flak, grenade, plasma-siege) were not properly hitting forcefields when targeting a ship protected by them, unless the targeted ship was also in range of the explosion from the point where the shot hit the forcefield.
  • Fixed a longstanding bug where an Ion Cannon killing a warhead would cause it to not properly detonate as if it had been killed by a Warhead Interceptor.
  • Fixed a bug where the AI would not attack armored warheads (due to a "very low priority target" flag on those unit definitions).
  • Fixed a bug where when the AI picked engineers or remains-rebuilders for reinforcements, it was "spending" too much on them.
  • Fixed a fairly longstanding bug where player ships would not autotarget an AI ship that was under a (non-module) forcefield and guarding something because that ship had not set its "angry" flag (to avoid leaving the protection of the forcefield). Now it considers the ship eligible for shooting if either it or its guard post has been angered recently.
  • Fixed a bug in the last version where the laser turret upgrades could show the stats on laser drones instead of... laser turrets. Similar for other turret techs that also unlock drones.
  • Fixed a longstanding bug where a unit could both be reclaimed and regenerated, which would sometimes lead to an AI unit being reclaimed, zombified, and warped off somewhere deep in AI territory. Not great for threat management.
    • Fixed a related bug where a unit that had swallowed other units or was tractoring other units would take them with them when regenerated. Now those units simply cannot be regenerated unless they have no such "load".
  • Fixed a bug where neinzul drones (which cannot go through wormholes) could inherit a go-through-wormhole order from the enclave starship building them, and would actually go through the wormhole.
    • Now they'll generally _move_ to a point near the target wormhole, but they won't try to traverse the wormhole itself.
  • Fixed the colony ship tooltip which was still saying it had to be near the target construction point, and also amended its hint about replacing existing command station to reflect recent changes.
  • Fixed a bug where beam and warbird starships were still in the "Starship mk III" buy-group for the AI; they're now in the mkV group where they're actually balanced to be now.
  • Fixed a longstanding bug where the "prevent construction of new command station by a different player than the current controller of the planet" rule was preventing gifting of command stations.
  • Fixed a longstanding omission preventing low-power ships under a forcefield protecting a passive guard post (and perhaps other guard posts) from coming out of low-power when the forcefield/post/guards were attacked.
  • Fixed a longstanding bug where Decloakers in waves (only possible by having 1 wave-sending AI and 1 support-corps AI) were not having their ship cap multiplier applied and thus were appearing in vastly larger numbers than they should have been. Wasn't a big deal before, but would have been devestating with their new stats.
  • Fixed some bugs with the Spire Archive gain-knowledge logic producing erratic display results (and not displaying how much it had gathered out of the total 9000, etc).
  • Fixed a longstanding bug where repairing units with a repair boost (which is most of the ones that can repair) were repairing units faster but still "spending" metal and crystal at the rate they would have if they had no repair boost. The cost difference between repairing with an MRS and with an EngieIII was pretty big. No longer.
  • Fixed a bug where multiple human homeworlds (in SP or MP) were not increasing the guard post part of reinforcements.
  • Fixed a longstanding (back to the unity port) bug where the buy/tech menus would also draw the buttons from the menus above them, commonly resulting in "ghosts" of build queue buttons, etc.
  • Fixed a longstanding but very intermittent null-exception in tech-menu-button rendering.
  • Fixed bug where core/starship/experimental fabricators were not being considered by the D keybind.
  • Fixed a bug where remains currently in the process of rebuilding could get "stuck" at 1 hp despite being under very heavy fire until its actual stored resources were exhausted.
  • Fixed a longstanding bug where buy menu buttons were showing up red outside supply even when the ship doing the building can build fine outside supply.
  • Fixed a longstanding bug where the AI would only produce carriers if the target planet already had 2 barracks, instead of 1.
  • Fixed a bug where Fallen Spire events would spawn the recoverable objects (and thus anything they go on to build) as belonging to the first player even when the first player was champion-only. Now it gives them to the first normal or normal+champion player.
  • Fixed omission in the new CPA-size logic that was making it not consider one of the later parts of the wave-size calculations (making it a bit too high on lower difficulties and not as high as intended on higher difficulties).
  • Fixed a longstanding bug in FRD target sorting that was sometimes being overly sensitive to differences in how far away two targets were.
  • Fixed a bug where it was possible to start placement of an item (like an engineer or turret) and switch to another planet via control-group-selection and still be in the middle of placing that item (and if you had supply, actually be able to place it).
  • Fixed a bug where a bunch of science ships on auto-knowledge-gather but with no eligible targets could "clog" the auto-explore throttle such that auto-explore for scouts would stop working. Now auto-knowledge-gather has its own separate throttle.
  • Made "what can I autotarget?" logic more consistent so that player-ally minor factions don't pop AI carriers.
  • Fixed a bug where viewing a Core Spire Corvette Fabricator could cause unhandled exceptions (and the queue buttons to not show).
  • Fixed a really longstanding bug where giving a ship an attack order against something already in range would cause it to move towards the target a little bit before stopping again. This was mildly annoying with most units but very troublesome with units like fortresses and zenith siege engines that have to recharge (either their ability or their weapon) after moving at all.
  • Fixed a bug where minor faction and zombie ships could be affected by the player auto-kite controls.
  • Fixed a bug where a cpa deploying could cause unhandled errors.
  • Military Command Stations:
    • Fixed a bug where the mkII and mkIII versions no longer had a unit cap (leaving it that way was entertained, but ultimately would require more sweeping changes to command stations than is a good idea right now, if it would be a good idea at all).
    • Fixed a bug where the mkII and mkIII were still showing the mkI descriptive text, despite that now not being the same.
    • The knockback logic now launches stuff 2000 range units outside the station's effective range rather than 2000 range units inside, to help the autotargeting not get stuck on a few targets when its main use is best served by spreading shots out.
  • Fixed a bug where the fallen spire campaign could spawn two of the same shard-signal.
  • Fixed a longstanding bug where the galaxy-nav code of AI-ally Dyson Gatlings was getting distracted from its main purpose.
  • Fixed a fairly longstanding bug where disabling an expansion from within the lobby would not properly remove several expansion-specific options (map types, setup scripts, minor factions, etc), which could lead to very odd behavior.
  • Fixed a couple longstanding bugs that would cause very old saves to not load properly.
  • Fixed a bug where hybrids, exo ships, and the like could switch to threat-fleet behavior.
  • Fixed some bugs where special forces and strategic reserve spawns could result in an AI player controlling a type of ship only available to the other AI.
    • And a related bug where some of the special forces spawn logic could only access the special ship types of the first AI player.
  • Overhauled how line-place determines space between points to be closer to how the game will actually accept or reject a given placement. Hopefully this will avoid "skipping every other one" bugs without adding excessive padding between points on a packed-line pattern.
  • Fixed rare null exception that could happen when changing control groups.
  • Fixed a bug where changing per-planet settings on one planet, then opening the CTRLS window from another planet would do the confirm-discard-changes check, which led to various other tomfoolery.
  • Fixed a bug where MkV Spider fabricators were still considered experimental fabricators instead of core fabricators, which incidentally handles an issue where there was a very high chance of there being 2 of these per map.
  • Now if you use the mid-game Manage Players interface to switch a player from the Normal role to Helper and then save that, it properly tells you that you can't do that rather than trying (and generally causing a desync).
  • Fixed a moderately longstanding bug where if while starting a new game you select a planet as a homeworld, then deselect it (in favor of some other homeworld(s) ) before actually starting the game, and that planet happens to have the superterminal on it, the superterminal would start the game in "active mode". Needless to say, that would be a short game.
  • Fixed a really longstanding bug where shots on a planet were sometimes visible even through the fog of war.
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