https://wiki.arcengames.com/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=Nat&feedformat=atomArcen Wiki - User contributions [en]2024-03-29T00:19:25ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.34.2https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=Template:AIWarTableMdlCorvetteHeavyBeam&diff=30001Template:AIWarTableMdlCorvetteHeavyBeam2017-11-04T21:18:37Z<p>Nat: Fix broken link due to namespace</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar]]<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Beam Weapon ||{{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range ||{{AlgCtr}} | Reload ||{{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[Abilities]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | Unlock<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 208,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 14,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 7 sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | 29,714 dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | Armor Piercing 8,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Heavy Beam Cannon|Heavy Beam Cannon Mk I]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 2x 208,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 14,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 7 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 59,429 dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | Armor Piercing 8,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Heavy Beam Cannon|Heavy Beam Cannon Mk II]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 3x 208,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 14,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 7 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 89,143 dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | Armor Piercing 8,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Heavy Beam Cannon|Heavy Beam Cannon Mk III]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | IV || {{AlgCtr}} | 4x 208,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 14,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 7 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 118,857 dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | Armor Piercing 8,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Heavy Beam Cannon|Heavy Beam Cannon Mk IV]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | V || {{AlgCtr}} | 5x 208,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 14,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 7 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 148,571 dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | Armor Piercing 8,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Heavy Beam Cannon|Heavy Beam Cannon Mk IV]] <br />
|}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=Template:AIWarTableMdlCorvetteLaserModule&diff=30000Template:AIWarTableMdlCorvetteLaserModule2017-11-04T21:17:05Z<p>Nat: Fix links for namespace</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar]]<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Laser ||{{AlgCtr}} | 5 Heavy, 5 Close-Combat, 5 Polycrystal <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range ||{{AlgCtr}} | Reload ||{{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[Abilities]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | Unlock <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 3x 3,600 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 9,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 4 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 2,700 dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | Armor Piercing 375 ||{{AlgCtr}} | -- <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 3x 7,200 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 9,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 4 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,400 dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | Armor Piercing 750 ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Laser Turret|Laser Turret Mk II]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 3x 10,800 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 9,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 4 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 8,100 dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | Armor Piercing 1,125 ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Laser Turret|Laser Turret Mk II]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | IV || {{AlgCtr}} | 3x 14,400 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 9,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 4 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,800 dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | Armor Piercing 1,500 ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Laser Turret|Laser Turret Mk III]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | V || {{AlgCtr}} | 3x 18,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 9,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 4 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 13,500 dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | Armor Piercing 1,875 ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Laser Turret|Laser Turret Mk III]]<br />
|} <br/></div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=Template:AIWarTableMdlCorvettePlasmaSiege&diff=29999Template:AIWarTableMdlCorvettePlasmaSiege2017-11-04T21:16:23Z<p>Nat: Fix links for namespace</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar]]<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Energy Bomb ||{{AlgCtr}} | 10 Heavy, 10 Turret, 10 Ultra-Heavy, 10 Structural <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range ||{{AlgCtr}} | Reload ||{{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[Abilities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Unlock<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 32,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 13,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 8 sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | 4,000 dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | ||{{AlgCtr}} | -- <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 64,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 13,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 8 sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | 8,000 dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Plasma Siege Starship|Plasma Siege Starship Mk II]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 96,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 13,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 8 sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | 12,000 dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Plasma Siege Starship|Plasma Siege Starship Mk II]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | IV || {{AlgCtr}} | 128,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 13,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 8 sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | 16,000 dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Plasma Siege Starship|Plasma Siege Starship Mk III]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | V || {{AlgCtr}} | 160,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 13,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 8 sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Plasma Siege Starship|Plasma Siege Starship Mk III]]<br />
|}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=Template:AIWarTableMdlCorvetteRailCannon&diff=29998Template:AIWarTableMdlCorvetteRailCannon2017-11-04T21:15:40Z<p>Nat: Fix links for namespace</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar]]<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Railgun ||{{AlgCtr}} | 5 Light, 5 Swarmer, 5 Ultra-Light, 5 Close-Combat <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range ||{{AlgCtr}} | Reload ||{{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[Abilities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Unlock<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 8,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 999,999,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 3 sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | 2,667 dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | Armor Piercing 999,999 ||{{AlgCtr}} | -- <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 16,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 999,999,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 3 sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | 5,333 dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | Armor Piercing 999,999 ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Sniper Turret|Sniper Turret]] Mk II<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 24,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 999,999,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 3 sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | 8,000 dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | Armor Piercing 999,999 ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Sniper Turret|Sniper Turret]] Mk III<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | IV || {{AlgCtr}} | 32,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 999,999,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 3 sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | 10,667 dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | Armor Piercing 999,999 ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Sniper Turret|Sniper Turret]] Mk IV<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | V || {{AlgCtr}} | 40,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 999,999,000 ||{{AlgCtr}} | 3 sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | 13,333 dmg/sec ||{{AlgCtr}} | Armor Piercing 999,999 ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Sniper Turret|Sniper Turret]] Mk ?<br />
|}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Neinzul_Scapegoat&diff=29997AI War:Neinzul Scapegoat2017-11-04T21:13:08Z<p>Nat: Fix links for namespace</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar]]<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarScapegoat.png|left|100px|Neinzul Scapegoat]] || valign="top" | 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.<br/><br />
<br/><br />
Very different from other fleet ships in that the individual ship stats are identical in all ships across all marks, but higher marks have higher ship caps.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
<br />
== Base Stats ==<br />
----<br />
'''These stats are out-of-date since a bug affecting the Scapegoat was fixed.'''<br />
<br />
{{AIWarTableNeinzulScapegoat}} <br/><br />
<br />
== How to use in your fleet ==<br />
Any damage this ship does is a nice bonus, you build this ship to die in the place of your more expensive ships.<br/>The more expensive the ship it sacrifices itself to save, the more efficient this unit will be.<br/>A [[AI War:Spire Tractor Platform|Spire Tractor Platform]] that is saved by the Scapegoat is worth thirty times more then a [[AI War:Tachyon Microfighter|Tachyon Microfighter]] in terms of resources saved.<br/><br />
As of 6.009, Scapegoats are able to save [[AI War:Spire Corvette|Spire Corvette]]s as they are a 'bonus fleet ship'.<br />
<br />
== How to counter when in the AI fleet ==<br />
These effectively increase the number of more dangerous ships the AI has on the planet. The exact composition will determine if you want to kill the Scapegoats directly, or kill another ship and allow the Scapegoats to destroy themselves at the expense of having to destroy that other ship a second time.<br />
<br />
{{AIWarShips}}<br />
{{AIWarRefNav}}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Spirecraft_Jumpship&diff=29964AI War:Spirecraft Jumpship2017-10-28T17:18:53Z<p>Nat: Add caveat</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar]]<br />
[[Category:AIWarLotS]]<br />
{{6.013}}<br/><br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftJumpship.png|100px|left|Spirecraft Jumpship]] || valign="top" | Expensive, tiny-capacity transport with advanced teleportation and no self-attrition-per-wormhole. The advanced teleportation lets the jumpship pass through wormholes and across planets without the normal few-second delays that regular teleporting ships face. On planets with a higher mark than the jumpship, the jumpship expires in about twenty seconds, however.<br/>Spirecraft are built from a [[AI_War:Spirecraft Mining Enclosure|Spirecraft Mining Enclosure]] built by a [[AI_War:Spire Mining Ship|Spire Mining Ship]].<br />
|}<br />
<br />
Mark V jumpships (and only Mark V) are immune to [[AI War:Black Hole Machine|Black Hole Machines]] (new in [[AI_War:Current_Post-7.000_Beta#Prerelease_7.019_Oops_MkII|7.019]]).<br />
<br />
== Base Stats ==<br />
----<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | Heavy || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Boosts, Armor Boosts, Speed Boosts, Tractor Beams, Tachyon Beams, Reclamation, Paralysis Attacks, Transport, Swallow, Nuclear Explosions, Being Insta-Killed, EMPs, Mines, Repair || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Ship Cap]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Speed]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Engine Health]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | Ship Cap DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I ||{{AlgCtr}} | 16|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 100,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 100 || {{AlgCtr}} | 84 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf || {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Cloaking, Teleports, Self Attrition Time 00:20, Self Attrition Only On AI Worlds > Mark 1, Transports 5 Ships, Blind<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II ||{{AlgCtr}} | 12|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 100,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 200 || {{AlgCtr}} | 84 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Cloaking, Teleports, Self Attrition Time 00:20, Self Attrition Only On AI Worlds > Mark 2, Transports 10 Ships, Blind<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III ||{{AlgCtr}} | 8|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 100,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 300 || {{AlgCtr}} | 84 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Cloaking, Teleports, Self Attrition Time 00:20, Self Attrition Only On AI Worlds > Mark 3, Transports 15 Ships, Blind<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | IV ||{{AlgCtr}} | 4|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 100,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 400 || {{AlgCtr}} | 84 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Cloaking, Teleports, Self Attrition Time 00:20, Self Attrition Only On AI Worlds > Mark 4, Transports 20 Ships, Blind<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | V ||{{AlgCtr}} | 2|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 100,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 500 || {{AlgCtr}} | 84 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Cloaking, Teleports, Self Attrition Time 00:20, Self Attrition Only On AI Worlds > Mark 5, Transports 25 Ships, Blind<br />
|} <br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Asteroid || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Cap Metal Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | Cap Crystal Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | Cap Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | Cap Energy Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | Ship Cap Build Time<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | Pysite (2 per)<br/>Xampite (4 per) || {{AlgCtr}} | 60,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 60,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 120,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 6,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:22:01 || {{AlgCtr}} | 960,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 960,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,920,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 96,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 05:52:16<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | Xampite (2 per)<br/>Ebonite (4 per) || {{AlgCtr}} | 120,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 120,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 240,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 12,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:44:01 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,920,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,920,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 3,840,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 192,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 11:44:16<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | Ebonite (2 per)<br/>Adamanite (4 per) || {{AlgCtr}} | 240,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 240,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 480,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 18,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 01:06:01 || {{AlgCtr}} | 3,840,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 3,840,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 7,680,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 288,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 17:36:16<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | IV || {{AlgCtr}} | Adamanite (2 per)<br/>Titanite (4 per) || {{AlgCtr}} | 360,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 360,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 720,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 24,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 01:28:01 || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,760,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,760,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 11,520,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 384,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 23:28:16<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | V || {{AlgCtr}} | Titanite (2 per) || {{AlgCtr}} | 480,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 480,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 960,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 01:50:01 || {{AlgCtr}} | 7,680,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 7,680,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,360,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 480,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 29:20:16<br />
|}Note that the build time of Spirecraft is half of the repair time listed.<br/><br/><br />
<br />
== How to use in your fleet ==<br />
Spirecraft Jumpships essentially enables you to blitzkrieg ''almost any'' planet you want, since they are perma-cloaked, and travel about 2-hops per second. A Mk-I Jumpship has no problem traveling 10+ hops away, dropping the forces there, and going back home.<br />
<br />
A typical use is to remove [[AI_War:Data_Center|Data Centers]], [[AI_War:Co-Processor|Co-processors]], or destroy/liberate [[AI War:Spire Civilian Leader Outpost|Spire Civilian Leader Outposts]] (note that you don't have to actually take the planet to liberate the outpost), deep inside AI territory with your Mk-III+ [[AI War:Raid Starship|Human Raid Starships]]. Since each asteroid provides at least 2 Jumpships, one can send one of the Jumpships to send your forces there, and bring them back with another Jumpship. You would still need to deal with the threats, though.<br />
<br />
Caveats:<br />
* Mark I - Mark IV jumpships can be trapped by a [[AI War:Black Hole Machine|Black Hole Machine]], preventing it from finishing the trip. If it becomes trapped on a world where self-attrition applies, it will likely attrition out before the player can deliver a fleet to destroy the [[AI War:Black Hole Machine|Black Hole Machine]]. Mark V jumpships ignore [[AI War:Black Hole Machine|Black Hole Machines]] and have no worlds on which they would self-attrition.<br />
* Jumpships respect the teleport inhibition and speed limiting of [[AI_War:Gravity_Drill_Station|Gravity Drills]]. Jumpships can cross a world with a [[AI_War:Gravity_Drill_Station|Gravity Drill]], but the severe speed penalty makes the self-attrition a severe threat instead of a minor irritant. Avoid [[AI_War:Gravity_Drill_Station|Gravity Drill]] worlds that would cause self-attrition. If possible, avoid sending a jumpship across a [[AI_War:Gravity_Drill_Station|Gravity Drill]] world at all. The extreme speed in teleport-enabled systems makes it faster to take a long route with teleporting permitted than a short route with it disabled.<br />
* Jumpships must land on the wormhole to use it, and are not immune to [[AI_War:Force_Field|Force Fields]]. If the wormhole is covered by a hostile [[AI_War:Force_Field|Force Field]] (such as from a [[AI_War:Spire_Shield_Sphere_Guard_Post|Spire Shield Sphere Guard Post]]), the jumpship will land outside the force field and be unable to use the wormhole. In very unlucky cases, the hostile [[AI_War:Force_Field|Force Field]] will cover the wormhole back to human space, trapping the jumpship until the player shrinks or destroys the [[AI_War:Force_Field|Force Field]].<br />
* Cloaking prevents the AI from directly targeting Jumpships, but they can still be damaged by area effect weapons. Avoid parking the Jumpship near any unit likely to be fired upon by Beam or Plasma Siege weaponry.<br />
<br />
== How to counter when in the AI fleet ==<br />
Coming soon<br />
<br />
{{AIWarShips}}<br />
{{AIWarRefNav}}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Spirecraft&diff=29963AI War:Spirecraft2017-10-28T17:16:38Z<p>Nat: Cross link to AI War:Asteroid table showing mark/count of Spirecraft available from each asteroid</p>
<hr />
<div>{{WIP}}<br />
<br />
The '''Spirecrafts''' form a [[AI War:Minor Faction|Minor Faction]]. They were introduced in the [[AI War:Light of the Spire|Light of the Spire]] expansion.<br />
<br />
While more powerful than [[AI War:Starships|Starships]], spirecrafts are below [[AI War:Golems|Golems]], however they compensate by being far more versatile, plentiful and easier to acquire.<br />
<br />
== Difficulty ==<br />
<br />
This minor faction has three different difficulties. If multiple difficulties are activated, the harder takes precedence.<br />
<br />
The EASY version of this minor faction simply gives you the spirecrafts with nothing in the way of benefit to the AI. Consequently, your adjusted scored is also halved.<br />
<br />
The MODERATE version of this minor faction gives you the spirecrafts at a vastly higher energy cost and without the ability to repair them (though the Martyr and Shield Bearer cannot be repaired on easy or hard either).<br />
<br />
The HARD version of this minor faction gives you the spirecrafts at their base energy requirements with no repair restrictions. However, whether or not you choose to capture any spirecraft, the AI periodically launches large exogalactic strikeforces against you -- so you're highly advised to get some golems in order to survive.<br />
<br />
Please note: the only thing that changes with intensity for Spirecraft (Hard) is the strength of the exogalactic strikeforces, and cranking this up high could result in an extremely difficult and/or annoying scenario. <br />
<br />
== Mining ==<br />
<br />
These Spirecrafts can be produced from asteroids seeded around the galaxy via a [[AI War:Spire Mining Ship|Spire Mining Ship]]. When selected, a Spire miner can build mining enclosures upon asteroids, consuming it in the process. The enclosure must be built by supplying it with [[AI War:Metal|Metal]] and transform into spirecrafts upon completion.<br />
<br />
There are different enclosures per asteroid type producing different quantities and [[AI War:Mark|Mark]] levels of different spirecrafts. Each asteroid kind can create almost all kinds of spirecrafts, but the mark of the produced spirecrafts depends on the rarity of the asteroid.<br />
<br />
Players do not need to own the system the asteroid is located in order to mine it.<br />
<br />
== [[AI War:Asteroid|Asteroids]] ==<br />
<br />
The asteroids are here ordered by crescent rarity and power.<br />
<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarReptite.png|50px|left|Reptite Asteroid]] || valign="top" | [[AI War:Asteroid#Reptite_Asteroid|Reptite]]<br />
|-<br />
| [[File:AIWarPysite.png|50px|left|Pysite Asteroid]] || valign="top" | [[AI War:Asteroid#Pysite_Asteroid|Pysite]]<br />
|-<br />
| [[File:AIWarXampite.png|50px|left|Xampite Asteroid]] || valign="top" | [[AI War:Asteroid#Xampite_Asteroid|Xampite]]<br />
|-<br />
| [[File:AIWarEbonite.png|50px|left|Ebonite Asteroid]] || valign="top" | [[AI War:Asteroid#Ebonite_Asteroid|Ebonite]]<br />
|-<br />
| [[File:AIWarAdamantite.png|50px|left|Adamantite Asteroid]] || valign="top" | [[AI War:Asteroid#Adamantite_Asteroid|Adamantite]]<br />
|-<br />
| [[File:AIWarTitanite.png|50px|left|Titanite Asteroid]] || valign="top" | [[AI War:Asteroid#Titanite_Asteroid|Titanite]]<br />
|}<br />
<br />
== Spirecrafts ==<br />
<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftShield.png|50px|left|]] || valign="top" | [[AI War:Spirecraft Shield Bearer|Spirecraft Shield Bearer]]<br/>This Spirecraft projects a powerful force field around it to protect itself and any allied ships. Any ships within the shield do not suffer any damage reduction to their attacks.<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftRam.png|50px|left|]] || valign="top" | [[AI War:Spirecraft Ram|Spirecraft Ram]]<br/>A specalized ship designed to destroy high health targets. Will ram itself into a single target, causing extreme damage, but also destroying itself.<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftMartyr.png|50px|left|]] || valign="top" | [[AI War:Spirecraft Martyr |Spirecraft Martyr ]]<br/>This Spirecraft has no guns, but instead has a large array of tractor beams. When this craft is destroyed all enemy ships within its tractor beam range will take massive damage.<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftAttritioner.png|50px|left|]] || valign="top" | [[AI War:Spirecraft Attritioner|Spirecraft Attritioner]]<br/>While this ship has poor weapons, it makes up by dealing high attrition damage to all enemy ships in the system every second. However this ship will alert every single ship on the planet who will all attack.<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftScout.png|50px|left|]] || valign="top" | [[AI War:Spirecraft Scout|Spirecraft Scout]]<br/>Unique scouts that are perma-cloaked. However they move very slowly and will quickly lose health on a AI held planet that is a mark level above them. Better served as a recon unit to free up dedicated scouts than as a dedicated scout.<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftIon.png|50px|left|]] || valign="top" | [[AI War:Spirecraft Translocator|Spirecraft Translocator]]<br/>Excellent all-around ship with translocating railguns.<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftPenetrator.png|50px|left|]] || valign="top" | [[AI War:Spirecraft Penetrator|Spirecraft Penetrator]]<br/>Perma-cloaked ship that houses a extremely powerful cannon. The ship must be ordered to fire manually, and when it does it is unable to fire for thirty minutes.<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftImplosion.png|50px|left|]] || valign="top" | [[AI War:Spirecraft Implosion Artillery|Spirecraft Implosion Artillery]]<br/>Long range artillery Spirecraft that deals damage to targets based on their remaining health, deals best damage against fully healed targets.<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftSiegeTower.png|50px|left|]] || valign="top" | [[AI War:Spirecraft Siege Tower|Spirecraft Siege Tower]]<br/>A slow moving, low range, mobile battlestation. Can take a lot of damage and dish it out.<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftJumpship.png|50px|left|]] || valign="top" | [[AI War:Spirecraft Jumpship|Spirecraft Jumpship]]<br/>A expensive, small capacity, transport ship that can rapidly teleport through wormholes and systems. Suffers no attrition damage when out of supply, but the ship will rapidly expire within twenty seconds on a planet with a higher mark than the ship.<br />
|}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Speed_Booster&diff=29962AI War:Speed Booster2017-10-28T17:11:04Z<p>Nat: Fix link</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar]]<br />
[[Category:AIWarBase]]<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpeedBooster.png|left|Speed Booster]] || valign="top" | Mobile ship that increases the speed of all friendly non-minor-faction ships in the current system by a small amount.<br/><br />
This effect is cumulative when multiple speed boosters are present.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
<br />
== Base Stats ==<br />
----<br />
{{AIWarTableSpeedBooster}}<br />
<br />
== How to use in your fleet ==<br />
<br />
For support ships, Speed Boosters are very keen to suicide themselves at maximum speed into the enemy on FRD mode. You can avoid this by sub-grouping the boosters with other support ships you'll never want to FRD. A full cap will reliably turn most of your low-speed juggernauts into high-speed killing machines, although all [[AI War:Spirecraft|Spirecrafts]] are immune to speed boosts. Just remember to keep the boosters at the back of your fleet, so that they will shepherd the last offensive ship out of each wormhole.<br />
<br />
Alternatively, if you always group-move a long-ranged fleet (''e.g.'' [[AI War:Missile Frigate|Missile Frigate]]+[[AI War:Plasma Siege Starship|Plasma Siege Starship]] combo), adding Speed Boosters to that group will make kiting almost trivial.<br />
<br />
== How to counter when in the AI fleet ==<br />
<br />
Speed Boosters are rarely encountered and do not generally pose a great threat. The AI will not micro them to prevent their ineffective kamikaze runs.<br />
<br />
Watch-out for a lightning bombing run at your command stations, though.<br />
<br />
{{AIWarShips}}<br />
{{AIWarRefNav}}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Spire_Blade_Spawner&diff=29961AI War:Spire Blade Spawner2017-10-28T17:09:35Z<p>Nat: Add note about "Fast Drones" Game Setup option</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar]]<br />
[[Category:AIWarLotS]]<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarBladeSpawner.png|left|100px|100px|Blade Spawner]] || valign="top" | Large central ship has weak guns, but continously spawns smaller independent blades that crash into enemy ships.<br/>Note that this ship will not chase other ships unless you have specifically given the order, even when in Free-Roaming-Defender mode.<br />
This ship can only appear if the host permits ''Fast Drones'' in the the Game Setup ''Ships'' tab. When that option is disabled, neither humans nor AI can obtain this ship.<br />
<br/>Part of the [[AI War Expansion 3: Light of the Spire|Spire Fleet]]<br />
|}<br />
<br />
<br />
== Base Stats ==<br />
----<br />
{{AIWarTableSpireBladeSpawner}}<br />
<br />
== How to use in your fleet ==<br />
Blade spawners are a unique ship-type not within the ship-triangle. They are stand-off combatants, spawning very-fast moving [[Spire Blade]]s at the enemy (faster than many of the bullet effects in the game). Useful in attack, defense, removing ships under force-fields, and practically all situations not involving hostile gravity manipulators. NB: the DPS of this ship should take their blades into account, which means an extra 50,000*Mark per spawner, making this one of the most powerful ship-types in terms of base damage.<br />
<br />
They are also one of the few fleet ships immune to insta-kill. With its other immunities and generally good stats, they can survive '''alone''' in an enemy wormhole filled with bad things - something that cannot be said of most ship-types. Mix as you please.<br />
<br />
== How to counter when in the AI fleet ==<br />
In defensive scenarios, their powerful [[Spire Blade]]s can be countered by gravity turrets and gravity drains. Meeting these ships while attacking AI planets can be a big pain, however, as they slowly chip away at your fleet. Mark III [[Riot Control Starship]]s with grav generators or grav tasers are an expensive counter. Alternatively, try taking a set of fast vessels ([[Raid Starship]]s, say, as they are immune to blades) and take out the spawners one by one.<br />
<br />
{{AIWarShips}}<br />
{{AIWarRefNav}}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Mobile_Builder&diff=29960AI War:Mobile Builder2017-10-28T17:05:05Z<p>Nat: Clarify that allied foldouts remove the need for a dedicated Mobile Builder</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar]]<br />
[[Category:AIWarBase]]<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarMobileBuilder.png|left|Mobile Builder]] || valign="top" | Allows you to build economic and defensive ships at planets your team doesn't control. <br/>Crucial for establishing beachheads in enemy or neutral territory.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
<br />
== Base Stats ==<br />
----<br />
{{AIWarTableSSMobileBuild}}<br/><br />
== How to use in your fleet ==<br />
This unit offers the system build menu in systems that you do not have a completed [[AI War:Orbital Command Station|Command Station]] in.<br/>Allied command stations provide a Foldout unit which serves a similar purpose to a Mobile Builder, allowing you to build in allies' systems without use of a mobile builder.<br />
<br/>Also, note the "Requires Supply" limitation. This means you can only build in systems adjacent to a system with a human [[AI War:Orbital Command Station|Command Station]]. For the purposes of the supply mechanic, an allies [[AI War:Orbital Command Station|Command Station]] does count.<br/>Lastly, you can not construct [[AI War:Metal Harvester|Harvesters]] with unit.<br />
<br />
== How to counter when in the AI fleet ==<br />
Not applicable. The AI does not use Mobile Builders.<br />
<br />
{{AIWarShips}}<br />
{{AIWarRefNav}}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Asteroid&diff=29954AI War:Asteroid2017-10-22T20:00:17Z<p>Nat: Fix up internal links; add per-tier tables of what Spirecraft can be built</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar]]<br />
[[Category:AIWarBase]]<br />
{{6.009}}<br />
<br />
= Asteroids =<br />
<br />
Asteroids allow the construction of [[AI War:Ships_and_Structures#Spirecraft|Spirecraft]] via the [[AI War:Spire Mining Ship|Spire Mining Ship]]. They only spawn if the [[AI War:Minor Factions#Light_of_the_Spire|Spirecraft Minor Faction]] is enabled.<br/>The higher quality asteroids that allow construction of higher Mark [[AI War:Spirecraft|Spirecraft]] are rarer then the low quality asteroids and asteroid quality also tends to increase as you get closer to the AI Homeworlds.<br/>There is a filter on the [[Galaxy Map]] for detected asteroids to find them easier.<br/><br />
<br />
<br />
== Reptite Asteroid ==<br />
<br />
Tier 1 Asteroid that can be used to construct:<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Icon<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Name<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Mark<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Count<br />
<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftImplosion.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Implosion Artillery|Spirecraft Implosion Artillery]] || I || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftMartyr.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Martyr |Spirecraft Martyr ]] || I || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftRam.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Ram|Spirecraft Ram]] || I || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftShield.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Shield Bearer|Spirecraft Shield Bearer]] || I || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftSiegeTower.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Siege Tower|Spirecraft Siege Tower]] || I || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftIon.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Translocator|Spirecraft Translocator]] || I || 1<br />
|-<br />
|}<br />
== Pysite Asteroid ==<br />
<br />
Tier 2 Asteroid that can be used to construct:<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Icon<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Name<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Mark<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Count<br />
<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftAttritioner.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Attritioner|Spirecraft Attritioner]] || I || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftImplosion.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Implosion Artillery|Spirecraft Implosion Artillery]] || II || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftJumpship.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Jumpship|Spirecraft Jumpship]] || I || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftMartyr.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Martyr |Spirecraft Martyr ]] || I || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftMartyr.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Martyr |Spirecraft Martyr ]] || II || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftRam.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Ram|Spirecraft Ram]] || I || 4<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftRam.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Ram|Spirecraft Ram]] || II || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftScout.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Scout|Spirecraft Scout]] || I || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftShield.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Shield Bearer|Spirecraft Shield Bearer]] || I || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftSiegeTower.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Siege Tower|Spirecraft Siege Tower]] || II || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftIon.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Translocator|Spirecraft Translocator]] || II || 1<br />
|-<br />
|}<br />
== Xampite Asteroid ==<br />
<br />
Tier 3 Asteroid that can be used to construct:<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Icon<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Name<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Mark<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Count<br />
<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftAttritioner.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Attritioner|Spirecraft Attritioner]] || II || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftImplosion.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Implosion Artillery|Spirecraft Implosion Artillery]] || III || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftJumpship.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Jumpship|Spirecraft Jumpship]] || I || 4<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftJumpship.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Jumpship|Spirecraft Jumpship]] || II || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftMartyr.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Martyr |Spirecraft Martyr ]] || II || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftMartyr.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Martyr |Spirecraft Martyr ]] || III || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftPenetrator.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Penetrator|Spirecraft Penetrator]] || I || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftRam.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Ram|Spirecraft Ram]] || II || 4<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftRam.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Ram|Spirecraft Ram]] || III || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftScout.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Scout|Spirecraft Scout]] || I || 4<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftScout.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Scout|Spirecraft Scout]] || II || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftShield.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Shield Bearer|Spirecraft Shield Bearer]] || II || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftSiegeTower.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Siege Tower|Spirecraft Siege Tower]] || III || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftIon.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Translocator|Spirecraft Translocator]] || III || 1<br />
|-<br />
|}<br />
== Ebonite Asteroid ==<br />
<br />
Tier 4 Asteroid that can be used to construct:<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Icon<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Name<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Mark<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Count<br />
<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftAttritioner.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Attritioner|Spirecraft Attritioner]] || III || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftImplosion.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Implosion Artillery|Spirecraft Implosion Artillery]] || IV || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftJumpship.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Jumpship|Spirecraft Jumpship]] || II || 4<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftJumpship.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Jumpship|Spirecraft Jumpship]] || III || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftMartyr.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Martyr |Spirecraft Martyr ]] || III || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftMartyr.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Martyr |Spirecraft Martyr ]] || IV || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftPenetrator.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Penetrator|Spirecraft Penetrator]] || II || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftPenetrator.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Penetrator|Spirecraft Penetrator]] || III || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftRam.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Ram|Spirecraft Ram]] || III || 4<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftRam.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Ram|Spirecraft Ram]] || IV || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftScout.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Scout|Spirecraft Scout]] || II || 4<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftScout.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Scout|Spirecraft Scout]] || III || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftShield.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Shield Bearer|Spirecraft Shield Bearer]] || III || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftSiegeTower.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Siege Tower|Spirecraft Siege Tower]] || IV || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftIon.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Translocator|Spirecraft Translocator]] || IV || 1<br />
|-<br />
|}<br />
== Adamantite Asteroid ==<br />
<br />
Tier 5 Asteroid that can be used to construct:<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Icon<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Name<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Mark<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Count<br />
<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftAttritioner.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Attritioner|Spirecraft Attritioner]] || IV || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftImplosion.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Implosion Artillery|Spirecraft Implosion Artillery]] || V || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftJumpship.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Jumpship|Spirecraft Jumpship]] || III || 4<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftJumpship.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Jumpship|Spirecraft Jumpship]] || IV || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftMartyr.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Martyr |Spirecraft Martyr ]] || IV || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftMartyr.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Martyr |Spirecraft Martyr ]] || V || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftPenetrator.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Penetrator|Spirecraft Penetrator]] || IV || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftRam.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Ram|Spirecraft Ram]] || IV || 4<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftRam.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Ram|Spirecraft Ram]] || V || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftScout.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Scout|Spirecraft Scout]] || III || 4<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftScout.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Scout|Spirecraft Scout]] || IV || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftShield.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Shield Bearer|Spirecraft Shield Bearer]] || IV || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftSiegeTower.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Siege Tower|Spirecraft Siege Tower]] || V || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftIon.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Translocator|Spirecraft Translocator]] || V || 1<br />
|-<br />
|}<br />
== Titanite Asteroid ==<br />
<br />
Tier 6 Asteroid that can be used to construct:<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Icon<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Name<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Mark<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Count<br />
<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftAttritioner.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Attritioner|Spirecraft Attritioner]] || V || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftJumpship.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Jumpship|Spirecraft Jumpship]] || IV || 4<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftJumpship.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Jumpship|Spirecraft Jumpship]] || V || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftPenetrator.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Penetrator|Spirecraft Penetrator]] || V || 1<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftScout.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Scout|Spirecraft Scout]] || IV || 4<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftScout.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Scout|Spirecraft Scout]] || V || 2<br />
|-<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftShield.png|50px|left|]] || [[AI War:Spirecraft Shield Bearer|Spirecraft Shield Bearer]] || V || 2<br />
|-<br />
|}<br />
<br />
= Rarity Table =<br />
<br />
In order from most common to most rare asteroid we have:<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Icon<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Name<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Tier<br />
! style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" | Rarity<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
| [[File:AIWarReptite.png|50px|left|Reptite Asteroid]]<br />
| [[#Reptite Asteroid|Reptite]]<br />
| style="text-align: center;" | 1<br />
| Common<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
| [[File:AIWarPysite.png|50px|left|Pysite Asteroid]]<br />
| [[#Pysite Asteroid|Pysite]]<br />
| style="text-align: center;" | 2<br />
| Common<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
| [[File:AIWarXampite.png|50px|left|Xampite Asteroid]]<br />
| [[#Xampite Asteroid|Xampite]]<br />
| style="text-align: center;" | 3<br />
| Rare<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
| [[File:AIWarEbonite.png|50px|left|Ebonite Asteroid]]<br />
| [[#Ebonite Asteroid|Ebonite]]<br />
| style="text-align: center;" | 4<br />
| Rare<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
| [[File:AIWarAdamantite.png|50px|left|Adamantite Asteroid]]<br />
| [[#Adamantite Asteroid|Adamantite]]<br />
| style="text-align: center;" | 5<br />
| Very Rare<br />
|-style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
| [[File:AIWarTitanite.png|50px|left|Titanite Asteroid]]<br />
| [[#Titanite Asteroid|Titanite]]<br />
| style="text-align: center;" | 6<br />
| Very Rare<br />
|}<br />
<br />
{| <br />
|-<br />
| [[File:AIWarAsteroidIcon.png|50px|left|Asteroid Icon]]<br />
| Asteroid Icon: <br />
| When zoomed out in the system view and on the galaxy map, all asteroid types are displayed using this same icon.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{AIWarShips}}<br />
{{AIWarRefNav}}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Dyson_Antagonizer&diff=29953AI War:Dyson Antagonizer2017-10-21T22:15:50Z<p>Nat: Fix namespace</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar]]<br />
[[Category:AIWarBase]]<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarControlNode.png|left|Dyson Antagonizer]] || valign="top" | A strange device constructed by an abnormally powerful Hybrid. The subspace waves emanating from the device appear to be responsible for the recent erratic signals from the Dyson Sphere.<br/>This structure will only spawn if the [[AI War:Hybrid Hives|Hybrid]] minor faction is enabled.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
<br />
== Base Stats ==<br />
----<br />
{{AIWarTableDysonAntagonizer}}<br />
<br />
<br />
== How to counter when in the AI fleet ==<br />
This structure is built by the [[AI War:Hybrid Hives|Hybrid Hives AI Plot]] if its intensity is set high enough and there is a [[AI War:Dyson Sphere|Dyson Sphere]] also present.<br />
<br />
{{AIWarShips}}<br />
{{AIWarRefNav}}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Counter_Dark_Matter_Turret&diff=29933AI War:Counter Dark Matter Turret2017-10-15T00:38:52Z<p>Nat: Fix links</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWarBase]]<br />
<br/><br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarCounterDarkMatter.png|left|Counter Dark Matter Turret]] || valign="top" | Launches flares to dissipate any dark matter ammo attacking targets within its range. Particularly useful for protecting against Astro Trains and Munitions Boosters.<br/><br/>More specifically, any Dark Matter attack launched against a unit within the Counter Turret's protection range will have that attack negated.<br/>An attack against a unit outside the Counter Turrets protection radius will not be negated, even if the attack crosses or is launched from within the Counter Turret's protection radius. <br />
|}<br />
<br />
<br />
== Base Stats ==<br />
----<br />
{{AIWarTableTurCtrDarkMatter}}<br/><br />
== How to use in your fleet ==<br />
Note that all [[AI War:Fortresses|Fortress]] type units, as well as the [[AI War:Cloaker Starship|Cloaker Starship]] also counter dark matter.<br />
<br />
== How to counter when in the AI fleet ==<br />
Coming soon<br />
<br />
{{AIWarShips}}<br />
{{AIWarRefNav}}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Reinforcements&diff=29911AI War:Reinforcements2017-10-08T17:32:17Z<p>Nat: Fix link</p>
<hr />
<div><big>'''Why Does An Enemy Planet Get Reinforcements After Its Warp Gate Is Gone?'''</big><br />
<br />
'''Q:''' I went into an enemy planet and destroyed the warp gate in order to protect my adjacent planets. But later, when I went back, I saw that there were even more enemy ships guarding that planet compared to when I made my raid. How is the AI getting those reinforcements in there? <br />
<br />
'''A:''' Command Stations and some other structures (Special Forces Guard Posts, AI Troop Accelerators, etc) allow for the AI to reinforce a planet even after the Warp Gate is gone. Basically, any AI ships or structures that have the Warp Gate (Full) or Warp Gate (Reinforce) abilities. <br />
<br />
So as long as the AI controls a planet, it can reinforce it if it so chooses (the AI gets a limited number of reinforcements per period of time, so it won't always reinforce all its planets adjacent to your planets). When a reinforcement occurs, the AI adds ships at the command station (if it still exists), as well as at all the guard posts.<br />
<br />
See also [[AI War:AI Reinforcement]]<br />
<br />
<br />
[[AI War:AI War]]</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Teleport_Battle_Station&diff=29891AI War:Teleport Battle Station2017-10-01T18:13:56Z<p>Nat: EMP -> Widow</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar]]<br />
[[Category:AIWarBase]]<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarTeleportBattleStation.png|100px|left|Teleport Battle Station]] || valign="top" | Teleporting battle station fires multiple lightning shots.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
<br />
== Base Stats ==<br />
----<br />
{{AIWarTableTeleportBattleStation}}<br />
== How to use in your fleet ==<br />
So. Low damage, low cap health, teleporting. The main utility of these ships is on the defense, or buffing up other teleporting units should you be lucky to have them unlocked as well ([[AI War:Spire Teleporting Leech|Spire Teleporting Leech]], [[AI War:Teleport Raider|Teleport Raider]]s). What the [[Teleport Battle Station|Battle Station]] excels at is intercepting AI units that have broken through your defenses, anywhere in the galaxy. The hull-bonuses reflect this ([[AI War:Raid Starship|Raid Starship]]s, [[AI War:Bomber|Bomber]]s, [[AI War:Space Plane|Space Plane]]s, ''etc.''). They may not be the most-damaging ship-type for the job, but they're certainly the fastest.<br />
<br />
Teleporting ships do not combine well with an attacking fleet, unless they act independently and are micro'ed out of danger. Caps of all four marks will be required to fully exercise the strength of a secondary fleet-ball, and are best suited to chase and eliminate long-range ships such as [[AI War:Spire Blade Spawner|Spire Blade Spawner]]s, [[AI War:Sniper|Sniper]]s, ''etc.'' (NB: To be tested - will they survive better with an auto-kiting behaviour set to greater than Fighter ranges?)<br />
<br />
== How to counter when in the AI fleet ==<br />
On the defense, it is best to place Mark III Logistics Command Stations on border planets to cancel the teleportation effect. Otherwise, the player must erect forcefields to protect all of their assets. However, it is possible to predict where most teleporting units will head after they enter the wormhole - they will target either the command station or a target of interest, and land at the closest possible region outside the forcefield forming an arc. Placing [[AI War:Widow Minefield|Widow Mine]]s there will make an appropriate stop-gap.<br />
<br />
(NB: Placement of [[AI War:Force Field|Force Field]]s over friendly wormholes should prevent ships from exiting, a fact which may be useful in planning your defenses.)<br />
<br />
Teleporting ships are generally hilariously ineffective when you're attacking a planet. When alerted, the ships will rush ahead and die, thus fulfilling 'defeat-in-detail' on the player's behalf. If there are actually sufficient teleporting units to mount an effective defense (Teleport Turtles AIs, say), the player may resort to sending small fleets instead so as not to wake up the entire planet.<br />
<br />
{{AIWarShips}}<br />
{{AIWarRefNav}}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Cloaking_and_Tachyon_Beams(Stealth)&diff=29890AI War:Cloaking and Tachyon Beams(Stealth)2017-10-01T18:11:04Z<p>Nat: Fix links</p>
<hr />
<div>[[category:AIWar]]<br />
{{5.033}}<br/><br />
<br/><br />
__toc__<br />
<br />
== Cloaking (Stealth) ==<br />
Ships with the [[AI War:Ship Abilities|Ability: Cloaking]] can disappear and not be visible to the enemy in any shape or form.<BR/><br />
Cloaked ships still show up on the [[AI War:Planetary Summary|Planetary Summary]] on the right side of the screen however, including the type of cloaked ships if you hover over the cloaked ships icon.<br/><br />
Cloaks are not perfect however and when a ship attacks a target, its cloak drops for several seconds so it can be targeted as any other ship during this time.<br/><br />
The other common method of a cloak not hiding a ship is Tachyon Beams.<br/><br />
While a number of ships in the game have cloaking, the [[AI War:Scout|Scout Mk I]] is always available to the player and is a cheap ship to scout nearby systems with.<br />
<br/><br />
== Tachyon Beams (Stealth Detection) ==<br />
Ships with the [[AI War:Ship Abilities|Ability: Tachyon Beam Emission]] emit Tachyon Beams for the range listed that uncloak any ship that comes in range that is cloaked.<br/><br />
A ship that has been decloaked cannot recloaked for some seconds afterwards.<br/><br />
A tachyon beam is 100% effective, all ships that enter into range will be decloaked. <br/><br />
The only way to not be decloaked by tachyon beams is to have the [[AI War:Immunities|Immunity: Tachyon Beam]] which will prevent hostile tachyon beams from decloaking you, other methods of decloaking (such as attacking) will still decloak the ship.<br/><br />
The most common source of tachyon beams for the AI is the [[AI War:Tachyon Guardian|Tachyon Guardian]]. These guardians do not spawn on worlds adjacent to a players homeworlds, however pretty much every other wormhole in the galaxy will have a [[AI War:Tachyon Guardian|Tachyon Guardian]] guarding it. [[AI War:Tachyon Guardian|Tachyon Guardians]] are not a strong unit however and are reasonably straight forward to destroy with raiding tactics if you need to extend the range of you scouts.<br/><br />
<br/><br />
== Cloaking Booster (and Super-Booster) ==<br />
A few ships have the ability to boost the cloaking of nearby ships.<br/><br />
A ship with the [[AI War:Ship Abilities|Ability: Cloaking Booster]] boosts the cloak of a nearby ship so it can not be revealed by tachyon beams, effectively granting that ship the [[AI War:Immunities|Immunity: Tachyon Beams]]. <br/>Note that the [[AI War:Ship Abilities|Ability: Cloaking Booster]] is limited and that even though a group of scouts will all have cloak and all have the [[AI War:Ship Abilities|Ability: Cloaking Booster]], not all the scouts in the group will get cloak-boosted so while most of the group will be Cloak-Boosted and so Tachyon Immune, there will always be at least one ship in the group not Cloak-Boosted.<br/><br />
[[AI War:Ship Abilities|Ability: Cloaking Booster]] is found on [[AI War:Scout|Scouts]] and other scouting units.<br/><br />
<br/><br />
A ship with the [[AI War:Ship Abilities|Ability: Cloaking Super-Booster]] is actually able to cloak ships near it that normally would not have cloaking. A ship cloaked this way effectively gains the [[AI War:Ship Abilities|Ability: Cloaking]] and all the cloaking rules apply, such as having to decloak to attack.<br/><br />
Currently the only ship with the [[AI War:Ship Abilities|Ability: Cloaking Super-Booster]] is the [[AI War:Cloaker Starship|Cloaker Starship]].<br />
== "Perma-Cloaked" ==<br />
While no unit in the game actually has a permanent cloak, this term is used to refer to units that do not have an attack and have cloaking as well as the [[AI War:Immunities|Immunity: Tachyon Beams]]. <br/><br />
The most common examples are the [[AI War:Scout|Scout. Mk IV]] and the [[AI War:Scout Starship|Scout Starship Mk. IV]].<br/><br />
Because these ships do not have an attack and tachyon beams do not decloak them, only exceptional methods can reveal them. It should be noted that the rare [[AI War:Counter-Spy|Counter-Spy]] is able to kill the [[AI War:Scout|Scout. Mk IV]], but not the starship due to its insta-kill immunity. See [[#Other Notes on Cloaking|Other Notes on Cloaking]].<br/><br />
<br/><br />
<br />
== Planetary Cloakers ==<br />
Note that a [[AI War:Planetary Cloak|Planetary Cloak]] grants a special form of cloaking. <br/><br />
Ships in a system with a [[AI War:Planetary Cloak|Planetary Cloak]] can not be revealed by any means until it is destroyed. Tachyone Beams, EMP effects and the [[AI War:Tachyon Warhead|Tachyon Warhead]] will not reveal units cloaked by a [[AI War:Planetary Cloak|Planetary Cloak]]. Ships are otherwise affected as normal if you can guess where they are and attack them with [[AI War:Area Damage|Area Damage]]. An [[AI War:EMP|EMP]] warhead will still disable units in the system as normal, however because the [[AI War:Planetary Cloak|Planetary Cloak]] itself is immune to EMP, the disabled ships will still not be visible.<br/><br />
The [[AI War:AI_Opponent_Types#Harder|Shadow Master]] AI is the most common user of the [[AI War:Planetary Cloak|Planetary Cloak]].<br />
<br />
== Other Notes on Cloaking ==<br />
To keep ships from attacking and so dropping their cloak, put them into [[AI War:Low Power Mode|Low Power Mode]]. Ships in low power mode keep their cloak up and do not attack and so do not reveal themselves. (Tachyon beams still reveal them as normal.)<br/><br />
<br/><br />
Cloaking does not grant any sort of damage immunity so if a cloaked ship is caught in an [[AI War:Area Damage|Area Damage]] attack, it takes damage as normal. [[AI War:Area Minefield|Area mines]] are the most common cause of this when cloaked ships are operating with uncloaked ships.<br/><br />
<br/><br />
EMP Attacks, such as from the [[AI War:EMP|EMP]] warhead or [[AI War:Widow Minefield|Widow Mine]] disable a ship and cause it to drop its cloak for the duration of the EMP effect.<br/><br />
<br/><br />
Paralysis, such as from the [[AI War:Zenith Paralyzer|Zenith Paralyzer]], do not cause a ship to drop its cloak when paralysed. However, the count down for when a ship can recloak after firing is extended for the duration of the paralysis effect.<br/><br />
<br/><br />
== Tactics to help cloaking (or Help! My scouts are dying too fast) ==<br />
The straightforward solution to scouts dying too fast is to raid the [[AI War:Tachyon Guardian|Tachyon Guardians]] that are decloaking your scouts.<BR/><br />
The disadvantages of this method are that you will exposed some of your fleet to combat and may take losses that have to be replaced and because you are not clearing the system of ships, some of the AI ships in the system will be loosed as [[AI War:Threat|Threat]].<br/><br />
<br/><br />
Another method to get your scouts farther out is [[AI War:Transports|Transport]] hopping. A [[AI War:Transports|Transport]] does not have cloaking but it is fast and [[AI War:Immunities|Immune]] to both [[AI War:Tractor Beams|Tractor Beams]] and [[AI War:Mines|Mines]].<br/><br />
To [[AI War:Transports|Transport]] hop, load your scouts into a [[AI War:Transports|Transport]] and then head for the system you want to scout. The [[AI War:Transports|Transport]] will die on the way, leaving your scouts to go on alone, but the scouts are now starting from within AI space and so get farther before being destroyed.<br/><br />
You should be able to scout a system or two systems farther out with this method.<br/><br />
You are throwing away a [[AI War:Transports|Transport]] to do this however and while they are not resource intensive, they are not cheap either.<br/><br />
On the other hand, a [[AI War:Transports|Transport]] will not cause AI ships to loose and become [[AI War:Threat|Threat]].<br/><br />
<br/><br />
== Tactics to defeat cloaking (or Help! I can't see the AI attacking me) ==<br />
The only real counter to cloaked ships attacking you is to increase your tachyon beam coverage.<br/><br />
The ships that are always available to you with tachyon beams are [[AI War:Tachyon Drone|Tachyon Drone]], [[AI War:Orbital Command Station|Military Command Stations Mk I]] and [[AI War:Scout Starship|Scout Starships]].<br/><br />
<br/><br />
You can unlock [[AI War:Tachyon_Beam_Emitter_(Stealth)|Tachyon Beam Emmiter Turrets]] and [[AI War:Decloaker|Decloakers]] for additional coverage.<br/><br />
<br/><br />
[[AI War:Orbital Command Station|Military Command Stations Mk II & III]] also grant tachyon beam coverage, with the Mk III station granting tachyon beam coverage for the entire star system.<br/><br />
<br/><br />
If you really need system wide tachyon beam coverage, the [[AI War:Tachyon Warhead|Tachyon Warhead]] can grant you that, however it does have an AIP cost attached.<br />
{{AIWarRefNav}}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Ship_Immunities&diff=29889AI War:Ship Immunities2017-10-01T17:51:39Z<p>Nat: Fix links</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar]]<br />
{{5.033}}<br />
<b>Immunities</b> allow a ship to outright ignore an enemy ability.<br />
If the <b>Immunity</b> is against an [[AI War:Ammunition Types|Ammunition Type]], ships armed with that ammunition can not even target the ship with immunity.<br/><br />
A ship's immunities can be found in the middle of the ship description pop-up in dark grey text.<br />
<br />
<br />
The complete list of <b>Immunities</b> in the game are as follows:<br />
{|<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Antimatter Bombs:</b> || Renders a ship immune to [[AI War:Ammunition Types|Antimatter Bomb]] ammunition, such as fired by the [[AI War:Zenith Bombard|Zenith Bombard]].<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Area Damage:</b> || Renders a ship immune to [[AI War:Ammunition Types|Area Damage]] attacks, such as the secondary explosions of ammunition fired by the [[AI War:Grenade Launcher|Grenade Launcher]]. This is can also be referred to an AOE (Area of Effect) attack.<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Armor Boosts:</b> || Renders a ship immune to armor boosts, such as from the [[AI War:Armor Booster|Armor Booster]].<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Artillery Ammo:</b> || Renders a ship immune to [[AI War:Ammunition Types|Artillery]] ammunition, as fired by the [[AI War:Artillery Golem|Artillery Golem]]. Most commonly found on high level [[AI War:Guard Posts|Guard Posts]] and [[AI War:Guardians|Guardians]].<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Attack Boosts:</b> || Renders a ship immune to attack boosts, such as from the [[AI War:Flagship|Flagship]].<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Attrition:</b> || Renders a ship immune to attrition, such as from the [[AI War:Attritioner|Attritioner]].<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Beam Weapons:</b> || Renders a ship immune to beam weapons, such as from the [[AI War:Zenith Beam Frigate|Zenith Beam Frigate]], [[AI War:Heavy Beam Turret|Heavy Beam Turret]], or [[AI War:Spire Frigate|Spire Frigate]].<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Being Cloaked:</b> || Renders a ship immune to being cloaked by another ship, such as the [[AI War:Cloaker Starship|Cloaker Starship]].<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Being Insta-Killed:</b> || Renders a ship immune to insta-kill effects, such as the [[AI War:Ion Cannon|Ion Cannon]]. <br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Being Scrapped:</b> || Prevents a unit from being scrapped via the self-destruct command (DEL key by default).<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Black Hole Machines:</b> || This immunity allows a unit to ignore the effects of the [[AI War:Black Hole Machine|Black Hole Machine]] and exit a system it would otherwise be stuck in.<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Blade Attacks:</b> || Renders a ship immune to [[AI War:Ammunition Types|Blade Attacks]], such as from the [[AI War:Vorticular Cutlass|Cutlass]].<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Dark Matter Ammo:</b> || Renders a ship immune to [[AI War:Ammunition Types|Dark Matter]], such as from the [[AI War:Astro Trains|Astro Trains]].<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>EMPs:</b> || Renders a ship immune to EMP effects, such as from the [[AI War:EMP|EMP Warhead]] and [[AI War:Widow Minefield|Widow Mine]]. Does not affect Paralysis Effects.<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Force Fields:</b> || Renders a ship immune to enemy [[AI War:Force Field|Force Fields]]. Friendly force fields will still protect a unit with this immunity. This is often given to non-military structures to avoid them getting pushed around by enemy ship mounted force fields as described in [[AI War:Force Field Interactions|Force Field Interactions]].<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Fusion Cutters:</b> || Renders a ship immune to [[AI War:Ammunition Types|Fusion Cutters]], such as from the [[AI War:Vampire Claw|Vampire Claw]]. Units over 1,000,000 health get this immunity automatically. For a ship type with multiple Mark levels, such as the [[AI War:Ships_and_Structures#Fleet_Ships|Fleet Ships]], all Mark levels are granted <b>Fusion Cutter</b> immunity if the Mark I ship has over 1,000,000 health, not on a per Mark basis.<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Gravity Effects:</b> || Renders a ship immune to being slowed by gravity, such as from the [[AI War:Gravitational Turret|Gravitational Turret]].<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Mass Driver Ammo:</b> || Renders a ship immune to [[AI War:Ammunition Types|Mass Driver Ammunition]], such as from the [[AI War:Orbital Mass Driver|Orbital Mass Driver]]. Found on [[AI War:Guard Posts|Guard Posts]], [[AI War:Guardians|Guardians]] and super-large units such as the [[AI War:Devourer Golem|Devourer Golem]].<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Mines:</b> || Renders a ship immune to [[AI War:Mine|Mines]], including [[AI War:Area Minefield|Area Mines]] and [[AI War:Widow Minefield|Widow Mines]]. Mines will not be triggered by ships with this immunity. However, if a ship nearby triggers an Area or EMP mine, this ship can still be affected unless they have an the Area Damage or EMP immunity as well.<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Minor Electric Ammo:</b> || Renders a ship immune to [[AI War:Ammunition Types|Minor Electric Ammunition]], such as from the [[AI War:Teleport Raider|Teleport Raider]].<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Missile Ammo:</b> || Renders a ship immune to [[AI War:Ammunition Types|Missile Ammunition]], such as from the [[AI War:Missile Frigate|Missile Frigate]].<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Nuclear Explosions:</b> || Renders a ship immune to [[AI War:Nuclear Warhead|Nuclear Warheads]]. Most Mark V, Core and Starships have this immunity.<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Paralysis Attacks:</b> || Renders a ship immune to Paralysis Attacks, such as from the [[AI War:Zenith Paralyzer|Zenith Paralyzer]]. Does nothing against EMP effects.<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Radar Dampening:</b> || Allows a ship to attack at its full range, it does not have to close to the Radar Dampening range to attack.<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Reclamation:</b> || Prevents a ship from being reclaimed, such as the [[AI War:Leech Starship|Leech Starship]].<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Repair:</b> || Prevents a ship from being repaired by other ships. Note that if the ship does not have the [[AI War:Ship Abilities|Regen Ability]], this means that the ship can never regain its lost health. The [[AI War:Spirecraft Martyr|Spirecraft Martyr]] is one such ship that can never regain its lost health.<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Shell Ammo:</b> || Renders a ship immune to [[AI War:Ammunition Types|Shell Ammunition]], such as from the [[AI War:Fighter|Fighter]].<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Sniper Shots:</b> || Renders a ship immune to Snipers, such as the [[AI War:Sniper Turret|Sniper Turret]].<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Speed Boosts:</b> || Renders a ship immune to Speed Boosts, such as those provided by [[AI War:Command Station|Command Stations]] or [[AI War:Speed Booster|Speed Boosters]].<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Swallow:</b> || Renders a ship immune to being Swallowed by ships such as the [[AI War:Spire Maw|Spire Maw]].<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Tachyon Beams:</b> || Renders a ship immune to [[AI War:Cloaking_and_Tachyon_Beams(Stealth)|Tachyon Beams]] which prevents them from being directly decloaked. Note that other methods, such as an [[AI War:EMP|EMP]] can still decloak the ship.<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Tractor Beams:</b> || Renders a ship immune to [[AI War:Engines and Speed|Tractor Beams]] which prevents them from being stopped, such as from the [[AI War:Tractor Beam Turret|Tractor Beam Turret]].<br />
|-<br />
| valign="top" | <b>Transport:</b> || A ship with this immunity can not be loaded into a [[AI War:Transports|Transport]]. Hostile ships can still swallow this ship, such as the [[AI War:Spire Maw|Spire Maw]].<br />
|}<br />
<br/><br />
{{AIWarRefNav}}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Zenith_Viral_Shredder&diff=29888AI War:Zenith Viral Shredder2017-10-01T17:38:46Z<p>Nat: EMP -> Widow</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar]]<br />
[[Category:AIWarZR]]<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarZenithViralShredder.png|left|Zenith Viral Shredder]] || valign="top" | Melee ship that generates build points as it attacks, spawning a free copy of itself when enough are accumulated. This replication costs a portion of the replicator's health, and will not happen below a certain percent of health. Also, when there are more shredders of a specific level than the natural ship cap on a single planet, the build points required to replicate will increase exponentially.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
<br />
== Base Stats ==<br />
----<br />
{{AIWarTableZenithViralShredder}}<br />
== How to use in your fleet ==<br />
It seems paradoxic for a melee unit to be slow, but [[AI War:Zenith Viral Shredder|Zenith Viral Shredder]] have good reason to be. They are the opposite of [[AI War:Vorticular Cutlass|Vorticular Cutlass]]es in that they reproduce on attack - this means that players can support twice or three times the default cap of Shredders without building more than a dozen or so at the start of the game.<br />
<br />
When numbers are low, keep Shredders for wave defense. This combines well with any effect that will keep enemy ships from travelling faster than them ([[AI War:Widow Mine|Widow Mine]]s, [[AI War:Tractor Beam Turret|Tractor Beam Turret]]s, [[AI War:Zenith Paralyzer|Zenith Paralyzer]]s, [[AI War:Etherjet|Etherjet]]s, ''etc.''), and distracts enemy fire long long for them to increase in numbers. They make for rather impressive damage soakers once there are multiple caps-worth. Although you won't be chasing down anything in a hostile wormhole, sending these guys ahead of ships that you actually have to ''rebuild'' will reduce net losses drastically.<br />
<br />
== How to counter when in the AI fleet ==<br />
As with all melee-units, [[AI War:Gravitational Turret|Gravitational Turret]]s. On wave defense it is important to reduce the Shredders to below the critical numbers needed to replenish themselves. Since Shredders are slower than default-speed ([[AI War:Fighter|Fighter]]s and [[AI War:Bomber|Bomber]]s), they can be kited even in hostile wormholes. It shouldn't be a problem until one meets 1000 Shredder-IVs, in which case it's probably time to use a warhead or two.<br />
<br />
Outstanding Issue: does the AI suffer from similar cap-penalties as human players?<br />
<br />
{{AIWarShips}}<br />
{{AIWarRefNav}}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=Template:FleetExp&diff=29887Template:FleetExp2017-09-30T17:41:07Z<p>Nat: Add namespace qualifier</p>
<hr />
<div>[[AI War:Decoy Drone|Decoy Drone]], [[AI War:Engineer|Experimental Engineer]], [[AI War:MicroParasite|MicroParasite]], [[AI War:Speed Booster|Speed Booster]], [[AI War:Translocator|Translocator]].</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Modular_Fortress&diff=29886AI War:Modular Fortress2017-09-30T17:37:15Z<p>Nat: Basic -> Needler</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar]]<br />
__toc__<br />
= Modular Fortresses =<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarModularFortress.png|100px|left|Fortress]] || valign="top" | EXTREMELY large, powerful, and expensive defensive structure. Mounts 4 Large and 8 Small modules that can be unlocked.<br/>Note that there are significant differences between the 4 types of Modular Fortresses, including which modules they can mount.<br/><b>Modular Fortress (Human):</b> The only Modular Fort unlocked with [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]], can mount most types of modules but the more exotic modules will not fit. Also repairs nearby units.<br/><b>Neinzul Modular Fortress:</b> A possible reward for completing an [[AI War:Ancient Shadows Nebula|Ancient Shadows Nebula]], this unit mounts can mount organic Neinzul type modules. This unit also cloaks and can grant cloaking to nearby ships the same as the [[AI War:Cloaker Starship|Cloaker Starship]].<br/><b>Spire Modular Fortress:</b> A possible reward for completing an [[AI War:Ancient Shadows Nebula|Ancient Shadows Nebula]], this unit mounts can mount the heavy Spire modules. Also mounts an extremely powerful Spire Beam main weapon.<br/><b>Zenith Modular Fortress:</b> A possible reward for completing an [[AI War:Ancient Shadows Nebula|Ancient Shadows Nebula]], this unit mounts can mount the Zenith beam modules. Also mounts an extremely powerful Energy Wave main weapon.<br/>Also see [[AI War:Fortress|Fortress]], [[AI War:Mini-Fortress|Mini-Fortress]], and [[AI War:SuperFortress|SuperFortress]].<br />
|}<br />
=Fortress Modules =<br />
Note that the Human Modular Fortress and the six basic modules are unlocked via [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]].<br/>The other 3 types of forts, and the advanced modules, are unlocked by progressing the [[AI War:Ancient Shadows Campaign|Ancient Shadows Campaign]].<br />
<br/>The higher marks of the six basic modules are unlocked by researching the corresponding structure.<br/><br />
Shield Module -> [[AI War:Force Field|Force Field]]<br/><br />
Needler Module -> [[AI War:Needler Turret|Needler Turret]]<br/><br />
Laser Cannon Module -> [[AI War:Laser Turret|Laser Turret]]<br/><br />
Missile Module -> [[AI War:Missile Turret|Missile Turret]] <br/><br />
MLRS Module -> [[AI War:MLRS Turret|MLRS Turret]]<br/><br />
Heavy Beam Module -> [[AI War:Heavy Beam Turret|Heavy Beam Turret]] (Note that unlike the other five, the Mk. I Heavy Beam Module is not already unlocked.)<br/><br />
These unlocks are for the Modular Fortresses only. To mount the Laser Cannon Module Mk. II on your [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] requires unlocking it via Champion Points.<br />
== Large Modules ==<br />
{| {{AIWarTableHeaderSortable}} {{AlgTop}}<br />
! !!Module!!Description!!Human!!Zenith!!Spire!!Neinzul<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarForceFieldModule.png|25px|Center|Shield Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Shield Module</b>|| A massive modular shield generator for use on a fortress that can protect nearby units.||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarBomberBayModule.png|25px|Center|Bomber Bay Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Bomber Bay Module</b>|| An integrated production and launching facility for very-short-lived bomber drones.||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}||{{Na}}||{{Ya}}<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarHeatBeamModule.png|25px|Center|Heat Beam Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Heat Beam Module</b>|| A fortress-mounted variant of the Zenith Heat Beam. Hits up to 9 targets on a line, each with the full power of the beam.||{{Na}}||{{Ya}}||{{Na}}||{{Na}}<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarHeavyBeamTurret.png|25px|Center|Heavy Beam Cannon Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Heavy Beam Cannon Module</b>|| A massive fortress-mounted variant of the human Heavy Beam Cannon turret.||{{Ya}}||{{Na}}||{{Na}}||{{Na}}<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarInterceptorBayModule.png|25px|Center|Interceptor Bay Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Interceptor Bay Module</b>|| An integrated production and launching facility for very-short-lived interceptor drones.||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}||{{Na}}||{{Ya}}<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarPlasmaSiegeCannonModule.png|25px|Center|Plasma Siege Cannon Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Plasma Siege Cannon Module</b>|| A modular weapon that fires enormous bolts of condensed plasma at large and/or immobile targets. When the bolt explodes, it also damages several nearby units for reduced damage. If it hits a forcefield, it will also damage up to 25 units protected by that forcefield (or forcefields near that forcefield) with 6.25% of the damage done to the forcefield.||{{Na}}||{{Na}}||{{Ya}}||{{Na}}<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarPhotonLanceModule.png|25px|Center|Photon Lance Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Photon Lance Module</b>|| A modular version of the weapon preferred by many Spire capital ships and fortifications. Fires a coherent beam of light for two seconds that strikes all enemy units in its path. Cannot be re-aimed during firing, so moving targets often escape the full force of the beam. Targets that fail to evade suffer tremendous damage.||{{Na}}||{{Na}}||{{Ya}}||{{Na}}<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarRailClusterModule.png|25px|Center|Rail Cluster Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Rail Cluster Module</b>|| A modular array of rail-cannons. More powerful than standard human sniper railguns, but without the infinite range.||{{Na}}||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}||{{Na}}<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarSlicerBayModule.png|25px|Center|Slicer Bay Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Slicer Bay Module</b>|| An integrated production and launching facility for very-short-lived slicer drones.||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}||{{Na}}||{{Ya}}<br />
|}<br />
==Small Modules==<br />
{| {{AIWarTableHeaderSortable}} {{AlgTop}}<br />
! !!Module!!Description!!Human!!Zenith!!Spire!!Neinzul<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarAcidJetModule.png|25px|Center|Acid Jet Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Acid Jet Module</b>|| A fortress-mounted variant of the Zenith Acid Sprayer's weapon. Low base damage, but extremely effective against exotic-material hulls. ||{{Na}}||{{Ya}}||{{Na}}||{{Ya}}<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarDoomAcceleratorModule.png|25px|Center|Doom Accelerator Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Doom Accelerator Module</b>|| A fortress-mounted variant of the Neinzul Youngling Vulture's weapon. Its damage increases against targets that have already taken damage. Against a target with 90% or higher health it does 10*base damage. Against more heavily damaged targets the damage keeps going up until the maximum of 90*base damage against targets with 10% or lower health.||{{Ya}}||{{Na}}||{{Na}}||{{Ya}}<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarFlakModule.png|25px|Center|Flak Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Flak Module</b>|| A fortress-mounted variant of the Flak Turret. Very effective against many lighter hull-types.||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}||{{Na}}||{{Na}}<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarImpulseReactionModule.png|25px|Center|Impulse Reaction Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Impulse Reaction Module</b>|| A fortress-mounted variant of the Impulse Reaction Emitter's weapon. Low base damage, but extremely effective against targets with high energy use.||{{Na}}||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}||{{Na}}<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarInsanityInducerModule.png|25px|Center|Insanity Inducer Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Insanity Inducer Module</b>|| A fortress-mounted variant of the Botnet Golem's weapon. Low rate of fire, and totally ineffective against units immune to reclamation, but instantly overrides the target's programming so that it attacks your enemies instead||{{Na}}||{{Na}}||{{Na}}||{{Ya}}<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarLaserCannonModule.png|25px|Center|Laser Cannon Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Laser Cannon Module</b>|| A massive high-power battery of laser cannons that can be mounted on a fortress.||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarMissileModule.png|25px|Center|Missile Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Missile Module</b>|| A massive long-range missile launcher that can be mounted on a fortress.||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}||{{Na}}||{{Ya}}<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarMLRSModule.png|25px|Center|MLRS Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>MLRS Module</b>|| A massive Multiple Launch Rocket System that can be mounted on a fortress.||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarNanosubverterModule.png|25px|Center|Nanosubverter Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Nanosubverter Module</b>|| A modular weapon that does reclamation damage.||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}||{{Na}}||{{Na}}<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarNeedlerModule.png|25px|Center|Needler Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Needler Module</b>|| A massive rapid-firing bank of Needlers that can be mounted on a fortress.||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarParalyzerModule.png|25px|Center|Paralyzer Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Paralyzer Module</b>|| A fortress-mounted variant of the Zenith Paralyzer's weapon. Incapacitates targets for several seconds. ||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}||{{Na}}||{{Na}}<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarPolarizerModule.png|25px|Center|Polarizer Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Polarizer Module</b>|| A fortress-mounted variant of the Zenith Polarizer's weapon. Low base damage, but extremely effective against targets with lots of armor. ||{{Na}}||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}||{{Na}}<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarRailCannonModule.png|25px|Center|Rail Cannon Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Rail Cannon Module</b>|| A modular rail-cannon. More powerful than the weapons found on standard human sniper units, but without the infinite range.||{{Ya}}||{{Na}}||{{Ya}}||{{Na}}<br />
|-<br />
|[[File:AIWarTranslocatorModule.png|25px|Center|Translocator Module]] || valign="middle" align="center" | <b>Translocator Module</b>|| A fortress-mounted variant of the Translocator's weapon. Lacks damage bonuses against specific hulls, but warps targets to a different location. Some targets (generally large ones) are immune to translocation.||{{Na}}||{{Na}}||{{Ya}}||{{Ya}}<br />
|}<br />
{{PT}}<br />
= Modular Fortresses Stats=<br />
== Human Modular Fortress ==<br />
----<br />
{{AIWarTableModFortHuman}}<br/><br />
== Neinzul Modular Fortress ==<br />
{{AIWarTableModFortNeinzul}}<br/><br />
==Spire Modular Fortress==<br />
{{AIWarTableModFortSpire}}<br/><br />
==Zenith Modular Fortress==<br />
{{AIWarTableModFortZenith}}<br />
{{PT}}<br />
<br />
= Module Stats=<br />
== Large Modules ==<br />
<font size="3"><b>Shield</b></font><br />
{{AIWarTableModFortShield}}{{PT}}<br />
----<br />
<font size="3"><b>Drone Bay (Bomber/Interceptor/Slicer)</b></font><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Shell || {{AlgCtr}} | Turret || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 200|| {{AlgCtr}} | 3,100|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 100 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 200|| {{AlgCtr}} | 3,100|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 100 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 200|| {{AlgCtr}} | 3,100|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 100 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|} <br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:24 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 40,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:47 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 60,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:04:10 <br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
----<br />
<font size="3"><b>Bomber Drone</b></font> Spawns automatically from Bomber Drone Bay Module<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Energy Bomb || {{AlgCtr}} | Polycrystal || {{AlgCtr}} | Speed Boosts, Reclamation, Being Scrapped, Transport, Swallow, Mines, Repair || {{AlgCtr}} | 6 Heavy, 6 Artillery, 6 Command-Grade, 6 Ultra-Heavy, 6 Structural<br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Speed]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Engine Health]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 14,400|| {{AlgCtr}} | 8,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 5 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 11,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 94 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf || {{AlgRgt}} | 2,880 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Self Attrition Time 00:21, Can't Use Wormholes<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 28,800|| {{AlgCtr}} | 8,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 5 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 22,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 94 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 5,760 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Self Attrition Time 00:21, Can't Use Wormholes<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 43,200|| {{AlgCtr}} | 8,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 5 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 33,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 94 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 8,640 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Self Attrition Time 00:21, Can't Use Wormholes<br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
----<br />
<font size="3"><b>Interceptor Drone</b></font> Spawns automatically from Interceptor Drone Bay Module<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Shell || {{AlgCtr}} | Light || {{AlgCtr}} | Speed Boosts, Reclamation, Being Scrapped, Transport, Swallow, Mines, Repair || {{AlgCtr}} | 6 Light, 6 Medium, 6 Close-Combat, 6 Polycrystal<br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Speed]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Engine Health]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 11,200|| {{AlgCtr}} | 4,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 4 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 11,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 120 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf || {{AlgRgt}} | 2,800 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Self Attrition Time 00:21, Can't Use Wormholes, Armor Piercing 750<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 22,400|| {{AlgCtr}} | 4,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 4 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 22,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 120 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 5,600 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Self Attrition Time 00:21, Can't Use Wormholes, Armor Piercing 1,500<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 33,600|| {{AlgCtr}} | 4,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 4 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 33,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 120 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 8,400 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Self Attrition Time 00:21, Can't Use Wormholes, Armor Piercing 2,250<br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
-----<br />
<font size="3"><b>Slicer Drone</b></font> Spawns automatically from Slicer Drone Bay Module<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Blades || {{AlgCtr}} | Close-Combat || {{AlgCtr}} | Speed Boosts, Tractor Beams, Reclamation, Being Scrapped, Transport, Swallow, Force Fields, Mines, Repair || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Speed]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Engine Health]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 18,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 1 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 11,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 178 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf || {{AlgRgt}} | 18,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Self Attrition Time 00:21, Target Seek Range 5,000, Can't Use Wormholes, Armor Piercing 10,000<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 36,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 1 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 22,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 178 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 36,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Self Attrition Time 00:21, Target Seek Range 5,000, Can't Use Wormholes, Armor Piercing 10,000<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 54,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 1 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 33,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 178 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 54,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Self Attrition Time 00:21, Target Seek Range 5,000, Can't Use Wormholes, Armor Piercing 10,000<br />
|} {{PT}}<br />
-----<br />
<font size="3"><b>Heat Beam Module</b></font> <br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Beam Weapon || {{AlgCtr}} | Turret || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 100,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 50,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 200,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 100,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 300,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 150,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|}<br />
DPS shown is for a single target hit. The Heat Beam Module can hit up to 9 targets in a line.<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:24 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 40,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:47 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 60,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:04:10 <br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
-----<br />
<font size="3"><b>Heavy Beam Module</b></font> <br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Beam Weapon || {{AlgCtr}} | Turret || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 7x260,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 14,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 8 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 227,500 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 8,000<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 14x260,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 14,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 8 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 455,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 8,000<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 21x260,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 14,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 8 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 682,500 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 8,000<br />
|} <br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Heavy Beam Turret|HBC Mk I]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 28,800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 6,400 || {{AlgCtr}} | 35,200 || {{AlgCtr}} | 4,800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:04:01 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Heavy Beam Turret|HBC Mk II]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 57,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 12,800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 70,400 || {{AlgCtr}} | 4,800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:08:01 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Heavy Beam Turret|HBC Mk III]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 86,400 || {{AlgCtr}} | 19,200 || {{AlgCtr}} | 105,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 4,800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:12:01 <br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
-----<br />
<font size="3"><b>Photon Lance Module</b></font> <br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Beam Weapon || {{AlgCtr}} | Turret || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 2,400,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 25,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2(4) sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 600,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 750<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 4,800,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 25,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2(4) sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 1,200 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 1,500<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 7,200,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 25,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2(4) sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 1,800,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 2,250<br />
|} Fire cycle is 4 seconds, 2 seconds of sustained beam firing following by 2 seconds to reload.<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:24 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 40,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:48 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 60,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:04:10 <br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
-----<br />
<font size="3"><b>Plasma Siege Cannon Module</b></font> <br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
!{{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Energy Bomb || {{AlgCtr}} | Turret || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | 10 Heavy, 10 Turret, 10 Ultra-Heavy, 10 Structural<br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 140,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 13,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 70,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 280,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 13,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 140,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 420,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 13,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 210,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|} DPS shown is for only a single target hit.<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:00:42 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:24 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:05 <br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
-----<br />
<font size="3"><b>Rail Cluster Module</b></font> <br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Railgun || {{AlgCtr}} | Turret || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | 5 Light, 5 Swarmer, 5 Ultra-Light, 5 Close-Combat<br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 20x10,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 100,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 999,999<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 20x20,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 200,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 999,999<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 20x30,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 300,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 999,999<br />
|} <br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:24 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 40,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:47 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 60,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:04:10 <br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
<br />
== Small Modules ==<br />
<font size="3"><b>Acid Jet Module</b></font> <br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Acid || {{AlgCtr}} | Turret || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | 8 Neutron, 8 Refractive, 8 Composite, 8 Polycrystal<br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 10x8,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 40,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 450<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 10x16,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 80,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 900<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 10x24,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 120,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 1,350<br />
|} <br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:00:42 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:24 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:05 <br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
-----<br />
<font size="3"><b>Doom Accelerator Module</b></font> <br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Shell || {{AlgCtr}} | Turret || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 14,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 70,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 999,999<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 28,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 140,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 999,999<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 42,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 210,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 999,999<br />
|} Note that the Doom Accelerator does (Base Damage)*(100-(Current Health Percentage)). <br/>DPS column shows minimum damage when target has 90% or higher health.<br/>Damage will scale as the target takes damage until 10% health at which time the effective DPS is 9 times what is listed.<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:00:42 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:24 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:05 <br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
-----<br />
<font size="3"><b>Flak Module</b></font> <br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Energy Bomb || {{AlgCtr}} | Turret || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | 5 Light, 5 Swarmer, 5 Close-Combat, 5 Refractive, 5 Composite<br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 3x12,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 18,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 3x24,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 36,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 3x36,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 54,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|} Each round explodes when its target is reached. The explosion can hit 5/6/7 (Mk. I/II/III) targets, including the target the round was fired at.<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:00:42 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:24 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:05 <br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
-----<br />
<font size="3"><b>Impulse Reactor Cannon Module</b></font> <br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Impulse Reactive || {{AlgCtr}} | Turret || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 18,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 9,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 36,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 18,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 54,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 27,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|} Minimum DPS against low energy targets shown. DPS scales significantly against high energy targets.<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:00:42 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:24 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:05 <br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
-----<br />
<font size="3"><b>Insanity Inducer Module</b></font> <br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Energy Burst || {{AlgCtr}} | Turret || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 2x20,000,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 20,000,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Reclaims Enemy Ships, Armor Piercing 999,999<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 4x20,000,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 40,000,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Reclaims Enemy Ships, Armor Piercing 999,999<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 6x20,000,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 ||{{AlgRgt}} | 60,000,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Reclaims Enemy Ships, Armor Piercing 999,999<br />
|} Ignore the DPS numbers, this module reclaims any target it hits into a ship that will fight on your side.<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:00:42 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:24 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:05 <br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
-----<br />
<font size="3"><b>Laser Cannon Module</b></font> <br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Laser || {{AlgCtr}} | Turret || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | 5 Heavy, 5 Refractive, 5 Ultra-Heavy, 5 Polycrystal<br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 3x36000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 13,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 4 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 27,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 375<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 3x72000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 13,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 4 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 54,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 750<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 3x108000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 13,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 4 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 81,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 1,125<br />
|} <br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | -- || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 7,200 || {{AlgCtr}} | 8,800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,200 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:01 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Laser Turret|Las Tur Mk II]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 3,200 || {{AlgCtr}} | 14,400 || {{AlgCtr}} | 17,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,200 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:01 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Laser Turret|Las Tur Mk III]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 4,800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 21,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 26,400 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,200 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:03:01 <br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
-----<br />
<font size="3"><b>Missile Module</b></font> <br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Missile || {{AlgCtr}} | Turret || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | 5 Medium, 5 Neutron, 5 Ultra-Light, 5 Composite, 5 Polycrystal<br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 2x25,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 25,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 2x50,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 50,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 2x75,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 75,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|} <br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | -- || {{AlgCtr}} | 6,400 || {{AlgCtr}} | 2,400 || {{AlgCtr}} | 8,800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:00:54 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Missile Turret|Mis Tur Mk II]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 12,800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 4,800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 17,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:47 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Missile Turret|Mis Tur Mk III]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 19,200 || {{AlgCtr}} | 7,200 || {{AlgCtr}} | 26,400 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:40 <br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
-----<br />
<font size="3"><b>MLRS Module</b></font> <br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Missile || {{AlgCtr}} | Turret || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | 5 Light, 5 Neutron, 5 Swarmer, 5 Ultra-Light, 5 Close-Combat<br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 12x9,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 4 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 27,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 12x18,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 4 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 54,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 12x27,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 4 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 81,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|} <br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | -- || {{AlgCtr}} | 7,200 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 8,800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:01 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | [[MLRS Turret|MLRS Tur Mk II]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 14,400 || {{AlgCtr}} | 3,200 || {{AlgCtr}} | 17,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:01 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | [[MLRS Turret|MLRS Tur Mk III]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 21,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 4,800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 26,400 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:03:01 <br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
-----<br />
<font size="3"><b>Nanosubverter Module</b></font> <br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Shell || {{AlgCtr}} | Turret || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 5x6,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 15,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Reclaims Enemy Ships, Armor Piercing 750<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 5x12,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 30,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Reclaims Enemy Ships, Armor Piercing 1,500<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 5x18,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 45,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Reclaims Enemy Ships, Armor Piercing 2,250<br />
|} <br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:00:42 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:24 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:05 <br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
-----<br />
<font size="3"><b>Needler Module</b></font><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Shell || {{AlgCtr}} | Turret || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | 5 Heavy, 5 Artillery, 5 Ultra-Heavy, 5 Structural<br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 6x10,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 11,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 30,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 750<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 6x20,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 11,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 60,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 1,500<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 6x30,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 11,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 90,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 2,250<br />
|} <br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | -- || {{AlgCtr}} | 4,800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 2,400 || {{AlgCtr}} | 7,200 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:00:40 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Needler Turret|Needler Tur Mk II]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 9,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 4,800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 14,400 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:20 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Needler Turret|Needler Tur Mk III]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 14,400 || {{AlgCtr}} | 7,200 || {{AlgCtr}} | 21,600 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:00 <br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
-----<br />
<font size="3"><b>Paralyzer Module</b></font><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Flare || {{AlgCtr}} | Turret || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 3x34,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 51,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Attack Paralyzes x24<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 3x68,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 102,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Attack Paralyzes x30<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 3x102,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 153,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Attack Paralyzes x36<br />
|} <br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:00:42 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:24 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:05 <br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
-----<br />
<font size="3"><b>Polarizer Module</b></font><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Dark Matter || {{AlgCtr}} | Turret || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 9,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 4,500 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Does More Damage To Heavily Armored Targets, Armor Piercing 999,999<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 18,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 9,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Does More Damage To Heavily Armored Targets, Armor Piercing 999,999<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 27,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 13,500 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Does More Damage To Heavily Armored Targets, Armor Piercing 999,999<br />
|} Minimum DPS shown. Damage scales significantly the more armor the target has.<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:00:42 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:24 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:05 <br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
-----<br />
<font size="3"><b>Rail Cannon Module</b></font><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Railgun || {{AlgCtr}} | Turret || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | 5 Light, 5 Swarmer, 5 Ultra-Light, 5 Close-Combat<br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 100,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 25,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 50,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 999,999<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 200,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 25,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 100,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 999,999<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 300,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 25,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 150,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Armor Piercing 999,999<br />
|} <br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:00:42 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:24 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:05 <br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
-----<br />
<font size="3"><b>Translocator Module</b></font><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Minor Electric || {{AlgCtr}} | Turret || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Armor|Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Abilities|Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 10x21,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 3 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 70,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 20x21,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 3 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 140,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 30x21,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 3 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgRgt}} | 210,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | <br />
|} <br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:00:42 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:24 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Champion|Champion]] || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 800 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:05 <br />
|}{{PT}}<br />
{{AIWarShips}}<br />
{{AIWarRefNav}}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Armor_Ship&diff=29885AI War:Armor Ship2017-09-30T17:27:29Z<p>Nat: Basic -> Needler</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar]]<br />
[[Category:AIWarBase]]<br />
<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarArmorShipIcon.png|left|Armor Ship Icon - Replace with Sprite when found]] || valign="top" | Weak firepower but heavily armored; excellent against most small craft.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
<br />
== Base Stats ==<br />
----<br />
{{AIWarTableArmorShip}}<br />
<br />
== How to use in your fleet ==<br />
If you imagine that an [[AI War:Armor Ship|Armor Ship]] is like an IFV to the [[AI War:Space Tank|Space Tank]]'s Tank Destroyer, you wouldn't be far off the mark. It sits in the [[AI War:Bomber|Bomber]] bracket in terms of defences but is geared towards attacking [[AI War:Fighter|Fighter]]s, reversing the standard triangle. This makes them useful as escorts, and they won't mind popping a [[AI War:Force Field|Force Field]] on your behalf. Will still lose to [[AI War:Bulletproof Fighter|Bulletproof Fighters]], of course.<br />
<br />
A more advanced way of using these ships with minimal micro is to use them to absorb the alpha strike you will receive when cross a wormhole, particularly one that's camped. They have a very high lifespan due to their nature and can absorb the punishment your other weaker ships wouldn't if everything on the other side fired on their best targets. Using these to absorb the alpha strikes can make or break an engagement against camped wormholes or other heavily reinforced targets.<br />
<br />
== How to counter when in the AI fleet ==<br />
Inside all that armour, these are just ordinary ships. Bringing extra [[AI War:Bomber|Bombers]], [[AI War:Needler Turret|Needler Turrets]] and [[AI War:Laser Turret|Laser Turrets]] will speed the battle up nicely.<br />
<br />
{{AIWarShips}}<br />
{{AIWarRefNav}}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Neinzul_Needler_Drone&diff=29884AI War:Neinzul Needler Drone2017-09-30T17:24:36Z<p>Nat: Update Basic -> Needler</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar]]<br />
[[Category:AIWarCoN]]<br />
{{6.010}}<br/><br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarYouglingTiger.png|left|Needler Drone placeholder]] || valign="top" | A very small, short lived neinzul lifeform augmented with basic spaceflight capability and weaponry adapted from advanced human needler turret technology.<br />
<br />
Requires Mark II [[AI War:Needler Turret|Needler Turret]] technology.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
<br />
== Base Stats ==<br />
----<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Ship Cap]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | 24 per Mark || {{AlgCtr}} | Shell || {{AlgCtr}} | Swarmer || {{AlgCtr}} | Reclamation, Transport, Swallow, Mines, Repair || {{AlgCtr}} | 5 Heavy, 5 Artillery, 5 Ultra-Heavy, 5 Structural<br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Speed]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Engine Health]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | Ship Cap DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 2,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 3,500|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 4,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 90 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf || {{AlgRgt}} | 1,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgRgt}} | 24,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Self Attrition Time 00:30, Can't Use Wormholes, Armor Piercing 450<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 4,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 3,500|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 8,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 90 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 2,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgRgt}} | 48,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Self Attrition Time 00:30, Can't Use Wormholes, Armor Piercing 900<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 6,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 3,500|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 12,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 90 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 3,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgRgt}} | 72,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Self Attrition Time 00:30, Can't Use Wormholes, Armor Piercing 1,350<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | IV || {{AlgCtr}} | 8,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 3,500|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 16,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 90 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 4,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgRgt}} | 96,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Self Attrition Time 00:30, Can't Use Wormholes, Armor Piercing 1,800<br />
|} <br/><br />
<br />
''NB: All Drones must be produced by a [[AI War:Neinzul Enclave Starship|Neinzul Enclave Starship]] of at least that level, this increases the effective knowledge "cost".''<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Cap Metal Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | Cap Crystal Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | Cap Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | Cap Energy Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | Ship Cap Build Time<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 750 ([[AI War:Needler Turret|Needler Turret]] II) || {{AlgCtr}} | 10 || {{AlgCtr}} | 10 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:00:01 || {{AlgCtr}} | 240 || {{AlgCtr}} | 240 || {{AlgCtr}} | 480 || {{AlgCtr}} | 480 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:00:24<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | (with above) || {{AlgCtr}} | 20 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20 || {{AlgCtr}} | 40 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:00:01 || {{AlgCtr}} | 480 || {{AlgCtr}} | 480 || {{AlgCtr}} | 960 || {{AlgCtr}} | 480 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:00:24<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,500 ([[AI War:Needler Turret|Needler Turret]] III) || {{AlgCtr}} | 40 || {{AlgCtr}} | 40 || {{AlgCtr}} | 80 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:00:01 || {{AlgCtr}} | 960 || {{AlgCtr}} | 960 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,920 || {{AlgCtr}} | 480 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:00:24<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | IV || {{AlgCtr}} | (with above) || {{AlgCtr}} | 60 || {{AlgCtr}} | 60 || {{AlgCtr}} | 120 || {{AlgCtr}} | 20 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:00:01 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,440 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,440 || {{AlgCtr}} | 2,880 || {{AlgCtr}} | 480 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:00:24<br />
|}<br />
<br />
== How to use in your fleet ==<br />
See [[AI_War:Neinzul_Laser_Drone|Neinzul Laser Drone]].<br />
<br />
== How to counter when in the AI fleet ==<br />
Not currently available to the AI.<br />
<br />
{{AIWarShips}}<br />
{{AIWarRefNav}}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=Area_Mine&diff=29883Area Mine2017-09-30T00:26:53Z<p>Nat: Fix redirect</p>
<hr />
<div>#REDIRECT [[AI War:Area Minefield]]</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=EMP_Mine&diff=29882EMP Mine2017-09-30T00:26:10Z<p>Nat: Fix redirect</p>
<hr />
<div>#REDIRECT [[AI War:Widow Minefield]]</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Special_Forces_Command_Posts&diff=29881AI War:Special Forces Command Posts2017-09-30T00:24:03Z<p>Nat: Fix bad redirect</p>
<hr />
<div>#REDIRECT [[AI War:Special Forces Guard Post]]</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Raid_Starship&diff=29874AI War:Raid Starship2017-09-24T21:49:19Z<p>Nat: Fix links</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar]]<br />
[[Category:AIWarBase]]<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarRaidStarship.png|100px|left|Acid Sprayer]] || valign="top" | Small, lightning-fast starship with powerful lasers. Excellent for long-range raiding.<br/>Can pass/shoot through force fields, and is exceptional at destroying ships with a high armor rating.<br/><br />
To maintain their raiding ability into the late game, the Raid Starship gains additional abilities as its Mark level increases:<br/>Mk I: Very high speed and Radar Dampening.<br/>Mk II: Immune to Missiles<br/>Mk III: Cloaking<br/>Mk IV: Immune to Gravity slowing effects<br/><br />
<br />
Note that the AI Raid Starship only has half the health of the Human Raid Starship shown below.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
<br />
== Base Stats ==<br />
----<br />
{{AIWarTableSSRaid}} <br />
== How to use in your fleet ==<br />
These can be sent on deep strike missions to quickly pick off high-value targets such as [[AI War:Data Center|Data Centers]] without committing your main force. They should use their speed and radar dampening to avoid enemy forces. At Mark II and higher they can also be used to neutralize [[AI War:Missile Guard Post|Missile Guard Posts]] and [[AI War:MLRS Guard Post|MLRS Guard Posts]] with impunity. [[AI War:Orbital Mass Driver|Orbital Mass Drivers]] will easily erase them, however.<br />
<br />
== How to counter when in the AI fleet ==<br />
[[AI War:Sniper Turret|Sniper Turrets]] and [[AI War:Spider Turret|Spider Turrets]] can pick them off quite effectively before they can reach your [[AI War:Orbital Command Station#Human_Home_Command_Station|Home Command Station]] and destroy it.<br />
<br />
{{AIWarShips}}<br />
{{AIWarRefNav}}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Orbital_Command_Station&diff=29873AI War:Orbital Command Station2017-09-24T21:38:22Z<p>Nat: Fix Modular Fortress Command Station link</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar]]<br />
[[Category:AIWarBase]]<br />
{{6.010}}<br/><br />
{{WIP}}<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Command Station|Command Stations]] are the nerve center of every star system. There can only be one [[Command Station]] in a star system and it is the only structure that can provide [[Supply]]. <br/>In older versions, the destruction of a [[Command Station]] caused any [[Colony Ship|Colony Ships]], [[Mobile Builder|Mobile Builders]], and [[Energy Collector]]s present in the system are destroyed as well to prevent a form of instant-rebuilding cheese. In newer versions, the destruction of a command station adds a rebuilding delay based on the type of station. Command stations are able to build a 'replacement' command station in close proximity to themselves without triggering the timer, allowing military stations or warp jammers to be converted to economic or logistics stations as the front lines change. Each Mk costs 4,000 + 4,000*Mk Metal. <br/>All Human command stations double the speed of allied ships in their system.<br/>There are actually several types of [[Command Station|Command Stations]] as follows:<br />
<br />
== Human Stations == <br />
<br />
These are the stations that can be built by the player. Stations are mutually exclusive - The AI does not have access to human stations, the player does not have access to AI stations (though some stations may share similarities).<br />
<br />
=== Human Home Command Station ===<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarHumanHomeCommandStation.png|100px|left|Human Home Command Station]] || valign="top" | [[Command Station#Orbital Command Station - Home Planet|Orbital Command Station - Home Planet]] is the [[Command Station]] that is present in every human home system at game start. If this structure is destroyed, the humans have lost and it is game over.<br/>(There is a caveat on how losing works in [[Multiplayer]].)<br/>Increases [[AI Progress]] by 30 when destroyed or scrapped. Produces 600 Metal & 30,000 [[Energy]] Increases metal storage by 2,000,000. Salvages 40% of ships destroyed in system.<br />
|-<br />
|}<br />
=== Economic Command Station ===<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarHumanCommandStation.png|100px|left|Economic Command Station]] || valign="top" | [[Command Station#Economic Command Station|Economic Command Station]] is one of the [[Command Station|Command Stations]] that can be built in conquered star systems. The [[Command Station#Economic Command Station|Economic Command Station]] maximizes resource production at the expense of everything else. Put these in backwater systems to boost your economy with minimal risk. <br />
{{EcoComStat}}<br />
|-<br />
|}<br />
=== Logistical Command Station ===<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarHumanCommandStation.png|100px|left|Logistical Command Station]] || valign="top" | [[Command Station#Logistical Command Station|Logistical Command Station]] is one of the [[Command Station|Command Stations]] that can be built in conquered star systems. The [[Command Station#Logistical Command Station|Logistical Command Station]] is designed to move your ships around faster, store resources, and prevent enemy teleport deepstriking. Use these to create a buffer between the front lines and your economic core. <br/> <br />
{{LogComStat}}<br />
|-<br />
|}<br />
=== Military Command Station ===<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarHumanCommandStation.png|100px|left|Military Command Station]] || valign="top" | [[Command Station#Military Command Station|Military Command Station]] is one of the [[Command Station|Command Stations]] that can be built in conquered star systems. The [[Command Station#Military Command Station|Military Command Station]] is designed for front line systems where combat is expected. Place these over the exits to frontline planets, near Advanced Factories and Fabricators, and near other positions of value. Note that these have no damage reduction from firing under force fields.<br/><br />
{{MilComStat}}<br />
|-<br />
|}<br />
=== Warp Jammer Command Station ===<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarHumanCommandStation.png|100px|left|Warp Jammer Command Station]] || valign="top" | [[Command Station#Orbital Command Station - Warp Jammer|Warp Jammer Command Station]] is one of the [[Command Station|Command Stations]] that can be built in conquered star systems. The [[Command Station#Orbital Command Station - Warp Jammer|Warp Jammer Command Station]] is specialty station that tricks the AI into think that the system is still under its control.<br/>Consumes 40 Metal & Crystal.<br/>Prevents the AI from initiating Attack Waves against this planet, including normal Waves, Counterattack Post waves and so on. Also prevents the adjacent planets from going on alert from the loss of the AI command station. Adjacent planets can still go alert from other factors, such as a large enough human military presence.<br />
|-<br />
|}<br />
== AI Stations ==<br />
=== AI Orbital Command Station ===<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarHumanCommandStation.png|100px|left|AI Orbital Command Station]] || valign="top" | [[Command Station#AI Orbital Command Station| AI Orbital Command Station]] is the AI's central command post in a star system. Destroying this structure is necessary before you can build your own [[Command Station]] in the system. When a [[Command Station#AI Orbital Command Station| AI Orbital Command Station]] is destroyed, any [[Wormhole Guard Post]] or [[Warp Gate]] left in the system are destroyed as well.<br/>Increases [[AI Progress]] by 15 when destroyed or scrapped.<br />
|-<br />
|}<br />
=== AI Home Command Station ===<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarAIHomeCommand.png|100px|left|AI Orbital Command Station - Home Planet]] || valign="top" | [[Command Station#AI Orbital Command Station - Home Planet| AI Orbital Command Station - Home Planet]] is the AI's central command post our galaxy. There are two of these [[Command Station|Command Stations]] in the galaxy, one for each AI. These two [[Command Station|Command Stations]] must be destroyed to chase the AI out of our galaxy and win the game.<br/>All [[Core (type) Guard Post|Core Guard Posts]] in the system must be destroyed before the [[Command Station#AI Orbital Command Station - Home Planet| AI Orbital Command Station - Home Planet]] can be attacked.<br/>Increases [[AI Progress]] by 20 when destroyed.<br />
|-<br />
|}<br />
<br />
=== AI Modular Fortress Command Station ===<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarModularFortress.png|100px|left|Modular Fortress Command Station]] || valign="top" | The [[Modular Fortress Command Station]] is exclusively used by the [[AI War:AI_Opponent_Types#Harder|Fortress King]] AI. <br/>Have fun. :)<br />
|}<br />
<br />
== Data ==<br />
Most of this is outdated and currently being kept for archival purposes until everything can be brought up to date.<br />
<br />
=== Orbital Command Station - Home Planet ===<br />
----<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | Command-Grade || {{AlgCtr}} | Antimatter Bombs, Blade Attacks, Fusion Cutters, Attrition, Reclamation, Being Scrapped, Paralysis Attacks, Transport, Swallow, Nuclear Explosions, Being Insta-Killed, EMPs || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Speed]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Engine Health]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 2,000,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,500 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf || {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Warp Detection, Increases Ally Speed By 100%, Gathers Scout Intel<br />
|} <br/><br />
<br />
<br />
=== Economic Command Station ===<br />
----<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Ship Cap]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Inf/6/6 || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | Command-Grade || {{AlgCtr}} | Tractor Beams, Reclamation, Paralysis Attacks, Transport, Swallow, Being Insta-Killed || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Speed]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Engine Health]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 99,999 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,500 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf || {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Warp Detection, Increases Ally Speed By 100%, Gathers Scout Intel<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 299,999 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,500 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Warp Detection, Increases Ally Speed By 100%, Gathers Scout Intel<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 599,999 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,500 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Warp Detection, Increases Ally Speed By 100%, Gathers Scout Intel<br />
|} <br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | -- || {{AlgCtr}} | 4,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 4,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 8,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:00 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 4,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 6,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 6,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 12,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:00 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 8,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 8,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 16,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:03:01 <br />
|}<br />
<br />
<br />
=== Logistical Command Station ===<br />
----<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Ship Cap]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Inf/6/6 || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | Command-Grade || {{AlgCtr}} | Tractor Beams, Reclamation, Paralysis Attacks, Transport, Swallow, Being Insta-Killed || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Speed]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Engine Health]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 149,998 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,500 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf ||{{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Advanced Warp Detection, Reduces Enemy Speed By 18.75%, Increases Ally Speed By 200%, Gathers Scout Intel<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 449,998 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,500 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Advanced Warp Detection, Reduces Enemy Speed By 37.5%, Increases Ally Speed By 200%, Gathers Scout Intel<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 899,998 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,500 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Advanced Warp Detection, Reduces Enemy Speed By 50%, Increases Ally Speed By 200%, Prevents Enemy Teleportation, Gathers Scout Intel<br />
|} <br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | -- || {{AlgCtr}} | 4,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 4,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 8,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:00 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 4,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 6,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 6,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 12,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:00 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 8,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 8,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 16,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:03:01 <br />
|}<br />
<br />
<br />
=== Military Command Station ===<br />
----<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Ship Cap]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Inf/6/6 || {{AlgCtr}} | Railgun || {{AlgCtr}} | Command-Grade || {{AlgCtr}} | Antimatter Bombs, Blade Attacks, Fusion Cutters, Attack Boosts, Radar Dampening, Tractor Beams, Reclamation, Paralysis Attacks, Transport, Swallow, Being Insta-Killed, EMPs || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Speed]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Engine Health]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 4x10000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 23,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,000,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,500 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf || {{AlgRgt}} | 20,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Warp Detection, Increases Ally Speed By 100%, Tachyon Beam Emission (10000 Range), Attack Boost For All Allied Ships On Planet (+19% Bonus), Gathers Scout Intel<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 8x20000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 33,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 4,000,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,500 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf || {{AlgRgt}} | 80,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Warp Detection, Engine Damage 200, Increases Ally Speed By 100%, Tachyon Beam Emission (20000 Range), Attack Boost For All Allied Ships On Planet (+50% Bonus), Gathers Scout Intel<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 12x30000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 43,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 9,000,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,500 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 180,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Warp Detection, Engine Damage 200, Increases Ally Speed By 100%, Planetary Tachyon Beam Coverage, Attack Boost For All Allied Ships On Planet (+100% Bonus), Gathers Scout Intel, Attack Paralyzes x5<br />
|} <br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | -- || {{AlgCtr}} | 4,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 4,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 8,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:01:00 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 4,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 6,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 6,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 12,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:00 <br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 8,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 8,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 16,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:03:01 <br />
|}<br />
<br />
<br />
=== Orbital Command Station - Warp Jammer ===<br />
----<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Ship Cap]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | 5 || {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | Command-Grade || {{AlgCtr}} | Antimatter Bombs, Attrition, Reclamation, Paralysis Attacks, Transport, Swallow, Nuclear Explosions, Being Insta-Killed, EMPs || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Speed]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Engine Health]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | Ship Cap DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 99,999 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,500 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf || {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Warp Detection, Increases Ally Speed By 100%, Warp Jammer, Gathers Scout Intel<br />
|} <br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Cap Metal Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | Cap Crystal Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | Cap Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | Cap Energy Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | Ship Cap Build Time<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | 5,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 8,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 8,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 16,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:02:01 || {{AlgCtr}} | 40,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 40,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 80,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:10:05<br />
|}<br />
<br />
<br />
=== AI Orbital Command Station ===<br />
----<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | Command-Grade || {{AlgCtr}} | Antimatter Bombs, Attrition, Tractor Beams, Reclamation, Paralysis Attacks, Transport, Swallow, Being Insta-Killed || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Speed]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Engine Health]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 499,995 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,500 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf || {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Warp Gate (Reinforce Only - AI ONLY)<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,499,995 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,500 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Warp Gate (Reinforce Only - AI ONLY)<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 2,999,995 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,500 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Warp Gate (Reinforce Only - AI ONLY)<br />
|} <br/><br />
<br />
<br />
=== AI Orbital Command Station - Home Planet ===<br />
----<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | Flare || {{AlgCtr}} | Command-Grade || {{AlgCtr}} | Missile Ammo, Antimatter Bombs, Mass Drivers, Artillery Ammo, Sniper Shots, Blade Attacks, Fusion Cutters, Attrition, Reclamation, Being Scrapped, Paralysis Attacks, Transport, Swallow, Nuclear Explosions, Being Insta-Killed, EMPs || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Speed]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Engine Health]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | 200,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 4,000|| {{AlgCtr}} | 2 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 16,000,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 2,500 || {{AlgCtr}} | 0 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf || {{AlgRgt}} | 100,000 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Warp Detection, Increases Ally Speed By 100%, Warp Gate (Full - AI ONLY), Gathers Scout Intel<br />
|}<br/><br />
<br />
<br />
=== Modular Fortress Command Station ===<br />
[[AI War:Modular Fortress Command Station|Found here.]]<br />
<br />
{{AIWarShips}}<br />
{{AIWarRefNav}}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=Template:AIWarShips&diff=29872Template:AIWarShips2017-09-23T16:38:32Z<p>Nat: Follow ARS redirect; fix Tachyon Sentinel link</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar|AIWar]]<br />
<noinclude>[[Category:AIWarTemplates|AIWarTemplates]]</noinclude><br />
<br/><br />
<br />
----<br />
----<br />
{| border="1" cellpadding="2" class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed wikitable" style="margin: auto;"<br />
! scope="col" align="center" colspan="2" | [[AI War:Ships and Structures|Ships and Structures]] Navigation<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" width="80"| [[AI War:Ships and Structures#Fleet Ships|Fleet Ships]]<br/><br />
<sub>Built at</sub><br/><sup>[[AI War:Space Dock|Space Dock]]</sup><br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> '''[[AI War:Scout|Scout]] ♦ [[AI War:Fighter|Fighter]] ♦ [[AI War:Bomber|Bomber]] ♦ [[AI War:Missile Frigate|Missile Frigate]]''' <br><br />
<br />
''Bonus fleet ships:'' [[AI War:Acid Sprayer|Acid Sprayer]] ♦ [[AI War:Anti-Armor|Anti-Armor]] ♦ [[AI War:Armor Booster|Armor Booster]] ♦ [[AI War:Armor Ship|Armor Ship]] ♦ [[AI War:Attractor Drone|Attractor Drone]] ♦ [[AI War:Autocannon Minipod|Autocannon Minipod]] ♦ [[AI War:Bulletproof Fighter|Bulletproof Fighter]] ♦ [[AI War:Electric Shuttle|Electric Shuttle]] ♦ [[AI War:Etherjet|Etherjet]] ♦ [[AI War:Eye Bot|Eye Bot]] ♦ [[AI War:Grenade Launcher|Grenade Launcher]] ♦ [[AI War:Impulse Reaction Emitter|Impulse Reaction Emitter]] ♦ [[AI War:Infiltrator|Infiltrator]] ♦ [[AI War:Laser Gatling|Laser Gatling]] ♦ [[AI War:Lightning Torpedo Frigate|Lightning Torpedo Frigate]] ♦ [[AI War:MLRS|MLRS]] ♦ [[AI War:Munitions Booster|Munitions Booster]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Railpod|Neinzul Railpod]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Scapegoat|Neinzul Scapegoat]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Youngling Commando|Neinzul Youngling Commando]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Youngling Firefly|Neinzul Youngling Firefly]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Youngling Nanoswarm|Neinzul Youngling Nanoswarm]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Youngling Shrike|Neinzul Youngling Shrike]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Youngling Tiger|Neinzul Youngling Tiger]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Youngling Vulture|Neinzul Youngling Vulture]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Youngling Weasel|Neinzul Youngling Weasel]] ♦ [[AI War:Parasite|Parasite]] ♦ [[AI War:Raider|Raider]] ♦ [[AI War:Raptor|Raptor]] ♦ [[AI War:Saboteur|Saboteur]] ♦ [[AI War:Sentinel Frigate|Sentinel Frigate]] ♦ [[AI War:Shield Bearer|Shield Bearer]] ♦ [[AI War:Sniper|Sniper]] ♦ [[AI War:Space Plane|Space Plane]] ♦ [[AI War:Space Tank|Space Tank]] ♦ [[AI War:Spider Bot|Spider Bot]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Armor Rotter|Spire Armor Rotter]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Blade|Spire Blade]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Blade Spawner|Spire Blade Spawner]] ♦ [[AI War:Gravity Drainer|Spire Gravity Drainer]] ♦ [[AI War:Gravity Ripper|Spire Gravity Ripper]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Maw|Spire Maw]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Mini Ram|Spire Mini Ram]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Railcluster|Spire Railcluster]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Stealth Battleship|Spire Stealth Battleship]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Teleporting Leech|Spire Teleporting Leech]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Tractor Platform|Spire Tractor Platform]] ♦ [[AI War:Tachyon Microfighter|Tachyon Microfighter]] ♦ [[AI War:Tackle Drone Launcher|Tackle Drone Launcher]] ♦ [[AI War:Teleport Battle Station|Teleport Battle Station]] ♦ [[AI War:Teleport Raider|Teleport Raider]] ♦ [[AI War:Vampire Claw|Vampire Claw]] ♦ [[AI War:Vorticular Cutlass|Vorticular Cutlass]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Auto Bomb|Zenith Auto Bomb]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Beam Frigate|Zenith Beam Frigate]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Bombard|Zenith Bombard]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Chameleon|Zenith Chameleon]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Electric Bomber|Zenith Electric Bomber]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Hydra|Zenith Hydra]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Medic Frigate|Zenith Medic Frigate]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Mirror|Zenith Mirror]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Paralyzer|Zenith Paralyzer]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Polarizer|Zenith Polarizer]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Reprocessor|Zenith Reprocessor]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Siege Engine|Zenith Siege Engine]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Viral Shredder|Zenith Viral Shredder]]<br><br />
<br />
''Experimental:'' [[AI War:Decoy Drone|Decoy Drone]] ♦ [[AI War:MicroParasite|MicroParasite]] ♦ [[AI War:Speed Booster|Speed Booster]] ♦ [[AI War:Spider Bot|Spider Bot]] ♦ [[AI War:Translocator|Translocator]]<br><br />
<br />
''Minor faction:'' [[AI War:Dyson Gatling|Dyson Gatling]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Bomber|Neinzul Bomber]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Viral Swarmer|Neinzul Viral Swarmer]] ♦ [[AI War:Preservation Warden Bomber|Preservation Warden Bomber]] ♦ [[AI War:Preservation Warden Commando|Preservation Warden Commando]] ♦ [[AI War:Resistance Fighter/Bomber|Resistance Fighter/Bomber]] ♦ [[AI War:Resistance Frigate|Resistance Frigate]]<br><br />
<br />
''Miscellaneous:'' [[AI War:Neinzul Youngling Cockroach|Neinzul Youngling Cockroach]] ♦ [[AI War:Wasp|Wasp]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Starships|Starships]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> [[AI War:Cloaker Starship|Cloaker Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Flagship|Flagship]] ♦ [[AI War:Heavy Bomber Starship|Heavy Bomber Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Leech Starship|Leech Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Enclave Starship|Neinzul Enclave Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Plasma Siege Starship|Plasma Siege Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Raid Starship|Raid Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Riot Control Starship|Riot Control Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Scout Starship|Scout Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Starship|Spire Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Starship|Zenith Starship]]<br><br />
<br />
''Bonus starships:'' [[AI War:Lightning Starship|Lightning Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Combat Carrier|Neinzul Combat Carrier]] ♦ [[AI War:Protector Starship|Protector Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Corvette|Spire Corvette]] ♦ [[AI War:Translocator Starship|Translocator Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Devastator|Zenith Devastator]]<br><br />
<br />
''Experimental:'' [[AI War:Beam Starship|Beam Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Warbird Starship|Warbird Starship]]<br><br />
<br />
''Miscellaneous:'' [[AI War:AI-Neinzul Hybrid|AI-Neinzul Hybrid]] ♦ [[AI War:Avenger|Avenger]] ♦ [[Beachhead|Beachhead]] ♦ [[AI War:Carrier|Carrier]] ♦ [[AI War:Decloaker|Decloaker]] ♦ [[AI War:Core Starship|Core Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Hunter/Killer|Hunter/Killer]] ♦ [[AI War:Mobile Builder|Mobile Builder]] ♦ [[AI War:Mothership|Mothership]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Preservation Warden|Neinzul Preservation Warden]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Roaming Enclave|Neinzul Roaming Enclave]] ♦ [[AI War:Transport Ship|Transport Ship]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Turrets|Turrets]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> '' Regular:'' [[AI War:Needler Turret|Needler Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Laser Turret|Laser Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:MLRS Turret|MLRS Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Missile Turret|Missile Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Flak Turret|Flak Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Lightning Turret|Lightning Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Sniper Turret|Sniper Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Spider Turret|Spider Turret]]<br/><br />
<br />
''Advanced:'' [[AI War:Heavy Beam Turret|Heavy Beam Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Counter Dark Matter Turret|Counter Dark Matter Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Counter Missile Turret|Counter Missile Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Counter Sniper Turret|Counter Sniper Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Tractor Beam Turret|Tractor Beam Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Gravitational Turret|Gravitational Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Tachyon Beam Emitter|Tachyon Beam Emitter]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Guardians|Guardians]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> [[AI War:Combat Carrier Guardian|Combat Carrier Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Devastator Guardian|Devastator Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Disassembler Guardian|Disassembler Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:EMP Guardian|EMP Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Enclave Guardian|Enclave Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Flak Guardian|Flak Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Gravity Guardian|Gravity Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Heavy Beam Guardian|Heavy Beam Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Infiltrator Guardian|Infiltrator Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Laser Guardian|Laser Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Lightning Guardian|Lightning Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Missile Guardian|Missile Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:MLRS Guardian|MLRS Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Munitions Boosting Guardian|Munitions Boosting Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Needler Guardian|Needler Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Plasma Guardian|Plasma Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Raider Guardian|Raider Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Self-Destruction Guardian|Self-Destruction Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Shield Guardian|Shield Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Sniper Guardian|Sniper Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Special Forces Rally Guardian|Special Forces Rally Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Spider Guardian|Spider Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Implosion Guardian|Spire Implosion Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Tractor Guardian|Tractor Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Translocator Guardian|Translocator Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Vampire Guardian|Vampire Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Warp Gate Guardian|Warp Gate Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Widow Guardian|Widow Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Zombie Guardian|Zombie Guardian]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Dire Guardians|Dire Guardians]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> [[AI War:Dire Guardian Lair|Dire Guardian Lair]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Artillery Guardian|Dire Artillery Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Disassembler Guardian|Dire Disassembler Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Gravity Guardian|Dire Gravity Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Implosion Guardian|Dire Implosion Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Infiltration Guardian|Dire Infiltration Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Laser Guardian|Dire Laser Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire MLRS Guardian|Dire MLRS Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Munitions Boosting Guardian|Dire Munitions Boosting Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Needler Guardian|Dire Needler Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Raider Guardian|Dire Raider Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Shield Guardian|Dire Shield Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Sniper Guardian|Dire Sniper Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Spider Guardian|Dire Spider Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Tractor Guardian|Dire Tractor Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Widow Guardian|Dire Widow Guardian]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Guard Posts|Guard Posts]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> ''Regular Guard Posts:'' [[AI War:Arachnid Guard Post|Arachnid Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Cloaker Guard Post|Cloaker Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Command Station Shield Guard Post|Command Station Shield Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Laser Guard Post|Laser Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Missile Guard Post|Missile Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:MLRS Guard Post|MLRS Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Needler Guard Post|Needler Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Shield Sphere Guard Post|Spire Shield Sphere Guard Post]]<br><br />
<br />
''Special Guard Posts:'' [[AI War:Special Forces Guard Post|Special Forces Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Warp Counterattack Guard Post|Warp Counterattack Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Wormhole Guard Post|Wormhole Guard Post]]<br><br />
<br />
''Exotic Guard Posts:'' [[AI War:Disassembler Guard Post|Disassembler Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Enclave Guard Post|Enclave Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Gravity Guard Post|Gravity Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Implosion Guard Post|Implosion Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Munition Boosting Guard Post|Munition Boosting Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Plasma Guard Post|Plasma Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Sniper Guard Post|Sniper Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Spider Guard Post|Spider Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Tachyon Sentinel|Tachyon Sentinel]] ♦ [[AI War:Tractor Guard Post|Tractor Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Widow Guard Post|Widow Guard Post]]<br/><br />
<br />
''Core Guard Posts:'' [[AI War:Core Arachnid Guard Post|Core Arachnid Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Booster Guard Post|Booster Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Electric Guard Post|Electric Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Heavy Beam Guard Post|Heavy Beam Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Core Implosion Drone Guard Post|Core Implosion Drone Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Leech Guard Post|Leech Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Core Missile Guard Post|Core Missile Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Melee Guard Post|Neinzul Melee Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Spawner Guard Post|Neinzul Spawner Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Riot Control Guard Post|Riot Control Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Sentinel Guard Post|Sentinel Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Core Spire Shield Sphere Guard Post|Core Spire Shield Sphere Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Bombard Guard Post|Zenith Bombard Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Fortress Guard Post|Zenith Fortress Guard Post]]<br/><br />
<br />
''Brutal Guard Posts:'' [[AI War:Cross Planet Attack Guard Post|Cross Planet Attack Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Grav Reactor Guard Post|Grav Reactor Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Hunter/Killer Factory Guard Post|Hunter/Killer Factory Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Raid Engine Guard Post|Raid Engine Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Shredder Drone Guard Post|Shredder Drone Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Teuthida Guard Post|Teuthida Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Wrath Lance Guard Post|Wrath Lance Guard Post]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Ships and Structures#Military Structures|Military Structures]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> [[AI War:Advanced Warp Sensor|Advanced Warp Sensor]] ♦ [[AI War:Alarm Post|Alarm Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Attritioner|Attritioner]] ♦ [[AI War:Barracks|Barracks]] ♦ [[AI War:Black Hole Machine|Black Hole Machine]] ♦ [[AI War:Co-Processor|Co-Processor]] ♦ [[AI War:Core Shield Generator|Core Shield Generator]] ♦ [[AI War:Counter-Spy|Counter-Spy]] ♦ [[AI War:Dark Spire Vengeance Generator|Dark Spire Vengeance Generator]] ♦ [[AI War:Data Center|Data Center]] ♦ [[AI War:Drone Spawner|Drone Spawner]] ♦ [[AI War:Dyson Antagonizer|Dyson Antagonizer]] ♦ [[AI War:Dyson Converter|Dyson Converter]] ♦ [[AI War:Force Field|Force Field]] ♦ [[AI War:Gravity Drill Station|Gravity Drill]] ♦ [[AI War:Hybrid Spawn|Hybrid Spawn]] ♦ [[AI War:Interplanetary Munitions Booster|Inter-Planetary Munitions Booster]] ♦ [[AI War:Ion Cannon|Ion Cannon]] ♦ [[AI War:Mobile Space Dock|Mobile Space Dock]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Bomber Cluster|Neinzul Bomber Cluster]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Cluster|Neinzul Cluster]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Nest|Neinzul Nest]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Privacy Cluster|Neinzul Privacy Cluster]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Rocketry Corps Silo|Neinzul Rocketry Corps Silo]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Viral Cluster|Neinzul Viral Cluster]] ♦ [[AI War:Orbital Mass Driver|Orbital Mass Driver]] ♦ [[AI War:Planetary Armor Booster|Planetary Armor Booster]] ♦ [[AI War:Planetary Armor Inhibitor|Planetary Armor Inhibitor]] ♦ [[AI War:Planetary Cloak|Planetary Cloak]] ♦ [[AI War:Radar Jammer|Radar Jammer]] ♦ [[AI War:Raid Engine|Raid Engine]] ♦ [[AI War:Rally Post|Rally Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Special Forces Alarm Post|Special Forces Alarm Post]] ♦ [[AI War:SuperTerminal|SuperTerminal]] ♦ [[AI War:Troop Accelerator|Troop Accelerator]] ♦ [[AI War:Core Warhead Interceptor|Warhead Interceptor]] ♦ [[AI War:Warp Gate|Warp Gate]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Reserve|Zenith Reserve]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith_SpaceTime_Manipulator|Zenith Spacetime Manipulator]]<br />
<br />
''Mines:'' [[AI War:Minefield|Minefield]] ♦ [[AI War:Area Minefield|Area Minefield]] ♦ [[AI War:Widow Minefield|Widow Minefield]]<br />
<br />
''Fortresses:'' [[AI War:Fortress|Fortress]] ♦ [[AI War:Mini-Fortress|Mini-Fortress]] ♦ [[AI War:Modular Fortress|Modular Fortress]] ♦ [[AI War:Modular Fortress Command Station|Modular Fortress Command Station]] ♦ [[AI War:Modular Fortress#Neinzul Modular Fortress|Neinzul Modular Fortress]] ♦ [[AI War:Modular Fortress#Spire Modular Fortress|Spire Modular Fortress]] ♦ [[AI War:SuperFortress|SuperFortress]] ♦ [[AI War:Modular Fortress#Zenith Modular Fortress|Zenith Modular Fortress]] <br />
<br />
''AI Eyes:'' [[AI War:Ion Eye|Ion Eye]] ♦ [[AI War:Nuclear Eye|Nuclear Eye]] ♦ [[AI War:Parasite Eye|Parasite Eye]] ♦ [[AI War:Plasma Eye|Plasma Eye]] [[AI War:Plasma Eye (Core)|(Core)]] ♦ [[AI War:Raid Eye|Raid Eye]] [[AI War:Raid Eye (Core)|(Core)]] ♦ [[AI War:Sentry Eye|Sentry Eye]] [[AI War:Sentry Eye (Core)|(Core)]] ♦ [[AI War:Threatening Eye|Threatening Eye]] [[AI War:Threatening Eye (Core)|(Core)]] ♦ [[AI War:Translocator Eye|Translocator Eye]] [[AI War:Translocator Eye (Core)|(Core)]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Ships and Structures#Economic Structures|Economic Structures]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> [[AI War:Asteroid|Asteroid]] [[AI War:Asteroid#Adamantite Asteroid|(Adamantite)]] [[AI War:Asteroid#Ebonite Asteroid|(Ebonite)]] [[AI War:Asteroid#Pysite Asteroid|(Pysite)]] [[AI War:Asteroid#Reptite Asteroid|(Reptite)]] [[AI War:Asteroid#Titanite Asteroid|(Titanite)]] [[AI War:Asteroid#Xampite Asteroid|(Xampite)]] ♦ [[AI War:Advanced Research Station|Advanced Research Station]] ♦ [[AI War:Advanced Factory|Advanced Factory]] ♦ [[AI War:Advanced Starship Constructor|Advanced Starship Constructor]] ♦ [[AI War:Captive Human Settlement|Captive Human Settlement]] ♦ [[AI War:Cleanup Drone|Cleanup Drone]] ♦ [[AI War:Orbital Command Station#Economic Command Station|Economic Command Station]] ♦ [[AI War:Colony Ship|Colony Ship]] ♦ [[AI War:Core Fabricator|Core Fabricator]] ♦ [[AI War:Distribution Node|Distribution Node]] ♦ [[AI War:Orbital Command Station|Command Station]] ♦ [[AI War:Energy Collector|Energy Collector]] ♦ [[AI War:Engineer|Engineer]] ♦ [[AI War:Exo-Galactic Wormhole|Exo-Galactic Wormhole]] ♦ [[AI War:Experimental Fabricator|Experimental Fabricator]] ♦ [[AI War:Foldout|Foldout]] ♦ [[AI War:Harvester|Harvester]] ♦ [[AI War:Harvester_Exo-Shield|Harvester Exo-Shield]] ♦ [[AI War:Home Human Settlement|Home Human Settlement]] ♦ [[AI War:Human Cryogenic Pod|Human Cryogenic Pod]] ♦ [[AI War:Intra-Galactic Warp Gate|Intra-Galactic Warp Gate]] ♦ [[AI War:Knowledge Hacker|Knowledge Hacker]] ♦ [[AI War:Orbital Command Station#Logistical Command Station|Logistical Command Station]] ♦ [[AI War:Matter Converter|Matter Converter]] ♦ [[AI War:Mercenary Space Dock|Mercenary Space Dock]] ♦ [[AI War:Orbital Command Station#Military Command Station|Military Command Station]] ♦ [[AI War:Missile Silo|Missile Silo]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Regeneration Chamber|Neinzul Regeneration Chamber]] ♦ [[AI War:Orbital Command Station#Orbital Command Station - Home Planet|Orbital Command Station]] ♦ [[AI War:Rebel Colony|Rebel Colony]] ♦ [[AI War:Remains|Remains]] ♦ [[AI War:Remains Rebuilder|Remains Rebuilder]] ♦ [[AI War:Science Lab|Science Lab]] ♦ [[AI War:Ship-Design Hacker|Ship-Design Hacker]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Archive|Spire Archive]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Civilian Leader|Spire Civilian Leader]] ♦ [[AI War:Space Dock|Space Dock]] ♦ [[AI War:Starship Constructor|Starship Constructor]] ♦ [[AI War:Tachyon Drone|Tachyon Drone]] ♦ [[AI War:Orbital Command Station#Orbital Command Station - Warp Jammer|Warp Jammer Command Station]] ♦ [[AI War:Wormhole|Wormhole]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Power Generator|Zenith Power Generator]] <br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Ships and Structures#Fallen Spire|Fallen Spire Campaign]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> [[Fallen Spire Campaign|Fallen Spire Overview]] ♦ [[AI_War:Survey_Ship|Survey Ship]] ♦ [[AI_War:Subspace_Receiver|Subspace Receiver]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Frigate|Spire Frigate]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Destroyer|Spire Destroyer]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Cruiser|Spire Cruiser]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Battleship|Spire Battleship]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Dreadnought|Spire Dreadnought]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Super_Dreadnought|Spire Super Dreadnought]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Shard|Spire Shard]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Colony_Ship|Spire Colony Ship]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Outpost|Spire Outpost]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_City_Hub|Spire City Hub]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Habitation_Center|Spire Habitation Center]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Shard_Reactor|Spire Shard Reactor]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Shipyard|Spire Shipyard]] ♦ [[Spire Galactic Capitol|Spire Galactic Capitol]] ♦ [[AI_War:Exogalactic_Transceiver|Exogalactic Transceiver]] <br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Ships and Structures#Ancient Shadows|Ancient Shadows]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> [[Ancient_Shadows_Campaign|Ancient Shadows Campaign]] ♦ [[AI War:Ancient_Shadows_Shadow_Ships|Shadow Ships (Champion Ships) All Types: Human/Neinzul/Spire/Zenith and All Sizes: Frigate/Destroyer/Cruiser/Battleship]]<br/>[[General Nebulae|General Nebulae]] ♦ [[Nebula: Epsilon Eridani Remnant Found|Epsilon Eridani Remnant Found]] ♦ [[Nebula: Shattered Pillar Zenith Found| Shattered Pillar Zenith Found]] ♦ [[Nebula: Neinzul Mourner Wardens Found|Neinzul Mourner Wardens Found]] ♦ [[Nebula: Gray Spire Cluster Found|Gray Spire Cluster Found]] ♦ [[Nebula: Shattered Pillar Found|Shattered Pillar Found]] ♦ [[Nebula: Human Resistance Found|Human Resistance Found]] ♦ [[Nebula: IMT Needs Help Again|IMT Needs Help Again]] ♦ [[Nebula: Allies Under Attack|Allies Under Attack]] ♦ [[Nebula: The Battle Rages|The Battle Rages]] ♦ [[Nebula: Empty Nebula|Empty Nebula]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Ships and Structures#Spirecraft|Spirecraft]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Attritioner|Spirecraft Attritioner]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Implosion Artillery|Spirecraft Implosion Artillery]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Ion Blaster|Spirecraft Ion Blaster]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Jumpship|Spirecraft Jumpship]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Martyr|Spirecraft Martyr]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Penetrator|Spirecraft Penetrator]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Ram|Spirecraft Ram]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Scout|Spirecraft Scout]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Shield_Bearer|Spirecraft Shield Bearer]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Siege Tower|Spirecraft Siege Tower]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Mining_Ship|Spire Mining Ship]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Mining_Enclosure|Spirecraft Mining Enclosure]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Golems|Golems]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> ''Broken Golems:'' [[AI War:Armored Golem|Armored Golem]] ♦ [[AI War:Artillery Golem|Artillery Golem]] ♦ [[AI War:Black Widow Golem|Black Widow Golem]] ♦ [[AI War:Cursed Golem|Cursed Golem]] ♦ [[AI War:Hive Golem|Hive Golem]] ♦ [[AI War:Regenerator Golem|Regenerator Golem]]<br />
<br />
''Special Broken Golems:'' [[AI War:Botnet Golem|Botnet Golem]] ♦ [[AI War:Nomad Beacon|Nomad Beacon]] ♦ [[AI War:Exodian Blade|Exodian Blade]]<br />
<br />
''Minor Faction Golems:'' [[AI War:Devourer Golem|Devourer Golem]] ♦ [[AI War:Dyson Sphere|Dyson Sphere]] ♦ [[AI War:Mining Golem|Mining Golem]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Trade Ship|Zenith Trade Ship]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Warheads|Warheads]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> [[AI War:Armored Warhead|Armored Warhead]] ♦ [[AI War:EMP|EMP]] ♦ [[AI War:Lightning Warhead|Lightning Warhead]] ♦ [[AI War:Nuclear Warhead|Nuclear Warhead]] ♦ [[AI War:Tachyon Warhead|Tachyon Warhead]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Ships and Structures#Astro Trains|Astro Trains]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> [[AI War:Astrotrain|Astrotrains Overview]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Astrotrain Station|Astrotrain Station]]<br/> Train Types: [[AI War:Astrotrain#Astrotrain|Astrotrain]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Armor Booster|Armor Booster]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Armor Inhibitor|Armor Inhibitor]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Attack Booster|Attack Booster]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Cargo|Cargo]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#EMP|EMP]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Forcefield Jammer|Forcefield Jammer]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Gravity|Gravity]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Gravity Jammer|Gravity Jammer]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Nuclear|Nuclear]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Paralyzing|Paralyzing]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Radar Jammer|Radar Jammer]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Regenerator|Regenerator]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Repair|Repair]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Shield|Shield]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Speed Booster|Speed Booster]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Supply Inhibitor|Supply Inhibitor]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Tachyon|Tachyon]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Tachyon Jammer|Tachyon Jammer]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Tractor|Tractor]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Tractor Jammer|Tractor Jammer]]<br />
|}<br/></div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Advanced_Research_Station&diff=29871AI War:Advanced Research Station2017-09-23T16:30:48Z<p>Nat: Fix links; clarify that Research Redirector Hacker requires each player to make a choice</p>
<hr />
<div>{{6.009}}<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarARS.png|100px|left|Advanced Research Station]] || valign="top" | Vault of advanced AI technology. Capture to gain a new ship type for your team to build at space docks, as well as 500 bonus knowledge. You cannot destroy these, but if it dies sometime after you capture it, you won't lose the technology you gained from it. Can gather knowledge, but not from hostile planets.<br/>You can see which types of ship you may gain by bringing one of your own [[AI War:Science Lab|Science Labs]] to the planet and the ship you gain when you capture the planet will be the leftmost of the 3 ship types shown on the [[AI War:Advanced Research Station|ARS]] tab on the [[AI War:Science Lab|Science Lab]].<br/>If you want to pick a specific ship from the 3, use the [[AI_War:Hacking#Research_Redirection|Research Redirection Hacker]] before destroying the AI Command Station. After capturing the planet, each player must independently pick one of the three ships from the ARS tab. Players are not required to pick the same ship type. Players who do not pick a ship type will not receive any default unlock.<br/>Produces 6 [[AI War:Knowledge|Knowledge]]/second on friendly and neutral planets that are in supply.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
== Base Stats ==<br />
----<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | Command-Grade || {{AlgCtr}} | Dark Matter Ammo, Attrition, Tractor Beams, Reclamation, Transport, Swallow, Force Fields, Nuclear Explosions, Being Insta-Killed, EMPs || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Engines and Speed|Speed]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[AI War:Engines and Speed|Engine Health]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 100,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 500 || {{AlgCtr}} | 44 || {{AlgCtr}} | 100 || {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Captured On Planet Ownership Change, Unlocks Ship Type On Capture, Requires Supply<br />
|} <br/><br />
<br />
== How to use in your fleet ==<br />
If you already have the leftmost ship-type of the three choices because you have hacked a [[AI War:Design Backup Server|Design Backup Server]] from an AI who has it, you will not gain one of the other available types without hacking. Unlocking the same ship-type twice is a waste and won't grant you additional ships.<br />
<br />
As to what ship-types will be available in a game... the map-gen engine (essentially) randomly reorders the available ship-types, then assigns them sequentially to each ARS in turn. This means:<br />
* None will be the bonus ship-types you have picked at the beginning of the game,<br />
* No two ARS will share the same ship-types.<br />
''Happy choosing.''<br />
<br />
== How to counter when in the AI fleet ==<br />
Not applicable. The AI owns these stations until the player captures the planet, but they provide no benefit to the AI.<br />
<br />
{{AIWarShips}}<br />
{{AIWarRefNav}}<br />
[[Category:AIWar]]<br />
[[Category:AIWarBase]]</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Spider_Bot&diff=29870AI War:Spider Bot2017-09-23T16:16:04Z<p>Nat: Fix image caption; fix links; add internal links to some elements in engine health list</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWarBase]]<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpiderBot.png|left|Spider Bot]] || valign="top" | Extremely effective at damaging the engines of enemy ships.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
<br />
== Base Stats ==<br />
----<br />
{{AIWarTableSpiderBot}}<br />
Note: Spider Mk V used to be called the Anti-Starship Arachnid (patch 5.027)<br />
== How to use in your fleet ==<br />
Engine damage is one of the less common aspect of AI-war gameplay. A Ship's base speed is determined by a ratio of their engine health over max-health, with a minimum of 1.<br />
<br />
[[AI War:Spider Bot|Spider Bots]] are capable of first-strike against many ship-types and stop them from making any more progress into your territory. This is very useful when planning defenses in which AI ships have to travel a large distance to reach their targets, especially in combination with the translocating attack of [[AI_War:Orbital_Command_Station#Military_Command_Station|Military Command Stations]]. With a cap of Spider-I plus Spider-IIs and a reload of 5 seconds, a player can theoretically completely disable early waves within a minute (a different targeting algorithm is in place, although this assertion should be tested). A volley or two should also disable the engines of an average starship or guardian. As engine health does not rise with mark-level, a full complement of Spider Bots will just as easily stop that core [[AI_War:Raid Engine Guard Post|Raid-Engine]] wave as a mark-I wave.<br />
<br />
NB: The ship-type distributions being random, engine damage actually decreases in utility with the addition of Neinzul and Spire expansions. A v5.029 non-comprehensive engine health list is included here:<br />
* '''Inf''' (immune) - [[AI_War:Raid Starship|Raid Starships]], melee ships, teleporting ships, [[AI_War:Sniper|Snipers]], Neinzul ships, and all [[Neinzul Enclave Starship]]s.<br />
* 600,000 - [[AI War:Spire Destroyer|Spire Destroyer]].<br />
* 300,000 - [[AI War:Bomber Starship|Bomber Starships]], [[Riot Control Starship]]s-III (10,000*Mark), [[AI War:Spire Frigate|Spire Frigate]]<br />
* 100,000 - Many [[AI War:Starships|Starships]], most [[AI War:Guardians|Guardians]], Spire fleet-ships, [[AI-Neinzul Hybrid]]s<br />
* 3,000 - [[Plasma Siege Starship]]s<br />
* 2000 - [[Zenith Electric Bomber]]s<br />
* 1000 - [[Sentinel Frigate]]s<br />
* 800 - [[Etherjet]]s, [[Zenith Chameleon]]s<br />
* 200 - [[Fighter]]s, [[Bomber]]s, [[Tachyon Microfighter]]s, [[Space Tank]]s, [[Space Plane]]s<br />
* 150 - [[AI War:Armor Ship|Armor Ship]]s<br />
* 100 - Other fleet-ships, [[AI War:Zenith Auto Bomb|Zenith Auto Bombs]](!), [[Decloaker]]s<br />
* 50 - [[Raptor]]s<br />
<br />
== How to counter when in the AI fleet ==<br />
Enemy [[AI War:Spider Bot|Spider Bots]] are generally annoying, being pernicious enough to disable a small bunch of your fleet across every planet. Aside from emphasising ship-types which are resistant or immune, best practice is to send in a squad of [[AI War:Engineer|Engineer]]-IIIs on FRD (engine damage can be repaired just like health damage).<br />
<br />
Ironically, their own engines can be readily disabled by your own ships.<br />
<br />
{{AIWarShips}}<br />
{{AIWarRefNav}}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Spirecraft_Jumpship&diff=29861AI War:Spirecraft Jumpship2017-09-16T20:31:27Z<p>Nat: Fix inequality for Self Attrition note; fix links; add note about MkV vs Black Hole Machines; add usage caveats</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar]]<br />
[[Category:AIWarLotS]]<br />
{{6.013}}<br/><br />
{|<br />
|[[File:AIWarSpirecraftJumpship.png|100px|left|Spirecraft Jumpship]] || valign="top" | Expensive, tiny-capacity transport with advanced teleportation and no self-attrition-per-wormhole. The advanced teleportation lets the jumpship pass through wormholes and across planets without the normal few-second delays that regular teleporting ships face. On planets with a higher mark than the jumpship, the jumpship expires in about twenty seconds, however.<br/>Spirecraft are built from a [[AI_War:Spirecraft Mining Enclosure|Spirecraft Mining Enclosure]] built by a [[AI_War:Spire Mining Ship|Spire Mining Ship]].<br />
|}<br />
<br />
Mark V jumpships (and only Mark V) are immune to [[AI War:Black Hole Machine|Black Hole Machines]] (new in [[AI_War:Current_Post-7.000_Beta#Prerelease_7.019_Oops_MkII|7.019]]).<br />
<br />
== Base Stats ==<br />
----<br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Ammo Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Armor Type]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Ammunition Types and Immunities|Immunities]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor Types and Bonus Damage|Damage Bonuses]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | || {{AlgCtr}} | Heavy || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Boosts, Armor Boosts, Speed Boosts, Tractor Beams, Tachyon Beams, Reclamation, Paralysis Attacks, Transport, Swallow, Nuclear Explosions, Being Insta-Killed, EMPs, Mines, Repair || {{AlgCtr}} | <br />
|}<br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] ||{{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Ship Cap]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor|Damage]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Attack Range || {{AlgCtr}} | Reload || {{AlgCtr}} | Health || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Armor]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Speed]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Engines and Speed|Engine Health]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Single Ship DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | Ship Cap DPS || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Abilities]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I ||{{AlgCtr}} | 16|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 100,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 100 || {{AlgCtr}} | 84 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf || {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Cloaking, Teleports, Self Attrition Time 00:20, Self Attrition Only On AI Worlds > Mark 1, Transports 5 Ships, Blind<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II ||{{AlgCtr}} | 12|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 100,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 200 || {{AlgCtr}} | 84 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Cloaking, Teleports, Self Attrition Time 00:20, Self Attrition Only On AI Worlds > Mark 2, Transports 10 Ships, Blind<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III ||{{AlgCtr}} | 8|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 100,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 300 || {{AlgCtr}} | 84 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Cloaking, Teleports, Self Attrition Time 00:20, Self Attrition Only On AI Worlds > Mark 3, Transports 15 Ships, Blind<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | IV ||{{AlgCtr}} | 4|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 100,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 400 || {{AlgCtr}} | 84 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Cloaking, Teleports, Self Attrition Time 00:20, Self Attrition Only On AI Worlds > Mark 4, Transports 20 Ships, Blind<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | V ||{{AlgCtr}} | 2|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0|| {{AlgCtr}} | 0 sec || {{AlgCtr}} | 100,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 500 || {{AlgCtr}} | 84 || {{AlgCtr}} | Inf|| {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgRgt}} | 0 dmg/sec || {{AlgLeft}} | Cloaking, Teleports, Self Attrition Time 00:20, Self Attrition Only On AI Worlds > Mark 5, Transports 25 Ships, Blind<br />
|} <br/><br />
{| {{AlgTop}}<br />
! {{AlgCtr}} | [[Knowledge|Mark]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Asteroid || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Metal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Metal and Crystal|Crystal Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Energy|Energy Cost]] || {{AlgCtr}} | [[Build Time and Constructors|Build Time]] || {{AlgCtr}} | Cap Metal Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | Cap Crystal Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | Cap Total Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | Cap Energy Cost || {{AlgCtr}} | Ship Cap Build Time<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | I || {{AlgCtr}} | Pysite (2 per)<br/>Xampite (4 per) || {{AlgCtr}} | 60,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 60,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 120,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 6,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:22:01 || {{AlgCtr}} | 960,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 960,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,920,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 96,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 05:52:16<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | II || {{AlgCtr}} | Xampite (2 per)<br/>Ebonite (4 per) || {{AlgCtr}} | 120,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 120,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 240,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 12,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 00:44:01 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,920,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 1,920,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 3,840,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 192,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 11:44:16<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | III || {{AlgCtr}} | Ebonite (2 per)<br/>Adamanite (4 per) || {{AlgCtr}} | 240,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 240,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 480,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 18,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 01:06:01 || {{AlgCtr}} | 3,840,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 3,840,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 7,680,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 288,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 17:36:16<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | IV || {{AlgCtr}} | Adamanite (2 per)<br/>Titanite (4 per) || {{AlgCtr}} | 360,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 360,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 720,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 24,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 01:28:01 || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,760,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 5,760,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 11,520,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 384,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 23:28:16<br />
|-<br />
| {{AlgCtr}} | V || {{AlgCtr}} | Titanite (2 per) || {{AlgCtr}} | 480,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 480,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 960,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 30,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 01:50:01 || {{AlgCtr}} | 7,680,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 7,680,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 15,360,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 480,000 || {{AlgCtr}} | 29:20:16<br />
|}Note that the build time of Spirecraft is half of the repair time listed.<br/><br/><br />
<br />
== How to use in your fleet ==<br />
Spirecraft Jumpships essentially enables you to blitzkrieg ''almost any'' planet you want, since they are perma-cloaked, and travel about 2-hops per second. A Mk-I Jumpship has no problem traveling 10+ hops away, dropping the forces there, and going back home.<br />
<br />
A typical use is to remove [[AI_War:Data_Center|Data Centers]], [[AI_War:Co-Processor|Co-processors]], or destroy/liberate [[AI War:Spire Civilian Leader Outpost|Spire Civilian Leader Outposts]] (note that you don't have to actually take the planet to liberate the outpost), deep inside AI territory with your Mk-III+ [[AI War:Raid Starship|Human Raid Starships]]. Since each asteroid provides at least 2 Jumpships, one can send one of the Jumpships to send your forces there, and bring them back with another Jumpship. You would still need to deal with the threats, though.<br />
<br />
Caveats:<br />
* Mark I - Mark IV jumpships can be trapped by a [[AI War:Black Hole Machine|Black Hole Machine]], preventing it from finishing the trip. If it becomes trapped on a world where self-attrition applies, it will likely attrition out before the player can deliver a fleet to destroy the [[AI War:Black Hole Machine|Black Hole Machine]]. Mark V jumpships ignore [[AI War:Black Hole Machine|Black Hole Machines]] and have no worlds on which they would self-attrition.<br />
* Jumpships respect the teleport inhibition and speed limiting of [[AI_War:Gravity_Drill_Station|Gravity Drills]]. Jumpships can cross a world with a [[AI_War:Gravity_Drill_Station|Gravity Drill]], but the severe speed penalty makes the self-attrition a severe threat instead of a minor irritant. Avoid [[AI_War:Gravity_Drill_Station|Gravity Drill]] worlds that would cause self-attrition. If possible, avoid sending a jumpship across a [[AI_War:Gravity_Drill_Station|Gravity Drill]] world at all. The extreme speed in teleport-enabled systems makes it faster to take a long route with teleporting permitted than a short route with it disabled.<br />
* Jumpships must land on the wormhole to use it, and are not immune to [[AI_War:Force_Field|Force Fields]]. If the wormhole is covered by a hostile [[AI_War:Force_Field|Force Field]] (such as from a [[AI_War:Spire_Shield_Sphere_Guard_Post|Spire Shield Sphere Guard Post]]), the jumpship will land outside the force field and be unable to use the wormhole. In very unlucky cases, the hostile [[AI_War:Force_Field|Force Field]] will cover the wormhole back to human space, trapping the jumpship until the player shrinks or destroys the [[AI_War:Force_Field|Force Field]].<br />
<br />
== How to counter when in the AI fleet ==<br />
Coming soon<br />
<br />
{{AIWarShips}}<br />
{{AIWarRefNav}}</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=Template:AIWarShips&diff=29860Template:AIWarShips2017-09-16T16:56:59Z<p>Nat: Fix numerous bad links; follow various redirects</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:AIWar|AIWar]]<br />
<noinclude>[[Category:AIWarTemplates|AIWarTemplates]]</noinclude><br />
<br/><br />
<br />
----<br />
----<br />
{| border="1" cellpadding="2" class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed wikitable" style="margin: auto;"<br />
! scope="col" align="center" colspan="2" | [[AI War:Ships and Structures|Ships and Structures]] Navigation<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" width="80"| [[AI War:Ships and Structures#Fleet Ships|Fleet Ships]]<br/><br />
<sub>Built at</sub><br/><sup>[[AI War:Space Dock|Space Dock]]</sup><br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> '''[[AI War:Scout|Scout]] ♦ [[AI War:Fighter|Fighter]] ♦ [[AI War:Bomber|Bomber]] ♦ [[AI War:Missile Frigate|Missile Frigate]]''' <br><br />
<br />
''Bonus fleet ships:'' [[AI War:Acid Sprayer|Acid Sprayer]] ♦ [[AI War:Anti-Armor|Anti-Armor]] ♦ [[AI War:Armor Booster|Armor Booster]] ♦ [[AI War:Armor Ship|Armor Ship]] ♦ [[AI War:Attractor Drone|Attractor Drone]] ♦ [[AI War:Autocannon Minipod|Autocannon Minipod]] ♦ [[AI War:Bulletproof Fighter|Bulletproof Fighter]] ♦ [[AI War:Electric Shuttle|Electric Shuttle]] ♦ [[AI War:Etherjet|Etherjet]] ♦ [[AI War:Eye Bot|Eye Bot]] ♦ [[AI War:Grenade Launcher|Grenade Launcher]] ♦ [[AI War:Impulse Reaction Emitter|Impulse Reaction Emitter]] ♦ [[AI War:Infiltrator|Infiltrator]] ♦ [[AI War:Laser Gatling|Laser Gatling]] ♦ [[AI War:Lightning Torpedo Frigate|Lightning Torpedo Frigate]] ♦ [[AI War:MLRS|MLRS]] ♦ [[AI War:Munitions Booster|Munitions Booster]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Railpod|Neinzul Railpod]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Scapegoat|Neinzul Scapegoat]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Youngling Commando|Neinzul Youngling Commando]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Youngling Firefly|Neinzul Youngling Firefly]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Youngling Nanoswarm|Neinzul Youngling Nanoswarm]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Youngling Shrike|Neinzul Youngling Shrike]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Youngling Tiger|Neinzul Youngling Tiger]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Youngling Vulture|Neinzul Youngling Vulture]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Youngling Weasel|Neinzul Youngling Weasel]] ♦ [[AI War:Parasite|Parasite]] ♦ [[AI War:Raider|Raider]] ♦ [[AI War:Raptor|Raptor]] ♦ [[AI War:Saboteur|Saboteur]] ♦ [[AI War:Sentinel Frigate|Sentinel Frigate]] ♦ [[AI War:Shield Bearer|Shield Bearer]] ♦ [[AI War:Sniper|Sniper]] ♦ [[AI War:Space Plane|Space Plane]] ♦ [[AI War:Space Tank|Space Tank]] ♦ [[AI War:Spider Bot|Spider Bot]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Armor Rotter|Spire Armor Rotter]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Blade|Spire Blade]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Blade Spawner|Spire Blade Spawner]] ♦ [[AI War:Gravity Drainer|Spire Gravity Drainer]] ♦ [[AI War:Gravity Ripper|Spire Gravity Ripper]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Maw|Spire Maw]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Mini Ram|Spire Mini Ram]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Railcluster|Spire Railcluster]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Stealth Battleship|Spire Stealth Battleship]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Teleporting Leech|Spire Teleporting Leech]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Tractor Platform|Spire Tractor Platform]] ♦ [[AI War:Tachyon Microfighter|Tachyon Microfighter]] ♦ [[AI War:Tackle Drone Launcher|Tackle Drone Launcher]] ♦ [[AI War:Teleport Battle Station|Teleport Battle Station]] ♦ [[AI War:Teleport Raider|Teleport Raider]] ♦ [[AI War:Vampire Claw|Vampire Claw]] ♦ [[AI War:Vorticular Cutlass|Vorticular Cutlass]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Auto Bomb|Zenith Auto Bomb]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Beam Frigate|Zenith Beam Frigate]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Bombard|Zenith Bombard]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Chameleon|Zenith Chameleon]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Electric Bomber|Zenith Electric Bomber]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Hydra|Zenith Hydra]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Medic Frigate|Zenith Medic Frigate]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Mirror|Zenith Mirror]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Paralyzer|Zenith Paralyzer]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Polarizer|Zenith Polarizer]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Reprocessor|Zenith Reprocessor]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Siege Engine|Zenith Siege Engine]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Viral Shredder|Zenith Viral Shredder]]<br><br />
<br />
''Experimental:'' [[AI War:Decoy Drone|Decoy Drone]] ♦ [[AI War:MicroParasite|MicroParasite]] ♦ [[AI War:Speed Booster|Speed Booster]] ♦ [[AI War:Spider Bot|Spider Bot]] ♦ [[AI War:Translocator|Translocator]]<br><br />
<br />
''Minor faction:'' [[AI War:Dyson Gatling|Dyson Gatling]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Bomber|Neinzul Bomber]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Viral Swarmer|Neinzul Viral Swarmer]] ♦ [[AI War:Preservation Warden Bomber|Preservation Warden Bomber]] ♦ [[AI War:Preservation Warden Commando|Preservation Warden Commando]] ♦ [[AI War:Resistance Fighter/Bomber|Resistance Fighter/Bomber]] ♦ [[AI War:Resistance Frigate|Resistance Frigate]]<br><br />
<br />
''Miscellaneous:'' [[AI War:Neinzul Youngling Cockroach|Neinzul Youngling Cockroach]] ♦ [[AI War:Wasp|Wasp]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Starships|Starships]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> [[AI War:Cloaker Starship|Cloaker Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Flagship|Flagship]] ♦ [[AI War:Heavy Bomber Starship|Heavy Bomber Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Leech Starship|Leech Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Enclave Starship|Neinzul Enclave Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Plasma Siege Starship|Plasma Siege Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Raid Starship|Raid Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Riot Control Starship|Riot Control Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Scout Starship|Scout Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Starship|Spire Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Starship|Zenith Starship]]<br><br />
<br />
''Bonus starships:'' [[AI War:Lightning Starship|Lightning Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Combat Carrier|Neinzul Combat Carrier]] ♦ [[AI War:Protector Starship|Protector Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Corvette|Spire Corvette]] ♦ [[AI War:Translocator Starship|Translocator Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Devastator|Zenith Devastator]]<br><br />
<br />
''Experimental:'' [[AI War:Beam Starship|Beam Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Warbird Starship|Warbird Starship]]<br><br />
<br />
''Miscellaneous:'' [[AI War:AI-Neinzul Hybrid|AI-Neinzul Hybrid]] ♦ [[AI War:Avenger|Avenger]] ♦ [[Beachhead|Beachhead]] ♦ [[AI War:Carrier|Carrier]] ♦ [[AI War:Decloaker|Decloaker]] ♦ [[AI War:Core Starship|Core Starship]] ♦ [[AI War:Hunter/Killer|Hunter/Killer]] ♦ [[AI War:Mobile Builder|Mobile Builder]] ♦ [[AI War:Mothership|Mothership]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Preservation Warden|Neinzul Preservation Warden]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Roaming Enclave|Neinzul Roaming Enclave]] ♦ [[AI War:Transport Ship|Transport Ship]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Turrets|Turrets]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> '' Regular:'' [[AI War:Needler Turret|Needler Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Laser Turret|Laser Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:MLRS Turret|MLRS Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Missile Turret|Missile Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Flak Turret|Flak Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Lightning Turret|Lightning Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Sniper Turret|Sniper Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Spider Turret|Spider Turret]]<br/><br />
<br />
''Advanced:'' [[AI War:Heavy Beam Turret|Heavy Beam Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Counter Dark Matter Turret|Counter Dark Matter Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Counter Missile Turret|Counter Missile Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Counter Sniper Turret|Counter Sniper Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Tractor Beam Turret|Tractor Beam Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Gravitational Turret|Gravitational Turret]] ♦ [[AI War:Tachyon Beam Emitter|Tachyon Beam Emitter]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Guardians|Guardians]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> [[AI War:Combat Carrier Guardian|Combat Carrier Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Devastator Guardian|Devastator Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Disassembler Guardian|Disassembler Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:EMP Guardian|EMP Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Enclave Guardian|Enclave Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Flak Guardian|Flak Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Gravity Guardian|Gravity Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Heavy Beam Guardian|Heavy Beam Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Infiltrator Guardian|Infiltrator Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Laser Guardian|Laser Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Lightning Guardian|Lightning Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Missile Guardian|Missile Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:MLRS Guardian|MLRS Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Munitions Boosting Guardian|Munitions Boosting Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Needler Guardian|Needler Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Plasma Guardian|Plasma Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Raider Guardian|Raider Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Self-Destruction Guardian|Self-Destruction Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Shield Guardian|Shield Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Sniper Guardian|Sniper Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Special Forces Rally Guardian|Special Forces Rally Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Spider Guardian|Spider Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Implosion Guardian|Spire Implosion Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Tractor Guardian|Tractor Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Translocator Guardian|Translocator Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Vampire Guardian|Vampire Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Warp Gate Guardian|Warp Gate Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Widow Guardian|Widow Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Zombie Guardian|Zombie Guardian]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Dire Guardians|Dire Guardians]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> [[AI War:Dire Guardian Lair|Dire Guardian Lair]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Artillery Guardian|Dire Artillery Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Disassembler Guardian|Dire Disassembler Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Gravity Guardian|Dire Gravity Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Implosion Guardian|Dire Implosion Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Infiltration Guardian|Dire Infiltration Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Laser Guardian|Dire Laser Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire MLRS Guardian|Dire MLRS Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Munitions Boosting Guardian|Dire Munitions Boosting Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Needler Guardian|Dire Needler Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Raider Guardian|Dire Raider Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Shield Guardian|Dire Shield Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Sniper Guardian|Dire Sniper Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Spider Guardian|Dire Spider Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Tractor Guardian|Dire Tractor Guardian]] ♦ [[AI War:Dire Widow Guardian|Dire Widow Guardian]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Guard Posts|Guard Posts]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> ''Regular Guard Posts:'' [[AI War:Arachnid Guard Post|Arachnid Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Cloaker Guard Post|Cloaker Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Command Station Shield Guard Post|Command Station Shield Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Laser Guard Post|Laser Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Missile Guard Post|Missile Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:MLRS Guard Post|MLRS Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Needler Guard Post|Needler Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Shield Sphere Guard Post|Spire Shield Sphere Guard Post]]<br><br />
<br />
''Special Guard Posts:'' [[AI War:Special Forces Guard Post|Special Forces Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Warp Counterattack Guard Post|Warp Counterattack Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Wormhole Guard Post|Wormhole Guard Post]]<br><br />
<br />
''Exotic Guard Posts:'' [[AI War:Disassembler Guard Post|Disassembler Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Enclave Guard Post|Enclave Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Gravity Guard Post|Gravity Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Implosion Guard Post|Implosion Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Munition Boosting Guard Post|Munition Boosting Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Plasma Guard Post|Plasma Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Sniper Guard Post|Sniper Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Spider Guard Post|Spider Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Tachyon Guard Post|Tachyon Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Tractor Guard Post|Tractor Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Widow Guard Post|Widow Guard Post]]<br/><br />
<br />
''Core Guard Posts:'' [[AI War:Core Arachnid Guard Post|Core Arachnid Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Booster Guard Post|Booster Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Electric Guard Post|Electric Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Heavy Beam Guard Post|Heavy Beam Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Core Implosion Drone Guard Post|Core Implosion Drone Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Leech Guard Post|Leech Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Core Missile Guard Post|Core Missile Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Melee Guard Post|Neinzul Melee Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Spawner Guard Post|Neinzul Spawner Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Riot Control Guard Post|Riot Control Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Sentinel Guard Post|Sentinel Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Core Spire Shield Sphere Guard Post|Core Spire Shield Sphere Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Bombard Guard Post|Zenith Bombard Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Fortress Guard Post|Zenith Fortress Guard Post]]<br/><br />
<br />
''Brutal Guard Posts:'' [[AI War:Cross Planet Attack Guard Post|Cross Planet Attack Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Grav Reactor Guard Post|Grav Reactor Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Hunter/Killer Factory Guard Post|Hunter/Killer Factory Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Raid Engine Guard Post|Raid Engine Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Shredder Drone Guard Post|Shredder Drone Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Teuthida Guard Post|Teuthida Guard Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Wrath Lance Guard Post|Wrath Lance Guard Post]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Ships and Structures#Military Structures|Military Structures]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> [[AI War:Advanced Warp Sensor|Advanced Warp Sensor]] ♦ [[AI War:Alarm Post|Alarm Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Attritioner|Attritioner]] ♦ [[AI War:Barracks|Barracks]] ♦ [[AI War:Black Hole Machine|Black Hole Machine]] ♦ [[AI War:Co-Processor|Co-Processor]] ♦ [[AI War:Core Shield Generator|Core Shield Generator]] ♦ [[AI War:Counter-Spy|Counter-Spy]] ♦ [[AI War:Dark Spire Vengeance Generator|Dark Spire Vengeance Generator]] ♦ [[AI War:Data Center|Data Center]] ♦ [[AI War:Drone Spawner|Drone Spawner]] ♦ [[AI War:Dyson Antagonizer|Dyson Antagonizer]] ♦ [[AI War:Dyson Converter|Dyson Converter]] ♦ [[AI War:Force Field|Force Field]] ♦ [[AI War:Gravity Drill Station|Gravity Drill]] ♦ [[AI War:Hybrid Spawn|Hybrid Spawn]] ♦ [[AI War:Interplanetary Munitions Booster|Inter-Planetary Munitions Booster]] ♦ [[AI War:Ion Cannon|Ion Cannon]] ♦ [[AI War:Mobile Space Dock|Mobile Space Dock]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Bomber Cluster|Neinzul Bomber Cluster]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Cluster|Neinzul Cluster]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Nest|Neinzul Nest]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Privacy Cluster|Neinzul Privacy Cluster]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Rocketry Corps Silo|Neinzul Rocketry Corps Silo]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Viral Cluster|Neinzul Viral Cluster]] ♦ [[AI War:Orbital Mass Driver|Orbital Mass Driver]] ♦ [[AI War:Planetary Armor Booster|Planetary Armor Booster]] ♦ [[AI War:Planetary Armor Inhibitor|Planetary Armor Inhibitor]] ♦ [[AI War:Planetary Cloak|Planetary Cloak]] ♦ [[AI War:Radar Jammer|Radar Jammer]] ♦ [[AI War:Raid Engine|Raid Engine]] ♦ [[AI War:Rally Post|Rally Post]] ♦ [[AI War:Special Forces Alarm Post|Special Forces Alarm Post]] ♦ [[AI War:SuperTerminal|SuperTerminal]] ♦ [[AI War:Troop Accelerator|Troop Accelerator]] ♦ [[AI War:Core Warhead Interceptor|Warhead Interceptor]] ♦ [[AI War:Warp Gate|Warp Gate]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Reserve|Zenith Reserve]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith_SpaceTime_Manipulator|Zenith Spacetime Manipulator]]<br />
<br />
''Mines:'' [[AI War:Minefield|Minefield]] ♦ [[AI War:Area Minefield|Area Minefield]] ♦ [[AI War:Widow Minefield|Widow Minefield]]<br />
<br />
''Fortresses:'' [[AI War:Fortress|Fortress]] ♦ [[AI War:Mini-Fortress|Mini-Fortress]] ♦ [[AI War:Modular Fortress|Modular Fortress]] ♦ [[AI War:Modular Fortress Command Station|Modular Fortress Command Station]] ♦ [[AI War:Modular Fortress#Neinzul Modular Fortress|Neinzul Modular Fortress]] ♦ [[AI War:Modular Fortress#Spire Modular Fortress|Spire Modular Fortress]] ♦ [[AI War:SuperFortress|SuperFortress]] ♦ [[AI War:Modular Fortress#Zenith Modular Fortress|Zenith Modular Fortress]] <br />
<br />
''AI Eyes:'' [[AI War:Ion Eye|Ion Eye]] ♦ [[AI War:Nuclear Eye|Nuclear Eye]] ♦ [[AI War:Parasite Eye|Parasite Eye]] ♦ [[AI War:Plasma Eye|Plasma Eye]] [[AI War:Plasma Eye (Core)|(Core)]] ♦ [[AI War:Raid Eye|Raid Eye]] [[AI War:Raid Eye (Core)|(Core)]] ♦ [[AI War:Sentry Eye|Sentry Eye]] [[AI War:Sentry Eye (Core)|(Core)]] ♦ [[AI War:Threatening Eye|Threatening Eye]] [[AI War:Threatening Eye (Core)|(Core)]] ♦ [[AI War:Translocator Eye|Translocator Eye]] [[AI War:Translocator Eye (Core)|(Core)]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Ships and Structures#Economic Structures|Economic Structures]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> [[AI War:Asteroid|Asteroid]] [[AI War:Asteroid#Adamantite Asteroid|(Adamantite)]] [[AI War:Asteroid#Ebonite Asteroid|(Ebonite)]] [[AI War:Asteroid#Pysite Asteroid|(Pysite)]] [[AI War:Asteroid#Reptite Asteroid|(Reptite)]] [[AI War:Asteroid#Titanite Asteroid|(Titanite)]] [[AI War:Asteroid#Xampite Asteroid|(Xampite)]] ♦ [[AI War:Advanced Research Ship|Advanced Research Ship]] ♦ [[AI War:Advanced Factory|Advanced Factory]] ♦ [[AI War:Advanced Starship Constructor|Advanced Starship Constructor]] ♦ [[AI War:Captive Human Settlement|Captive Human Settlement]] ♦ [[AI War:Cleanup Drone|Cleanup Drone]] ♦ [[AI War:Orbital Command Station#Economic Command Station|Economic Command Station]] ♦ [[AI War:Colony Ship|Colony Ship]] ♦ [[AI War:Core Fabricator|Core Fabricator]] ♦ [[AI War:Distribution Node|Distribution Node]] ♦ [[AI War:Orbital Command Station|Command Station]] ♦ [[AI War:Energy Collector|Energy Collector]] ♦ [[AI War:Engineer|Engineer]] ♦ [[AI War:Exo-Galactic Wormhole|Exo-Galactic Wormhole]] ♦ [[AI War:Experimental Fabricator|Experimental Fabricator]] ♦ [[AI War:Foldout|Foldout]] ♦ [[AI War:Harvester|Harvester]] ♦ [[AI War:Harvester_Exo-Shield|Harvester Exo-Shield]] ♦ [[AI War:Home Human Settlement|Home Human Settlement]] ♦ [[AI War:Human Cryogenic Pod|Human Cryogenic Pod]] ♦ [[AI War:Intra-Galactic Warp Gate|Intra-Galactic Warp Gate]] ♦ [[AI War:Knowledge Hacker|Knowledge Hacker]] ♦ [[AI War:Orbital Command Station#Logistical Command Station|Logistical Command Station]] ♦ [[AI War:Matter Converter|Matter Converter]] ♦ [[AI War:Mercenary Space Dock|Mercenary Space Dock]] ♦ [[AI War:Orbital Command Station#Military Command Station|Military Command Station]] ♦ [[AI War:Missile Silo|Missile Silo]] ♦ [[AI War:Neinzul Regeneration Chamber|Neinzul Regeneration Chamber]] ♦ [[AI War:Orbital Command Station#Orbital Command Station - Home Planet|Orbital Command Station]] ♦ [[AI War:Rebel Colony|Rebel Colony]] ♦ [[AI War:Remains|Remains]] ♦ [[AI War:Remains Rebuilder|Remains Rebuilder]] ♦ [[AI War:Science Lab|Science Lab]] ♦ [[AI War:Ship-Design Hacker|Ship-Design Hacker]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Archive|Spire Archive]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Civilian Leader|Spire Civilian Leader]] ♦ [[AI War:Space Dock|Space Dock]] ♦ [[AI War:Starship Constructor|Starship Constructor]] ♦ [[AI War:Tachyon Drone|Tachyon Drone]] ♦ [[AI War:Orbital Command Station#Orbital Command Station - Warp Jammer|Warp Jammer Command Station]] ♦ [[AI War:Wormhole|Wormhole]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Power Generator|Zenith Power Generator]] <br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Ships and Structures#Fallen Spire|Fallen Spire Campaign]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> [[Fallen Spire Campaign|Fallen Spire Overview]] ♦ [[AI_War:Survey_Ship|Survey Ship]] ♦ [[AI_War:Subspace_Receiver|Subspace Receiver]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Frigate|Spire Frigate]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Destroyer|Spire Destroyer]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Cruiser|Spire Cruiser]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Battleship|Spire Battleship]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Dreadnought|Spire Dreadnought]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Super_Dreadnought|Spire Super Dreadnought]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Shard|Spire Shard]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Colony_Ship|Spire Colony Ship]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Outpost|Spire Outpost]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_City_Hub|Spire City Hub]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Habitation_Center|Spire Habitation Center]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Shard_Reactor|Spire Shard Reactor]] ♦ [[AI War:Spire Shipyard|Spire Shipyard]] ♦ [[Spire Galactic Capitol|Spire Galactic Capitol]] ♦ [[AI_War:Exogalactic_Transceiver|Exogalactic Transceiver]] <br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Ships and Structures#Ancient Shadows|Ancient Shadows]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> [[Ancient_Shadows_Campaign|Ancient Shadows Campaign]] ♦ [[AI War:Ancient_Shadows_Shadow_Ships|Shadow Ships (Champion Ships) All Types: Human/Neinzul/Spire/Zenith and All Sizes: Frigate/Destroyer/Cruiser/Battleship]]<br/>[[General Nebulae|General Nebulae]] ♦ [[Nebula: Epsilon Eridani Remnant Found|Epsilon Eridani Remnant Found]] ♦ [[Nebula: Shattered Pillar Zenith Found| Shattered Pillar Zenith Found]] ♦ [[Nebula: Neinzul Mourner Wardens Found|Neinzul Mourner Wardens Found]] ♦ [[Nebula: Gray Spire Cluster Found|Gray Spire Cluster Found]] ♦ [[Nebula: Shattered Pillar Found|Shattered Pillar Found]] ♦ [[Nebula: Human Resistance Found|Human Resistance Found]] ♦ [[Nebula: IMT Needs Help Again|IMT Needs Help Again]] ♦ [[Nebula: Allies Under Attack|Allies Under Attack]] ♦ [[Nebula: The Battle Rages|The Battle Rages]] ♦ [[Nebula: Empty Nebula|Empty Nebula]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Ships and Structures#Spirecraft|Spirecraft]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Attritioner|Spirecraft Attritioner]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Implosion Artillery|Spirecraft Implosion Artillery]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Ion Blaster|Spirecraft Ion Blaster]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Jumpship|Spirecraft Jumpship]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Martyr|Spirecraft Martyr]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Penetrator|Spirecraft Penetrator]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Ram|Spirecraft Ram]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Scout|Spirecraft Scout]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Shield_Bearer|Spirecraft Shield Bearer]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Siege Tower|Spirecraft Siege Tower]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spire_Mining_Ship|Spire Mining Ship]] ♦ [[AI_War:Spirecraft_Mining_Enclosure|Spirecraft Mining Enclosure]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Golems|Golems]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> ''Broken Golems:'' [[AI War:Armored Golem|Armored Golem]] ♦ [[AI War:Artillery Golem|Artillery Golem]] ♦ [[AI War:Black Widow Golem|Black Widow Golem]] ♦ [[AI War:Cursed Golem|Cursed Golem]] ♦ [[AI War:Hive Golem|Hive Golem]] ♦ [[AI War:Regenerator Golem|Regenerator Golem]]<br />
<br />
''Special Broken Golems:'' [[AI War:Botnet Golem|Botnet Golem]] ♦ [[AI War:Nomad Beacon|Nomad Beacon]] ♦ [[AI War:Exodian Blade|Exodian Blade]]<br />
<br />
''Minor Faction Golems:'' [[AI War:Devourer Golem|Devourer Golem]] ♦ [[AI War:Dyson Sphere|Dyson Sphere]] ♦ [[AI War:Mining Golem|Mining Golem]] ♦ [[AI War:Zenith Trade Ship|Zenith Trade Ship]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Warheads|Warheads]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> [[AI War:Armored Warhead|Armored Warhead]] ♦ [[AI War:EMP|EMP]] ♦ [[AI War:Lightning Warhead|Lightning Warhead]] ♦ [[AI War:Nuclear Warhead|Nuclear Warhead]] ♦ [[AI War:Tachyon Warhead|Tachyon Warhead]]<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" align="center" | [[AI War:Ships and Structures#Astro Trains|Astro Trains]]<br />
| align="center" | <font size="1"> [[AI War:Astrotrain|Astrotrains Overview]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Astrotrain Station|Astrotrain Station]]<br/> Train Types: [[AI War:Astrotrain#Astrotrain|Astrotrain]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Armor Booster|Armor Booster]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Armor Inhibitor|Armor Inhibitor]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Attack Booster|Attack Booster]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Cargo|Cargo]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#EMP|EMP]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Forcefield Jammer|Forcefield Jammer]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Gravity|Gravity]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Gravity Jammer|Gravity Jammer]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Nuclear|Nuclear]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Paralyzing|Paralyzing]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Radar Jammer|Radar Jammer]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Regenerator|Regenerator]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Repair|Repair]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Shield|Shield]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Speed Booster|Speed Booster]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Supply Inhibitor|Supply Inhibitor]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Tachyon|Tachyon]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Tachyon Jammer|Tachyon Jammer]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Tractor|Tractor]] ♦ [[AI War:Astrotrain#Tractor Jammer|Tractor Jammer]]<br />
|}<br/></div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Current_Post-4.000_Beta&diff=29859AI War:Current Post-4.000 Beta2017-09-16T16:16:11Z<p>Nat: Add Category:AI War Release Notes</p>
<hr />
<div>== Release 5.000 ==<br />
<br />
* Corrected the tooltips for the "Broken Golems - Hard" and the "Spirecraft - Hard" minor factions to not specifically state that the extra attacks include golems or spirecraft, since there's no guaruntee of either.<br />
<br />
* Fixed typo in Siege Starship description.<br />
** Thanks to Loix for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Marauders:<br />
** Spawns now only happen when the marauder counter is "fully charged" (40 for diffs < 9, 80 otherwise) instead of having a random chance of triggering early.<br />
** The counter is now capped at the "fully charged" level instead of 2x that, to avoid "stockpiling" resulting in multiple spawns over a short interval.<br />
** The "number of marauders to spawn" was computed by roughly "number of human military ships here" minus "number of AI military ships here" (and capped at the value of the marauder counter). It now takes simply either "number of human military ships here" or "number of AI military ships here", whichever is larger (though capped at 4x the smaller value) and divides it by 8. This number is then doubled on normal unit caps, and quadrupled on low caps. Anyway, the upshot should be less chance of small marauder spawns that cause the marauder counter to stay "stockpiled".<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug in recent versions where reclaiming a ship with nanoswarms could result in it being handed over to an arbitrary different player (and we mean _arbitrary_; it was using an outer loop index, i, instead of the index j that had the actual player number). This caused all manner of twilight-zone-ish behavior like reclaiming stuff on behalf of non-existent allies, having builder foldouts for those allies pop out when you build a command station, etc. Note that those "extra" phantom players in existing saves won't be removed by this fix as the game-loading code has no way of knowing that those reclaimed units don't legitimately belong to the owners.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Updated Defender Mode tooltips with additional setup suggestions, based on balance testing.<br />
<br />
* Removed parentheses from around the unused-crystal-deposits number; they were removed several versions ago from the corresponding metal and knowledge numbers.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for pointing out the discrepancy.<br />
<br />
* Made some minor fixes and updates to the tutorial, specifically:<br />
** Reduced the number of player ships spawned in the latter part of tutorial 3 to cut down on the chance of it putting the player into negative energy.<br />
** Fixed a reference in a tutorial 2 tooltip that always referred to a planet as "Tiroha" despite the name having changed.<br />
** Added note about the Core Shield Generators to the tooltip about the objectives screen.<br />
** Updated the note about unlocking higher tier harvesters and economic command stations to no longer indicate that the older structures have to be scrapped to be upgraded.<br />
<br />
* Added a note to the Spirecraft-Medium minor faction tooltip that some spirecraft are always non-repairable even on easy and hard.<br />
<br />
* Updated in-game credits to thank players who helped us with several ideas/bugs/etc during the 5.0/LotS development cycle.<br />
** Many, many thanks to everyone who contributed. 5.0 and Light of the Spire would not be what they are without you.<br />
<br />
(Released January 27th, 2011)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.073 ==<br />
<br />
* The logo for light of the spire has been revised in light of the newer art style for the expansion (and in light of the fact that the old logo was ugly).<br />
<br />
* The modules on the minor faction ships in the Fallen Spire campaign now explicitly have zero energy use because of ongoing bugs where they get created as non-minor-faction units (bugs which will be fixed but probably not in the immediate future since they don't cause any other problems).<br />
** Thanks to hullu for the report.<br />
<br />
* Changed the relationship between AI difficulty and wave size to a new algorithm that hopefully provides a more useful/granular range of difficulty while also compensating for the difficulty-spike (on low-caps particularly) introduced in 4.072. Details omitted since they're somewhat complex and are likely to change significantly in the next release.<br />
** Thanks to Suzera and Draco18s for working on formulas, etc.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug from the last few weeks where planets that were neutral were being counted as player planets for a variety of purposes (such as for providing supply).<br />
** Thanks to Valeran for reporting.<br />
<br />
(Released January 21st, 2011)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.072 ==<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where the lobby bonus-type tooltips would always display ship caps as if the base cap were 100 instead of 196.<br />
** Thanks to MaxAstro for the report.<br />
<br />
* The "template abbreviation" drawn on top of each template option in the buy menu for riot control starships and spire capital ships was previously always drawn in one color (black); that displayed fine for the spire ships but not well for the riot ships. Now it will use white for the riot ships and black for the spire ships.<br />
** Thanks to Salamander for the report.<br />
<br />
* Resistance Fighter Bombers and Resistance Frigates now have the "HasWarpEngineMufflers" flag, which prevents the warp-in and warp-out sounds from playing when they go through a wormhole (kinda nice when they're patrolling your planets at a rapid pace).<br />
** Thanks to Varone for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a relatively longstanding error (since unit cap scale was introduced) in wave size computation: previously the wave size would be multiplied by the unit-cap-scale-multiplier (high = 1, normal = 0.5, low = 0.25) and then later by the ship-type-specific ship cap multiplier (e.g. on high fighter = 1, sentinel-frigate = 0.1, zenith-bombard = 0.25); the problem is that thte ship-type-specific cap was _already_ multiplied by the overall unit-cap-scale multiplier. So waves on high had the correct size, normal waves were 1/2 the correct size, and low waves were 1/4 the correct size.<br />
** Since the balance of wave sizes has been generally acceptable lately, we don't want to just totally shatter that to fix this math mistake on our part. Instead we are fixing that but also dividing the base size of waves by 2. So waves on normal will continue to be the same size as before, waves on high will actually be half the previous size, and waves on low will be double the previous size.<br />
** Thanks to BluePhoenix for bringing this to our attention.<br />
<br />
* Made the exo-galactic-transceiver alert message clearer.<br />
** Thanks to leb0fh for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that was preventing the exo-galactic-transceiver's construction-started event-attack from spawning.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that was causing the exo-galactic-transceiver's ongoing provocation of event-attacks to start while it was still under construction when it's not supposed to kick in until construction is done.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Beam Frigate:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 4000*mk => 3200*mk.<br />
** Max targets hit per shot from 10 => 9.<br />
<br />
* Spire Blade Spawner:<br />
** Seconds-per-blade-spawn from 2 => 3.<br />
** Blade health from 60k*mk => 30k*mk.<br />
** Blade damage from 60k*mk => 50k*mk.<br />
** Blade lifetime from 10 seconds => 15 seconds.<br />
<br />
* Bomber Starship armor from 1500*mk => 600*mk (now the same as bombers).<br />
<br />
* Now that AI Shield Sphere Guard Posts have so much health, they are no longer used in the intermediate tutorial.<br />
** Thanks to Kordy for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a potential desync bug related to objects tracking which ships they've shot so far in a cycle.<br />
<br />
* Ships that emit attrition effects are now immune to cloaking and camouflaging.<br />
** Thanks to JMAnderson for reporting the potential exploits there.<br />
<br />
(Released January 19th, 2011)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.071 ==<br />
<br />
* Fixed an bug from the last version that would cause savegames with units in transports to not load properly (lots of missing units, crash, etc).<br />
** Thanks to vonkolberg for the report.<br />
<br />
* Previously, enemy-to-all minor faction units (like marauders and some roaming enclaves) could get protection from human forcefields, counter-sniper turrets and the like. Fixed so that these particular units cannot get those protections from any source at all (none of them have such inherently, and being an enemy-to-all precludes getting them from anyone else).<br />
** Thanks to Draco Cretel for reporting that this was still happening.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an infinite-loop bug in the new minor-faction "which planet do I go to next?" logic.<br />
** Thanks to hullu for the report and save.<br />
<br />
(Released January 18th, 2011)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.070 ==<br />
<br />
* The AI-ships-stay-under-ff rule no longer applies to ships under a module-based forcefield, to ships either coordinating or coordinated (i.e. hybrids and their drones, and exogalactic strikeforces), or to ships on galaxy-wide chases (i.e. exogalactic strikeforces).<br />
** Thanks to Rainbow for the report.<br />
<br />
* Redid Parasite and Leech Starship tooltips to reflect recent changes to the reclamation mechanic.<br />
** Thanks to Ymihere for the report.<br />
<br />
* AI ships that create forcefields will now never be put into low-power mode by the AI.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* All spire blade spawners are now immune to being cloaked by a cloaker starship or an AI planetary cloaker.<br />
** Thanks to MaxAstro for suggesting this change.<br />
<br />
* Spire blade spawners also no longer have direct guns.<br />
** Thanks to MaxAstro for suggesting this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a desync that would occur whenever the harvesters were reset in a multiplayer game.<br />
<br />
* All cross planet attacks are now twice as large as they used to be. In essence, this puts them back to where they were on Normal before the prior version, as that seemed like a good level what with the new, larger wave sizes and such. On Low ship caps they will still be 1/2 what they were a couple of releases back, based on being quartered and now doubled. And for High ship caps, it's just now twice as large as it's ever been.<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Awesomebomb (oops, I mean Autobomb)<br />
** Base Health from 10k/20k/30k/40k => 11k*mk.<br />
** Can now hit a maximum of 10 units.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 4k/6k/8k/10k => 4k*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 0 => 10k.<br />
*** We've gotten a lot of reports of these being overpowered, and we think that's primarily due to the fact that it could hit any number of targets within their radius. The actual "what's an acceptable dps?" question is a lot more complicated.<br />
*** Their previous cap-dps for mkI was about 784k. And that's when hitting only one target. But that also assumes that you're hitting a target with a full cap of autobombs every second, which isn't realistic. Assuming that you're producing 2 autobombs per second that's about 1/100th of a cap, multiplied by 10 targets per hit, we could say that it's ok for the standard cap-dps calculation to be 10x what it is for a standard fleet ship type. That means on the 30-100 scale that autobombs are about 78k.<br />
*** So, rather than tweak it around more, we'll just leave the mkI damage as-is and make the other marks linear with it. The allowed bonus in that range is roughly 2.<br />
** Bonus vs. Polycrystal from 5 => 2.<br />
** "Bonus" vs. CloseCombat from 0.5 => 1.<br />
** "Bonus" vs. Artillery from 0.5 => 1.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Nanoswarm<br />
** Base Health from 500 + 50*mk => 3400*mk (not that health matters terribly much for these).<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 75 + 25*mk => 0.<br />
** Base Attack Power intentionally left at 400*mk.<br />
*** In parallel to the comments on the Zenith Autobomb, the "cap-dps" (oddly computed as it is) for nanoswarms is about 313k. But it has an attribute that makes that count 16x times as much for reclamation purposes, putting it in roughly the 5-million category for that. Also, Nanoswarms can only hit 3/5/7/9/11 targets, which shifts it a bit downward from the autobomb (except for the higher marks... may need to make the target-count thing a flat 5 or so). But the main thing is that the nanoswarm is intentionally not about the damage, it's just supposed to do _some_, and to be an effective reclamator, and apply a variety of other debuffs (armor damage, engine damage, paralysis) just for the fun of it.<br />
<br />
* Electric Shuttle<br />
** Base Energy Cost from 100 => 400 (MkIs, as usual, have half energy cost).<br />
** Metal Cost from 100 => 300.<br />
** Crystal Cost from 500 => 1500 (the main reason for the resource cost increase is that these are a 1/4 cap ship, so the build-to-cap expenses were way lower than is normal).<br />
** Base Health from 7200/10000/14000/20000 => 30k*mk (this brings their cap health up to 10m, average is 15m).<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 100 => 150*mk.<br />
** Seconds-Per-Salvo from 20/19/18/17 => flat 20.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 200/600/1000/1500 => 400*mk.<br />
*** Previously these had a mkI cap-dps of... 490. That's against one target, obviously. Against 100 targets that's 49000, which is inside the 30-100 scale, but against 1000 targets or 2000 targets, etc, it gets really high. It's not too insanely high but in order to maintain that the more "normal" cases have to have a much lower than average dps.<br />
*** So we're introducing a new form of "aoe-capping" to avoid the truly asymptotic cases and also avoid the ship being too ineffective against a small number of targets, and removing the normal bonuses; basically it has a "bonus" against larger groups.<br />
** Can hit a maximum of 200 targets in one blast, but if there are fewer than that many eligible targets in range it will keep hitting them until it has done 200 hits or until it has hit all of them 5 times.<br />
*** This means that the cap-dps vs groups of 40 or more is about 196k, and the cap-dps against a single target is only 4900 (which is reallllly low, but still 10x what it used to be and basically they're not supposed to be good against single targets).<br />
** The "staggering" mechanic is still in place to prevent alpha strikes (which has both positive and negative impacts on the unit's effectiveness, actually), we can look at reducing the stagger post-5.0.<br />
** None of these various "number of targets" value scale with unit caps; we may change that later but in general it's not a priority to maintain exactly the same balance across different caps, so long as each has a reasonable balance of its own.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 4 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 4 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 4 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs CommandGrade from 4 => 1.<br />
** "Bonus" vs Medium from 0.75 => 1.<br />
<br />
* Since Hybrid facilities are no longer (for now) constructed during the game, the Hybrid Facilities galaxy map filter will now display data for all planets you've ever scouted.<br />
** Thanks to Prezombie for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* AI ships will now come out of low-power mode (but not free, as a result of just this) when a shot targeting them is in the air; this will tend to also wake up the rest of their guard group.<br />
<br />
* Spire Mini-Ram<br />
** Base Health from 20k/30k/40k/50k/60k => 30k*mk.<br />
** Metal Cost from 6000 => 1500.<br />
** Leaving attack power at 200k*mk.<br />
*** We've had reports of these being underpowered, but we'd like to see how the recently added 2x bonus vs structural (i.e. forcefields) affects things. Currently a full cap of mkI rams has a base dps of just under _10 million_. Or 20 million against forcefields. Or 40 million against forcefields on normal or blitz combat style. An AI forcefield mkI has 52 million hitpoints. So we'll boost the bonus a bit so a full cap of mkI rams can take down a mkI AI ff.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 2 => 3.<br />
<br />
* Spire Blade Spawner<br />
** Base Health from 30k*mk => 150k*mk (these have a really low ship cap).<br />
** Energy Cost from 100 => 1000 (mkI costs half, as usual).<br />
** Leaving Blade attack power at 60k*mk.<br />
*** It spawns 1 blade every 2 seconds, so that's roughly 30k dps per spawner or 270k dps at a cap of 9 spawners (on high caps). That's pretty high, actually, but most feedback has seemed to indicate a feeling that these are underpowered. We'll see.<br />
<br />
* Spire Maw<br />
** Base Health from 200k*mk => 300k*mk (very, very low ship cap).<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1100*mk => 1400*mk<br />
*** This brings the base cap-dps up to 30k, the very low end for direct dps, but normally has 10x bonuses. No bonuses in this case, instead that's accounted for by the swallow-and-attrition behavior.<br />
** Shots-per-salvo from 8/10/12/14/16 => flat 8.<br />
** Energy Use from 100 => 2000 (mkI costs half).<br />
<br />
* Sniper base attack power from 7500*mk => 6000*mk.<br />
<br />
* Sentinel Frigate base attack power from 20k*mk => 14k*mk.<br />
<br />
* Teleport Raider:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 600*mk => 800*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Piercing from 150*mk => 300*mk.<br />
<br />
* Teleport Battlestation Base Attack Power from 310*mk => 400*mk.<br />
<br />
* Teleporting Leech Base Attack Power from 440*mk => 550*mk.<br />
<br />
* Fixed another really obscure desync that no one had actually run into yet. It would only occur if one player had their UI turned off and the other didn't, and a grenade went off.<br />
<br />
* Auto-kiting distance is now properly cut in half when they are being radar jammed.<br />
** Thanks to BobTheJanitor for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Traders now path randomly between any planets, not just AI planets. That still means they will be a lot less likely to visit you in the start of the game, but it also means that they have a chance of visiting even your homeworld again (even if it's in a dead end), though the chance is way smaller. The longer the game goes on, of course, the better the chance. And if you wind up controlling most of the planets in the galaxy, the trader will spend most of their time on your planets.<br />
** Thanks to many players for complaining about the traders.<br />
<br />
* Various astro train changes:<br />
** Attack range increased 10x.<br />
** Max health up from 200m to 800m.<br />
** Turret trains:<br />
*** Attack range increased 10x.<br />
*** Max health changed from 1m/2m/200m to 30m/50m/70m.<br />
** Booster trains:<br />
*** Attack range increased 10x.<br />
*** Max health up from 20m to 600m.<br />
** Regenerator trains:<br />
*** Attack range increased 10x.<br />
*** Max health up from 20m to 600m.<br />
** Thanks to Prezombie, LordSloth, and TechSY730 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Bomber Starship:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 45/44/43/42 => flat 45.<br />
** Base Health from 4m/6m/16m/20m => 4.7m*mk (to a cap health of about 20m).<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 3000/3700/4400/5100 => 1500*mk (2x max fleet-ship armor).<br />
** Base Attack Power from 93k/120k/143k/173k => 70k*mk.<br />
*** Our approach to balancing starships is still a work in progress, but the previous mkI cap-dps was 186k. This change brings it below 150k which is still pretty high but between the high cost (compared to fleet ships, anyway), short range, and can't-hit-small-stuff attributes we figure that's worth a 1.5 factor. The linearization of the attack power is going to make the higher mark versions pretty intimidating, in any event.<br />
<br />
* Siege Starship:<br />
** Energy Use from 2000/2000/2400 => flat 2k.<br />
** Base Health from 2.5m/3m/3.5m => 2.5m*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 200 => 300*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 192k/330k/450k => 200k*mk.<br />
*** This is a slight buff from the existing 120k mkI cap-dps. If anything this is a bit low with the restrictions on antimatter-bomb ammo but these are already so strong that we don't want to buff them too much on this pass.<br />
** Engine Damage from 5000/7500/10000 => 5k*mk.<br />
<br />
* Raid Starship... we looked at it, already seems pretty close to where we want it. Can tweak when doing more tweak-oriented balance passes later.<br />
<br />
* Leech Starship:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 300 => 300*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 4 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 4 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 4 => 2.<br />
<br />
* A bug in prior versions was preventing the devourer golem from ever entering human planets. Whoops! That's now fixed, so better watch out.<br />
<br />
* Previously, zombie ships and all the other minor faction ships would really wander far and wide, much moreso than they should have. Fixed so that they'll now wander only to adjacent planets near to the planet they are currently on each time they decide to go a-wandering.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a couple of murky pieces of code that could have been desyncs, but probably were not. At least they are clearer as to being correct, now.<br />
<br />
* Spire Gravity Drain base health from 7300*mk => 15k*mk.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a desync that would occur when the defensive hybrids mobilized.<br />
<br />
* Made some various internal improvements to how the AI decides to stay at a planet to defend itself against enemy threats (most notably cloaked enemy threats, but in general). The specific rules are difficult to really explain as it's all internal math, but in general the result should be for it to more properly weight threats and react more like what a human would do.<br />
** Thanks to Varone and TechSY730 for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The game will now check Enter and Return together, like it does leftalt/rightalt, etc. This should help clear up some confusion with the chat textbox on certain OSX keyboards.<br />
** Thanks to Ymihere and Vornicus for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the spirecraft penetrator damage calculations that was giving a range (and an incorrect one) for a single ship.<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s for reporting.<br />
<br />
* When cross planet attacks arrive, they now state (via chat messages) how many ships of each mark level were just freed.<br />
<br />
* To prevent AI ships from unnecessarily "sticking" under force fields, they will now only stay in place if they are actually guarding a ship. This will prevent all sorts of issues with them.<br />
<br />
* Going along with the above, AI ships will no longer be freed from their guard posts due to anger/alerting on their part or the part of their guard posts if they are under a forcefield.<br />
<br />
* When looking for ships to add as part of a CPA, the AI now also looks inside barracks and pulls ships out to use in the CPA. Some (but definitely not all) of the smaller-than-they-should-have-been CPAs were relate to lots of ships being stuck in barracks.<br />
<br />
* When there are simply too few ships in the galaxy for the desired tech level of CPA, in the past it always has counted downwards.<br />
** So, for example, if you were supposed to get 5000 mark II ships in a CPA but it could only find 1000, then it would look to mark I ships to see if it could find any more.<br />
** However, there were many common cases where there would even still be too few ships in the galaxy of the correct or lower levels. Now the game will loop back around and start including higher mark ships.<br />
*** So, to continue the example from above, if it had found 1000 mark II ships and, say, 500 mark I ships, then it would start adding mark III ships to the CPA as well. Odds are very good that it would find the remaining 3500 ships in even just one mark higher, so that would fulfill the order for 5000 ships.<br />
*** Of course, in the event that it doesn't find enough ships directly in the level above, it just keeps counting up, all the way to mark V.<br />
** Bear in mind that certain ships are specifically excluded from CPAs: immobile ships, ships under force fields, ships in carriers, ships that are already free/threat, ships that are minor factions or zombies, ships that are being coordinated by a hybrid hive or similar, ships that aren't counted as "extended mobile military," starships, and guardians. These restrictions aren't new, but bear mentioning.<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith and rustayne for reporting.<br />
<br />
(Released January 17th, 2011)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.069 ==<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last version where the ship filters in the lobby (Heavy Defense, Teleporting, etc) were all doubled. This was just testing data that accidentally got left in.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where pre-4.068 saves were defaulting the new "enable/disable swallower-type ships" option to disable instead of enable. This is another one of thsoe where if you keep the pre-4.068 save it will load fine (with swallowers enabled) in 4.069 but if you save it in 4.068 and then load it in 4.069 it will have them disabled (because it won't be able to tell that you didn't explicitly disable them in the lobby).<br />
** Thanks to hullu for the report.<br />
<br />
* Vorticular Cutlass:<br />
** Base Speed from 16/16/16/17 => flat 16.<br />
** Base Health from 7k/12k/18k/24k => 7k*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 2500/2600/2600/2700 => 750*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 3600/6200/9200/12200 => 360*mk.<br />
*** That's a pretty big change, here's the rationale:<br />
*** Generally we let mkI fleet ship types have between 30k and 100k cap-dps (on epic/high) vs non-bonus targets, and scale the bonuses between them (so something with 100k has no bonuses, something with 30k can have a bonus of up to 10x).<br />
*** Previously, the mkI cutlass had a cap-dps of approximately 1.4 _million_ (392 ships * 3600 damage-per-shot / 1 second-per-shot).<br />
*** Provisionally, we're figuring that a melee ship can have 1.5x as much dps, to compensate for the difficulty of actually getting that close, etc.<br />
*** Also, we're figuring that the self-damaging attribute of cutlasses should allow for an additional 2x factor to the dps, for a total factor of 3.<br />
*** So, starting with a div-by-10 nerf, that brings it down to 141k, and accounting for the 3-factor (for melee and self-damaging) that's 47k on the 30-100 scale, so it's actually in the allowed range. On the sliding-scale of allowed bonuses that comes to about 4.<br />
*** Bear in mind that cutlasses have 10k armor piercing, so they'll basically always get the full damage per shot.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 6 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 3 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 2 => 4.<br />
<br />
* Vampire Claw:<br />
** Base Speed from 44/44/44/44/54 => flat 44.<br />
** Base Health from 4400/7800/10500/19200/20400 => 5k*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Piercing from 0 => 10k.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 600/1200/2400/4800/9600 => 650*mk.<br />
*** We're considering the heals-by-damaging attribute to allow 0.75x as much dps as normal, which combines with the 1.5x melee factor into 1.125x.<br />
*** Previous mkI cap-dps was about 70k, or 62k on the 30-100 scale, which allows a bonus of about 3, which is exactly what it already had, interestingly; there was room for a minor buff too.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Viral Shredder:<br />
** Base Speed from 16/16/16/17 => flat 16.<br />
** Base Health from 9600/14200/18200/24200 => 11k*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 500/600/600/700 => 450*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Piercing from 0 => 10k.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 500/1000/1750/2625 => 575*mk.<br />
*** We're counting the self-replicating capability as allowing 0.75x as much dps as normal, so 1.125x combined with the melee attribute.<br />
*** Previous mkI cap-dps was about 98k, or 87k on the 30-100 scale, and we decided to go with no-bonuses since the replication depends on actual damage done rather so replication rate was highly dependent on whether bonus targets were available and while that's not the end of the world we'd like to try things without that factor involved, so a cap-dps of about 112k is acceptable (and is about what they have now).<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 3 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 2 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Medium from 2 => 1.<br />
<br />
* Marauder spawn-chance-and-size logic now the same for diffs 1-4 as for diffs 5-8.6; previously the 1-4 diffs would get much smaller but much more frequent marauder spanws that could lead to significant player-annoyance without actually increasing the challenge much.<br />
** Thanks to chmjs for the report.<br />
<br />
* All of the far zoom icons for the Light of the Spire expansion have now been significantly updated to look nicer and be more clear. Additionally, the various mobile ships from the Fallen Spire part of the game now have unique far zoom icons rather than just using those from the light starship.<br />
<br />
* The engineers-looking-for-targets-while-in-motion change was causing problems, and has been reverted back. They will still continue to not ignore moving targets, though, they just won't try to repair while they themselves are moving.<br />
<br />
* Re-implemented the dump button (when debug mode is on) on the save-game screen; the load-game screen version's one is still not implemented.<br />
<br />
* When players are being waited on or have desynced, a message to that effect now goes out from the game host.<br />
<br />
* There are now separate messages for "Waiting for Players..." and "DESYNC..." to help remove any confusion on those points.<br />
<br />
* Previously CPA size was not scaled with unit caps. Odd that it's taken so long to notice. Anyway, fixed.<br />
** Thanks to matyasbot for the report.<br />
<br />
* AI Eyes are no longer auto-targeted.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* In the last version, almost all ships were saying "Guard Posts Keeping This Alive" for no reason. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Vornicus for reporting.<br />
<br />
* In the prior version, reclamator text was still saying "reclaimed units have health = half damage." Fixed to be the new "reclaimed units have health =damage."<br />
** Thanks to Moonshine Fox for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that was letting minor factions get speed boosted in recent versions, when they never should have been.<br />
** Thanks to Moonshine Fox for reporting.<br />
<br />
* When desyncs are encountered, a new DesyncErrors.txt is logged on the host. I'm not sure why we never did this before.<br />
** It also shows individual chat messages to all players saying who desynced. This is a bit redundant with the other chat message that gets sent, but it's from a different branch of code and thus even though probably both will fire, at least we can be sure one of them will definitely do so in all cases.<br />
<br />
* Added a new base game cheat: Gimme Absolutely Positively Everything, which gives the player one of every type of ship. Even AI ships, etc.<br />
<br />
* Two new Light of the Spire cheats have been added:<br />
** Spirecraft To The Rescue (+1 Of Each Spirecraft Type On The Current Planet)<br />
** Fallen Friends Arise (+1 Of Each Fallen Spire Military Vessel Type On The Current Planet)<br />
<br />
* Since the port to unity, the cloaked enemy ships indicator was never showing on the planetary summary sidebar. This was a pretty handy indicator, especially for helping with confusion for newer players, and it has finally been brought back.<br />
<br />
* The "Must be built close to a colony ship." text has been removed from the command station descriptions.<br />
** Thanks to c4sc4 for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Previously there was a bug where the ship icons on the galaxy view intel summary would appear even when the proper scouting had not been done. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to matyasbot for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Allied minor faction ships (including asteroids) are no longer able to be seen in the planetary summary sidebar on planets where the player does not have a scout.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Advanced Warp Sensors now have a ship cap of 50, and no longer act as scouts.<br />
** Thanks to Prezombie for suggesting the cap be increased.<br />
<br />
* All Spirecraft are now immune to tractor beams.<br />
** Thanks to Draco Cretel for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The Implosion Artillery Guardians now have a reload time of 1 second instead of 4, to be more consistent with the spirecraft variants.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The "active" wormholes shown when an advanced warp sensor is present are now shown in a bright yellow instead of the dull red, to avoid issues for red/green colorblind players.<br />
** Thanks to Vornicus for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Some of the older AI types now have new unlocks (assuming the appropriate expansions and enabled ships, etc):<br />
** Teleporter Turtles now get Spire Teleporting Leeeches.<br />
** Mad Bombers now get Zenith Electric Bombers, Zenith Chameleons, and Zenith Bombards.<br />
** The Tank now gets Youngling Tigers.<br />
** Shadow Master and Stealth Master now get the Spire Stealth Battleships.<br />
** The Feeding Parasite and Technologist Parasite now get the Spire Teleporting Leeches and Youngling Nanoswarms.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Spire Blades (from Spire Blade Spawners) now move at speed 1200 instead of speed 140, and they are now immune to speed boosting. This gives them a longer effective range, makes them less likely to miss their target, and so on.<br />
** Thanks to lyravega for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions that was causing groups of unlike ships that were all immune to speed boosting (such as multiple mark levels of scout) to not properly group move together.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Spire Mini Rams now have a 2x bonus against structural ship types, and are now immune to force fields (they can still hit forcefields, of course). They also now have a 0.001 penalty against command grade hulls.<br />
** Spirecraft Rams also now have the same new bonuses.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00, Lancefighter, and TechSY730 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
(Released January 16th, 2011)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.068 ==<br />
<br />
* Fixed a typo in the tooltips for the destroy-core-shield-generator objectives where C, D, and E referred to B.<br />
** Thanks to matyasbot for the report.<br />
<br />
* The way that the planet resources/wormholes are populated has now been moved exclusively back to the old method. This means that savegames from 4.067 will show up different temporarily, and then will go back to normal with this new version onwards. <br />
** Thanks to BobTheJanitor and Ozymandiaz for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where exoshields were not being factored into the attack-power computation against a harvester, so we were still seeing things like siege starships firing on an exoshielded harvester.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Swallower ships (Starship Disassembler Guardians and Spire Maws) can now be disabled in the lobby on the ships tab, much as cloaking, parasite, etc ships can be disabled.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where objectives would report a destroy-ai-home-command-station objective as complete when the station had been scouted but could not be destroyed due to the core shield network.<br />
** Thanks to Vornicus for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The standard galaxy-map number-under-planet display of "how many dangerous AI ships are on this planet" will now also display the total number of ships in AI barracks and carriers in parenthesis next to the main number (if that's zero, it doesn't display anything extra).<br />
** Thanks to SNAFU for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Engineers will now try to repair while they themselves are moving (though starting a new move order will interrupt repairs temporarily), and will no longer ignore moving ships when searching for targets to repair.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report/suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Corrected Siege Starship tooltip to reflect the new antimatter bomb ammo and the things immune to it.<br />
** Thanks to Vornicus for the report.<br />
<br />
* Corrected Sniper/Sniper-Turret/Spider-Turret tooltips that still said they fired through forcefields.<br />
** Thanks to KPJZKC for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed various bugs with the textboxes in the in-game chat-popup and planet-notes-window not responding well when the mouse was inside the popup window itself. We can't get those to misbehave anymore, so if you see them doing so please let us know. There are still some issues with the lobby map-seed-textbox and stats-screen-messages-tab-chat-texbox (and probably some with the lobby-chat-textbox), though, those are more complex situations.<br />
<br />
* AI Eyes always now seed next to the command stations of the AI, rather than next to guard posts, to prevent them from being under spire shield spheres.<br />
** This won't help existing saves, but it will affect all new campaigns.<br />
** Thanks to Penguin21 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Wormhole guard posts and AI Eyes now have command-grade hulls instead of ultra heavy.<br />
** Thanks to Vornicus for inspiring.<br />
<br />
* All of the close-up images for the spirecraft, including those in the base game (spire shield spheres, etc) have now been updated to have the same fancier glow-effect for both themselves and in particular for their colormasks. The increase in apparent quality in-game on a black background (and with diffuse-colored colormasks) is pretty huge, even though the underlying graphics themselves haven't changed. The beauty of post-processing!<br />
** Someone, possibly HitmanN, suggested this a long while back when the new spire graphic style was introduced. A belated thanks; we didn't listen at the time, but came around in the end.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where auto-knowledge-gather ships would "give up" after a few planets, even if more eligible ones were available.<br />
** Thanks to Burnstreet for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* The health of all the AI forcefields are now only 3x that of the human counterparts, rather than 5x. This makes them not take so incredibly long to kill with bombers, etc. <br />
** The health of the spire shield spheres (core and regular) have also been correspondingly reduced in the vague neighborhood of the same amount.<br />
<br />
* All of the AI forcefields, and the AI spire shield spheres (except the core ones on the AI home planets) now automatically die if they are protecting no ships and not on an AI planet.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Missile Turrets now have armor piercing of a flat 90,0000. This gives players one more recourse against raid starships in the hands of the AI (along with sniper turrets, fighters, and a couple of other turrets).<br />
** Thanks to mr_lolz for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* AI Special Forces Rally Post Guardians now have zero extra armor and zero extra health compared to the basic guardian template. Their attack is now 10k * shiplevel rather than just a token shiplevel value. They no longer have cloaking, they no longer have self-attrition, they no longer hunt the human homeworlds, and they are no longer direct-only targeted.<br />
** However, they now have a new ability: not only do they draw the AI special forces ships to them in the way they always have, but the AI also gets special forces reinforcements added at this guardian during each reinforcement event at the guardian's planet (they don't count as a guard post in any other fashion, though - not for ship counts or anything like that).<br />
** Thanks to many players for complaining about the old design of the special forces rally post guardians, thus prompting us to completely redesign them.<br />
<br />
* Previously, only mark V guard posts were immune to being insta-killed. Now they all are.<br />
** Thanks to Varone for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the AI could still get gravitational turrets from the Zenith Trader. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to lyravega for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Minor Faction ships are no longer barred from shooting at low-power AI ships. This fixes some issues with the devourer not doing its job, as well as the dyson gatlings not doing their thing always, too.<br />
** Thanks to lyravega for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The AI will now more properly react to cloaked ships on its planet; much the same as a human player, it now knows how many ships are there and the general threat at that planet, just not specifically which ships are there or where they are. Actually, in some cases the AI has long known this (same as the AI), but in some critical decision-making logic it was incorrectly barred from that data.<br />
** Thanks to lyravega for reporting.<br />
<br />
* When a zombie ship damages an enemy, that enemy will no longer be angered/antagonized into abandoning its guard posts. This was a major problem for the botnet golems and similar.<br />
** Thanks to ShdNx and BobTheJanitor for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Zombie ships are no longer prevented from being created based on insufficient energy or ship caps. Neither energy nor ship caps are affected by zombies, anyway.<br />
** Thanks to MaxAstro for reporting.<br />
<br />
* There is now a "Guard Posts Keeping This Alive" count on AI eyes, to prevent confusion about what they are getting protection from, or if they should have died. In particular, sometimes if there is a cloaked guard post still at the planet, the player might not realize without seeing this.<br />
<br />
* All astro trains now have command grade hulls rather than ultra heavy. This acts like a massive boost to their health.<br />
** Thanks to LordSloth for suggesting the buff.<br />
<br />
* The Zenith Reserve Mark I-V AIP previously was 10*ShipLevel, which got really non-worthwhile by the upper end of that scale. Now it is 5*shiplevel for AIP.<br />
** Thanks to BobTheJanitor for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The tooltips for mark II-V zenith reserves was still out of date, referring to older energy costs. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to BobTheJanitor for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The AI Eyes now only produce ships that don't have a per-planet or per-guard post special cap (so not most of the spire ships, zenith bombers, sentinel frigates, etc).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Anti-Starship Arachnids are now completely unable to hit any other sort of ship other than starships, but they retain their very powerful nature against starships specifically.<br />
** Thanks to Prezombie for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Enclave Starships no longer have attack bonuses, since they no longer have an attack.<br />
** Thanks to Nypyren for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Dyson Gatlings are all now immune to being insta-killed, and immune to sniper attacks.<br />
** Thanks to lyravega and Sunshine for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The AI is now completely disallowed from using mobile repair stations. They didn't use them correctly, and it was just a hassle in general with them. They will be automatically removed from existing savegames where the AI has them.<br />
** Thanks to Toll and Vinraith for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* The Support Corps AI Type will no longer seed its ships in a guard capacity, and instead will have vastly more of them seeded with its ally's waves. The support corps AI type also no longer includes engineer drone IIs.<br />
<br />
* The decoy drone attack power has gone up 10x.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the "sabotage" message would erroneously show on non-AI planets. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to lyravega for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Added a new tip of the day by TechSY730.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a typo about "reclamming" enemy ships.<br />
** Thanks to KPJZKC for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some clarity issues with the descriptions of the spirecraft/golem minor factions.<br />
** Thanks to Dazio for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Given the low percentage of damage dealt per shot, the spirecraft implosion artillery recharge time has dropped from 6 seconds to 1 second, making them a lot more powerful and attractive.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Siege Towers now have 15 second reload times instead of 10, once again relegating them to more of an artillery role instead of being quite so powerful. Their radar dampening has also dropped from 6000 to 9000.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* When ships are regenerated by a regenerator golem, they are now revived with full engine and armor health.<br />
** Thanks to MaxAstro for suggesting.<br />
<br />
(Released January 15th, 2011)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.067 ==<br />
<br />
* Added galaxy-wide and per-planet integer-textbox controls for "Engineers Do Not Assist Large Projects".<br />
** If this is not zero, your engineers will not auto-assist a self-building structure or repair a structure with a per-second metal or crystal cost that is equal to or greater than the specified value.<br />
** This ONLY applies to assisting self-building units and repairing units, it does not apply to assisting build queues (of a Space Dock, for example).<br />
** It only triggers on the higher of the metal or crystal cost-per-second values, not the sum of them.<br />
** If you've defined a value for this at the per-planet level and at the galaxy-wide level, the game will use the per-planet value and ignore the galaxy-wide value for that planet.<br />
** The galaxy-wide version defaults to 400. There aren't very many things you can normally build that are that high, even on low caps. But Sniper Turrets and Fortresses and whatnot are certainly up there. The per-planet versions default to 0, meaning disabled.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Beam Frigate base range from 5500+(500*mk) => 7500+(100*mk).<br />
<br />
* Human Resistance Fighter spawn rebalance:<br />
** Instead of incrementing the counter every 80 seconds by 1 + (AIP / 50), it now increments by 1 + (AI Tech Level - 1) (or, more simply, by AI Tech Level), but capped at 3.<br />
** All difficulties below 8 now have capLow and capHigh of 10 and 40 (previously difficulties < 5 got 2 and 8). Difficulties >= 8 still have 20 and 80. For reference, after the increment it generates a random number between capLow and capHigh, and if the current value of the resistance fighter counter is greater than the random number it tries to generate a resistance fighter spawn.<br />
** Now uses the same absoluteCap rule (equal to capHigh*2) as maruaders, to prevent really massive spawns.<br />
** Re-did the logic of "is planet XYZ eligible for a resistance fighter spawn":<br />
*** It now considers all planets, not just AI-controlled ones.<br />
*** It requires the presence of at least 400 human ships (on high caps, 200 on normal, 100 on low).<br />
*** It requires the presence of at least 300 AI ships (on high caps, 150 on normal, 75 on low).<br />
*** It requires that the number of AI ships be greater than the number of human ships.<br />
*** It requires that (AIShipCount-HumanShipCount) be less than or equal to 8x the number of resistance fighters it's planning to spawn (on high caps, 4x on normal, 2x on low).<br />
<br />
* Resistance Frigate rebalanced to be more like the Marauder Dagger Frigate (not that they're the same ship, but it's easier to balance them together than separately). FYI, the maruader frigate is balanced roughly as a .2 ship-cap mkIV/mkV bonus-type ship.<br />
** Base Move Speed from 48 => 60.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 150k => 48k.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 20k => 15k.<br />
** Base Health from 1.5m => 2.2m.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 3000 => 600.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 3 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 1 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 1 => 2.4.<br />
** Energy Use from 3000 => 1000.<br />
<br />
* Resistance Fighter Bomber:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 48 => 60.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 180k => 100k.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 3400 => 4000.<br />
** Base Health from 1.8m => 2.4m.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 3000 => 1800.<br />
** Engine Health from 200 => Infinite (oddly, the unit def had both a line setting it to infinite, and a line setting it to 200, but the second was later and thus took precedence).<br />
** Base Armor Piercing from 1000 => 1800.<br />
** Bonus vs Medium from 4 => 1.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 2 => 1.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 2 => 1.4.<br />
** Energy Use from 3000 => 1000.<br />
<br />
* The mobile-builder-command-station-foldouts in multiplayer will now process per-planet auto-build controls (for engineer mkI,II,III, remains rebuilder, and energy reactor I,II,III) set by the owner of the foldout (not the owner of the planet).<br />
<br />
* The logic processing auto-build energy reactor controls now considers the remains of energy reactors to be equivalent to the non-destroyed structure from which it came, and so will not try to build a new one. You'll want remains rebuilders for that.<br />
<br />
* Fallen Spire Shards now have a new, much better graphic.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that may have been causing AI ships to aggro when firing on a minor-faction ship.<br />
<br />
* Defender mode rebalance:<br />
** Now AI no longer can warp to any human planet (unless it's a warp jumper AI type, naturally).<br />
** Attacking AI ships on a planet with no human command station now move at 1400 speed, to cut down on humans being able to win (as easily) by simply picking so many planets that it takes the AI too long to _move_ through all of them on lower time-limit games (also helps make cpa-like waves not be very different time-wise). It would still not be balanced if you picked 25+ planets on a 15-minute game, for example.<br />
** Halved the initial AIP increase.<br />
** The total AIP increase from waves during the game from 2000 => 1100 (so on Diff 7 you'll probably get mkIII waves the last 10-15% of the timer).<br />
<br />
* Remains rebuilders will now try to rebuild energy reactors even when net energy is negative (previously rebuilders would just shut down in negative energy).<br />
** Thanks to BobTheJanitor for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Added new command: "cmd:copy game setup to lobby", that tries to populate your "LastMapStyle" and whatnot settings from the game currently loaded (it has to kinda guess at planet count in some cases). Mostly useful for the developers to debug mapgen situations from a save, but some players may have use of it.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some bugs that were inflating AI Eye seeding by roughly 2x.<br />
** Thanks to Goekhan for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* AI ships without attack power will no longer stick under forcefields.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Manufactory input/output from 12-gives-8 => 20-gives-14 (since 20 is the amount produced by a mkI harvester).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a surprisingly longstanding (but heretofore unrecognized) bug that was making the random number generator sometimes be highly non-random. This was leading to things like a very odd default pattern of collision offsetting.<br />
** Really, this changes EVERYTHING about the seeding in the game. Map seeds now will give completely different (and much more varied) results, there will be less "false statistical clustering" going on, and even the patterns of where guard posts are seeded in planets looks pretty different. This bug dates back to March 6, 2009, before the game was even released -- one of the longest-standing bugs we've seen, especially of this magnitude.<br />
** This also seems to fix the "all new ships seed in a line" bug that has been around for a while.<br />
<br />
* A whole host of internal logic changes have been made to forcefields. Most of them are a bit difficult to explain, but the upshot is that now instead of caring about "strong" and "Weak" forcefields in most cases (aside from collision with forcefields), the game just tracks a single protecting forcefield for all the ships, and tracks an additional "firepower-reducing forcefield" for the human ships only. The only firepower-reducing forcefields for the humans at the moment are those three basic ones and the player home planet ones. In the past, there was a lot of logic that was incorrectly only looking at "Strong" forcefields for decision making purposes, and now all of that just looks at the generic forcefield protector, which should lead to a lot of subtle ship targeting improvements. It may also lead to some new issues, go figure, but that's kind of unavoidable as a risk.<br />
<br />
* When determining firepower against a ship under a forcefield (and thus also hit chance, etc), ships now use the firepower they would have against the forcefield, rather than the ship itself (assuming the attacker isn't immune to force fields). Given that's the firepower that would hit the forcefield, that's more accurate for decision-making in general, but this is particularly critical as of late because of how some ships are now unable to hit some forcefields (ie, the anitmatter bombs). This change should prevent things like siege starships from trying to fire against ships that are under a forcefield that just nullifies out all their damage.<br />
<br />
* Reclamation:<br />
** Fixed bug where non-zombie reclamation actually required 100% reclaim damage instead of 50% (this made it seem like a reclamator had to get the actual killshot, which wasn't strictly speaking the case, but in practice felt like it).<br />
** Reclaimed ships now have health equal to the reclamation damage done to them (or max health, whichever is less) regardless of whether a zombie reclamator was involved (previously non-zombie reclamations got half that amount of health).<br />
** The reclamation amount for determining "is this reclaimed" and "how much health does it get when reclaimed" is now the sum of what various players have done, though the reclaimed ship still goes to the player with the highest individual reclamation amount against that target.<br />
** Minor faction ships killing a target can no longer trigger reclamation (this was an edge case, but it could have led to a damaged-long-ago AI ship wandering back into AI territory, getting killed by the devourer, and transforming into a human ship on a planet the humans had never been to, etc).<br />
<br />
* Youngling Nanoswarm:<br />
** This is not actually the full rebalance, just patching a few things up while we're looking at reclamation.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 200+(200*mk) => 400*mk.<br />
** Armor piercing from 500 => 100k.<br />
** For the purposes of reclamation, nanoswarm damage is now multiplied by 16.<br />
<br />
* Put in a fix to prevent older savegames and the tutorials from having their resource points and wormholes all rearranged because of the new random stuff. This was tougher than perhaps it sounds, actually. The placement of stuff in the tutorials (not wormholes or resource points) is still going to be a bit different than it used to be, though -- so any feedback folks care to give us on how that's working and if there's anything amiss in the tutorials, would be much appreciated!<br />
<br />
* In the past, for the AI to be allowed to retreat from a planet it had to have had at least half of its ships on the planet for at least 30 seconds. That prevented a number of back-and-forth behaviors that are now prevented by other means, and this behavior was now leading to some "gap in the wall" type exploits. The limit has now been changed to 3 seconds instead.<br />
** Thanks to Ozymandiaz for reporting.<br />
<br />
* When random AI types are assigned, the game now explicitly tries to avoid assigning the same AI type to both players.<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith for suggesting. <br />
<br />
* Fixed another couple of bugs where the game's random number generator was recently not as random as one might have hoped. These were much more recent, in the main, as issues.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where asteroids being seeded could collide with forcefields and thus wind up stacking on top of other another. This won't fix existing saves, but should fix the issue in any new saves; do let us know if you see the issue again, of course.<br />
<br />
(Released January 14th, 2011)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.066 ==<br />
<br />
* The move speed of all the player force fields have dropped to a flat 4 (the amount of the mark I forcefields), and they are now immune to speed boosting, and no longer scale up their speeds with faster combat styles. This reflects that the movement of the forcefields are just for small adjustments, and not any sort of larger tactical engagements, which would be glacially, ridiculously, slow.<br />
<br />
* Some Fallen Spire rebalancing:<br />
** To compensate for no longer being able to cover a shard with a normal forcefield generator, Shard hp has been increased from 200 million to 300 million (also, the first shard previously only had 20 million, now it's the same as the others).<br />
** Shard speed now locked at 22, regardless of combat style, speed boosting, gravitational effects, etc.<br />
*** Also removed the rule that changed the frequency of chase-force spawning based on combat style.<br />
** Spire Capital Ship shield generators:<br />
*** Radius from 300/500/500/500 => 600/1200/1200/1200.<br />
*** Base health from 1.2m/2.4m/7.2m/9.6m => 5m/10m/20m/40m.<br />
** Spire Destroyer (hull) base health from 20m => 10m (for reference, DDs can use mkI or mkII shield generators).<br />
** Spire Cruiser (hull) base health from 50m => 20m (for reference, CAs can use mkI-III shield generators).<br />
** Spire Battleship (hull) base health from 100m => 40m (for reference, BBs can use mkI-IV shield generators).<br />
** Spire Dreadnought (hull) base health from 200m => 80m (for reference, DNs can use mkI-IV shield generators and can mount 2 of them).<br />
<br />
* Riot Shield I/II radius from 300/500 => 600*mk.<br />
<br />
* The Objectives tab now lists find/destroy objectives for the five core shield networks, if they exist.<br />
<br />
* Siege Starship mkII and mkIII didn't get the intended hp boost last version, fixed from 1.2m/1.4m => 3m/3.5m.<br />
** Thanks to lyravega for the report.<br />
<br />
* Raider:<br />
** Ship cap multiplier from 2.5 => 2.<br />
** Base health from 3000*mk => 5500*mk (so, compensating for ship cap change and an additional x1.5 on top of that).<br />
** Base attack from 200*mk => 250*mk (just compensating for ship cap change).<br />
** Bonus vs Turrets from 4 => 1.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine and Suzera for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* When drawing in-game, the Settings window now snaps to the top of the screen rather than the bottom of the resource bar when the resolution is not tall enough to accomodate both.<br />
** Thanks to PineappleSam for the report.<br />
<br />
* The "don't move if under a strong forcefield" logic for AI units now no longer applies to minor-faction or zombie units that happen to have the same player number as AI units.<br />
** Thanks to BobTheJanitor for the report.<br />
<br />
* Put in some changes to the per-second logic for command stations to make it much less likely that the auto-construction controls would "double-build", by making a command station wait about 3 seconds after being constructed to start looking at auto-build stuff, and also wait at least 1 whole second (and potentially 2) between checking the logic instead of potentially checking it at the end of one second and again at the beginning of another.<br />
** Thanks to many players for reporting this.<br />
<br />
* The command station foldouts in multiplayer now process the auto-frd-engineers and auto-frd-military controls in the same way as a command station.<br />
<br />
* The Bonus-ship-type-detail-window used on lobby mouseovers now snaps to the bottom of the screen rather than displaying from the same top-left as the options window if it's too tall for that to fit on the screen.<br />
** Thanks to Burnstreet for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed textual bug that was making the "abilities" line in ship data always reflect high-cap numbers (notably, for armor piercing), now refreshes the abilities line if the cap has changed since the last time.<br />
** Thanks to Suzera for the report.<br />
<br />
* Military Command Stations no longer focus-fire with their secondary shots, since the translocation effect favors spreading it out.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* The tooltips for the various random ai type options in the lobby now refresh properly when expansion-enabledness is changed, etc.<br />
** Thanks to Dyers_Eve for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where scouts were not immune to reclamation.<br />
** Thanks to KDR_11k for the report.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Beam Frigate:<br />
** Base Health from 22k/26k/32k/38k/54k => 22k*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 200/250/300/350/500 => 150*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 500/1000/1500/2000/3000 => 4000*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 8k/9k/10k/12k/12k => 6k/6.5k/7k/7.5k/8k.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 8 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 8 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 2 => 1.<br />
** Can now hit a maximum of 10 targets with one shot; there is no particular logic (closest, etc) for selecting which 10 if there are more than that on the line, nor is it desired that there be.<br />
** Beams now always go the full range, rather than stopping at the primary target.<br />
<br />
* The Resource Flows tab of the stats screen now uses LastEnergyProduced instead of UnitData.EnergyProduction for reporting positive energy flows, thus fixing the bug where it was inacurrately reporting the energy contribution of poor-efficiency reactors.<br />
** Thanks to Winter Born for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the summary mode of the Resource Flows tab of the stats screen where if you had more than 2 of a specific unit type it would only report the sum-impact of 2 of them. This display is now much more useful.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug with various beam weapons where the firing ship would stay slightly out of range and the beam wouldn't hit anything. Will now always fire such that the beam will reach the primary target (unless stopped by some other object, in the case of human and spire beam weapons).<br />
** Thanks to Toll for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a couple bugs with the logic for freeing ai ships firing on a target within 11,000 range, one of which was making it not happen a lot of the time, one of which was making it happen against minor-faction/zombie ships. <br />
<br />
* Fixed bugs with ship coordination where ships left behind on a planet by the coordinator could get _really_ confused about whether to go to the appropriate wormhole to catch up or to go to the coordinator's coordinates.<br />
** Thanks to PineappleSam for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Added non-placeholder description for the Fallen Spire "minor" faction.<br />
<br />
* Lowered the AIPerGuardPostShipCap for Spire Blade Spawners, Spire Maws, Spire Stealth Battleships, and Spire Tractor Platforms from 4 to 2.<br />
<br />
* When command stations are scrapped, the colony ships on that planet are now destroyed the same as if the command station was killed by enemies.<br />
** Thanks to numerous players for pointing out the possible exploit here, and the fact that since there is now in-place upgrading of command stations, this is not really a hassle, anyway.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that was causing AI ships to incorrectly stack up under force fields that were protecting them: now they won't stop moving until they have "settled" into a position under said forcefield.<br />
** Thanks to lyravega for reporting.<br />
<br />
(Released January 12th, 2011)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.065 ==<br />
<br />
* Snipers and sniper turrets are no longer immune (able to fire through) force fields.<br />
<br />
* All of the player mark I-III force fields are no longer able to go through wormholes (the AI ones are immobile, so that would be redundant). Actually, mark III AI force fields were mobile before, but are no longer.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Bombard Guard posts, AI Core booster guard posts, siege starships, starship disassemblers, and zenith bombards now all fire a new "Antimatter bomb" ammo type instead of their former energy bomb type. Antimatter bombs move about 50% faster than the older shots of these types used to, and most importantly some ships now will be able to have immunity to antimatter bombs (no ships are immune to energy bombs).<br />
** Note that, importantly, bomber starships and bombers in general still have the regular energy bomb ammo type.<br />
<br />
* The following ships now have immunities to antimatter bombs, shifting the balance around some in a way intended to prevent too-easy sniping on both sides in a way that was formerly not interesting because of bombards and siege starships:<br />
** Counter-missile, counter-sniper, and counter-dark-matter turrets, as well as sniper and spider turrets, and harvester exo-shields (a benefit to the humans).<br />
** All of the standalone force fields for both players and AIs (a benefit for both the humans and the AI).<br />
** The AI fortresses and superfortress for the AI (a benefit for the AI only).<br />
** The human home command stations, as well as the human military command stations mark I-III, home cores, and the warp jammer command stations (a benefit for the humans only).<br />
** All AI command stations, special forces guard posts, and warp gates (a benefit for the AI only).<br />
<br />
* Non-melee AI ships that are under a protecting strong force field now will no longer move until they are out from under the force field (from it dying or whatever), though they will still receive orders from the AI as normal. This makes the AI-ships-under-AI-forcefield case really a lot more back like how it used to be in the 2.0 days, where those were interesting and tricky nests of AI ships to take out.<br />
<br />
* Ships that are immune to being scrapped now show that in their immunities list.<br />
** Thanks to lyravega for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* In the prior version, gravity drills were not preventing teleportation of allied ships. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to lyravega for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed the description of the spirecraft shield bearers to reflect the fact that they no longer have guns.<br />
** Thanks to Lightbulb for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Added Plasma Siege Cannon Module MkI-III for use on Spire capital ships and city defense platforms. The first mark is unlocked by researching the MkII Siege Starship, the second mark by researching the MkIII Siege Starship, and the third mark by an advanced tech at the Spire Galactic Capitol. The smallest mobile ship capable of mounting one (a mkI) is a Spire Cruiser.<br />
** Many thanks to HitmanN for the graphics used for these modules.<br />
<br />
* Added Rail Cannon Module MkI-IV for use on Spire capital ships and city defense platforms. The first mark doesn't need to be unlocked, the second and third marks are unlocked by researching the Spider Turret, and the fourth mark by an advanced tech at the Spire Galactic Capitol.<br />
** Many thanks to HitmanN for the graphics used for these modules.<br />
<br />
* The graphics for shield modules have been changed to much, much nicer ones provided by HitmanN, thanks!<br />
<br />
* Spire Tractor Platform base energy use from 100 => 2000 (it was a bug, 100 is what a ship gets if we forget to define it).<br />
** Thanks to superking for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Spire Armor Rotter:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 44 => 26.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 8k/9k/10k/11k/12k => flat 4k.<br />
** Thanks to superking for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Since Spirecraft Shieldbearers are no longer military ships, they are now also no longer eligible for event attacks.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft scouts are now immune to area of effect damage, artillery, sniper shots, minefields, black hole machines, missiles, mass drivers, translocation, and tractor beams.<br />
** Thanks to BobTheJanitor and hullu for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Siege Starship:<br />
** Base Range from 35000 => 16000 (meaning that actual range from 38000 => 19000).<br />
** Base Health from 1,000,000 => 2,500,000.<br />
<br />
* AI Beam Guardian Base Range from 10k/12k/14k/16k/18k => flat 7k.<br />
* AI Artillery Guardian Base Range from 31k/32k/33k/34k/35k => flat 15k (so slightly less than a siege starship).<br />
* AI Laser Guardian Base Range from 7k/8k/9k/10k/11k/12k => flat 7k.<br />
* AI Vampire Guardian Base Range from 13k/16k/19k/22k/25k => flat 7k.<br />
<br />
* Spire Starship Base Range from 17k => 10k.<br />
<br />
* Laser Cannon Module (including variants used by Hybrids, Spire Capital Ships, and Spire city defenses) base range from 20k => 10k.<br />
<br />
* Spire Frigate Base Range from 13k => 10k.<br />
<br />
* All AI guard posts (except wormhole guard posts and special forces guard posts) now have radar dampening of 7500/7000/6500/6000/5500.<br />
<br />
* AI Eyes now have 400 million health (same as wormhole guard posts) instead of 6 million, and are now destroyed when the last non-wormhole guard post of the AI on that planet is destroyed.<br />
** In general, many fewer AI Eyes are now seeded, but the exact amount fewer is hard to express because it involves a divisor, the number of planets, a floor value of 2 per galaxy, and differences by AI type.<br />
*** In general, with the defensive-type AIs that had extreme numbers of Eyes in the past (just tons and tons of them, they now have about 3x fewer than before. In terms of the other AI types that had more moderate numbers already, they now have maybe 10% fewer, or thereabouts.<br />
*** Unfortunately, due to the nature of the seeding, the number of AI Eyes will only be reduced in future savegames, not in existing ones.<br />
** Thanks to zebramatt for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where clicking in a GUI window while in ship-placement mode could place a ship at the point in world space that happened to be under that part of the GUI window.<br />
** Thanks to Red Spot for the report.<br />
<br />
* AI ships will now be angered (rather than just alerted) when firing upon human ships within roughly 11,000 range, which will make them (and their guard posts and fellow guards) fall under normal targeting rules, thus hopefully fixing the situations where human ships were being shot at by a relatively nearby AI ship but not retaliating (they shouldn't retaliate if the AI ship is way far away, as otherwise this can cause long range human ships to aggro the entire planet pretty quick).<br />
** Thanks to Suzera for the report.<br />
<br />
* A pretty sweeping internal change has been made for how group move is tracked and applied. This should hopefully resolve all the problems with the mixtures of group moving and speed boosting and speed-boost-immune ships, but we'll see (we said this a few releases back, too). The difference is that this time the solution is clearer and more architecturally-dstructive, rather than being clever and yet architecture-saving.<br />
** This may cause some accidental bugs if we typed something wrong (that's the architecturally-dstructive part, and why we avoided doing that before), but it should also fix the actual bugs it's meant to fix.<br />
** The core of this change is basically tracking two group move speeds, rather than one: slowest boostable speed, and slowest non-boostable speed.<br />
** Ships in savegames that are already group-moving might be still acting briefly wrong. Simply giving them another group-move order will straighten them out, if so. By "briefly wrong," we mean that they might be moving too fast or too slow compared to what they really should be, the same as they were already moving in the old savegame.<br />
** This should also fix the "player ships are always moving too slowly" bug that was in the last version (it was really just a group-move thing).<br />
** Thanks to Suzera and Moonshine Fox for reporting.<br />
<br />
* A message is now sent to the human players in the chat log if a warp gate guardian is added on a planet adjacent to one of their planets (or next to a neutral planet), stating what type of warp gate guardian was added and on which AI planet.<br />
** In exchange, warp gate guardians, which are pretty nasty, are now twice as likely to occur. This is still incredibly unlikely however, something like a 2 in 400 chance at the moment -- and it will only get less likely as more guardians are added over time (as happens with the dispersal of all guardians).<br />
** Thanks to Burnstreet for suggesting the warning.<br />
<br />
* Okay, so that command-stations-must-be-built-within-proximity-to-the-colony-ship thing wasn't a hit. It was tedious and fiddly, and didn't really accomplish its core goal, anyway. So, the following changes have been made:<br />
** The proximity thing has been removed completely, so as far as how colony ships go, they are back to working like they used to.<br />
** However, whenever a human command station is blown up (NOT when it is scrapped), any colony ships OR mobile builders on that planet are also blown up. Even if they are currently inside a transport on that planet.<br />
*** These sorts of ships can exist in planets not controlled by a human player, obviously -- they have to. So in their case, it's just a matter of their being on the planet at the exact instant that the command station dies. If they are, then that's when they are killed.<br />
*** This meets the original goal a lot better, which was to prevent players from too-easily just instantly rebuilding outlying command stations that were lost, with no real delay in the ability to rebuild.<br />
**** With planets near other planets it will still be fast to rebuild -- of course -- but this provides some incentive to keep planets clustered where possible. This incentive of clustering planets which is obviously at odds with the goal of keeping AI Progress low, which is the idea: competing incentives, tough choices, etc. Best if you don't lose the planet at all in the first place, of course. But now it will feel like you do if that planet was a more distant waypoint between multiple of your planets on an important transport route, for instance.<br />
** Thanks to many players for complaining about the proximity thing for colony ships.<br />
<br />
* Previously, there was a AIDifficulty percent chance, per AI player, of a mark I or II fortress being added on each planet in the galaxy (for all difficulties 4 and up).<br />
** Now there is a flat ( AIDifficulty / 2 ) * ( totalPlanets < 80 ? totalPlanets / 80 : 1.0 ) fortresses per AI player on the map, rounded up.<br />
*** For difficulty 7.3 on a 40 planet map, that would be ( 7.3 / 2 ) * ( 40 / 80 ) = 3.65 * .5 = 1.825 = 2 fortresses per AI player.<br />
*** For difficulty 8 on an 80+ planet map, that would be ( 8 / 2 ) * 1.0 = 4 fortresses per AI player.<br />
** Fortress Barons, in addition to the other fortresses (superfortresses and mark III fortresses) that they already get, now get 8x the normal number of mark I and II fortresses in addition (not to exceed the total number of planets controlled by the fortress baron player).<br />
** Mad Bombers now get absolutely no additional fortresses.<br />
** Vicious raiders, technologist raiders, speed racers, special forces captains, radar jammers, and extreme raiders now all get half the normal number of extra fortresses, not to be less than 1 fortress.<br />
** Whether or not the seeded fortress is mark I or II depends on the mark level of the planet. Mark I and II planets get a mark I fortress, everything higher gets a mark II fortress.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine! for suggesting that the prior fortress algorithm was leading to undesirable frequency in some cases.<br />
<br />
* Normally there are a number of "extra forcefields" that are seeded around the AI planets, per AI. There are normally AIDifficulty * 2 planets with each having either 1 or 2 extra forcefields added per planet. The following frequency changes for these have been made:<br />
** Shield Ninnies now get 4x the normal number of planets with extra forcefields, as well as 3x the normal number of extra forcefields per planet.<br />
** Turtles, technologist turtles, and teleporter turtles now get 3x the normal number of planets with extra forcefields, as well as 2x the normal number of extra forcefields per planet.<br />
** Peacemakers and alarmists now have 2x the normal number of extra forcefields per planet, but on the normal number of planets.<br />
** Mad Bombers now get absolutely no extra forcefields.<br />
** Vicious raiders, technologist raiders, speed racers, special forces captains, radar jammers, and extreme raiders now all get half the normal number of planets with extra forcefields, not to be less than 1 planet.<br />
<br />
* Spire blades and spire blade spawners are now immune to camouflaging.<br />
** Thanks to Burnstreet for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Jumpships now have immunity to minefields and to tractor beams.<br />
** Thanks to BobTheJanitor for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Penetrators now have 33k range instead of 6k, and also have 80 million health * mark level instead of 8 million. This makes them a lot easier to survive, and thus more interesting as one-amazing-shot-per-30-minute wonders.<br />
** Thanks to Suzera, BobTheJanitor, and PineappleSam for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Ships no longer decelerate to enter into wormholes. They now just fly right in at whatever speed they are at when they arrive. Additionally, when ships are closing in on a wormhole, they now do their movement-recalculation checks a lot more frequently, which uses a bit more CPU, but which also will prevent them from overshooting their goal as they have been doing at times in the last version or two.<br />
** Thanks to Moonshine Fox, kingisaaclinksr and lyravega for reporting the "bouncy" ships.<br />
<br />
* Military Orbital Command Stations all now have translocation lightning as their attack type instead of missiles.<br />
** Thanks to Burnstreet for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* AI Carriers now have 6000 attack range, so they should no longer be trying to get right on top of the human home command station to attack them.<br />
** Thanks to Draco Cretel for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The counts of scouts on the galaxy display mode now just displays literal scouts, rather than everything that has scouting ability (like commandos).<br />
** Thanks to BobTheJanitor for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* When an EMP goes off, it is now assured to hit AI ships that were in cold storage; apparently in some rare circumstances previously it was able to miss ships in cold storage. Since this bug could possibly also happen with tachyon warheads, a safety check was put in place to make sure that was prevented, too. Nukes were already assured of not having this problem.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Dyson gatling attack has been doubled, and health has also been doubled. Fear these.<br />
** Thanks to Burnstreet for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Gravitational turrets now cost about 30% more, but have twice the health they used to have.<br />
** Thanks to Moonshine Fox for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Ships with tractor beams on them are no longer eligible for auto-kite behavior, as that leads to some very wrong behavior.<br />
** Thanks to PineappleSam for reporting.<br />
<br />
* AI Fortresses and superfortresses no longer show the countdown timer, as they no longer use it.<br />
** Thanks to mr_lolz for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Scouts, spirecraft scouts, and spirecraft jumpships are now immune to being swallowed. Scout starships already were.<br />
** Thanks to KPJZKC for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, spire maws and similar were only hurting the health of enemy ships if they were powered on, which caused low-power AI ships to permanently hold onto some player ships. Fixed so that the full-power/low-power thing doesn't matter for these for the human or the AI players.<br />
** Thanks to KPJZKC for reporting.<br />
<br />
* In defender mode, the waves from the AIs can now come in anywhere, rather than always having to come in at a planet adjacent to an AI planet. This makes the extreme-numbers-of-planets variants almost impossible to play, but makes the 4-10 (or so) planets a lot more interesting, as the 1-3 already were.<br />
<br />
* When in the lobby, if players Ctrl+click a planet that is a valid starting point, they will automatically claim all the planets that have not yet been claimed. Similarly, ctrl+right-clicking deselects all planets that player had previously selected. This shows up in the keybindings window under the Anytime controls.<br />
** Thanks to wyvern83 for inspiring.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a missing localization at the start of new defender mode campaigns.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the total number of allowed lines in the alerts window was 16. That meant that if there were a ton of waves plus other messages, some messages could be invisible. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* The first wave in defender mode now comes after 20 seconds, rather than after 70 seconds, since there's not really much to do in a multi-planet defender session until the first wave is announced. Additionally, the AI loop now starts on the host in defender mode after 10 seconds, rather than after 60.<br />
<br />
* The wave timers in defender mode have been made far shorter -- this makes the AI Progress skyrocket all that much faster, and keeps the influx of AI ships that much higher, too.<br />
<br />
* In defender mode, 200% is now automatically added for free to the player's effective handicap, for free (in terms of score) and behind the scenes. In other words, all the ships "just happen to" produce a bunch more metal, crystal, and knowledge than normal. This makes it easier to have rather constant action (the idea of defender mode), without player funds constantly disappearing.<br />
<br />
(Released January 10th, 2011)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.064 ==<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug in last versions icon-combination fixes that was causing AI ships in cold-storage to basically never be drawn in far zoom (unless icon-combining was turned off).<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine, BobTheJanitor, and Burnstreet for the report.<br />
<br />
* All of the spirecraft have had their speed doubled, to account for no longer getting any speed boosting from human planets.<br />
** The spirecraft scouts actually have had their speed incredibly increased, to 240 * mark level, rather than just a flat 24.<br />
** Spirecraft Ions have had their speed tripled.<br />
** Thanks to BobTheJanitor for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The health of both mark II and mark III tractor beam turrets have been doubled.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* AI fortresses of all marks now have 6x the health of their human counterparts (instead of 5x), but now have 3x lower range than the human versions. They also are now immobile.<br />
<br />
* AI Superfortresses now have simply been adjusted to be immobile, but have the same range and health as before.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft shield bearers are no longer eligible for auto-kiting behavior.<br />
** Thanks to BobTheJanitor for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Ships with more than 60k range are no longer able to auto-kite, because this leads them to trying to keep more than a planet's distance between them and the enemy.<br />
** Thanks to BobTheJanitor for reporting.<br />
<br />
* A number of speed-boost/gravity related fixes:<br />
** Gravity boosts also now prevent speed-halving by enemy logistics command stations and similar.<br />
** Previously, group movement could override the effects of gravity beams and drills. Fixed.<br />
** There was also some logic that was previously causing ships to be capped at 2x their normal movement speed from some but not all kinds of speed boosters. That was some old logic that hung around too long, apparently. Fixed.<br />
* Previously, there was a bug that was causing ships that were immune to gravity effects to not be able to be speed-boosted when group moving. Fixed.<br />
** Previously, the gravity effect of spire gravity drains wasn't working at all. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Suzera, Sunshine, Draco Cretel, and Reality for reporting various issues related to this.<br />
<br />
* The damage output of the spider turret now properly matches that of the sniper turret.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft shield bearers no longer have an attack, to make them easier to control and position, etc.<br />
** Thanks to PineappleSam for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Mirrors are once again immune to blades, to prevent cutlasses from one-shotting themselves against the mirrors.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions that was causing melee ships to be pretty ineffective at targeting enemy ships that were moving.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for reporting.<br />
* Fixed a number of text wrapping and overlap issues in the ship hover window.<br />
* Thanks to dumpsterKEEPER, Toll, Prezombie, and BobTheJanitor for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Hive Golem Wasps now have 10x more health and attack power.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for reporting that they were underpowered.<br />
<br />
* AI Carriers are now able to be hit by the various types of ships that can't hit fleet ships (siege starships, etc).<br />
<br />
* Additionally, AI Carriers can now be hit by orbital mass drivers.<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, when a ship that was actively tractoring other ships was loaded into a transport, it was still tractoring those ships. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Garthor for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, when maws of the same team were too close together, they would block each other so that only one could eat enemy ships at a time. Fixed. Also increased their range by 1000.<br />
** All ships that have zero move speed are now explicitly immune to being swallowed, to be more clear.<br />
** Thanks to Draco Cretel for reporting that maws were not eating in some circumstances.<br />
<br />
* All of the spire fleet ships now have properly sized selection and force field circles, etc, in far zoom.<br />
** Thanks to Nypyren for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Put in place the fancy new forcefield-hit effects by Hans-Martin Portmann, which he'd originally created as a mod.<br />
** Thanks to Hans-Martin Portmann, of course!<br />
<br />
* Cursed Golems are now immune to snipers, like all the other golems already were.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, AI ships would remain in cold storage if there were only cloaked player ships on a planet, which was problematic with things like spire penetrators. Fixed so that it only does this for ships that are cloaked AND which have no attack power (aka, scouts).<br />
** Thanks to PineappleSam for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Penetrators also now have a flame wave attack type instead of mass driver so that they can actually hit guardians.<br />
** Thanks to PineappleSam for reporting.<br />
<br />
* When a planet is being viewed by a human player, the AI ships will no longer be in cold storage. This prevents issues with things like planetary cloakers, camouflager AI types, etc.<br />
** Thanks to Burnstreet for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The Raptor retreat radius has been increased from 5k to 9k.<br />
** Thanks to Ozymandiaz for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Devourer Golems and Zenith Trade ships are both now immune to gravity and speed boosting.<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s for reporting.<br />
<br />
(Released January 8th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.063 ==<br />
<br />
* Windowing system reworked from using GUI.Window to the more primitive GUI.Box, handling the various other windowing stuff in our own code. GUI.Window did a pretty good job but we were butting up against several limitations and thus decided to just "roll our own". Thankfully, the engine is flexible enough to allow this. Note that this is a pretty wide-reaching change and may cause all kinds of odd problems. For what it's worth, in our tests we were able to play just fine.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Mirror health increased by 10x to compensate for the 10x bonus everything gets against it (when they were rebalanced, it was without respect to that bonus, thus effective health was pretty pitiful).<br />
** Thanks to superking for pointing this out.<br />
<br />
* A lot of internal changes have been made to make the code for referencing the art more efficient and compact. If you seen any oddness in ship graphics because of this, please let us know.<br />
<br />
* Science Labs Mark III now count as "sabotage" units that stirs up the AI into creating threat/free ships from its command station sort of like how an AI Eye would work. This replaces the old way of stirring up the existing ships sitting on the planet, which didn't work too well for a lot of reasons.<br />
** Science Labs Mark III also no longer cause the AI to get a reinforcement bonus, and they now generate 6/s knowledge instead of 2/s. This makes them a lot more attractive to actually use, but also substantially more risky.<br />
<br />
* Previously, it was still possible to unlock command station techs in defender mode, even though you couldn't build them. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, it was possible for the wave timers in defender mode to actually extend beyond when the game would already be won by timer. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Nypyren for reporting.<br />
<br />
* It is now clearer in the tooltip popups that each AI player's waves causes separate AIP increases (the tooltips note which AI player it came from).<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s for reporting the lack of clarity there.<br />
<br />
* The Zenith Trader previously flipped back and forth between visiting one player planet and one AI planet. This led to the trader always showing up very early in the game, and returning pretty frequently. Now the trader only moves between AI planets, never intentionally going to a human planet. This means that the human players need to place themselves in the path between two AI planets that the trader will go between in order for the trader to visit them. This in turn will make Trader visits comparably more rare, and something that is more interesting as a way to capitalize on (as often you won't get as good of positioning for the stuff they will sell you).<br />
** Thanks to Red Spot and TechSY730 for unintentionally inspiring this change with an innocent query they now regret ("what have I done?" was the exact wording).<br />
<br />
* The Zenith Trader now has a 20% chance of leaving goodies for the AI players on each planet, rather than a 10% chance.<br />
<br />
* All of the spire "fleet ships" now have 100k engine health or better, rather than just the flat 100 engine health.<br />
** Thanks to amonchakad for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Riot Control Starships now show up with a ship type of Riot Starship rather than Fleet Starship, to avoid confusion.<br />
** Thanks to zebramatt for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Ship modules now automatically take on the cloaking status of their parent ship.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Starship constructors now have a health of 300k instead of 48k, in keeping with the other constructors.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed inaccuracy in Riot Tazer tooltip.<br />
** Thanks to TheDeadlyShoe for the report.<br />
<br />
* Split tech "groups" out like buy groups so that different units can have different tech menus and have their own tracking of which tab was open last. This allows the Spire Galactic Capitol to properly open it's tech tab by default without messing with human science station menus.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for the report.<br />
<br />
* Auto-explore/Auto-gather-knowledge orders were previously not being persisted through save/load, but now are.<br />
** Thanks to hyramgraff for the report.<br />
<br />
* Auto-explore/Auto-gather-knowledge orders were previously not clearing when a ship was given another direct order, but only when given the "stop" order; they now clear whenever the ship clears all its commands (generally when given an order to do something else without the shift key held).<br />
<br />
* Previously it was possible for using the "quick buttons" at the bottom to select ships in such a way that ships from multiple distinct planets were in your selection, leading to various problems like unintended orders. Now when using the quick buttons the selection will be completely cleared first.<br />
** Thanks to Sigma7 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Removed the Map Button context menu from the list on the input-bindings screen, since it didn't actually have any bindings and would cause an error if you tried to open it.<br />
<br />
* Added a couple missing localization strings for the edit-binding screen.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for the report and screenshot.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where very high-sensitivity mice could actually have their inputs periodically rounded down to zero when edge scrolling, or where having a very high performance profile could cause this even with normal mice.<br />
** Thanks to eRe4s3r for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Put in a change that should make the AI react better when saboteur-type ships, or player immobile structures, are on an AI planet.<br />
<br />
* The lobby Map Type, Campaign Type, Minor Faction, and AI Plot lists now properly update when an expansion is enabled or disabled in the lobby expansion list.<br />
** Thanks to Winter Born for the report.<br />
<br />
* The objectives window will no longer act like nuked planets can be knowledge-gathered.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for the report.<br />
<br />
* Heavily adjusted the way that AI ships that are "stalking" a wormhole will behave. Previously they would just wait there until they saw an opportunity to attack the planet on the other side, ignoring everything at their own planet. Now they act as if in FRD mode on their own planet, and only will break away from the action if they decide that it's better now to attack the other planet. If no enemy ships are around, then of course they will wait by the wormhole as they used to do.<br />
** The above might have been confusing, so the bottom line summary is this: when ships are stalking another planet, they will now still behave sensibly on the planet they are on, unlike before.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for reporting the issue.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that could cause very large numbers of AI ships that were stalking a wormhole to undervalue their attack prowesss and keep waiting longer than they should have.<br />
<br />
* Force fields no longer have a firepower rating, as that was confusing the firepower calculations and making the AI too tentative to attack in way too many circumstances.<br />
<br />
* The health of ships no longer affects their firepower rating. That was causing a lot of the spire ships to be way over-weighted. The only time that would be relevant was if a ship had a low attack power but tons of health, which isn't something that needs to be accounted for in the fashion we were previously doing (and we're not really having many ships of that sort that would be of concern to the AI, which is the chief consideration here).<br />
** The net effect of this is that the AI will be more daring during fallen spire campaigns in general, and it also won't overestimate spirecraft and golems to the degree it used to.<br />
<br />
* The AI is a lot more savvy now with some of its internal firepower weightings, using different kinds of weights for different situations. Overall this makes it feel a lot smarter when it comes to how it decides to do stuff with its free/threat ships.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the Neinzul Enclave Starship mercenaries used the old graphics for the actual ship, but the new graphic for the icon. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Ozymandiaz for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the description text for the carriers and barracks said they could contain 200-1200 units, but that was only correct for High ship counts. Now it just says "up to 1200."<br />
** Thanks to dumpsterKEEPER for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the fortress tooltip was still saying that fortresses could transport ships. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to BigJake for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Converted away all internal references from Time.smoothDeltaTime to our own Game.Instance.GameDeltaTime, which prevents occasional skipping and lag in certain animations and scrolling the background stars as players pan the view, etc.<br />
<br />
* Previously, using very high or low speed modifiers would cause explosions and similar to have the inverse amount of animation speed from what they should have. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for finally helping us figure this one out!<br />
<br />
* When Advanced Hybrids are on for their player, Defensive Hybrids will now switch to an offensive role to add pressure to certain other major AI offensives. This can make them more of a danger in the mid/late game. When this happens an alert message ("Defensive Hybrids Are Mobilizing") will be displayed for about 2 minutes after the "switch".<br />
<br />
* Previously, the gravity ripper mark II image was missing in the tech upgrades window. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions of the game that was causing the game to hang in some savegames when a superterminal planet was captured. It depended on which ships the AI had unlocked as to whether the freeze would happen.<br />
** Thanks to northcornice for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Hybrids looking for attack missions are now more likely to heavily prefer a "main target" planet.<br />
<br />
* Eyebots now have missile ammo, and so it's much easier for the player to protect their command stations and whatnot by simply building counter-missile turrets (which have a tech cost, of course -- but note that any counter-whatever turret can be unlocked directly, they are not part of a tech line with prerequisites).<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for suggesting changing the ammo type.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where previously the Spire advanced laser cannon module, heavy beam cannon module, and shield module technologies did not have any prerequisites. They now require the Laser Turret III, Heavy Beam Cannon IV, and Forcefield Generator III technologies, respectively.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where most of the advanced Spire technologies did not have icons.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the prior version that was causing waves in the intermediate tutorial to come into play not belonging to the AI player (and thus be unhittable by the human player, as well as treated as allies -- so they would attack AI ships automatically, etc).<br />
** Also made it so that existing saves with those "Allied ships" in them would convert those ships over to the AI appropriately.<br />
** Thanks to whiskeypriest for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding issue that affected a very small number of players (but more recently was suddenly more widespread... actually a good thing in terms of finding and fixing it) where the mouse edge scrolling did not work properly in some circumstances, most notably in windowed mode. The explanation on this one is long and convoluted: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=937#c7847<br />
** Thanks to eRe4s3r for reporting, and for his patience as we hunted for this one for so long!<br />
<br />
* Marauder rebalancing. <br />
** The rough target is to balance each like a MkIV fleet ship type with a 0.2x ship cap (i.e. a ship type that would have a mkI cap of 40 ships on high caps), since on difficulties less than 9 it's generally unlikely that more than 40 total marauders will spawn unless it's been a long time since there were any eligible cases for a marauder spawn.<br />
** The marauder spawning code will now not spawn more than twice the "high cap", regardless of how long it's been since a marauder spawn. On difficulties greater than 5 and lower than 9, the high cap is 40, so this new absolute cap will be 80 (which generally means 40 dagger frigates and 40 buzz bombs) on those difficulties.<br />
** Marauder Dagger Frigate:<br />
*** Base Health from 3,300,000 => 2,200,000.<br />
*** Armor Rating from 3,000 => 600.<br />
*** Base Attack Range from 30,000 => 15,000.<br />
*** Bonus vs Structural from 30 => 2.4.<br />
*** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 8 => 2.4.<br />
*** Bonus vs Turret from 8 => 2.4.<br />
*** Bonus vs Light from 6 => 2.4.<br />
*** Bonus vs CommandGrade from 4 => 2.4.<br />
** Marauder Buzz Bomb:<br />
*** Base Health from 3,000,000 => 2,000,000.<br />
*** Base Attack Power from 15,000 => 12,000 (note that these shots can hit 14 targets at once).<br />
*** In many ways this is now a condensed version of the MkIV Grenade Launcher, rather than the Autobomb, so it's been renamed the Marauder Buzz Bomb Launcher.<br />
<br />
* Grenade Launcher rebalancing:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 28/25/22/18/28 => flat 28.<br />
** Base Health from 15,000/25,000/45,000/65,000/95,000 => 15,000*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 4000 => 300*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 900/1800/3600/7200/14400 => 1000*mk (note that these shots hit 8/10/12/14/16 targets each).<br />
** Seconds-Per-Salvo from 15/15/10/8/7 => flat 15.<br />
<br />
* Previously, crystal harvesters had 10x too much armor. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to cathexis for reporting.<br />
<br />
* All spirecraft, guardians, and hunter/killers are now immune to camouflaging.<br />
** Thanks to Burnstreet for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Apparently all guardians had a 10x bonus against the scout hull type recently. This has been removed. Artillery guardians additionally now have a 0.1 penalty against the scout hull type. This was hugely hurting both transports and scouts.<br />
** Thanks to ColdPrototype and TechSY730 for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The fortress bonus against the scout hull type has been further reduced from 0.1 to 0.05.<br />
** Thanks to RogueThunder for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The movement speed of all the scouts has been doubled once again, to bring them back to the equivalent of what they were two releases ago on Normal speed.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Laser Gatling:<br />
** Base health from 1400*mk => 2800*mk (a cap of Laser Gatlings MkIs used to have roughly 1/3rd as much totaly hp as a cap of Fighter MkIs, now it will be 2/3rds).<br />
** Base MkI Metal/Crystal from 80/80 => 50/50 (so now is half of fighters per-individual, and about 1.4x comparing cap to cap).<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* The "Result" column on the reference tab of the stats screen now displays a percent next to each Win or Loss value, representing the margin of win or loss. <br />
** So Win(80%) on a row in the table means that the type selected in the dropbox above the table will beat that row's type and still have 80% health/ships left (if it's one vs one it roughly corresponds to how much health the individual will have left, if it's cap vs cap it roughly corresponds to how much total health the ships will have left). <br />
** A Loss(80%) means that row's type will beat the dropdown's type with 80% left. <br />
** Sorting by the Result column will now sort from Win(100%) to Win(1%) to Draw to Loss(1%) to Loss(100%) and vice versa.<br />
<br />
* Some melee ship changes, at last:<br />
** Vorticular Cutlasses, Hive Golem Wasps, and Spire Blades are now the only ships with the Blade ammo type at the moment.<br />
** Vampires and Zenith Viral Shredders and Neinzul Viral Swarmers now all have a new Fusion Cutter ammo type (with a creepy new sound effect).<br />
** Previously, all ships with health larger than 1 million were immune to blades. Now they are immune to fusion cutters instead.<br />
** Previoulsy, all turrets were immune to blades. Now they are immune to fusion cutters instead.<br />
*** The counter-whatever turrets and sniper/spider turrets remain immune to both blades and fusion cutters.<br />
** Military orbital command stations mark I-III, home command station cores I-III, experimental engineers, home human settlements, human cyro pods, mines of all sorts, raid starships I-III, lightning and armored warheads, fallen spire shards and survey markers, spire civilian outposts, and spire archives remain immune to both blade attacks and fusion cutters.<br />
** Self-Destruction Guardians, leech starships, riot control starships, impulse reaction emitters, and acid sprayers are now immune to fusion cutters instead of blades.<br />
** Home Command Stations and fortresses for both the player and the AI are now immune to blades again -- in the past they were simply because of those "greater than 1 million health" rule that got moved to fusion cutters.<br />
** Thanks to many players for helping out with suggestions here, and to Sunshine in particular for the suggestion of fusion cutters.<br />
<br />
* Fixed longstanding bugs with icon-grouping that would cause ships and health bars to be drawn in spurious places.<br />
** Thanks to a long line of players, reporting this as early as the mesozoic era and never letting up. Well, maybe not that long ago.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug that was having multiplied-by-square-root-of-target-armor (zenith polarizer) and multiplied-by-100-minus-percent-of-target-health-remaining (youngling vulture) attack power calculations use the minimum and maximum multipliers of the _target_ rather than the attacker. Now uses the attacker's min/max. FYI, the polarizer is supposed to have a min/max of 4x/100x and the vulture is supposed to have a min/max of 10x/90x (the defaults both was getting most of the time were 1x/100x).<br />
<br />
* Spire Frigates and capital ships previously had double the LoneUnitRadius values they should have had, which made them way bigger than intended for collision purposes. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for the report.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the metal/crystal costs for the mark II-IV scouts was identical to that of the mark I. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug from the last few weeks where selecting military and nonmilitary ships together was way messed up; that in turn was a result from a fix to where it was too easy to accidentally select nonmilitary stuff. It should now be back to the way it was pre-Unity-port, but please let us know if something still seems up.<br />
** Thanks to MaxAstro, Ozymandiaz, Burnstreet.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Attritioners no longer have guns because before they were "considered a military unit, so if you FRD them they will go around, possibly getting themselves destroyed in the process. Additionally, if you want them cloaked, they will uncloak to fire which obviously creates problems."<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Intra-galactic warp gates will no longer warp ships to themselves that were already spawned in their same system.<br />
** Thanks to BobTheJanitor for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the low-power hotkey (K) would not toggle ships with build queues. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Nypyren for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The Spire Shield Sphere guard posts (core and regular) now have vastly more health, in keeping with other force fields (but a bit stronger).<br />
** Thanks to Ozymandiaz for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Added a new base game achievement.<br />
<br />
* Since they are no longer "military" units, Spirecraft Attritioners are no longer eligible to be picked for an event-attack.<br />
<br />
* The gravity drill now generates 90/s metal and crystal for players, rather than 30/s, in keeping with the new, larger economies.<br />
** Thanks to Ozymandiaz for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the "Can't use wormholes" tag was uselessly applied to mark II/III command stations. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for reporting.<br />
<br />
* En-dashes and Em-dashes are now automatically converted to hyphens when checking license key validity. This prevents issues with players typing the wrong kind of dash and it saying their license key is not valid.<br />
<br />
* The spire civilian leaders now have 600k health instead of 200k.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* When AI ships are EMP'd or paralyzed or tractored, they are now both angered and -- this last only if they are an AI ship -- taken out of low power mode. This makes them autotargetable, and also means they probably just became free-threat.<br />
** Thanks to PineappleSam for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The gravitational turret mark II/III was unintentionally lower than mark I. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to BlackCobra for reporting.<br />
<br />
(Released January 7th, 2011)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.062 ==<br />
<br />
* The movement speed of transport ships has been doubled, from 128 to 248. They are also now immune to speed boosting.<br />
** Thanks to BobTheJanitor for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The movement speed of colony ships has been doubled, from 36 to 72. They are also now immune to speed boosting.<br />
** Thanks to BobTheJanitor for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* All of the scout ships are now immune to speed boosting, as are eyebots.<br />
<br />
* SuperFortresses and all regular fortresses are now immune to speed boosting, munitions boosting, and shield boosting.<br />
<br />
* All AI guardians are now immune to speed boosting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in prior versions that was causing the gravity immunity to not work.<br />
** Thanks to MaxAstro for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a typo that said "Halves Allied Move Speed" instead of "Doubles Allied Move Speed."<br />
** Thanks to KPJZKC for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The global "speed limit" was previously 150, including various speed boosts, etc. However, the "silent doubling" for player ships was applied after that. This meant that in the last version, the speed of player ships was now capping out at 150 instead of 300. Worse, because the combat style speed bonuses were previously after-the-speed-limit as with the silent doubling, those were also getting capped at 150... rather than 1200 in terms of blitz for player-controlled ships. Yikes. The new speed cap is now 1400, to account for the cumulative old cap plus a little extra wiggle room to account for even-speedier ships.<br />
<br />
* The speed floor for Speed Racer and tag teamer ships wasn't working correctly with the new way that the combat style speeds are applied (as in, it was correct only on Epic). Fixed.<br />
<br />
* In the prior version, ship acceleration was incorrect except on epic speed. This made the relative movement speeds of ships on Blitz in particular almost irrelevant, because by the time they finished accelerating, they were to their destination! Fixed.<br />
<br />
(Released January 6th, 2011)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.061 ==<br />
<br />
* Fixed several typos in the tutorial.<br />
** Thanks to roy7 for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The Core Missile Guard posts have had their attack increased about 4.4x, and their range increased about 2x.<br />
** Thanks to TheDeadlyShoe for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Various "short name" changes have been made for consistency:<br />
** Z Elec Bomber is now Electric Bomber.<br />
** Frigate is now Missile Frigate.<br />
** MicroFight is now MicroFighter.<br />
** Shuttle is now Elec Shuttle.<br />
** Infil is now Infiltrator.<br />
** Laser is now Laser Gat.<br />
** Autocan is now Autocannon.<br />
** Deflect is now Deflector.<br />
** Grenade is now Grenade Launch.<br />
** Z Mirror is now Mirror.<br />
** Z Paralyzer is now Paralyzer.<br />
** Z Beam Frigate is now Beam Frigate.<br />
** Z Chameleon is now Chameleon.<br />
** Z Polarizer is now Polarizer.<br />
** Z Shredder is now Viral Shredder.<br />
** Commando is now Yng Commando.<br />
** Tiger is now Yng Tiger.<br />
** Vulture is now Yng Vulture.<br />
** Weasel is now Yng Weasel.<br />
** Nanoswarm is now Yng Nanoswarm.<br />
** S Armor Rotter is now Armor Rotter.<br />
** S Blade Spawner is now Blade Spawner.<br />
** S Gravity Drain is now Gravity Drain.<br />
** S Gravity Ripper is now Gravity Ripper.<br />
** S Maw is now Maw.<br />
** S Mini Ram is now Mini Ram.<br />
** S Stealth Battleship is now Stealth Battleship.<br />
** S Teleporting Leech is now Teleporting Leech.<br />
** S Tractor Platform is now Tractor Platform.<br />
** Thanks to Nypyren for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Various "wave name" changes have been made for consistency:<br />
** Frigates are now Missile Frigates.<br />
** Tanks are now Space Tanks.<br />
** Cutlasses are now Vorticular Cutlasses.<br />
** Spiders are now Spider Bots.<br />
** Autocannons are now Autocannon Minipods.<br />
** Planes are now Space Planes.<br />
** EtherJets are now EtherJet Tractors.<br />
** Force Field Bearers are now Shield Bearers.<br />
** Armors are now Armor Ships.<br />
** Anti-Armors are now Anti-Armor Ships.<br />
** Bombards are now Zenith Bombards.<br />
** AutoBombs are now Zenith AutoBombs.<br />
** Commandos are now Neinzul Youngling Commandos.<br />
** Tigers are now Neinzul Youngling Tigers.<br />
** Vultures are now Neinzul Youngling Vultures.<br />
** Weasels are now Neinzul Youngling Weasels.<br />
** Nanoswarms are now Neinzul Youngling Nanoswarms.<br />
** Thanks to Nypyren for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Various "full name" changes have been made for consistency:<br />
** Heavy Bombers are now Bombers.<br />
** Thanks to Nypyren for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Various "ship type name" changes have been made for consistency/clarity:<br />
** Z Elec Bomber is now Elec Bomber.<br />
** Z Mirror is now Mirror.<br />
** Z Paralyzer is now Paralyzer.<br />
** Z Beam Frigate is now Beam Frigate.<br />
** Z Chameleon is now Chameleon.<br />
** Z Polarizer is now Polarizer.<br />
** Z Shredder is now Shredder.<br />
** Z AutoBomb is now AutoBomb.<br />
** Z Bombardment is now Bombard.<br />
** Spire Armor Rotter is now Armor Rotter.<br />
** Spire Blade Spawner is now Blade Spawner.<br />
** Spire Gravity Drain is now Gravity Drain.<br />
** Spire Gravity Ripper is now Gravity Ripper.<br />
** Spire Stealth Battleship is now Stealth Battleship.<br />
** Spire Teleporting Leech is now Teleporting Leech.<br />
** Spire Tractor Platform is now Tractor Platform.<br />
** Spire Maw is now Maw.<br />
** Spire Mini Ram is now Mini Ram.<br />
** These changes also affecet the sort order of the ship icons in the planetary summary.<br />
** Thanks to Nypyren for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The incorrect part of the description about spirecraft has now been removed, so it isn't saying they are all non-repairable when in fact that varies based on the selected minor faction.<br />
** Thanks to Nightchill and Spikey00 for reminding us of this.<br />
<br />
* The health of spirecraft shield bearers has been doubled as an incentive to make them more attractive, as a compromise since we won't add passive regen.<br />
** Thanks to Fleet for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Ships that metamorphose (like Golems), that replicate (like viral shredders), which get rebuilt by rebuilders, and which get created via things like the mining enclosures (like spirecraft) now properly count as being built.<br />
** Thanks to PineappleSam for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Large ships that are colliding with one another, like starships or golems or spirecraft, now do a better job of hanging close together in a group rather than spreading quite so far out.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Some notable performance improvements have been made to the ship collision-avoidance movement algorithms, which are some of the most expensive in the game.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft all now have infinite engine health.<br />
** Thanks to Kemeno for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft are all now immune to munitions, shield, and speed boosting.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* In the past, the combat styles would just invisibly affect the attack powers and movement speeds of ships. Now it actually shows the real values in the interface, to be clearer what is happening there.<br />
<br />
* Scouts and scout starships have had their base movement speed doubled. However, their speed also no longer increases like other ships when the combat style is increased. This prevents scouting from being too easy/hard on the various combat styles.<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Similarly, human transports and AI carriers no longer scale up in speed with the faster combat styles, but have had their base speed doubled.<br />
<br />
* The colorization of the alerts was not actually working in the last version. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Fleet for reporting.<br />
<br />
* In the last few versions, Parasites were accidentally stacked on top of the other units in the advanced factory. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to leb0fh for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Removed/merged/etc a few fields in the core ForegroundObject class; probably more to come here as all the fields have been cataloged now.<br />
<br />
* Made ships much more likely to clear their autotargeting lists and release the memory used for them in a timely fashion when no longer in combat.<br />
<br />
* Pulled various ForegroundObject fields used only during the load-game process into a sub-object that is released after that process, to cut down on the memory footprint of ships.<br />
<br />
* Fixed loooooongstanding bug where a completed game would not show up on the high scores list if another record was already there with the same map seed and a higher score. It will now prefer a record with the IsGameOver flag, even if the score is equal or lower. Also made it log the game result more promptly after IsGameOver is set.<br />
** Thanks to many, many players for reporting this many, many times.<br />
<br />
* Okay, wow. We majorly restructured the way that "other objects" (basically, everything that is not a ship: explosions, shots, junk, rocks, shield hits, etc) is stored and initialized in memory. A lot of this was very old code that hadn't been reimagined significantly since early alpha, way before 1.0.<br />
** Not only did our restructuring result in lower overall RAM use for these objects (both ongoing and transient), it also resulted in lower CPU for creating new copies of them -- this helps a small bit during very large battles, but it also has extremely reduced the amount of time it requires to load a savegame. For a savegame that previously took 16 seconds, it now takes 10 seconds, etc. The effect of this is larger on maps with more planets.<br />
** Also fixed a rather obscure potential desync related to shot movement as part of this. Nobody had reported it, but it could have randomly struck in fairly uncommon circumstances.<br />
** Note that this is an enormous change, so could lead to some new crashes or other instability for a little while, but hopefully we caught all of the various cases that were crashing already (fingers crossed).<br />
<br />
* A bunch of more optimizations internal to the foreground objects (ships, structures, etc) has been made. The general effect of these changes is once again to reduce the memory footprint a bit, but in this case also to help reduce the CPU overhead of creating new foreground objects. This should help savegame loading speed a small bit, but in our testing it doesn't seem to have been much help so far.<br />
** All in all, these changes plus the other ones earlier in this same release version account for about 205 bytes of RAM saved per ship in the game: that's about 2MB per 10k ships. Even just in a 70k ship game, that's fairly notable that we could save 14mb there in this fashion. A lot of these also boost CPU efficiency to a minor degree, which is also cool.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the prior version that was causing units not to be able to attack enemies in the tutorials.<br />
** The issue was actually that in older saves (anything created up through 4.060), the AI player in the tutorials was in the wrong slot. The new version converts the AI players to the appropriate slot.<br />
** Amusingly, the hardest part of getting this working with older saves was that the AIs wanted to tear themselves apart.<br />
** The tutorials could definitely use some testing now, though, if anyone doesn't mind and has some time. These changes were hard on the tutorials, in terms of creating situations like instantly-winning, or ships belonging to the wrong player, etc. The efficieny gains to the game in general are well worth it, but this just means extra checking on the tutorials is needed.<br />
** Thanks to skunktail for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The yellow color of players in the tutorials is now brighter (on new savegames only) to be easier to see.<br />
<br />
* The silent doubling of player ship speed has been removed.<br />
** In its place, all of the human command stations now have an ability that doubles the speed of all allied ships on that planet. This gives the players their same home-field advantage as always, while not letting them run in circles around the AIs on the AI planets. Also, it really gives a tactical penalty when a command station is lost for the players.<br />
** The AI home planet command stations also now have this new doubles-allied-ship-speed ability, too. This is new, and makes it so that the AI home planets always have a home-field speed advantage similar to what your ships do on all your planets.<br />
** Thanks to superking and TechSY730 for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
(Released January 6th, 2011)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.060 ==<br />
<br />
* Since it did more than we thought it would for the memory efficiency of planet serialization, converted player serialization from string.concat to StringBuilder.Append. We may have made some mistake in the process and that would cause problems, please let us know if you find something.<br />
<br />
* Player ships that are in low power mode no longer are able to recharge their weapons. Note that when this happens, the recharge bar will automatically be shown for the ship, no matter what the context, to let the player know what is happening. This prevents the incentive to use some micro-intensive tactics.<br />
** Thanks to Lars Bull for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The different kinds of alerts in the upper left are now colorized by type, to make telling them apart easier to do.<br />
** Thanks to Fleet for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* In recent versions, crystal harvesters had 10x too low of health.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Youngling Commandos now have armor piercing of 750*mk (same as fighters).<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Added in a couple of "safety garbage collections" into the load savegame process to attempt to prevent the game from grabbing any more memory than it has to when loading large savegames.<br />
<br />
* Put in more exception-preventing code in the single-select dropdowns to prevent a rare issue.<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Scout starships have received some rebalancement:<br />
** Mark I now have 120k health instead of 80k.<br />
** Mark II now have 4x the health of mark I instead of 2x.<br />
** Mark III now have 8x the health of mark I instead of 4x.<br />
** Mark IV now have 10x the health of mark I instead of 6x.<br />
** Thanks to Moonshine Fox for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Put in a new CPU-efficiency-improving shift in the targeting logic for ships in FRD mode: while in FRD mode (and always for ships that are snipers), a much-less-accurate but much-faster-to-calculate range value is now used. Normally accurate ranges are important in battle, because ships have to know if they are in range to hit their target, etc. However, for ships in FRD mode, they can move to hit their target, so they only need to get a rougher idea of which ships are vaguely closest.<br />
** The main side effect of this change, aside from the speed boost, is that ships in FRD mode will choose more poorly between targets that are close together and also at a diagonal from the targeting ship. There may be some other unintended side effects, though, so we'll have to keep an eye on that.<br />
** Thanks to Penguin21 for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* The "are we on the same team" logic, which gets called a lot, is now more efficient in the general all-ais-versus-all-humans cases.<br />
<br />
* An even more enormous change has been made to how the rollups are calculated, basically making huge chunks of them per-team. This is a notable speed and RAM boost for large games and especially for multiplayer games. It particularly makes it more efficient for ships to change planets, and for savegames to be loaded.<br />
<br />
* The following bonus types are now eligible to be picked when composing an event-attack (the AI has to actually have the type in question, of course, and the different types and mark levels have different point values) :<br />
** Raiders<br />
** Parasites<br />
** Snipers<br />
** Spiders<br />
** Laser Gatlings<br />
** Autocannon Minipods<br />
** Deflector Drones<br />
** Shield Bearers<br />
** Armor Ships<br />
** Anti Armors<br />
** MLRSs<br />
** Munitions Boosters<br />
** Zenith Bombards<br />
** Zenith Electric Bombers<br />
** Sentinel Frigates<br />
** Zenith Mirrors<br />
** Zenith Paralyzers<br />
** Zenith Chameleons<br />
** Zenith Polarizers<br />
** Impulse Reaction Emitters<br />
** Spire Armor Rotters<br />
** Spire Gravity Rippers<br />
** Spire Maws<br />
** Spire Tractor Platforms<br />
<br />
* The following spirecraft are now eligible to be picked when composing an event-attack (though these won't show up in a Broken-Golems-Hard game if LotS is disabled, just as Golems cannot be picked for event attacks if TZR is disabled) :<br />
** Spirecraft Shield Bearers<br />
** Spirecraft Attritioners<br />
** Implosion Spirecraft<br />
** Spirecraft Siege Towers<br />
<br />
* Scouts I-IV, Scout Starships I-IV, (non-AI) Remains Rebuilders, and Engineers II-III and Experimental (Engineer mkIs _not_ included) are now immune to attrition.<br />
<br />
* The AI thread now thinks almost entirely in terms of team-based tactics, but especially in terms of things like warp gates, etc. Thus there really should never again be any situations where one AI player is unable to find a planet to warp into just because there is only one warp gate bordering human planets and that warp gate belongs to the other AI player.<br />
<br />
* Previously, when a bully or assassin AI type could not find a valid planet to attack belonging to the weakest/strongest player (respectively), they would warp in to ???. Now they will warp in against other players if their favorite target is not available.<br />
** Thanks to Draco Cretel for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that was causing the Warp Jumper AI type to not always be able to attack any human planet that wasn't warp jammed.<br />
<br />
* Put in a number of internal efficiency improvements with regard to properly clearing internal rollup lists and releasing their memory.<br />
<br />
* Put in a number of internal transient-RAM-reductions related to converting some AI thread dictionaries to int arrays.<br />
<br />
* AI mobile military ship combining is no longer player-specific. This means that AI ships will be condensed further than they once were when needed (when both AIs have ships at a planet), and it also means that this process requires less CPU to calculate.<br />
** The same is also now true for the creation of AI Carriers out of mobile AI ships, which will result in fewer, more-appropriately-filled-to-capacity carriers in most cases.<br />
<br />
* The AI players now coordinate as a team when deciding whether or not they should attack a player planet with their ships that are waiting on the other side of a wormhole. Previously, it was per-AI-player which led to incorrect cases where the AI players would wait too long. When determining what sort of firepower they should bring, the difficulty of the highest AI type is what is used.<br />
<br />
* The AI players should now properly value the per-planet ship caps for creating experimental and support-corps ships, and in general will flood them into planets a whole lot less.<br />
<br />
* The experimentalist and support corps ships are now more likely to send their specialty ships along with waves.<br />
<br />
* Massively refactored the AI-thread rollups in general, so that way fewer object references are required (somewhere around 1/3 as many references as before in single player, and an even lower percentage in multiplayer). These shifts in general will improve RAM and CPU use on the host computer, amongst the gameplay benefits already noted above.<br />
<br />
* Further Teleport Raider rebalancing:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 120*mk => 600*mk.<br />
** Seconds-Per-Salvo from 2 => 8.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 2 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 2 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 2 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 2 => 4.<br />
** Thanks to superking for pointing out that they weren't doing well against pretty much anything, particularly if it had armor.<br />
<br />
* A revised savegame format has now been put in place, with an emphasis on using less RAM to create it.<br />
** One happy side effect of this is that that savegame files are now about 7/8 to 4/5 of their former size. They still load in about the same amount of time, though.<br />
** Another side effect is that the new savegames actually show their loading process as they load, now, rather than just sitting there silently on parsing data.<br />
** At any rate, the chief purpose of this is to make the creation of savegames as well as the syncing of multiplayer network state into a lower-RAM-using process to avoid GC heap errors when players are already running near the RAM redline. The new format is vastly superior in that regard, possibly using as little as half as much RAM as before, depending on the exact circumstances of the save.<br />
** HANG ON TO YOUR OLD SAVES! There's no risk of corrupting any old saves with this new system, but new saves might indeed turn out to be corrupt. Our testing has resulted in no corruption, but with anything this large and new, it's good to hang onto your old saves for a bit, just in case.<br />
<br />
* The old mission summary was still in the game, taking up time getting periodically recalculated, but invisible. This was just a porting artifact, and it has now been removed.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the Zenith Power Generator did not show up in the reactors quick-button lists. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* A number of rollup lists on the Player object that were really human-only (but which were bloated by lots of AI ships on the AI versions of the objects have been made human-only. A few have been removed. This lets the functionality remain the same while having a bit less ram usage and a bit faster loading of savegames.<br />
<br />
* A message is now shown in the alerts window when an enemy black hole machine is at the current planet being viewed.<br />
** Thanks to jcarvajal for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* When one resource is at the resource cap and the other is not, the manufactories now start turning on to minimize the wasted overflow.<br />
** Thanks to Heavens, ShadowOTE, and Echo35 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions where if something had zero crystal cost, it would start out at full health instead of whatever percentage of metal had been collected.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for reporting.<br />
<br />
* If a handicap was previously set on a player, then it wouldn't get reset properly when a new game or tutorial was started. This is a bug going all the way back to 1.0 or before, apparently. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Nil Einne and Someone.r.c.tm for reporting.<br />
<br />
(Released January 4th, 2011)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.059 ==<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where a ship with over 50% parasite damage being killed inside a Spire Maw would cause an Unhandled Error due to the reclamation code assuming that a dying ship had a CurrentPlanet set (ships inside transport-like structures do not). The fix prevents the reclamation from happening, which isn't ideal but is the best way to avoid simulation-destabalizing errors like this one in this very rare case.<br />
** Thanks to Fleet for the report and easily-reproducing savegame.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a crash-on-game-start bug that could happen if the players selected more than 8 homeworlds in the lobby with some combination of fairly high difficulty and an AI type that has high defensive multipliers on some or all of its planets. The bug was in the "randomly promote tech level of AI planet" code, because the old algorithm was now returning a more than 100% chance of promoting the tech level and our random number generator is not amused by requests to generate a random number with a low-bound higher than the high-bound. The game will now just treat that case as a 100% chance to promote tech level, which means a mkIV AI planet.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a crash-on-creating-game bug with the Crafty Spire AI Type.<br />
** Thanks to love kawa for the report.<br />
<br />
* Improved memory/cpu performance of sending/saving planet state (string.concat -> StringBuilder.Append). Not done terribly commonly, but every bit helps. This could cause some problems if a mistake was made, so please let us know if something bad happens.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where Neinzul Youngling Vultures were scaling damage up from a minimum at 100% target health to a maximum at 90% (or lower) target health, they were intended to (and will now) scale from a minimum at 100%-90% target health to a maximum at 10%-0% target health.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for reporting.<br />
<br />
(Released December 30th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.058 ==<br />
<br />
* New Moderate AI Type: Spireling<br />
** Fairly aggressive AI that uses only Spire fleet ships.<br />
** Extra Ships: All Spire fleet ships.<br />
<br />
* New Moderate AI Type: Thief<br />
** Fairly aggressive AI that uses ships with tractor beams and leech capabilities. This can lead to a distinct disregard for player property rights.<br />
** Extra Ships: Etherjet tractors, Spire Tractor Platforms, Parasites<br />
** Thanks to Kemeno for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* New Hard AI Type: Retaliatory<br />
** Starts with Counterattack Guard Posts on most planets, and can actually have more than one on a planet (if that planet would have gotten one normally). This can lead to devastating counter attacks particularly when taking a mkIV planet.<br />
** Thanks to zebramatt for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* New Hard AI Type: Crafty Spire<br />
** Starts with various Spirecraft (which are generally bigger than starships and smaller than golems) on its planets.<br />
** Extra Ships: Spirecraft.<br />
<br />
* New Hard AI Type: Extreme Raider<br />
** Very nasty AI that uses raid-oriented fleet ships and really likes sending Raid Starships along with normal waves.<br />
** Extra Ships: Raider, Spire Stealth Battleship, Cutlass, Vampire, Teleport Raider<br />
** Thanks to ShadowOTE for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* New Hard AI Type: Spire Hammer<br />
** Generally solid AI that also adds a powerful Spire ship to each wave (in addition to the normal starship). At higher tech levels it will even send Capital-ship level vessels.<br />
** Extra Ships: Spire Frigates and Capital Ships.<br />
<br />
* Added 24 new achievements (1 base-game, 23 LotS).<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug since the first Unity versions where disabling a trial-mode expansion would not fully bring the game out of trial mode (even if it was the only trial-mode piece left) until you restarted the application. This also fixes the same bug for when a valid license key was actually entered and previously the game had to be restarted before that key fully "took."<br />
** Thanks to many players for reporting this, including winthrowe, vonduus, Ozymandiaz, Sizzle, and Ymihere.<br />
<br />
* A new special ability, "Self Attrition Only When Not Low-Power," is now applied to most units with self-attrition (the spirecraft scouts and jumpships, and the AI special forces guard posts, being the exceptions). This ability makes it so that things like golems, Neinzul Younglings, etc, can be put into low-power mode whenever they are not actually attacking.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The default for the galaxy map display filter is now Mobile Military Units instead of Mobile Military Firepower. All existing settings files have been adjusted to the new default.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the "Show Ship Recharge Bars" setting was not properly being read out of the settings file into the settings visual display, causing it to reset to the default if players closed the application and later restarted it and opened the settings screen again. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730, Toll, and Echo35 for reporting.<br />
<br />
(Released December 27th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.057 ==<br />
<br />
* Spire Blades and Hive Golem Wasps are now immune to being insta-killed so that they don't distract ion cannons.<br />
** Thanks to KDR_11k for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last version that was causing all AI ships to be anemically slow. This also fixed a few other way-too-slow cases.<br />
** Thanks to Retzinsky and Woggle for reporting.<br />
<br />
(Released December 24th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.056 ==<br />
<br />
* Scout health is now 3/5 of its prior value.<br />
** Thanks for Vinraith for continuing to report on scout effectiveness.<br />
<br />
* Group move is fixed (in the last version it was only working if one of the ships in the group was unable to be speed-boosted.<br />
** Thanks to BigJake for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fortresses and superfortresses now only do 10% damage to scout hulls (which includes transports).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and Suzera for reporting.<br />
<br />
(Released December 24th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.055 ==<br />
<br />
* Ion cannons, core warhead interceptors, orbital mass drivers, and counterspies are all now immune to radar dampening.<br />
** This is another nerf to scouts, as well as a general buff back to all these ships.<br />
** Thanks to Moonshine Fox and Lancefighter for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Spider turrets are no longer immune to sniper attacks.<br />
<br />
* Both spider and sniper turrets are now immune to radar dampening, which makes them a lot more interesting and powerful against AI raid starships again (recall that only the humans get these turrets).<br />
<br />
* Ships will no longer auto-kite or otherwise retreat if they are already beyond the max distance at which ships can be built on the planet.<br />
** Thanks to Kemeno for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Ships with movement that causes abilities to be reset (like fortresses) are no longer eligible for auto-kiting, or for auto-FRD mode.<br />
** Thanks to Sigma7 and matyasbot for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Fortresses no longer have the ability to transport ships. That was somewhat useless, and the counter for the transport overlapped with the repair-ability counter. Any fortresses transporting ships in existing saves will eject them.<br />
** Thanks to ShadowOTE and shugyosha for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fortresses have been significantly buffed:<br />
** Fortresses mark I-III now fire flame waves rather than missiles (superfortresses already did). This lets them now hit ships that are immune to missiles, obviously, but it also increases the movement speed of their shots from 54 to 178: a tremendous boost to their ability to wreak a lot of havoc on ships that are fast and/or distant.<br />
** Fortresses mark I-III now have 5x more health (superfortresses already had way more), making them much more substantial in terms of their own survivability.<br />
*** The AI versions of fortresses now only have 5x the health of their human counterparts, not 10x.<br />
** The attack power of fortresses and superfortresses have all been increased 10x, making them a lot more formidable again.<br />
** Superfortresses are now 2.5x more expensive than they were before.<br />
** Regular fortresses are now 10x more expensive than they were before.<br />
** Fortresses mark I-III now cost 3x more energy than before, and cannot be put in low-power mode.<br />
** Superfortresses now cost 15x more energy than before, and cannot be put in low-power mode.<br />
** Thanks to themachineissentient for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* To be consistent with the other fortresses, there is now an AI superfortress with 5x more health than the human counterpart.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Previously, very old games were not having their AI units upgraded to their new counterparts properly. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Armored Warhead attack powers have been increased 40x, making them significantly more awesome and perhaps actually strategically viable for once.<br />
** Thanks to Moonshine Fox for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Lightning Warhead attack powers have been increased 2x to make them a lot more strategically tempting again, too.<br />
<br />
* Barracks checks were previously always 200 only occurring if there were an excess 200 units at the planet, even though the barracks capacity amounts were scaled with the different unit cap scales. This meant that barracks/carriers were rarely being seeded into normal and low ship cap scale games, except for older savegames that had these.<br />
** This has been fixed so that the check floor is now 200/100/50 at high/normal/low ship caps, which means that barracks and carriers are WAY likelier to show up in those kinds of games. Correspondingly, now border aggression is less of a thing there, as it already was on high (still a thing, just not so much of one).<br />
** Thanks to orzelek for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The tachyon drone's range has been doubled from 750 to 1500, and the decloaker's range has been increased from 15k to 20k.<br />
** Thanks to Sigma7 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The ship cap of fortresses has been moved to 5/4/3 for marks I/II/III.<br />
** Thanks to Suzera for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an issue that previously existed where when ships were group-moving and speed-boosted, but some of the ships were immune to speed boosting, and those ships would then get left behind. This was a fairly substantial change to the group move logic, so please let us know if you run into any issues.<br />
** Thanks to PineappleSam for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The Starfleet Commander AI type has been completely reinvented. Now it gets no extra starships in reinforcements, and its per-planet starship caps are just as normal. On defense, it's just essentially a lightly-defended AI. However, on offense it now gets 4x the normal starships with every wave, making it a pretty interesting and dangerous offensive raider-type AI. It was already offensive-oriented, but now it is much more so.<br />
** This makes this AI type significantly easier, as before it could collect dozens of starships at its planets.<br />
** Thanks to Dyers_Eve for reporting the recent imbalance.<br />
<br />
* Lightning and Armored Warheads now scale with the ship caps, so that their damage output is higher on the lower cap scale settings, retaining their value appropriately.<br />
** Thanks to Suzera for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, EMP detonations were causing force fields to blink on and off rather than disabling them completely. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for reporting.<br />
<br />
* All ships with force fields on them are now immune to paralysis attacks (since having the paralysis attacks disable the force fields would make the paralyzers way overpowered).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the resource flows that could previously cause self-building ships to stall out, most notably force fields under some various circumstances (such as being shot, but not just limited to that).<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith for providing an awesome save that could demonstrate this.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause the health of a self-building ship to be artificially too-high. This could cause all sorts of problems, such as engineers ceasing helping to repair it, etc.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a related bug that could sometimes cause the remaining time-to-build to be massively incorrectly reported.<br />
<br />
* The bonus that guardians have against scouts has been changed from 0 to 0.01, again to prevent scouting from being too easy.<br />
<br />
* Normally tractor beams will not latch onto ships with an effective speed of 0 (from engine damage or whatever), but now that logic is only for IMMOBILE tractor beam sources. Mobile ships like martyrs, etherjets, etc, can now pick up ships with zero current move speed that would normally have move speed.<br />
** Thanks to Nightchill and Draco18s for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The range circles no longer draw with partially-transparent colors for the lines, thus reducing their GPU overhead quite a bit, more or less depending on the GPU in question.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* EtherJet Tractors now have significantly boosted tractor beam ranges (about 500 less than their attack range), so that their likelihood of actually tractoring any enemies goes way up. And, so that they do a better job of holding enemies at arms' length (though enemies can hit them anyway, they don't have the same luck with whatever is near the etherjets). In the past, the range of etherjets was short enough that sometimes it seemed like their tractors weren't even working.<br />
** Thanks to Winter Born for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Mobile ships with tractors now make an effort to move into tractor range as well as attack range if they are chasing a target. Again, this way etherjet tractors are a lot more likely to actually capture targets (in the past that was less of an issue because of the old shielding model, but now it's a definite concern).<br />
** Thanks to Winter Born for reporting.<br />
<br />
* When Spire Civilian Leader outposts are captured, they now reduce the AI Progress by 3 every hour, rather than the former value of 1. Until captured, they still keep increasing the AI Progress by 1.<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith for noting they were always a pretty raw deal before.<br />
<br />
* Okay, this one is super exciting. Six new kinds of Intra-galactic warp gates have been added for players under the CONST tab -- no knowledge required to unlock, as these are essentially logistical tools that people would find to be must-unlock techs (like the transports and rally posts had turned out to be -- we learned our lesson with that sort of thing). Here's a description of perhaps the most exciting one of the six:<br />
** Intra-Galactic Warp Gate - Advanced Factories<br />
*** When this gate is not in low power mode, all ships produced by the controlling player at any advanced factories will emerge at this gate. When there are multiple gates of this type, ships emerge from one at random. Ships that emerge are paralyzed for 60 seconds on account of their ordeal of warping. If this gate is on an enemy or neutral planet, they are paralyzed for 2 minutes instead. A gather point, ship stance (FRD, attack move, etc), and so forth can be set on the gate just like on a normal constructor, and the created ships will obey those orders.<br />
** However, there are six in all, one type each for space docks, starship constructors, advanced factories, mercenary space docks, fabricators, and missile silos.<br />
** There is a cap of five per type. Given that these can be paused and re-enabled, that's pretty useful.<br />
** The short description of this feature basically that the logistical challenges of unit production and delivery are a thing of the past.<br />
*** Before anyone complains about the game "playing itself," note that this is of no help with units that have already been placed. As has always been the case, you still need to make sure and build your ships in a sensible place for defense or offense, or you can get caught unawares.<br />
*** In terms of space docks, what this new mechanic saves is time of tearing down the docks and rebuilding them somewhere else (at the cost of temporary paralysis, of course, which means that it's not always the best choice for space docks. But it can save a lot of time when you don't want to be having to repeatedly set up queues as you move your docks around, though.<br />
*** In terms of fabricators and advanced factories, the benefit is absolutely enormous: those are immobile and you don't get to choose where to put them, so in many games that could make them of marginal use simply because of the hassle factor. Now you can deliver ships to or near to the front lines for the very minor setback of the temporary paralysis on arrival -- quite a fair trade.<br />
**** One of the reasons for advanced factories and fabricators being immobile and set in specific positions, however, is that this can lead to interesting situations where you have to defend a planet you might not otherwise want to. The beauty of this solution is that that dynamic is unharmed, because you still have to defend those distant planets. All it removes is the logistical challenge of moving the goods from that planet out into the rest of the galaxy.<br />
** In the end, given the AI's exo-galaxy warps for unit creation, it only makes sense that the humans would get something similar for intra-galaxy warps with unit creation. The symmetry there is actually pretty cool, and at any rate the goal here is savings in micromanagement, which it delivers in spades.<br />
** Thanks to Winter Born for inspiring this feature.<br />
<br />
* When human ships have been swallowed by enemy ships (such as the spire maw or starship disassembler guardian), an alert now appears in the upper left saying how many ships are currently swallowed, and what their total remaining health is. This way players have some indication of where their ship cap went to (not on specific planets, just in general that they were swallowed -- the Find function can be used to find specific ships swallowed on enemy planets), and when they will get it back (usually under 5 minutes).<br />
** Thanks to Invelios for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Scout starships can no longer be swallowed, which makes them a lot more useful again. Regular scouts can still be swallowed.<br />
** Thanks to Invelios for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Previously, when ships had been swallowed, they would in fact get properly consumed, but they would not actually give back their ship cap upon death until the game was saved and reloaded, which was obviously a huge hassle.<br />
** Thanks to Invelios for reporting.<br />
<br />
* It is now possible to replace an existing command station that belongs to you all in one action: simply build the new command station on an planet and it will replace the existing one.<br />
** Additionally, when this action is taken, it no longer triggers the when-command-station-dies logic for other ships on the planet; they don't notice the swap. This is extremely useful for reactors and harvesters, which otherwise would be unavoidably destroyed when the command station was scrapped before the replacement was built.<br />
** This also causes the planet to not leave control of the player, even while the command station replacement is self-building, whereas before it would normally have been neutral in color for a while. <br />
** Thanks to MaxAstro for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last couple of versions that was making the buy and tech button backgrounds not dimming or redding when the foreground was, which really made them hard to interpret.<br />
** Thanks to MaxAstro for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Much improved the colors of the control group labels on the planetary summary, so that they are actually legible again (first time these have been legible since the port to unity).<br />
** Thanks to Kalzarius and themachineissentient for reporting.<br />
<br />
(Released December 23rd, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.054 ==<br />
<br />
* Fixed an inaccuracy in the Armored Golem description text.<br />
** Thanks to Moonshine Fox for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Clarified the description text on Zenith SpaceTime Manipulators and Speed Boosters to note that they affect all friendly ships EXCEPT minor faction ships (in other words, your ships and allied human ships).<br />
** Thanks to Toll and Ozymandiaz for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, speed boosters and similar could override the cap of things like gravity drills, which made combos like gravity drills plus logistics command stations ridiculously overpowered. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Toll and PineappleSam for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The effects of gravity drills, gravitational turrets, etc, are now calculated approximately 3x more frequently, and thus increase CPU load a bit but at the same time make the gravity turrets in particular more effective.<br />
** Thanks to Ozymandiaz for reporting.<br />
<br />
* When there are extra metal or crystal harvesters on a planet (typically from old and semi-messed-up-saves), all of the harvesters of the type-in-excess are now removed (and presumably are then rebuilt afterward). This prevents some situations of essentially accidental-cheating. A message is sent when the harvesters of a planet are reset in this way.<br />
<br />
* All metal and crystal harvesters and all energy reactors are now destroyed on a planet when the command station is lost. The main goal of this is making the loss of a command station more meaningful again, as it used to be for other reasons, but it happily also means that energy reactors can no longer be constructed on neutral/enemy planets (thus preventing circumvention of the AI Progress needed for energy via that sort of strategy).<br />
<br />
* The various resource-gathering-type ships are no longer including the "captured on planet ownership" flag, as that was pointless given that the AI no longer has them.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an extremely longstanding bug (since pre-1.0) where in certain rare circumstances, specific harvesters could not be built.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for reporting the most recent case of this.<br />
<br />
* The way that exo-shields work has now been completely re-done. Rather than providing a single-ship forcefield, the exo-shield now just adds its health to that of the original ship. For purposes of the AI thread, the AI is now WAY better at deciding when to attack ships under exo-shields (in the past it would pretty much just ignore them). Additionally, the way that exo-shields work is a lot more RAM-efficient. Also, a ship can now be protected by both a regular force field and an exo-shield at the same time, unlike before. The visuals of exo-shields also now show up like the "ship based force fields" of riot starships and similar.<br />
<br />
* Exo-shields no longer die when their target protected object dies, they simply become unlinked and will later link with anything valid that is within range of them.<br />
<br />
* The regen rate of exo-shields has now been dropped considerably, to regenerating over 20 minutes instead of a ludicrous 30 seconds. They also now drop remains, however, so that rebuilders can come along and put them back up.<br />
** Thanks to Echo35 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Rather than having exo-shields cost a simple -2 metal and crystal per second, they simply halve the amount of resources generated by whatever ship it is they are protecting. They also now cos 750 knowledge to unlock instead of 500.<br />
<br />
* Improved the AI thread's information about guarding objects and exo-shields. This should fix some of the issues relating to units dancing, etc.<br />
<br />
* Energy reactors now drop remains when they die, so that remains rebuilders can rebuild them automatically.<br />
<br />
* Metal and crystal harvesters mark II now each cost 3250 knowledge rather than 3000.<br />
<br />
* Tachyon beam emitters now cost 250 knowledge to unlock instead of 500. The stealth tachyon emitters now cost 1500 knowledge instead of 1000 to unlock.<br />
<br />
* Ships that are still under construction are now immune to all forms of paralysis -- paralysis shots, EMPs, whatever. This prevents a number of little issues.<br />
** Thanks to TheDeadlyShoe for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The exo-shield and energy reactor remains now can't be rebuilt when on a planet that doesn't have a player command station (the exo shields because those are linked to nonexistent harvesters, so those are pointless).<br />
** Thanks to techsy730 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* A couple of force field rebalancements:<br />
** The health of mark I and player home force fields has gone up from 9 million to 14 million (and thus the AI force fields mark I have gone up from 45 million to 70 million).<br />
** The health of mark II force fields has gone up from 18 million to 30 million (and thus the AI force fields mark II have gone up from 90 million to 150 million).<br />
** Thanks to Moonshine Fox, Vinraith, and techsy730 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* A change has been put in place to make ships immediately re-check for new forcefield protection as soon as they lose protection from a prior force field. This was previously the case for command stations only. This will have some performance impact, but will greatly help correctness in the case of multi-stacked force fields. And in most cases, the performance impact will hopefully be negligible, but we look forward to your feedback on that.<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s for reporting the issue that spawned this.<br />
<br />
* All guardians are now immune to paralysis attacks, as are carriers now.<br />
** Thanks to Kemeno for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* All spire bonus ship types, and the zenith electric bombers and sentinel frigates, are all now immune to paralysis attacks.<br />
** Thanks to Kemeno for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Penetrators are now immune to force fields.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Spire Mining Ships now appear under the Mobile Builders quick buttons at the bottom of the screen.<br />
** Thanks to Echo35 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The max health of advanced research stations has been reduced by 1/5th.<br />
<br />
* Some tweaks to the resource bar display:<br />
** The parentheses around the unused resource gatherers label on the resource bar has been removed to prevent wrapping issues.<br />
** The total income display on the resources bar next to the current net income for metal and crystal has been removed. Those are both accessible through the tooltip for those items, and it was both cluttering and causing-of-wrapping-issues to have it included.<br />
** Both the metal and crystal resource sections of the resource bar are now 10px narrower each. On 1024px-wide screen resolutions, this should prevent threat, etc, from ever going off the right side of the screen, while still not having any wrapping like we used to have here (thanks to the above change).<br />
<br />
* The AI now only has a 8% chance of swarming after "irreplaceable" units like ion cannons, ARSes, etc, rather than a 70% chance.<br />
** The AI already has logic in place for valuing targets even beyond this, but much more flexible and less gap-in-the-wall type logic, so having this be very infrequent is good. However, still having it present is also good, so that occasionally the AI will mass their ships on a frontal assault on something valuable, always a good thing.<br />
** Thanks to Kemeno and others for reporting various cases.<br />
<br />
* Two new ammo-type immunities have been added: mass driver and artillery (artillery referring to mainly the artillery golem, but other mega-artillery cases as well).<br />
<br />
* Hunter/Killers are now immune to both artillery and mass drivers. As are all mark V guardians. As are core shield generators. As are all of the AI core guard posts, and the AI home command station.<br />
<br />
* The recent hunter/killer spawn logic has been (nearly) completely removed. Instead of scrapping ships to try to create an "equivalent" Hunter/Killer in circumstances of extreme threat, it now just redeploys them into carriers to meet the same goal while not affecting difficulty in the same way (for good or for ill) as had been happening with the hunter/killers).<br />
<br />
* Distribution nodes previously granted players between 20k and 200k of metal and crystal each on being burst. With all the recent economic changes, that's in no way worth even 1 AIP. Now they give between 300k and 400k of metal and crystal each on being burst (except the trojan ones, obviously, which take away half that).<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for reporting the imbalance here.<br />
<br />
* The "shots instantly hit targets leaving their planet" logic was not previously working. It should be fixed now, though, but could use more testing. Consider this a pretty major nerf to scouts, FYI.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where modules would not always draw on top of their parent ship.<br />
<br />
* The alerts box now remembers its widths from the last 12 seconds, and doesn't shrink below whatever the max size was during that period (it keeps track of the sizes once per second). This prevents the alerts box from jittering around in size as numbers count down on the wave timers, for instance.<br />
** Thanks to Kalzarius for badgering us about this a lot. ;) It does look much cleaner.<br />
<br />
* The spirecraft mining enclosures should now have the properly raised ship caps to match their actual spirecraft that they construct.<br />
** Thanks to Invelios for reporting.<br />
<br />
(Released December 22nd, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.053 ==<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the Fallen-Spire per-game-second logic was not always being called on all appropriate ships (so some chases were not being triggered at all).<br />
<br />
* Spire City Shield Generators now use the same mechanic as the Riot Shield modules (that is, they cannot be flown through, and they do not apply the 75% damage reduction to objects protected by them).<br />
** This may make things a wee bit too easy, we'll see, but it was confusing people to have things fly through those shields.<br />
<br />
* Spire Capital Ships larger than a Frigate main gun base range from 4000 => 7000 (this was kept short because the main gun has to be shorter range than any module gun that can be mounted on the ship, but 7000 should be safe for that even with the other modules that are planned).<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug that was making the planet-specific auto-build-energy-reactor-mark-(I/II/III) toggles simply not work at all.<br />
<br />
* Still working on how to balance the melee/aoe/kamikaze ship types, but went ahead and did a balance pass on the simpler turrets:<br />
<br />
* MLRS Turret:<br />
** Base Health from 58,000/74,000/130,000 => 100,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 600/800/800 => 450*mk.<br />
** Base Range from 7000 => 12000.<br />
** Build time from 70/120/170 => 60*mk.<br />
** The dps of this thing was simply _out there_, even at mkI, so with great regret:<br />
** Shots-per-salvo from 12/24/48 => flat 12.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 4 => 8.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1240/1600/2000 => 700*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 16 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 8 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 4 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 1 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs CloseCombat from 1 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Flak Turret:<br />
** Ship cap multiplier from 1.2 => 0.5.<br />
** Base Health from 110,000*mk => 250,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 100+100*mk => 750*mk.<br />
** Energy Use from 150 => 300.<br />
** Base Metal Cost from 1150 => 2000.<br />
** Base Crystal Cost from 225 => 400.<br />
** Build time from 70 => 120*mk.<br />
** Base Range from -1000+750*mk => 1000*mk (Translation: the real in-game range is going from 2250/3000/3750 => 4000/5000/6000).<br />
** Seconds-Per-Salvo from 8-mk => 7 flat.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 3000*mk => 6,000*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs CloseCombat from 8 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 8 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 3 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 1 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Basic Turret:<br />
** Base Health from 46,000/92,000/400,000 => 75,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 600 => 300*mk.<br />
** Build Time from 60/90/120 => 60*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1800/3600/7200 => 4000*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 0 => 150*mk.<br />
** Base Crystal Cost from 0 => 400.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 2 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 1 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 3 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 1 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Missile Turret:<br />
** Base Health from 56,000/86,000/130,000 => 50,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 1200 => 150*mk.<br />
** Base Range from 27,000/27,000/33,000 => 27,000 flat.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 3600/5600/7600 => 5400*mk.<br />
** Base Metal Cost from 300 => 800.<br />
** Base Crystal Cost from 1200 => 300.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 8 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Medium from 6 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 4 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 1 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 1 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Lazer Turret<br />
** Base Health from 200,000/300,000/400,000 =>150,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 800 => 300*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 600/2000/3000 => 1500*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 500/1500/3500 => 750*mk.<br />
** Build Time from 130/210/250 => 60*mk.<br />
** Base Metal Cost from 600 => 200.<br />
** Base Crystal Cost from 1800 => 900.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 15 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 8 => 2.4<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 1 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 1 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Now that Mining Golems spawn so close to the human planets, there is only a 30-minute countdown timer on them, rather than 90 minutes.<br />
** Thanks for Vinraith for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Translocator health has been increased 7x. It was a mistake that it was previously set so low (since 4.0 or so).<br />
** Thanks to Ozymandiaz for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Removed recently added rule that increased the rate of marauder spawns as AIP increased (specifically it would be 2x normal at 100-199 AIP, 3x normal at 200-299, etc); this was intentional but with the recent buffs to the marauder ships themselves it is not necessary and indeed fairly overwhelming.<br />
<br />
* Ships with modules can no longer be camouflaged.<br />
** Thanks to Moonshine Fox for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an inaccuracy in the Tachyon Guardian description.<br />
** Thanks to Nightchill for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Hybrids now cannot rebuild modules if they have been angered (fired upon by human player ships) within the last 30 seconds.<br />
<br />
* AI ships that are immune to force fields will never now prioritize attacking them over ships under it (this makes raid starships way more dangerous than before in the hands of the AI, incidentally). It was previously simply a property being mis-applied on some ships that later got ff immunity belatedly. Now it automatically removes that flag for anything with the immunity.<br />
** Thanks to themachineissentient and MaxAstro for reporting.<br />
<br />
* All guardians are now immune to being insta-killed.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an inaccuracy in the Zenith Reserve tooltip.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an inaccuracy in the decoy drone description.<br />
** Thanks to Salamander for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, using 0 as the seed on some map types could cause the game to lock up. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Sora-Chan for reporting.<br />
<br />
* All Warheads (except armored) now have 5x more health. It's been a post-4.0 bug that they have so little.<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The attack power of all the lightning warheads have been increased by 3x due to recent game rebalances. Additionally, their ranges have been increased by 0/250/250.<br />
** Thanks to Moonshine Fox for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The "Can't Go Through Wormholes" ability has been removed from any ships that are unable to move, thus preventing useless text in their descriptions.<br />
** Thanks to Heavens for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Bomber Starships now use the energy wave shot type, rather than energy burst, so that their attack is visually and aurally more impressive.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Metal and crystal manufactories now have 5x more health.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* In multiplayer games, all player-controlled command stations now automatically fold out into mobile builders for allied players. This saves time and hassle with sending mobile builders around and keeping them alive, making the actual mobile builders now simply a matter for use in enemy/neutral territory.<br />
<br />
* If either of the two icon rows on the intel summary in the galaxy map need to get wider than they can, they now will wrap down to the next line.<br />
<br />
* The icons on the intel summary in the galaxy map now are colorized by player and include the niche icons.<br />
<br />
* Carriers and Hunter-Killers can now be targeted by siege and bomber starships. Carriers still have their invincible-if-more-than-2000-ai-ships-here property, so this should be ok.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for reporting that HKs were not already like this.<br />
<br />
* Explicitly set the following flags for Hunter-Killers (some may already have been set implicitly):<br />
** Immune to Black Hole Machines.<br />
** Immune to Nuclear Explosions.<br />
** Immune to Tractor Beams.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for pointing out that HKs were not tractor immune.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where neinzul clusters were only checking for non-mine military enemy units to see if they should spawn their internal squadrons. Now checks all enemy units. Will still not trigger on scouts unless it's a privacy cluster (though it will trigger in that case, it hasn't been for a while).<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Reworked the AutoCreateUnitOutside behavior used by Neinzul Clusters and Hybrid Hive Spawners to not require that the source ship still exist when the command is processed, and to be triggered on death, so that taking out a cluster in one shot does not bypass its spawning of its internal squadrons.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for the report.<br />
<br />
* Modules can no longer be assigned to a control group, since that was really buggy and unintended anyway.<br />
** Thanks to Ozymandiaz for the report.<br />
<br />
* The logic used for most minor faction and zombie ships for deciding to move on to a different planet should now ignore the presence of any enemy target that they are incapable of actully hitting (so neutral and player-ally Dyson Gatlings won't get stuck because of mk5 ships on the planet, etc).<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where playing a game without Fallen-Spire on could lead to ClientReceivingData errors when loading the game because it would try to deserialize the galaxy-wide state string (which was added for the FS serialization) and not realize it was empty.<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Player-Ally Dyson Gatlings no longer self-attrition on human-controlled planets. This shouldn't be too unbalancing because the humans would have to capture a contiguous line of planets, the spawns only come so fast, etc.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that could cause "ghosting" of old graphics (and thus both incorrect drawing as well as performance degradation) in certain circumstances. We never actually saw evidence of this occurring in AI War -- we found it via Tidalis -- but it's something that definitely could have been happening, especially temporarily as images were being loaded in to the game.<br />
<br />
* When ships such as viral shredders replicate, they now are automatically added to any control groups that their source ship was in.<br />
** Thanks to SInflux for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* When ships such as viral shredders replicate, if the original was selected, the new ship will also be selected.<br />
** Thanks to zebramatt for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Advanced Factories, Fabricators, and Captive Human Settlements are now immune to nukes.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug that could result in resistance fighter ships built by a human player at a resistance colony being produced as minor faction units and thus not costing energy (until the game was saved and reloaded, apparently, potentially resulting in a nasty shock).<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith and Master Cylinder Pants for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some bugs with the Resource Flows tab of the Stats window where it wouldn't include everything that was causing an impact on metal or crystal (notably self-building turrets, etc).<br />
<br />
* Added a toggle to the Resource Flows tab of the Stats window, defaulting to un-toggled, that:<br />
** If unchecked, the grid is in "detail" mode and displays one row per ship with a non-zero metal or crystal impact (units with only an energy impact are omitted due to sheer volume).<br />
** If checked, the grid is in "summary" mode and displays one row for each distinct type of ship with a non-zero metal, crystal, or energy impact. This can be very helpful for figuring out where all your energy is going.<br />
<br />
* Filenames for savegames are now fully validated, avoiding characters that are not allowed, filenames that are not allowed on windows (CON, LPT1, etc), and things like directory path separators that would cause the file to get saved into a subdirectory by accident.<br />
** Thanks to ciaran, rhinosaurus, and jsterrett for reporting.<br />
<br />
* When placing ships via far-zoom, their niche images now show if they have them. This makes it a lot clearer what's going on there.<br />
<br />
* The buy buttons in ship menus now include the niche images if they have them. This makes it a lot easier to tell apart the various types of command stations, and things of that nature.<br />
<br />
* The tech buttons in the science menu now also includes the niche images, rather than including hard-to-read overlay text.<br />
** Thanks to zebramatt for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The attack recharge speed of hunter/killers has been changed from 1s to 3s.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for suggesting.<br />
<br />
(Released December 21st, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.052 ==<br />
<br />
* The Hard versions of the Broken Golems and Spirecraft minor factions now have their "challenge" side implemented:<br />
** PLEASE NOTE that the balance of this is very preliminary, please try it out and give us feedback!<br />
** Roughly every minute, the current AIP (or AIP * 0.8 for the golems one) is added to an event-attack accumulation counter that works similar to the Spire-City-provoked event attacks in the Fallen Spire progression, but is considerably more tame than that one just due to the lower magnitude.<br />
** Assuming an average AIP of 100, the first attack (of 12,000 points, base) will come a bit before the 2.5 hour mark. If your average AIP is 200, the first attack will come about an hour and 15 minutes into the game.<br />
** Each attack's base point value is 25% larger than the previous, and thus takes 25% more time to accumulate (if AIP stays constant).<br />
** The base point value cannot increase beyond 100,000 (this is somewhat less than the ceiling on FS event attacks when you have 2 cities).<br />
** The three sources of event attacks (Fallen Spire, Broken Golems - Hard, Spirecraft - Hard) are computed entirely separately from each other, so you can have three of these counting up at once if all three minor factions are on.<br />
<br />
* Event-Attack coordinated ships (as opposed to Hybrid coordinated ships) are now reflected in the threat counts.<br />
<br />
* Event-Attack "buildup" is now roughly indicated in the Alert box: when an event-attack is at least 50% "charged" the buildup will be detected and displayed with the current percent progress towards the the attack actually being spawned. The minor faction responsible for the buildup is also listed (which is helpful when multiple such factions are in play).<br />
<br />
* Put in some error-trapping code to help with diagnosing the occasional nullreferencexception in gamebutton rendering. This will both provide us with more info (which row/col button it was with the error), as well as providing a safeguard to definitely avoid any interruption to the game execution.<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* "Weak" force fields that protect their allied ships as normal but which do not collide with enemy ships (such as those by shield bearers, etc) now have their own special graphic to denote this.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for inspiring this.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a "ghost line" in the spire teleporting leech graphic.<br />
** Thanks to wyvern83 for reporting!<br />
<br />
* Mining Golem attack power has been increased 10x, armor has been decreased 3x. Health of the mining golem has been increased from 40m to 120m.<br />
** When mining golems explode, they now destroy the planet and all the resource points, but no ships. This means that there is no risk of AI Progress increase from them, they just cut off access to resources.<br />
** Mining golems are now only seeded on planets in player territory, or within one hop of player territory.<br />
** Instead of a single mining golem per planet, it is now one per human player in multiplayer games.<br />
** Instead of a single planet getting a mining golem at once, three planets all get them at the same time, now.<br />
** Mining golems are now spawned every four hours (or so), rather than every 8ish hours.<br />
** The net effect here is that with this minor faction on, you'll have planets exploding and sometimes you'll just need to let them explode. This can put crimps in your and/or AI supply, and can also put the pressure on in terms of resource availability.<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith and unclean for suggesting that mining golems needed a boost.<br />
<br />
* When a planet is destroyed, all of the new advanced resources asteroids are also destroyed in addition to the regular resources.<br />
<br />
* Mining Golems also now have 10k radar dampening.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Hunter Killers now have 5x more health, and 10x more attack power. They also now fire 10x as many shots at once as before.<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* There is now a new "Show Firepower Instead Of Ship Counts In Resource Bar" option in the interface tab of the settings window. Firepower was just too abstract to be the default thing displayed. The chief problem here was just with a few mega-sized ships in free mode, anyhow, so those can be handled through alerts.<br />
** Thanks to Red Spot for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Firepower for under-construction units is now considered to be zero, for display and AI purposes.<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft, golems, hunter/killers, and avengers all now count as "massive" ships that give the player a warning in the alerts box onscreen while the AI has these ships in free/threat mode. This way players are still warned about oversized ships that are a particular threat to them, without needing to make the actual Attack and Threat displays into something confusing (aka firepower-based). <br />
<br />
* Marauder Buzzbombs have had their attack power halved.<br />
** Thanks to MaxAstro for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the firepower calculations that was causing ships with incredibly high firepowers (like armored golems) to actually have an overflow and wind up with a firepower of 1. Now they instead are calculated as Int64s temporarily, and then capped at Int32.MaxValue. This mostly only applies to the new version of Mark V hunter/killers, and armored golems, and a few others.<br />
** This may have also been causing some performance issues in the prior version, which are now fixed.<br />
<br />
(Released December 18th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.051 ==<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in prior logic that was not causing constructor foldouts to appear for disabled players.<br />
<br />
* All fabricators now have foldouts (like advanced factories), so that when one player captures a core fabricator in a multiplayer game, all the players on his/her team now also gain access to use the fabricator. This prevents the incentivization of players to gift fabricators back and forth between one another, while also raising the usefulness of fabricators in multiplayer games by a substantial margin.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a hang-causing bug in processing the removal of a ship with coordinated underlings (like a Hybrid).<br />
** Thanks to orzelek for the report and reproducing save.<br />
<br />
* Previously the CanBeSwallowed UnitData flag was not actually being honored. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Ships with module attachment points are now inherently immune to being swallowed, to avoid dealing with really weird edge cases.<br />
<br />
* Previously it was possible for spire maws to swallow starships and starship disassemblers to swallow fleet ships, fixed.<br />
<br />
* All AI Guardians are now immune to being swallowed.<br />
** Thanks to orzelek for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Previously, there was no "Event flare" for rebelling human colonies on the galaxy map. Now there is, when they are still in the hands of the AI.<br />
** Thanks to Draco Cretel for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* It is now possible for ships to be captured from a minor faction by the humans on planet ownership change, something that was previously not allowed.<br />
<br />
* The way that rebelling human colonies work has now been completely revamped in terms of what happens once you capture them:<br />
** They now provide foldouts in multiplayer.<br />
** They cannot be used to create ships while the minor faction still controls them (previously, when the rebel colony was in supply, they could).<br />
** The ships they create are now created through a queue as you would expect, rather than through direct placement.<br />
** The colonies are captured on planet ownership change, rather than continuing to belong to a minor faction.<br />
** This fixes a number of prior bugs and logical issues with the rebelling human colonies:<br />
*** Previously, the colonies gave no economic benefit to players, despite claiming to, because they were controlled by a minor faction.<br />
**** Interestingly, no-one ever reported this one.<br />
*** Recently, it was impossible to build any ships using the colonies.<br />
**** Thanks to Vinraith, Collic, shortstar, and Malibu Stacey for reporting this.<br />
<br />
* The attack power of the resistance fighter/bombers and resistance frigates has gone up 10x, and their bonuses against hull types has gone down 10x. Their health has also gone up 10x, and they are also both now including warp detection and blind in their abilities list. Speed up from 18 to 48, also. Their ships caps have been reduced to 1/3 of what it was before, and their metal/crystal cost has gone up 3x.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for suggesting they were underpowered.<br />
<br />
* Marauders have been overhauled:<br />
** Marauder BuzzBombs have had their speed decreased from 82 to 60. Health increased 100x. Their armor rating and EMP-absorption have been removed, and they no longer explode themselves to deal area damage. They now fire area-of-effect grenades, instead. This is much, much scarier and more effective, as their firepower remains the same as before -- but is now something they can do over and over again.<br />
** Marauder Dagger Frigates have had their speed increased from 20 to 60. Health increased 100x (it was very low in recent times, unintentionall so).<br />
*** Thanks to MaxAstro for suggesting that marauders have become underpowered.<br />
<br />
* All marauders and resistance fighters are now immune to Attrition, being insta-killed, camouflaging, EMPs, gravity effects, shield boosting, munitions boosting, paralysis attacks, nuclear explosions, tractor beams, translocation, and black hole machines. They all also now include a radar dampening range of 4000.<br />
<br />
* Beachheads can no longer be used by the AI against any planets that were ever a home planet.<br />
** Thanks to colonyan, Draco18s, KDR_11k, Varone, Winter Born, amonchakad, and wyvern83 for weighing in on this one.<br />
<br />
* The spawning logic for human marauders previously was that there had to be at least 100 enemy-to-AI and AI-allied ships on the planet, unless the difficulty was set to 8 or higher, in which case it was just completely random.<br />
** The spawning logic has been changed so that on AI planets or neutral planets, there must be at least 100 human military ships present (so that marauders are more likely to show up during big attacks); and so that on human planets there must be at least 10 AI-allied military ships on the planet. The AI difficulty level no longer has any impact on this.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for pointing out some inconsistencies in the old logic.<br />
<br />
* Zombie and Minor Faction ships are no longer allowed to be regenerated.<br />
** Thanks to ShdNx for reporting that marauders could be regenerated by human regenerators.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the logic for human resistance fighters to spawn was a bit fiddly and wasn't always working as intended. It's been overhauled so that on AI planets, resistance fighters have a chance of joining in when there are at least 300 human-allied military ships, and the AI still outnumbers the humans in terms of ship count; while on human or neutral planets, there must be at least 400 human-enemy military ships, and the resistance fighters may join in.<br />
** Thanks to wyvern83 for reporting that resistance fighters were previously almost never appearing.<br />
<br />
* The AI home command station has had it's health increased 20x. It was previously actually 10x lower than expected, but it could have used a boost even above that in light of all the recent changes to the game.<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Zombified ships are all now immune to reclamation (it doesn't say this in their tooltip, as these are regular ships that have been reclaimed as zombies, and they are only reclamation-immune in their zombified state).<br />
<br />
* Both SuperTerminals and AI Eyes now spawn ships as zombie bots, so that they are extra aggressive as well as being non-reclaimable. This is a nerf from them being reclamator farms.<br />
<br />
* When players have scouted a planet, forever after it will include counts in the upper-left alerts window whenever there are enemy warp gates (reinforce or warp) at a planet. This should greatly help with player confusion on a number of fronts, the most frequent of which is the AI Eyes in recent times.<br />
** Thanks to Toll, Moonshine Fox, and TheDeadlyShoe for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* When alarm posts are triggered, there is now a chat message sent saying what kind of alarm post was triggered and on what planet.<br />
** Thanks to themachineissentient and TheDeadlyShoe for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* When AI Eyes or SuperTerminals are spewing out ships, a warning message (like the "you have flown into a minefield" message) is now shown. This is helpful particularly with the AI Eye for making sure that players (especially new players) aren't accidentally setting them off.<br />
** Thanks to TheDeadlyShoe for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The way that gravity guardians scale up their range is now much lower. Before it was 8k * mk. Now it's 6k + ( 2k * mk).<br />
** Thanks to shugyosha for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The way that the spawn planet for deepstrike-spawned-ships is chosen is now handled more correctly.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that was causing per-guard-post AI ship caps on AI types to not be set properly in recent versions.<br />
<br />
* The old way of having per-planet ship caps for AI starships has been completely replaced. That was some OLD logic, dating back to pre-1.0, and it's not been updated as much as we'd have preferred. Now the AI starships use a variant of the new per-planet logic, which has recently been updated to work better, anyhow. This results in per-type-of-starship kinds of ship caps, rather than per-"starship" ship caps. That actually works a lot better in general, or should.<br />
<br />
* Added a new cheat: We Like Carriers, which spawns in a MASSIVE wave with 1 second left on the timer. (As you may guess from many of our cheats, this was added for testing, even though it's interesting outside of that context).<br />
<br />
* When AI carriers or barracks are on a planet with more than 2000 allied-to-the-carrier ships, the carriers are now temporarily invincible. This is a CPU/RAM safety measure, to prevent player ships from autotargeting their way to a crash in huge-numbers-of-carriers situations, but with still letting ships autotarget the carriers. There's still some risk in that a player could destroy a bunch of carriers at a single time, but that's a lot less likely even inside this already-very-unusual circumstance.<br />
** My obviously-cheat-induced test case was with 30 armored golems facing off against a wave of 156,000 enemy ships, and thus some 154 carriers. Notably, the battle was able to be carried out in a completely automated fashion while never dropping the game execution speed below about 98% and without causing any crazy RAM spikes. That's the goal!<br />
<br />
(Released December 15th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.050 ==<br />
<br />
* Marauder and Human Resistance ship counter-accumulation-rate now scales somewhat with AIP (not that they have any connection to the AI, but it's a decent index for "how big should this be").<br />
<br />
* Space Tank:<br />
** MkI Metal Cost from 1540 => 1000.<br />
<br />
* Spire Gravity Drain:<br />
** Base Health from 5000+5000*mk => 7,300*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 46,000*mk => 8,200*mk (it was way, way out there).<br />
** Armor Piercing from 50,000 => 100,000.<br />
** Energy Cost from 100 => 400.<br />
** MkI Crystal Cost from 5000 => 3000.<br />
<br />
* Spire Gravity Ripper:<br />
** Energy Cost from 100 => 300.<br />
** MkI Metal Cost from 3000 => 1800.<br />
** MkI Crystal Cost from 2000 => 1200.<br />
** Base Health from 15,000+15,000*mk => 30,000*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 4000*mk => 1000*mk.<br />
<br />
* Spire Teleporting Leech:<br />
** Energy Cost from 100 => 400.<br />
** MkI Metal Cost from 3200 => 2200.<br />
** MkI Crystal Cost from 1200 => 800.<br />
** Base Health from 10000*mk => 8,200*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 750*mk => 150*mk.<br />
** Attack Power from 1600*mk => 440*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 1500 => 750*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 6 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 6 => 3.2.<br />
<br />
* Teleport Battlestation:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 400/700/1000/1300 => 310*mk.<br />
** Shots-per-salvo from 8/12/16/20 => flat 8.<br />
** Base Health from 2800/3800/4800/5800 => 14,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 600/800/1000/1000 => 450*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 0 => 600*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 10 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 10 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 10 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 2 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Shield Bearer:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 22/23/24/25 => flat 22.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 240/480/840/1220 => 3000*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 150,000*mk => 90,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 200 => 0.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 10 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 10 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs Medium from 10 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 10 => 2.<br />
<br />
* Teleport Raider:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 100/300/500/700 => 120*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 0 => 150*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 400/800/1400/2000 => 1500*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 150/225/300/375 => 0.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 30 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 4 => 2.<br />
<br />
* Deflector Drone:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 26/27/28/29 => flat 26.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 900/1500/2100/2700 => 1400*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 300/500/700/1200 => 1900*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 320/420/520/620 => 300*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 20 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 2 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 2 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 2 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* The Unit Formerly Known As Shield Booster:<br />
** Base Health from 11200/15200/19200/23200 => 37,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 3200/3400/3800/4400 => 750*mk.<br />
** Energy Cost from 200 => 500.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 300/600/1200/2400 => 1000*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 10 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 10 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 5 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 5 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 2 => 6.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Polarizer:<br />
** Base Health from 11600/15600/19600/23600/28600 => 11,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 500 => 450*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 24/48/72/96/180 => 48*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 10,000 => 100,000.<br />
** The multiply-damage-by-square-root-of-target-armor mechanic now gives a minimum attack multiplier of 4 even against targets with less than 16 armor, and a maximum attack multiplier of 100 even against targets with more than 10,000 armor.<br />
<br />
* Munitions Booster:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 18/19/19/20 => flat 18.<br />
** Base Health from 2800/3800/4800/5800 => 37,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 600/800/1000/1000 => 300*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 300/600/1200/2400 => 1000*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 10 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 10 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 2 => 6.<br />
<br />
* Parasite:<br />
** Base Health from 6600*mk => 7200*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 400+100*mk => 450*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Medium from 3 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 2 => 4.<br />
<br />
* Impulse Reaction Emitter:<br />
** Base Health from 11600/15600/19600/23600/31600 => 11,000*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 150/300/450/600/720 => 150*mk.<br />
** Damage/energy scaling changed from multiplying by sqrt(energy)/10 to multiplying by 1 + (energy/1024), with a maximum multiplier of 30. Note that partial units of 1024 are counted, so something with an energy use of 200 will take roughly 1.2x damage.<br />
<br />
* Spire Armor Rotter:<br />
** Base Health from 11000*mk => 14500*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 700*mk = 1200*mk.<br />
** Energy Cost from 100 => 250.<br />
** (MkI) Metal Cost from 1000 => 800.<br />
** (MkI) Crystal Cost from 2400 => 1900.<br />
<br />
* Spider (MkI-IV):<br />
** Base Health from 3600/4200/6200/8200 => 3600*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 60 => 150*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 100/300/450/700 => 1000*mk.<br />
** Engine Damage from 15/30/50/90 => 15*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 8 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 2 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 1 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs CloseCombat from 1 => 6.<br />
<br />
* Etherjet:<br />
** Base Health from 2400/3600/5400/7800 => 2400*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 100/300/700/1100 => 600*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 1000/1500/1750/2000 => 1000+(250*mk).<br />
** Tractor Range from 400/450/500/600 => 400+(50*mk).<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 20 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 3 => 4.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Mirror:<br />
** Base Health from 10,000/25,000/45,000/75,000/95,000 => 11,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 500/1000/2000/4000/8000 => 600*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 100/200/400/800/1600 => 500*mk.<br />
<br />
* Spire Tractor Platform:<br />
** Base Health from 60,000*mk => 300,000*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 200*mk => 3,500*mk.<br />
** Shots per salvo from 21/24/27/30/33 => flat 21.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 3000*mk => 750*mk.<br />
** Removed penalty vs Polycrystal.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 1 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 1 => 2.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Paralyzer:<br />
** Base Health from 3500*mk => 3600*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 350 => 450*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1/2/4/8/16 => 625*mk (this still gives them a really low dps-at-cap, but it's not completely useless).<br />
** Paralysis seconds per shot from 8/10/12/14/18 => 6+(2*mk).<br />
<br />
* Colony ships are now immune to reclamation.<br />
** Thanks to Varone for reporting that they weren't already immune.<br />
<br />
* Changed number-of-enclaves spawned for a roaming enclave spawn-event from 1 + (AIP / 50) to 1 + (AIP / 75).<br />
<br />
* When multiple roaming enclaves are spawned as part of a single spawn-event, they now each spawn on a randomly selected planet (of the eligible planets). This can still result in multiple spawns on a single planet, but it's much less likely.<br />
<br />
* Doubled number of precomputed circular offset points for pre-displacement stuff like large-number-of-unit moves and exiting wormholes, etc.<br />
<br />
* Mobile Builders are now immune to reclamation.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey for reporting that they weren't.<br />
<br />
* Continuous beam weapons no longer get overkill reload-refund.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for pointing out that they were.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Tiger:<br />
** Base Health from 10,000/15,000/20,000/25,000/30,000 => 11,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 400 => 300*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 2400/3000/3600/4200/5000 => 2800*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 40 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 20 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 20 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Medium from 8 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 4 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 1 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Commando:<br />
** Base Health from 10,000/15,000/20,000/25,000/30,000 => 6,600*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 120/220/320/320/460 => 150*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 270/540/810/1080/2250 => 1000*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 15 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 10 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 8 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 8 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 1 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs CloseCombat from 1 => 2.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Vulture:<br />
** Base Health from 12,000/16,000/20,000/24,000/28,000 => 15,400*mk<br />
** Armor Rating from 400 => 450*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1/3/6/8/10 => 77*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 0 => 100000.<br />
** Attack multiplier (from enemy health) now has a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 90.<br />
** Penalty against UltraHeavy removed.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Weasel:<br />
** Base Health from 4000/6000/10000/16000/24000 => 15,400*mk<br />
** Armor Rating from 120/220/320/320/460 => 600*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 900/1200/1500/1800/2500 => 2250*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 20 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 2 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 2 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 1 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 1 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 1 => 4.<br />
<br />
* To compensate for the pretty significant buffing of mkIII younglings (by virtue of the new base values for mkI and the linearization of stats by mk) and thus the minor-faction versions, Roaming Enclave and Preservation Warden "hangar size" has been reduced to half of what it was (300 => 150 for roaming, 500 => 250 for wardens), and the time-to-"build"-one-internal-ship has been doubled. Similar changes made to Neinzul Clusters and Neinzul Privacy Clusters (not to bomber or viral clusters yet, since the neinzul bomber and neinzul viral swarmer haven't been changed yet).<br />
<br />
* Added some measures to make the game less likely to hang onto memory it no longer needs (excess rollup list space, dead ships still linked to other objects, etc).<br />
** Note that this could introduce some instability, but our tests worked fine.<br />
<br />
* Changed a few ship types (like the blade spawner) that were using AIPerPlanetShipCap to use a new AIPerGuardPostShipCap flag that will allow us to prevent massive concentrations of larger fleet ships on AI planets but also not interfere with their inclusion in waves.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for reporting that the previously limited ship types were not being added in proper quantity to waves.<br />
<br />
* Spire Blade Spawners are now not eligible to be used as a homogenous wave, though they can still be used in schizo waves.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Electric Bombers and Sentinel Frigates now use AIPerGuardPostShipCap (of 4/2/1 on high/normal/low caps, respectively) to avoid big concentrations on AI planets, and to make it easier to engage them a few at a time when attacking AI planets (since planets with many guard posts may still have a pretty scary number of them but they won't generally all dogpile you).<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for pointing out that AI reinforcements of zelecs and sentinels could pile up to be pretty brutal after their rebalancing.<br />
<br />
* The experimental anti-bottleneck/anti-giant-fleet from the last version was problematic and on shaky logical ground to begin with. It was an interesting brief experiment, and thanks to everyone for bearing with us and sharing your thoughts whether you loved it or hated it. But this is one mechanic where trying to fix it is likely to just spiral out of control, and we'd rather devote our time and attention to more promising avenues.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that could cause uv textures to become accidentally flipped.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Nesters, Raid Engines, and Alarmist AI types now have 2x the normal number of data centers seeded to offset their AI-Progress-increasing weapons to some extent. Special Forces captains now have 1.4x the normal number of data centers because of all their special forces guard posts.<br />
** Note that this will not affect existing savegames, since the data center seeding there is already past.<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft ship caps have been changed around from being a flat 2 as in the last release.<br />
** The following spirecraft now have ship caps of 5/4/3/2/1 (mark I through V): Shield Bearer, Attritioner<br />
** The following spirecraft now have ship caps of 8/6/4/2/1 (mark I through V): Ion, Penetrator, Implosion, Siege Tower<br />
** The following spirecraft now have ship caps of 16/12/8/4/2 (mark I through V): Ram, Martyr, Scout, Jumpship<br />
** Thanks to MaxAstro for suggesting a sliding scale of this sort.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a number of issues with per-planet AI ship count limiters kicking in when they should not have been. This is most notable for things like AI starships that are included in a wave to an AI planet, or just included to a planet in general, for instance. Now only guarding or planetary roamer ships are even included in the ship caps -- free/threat ships, special forces ships, etc, don't count, since they are all transient, anyhow.<br />
** This also includes some performance improvements associated with it, including making savegames open a hair faster.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a since-the-port-to-Unity bug with ships being selected, where if you drag-selected once it would select military-only, and then on the second time over the same group it would select all.<br />
<br />
(Released December 15th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.049 ==<br />
<br />
* Added new Galaxy Display Mode: "Detected Threat"; only displays data from planets with current scout intel.<br />
<br />
* Added new Galaxy Display Mode: "Detected Threat Firepower"; only displays data from planets with current scout intel. This displays the total rough firepower of the threat ships (the raw value is divided by 1000 to make it a bit easier to read; it's a relative value anyway).<br />
<br />
* Added new Galaxy Display Mode: "Detected Core Shield Generators"; works like the previously-existing single-type modes, displays all 5 types of core shield generator each with a different color.<br />
** The old single-type modes have been removed.<br />
** Thanks to cathexis for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* As more variable ship sizes have been introduced to the game, the utility of simply counting ships has been dropping sharply: is one threatening ship a big deal, or not? Most players would agree not. But what if that sole ship is an avenger or a golem? Then, certainly, that's as dangerous as hundreds or thousands of ships and demands immediate attention.<br />
** For this reason, the overall threat and attack counters at the top of the screen have been changed to now show total firepower rather than ship counts. This is a bit more abstract, but it's far more useful for actually gauging danger in the current builds of the game, and is only going to be becoming more critical soon.<br />
** Players can still see the count of ships making up this threat or attack value by looking in the tooltip that is shown when hovering over these items in the resource bar.<br />
** Note that the wave notices still show ship counts (and thus don't have an "F:" in front of them), since those are talking about theoretical ships and not literal existing firepower.<br />
<br />
* The Attacking ships tooltip has been updated to show the same kind of sorted per-planet info that the threatening ships tooltip does.<br />
<br />
* In the last few versions, capturable ships were switching to player control as soon as a command station was started into construction. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith and Toll for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The small buttons on the left of the galaxy map for the display mode and display filter have been removed, as they were redundant with the much better dropdowns at the bottom of the screen since 4.0.<br />
<br />
* The firepower for ships inside transports or barracks/carriers are now properly included in the firepower totals.<br />
<br />
* All of the various galaxy map filters now have both Units and Firepower variants.<br />
<br />
* The AI now considers munitions boosting when deciding whether or not to fleet the planet it is on.<br />
<br />
* The way that the AI does threat assessments has been improved a ton in general on the AI thread. Specific areas of improvement include transports, carriers, barracks, and munitions boosting, but also it's just been much improved in general.<br />
<br />
* The AI now is waiting only until it has equal force to the enemy human player, rather than waiting until it has overwhelming force, except on lower difficulties where it attacks sooner (less than 6 attacks with half-forces, less than 5 attacks with third forces).<br />
<br />
* The scale of displayed firepower has been reduced 5x, to result in smaller, more manageable numbers that are less likely to go to six figures.<br />
<br />
* Previously, AI ships that were being "coordinated" by other AI ships (such as hybrid hives) were counting as threat. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* A new command has been added to the game: "cmd:enable cheats" turns on cheats for the current campaign, but does not itself count as a cheat.<br />
** Note: Having cheats enabled does not affect score or the game's outcome at all, until players actually use the cheats. Disabling cheats is simply a "safety net" mechanism so that players don't accidentally use cheats, and so that players can't grief by suddenly cheating out of the blue.<br />
** Further note that this command cannot be used when there is more than one active player (in other words, if you use "manage players" to disable all the players but the host, you ''can'' use this command). This is another anti-griefing safety measure.<br />
** Lastly, this specific alteration to the savegame does not require a full sync and so does not create a conversion save file, etc. It just makes the changes right in memory, as it's a comparably simple change to the save.<br />
<br />
* Two new cheats have been added to the game:<br />
** Fog This! (Change Fog of War To "Complete Visibility")<br />
** Better Than Trelawney (Reveal Random AI Types)<br />
<br />
* Revisited several recently rebalanced types since we now have a better feel for the balance we're going for:<br />
<br />
* Sniper:<br />
** Base Health from 30,000*mk => 18,750*mk.<br />
** Armor rating from 800+100*mk => 0.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 8100*mk => 7500*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 8 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 5 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs CloseCombat from 5 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Medium from 3 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 2 => 6.<br />
** Energy use from 100 => 250 (mkI has half energy cost, as usual).<br />
** Metal cost from 1200 => 1500.<br />
<br />
* Eyebot:<br />
** Base Health from 1000*mk => 7200*mk.<br />
** Armor rating from 500 => 0.<br />
** Attack Power from 1800*mk => 2000*mk.<br />
** Metal cost from 60 => 100.<br />
** Crystal cost from 60 => 100.<br />
** Energy cost from 10 => 100.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 6 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 10 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 5 => 3.2.<br />
<br />
* Stealth Battleship:<br />
** Base Health from 250,000*mk => 275,000*mk.<br />
** Energy Use from 800 => 2000.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 4,500*mk => 4,000*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 2 => 1.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 2 => 1.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 2 => 1.4.<br />
<br />
* Tachyon Microfighter:<br />
** Base Health from 10,440*0.9*mk => 7,000*mk.<br />
** Armor rating from 75 => 150*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 975*mk => 700*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs CloseCombat from 4 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 3.2 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Bulletproof Fighter:<br />
** Base Health from 20300*mk => 16000*mk.<br />
** Armor rating from 150 => 300*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1625*mk => 1400*mk.<br />
** Metal Cost from 200 => 400.<br />
** Armor piercing from 1000*mk => 750*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs CloseCombat from 4 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 3.2 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Fighter:<br />
** Armor rating from 100 => 150*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1300*mk => 1200*mk.<br />
** Armor piercing from 1000*mk => 750*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs CloseCombat from 4 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 3.2 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Autocannon Minipod:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 160*mk => 140*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 6000*mk => 3900*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 3 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 3 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 3 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 3 => 3.2.<br />
<br />
* Raptor:<br />
** Base Health from 3500*mk => 3600*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1200*mk => 1000*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 3 => 1.8.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 1.5 => 1.8.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 2 => 1.8.<br />
<br />
* Sentinel Frigate:<br />
** Base Health from 90,000*mk => 75,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 800 => 300*mk.<br />
<br />
* Anti-Armor:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 900*mk => 950*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 100*mk => 150*mk.<br />
** Energy Cost from 100 => 50.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 5 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 5 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 5 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 4 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Space Plane:<br />
** Base Health from 1500*mk => 2100*mk.<br />
** Energy Cost from 150 => 100.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 4 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 5 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 4 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 4 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Acid Sprayer:<br />
** (fixed bug where it wasn't actually multiplying attack power, health, or armor piercing by mark level)<br />
** Base Health from 11,600*mk => 11,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 500*mk => 450*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 1000 => 450*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 9 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 9 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 7 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 7 => 6.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Chameleon:<br />
** Base Health from 13,000*mk => 14,500*mk.<br />
** Energy Use from 100 => 50.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 3 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 3 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 3 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 2 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Infiltrator:<br />
** Base Health from 2000*mk => 2900*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 500 => 150*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 200+200*mk => 300*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 6 => 4.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Electric Bomber:<br />
** (fixed bug where health was not multiplied by mark)<br />
** Base Health from 60,000*mk => 75,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 1000+200*mk => 600*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 32,000*mk => 38,000*mk.<br />
** Energy Cost from 1000 => 500.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 10 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 2 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 2 => 3.2.<br />
** Removed 0.5 penalty against CloseCombat.<br />
<br />
* Lazer Gatling:<br />
** (fixed bug where health was not multiplied by mark)<br />
** Base Health from 1,750*mk => 1,400*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 120*mk => 150*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 500*mk => 600*mk.<br />
** Energy Cost from 50 => 20.<br />
** Metal Cost from 150 => 80.<br />
** Crystal Cost from 150 => 80.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 3 => 1.8.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 3 => 1.8.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 3 => 1.8.<br />
<br />
* Bomber:<br />
** Base Health from 9000*mk => 11,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 200+300*mk => 600*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1500*mk => 1900*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 6 => 10.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 6 => 10.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 3 => 10.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 4 => 10.<br />
<br />
* Space Tank:<br />
** Base Health from 7200*mk => 7300*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 200+300*mk => 750*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1800*mk => 2600*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 6 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 6 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 6 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 3 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 4 => 3.2.<br />
<br />
* Missile Frigate:<br />
** Base Health from 9000*mk => 11,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 150 => 150*mk.<br />
** Attack Reload Time from 10/9/8/7/6 => flat 10.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1000*mk => 1600*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 5 => 10.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 5 => 10.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 5 => 10.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 5 => 10.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Bombardment:<br />
** Base Health from 20,000*mk => 27,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 150 => 150*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 1 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 1 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 1 => 2.<br />
** Removed penalties against Artillery, CloseCombat, and Light.<br />
<br />
<br />
* And rebalanced a few types that haven't been touched recently:<br />
<br />
* Armored:<br />
** Base Health from 40,000/60,000/80,000/100,000/140,000 => 25,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 3,000/3,200/3,400/3,600/4,000 => 750*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 400/1,200/2,000/3,000/6,000 => 800*mk.<br />
** Base Range from 200/500/600/800/900 => 300+100*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 9 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs CommandGrade from 6 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 6 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 6 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 6 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 6 => 4.<br />
<br />
* Raider:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 36/38/40/42/45 => flat 36.<br />
** Base Health from 1600/3200/5200/10000/13600 => 3000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 150/225/300/375/500 => 150*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 200/400/600/800/1200 => 200*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 3000/4000/5000/6000/7000 => 10000.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 4000/4000/5000/6000/7000 => 4000+100*mk.<br />
** Metal Cost from 100 => 40.<br />
** Crystal Cost from 300 => 120.<br />
** Energy Cost from 50 => 20.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 8 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 12 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 5 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 1 => 4.<br />
<br />
* MLRS:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 240/600/960/1120 => 800*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 2800/3200/3800/3800 => 2800+200*mk.<br />
** Shots-Per-Salvo from 4/6/8/12 => flat 8.<br />
** Reload Time from 6 => 12.<br />
** Base Health from 16800/24800/30800/36800 => 14,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 600/800/1000/1000 => 600*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 16 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 10 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 8 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 4 => 2.<br />
<br />
* Roaming enclaves now only hold 30% as many ships, but when the game spawns new roaming enclaves it spawns an additional enclave (of the same alignment) for every 50 AIP. So at 0-49 AIP it spawns 1 enclave, at 50-99 AIP it spawns 2, etc.<br />
<br />
* In a recent version, ships that were in low power mode would ignore commands from the AI. Now, instead ships will be woken up from low power mode when given commands from the AI. This may or may not cause some strange issues, but more likely it should resolve some of the "AI ships keep staying in low power mode!" issues when players are attacking planets.<br />
<br />
* Additionally, AI ships that have active commands from the AI will no longer be automatically put back into low-power mode even if they otherwise would be.<br />
<br />
* Fixed up some age-old nonsensical code from the AI thread, the unclarity of which had been the cause of some recent bugs with threat accumulating.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a major longstanding typo in the AI loop dating back to sometime pre-3.120, wherein huge numbers of the AI's planets often would not be evaluated for AI logic, attacking, etc. Actually, depending on the circumstances of the savegame, it could affect no planets or it could affect virtually all of them. In one example save from Spikey00, for instance, it was only processing 4 planets out of 120 for the AI... with the result that over 17,000 ships accumulated in threat.<br />
** This one took forever to track down, but was super worth it. A lot of the "why didn't the CPA ships actually attack" issues probably trace back to this. Not sure why exactly this issue has been seeming more prevalent in the last week (perhaps related to the other, more recent issues reported in the line item above), but it's very clearly some code that dates all the way back to the initial import to Unity and before.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for providing the save that finally helped us track this down.<br />
<br />
* The logic for "excess starship removal" on AI planets is now significantly better, and will never clean up starships because of an excess of free/threat starships, which might just have clustered on a planet. Only "planetary roamer" starships will be kept to a specific cap, now.<br />
<br />
* AI Hunter/Killers have been coded into the game for some while now (you could see them in the planetary summary indexes), but they were never actually spawned or used by the AI. As players will know, they were truly fearsome in the stats screen. Their stats have been adjusted a bit (mostly downward) for this release.<br />
<br />
* When there are more than 4,000 ships in Threat for the AI players, they will convert some portion of that to the equivalent firepower of Hunter/Killers. Generally this will then leave between 1,000 and 2,400 AI ships behind as individual threat, while creating 1-2 hunter killers.<br />
** Typically a single hunter/killer ranging from mark I-V will be created, and then if there is any remainder that will go to a second mark I hunter/killer. So, this can actually bump the threat up slightly because of that remainder effect, but generally speaking it's not an enormous effect (and, hey, the hunter/killers are meant to be scary (and they are).<br />
** When these are spawned, huge numbers of the AI's other ships are scrapped. The numbers vary based on firepower ratings, but in a lot of cases it's upwards of 12,000 mark III/IV ships that are packed into one single Hunter/Killer Mark V, for example. It's significant compacting, and so you should expect the hunter/killers to present more trouble than... well, pretty much anything other than the avenger, or the biggest golems, or similar.<br />
*** Right now their attack strength and health are preliminary. They may be too fearsome, or they may be too easy. Feedback very much welcomed on this, but just keep in mind how many other ships they are supposed to be representing. Our best guess is that they will be a bit too easy compared to what we want.<br />
** When spawned, these appear on one of the AI homeworlds whenever possible. When that isn't possible (if both homeworlds are missing), they will instead appear on a random AI planet.<br />
** The primary reason for this is to keep games running smoothly and not getting bogged down on the CPU (or worse, getting out-of-RAM-errors) in extreme-threat situations such as extended sieges. This is very similar to a big part of the function of carriers and barracks, which address ships in waves or guarding ships. This is the first time that existing free/threat AI ships has been addressed in this way, but it's a very important function.<br />
** The secondary function, of course, is to make the massive-threat events even slightly more challenging/intense.<br />
** In short: you will fear these on the battlefield, but will absolutely love what they do for you in the performance department. And these are a prime example of why the threat meter now shows firepower instead of ship counts as of this release.<br />
<br />
* All ships that can be captured on planet ownership change, or which swallow enemy ships, are now immune to camouflaging.<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft are now internally treated as "major weapons" by the game, in the same way that golems and anything of the type heavy defense is.<br />
<br />
* All major weapons are now immune to camouflaging, EMPs/paralysis, munitions boosting, shield boosting, and gravity effects. This partially buffs them and partially nerfs them, but underscores their epic nature, at least.<br />
<br />
* Forcefields now have a firepower rating, even though they typically don't have a direct attack. This helps for overall strength-of-forces analysis, both for the humans and the AI.<br />
<br />
* The AI now has an anti-extreme-blobbing/bottlenecking mechanic built in very similar to the one for anti-deepstriking. For every 10,000 firepower or more on a planet, the AI home planets will spew out ships equivalent to that which is spewed out with the deep striking. If a player thus has 310,000 firepower on a single planet, that's as bad as doing 62 deepstrikes at once, for instance.<br />
** This applies to both AI planets and player planets. So if the players try to make an absolutely-impenetrable defense, the AI notices and gets pissed, and the same thing is true if the AI tries to make a crazy attack force.<br />
** This may make the fallen spire minor faction extremely difficult at the moment, thanks to the crazy-high firepower on the spire city buildings. We'll have to address that as we continue to evaluate the balance of this feature. However, for the moment the firepower of the fallen spire city buildings are all being undervalued by 2x, which should help a tremendous amount.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft are now limited to a ship cap of two per type of spirecraft. Given that there are 50 different types of spirecraft, this is not a huge restriction (that's 100 different ships right there), but it does prevent some of the worst excesses of the spirecraft lifestyle, so to speak.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Rams, Shield Bearers, Jumpships, and Martyrs are now never repairable. These were all made to be single-use, and are simply massively unbalanced without it.<br />
<br />
* The Firepower calculation has been switched around so that high-health ships aren't so highly valued as before. The firepower calculation still needs a fair bit of work to be truly accurate for the main range of situations (ignoring things like special abilities, etc), but it's getting there.<br />
<br />
(Released December 11th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.048 ==<br />
<br />
* Sniper Turrets:<br />
** Base Health from 24,000 => 100,000.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 1 => 6.<br />
** This is to compensate for the Raid Starship getting the 8000 radar dampener range, because now you'll need to plant snipers close to where you expect to face the Raid starships. Doing so should maintain the sniper turret's use as a counter to the raid starship, however.<br />
<br />
* Spider Turrets now have the same attack power, bonuses, and health as sniper turrets.<br />
<br />
* In the prior version, all ships were immune to attrition. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Toll and Fleet for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an error that could sometimes strike on the AI thread in the last version with upgrading ship types.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Without trying to get too complex and factor in everything into the firepower rating, the firepower ratings now value the overall health of their ships. Thus if there are some really high-health ships, like golems, those are considered to have notably higher overall firepower, since their survivability determines how much damage they'll have a chance to dish out before they die.<br />
<br />
* Border Aggression has always had a mechanism whereby it would get more severe the longer players played: the cap of total attacking units plus threat would increase by 20 per hour of play. The cap would basically not release any ships to border aggression if the total number of enemies attacking and/or threatening exceeds that cap.<br />
** However, there was a catch: the cap was capped at 1/4 the total size of the player's current military. This cap on the cap has now been removed, so very long games now get ever-increasing border aggression caps.<br />
** Note that this doesn't mean that border aggression will definitely increase linearly over an entire long game, but it won't be artificially kept low if it would have been high late in a 60-hour game or whatever.<br />
<br />
* Border Aggression is now keyed based on firepower. The caps for BA now go up by the equivalent of 20 mark III bombers per hour.<br />
<br />
* The Starfields have been adjusted to no longer try and draw if they failed to initialize, thus preventing flooding of a ton of issues into a single log file.<br />
** Thanks to glassairports, nl1dnv, and snelg for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The prior version would throw tons of errors if the player had an expansion installed but not unlocked. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to glassairports, nl1dnv, and snelg for reporting.<br />
<br />
(Released December 9th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.047 ==<br />
<br />
* Both the Gravity Driller and One Way Doormaster types now have 2x as many data centers as normal (in the prior release, one way doormasters had 3x the norm, but that was a miscalculation on my part).<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug in last version where Tachyon Microfighters had no tech prerequisites.<br />
** Thanks to Suzera for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Bombardment:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 8,000*mk => 45,000*mk (note, this unit has no bonuses).<br />
** Base Health from 10,000*mk => 20,000*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 0.5 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Close Combat from 0.5 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 0.25 => 1.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Electric Bomber:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 8,000/27,000/56,000/80,000/120,000 to 32,000*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 30,000*mk => 60,000*mk.<br />
** Armor rating from 1500/2500/4500/4500/4500 to (1000 + 200*mk).<br />
<br />
* Added "Experimental Auto-Kite Behavior" textbox to the galaxy controls window.<br />
** This is an experimental control, use at your own risk.<br />
** Valid values are 0 through 50,000 (no commas in the textbox, please). If this is not zero, all your non-melee, non-sniper ships with greater than the specified range will automatically pull away from their target so that they are (effectiveRange - 500) range units away.<br />
** We're working with some players to see if this results in desirable behavior.<br />
** Thanks to Suzera for inspiring this control.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a crash bug when a ship with the DamageMultiplierOnEnemyPlanets flag (like engineers) was hit by a shot from an enemy that no longer had a CurrentPlanet (because it had been sucked into a Maw, or gone into cold-storage, etc).<br />
** Thanks to Kemeno for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Trying to make parasites not slaughter everything with their newfound dps:<br />
** Base Attack power from 40,000*mk => 4,000*mk.<br />
** Ship Cap Multiplier from 1.5 => 0.5.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for reporting the... terrifying capabilities of 4.046 parasites.<br />
<br />
* To make them more reasonable as fighter+ types:<br />
** Bulletproof fighter hull type from Medium => Light.<br />
** Tachyon microfighter hull type from Swarmer => Light.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for pointing out that having a Medium hull with shell immunity is serious business.<br />
<br />
* Bomber:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 28/25/22/18/30 => a flat 28 (same as a fighter).<br />
** Base Attack Power from 600/2700/4200/9000/15000 => 1500*mk.<br />
** Base Range from 1000/1300/3000/3400/3000 => 800 + (200*mk).<br />
** Attack Reload Time from 12/12/12/12/8 => a flat 12.<br />
** Base Health from 8,000/20,000/36,000/60,000/65,000 => 9,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 500/1500/3500/3500/5500 => 200 + (300*mk).<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 10 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs CommandGrade from 10 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 10 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery 7 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 2 => 3 (Yes, increased).<br />
** Note that Space Tank stats are based off Bomber stats with several multipliers and changes.<br />
<br />
* Space Tank:<br />
** Move Speed from 0.5 * Bomber's => a flat 12 (same as a missile frigate).<br />
** Metal Cost from 1.2 * Bomber's => 2.2 * Bomber's (note that it has no crystal cost).<br />
** Same bonus changes as the Bomber, except Tanks have a bonus against Polycrystal instead of CommandGrade (and it went from 10 => 6).<br />
<br />
* Sentinel Frigate:<br />
** Base Health from 120,000/160,000/220,000/280,000/330,000 => 90,000*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 2,000*mk => 20,000*mk (note, this unit has no bonuses).<br />
<br />
* Acid Sprayer:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 40*mk => 450*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs. Composite from 50 => 9.<br />
** Bonus vs. Neutron from 50 => 9.<br />
** Bonus vs. Polycrystal from 38 => 7.<br />
** Bonus vs. Refractive from 38 => 7.<br />
** Base Health from 11,600/15,600/19,600/23,600/31,600 => 12,000*mk.<br />
<br />
* Sniper:<br />
** Base Health from 6000/8000/10000/12000 => 30,000*mk.<br />
<br />
* The balance export added last version now includes hull type for each ship.<br />
<br />
* Raptor:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 300/550/800/1050/1800 => 1200*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 1600/2600/3800/6200/9800 => 3500*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 0 => 500*mk.<br />
** Bonus against Light from 8 => 3.<br />
** Bonus against UltraLight from 4 => 1.5.<br />
** Bonus against Swarmer from 2 => 1.<br />
** Bonus against Refractive from 1 => 2.<br />
<br />
* Infiltrator:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 120*mk => 270*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 1440/1680/2480/3280 => 2000*mk.<br />
** Bonus against Turret from 10 => 1.<br />
** Bonus against Heavy from 2 => 4.<br />
** Bonus against UltrayHeavy from 4 => 6.<br />
** Bonus against Scout from 2 => 1.<br />
<br />
* Eye Bot:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 2000*mk => 1800*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 360/420/620/820 => 1000*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 4 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 20 => 10.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 20 => 5.<br />
** Bonus vs Scout from 2 => 1.<br />
<br />
* Space Plane:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 44/45/46/48/50 => flat 44.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 500/1500/3500/5500/10000 => 600*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 2000/3000/3500/4000/4000 => 2000 + (500*mk).<br />
** Base Health from 600/900/1400/2000/2000 => 1500*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 2 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 10 => 5.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 3 => 4.<br />
<br />
* Stealth Battleship:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 8800*mk => 4500*mk.<br />
** Shots-Per-Salvo from 8/10/12/14/16 => flat 8.<br />
** Energy use from 100 => 800<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 0.5 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 1 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 1 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 1 => 2.<br />
<br />
* Laser Gatling:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 24/25/26/27/28 => flat 24.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 180*mk => 150*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 0 => 500*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 1300/1900/2900/3700/3600 => 1750*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 120/220/320/320/460 => 120*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs PolyCrystal from 15 => 3.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 15 => 3.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 5 => 3.<br />
<br />
* Anti-Armor:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1200/2000/3200/6000 => 900*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 10000/14000/18000/22000 => 10000*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 1600/3600/5600/7600 => 2000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 100/150/200/250 = 100*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 14 => 5.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 10 => 5.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 6 => 5.<br />
<br />
* Fighter and Tachyon Microfighter base attack power from 1500 => 1300*mk (Bulletproof Fighter staying roughly the same).<br />
<br />
* Decoy Drones and AI Carriers can now be targeted and damaged by siege starships and bomber starships.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 and Lancefighter for the reports.<br />
<br />
* AI Carriers can now be targetted and damaged by Orbital Mass Drivers.<br />
** Thanks to LintMan for the report.<br />
<br />
* Previously the Spire Penetrator's shots could be attracted by a Decoy Drone. Decoy Drones now know better than to get in the way of that.<br />
** Thanks to LintMan for the report.<br />
<br />
* Added Galaxy-Wide and Planet-Specific versions of three new toggle controls: Auto Build MkI Energy Reactor, Auto Build MkII Energy Reactor, Auto Build MkIII Energy Reactor.<br />
** Thanks to Suzera for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* All ships that are not directly autotargeted by human players are now immune to the effects of attrition. This prevents things like spirecraft attritioners from harming enemy-held fabricators, ARSes, etc.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 and Nihilus for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Ships that are immune to speed boosting now actually have that shown in their list of immunities.<br />
<br />
* Added a new tip of the day about ctrl+dragging to select all ships regardless of military status.<br />
** Thanks to shortstar for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Planets that have been destroyed, or which don't have supply for the local player, now won't be included in pathing that should be limited to planets that have knowledge left (those planets are considered as having no knowledge left).<br />
<br />
* An ENORMOUS number of memory-static-ness updates have been made, primarily centering around converting some very central generic dictionaries to arrays. This also serves as a performance boost, and makes savegames load a little faster, as well as the game itself.<br />
** However, this changed several thousand disparate lines, so the risk of random new bugs is pretty high. We've still got a month or so before the next official release, so it seemed a good time to try something like this; and the benefits are certainly well worth it in the long run.<br />
<br />
* When players unlock higher-mark metal or crystal harvesters, all existing lower-mark harvesters are immediately upgraded to the new higher-mark versions at full health, at no metal/crystal cost.<br />
** However, any lower-mark harvesters that are still under construction won't upgrade until after they finish constructing.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Put in a fix that should make it harder for AI ships to be brought out of low-power-mode when the player attacks and then drop back into low-power during the battle.<br />
** Thanks to Suzera for reporting that this was still happening.<br />
<br />
* Fixed odd bug with the code that sends updates on planets (specifically on the wormholes, in this case) to the AI thread.<br />
** Thanks to Elukka for the report leading to the discovery.<br />
<br />
* Ion Cannons, Mass Drivers, and Counter Spies now scrap for 0.1% of their cost rather than 10%, to bring the usefulness of melting captured ones down closer to the usefulness of keeping them.<br />
** We won't point any fingers on this one.<br />
<br />
* Scouts, Scout Starships, Raptors, and Spire Starships are now immune to "gravity effects," which includes the gravity drill, gravity ripper, gravity drains, gravity turret, and similar effects.<br />
** Thanks to orzelek for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Cursed Golems are now immune to both snipers and gravity effects.<br />
<br />
* Ships that swallow enemy ships can now NEVER be put into cold storage, to avoid any potential issues there.<br />
<br />
* The various galaxy-map-based counts (including the find count) now include parenthetical counts for any ships that have been swallowed by enemy ships.<br />
** Thanks to Invelios for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed the City Hub tooltip to include all the rules of where it can be built.<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Imunities are now shown for ships that can't be swallowed or can't be transported.<br />
<br />
* Ships that can swallow or transport other ships are now unable to be swallowed.<br />
** Thanks to Kemeno for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Raid Starships and Raptors are both now immune to being swallowed.<br />
<br />
* The reclaim ability no longer shows any higher than mark IV, since there are no mark VI ships and mark V ships are immune to reclamation across the board.<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Spire Teleporting Leechs now have a 90% penalty against command stations.<br />
** Thanks to bonesbro for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The ship caps and other stats in the planetary summary are now always synced with the local player's stats. Previously they often used global defauts that weren't correct for the current game.<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Raid Starships now have radar dampening of 8000, helping to protect them from the likes of artillery guardians.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Mark I-III Scout Starships now have radar dampening like the mark I-III regular scouts do.<br />
** Thanks to amonchakad for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* When a ship is having its radar jammed by a global planetary effect (this does NOT refer to radar dampening against a single ship), the drawn attack range of the ship is shown as halved.<br />
** Thanks to Ymihere for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Reclamators were, in the prior release, only reclaiming stuff of a higher mark level than themselves. Whoops. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 and MaxAstro for reporting.<br />
<br />
(Released December 9th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.046 ==<br />
<br />
<br />
* Distribution nodes and zenith reserves will no longer be targeted or damaged by AI ships.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Distribution nodes and zenith reserves that are scrapped will now give their proper benefit.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Added new top-level context menu that opens when you alt+right-click (that's the default binding) empty space when you have no ships selected (if you have ships selected it still opens the with-selection top-level menu). The only thing on this new menu is the now-re-implemented Give Resources menu.<br />
<br />
* Reimplmented "Give Resources" context menu.<br />
** Keybind: OpenGiveResourcesContextMenu can open this menu any time in the game (unless a nearer-scope active context has the same key bound, of course), no default binding.<br />
** Keybind: ContextMenu_TopLevel_OpenGiveResourcesContextMenu can open this menu from the top-level context menu (which is also new in this version).<br />
** Keybinds: ContextMenu_GiveResources_ToggleGivingToPlayer1 (and 7 other ones for player 2, 3, ... , 8) works on the give-resources menu and toggles whether the specified player will receive the resources when given. Defaults to Alpha1 through Alpha8 (top-of-keyboard number keys). Note that giving to multiple players gives the full amount to each, not splitting it or anything complicated like that.<br />
** Keybind: ContextMenu_GiveResources_IncreaseMetal works on the give-resources menu and increases the metal-to-give by 1,000. Defaults to Alpha9.<br />
** Keybind: ContextMenu_GiveResources_IncreaseCrystal works on the give-resources menu and increases the crystal-to-give by 1,000. Defaults to Alpha0.<br />
** Keybind: ContextMenu_GiveResources_DecreaseMetal works on the give-resources menu and decreases the metal-to-give by 1,000. Defaults to Minus (next to Alpha0 on many keyboards).<br />
** Keybind: ContextMenu_GiveResources_DecreaseCrystal works on the give-resources menu and decreases the crystal-to-give by 1,000. Defaults to Equals (next to Minus on many keyboards).<br />
** Keybind: ContextMenu_GiveResources_MakeAmount10000 works on the give-resources menu; while it is held the amount of the increase/decrease metal/crystal keybinds is 10,000 instead of 1,000. Defaults to LeftControl (and on default settings RightControl is an alias to LeftControl).<br />
** Keybind: ContextMenu_GiveResources_MakeAmount100000 works on the give-resources menu; while it is held the amount of the increase/decrease metal/crystal keybinds is 100,000 instead of 1,000. Defaults to LeftAlt.<br />
** Keybind: ContextMenu_GiveResources_ExecuteGive works on the give-resources menu, it executes the give operation configured using the other buttons. Defaults to Backspace (which may prove to be ill-advised, dunno, but it's next to Equals on many keyboards and you can change the bind and a lot of people just use the mouse anyway). Note that this will also close the context menu unless you're holding the SuppressContextMenuAutoClose keybind that's been around for a while (it defaults to LeftShift).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a fairly longstanding bug that was totally messing up the detection of whether one input context was "narrower" than another, and thus should have precedence when one if its keybinds conflicted with another active context's keybinds. <br />
** Note that this won't fix the "K causes low power and knowledge filter when ships selected while viewing galaxy map" thing, that will require the low-power bind being assigned to a different context than WithSelection which is ''supposed'' to work on the galaxy map.<br />
*** This was also resolved, see below.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where a Spire City Hub could be given a gather point that could result in the structures it produced being sent through a wormhole upon completion. Cute, but wrong.<br />
<br />
* Added "Export Balance Stats" button to reference tab; its tooltip explains how it functions but basically it's just for use in our new effort to systematically establish a rough-baseline balance of the fleet ship types. That's still very much a work in progress, of course.<br />
<br />
* A new "[[AI War:Cheats#Maintenance_Commands|maintenance commands]]" section has been added to the wiki with some previously-not-all-public commands you can use for altering existing savegames. This is generally to turn on new features that were added after your existing savegame was created, so you don't have to start over from scratch to see the new features.<br />
<br />
* Core Shield Generators can now be disabled in the lobby, like Turrets or Heavy Defense or Cloaking various other ships. This can be done under the Ships tab of the lobby, for players who simply don't like the new mechanic; but the default is to have these on, since the mechanic provides helpful intermediate goals for new players, and is something we consider a useful new core part of the game. The turn-off option is simply for those players who can't stand the feeling that their choices are being reduced by it (after much forum discussion we don't really agree with that view, but consented for the ability to disable the feature).<br />
** Existing savegames will all have this as false. This will also remove existing Core Shield Generators from existing games.<br />
** A new command, "cmd:activate core shield generators" has been added for turning on CSGs in any savegame that doesn't have them on. This will seed them fresh, so if you had already had CSGs on, then captured E group, then upgraded to this version and re-enable CSGs, you will have to capture E group again, unfortunately. We apologize for any annoyance this might cause, but long-term this seemed like the least-destructive-to-existing-saves path.<br />
** Thanks to the dozens and dozens of players who weighed in one way or the other on this issue!<br />
<br />
* The WithSelection context is now only active in planet-view, never in galaxy-view. It now also overrides any conflicting PlanetView binds. These two changes should resolve some really confusing input-causing-multiple-unrelated-things-to-happen issues we've been seeing (including the K causing both low-power-mode and knowledge-display-filter thing).<br />
<br />
* The current game version is now shown in the galaxy stats window, so that players have a way of checking the game version from within the game itself.<br />
** Thanks to Winter Born for suggesting<br />
<br />
* When a player uses a command, it now shows "CMD" instead of "CHEAT" for the sake of clarity.<br />
<br />
* There is now a "Has Cheated" option shown in the Galaxy Stats window, since that's the internal value that score-modifiers go on rather than Cheats Enabled. It doesn't care if you have cheats enabled, it just cares if you used any. Now that's more clear when that's the case and when it's not. Commands don't count as cheats, of course.<br />
<br />
* Warbird Starships no longer eligible for inclusion in an event attack since the speed-inflation of one being picked as a battle-group command ship has a pretty dramatic impact on difficulty that can basically require the unlocking of grav turrets in an unintended way. This quite obviously could have nothing to do with one of the developers getting roflstomped by a warbird-led battlegroup in a recent test game.<br />
** Thanks to TheDeadlyShoe for reporting.<br />
<br />
* There are now buttons for both the high scores and achievements in the in-game menu, so that players don't have to go out to the main menu to see those.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Chameleon rebalance:<br />
** Move Speed from 28/25/22/18/28 to simply 28 across the board.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 400/1800/2800/4000/8000 to 4000*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 2600/3600/4000/4000 to 4000 across the board.<br />
** Health from 10,000/18,000/30,000/28,000 to 13,000*mk.<br />
** Armor from 500/1000/1500/2000/2500 to 150*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 18 => 3.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 10 => 3.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 1 => 3.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 1 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs CommandGrade from 5 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 4 => 1.<br />
** The goal here is a moderately durable, moderately cheap ship providing solid dps (particularly vs big stuff) plus it's little bonus of the stationary-camo.<br />
<br />
* The metal/crystal costs of ships by mark level has been reduced from 1x/2x/4x/8x/16x to 1x/2x/4x/6x/8x.<br />
** Thanks to Suzera and KDR_11k for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* When the game is unable to unlock a bonus ship type for human players/home-planets that is unique for their team (usually due to playing with a lot of players on the simple ship types with no or few expansions), it now unlocks something that is unique for each player instead of for the team as a whole. The only time players would get nothing is if they already had all the ship types available.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the game had a chance to sometimes hang if it was unable to unlock a new bonus ship for a player at various junctures. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Now when an Advanced Research Station is captured, it unlocks not only a new bonus ship type, but also the mark II technology of that ship type.<br />
** This helps to allow players to experiment with more bonus ship types without fear, since normally if you are getting a mark I bonus ship type late in the game, that's not very useful and it's hard to tell if the higher-mark ships would be useful. Those extra ships wind up just being put on guard duty. This way, players also get mark II ships that are a lot more useful later in the game, and they can make a better decision about whether or not they want mark III/IV variants.<br />
** Of course, it also sweetens the deal for capturing Advanced Research Stations.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The knowledge cost of mark III fleet ships has been raised from 5000 to 6000. This is partly to counterbalance the change above, but also to better account for the fact that you get mark III AND IV ships out of the deal of just unlocking III (assuming you have and hold an advanced factory).<br />
<br />
* All mkI fleet ships (triangle and bonus types) cost 1/2 as much energy as they used to, to ease the early game energy economy somewhat and to make them more attractive for garrison/support roles later in the game.<br />
** Thanks to Suzera for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Bulletproof fighter tweaks<br />
** Base range changed to fighter's base range +2000.<br />
** Attack power * 1.1.<br />
** Health changed from fighter's health * 1.1 => 1.75.<br />
** Armor Rating changed from fighter's armor * 0.8 => 1.5 (the 0.8 was from when they were called shields).<br />
<br />
* Tachyon Microfighter rebalanced in a similar fashion as the Bulletproof Fighter to basically be a fighter, but with the following modifiers:<br />
** Obviously, the tachyon range, and the mine immunity that they've always had.<br />
** Half metal cost.<br />
** Double crystal cost.<br />
** Reload time from 4 seconds to 3.<br />
** Base range +1000.<br />
** Attack power * 0.75.<br />
** Armor piercing * 0.75.<br />
** Armor rating * 0.75.<br />
** Health * 0.75.<br />
** Ship cap multiplier from 1 => 1.5.<br />
<br />
* Autocannon Minipod rebalance:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 84/85/86/88 to 84 across the board.<br />
** Given 3*mk armor damage per shot, to help counteract their very low power-per-shot and total lack of armor piercing when used in larger groups.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 4/8/16/32 to 160*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 3300/5900/8900/14100 to 6000*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 45 => 3.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 45 => 3.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 35 => 3.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 28 => 3.<br />
** The goal here is a cloaked ship that does pretty good "ambush" dps against lightly armored stuff but has a "spin up" time versus more heavily armored targets. In general they may need more than this to get up to the desired level of usefulness, but this should help bring them out of the bottom-of-the-bin.<br />
<br />
* One-way doormasters now seed with 3x as many data centers as normal, to make up for the AI Progress cost of all those black hole machines (30 each). It's still a harder AI than normal, but now not so egregiously so.<br />
** Thanks to orzelek for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Zenith viral Shredders are now immune to reclamation, as they unintentionally could multiply from 1 captured by a player to hundreds or thousands.<br />
** Thanks to Ozymandiaz for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The parasite line of ships has had their stats rebalanced in general, and linearized. They now have a lower attack speed, but massively higher attack values (which they now need).<br />
** Thanks to lovekawakawaii for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Leech Starships now cost 2x as much energy to run, and their stats have been linearized also. They also now have 10x fewer shots, and do 10x more damage than before.<br />
** Thanks to lovekawakawaii for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* All mark V ships are now immune to reclamation (this was always the intent, but a few slipped through before).<br />
** Thanks to Toll for reporting some of the lapses.<br />
<br />
* Ships with the reclamation ability are now only able to reclaim ships that are, at most, one mark level above their current level. So mark I ships can reclaim mark II ships, and so on.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* When reclamators damage an enemy ship, it will only be reclaimed if at least 50% of the damage to that ship was done by the parasites of the current player.<br />
** Thanks to superking for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Cockroaches can no longer be regenerated.<br />
** Thanks to True-Chaos for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Attrition Emitters can no longer be reclaimed.<br />
** Thanks to Malibu Stacey for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Attrition emitters now have teeth: they now do 400 damage per second, rather than 20.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The Exo-Galactic Wormholes now spawn way further out than beofre when in the hands of a Backdoor Hacker. This prevents bombers and similar from being in immediate range of the home forcefields with these.<br />
** Thanks to Suzera for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Rather than there being three cloaking states -- full, partial, and none -- there are now only two -- full and none. Now there is never a case where players can shoot at an enemy ship without being able to see what it is. Ships are either cloaked or they are not.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Any ship that can't be repaired now automatically has infinite engine health.<br />
<br />
* Ships with shot-out engines are no longer completely unable to move. Now they just have the infuriatingly-slow move speed of 1. This prevents such situations as wormhole guard posts permanently trapping player ships. Now ships can always at least move away, albeit extremely slowly, to then be later repaired. This also helps to reduce the micro needed with engineers related to engine health.<br />
<br />
* AI MRS and Fortresses were still repairing broken golems preemptively. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to ArcDM, Toll, and Vinraith for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Engineers mark I-III now take 4x as much damage when on enemy planets. This makes them still just as useful while on beachheads or in other protected circumstances where they are under forcefields or whatever and thus not taking fire while in enemy territory. But it makes them vastly less effective in actual combat situations, so that they don't work well mixed in with your main fleet WHILE it is attacking. However, on defense and on player planets they are just as effective as ever, which is also important.<br />
<br />
* The multi-repair-range of superfortresses has been doubled, although it's still much smaller than that of the other fortresses. That's simply not its primary function.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* SuperFortresses, Fortresses, and Mobile Repair Stations now have to remain stationary to do their multi-repairs. After moving, they must recharge for 60 seconds before they can start doing repairs again: it's best to find a good position for them and leave them there until you're ready to deploy them in a new locale. In the case of fortresses/superfortresses, this doesn't affect their ability to attack while stationary or moving.<br />
** The intent here is to keep mobile repair stations from being used as mobile heal-instantly fleet-life extenders.<br />
<br />
* Further Parasite/Leech rebalance:<br />
** The Parasites now have a further 10x added to their attack power, but now always have an 8-second recharge time rather than one that diminishes with their mark level. Their bonus against medium hulls has thus been cut from 6 to 3.<br />
** The MicroParasite attack recharge has been put back to 2s instead of 8, and now has an attack power of 8000 instead of 800. Their health has also been doubled.<br />
** The Leech Starship has had their attack buffed a further 40x, giving them a pretty sizble DPS. Their number of shots has been further reduced from 4x to 1x, helping to make them a lot more likely to convert enemy ships.<br />
** The overall goal is to make Parasites rather slow-firing so that they are not converting everything in sight, but with a high enough DPS that they have a reasonable chance of success in mixed fleets, or with allies, or on their own (in order from least to most successful, there). These changes are a start, at least, and we'll see how these feel.<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Apparently Starship Dissasembler guardians weren't actually attriting the starships that they ate. This meant that the starships would be stuck in permanent limbo until the guardians were killed, which was obviously a problem.<br />
** Additionally, starships in particular were eaten very slowly, but a lot of high-health ships would be. This was very problematic, as players can't rebuild those ships until they are returned to them. Now all ships are eaten at a speed that will ensure they are dead and can be rebuilt 4 minutes later. 4 minutes is long enough to kill the maw/disassembler if you have ships present, and otherwise the ship is just lost and can be rebuilt without so much hassle.<br />
** Previously, Starship Disassemblers didn't even have the ability to properly capture starships, because they had no transport capacity set. Now they can eat one starship per mark level.<br />
** Thanks to Fleet for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Attritioners now do 300 x ShipLevel damage per second.<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s for suggesting they get a buff.<br />
<br />
* Previously, shot damage was only being reduced by 75% at the time of attack, not when the shot damage was actually being calculated for things like estimated damage display. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Previously, shot damage was being capped at the maximum health of the target at the time of firing. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Previously, if overkill damage was being dealt to an enemy ship, it would self-heal, self-damage, or help-with-replication at the overkill amount rather than the actual amount of damage needed to kill the ship. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Previously, shots that self-heal, self-damage, or help-with-replication, were taking effect when they were shot, rather than when they hit. This was particularly troublesome with self-damaging shots, which could cause a ship to massively over-damage itself for very little gain. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Wasps and Spire Blades no longer make an explosion sound when they die.<br />
** Thanks to Dazio and PineappleSam for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Wasps and Spire Blades no longer effect the counts of number of ships lost or built, and no longer effect score.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 and Draco18s for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Ships with the reclamator ability now all do their best to target ships they can actually reclaim. This is particularly important because of the new ship-level restrictions that reclamators have, but it's also important new logic that they never had in general (previously hitting stuff that was immune to reclamation just as commonly).<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Ships that have regen or vampirism now are automatically overkilled by a corresponding amount by enemy ships; this makes automated fleets of ships (and AI fleets of ships in general) able to actually take care of ships with high regen or high vampirism.<br />
** Thanks to shugyosha and Toll for reporting.<br />
<br />
* New hybrids will no longer mature into builder classes, since they were responsible with numerous crimes against humanity including "the ai is still building turrets", "good grief that's a lot of forcefields", and "why won't my fleet autotarget those 200 neinzul clusters".<br />
** Builders will be back when we have appropriate things for them to build in moderation.<br />
<br />
* New behavior for the AI! When the player goes on distant deepstrike runs -- defined as having any human military ships more than four hops away from any human or neutral planet -- the AIs both goes on high alert and starts spewing out ships from their home planets (or a random planet if their home planets are destroyed).<br />
** The tech level of the spawned ships will be whatever the AI's current tech level is, plus one (obviously between 1-5). Unless it's an AI home planet that is being deepstruck, or a planet adjacent to an AI home planet (we call these core planets), in which case the tech level is always 5. Watch out for that: you'll want some sort of launch pad within 4 hops of the AI home planet in order to take it without massive pain.<br />
** The spawned ships will be random fleet ships that the AI is allowed to use in waves, and each AI player will spawn a certain number of ships ship per event-second.<br />
** The event-second interval is defined as ( 11 - Floor(AIDifficultyLevel) ). So, for difficulty 7 or 7.6, that would be 11 - 7 = 4 seconds per interval.<br />
** The number of ships is defined as Floor(AIDifficultyLevel/2). So for difficulty 7, it would be 3 ships every 4 seconds, per AI player. On difficulty 8, it would be 4 ships every 3 seconds, per AI player.<br />
** These spawned ships are in free/threat mode, and will eventually attack the human players in whatever way they think will be most disruptive. They may engage the deep strikers, but more likely they will try to kill the planets of the players instead.<br />
** Note that all of these numbers are PER PLANET that has a deepstrike on it. So if you are deepstriking four planets, multiply those numbers by four. It's best to keep your forces together, and make the deepstrike raids as brief and effective as possible to avoid too strong a retaliation against your forces.<br />
** Thanks to many players for contributing ideas that ultimately led to this.<br />
<br />
(Released December 7th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.045 ==<br />
<br />
* Reverted change from 4.043 for recalculating world-point even on frames where screen point did not change, because it was seriously interfering with middle-mouse scrolling.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for the report.<br />
<br />
* Other mouse-move and middle-mouse-scrolling handling changes and another way of updating the world-point each frame, in hopes that it won't break something else.<br />
<br />
* Distribution nodes and Zenith reserves are now captured on planet ownership change. It allows them to be scrapped when needed instead of having to send ships to already secured planets on the other side of the galaxy.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* New galaxy map filters have been added for detected AI Progress reducers (combined counts of co-processors, data centers, and superterminals). The default keybindings are unbound.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The "runsim" command line argument was previously crashing the game when used. As it's no longer supported, it's now been removed.<br />
** Thanks to themachineissentient for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The way that the seeding for asteroids was previously done in the maps, it was random-chance-per-planet for each group of rarities. Now it's percentage-of-galaxy based, which makes sure that it's way more likely that the rarer asteroid types will show up in the game. It's still possible you might not have some titanite and adamantite, but you'll definitely have at least two planets with at least one or the other.<br />
** Thanks to Kemeno for partially inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the prior version where the filters for adamantite and titanite had missing localization errors.<br />
** Thanks to Kemeno for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Added a new cheat: Military Takeover<br />
** Spawn Military Command Station, Thus Capturing The Planet Even If The AI Held It<br />
<br />
* Added a new cheat: Like Dynamiting Fish In A Bucket<br />
** Spawn an Advanced Research Station under the control of the first AI.<br />
<br />
* When an AI ship that is captured upon planet ownership change is on a player planet, that AI ship now changes hands automatically to the player who controls the planet.<br />
<br />
* Science Labs are no longer seeded on AI planets, or able to be captured on planet ownership change. It was just clutter, was slightly confusing, and was slightly problematic with the new logic.<br />
<br />
* The external invincibility counts on core guard posts were previously flickering all over the place. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to wyvern83 for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Processing order was causing core shield generators to sometimes not properly cascade in their destruction, but other times to do so properly. A two-stage processing order has now been implemented to fix this.<br />
** Thanks to Mithror for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The [http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI War:Why_Do_Enemy_Waves_Get_So_Large%3F#Step_7: AI Wave level modifiers] from tech levels have been adjusted to the following:<br />
** Thanks to Suzera for suggesting.<br />
{| {{table}}<br />
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Mark Level'''<br />
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Multiplier'''<br />
|-<br />
| 1||1.5<br />
|-<br />
| 2||0.9<br />
|-<br />
| 3||0.7<br />
|-<br />
| 4||0.6<br />
|-<br />
| 5||0.5<br />
|-<br />
| <br />
|}<br />
<br />
* Data Centers were previously seeded on the core planets (those next to the AI home planets) in great abundance. Often it would be five or six of them, a huge treasure trove and between the two AI planets constituting often nearly half of the total data centers in the galaxy. On higher-linked AI home planets, the effect of this could be multiplicative, making them even more crazily overpowered. These have now been removed, but the seeding of other data centers throughout the galaxy has been unchanged.<br />
** This obviously makes for way fewer data centers in general (on average perhaps 1/3 the prior numbers), and it also means there tends to be a max of usually 1 per planet, rather than huge clusters of them.<br />
** This will also strip out the extra data centers on the core planets from existing saves.<br />
** Thanks to Suzera for suggesting -- though don't blame her entirely, I've been thinking this direction for a while, myself. ;)<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Cockroaches are now immune to reclamation.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* All Neinzul ships in general are now immune to reclamation. This makes them excellent against botnet golems in particular now.<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Wasps and Spire Blades are now immune to reclamation.<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Shield Bearers have been changed to Heavy on their ship type. Thus more ships (including turrets) actually get bonuses against them. The max health of shield bearers has also been halved.<br />
** Thanks to Fleet and Suzera for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* AI Stealth Guard Posts now have the cloaking super boost ability.<br />
** Thanks to mr_lolz for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Guardians are now immune to the effect of the camouflager.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Home Cores are now immune to blade attacks.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, it was possible for Core Shield Generators to spawn on AI home planets on very small maps, which would make the game unwinnable. Fixed. Also, this will fix existing savegames.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for reporting.<br />
<br />
(Released December 4th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.044 ==<br />
<br />
* The armor rating on metal and crystal harvesters has been reduced 10x.<br />
** Thanks to superking for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The Unity resolution configuration screen is no longer allowed to be opened. It was pointless, anyway, as the game overrides it.<br />
<br />
* The core guard posts all now have descriptions that explain that all the core shield generators in the galaxy must be destroyed before they can be destroyed.<br />
<br />
* Core Shield Generators are no longer acting as warp gates.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The seeding of the core shield generators is now much improved. It no longer has trouble with cold storage units, or with units that are seeded as part of the second AI's generation, or with not seeding when one AI is lower-level than 4 while the other is not.<br />
** Thanks to wyvern83 for reporting.<br />
<br />
* New galaxy map filters have been added for each of the asteroid types. The default keybindings are unbound.<br />
** Thanks to LintMan for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The galaxy map filter for detection of hybrid hives and hybrid hive facilities now works properly when fog of war is off.<br />
<br />
* New galaxy map filters have been added for advanced research stations, advanced factories, core fabricators, experimental fabricators, experimental starship fabricators, and broken golems. The default keybindings are all unbound.<br />
<br />
* New galaxy map filters have been added for all of the various detected core shield generators. This makes it way easier to plot an attack with them. The default keybindings are all unbound.<br />
<br />
* The actual hull of ships no longer show up as pink or green while being munitions-boosted or shield-boosted. This looked rather odd, was unneeded, and especially made the spire ships bubble-gum pink, heh.<br />
<br />
* Previously, Spire Archives were only appearing in existing savegames, not in new campaigns. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to wyvern83 for reporting.<br />
<br />
(Released December 3rd, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.043 ==<br />
<br />
* Raid Starships:<br />
** Multiplier against command-grade hull type (primarily command stations) from 4 => 1. This should help make them less insta-homeworld-death against the human, but still quick-homeworld-death.<br />
** Multiplier against ultra-heavy hull type from 2 => 4.<br />
** No longer immune to snipers.<br />
<br />
* Snipers, Sniper Turrets, and Sniper Guardians all now have 100,000 armor piercing.<br />
<br />
* Sniper base damage was way out of line (MkII did 900 damage every 9 seconds with a 0.2 ship cap multiplier, Sniper Turret did 3600 damage every 6 seconds with a 1.2 ship cap multiplier, a ratio of 1:36), so base damage from 450*mk => 8100*mk. making the mkIV Sniper have a roughly equivalent dps-for-cap as the sniper turret, and the mkI sniper have roughly 1/4 of that, etc.<br />
<br />
* Sniper Turrets now get a 5x vs Close-Combat hulls (Snipers already had this).<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug preventing ships from leaving cold storage if they were on a planet with > 4000 attack+threat ships (this led to capturables not being captured, zero-health ships not going away, ai ships sitting there and not firing and not fireable-upon, etc).<br />
** Thanks to BlackCobra for reporting and providing a save.<br />
<br />
* Added both a global and a per-planet "Non Military Do Not Rally" control to the controls window.<br />
** If this toggle is checked, all your non-military ships will ignore all rally posts.<br />
** Please note that if the "Reclaimed Ships Rally To Rally Post" global control is enabled, a non-military ship that has just been reclaimed will still try to rally.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug with the suppress-rally garrison controls where it would suppress the rally of a non-military ship (which don't count toward garrisons anyway).<br />
<br />
* Armor maximum percent damage blocked from 95% => 80%. Health of some high-armor units increased to offset this somewhat:<br />
** Vorticular Cutlass health a bit less than doubled.<br />
** Armor Ship health a bit more than doubled.<br />
** Grenade Launcher had _really_ low health so it's been increased 10x.<br />
** Zenith Electric Bomber health increased somewhat and made more linear with mark level: 20k/40k/80k/160k/320k => 30k/60k/120k/150k/180k.<br />
** Raid Starship health from 800,000*mk => 1,600,000*mk.<br />
<br />
* Fixed unintended inflation of schizo waves where each distinct type would have a minimum of its effective ship-cap; now ignores that rule for waves containing at least two non-starship types.<br />
** Thanks to Master Cylinder Pants for the logs demonstrating the bug.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug causing the "minimum wave size for difficulty" logic to be twice as high as intended.<br />
<br />
* Raid Engines now no longer trigger on zombie ships since the human player has no way of controlling where they go.<br />
** Thanks to Ymihere for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Raid Engines used to be capable of triggering multiple times at once if multiple adjacent planets and/or the engine's own planet satisfied the conditions at once. Changed to only trigger at most once per "reload".<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where we thought Spire Maws were slacking off on the job by inexplicably ceasing to swallow more ships. The truth is far more sinister: the Maws were not only failing to swallow the ship, they were _altering the fundamental rules of the universe_ such that all ships of the target type ever produced would be unable to be loaded into any transport ever again (well, until you reloaded the save). Thankfully we've put an end to their dastardly plans to... we're not sure, actually.<br />
** Thanks to Nypyren for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Since vampires are refractive, flak turrets and flak guardians now have an 8x bonus against refractive (that's what they've had against close-combat for a while).<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the game was not recomputing the coordinate in "world space" under the mouse cursor if the game was moving under the cursor without the cursor actually moving (panning, zooming, switching planets, etc).<br />
<br />
* Warheads produced by the Neinzul Rocketry Corps will now actually do something. Their behavior was probably disabled a while ago when a wholesale revision was made to how the AI thread issued commands for minor faction ships (or, more precisely, how it does not).<br />
** Be afraid.<br />
** Thanks to zebramatt for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where one of the module slots on the Spire Habitation Center could take a normal heavy-beam-cannon-module instead of the city-variant it's supposed to use.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Hybrids can no longer get the starship-esque Spire bonus ships (Blade Spawner, Maw, Stealth Battleship, Tractor Platform) as drones, since its "drone cap" doesn't differentiate by ship power and it would be painfully unbalanced to get hit by a bunch of hybrids escorted by a horde of such ships.<br />
<br />
* Random wave sizing factor changed from a number between 1.0 and 1.3 to a number between 0.8 and 1.1. Wiki updated to reflect the new number.<br />
** Thanks to Suzera for reporting that the wiki mismatched the actual calculation to begin with.<br />
<br />
* Rather than having Counterattack Guard Posts die (and launch a counterattack wave) when the command station on their planet is now killed, instead they now provide protection to their command station until they are killed. Thus the same net effect is in place for players -- players can't kill the command station without also killing the counterattack guard post -- but it is no longer possible for players to ACCIDENTALLY trigger the counterattack guard post, which is a big improvement.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting, and to Winter Born for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Five new types of Core Shield Generators have been added to the game: These must be destroyed before the AI Core Guard Posts and AI Home Command Station can be damaged. The planet on which this shield generator sits must be controlled by the humans before it can be damaged. These only get seeded on difficulty 4 and up.<br />
** Group A-Prime<br />
*** One of these is seeded on every planet with an advanced research station.<br />
*** The A-Prime shield generators are linked into a very strong network. All but one of them must be destroyed before the last generator in the group will self-destruct.<br />
** Group B-Secondary<br />
*** One of these is seeded on every planet with an advanced factory.<br />
*** The B-Secondary shield generators are linked into a weak network. Destroy any one of the generators in the group, and the rest will self-destruct.<br />
** Group C-Secondary<br />
*** One of these is seeded on every planet with a fabricator and without an advanced factory.<br />
*** The C-Secondary shield generators are linked into a weak network. Destroy any one of the generators in the group, and the rest will self-destruct.<br />
** Group D-Secondary<br />
*** One of these is seeded on every planet with a counterattack guard post, but with no other core shield generators already in place.<br />
*** The D-Secondary shield generators are linked into a weak network. Destroy any one of the generators in the group, and the rest will self-destruct.<br />
** Group E-Secondary<br />
*** These are scattered on some random planets that do not already have an existing shield generator.<br />
*** The E-Secondary shield generators are linked into a weak network. Destroy any one of the generators in the group, and the rest will self-destruct.<br />
** Thanks to Suzera for inspiring this new feature.<br />
*** This new mechanic is designed to require players capture at least a certain small baseline number of planets before they can even attack the AI homeworlds. This ensures that ultra-conservative low-planets-held strategies simply aren't valid, and the alternative is somewhere the game been before: having the AI homeworlds be so beefy that they are incredibly grindy in the late game, which also isn't good. That had led to most players "declaring they had won" and stopping before they actually had won. The logical solution, then, is a multi-stage AI takedown procedure that requires you to take certain planets that it was expected you were required to take, anyway.<br />
*** To those that would complain about how this will prevent certain playstyles: yes, it will. But only the ones that don't allow for a natural progression of AI difficulty, and so short-circuit (and thus drastically break) the game. Deep striking and raiding are still a great thing to do, and in fact may be more important than every in some circumstances now, but you can't use that in a preemptive "the enemy's gate is down" sort of fashion to win the game. If you'll recall, even the battle school teachers changed the rules after Ender used that tactic once, and for good reason: it's fun once, but leads to a broken game after that.<br />
*** Note that achieving the alternate victory in the Fallen Spire progression will take care of this shield network for you, since that victory condition already involves taking plenty of territory, etc.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that would allow the selection of a non-available bonus ship type in the lobby, but not actually allow the construction of that type in the game. Fixed to not allow the choice in the first place.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Roaming Enclaves:<br />
** Now are much prompter about retreating when under heavy fire.<br />
** Move Speed from 34 => 51, effective range from 5,000 => 10,000, and removed the x0.2 penalties against Light and Ultra Heavy (apples to preservation wardens too).<br />
** HumanAlly variant now has 30x the base health instead of 10x.<br />
** HumanAlly variant can no longer be repaired (this could hurt your economy before, and it's got plenty of self-regen by itself).<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Fabricators will now be listed under the "Build Queues" quick button at the bottom of the screen.<br />
** Thanks to wyvern83 for reporting that they were not.<br />
<br />
* The Fallen-Spire progression now requires (during the build-five-cities phase) that all cities be level 2 (have a hab center and no adjacent AI planets) before the next signal marker will spawn. This was the intent all along, but the original implementation didn't enforce this properly.<br />
<br />
* The "Mobile Military" filter option on the galaxy map has been renamed to "Mobile Military (Units)." A new option, called "Mobile Military (Firepower)" has been added, which shows the My, Allied, and Team values in terms of the firepower rating of their ships (divided by 10,000) instead of by the raw number of ships.<br />
** When enabled, this also effects the display of the enemy ship counts on the galaxy map.<br />
** This option makes it a lot easier to tell the relative strengths of planets, since ship counts are all but meaningless now: what with spirecraft, golems, guardians, and other large ships making it so that one or two ships can take on hundreds or thousands of smaller ships. This also helps to account for the relative mark levels of ships, too.<br />
<br />
* The game now requires that the human players leave at least two planets unclaimed in the lobby (for the AIs to use).<br />
** Thanks to PineappleSam and ArcDM for reporting.<br />
<br />
* In recent versions, the frequency of asteroids was unintentionally way lowered. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to snrub_guy, LintMan, and wyvern83 for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where continuous beam weapons were actually hitting twice per frame instead of once when targeting stuff that didn't require direct targeting (incidentally, most of the is-the-damage-correct testing was done on wormhole guard posts, go figure). Since the balance of the beams is as desired, numeric attack power doubled to maintain current balance.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for reporting.<br />
<br />
* There were still some cases of commands being issued to AI ships that were in low-power mode, so we've added a much more aggressive check that makes it essentially impossible for a low-power-mode AI ship to receive a UnitCommand. In our testing this has worked out fine, but it's such a sweeping change that there may be some really weird consequences. Note also that if any low-power-mode AI ships in your saves that were out doing something because they erroneously had a command will pretty much just sit still wherever they happen to be (other than collisions with other stuff), which may look odd until they're woken up by something.<br />
** Thanks to ShadowOTE for reporting a case where this was still happening.<br />
<br />
* There is now only a 25% chance that AI ships will prioritize the destruction of an "irreplaceable" unit (like an ion cannon) at any given time. This makes them still likely to hit important targets, but a lot less predictable. It also makes it a lot harder to use those other ships as a damage sponge.<br />
<br />
* When AI ships are fleeing from a planet, they will now tend to scatter a lot more than they used to, and have a much greater chance of circling around to an undefended or unexpected part of player territory. Paired with other recent changes that make the AIs more smart about when to attack a planet they are "stalking," this will make them a lot less predictable and a lot more dangerous.<br />
** Thanks to Suzera for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Special Forces ships that arrive on player planets now go into "free" mode instead of just passing through while on special forces mode. Similarly, whenever special forces ships find themselves on a planet with a human-controlled non-scout/scout-starship unit, they will also go into "free" mode. This is how it used to be, but sometime since 4.0 it's changed, likely because minor factions were accidentally stirring up special forces units. That will no longer happen. Also, Zombie units will be ignored for these purposes.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for reporting that this was amiss.<br />
<br />
* Raid Engines are no longer triggered by zombie ships.<br />
** Thanks to Ymihere for reporting.<br />
<br />
* On difficulty 7 and up, when the AI forces on a planet are more than 2x outgunned in terms of firepower, the guards will be freed and will either engage the player forces en masse or will escape to fight another day, as appropriate.<br />
** Thanks to Suzera for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* When players have exhausted the ship cap for a type of ship, that now takes precedence over the ENER error message on the buttons when players are in low-energy situations.<br />
** Thanks to ShadowOTE and Toll for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The raid engine description was previously out of date, talking about a "significant fleet" instead of "any military units" to trigger it. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Weteor for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Previously when players selected more than 8 home planets to start with, they would get oddly low available ship counts. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to orzelek and ArcDM for reporting.<br />
<br />
(Released December 2nd, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.042 ==<br />
<br />
* Added new control to the Planet-Specific tab of the Controls window: "Redirection Tries To Maintain Garrison Of".<br />
** When this is greater than zero, and the number of allied mobile military ships on the planet is less than the specified number, redirection rally posts won't actually redirect ships entering the planet.<br />
** Functionally this allows you to tell the planet to hold onto a "garrison" of X ships, filling up from the redirection-post patrols you've set up.<br />
** Note that you have relatively little control over the composition of the garrison, since faster ships will tend to fill empty slots unless you've got your patrol groups on group-move. Nonetheless, this can be useful for making sure a planet has some kind of defensive force without having to nanny it.<br />
** Thanks to Fleet for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Added new control to the Planet-Specific tab of the Controls window: "Stop Building Military If Have Garrison Of".<br />
** When this is greater than zero, and the number of allied mobile military ships on the planet is greater than or equal to the specified number, build queues on the planet will be suspended (not actually paused, per se, but similar to that).<br />
** This also allows establishing a garrison, and gives you more control over composition but requires that you build a space dock (or whatever) on the planet and set up the queue, etc. Anyway, you can set up a looping queue of, say, 5 fighters, 1 bomber, and 1 missile frigate and a garrison threshold of 50 and it will produce ships until it hits 50 ships and then stop until some of the ships die or leave; it will then replace those (though not necessarily with the same type, of course).<br />
** Does not impact self-building units like turrets, or the construction of modules on modular ships.<br />
** Thanks to Fleet for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Enclave Starship collision priority from 9000 => 875, putting it below rally posts (and standard ff-gens and command station cores) but above just about everything else that's mobile.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Shield Bearers and Spirecraft Shield Bearers now have collision priority of 566, making them less likely to be bounced out to the edges of a group and more likely to cover more units.<br />
** Thanks to zebramatt for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* All other Spirecraft, and the "starship-esque" Spire bonus ship classes (Blade Spawner, Maw, Stealth Battleship, Tractor Platform) now have collision priority, the default for all starships.<br />
** Thanks to zebramatt for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* The Spire Blade Spawner, Maw, Stealth Battleship, and Tractor Platform:<br />
** No longer use the ship cap scaling since there are so few of them even on high. This means that their stats (attack power, health, etc) will no longer be higher on low and normal caps than on high caps, but the ship cap will not decrease either.<br />
** Now have AIPerPlanetShipCap set to 4. This is supposed to cull existing populations and apply to almost all forms of reinforcement and spawning, and will help with situations like the AI having 100 blade spawners on a single planet slaying your CPU.<br />
*** Note that this functions more like a cap of 5 and is per-mark-level, so it is possible to still get fearsome clusters of these, just nothing like 100.<br />
*** Thanks to Spikey00 for reporting the AI blade spawner CPU-slaying menace.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some mixed-wave messages showing up as homogenous and thus misleading the player as to the content of the wave (now just says Enemy Ships in those cases).<br />
** Thanks to SNAFU for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed unintended inflation of counter-attack-wave size. May still be some issues but this should fix the biggest of them.<br />
** Thanks to many, many... many players, for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Previously Raid Engines and Core Raid Engine Posts could lead to runaway wave sizes (particularly the core one), this has been set to a more constant multiplier. Still might have some runaway-ness, we'll see.<br />
** Thanks to TheDeadlyShoe for reporting being attacked by almost seven. hundred. thousand. ships.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug that was preventing the spawning of certain objects in the fallen-spire progression if there were simply no more planets far enough away from human territory; now they'll spawn as far away as they can in those cases.<br />
** Thanks to mavorspam for the report and the save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some discrepancies in applying AI-Type-specific modifiers to wave sizes between mixed-wave and homogenous-wave branches.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the WaveSize multiplicative factor was being applied twice (once on the AI thread, once on the main thread), leading to factors < 1 causing smaller-than-intended waves and factors > 1 causing larger-than-intended waves. In some cases the factors were >= 10, and you can imagine how bad that got.<br />
<br />
* The Enable Advanced Logging setting now also causes two new logs to be written: MainThreadWaveComputationLog and AIThreadWaveComputationLog (which is only written on the host's machine in an mp game). These will have a lot of details in how a wave's size was computed, which is helpful in diagnosing exactly what's going on if we continue to have unexpectedly-sized (generally unexpectedly-large) waves.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the enforcement of the IsEligibleForHomogenousWave flag that was leading to a wave that would be composed entirely of a non-eligible type simply being a nearly-empty wave (basically it would just have the starship(s)). Now the wave will only be empty if it somehow does not have any eligible types, but that should be impossible.<br />
<br />
* Shield Bearers hull type from Heavy => Structural.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where multiple science lab mkIIIs on one planet were reporting as if multi-stacking the reinforcement multipliers, even though they were not actually multiplying them.<br />
** Thanks to Suzera for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The game now makes it clear when a wave or CPA that is incoming was triggered by a ship -- guard post, raid engine, scrap wave, or otherwise. This should substantially help reduce confusion about the deep raids into player territory.<br />
<br />
(Released November 30th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.041 ==<br />
<br />
* All map seeds now give twice as many possible starting positions (16 instead of 8), to allow for players to have greater variety with less clicking through map seeds to find the ships they want (especially with all the new ship types lately).<br />
** If there are fewer than the allotted number of ship types available given the current expansions and ship complexity, then the number of valid starting positions will be reduced as appropriate.<br />
** Thanks to themachineissentient for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Electric Bomber hull type changed from Heavy to Neutron.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Autobombs and Neinzul Youngling Nanoswarms now do a better job of splitting up rather than focusing on a small set of targets.<br />
<br />
* Missile Frigate Rebalance:<br />
** Reload Time from 20/15/10/8/7 => 11 - ShipLevel (10/9/8/7/6).<br />
** Base Range from 7000 for all marks => 6500 + 500*mk (7000/7500/8000/8500/9000).<br />
** Health from 4,800/16,000/22,000/28,000/33,000 => 9000*mk (9,000/18,000/27,000/36,000/45,000).<br />
** Armor from 150/150/300/600/300 => 150 for all marks.<br />
** Attack Power for MkV from 8000 => 5000.<br />
** Bonus against Neutron from 3x => 5x.<br />
** Added 5x bonuses against Composite and Refractive (previously, no triangle ship had a bonus against either of those).<br />
<br />
* Youngling Nanoswarm Rebalance:<br />
** Removed all damage bonuses (trying to avoid their autotargeting prioritizing damage over other stuff).<br />
** Maximum targets affected from 1/3/5/7/9 => 3/5/7/9/11.<br />
** Now does 100*mk armor damage (i.e. "armor rotter" damage) to each affected target.<br />
** Now adds 1*mk seconds of paralysis to each affected target.<br />
** Now does 2*mk engine damage to each affected target.<br />
** Note that the nanoswarm cannot directly target stuff that is immune to reclamation, and may have similar difficulties with ships immune to its new debuffs, but that often other ships caught in the blast may be affected by those debuffs they are not immune to. Nanoswarms will pay house calls to individuals found filing mantis reports resulting from not reading this release note.<br />
<br />
* Nanoswarm now considered to use non-shell ammo, so bulletproof stuff should no longer be immune to them.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The way that unit data is synced to the AI thread is now better for purposes of cold storage and similar in particular.<br />
<br />
* The AI now has some new logic for cleaning up certain old ships on its thread, to hopefully avoid issues with "ghost" warp gates and such that would lead to waves that shouldn't happen. That may or may not have been happening before, but we suspect it might have been and this adds on some safety checks to hopefully prevent it.<br />
<br />
* Human ships no longer automatically open fire on low-power AI ships, though they do still put them in their targeting lists as normal (so that as soon as the AI ship comes out of low-power mode, they are able to fire on them just as quickly as before). This prevents long-range human ships from accidentally stirring up the guards of AI guard posts unless the player specifically orders them to. In general this will make the AI guards bumrush the player ships a lot less frequently than they were recently doing, while not losing the first-mover advantage of the human ships against the low-power AI ships.<br />
** Thanks to CogDissident for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Human ships no longer automatically open fire on guard posts of the AI if those guard posts have not already been "angered." This means that long-range human ships won't just snipe them without being told to do so, but as soon as the guard posts have entered the battle at all, they will fire at will. Like the other change about low-power ships, this also doesn't impact the putting of guard posts into the targeting lists, so it doesn't hurt the first-mover advantage of the player ships. Generally when players get at all in the vicinity of the guard posts the guard post gets angered, so this just prevents snipers and similar from alerting the entire planet without the player desiring for that to happen, for instance.<br />
<br />
* Human ships no longer automatically open fire on guardians of the AI if those guardians have not already been "angered" AND they are on active guard duty. This works basically on the same principles as the above change to the guard posts, except for guardians that are already freely moving around it ignores them.<br />
<br />
* Fallen Spire stuff:<br />
** Fixed another bug with the minor faction stuff costing the player energy.<br />
*** Thanks to orzelek for reporting that the bug was still happening.<br />
** Improved the defense-assistance fleet logic, and improved the coverage from the initial spawns.<br />
** Fixed a bug where still-in-construction shipyards and city hubs counted towards their respective ship caps (for the capital ships and the galactic capitol, respectively).<br />
*** Thanks to Ozymandiaz for the report.<br />
** Due to the golem buffs, the event-attack logic point-costs for golems have been increased by roughly 2.5x (from "Medium Battleship" to "Light Dreadnought", for those keeping score). Note that the balance may be off now, it's hard to say ahead of time, but the AI-variants used in these attacks are still relatively easy to destroy by concentrated beam & photon cannon fire, they're just more dangerous offensively.<br />
<br />
* On difficulty 7 and up, AI ships now spread out 2x as much as before. AI ships that are waiting before going through a wormhole to a human planet now spread out 4x more diffusely to make them even harder for players to hit.<br />
<br />
* The AI now uses the intel data it has about the relative strengths of planets (as human players do), when determining whether or not to send its ships through a wormhole they are waiting on. This is different from the prior method, which was partly randomized, partly based on an accumulated number of 200 ships, and partly based on having a lot of ships incoming.<br />
** This is a far-reaching change to the emergent behavior, which will have many effects on the gameplay, some of which are likely to be unanticipated at this time. The general expected result is that the AI will not attack players with "trickles" of ships very often anymore, and will instead choose to build up before breaching. The other expected result is the AI acting more sensibly when its command station has been prematuraly destroyed or when ships are freed from a guard post.<br />
** On lower difficulties (<5), the AI actually overestimates its strength 5x, leading it to make dumber decisions. On difficulties less than 6, it overestimates its strength by half, leading it to make occasional stupid decisions there. Both of these are examples of the intentionally-sometimes-off decisions that make the lower-level AIs easier while also making reasonable mistakes a human might.<br />
** On difficulty 9 and up, the AI actually underestimates its strength by half, leading to it to have a greater tendency to wait to strike with overwhelming force.<br />
** These changes should also make the AI more effective in defender mode.<br />
<br />
* The number of shots of the raider guardians have been cut about 10x, and the attack power of their shots has bee increased about 20x. Their bonuses have also been changed to specialize against commandgrade, structural, and ultraheavy, with a penalty against turrets.<br />
<br />
* The speed of raid starships has been increased about 50%, and their attack power has gone up 5x. They also have gained a hefty bonus against command grade ships, while losing their bonus against turrets and instead having a penalty. The armor rating of raid starships has also been increased 3x.<br />
<br />
* Enclave starships mark II-IV still had guns in previous versions. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Nypyren for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Armored Golem health has once again gone up 10x (to 500m). The base attack power of armored golems has gone up 100x. The number of shots of armored golems has gone down to 1/6th of its prior value. The armor piercing of armored golems has increased from 10k to 999k.<br />
<br />
* Artillery Golem health has been increased 20x (to 100m). The base attack power of them has gone up to 50m per shot. The armor piercing of armored golems has increased from 100k to 999k.<br />
<br />
* Black Widow Golems now have 70m health instead of 30m. The attack range of black widow golems has been increased 4k, and their tractor range has also gone up 4k. The armor piercing of 1k has been removed from black widow golems, and their attack power has increased from 3k to 60k.<br />
<br />
* Regenerator Golem attack power has been increased 100x.<br />
<br />
* Cursed Golem range has been increased 100x, and health up by 3x (to 60m). The number of shots has also increased from 3 to 20.<br />
<br />
* The AI Wave and reinforcement bonuses of all golems have been removed. Golems also no longer require the proximity of AI Warp Gates.<br />
<br />
* The repair costs of golems were ludicrously low in recent releases -- fixed.<br />
<br />
* Added new "Auto Load" command.<br />
** Can be issued via Unit Commmand context menu (either click the button or via context-menu-specific keybind, which has no default binding) or the Auto Load keybind (which also has no default binding).<br />
** When issued:<br />
*** Tells all can-be-transported units in the selection to try to load themselves into a transport on their planet. If insufficient transport space is available, those that can find room will try to load while the others may do nothing.<br />
*** If any transports are currently in the selection, only those transports are eligible for the auto-load operation. If no transports are in the selection, all allied transports on the planet are eligible.<br />
*** Each ship to be loaded will prefer nearby transports, but if multiple transports are within roughly 5000 range units of one another, ships will generally prefer to fill one transport before beginning to fill the next.<br />
<br />
* Hive Golem health has been increased 3x (to 48m). Hive Golem attack has been increased 50x, but their attack range has been reduced by 3k. Hive Golems also now have a radar dampening range of 10000. The speed of creation of wasps has been increased 4x.<br />
<br />
* The health of the botnet golem has been increased 10x. Armor Piercing on the Botnet Golem has gone up 10x. The number of secondary shots fired by the botnet golem has been doubled.<br />
<br />
* The previous concept of AI Wave Bonuses (the crazy multipliers that could lead to waves of 700,000 ships, for example) have been removed entirely. This buffs a number of structures for human use, including captive human settlements, zenith power generators, gravity drill stations, zenith spacetime manipulators, and ion cannons.<br />
<br />
* The cost of all ion cannons has gone up 3x. The cost of the higher-mark ion cannons now go up even more exponentially than before.<br />
<br />
* The ability "AI Reinforces When This Enters AI Planet" has been removed from the game, as only golems used it and now they do not.<br />
<br />
* The ability "Requires Proximity Of AI Warp Gate" has been removed from the game, as only golems used it and now they do not.<br />
<br />
* Broken Golems are no longer seeded as a part of the base Zenith Remnant campaigns (it used to seed 3 in every TZR campaign) -- however, any preexisting seeded golems will remain in existing saves.<br />
<br />
* Three new minor factions have been added to The Zenith Remnant (nearly a year after the expansion's release -- crazy, right?). The purpose of these is to provide a more satisfactory range of experiences with golems to match player tastes, rather than the old "there are always three there" method. The three minor factions are:<br />
** Broken Golems (Easy)<br />
*** Massive broken golems can be found around the galaxy, ready for humanity to capture and repair them. Once repaired, they represent enormous power to use against the AI.<br />
*** The EASY version of this minor faction simply gives you the golems with nothing in the way of benefit to the AI. Consequently, your adjusted score is also halved.<br />
** Broken Golems (Moderate)<br />
*** Massive broken golems can be found around the galaxy, ready for humanity to capture and repair them. Once repaired, they represent enormous power to use against the AI.<br />
*** The MODERATE version of this minor faction gives you the golems at a moderate energy cost and with a small AI Progress increase upon repairing them from their broken states. Consequently, your adjusted score is also reduced by 1/3.<br />
*** Using the moderate version will automatically disable the easy version if the easy version is also selected.<br />
** Broken Golems (Hard)<br />
*** Massive broken golems can be found around the galaxy, ready for humanity to capture and repair them. Once repaired, they represent enormous power to use against the AI.<br />
*** The HARD version of this minor faction simply gives you the golems with nothing in the way of benefit to the AI. However, whether or not you choose to capture any golems, the AI will be launching periodic large waves with golems of their own -- so you're highly advised to get some golems in order to survive.<br />
*** Using the hard version will automatically disable the easy and moderate versions if either of them is also selected.<br />
*** '''Important: So far the hard version just works like Easy, it doesn't actually spawn the waves yet. That will come in a future version.'''<br />
<br />
* All of the human-controlled golems now have a self-attrition that makes them require ongoing maintenance from player engineers. The attrition is slow, however, taking the golems from full health to the brink of death over a two hour span (except for the cursed golem, which takes a mere 40 minutes -- still up from the prior 20 minutes there).<br />
** This creates an optional non-energy-related ongoing cost for golems that players can choose to pay or not pay; if they don't wish to repair golems, they can simply be placed out of service somewhere safe. This also seems fitting with the status of golems as uber-powereful, extremely ancient weapons in poor repair. And boy are they powerful, they do need something to counteract them a bit even on the Hard golem minor faction.<br />
** AI-controlled golems don't have the self-attrition, but instead have 10x lower health and an inability to be repaired.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Rams now do 10x more attack damage, and now have 999k piercing damage, have a ton more health, and are now much faster. This makes them brutally effective against force fields and other large structures that the martyr can't really touch. Now there's a reason to sometimes choose these over the martyr.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Shield Bearers now have a much larger radius, making them a lot more useful.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* A new "positive AI Progress on Metamorphosis" ability has been added for golems on the Broken Golems (Moderate) minor faction only. Also on that moderate minor faction, the cost of the golems in terms of energy is 10x higher.<br />
<br />
* Previously, only three broken golems were seeded into almost all games. Now 3x the number of human home planets are seeded, not to be less than 9 or more than 14.<br />
** Existing savegames that already had their broken golems seeded won't get any extras, unfortunately.<br />
<br />
* Asteroids are no longer seeded as a part of the base Light of the Spire campaigns (and Spire Mining Ships also thus don't appear) -- however, any preexisting seeded asteroids/mining ships will remain in existing saves, though the mining ships won't be constructible new and no spirecraft will be constructible with existing mining ships.<br />
<br />
* Three new minor factions have been added to Light of the Spire. The purpose of these is to provide a more satisfactory range of experiences with spirecraft to match player tastes. The three minor factions are:<br />
** Spirecraft (Easy)<br />
*** Six different kinds of asteroids are seeded around the various planets of the galaxy, waiting for you to use your Spire Mining Ships (CONST tab) to build mining enclosures on them. From these mining enclosures, you can produce the rare and deadly Spirecraft ships, which cannot be procured any other way. These massive ships can be an enormous asset against the AI.<br />
*** The EASY version of this minor faction simply gives you the spirecraft with nothing in the way of benefit to the AI. Consequently, your adjusted score is also halved.<br />
** Spirecraft (Moderate)<br />
*** Six different kinds of asteroids are seeded around the various planets of the galaxy, waiting for you to use your Spire Mining Ships (CONST tab) to build mining enclosures on them. From these mining enclosures, you can produce the rare and deadly Spirecraft ships, which cannot be procured any other way. These massive ships can be an enormous asset against the AI.<br />
*** The MODERATE version of this minor faction gives you the spirecraft with a vastly higher energy cost, and without the ability to repair them. Consequently, your adjusted score is also reduced by 1/3.<br />
*** Using the moderate version will automatically disable the easy version if the easy version is also selected.<br />
** Spirecraft (Hard)<br />
*** Six different kinds of asteroids are seeded around the various planets of the galaxy, waiting for you to use your Spire Mining Ships (CONST tab) to build mining enclosures on them. From these mining enclosures, you can produce the rare and deadly Spirecraft ships, which cannot be procured any other way. These massive ships can be an enormous asset against the AI.<br />
*** The HARD version of this minor faction simply gives you the spirecraft with nothing in the way of benefit to the AI. However, whether or not you choose to capture any spirecraft, the AI will be launching periodic large waves with spirecraft of their own -- so you're highly advised to get some spirecraft in order to survive.<br />
*** Using the hard version will automatically disable the easy and moderate versions if either of them is also selected.<br />
*** '''Important: So far the hard version just works like Easy, it doesn't actually spawn the waves yet. That will come in a future version.'''<br />
<br />
* When asteroids are seeded into a campaign, they are now seeded onto all non-homeworld worlds. This makes them work in a much more friendly fashion with long-running existing savegames.<br />
<br />
* Three new commands have been added to The Zenith Remnant for enabling the new minor factions in existing savegames (but ONLY if none of the three is already on -- you can't use this to switch back and forth between them):<br />
** cmd:activate broken golems easy<br />
** cmd:activate broken golems moderate<br />
** cmd:activate broken golems hard<br />
<br />
* Three new commands have been added to Light of the Spire for enabling the new minor factions in existing savegames (but ONLY if none of the three is already on -- you can't use this to switch back and forth between them):<br />
** cmd:activate spirecraft easy<br />
** cmd:activate spirecraft moderate<br />
** cmd:activate spirecraft hard<br />
<br />
* There was a missing localization error on the Spirecraft Martyr short name. Martyr is hard to type. ;)<br />
** Thanks to TheDeadlyShoe for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft can now be repaired, except when playing with the Spirecraft Moderate minor faction. On that one minor faction, spirecraft aren't repairable and their energy costs are 5x as high as they otherwise would be.<br />
<br />
* Previously, self-attrition was impairing engineers from being able to repair ships with self-attrition. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Salamander for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The "View Ship Modules" context menu item now works on groups of more than one of the same designable type. If more than one distinct designable type is in the selection, the option is not available. Please note that it will only actually display the modules for one of the selected ships, but changes applied to the ships will be applied to them all (meaning that they will all wind up with the same design if you apply anything to the ships).<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the graphics for the Implosion Guardian was missing from in the game. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Nypyren for reporting.<br />
<br />
(Released November 24th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.040 ==<br />
<br />
* Heavy Beam Cannons buffed:<br />
** MkI beam count 1 => 3<br />
** MkII beam count 3 => 6<br />
** MkIII beam count 7 => 12<br />
** All Marks armor piercing from 2000*mk => 8000 (flat, not multiplied by mark)<br />
<br />
* Fallen Spire Stuff:<br />
** Spire Shard Reactors, Habitation Centers, Shipyards, and the Galactic Capitol now have a primary armament; the Capitol's is similar to a Spire Dreadnought, the others' are between a Spire Destroyer and a Spire Cruiser. For all of them, the base range is roughly double that of the capital ships.<br />
** Spire city laser-cannon and heavy-beam-cannon modules are now significantly more expensive and much more powerful.<br />
** Spire city shield generator mkII health doubled to put it more in line with the mkI and mkIII (the ship-based versions used by Spire capital ships and Hybrids are intended to have a big jump from mkII to mkIII).<br />
** Combined with the 4.039 changes, this probably actually makes things too easy on defense, but not trying to correct for that (possibly non-existent) problem yet.<br />
<br />
* Added a new LotS AI Guardian: Gravity<br />
** Enormous gravity distortion effect slows enemy ships over a wide area. Middling firepower specially geared towards starships and other large targets.<br />
** Thanks to Ozymandiaz for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Added a new LotS AI Guardian: Starship Disassembler<br />
** Huge alien guardian that swallows enemy starships and gradually attritions them. If the guardian is destroyed, they are ejected with whatever health they have left. External guns also fire at targets at short range while it chews on the swallowed ships.<br />
<br />
* Added a new LotS AI Guardian: Implosion<br />
** Mid-range, middling-health artillery weapon that does damage based on a percentage of the enemy ship's remaining health (not to be less than 1 damage). This is most effective when enemy ships have very high remaining health.<br />
** Thanks to RCIX for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The radius of all the human force fields (but not AI force fields) have been increased substantially.<br />
<br />
* The radius of the spirecraft shield bearer force fields have been increased substantially.<br />
<br />
* The ship cap of the shield bearer ship class has been cut in half, but their individual force field sizes have been doubled, their health has been tripled, and their attack power has been doubled. Their costs have also been doubled.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where minor faction ships were consuming player energy.<br />
** Thanks to orzelek for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, rally posts were able to be damaged by mines. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Sigma7 for reporting.<br />
<br />
* If a rally post is in FRD mode or attack-move mode, it will now set those modes on any ships that are directed to/through that rally post.<br />
<br />
* The old rally posts are now called "Mobile Rally Posts," since their key feature is that they are mobile.<br />
<br />
* New "Redirector Rally Posts" have been added to the base game. These are NOT mobile, but which can have gather points set like that of a space dock. You can use this to give cross-planet move orders, and even to set up cross-planet roving patrols of ships if you set up a looping pattern of redirectors.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Cross-planet gather points (for docks and otherwise) now visually show movement lines on the planet itself, thus making it far more clear what's going on.<br />
<br />
* Previously, holding Ctrl could allow players to build extra mining enclosures on a single asteroid. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for reporting.<br />
<br />
* "Ally to all" minor faction ships were previously being affected by attrition. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Ozymandiaz for reporting.<br />
<br />
* All ships that are unable to be repaired now automatically get infinite engine health (to prevent them from being permanently stranded).<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter and TheDeadlyShoe for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Spire Blades (from a Spire Blade Spawner) and Wasps (from a Hive Golem) no longer get regenerated by Regenerator Golems/Trains.<br />
** Thanks to TheDeadlyShoe for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The fighter hull attack bonuses have been doubled to compensate for the recent cutting-in-half of their base attack.<br />
<br />
* Previously, when an AI ship contained other ships (carriers, etc) that was not reflected in the threat/attack meters properly. Now it is.<br />
<br />
* Previously, when AI waves got too large (more than about 2000 ships), the extra ships of the AI would simply not be included in the wave, leading to very inflexible wave caps. Now waves are free to get infinitely large, but any ships over the wave caps get added inside carriers instead of as roaming ships. There is a separate cap for starships in waves (always was), and now the excess starships also go into carriers rather than being cropped out. The net effect of this change is to make the danger from high AI Progress levels continue to rise linearly, rather than capping out at some certain value. However, the reason for the wave caps in the first place was to protect performance, and the use of carriers still accomplishes that while not reducing difficulty overmuch.<br />
<br />
* The Armor Rotter, Blade Spawner, Tractor Platform, and Maw ships are now considered complex ship types. The rest are all considered Normal, as before.<br />
<br />
* The Special Forces Rally Guardians are now direct-only targeted by the human players. The attack power of these guardians has been reduced to practically nothing, and they now have self-attrition that kicks in ONLY on human worlds, and which kills the guardian after 30 minutes of time. Thus the special forces rally post guardian winds up redirecting special forces ships for quite a long while, but isn't the same hassle as before to players.<br />
** Thanks to LintMan and TheDeadlyShoe for reporting the previous difficulties.<br />
<br />
* Unique far-zoom icons have now been created for the following ships: AI Beachhead, SC Attritioner, SC Implosion, SC Ion, SC Jumpship, SC Martyr, SC Penetrator, SC Ram, SC Scout, SC Siege Tower, Spire Archive.<br />
<br />
(Released November 23rd, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.039 ==<br />
<br />
* Previously a ship design with empty slots would actually try to add "None" to the ship's queue. Hilarity ensued. Fixed to not do this.<br />
** Thanks to Ham for reporting.<br />
<br />
* When Spirecraft Martyrs die, they now deal damage even to those ships that are immune to normal AOE damage.<br />
<br />
* In the prior version, spire civilian leaders were helping out the humans even when under AI control. Oops. :) Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Winter Born for reporting.<br />
<br />
* A new capturable ship type has been added for LotS: Spire Archive.<br />
** These powerful science vessels can be found nearby or on the AI homeworlds. Capturing them will provide +1/s knowledge income on the archive's planet for all human players while the archive lives, up to a cap that is 3x that of the normal per-planet cap. If the archive is destroyed, however, there is a hefty AI Progress cost.<br />
<br />
* Fallen Spire rebalancing:<br />
** City-Hub provoked event-attacks now cannot exceed 60,000 points per city hub (so 5 city hubs = max of 300,000). Having a capitol counts as one extra city hub for purposes of event-attack calculations.<br />
*** Thanks to orzelek for suggesting some kind of cap.<br />
** Event-attack counter increment rate from 1300 per hub to 1000 per hub.<br />
** City Hubs are now perma-cloaked and thus exceedingly unlikely to ever be destroyed, but now requires supply to actually build anything. Other city facilities can be destroyed normally, as before. This change mostly removes the possibility of being kicked out of the "quest line" by losing a city during the build-five-cities phase, and makes it much easier to use cities as major defensive bulwarks on the way to your home command stations.<br />
*** Thanks to Lancefighter for pointing out why people didn't want to use cities as heavy defense.<br />
*** Event attacks used to send one battlegroup after each city hub, now it picks a random non-hub city facility from those existing in the galaxy. <br />
** Spire Habitation centers now produce 300/s of both metal and crystal. Generally the player wants as many shipyards as possible so there isn't a huge motivation to spam hab centers, but it does somewhat help compensate for the increased amount of fleet rebuilding required by the special attacks.<br />
** Leech starships no longer show up in event attacks.<br />
** Fixed bug where the signal to be scanned by a subspace receiver or refugee outpost was being spawned on the first homeworld their respective shards arrived on, rather than the homeworld they were constructed on. The game will also try to correct this retroactively in old saves by removing and respawning signals on incorrect planets.<br />
*** Thanks to UberJumper for reporting.<br />
** Spire capital ship caps weren't scaling with multiple homeworlds since they used the entirely separate shipyard-count-based calculation, fixed to also scale with multiple homeworlds.<br />
** Previously event-attack battlegroups using the ship-coordination logic (same as the Hybrids use) were effectively immune to engine damage except for the "lead" ship (and the player is not told and should not need to know which ship is the lead ship). Fixed so that engine-damaged "underlings" can have an effective speed below coordinator.EffectiveMoveSpeed+5 (which is their normal speed while coordinated).<br />
*** Thanks to orzelek for pointing out that engine damage was really ineffective against these.<br />
<br />
* The force field size of the spirecraft shield bearers has been greatly increased.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the metal and crystal costs to actually build spirecraft via the mining enclosures were swapped. Whoops, fixed.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS Spirecraft ship class (built on the new asteroids) has been added: Attritioner (Mark I-V)<br />
** This massive ship has weak direct guns, but does high attrition damage to all enemy ships once per second (on the order of multiple fixed-position attrition emitters). Enemy ships on the current planet will notice that they are damaged by attrition and will turn aggressive, however, so be careful of stirring up enemy planets with the attritioners.<br />
** These each get created as 1 ship from one asteroid ranging from Pysite to Titanite, Mark I-V ships.<br />
** Spirecraft are massive ships using advanced materials that mean they can't be repaired by any known technology. Use them wisely, or find a new asteroid belt to build encampments and replace them.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS Spirecraft ship class (built on the new asteroids) has been added: Scout (Mark I-V)<br />
** These scouts are all perma-cloaked, but move pretty slowly and rapidly lose health if they are on an enemy planet of a higher mark level than the scout itself. Most of these except for the Mark IV or V spirecraft scouts make for better long-term sentries (thus freeing up your normal scouts to do mobile scouting) rather than as literal scouts that explore.<br />
** These each get created as 2 ships from one asteroid ranging from Pysite to Titanite, Mark I-V ships, or as 4 ships from one asteroid ranging from Xampite to Titanite, Mark I-IV ships. <br />
** Spirecraft are massive ships using advanced materials that mean they can't be repaired by any known technology. Use them wisely, or find a new asteroid belt to build encampments and replace them.<br />
<br />
* Minimum ship cap multiplier for wave size from 0.3 => 0.03. This should help with the killer waves of zenith electric bombers, spire stealth battleships, etc.<br />
<br />
* AI Reinforce-guard-post logic now stops prioritizing the "majority" type at that guard post when a certain cap is reached, that cap is related to the human ship cap, this should help avoid massive piles of z-bombers and stealth battleships, though it won't completely prevent them.<br />
<br />
* Added "priority" values to each of the hardpoints on the Spire capital ships, and newly completed modules fill the lowest-priority slot that is open. This helps prevent the case where, say, the shield generator and one of the heavy-beam-cannon modules are shot off of a cruiser, and it happens to rebuild the HBC first, and it gets put in the shield generator's slot.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Spire Tractor Platform shots-per-salvo from 1+(20*mk) => 18+(3*mk).<br />
<br />
* A new LotS Spirecraft ship class (built on the new asteroids) has been added: Ion Blaster (Mark I-V)<br />
** Advanced weapon insta-kills most ships with a mark level equal to or lower than its mark value. Cannot fire upon ships immune to insta-kill. Unlike the fixed-position ion cannons, these ion ships are both mobile and much shorter-ranged, but they are still extremely deadly.<br />
** These each get created as 1 ship from one asteroid ranging from Pysite to Titanite, Mark I-V ships. <br />
** Spirecraft are massive ships using advanced materials that mean they can't be repaired by any known technology. Use them wisely, or find a new asteroid belt to build encampments and replace them.<br />
** Thanks to mr_lolz and love kawa for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS Spirecraft ship class (built on the new asteroids) has been added: Penetrator (Mark I-V)<br />
** Perma-cloaked ship that cannot hit most smaller fleet ships and which must be manually targeted to fire. It does absolutely astronomical damage, and then is uncloaked and unable to fire for the next half hour. This ship is Blind, and thus requires the support of scouts or other similar ships to see its target, but otherwise it works best as a lone wolf sort of ship, delivering its payload and then returning to friendly space to rest and recuperate.<br />
** These each get created as 1 ship from one asteroid ranging from Pysite to Titanite, Mark I-V ships. <br />
** Spirecraft are massive ships using advanced materials that mean they can't be repaired by any known technology. Use them wisely, or find a new asteroid belt to build encampments and replace them.<br />
** Thanks to LintMan for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Ion cannons, orbital mass drivers, and core warhead interceptors are no longer immune to minor electric shots.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS Spirecraft ship class (built on the new asteroids) has been added: Implosion Artillery (Mark I-V)<br />
** Large, high-range, middling-health artillery weapon that does damage based on a percentage of the enemy ship's remaining health (not to be less than 1 damage). This is most effective when enemy ships have very high remaining health.<br />
** These each get created as 1 ship from one asteroid ranging from Reptite to Adamantite, Mark I-V ships. <br />
** Spirecraft are massive ships using advanced materials that mean they can't be repaired by any known technology. Use them wisely, or find a new asteroid belt to build encampments and replace them.<br />
** Thanks to RCIX for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS Spirecraft ship class (built on the new asteroids) has been added: Siege Tower (Mark I-V)<br />
** Huge, slow, low-range, high-piercing, highly-armored, radar-dampened battlestation with multiple shots excellent for taking out large swathes of enemy ships while repelling a beating in return.<br />
** These each get created as 1 ship from one asteroid ranging from Reptite to Adamantite, Mark I-V ships. <br />
** Spirecraft are massive ships using advanced materials that mean they can't be repaired by any known technology. Use them wisely, or find a new asteroid belt to build encampments and replace them.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS Spirecraft ship class (built on the new asteroids) has been added: Jumpship (Mark I-V)<br />
** Expensive, tiny-capacity transport with advanced teleportation and no self-attrition-per-wormhole. The advanced teleportation lets the jumpship pass through wormholes and across planets without the normal few-second delays that regular teleporting ships face. On planets with a higher mark than the jumpship, the jumpship expires in about twenty seconds, however.<br />
** These each get created as 2 ships from one asteroid ranging from Pysite to Titanite, Mark I-V ships, or as 4 ships from one asteroid ranging from Xampite to Titanite, Mark I-IV ships.<br />
** Spirecraft are massive ships using advanced materials that mean they can't be repaired by any known technology. Use them wisely, or find a new asteroid belt to build encampments and replace them.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Added a new LotS AI Plot: Beachheads<br />
** Each wave that the AI sends has a 10% chance of being half-size, but including a Beachhead structure that interferes with supply on the planet being attacked (thus knocking out everything from turrets to forcefields until the beachhead is destroyed), as well as preventing player ships from retreating. Counterattack waves, event waves, raid engine waves, and other specialized forms of waves won't ever include a beachhead.<br />
** Five marks of AI Beachhead have also been added:<br />
*** Tough, armored, immobile long-range AI ship that gets sent along with some waves. Interferes with supply on the planet being attacked (thus knocking out everything from turrets to forcefields until the beachhead is destroyed), as well as preventing its enemies' ships from retreating.<br />
** Thanks to KDR_11k for suggesting.<br />
<br />
(Released November 22nd, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.038 ==<br />
<br />
* Fallen Spire stuff:<br />
** Fixed bug where it was possible to order the new higher-tech modules for spire city defenses and capital ships through the ship design window, but not through the normal buy menu. Added to the buy menu now.<br />
** Added episodes 9 & 10, which are the end of the progression. They're actually also entirely optional, actually.<br />
** Fixed bug where the "must have all neighboring planets clear of AI" requirement of expanding a city was looking for units with WarpGateWave, instead of just checking for an AI command station.<br />
*** Thanks to TheDeadlyShoe for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Laser Cannon Modules (for the Riot Control Starships, Hybrids, and Spire capital ships) now use new laser shot graphics generously donated by HitmanN, the Hybrid and Spire lasers use different colors for the different power levels (mkI = red, mkII = orange, mkIII = green, mkIV = blue) and the Riot laser mkI and mkII also use different colors.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that was causing Gravity Rippers to permanently strand enemy ships.<br />
** Thanks to TheDeadlyShoe for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Added a new cheat for Light of the Spire: Impact Is Imminent (+1 Of Each Asteroid Type On The Current Planet)<br />
<br />
* The far zoom icon for the asteroids has been greatly improved.<br />
<br />
* Guardians and guard posts no longer try to load colormasks off the disk (which were all blank, anyway) to save a bit of RAM use and disk access time.<br />
<br />
* Spire Mining Ships have been added to the game for the LotS expansion.<br />
** This ship allows the construction of mining enclosures on asteroids. Each tab in its build menu corresponds to a type of asteroid on which specific mining enclosures can be built.<br />
<br />
* The attack range on the spire maw has been shrunk by 1000 to make extra sure that it's always in swallowing range of enemy ships.<br />
** Thanks to mr_lolz for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The cloaking and selection circles on the spire stealth battleship have been increased in far zoom so that they are actually visible.<br />
** Thanks to Nypyren for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The Spire Blade Spawners accidentally had tractor beams in the prior version. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to mr_lolz for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The Core Neinzul Melee Guard Posts and all the spire Mini Rams now have a shot type of Ram instead of Blades. The Ram is also a melee type, but ships aren't immune to it.<br />
** Thanks to TheDeadlyShoe for reporting the confusion with mini rams not being able to attack many of their intended targets.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS Spirecraft ship class (built on the new asteroids) has been added: Shield Bearer (Mark I-V)<br />
** Does relatively low damage, but has very high health and provides a sizable force field to protect allied ships. Its force field does not reduce the attack power of protected ships.<br />
** These each get created as 1 ship from one asteroid ranging from Pysite to Titanite, Mark I-V ships.<br />
** Spirecraft are massive ships using advanced materials that mean they can't be repaired by any known technology. Use them wisely, or find a new asteroid belt to build encampments and replace them.<br />
** Thanks to Ozymandiaz for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* A system for spirecraft mining enclosures is now in place, so that the spire mining ships build mining enclosures which consume asteroids and which then actually turn into one or more spirecraft when completed. Whew. Now we can get on with the business of actually creating the rest of the spirecraft themselves!<br />
<br />
* A new LotS Spirecraft ship class (built on the new asteroids) has been added: Ram (Mark I-V)<br />
** This massive battering ram specializes in high-health targets, crashing into them for extreme damage and destroying itself in the process. Unable to hit smaller ships.<br />
** These each get created as 2 ships from one asteroid ranging from Reptite to Adamantite, Mark I-V ships, or as 4 ships from one asteroid ranging from Pysite to Adamantite, Mark I-IV ships.<br />
** Spirecraft are massive ships using advanced materials that mean they can't be repaired by any known technology. Use them wisely, or find a new asteroid belt to build encampments and replace them.<br />
** Thanks to HitmanN and RCIX for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The far zoom icons for the spire bonus ships have had their contrast and sharpness improved.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS Spirecraft ship class (built on the new asteroids) has been added: Martyr (Mark I-V)<br />
** This massive ship has no guns, but is bristling with tractor beams. When it dies, it explodes for extreme damage to enemy ships within its tractor range.<br />
** These each get created as 2 ships from one asteroid ranging from Reptite to Adamantite, Mark I-V ships, or as 4 ships from one asteroid ranging from Pysite to Adamantite, Mark I-IV ships.<br />
** Spirecraft are massive ships using advanced materials that mean they can't be repaired by any known technology. Use them wisely, or find a new asteroid belt to build encampments and replace them.<br />
** Thanks to KDR_11k for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* All ships that have tractor beams on them are now immune to the tractor beams of other ships.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for reporting the issue that led to this change.<br />
<br />
* The health of armored and artillery golems has been increased 10x.<br />
<br />
* In the prior version, the Civilian Leaders outposts were not working properly -- they could not be captured by taking their planet. Now they are properly captured, and they also give positive AI progress even when the AI command station has been destroyed but the humans have not yet colonized the planet.<br />
** Thanks to DonCarsto for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The awesome modified version of the beam guardian that was created by HitmanN as a mod has now been integrated into the main game.<br />
** Thanks to HitmanN for creating!<br />
<br />
* The way AI/minor-faction ships with module templates are created fixed to be much less fiddly (this was leading to avengers and AI-controlled Riots spawning with no modules).<br />
** Thanks to TheDeadlyShoe for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Spire ships now have a new blue explosion animation, like the Zenith ships have a green explosion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug in recent versions preventing the ai eye and superterminal from functioning.<br />
** Thanks to TheDeadlyShoe for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Bulletproof fighter changed from Heavy hull type to Medium hull type.<br />
<br />
(Released November 20th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.037 ==<br />
<br />
* The awesome modified version of the short range guard post, missile guard post, and MLRS guard post that were created by HitmanN as a mod have now been integrated into the main game.<br />
** Thanks to HitmanN, of course!<br />
<br />
* A new LotS bonus ship class has been added: Spire Maw (Mark I-V)<br />
** Huge alien vessel that swallows transportable enemy ships and gradually attritions them. If the maw is destroyed, they are ejected with whatever health they have left. External guns also fire at targets at short range while it chews on the swallowed ships.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS bonus ship class has been added: Spire Blade Spawner (Mark I-V)<br />
** Large central ship has weak guns, but continously spawns smaller independent blades that crash into enemy ships.<br />
** This also adds mark I-V of Spire Blades.<br />
*** Extremely fast melee ship -- loses health over a 10-second period, then self-destructs. Created inside Spire Blade Spawners, these are uncontrollable but will viciously attack the enemy on the current planet. Players cannot give direct orders to the blades.<br />
** Thanks to soMe_RandoM for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Fallen Spire stuff:<br />
** Added Episode 8.<br />
** Fixed bug where secondary unlocks (like the higher laser cannon modules unlocked by researching laser turret II and laser turret III) were being used for the parent tech description.<br />
** Shard planets are now chosen more forgivingly; it still insists on X planets deep in AI territory (X=2 or 3 for early missions, 4 for city-shard-recovery missions) but it will choose between those meeting that criteria that are closest to the human homeworld(s), rather than potentially choosing something waaaaaay far away from the human homeworld if the human has expanded fairly far in a particular direction. If the human expands in all directions from their homeworld they may still face a rather long "shard run".<br />
** Recovery mission chase-spawn interval now scales with combat style; on Normal it's unchanged, on epic it's 2x as long, on blitz it's 1/2x as long. This is just to compensate for differences in actual shard speed.<br />
** Hab centers and Shard reactors can now mount a few higher tech modules if you have them unlocked. Note that we intend to add more variety of modules for both the city defenses and spire capital ships (particularly the really big ones).<br />
** Fixed a freeze bug in ship-coordination code<br />
** Building a Spire Colony Ship from a shard no longer requires the refugee outpost, just a home command station. This makes it possible to continue during the city-building phase if you lose your refugee outpost.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where AI players were having no wave-eligible core ship types unlocked, and in some cases no core ship types unlocked at all. This caused various problems. Now all AI players will have the core fighter, core bomber, and core missile frigate unlocked. This will be applied retroactively to savegames as they are loaded.<br />
<br />
* The last of the new LotS bonus ship classes has been added: Spire Armor Rotter (Mark I-V)<br />
** Shots do fairly little damage, but eat away at the armor of ships they hit with each shot. Ship armor gradually regenerates over time (it takes up to 10 minutes to fully regenerate, depending on how much armor the target has), but cannot be directly repaired. Thus the armor rotters can create a window of opportunity for other ships to strike high-armor ships.<br />
** Thanks to Salamander for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* There was previously a cap on wave timers that was preventing counterattack waves from taking as long as they should have been taking. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Winter Born for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The "Grid" map type from The Zenith Remnant has been renamed to "Lattice" instead, as it really was not a true grid.<br />
<br />
* Two new grid-like maps have been added for Light of the Spire:<br />
** Grid<br />
*** Planets are organized into an orderly grid.<br />
** Crosshatch<br />
*** Planets are organized into an orderly grid with the angles also filled in.<br />
<br />
* The spire tractor platforms were previously ridiculously fearsome. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to UberJumper for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Six new maze-like maps have been added for Light of the Spire:<br />
** Maze A<br />
*** Planets are organized into a maze-like grid that uses the Recursive Backtracker algorithm on a grid to create the maze.<br />
** Maze A Easy<br />
*** Planets are organized into a maze-like grid that uses the Recursive Backtracker algorithm on a grid to create the maze, but with random extra links added in various spots.<br />
** Maze B<br />
*** Planets are organized into a maze-like grid that uses the Recursive Backtracker algorithm on a crosshatch to create the maze.<br />
** Maze B Easy<br />
*** Planets are organized into a maze-like grid that uses the Recursive Backtracker algorithm on a crosshatch to create the maze, but with random extra links added in various spots.<br />
** Maze C<br />
*** Planets are organized into a maze-like grid that uses the Prims algorithm on a grid to create the maze.<br />
** Maze D<br />
*** Planets are organized into a maze-like grid that uses the Prims algorithm on a crosshatch to create the maze.<br />
<br />
* The armor piercing and armor rating on the stealth battleship have both been removed. The radar dampening range on these has also been doubled (making it half as effective).<br />
** Thanks to Nypyren for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* A new Minor Faction has been added for Light of the Spire: Spire Civilian Leaders<br />
** Up to 10 Spire Civilian Leader Outposts are scattered throughout the galaxy in the control of the AI. Against their will, every hour each outpost increases the AI Progress by 1. You have the choice of either destroying these outposts for colloduing with the AI, or freeing the outposts by capturing the planet from the AI. When freed, each of these outposts will gratefully decrease the AI Progress by one every hour.<br />
<br />
* The attack power of all the fighters have been reduced by half from the prior release, but also now have twice as much armor piercing in general.<br />
<br />
* Guns have been removed from the Neinzul Enclave Starships, at the request of players to have these work more like space docks (not selecting with military ships, etc).<br />
** Thanks to Foogsert for suggesting.<br />
<br />
(Released November 18th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.036 ==<br />
<br />
* Fixed some bugs where logic was not properly checking for AssociatedExpansion = -1; notably this pretty much prevented all Fallen-Spire event-attacks.<br />
** Thanks to orzelek for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The game is no longer able to use multiple copies of the same starfield background to draw the starfield effect (that was able to make it look blurry when that happened).<br />
** Thanks to Toll and Kejal for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, Defender mode would result in different AI Progress for the host and the clients on game start. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Fleet for reporting.<br />
<br />
(Released November 17th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.035 ==<br />
<br />
* The wave sizes of the aggressive AI types have been toned down quite a bit, from being 2x or 3x larger than normal, to being 1.25x or 1.5x larger in general, or 2x for the mad bomber (which was previously the sole 3x-larger one).<br />
<br />
* For clarity, the rarity descriptions of asteroids have been changed from "Low, "Medium," and "High" to "Common", "Rare", and "Very Rare."<br />
** Thanks to TheDeadlyShoe for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Fighters and bulletproof fighters have been rebalanced a fair bit.<br />
** Their attack power and health, etc, scales up more linearly by mark level, making the higher-level ships much more powerful than before.<br />
** Their attack power in general has increased 10x, while their hull attack multipliers have been dropped 10x. Any hull multipliers that were less than 10 have simply been removed.<br />
** This is essentially a preview of something we hope to do next week for all the fleet ship types.<br />
<br />
* Fallen-Spire Stuff<br />
** Added episode 7.<br />
** The in-hostile-space surveys now takes 2 minutes instead of 5.<br />
** The event-attack counter now won't count up at all until the first city hub is constructed. Any saves from before the first city hub construction will have their event-attack counter zero'd out on load.<br />
** All event-attack-counter incrementing now comes from the city hubs, to avoid players feeling like they're being penalized for building the structures and ships that come from the hubs. This also avoids problems where multi-homeworld games using the expanded caps for the Spire capital ships was resulting in the event attack counter increasing faster AND causing bigger attacks, when it should have been maintaining the same frequency as a single-homeworld game while using bigger attacks.<br />
** Fixed a bug where saves made after construction of the subspace receiver or refugee outpost in versions where those were the last implemented stage of the progression were failing to progress when loaded in recent versions.<br />
*** Thanks to themachineissentient, Lancefighter, and Dazio for reporting this from their mp game.<br />
** City Hub IncrementsEventWaveCounterByThisPerMinute from 1500 => 1300 (the 1500 is from the aforementioned combination of other factors into the hub, the decrease is to compensate in part for the build-up time from hub construction to full deployment if its structures and capital ships).<br />
** Event attacks will now use roughly 1/3rd as many fleet ships, if it is unable to spend the points they will be shuffled up to buy more escorts.<br />
** When loading games from 4.034 or earlier, the game will compute the event-attack-counter contribution from the existing city hubs and set NextRawEventWaveSize and AccumulatedEventWaveCounter to what it would have been with the new numbers. It is also very forgiving of city hubs that have been in existence for over 3 hours, though in general having several hubs for several hours is going to lead to tremendously dangerous event attacks.<br />
** Frequency of chase-spawns during recovery of city shards increased so that the actual "points per second" stays constant with the first city-shard-recovery, but the power of each spawn is larger on the later missions.<br />
** Event attacks can now choose from a much wider selection of starships and golems.<br />
<br />
* Warbird Starship health 300,000 => 3,000,000.<br />
* Beam Starship health 900,000 => 4,500,000.<br />
<br />
* The way that AI fixed-position ships, most notably things like guard posts, respond to radar jamming and similar is now much improved.<br />
<br />
* Space planes now have a new "Radar Dampening" ability that makes them impossible to hit beyond a certain distance. This even affects snipers, ion cannons, and the like -- they can't target the space planes until the planes get close enough to them.<br />
** Thanks to TheDeadlyShoe for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Scout drones 1-3 now also have the radar dampening ability, to counteract the recent nerf to scouts based on making them unable to outrun shots through wormholes.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS bonus ship class has been added: Spire Stealth Battleship (Mark I-V)<br />
** Powerful battleship with onboard cloaking options as well as a portable radar dampener that makes enemy ships have to be in very close range to hit it at all (radar dampening does not affect the ability of enemy ships to hit other ships, just this one).<br />
** Thanks to KDR_11k for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The Attack Power of the Zenith Starship has been increased 3x, as it was actually lower than the flagship (though with more shots) lately.<br />
<br />
* The Spire Starship has had its range increased by 10k, it's attack power roughly tripled, and its number of shots cut by half.<br />
<br />
* Continuous beam weapon endpoints now maintain position to the firing ship rather than maintaining an absolute position.<br />
* Fixed bug where continuous beams were not properly "punching through" when the current target was destroyed and no other targets were behind it.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS bonus ship class has been added: Spire Teleporting Leech (Mark I-V)<br />
** Large teleporting ship fires lightning shots. Reclaims enemy ships it kills (reclaimed ships have health = half damage inflicted by reclamator).<br />
<br />
* Yet... another... wildly different sound subsystem method in an attempt to get rid of the psched issue on osx. I'll be really surprised if this one doesn't work, and it also has the side benefit of having to do fewer calls to the disk. It possibly has a drawback of limiting how many sound effect files can be used by the game (to around 200), but AI War is presently under that number, anyway.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where superterminal would stop generating ships once it tried to cross from MkIV to MkV ships. For now it will just stick with MkIV.<br />
** Thanks to themachineissentient, Lancefighter, and Dazio for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Gravity turrets and other ships with gravitational effects now only affect enemy ships, rather than all ships. This makes them significantly more valuable and less annoying to use.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS bonus ship class has been added: Spire Gravity Drain (Mark I-V)<br />
** Large, slow ship slows the movement of enemy ships near to it. Also has powerful short-range lasers.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS bonus ship class has been added: Spire Gravity Ripper (Mark I-V)<br />
** Large, high-health, slow ship temporarily halts the movement of enemy ships with every hit of its weak, short-range, rapid-fire energy bursts. Best used in combination with other ships to keep fast targets from escaping.<br />
** Thanks to KDR_11k for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS bonus ship class has been added: Spire Mini Ram (Mark I-V)<br />
** This miniature battering ram specializes in high-health targets, crashing into them for high damage and destroying itself in the process. Unable to hit smaller ships.<br />
** Thanks to RCIX for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS bonus ship class has been added: Spire Tractor Platform (Mark I-V)<br />
** Large, slow alien vessel is bristling with small guns but most importantly many tractor beams. This has obvious defensive uses, but can also be used to hold enemy ships at bay while longer range allied ships take them out.<br />
<br />
(Released November 17th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.034 ==<br />
<br />
* Sniper, Tractor, Tachyon, Artillery, and Laser guardian shots-per-salvo significantly reduced, damage-per-shot increased to maintain same raw dps. Should shred fleet ships somewhat less. Flak, Lightning, and Raider guardians a bit more distinctively-against-large-groups now.<br />
<br />
* Fallen-Spire stuff:<br />
** Added episode 6.<br />
** The 2-hour time limits on the survey missions have been removed. The main point of them was to encourage the player to be planning to move forward in the near future, rather than waiting until significantly later in the game (when it might no longer be possible due to sheer AIP, buildup, etc), but the psychological impact was more of "feeling rushed", which was not intended. The limits may be re-introduced later in another form if this is found desirable.<br />
** Spire frigate, destroyer, and cruiser main weapons changed from Heavy Beam Cannons to a new beam mechanic (currently called "Photon Bombardment Cannon", though not all tooltips may indicate this).<br />
*** These look pretty similar to a single-beam HBC, but instead of applying all their damage in one frame they apply it over about 2 game seconds, doing damage every frame, but the beam endpoint cannot change during firing. This makes it much easier to apply full damage at a longer range than the fan-of-beams based HBCs, but it is also possible for the target to move out of the beam during those 2 seconds. It behaves similar to an HBC in that it hits whatever is along the actual line of fire, and closest to the firing ship, and continues through any targets destroyed by the damage.<br />
*** Note that the heavy beam cannon modules mounted by Spire ships are still HBCs, only the main guns are now PBCs. There may be some PBC modules for the higher capital ships later on.<br />
** Along with the mechanic change, the Spire capital ship main-guns now have a firing cycle time of about 10 seconds instead of 5 seconds, and do about 4x as much damage as they used to (2x to compensate for the reload time change, 2x to compensate for the mechanic change that makes it very much more anti-big-target).<br />
** The AI's Event-attack composition logic now uses a somewhat different system for assigning point-values to eligible ship types, so there may be some differences in sizes and when certain ships start showing up in these.<br />
** Core Starships are no longer immune to missiles (this is a base game unit, but in practice is only encountered via cheats or the Fallen Spire progression).<br />
** Survey Ships can now fit in a transport, though they will not be able to scan from inside them.<br />
** Spire capital ships will no longer add more to the event-attack counter when on an AI planet, removing the penalty from using them offensively.<br />
*** Thanks to orzelek for reporting the unseemly difficulty of having 1 Spire City on Diff 7, due to offensive use of the Spire fleet.<br />
** Added "Enable Advanced Logging" toggle to the advanced tab of the settings window. The only thing this does right now is add entries to a new "EventAttackCompositionInfoLog.txt" log file in the RuntimeData directory, each time a Fallen-Spire event attack is launched, with details on the composition that is useful for balance and debugging. The option is off by default since disk i/o is related to some of the recent instability issues on OSX, etc, but really it should be safe since these attacks are not triggered frequently.<br />
*** If you are playing a Fallen-Spire game, we would appreciate your turning this option on in case you run into some oddness or just sheer brutality from the event attacks, it makes it much easier for us to get the necessary details to make informed decisions.<br />
** For 4.033 the IncrementsEventWaveCounterByThisPerMinute values for each of the relevant Spire unit types were about 35% of what they were in 4.032. For 4.034 they will be roughly 25% of the 4.032 values.<br />
<br />
* Transport unload radius changed from 50,000 to 60,000.<br />
<br />
* Put in a fix that prevents a semi-rare exception from killing the AI thread.<br />
** Thanks to Kejal and Ymihere for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The method for randomizing lists has been made generic rather than object-based, so that lots of boxing and casting no longer occurs with it, saving a bit of CPU and more transient memory usage.<br />
<br />
* Previously, there was an extra wave per wave event for difficulty 8, two extra waves for difficulty 9, and three extra waves for difficulty 10. This made the game WAY harder for solo play on those difficulties, but much easier the more players you have (since this didn't scale per the number of players).<br />
** Now it has been changed so that there are no extra waves per wave event on difficulties 8 and 9 (as the more recent changes to wave sizing make this unneeded, anyway), and the number of waves per wave event is simply doubled on difficulty 10 (so that way it scales appropriately with the number of players). Normally there is one wave per home planet of the players per wave event.<br />
** Thanks to Dazio for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Warp Jammer Command Stations now block counterattack waves.<br />
** Thanks to Winter Born for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Counterattack waves are now 4x larger than normal, but take a full 14 minutes to arrive. This makes them more of an event than they used to be, even, but also makes them much easier to prepare for and deal with.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Previously, SuperTerminals and AI Eyes were not limited in what they spawned based on the types that the controlling AI had unlocked. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to HitmanN for reporting.<br />
<br />
* When a target ship gets into a transport or goes through a wormhole, shots that are incoming to that ship will now hit the the ship immediately. This prevents players or the AI from being able to use wormholes or transports to fire pot-shots and then disappear.<br />
<br />
* Shot damage is now recalculated right when a ship is hit, so that if targets were changed (was the forcefield, now the ship, or vice-versa) the appropriate damage is now done rather than an inflated or reduced amount.<br />
<br />
* Multi-shot ships no longer are able to get any "freebie" shots if their target dies while their shots are incoming against it. This nerfs the mutli-shot ships to a minor degree, but more significantly it is a CPU-cheap way of solving a huge bug that was recently leading to multi-shot ships sometimes getting loads and loads of freebie shots that they weren't supposed to -- leading to things like the "rapid fire artillery guardian," for instance.<br />
** Thanks to mr_lolz for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Yet more changes have been made to sound (and, actually, this time also music) playback to hopefully further reduce the psched issue on OSX. Additionally, this should fix the nonresponsiveness and cutting-off-too-early issues with sound effects on windows in the last version.<br />
<br />
* Raid Starships are no longer immune to missiles.<br />
<br />
* FF Bearers are no longer immune to or absorb EMPs (to make it possible to disable their ff coverage via emp).<br />
** Thanks to lanstro for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* The health of all the scout starships have been doubled.<br />
<br />
* The health and other stats of the scouts have been improved a bit.<br />
<br />
* Fleet, Bomber, Siege, Raid, Leech, and Riot Starships all now cost 2x more metal and crystal than before, and thus also take 2x longer to build. This should hopefully bring their cost-to-benefit ratios more inline with the fleet ships.<br />
<br />
* Dyson Gatling Health increased by factor of 10. Also, they now take 1000 seconds to auto-decay instead of 200 seconds (it had been 1000 before the removal of a standard 5x health multiplier). Also can now hit UltraHeavy and Structural hulltypes again, but should still be unable to hit all guard posts to avoid freeing stuff.<br />
* Marauder Buzz Bomb and Marauder Dagger Frigate health and attack power increased by factor of 10.<br />
* Resistance FighterBomber and Frigate health and attack power increased by factor of 3.<br />
* Player-Ally and Enemy-To-All Neinzul Roaming Enclaves health increased by factor of 10; AI-ally ones left as-is since those are painful enough.<br />
* Neinzul Preservation Wardens health and move speed increased up to same as AI-Ally Roaming Enclaves.<br />
<br />
(Released November 15th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.033 ==<br />
<br />
* A completely new formula for wave sizes has now been put in place, and it puts a much more linear weight on AI Progress and difficulty when determining wave size. This attempts to go back to some of the earlier 2.0-and-before feel of the AI Progress increases while staying away from extreme early game difficulty with the first waves.<br />
<br />
* Impulse Reaction Emitter damage is now multiplied by (sqrt(targetEnergyUse)/10) instead of (targetEnergyUse/100) (the root is computed when the energy use is set, not each time it is needed, of course), much like the zenith polarizer now multiplies by the square root of armor rating instead of armor rating. Also using the lower divisor to make it more granular. Base damage is half what it used to be (except the core version which had a much higher base, down to like 1/4 of what it was).<br />
<br />
* AI Carriers engine health from 100 => infinity.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for reporting.<br />
<br />
* AI-only Black Widow golems 1/2 health modifier (it used to have less than a core starship, and not much more than an old spire starship).<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for pointing out the oddity.<br />
<br />
* Fallen-Spire stuff:<br />
** Added "episode 5".<br />
** Spire Heavy Beam Frigate now fires 1 250,000 damage beam instead of 5 50,000 damage beams.<br />
** Spire Destroyer's main gun now fires 1 375,000 damage beam instead of 5 75,000 damage beams.<br />
** Spire Cruiser's main gun now fires 1 750,000 damage beam instead of 3 250,000 damage beams.<br />
** Spire Heavy Beams now have no bonuses against anything (they had a few bonuses against small-ish stuff, which is not their intent; the existing heavy beam cannon turrets and modules are unchanged).<br />
** Coordinator ships now release their minions if the coordinator's engines are shot out.<br />
*** Thanks to Lancefighter for admitting to the use of this tactic.<br />
** The rolling special attacks that start midway through episode 4 have been cranked down to happen about 35% as often as before. The actual attack sizes will be about the same. This will be retroactively applied to 4.032 saves so that future attacks won't be as large. Any attacks already spawned will not be affected, however.<br />
*** Thanks to Ozymandiaz for reporting this in mantis.<br />
* Hybrids will now launch an attack if at least 7/8ths of the hybrids that are coming are ready, and will not intentionally wait for the last 1/8th.<br />
<br />
* Modules firing will now apply the same "cannot be cloaked for x seconds" logic to their parent ships as to themselves.<br />
** Thanks to themachineissentient for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the prior version that was causing special forces ships and astro trains to not patrol properly.<br />
** Thanks to Ozymandiaz for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed index out of bounds exception in reference tab.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a sizing issue that was causing an error message and for the special forces guardian to not appear in far zoom.<br />
** Thanks to orzelek and themachineissentient for reporting.<br />
<br />
* System.IO.File.AppendAllText is no longer used, in favor of a wrappered System.IO.StreamWriter. It is apparently possibly the case that the AppendAllText does not close properly, or uses a secondary thread, in Mono on OSX. That's not 100% certain, but as a matter of safety at this stage we're trying to eliminate extra held handles that might exist. <br />
<br />
* A wildly different sort of sound playback system has been put in place. It's now using PlayOneShot off a single audiosource, for those keeping score. The hope is, once again, to fix the OSX psched issue with either this change or the File.AppendAllText change.<br />
<br />
(Released November 13th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.032 ==<br />
<br />
* Several things with HullType.UltraHeavy changed to HullType.Heavy, since they just didn't have the hp to play in that league.<br />
* Most bonuses vs HullType.Heavy reduced to 20-25% of what they were, since they were much more in line with bonuses vs. HullType.UltraHeavy, leading to alarmingly rapid destruction.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for pointing out some of the more egregious cases.<br />
<br />
* All Fabricators from base health of 60,000 to 1,000,000, since they are lost forever if destroyed and previously a player could lose one before they even realized there were hostiles near it.<br />
<br />
* Fixed swapping of text between two keybinds on the controls window.<br />
** Thanks to Nypyren for the report.<br />
<br />
* Added context menu item for when you have a single ship selected that is modular, for opening the ship design window with that ship's modules prepopulated into the slots so that you can save the design. You can also change the modules manually or select another defined custom design and apply it to the ship you used to get to the window.<br />
<br />
* Spire Starship given 16000 armor piercing, because it strangely had none despite both the Zenith and the Core starship having it.<br />
<br />
* Core Starship rebalance:<br />
** Armor from 5000 => 2500.<br />
** Health from 65,000,000 => 25,350,000 (twice the Spire Starship's).<br />
** Attack Power from 40,000 => 60,000.<br />
<br />
* Fallen-spire stuff:<br />
** Art added for actual zoomed-in graphics and buy icons of fallen-spire-related stuff; buy icons and far-zoom-icons still what they were.<br />
** Added "episode 4".<br />
** Added an Achievement for completing "episode 1" of the fallen spire progression on difficulty 10 with 8 human homeworlds (it takes the number of human homeworlds or the number of human players, whichever is greater). If this causes you grievous harm, blame the guys on irc.<br />
** Fixed a bug where the AI would scrap some of the starships spawned an event attack.<br />
** The "from homeworld" scans now only take 5 minutes instead of 45.<br />
** Spire Heavy Beam Frigates:<br />
*** Actually have an engine health now.<br />
*** Shots-per-salvo from 7 to 5.<br />
*** Now properly immune to insta-kill, tractors, reclamation, emps, and paralysis (some of these had been missing).<br />
** Non-chase event attacks now try to be a bit more coherent.<br />
<br />
* The way that the AI thread keeps track of Astro Train Stations and Special Forces Rally Points (of all sorts) is now significantly more efficient and effective, resulting in somewhat lower RAM and CPU use on the AI thread in general.<br />
<br />
* The EMP on death ability now shows how many seconds the EMP is for.<br />
<br />
* The way that expansion enabled status is checked and set in code is now more efficient on RAM and CPU use.<br />
<br />
* 35 new guardians have been added to LotS (5 marks each of 7 new guardian types): Carrier, EMP, Self Destruction, Special Forces Rally, Vampire, Warp Gate, and Zombie.<br />
** EMP guardians only appear on difficulty 7 and up.<br />
** Self-destruction guardians only appear on difficulty 8 and up.<br />
** Warp gate guardians only appear on difficulty 7 and up.<br />
** The rest of the guardians have a more normal difficulty spread, and thus appear at all difficulty levels.<br />
<br />
* Thanks to HitmanN for providing module-scale versions of the Heavy Beam Cannon graphics (the turret versions of which he also provided).<br />
<br />
* Six different kinds of asteroids are now seeded throughout the galaxy in the following order of rarity (from least to most rare): Reptite, Pysite, Xampite, Ebonite, Adamantite, Titanite.<br />
** Build a mining enclosure (not available yet in the beta) around this asteroid to consume it and use its advanced materials to create advanced ships not accessible any other way.<br />
** Note these are utterly useless at the moment, but won't be for long. ;)<br />
<br />
* The way that the text wrapping is handled on the intel summary is now better, appropriate to its new taller-but-narrower appearance.<br />
<br />
* Transports can now not unload further than 50,000 range units from planet-center (for reference, the maximum distance anything can be built at is 60,000), to avoid some of the more exploitative usages.<br />
<br />
* In yet another attempt to find that sound-related resource issue on OSX, the sound system has been hugely restructured to be more bulletproof and to hopefully remove any possibility that Arcen's code is dropping any clip references that were keeping files open.<br />
<br />
* A new version of the Unity Engine, 3.1, is now in use (updating from prior version 3.0).<br />
<br />
(Released November 12th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.031 ==<br />
<br />
* Fallen-Spire stuff:<br />
** Added 3rd "episode" of the progression.<br />
** Dangerous fallen-spire events (like when you discover an artifact and the AI starts spawning ships to go after it) now automatically pause the game and display the corresponding journal entry so that you don't miss the fact that you're about to be torn to ribbons (or not, if you're on your toes).<br />
*** Thanks to Lancefighter for the suggestion.<br />
*** Added "Disable Dangerous Event Auto-Pause" toggle to a new "Advanced" tab of the settings window to disable this behavior. Note that in a multiplayer game if anyone hasn't disabled the auto-pause, it will still happen, though those with it disabled will not have the journal entry pop up automatically.<br />
** Added LotS-only cheat "i do not have time for this" that toggles the fallen-spire UseTestTimingValues flag on and off (it defaults to off). When the flag is on, all time-to-perform-survey (not time-before-signal-disappears) times are divided by 60. Note that this is indeed a cheat and will massively mess with the overall balance, but is provided as a courtesy to those players who are so helpfully assisting in the testing of these features. It can be toggled back and forth, though the behavior may not work quite as expected in all cases. One suggestion for balance testing is to use it to shorten the "remote" (from your homeworld) surveys and turn it off before beginning the "local" (on the AI planet) surveys.<br />
*** Thanks to themachineissentient for suggesting a way to short-circuit the waits for testing.<br />
* Increased Avenger hull hp to be somewhat greater than a superfortress, again in line with recent hp changes to fortresses.<br />
<br />
* Added a new tab to the Controls screen called "Ship Design", for defining custom templates for modular ships (i.e. the three marks of Riot Control Starship).<br />
<br />
* Updated Zenith Polarizer tooltip to no longer specify the exact relationship between attack power and target-armor, since it's more complex now and there isn't space to explain it all.<br />
** Thanks to liq3 for pointing out the inaccuracy.<br />
<br />
* Re-implemented the small window that used to draw when placing a ship, that tells you why the icon is red if the proposed location is not valid.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where the minor-faction-shots-never-anger-AI logic was causing it to not even apply the repair-cooldown from the damage. Changed to handle LastDamaged separately from LastAngered.<br />
<br />
* GZip compression is now used instead of Zip compression for savegames. This has the advantages of: 1) resulting in significantly smaller save files, especially for large savegames -- as much as 30% savings at the upper end; 2) resulting in the correspondingly smaller full sync network requirements for multiplayer; 3) hopefully solving the "pthread_getschedparam" issue on OSX, which seems to quite likely have been related to unintentionally-multithreaded zip processing in the autosave process.<br />
** Huge thanks to dumpsterKEEPER, resistor, and Vampyre for helping to track this one down.<br />
<br />
* A message is now shown when a savegame is saved, to provide visual feedback that the save actually did occur. It's only been since SlimDX that this message was missing, incidentally, but it's fixed now.<br />
** Thanks to dumpsterKEEPER for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Raid Starships now have only 1/2 the health reduction that was previously made a few releases back (it's about 5x more health than in the last version, or thereabouts).<br />
** Thanks to Toll, orzelek, Winter Born, and Moonshine Fox for suggesting.<br />
<br />
(Released November 9th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.030 ==<br />
<br />
* Fixed a null-exception bug in hybrid-hive logic that was killing the ai thread when it was unable to pathfind to certain objects.<br />
** Thanks to KToff for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fallen Spire stuff:<br />
** Unset a testing flag that was making the survey times in seconds instead of minutes.<br />
** Survey-marker time-to-disappear no longer counts down while the marker is being actively surveyed (this is important in cases where you have 2 hours before it disappears and it takes 45 minutes to go from start-to-finish; this way you have 2 hours to start, rather than just 1 hour and 15 minutes).<br />
** Made event-attack composition logic significantly more robust (more interesting compositions, at least in the developer's opinion, now properly scales with unit caps for scaled units, point-cost and tier-associations now kept with the rest of the unit data, etc).<br />
** Chase ships will now no longer wait at wormholes for an accumulation of force (which is the normal behavior).<br />
** Shard is now immune to engine damage.<br />
** Shard will now be consumed by construction of receiver.<br />
** Receiver construction notice now happens at time of completion, not beginning.<br />
*** Thanks to Lancefighter for reporting.<br />
** Added next "episode".<br />
<br />
* Special difficulty factor (currently only used for hybrids and fallen-spire stuff) now scales more granular-ly with difficulty. For example, it used to be that 7, 7.3, and 7.6 all multiplied the factor by 1 (i.e. no change), and 8 multiplied it by 1.5. now 7 = 1, 7.3 = 1.15, 7.6 = 1.3, and 8 = 1.5. And so on with the other partial difficulties.<br />
<br />
* In recent versions the MkIV heavy beam cannon's metal+crystal cost was lower than intended, increased to 2x of what it was, to be in the general neighborhood of 4x what the mkIIIs cost.<br />
<br />
* FF Bearers (Shield Bearers):<br />
** Health increased from 88000*Mk to 100000*Mk.<br />
** Armor decreased from 4000 to 200.<br />
** FF coverage radius increased by 50%.<br />
<br />
* Armor ship:<br />
** Reload Time from 4 seconds to 3 seconds.<br />
** Armor from 15,000 to 3,000/3,200/3,400/3,600/4,000 for I/II/III/IV/V.<br />
<br />
* Superfortress health from 90,000,000 to 150,00,000 to be more in line with the recent AI fort hp bonuses.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for reporting the new inconsistency.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that's probably been around since unit scaling and armor where the game was frequently using the normal-cap base-attack-value instead of low, when playing on low. With this fixed, it is likely that stuff will die faster on low now.<br />
<br />
* Laser Guardian<br />
** Bonus against polycrystal 45x => 5x.<br />
** Bonus against light 45x => 5x.<br />
** Bonus against refractive 15x => 5x.<br />
** Bonus against turrets 3x => 1x.<br />
** Base attack power 1800*Mk => 4800*Mk.<br />
<br />
* Raider Guardian<br />
** Bonus against heavy 18x => 5x.<br />
** Bonus against artillery 12x => 3x.<br />
** Bonus against turrets 3x => 2x.<br />
** Bonus against swarmer 4x => 3x.<br />
** Base attack power 1200*Mk => 1800*Mk.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the prior version with the AIs only using basic ships.<br />
** Unfortunately, this will only work for new savegames -- campaigns started in the last prerelease will still be too easy, because this was part of the initial seeding of those savegames.<br />
** Thanks to DakaSha for reporting.<br />
<br />
* When a "pthread_getschedparam" error is logged, the game now also logs information about the total number of texture, music, web service, update, and sound WWWs (and errors) that have been started. Hopefully this would provide some clues as to the nature of the pthread_getschedparam error.<br />
<br />
* The ship cap for colony ships has been dropped from 60 to 5, to prevent people from just storing up so many extra colony ships now that there is no energy cost per colony ship.<br />
* Command stations must now be built within 2000 pixels of a colony ship.<br />
** Thanks to Malibu Stacey, Moonshine Fox, orzelek, and KToff for various suggestions relating to this.<br />
<br />
* A new graphic for the Shard is now in place.<br />
<br />
* In prior versions, the AI was actually still creating barracks instead of carriers (d'oh). Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The images for the AI Carrier, Raider Guardian, and Laser Guardian have once again been included in this beta release since the 4.021 update on Steam for some reason still didn't include them.<br />
<br />
(Released November 8th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.029 ==<br />
<br />
* Added a new "Fallen Spire" Minor Faction for LotS. Details secret for now :) The special stuff starts right at the beginning of a game with them, though, so self-discovery is possible. Only about 10% of what's intended is actually done.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some inconsistencies in AI "can I give another order to this unit yet?" logic.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some bugs skewing the overall "special difficulty" modifier (based on homeworld/player count and AI difficulty); it was only used for hybrids, so the problems may not have been apparent.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some rare null-exception bugs in the lobby when coming in with a messed up settings.dat.<br />
<br />
* Turret rebalance:<br />
** Basic, MLRS, Flak, Laser health to 5/3x of what it was.<br />
** Lightning Turrets health to 5x what it was.<br />
** Missile Turrets health to 1/3x of what it was.<br />
** Laser Turret base range from 6000 to 9000.<br />
<br />
* Various major-electric ships now have the corresponding extreme-armor-piercing (core electric guard post, tazer, all warheads, electric shuttle,<br />
<br />
* Following guardians now have 1.4x as much health as before: Tractor, Lightning, Flak, Beam, Laser.<br />
<br />
* Bomber starship rebalance:<br />
** Attack power 1/3x what it was.<br />
** Reload time 1/9x what it was.<br />
** Attack range from 5000 => 2500.<br />
** Health to 2x what it was.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where if you had the game in non-trial mode and your last-started-game's available ships setting was something other than "Simple", and then switched to trial mode (by adding an expansion without a key), and then tried to start a new game it would fail.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the prior version that was causing there to be no higher-mark AI planets in Conquest mode except for the homeworlds and the worlds next to them.<br />
** Thanks to DakaSha for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Achievements for victories against AI types, minor factions, AI plots, on various planet counts, for controlling various planet counts, winning and losing in general or against certain difficulties, and so forth are all now Conquest-only. Other achievements, based on things such as points, time, resources, kills/losses, and reclaimining/scrap are still able to be won in Defender mode.<br />
** Thanks to nachomahn for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a couple of bugs with how bonus ships were assigned on game start in the last version.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the "Attack Recharge" was also being used as an "Ability recharge" for a growing number of ships (raid engines, cleanup drones, rebuilders, etc). That led to a number of bugs so subtle that no-one has ever reported them (mostly with the raid engine), but now we've split these apart and the various bugs are thus resolved.<br />
<br />
* The logic for when raid engines trigger is now a lot tougher (it happens when there are ANY human military ships, whereas in the past it took a military fleet of size 100 to trigger them (which was basically a free pass to starships -- no longer).<br />
<br />
* Four new AI Core Guard Posts have been added for LotS: Booster, Cross Planet Attack, Heavy Beam, and Raid Engine.<br />
** All four of these basically add variety to the end-of-game scenarios (most specifically the CPA guard post is wildly different), which has been a long-term goal for the game for a while now. Because of the comparative rarity of AI Core Guard Posts (they only show up on the AI homeworlds), we won't be adding too many of these in this expansion, though -- more focus will be going into the regular Guard Posts (mark I-V) that show up on all the AI planets randomly, as variety is even more critical there (in one sense).<br />
<br />
(Released November 5th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.028 ==<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that caused any non-Defender-mode campaigns to result in an instant loss in the prior version. Whoops!<br />
** Thanks to Varone and ghoti221 for reporting.<br />
<br />
(Released November 4th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.027 ==<br />
<br />
* Auto-created manufactories are always now disabled at the start of the game.<br />
<br />
* The first set of waves now comes sooner from the AIs, more like it used to in the 2.0 era of the game. It's been a longstanding bug since 3.0 or thereabouts where the first set of waves always fizzled.<br />
<br />
* The remaining trial time is now shown as a countdown timer in the alerts box in the upper left of the screen while playing. This should make it a lot more obvious when players accidentally start a trial game, as well as making it more clear how much time remains for players who did intend to start a trial game.<br />
<br />
* The first release of Light of the Spire's beta is in this one. Defender mode, as well as the Vanilla and Everything AI types make their debut. As a warning, Defender mode is extremely preliminary, so will probably need a lot of tweaking to be in balance. But it's pretty fun already, if you like getting beat up. ;)<br />
** Also bear in mind that we do still need to teach the AI a few new tricks for this mode. It's not used to working on a timer, it's used to thoroughly crushing you. When it's on the clock, it needs to do a better job of prioritizing your ''quick'' defeat, rather than obliterating every last trace of you.<br />
** In short, if you play with too few planets the AI will crush you; too many, on too short a time schedule, and it won't have time to crush you so you'll likely win despite the thousands of high-level ships slowly scouring you from the galaxy. We'll be working on that in future releases, but for now we suggest you use maybe 4-5 planets as perhaps a sweet spot. Or, feedback on what seems to work best (and what doesn't) is also welcome. Part of the point of the beta, after all!<br />
<br />
(Released November 4th, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.025 ==<br />
<br />
* Fixed mark I scouts to not have guns, unlike the prior release.<br />
** Thanks to Epsilon Plus for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Raid Starships now have 100x more armor than before, and now have 100k armor piercing. They also now have 10x lower health. In general, this transforms them into a ship specializing in killing highly-armored targets, including fleet ships such as armor ships, which is a unique role for them amongst starships. The extra armor that they have, in turn, makes them better suited than ever for doing long-range raids except when they run up against raw-damage-dealing ships such as siege starships and so forth.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Cockroaches no longer fire translocation shots, as this was overpowered and made offense a lot tougher with them around.<br />
** Thanks to orzelek for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed what may have been a small memory leak in the GZip compression. More likely, an extra handle declared and never released. Related to the crash on OSX?<br />
<br />
(Released November 3rd, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.024 ==<br />
<br />
* Colony ships no longer have any energy cost.<br />
<br />
* Cutlasses now have a heavy penalty against command grade hulls, and their attack power (and health) have also been significantly reduced.<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith for reporting the imbalance. <br />
<br />
* All of the fleet ships, starships, and turrets (and a few other types of ships) now have a completely revamped cost structure. In the case of their mark I variants, the costs have been tweaked somewhat, often reduced slightly or even significantly in cases of ships that were exceedingly expensive before. In the case of their mark II, III, IV, and V variants, they are now based on multipliers from the mark I version.<br />
** Those multipliers are x2, x4, x8, and x16, respectively. This makes the mark V variants enormously more expensive than the mark I variants, which accomplishes two things: first it once again increases the utility of those lower-level ships, and secondly it makes it so that the economy becomes more strained the further into the game players go. This makes the early game simpler (as it has been lately), while not making the late-game too easy in terms of the decisions regarding territory, economic unlocks, and so forth.<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* The health of all the AI force fields has been increased by 5x, in light of all the new ultra-damaging starships and such that the humans have.<br />
<br />
* Home planet command stations for the human players now have 2 million health instead of 300k.<br />
** Thanks to KDR_11k for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* The AI now has a separate fortress line with 10x more health and without the ability to be repaired. Player fortresses can now be directly repaired, but those fortresses now take 10x longer to build and repair.<br />
** Thanks to orzelek for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* At long last, due to popular demand, there are now Mark V Fighters in the game. What's more, there are also now Mark V Bulletproof Fighters and MicroFighters.<br />
** There are also now core fabricators for all three of these ship types.<br />
<br />
* Spire Starships are now considered Mark IV, instead of Mark III.<br />
<br />
(Released November 2nd, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.023 ==<br />
<br />
* Removed AI Progress cost for killing any Neinzul cluster (Neinzul Nests still cost 10 AIP to kill).<br />
<br />
* Previously the save window, load window, and stats window would not functionally fit on a 1024x600 screen (1024x768 is the lowest resolution supported, but we try to make 1024x600 work at least minimally functional), fixed the sizing of controls so this works now.<br />
** Thanks to datom for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Also fixed the settings window to fit (albeit barely) on 1024x600.<br />
<br />
* Also fixed the lobby window for 1024x600, though this one is a bit more intrusive: when the lobby window first initializes, if the height of the current resolution is less than 768, it omits the logo at the top of the right window, so there's room for the start game button at the bottom. This looks a bit weird but it's at least functional.<br />
<br />
* Added explicit logic for preventing most non-ai-ally minor faction ships from being able to hit anything that can cause freeing of ai ships (namely command stations and guard posts); this had been handled properly before but after the switch to hull-type-based bonuses some gaps opened up, and may be responsible for some of the inexplicable early-game attacks people have been seeing.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an (apparently) rare crash bug in the tutorial that happens right after capturing the ARS. If the underlying bug happens it may cause problems, but at least shouldn't crash.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug in last version where it would fail to write to an error log due to path confusion.<br />
<br />
* Added 2 new planet-specific controls:<br />
** Alert When # Enemy Units Present<br />
** Alert When # Aggressive Units Present<br />
** If set to something higher than zero, the alert window will note when the planet has >= the specified number of enemy or threat (respectively) units. This only works if you have scout intel on the planet (command station or scout drone provide that, among others).<br />
<br />
* Augmented the tooltip of the "Threat" section of the resource bar to display a list of all planets with known threat units, and the count thereof. Only displays planets you have scout intel on.<br />
<br />
* Lightning Guardians now have 100000 armor-piercing (like lightning turrets), 4x previous attack power, and 1/2x previous base range (actual range differs from base range due to some post-processing on stats).<br />
<br />
* Since the introduction of armor, the different unit scales have provided pretty radically different balance between scaled-types (like a bomber) and non-scaled-types (like a flak guardian). This is due to the fact that 2x as many bombers each with 1/2 as much armor (high caps) are going to die way more than 2x faster against a flak guardian. Similarly, 1/2x as many bombers each with 2x as much armor (low caps) are going to have a much easier time surviving against the same unscaled flak guardian (even leaving aside the aoe aspect of that). We've now put in a fix that will make scaled ships always have the same effective armor against non-scaled ships, while maintaining their scaled armor ratings versus each other (since if we just stopped scaling armor at all then scaled ships would take a _lot_ longer to kill each other on some settings).<br />
** PLEASE NOTE: this is going to put the effective armor roughly between where it was on High and where it was on Normal. Low will probably be a step harder in this respect, but it was never intended to be easier than Normal or High. We'll be listening closely to player feedback and will continue to make adjustments as necessary. Your patience is appreciated :)<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug preventing the mercenary space dock from building a ship whose base type was prohibited by the Available Ships lobby setting (so if you had it on "simple" you couldn't build ether jets or beam frigates from the mercenary space dock, but now you'll be able to).<br />
** Thanks to several users for reporting and providing saves.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug occasionally causing a null exception in GameButton.SelfRender early in the game. This was being caught, logged, and ignored so it probably wasn't hurting anything, but definitely good to have it fixed.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug preventing player from buying ships from a human rebel colony.<br />
** Thanks to Collic for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Heavy Beam Cannon health increased by 5x, to make them not insta-die so readily.<br />
<br />
* Further balancing of the guardians, specifically:<br />
** Most of the offensive types had their number of shots multiplied by their mark level; since their attack power was already being multiplied by their mark level each level was a much larger increase in dps than might be expected. For now, all those types now have the same number of shots that the mkIII versions used to have.<br />
** Those types with bonuses against turrets have had those bonuses reduced; Flak guardians in particular will do much less damage against turrets as they're supposed to be the bane of mobile lightly-armored stuff, not everything that has the audacity to exist. Guardians are still very effective vs turrets (particularly mkI turrets) and are intended to be so.<br />
** The artillery guardian's base range reduced from 25000 + 4000*mk to 30000 + 1000*mk.<br />
** Laser guardian reload time from 2sec => 4sec, shots-per-salvo from 19 = > 11, attack power from 400*mk => 1600*mk. This makes them even more effective against armored targets (already having 500*mk armor-piercing).<br />
<br />
* Fortress balancing to deal with ineffectiveness vs. armored targets and stuff with high bonuses vs UltraHeavy:<br />
** Reload time from 3sec => 6sec.<br />
** Shots-per-salvo from 60/80/100 => 30/40/50.<br />
** Attack power from 2000/3500/5000 => 8000/14000/20000.<br />
** Health from 2,800,000/4,800,000/8,800,000 => 4,000,000/8,000,000/12,000,000.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug preventing the galaxy-map helper-window from switching out of displaying the last find-mode target. Also changed the find-mode text to reflect that left clicking empty space ends it, rather than right-clicking empty space.<br />
<br />
* Decreased the difficulty of the player-adjacent Mark IV planet in the intermediate tutorial.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where Youngling Commando MkIIIs were not scaling with the unit cap.<br />
** Thanks to cpunch for the report.<br />
<br />
* The license keys, logo, and general programming hooks for the upcoming expansion pack AI War: Light of the Spire are now in place.<br />
<br />
* Various AI types are now disabled based on the current options in the lobby.<br />
** If an AI belongs to a specific expansion, it is now disabled if that expansion is disabled in the LOBBY, not just in the overall License Keys / Expansions setting for the game itself.<br />
** If Mines are disabled, so is the Mine Enthusist.<br />
** If Starships are disabled, so is the Starfleet Commander.<br />
** If Heavy Defense is disabled, so is the Fortress Baron.<br />
** If Teleporting is disabled, so is the Teleporter Turtle.<br />
** If Parasites are disabled, so are the Technologist Parasite and Feeding Parasite.<br />
** If Cloaking is disabled, so are the Camoflager, the Counter Spy, the Shadow Master, and the Stealth Master.<br />
** If the Astro Trains AI Plot is disabled for either player, then those players cannot be a Train Master.<br />
** Thanks to Folket for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* When the AI Type that would be selected is unavailable (due to options being changed as above, for instance), it now defaults to Random Moderate/Easier instead.<br />
<br />
* When the player or AI colors would be set to nothing in the lobby based on their old values not being available, it now sets them to the first entry in the list instead.<br />
<br />
* Two new expansion-3-only AI types have been added: Vanilla and Everything.<br />
** Vanilla is just a basic AI with no special abilities or extra ship unlocks, whil Everything has ALL of the fleet ships unlocked.<br />
** There are also the attendant six achievements associated with these, also.<br />
** Note that as preorders haven't quite yet started for the third expansion, these are currently inaccessible in the game.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a rare bug that could cause the lobby to draw without the planets actually showing, while throwing a lot of exceptions, upon the second or third run of the program (but not always!). This seems to only have happened if the players were viewing the galaxy map when they exited out of the game, and possibly only if they were hovering over a plant at the time.<br />
** Thanks to unclean, vonkolberg, and Spikey00 for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Hopefully fixed a rare AI Assertions bug that could be caused by a "race condition" of sorts when starting a new game or restarting the AI thread.<br />
** Thanks to NickAragua for reporting the last batch of them.<br />
<br />
* If the dreaded pthread_getschedparam error is encountered on OSX, normally this means a crash is imminent within 30 seconds or so if the player does not disable their sound first.<br />
** We've been attempting many things to solve this problem, and still will be hunting for it, but as a temporary salve we've now made it so that when this error is encountered it will AUTOMATICALLY disable the sound for the player and shows them a message advising them to save their game and restart the program asap.<br />
** It also now logs some extra information about the state of their program to hopefully aid in actually fixing the root cause of this.<br />
** It also stops further images, music, and similar from being loaded, as they could also trigger the same crash and the player really needs to restart, anyway.<br />
<br />
* Since the 4.0 switch, the "Automatically Check for Updates" settings option was doing nothing. Now it properly disabled automatic update checks.<br />
<br />
(Released November 1st, 2010)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 4.022 ==<br />
<br />
* Put in some more sanity checks that would hopefully prevent missing image or sound files from impacting game stability on OSX (if that is what was happening).<br />
<br />
* The error file writing has now been centralized, so that if error files can't be written it no longer crashes the game.<br />
** Additionally, if any error file is larger than 2MB before the new error occurs, it now deletes the entire old error file and starts again (if it can). This keeps the game from generating gargantuan error files in the case of a serial error that might occur.<br />
** Additionally, if the error file is unable to be written, it now logs itself to the console log instead.<br />
** And finally, when errors are encountered in-game they are now rendered as local text messages to the player (not their contents, just their error name). Thus players actually know when errors happen, rather than them being a bit too silent.<br />
** They also now ALL include the game version number as part of their error, which a few previously did not do.<br />
<br />
* All of the Unity GUI texture-drawing methods are now wrappered in a much more robust error-avoiding central call. If this was the cause of any instability on the OSX side, it should now be resolved.<br />
<br />
* Added a new "Left Mouse <=> Right Mouse" AnyTime KeyBind (defualts to None on windows, defaults to LeftApple on a mac), for people who were having problems getting the normal ctrl+left = right logic on a mac one-button mouse.<br />
<br />
(Released October 29th, 2010)<br />
<br />
[[Category:AI War Release Notes]]</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Current_Post-6.000_Beta&diff=29858AI War:Current Post-6.000 Beta2017-09-16T16:14:06Z<p>Nat: Fix link to 7.001</p>
<hr />
<div>== Statistics For The Curious ==<br />
<br />
* Between 6.000 and 7.000, we pushed out 50 distinct public releases over 238 days. <br />
<br />
* Community contributors were (as always) a huge help. 123 Players were thanked over the course of the 500 individual changes that were made.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 7.001 ==<br />
<br />
* Patch notes for game version 7.001 and up can be found at [[AI War:Current_Post-7.000_Beta|Current Post 7.000 Beta]].<br />
<br />
== Release 7.000 ==<br />
(Released June 17th, 2013)<br />
<br />
(No changes other than the version number, compared to 6.050)<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.050 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/06/ai-war-beta-6050-release-candidate-3.html Release Candidate 3] ==<br />
(Released June 16th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* The "Starfleet Commander" AI Type is now categorized as a "Harder" type.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna, LordSloth, and Bognor for the suggestion<br />
<br />
* Zenith Hydra Heads are now immune to repair.<br />
** Note: the hydras themselves can still be repaired just fine.<br />
** Thanks to Diazo for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* The Zenith Hydra Head (not the main body, just the spawnable) now starts in FRD automatically.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.049 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/06/ai-war-beta-6049-release-candidate-2.html Release Candidate 2] ==<br />
(Released June 15th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Set metal and crystal cost of Lightning Torpedoes to minimal values to prevent efficient resource farming by scrapping them (producing them doesn't cost resources anyway).<br />
** Thanks to Niwantaw for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that allowed more shadow-projection units to be placed by a champ than the available shadow charge would permit, by holding shift and clicking repeatedly without moving the mouse at all. This could allow infinite shields while paused, in fact.<br />
** Thanks to MasterSJT and Spikey00 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the SpecialForces and ThreatFleet logic could pick "staging point" planets that were human planets. Nothing quite like the SF deciding to "stage" from your homeworld.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.048 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/06/ai-war-beta-6048-release-candidate-1.html Release Candidate 1] ==<br />
(Released June 14th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* MLRS Guardians (normal and Dire) hull type from medium => artillery, so that they don't counter their triangle counter (was fighters, is now bombers).<br />
** Thanks to zleorg for pointing this out.<br />
<br />
* Bumped all non-dire guardians up 2 exo cost tiers; partly because it was kind of silly to have Raid and Infiltration guardians start 1 tier lower than the Raid Starship (while being 50% to 150% more effective than it), but really all the guardians are pretty buff right now.<br />
<br />
* Added a tooltip to the Master Sound Volume slider that it does not impact the Music levels (only the Sound effects levels).<br />
** Thanks to Tridus for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some bugs where normal AI retreat or target-priority logic could interfere with exo "galaxy-wide-chase" logic and cause dancing and indecisiveness, etc.<br />
** Thanks to Histidine for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some bugs where normal AI retreat/attack/etc orders were being sent to hybrids, which could cause dancing and indecisive behavior, etc.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report and saves.<br />
<br />
* Modernized the Refugee Outpost's HBC-IV.<br />
<br />
* Added seven new AI taunts for various occasions.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg, LordSloth, Hearteater, Faulty Logic, and others for the inspiration.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.047 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/06/ai-war-beta-6047-activating-vengeful.html Activating Vengeful Sanding Machine MkIII] ==<br />
(Released June 13th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Updated the Spider Guardian description to reflect that it doesn't fire sniper shots anymore (so scout starships aren't gonna help).<br />
** Thanks to relmz32 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions where the Spire Maw was not doing attrition damage to its contents.<br />
** Thanks to Ricca for the report.<br />
<br />
* Updated the tutorials to reflect changes since 6.0.<br />
<br />
* Added new per-control-group toggle to the CTRLS window: Batch Auto-Explore<br />
** The idea here is to automatically build and send batches of scouts to get initial scout intel on planets you've never seen before. This is not at all optimal (you'll lose a _lot_ of scouts, and they won't generally concentrate their paths in an optimal fashion) but it can be great for picking up intel on a bunch of planets that are accessible with minimal micro.<br />
** Suggested usage:<br />
*** 1) Pick a control group you're not using, and turn this toggle on for it.<br />
*** 2) Build a separate Space Dock, and assign it to that control group.<br />
*** 3) Set the space dock to loop build, and pause it.<br />
*** 4) At that space dock, queue up the number and type of scouts you want in a batch (presumably all you can build, but if you've got some scouts stationed permanently elsewhere they won't be available for this so set the number accordingly).<br />
*** 5) Make sure no other space docks are building those types of scouts.<br />
*** 6) When you're ready to start building the scout batches, unpause the space dock. Having engineers on hand to speed-build the scouts is helpful but not required.<br />
** And that's basically it. The dock will build scouts until it has a full batch (according to the numbers you set) and then when the last scout is built it will automatically set the "auto explore" behavior on those scouts. As the scouts die the dock will build more and once it has a full batch again it will set those to auto-explore too. And so on.<br />
** This can actually cost a fair bit of metal and crystal, so once your scouts have stopped making progress you'll want to pause that dock again.<br />
<br />
* Lightning Torpedoes (spawned by Lightning Torpedo Frigates) can now be given direct commands from the player. Mainly this is to make sure you can scrap them if desired (so they don't set off an AI Eye) since they have a much longer lifetime than most spawned "drone"-type units.<br />
** Thanks to ZaneWolfe for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some issues that made non-packed-line line-place... really wonky.<br />
** Thanks to MaxAstro, Kahuna, and others for reporting this.<br />
<br />
* Toned down the mapgen initial unit seeding for planets adjacent to a human homeworld; goes easier on starships, fortresses, etc.<br />
** Thanks to... probably everyone for suggesting this.<br />
<br />
* Made counter-shot-range drawing use a similar optimization as normal firing range drawing (that if two circles of the same radius have centers within a certain zoom-based threshold of each other, only draw one of them) to cut down on Attractor-Drone-related lag.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Updated the tip-of-the-day section of the main menu.<br />
<br />
* Bumped the MkI Flagship up one exo-cost sub-tier so that they were no longer the only always-available "Heavy Frigate", as this was resulting in many exos having a _lot_ of MkI flagships.<br />
** Thanks to nitpik, TechSY730, and many others for reporting this.<br />
<br />
=== One Last Round Of Buff Polls Before The Official Version ===<br />
<br />
* Thanks to the players participating in the nominations and voting for the recent [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13340.0.html buff-for-humans] and [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13341.0.html buff-for-ai] polls.<br />
<br />
* Grenade Launcher, in honor of winning BOTH polls:<br />
** From having no vs-hull bonuses to having 3x vs Light, Composite, CloseCombat, and Swarmer (same as the Flak Turret, which is basically a stationary grenade launcher).<br />
** From 80k+20k cap-m+c cost => 70k+10k.<br />
** From 30k cap-e cost => 20k.<br />
<br />
* Armor Booster, in honor of coming second in the for-humans poll and doing decently in the for-ai poll:<br />
** Now increases the armor of all boosted ships to a minimum of 1000, before piercing and the multiplicative part of the boost are applied.<br />
** Base Cap Health from 4,921,000 => 7.5M (so about 50% of fighters, though the armor boosters have a much lower cap and thus higher effective durability).<br />
** Base Cap DPS from 28.5k => 40k (so about 80% of a fighter, since it also has 6x bonuses).<br />
<br />
* Etherjets in honor of doing well in both polls:<br />
** Base Cap Health from 4,939,200 => 10M (about 2/3rds of Fighters, and jets are a high caps ship, so effective durability is much lower).<br />
** Base Cap DPS from 58.8k => 80k (about 60% more than Fighters, but makes Bonus DPS only about 9% higher than Fighters)<br />
** Cap M+C cost from 9k+27k => 9k+18k.<br />
** Cap E cost from 30k => 20k.<br />
** So the point of these is still the tractors and the cloaking, but they should hold their own a bit better in a fight now.<br />
<br />
* Anti-Armor Ships, in honor of doing well in both polls:<br />
** Base Ship Cap from 392 => 240 (Fighters have 192).<br />
** Base Cap Health from 5,488,000 => 15M (so near Fighters, but with somewhat higher cap means somewhat lower effective durability).<br />
** Base Armor from 150*mk => 0.<br />
** Bonuses (vs Heavy, UltraHeavy, Polycrystal, and Structural) from 2.4 => 5 (base dps is already 52% higher than Fighters, this makes bonus dps 26% higher than Fighters).<br />
** Armor Piercing from 10k*mk => Max (kinda in the name, right?).<br />
** Base Move Speed from 24 => 28 (so now same speed as Bombers).<br />
** So the point is that it ignores armor and is effective vs heavily fortified stuff, while no longer being curiously flimsy.<br />
<br />
* Raptor, in honor of doing well in both polls:<br />
** Base Ship Cap from 192 => 96 (so half fighters).<br />
** Base Cap Health from 4,939,200 => 7.5M (so half fighters, but with the lower cap has somewhat more effective durability).<br />
** Added Bonus vs Artillery (already had Light, UltraLight, and Refractive).<br />
** Bonuses from 1.8 => 6 (base DPS was 33% more than fighters, but bonus dps was 60% lower, now will be 11% higher).<br />
** Armor Piercing from 500*mk => 0.<br />
** Base Engine Health from 50 => 100.<br />
** Cap M+C cost from 16k+80k => 16k+40k.<br />
** So the point is still the speed and the cloaking, but more up to date in terms of combat stats.<br />
<br />
* Raider, in honor of doing well in both polls:<br />
** Base Ship Cap from 392 => 240 (so 25% more than Fighters).<br />
** Base Cap Health from 10,290,000 => 15M (so like Fighters, but slightly lower effective durability due to cap).<br />
** Armor from 150*mk => 0.<br />
** Base Cap DPS from 49k => 65k (so now 32% more than Fighters).<br />
** Vs-hull bonus types from Heavy, UltraHeavy, Artillery, Swarmer => Light, UltraLight, Artillery, Medium,<br />
** Bonuses from 4 => 5 (so bonus DPS now 10% more than Fighters).<br />
** Armor Piercing from 10k => 0.<br />
** Base Move Speed from 36 => 60 (so quite a bit faster than the normal 30-40 range of fighter-likes but nowhere near the 130+ league of Raptors and Raid Starships).<br />
** Cap M+C cost from 16k+47k => 12k+30k.<br />
** So these have be re-imagined a bit to be fast high-ish-cap raiders but not cloaked, with increased durability (since they're not cloaked) and designed to take down non-hardened targets.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.046 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/06/ai-war-beta-6046-activating-vengeful.html Activating Vengeful Sanding Machine MkII] ==<br />
(Released June 12th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Enclave Guardians base speed from 40 => 24 (fighters are 32, for reference, and the triangle counter to said guardians).<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Spire Civilian Leader Outposts now use the normal irreplaceable-capturable seeding (to put it way the waaaay out away from wormholes).<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Dire Guardian Lairs now seed no closer than 4 hops from human homeworlds, instead of no closer than 2 hops.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Distribution nodes no longer have the 20% chance of causing a savescum... I mean, of being trojan.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic, Kahuna, and others for inspiring this.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a typo in the Core Starship description.<br />
** Thanks to The Silent Watcher for the report.<br />
<br />
* Added Bradley Smith to the Special Thanks section of the credits roll, for the source code we adapted to develop the map untangler released in 6.044.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Hydras, since their implementation was adequate but not particularly inspiring:<br />
** Base Ship Cap from 128 => 64 (cap stats maintained).<br />
** Regen Rate from 9/8/7/6/5 minutes to 30 seconds.<br />
** Base Cap DPS from 150k => 100k.<br />
** Gains build points as it takes damage, and spawns a Hydra Head when its build points are >= (max health)/(1+mark), in other words every 50%/33%/25%/20%/17% of health.<br />
*** Hydra heads have about 50% the health and 75% the DPS of a mkI Hydra, fire 2 shots every 2 seconds (instead of 8 shots every 8 seconds), and self-attrition to death in 30 seconds (or less, if damaged).<br />
*** Note: the spawn check does not happen immediately upon taking damage, so a killing shot will not generally cause spawns. So if you can one-shot hydras it really cuts down on the pain they cause. If you can't... well, they can get pretty aggravating.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art, TIE Viper, Wingflier, and Tridus for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that was causing Astro Trains to stall when their route would take them through a strongly-held human world.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a few bugs that were causing Special Forces and Threatfleet ships to try to rally (when idle) to planets they could not reach without going through stronger human worlds than they were willing to actually enter. This would lead to said fleets "camping" right next to human territory instead of 3 hops back from it.<br />
** There are still some issues that can happen if you cut the AI homeworlds off from each other, but that will have to persist for now.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Renamed the Artillery Guardian to the Missile Guardian because it shoots missiles instead of the actual "Artillery" ammo type (which is fired by the Artillery Golem and Dire Artillery Guardian, etc).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the new starship-disassembling units (the expansion has a guard post, a dire guardian, and a core guard post with that ability) were not actually attrit'ing the swallowed starships.<br />
** Thanks to SNAFU for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* The Shark-plot consequences for losing a home command station are now 5x a normal command station, instead of 100x. This is relevant to co-op.<br />
** Thanks to Arkillion for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Updated the Objectives screen with... a whole lot of stuff.<br />
** Thanks to Bognor, Tridus, Histidine, Mick, LaughingThesaurus, LordSloth, TechSY730, Burnstreet, Aeson, Kahuna, Qatu, and Aklyon for helping figure out what should be changed/added/etc.<br />
<br />
* Core Turret Controllers: halved core turret caps. We knew they would be OP in their last iteration, just wanted to figure out how much.<br />
** Now they'll be a straight upgrade over mkI turrets but not over mkI+mkII turrets. Except for the Sniper/Spider ones (which only have mkIs), but that's only for when you can actually take and hold them, etc, so we'll deal with that later.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the suggestion<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.045 ==<br />
(Released June 10th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Made some slight modifications to the VotM logo to better line up with the other expansion logos.<br />
** Thanks to... quite a few of you, for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Struck the infamous Rotting Cow (and its nefarious associates) with the Planet Cracker. <br />
** In other words: refined the selection of background planets somewhat to focus on the better ones, and go with larger-res versions where available.<br />
** Note that since the updater cannot delete files from your installation, you'll still have planet images numbered above 37 but the game won't actually use them.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Added "cleanup aisle three" cheat for destroying ALL units on a planet.<br />
<br />
* Added support for a sixth parameter to the "ilostit" cheat that specifies the player number to spawn the ships for. 0 through 7 are human players, 8 and 9 are the two AI players.<br />
<br />
* Added new chat command "load_script:(filename)" where you replace (filename) with the name (without extension) of a .txt file in your RuntimeData/ChatScripts/ directory. When run, this command will treat each line in that file as a chat line from you, including commands and cheats.<br />
** So for example you could have a file named "test.txt" in the ChatScripts directory, with the lines:<br />
***cmd:enable cheats<br />
***cleanup aisle three<br />
***ilostit,FighterII,-12300,6700,84,0<br />
***ilostit,BomberII,-10300,4700,84,8<br />
** And then execute that by entering "load_script:test" (without the double quotes, of course) in the chat box and pressing enter. The result is that it would wipe the currently viewed planet and spawn a group of fighters versus a group of bombers. This is probably useful for balance testing, among other things.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg for inspiring this command.<br />
<br />
* The lobby "Untangle Map" button now applies the untangling to all alternate layouts, not just the official one. Makes sense, since the alternates should begin the game in the same state as the official.<br />
** Thanks to MaxAstro for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.044 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/06/ai-war-beta-6044-so-thats-what-vines.html So That's What A Vines Map Looks Like] ==<br />
(Released June 10th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Honeycomb maps now space their planets out more if there's room (won't affect old saves).<br />
<br />
* Removed the 3-fighter "advanced scout" sent by each AI wave. It was an effective way to soak some turret alpha (particularly AOE alpha) and it could mess with counter-wave defenses... but ultimately the player could defeat this effect with some trivial-but-annoying-to-execute micro.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic, chemical_art, and others for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* The new title screen is now dimmer.<br />
** Also added a new "Disable New Title Screen" toggle to the graphics tab of the settings window (the toggle defaulting to on, at least for now).<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna, Faulty Logic, doctorfrog, and many others for feedback on the new image.<br />
<br />
=== Map Untangling! ===<br />
<br />
* Thanks to Dr. Zoidzerg for putting us on the trail of the force-directed-graph method, and special thanks to [http://www.brad-smith.info/blog/archives/129 Brad Smith] for previously publishing a C# implementation (and permissive license thereof) that we were able to adapt and extend for AI War.<br />
<br />
* Added an "Untangle Map" button to the lobby (just under the big New Map Seed button), here's the in-game tooltip for description:<br />
** Some map types (notably Vines, Spokes, and Tree) produce maps that are difficult to read due to the links between planets being very long and crossing over each other a lot. You can use this button to run a "Force-Directed Graph" physics simulation that will generally result in a more readable map in those cases. This is certainly not guaranteed to fully untangle a map, in any event.<br />
** Untangling is not really recommended for map types that already don't have much link-overlap, but you're welcome to give it a try. The results are generally interesting, if nothing else. Maze maps usually remain readable but look more organic after this process.<br />
<br />
* Also added two new related chat-line commands:<br />
** cmd:untangle map<br />
*** This is basically the same as clicking the "Untangle Map" button in the lobby, but can be used in-game (and thus on old saves).<br />
**** PLEASE NOTE! This only applies to your alternate layout (accessed via the alt+right-click context menu on the galaxy map), not the official layout, as we very much want to avoid modifying that after game-start. So if you're looking at the official layout (or someone else's alternate) when you trigger this command, you won't see the results until you switch to your alternate layout.<br />
**** Also, this change to your alternate layout is not sync'd to other machines in multiplayer; we may add that later but it's a little tricky because the untangling is happening on a separate thread, etc.<br />
** cmd:stop untangling<br />
*** This simply stops the process started by the other command.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.043 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/06/ai-war-beta-6042-controllers-out-of.html Controllers Out Of Control] ==<br />
(Released June 8th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Railpod cap m+c from 5k/10k => 5k/5k.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where railpods were sometimes doing way more than half their health in self-damage per shot, when they should have been doing 50% + 1.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a few bugs where sniper units would neglect to close on radar-dampened targets even if this meant they could not fire on them.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where it was possible for a unit to get partially "stuck" with a "set by the player" destination when that destination was actually just "no destination". So it would ignore any "implicit" destinations like moving towards a target of opportunity that was out of range.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a number of bugs where AI guard ships would try to come after targets further away from their guard posts than the normal "do not go more than X range away from your station" logic (combined with their own effective firing range) would allow. This tended to result in a bit of dancing back and forth when chasing radar-dampened stuff, etc.<br />
** Thanks to Burnstreet for the report and save which led to discovering these.<br />
<br />
* Added a "Decolonize" button to the scrap-confirmation popup when trying to scrap a (non-home, obviously) command station AND the Shark plot is active. The only differences from scrapping are:<br />
** Starts 2 minute countdown (which cannot be cancelled), and at the end of that the station is destroyed.<br />
** Does not cause shark-related penalties (though these still happen if the station is killed or scrapped normally before the countdown triggers the actual decolonization) or AI taunts, but does cause all other normal on-station-death things like the stall timer.<br />
** Does not refund any resources (not that this really matters, but it is a difference).<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Replaced the main menu background.<br />
<br />
=== Core Turret Controller Rework ===<br />
<br />
* So Core Turret Controllers were cool, but they weren't really accomplishing their main goal (make distributed defense easier and more desirable, without significantly buffing chokepoints) as well as we wanted. So we're trying something... a little different, you could say, if you were given to understatement. As part of this, we also changed the core-game mkII and mkIII turret costs and redefined the Spider Turret's relationship to the Sniper Turret.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art, Tridus, Faulty Logic, Toranth, and others for inspiring these changes (whether they wanted to or not).<br />
<br />
* Higher-mark turrets (except the HBC) now use the mkI metal and crystal costs (yea, kind of a big change, but mainly just makes the higher-mark turret unlocks and core turret controllers more attractive).<br />
<br />
* Spider Turret:<br />
** Damage from what the Sniper does => half that.<br />
** M+C costs from (really big) => the Sniper's (which are still high, but not nearly as much).<br />
** K Cost from 3000 => 2000.<br />
<br />
* Core Turret Controllers:<br />
** Now all 8 are seeded in new VotM-enabled maps (sorry, old saves), instead of just 3 (or 4 on multi-HW games), to avoid situations where it gives you just Lightning, Flak, and Sniper and not much that can really fill the main combat role, and also to increase the total per-planet firepower available.<br />
** Now give full-caps instead of quarter-caps. This is pretty huge in terms of increasing that total possible per-planet firepower.<br />
** _Very_ importantly: Now a core turret cannot be placed on the same planet as a turret of the same type (needler, mlrs, laser, missile, etc) of a lower mark, and vice versa. This includes turret remains (cheese prevention).<br />
*** So you can have Core Laser Turrets on the same planet as MkI, MkII, and MkIII Missile turrets (or needler turrets, or mlrs turrets, etc), but you could not have Core Laser Turrets on the same planet as MkI, MkII, or MkIII Laser Turrets.<br />
*** The end result is that core turret controllers no longer really increase the total ceiling of turretry firepower you can pack onto a single chokepoint; they're still a benefit there if you weren't already unlocking mkII and mkIII of that particular turret type (as 1 cap of core turrets is better than a cap of mkIs plus a cap of mkIIs, but not better than mkIs + mkIIs + mkIIIs all together), but massively increase the amount of firepower you can put on any planet you want to defend (if you have the energy) without taking away from what's available for the chokepoint.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.042 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/06/ai-war-beta-6042-activating-vengeful.html Activating Vengeful Sanding Machine] ==<br />
(Released June 5th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Ship Design tab of Controls window: now,<br />
** If you have one slot selected, hold shift, and click on another slot:<br />
** Then instead of selecting that other slot, it copies the module type from your selected slot to this clicked slot.<br />
*** If the clicked slot cannot hold that type of module, nothing happens (nor does which slot you have selected change).<br />
** Thanks to Toranth, Aquohn, Eternaly_Lost, and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Champion module upgrades: now,<br />
** If you unlock a higher tier of a module:<br />
** Then any saved ship designs (of that player) with a lower-mark version of that same module type will upgrade to use the new higher mark.<br />
*** Unless the newly unlocked mark is too high for the base hull, of course, in which case nothing happens for that slot in that design.<br />
** The same update is done for that player's list of "modules to immediately queue on champ respawn".<br />
** Note that this update only happens at the time of the new mark being unlocked, so it won't immediately impact old saves.<br />
** Thanks to Aquohn, Eternaly_Lost, Toranth, and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Build times of Core Sniper Turret and Core Spider Turret from 50 => 150 to be more like most other core turrets, and be less drastic on the per-second economic impact.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Special Forces Alarm Posts:<br />
** Chance of triggering on death from 50% => 0%.<br />
** Seeding frequency halved.<br />
** Alarmist AI half as likely to pick these when seeding an alarm (if it doesn't pick this it just does a normal Alarm Post).<br />
** AIP on death from 5 => 15.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug from the last month or so where some galaxy map display configurations would display allied units as if they were in a transport (that is, in parentheses).<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Improved the performance throttling logic for "should I let this ship request a new target list now?" to let ships with absolutely no target list check more than once every 2 seconds for a list if they are:<br />
** An aggregate-targeting leader with followers.<br />
** Or an aggregate targeting follower with a leader who does have a target list.<br />
** This will particularly help ships in Attack-Move actually start firing on targets (and stop moving) as they come into range rather than waiting a while and in some cases simply sliding right past the target.<br />
** This may also reduce performance in some cases, though generally in the bigger battles (where performance is most problematic) the ships in question have targets fairly soon anyway.<br />
** Thanks to Burnstreet for the report and saves that demonstrated the need and provided a testbed for this change.<br />
<br />
* AI Missile Guard Post seconds-per-salvo from 3 => 6, so DPS has been halved. This puts it at 2/5ths of many other guard posts, hopefully actually compensating for its huge range and such now.<br />
<br />
* The FRD-Engineers Toggle (both the global and the per-control-group ones) have been split out into FRD-Engineers and FRD-Rebuilders. The former no longer applies to Remains Rebuilders, and the latter applies exclusively to them.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier and others for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where engineers in FRD would not prioritize a player-given go-to-another-planet order over assisting local build queues (or whatever), even with the Multi-Planet-Patrol-FRD toggle off (if it's on then they should prioritize local assistance, etc).<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Now when a player unit enters a planet with a redirector post that would send them right back out through a nearby wormhole (generally the one they came in through), they set a quick movement waypoint about 2k-3k distance away, move to that, and then move to the target wormhole and get underway. This gives a chance for FRD or other logic to fire in case there's something on the planet that the ship should be dealing with rather than ducking right back in the wormhole without checking.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for the suggestion and testbed save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some bugs with the carrier auto-deploy logic where it wasn't actually considering all human/ai strength on the planet when making the call on whether to do a pre-emptive partial (or full) deployment.<br />
** Also made the "only auto-deploy one carrier every 2 seconds" rule per-planet instead of galaxy-wide.<br />
** Thanks to Tridus, Cinth, and others for providing reports and saves where carriers were being too reticent.<br />
<br />
* Fixed another bug that was preventing core fabricator ships from showing up in the Ship Design list (this is just the Core Spire Corvette and Core Protector Starship, currently).<br />
** Thanks to Burnstreet for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where SF carriers considered themselves exempt from the "FINAL" cpa.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where Hunter-spawned Special-Forces H/Ks and guardians could be packed into an SF carrier... and then forgotten by the hunter plot, which would then happily spawn more of those units to fill in the gaps. Which in turn could very likely get packed away into carriers. Such an unfortunate malfunction.<br />
** Note, this won't remove H/Ks from SF carriers in old saves so in those saves you may get another round of hunter spawns, but it won't just keep packing the new ones away.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Updated the ancient (on multiple levels) description of the toggle that causes ships repaired by a Mobile Space Dock to stay with the Dock rather than try to go back to where they were (given the lack of tugs, I'm not sure that even happens anymore).<br />
** Thanks to Bongor for the report.<br />
<br />
* Updated the Neinzul Enclave Drone descriptions to no longer mention a dependency on turret tech (as it's no longer true).<br />
** Thanks to Aklyon and Bognor for the report.<br />
<br />
* Turns out that the Sledgehammer AI type has basically been "vanilla" for a while. Now it sends waves 2.5x slower than other AI types, but gets a 2.0x wave size multiplier (would have gone higher, but it is an "easier" type). Also updated its description to reflect the new meaning.<br />
** Also modified the Technologist Sledgehammer the same way; previously it was just Vanilla with an extra tech level.<br />
** Thanks to Bognor for pointing out the unclear description.<br />
<br />
* Fixed the technologist AI type descriptions implying that they all got max-tech, instead of just higher tech.<br />
** Thanks to Bognor for the report.<br />
<br />
* Changed the objectives tab of the stats window to only show the "Scout For Points Of Vulnerability" objective if:<br />
** There are no currently scouted Data Centers, Coprocessors, or Super Terminals.<br />
** At least one of the above still exists somewhere in the galaxy.<br />
** Thanks to Bognor for pointing out that this objective line would show up at odd times.<br />
<br />
* Fixed the Gravity Drill Station description still claiming to reduce speeds to 8.<br />
** Thanks to Histidine for the report.<br />
<br />
* Removed the mention of mobile repair stations from the Support Corps AI Type description.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and Bognor for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a misspelling in the Retailatory AI Type description.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Corrected the Zenith Spacetime Maniplulator's description claiming it was a stationary ship.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Added a note to the Hybrid Hive Spawner description that destroying one reduces the hive pop-cap.<br />
** Thanks to Bognor for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Updated the Beam Starship description to note that the beam only hits up to 9 targets on the line, not all of them.<br />
** Thanks to Bognor for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.041 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/06/ai-war-beta-6041-brutalizing-new.html Brutalizing Expansion Features] ==<br />
(Released June 4th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* By popular demand, "The Core" AI type now no longer has penalties to wave size or reinforcement size, since the AI already always gets a 0.5 multiplier when getting mkV ships in those contexts to begin with.<br />
** Thanks to MaxAstro, Kahuna, and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Foldouts can no longer be scrapped.<br />
** Thanks to Sundew for reporting that these could be scrapped for resources... infinitely.<br />
<br />
=== New expansion Core Brutal Guard Posts ===<br />
<br />
* Thanks to the community members participating in the nominations and voting for [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13094.0.html this poll] from which these ideas came. In practice we had to make some adjustments, but hopefully the results will still be pleasing (or is it deadly? I often confuse the two).<br />
<br />
* Core Shredder Drone Guard Post<br />
** This guard post is armed with a powerful shotgun weapon, but its main danger lay in the fact that when damaged, it spawns "Shredder Drones" which then attack human units. If one of these shredders does enough damage it replicates itself. Further, after a shredder has existed for 30 seconds it will automatically scrap itself and restores a chunk of health to the Shredder Drone Guard Post (if the post is still alive).<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for suggesting The Nanoswarm Fortress, which this came from.<br />
<br />
* Core Hunter/Killer Factory Guard Post<br />
** This guard post is armed with powerful Energy Wave cannons, but a far greater danger lies within: if an AI unit dies on its planet or any adjacent planet, or if any adjacent planet is not AI-held, this factory deploys the fearsome Hunter/Killer unit it has constructed. After deploying the H/K, the factory builds another in 30 minutes.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for suggesting the Hunter/Seeker Factory, from which this came.<br />
<br />
=== Revising/Polishing Expansion Stuff ===<br />
<br />
* The above brutal core guard posts are the last new content being added for the expansion, so now we're turning more directly to dealing with the feedback on what hasn't been well received thus far (or in some cases was well received, but there were still significant issues).<br />
<br />
* The Youngling Shrike has been promoted from "the unique unit built by the Neinzul Combat Carrier" to the replacement for the Neinzul Combat Carrier in the expansion's roster of new bonus types.<br />
** The Neinzul Combat Carrier still exists in the unit definitions, and will still exist in old games which have them (bear in mind that they don't get the Shrike for free anymore), but will not be seeded into new games. Perhaps some day we'll find an implementation of them that won't suffer from the chronic-dissatisfaction that plagued the old Neinzul Enclave Starship (which the NCC was honestly pretty similar to).<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* The Lightning Torpedo Frigate is now player-only (the AI can't get it anymore) and has had its stats reverted back to what they were before 6.040 (except for the change that lets the torpedoes live a lot longer and thus have a longer effective range).<br />
** Note: loading an old save with AI-controlled LTF's should result in those being quietly removed from the game.<br />
** Thanks to orzelek for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Protector Starship counter-modules rule change:<br />
** Shots which does 100,000 damage or more now take multiple counter-shots to stop (specifically, damage/50,000 shots, rounding down).<br />
** Shots cannot be partially stopped, so a counter-module will not fire on an incoming shot that it cannot fully stop.<br />
** Only one counter module can fire on a particular enemy shot (though it can fire multiple counter-shots to do so).<br />
** So, for example:<br />
*** A counter-energy module has 100 shots at fully-loaded, and reloads 10 per second.<br />
*** An AI Mothership fires 80 shots per salvo, 4 seconds per salvo, each shot doing 800k.<br />
*** Previously, that counter module would totally shut down the mothership's initial salvo, take out 75% of the second salvo, and 50% of every salvo after that. In other words, you could say it did 4M "counter-DPS". And you get 2 counter-modules per mk*cap of protector starships, so full caps of mkI/II/III could stop 96M damage every second (actually more, against combatants with more "concentrated" shots than the Mothership).<br />
*** Now, that counter module would have to put 16 "charges" into stopping each mothership shot, and so fully loaded would only stop 6 mothership shots. That's still 4.8M damage stopped from the initial salvo, which isn't bad. But for each follow-up salvo it would only be able to stop 2 or 3 shots (2.5 actually, on average). So its "sustained" counter-dps would be 2M per salvo or 500k per second. So 1M counter-DPS per mk*cap, or 6M counter-DPS for full I/II/III caps. Note that said full I/II/III cap can thus actually shut down a few mothership salvos entirely and stop 75% of the damage of the rest of them, which is pretty impressive (but finite). This gets much less effective if there are other energy-firing AI ships in the area soaking up counter-shots, of course.<br />
*** For reference, a mk*cap of protector starships can mount 4M HP worth of wide-area forcefields, and a standard mkI forcefield can stop 20M damage (the full cap stopping 200M). So Prot Starships are still up there, but depending on the situation (i.e. how long the fight lasts, how many counter shots are being soaked by high-ROF ships, etc) don't necessarily add a whole lot more durability to a setup than a small/medium pile of forcefields.<br />
<br />
* The Shark plot has been split into Shark-A (only increases AIP on command station death) and Shark-B (only does the non-permanent AI bonuses: the immediate mini-exos and the later buff-to-CPA).<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* The strength of "waves" sent by Exotic and Vicious Exotic AIs has been reduced to about 1/5th of what it was, as Exotic was waaaaay stronger than even the Mad Bomber type.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* The counter-post-heavy AI Subcommander type now seeds its first four posts as counter-posts, instead of all of them. The rest are picked from a very small set of types that, while annoying, do not involve a counter-wave.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
==== Showdown Refinements ====<br />
<br />
* Thanks to Toranth, Cyborg, Faulty Logic, chemical_art, orzelek, Cinth, and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Showdown Response:<br />
** Exo base sizes halved.<br />
** Superweapon-provoked multipliers halved.<br />
** Final exo "base" multiplier (what you get before adding the superweapon multiplier) reduced from 1 to 0.1, since the GSC is added on top of that. Basically if you have no superweapons the final exo should be just the GSCs with a smallish (about the size of 2.5 minute exos) escort each.<br />
<br />
* The superweapon-based increases to the response multiplier are now all conditional on the actual presence of said superweapons:<br />
** FS's was already conditional on the number of city structures you had.<br />
** The one for champs was already conditional on the number of champs you had, but is now also conditional on your highest available champ hull size.<br />
** Broken-Golems previously was not conditional, but is now conditional by the number of golems you have actually running (not counting broken ones yet to be activated), capping out at 4.<br />
** Botnet-Golem previously was not conditional, but is now conditional by whether or not you have an active Botnet Golem.<br />
** Spirecraft previously was not conditional, but is now conditional by the number of spirecraft you have actually running (not counting asteroids), capping out at around 24.<br />
<br />
* The "FINAL" CPA really does launch everything now.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for providing a good save to test this with.<br />
<br />
* Showdown GSC:<br />
** Armor back down to levels that don't break "max armor piercing".<br />
** Range cut to about 1/5th of what it was.<br />
** Speed cut to about 1/3rd of a missile frigate's (on normal combat style, but not changing on epic or blitz even though said missile frigate's speed would change on those).<br />
** Now uses more appropriate graphics.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.040 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/06/ai-war-beta-6040-kindler-gentler-sort.html The Kinder, Gentler Sort Of Core Guard Post] ==<br />
(Released June 1st, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Arachnid Guard Posts now use Artillery ammo.<br />
<br />
* Lightning Torpedo Frigates:<br />
** Now costs the AI 1.5 as much in most contexts.<br />
** Torpedo Base speed from 50 => 30 (so slightly slower than a fighter on epic speed, now).<br />
** Torpedo Base health from 30k => 100, so most things should be able to shoot it down in one shot now.<br />
** Torpedo Lifetime from 20 seconds to 180 seconds, to extend its effective range.<br />
** Torpedo Explosion radius from 1500 => 1000.<br />
** Torpedo Base Attack Power from 1k => 5k, so it will hit _hard_ when it hits (a group of 40+ targets), but with the above it will be much easier for the player to prevent them from hitting.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art, ZaneWolfe, and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where:<br />
** A ship that is all of the below:<br />
*** AI<br />
*** Zombie<br />
*** Cloaked<br />
** Would often essentially become "stuck" because they would not get targeting orders from the AI because they were a zombie, but they would not get targeting orders from the main thread because they were both AI and Cloaked (main thread avoids giving target orders in that case to avoid disrupting AI sneakiness, much the same way you might with putting cloaked units in stand-down).<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for the report and (most importantly) a save where this was really easy to reproduce, and to many players throughout the months (years?) for reporting it.<br />
<br />
=== New Core Guard Posts (Non-Brutal) ===<br />
<br />
* Added the 3 expansion Non-Brutal Core Guard Posts that won [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13095.0.html this poll].<br />
** Thanks to the community members participating in the nominations and voting.<br />
<br />
* Core Implosion Drone Guard Post<br />
** This guard post is armed with several high-power implosion cannons that are extremely dangerous to large targets, but are thankfully relatively shorter-ranged than most implosion weapons. Unfortunately, this post also launches "Implosion Drones" which (while much shorter-ranged still, and the drone self-destructs when it fires) charge at enemy ships to fire several lower-power implosion rounds.<br />
** Thanks to zharmad for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Core Arachnid Guard Post<br />
** This guard post is armed with massively powerful artillery cannon designed to cripple or destroy larger targets. It can't even shoot at smaller units.<br />
** Also swallows enemy starships that get too close.<br />
** Thanks to Histidine for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Core Riot Control Guard Post<br />
** This guard post fires many shells that aren't massively powerful but do significant engine damage. Also, the post mounts many tractor beams which paralyze their victims.<br />
** Thanks to Histidine for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.039 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/05/ai-war-beta-6039-carrying-combat.html Carrying The Combat] ==<br />
(Released May 31st, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Added updated far-zoom icons for the 7 expansion AI (non dire) guardian types.<br />
** Thanks to HitmanN for the pixelart.<br />
<br />
* Added final new Bonus Ship Type for this expansion: Neinzul Combat Carrier.<br />
** Lightly armored and armed for a starship, but can internally produce any type of Neinzul Youngling you have unlocked (includes Commandos, Tigers, Vultures, Weasels, Nanoswarms, and Fireflies) and is also the only thing that can produce the unique Youngling Shrikes.<br />
** Built from the Starship Constructor (or from the Advanced Starship Constructor, for the MkIV).<br />
** Shrikes are fast-attacking cloaked raiding ships, and you get basically "half a cap" of them with the combat carrier itself (whose dps isn't great, but the combined effect is fairly useful).<br />
** Thanks to pheonix89 for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* MkV Youngling types now have self-attrition again, as they lost it solely to facilitate the use of Youngling-producing fabricators, but more recently it was changed such that those fabs teleport their units to the corresponding intragalactic warp gate (if any) with no paralysis time.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Tiger now uses energy-bomb instead of shell ammo.<br />
** No, this really doesn't matter much, I just felt like it.<br />
<br />
* Fixed up the ARS-tab tech menu tooltips to show the stats for the mkIs instead of the mkIIs, and to no longer claim that an ARS unlocks both mkI and mkII.<br />
** Thanks to Vyndicu and... rather a lot of you jumped on this one, actually.<br />
<br />
* Showdown Device tweaks:<br />
** Showdown-device-related counterwaves now give 180 seconds instead of 30 seconds warning before the wave launchers, and no longer get the base 2x multiplier.<br />
** The Showdown-Device-related AI response scalings based on Broken Golems and/or Botnet Golems being on has been reduced and the scaling based on Spirecraft has been increased.<br />
** The Showdown-Device-related waves and counterwaves are now sized as if the AIP were 400 regardless of current AIP, since the SD mechanic is thematically setting aside the normal "guerilla war" concept and the AI is hitting back with everything it can (under the circmustances) rather than scaling with a certain perceived threat.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.038 ==<br />
(Released May 30th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug from several versions ago (when Guardian types became AI-unlockables instead of always-have-all-available) that was preventing new Defender-mode games from being started at all.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the colony ship's menu would be blank until you clicked the CMD button, instead of defaulting to behaving as if it were on.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where having a command station build another command station could trigger an AI taunt (that wasn't appropriate to the occasion).<br />
** Thanks to Orelius for the report.<br />
<br />
* Added a different tooltip when mouseovering the command station CMD tab to say that it's for switching to another station type without on-station-loss penalties.<br />
** Thanks to Aquohn for pointing out the confusion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where something whose shot was countered by a Protector Starship module would get a free reload (as it normally does when there's an overkill).<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Finally fixed a bug where it was still possible for a Ship Design Hacker to trigger a counter-hacking response when on a planet with no available bonus types (and thus could not be hacked).<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar and Wingflier for the reports.<br />
<br />
* Amended the Grav Driller AI Type description to better reflect the quantity of drills seeded.<br />
** Thanks to LordSloth for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the military home station foldouts could trigger the shark plot logic when removed.<br />
** Thanks to ZaneWolfe for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the military home station foldouts required supply.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.037 ==<br />
(Released May 29th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last version where some saves from the version before that would throw errors during load.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report and save.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.036 ==<br />
(Released May 29th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where AI reinforcements sent to a human-controlled planet (due to a troop accelerator still being there or whatever) sometimes spawning on top of the (human) command station.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last version that was causing some old saves to act as if the new "Fast Drones" toggle was disabled.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier and Vyndicu for the reports and saves.<br />
<br />
* Reverted a target sorting optimization from a few releases ago in case it was responsible for the recent rash of out-of-memory errors we've been hearing about.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.035 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/05/ai-war-beta-6035-dire-protector-released.html Dire Protector] ==<br />
(Released May 29th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* The Neinzul Railpod now does not suffer damage reduction when firing out from under a normal human forcefield.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Added new expansion Bonus Ship Type: Protector Starship.<br />
** Small Starship-class modular vessel designed to defend other ships via passive and active defense systems.<br />
** Specifically, each protector starship (shipcap is 2) gets 1 slot per mark, and each slot can take one of the following:<br />
*** Counter-Missile Module<br />
**** This module allows the Protector Starship to shoot down a finite number of incoming enemy missiles per second.<br />
*** Counter-Laser Module<br />
**** This module allows the Protector Starship to shoot down a finite number of incoming enemy laser shots per second.<br />
*** Counter-Shell Module<br />
**** This module allows the Protector Starship to shoot down a finite number of incoming enemy shells per second.<br />
*** Counter-Energy-Shot Module<br />
**** This module allows the Protector Starship to shoot down a finite number of incoming enemy energy shots (which is a broad definition including negative energy, energy waves, implosion shots, impulse reactive shots, flame waves, etc) per second.<br />
*** Protector Shield Module<br />
**** This module allows the Protector Starship to provide protection to any allied ship within range. The generator itself is relatively weak and cannot hold up under intense fire, but does protect a much wider area than most mobile shield generators.<br />
**** Generally speaking the Protector's counter modules are much more efficient, but the shield module certainly has its uses.<br />
** Thanks to KDR_11k for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* On the lobby section where you can disable Swallowers, Core Shield Generators, etc, you may now also disable "Fast Drones", which for now simply disables the Spire Blade Spawners and the Tackle Drone Launcher. The idea being that slow drones (like from the enclave starship and Lightning Torpedo Frigate) can be dealt with more easily.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for, um, "inspiring" this change.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Devastators:<br />
** Reload time from 10 => 5; dps maintained.<br />
** Now has 1.2x bonus vs heavy and ultraheavy, base-cap-dps from 200k => 170k so the bonus dps is now slightly higher than before, but the base is a bit lower.<br />
** Now cannot shoot at small targets.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* The Custom (Narrow) and Custom (Broad) galaxy display modes now count enemy ships that are immobile and were there the last time the planet was scouted (unless the galaxy display filter excludes all enemy ships, of course).<br />
** Thanks to Bognor, onyhow, and many other players for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
=== Dire Guardians ===<br />
<br />
* Thanks to Wingflier, Cyborg, chemical_art, Hearteater, and many other players for inspiring these.<br />
<br />
* New games with the new expansion enabled will now seed a number of "Dire Guardian Lair" objects throughout the galaxy.<br />
** These will not be retroactively seeded into existing games, as if it puts one next to a non-AI planet things could get... rough.<br />
** You can prevent these from seeding by disabling the "Dire Guardian Lair" ship type in the lobby (on the same screen where you can disable Swallowers, Core Shield Generators, etc).<br />
*** And they're never seeded below diff 7, at least for now.<br />
<br />
* When a dire guardian lair's planet is on alert (or simply not controlled by the AI at all anymore) it will gradually construct a "Dire Guardian" over about an hour and a half. Once launched they will try to find the best way to hurt you. These are very nasty units and will succeed in hurting you particularly if you are unprepared. But if you catch it by itself with enough firepower the fight should be pretty quick.<br />
<br />
* You may also opt to simply destroy a lair to prevent it from building more dire guardians, but when it is destroyed it will spawn 3 dire guardians in a "last gasp". 3 at once will be uncomfortable, but can be dealt with if you're careful.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.034 ==<br />
(Released May 27th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Added a note to the Zenith Devastator description that it is built at the Starship Constructor.<br />
** Thanks to Mick for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that could cause unhandled exceptions when a CPA launched and would previously have dropped a carrier on a planet with no warp gate and no command station at all (still works fine as long as there's either an AI or human command station there).<br />
** Thanks to leb0fh for the report.<br />
<br />
* The planet-select dropdown in the per-planet controls window is now sorted alphabetically.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* The showdown-device-activation-related counter-waves now have a "depth" of 4 instead of 90.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.033 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/05/ai-war-beta-6033-bonus-tricks-released.html Bonus Tricks] ==<br />
(Released May 27th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where disabling the latest expansion could still carry the hunter plot setting into the next game.<br />
** Thanks to Akylon for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Increased the minimum size the target list sorting tries to generate, as last version's optimization apparently took it too far down.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug from recent versions where the counterattack posts were basically back to just sending waves everywhere.<br />
** Thanks to SNAFU for the report and save, and Cinth for bugging me incessantly about it.<br />
<br />
* Various units that do auto-unit creation that just dumps the new unit out into the game rather than internal transport space (including the Spire Blade Spawner, Neinzul Enclave Starship, etc) now do not do their unit creation if:<br />
** As before, when no enemy units are present at all.<br />
** Now, if all enemy units present are cloaked.<br />
** Now, if the spawner is controlled by the player (and not the AI) and all non-cloaked enemy units present are flagged "not dangerous" (i.e. has no attack) or are flagged "never include in threat or attack count" (i.e. a special forces guard post or a core shield generator).<br />
** Thanks to... well, this is another one of those "who has _not_ asked for this?" issues, but particularly thanks to Toranth for a save showing what happens when 16 HWs of Enclave Starships get bored (answer: total performance kill).<br />
<br />
* The Modular-fort version of the Insanity Inducer module has had its shots-per-second halved and its seconds-per-salvo doubled, because previously it could make the fort into a botnet all its own.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* FS Exos are now included in the diff 8+ cpa/exo syncing logic introduced recently.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that's been around for a couple of months that was basically causing reinforcements to ignore the reinforcement population cap rule.<br />
** Thanks to Bossman for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* The good news is that Core Eyes no longer have infinite tachyon. The bad news is that now the AI Home Command Station has it.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* The CPA deployment logic will no longer drop carriers on planets with no "wave" warp gates (so a non-home command station isn't enough, but a warp gate is).<br />
** Thanks to Burnstreet for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
=== New AI Toys/Tricks ===<br />
<br />
* Added seven new expansion-only types of AI Guardian for normal use and exos:<br />
** Infiltration<br />
*** Be afraid.<br />
** MLRS<br />
** Munitions Boosting<br />
** Needler<br />
** Widow<br />
** Plasma<br />
** Shield<br />
** Note: as before, each AI only initially unlocks 3 guardian types, and gets more as AIP goes up. So you won't be seeing all of these types right from the start of every game or anything like that.<br />
<br />
* Added the concept of AI "subcommanders" to the expansion: each mkIII+ non-home AI planet has a chance (with higher marks having a higher chance) of getting a "subcommander personality" which allows it (during mapgen) to pick from a special set of new AI command stations, a special set of new AI guard posts (sometimes mixed with the existing ones), and place both station and guard posts according to its own whims.<br />
<br />
=== New Bonus Ship Types ===<br />
<br />
* Many thanks to the community members discussing and voting in the [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13096.0.html poll] from which these were drawn. Still two more winners to add in a later release, but wanted to go ahead and get these into the game.<br />
** Also thanks to community member HitmanN for the far-zoom icons and borders for the bonus ships.<br />
<br />
* Added new expansion Bonus Ship Type: Lighting Torpedo Frigate.<br />
** Has modest firepower in its own right, but primarily attacks by launching miniaturized versions of the Lightning Warhead (that do not increase AIP when detonated, of course).<br />
** Thanks to pheonix89 for the main suggestion behind these.<br />
<br />
* Added new expansion Bonus Ship Type: Zenith Devastator.<br />
** A powerful starship designed by the Zenith during their ancient wars against the Spire (who heavily rely on shields). Its shots completely ignore forcefields (though the devastator itself does not ignore forcefields).<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for the main suggestion behind these.<br />
<br />
* Added new expansion Bonus Ship Type: Neinzul Railpod.<br />
** Mature Neinzul organism without the time-limited lifespan of a Youngling. The railpod is basically an organic railcannon, with effectively infinte range. The downside is that firing the cannon does tremendous damage to the railpod itself, generally destroying itself after only two shots. Despite this limitation, railpods can contribute significantly to "burst" damage either defensively or offensively, and a group of space docks loop-building these with engineer support effectively becomes a large artillery battery.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater and TechSY730 for the main suggestion behind these.<br />
<br />
* Added new expansion Bonus Ship Type: Zenith Hydra.<br />
** A potent short-range combatant that breathes (plasma) fire and can regenerate its own health over time.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for the main suggestion behind these.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.032 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/05/ai-war-beta-6032-tumbleweeds-in-stars.html Tumbleweeds In The Stars] ==<br />
(Released May 22nd, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug (which also affects more recent map types) where there was a very predictable pattern of "which AI owns which planet?" in several map types.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for pointing this out.<br />
<br />
* Core CPA posts now schedule a CPA for 10 seconds out rather than using the normal timing, because generally that would result in the CPA coming too late. Post description updated to accurately reflect the change (the description having been part of why it was shifted to the normal timing before).<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* The Core CPA Post logic now uses the same size calculations as normal CPAs.<br />
<br />
* Corrected the CoN Neinzul Youngster AI Type's description to include that it launches waves 2x as frequently, and often (rather than always) sends pure-youngling waves.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the report.<br />
<br />
* The new expansion's Exotic and Vicious Exotic AI Types now show a timer for when their next exo "wave" will launch, with a lead time similar to normal waves. They no longer announce the moment of launch, since this would be redundant (and normal waves and such don't bother with it).<br />
** Thanks to ZaneWolfe for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Added the new expansion's "minor" faction: Showdown Devices.<br />
** Won't spoil the details for now; the in-game journals you get from capturing them should point you in the right direction for now.<br />
*** But we will mention the ultimate point of the faction: alternate way to win, and ultimate stalemate-breaker.<br />
<br />
* Somewhat reduced the number of target comparisons necessary when building a target list in the normal auto-targeting logic, which should help performance in big battles.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.031 ==<br />
(Released May 20th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the wave-substitute-exo logic where Vicious Exotic wasn't getting any bonus over Exotic at all.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug introduced a few weeks ago where the "The Core" AI Type was not getting its traditional mkV ships (in any case).<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna, tmm, and Coppermantis for the report.<br />
<br />
* Human command stations (other than the Home one) can now construct another command station within 2000 range of themselves. Just like with building a new station via colony ship this destroys the original station and the new one must be built up from 1 health, BUT ''unlike'' using a colony ship this does NOT trigger the on-death "command station building stall", and so can be used to upgrade a station without incurring that penalty. At the same time, it has limited cheese value because you can't put the station way on the other side of the planet and thus play "monkey in the middle" with AI attackers.<br />
** Using the new station-upgrading-itself method also avoids the effects the expansion's Shark plot normally has when a human command station dies. It's unlikely that the new station will survive if the old one would not have, however.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth and many other players for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* The exo "substitute waves" launched by the expansion's Exotic and Vicious Exotic AI Types now come with an initial announcement in the chat log that the wave has launched.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth and chemical_art for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* The expansion's Chivalric AI Type now also considers Spire Civilian Leaders to be non-targetable.<br />
** Thanks to Tridus and tmm for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* The prefix for "Strength" in most places is now Str instead of S, since S looks a bit like 5 in that font.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions where the "offensive nemesis" component of the AI's response to human champions could spawn too many nemesis champs because the previously spawned ones were dropping out of threatfleet due to being cut off from the AI HW's, and the "how many should I spawn?" logic for that particular bit counted TF nemesis units against its cap. Now it will count normal-Threat ones too.<br />
** Thanks to Tridus for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions that could cause AI thread errors if an AI threat ship no longer had a current planet (were swallowed by a maw or whatever, there's a few different ways this could happen).<br />
** Thanks to vinco for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug with the expansion dual-type AIs where several "negative" flags (like "does not send waves" from Turtle or Support Corps) basically never had an impact on a dual-type AI even if present on both types.<br />
** Thanks to Coppermantis for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the "# of aggressive ships on this planet" alert control was only counting "threat" ships, not "attack" ships, when an "attack" ship is usually just a threat ship which happens to be on a human-held planet.<br />
** Also changed the alert text color from green to red.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg for the report/suggestion.<br />
<br />
* The expansion's Vengeful AI Type's response to CSGs B through E being blown up has been adjusted downward to account for the fact that multiple generators are dying all at once because popping one pops that whole network.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for bringing the multiplying-pain effect of the above to our attention.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.030 ==<br />
(Released May 18th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where human champions were still increasing the size of CPAs somewhat.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the Vengeance-expansion AI Type "Vengeful" where its tantrum attacks would not happen if Vengeful was the secondary type of that AI instead of the primary.<br />
** Thanks to Aklyon for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a typo calling a unit the mk5 variant the "Flak Turret Mk VV".<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the expansion Hunter plot where turning it all the way up to intensity 10 would cause unhandled errors periodically. This may have been an effort to shield you from what that plot does on intensity 10.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a couple bugs in the "x out of y in service" display for the expansion's per-planet-cap core turrets.<br />
** Thanks to Tridus for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Added some bits of the expansion's Shark plot that weren't implemented in 6.029.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.029 ==<br />
(Released May 14th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where AI threat ships could get stuck on a planet because there was a target that was marked VeryLowPriority (meaning that the AI cannot shoot at it) but nonetheless caused it to consider the enemy presence interesting enough that it didn't want to reassign the threat to a different planet. The only example we're aware of right now is the Core Warhead Interceptor, which is often not captured by the player anyway, but the problem has been fixed in general.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug from a few versions ago where giving an auto-load command to ships in a control group with the control-group-uses-control-group-move toggle, it would generate unhandled errors and fail to actually auto-load.<br />
** Thanks to Burnstreet for the report and save.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.028 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/05/ai-war-beta-6028-so-i-rewired-it.html So I Rewired It] ==<br />
(Released May 14th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions that was causing a dramatically different distribution of guard post types. Notably, it was causing a ''ton'' more counterattack guard posts than normal.<br />
** Thanks to ussdefiant and others for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The Tachyon Guardian has been renamed to the Tachyon Sentinel<br />
** They also no longer show up under the count of "Guardians" but rather the count of "Sentinels". You can use the Custom Broad filter to just get one or the other, now.<br />
<br />
* Guardian seeding changes: <br />
** Since guardians were made more, well, "interesting" a few things have come to light:<br />
*** Having Wormhole Guard Posts get them makes some map types a lot harder than others, due to highly variable numbers of wormholes.<br />
*** Having all planets start with their maximum number of guardians is both painful and somewhat diminishes the importance of the guardian each planet can get in a reinforcement (if it's below its cap).<br />
** We're:<br />
*** Making wormhole guard posts not get guardians during initial seeding or reinforcements.<br />
*** Making the initial seed of guardians only get a certain % of the actual max per planet:<br />
**** If Diff <= 7 then 25%, else if Diff <= 8 then 27.5%, else if Diff <= 9 then 30%, else if Diff <= 10 then 32.5%.<br />
**** If it's a homeworld, core world, or superterminal planet this is multipled by 3.<br />
**** If it's not one of the above, but does have an ARS, AdvFact, ASC, CSG, or Broken Golem, this is multiplied by 2.25.<br />
**** If it's not one of the above, but does have a Fabricator of some sort, this is multiplied by 1.5.<br />
**** So if a planet has 4 non-wormhole guard posts and a fab (but nothing more important), then on diff 7 it gets to seed at (4*0.25*1.5)=1.5 locations, which means the command station will get a guardian (it would be more on higher difficulties, but 1 on diff 7) and that's it. But the next planet will start with that extra 0.5, so if it's the same exact situation it will wind up getting to seed at 2 locations (command station and first post) with nothing left over.<br />
*** Now when checking for adding a guardian during a reinforcement, it no longer skips the chance if the planet happens to be controlled by the other AI player than the one sending the reinforcement (if it does indeed do a spawn it will be based on the planet owner's difficulty and unlocked guardian types and controlled by the planet's owner, however).<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art, Hearteater, and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions where the Spire Corvette IV could not be built at an ASC unless you had an AdvFact too (and had unlocked the Corvette III, of course).<br />
** Fixed a related bug where the MSD could only build mkIV stuff if you personally held an AdvFact, the foldouts given to other players were not sufficient for them, but are now.<br />
** Thanks to Shadowsand for the report.<br />
<br />
* The Advanced Hybrids "mobilization" mechanic has been disabled until we can find an implementation that is neither negligible (in its first implementation it garnered a highly-voted bug report for not doing anything at all, though it was actually working) nor overpowering (in its current implementation it was... ow).<br />
<br />
* The golem build times have been adjusted so that all of them cost the same rate per second to build, and thus have different build times. This helps for instance with not having to grab every engineer in existence to build the Cursed Golem in a reasonable time because its costs are actually fairly low.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Tackle Drone Launcher cap health from 17,850,000*mk => 10M*mk.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Enclave Guardian health from 8M*mk => 4M*mk.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna, Hearteater, chemical_art, and others for inspiring this change<br />
<br />
* Changed the total-AIP thresholds at which the AI gains new bonus ship types from 100/200/300/etc to 100/250/400/550 (100 and +150 for every one after that, instead of just every 100).<br />
<br />
* Remains Rebuilders now lose their cloak briefly after a friendly command station dies on that planet. This gives the AI a chance to prevent the human from trivially rebuilding everything from scratch out in the middle of nowhere. Though if you have a tachyon-free path from one of your other planets to the one you just lost, it's still quite easy (just FRD-move the rebuilders to the lost planet) to get everything back on line once the AI forces are gone.<br />
<br />
* Special Forces Guard Posts and Core Shield Generators are now never counted as Attack or Threat on the top bar, since players commonly leave them as-is and they're (relatively) innocuous. <br />
** Bear in mind that an SFGP is a valid SF rally point if the planet is (or suddenly becomes) neutral.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Added a "i c u" cheat to temporarily tachyon the currently viewed planet.<br />
<br />
* Added a "did i break your concentration" cheat to temporarily EMP the currently viewed planet (both friend and foe).<br />
<br />
=== AI Improvements ===<br />
<br />
* The AI code itself has been largely unchanged for years and has served quite well. But as various additions and changes have been made to the game some things have gotten a bit strange with the existing AI code, so as part of the major "base game" work for 7.0/Vengeance we've put a lot of work into renovating the AI code, digging in to find out exactly what's going on in there, fixing some longstanding bugs, improving the AI's response-time and actual decision-making.<br />
** Due to the sheer volume of changes, it's possible something really got messed up ;) We've done many hours of testing (both singleplayer and multiplayer, if you're curious) and the AI seems to be working fine. Actually more dangerous than before, in some ways. But if you run into bugs please let us know!<br />
*** Though do keep in mind that some things that ''look'' like "units dancing back and forth" are actually just the AI making legitimate reactions to changes in the situation (new enemy ships entering the planet and/or leaving it, changing between moving towards a wormhole or its wait-point because the balance of power on the other side changed, etc), but making them more quickly than it used to.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730, Faulty Logic, Cyborg, and many other players for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Replaced the "Firepower" metric (which was basically just BaseDPS, not considering other stats) with the "Strength" metric (which, while not perfect, has been used with success elsewhere and seems to be a much better measure for comparing groups of units to see which one is stronger; something that the game does rather a lot in AI logic, as well as some other placess).<br />
** You're likely to see situations where the AI is undervaluing/overvaluing some things and making... "questionable" decisions about when to commit to an attack, etc. Your reports (and save games) will be helpful in fixing these cases.<br />
<br />
* Converted several AI checks that were based purely on ship count to determine force-levels to instead use the "Strength" metric.<br />
<br />
* Drastically reduced the number of individual "GameCommand" messages generated by the AI thread by making it send similar orders as a single command. So if 200 of one AI's ships on one planet all decide they want to attack a particular unit in the same "tactics cycle", that will be sent as one command instead of 200. This really cuts down on the round-trip time between when the AI makes a decision and when it hears back on the results.<br />
<br />
* Significantly improved the syncing of unit updates from the main thread to the AI thread to be more "fair" when choosing which updates to send when there are too many to send at once so that the AI doesn't have to wait as long (on average) for updates on a particular unit, without increasing the max updates per frame (just slamming more data across the queue isn't going to help, in general).<br />
<br />
* Fixed some race conditions where:<br />
** If:<br />
*** 1) The AI sends a command on a particular unit.<br />
*** 2) There are a ton of unit updates needing to be sent to the AI such that it takes many cycles for that particular unit's update to actually get through and processed by the AI thread.<br />
*** 3) The main thread's acknowledgement of the command gets back to the AI thread before that particular unit update gets there.<br />
*** 4) The AI thread gets back to another "tactics cycle" after that command acknowledgment but before that unit update.<br />
** Then the AI thread could look at the same unit, see what it saw before, and (due to other things being different, or simply some of the logic randomization) issue a second command to the same unit that's different and possibly contradictory of the first.<br />
*** In the case of "go to a different planet" orders this could easily produce the kinds of "dancing back and forth" behavior reported several times in the past. It also wasn't particularly effective.<br />
** So now we've changed it to not try to give commands to a unit until it has received ''both'' the command acknowledgment and the unit update reflecting the last command given to that unit.<br />
<br />
* Significantly reduced the processing load of the AI thread (mainly the "individual ship tactics" logic, which is most of what that thread does) so that it can react faster to changes in the game-state.<br />
<br />
* Improved the AI's handling of "wait points", where it delays a ship's entrance into a wormhole in order to better concentrate forces against the humans.<br />
** Previously when asking "is it safe to move this threat to its next destination planet?" it would only consider the strength of the threat on that group's current planet (and anything actually on the target planet), but now it also considers any other threat (on other planets adjacent to the target) waiting to go through.<br />
** It now asks that question (is it safe, blah blah) even when moving on to other AI-held planets. Unless it's a special forces ship, which is just supposed to charge in if it's an AI planet.<br />
** If it decides a ship needs to wait, the ship now waits somewhere not directly on top of the wormhole leading to the target planet, because that position is far too vulnerable to tractor shenanigans and such.<br />
*** Thanks to a suggestion by LordSloth, if the Lazy AI toggle is on it will use the old sit-on-top-of-the-wormhole behavior. Interesting correlation with the username...<br />
<br />
* The "where should this threat ship go next?" logic has been significantly improved to consider both the difficulty of reaching a target planet and the desirability of doing so.<br />
** Also, a threat ship enroute to a planet can now cancel that path if the target planet becomes no longer desirable (meaning that it has no human command station or human-controlled irreplaceable, i.e. something else got there first and took it down). The ship can then pick a new destination.<br />
<br />
* If a ship is in a part of the galaxy that the AI cannot reasonably easily gather forces from (meaning there's some nasty human chokepoint cutting it off from the AI homeworlds), the AI will no longer try to enlist that ship into the Threatfleet. The "local threat" logic is better in those cases.<br />
** Note that ships already in threatfleet behavior (from previous saves, or before you cut it off from the AI HWs, etc) will stay that way.<br />
<br />
* The individual-AI-ship-tactics logic no longer considers golems an "irreplaceable" target unless it has local superiority on the planet, so the presence of a golem won't override retreat behavior or general targeting priorities unless the AI has a decent chance (in theory) of actually taking it down.<br />
<br />
* The individual-AI-ship-tactics logic now considers harvesters, engineers, etc to be lower priority than enemy military vessels if the total enemy strength on the planet is over a certain absolute threshold, unless the AI has better than 10:1 superiority. It will still shoot at those other targets if they're the best "targets of opportunity" in range at a particular moment, but it will no longer cause a huge fleet to voluntarily diminish its own concentration-of-power to go after harvesters when the player fleet is roaring down with blood in its eyes.<br />
<br />
* The individual-AI-ship-tactics logic now considers most forms of "drones" (enclave drones, spire blades, tackle drones, champion bay drones; but not deflector/attractor "drones" or ordinary younglings) to be lower priority than most other things regardless of the local balance of power. It will still shoot at them if they're the best "targets of opportunity" in range at the particular moment, but it won't break off to chase something moving 50 times faster than it could ever dream of and/or is going to die in 5 seconds anyway.<br />
<br />
* Certain AI ships (like Carriers, H/K's, etc) now use a new "Bullheaded targeting" flag which makes them ''heavily'' prioritize going after military command stations, logistics command stations, modular forts, forts, heavy beam cannons, and other command stations (in basically that order). This is a bit more heavy-handed than we typically are in the AI logic and we wouldn't want to do it for the bulk of the AI forces, but it seems this is more effective at dealing with the most serious threats on the battlefield than the previous logic (which could sometimes see a fully loaded carrier going after a single missile frigate while a Mod-Fort was field-refitting the entire AI fleet with supplementary exhaust ports, etc).<br />
<br />
* Spire Civilian Leaders and Zenith Power Generators are now considered full "irreplaceables" when under human control. Previously they were not given that level of priority in all areas and the AI would sometimes pass up an opportunity to kill them.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the AI would consider an irreplaceable target "unshielded" if it was protected only by non-movement-blocking forcefields. Given the power of Spirecraft Shield Bearers (or even just normal Shield Bearers) that wasn't a safe assumption.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug (introduced back in the days when we tried to implement paint-attack, probably) where the AI sending a list of targets for a particular ship would actually result in it being set to go after the last ship in the list (because the commands were not being queued, but overriding each other).<br />
<br />
=== Cross Planet Attack Refinements ===<br />
<br />
* CPA changes:<br />
** Now when a CPA is launched:<br />
*** If all these conditions are true:<br />
**** Difficulty is 8 or higher.<br />
**** Elapsed game time is 5 hours or more.<br />
**** A broken-golems-hard, botnet-golem-hard, and/or spirecraft-hard exo (notably, not FS exos) is charged to at least 60%.<br />
**** The CPA's actual number of freed ships is over a certain minimum threshold (in general, on diff 8+ it will be).<br />
*** Then those exo(s) will launch within 90 seconds after the CPA does.<br />
**** Please note that the strength of these exos will be whatever it was built up to, NOT necessarily 100% (unless it just happened to be 100% at the right moment).<br />
** CPAs now deploy all their units via carrier, to help its initial push have a similar velocity across the map and to cut down on the significant slowdown that often happens right after a CPA launch where the AI is shoving thousands of threat ships into carriers.<br />
*** Also, to avoid cases where CPA ships were being put into a carrier containing only two ships or something silly like that, if a planet doesn't have enough ships to justify a carrier of its own those are "rolled over" on to the next planet that's launching CPA ships, and it will keep doing this until it has enough for an at least decently-sized carrier load.<br />
** CPA units no longer start as Threatfleet, just normal Threat. With the AI improvements listed above Threat is actually more immediately dangerous in some ways, where Threatfleet is still probably better at dealing with situations where the game-state at that particular moment just doesn't have a good way to hit the player.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* This has an impact outside CPAs, but probably impacts them most: Carriers now automatically deploy some (but not necessarily all) of their units when they reach an area where the human has some presence.<br />
** The number deployed is based on an internal idea of the minimum number of AI ships the carriers should try to keep "in the air" on that planet at once. This ranges from 250 when the human presence is fairly trivial compared to AI strength there, up to 2000 when the AI thinks human forces pose a significant danger to the carrier fleet.<br />
** When a carrier deploys units in this particular way, it is forced to simply deploy the ships that are actually inside; no combining into higher-marks or core guardians or whatever.<br />
** Note: despite the fact that the AI's not getting any extra ships out of this, or stronger ships or whatever, this actually ''substantially'' increases the danger posed by carriers in many cases. It also makes them less annoying to fight because as long as you kill everything they deploy they'll eventually fully deploy (and thus disappear) even if you leave the auto-target carriers toggle off.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth, Eternaly_Lost, and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
=== New Debug/Logging Commands ===<br />
<br />
* In the course of the AI renovations mentioned above we had to improve our tools for telling exactly what was going on inside "the black box" and we figured that some of you are curious (or strange) enough to want to see this info too. More importantly, the ability to gather this info yourself will help in case of strange AI bugs that don't reproduce after save/load, because you can record the logic as it happens and send us the logs so we don't have to rely entirely on being able to reproduce the bug itself (which sometimes just isn't possible or feasible). So these new debug commands are available for any player to use.<br />
** Note 1: naturally, this information can be exploited to find stuff out about your game-in-progress that will give you an advantage. Up to you if you want to do that, but consider this your "spoiler warning".<br />
** Note 2: Unlike Advanced Logging, which generally does not have a big impact on performance, these forms of logging can cause signficant slowdown on the AI thread. It will generally still be faster than it was before (though unit-ai-logging something with 4000 potential targets could get hairy) but it will degrade the AI's response time and thus degrade its effectiveness to some extent. There's probably at least one of you who will exploit that.<br />
** Note 3: Much of the info is human-readable, particularly if you're used to code variable naming conventions, but some of it can be a bit... dense ;)<br />
<br />
* Added a debug chat command: "cmd:log ai wait"<br />
** If used in MP this only affects the host, since only the host runs the AI thread.<br />
** If you're in planet view when you give the command, this tells the AI thread to generate a "LogicLog_AICheckForClearingWaitPointsAgainstSpecifiedPlanet_AIThread.txt" log file in your RuntimeData directory whenever evaluating whether to clear wait points (i.e. charge!) against that planet.<br />
** If you're in galaxy view when you give the command, this tells the AI thread to stop said logging.<br />
<br />
* Added a debug chat command: "cmd:log ai threat choice"<br />
** If used in MP this only affects the host, since only the host runs the AI thread.<br />
** Toggles a debug flag which defaults to false, but when true writes entries to "LogicLog_AIChoosingThreatAttackTarget_AIThread.txt" whenever the AI is trying to pick a new planet-to-attack for normal threat.<br />
<br />
* Added a debug chat command: "cmd:log ai for unit,(ObjectNumber)" (so an example usage is: "cmd:log ai for unit,4270993", without the quotes)<br />
** If used in MP this only affects the host, since only the host runs the AI thread.<br />
** Sets a debug variable to the object number specified. <br />
*** If this number does not correspond to an actual unit (for instance, -1, which is the default value) then this effectively disables this bit of logging.<br />
*** Probably the easiest way to get the number of a particular unit:<br />
**** Pause.<br />
**** Zoom in far enough to be sure you're looking at just that unit and not a group of them.<br />
**** Press F3 to turn on the game's normal debug-output mode.<br />
**** Hover your mouse cursor over the ship.<br />
**** The tooltip's first number is the FGObjectNumber ("Foreground Object Number"), and that's what you use as the parameter to this command.<br />
** Anyway, when this is set, when the AI is considering that particular unit or giving it any commands it will generate entries in "LogicLog_AILogicForIndividualShip_AIThread.txt".<br />
*** Note: this log can be pretty voluminous, particularly if the unit is a military ship with a lot of targets to pick from because it records all the decision-making on what targets are eligible and the sorting between them (thankfully that does not actually involve comparing every ship to every other ship, but it could involve up to 5 comparison-lines for every single enemy ship, every time it runs the individual-ship-logic).<br />
<br />
* Added a debug chat command: "cmd:log ai commands"<br />
** If used in MP this only affects the host, since only the host runs the AI thread.<br />
** Toggles a debug flag which defaults to false, but when true writes entries to "LogicLog_AIIssuedCommands_AIThread.txt" whenever the AI generates commands for the main thread.<br />
** Note: the info in this is often not really human-understandable because the GameCommand objects are in a fairly generic form at the time the log is generated. Mainly you'll see the name of the command type and a bunch of numbers following it which usually indicate which ship(s) the command is to and what ship(s) or planet(s) the command concerns (ships to attack, planets to travel through, etc).<br />
<br />
* Added a debug chat command: "cmd:log ai cpu time"<br />
** If used in MP this only affects the host, since only the host runs the AI thread.<br />
** Toggles a debug flag which defaults to false, but when true writes entries to "LogicLog_AIProfiling_AIThread.txt" at the end of each AI "overall cycle" (which includes three executions of individual-ship-tactics, three executions of ship-waiting-logic, and one execution each of several more minor routines, as well as a number of half-second waits, etc).<br />
*** Each line includes the sample name, the total milliseconds recorded against that sample during the overall cycle, the number of times the sample was hit during the overall cycle, and the average milliseconds per hit (just the first number divided by the second).<br />
** Note: at the end of the cycle it actually writes the results twice: once in rough "chronological order" of when the samples were started/stopped, and once in descending order of how much time the samples took. Subsamples are always grouped under their parent samples in both cases.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.027 ==<br />
(Released May 6th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Hid some for-next-expansion AI Types that were peeking out.<br />
<br />
* The nebula starships and non-human modular forts that can be built as champion rewards now scale up with the number of champions in the game if that's more than the number of human homeworlds.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic, Cinth, and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.026 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/05/ai-war-beta-6026-guard-before-storm.html The Guard Before The Storm] ==<br />
(Released May 6th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where an ARS would still give mkII for free when hacked.<br />
** Thanks to kasnavada for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions that caused most AI guard posts to seed 1 mark higher than the planet they were on.<br />
** This does not retroactively apply to games created during those versions, since the bug was in mapgen itself.<br />
** Thanks to LordSloth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Hero and Modular Fort Photon Lances now have reload times of 1 second (so 3 seconds total cycle time with the beam duration).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the Ship Design window would not show the Spire Corvette IV or Spire Corvette V even if you could build them (due to holding the ASC or the Core Spire Corvette Fab).<br />
** Thanks to resonence for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where if you were playing FS where your only neighboring AI planets are mkIV (causing the first two recoverables to spawn on your HW) and you started building either the subspace receiver or the refugee outpost before the actual very first second of the recoverable's existence (due to the auto-pause upon scanning, probably), the next signal would not spawn.<br />
** Thanks to Vyndicu for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where coordinated AI ships (exo followers and hybrid escorts) could get "stuck" moving very slowly if too far from their leader but still on the same planet as their leader.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and Hearteater for the reports and saves.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where some AI units that should wait with a threatball were not actually waiting and just cruising through the wormhole to an ignominious demise.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Since the AI's not used them effectively (or consistently, or really anything-positively) for quite some time, the AI no longer gets Engineer Drone or related units.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where some units like Nanoswarms could get "stuck" at "just exiting a wormhole" speed even after fading fully in, until their next full recalculation.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* The order of turrets on the build and tech menus has been rearranged to keep all the combat turrets together and to put the "core 4" types (needler, laser, mlrs, missile) first.<br />
** Thanks to Bognor for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Enclave Starships:<br />
** Higher-mark drones no longer require turret research.<br />
** Drone spawning counts doubled.<br />
** Drone health from 2000*mk => 40k*mk (so about half a fighter, now).<br />
** Drone DPS increased by 50%.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Advanced Factory and ASC health from 440k => 4M.<br />
* Fab health from 1M => 4M.<br />
<br />
* The AI now unlocks new bonus types at every 100 total AIP instead of every 200 total AIP, and the unlocks are rolled separately for each of the two AI types instead of for the AI team as a whole.<br />
<br />
=== Making Guardians More Interesting/Varied ===<br />
<br />
* A lot of this is prep work for the expansion where we're planning to add more guardian types and to have the AI not have every guardian type in every game.<br />
** Thanks to Radiant Phoenix, Hearteater, Wingflier, TechSY730, Lancefighter, chemical_art, Histidine, and LordSloth for inspiring these changes.<br />
** Special thanks to Hearteater for a lot of the numeric work that went into this.<br />
<br />
* Each AI player now no longer has all guardian types available to it, but instead has tachyon guardians (which are basically unchanged from before) plus 3 of the other guardian types chosen at random. At 50 total AIP and every 100 AIP thereafter (so 50/150/250/etc) it will unlock an additional guardian type, similar to how it unlocks additional bonus ship types for the AI.<br />
<br />
* For-planet-guarding Guardians are now seeded one mark lower than the planet they're seeding on, but their stats have been adjusted upward to maintain the same general level of power in these cases, and the AI-core and AI-HW planets still get mkV guardians. This allows a greater range of power between "guardians you run into on low-mark planets" and "guardians you run into in the endgame".<br />
** Note especially that this means that a guardian's DPS or health being doubled in the stats below indicates "staying the same" for most of the guardians you encounter in new games generated from this version onward.<br />
** They've also all been shifted up one level in exo-budget-cost, so their increase in individual stats won't as drastically increase their utility to the AI in exos.<br />
<br />
* The blanket Guardian immunity to fusion cutters has been removed.<br />
<br />
* The blanket MkV Guardian immunities to orbital mass drivers, artillery ammo, and sniper shots have been removed.<br />
<br />
* Artillery Guardian:<br />
** Health from 400k*mk => 1M*mk.<br />
** Armor from 200*mk => 0.<br />
** Damage per shot from 160k*mk => 482k*mk.<br />
** Armor piercing from 320k*mk => 0.<br />
<br />
* Beam Guardian:<br />
** Health from 800k*mk => 2M*mk.<br />
** Armor from 300*mk => 0.<br />
** Damage per shot from 33k*mk => 38k*mk.<br />
<br />
* Carrier Guardian:<br />
** No longer allows AI ships to take refuge in it, but instead generates drones internally up to a load of 100, to be unleashed upon the unsuspecting human forces.<br />
** Renamed the Enclave Guardian.<br />
** Ammo type from Dark Matter => Energy Burst.<br />
** Armor from 300*mk => 10k flat.<br />
** Damage per shot from 600*mk => 4.5k*mk.<br />
** Shots per salvo from 31 => 12.<br />
** Seconds per salvo from 10 => 4.<br />
** Bonuses from 3 vs Heavy => 5 vs CloseCombat, Refractive, and UltraLight.<br />
<br />
* EMP Guardian:<br />
** Health from 1.12M*mk => 2M*mk<br />
** Armor from 300*mk => 0.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 0 => 10k.<br />
** Shots per salvo from 31 => 24.<br />
** Seconds per salvo from 10 => 6.<br />
** Damage per shot from 600*mk => 6k*mk.<br />
** Now EMPs a planet both on entrance and exit, instead of just entrance.<br />
<br />
* Flak Guardian:<br />
** Health from 1.12M*mk => 2M*mk<br />
** Armor from 100*mk => 1k*mk.<br />
** Get immunity to fusion cutters (other guardians are losing it).<br />
** Seconds per salvo from 10 => 6.<br />
** Shots per salvo from 5 => 8.<br />
** Damage per shot from 5.5k*mk => 6.6k*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite replaced by Bonus vs Polycrystal (other bonuses left as is).<br />
<br />
* Gravity Guardian:<br />
** Health from 800k*mk => 1M*mk.<br />
** Armor from 300*mk => 0.<br />
** Damage per shot from 40k*mk => 175k*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy replaced by Bonus vs UltraLight (other bonuses left as is).<br />
<br />
* Laser Guardian:<br />
** Health from 880k*mk => 1.5M*mk.<br />
** Armor from 300*mk => 1k flat.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 300*mk => 1k flat.<br />
** Damage per shot from 3.4k*mk => 10k*mk.<br />
** Instead of 5x vs Polycyrstal, Light, and Refractive it now gets 5x vs Polycrystal, Artillery, and Medium.<br />
<br />
* Lightning Guardian:<br />
** Health from 1.12M*mk => 2.5M*mk.<br />
** Armor from 600*mk => 1k flat.<br />
** Seconds per salvo from 18 => 10.<br />
** Damage per shot from 6k*mk => 3.7k*mk.<br />
<br />
* Raider Guardian:<br />
** Health from 400k*mk => 2M*mk.<br />
** Armor from 375*mk => 1k flat.<br />
** Damage per shot from 11k*mk => 32k*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy replaced by Bonus vs Turret (other bonuses left as is).<br />
<br />
* Self-Destruct Guardian:<br />
** Health from 20k*mk => 750k*mk.<br />
** Armor from 0 => 10k.<br />
** Damage from 100k*mk => 75k*mk.<br />
** Armor piercing from MAX => 0.<br />
** Added bonuses vs Light and Polycrystal.<br />
<br />
* Sniper Guardian:<br />
** Health from 400k*mk => 1M*mk.<br />
** Armor from 150*mk => 0.<br />
** Seconds per salvo from 6 => 8.<br />
** Shots per salvo from 5 => 4.<br />
** Damage per shot from 19k*mk => 64*mk.<br />
** Bonuses from 4x vs Medium and Polycrystal => 4x vs Medum, Refractive, Ultra-Light, Composite.<br />
<br />
* Special Forces Rally Guardian:<br />
** Health from 800k*mk => 2M*mk.<br />
** Seconds per salvo from 10 => 5.<br />
** Shots per salvo from 1 => 5.<br />
** Damage per shot from 10k*mk => 50k*mk.<br />
** Gained 5x bonus vs Turret.<br />
** Any planet one of these is on is considered a valid target for the AI's Special Forces, even if it is a neutral or human planet.<br />
<br />
* Spider Guardian:<br />
** Base speed from 12 => 60.<br />
** Health from 400k*mk => 1.5M*mk.<br />
** Armor from 150*mk => 1k flat.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 0 => 1k.<br />
** Removed auto-kite behavior.<br />
** Now has infinite engine health.<br />
** Range from Infinite => 15k.<br />
** Ammo from Railgun => Shotgun.<br />
** Seconds per salvo from 6 => 4.<br />
** Damage per shot from 3k*mk => 4k*mk.<br />
** Bonuses from 4 vs Medium and Polycrystal => 5 vs Artillery.<br />
<br />
* Spire Implosion Guardian:<br />
** Health from 800k*mk => 2M*mk<br />
** Range from 7000+1000*mk => 30k.<br />
** Seconds per salvo from 1 => 4.<br />
** Shots per salvo from 1 => 4.<br />
** Damage per shot from 0.25%/0.5%/1%/2%/4% => 1%/2%/3%/4%/5%.<br />
<br />
* Starship Disassembler Guardian:<br />
** Renamed to simply "Disassembler Guardian".<br />
** Health from 2.4M*mk => 1.5M*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 8k*mk => 100k flat.<br />
** Ammo from Antimatter Bomb => Dark Matter.<br />
** Seconds per salvo from 2 => 3.<br />
** Damage per shot from 4k*mk => 175k*mk.<br />
<br />
* Tractor Guardian:<br />
** Health from 1.12M*mk => 3M*mk.<br />
** Armor from 450*mk => 10k flat.<br />
** Bonuses from 3x vs Turret => 3x vs Swarmer and Medium.<br />
** Damage per shot from 35k*mk => 54k*mk.<br />
<br />
* Tachyon Guardian:<br />
** Armor from 150*mk => 0.<br />
** Didn't change these to make them more durable or more dangerous to fit the others since these aren't following the others into "not always on in every game". There's been requests to make them less ubiquitous but that would require an overhaul of the scouting game so it's just being left as-is for now.<br />
<br />
* Vampire Guardian:<br />
** Health from 800k*mk => 1M*mk.<br />
** Armor from 50*mk => 1k flat.<br />
** Bonuses from 3x vs Polycrystal, Medium, and Neutron => 3x vs Refracfive, Neutron, and Swarmer.<br />
** Seconds per salvo from 3 => 2.<br />
** Shots per salvo from 4 => 8.<br />
** Damage per shot from 4k*mk => 9.5k*mk.<br />
<br />
* Warp Gate Guardian:<br />
** Attack Range from 6k => 30k.<br />
** Ammo from Minor Electric => Antimatter Bomb.<br />
** Seconds per salvo from 2 => 30.<br />
** Shots per salvo from 1+3*mk => 4 flat.<br />
** Damage per shot from 4k*mk => 125k*mk.<br />
** Gained 3x bonus vs Structural, UltraHeavy, and Heavy.<br />
<br />
* Zombie Guardian:<br />
** Health from 266k*mk => 2M*mk.<br />
** Armor from 300*mk => 0.<br />
** Seconds per salvo from 2 => 4.<br />
** Shots per salvo from 2 => 4.<br />
** Damage per shot from 60k*mk => 55k*mk.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.025 ==<br />
(Released May 1st, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug preventing most foldouts from spawning in multiplayer.<br />
** Thanks to darkarchon for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions where winning any game would give you all the "beat AI Type X" achievements you met the difficulty requirements for, instead of just the ones for the AI Types you were playing against.<br />
** Thanks to Histidine for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.024 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/04/ai-war-beta-6024-squeaky-wheel-gets.html The Squeaky Wheel Gets The Buff (or Nerf)] ==<br />
(Released April 29th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Added a unique identifier (ObjectType) to the ShipDataFull.xls and ShipDataStatsOnly.xls exports.<br />
** Thanks to Diazo for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* The AI's main carrier-creation logic now no longer redeploys ships to a carrier on a different planet (generally it put everything on its homeworld) but instead to carriers on their own planet. This can result in more carriers than before and thus not quite the same "unit count savings", but in practice it works (in testing it still condensed a 45,000 ship CPA down to a level that ran smoothly on +10 on a decent machine, at least until the shooting started).<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* The "try to synchronize new waves with an announced CPA" rule that applies on diff 8+ now aims for launching the waves 90 seconds after the CPA "launches" instead of at the same time, to make actual attack-overlap more likely.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions where the radar dampening on mkII/mkIII turrets was... awry.<br />
** Thanks to Winge for the report.<br />
<br />
* Added new per-control group toggle: Suspend Spending If Resources Less Than.<br />
** If your combined metal+crystal reserve is less than this number, units in this control group will temporarily cease the following activities (even if specifically ordered to do them) :<br />
*** 1) Spending resources on its own build queue (for Space Docks, Starship Constructors, etc).<br />
*** 2) Spending resources on its own self-building (for Turrets, Forts, etc that are still under construction).<br />
*** 3) Accepting assistance from engineers on its build queue or self-building.<br />
*** 4) Providing assistance to another unit's build queue or self-building.<br />
*** 5) Repairing other units.<br />
*** 6) Accepting repairs from other units.<br />
** If a ship is in multiple control groups, the highest value of this setting takes precedence.<br />
** One important use of this is for "use excess resources" assignments, so if you want your merc space dock to turn anything over a total of 1.5M resources into merc fighters, you can do that with this new toggle with minimal micro.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this addition.<br />
<br />
* Added new global toggle to controls window: Harvester Autobuild Ignores Cloaked And Immobile Units<br />
** If this toggle is checked, your command stations will automatically build harvesters on empty resource spots even if there are AI ships present, as long as all of those AI ships are either cloaked or immobile (a Special Forces Guard Post is a good example of an immobile unit you may choose to not destroy but don't want to prevent harvester auto-building).<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic and many other players for inspiring this addition.<br />
<br />
* To address widespread player feedback that the recent buffs to starships went too far, as well as some other longstanding starship-related feedback:<br />
** Flagship Radar Dampening from 8,000 => 12,000.<br />
** Zenith Starship Radar Dampening removed.<br />
** Zenith Starship base capHealth from 36M => 32M.<br />
** Zenith Starship base capDPS from 40k => 36k.<br />
** Spire Starship Radar Dampening removed.<br />
** Spire Starship base capHealth from 24M => 22M.<br />
** Spire Starship base capDPS from 180k => 160k.<br />
** Bomber Starship base capHealth from 36M => 33M.<br />
** Bomber Starship base capDPS from 150k => 135k.<br />
** Plasma Siege Starship engine health from 3k => 100k (which is much more normal for a starship).<br />
** Plasma Siege Starship base capDPS from 90k*mk => 100*mk.<br />
** Plasma Siege Starship base move speed from 12 => 14.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730, Zeyurn, _K_, Aquohn, chemical_art, Zeyi, Hearteater, Diazo, Wingflier, Radiant Phoenix, Faulty Logic, Aklyon, Dichotomy, and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Advanced Research Stations now no longer give MkII of their bonus type for free, but:<br />
** They now grant 500 extra Knowledge immediately upon capture.<br />
** Not directly related to ARS's, but related to Knowledge balance: researching a MkIII triangle or bonus ship type now costs 4000 instead of 6000.<br />
*** The idea being that we're no longer going to count "You get MkIVs of this type if you also have an advanced factory" when computing the cost of these. In theory that yields a cost of 3750 but we went with 4000 since mkIII units are slightly more than 1.5x as useful as MkIIs. We're not yet sure of whether to apply this same philosophical change to MkIII starship costs, as the balance of those is still very much in flux.<br />
** Thanks to kasnavada, TechSY730, Hearteater, Cinth, LaughingThesaurus, Wingflier, Winge, chemical_art, Kahuna, Faulty Logic, Zeyurn, and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* The AI's response to K-hacking and Ship-Design hacking now has a few new tricks, getting progressively trickier as the overall hacking-antagonism "category" (listed in the alert box) gets higher.<br />
** Also educated the AI that it is not, in fact, efficient to attempt to cook food at interplanetary distances with tachyon radiation. Judging by its past frequency of counter-hack tach bursts, it apparently thought this was feasible.<br />
** Haven't added the trickiness here to ST hacking yet, we'll see how it goes here first.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
=== The Squeaky Wheel Gets The Buff, Part 2 ===<br />
<br />
* Continuing the work from the previous version: mostly responding to a [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,12864.0.html recent community poll] with these, specifically with an eye to making some lesser-taken unlocks more worth their knowledge cost (by increasing usefulness, decreasing K cost, or both).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730, Hearteater, Zeyurn, Faulty Logic, Vyndicu, Winge, chemical_art, Toranth, Kjara, zharmad, KDR_11k, and the poll voters for inspiring these changes. <br />
<br />
* The researchable Command Station Upgrades (mkII/mkIII of econ, logistical, and military stations), in honor of doing quite well in that poll, now also create (after a few seconds when the foldout logic fires) a "sub station" next to your Home Command Station that basically provides all of the benefits of one of the corresponding stations. This is cumulative, so unlocking econ II and econ III will cause your home command stations to have both the econ-II and the econ-III sub stations.<br />
** Note: in case there's confusion, these are not modules but totally separate units. They're permacloaked, even the military ones that can fire while cloaked (the idea being that the AI doesn't have to kill it, just the home station).<br />
<br />
* As part of responding to the Enclave Starship doing very well in the poll, added new global toggle to controls window: Brave Enclave Starships.<br />
** If this toggle is checked, your Enclave Starships will suppress their normal self-preservation instincts to avoid being included in a selection with military ships.<br />
** Note: this applies to the enclave starships of the player who's brave-enclave-starships toggle is checked, regardless of who is trying to control them in a multiplayer game with Allow Team Control on. Allied Player Enclave Starships will still be wimps unless their owners check this toggle too.<br />
<br />
* In honor of doing very well in the poll, and in order to assist in plans for revising the Enclave Starship: <br />
** The Mobile Repair Station: <br />
*** Now has the capacity to build mkI-III ships that you've unlocked.<br />
*** Now also has the capacity to build mkIV ships that you've unlocked mkIII of, if you ALSO control an Advanced Factory.<br />
*** Now has a Radar Dampening range of 8000.<br />
*** Now has a brave toggle on the Controls window.<br />
*** Has been renamed to "Mobile Space Dock".<br />
** The Enclave Starship no longer has a build queue (see below, it's being repurposed to produce drones in another fashion).<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Enclave Starships, in honor of doing very well in the poll (and past polls of this nature...) :<br />
** The MkIV version is no longer unlocked by K but instead built at the Advanced Starship Constructor if you've already unlocked MkIII.<br />
*** K cost from 0/2000/2000/14000 => 0/1000/3000 (like the flagship, leech starship, heavy bomber starship, etc).<br />
** Base Cap HP from 6M*mk => 20M*mk.<br />
** Build menu has been removed.<br />
** Instead of a build menu, this ship now automatically produces a group of drones every 10/9/8/7 seconds. That group will contain 1 of every drone type you have unlocked via turret research:<br />
*** MkI Needler/Laser/MLRS/Missile drones are now automatically available.<br />
*** MkII drones can only be built by MkII+ enclaves and are unlocked with MkII turret research (into Basic/Laser/MLRS/Missile turrets, respectively).<br />
*** MkIII drones can only be built by MkIII+ enclaves and are unlocked with MkIII turret research.<br />
*** MkIV drones can only be built by MkIV enclaves and are unlocked with MkIII turret research (there being no MkIV turret research).<br />
** Enclave Drones now automatically start in FRD.<br />
** Enclaves themselves can no longer be cloaked (for the same reason the Spire Blade Spawner cannot be cloaked).<br />
** The Mercenary Enclave Starship is now equivalent to a MkIV, instead of a MkII.<br />
<br />
* The MkII Transport, in honor of doing quite well in the poll:<br />
** Has been renamed to the Assault Transport.<br />
** Cap from 20 => 10 (metal cost, crystal cost, and build time doubled accordingly).<br />
** Unload rate from 20/sec => 200/sec (so effectively instant.<br />
** Where the normal Transport causes all unloaded ships to do a full reload cycle before firing, the Assault Transport unloads them at halfway through the reload cycle (or wherever they were in the reload cycle when they loaded into the transport, whichever is greater).<br />
** The Assault Transport has cloaking.<br />
** The Assault Transport has an attack. Unloaded, the cap of Assault Transports has a little over half the bonus-cap-dps of the mkI fighter so it's not very impressive (particularly considering the K cost). But every 10 ships in an assault transport gives it an additional shot-per-salvo, so a fully loaded cap of these is actually fairly powerful (but nowhere near as powerful as that many normal combatants). And before you ask, yes, Science ships (and other unarmed things) count for this, but 2,000 science ships involves a... rather prohibitive economic cost, considering the payoff.<br />
*** This attack can be suppressed by putting the unit in stand-down mode; everything else it does (loading, unloading, cloaking, etc) will continue to function just fine but this will prevent it from unilaterally breaking its own cloak. At the same time, the attack behavior can be used (while not in stand-down) to suppress the cloak so you can use the transports' traditional "damage sponge" role.<br />
** Health from 2x a normal transports => 4x.<br />
** Knowledge cost from 4000 => 3000.<br />
<br />
==== Turret Rebalance ====<br />
<br />
* This general category did well in the poll, and much feedback followed on what to do about it. Ultimately we went with a general proposed set of numbers from Hearteater, omitting some of the proposed changes and making a few extra ones.<br />
<br />
* Basic Turret:<br />
** Base Cap Health from 14.7M => 38.4M.<br />
** Base Armor from 300 => 10k.<br />
** Shots-per-salvo from 3 => 1.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 10 => 3.<br />
** Base Cap DPS from 235,200 => 168k.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 150 => 0.<br />
** Bonuses from 2.4x => 3x.<br />
** Penalty vs CommandGrade removed.<br />
** K-Cost from 0/500/1500 => 0/1000/1750.<br />
*** Each step is now 250 less than the new "standard" turret K costs; historically this has been a very low-priced turret because historically it was a much weaker turret than the others. It's been in the same league as the others performance-wise for some time, however.<br />
<br />
* MLRS Turret:<br />
** Base Cap Health from 19.6M => 39.6M.<br />
** Base Armor from 450 => 0.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 8 => 10.<br />
** Base Cap DPS from 205800 => 216k.<br />
** Bonuses from 2.4x => 3x.<br />
** Penalty vs CommandGrade removed.<br />
** K-Cost from 0/2000/3000 => 0/1250/2000.<br />
<br />
* Flak Turret:<br />
** Base Cap Health from 24.5M => 60M.<br />
** Base Armor from 750 => 0.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 7 => 6.<br />
** Base Cap DPS from 420k => 315k.<br />
** Attack Range from 4500/5500/6500 => 5000/6000/7000.<br />
** Bonuses from 2.4x => 3x.<br />
** Bonus against Refractive removed and replaced with bonus against Light.<br />
** Penalties vs CommandGrade, Heavy, and UltraHeavy removed.<br />
** K-Cost from 0/2500/3000 => 0/1250/2000.<br />
<br />
* Missile Turret:<br />
** Base Cap Health from 9.8M => 28.8M.<br />
** Base Armor from 150 => 0.<br />
** Base Cap DPS from 264,600 => 171k.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 90k => 0.<br />
** Bonuses from 2.4x => 3x.<br />
** Penalty vs CommandGrade removed.<br />
** K-Cost from 0/3000/4000 => 0/1250/2000.<br />
<br />
* Laser Turret:<br />
** Base Cap Health from 29.4M => 36M<br />
** Base Armor from 300 => 1000.<br />
** Shots-per-salvo from 3 => 1.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 4 => 8.<br />
** Base Cap DPS from 220,500 => 180k.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 750 => 1000.<br />
** Bonuses from 2.4x => 3x.<br />
** Penalty vs CommandGrade removed.<br />
** K-Cost from 0/2500/3500 => 0/1250/2000.<br />
<br />
* Heavy Beam Cannon:<br />
** Base Health from 850k/2.55M/7.65M/40M (at caps 12/8/4/1) => Base Cap Health of 36M*mk (this probably makes the mkIV an unspeakable monster of a turret, we'll see).<br />
** Base Armor from 800 => 0.<br />
<br />
* Lightning Turret:<br />
** Base Cap Health from 19.6M => 48M.<br />
** Base Armor from 800 => 10k.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 18 => 15.<br />
** Base Cap DPS from 435,600 => 337,500.<br />
** Bonuses from 8x vs Refractive, 4x vs Artillery, 2x vs Neutron => 3x vs Refractive, Neutron, UltraLight, and Polycrystal.<br />
** Penalty vs CommandGrade removed.<br />
** K-Cost from 0/1500/2000 => 0/1250/2000.<br />
<br />
* Sniper & Spider Turrets:<br />
** Base Cap from 232 => 192.<br />
** Base Cap Health from 23.5M => 19.2M.<br />
** Base Armor from 1000 => 0.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 6 => 8.<br />
** Base Cap DPS from 141k => 112,500.<br />
** Bonuses from 5x vs CloseCombat, 4x vs Medium, 4x vs Polycrystal, 6x vs UltraLight => 5x vs same types.<br />
** Penalty vs CommandGrade removed.<br />
<br />
* Tractor Turret K-Cost from 0/2000/4000 => 0/1250/2000.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.023 ==<br />
(Released April 23rd, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version where the new control-group-specific sticky-formation toggle wasn't working.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an unhandled-errors bug in the last version with auto-load.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the report and save.<br />
<br />
=== The Squeaky Wheel Gets The Buff, Part 1 ===<br />
<br />
* Mostly responding to a [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,12864.0.html recent community poll] with these, specifically with an eye to making some lesser-taken unlocks more worth their knowledge cost (by increasing usefulness, decreasing K cost, or both).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730, Hearteater, Zeyurn, Faulty Logic, Vyndicu, Winge, chemical_art, Toranth, Kjara, zharmad, KDR_11k, and the poll voters for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Human Raid Starships, in honor winning a recent community poll:<br />
** MkIIs and higher now have immunity to missiles.<br />
** MkIIIs and higher now have cloaking.<br />
** MkIVs and higher now have immunity to gravity.<br />
** K cost from 0/4000/4000 => 0/2000/3000.<br />
<br />
* Mobile Repair Station K cost from 4000 => 3000.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.022 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/04/ai-war-beta-6022-honored-bugs-released.html Honored Bugs] ==<br />
(Released April 23rd, 2013)<br />
<br />
* The Diff > 8 escalation of the "Alternative Minimum AIP" rule that's used for computing how fast golems/spirecraft exos are "grown" has been toned way down to make the first exo less of an "I Win" button for the AI on the highest difficulties.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic and Kahuna for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Nebula Detail now defaults to 60%.<br />
** When loading from a version from before 6.022 you have it set to 100% (the previous default) it will be set to the new default.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna and TechSY730 for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an error in a recent release preventing it from actually giving cloaker starships mine immunity.<br />
** Thanks to onyhow for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some weird bugs with pathing through planets bordering unexplored nebulae in a game with hide-unexplored-planets.<br />
** Thanks to MaxAstro for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where human intragalactic warpgates could not be placed on a planet with an AI warp gate (for instance, an exogalactic wormhole on the human homeworld due to a backdoor-hacker AI).<br />
** Thanks to Tie-Viper for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Removed the rule in the wave-size calculation where it used "(AIP * 0.8 ) ^ 1.1" instead of just AIP on diff >= 8.<br />
** Thanks to... everyone? ... for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* More nebula balance stuff:<br />
** The recently-added "small base death causes one-time surge in large base production" rule:<br />
*** Is now not applied to the GraySpire-vs-Dysons, HumanResistance-vs-RavenousShadow, or Explosive-colony-ships nebula scenarios.<br />
*** Fixed a bug where it wasn't applying to the neinzul bases in the early 3-way sceanrios.<br />
*** On the scenarios where it does apply, is now about 1/5th as strong as it was (it is still multiplied by champion hull size).<br />
** Champion missile module attack power from 60k*mk => 50k*mk.<br />
** Ravenous Shadow, due to feedback that the last nerf was excessive (though the reduction in move speed and attack range were well received) :<br />
*** Base Health from 700M => 750M.<br />
*** Base Damage per shot from 54k => 65k (5k more than pre-nerf).<br />
*** Shots-per-salvo from 40 => 45 (back to pre-nerf).<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic, zharmad, Aquohn, Toranth, Cinth, Poko, Vyndicu, and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Added new per-control-group-control, Ship Movement Defaults To Group-Move:<br />
** When this is set to "On", all your ships in this control group slow down to match the slowest ship in your selection at the time the order is given (disregarding engine damage) so that they don't get farther apart while moving. Normally all ships move at top speed regardless of other ships in the selection.<br />
** When this is set to "Default", the global group-move policy will govern.<br />
** When this is "Off", this behavior will not happen for ships in this control group even if the global group-move toggle is on.<br />
** Note: the group speed only cares about ships in the selection; if there are other ships in this control group but not in your selection then their top speed will not be factored in to the group's top speed.<br />
** Also, if your selection contains ships from other control groups then those ships will follow the group-move policy of that control group (or just your global group-move setting, if they are not in a control group), and thus may go at a different speed.<br />
** If a ship is in multiple control groups with conflicting settings for this, the priority order is as follows: Off, On, Default.<br />
<br />
* CPA ships now go straight to threatfleet rather than spending 30 minutes in normal threat behavior, as that was allowing them to be more easily intimidated (by forts, for example) into just sitting on the other side of a wormhole from a huge human chokepoint. Certain humans are too good at arranging accidents for threatballs for that to work well.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
=== Honored (and now dead) Bugs ===<br />
<br />
* In honor of it winning the "bug of the year" poll, we've fixed the one (several bugs, actually) where Advanced Research Stations, Super Terminals, Broken Golems (normal and botnet), Fabricators (all three categories), Dyson Spheres, Neinzul Rocketry Silos, and Dark Spire Vengeance Generators were only seeding on planets belonging to the first AI player. Depending on which type that player was (scorched earth, notably) this was capable of being very... interesting.<br />
** Note: this is not retroactive for old saves, since the seeding has already happened there.<br />
** Thanks to amethyst, Winge and the poll voters for bringing this (and its importance) to our attention.<br />
<br />
* In honor of it coming in fourth for the "bug of the year" poll, we've fixed how the scaling turret types were still using the old ship caps and not the ones adjusted to work on ultra-low caps without rounding errors (so they've been moved from the base of 196-on-high to a base of 192-on-high, with their cap-health, cap-dps, cap-m, cap-c, and cap-e kept very similar, though not necessarily exactly the same). Specifically this applies to:<br />
** Basic Turret<br />
** Laser Turret<br />
** MLRS Turret<br />
** Missile Turret<br />
** Flak Turret<br />
** Lightning Turret<br />
** Sniper Turret<br />
** Spider Turret<br />
** Tractor Turret<br />
** Note that this does not apply to the counter turrets, the grav turret, the tachyon emitters, or the HBC, as those don't scale with unit caps anyway (the counters and gravs and tachyons because their usefulness varies much more if cap is changed, the HBC because it's already low cap).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730, orzelek, and the poll voters for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* In honor of it coming in second in the "bug of the year" poll, we've fixed a number of bugs that were preventing the preferred-target rules (and to some extent the focus-fire rules) from working on hybrids or other units with a modular forcefield.<br />
** The Focus-Fire toggles and preferred-target rules have also been made somewhat more enthusiastic about their jobs in general (specifically, when looping over secondary targets in range after reaching overkill-saturation on the primary target).<br />
** Thanks to KDR_11k and the poll voters for bringing the importance of this to our attention, and specifically to orzelek for providing a save where the problem could be reproduced.<br />
<br />
* In honor of it coming third in the "bug of the year" poll, we fixed the "Defensive Hybrids are Mobilizing" condition appearing to do nothing. It was actually working as intended in our tests, but since you wanted it to do more, well, it does more now.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and the poll voters for bringing the importance of this to our attention.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.021 ==<br />
(Released April 16th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a null-exception bug in the AI code caused by the recent fix to the retreat logic.<br />
** Thanks to fuzz_head and Chthon for the reports and saves.<br />
<br />
* Put a bandaid on a bug where one of the 3rd expansion's units is being redirected to look for some of its buy-button images in the 4th expansion's directory. Need to fix the underlying problem but that proved to be a major rabbit hole.<br />
** Thanks to rickynumber24 for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.020 ==<br />
(Released April 15th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* EMP Guardian pulses no longer get announced if you do not at least have basic vision (at least one non-blind unit) on the planet where the pulse occurs.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions where scouts could not be directly sent through unexplored wormholes when the everything-starts-unexplored toggle was on.<br />
** Thanks to MaxAstro for the report and save.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.019 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/04/ai-war-beta-6019-nebulous-diligence.html Nebulous Diligence] ==<br />
(Released April 15th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Offensive Nemesis champions now do not start unless the player has completed a nebula (win or loss) or the game clock has reached 3 hours.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Normal AI reinforcements now have an "effective AIP cap" of (AIDifficulty^2)*5.<br />
** So, for example, a Diff 7 AI's normal reinforcements will not increase from AIP increases past 245 (on Diff 8 it'd be 320, on Diff 9 405, and on Diff 10 500).<br />
** The main reason for this is that reinforcements tend to produce stalemates rather than player-loses outcomes. If the player really oversteps the viable AIP range then waves or CPAs or something like that should step in to kill them, but reinforcements generally aren't going to do that.<br />
** Thanks to kasnavada for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* The Lazy-AI toggle now also disables the AI's counter-spawns when a human deepstrike is detected.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions where counterattack posts actually had an effective range one less than their mark level, rather than equal to their mark level.<br />
** They're also more likely to target "deeper" than they were previously, as targeting the "surface" planets is something waves can generally already do.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* If a modular ship is immune to EMP, it now also protects its modules from EMP.<br />
** Thanks to KDR_11k for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Cloaker Starships are now immune to mines.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Astro Trains now no longer inherently have tachyon emission (so the Tachyon train still has a planet-wide tachyon effect, but that's it).<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Finally fixed a longstanding bug where the "Attacking AI ships should wait at least 30 seconds before retreating" rule was not working. It's possible there are other behaviors which may cause retreat-like results, but this fixed the reproducible case we had.<br />
** Thanks to Diazo for the report and save, and many others who reported it through the months/years.<br />
<br />
* Made the normal-offensive-nemesis part of the champion counterbalance check roughly every 5 minutes instead of roughly every minute. So they won't respawn quite so quickly after dying, on average.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* For the base vs base nebula scenarios, the old "rubberbanding" effect of increasing both sides' production for each dead small starbase (the side that lost the base would get more of an increase) has been entirely removed. Instead, killing a small starbase causes an immediate spawn at the corresponding large base (but has no further impact on production). The size of this counter-spawn is partly determined by the highest size champion you've unlocked at the time.<br />
** This will probably need some further balancing, let us know about your experiences with it.<br />
** Thanks to Aquohn, Zeyi, TechSY730, LordSloth, Toranth, chemical_art, Histidine, and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Spire Champion beam cycle time from 4 seconds => 3 seconds. Previously it had the same "optimal" dps as the Zenith champion, but with the additional quirks of the photon lance mechanic. Now it has 33% higher optimal dps than the Zenith one.<br />
** Thanks to Radiant Phoenix and Cinth for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Core Guard Posts:<br />
** AIP-on-death from 2 => 1.<br />
*** Would have just removed it altogether, but keeping it helps make sure it will avoid various autotargeting and aoe related considerations that might result in these being unintentionally killed.<br />
** If Lazy-AI is off, killing one of these now causes an immediate one-time AI counter-attack from one or more warp gates in the galaxy.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art and TechSY730 for the suggestions.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.018 ==<br />
(Released April 9th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous versions (and possibly earlier, but unlikely) where it was impossible to send a champion through to a previously-unexplored nebula unless you were playing on complete-vis.<br />
** Note: a side effect of the fix is making nebulae follow the same visibility rules as other planets on the map, so they'll no longer be hidden in non-complete-vis games.<br />
** Thanks to Poko for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.017 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/04/ai-war-beta-6017-defending-ais-front.html Defending The AI's Front Lawn] ==<br />
(Released April 9th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* AI-controlled speed boosting units still have their speed-boosting effect even in stand-down mode.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a grammatically incorrect apostrophe in one of the ending journals.<br />
** Thanks to Bognor for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where units that fire counter-missiles did not note it in their description.<br />
** Thanks to Bognor for the report.<br />
<br />
* Thanks to Bognor and others for reporting a number of textual errors:<br />
** Corrected the Core CPA post's description saying the CPAs were launched immediately.<br />
** Corrected several Plasma-Siege unit/module descriptions not noting that they could not target small ships.<br />
** Corrected Bomber Starship description still saying it cannot target small ships.<br />
** Corrected Modular Fort descriptions not noting that the more exotic module types become available with champion upgrades.<br />
** Corrected Logistical Command Station descriptions implying a different level of armor compared to other command station types.<br />
** Corrected Zenith Power Generator description claiming to have an operating cost and claiming to increase AI waves against the planet.<br />
** Corrected Tachyon Beam Emitter and Stealth Tachyon Beam Emitter description claiming to be "stronger" (technically, stronger than a tachyon drone, but it doesn't really matter).<br />
** Corrected Spire Teleporting Leech description claiming that the unit is "large", when it's not targetable by stuff that cannot target "small" units.<br />
** Corrected Cloaker Starship description claiming to be "fast".<br />
** Corrected Spire Blade description claiming the wrong duration before self-destruct.<br />
** Gave the Armored Warhead Armor so that it's, well, Armored.<br />
<br />
* Wormhole Guard Posts are now listed as such in the planetary detail window when mousing-over a planet on the galaxy map.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Minor Faction enclave ships no longer get the massively-high collision priority that human-controlled ones get.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic, TechSY730, and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Added note to the Spire Shard Reactor description explaining that it can power 1 Spire Shipyard AND 1 Spire Habitation Center, anywhere in the galaxy. This was already explained elsewhere in the game, but not here.<br />
** Thanks to Fealthas for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug preventing the "Avoid Pathing Through This Planet" control from working in many cases.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Added a "Lazy AI" toggle to the AI Modifiers section of the lobby.<br />
** If this is on (off by default), the AI will not care enough to be bothered with the following (newly implemented) self-preservation measures:<br />
*** Maintaining a powerful strategic reserve to defend the AI homeworlds, even when it does not feel threatened. Instead, its strategic reserve will be proportional to AIP (capping out around 200 AIP).<br />
*** Increasing the AIP floor by 10 for every homeworld-guarding Core Guard Post that is killed.<br />
** Decreased AIP-on-death of AI Home Command Stations from 100 to 20.<br />
*** This applies to Lazy-AI games too, but is intended to counterbalance the increase the core posts give to the floor on Non-Lazy.<br />
** The overall point of these changes is actually to make AIP feel less restraining: if you're playing a Non-Lazy AI you're going to need a certain amount of power to take down the homeworlds due to the strategic reserve, and if the core posts are going to bump up your AIP-floor anyway you may as well be above the floor before that happens. At the same time, it's not actually forcing you "off the floor" until that final assault on the HWs, so it's up to you whether you want to start ramping up earlier or "just-in-time". Of course, on high difficulty levels you may not be able to survive the escalation, but that's kind of the point of the high difficulty levels :)<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art, Cyborg, Histidine, Hearteater, Faulty Logic, Diazo, TechSY730, Toranth, Winge, _K_, Wingflier, and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.016 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/04/ai-war-beta-6016-deflecting-attraction.html Deflecting Attraction] ==<br />
(Released April 3rd, 2013)<br />
<br />
* To fix a problem in recent versions where some guard posts were countering their triangle counters:<br />
** Needler Guard Post hull type from Light => Medium (so now countered by fighters, which they do not counter).<br />
** MLRS Guard Post hull type from Medium => Heavy (so now countered by bombers, which they do not counter).<br />
** Missile Guard Post hull type from Artillery => Light (so now countered by missile frigates, which they do not counter).<br />
** Laser Guard Post hull type from Heavy => Neutron (so now countered by missile frigates, which they do not counter).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730, Kahuna, Space Cowboy, and many others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* New maps will now seed quantities of guard posts more appropriate to their planet's internal "AIStrengthLevel" (something that's been part of mapgen since 2009, but its factor into guard post count was obscured on any diff >= 7 for the most part) and the AI's difficulty level.<br />
** This will generally result in a significantly smaller galactic population of guard posts on diff 7 and thereabouts, which should help lessen the blow of the recent guard post buffs on the folks who don't intentionally play the really punishing difficulty levels.<br />
** Thanks to Space Cowboy for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Exos from golems-hard and spirecraft-hard are now more aggressive on diffs higher than 8, with 8.3 getting a very slight boost, 9 a modest one, and 10... well, it's likely to hurt.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* To prevent an exploit providing massive "brownout insurance" without the intended ongoing costs for said, Matter Converters can no longer be paused while under construction (they already could not be paused after construction).<br />
** If this is a problem an alternate fix would be for its ongoing m+c consumption to happen even while it's still under construction.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier and Toranth for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* AI forts and superforts no longer self-regen.<br />
** Thanks to eRe4s3r for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where Neinzul Youngling Weasels were not attracting missile shots aimed at nearby allies.<br />
** Their coverage is still not completely perfect; when a weasel dies any units that it was "covering" may temporarily be susceptible to missile lock, and once the missile is locked on it will go after them. But the weasels will attract most of the incoming fire.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions where lots of units trying to do cloaking boosting in the game could cause others to have temporary "interruptions in service", so to speak.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding (back to the beginning of Ancient Shadows) bug where some minor faction ships could get stuck on a planet's central point because they were trying to path to a nebula (but obviously could not actually do so).<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Deflector Drones, in honor of developing quite a reputation for being, um, "usefulness-challenged" among a substantial portion of the playerbase:<br />
** Base mkI cap-health from 5,213,600 => 10,880,000.<br />
** Base mkI cap-dps from 54880 => 76160.<br />
** Base move speed from 24 => 32 (so now same as fighters).<br />
** Base radius of the protection effect increased from 1000 => 9000.<br />
** No longer reduce the damage done by laser weapons to nearby allies; instead they now attract laser fire against nearby allies to target them instead (much as the Youngling Weasel does with missiles).<br />
*** Please, if you know a physicist please prevent them from thinking too much about this: it could pose serious health risks.<br />
** Has been renamed to "Atrractor Drone".<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna, Diazo, and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Added new per-planet control to the CTRLS window: Avoid Planet During Auto-Pathing<br />
** If this is on, the game will try to avoid including this planet in the path when you give a move order on the galaxy map to a non-adjacent planet.<br />
** Note that this only applies to newly created paths: orders you've already given will remain unchanged, including "standing orders" on space docks and redirector rally posts, etc.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for the suggestion, and many others for feedback over the years leading to this.<br />
<br />
* On new maps, Advanced Factories, Advanced Starship Constructors, and Fabs will now be fairly aggressively seeded far away from the planet center, while maximizing the distance from the nearest wormhole, to make defending these irreplaceables at least somewhat more feasible.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Intra-Galactic Warp Gates:<br />
** The post-warp-paralysis time for units using a "Intra-Galactic Warp Gate - Mercenaries" or a "Intra-Galactic Warp Gate - Advanced Production" (which routes units from an AdvFact or ASC) has been reduced from 60 seconds (120 on non-friendly planets) to 4 seconds (8 on non-friendly planets).<br />
** The post-warp-paralysis time for units using a "Intra-Galactic Warp Gate - Fabricators" has been completely removed.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Allied Roaming Enclave logic:<br />
** The enemy-power threshold at which it considers a planet worth its attention (based on total allied enclave strength) has been raised by about 25%.<br />
** The enemy-power threshold at which it considers a planet too dangerous to attack (based on total allied enclave strength) has been raised by about 100%.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier, TechSY730, and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.015 ==<br />
(Released March 27th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last version that could cause unhandled errors when launching some exos.<br />
** Thanks to orzelek for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed several bugs with cloak-boosting in the last version.<br />
** Also added a rule where something unloading from a cloaked transport is now also cloak-boosted for about 2 seconds so a nearby cloaker starship has a chance to pick it up for boosting and avoid a "blink".<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the report and save.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.014 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/03/ai-war-beta-6014-de-faulting-logic.html De-Faulting The Logic] ==<br />
(Released March 27th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last version where counterattack posts were mostly just sending ships on AI planets rather than human ones.<br />
** Thanks to Vyndicu for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an unhandled-exception bug with the resource auto-conversion logic when player resources would overflow to other players.<br />
** Thanks to Bronzite and Fleet for reports and saves.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an unhandled-errors bug with the nemesis logic in Defender mode (it was assuming the game started with an AI HW, which is technically not true in Defender). This could also cause a desync in MP.<br />
** Thanks to Cowinatub for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Cloaking boosting (both the normal variety some cloaking ships can do for other cloaking ships, and the type the cloaker starship can do for all not-immune-to-cloaking units) now has a residual effect for at least 1 second after the boost goes away.<br />
** This effectively prevents "cloak blinking" when escorting warheads through wormholes and so forth, where a unit with more than ample cloak-boosting support right next to it could still become very briefly uncloaked while the cloaker starships shuffled around.<br />
** This also serves as a buff to cloak-boosting in general, for keeping scouts alive and whantot.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where the rule "a ship is always considered in firing range of something that is tractoring it, or the forcefield guarding said tractor" was actually inverted. So AI fighters (for example) could be stuck in a tractor+FF trap without firing on anything if its other desired targets were out of range.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* In honor of being in the top-10 in the mantis vote tallies: Since a rule was added more recently that makes it so engines automatically repair themselves, we've removed the rule that makes ships with zero engine health have a minimum speed of 1.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the suggestion and... a whole lot of players for supporting that mantis record.<br />
<br />
* In honor of being in the top-10 in the mantis vote tallies: Units that cause AIP-on-death no longer do so if they are destroyed while still under construction.<br />
** Thanks to vinco and a bunch of supporters for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* CPAs have been made a bit more ferocious in some circumstances on diff 10 (with a lesser impact on other greater-than-9 difficulties). Waves and exos have also been buffed somewhat in that range.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for... "inspiring" this change.<br />
<br />
* On Diff 8+ the AI may now choose to delay a wave when there's a CPA already in the announcement box. Not that there'd be any particular reason for it to want to do that. No, not at all.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Increased cost-to-the-AI for including a spire starship or zenith starship in an exo.<br />
** Thanks to Diazo and many others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* AI Home Command Stations are now immune to AOE (including warhead detonations).<br />
** Would have done this for human home command stations too, but inevitably someone would get overwhelmed by an electric shuttle wave and then file a bug report when said shuttles just kind of stared helplessly at the human home command station.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Now when a carrier is nuked, all its not-immune-to-nukes units are destroyed rather than deployed. This makes them more consistent with transports (which use a different internal mechanic, but the player doesn't really see the difference usually).<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for reminding us that fridges are not, in fact, going to protect you from a nuclear explosion. Even very large fridges with guns.<br />
<br />
* Normal (non-homeworld) guard posts:<br />
** Needler, Laser, MLRS, and Missile guard posts have had their shots-per-salvo multiplied by 5, and damage adjusted downward to maintain DPS.<br />
** Missile guard post DPS down 25%.<br />
** Anti-starship guard post DPS doubled.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730, Hearteater, and many others for feedback on the new guard post stats.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.013 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/03/ai-war-beta-6013-core-foamhammer.html Core Foamhammer] ==<br />
(Released March 19th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Heavy Bomber Starship:<br />
** Is now able to hit fleet ships again.<br />
** Base CapDPS from 120k*mk => 150k*mk.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic (most recently; probably dozens of players over the past several months) for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Regeneration Golem:<br />
** Instead of having self-attrition (100% to 0% in 2 hours) it now has self-regeneration (0% to 100% in 4 hours).<br />
** AIP-on-activation (for golems-medium) from 25 => 15.<br />
** Base Health from 200M => 400M.<br />
** Metal/Crystal "build" cost (these are never built, but this impacts repair costs) from 20M/20M to 10M/10M.<br />
** Now has vampirism (heals itself by the damage it does).<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic, Hearteater, Aeson, onyhow, Jonz0rz, ZaneWolfe, Vyndicu, Wingflier, chemical_art, TechSY730, and the voters in the community poll that inspired these changes.<br />
<br />
* Spire Corvette II/III knowledge cost from 2500/6000 => 2000/5000 because the module upgrades require separate knowledge expenditure (you get something else for that other spending, which is why the reduction here is not bigger).<br />
** Thanks to ZaneWolfe and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* To make the Astro Train plot a bit less "Automatic Death On Wheels": <br />
** The Regenerator, Nuclear, EMP, Shield, and Cargo trains are now autotargeted.<br />
** Cargo train health from 400M => 20M.<br />
** Cargo train armor from 10k => 1k.<br />
** Nuke train health from 40M => 10M.<br />
** EMP train health from 40M => 10M.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater, Diazo, and many others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Removed the "can only get at most a 20% munitions boost" rule from starships, so they now have the default cap of +400% that everything (that doesn't have a specific cap) has. Can tweak this back downwards if it's too much, but since starships now have much lower average cap-dps than fleet ships and fleet ships have the +400% cap, in theory this should be at-least-not-totally-insane.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art, Lancefighter, Winge, and TechSY730 for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last version where having the Spire Corvette bonus ship type and switching to the SCRV tab of an Advanced Starship Constructor could cause the ASC's build menu to be "stuck" on that tab.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* MkII Transport health-lost-on-hop-outside supply from 35% => 26%, so instead of "can go 2 hops outside supply and have 30% health left to deal with normal damage" (like the MkI) it "can go 3 hops outside supply and have 22% health left to deal with normal damage".<br />
** Thanks to... well, a lot of players asked for this but it was a long time ago and I'm not seeing anything in Mantis when I look... let me know who you are if you want to show up here :)<br />
<br />
* The chase-exos for the recover-first-city-shard and building-first-city parts of the Fallen Spire progression have been toned down somewhat, and the later chase-exos increased somewhat. Player feedback seems to consistently indicate that those first-city ones were too strong, and the later ones (the chase exos, not the pre-announced ones) relatively underwhelming.<br />
** Thanks to Diazo and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
=== Congratulating The Winners Of The "Aim the Nerfbat of Damocles: Player-side (III)" Poll ===<br />
<br />
* Thanks to Hearteater, TechSY730, Faulty Logic, Histidine, Dichotomy, Wingflier, chemical_art, Diazo, Toranth, Eternaly_Lost, Radiant Phoenix, Marmu23, laughingman, Winge, Aeson, Bognor, ZaneWolfe, and the poll voters for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Metal Manufactories and Crystal Manufactories, in honor of winning the poll, have been removed from the game! Instead: The Automated Energy Hamsters have returned from retirement, seeing an opportunity to synergize their unique skillset and capitalize on the market created by player dissatisfaction with the Manufactories. Specifically:<br />
** If something you're building requires either more metal or more crystal than is available, the Automated Resource-Conversion Hamsters will perform Just-In-Time conversion of the other resource into the needed one. The process is inefficient, however, and consumes 1.5 times as much of the converted material as it produces of the other.<br />
*** If the new "Max Resource Conversion" galaxy-wide control is set to -1 (the default), then there is no limit to how much this as-needed conversion will convert per second. Otherwise, it will not convert more than the specified amount per second. If it is set to zero, the automatic conversion is effectively disabled.<br />
** If something causes you to gain either more metal or crystal than the resource cap will let you hold, the extra amount tries to convert into the other resource (at a 1.5:1 ratio, like with conversion-on-spending). If the other resource also hits cap, it then does the normal logic for the excess (first tries to distribute it to other human players, and if that doesn't work just dumps it all over the floor).<br />
<br />
* In honor of coming in third in the poll, the Spirecraft Scout:<br />
** Removed normal attrition while on higher-mark enemy planets.<br />
** Instead limited the range of these like we do with transports:<br />
*** When hopping out of supply, they take 50/34/25/20/17% of max health in damage. This gives it a maximum effective range of 2/3/4/5/6 hops outside supply.<br />
*** They cannot be repaired by another unit under any circumstances.<br />
*** While on a friendly planet they auto regenerate fairly quickly (from 0% to 100% in 30 seconds). So if you're ok with roughly half the effective range you can reuse them.<br />
<br />
=== Congratulating The Winners Of The "Aim the Nerfbat of Damocles: AI-side (III)" Poll ===<br />
<br />
* Thanks to Hearteater, TechSY730, Faulty Logic, Histidine, Dichotomy, Wingflier, chemical_art, Diazo, Toranth, Eternaly_Lost, Radiant Phoenix, Marmu23, laughingman, Winge, Cinth, Aeson, onyhow, and the poll voters for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Ravenous Shadow, in honor of tying for second:<br />
** Base Speed from 84 => 75.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 60k => 54k.<br />
** Shots per salvo from 45 => 40.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 17k => 15k.<br />
** The combination of those 4 roughly-10% nerfs should be pretty significant. It's supposed to be a pretty nasty combatant, and you really have to pull out the stops with distracting fire and providing shielding (both from your modules and your projected-shield-ability) for the enclaves to save many of them. But it should be substantially easier now.<br />
<br />
* Interplanetary Munitions Booster, as an honorable mention (4th place, if it matters):<br />
** AIP-on-death from 20 to 5.<br />
<br />
* Gravity, in honor winning this poll (and coming in second on the player-side) ... well, actually, we can't nerf gravity. But we can nerf all the artificial gravity units!<br />
** All grav-well units except the player home forcefield generator (but including the grav drill) have had the "speed ceilings" they enforce upon victims multiplied by 4. So the mkIII grav turret used to slow things down to 2, but now slows them down to 8 (the old ceiling on the mkI, incidentally), and so on.<br />
** Grav Turret knowledge unlock cost from 750/3000/4000 => 500/1500/2500.<br />
** Since gravity is no longer as game-changing, immunity to Gravity has been removed from the following units:<br />
*** Hunter/Killer<br />
*** Spire Starship<br />
*** Raptor<br />
*** Spire Corvette<br />
*** Super Hybrid<br />
*** All Golems (except the Devourer)<br />
*** All Spirecraft (except the Spirecraft Scout; all scouts are immune to gravity)<br />
*** Resistance Fighter ships (from the base game minor faction)<br />
*** Marauder ships (from the base game minor faction)<br />
*** Most of the units retaining this immunity do so because they need to travel at a consistent speed to make sense (Zenith Trader, Devourer Golem, Astro Trains, etc), rather than to counter the grav-well units.<br />
<br />
* In honor of tying for second in the poll, Counterattack guard posts:<br />
** Can no longer just send a wave anywhere, the target must be within X hops of a warp gate, where X is the mark level of the counterattack guard post in question.<br />
** Wave timer down from 14 minutes => 10 minutes, due to player complaints that it was annoying to have to wait that long.<br />
<br />
=== Core Versions Of 18 Additional Fleet Ship Types ===<br />
<br />
* Added Core (MkV) versions of the 18 fleet ship types (15 base game, 3 TZR) that did not already have them:<br />
** Space Tank<br />
** Sniper<br />
** Electric Shuttle<br />
** Vorticular Cutlass<br />
** Infiltrator<br />
** Eye Bot<br />
** Autocannon Minipod<br />
** Deflector Drone<br />
** Ether Jet<br />
** Shield Bearer<br />
** Anti-Armor Ship<br />
** MLRS<br />
** Munitions Booster<br />
** Teleport Raider<br />
** Teleport Battle Station<br />
** Zenith Auto Bomb<br />
** Armor Booster<br />
** Zenith Viral Shredder<br />
<br />
* Core Fabricators for all of the above are now eligible for seeding as fabs during mapgen.<br />
<br />
* Since the available variety has increased, the number of Core Fabs seeded during mapgen has been increased by 2.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.012 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/03/ai-war-beta-6012-darkened-sky-altered.html Darkened Sky, Altered Starship] ==<br />
(Released March 12th, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where Hive-Golem wasps were contributing way too much charge to a vengeance generator on death.<br />
** Thanks to Vyndicu for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version where the AI could get a single (non-respawning) offensive nemesis champion even if the human players had no champions.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the report.<br />
<br />
* Now when starting the game your initial metal/crystal stockpiles are 200k/200k instead of 20k/20k. It may sound like a lot but even just a homeworld's starting resource generation amounts to the difference in only a few minutes, so it's not much of an advantage. But it does help the first few minutes of the game not drag on so much (due to running a zero'd out economy - that will still happen to a lot of players but it won't be as bad).<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier, Moonshine Fox, LaughingThesaurus, Diazo, Winge, TechSY730, and Aeson for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
=== Starship Rebalance (Later-game power, role compared to fleet ships) ===<br />
<br />
* We got a lot of feedback about last version's changes to the Spire and Zenith starships, and much of it pointed to starships in general being pretty good in the early/mid game but falling off the pace compared to fleet ships in the later parts of the game due to the Advanced Factory making mkIV fleet ships available and starships having no real parallel to that. So let's see what happens if we change that.<br />
** Note that this shouldn't have much of an impact on the early game at all; mainly it comes into play when you're in a position to actually take-and-hold the new capturables and have the resource income to use them.<br />
** Also note that starship-only games will still generally not be viable in harder scenarios because the resource costs are so high. These aren't intended to be able to replace fleet ships in all roles.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art, TechSY730, Winge, Faulty Logic, Diazo, onyhow, Hearteater, Dichotomy, Jonz0rz, Wingflier, and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Amendments/Fixes to some of the Spire/Zenith Starship changes from last version<br />
** The change in the last version where the Spire Starship and Zenith Starship were effectively mkII/III/IV instead of mkI/II/III has been reverted.<br />
** The AI now pays more for these in exos than it did before, since the cap reduction made them individually stronger than they used to be.<br />
** Waves including these now get one mark lower than they used to, due to the lower ship cap and higher individual strength. This can result in a wave not having Spire or Zenith starships available to it at all.<br />
<br />
* Added a new type of important capturable structure: the Advanced Starship Constructor.<br />
** These are very similar to Advanced Factories, but instead of mkIV fleet ships these can produce the mkIV version of a starship you already have the mkIII of.<br />
** The Scout Starship and Enclave Starship already have mkIV versions at the normal starship constructor and are not on this one's menu.<br />
** The Cloaker Starship and Riot Starship do not have mkIV versions (the former because it didn't seem necessary, the latter because otherwise no AI ship would ever have working engines again).<br />
** But all the other types (Flagship, Zenith Starship, Spire Starship, Heavy Bomber Starship, Plasma Siege Starship, Leech Starship, and Raid Starship) now have mkIV versions. Like with fleet ships, they are not unlocked directly but are available at the advanced production structure when mkIII is unlocked.<br />
** These try very hard to not seed on the same planet as an Adv Fact.<br />
** In new games with CSGs on, a planet with an ASC will get a CSG-B generator like a planet with an AdvFact would.<br />
<br />
* Added Core Fabricators (specifically, in the "Experimental Starship" category) for producing the mkV versions of the Flagship, Spire Starship, Zenith Starship, Plasma Siege Starship, Leech Starship, and Raid Starship.<br />
** Also, the experimental starship category of fabricators now seeds an extra fab at the beginning of the game (so from 2 => 3, on single-HW games).<br />
<br />
* The Heavy Bomber Starship mkIV is now produced at the Advanced Starship Constructor, and no longer produced at the bomber-star fabricator (that now produces the mkV variant).<br />
<br />
* Spire Corvette:<br />
** MkIV is no longer researchable or buildable at a normal starship constructor, but instead can be built at an Advanced Starship Constructor if you've unlocked the MkIII version.<br />
*** Knowledge cost of mkIII from 3500 => 6000 now that you get the mkIVs "for free" with an ASC. This makes the knowledge costs of the corvette identical to other bonus types.<br />
** Base Cap DPS of the main weapon from 120k*mk => 300k*mk (same as Spire Starship, and the corvette's modules are its extra boost for being a bonus type rather than a core type).<br />
** Beam cycle time from 10 seconds => 3 seconds (so an actual reload of 1 second, plus the 2 second firing time), damage adjusted to maintain DPS.<br />
** Note that these are really considered a "bonus fleet ship" for balance purposes, they're just built like a starship.<br />
<br />
* Another important point about starships that's really come to light that starships have been competing with fleet ships more-or-less directly in terms of Knowledge-costs and thus players are seeing them as replacements for fleet ships when they're really supposed to be more of a supporting category (like, for instance, turrets: turrets are great, but they don't displace the role of fleet ships). So we're trying something new with that too:<br />
<br />
* The knowledge costs for the Flagship, Heavy Bomber Starship, Plasma Siege Starship, and Leech Starship are now 0/1000/3000 and the the costs for the Zenith Starship and Spire Starship, are now 500/1000/2500, for a total of 4000 to unlock mkIII (and thus mkIV if you have an ASC), compared to the 8500 K needed to do the same for a triangle fleet ship type.<br />
** In return, the overall dps of starships is coming down: you'll still be getting a good deal in terms of DPS-per-K return, but you won't be able to "buy" all your DPS that way because there's only so much total starship cap available.<br />
** Overall, the effect is to make starships "as a category" more explicitly a support-role compared to fleet ships "as a category", while still emphasizing them as individually-powerful (and very durable, relative to fleet ships) units. You can probably still go "starship-only" in easier scenarios, or in the early (and maybe mid, with an ASC) game in a harder scenario, but in general going "starship-only" is just not going to give you the needed core of firepower to replace fleet ships. But you won't be paying fleet-ship-levels of K to get them, either, which is the main thing.<br />
<br />
* Flagship:<br />
** Ship cap from 4 => 2 (health and damage adjusted to maintain cap values).<br />
** Munitions boost range from 2000+(1000*mk) => 4000+(2000*mk) (which also increases the "total ship area" it can boost simultaneously) to compensate for fewer individual boosting platforms.<br />
** Base CapDPS from 50k => 30k.<br />
** Cap m/c cost from 240k/160k => 120k/80k.<br />
** Cap e cost from 40k => 20k.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Starship:<br />
** Ship cap from 2 => 1 (health and damage adjusted to maintain cap values).<br />
** Base CapDPS from 50k => 40k.<br />
** Cap m/c cost is 80k/120k (has been since last version, but worth mentioning).<br />
** Cap e cost is 20k (ditto).<br />
<br />
* Spire Starship:<br />
** Ship cap from 2 => 1 (health and damage adjusted to maintain cap values).<br />
** Base CapDPS from 300k => 180k.<br />
** Cap m/c cost is 90k/110k (has been since last version, but worth mentioning).<br />
** Cap e cost is 20k (ditto).<br />
<br />
* Heavy Bomber Starship:<br />
** Ship cap from 4 => 2 (health and damage adjusted to maintain cap values).<br />
** CapHealth from 28M => 36M.<br />
** Base CapDPS from 140k => 120k (would have dropped it more, but generally getting a feel that these felt underpowered previously).<br />
** Cap m/c cost from 340k/60k => 170k/30k.<br />
** Cap e cost from 40k => 20k.<br />
<br />
* Plasma Siege Starship:<br />
** Ship cap from 4 => 2 (health and damage adjusted to maintain cap values).<br />
** Base Cap DPS from 100k => 90k (would have dropped it more, but generally getting a feel that these felt underpowered previously).<br />
** Cap m/c cost from 60k/340k => 30k/170k.<br />
** Cap e cost from 40k => 20k.<br />
** Base move speed from 8 => 12 (now same as missile frigate, the slowest triangle ship).<br />
<br />
* Leech Starship:<br />
** Ship cap from 4 => 2 (health and damage adjusted to maintain cap values).<br />
** Base Cap DPS from 72k => 40k.<br />
** Cap m/c cost from 240k/160k => 120k/80k.<br />
** Cap e cost from 40k => 20k.<br />
<br />
=== Dark Spire Revamp ===<br />
<br />
* The Dark Spire minor faction is a lot of fun, at least for players who like that kind of thing.<br />
** But over the months two key problems have been identified:<br />
*** It doesn't take much of a spawn-spiral to lead to 50k+ of the things in the game, which is kind of a deathblow to the cpu. Minor factions taking over the galaxy is fun (if you asked for it in the lobby settings), but it needs to still run on your machine.<br />
*** Particularly once there are a lot of Dark Spire spawned, they don't really do much.<br />
** So we're making several changes to keep the cpu cost of these under control while retaining their overall power, and giving them a little bit of extra logic to keep them from behaving in an ineffective manner.<br />
** Thanks to Jefferson, chemical_art, Cinth, Vyndicu, Faulty Logic, and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* The Dark Spire Wraith has had its health, damage, and strength-cost (used when computing how many to spawn) doubled.<br />
** Effectively this halves the size of their spawns while keeping the overall power of those spawns the same.<br />
<br />
* The Vengeance Generators now spawn different versions of the 3 Dark Spire minor faction ships, with different stats to better facilitate spawn "packing":<br />
** Normal Combat Ship: 5 times as powerful as the Wraith.<br />
** Advanced Combat Ship: 5 times as powerful as the Normal Combat Ship. So like 25 Wraiths.<br />
** Command Ship: 5 times as powerful as the Advanced Combat Ship. So like ''125'' Wraiths.<br />
** Note that already-spawned Dark Spire ships in old saves will have the old stats and not really be affected by any of these changes (so if you've already got 50k of the guys running around, this isn't going to help your cpu).<br />
<br />
* The chance of what ship it will pick in a spawn is now weighted by the number of vengeance-spawned Dark Spire ships in the galaxy already; below 100 it's more heavily weighted towards Wraiths, above 1000 it picks the command ship a lot more often, etc. This tends to make its numerical explosion slow down rapidly as the milestones are passed, without really slowing down the overall power growth of the faction.<br />
<br />
* Since the individual spawns can now be much more expensive, the game tracks a "debt" for the spawns that delays the next trigger accordingly. So if it picks a command ship it's going to need more "fuel" to get the next spawn than if it had just picked exactly the right number of Wraiths to fill its budget.<br />
<br />
* About every 5 minutes: <br />
** All non-command vengeance-spawned dark spire ships without a leader will look for a command ship on that planet to pick as a leader (if there are multiple such command ships, they split roughly evenly).<br />
** All command ships without a chase target pick one. Each command ship is hardwired to either go after the humans (picks a human command station), the AI (picks a non-invincible AI guard post that isn't a counterattack or special forces post), or just kind of wander (doesn't pick a chase target). The command ships will be roughly divided evenly between those three categories.<br />
<br />
* All the vengeance-spawned dark spire ships (not the ones from the nebula) are now immune to the black hole generator.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.011 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/03/ai-war-beta-6011-nemesis-of-dubious.html Nemesis of the Dubious Honor] ==<br />
(Released March 5th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* MkI-MkIV carriers are no longer immune to nuclear explosions (mkV still are, but you basically have to have an AI at tech level V for them to show up, and that's not easy to do in a game you plan to win).<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last version where the friendly-enclave-pop-cap was computing as if all planets were non-AI (so the base of the calculation was generally at least 4 times as big as it should have been.<br />
** Thanks to Aziphos for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Added a column to the reference export which lists all the types of modules that the ship on that row can mount.<br />
** Thanks to Diazo for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Minor faction neinzul younglings (generally launched from roaming enclaves) now give far less "charge" to a Dark Spire Vengeance Generator when they die.<br />
** Thanks to Vyndicu for reporting where this was causing problems. If by "problems" you mean a galaxy completely overrun by Dark Spire.<br />
<br />
=== Congratulating The Winners Of The 9th Worst-Unit Poll ===<br />
<br />
* Decoy drones, in honor of tying for first in the latest what-needs-a-buff poll:<br />
** Ship cap from 9 => 40 (but the AI pays about the same for them as it used to, since these were already strong enough for the AI).<br />
** Base energy cost from 1000 => 250.<br />
** Base speed from 14 => 26 (so now same as bombers).<br />
** Base health from 200k => 1M.<br />
** Thanks to Dichotomy, Faulty Logic, LintMan, Vacuity, Diazo, and the voters for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* AI Guard Posts (not the core ones, the normal ones), in honor of tying for first in the latest what-needs-a-buff poll (after many months of feedback that these were not threatening enough) :<br />
** Short Range Guard Post:<br />
*** Renamed To Needler Guard Post.<br />
*** Hull Type from Medium => Light.<br />
*** Base Health from 700k*mk => 3M*mk (about 1/5th a cap of fighters).<br />
*** Base Attack Range from 6000 => 7500 (same as needler turret).<br />
*** Shots-per-salvo from 1 => 5.<br />
*** Base DPS from 1267*mk => 50k*mk (right around a cap of fighters).<br />
*** Vs-Hull-Type bonus list from "Heavy (2x), Artillery (3x)" => "Heavy, UltraHeavy, Structural, Artillery (all 6x)" (same types as needler turret, same multiplier as fighter).<br />
** MLRS Guard Post:<br />
*** Hull Type from Heavy => Medium.<br />
*** Base Health from 700k*mk => 3M*mk.<br />
*** Base Attack Range from 7000 => 12000 (same as MLRS turret).<br />
*** Shots-per-salvo from 11/21/31/41/51 => 30.<br />
*** Base DPS from 1700*mk => 50k*mk.<br />
*** Vs-Hull-Type bonus list from "Light (16x), Swarmer (8x), Neutron (4x)" => "Light, Swarmer, Neutron, UltraLight, CloseCombat (all 6x)" (same types as MLRS turret).<br />
** Missile Guard Post:<br />
*** Base Health from 700k*mk => 3M*mk.<br />
*** Seconds-per-salvo from 7/6/5/4/3 => 3.<br />
*** Base Attack Range from 17k/27k/37k/47k/57k => 27k (same as Missile turret).<br />
*** Base DPS from 13k*mk => 50k*mk.<br />
*** Vs-Hull-Type bonus list from "UltraLight (8x), Medium (6x)" => "UltraLight, Medium, Polycrystal, Neutron, Composite (all 6x)" (same types as Missile turret).<br />
** Passive Guard Post:<br />
*** Renamed To Laser Guard Post (hey, at least it's not now the Passive-Aggressive Guard Post).<br />
*** Hull Type from Structural => Heavy.<br />
*** Base Health from 1.4M*mk => 3M*mk.<br />
*** Shot type from flare => laser.<br />
*** Base Attack Range from 8000 => 9000 (same as Laser turret).<br />
*** Shots-per-salvo from 1 => 4.<br />
*** Base DPS from (negligible) => 50k*mk.<br />
*** Vs-Hull-Type bonus list from (well, nothing) => "Refractive, UltraHeavy, Polycrystal, Heavy (all 6x)" (same types as Laser turret).<br />
** Anti-Starship Arachnid Guard Post:<br />
*** Hull Type from Light => Polycrystal.<br />
*** Base Health from 1.4M*mk => 3M*mk.<br />
*** Base Attack Range from 10k/12k/14k/16k/18k => 14k.<br />
*** Seconds-per-salvo from 15 => 5.<br />
*** Base DPS from 10k*mk => 500k*mk (bear in mind these cannot target small stuff, it's an anti-starship sort of thing).<br />
*** Vs-Hull-Type bonus list still empty, but now has 0x multiplier vs Scout hull so it doesn't just gank your transports.<br />
*** Shot type from laser => energy wave (so now like a sentinel frigate shot; just aesthetic for the most part, makes it stand out better).<br />
** Stealth Guard Post: didn't actually need a buff, but:<br />
*** Renamed to Cloaker Guard Post.<br />
*** Are now un-cloakable; they still cloak stuff near them but will always be revealed themselves.<br />
** Special Forces Guard Post: also didn't need a buff (the SF ships are the important part of SF, really), but these no longer count for purposes of the "if no AI guard posts are present, an AI Eye self-destructs" rule.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic, LaughingThesaurus, Vacuity, TechSY730, Diazo, Hearteater, chemical_art, and the voters for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Spire Starships, in honor of coming in third in the poll:<br />
** Ship cap from 4 => 2, with health and damage adjusted to maintain same cap-health and cap-dps.<br />
** Effective mark level from 1/2/3 to 2/3/4, so that the mkI is balanced like a mkII starship, the mkII is balanced like a mkIII starship, etc.<br />
** Knowledge cost from 1000/2500/4000 => 1500/3000/4000, in accordance with their effective mark promotion (this makes the cost of getting to mkIV the same as with a triangle fleet-ship type, though this is without the benefit of having mkIs and without the need to get an advanced factory).<br />
** Beam cycle time (from the beginning of one beam to the beginning of the next, so including the 2 seconds the beam is actually being fired) from 10 seconds => 3 seconds, damage adjusted to maintain DPS.<br />
** Base Cap-Health from 16M*mk => 24M*mk.<br />
** Base Cap-DPS from 240k*mk => 300k*mk.<br />
** Thanks to Diazo, Faulty Logic, Winge, chemical_art, Dichotomy, TechSY730, and the voters for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Starships, as an honorable mention from the poll:<br />
** Ship cap from 4 => 2, with health and damage adjusted to maintain same cap-health and cap-dps.<br />
** Effective mark level from 1/2/3 to 2/3/4, so that the mkI is balanced like a mkII starship, the mkII is balanced like a mkIII starship, etc.<br />
** Knowledge cost from 1000/2500/4000 => 1500/3000/4000, in accordance with their effective mark promotion.<br />
** Base Cap-Health from 24M*mk => 36M*mk.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 8 => 4, damage adjusted to maintain DPS.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art, Faulty Logic, TechSY730, Diazo, and the voters for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
=== Reworking The AI's Counterbalance To Champions ===<br />
<br />
* Now, when the humans have champions, the AI gets some offensive nemesis champions.<br />
** It doesn't check for this until 60 minutes into the game.<br />
** After that, it checks roughly every minute.<br />
** The target quantity is = (number of human champions * highest human champion hull size * (AI Difficulty / 7)) / 2, with a minimum of 1 for the first AI player (there must be at least one human champion to trigger this, though).<br />
** If the current number of offensive nemesis units is less than the target, it randomly picks one of the four champion frigate hulls and does a spawn of those on that AI's homeworld.<br />
*** The count spawned is 1/10th the target number of champions or 1, whichever is greater.<br />
*** The spawned nemesis champions start in Threatfleet behavior (and there's no rule that can take it out of that).<br />
** Overall this is a bit more similar to the Heroic AI type's special feature than we're entirely comfortable with, but that AI type is still the only way you'll see enemy champions larger that frigate-size, etc.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier, Histidine, Faulty Logic, Dichotomy, Confirmation_Bias, and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Now when there are human controlled champions, the AI is gradually given a supply of points to spend on responses. Right now that's just "special forces nemesis unit" and "threatfleet nemesis unit" (above and beyond the perpetually respawning ones mentioned above). More responses were planned but time for working on this release (this week at least) is running out.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier, Histidine, Faulty Logic, Dichotomy, Confirmation_Bias, and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Now that the above two counter-balances are in place the previous 20%/8%/4%-of-a-normal-player increase that each champion was adding to pretty much all other threats (20% for waves and 4% for exos, etc) has been removed. The overall effect may be too kind to the player, but the above counter-balances can be augmented and adjusted accordingly.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.010 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/02/ai-war-beta-6010-back-from-valley.html Back From The Valley] ==<br />
(Released February 22nd, 2013)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where allied roaming enclaves would sometimes launch all their squadrons in the first sim cycle after the game was loaded, even if there was no reason whatsoever for them to launch.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* The main special forces population logic now tracks its "strength debt" from buying more than its budget on a particular spawn. The overspending happens due to random selections picking high-strength individual ships, and previously was simply ignored but will now count against the budget of the following spawn(s).<br />
** The result is that it still tends to overspend on every pulse (every pulse that actually happens, anyway) but the actual total spawn over time is effectively controlled by total strength spent, ending the low-cap-ship loophole.<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar, TechSY730, Hearteater, Kahuna, and others for anecdotal and log-based evidence of the problem.<br />
<br />
* Friendly roaming enclaves (the normal-space ones; not the ones temporarily in a nebula scenario) now have a population cap based on the number of non-AI-controlled planets (i.e. planets you've killed the AI command station on) and the intensity of the roaming enclave faction.<br />
** So there's not a hard-cap per se, in that you can increase it by taking more territory. And who wouldn't like to get more AIP, right?<br />
** Mainly this is to prevent lag, but also helps bring the friendly enclaves a bit down from their previous overpowered-ness.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* The individual ships in the friendly enclave launched-squadrons now have 4x the health and 4x the dps, but the enclaves produce them 1/4th as fast and can hold a maximum load 1/4th as numerous.<br />
** Just trying to keep the CPU impact of these down in the more extreme situations.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Rebalance of the Ancient Shadows "brutal pick" core posts:<br />
** Teuthida<br />
*** Drone lifetime from 240 seconds => 60 seconds.<br />
*** Spawner health halved.<br />
** Wrath Lance<br />
*** Rotation speed halved.<br />
*** Health halved.<br />
** Grav Reactor<br />
*** Drone lifetime from 240 seconds => 60 seconds.<br />
*** Spawner health halved.<br />
** Thanks to Diazo, TechSY730, and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* AI Strategic Reserves:<br />
** Replenishment rate down to about 2/3rds what it was.<br />
** Now homeworld-defense spawns only happen if the reserve is at least 25% full, so the follow-up reserve spawns will be much more spaced out.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.009 ==<br />
(Released November 21st, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding but rare bug that could "eat" a carrier during the loading of the game if the conditions were such that a carrier was eligible for deploying its contents ''immediately''.<br />
** Further, this would happen on the host and then again on the client when the client received the game data, leading to a desync-on-load.<br />
** Thanks to Zebreu for the report and save.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.008 ==<br />
(Released November 21st, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a null exception bug that could happen in some cases in the ally-enclave logic.<br />
** Thanks to ussdefiant for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed the logic generating the LogicLog_AIMechanic_CounterHacking.txt file when Advanced Logging is on to use the proper platform-specific newline instead of just \n (which makes it look like all one line on windows).<br />
** Thanks to ussdefiant for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.007 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/11/ai-war-beta-6007-burying-hatchet.html Burying The Hatchet] ==<br />
(Released November 20th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the Armor Booster Astro Trains were not actually having the armor boost effect.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed longstanding bug where it was possible to tractor a hostile ship through a wormhole, even if it was a cannot-go-through-wormholes unit type.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where AI threatfleet ships could get stuck on a planet with human-controlled remains on it because it made the AI think there were still enemies to kill there.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Over time the number of files generated by Advanced Logging under various circumstances has grown a fair bit and it could be difficult as a player to know what to delete when you wanted to clean out old logs, etc. To cut down on this we started combining some related logs (the SF-like mechanics into the SF log file) but this just caused confusion. The naming conventions were also pretty variable and frequently one half of the wave log would get submitted and not the other, etc. These logs are obviously not something players need to worry about, but it's very helpful when players submit them in cases where logic problems are suspected, so it'd be nice if they were easier to find. So the names of the generated files are being changed to something that's much easier to make sense of in your file system:<br />
** (listed as "new name" <= "old name")<br />
** LogicLog_AIMechanic_CarrierEarlyPopCombination.txt <= CarrierEarlyPopComputationLog.txt<br />
** LogicLog_AIMechanic_CounterHacking.txt <= CounterSaboteurSpawns.txt<br />
** LogicLog_AIMechanic_Reinforcements_AIThread.txt <= ReinforcementsLog_AIThread.txt<br />
** LogicLog_AIMechanic_Reinforcements_MainThread.txt <= ReinforcementsLog_MainThread.txt<br />
** LogicLog_AIMechanic_SpecialForces.txt <= SpecialForcesLogicLog.txt<br />
** LogicLog_AIMechanic_StrategicReserve.txt <= SpecialForcesLogicLog.txt (so it's no longer combined with the SF log)<br />
** LogicLog_AIMechanic_ThreatFleet.txt <= SpecialForcesLogicLog.txt (so it's no longer combined with the SF log)<br />
** LogicLog_AIMechanic_Waves_AIThread.txt <= AIThreadWaveComputationLog.txt<br />
** LogicLog_AIMechanic_Waves_MainThread.txt <= MainThreadWaveComputationLog.txt<br />
** LogicLog_AIPlot_AstroTrains.txt <= AstroTrainLogicLog.txt<br />
** LogicLog_AIPlot_HybridHives_AIThread.txt <= HybridHyjinksLog_AIThread.txt<br />
** LogicLog_AIPlot_HybridHives_MainThread.txt <= HybridHyjinksLog_MainThread.txt<br />
** LogicLog_EventAttackPopulation.txt <= EventAttackCompositionInfoLog.txt<br />
** LogicLog_MinorFaction_DarkSpire.txt <= DarkSpireMinorFactionLogicLog.txt<br />
** LogicLog_OffroadScenarios.txt <= OffroadScenarioLog.txt<br />
** The old files are not being deleted (the game doesn't know if there's anything in there you still want), but you can use the above list as a reference to find and remove them if desired.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Command Station rebuilding behavior:<br />
** Now when the stall timer is running because the previous human station on the planet was destroyed, the remains rebuilders cannot do anything with the command station remains until the stall timer is up.<br />
** Once the stall timer is over, Remains Rebuilders looking for something new to rebuild will give command station remains absolute priority.<br />
** The stall timer on non-military command stations from 4 minutes => 2 minutes (military ones still get 1 minute).<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine, DrTall, TechSY730, Varone, Hearteater, Lancefighter, KDR_11k, and Astilious for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where the modules of the imperial spire minor faction ships were not minor faction (and simply owned by the first player). Not much impact gameplay-wise, but it was weird.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter and others for the report.<br />
<br />
* In response to ongoing occasional reports that the imperial spire fleet still sometimes stalemates vs the AI at the end of FS on 10/10, the non-player-controlled ships and modules have been substantially buffed again (the biggest ships are approaching 32-bit arithmetic limits here, folks) and if things drag on it starts sending in more ships each spawn.<br />
** Thanks to Eternaly_Lost for the report.<br />
<br />
* Logistics Stations:<br />
** Enemy Speed Reduction from 50% at all marks => 18.75% / 37.5% / 50%.<br />
** Ally Speed Increase from 100% (which all command stations give) to 200%.<br />
*** They also all still give the +40/60/80 to ally speed, which other command stations don't give.<br />
** Thanks to... well, I think a bunch of people suggested something like this to give a reason to unlock the higher marks, but I can't find records of it right now.<br />
<br />
* Spire Railcluster hull type from Polycrystal => Composite.<br />
** The previous setting was an experiment to see what happened if a unit was a counter to the triangle ship (fighter, in this case) that counters it. What happened is that the ship is a lot harder to kill under normal circumstances than we'd intended for something that does that much damage that quickly.<br />
** So now the triangle counter for these is the missile frigate, which may survive long enough to kill it.<br />
** Thanks to Chris_Stalis, TechSY730, and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the new dropdown-with-text-filter controls were not triggering the "a textbox is active, don't handle most key-binds normally" logic, so pressing the P key while typing into the text-filter would pause or unpause the game, etc.<br />
** Thanks to contingencyplan for the report.<br />
<br />
=== Human-Ally Roaming Enclaves Return ===<br />
<br />
* Long ago the Roaming Enclaves minor faction could spawn human-ally variants in addition to the currently-possible AI-ally and enemy-to-all variants. But they weren't very bright, and tended to get killed a lot despite many changes to make them survive better. Eventually they listened to the human players saying that the enclaves were stupidly suicidal and made a very wise decision for their own survival: they left the galaxy.<br />
** But since then there have been many requests for the return of the human-ally enclaves, and in recent months we've added some logic to the game for other reasons that happens to make this kind of AI much easier to accomplish.<br />
** So, while these were re-enabled (in their dumb state) in a particular champion-related case, they've now been re-enabled generally, so you'll see them eventually if you have the Roaming Enclaves minor faction enabled.<br />
*** Thanks to Cyborg, Spikey00, TechSY730, Sunshine, Faulty Logic, and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* The Control logic for these human-ally ones has been completely redone so that all human-ally roaming enclaves in the game act as a coherent fleet. This greatly enhances survivabiltiy and coolness.<br />
** They also pay careful attention to how much firepower they have, the enemy firepower on potential target planets, and the enemy firepower on planets they're thinking of pathing through to get to the target.<br />
** There are five basic types of behavior the coherent-fleet logic can do:<br />
*** Priority-defense of human homeworlds.<br />
**** If a human homeworld comes under any not-completely-trivial attack (for reference, this means "more than about 50 mkI triangle ships on high caps" or the equivalent), the next fleet-logic check will drop whatever is being done and send them all back to that homeworld.<br />
**** This takes priority over any other behavior.<br />
**** You may tell the enclaves to not consider this behavior by sending "cmd:disallow enclaves prioritize homeworld" through chat, and tell them to start considering it again by sending "cmd:allow enclaves prioritize homeworld" through chat.<br />
*** Defend human planets.<br />
**** Considers moving to any planet with a human command station and an AI presence.<br />
**** You may tell the enclaves to not consider this behavior by sending "cmd:disallow enclaves defend planets" through chat, and tell them to start considering it again by sending "cmd:allow enclaves defend planets" through chat.<br />
*** Assist human attacks.<br />
**** Considers moving to any planet without a command station or with an AI command station, if both the humans and AI have a presence there and the humans have a fighting chance (at least half the AI firepower).<br />
**** This behavior is OFF by default but you may tell the enclaves to consider it by sending "cmd:allow enclaves assist attacks" through chat, and tell them to stop considering it again by sending "cmd:disallow enclaves assist attacks" through chat.<br />
*** Attack independently.<br />
**** Considers moving to any planet without a command station or with an AI command station, and an AI presence.<br />
**** This behavior is OFF by default but you may tell the enclaves to consider it by sending "cmd:allow enclaves attack independently" through chat, and tell them to stop considering it again by sending "cmd:disallow enclaves attack independently" through chat.<br />
*** Idle rally<br />
**** If there's nothing else to do, rallies the enclave fleet to the human planet furthest from the human homeworlds that still prevents all pathing from an AI planet to a human homeworld. If no such solid chokepoint exists, it falls back on a human homeworld (if one of the homeworlds is such a chokepoint for all the others, it picks that one).<br />
**** This behavior is always available, you can't tell them to not do nothing if there's nothing to do.<br />
** When considering behaviors other than the emergency homeworld defense and the "nothing else to do" rally:<br />
*** It won't pick a planet if the AI firepower is way lower than the enclave-fleet's, or if it's high enough to be too much of a threat to it.<br />
*** It won't consider a planet if it can't get from the human homeworlds to there without moving through a planet with enough AI firepower to threaten the enclave fleet.<br />
*** If more than one planet is found eligible by the enabled behaviors, it picks randomly between the ones nearer the human homeworlds.<br />
*** Once a planet is chosen it sticks with it as long as it remains eligible, or gets the emergency-defend-homeworld override.<br />
** A note on these enclave-related chat commands:<br />
*** They're experimental: historically we haven't done direct-human-control of minor factions for a lot of reasons and that's not really what we're doing here (it's pretty indirect and general). But we wanted something a bit more meaty with this faction's behavior in the sense of it feeling like an ally that's fighting alongside you rather than directly under your control (we've already done that with most of the Fallen Spire stuff, and to some parts of the nebula faction stuff) or only participating in a very simple fashion (we've already done that with the human resistance and dyson spawns, etc).<br />
**** That said, it's very hard and perhaps impossible to get these enclaves to do something even moderately complex without it clashing with what some players want them to do. So we're experimenting with these "chat directives" to see if that kind of very high-level influence is sufficient to give these a general appeal to the various kinds of player who want a "computer-controlled sidekick" in the game.<br />
**** So these commands, and potentially the new behaviors as a whole, may just go away if things are found to just not work out. Or potentially some kind of new interface will be needed for them, in which case it would probably need to be part of an expansion if we do another one of those. For now it's a lot like text-chatting with a human ally in multiplayer.<br />
*** These commands are not cheats (so they do not require "enable cheats", and do not flag the game as having had cheats done).<br />
<br />
* An enclave will not deploy its squadrons until on the target planet determined by the fleet-logic, or it falls below half health. When just idle-rallying it won't launch squadrons even on the target planet unless that planet comes under significant AI attack.<br />
<br />
* The spawning logic has also been changed:<br />
** Time between spawns was previously based on both faction intensity and AI Difficulty, but is now based on just the intensity. The difficulty-based factors have been changed to always use the higher-end values so that spawns will happen more frequently on lower difficulties than they used to.<br />
*** For reference: on faction intensity 4 you'll generally see the first spawn at 73 to 88 minutes into the game, and new spawns every 31 to 46 minutes after that. Intensity 1 is about 1/4 as often (with a longer initial delay), and intensity 10 is about 4x as often (with minimal initial delay).<br />
** When spawning, instead of randomly picking between spawning enemy-to-all, ai-ally, or human-ally enclaves it does a spawn of all three (in different places).<br />
<br />
* Stats-wise these have been left alone (although that's pretty buff right now, possibly OP) except for a few changes to cut down on hair-pulling:<br />
** Now have Radar Dampening 20000, so it does't protect them from much but does help against really long-range strikes from superforts, bombards, etc.<br />
*** For reference, human-built enclave starships have radar dampening of 8000 or lower, so this particular change may actually be too weak.<br />
** Are now immune to Orbital Mass Drivers, since the alternative was letting them kill the OMDs in self defense, which didn't seem desirable since those are not autotargeted.<br />
** May now fly through enemy forcefields, but still can't directly shoot things under them.<br />
** The launched squadrons can no longer traverse wormholes, to keep them from buzzing off and annoying all kinds of AI stuff. The enclaves will have new ones to launch before long anyway.<br />
** Both the enclaves and their squadrons are now allowed to kill (autotargetable) guard posts and do other behaviors that free threat. since their deployment is now more regulated and they tend to clean up what they free.<br />
*** They're still scrupulous about never killing anything that causes AIP on death, or is otherwise not autotargeted (ion cannons, SF guard posts, distro nodes, etc).<br />
<br />
* If you're curious about the spawning and high-level control logic, advanced logging will generate a LogicLog_MinorFaction_RoamingEnclaves.txt file in your AIW installation's RuntimeData directory (when any of that logic happens, of course).<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.006 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/11/ai-war-beta-6006-pain-train-released.html The Pain Train] ==<br />
(Released November 13th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Rebel Human Colony health from 400k => 5M.<br />
** Thanks to Don Carsto for reporting a situation where AOE apparently killed one of these as an afterthought.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some longstanding GUI issues with the handling of mouse-down (where it should have been mouse-up) with textboxes.<br />
<br />
* On the Stats Window, Reference Tab, changed the "Target Ship" dropdown such that when you click on it, the main button (just above the dropdown list) converts into a textbox; if you type something into that the dropdown list is filtered to only contain items which which contain what you typed.<br />
** The dropdown has been really bad for a while due to the sheer number of items, but more recently it's become even worse to the point that some items simply couldn't be selected because "one pixel down" on the scroll bar was more than one "page" of options.<br />
** Thanks to Nypyren and chemical_art for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* In response to the then-#2 item on the mantis voting list: Added two new options to the Galaxy Display dropdown on the galaxy map:<br />
** Custom Search (Narrow)<br />
*** Allows you to pick a specific type of object (example: MkII fighter, MkIII Hardened Forcefield Generator), and displays the count of detected units of the specific type on each planet.<br />
** Custom Search (Broad)<br />
*** Allows you to pick a category of object (example: fighter, forcefield), and displays the count of detected units of types in that category on each planet.<br />
** Both of these use the "text filtering" mechanism just implemented for the reference dropdown, so you you can get to the desired selection faster.<br />
** Both of these can be keybound like all the other galaxy display options, but default is unbound.<br />
** Thanks to PineappleSam for the suggestion and a whole ton of other players for supporting it on mantis.<br />
<br />
* In response to a longstanding request from many players to make Astro Trains interesting:<br />
** The plot is now like the other variable-intensity plots, with settings from 0 to 10 (can be set differently per AI player).<br />
** The intensity controls the number of stations seeded during mapgen.<br />
** Trains no longer spawn during mapgen, but about every 20 minutes the game will check to see if the number of trains in the game is less than the "supplied population" of trains (which is based on plot intensity and whether the AI in question is a Train Master), and if there's room it spawns a group of trains at a randomly selected station.<br />
*** This group will move together through the rest of the game.<br />
*** The size of the group is based on plot intensity and whether the AI is a Train Master.<br />
*** All told, the result is that an AI with Astro Trains on will build up to 10 groups, with the size of each group being bigger on higher intensities.<br />
** The vanilla "Astro Train" and "Turret Astro Train" no longer get spawned into the game. The Regenerator and Speed-Boosting trains still exist, but no longer have guns.<br />
*** None of the new types have guns either. The danger posed by these is based on other mechanics.<br />
** Each new train's type is picked randomly from the set of eligible types, which is based on plot intensity and weighted to favor the less dangerous trains (so the more dangerous ones still happen but are rarer). Do note that the really nasty trains don't show up at all unless the plot intensity is fairly high.<br />
** The following new train varieties have been added (brace yourself, this isn't going to be pretty) :<br />
*** Cargo<br />
**** Harmless in itself, but each "delivery" contributes towards a counter for that player, and when that fills up (you'll see an alert once it's past 50%) it spawns some surprises. The spawns are unpleasant but not massively so (unless you're on intensity 8 or higher, where you're asking for it).<br />
*** Tachyon Jammer<br />
**** Prevents human tachyon emitters from working on the planet it's on.<br />
*** Gravity Jammer<br />
**** Prevents human gravity emitters from working on the planet it's on (the limited-range stuff, not planet-wide stuff like logistics stations or grav drills).<br />
*** Tractor Jammer<br />
**** Prevents human tractor beams from working on the planet it's on.<br />
*** Forcefield Jammer<br />
**** Prevents human forcefields/shields from working on the planet it's on.<br />
*** Radar Jammer<br />
**** Acts like the unit of the same name: halves attack range of everything on the planet. There's also a MkII variant that only halves enemy (to the AI) ranges.<br />
*** Armor Booster<br />
**** Acts like the unit of the same name: boosts armor of all AI ships on the planet.<br />
*** Armor Inhibitor<br />
**** Acts like the unit of the same name: negates armor of all enemy-to-AI ships on the planet (also disables shields, like that unit does, though that may be changed in the future for both; it's a holdover from when the armor inhibitor was the shield inhibitor).<br />
*** Attack Booster<br />
**** Boosts the attack of all AI ships on the planet.<br />
*** Tachyon<br />
**** Provides planetary-wide tachyon coverage for the AI.<br />
*** Gravity<br />
**** Halves the speed of all enemy-to-AI ships on the planet.<br />
*** Tractor<br />
**** Has a bunch of tractor beams.<br />
*** Widow<br />
**** Has a bunch of paralyzing tractor beams.<br />
*** Shield<br />
**** Basically a shieldbearer (the shield does not push enemy units). Has a lot less health than most of the other trains and is thus somewhat feasible to kill.<br />
*** Repair<br />
**** Basically a super-MRS.<br />
*** EMP<br />
**** Basically an EMP-guardian in train form. This is another one of the train types that's got way less hp and thus more feasible to destroy than others. If you have scouting on a planet with one of these, it shows up in the alert box.<br />
*** Nuclear<br />
**** Kinda like an EMP guardian, but only triggers on non-destroyed planets with a human command station present. Oh, and it's a nuke instead of an EMP. Destroys itself when it goes off. This is one of the train types that's got way less hp and thus more feasible to destroy than others. If you have scouting on a planet with one of these, it shows up in the alert box.<br />
*** Note: several other train varieties are under consideration, including others submitted by players in the past, but this seemed like a good set to start the mauling.<br />
** Astro Train Station AIP-on-death from 1 => 3 to make "just blow up all the stations" less of an obvious choice to train-troubled players.<br />
** Any old save with trains in them will have all trains removed (they're the wrong types of trains and wouldn't fit into the new logic due to how they spawned); the stations will spawn new ones over time until the train cap is reached.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine, Toranth, Draco18s, TechSY730, Kahuna, Hearteater, and others for inspiring this change. They probably wish they hadn't said anything.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where gravity turrets (and other finite-gravity-well generators like Spire Gravity Drains) would continue to function even if in stand-down, paralyzed/EMP'd, or out of supply (for the turret; the fleet ship doesn't need supply).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where a couple icons for the Spire Shadow Frigate were missing; they'd not been used for a long time but recently we started using them, but not everyone has them. This patch should fix that.<br />
** Thanks to Deus Draco for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug with carrier early-pop unit combination that could cause desyncs in MP, and for carriers to simply not produce any units in SP.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter, Night, Lord Of Nothing, and Drin for reports and saves.<br />
<br />
* Special Forces now combines ships into carriers if SF non-carrier'd population gets over 3000 (aims to bring it down to 1500 or so).<br />
** These carriers, and any ships they deploy, will all be Special Forces and follow that logic.<br />
** Thanks to Dressari and Bruteforce123 for reporting a case where there were so many SF ships flying around it was causing massive lag just from that.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where raid eyes could be triggered by enemy presence on adjacent planets.<br />
** There seemed to be reports of raid eyes going off on the presence of 1 enemy ship, but upon review we couldn't find a clear report of this, or a save of it happening, nor did our tests reproduce any such behavior. If you have one, please mantis :)<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter and contingencyplan for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Spire Corvette main-gun range from 3500 => 8500.<br />
** This is still shorter range than its shortest-range module, last we checked, so it should still work fine there.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Superfortress build time increased to 2.5x of what it was; still costs the same and with engie assistance you can still build one basically as fast, but now the per-second costs of unassisted construction are not quite so bleak.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Core Eyes, as a group, are now roughly as likely to be picked as each of the other brutal-pick AI HW structures. Each core eye is still equally likely to be picked, compared to other eyes.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.005 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/10/ai-war-beta-6005-burning-candle-at-both.html Burning The Candle At Both Ends] ==<br />
(Released October 31st, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Since it was the sole winner (that beat the "none of the above" option) of the "Aim the Nerfbat of Damocles: Player-side (II)" poll, Tackle Drone Launcher:<br />
** Drone's self-attrition now happens on a per-frame basis rather than per-second, so that the distance it can travel after engaging tractors is much more consistent (for a given amount of health-left-when-starting-tractors).<br />
** This deals with the tendency since the attritions-faster-when-tractoring change was made for drones to pick up their loads just after the second ticked over and thus get nearly a full second of additional flight time and go way further than intended. Overall it's a fairly big nerf, though it also makes the results look cooler in general.<br />
** Thanks to the players who provided feedback and votes on this.<br />
<br />
* Improved the rendering of the planetary summary sidebar to use the same approach for drawing the ship icons and borders as the game normally does for far-zoom ships. Previously that sidebar was blurring the icons a fair bit due to using a different method.<br />
** Thanks to HitmanN for bringing this to our attention and helping us figure out what was happening.<br />
<br />
* Since threat now behaves more intelligently when "stonewalled", removed the /10 modifier that turret firepower was given when evaluating whether a threatball should attack. Before it was better that they just get it over with, but now it's better that they regroup with other threat and look for an opening.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and many other players for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* In honor of being one of the winners of the "Aim the Nerfbat of Damocles: AI-side (II)" poll, the autobomb-like colony ship in the nebula scenarios has received moderate nerfs to speed, health, and damage. Combined, those three moderate nerfs are fairly severe. Surely if we overdid it someone will let us know (yea right, not with that scenario).<br />
** Thanks to the players who provided feedback and votes on this.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the past couple versions where the Spire's Frigate-level champion was using the wrong icon in the planetary summary.<br />
** Thanks to Jeffersn for the report.<br />
<br />
* Redid the far-zoom icons for the 9 LotS bonus ships:<br />
** Spire Armor Rotter<br />
** Spire Blade Spawner (and Spire Blade)<br />
** Spire Gravity Drain<br />
** Spire Gravity Ripper<br />
** Spire Maw<br />
** Spire MiniRam<br />
** Spire Stealth Battleship<br />
** Spire Teleporting Leech<br />
** Spire Tractor Platform<br />
** Thanks to HitmanN for more excellent pixelart.<br />
<br />
* Also in honor of being one of the winners of the "Aim the Nerfbat of Damocles: AI-side (II)" poll, the Zenith Bombard:<br />
** Now "costs" the AI 150% as much to spawn in all contexts (or nearly all of them, at least; hybrids wouldn't pay attention to this when picking up their escorts, they just pick zombards less often).<br />
** Thanks to the players who provided feedback and votes on this.<br />
<br />
* In honor of being one of the winners of the "Worst Unit Of The (time interval) Award (VIII)" poll, the Teleport Raider:<br />
** Ship Cap from 488 => 320. (those are high-cap-scale numbers)<br />
*** Health, Attack, M+C cost, and E cost automatically adjusted accordingly, before the further changes below.<br />
*** This just cuts down a bit on the inevitable disadvantages of being so high-cap in terms of damage loss to armor, etc.<br />
** Cap Health from 5.145M*mk => 10M*mk.<br />
** Cap Base DPS from 49k*mk => 70k*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 300*mk => 750*mk.<br />
** Effective Range from 7k => 8k.<br />
** Cap Energy cost from 25k => 20k.<br />
** Thanks to the players who provided feedback and votes on this.<br />
<br />
* Also in honor of being one of the winners of the "Worst Unit Of The (time interval) Award (VIII)" poll, the Infiltrator:<br />
** Ship Cap from 544 => 320. (those are high-cap-scale numbers)<br />
*** Health, Attack, M+C cost, and E cost automatically adjusted accordingly, before the further changes below.<br />
*** This just cuts down a bit on the inevitable disadvantages of being so high-cap in terms of damage loss to armor, etc.<br />
** Cap Health from 11,124,400*mk => 15M*mk.<br />
** Cap Base DPS from 49320*mk => 70k*mk.<br />
** Now has bonus vs medium (of 4x, like its other bonuses).<br />
** Base Move Speed from 26 => 32.<br />
** Now has cloaking (between the name and the role, it just doesn't make sense not to).<br />
** Ammo type from Flare => Dark Matter, to prevent excessive nightmare generation.<br />
** Thanks to the players who provided feedback and votes on this.<br />
<br />
* And in honor of being third place in the winners of the "Worst Unit Of The (time interval) Award (VIII)" poll, the Superfortress:<br />
** Now being balanced as a MkV version of the MkI fort, but with a ship cap of 1 instead of that type's 5. So roughly 25x as nasty as a FortI. You can go hide now.<br />
** At the same time, removing the AI version's 3x health multiplier. It seems unnecessary now.<br />
** Base Armor from 5k => 500k. <br />
*** This basically means it has 5x the listed health, and puts the effective cap-health at about 50% higher than a cap of theoretical MkV forts. To compensate, it's about 3 times easier to take down than those would be if you're hitting it with stuff that ignores armor, strips it away, or somehow overpowers half a million of it.<br />
** Seconds per salvo from 3 => 2.<br />
** Shots per salvo from 120 => 250. (I said you could hide)<br />
** Base move speed from 3 => 12 (same as forts)<br />
** Thanks to the players who provided feedback and votes on this.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions where the Doom Accelerator Cannon modules were largely confused into thinking they were Impulse Reaction Cannon modules.<br />
** Thanks to Bognor and chemical_art for the report.<br />
<br />
* Honorable mention from the "Worst Unit Of The (time interval) Award (VIII)" poll, the Zenith Power Generator:<br />
** Build cost (from trader) from 7.2M total m+c => 5M.<br />
** Base Max Health from 100k => 2M.<br />
** Ongoing metal+crystal cost (10 each per second) removed.<br />
** Energy production from 400k => 600k (equivalent to 4 planets' worth of energy collectors).<br />
** Thanks to the players who provided feedback and votes on this.<br />
<br />
* Another honorable mention from the "Worst Unit Of The (time interval) Award (VIII)" poll, the Champion Drone Bays:<br />
** Bomber Drone base movement speed increased from 70 => 84.<br />
** Slicer Drone base movement speed increased from 140 => 168.<br />
** Interceptor Drone base movement speed increased from 90 => 110.<br />
** Champion Drone bays production:<br />
*** Interval between "batches" from 2 => 5.<br />
*** Batch size from 1 => 3.<br />
** Thanks to the players who provided feedback and votes on this.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.004 ==<br />
(Released October 29th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last version that had changed the colors of your ships in the planetary summary.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.003 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/10/ai-war-beta-6003-fortress-size-it.html Fortress-size It] ==<br />
(Released October 29th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding (forever, basically) bug where non-wave AIs (Turtle, Support Corps, etc) would not launch waves even in a Defender-campaign game.<br />
** Thanks to Gith, Cinth, and others for reporting this.<br />
<br />
* AI Home Command Stations have been taught a new self-preservation technique for dealing with a very specific threat.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for inspiring its new sense of humor.<br />
<br />
* Removed the range-check when deciding whether a champion should gain experience from a kill on a planet. Now if it's on the same planet as the thing dying, it gets XP.<br />
** Note that the majority of champion XP normally comes from winning nebula scenarios, which already give XP to all champions in the game.<br />
** Thanks to contingencyplan, Moonshine Fox, Wingflier, and Cinth for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where AI spire corvettes were always spawning with MkI modules when they should have been using (corvette mark)+1 (max 5, of course).<br />
** This will not impact AI spire corvettes that already exist in savegames prior to this version; just newly-spawned ones.<br />
** Thanks to ussdefiant for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Adjusted Fallen Spire shard speeds again, since the increased intensities necessary to match the increased speed were a bit much early on. Now the first shard is back at the original (1/4 of recent) speed, the first city shard is 1/2 of recent, the second city shard is 3/4 of recent, the last shard is actually 5/4 of recent, and the others are unchanged. The intervals between chase spawns have been adjusted accordingly.<br />
** Thanks to the participants of [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11846.0.html this poll] and for their feedback on this issue.<br />
<br />
* Added modular-fort versions of the following champion modules:<br />
** Acid Jet.<br />
** Paralyzer.<br />
** Polarizer.<br />
** Impulse-Reaction.<br />
** Heat Beam.<br />
** Nanosubverter.<br />
** Insanity Inducer.<br />
** Translocator.<br />
** Doom Accelerator.<br />
** Photon Lance.<br />
** Rail Cluster.<br />
** Rail Cannon.<br />
** Plasma Siege Cannon.<br />
** Flak.<br />
** Bomber Bay.<br />
** Interceptor Bay.<br />
** Slicer Bay.<br />
** So that's all of them. They follow the same racial affinities as the champion modules (spire doesn't get drones but gets the absurdly big energy weapons, etc).<br />
** Each is available to any human player's modular fortresses if any human champion has them. Fortress modules only go up to MkIII, though (champion modules go all the way to MkV).<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for reminding us to make this happen.<br />
<br />
* Redid the far-zoom-icons for all the Ancient Shadows bonus ship types:<br />
** Neinzul Scapegoat.<br />
** Youngling Firefly.<br />
** Saboteur.<br />
** Spire Corvette.<br />
** Spire Railcluster.<br />
** Tackle Drone Launcher.<br />
** Zenith Medic Frigate.<br />
** Zenith Reprocessor.<br />
** Zenith Siege Turret.<br />
** Thanks to HitmanN for the excellent pixelart.<br />
<br />
* Redid the far-zoom icon for the Spire champions (the others had a fair bit of internal contrast, but this one looked pretty washed out.<br />
** Thanks to HitmanN for this one too.<br />
<br />
* Added two new cheat codes (entered during the game via the chatline, if cheats are enabled) :<br />
** running with scissors<br />
*** Removes all AI Eyes (sentry/ion/parasite/nuclear/etc) from the game.<br />
** revenge is best not served<br />
*** Removes all Counterattack Guard Posts from the game.<br />
**** Note, this will result in the ships guarding those posts being freed as threat. Not generally a big deal if done early in the game after you have some defenses, however.<br />
** Thanks to triggerman602, LaughingThesaurus, and Lancefighter for inspiring these.<br />
<br />
* AI special forces growth rate is now about 0.5x what it used to be, but max strength is now about 1.5x what it used to be. An overall nerf, in general; we'll see where we need to go from here.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Corrected an obsolete description for the counterattack guard post saying the resulting waves were low-warning.<br />
** Thanks to Lord of Nothing for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.002 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/10/ai-war-beta-6002-better-than-stick-in.html Better Than A Stick In The Eye] ==<br />
(Released October 25th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a really longstanding bug where human rebel colony rebellions couldn't happen if the player had not conquered any mkII AI planets.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic and others for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Amended the tooltip that the lobby shows when you mouse over the button that disables cloaking ships to note that it does in fact disable scouts and this makes for a fairly different game.<br />
<br />
* Tackle Drones now self-attrition much faster once their tractors have engaged, which drastically reduces how far out of the fight they can throw enemy ships while not reducing their effective "get to the enemy at all" range.<br />
** In fact, their overall base time-to-live has been increased from 7 to 9, to make sure they can reach the enemy in most cases.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic, Kahuna, Hearteater, and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* The AI now has some more tricks to use when responding to knowledge hacking, only used fairly rarely except when dealing with certain recently exploited player cheeses.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for sealing the fate of many.<br />
<br />
* Deepstrike threat:<br />
** Now triggers 1/20th as often, but each spawn is 20 times as big.<br />
** Now respects relative unit strength (so 1 blade spawner != 1 fighter, cost-wise).<br />
** Now spawns on a random AI planet instead of always on an AI homeworld.<br />
** Now spawns with the ThreatFleet behavior instead of just normal threat.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where champion-only players could try to build units from the zenith trader. Not really succeed, lacking resources, but try.<br />
** Thanks to bonreu and Coppermantis for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Respawning champions owned by a Normal+Champion player now respawn at that player's home command station (if alive) rather than using the "respawning command core" logic (which Champion-Only player champions still do).<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Finally got around to finishing the AI Eye changes from the poll it won some months ago.<br />
** Added the following new eye types:<br />
*** Raid Eye (like a raid engine if it's triggered too long)<br />
*** Nuclear Eye (nukes the planet, and itself, if it's triggered too long, really hurts on AIP)<br />
*** Threatening Eye (spawns threatfleet ships elsewhere in the galaxy every 5 seconds or so of being triggered)<br />
*** Translocating Eye (powered-up version of the mkIII military command station's new weapon, only fires when eye is triggered)<br />
*** Plasma Eye (massively-higher-Rate-of-Fire version of the mkIII plasma siege starship's weapon, only fires when eye is triggered).<br />
** Added "Core" variants of the Sentry, Raid, Threatening, Translocating, and Plasma eyes.<br />
*** These are only seeded on AI homeworlds, and are now the only eyes eligible for seeding on AI homeworlds (so Ion and Parasite eyes are now only seeded on non-homeworld planets).<br />
*** They are immune to nukes and a few other things normal eyes aren't.<br />
*** They emit planet-wide tachyon coverage (even when powered down, for those types that can power down).<br />
** Thanks to the many players who voted for the Eye in that poll, and to Hearteater, Faulty Logic, madcow, and others for suggesting some of the specific changes made here.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 6.001 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/10/ai-war-beta-6001-theres-always-at-least.html There's Always At Least One] ==<br />
(Released October 22nd, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where if player 1 had the "Engineers do not assist allies" toggle checked, the allied large starbases in nebulae would not repair champions controlled by players 2-8.<br />
** Thanks to Kronic and menzel72 for the reports and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where unlocking the MkI champion missile module would count as MkV for the purpose of the Specialist achievement.<br />
** Thanks to Jeffersn for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a localization-missing error that could happen on the high scores window.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* The "Reduce Visual Stimulation" now suppresses the "whiteout" effect of warhead detonations, etc.<br />
** Thanks to Jeffersn for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed several potential unhandled-errors and desync situations that could happen with the scrap-wave mechanic.<br />
** Thankfully scrapwaves basically never happen due to other AI-population-compression mechanics, so this wasn't actually a big deal. Good to have fixed anyway.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where the Stats window -> Military tab -> "# Built" column values ended in a % sign.<br />
** Thanks to Volatar for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the CTRLS window -> Ship Design tab where changing a design and then switching templates or unit types before saving (and confirming when it asks if you're sure you want to discard the changes) would leave the display in a very confused state.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic and chemical_art for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where a scapegoat could regen ''any number'' of allied ships that died in exactly the same frame, rather than just one.<br />
** Generally this wouldn't be a big deal due to the number of ships dying during a particular frame being fairly low, but when a Spirecraft Martyr goes up... let's just say that the Abominable Intelligence found a counter to the martyr. But it's been fixed now.<br />
** Thanks to Switch for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Changed Ravenous Shadow speed to not vary with combat style (it's now always what it used to be on Normal combat style), since the champion's speed doesn't vary there.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth and Coppermants for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* The game no longer seeds wormhole guard posts on wormholes that lead to nebulae, since this was confusing in games without champions (the wormholes are still seeded in that case, because champions can be added midway).<br />
** Note: this won't affect saves from previous versions, because the posts are already seeded there.<br />
** Thanks to Volatar and other for reporting the confusion.<br />
<br />
* Brightened the "Shields" display that shows on the resource bar when using a champion.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
[[Category:AI War Release Notes]]</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Current_Post-5.000_Beta&diff=29857AI War:Current Post-5.000 Beta2017-09-16T16:09:20Z<p>Nat: Fix link to 6.001 notes</p>
<hr />
<div>== Release 6.001 ==<br />
<br />
* Patch notes for game version 6.001 and up can be found at [[AI War:Current_Post-6.000_Beta|Current Post 6.000 Beta]].<br />
<br />
== Release 6.000 ==<br />
(Released October 19th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Updated the player-community credits to reflect contributions during the 5.0-to-6.0 run. Thanks everyone!<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.097 Release Candidate 2 ==<br />
(Released October 17th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last version where the list of available modules wasn't showing on the ship design at all, if your monitor (not resolution) was above a certain size.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth and Toranth for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.096 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/10/ai-war-beta-5096-release-candidate-1.html Release Candidate 1] ==<br />
(Released October 17th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Previously, when your ships exploded anywhere in the galaxy it played the same audio cue. Now if they are on a different planet from your view, it plays a much more muted, distant-sounding, quieter explosion sound effect. And there was much rejoicing.<br />
<br />
* Added 25 champion-related achievements.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that was letting the buy menu (with MODS button and abilities) show when multiple champions (of the same hull) type were selected. In some ways this was convenient but it's just asking for bug-trouble because of differences in what unlocks each player might have.<br />
** This also prevents some genuinely bizarre behavior when the multi-player selection is opened for modification in the ship design window, since they can no longer be opened in that window now.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Each champion/normal+champion player now starts with 100 shadow capacitor charge so that the champion-only players can immediately spawn rather than waiting 20 seconds or so to build up the initial charge.<br />
<br />
* Ship Design Window: changed the positioning of the list of available modules for the selected slot so that it's always the same horizontal distance from the right edge of the window. Previously the "floating" behavior sometimes made sense but more recently it's just made it look buggy in some cases.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed several errors and misleading bits in various unit descriptions.<br />
** Thanks to Bognor, RCIX, Draco18s, KingRaptor, and KDR_11k for the reports.<br />
<br />
* Reduced the quantity of nemesis champions the AI gets to defend itself against champion assassination, since it seemed like even dislodging a non-respawning population (after raising AIP a bit) would be inappropriately difficult.<br />
<br />
* Added the higher-mark-version images for most of the champion module lines.<br />
** Thanks to HitmanN for the art.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.095 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/10/ai-war-beta-5095-apply-core-sanding.html Apply Core Sanding Machine] ==<br />
(Released October 17th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a typo in the kill-second-AI-homeworld objective text that made it nonsensical. It had said you had to destroy the CSG network Second instead of first... real cute; obviously the AI shouldn't have been assigned to proofread that part.<br />
** Thanks to Bognor for the report.<br />
<br />
* Now when a champion respawns, it automatically queues up the highest eligible mark of each module instead of just keeping exactly the modules that were on it before dying/warping.<br />
** Also, there is now a "Switch To Best Module Versions Available" button on the ship design interface (only shows when there's actually a module on the design that has an eligible higher-mark version available) which switches in the eligible higher-mark versions. It doesn't actually apply the changes (we can make it do that if preferred, but this seemed more flexible), but the apply-to-selection button is just above.<br />
*** In theory it could just do this automatically, but that would cause apply-to-selection to make changes the player did not consciously make, in some cases, so this seemed safer.<br />
** Thanks to LordSloth, Eternaly_Lost and TechSY730 for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater,chemical_art, Faulty Logic, TechSY730, Cinth, Wanderer, Dichotomy, LaughingThesaurus, Volatar, and Winge for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Champion module unlock costs from 1/1/2/3/3 => 1/1/2/2/2, so upgrading a mkI module to mkV now costs 7 points instead of 9, allowing for a bit more flexibility with the two larger champion hull sizes.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth, Dichotomy, Eternaly_Lost, chemical_art, and orzelek for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Previously if a player champion entered a nebula and no scenario was eligible to be seeded, it would duplicate a previous scenario since the beta was ongoing and more scenarios were being added. Since the 6.0 set of scenarios is complete, this duplication now no longer happens and such a nebula will simply stay empty.<br />
** The first time this "empty nebula" logic is encountered in a game, it will trigger a short journal entry explaining the situation, so that it doesn't look like a bug.<br />
** If later on a scenario is eligible to seed there and the player has a champion there (or brings one there), one of the now-eligible scenarios will spawn. The emptiness won't prevent that from happening.<br />
** If you really want more than 9 scenarios in a game, you may use the "cmd:allow duplicate nebula scenarios" command from the chatline to re-enable the old behavior.<br />
*** Note: this is not a cheat! It does not require that cheats be enabled, and does not flag the game as having had cheats used. This is because the additional scenarios still use the proper balancing scaling based on your hull size, number of previous victories, etc. It's up to the player if they want to do more scenarios after 9, though hopefully we'll eventually have enough defined that even the largest galaxy (120 planets, 15 nebulae) won't run out and this command will become moot.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Added a note to the Dark Spire description indicating it's intentional chaoticity (by way of warning the player).<br />
** Thanks to Dichotomy for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where strategic reserve ships could be freed as threat while attacking.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for the report.<br />
<br />
* Dark Spire minor faction ships will no longer kill warp gates.<br />
** Note: the rationale with these is that they're supposed to have a chaotic and uncontrollable effect on the game if included and triggered. If you want minor factions that don't cause AIP or other badness, those factions already exist :) But the DS still won't kill command stations or warp gates because those: 1) Increase AIP substantially. AND 2) Are very common (i.e. on every planet). There's no strategy in avoiding DS spawns near those, because they're everywhere.<br />
*** So something that is merely common, but does not increase AIP much (Special Forces Guard Post, +1 AIP) is fair game.<br />
*** And something that substantially increases AIP, but is rare (Black Hole Generator) is fair game.<br />
*** And something like a counter-attack-guard-post is also fair game. If you play with Dark Spire on you'll want to pay close attention to things like that which are in striking distance of a DS spawner.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a textual error in the captive human settlement description.<br />
** Thanks to Volatar and KingRaptor for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.094 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/10/ai-war-beta-5094-apply-mkiv-sanding.html Apply MkIV Sanding Machine] ==<br />
(Released October 16th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Zenith Reprocessors are now immune to reclamation, because otherwise the player could have zombie reprocs giving them m+c which just seemed weird.<br />
** Thanks to rabican for the report.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Medic Frigates are now immune to reclamation, because zombies healing other zombies doesn't really work right (on many levels).<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the large starbases were repairing the champion about 100x faster than they should have been due to a testing flag being left on.<br />
** Note that the module construction part is unaffected.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed several minor issues with the tutorials, in preparation for 6.0.<br />
<br />
* Added a welcome message (referencing the tutorial and the "Beginner Game" setup script) to the lobby for the first time it is opened under a given profile (this is suppressed if the game detects that the profile has already started playing a real game at least once).<br />
<br />
* Adjusted the energy-surplus-achievement trigger thresholds to better fit the current model's numbers (and not trigger any achievements immediately upon starting the game).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where minifortresses had a ship-cap of zero in defender games.<br />
** Thanks to Gith for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the Spire Corvette was still available in some games with starships off.<br />
** Thanks to X14U2NVX for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where hacking an ARS, capturing the planet, saving, quitting, and reloading could cause another ARS to spawn somewhere in the galaxy.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the fallen spire campaign could spawn two of the same shard-signal.<br />
** Thanks to contingencyplan for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Nebulae are no longer considered by the "Knowledge Found" galaxy map display mode.<br />
<br />
* Fixed several bugs that could cause the new "large starbases can repair/assist champions" rule to not work sometimes.<br />
** Thanks to Underfot, Faulty Logic, Cinth, chemical_art for reporting, and to chemical_art again for the save that demonstrated yet another bug with this.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to LordSloth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a couple longstanding bugs that would cause very old saves to not load properly.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to vortexion for the report.<br />
<br />
* Champion respawn rebalance:<br />
** Now, if a "dead" champion's shadow capacitor charge is lower than 100, it does not respawn until the charge reaches 100.<br />
** Respawning now completely discharges the champion's shadow capacitor.<br />
** The confirm prompt for scrapping now displays alternate text if only champions are selected, since it's actually a "warp home" function rather than a "scrap" one. Follows exactly the same rules as normal respawning, either way.<br />
** Also amended the opening champion journal entry to note the respawn rules.<br />
<br />
* Added "Champions" galaxy map display mode so you can see where your champion(s) are from the galaxy map.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the resource bar metal/crystal/energy/knowledge mouseover tooltips would show lines for champion-only players.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.093 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/10/ai-war-beta-5093-apply-mkiii-sanding.html Apply MkIII Sanding Machine] ==<br />
(Released October 13th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* The large allied starbases in nebula missions can now (slowly) repair your champion and assist it in constructing new modules, allowing you to switch loadouts mid-mission without keeping an engineer team on the other side of the wormhole.<br />
** To make this work, champions and all nebula units are now free to repair (minor faction bases having no m+c reserves of their own to draw upon), which now makes the player-buildable versions of the nebula faction ships a bit more attractive to use.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth, Marmel, and other players for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where hybrids, exo ships, and the like could switch to threat-fleet behavior.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Military Command Stations:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Fixed a bug where the mkII and mkIII were still showing the mkI descriptive text, despite that now not being the same.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Winge, TechSY730, rabican, and Kahuna for reports/suggestions on these.<br />
<br />
* AI Strategic Reserves:<br />
** Fixed a bug where the spawns were only considering the first player's available ship types (so if the second player's core planet was under attack, nothing would spawn).<br />
** Fixed a bug where non-homeworld spawns were not trying to leave the correct percent-of-max-reserve remaining.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Significantly rebalanced how the ally and enemy large-starbase "how fast do these build units?" rates are computed in the nebula scenarios, notably:<br />
** Most of the modifiers are now applied additively, not multiplicatively, so that the numbers stay under control longer.<br />
** The base-vs-base scenarios are now more consistent in how losses of small starbases impact ally/enemy production concentration into the large bases.<br />
** Ally production now scales up with the factor based on number of champions, number of won scenarios, and biggest available champion hull. It doesn't scale up as much as the enemies do (as otherwise the overall challenge wouldn't really change, where it does need to get harder as the player progresses), but it should keep it from feeling quite so one-sided in highly scaled scenarios.<br />
** If you have advanced logging on, each multi-ship group spawn in an offroad scenario will log an entry to OffroadScenarioLog.txt giving info on what was spawned and how frequently spawns are happening at that point.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth, Winge, chemical_art, Histidine, Mermel, and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* The earlier base-vs-base scenarios now use similar autotargeting-logic-modifications to what is used in some of the later scenarios, to keep the enemies and allies from getting near an objective and then haring off to the other corner of the map because they could get better damage against some target.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the Dark Spire minor faction could kill AI command stations indirectly through plasma-siege splash damage.<br />
** Thanks to Histidine for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed several display bugs with champion hulls on the ship design screen.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Nebula scenarios can now grant both a new hull-race and a new hull-size at once. Previously a new hull-size would override, which could lead to not having all races by the end.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.092 ==<br />
(Released October 10th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Nebula seeding:<br />
** Every map now always seeds at least 9 nebulae; though 80+ planet maps seed more (up to 15 on 120 planets, as before).<br />
** Nebulae try to seed 4 hops apart, falling back on seeding closer together if there winds up not being enough room later on in the seeding.<br />
*** This helps with the fact that nebulae have to be seeded before homeworlds are chosen, by generally avoiding large concentrations of or gaps between nebulae.<br />
<br />
* Added "Nebula Wormholes" galaxy display mode that shows all planets with a wormhole that leads to a nebula.<br />
** The "Unexplored Wormholes" galaxy display mode no longer counts these wormholes, to avoid confusion.<br />
** This display mode doesn't work (and doesn't show up in the list on the galaxy map) if there are no champion or normal+champion players.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where a cpa deploying could cause unhandled errors.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version that was interfering with group moves through wormholes.<br />
** Thanks to Histidine for the report.<br />
<br />
* The Neinzul Mourner large starbase can now also spawn the player-gift facility after you win a scenario with the mourners in it, instead of just the small starbase (possibly the small starbase being able to do so will go away later, since it's the only faction that can happen with). In any event, it should still be true that at most one player-facility per splinter faction per nebula will spawn.<br />
<br />
* The IMT player-gift facility now responds to the D hotkey.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the reminder.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.091 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/10/ai-war-beta-5091-apply-mkii-sanding.html Apply MkII Sanding Machine] ==<br />
(Released October 9th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Diazo for reporting that interference.<br />
<br />
* Military Command Stations:<br />
** 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)<br />
** Metal,Crystal production from 16,16/32,32/64,64 => 24,24/48,48/96,96 (the same as logistics stations).<br />
** Now do not suffer damage reduction when firing from under a normal human-tech forcefield.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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)<br />
** Is now immune to radar dampening.<br />
** 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).<br />
** MkII and MkIII versions now do 200 engine damage per shot.<br />
** MkIII versions now apply 5 seconds of paralysis per shot.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Miniforts:<br />
** Now immune to translocation<br />
*** Thanks to Diazo for reporting what a clever AI shadow frigate did with that fact.<br />
** No longer provide counter-dark-matter coverage.<br />
** Can now receive up to a +100% munitions boost.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** And a related bug where some of the special forces spawn logic could only access the special ship types of the first AI player.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report leading to these discoveries.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for reporting that there were still issues here.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where Youngling Fireflies were eligible to be picked as AI reinforcements. Maybe it was for entertaining bored guard ships.<br />
** Thanks to rabican for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some remaining cases where giving a group-move order to an all-teleporter group would cause them to use normal engines instead of teleporting.<br />
** Thanks to Eternaly_Lost for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730, Toranth, Kahuna, and Cinth for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The nebula faction structures that produce ships for the player will now send their ships to a starship-constructor intragalactic warp gate, if you have one active.<br />
** This seemed a better way of handling the request for a warp gate for these than a whole new dedicated gate type, as that could be a bit tricky to know when to include in the buy menu.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and many other players for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.090 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/10/ai-war-beta-5090-fish-or-cut-bait.html Fish Or Cut Bait] ==<br />
(Released October 6th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Now when you give a group-movement movement command to a group containing only teleporting units, it ignores the group-movement part so that the teleporters do not use their normal engines.<br />
** Thanks to contingencyplan and Valorian_Nova for pointing out the undesirable side effect of the change in the last version.<br />
<br />
* Made the Youngling Vulture's description more clear about how its damage is computed, and copied the details of that to the Doom Accelerator module rather than just referencing the vulture.<br />
** Thanks to idont for pointing out how unclear the descriptions were for this purpose.<br />
<br />
* Removed the initial prompt to import settings from 3.x, since that hasn't been current in over two years.<br />
** The importer is still available from the settings menu, if anyone for some reason actually needs it.<br />
<br />
* Since "make the threatballs fish or cut bait" was #1 on the second round of the 6.0 poll:<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** If an AI homeworld or core world is under attack, the threat fleet will rally to defend it.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Otherwise, it picks a planet in AI territory to hang out at until either of the two above conditions are met.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** For the curious who have advanced logging on, the target-planet selection process is logged in the special forces log file.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer, TechSY730, Faulty Logic, Hearteater, many other players over the months, and the 6.0 poll voters for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* CPAs are now partly "funded" from the AI's strategic reserve if the reserve is over 50% full. Also, if that plus cpa-freed ships does not fill out the proper number of ships the strategic reserve will contribute even beyond the 50% line to try to fill it up.<br />
** If you're curious about the math of how the strategic reserve contributes to CPAs, the actual sending of the CPA will add an entry to the special forces log (where the rest of the strategic reserve logging goes) detailing what it did. Assuming advanced logging is on, of course.<br />
** Thanks to Trandrin for reporting some circumstances where the barracks population was running out relatively soon in games.<br />
<br />
* The issue of multi-ingress being so much harder than single-ingress came in #2 on the second round of the 6.0 poll, so here's a start: The time-between-waves adjustment for the number of player-territory ingress points has been adjusted to narrow the random range somewhat and to be somewhat more forgiving on multiple-ingress-point cases.<br />
** Thanks to Diazo for the suggestion, and the poll voters for emphasizing how important this was to them.<br />
<br />
* Also for helping with the multi-ingress/satellite-worlds thing: 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** These don't have the penalty vs polycrystal (or scout) hulls, making them actually able to deal with bombers.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer and the other poll voters for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where minor faction and zombie ships could be affected by the player auto-kite controls.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and Faulty Logic for reporting this.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where auto-knowledge-gather and auto-scout would sometimes still consider nebulae.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and Vinco for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where line-place would try to pack things in too closely on certain angles, which would lead to every other spot being skipped.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for the report.<br />
<br />
* Command station remains can now be rebuilt even when energy is negative, to avoid the "you need power to get power" catch-22.<br />
** Thanks to motai for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed several bugs that were preventing champions (and their assisting engineers) from building modules while the controlling player's energy was negative.<br />
** Normally this would be fine, but since champions are supposed to function as independent players, no player's energy budget should impact them directly.<br />
** This also fixes some issues where 0-energy things could not be built during negative energy.<br />
** Thanks to motai for the reports.<br />
<br />
* Spire Tractor Platform:<br />
** MkI-Cap-Health from 10.5M => 8M.<br />
** Base move speed from 18 => 15.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for inspiring these changes, and other player for their feedback on what happens when the AI gets Dire Honeycombs.<br />
<br />
* Most champion modules (basically everything except paralyzer) and the champion main guns are now better at not spreading out their fire too much, and thus at staying focused on the preferred target designated by the player.<br />
** Thanks to orzelek for the report and save leading to this change.<br />
<br />
* Changed champion paralyzer module:<br />
** Shots per salvo from 11 => 1.<br />
** Seconds per salvo from 8 => 2.<br />
** Base MkI Attack Power from 6250 => 17k.<br />
** Paralyze-seconds from 6+(2*mk) => 18+(6*mk).<br />
** Mainly this is because the paralyze autotargeting logic doesn't work well with multi-shot salvos (they tend to all hit the same target). Now it's much more efficient at spreading out.<br />
** Thanks to many players for reporting the inefficiency, and orzelek for a save that helped demonstrate the problem.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to... has anyone not reported this?<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.089 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/10/ai-war-beta-5089-apply-sanding-machine.html Apply Sanding Machine] ==<br />
(Released October 3rd, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where viewing a Core Spire Corvette Fabricator could cause unhandled exceptions (and the queue buttons to not show).<br />
** Thanks to Niwantaw for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* In honor of basically winning the "what most needs attention for 6.0?" poll, the remains rebuilders have received a logic overhaul and now:<br />
** 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.<br />
** If in FRD, they now are much less likely to "yoyo" back to the FRD-point between rebuilds until all the targets are rebuilt.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** This is actually a fairly significant buff to the unit, but it's probably not a big balance impact to start the rebuilding faster. Let us know if we're wrong about that.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer and the other voters for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Another high-scorer from the 6.0 poll: Advanced Fabricators and Fabricators now use the same "don't put this near a wormhole" logic as human home command stations.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna and the other voters for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Also from the 6.0 poll: 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.<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar for reporting this.<br />
<br />
* Changed the seeding quantity calculations of fabricators a bit; should be a similar amount as before but now there are somewhat more core fabs and somewhat fewer experimental fabs (should be same number of experimental-starship fabs).<br />
** Mainly, this is because there's so many more types of core fabs that more variety can be had there.<br />
<br />
* Another popular one from the 6.0 poll (and mantis voting) : Human-player teleporting units now use normal engines when group-moving.<br />
** Along with this, increased the normal-engine speed of all teleporting units to the speed of a fighter, for those lower than that.<br />
** Thanks to FunnyMan for the suggestion and many players for supporting it on mantis and in the 6.0 poll.<br />
<br />
* Since it also did very well in the 6.0 poll: engineers have had a "what to assist" logic overhaul such that:<br />
** If is Prefer-Non-Military toggle is on, and one is military and the other is not, prefer the non-military one.<br />
** If one has more currently assisting engineers than the other, prefer the one with less.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** Also, distance is now considered zero if the target is already within range, which helps a lot because previously it was masking other considerations.<br />
** If one object is a damaged irreplaceable unit and the other is not, prefer the damaged irreplaceable.<br />
** If one object is in stand-down and the other is not, prefer the one not in stand-down.<br />
** If one object's remaining-health-percent is less than half the other's, prefer the lower-health one.<br />
*** This was being considered before (it always went for the lowest percent-health), but only by teleporting repairers.<br />
** If one object has taken more than 25% engine damage and the other has not, prefer the engine-damaged one.<br />
** If one object's metal+crystal cost is more than twice the other's, prefer the more expensive one.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer and the other voters for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.088 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/10/ai-war-beta-5088-strategic-reserve.html Strategic Reserve] ==<br />
(Released October 1st, 2012)<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** The reserve starts at zero and increases periodically, so it can be whittled away.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* A longtime favorite on the mantis voting: Added a mouseover tooltip to the game clock in the upper-left corner that displays:<br />
** "Game Time", the clock that's already there, which speeds up or slows down with the simulation and stops while the game is paused.<br />
** "Local Time", as in real-world, according to your computer.<br />
** "Real Time Spent In Game", which is the amount of real time you've spent playing that particular game (i.e. that particular savegame), and ignores simulation speed and pausing, etc.<br />
** Thanks to Prezombie and many others for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Added a "Control-Group-Specific" tab to the CTRLS window, similar to the "Planet-Specific" tab:<br />
** Instead of selecting a planet on this tab, you select one of your 10 control groups from a dropdown.<br />
** Currently the tab has:<br />
*** Auto-FRD Military<br />
**** When this is set to "On", all your military units in this control group will be set to Free-Roaming Defender. Note: certain ship types (like fortresses that multi-repair, and zenith siege engines) never auto-FRD.<br />
**** When this is set to "Default", the global Auto-FRD toggle will govern.<br />
**** When this is "Off", this behavior will not happen for ships in this control group even if the global Auto-FRD toggle is on.<br />
**** If a ship is in multiple control groups with conflicting settings for this, the priority order is as follows: Off, On, Default.<br />
*** Auto-FRD Engineers<br />
**** When this is set to "On", all your engineer/rebuilder units in this control group will be set to Free-Roaming Defender.<br />
**** When this is set to "Default", the global Auto-FRD toggle will govern.<br />
**** When this is "Off", this behavior will not happen for ships in this control group even if the global Auto-FRD toggle is on.<br />
**** If a ship is in multiple control groups with conflicting settings for this, the priority order is as follows: Off, On, Default.<br />
*** Auto Kite<br />
**** When this is set to "On", all your non-melee, non-sniper ships in this control group will automatically pull away from their target so that they are (effective range - 500) range units away. Note: certain ship types (like fortresses that multi-repair, and zenith siege engines) never kite, and certain other ship types (like raptors) always kite.<br />
**** When this is set to "Default", the global Auto-Kite threshold will govern.<br />
**** When this is "Off", this behavior will not happen for ships in this control group even if the global Auto-Kite threshold would apply to them.<br />
**** If a ship is in multiple control groups with conflicting settings for this, the priority order is as follows: Off, On, Default.<br />
** Thanks to kezziny and many others for the high-on-the-mantis-votes suggestion that inspired this change.<br />
<br />
* The Galaxy-Wide, Per-Planet, and Per-Control-Group tabs of the CTRLS window now notify you if you're about to discard unsaved changes when you try to close the window, switch to another tab, or switch to a different target for the same tab (for the per-planet and per-control-group ones).<br />
<br />
* Answering another longstanding top-of-the-mantis-voting request: 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine! TyberZann, Draco18s, and many others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.087 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/09/ai-war-beta-5087-brawl-royale-released.html Brawl Royale] ==<br />
(Released September 27th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version where EER missions were rewarding with IMT facilities (and last time the problem was the other way around, ha; now they each give the right one).<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where player-built IMT ships were basing their caps on EER facilities.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Added the last "main" nebula scenario.<br />
** And the largest champion hull size.<br />
<br />
* Added better graphics for the champion (and corvette) plasma siege cannon.<br />
** Thanks to HitmanN for the art (for this and all the other champion module graphics, though most of them have not been individually announced).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the available-module-list button set on the ship design window wasn't fitting horizontally within the window.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.086 ==<br />
(Released September 24th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version that would grant a ton of stuff to champions as soon as you loaded the game (a bit of test code that had been disabled, but had a bug that applied to other cases, sigh...).<br />
** Thanks to Arkillion for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.085 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/09/ai-war-beta-5085-shady-carriers-released.html Shady Carriers] ==<br />
(Released September 24th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the most recent scenario where the new splinter faction was giving an EER reward building instead of the right one.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Added two more nebula scenarios.<br />
<br />
* Made "what can I autotarget?" logic more consistent so that player-ally minor factions don't pop AI carriers.<br />
** Thanks to Trandrin for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that could cause Dark Spire spawns on AI planets at the beginning of the game.<br />
** Thanks to Trandrin for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that was causing champion ships to still be able to get into a transport.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the report.<br />
<br />
* The special-difficulty scaling (used for exos and other superweapon stuff, mainly, but some other stuff as well) is now higher on higher difficulties.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Combat Guardians rebalance:<br />
** This just focuses on the base-game guardians (the guardians added in LotS are more special-purpose) and doesn't touch the Tachyon guardian since it's not really focused on combat.<br />
** Basically balancing these to be fairly powerful offensively (roughly like a starship with a cap of 4), but defensively much lower health than that (roughly that of a fleet ship with a cap of 20).<br />
*** If this proves too tame, can always ratchet it up later, but wanted to bring the threat levels from the different guardians closer together.<br />
** Laser Guardian shots-per-salvo from 15 => 8 (previously these things had really high dps for also having 5x bonuses vs light and polycrystal).<br />
** Sniper Guardian:<br />
*** Base damage per shot from 12k*mk => 19k*mk (yielding a cap-dps a bit below where the laser guardian now is, with 4x bonuses).<br />
*** Health from 1/3th normal guardian health to 1/2.<br />
** Spider Guardian: <br />
*** Base damage per shot from 600*mk => 3k*mk (cap-dps is now 80% that of the sniper guardian).<br />
*** Health from 1/3th normal guardian health to 1/2.<br />
** Tractor Guardian base damage per shot from 3600*mk => 35k*mk (bonus cap-dps now around that of the sniper guardian, but it only gets bonuses vs turrets)<br />
** Lightning Guardian:<br />
*** Base damage per shot from 2400*mk => 6000*mk (base cap-dps when hitting at least 40 targets is a little lower than the bonus cap dps of the laser guardian)<br />
*** All vs-hull-type bonuses removed.<br />
** Flak Guardian:<br />
*** Shots-per-salvo from 31 => 5 (previously the dps on this thing was way up there, able to hit 155 targets per salvo).<br />
*** Seconds-per-salvo from 8 => 10.<br />
*** Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 8 => 5.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Refractive from 8 => 5.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Turret from 0.1 => 1.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Composite from 3 => 5.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Heavy from 0.3 => 1.<br />
*** Multiplier vs UltraHeavy from 0.2 => 1.<br />
*** Base damage per shot from 1500*mk => 5.5k*mk (base and bonus cap-dps now in range of laser guardian's new numbers).<br />
** Beam Guardian:<br />
*** Beam can now hit a maximum of 9 targets instead of everything on the line (that is, it now uses the same rules as the zenith beam frigate).<br />
*** Base damage per shot from 4500*mk => 33k*mk (base cap-dps when hitting 9 targets is a bit higher than the lightning guardian's ideal dps; neither has bonuses)<br />
** Artillery Guardian:<br />
*** Multiplier vs UltraHeavy from 3 => 5.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Heavy from 2 => 5.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Turret from 2 => 5.<br />
*** Fixed bug where it had a multiplier vs Artillery of 0.1, now that's a multiplier vs Scout.<br />
*** Base damage per shot staying at 160k*mk (base and bonus cap-dps now in range of laser guardian's new numbers).<br />
*** Health from 1/5th normal guardian health to 1/2.<br />
** Raider Guardian:<br />
*** Multiplier vs CommandGrade from 3 => 5.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Structural from 2 => 5.<br />
*** Multiplier vs UltraHeavy from 2 => 5.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Turret from 0.2 => 1.<br />
*** Base damage per shot from 36k => 11k (base and bonus cap-dps now in range of laser guardian's new numbers).<br />
*** Health from 1/8th normal guardian health to 1/2.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic, Hearteater, and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Fixed military tutorial to expect you to build half your mark I cap of the ARS-granted unit, instead of 20, since 20 could be higher than the cap.<br />
** Thanks to Honknatter, Arkillion, and ElOhTeeBee for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a number of other issues with the military tutorial (the other tutorials will be getting a full go-over closer to the next official release).<br />
<br />
* Changed the rewards scaling for the IMT scenario to be based primarily on how well the allied bases survived (in count and health %), instead of primarily on the number of surviving enclaves.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the feedback inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.084 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/09/ai-war-beta-5084-diplomatic-incident.html Diplomatic Incident] ==<br />
(Released September 20th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Added a new nebula scenario, with a somewhat different kind of gameplay than the previous ones, and includes a couple old friendly foes (hence the release title).<br />
** Includes the last splinter faction, incidentally it is a human one.<br />
<br />
* Nerfed the champion/corvette plasma siege cannons because they were really a bit much as it was.<br />
<br />
* Exos now get less bonus from the presence of human Champions in the game.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth, Faulty Logic, and others for the feedback inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Kills by the Devourer Golem or Enemy-to-all Roaming Enclaves (or their squadrons) no longer contribute to the Dark Spire counter when on the same planet as one of the vengeance generators.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine and other players for reporting how badly that could go. Hilarious but... a bit much.<br />
<br />
* Champions can no longer be loaded into transports.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the feedback (read: record of a jumpship made out of limburger) inspiring this change, and Soyweiser for also pointing it out.<br />
<br />
* Champion main weapon ranges normalized so they don't exceed the range of their modules (and thus cause the auto-movement logic to not close to the proper range).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for reporting that this was happening.<br />
<br />
* Dark Spire spawns no longer get stronger based on the number of previous dark-spire-spawns, because this was still causing things to get out of control even at a very low value (+1% per previous spawn, so additive and not exponential), and this is probably inevitable in some situations like FS shard-chase-exos.<br />
** Thanks to Arkillion for the feedback and save inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Dark Spire vengeance generators now only get 1/10th the normal charge from a ship dying if it belongs to an exo attack.<br />
** Thanks to Arkillion for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Put in some save-game repair logic to deal with a case where the next-exo-size variable was being saved as a really large number in version 5.078 (and propagated for those particular savegames since then), which would effectively disable the affected exo source.<br />
** Thanks to orzelek for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Reprocessor: <br />
** MkI-base-cap-dps from 30k => 45k (for reference, Acid Sprayers have 58.8k, and the same bonuses).<br />
** Now immune to tractors.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to LordSloth for the experiments and feedback that inspired these changes.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.083 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/09/ai-war-beta-5083-core-values-released.html Core Values] ==<br />
(Released September 18th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Added roughly (there's some randomization) one "brutal pick" to each AI homeworld on difficulties 7+.<br />
<br />
* Added new "brutal pick" Core Guard Post for Ancient Shadows: The Wrath Lance.<br />
** As long as it detects hostile military ships on the planet, fires several massive long-range continuous beam weapon cannons in different directions. Does not actually aim, but the beams move as the post rotates.<br />
<br />
* Added new "brutal pick" Core Guard Post for Ancient Shadows: The Teuthida.<br />
** An AI/Neinzul hybrid experiment gone wrong. When hostiles are present, this post continuously generates nanoswarm-like drones. Instead of merely doing reclamation damage, however, the organisms released by these drones instantly transform the targets into "zombie" vessels.<br />
** Ships immune to reclamation are spared this fate, but are not spared from the extremely powerful cluster of railcannons mounted on the post itself.<br />
<br />
* Added new "brutal pick" Core Guard Post for Ancient Shadows: The Grav Reactor. <br />
** An enormously powerful reactor based on some kind of gravitational energy manipulation. Generates a strong gravity well that prevents most enemy ships from leaving the system, and greatly slows enemy ships that stray too near the reactor itself. Also builds gravity drones that rush hostile ships to slow them down and damage them upon detonation.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.082 ==<br />
(September 17th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that could cause basically all buy menus to be empty. Whoops.<br />
** Thanks to ussdefiant for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.081 ==<br />
(Released September 17th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for noting the effective-invincibility problem.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version that could cause unhandled exceptions when opening the buy menu of a core fabricator.<br />
** Thanks to Battlecrydnx for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where some toggles on the CTRLS screen were taking up more horizontal space than necessary, causing it to not quite fit on a 1024-wide resolution.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the feedback inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Firefly death-explosion base power cut to 25% of what it was; can still get multiplied by up to 20 (so 5x of what the base power used to be) by getting a lot of shots in before dying.<br />
** This may be too low, in which case we'll buff these again, but these were really brutal in the hands of the AI in the previous version with a couple dozen fireflies basically able to vaporize an early-game human fleet.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the feedback inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** The actual attack power of the unit is unchanged, this is just fixing a bug in the internal balancing model.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for the feedback inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to mithrandi for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* 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) :<br />
** Mad Bomber reinforcement multiplier from "you get one ship" on non-core-worlds (and 0.25 on core worlds) => 0.7, on all worlds.<br />
** Neinzul Youngster reinforcement multiplier from 0.25 => 0.8.<br />
** Vicious Raider, Extreme Raider, and Technologist Raider multiplier from 0.3 => 0.8.<br />
** Attritioner, Zenith Descendant, Spireling, Starfleet Commander, Experimentalist, and Grav Driller reinforcement multiplier from 0.4 => 0.9.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
** The Core reinforcement multiplier from 0.3 => 0.5 (same as its wave multiplier).<br />
<br />
* Removed the AI-Type-inherent effects where reinforcement and/or waves would act like AIP was a certain number of points higher than it actually was, since this tended to make the early game much harder for no obvious reason, but not have much impact on the balance later in the game.<br />
<br />
* Made the wave alert-text logic better handle mixed-tech waves: if it's 100 mkI fighters and 100 mkII fighters, it will now stay "Fighters" instead of just enemy ships as if it were truly a mixed wave.<br />
** Thanks to pheonix89 for reporting that it was frequently not giving a ship type for waves like that.<br />
<br />
* Removed the wave-calc rule that was preventing more than 1 of a specific starship type from being added; normally it wouldn't make much difference but it was impairing the Spire Hammer, Heroic, Starfleet Commander, and Extreme Raider AIs from scaling up their extra wave components.<br />
<br />
* Made the AI-Type-specific units added to waves (Spire Hammer, Heroic, and Extreme Raider AIs do this) scale up quantity-wise with AIP (based partly on AI Difficulty) as well as wave size, but also scale down with higher-tech-level variants.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth and Dazio for pointing out how these could be punishing in the early game but nearly irrelevant later on.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous verion's addition of automatic gradual engine self-repair where anything with less than about 250 max engine health was not being impacted at all.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.080 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/09/ai-war-beta-5080-bonus-round-released.html Bonus Round] ==<br />
(Released September 15th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed several bugs where some ways of killing a ship were not even checking for "should this ship be reclaimed?".<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the most common way of killing a ship was not checking for "should this ship be reprocessed?" (meaning that it took damage from a Zenith Reprocessor and should grant m+c to the player who did that damage).<br />
** Thanks to LordSloth, Nic, Lancefighter, KDR_11k, and others for reporting the... lack of effect.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where reclamation damage and reprocessing damage were not persisting across save/load.<br />
<br />
* Added new Ancient Shadows bonus ship type: Youngling Firefly.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to soMe_RandoM for the suggestion that inspired this ship.<br />
<br />
* Added new Ancient Shadows bonus ship: Saboteur.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for the suggestion that inspired this ship.<br />
<br />
* Added new Ancient Shadows bonus ship: Spire Corvette.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Built from the SCRV tab of the Starship Constructor.<br />
<br />
* Corrected some omissions to the Hybrids drone-preference logic, to reduce the likelihood of their picking up a ton of Spire Tractor Platforms, Spire Stealth Battleships, and/or Spire Railclusters. The Super Hybrid actually prioritizes these and similarly devastating escorts, however.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug with the display of the champion decoy ability.<br />
** Thanks to Jeffersn for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** But tactical usage should still be very viable for kiting around a planet, spreading out an incoming attack, etc.<br />
** Thanks to many players (who may wish to remain nameless) for feedback over the past several months pointing to this being necessary.<br />
<br />
* Corrected a balance-math error with Zenith Medic Frigate attack power, mkI-cap-dps from 446,250 => 100,000 (for reference, the spire stealth battleship has 90,000, with 1.4 multipliers; the medic frigate has no multipliers).<br />
<br />
* Zenith Siege Engine:<br />
** MkI-cap-health from 16.8M => 10M.<br />
** Corrected an... interesting balance-math error where it had 720k mkI-cap-dps AND 10x multipliers (against structural, heavy, ultraheavy, and turret):<br />
*** Multipliers from 10x => 5x.<br />
*** 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).<br />
** Reload time from 15 => 10.<br />
*** Damage adjusted to maintain dps.<br />
** Now pay no attention to auto-FRD or auto-kite.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring these changes, as little consolation as that may be to the many ships (including spire capital ships) <br />
* All modular forts now pay no attention to auto-kite (previously some did, and some didn't).<br />
<br />
* Zenith Reprocessor:<br />
** MkI-cap-health from 8.4M => 15M (now in the neighborhood of fighters).<br />
** MkI-cap-dps from 17.2k => 30k (has 8x multipliers).<br />
** Thanks to LordSloth, Kahuna, and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Eternaly_Lost and others for periodically raising laments at the length of time it can take to get one of those things back home.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.079 ==<br />
(Released September 10th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the recent change to remains-rebuilder logic that could cause a null exception.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a savegame/gamestate corruption bug that could happen when the Dark Spire faction was enabled.<br />
** Very sorry about that, actual corruption bugs are quite rare. Apparently a zombie apocalypse wasn't the only thing the Dark Spire had planned!<br />
** This could also impact new games (probably just in multiplayer; the same code that does savegames is used to send gamestates over the network), cause nebulae to be empty, etc.<br />
** Thanks to Jeffersn, Toranth, Lilli, eduran1984, and Lancefighter for providing reports and saves leading to this being discovered.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.078 ==<br />
(Released September 4th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the cap-overhaul where microparasites and translocators had a ship cap of 1.<br />
** Thanks to Nic for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version where the AI had stopped respecting unit-cap-scale when sending waves. Clever girl.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report and logs.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.077 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/09/ai-war-beta-5077-cap-tectonics-released.html Cap Tectonics] ==<br />
(Released September 4th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* After thinking about it for about a month: removed the rule where fleet ships have lower caps at higher marks. So instead of 98 MkI fighters (on normal caps), 88 MkII fighters, etc, it's now just 98 for each mark of fighter.<br />
** Hopefully this will make the higher-mark unlocks, and fabricators, more attractive.<br />
** This does increase how much the AI gets too, though as it turns out the mark level of a ship was being factored into wave sizes _twice_ (so MkII waves were about 10% smaller than they should have been, etc), which wasn't really good anyway.<br />
** Thanks to many players for weighing in with votes and discussion on [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11244.0.html the poll], and Faulty Logic for starting said.<br />
<br />
* 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+ <br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Still not applied on difficulties under 5 since the waves are so small there anyway.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the spire blade, tackle drone, and various other drones were valued far higher than intended for purposes of the amount of energy their death provides dark-spire generators.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Turrets still need to be done, of course, but I've had enough swimming-in-numbers for one day.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater and others for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug which could occasionally cause unhandled errors when trying to spawn a barracks/carrier.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Dark Spire minor faction toned down to avoid it causing a "zombie apocalypse" in the first hour:<br />
** Number of spawners from (FactionIntensity+1)*2 => FactionIntensity*2.<br />
** Spawners can no longer be placed on planets with an advanced factory, super terminal, or dyson sphere.<br />
** Base spawn intensity is now 1/4th of what it used to be.<br />
** Spawn intensity is now doubled on the planet actually triggering the spawn (so it's 1/2 of what it used to be, total).<br />
** The increase in spawn intensity from previous spawns from +10%-per-previous-spawn => +1%-per-previous-spawn.<br />
** Fixed a bug where the spawns were giving champion XP.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for reporting the... apocalyptic nature of the first implementation.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where clicking an "allied ship" group on the planetary summary (right sidebar of planet view) would only actually select those ships if the controlling player(s) were disabled (e.g. loading a multiplayer save and disabling the other players so you can play it in singleplayer). Now it will work whenever you are allowed team-control of those ships, for whatever reason.<br />
<br />
* Added new toggle to the Galaxy-Wide tab of the CTRLS window: Brave Cloaker Starships.<br />
** If this toggle is checked, your Cloaker Starships will suppress their normal self-preservation instincts to avoid being included in a selection with military ships.<br />
** Note: this applies to the cloaker starships of the player who's brave-cloaker-starships toggle is checked, regardless of who is trying to control them in a multiplayer game with Allow Team Control on. Allied Cloaker Starships will still be wimps unless their owners check this toggle too.<br />
<br />
* Fixed the health and damage of the neinzul viral swarmer (only used by one AI type) and the neinzul bomber (used by roaming enclaves and preservation wardens) to not be abysmally low.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Rams, Martyrs, Siege Towers, Ion Blaster, and Implosion Artillery can now be placed into stand-down mode to keep them from firing (or, in the case of a ram, blowing itself up; thankfully martyrs already didn't try to do that automatically).<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Ram far-zoom icons now rotate according to their facing.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where a remains rebuilder could target the remains of an energy-producer before the command station went down, be unable to actually rebuild the energy-producer due to the command station being down, and keep trying to perform the rebuild. Now when it notices that the command station is down while trying to rebuild, it will abort the rebuild and look for something else to do.<br />
** Thanks to Sigma7 and Lancefighter for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to Drin for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the addition of Microcosm Clusters had caused Simple Clusters to be generated the same way as the new variant.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where hybrids were considering nebulae for the purposes of eligible planets to defend, attack, etc.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a really longstanding bug where shots on a planet were sometimes visible even through the fog of war.<br />
** Thanks to chrism, Nice Save, Tssbackus, zharmad, and others for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where Helper players could not switch to the Champion-only role (they could already switch to Normal and Normal+Champion).<br />
** Thanks to LordSloth for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.076 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/09/ai-war-beta-5076-clusters-of-pain.html Clusters Of Pain] ==<br />
(Released September 1st, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Added new Ancient Shadows Map Style: Microcosm Clusters:<br />
** Similar to Clusters in overall structure, but each cluster picks from a set of different methods of placing and connecting the intra-cluster planets.<br />
<br />
* Added new Ancient Shadows Minor Faction (this is not related to nebulae or champions, just another "Minor Faction" that can be enabled from the lobby): Dark Spire<br />
** Several mysterious, ancient structures exist on AI planets throughout the galaxy. They cannot be harmed, and do not have any weapons, but they absorb energy when a ship dies on the same planet. What happens when they absorb too much?<br />
** The intensity of this faction can be set from 0 to 10; 0 is disabled, 1 is trivial-impact, 4 is normal, 10 is potentially-dominating.<br />
** The structures are marked as "DaS" on the immobile-minor-faction galaxy filter (similar to how it shows the dyson sphere, rocketry corps silos, etc), so you can see their known locations pretty quickly.<br />
** Balance is ongoing on these, if you think it's out of line please:<br />
*** Turn on advanced logging.<br />
*** Play for a bit until it does what you think is out of line.<br />
*** Send us the DarkSpireMinorFactionLogicLog.txt from your RuntimeData directory, along with a description of what seems off to you. Thanks!<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the application of the reinforcement-focus logic to the initial ship seeding was crashing the tutorial.<br />
** Thanks to DrGonzo for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.075 ==<br />
(Released August 30th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* The reinforcement-focus concept from the previous version is now also applied to the initial seeding of guard ships onto AI planets.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an array-index-out-of-bounds error on the AI thread from the reinforcements-focus logic.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.074 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/08/ai-war-beta-5074-focused-forces-released.html Focused Forces] ==<br />
(Released August 30th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the fifth direct-use champion ability was never being given as a scenario reward.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where one of the scenario-reward ship production facilities was not responding to the D hotkey.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
=== Special Forces made more interesting ===<br />
<br />
* AI Special Forces:<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater, Faulty Logic, Martyn van Buren, Diazo, TechSY730, Lancefighter, Sunshine!, Bossman, Draco18s, Ozymandiaz, Wingflier, and chemical_art for feedback inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
=== Combat Starship rebalance ===<br />
<br />
* By "Combat Starship" we mean: Flagship, Zenith Starship, Spire Starship, Bomber Starship, Plasma Siege Starship, and Leech Starship. The Raid and Riot lines are not considered here since they have very different roles and/or stat baselines (the Raid is largely for independent raids, and the Riot does hardly any damage). The Cloaker, Enclave, and Scout lines are all not directly involved in combat. The Leech is borderline but fits well enough.<br />
<br />
* Not making any extreme changes here, just refinements based on feedback from the last several months' changes. Some of those changes have been pretty substantial, so some of these are too.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter, chemical_art, TechSY730, Diazo, Faulty Logic, Hearteater, Draco18s, sol_ilya, and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Leech Starship:<br />
** Ship cap from 3 => 4.<br />
** Seconds Per Salvo from 4 => 2.<br />
** Shots Per Salvo from 3= > 6.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 30k => 2k (24k base-cap-dps, parasite has 12.25k)<br />
*** 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.<br />
**** 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.<br />
** Base Armor Piercing from 0 => 750*mk (same as parasite).<br />
<br />
* Knowledge costs:<br />
** Flagship was 0/2000/5000.<br />
** Zenith Starship was 1000/2500/6000.<br />
** Starship Starship was 1000/2500/6000.<br />
** Bomber Starship was 0/5000/7000.<br />
** Plasma Siege Starship was 0/5000/7000.<br />
** Leech Starship was 0/5000/6000.<br />
** MkI costs (or lack thereof) unchanged.<br />
** MkII costs are now all 2500.<br />
** MkIII costs are now all 4000.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Health:<br />
** "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).<br />
** Flagship from 3.75M*mk => 5M*mk (20M cap-hp).<br />
** Zenith from 4.5M*mk => 6M*mk (24M cap-hp).<br />
** Spire from 3M*mk => 4M*mk (16M cap-hp).<br />
** Bomber from 4.7M*mk => 7M*mk (28M cap-hp)<br />
** Plasma Siege unchanged at 5M*mk.<br />
** Leech from 3.2M*mk => 4M*mk (16M cap-hp).<br />
<br />
* Metal+Crystal/Energy costs:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Cap-e is more consistent for fleet ships, typically about 20k (halved for mkI types). So targeting about 40k for a mkI cap here.<br />
** The m+c costs listed are for mkI, mkII are 2x, mkIII are 4x. E costs do not change with mark.<br />
** Flagship from 40k+24k / 4k e => 60k+40k / 10k.<br />
** Zenith from 24k+40k / 4k e => 40k+60k / 10k.<br />
** Spire from 30k+34k / 4k e => 45k+55k / 10k.<br />
** Bomber from 80k+8k / 2k e => 85k+15k / 10k.<br />
** Plasma Siege from 8k+80k / 2k e => 15k+85k / 10k.<br />
** Leech from 60k+40k / 5k e => 60k+40k / 10k.<br />
<br />
* Spire Starship:<br />
** Hull type from Neutron => Medium.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 120k*mk => 600k*mk.<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* Bomber Starship renamed to Heavy Bomber Starship.<br />
** This is obviously the most important change of the batch.<br />
<br />
=== Fighter/Bomber role adjustment ===<br />
<br />
* In general, nothing earthshaking, but hopefully making life a bit more dangerous for the bombers of the galaxy, and a bit more interesting for the fighters.<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar, Wingflier, Diazo, chemical_art, Martyn van Buren, RCIX, doctorfrog, Winge, Wanderer, zebramatt, Nodor, relmz32, Kahuna, rchaneberg, LaughingThesaurus, Drjones013, Eternaly_Lost, MaxAstro, and Irxallis for feedback inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Fighter (including tachyon-micro and bulletproof variants):<br />
** Base Move Speed from 28 => 32.<br />
** Multiplier vs Polycrystal from 5 => 6.<br />
** Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 2.4 => 6.<br />
** Multiplier vs Medium from 2.4 => 6.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1200 => 1000 (similar for the variants).<br />
<br />
* Bomber Base Move Speed from 28 => 26.<br />
<br />
* The following guardians now have the medium hull type:<br />
** EMP (was Neutron)<br />
** Heavy Beam (was Heavy) <br />
** Laser (was Swarmer)<br />
** Lightning (was Composite) <br />
** Special Forces Rally (was Heavy)<br />
** Spire Implosion (was Artillery)<br />
** Starship Disassembler (was UltraHeavy)<br />
** Tachyon (was Refractive)<br />
** Tractor (was Neutron)<br />
** Vampire (was Artillery)<br />
<br />
=== AI Reinforcement Focus ===<br />
<br />
* AI planets now pick a primary, secondary, and tertiary type of ship to focus their reinforcements on. <br />
** It's not purely random, sometimes it picks ships that fit certain roles.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Whenever the AIs unlock new ship types due to AI progress, all AI planets "reroll" their focus types.<br />
** Thanks to... basically everyone in the list for the fighter/bomber changes :) The point that "everything, everywhere" is at least as practically-homogenous as "one thing, everywhere" came up during that discussion.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.073 ==<br />
(Released August 28th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the modular zenith fortress was trying to load the wrong far-zoom icon.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.072 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/08/ai-war-beta-5072-revised-experience.html A Revised Experience] ==<br />
(Released August 28th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Nebula minor faction ships are now a bit more focused on getting the job done:<br />
** All use focus-fire, thus indirectly more likely to shoot at the stuff that will take the most damage.<br />
** All the "bomber-role" ships will heavily prioritize enemy starbases, and thus are more likely to make progress towards scenario conclusion one way or another.<br />
** All no longer prefer mobile targets to immobile targets.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug in FRD target sorting that was sometimes being overly sensitive to differences in how far away two targets were.<br />
<br />
* Knowledge rewards from offroad scenarios have been substantially reduced.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for reporting how... intense they could be.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* Reverted the change in the last version that applied the special difficulty modifier to forced carrier pops; it now applies only a difficulty-based modifier and doesn't factor in the number of homeworlds or champions.<br />
** Thanks to Eternaly_Lost for feedback about how brutal that change had made things.<br />
<br />
* Added a new scenario that can seed in a nebula.<br />
** Introduces the second Zenith splinter group, along with another old acquaintance.<br />
** Added 3 new module lines and 1 new ability the rewards you can get from some nebula scenarios.<br />
** Implemented the Modular Zenith Fortress and added it to the rewards you can get from some nebula scenarios.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where abilities that had not been unlocked yet were showing on the champion ability menu.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Gives a bit more motivation to unlock the higher engineer marks, if you're having trouble getting enough assistance/repair out.<br />
** Thanks to LordSloth for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Changed how champion hull unlocks are handled in nebula scenario rewards:<br />
** As before, you can't get destroyer hulls until the second scenario is over, and can't get cruiser hulls until the fifth scenario is over.<br />
** But now when you get a new size, you get the new size in all the races you've already got access to.<br />
** On scenarios where you are not given a new size, and you do not already have the race-tech-base-form corresponding to the faction you just helped, you get that form in all sizes you've already got access to (though it only announces the largest one).<br />
*** If you've already got that racial-tech-base-form it just gives you an extra module line instead.<br />
** Since there really isn't a point in using the smaller forms after you've got a larger one, only the largest ones will be shown (in an old save if you have, say, human frigate, human destroyer, and zenith frigate, it will show the H-DD and the Z-FF).<br />
** Thanks to Shrugging Khan for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Changed main way to gain XP as a champion:<br />
** Nebula ships now only grant 1/10th as much XP as they did.<br />
*** Starbases and anything outside a nebula give the same as they used to.<br />
** Winning a scenario now rewards a substantial amount of XP that:<br />
*** Scales up with the level of the highest level champion in the game, though significantly slower than the xp-required-to-level scales up.<br />
*** Scales up the better you do:<br />
**** On the Neinzul Mourner and Gray Spire scenarios, this isn't directly related to time as those scenarios are basically over one way or another after a certain period of time anyway.<br />
**** On the other scenarios where it's possible to drag it out to "farm" kill-based XP, this is now tied to how quickly you finish the scenario. So you can still farm if that's what entertains you, but you won't really get an XP advantage.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art, orzelek, and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.071 ==<br />
(Released August 27th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed some bugs with the Fortress King's modular fort command stations:<br />
** Previously they did not have the "+15 AIP on death" attribute. Heh. Fixed.<br />
** Previously they used the wrong "requires supply" flag. Fixed.<br />
** Previously they were auto-targeted by human ships. Fixed.<br />
** Previously they did not function as warp-gate-reinforce. Fixed.<br />
** Also made the homeworld versions get most of the home-command-specific attributes.<br />
** Made the Fortress King command forts no longer limit themselves to mark 2 modules (instead accepting that they then proceed to 3).<br />
** Fixed a bug where Fortress King command forts were using champion shield modules instead of fort shield modules.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for reporting most of these.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where a forcefield that just turned on would sometimes take a long time to actually apply protection to a unit inside it (generally more likely with minor-faction allies than player-controlled ships).<br />
** Thanks to Tssbackus for the report and save leading to this discovery.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Battlecrydnx for the report.<br />
<br />
* CPA size calculations ares now structured more like the wave size calculations, in order to make sure they produce results bigger than wave size calculations, without being too crazy on Diff 7 and thereabouts.<br />
<br />
* Barracks are now seeded on some AI planets at the start of the game (and retroactively into old saves):<br />
** The higher the difficulty, the more planets get them.<br />
** The higher the difficulty, the more ships in them.<br />
** None are placed closer than 3 hops from a human homeworld, to not be too cruel.<br />
** These serve two purposes:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Making the AI's defensive response to the loss of a planet (with a barracks on it) something more of an event.<br />
** Thanks to many players for feedback about underwhelming (still) CPAs and underwhelming AI defensive behavior.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where the AI would only produce carriers if the target planet already had 2 barracks, instead of 1.<br />
** Thanks to the players who reported this, regrettably mantis doesn't seem interested in telling us who right now.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a graphical bug with the border drawn around barracks icons in some contexts.<br />
<br />
* Popping a carrier such that it has to "combine" ships due to high AI population on the planet already will now produce somewhat more... enthusiastic results on higher difficulties.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.070 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/08/ai-war-beta-5070-once-and-fortress-king.html The Once And Fortress King] ==<br />
(Released August 23rd, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions where self-exploding units (autobombs, nanoswarms, etc) were not updating their destination to match the target's current location frequently enough.<br />
<br />
* New Ancient Shadows Bonus Ship Type: Zenith Siege Engine:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine! for the suggestion inspiring this unit.<br />
<br />
* New Ancient Shadows Bonus Ship Type: Zenith Reprocessor:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Can damage ships immune to reclamation, but cannot reprocess them.<br />
<br />
* New Ancient Shadows Hard AI Type: Fortress King.<br />
** Generally solid AI that has Modular Fortresses in place of most command stations. Expect grievous pain.<br />
<br />
* Removed a "go for the command station over everything else when AI" behavior from a number of units, including:<br />
** Leech Starships.<br />
** Flagships.<br />
** Zenith Starships.<br />
** Spire Starships.<br />
** Riot Starships.<br />
** Thanks to Prezombie for the report of the CC-ramming leech starships.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where Neinzul Rocketry Corps silos could be antagonized by stuff in an adjacent nebula.<br />
** Thanks to motai for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where shadow charge was not persisting across save/load.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where shadow-charge-created projections were being affected by the champion's controlling player (a normal+champion player) having a negative energy balance (shields shutting off, etc). In theory that could work as a balancing mechanism but it wouldn't work because champion-only players have no energy balance.<br />
** Thanks to motai for the report.<br />
<br />
* The "Zenith Descendant" and "One Way Doormaster" AI Types have been promoted from the "easy" category to the "moderate" category, due to sustained player feedback that they are not, in fact, easy.<br />
** Thanks to the many players who died to bring us this information.<br />
<br />
* New Ancient Shadows Map Style: Clusters<br />
** Planets are organized into a small number of clusters, each of which has only a few wormholes that lead to other clusters. Planets within a cluster each have a moderate number of connections to other planets within that cluster.<br />
** Thanks to shugyosha for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.069 ==<br />
(Released August 22nd, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Reworked the CPA formula to be more aggressive on higher difficulties, since it's been sadly anemic lately.<br />
** Also added cpa-size calculations to the wave logs, when advanced logging is enabled.<br />
** Thanks to many players for reporting the embarrassing CPA sizes they've been seeing.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where only one type of nebula scenario was seeding.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where minor-faction ships with plasma-siege shots could hurt/kill AI command stations that happened to be under forcefields.<br />
** Thanks to Jeffersn for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where champion ships were not causing AI planets to go on alert.<br />
** Thanks to LordSloth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Champion module unlock costs from 1/2/3/4/5 => 1/1/2/3/3.<br />
** Note that there's only one module (missile) you can pay to unlock the mkI version of, and no currently available champion hull can use the mkV versions.<br />
** Note also that this is tentative and the balance may not stay here. It's probably too generous, but the previous setup appeared to be too stingy.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth, orzelek, Nodor, LaughingThesaurus, and others for feedback inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.068 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/08/ai-war-beta-5068-old-enmity-reclaimed.html Old Enmity Reclaimed] ==<br />
(Released August 21st, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Added a new nebula scenario.<br />
** Introduces a second Spire splinter faction.<br />
** Reintroduces an old foe/friend in a new context.<br />
** Added 3 new possible reward champion hulls (different race, nothing bigger than what was previously available, yet).<br />
** Added 4 new possible reward module lines.<br />
** Added 2 new possible reward champion abilities.<br />
<br />
* Put in new graphics for the needler, laser, mlrs, and missile modules used by champions and modular forts.<br />
** Thanks to HitmanN for these (and many other) module graphics.<br />
<br />
* The champion hulls now have slightly different movement speeds, based on which racial tech-base they use.<br />
<br />
* Heroic AI type balance changes:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Its non-wave champion spawns now start at Frigate-level at tech-level 1, not Destroyer-level.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna and Nodor for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul champion hulls are now immune to black hole machines.<br />
** Thanks to MaxAstro for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Champion XP gain from being near enough to a dying AI command station or guard post doubled.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* 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. These specific ships now have the flag that suppresses the redding out (let us know if we missed one) :<br />
** Champions.<br />
** Spire Capital Ships.<br />
** Riot Control Starships.<br />
** Neinzul Enclave Starships.<br />
** Spire Mining Ships.<br />
** Nebula faction structures the player gets after winning a scenario.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00, ArcDM, Kemeno, and others for reporting this.<br />
<br />
* Added four new keybinds, each like: Use First Champion Ability<br />
** Shortcut to the first item on the selected Champion's Ability menu. Does not actually uses the ability, just puts your interface into "placement mode" so you can click the place to use the ability without moving your mouse cursor down to the Ability menu itself.<br />
** Only works if you have a single champion selected.<br />
** There's also a second-ability, third-ability, and fourth-ability version, though as of this version no champion has more than two abilities. The ability descriptions themselves tell you which keybind can be used to trigger them.<br />
** The default bindings for these are Ctrl+Q, Ctrl+W, Ctrl+E, Ctrl+R, and all will override other non-context-menu keybinds (if you have a single champion selected) if you rebind them to something that conflicts. For instance, if you change the first one to Q instead of Ctrl+Q, and leave Q's default keybind alone then if you have a single champion selected Q will trigger the first-ability keybind and if you do not have a single champion selected Q will do the normal "zoom in really close" function.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Tackle Drone Launcher rebalance:<br />
** Tackle Drone speed halved, and is no longer affected by combat style (so its effective speed is now what it was in the previous version on Epic comat style).<br />
** Tackle Drones are now immune to speed boosting.<br />
** Tackle Drone Launchers time to produce a drone from 3 seconds => 6 seconds.<br />
** Thanks to Nodor, Coppermantis, and others for feedback on these.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Scapegoat:<br />
** Ship cap halved.<br />
** Health doubled.<br />
** Attack doubled.<br />
** M+C cost doubled.<br />
** Energy cost doubled.<br />
** Ship cap now scales UP (instead of down) with ship cap, so that you can have 2x as many MkIIs as MkIs, 3x as many MkIIIs as MkIs, etc.<br />
*** This corrects the main problem with the previous design: higher marks didn't get more of the unit's actually-important ability (one-shot regen) than mkIs, and in fact got less.<br />
** All other its stats that used to scale up with mark level no longer do.<br />
** Thanks to soMe_RandoM, Hearteater, Cinth, and others for feedback on these.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.067 ==<br />
(Released August 20th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last few versions where only the first 3-4 nebulae were generating scenarios.<br />
** Thanks to Irxallis, vadatajs, and RCIX for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Spire Blade and Tackle Drone speed halved, since their being changed to not need to accelerate (which helps them make consistent use of their time-to-live when time to get a target is variable) increased their effective distance travelled substantially.<br />
** Thanks to RCIX for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Tackle drones now automatically self-destruct when at or beyond the outer grav-well ring.<br />
** Note: this applies to player and AI tackle drones, even though AI ships are not affected by the outside-grav-well speed debuff.<br />
** Thanks to Battlecrydnx, platinawolf, and RCIX for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Offroad scenario enemy scaling:<br />
** Per scenario previously successfully completed, from +30% => +15%.<br />
** Per extra champion present, from +50% => 25%.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth, bonesbro, and orzelek for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where nebulae were being considered by the rule that a spire city hub cannot be built on a planet with only one wormhole<br />
** It couldn't really be left as-is because a game started with Ancient Shadows enabled always generates the nebulae even if you can't see them, which would lead to inconsistent results from the player perspective.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.066 ==<br />
(Released August 18th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed inadvertent change to bomber drone speed, so that it's now the same as it was on normal-combat-style a few versions ago.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where using Ctrl+M or the Mods button to open a champion in Ship Design could sometimes result in a blank ship design window if the selected champion was controlled by a different player than the interface you were using at the time.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report and save.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.065 ==<br />
(Released August 18th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the Ship Design tab where it wouldn't show any modules for a line where the highest unlock mark was not usable by the selected champion hull.<br />
** Thanks to Kemeno for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where Shadow Charge was not actually being prevented from accumulating past the maximum storage amount.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where opening the ship design tab to edit a champion, selecting a different hull type, switching to another tab, and switching back to the ship design tab would... do weird things.<br />
** Thanks to Kemeno for the report.<br />
<br />
* Bomber Drones:<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo back from 3 => 5.<br />
** Seconds it takes a bay module to produce one from 3 => 2.<br />
** Time to live from 20 => 21.<br />
*** Just to make it less likely that they'll lose the last shot because of not instantly targeting.<br />
** In short, this should maintain the same total shots produced over a given minute, but with more drones in the air at any given time.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the feedback that the drones' numbers were more important than the total number of shots produced.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.064 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/08/ai-war-beta-5064-abilities-unlocked.html Abilities Unlocked] ==<br />
(Released August 18th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* A new Ancient Shadows bonus ship class has been added: Neinzul Scapegoat (Mark I-V).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to soMe_RandoM for the idea that inspired this.<br />
<br />
* Another new Ancient Shadows bonus ship class has been added: Spire Railcluster (Mark I-V).<br />
** Large Spire fleet ship mounting multiple short-range railcannons. Highly effective against very small ships.<br />
** Thanks to superking for the idea that inspired this.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where Extreme Raider and Spire Hammer were not adding their AI-type specific extra ships to non-schizo waves.<br />
<br />
* Improved the extra-homeworld/champion scaling for Extreme Raider and Spire Hammer AI-type-specific wave-add-ons.<br />
<br />
* Added new Hard AI Type: Heroic.<br />
** Generally solid AI that can also add a powerful Champion ships to each wave (in addition to the normal starship). Also periodically spawns a Champion ship on one of its own planets that joins the general AI forces threatening you. At higher tech levels it uses bigger Champion ships.<br />
** Note: these AI-version Champions are not exactly like human-controlled ones: they cannot traverse blue wormholes, they do not gain experience, and they do not respawn when killed. They're just big nasty modular ships.<br />
** Added 3 achievements for beating a Heroic AI, beating one on 7+, and beating one on 9+, respectively.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* The rule that "if a forcefield-projecting unit is fully cloaked, it turns off its forcefield" now no longer applies to player-controlled modules. It was messing with modular-fort shield modules pretty effectively.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Nebula scenario buildings that let you build units now respond to the D (default for selecting space docks and similar) keybind.<br />
** Thanks to Twinge for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where core/starship/experimental fabricators were not being considered by the D keybind.<br />
** Thanks to Twinge for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where Insanity-Inducer and Translocator champion modules were not scaling up at all at higher marks. They now gain an extra shot-per-salvo per mark above 1.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Champion Bomber Drones, to make them less likely to score kills outside the champion's XP-gaining envelope and otherwise extend its reach beyond the intended:<br />
** Speed no longer scales with combat style (it's now always like it was on normal combat style).<br />
** Is now immune to speed-boosting.<br />
** Time-to-live from 30 seconds => 20 seconds.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 5 => 3 (so it can still fire 6 times before dying, and is now more likely to get that last shot in).<br />
** Effective Range from 8000/8400/8800/9200/9600 => flat 8000.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report of the xp-gathering issue.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where saving a design on the Ship Design tab of the CTRLS window would switch you to a different tab (the save would work, but it could be very annoying).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where nanoswarms, autobombs, spire blades, and tackle drones could be slowed down artificially (to very low speeds) due to changing targets in midflight.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Added new resource to champion and normal+champion players: Shadow Charge.<br />
** Consumed by the new direct-use abilities added in this version.<br />
** Current and max charge is displayed on the champion UI.<br />
** Regenerates over time.<br />
<br />
* Added "ABILITY" tab to the champion's build menu. Only two are currently implemented:<br />
** Human and Zenith champions can "Project Shadow Shield":<br />
*** Creates an immobile forcefield at the target point for 20 seconds (taking damage reduces the duration).<br />
*** Must be initially placed within 4000 range of the champion.<br />
*** Consumes 200 Shadow Charge.<br />
** Neinzul champions can "Project Shadow Repair Field":<br />
*** Creates an immobile generator at the target point for 20 seconds (taking damage reduces the duration).<br />
**** Repairs all friendly units in range (except golems), at no m+c cost.<br />
*** Must be initially placed within 4000 range of the champion.<br />
*** Consumes 500 Shadow Charge.<br />
<br />
* Changed the existing "MODS" tab of the champion build menu to not have the buy buttons for the modules but instead say "Click "MODS" to change Champion modules.".<br />
** And clicking MODS again when it is already showing now opens the Ship Design menu just like pressing Ctrl+M.<br />
** The reason for the change is that the normal buy-menu interface for modular ships to build their modules has always been a bit wonky, and the Champion stuff is only making that moreso. One of the big problems is that there's not really a way to infer from normal buy menu operations what module loadout the game should "save" to be redone after a respawn (the Ship Design screen knows to do this when you use Apply To Selection).<br />
** Since this may turn out to not be the best way to go (though we will try to make it work) : Added new toggle to the Advanced tab of the Settings window: Show Module Build Menu For Champion Ships.<br />
*** If this toggle is enabled, selecting a champion ship's modules tab displays the old-style build menu that works just like other queue-builders (space dock), etc. This mode has a number of quirks due to the differences between producing modules and producing separate ships, and the Ship Design window is much better at communicating what you're doing, but some players may find the old menu more convenient for certain use cases.<br />
<br />
* Added new "Champion Unlocks" tab to the CTRLS window:<br />
** Previously the "modules available for this slot" list on the Ship Design tab would, for champions, display all available modules plus the next locked module in each line if the selected champion hull could use it. Unlocks were performed by clicking on those locked options. This functioned but is increasingly unwieldy as the number of modules increases.<br />
** Now the Ship Design tab's list of available modules (when viewing a champion) only displays the highest-usable-on-that-hull module in each line that is unlocked, and does not display anything locked.<br />
** Now, to unlock a higher module for your champion, you go to the Champion Unlocks tab where each available module line is displayed with the currently unlocked mark, and how many points it costs to unlock the next-higher mark.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for the suggestion to create a separate interface for unlocking this stuff.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where bomber drones launched from champion hangar bays could be scrapped (and resources gained from it).<br />
** Thanks to Drin for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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. Please let us know if you run into weirdness, as the game's gotten pretty "used" to that bug and it may be that something was inadvertently made to rely on it. Things look fine in our tests, though.<br />
<br />
* Offroad Scenarios now scale up somewhat in difficulty with the number of champions present in that particular nebula. The amount of increase is low enough that it's still always a significant advantage to bring more champions, but it's hopefully no longer a situation where a scenario is tough if you bring 1 champion and trivial if you bring 2.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.063 ==<br />
(Released August 16th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed some typos in some of the champion ship hulls' short-names.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where tackle drone explosions could damage friendly targets.<br />
** Thanks to Draco Cretel for the report.<br />
<br />
* The following units are now omitted from control group selection since control groups for them are just part of getting newly constructed ships assigned to the right control group and moved to the right spot:<br />
** All human intragalactic warp gates.<br />
** Human Rebel Colony (base game).<br />
** Spire Refugee Colony (Fallen Spire).<br />
** Spire Shipyard (Fallen Spire).<br />
** All splinter-faction construction facilities (Ancient Shadows).<br />
** Thanks to jerith for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Tackle Drones no longer make an explosion sound on death (they already had the same muffling flag as the spire blades, but their actual damage-causing explosion-on-death was a separate code path).<br />
** Thanks to MaxAstro and Draco Cretel for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where inherently-cloaked ships were not decloaked by their modules firing (externally-cloaked ships were already working properly).<br />
** Thanks to Kemeno for the report.<br />
<br />
* Spire Civilian Leaders now do their first "pulse" of AIP change at one hour into the game, instead of one minute into the game, to avoid skewing the very-early difficulty of a high-diff game.<br />
** Thanks to motai for the suggestion, and many others for similar thoughts.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.062 ==<br />
(Released August 15th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Includes the language file updates accidentally omitted from 5.061.<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar, phoenix89, Eternaly_Lost, and others for reporting.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.061 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/08/ai-war-beta-5061-tackled-medic-released.html *Tackled*, Medic!] ==<br />
(Released August 15th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* A new Ancient Shadows bonus ship class has been added: Zenith Medic Frigate (Mark I-V).<br />
** Moderately large frigate with capable weaponry, but the main point of a medic frigate is the multiplex repair beam emitter that allows it to heal nearby ships (note: cannot heal a ship for a few seconds after that ship has taken damage).<br />
** Thanks to RCIX for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Another new Ancient Shadows bonus ship class has been added: Tackle Drone Launcher (Mark I-V).<br />
** Has guns of its own but primarily attacks by launching small tractor-equipped drones. The drones fly in a straight line dragging any enemy they can tractor along with them and explode when they reach their maximum range, dealing damage to up to (5*drone level) nearby targets. The drones are thus very effective at taking smaller craft out of a fight, but cannot damage tractor-immune ships in any way.<br />
** Give these a try, they're hilarious.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where nebulae were being counted as human territory for deepstrike checks.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where super-hybrid logic for determining which planets were the right distance into AI territory for a dyson antagonizer was considering nebulae to be non-AI territory.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for the report leading to this discovery.<br />
<br />
* Reduced the distance-into-AI-territory super-hybrids try to plant dyson antagonizers by 1, hopefully making them less excruciating to find.<br />
** Thanks to quite a lot of players for public lamentations regarding this.<br />
<br />
* The initial seeding of AI fleet-ships during mapgen now pays more attention to ship cap.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for the report of a planet starting with ~43 Spire Stealth Battleships.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Diazo, Toll, and others for bringing the need to our attention.<br />
<br />
* Nebula-faction units and champions now have the same speed on all combat styles (equal to their prior speed on Normal combat style).<br />
** Thanks to Eternaly_Lost for pointing out that scenarios taking 30 to 60 minutes on normal took... a really really long time on Epic.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic and others for pointing out the oddness of it being transportable.<br />
<br />
* Now nebulae don't pick a scenario type during mapgen, but instead when first entered by a champion. Earlier in development it was possible for nebulae map placement to be different depending on the scenario, but this is no longer the case.<br />
** This won't impact games already in progress before 5.061, but games started in this version or later will adjust more gracefully to the addition of new scenario types, and this helps in some other areas too.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the question inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Amended the paralyzer module's tooltip to not call it "low base damage", since it isn't really.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Added Neinzul Modular Fortress:<br />
** Quite similar to the normal modular fortress, but with different specialized modules available (when they're implemented, anyhow), and instead of the repair ability it has cloaking and cloaking-superboost (same ability as the cloaker starship).<br />
** Right now the only way to unlock this is via nebula-scenario reward in the soon-to-be-released third type of scenario, but that will change to at least some extent.<br />
<br />
* The Core (mark 5) variants of the youngling ships no longer self-attrition.<br />
** Mainly this is to make the fabricators that produce them more useful.<br />
** Thanks to the players who participated in the [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,10871.0.html poll] where this came up, and to Wingflier for organizing that.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in previous versions where it was possible for a nebula to reward a champion hull when you didn't already have the smaller size-steps of that line.<br />
<br />
* Added a new nebula (offroad "planet") scenario for champions.<br />
** Includes 1 new neinzul splinter group.<br />
** Added 5 new possible unlock-champion-hull-type rewards, including the next size step up for the human and zenith lines and a new neinzul line (that gets fewer modules but a key special ability at each size step).<br />
** Added 4 new possible unlock-module-line rewards, some given only from this new scenario, some also eligible to be given from the existing one.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.060 ==<br />
(Released August 13th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where various Fallen-Spire seeding logic was considering nebulae. Spawning a shard-signal there is cute, but wrong.<br />
** Thanks to Eternaly_Lost for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding but very intermittent null-exception in tech-menu-button rendering.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for the report and log.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the past couple of versions where non-minor-faction photon lances (spire capital ship main weapons, etc) were considering a smaller subset of enemy units as targets.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where photon lances fired at forcefields overlapping the firing ship could wind up firing in a totally wrong direction.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Dark Spire starbases now fire more rapidly (but with less power) to better deal with attacking enemies and juking champions (the latter will still have an advantage, that's fine, not all starbases should require the same tactics).<br />
<br />
* The Devourer can no longer attack champion ships. The Devourer camping the auto-respawning champion at a human home command station was... hilarious, but we don't want the Devourer to get a nutritional imbalance.<br />
** Thanks to soMe_RandoM for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed another bug that was letting auto-explore scouts consider nebulae and thus getting stuck.<br />
** Thanks to fflaguna and Draco Cretel for the report.<br />
<br />
* Switching from the Normal role to Normal+Champion in mid-game is no longer rejected as an invalid role switch.<br />
<br />
* Opening the ship design window by clicking the CTRLS button and then the Ship-Design tab now tries to enable the "Apply To Ship(s)" button (which is now called "Apply To Selection" to be clearer). Previously it would only try to do this if opened through the context menu "View Ship Modules" or Ctrl+M.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for pointing out that it was confusing for 2 out of three ways to get to this screen would do this, but the other would not.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.059 ==<br />
(Released August 11th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where offroad planets (nebula) were counting as non-AI-controlled-worlds for the purposes of determining how many worlds the AI could reinforce.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the recent changes to the reinforcement logic causing N guard posts on a single planet to get reinforced with (Strength*1)+(Strength*2)+(Strength*3)+...+(Strength*N) total strength, rather than just (Strength*N).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for spotting this in the reinforcement logs, and to LordSloth for providing logs.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the reinforcement logging where it wouldn't list alerted planets in the "this is the order planets will be reinforced in". The order was correct, the logging was not (and it really helps for it to be right when finding problems like the above).<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.058 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/08/ai-war-beta-5058-further-shadows.html Further Shadows] ==<br />
(Released August 11th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* When playing as the Normal+Champion role it now only shows the Champion UI (XP/Hull/Shields) instead of the Normal UI (Metal/Crystal/Energy/Knowledge) when you have the champion selected and are in planet view on the same planet as the champion.<br />
** Thanks to LaughingThesaurus and Volatar for the suggestions.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a couple more bugs where the modular fortress was on the tech and buy menus even when Ancient Shadows was not enabled.<br />
** Thanks to Draco Cretel and Draco18s for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Added support for the chatline command "cmd:activate expansion 4", which lets you turn on the expansion midway through the game. Notes:<br />
** This will not add the nebulas (offroad "planets") to the game, so while you could in theory add champions to the game after enabling the expansion it would be a truncated experience.<br />
** Any expansion-specific special structures that have a chance of being seeded onto planets will have a chance to seed at this time, but there's nothing like that implemented yet.<br />
** What this will do, as of this writing, is give you access to research and build modular forts.<br />
<br />
* The Z+X keybind combo now shows NPC/minor-faction ranges as well as enemy ranges.<br />
** This is particularly helpful in the nebula/offroad areas when playing with champions.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to... is there anyone who has NOT reported this? Anyway, thanks for making sure we knew :)<br />
<br />
* Fixed relatively recent issue where photon lance beams would not actually draw all the way to the end of the beam (either the natural range or the poor thing it was currently incinerating).<br />
<br />
* Added a new nebula (offroad "planet") scenario for champions.<br />
** Includes 3 new splinter groups: one zenith, one neinzul, one spire.<br />
** Total of 16 new units from those groups, 3 of which have player-usable variants.<br />
** Added 2 new possible unlock-champion-hull-type rewards (not bigger than the existing ones, that's for later), only given from this new scenario right now.<br />
** Added 5 new possible unlock-module-line rewards, some given only from this new scenario, one also eligible to be given from the existing one.<br />
<br />
* Champion shields now regen twice as fast (the delay between last-damage-taken and the start of regen is the same, though).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bunch of places where the existence of champions was not increasing AI response.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where multiple human homeworlds (in SP or MP) were not increasing the guard post part of reinforcements.<br />
<br />
* Made the guard post part of reinforcements start increasing at a lower AIP.<br />
** Before it was basically stuck to the floor until 270 AIP or so, which was fine in the older system but appears to have been dragging things down since the AI started not getting blade spawners and laser gatlings in the same proportions.<br />
** Thanks to many players for pointing out how underwhelming reinforcements have been recently; this may or may not help much, we'll see.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.057 ==<br />
(Released August 9th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Zenith Reserves and Distribution Nodes no longer grant stuff to champion-only players, but instead to the first normal or normal+champion player in the game.<br />
** Thanks to TyberZann for reporting that these were working for champions.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where auto-explore and auto-knowledge-gather ships would consider offroad/nebula "planets", which could lead to odd behavior and stalling out since they cannot enter those areas.<br />
** Thanks to Draco Cretel for the report.<br />
<br />
* Champion ship, champion modules, and the NPC nebula combatant's have all had their base ranges doubled, but now being in a nebula acts as if there's always a radar jammer present (which halves effective ranges).<br />
** The result is that the in-nebula ranges are the same (as they are intentionally shorter than folks are used to since it's easier to make something tactically interesting with shorter ranges) but the champion and NPC ships aren't so nearsighted in the rest of the galaxy.<br />
** Thanks to phoenix89 for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Champion ship effective speed has been doubled and the NPC nebula combatant speed has been increased to maintain a smaller margin over the champion ship, but now being in a nebula acts as if there's always a speed-halver present.<br />
** The result is that the champion's in-nebula speed is the same and the NPC in-nebula speed is a little lower (as they are intentionally slower than folks are used to since it's easier to make something tactically interesting with slower speeds) but neither is so slow in the rest of the galaxy.<br />
** Thanks to Varone for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* The facility that spawns in the current nebula scenario when it is successfully completed now provides scout intel on the nebula.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the prior version where playing a normal+champion player with multiple homeworlds would cause you to start the game with multiple champion units.<br />
** Thanks to phoenix89 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug with the new Normal+Champion role where viewing the modules of an existing non-champion modular ship (like a Riot or a Mod-Fort) would let you use the switch-to-ship button. That button's only supposed to work for heroes, and caused odd things when used on other stuff.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug with the ship design screen where you could apply a design from a different ship type to your selected ship. Result = Hilarity.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.056 ==<br />
(Released August 9th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Added "Normal+Champion" to the player role dropdown:<br />
** In this role you get both your normal starting units (home command station, etc) AND a champion.<br />
*** Notably, this lets you put your champion ship in the same control group as other of your units (though if the champion ship dies it does get removed from control groups), and prevents confusion when using your science lab to unlock something from another player's interface, etc.<br />
** It displays the champion UI (XP/hull/shields) while you have the champion ship selected, and the normal UI otherwise.<br />
** Hopefully this will greatly simplify the process of starting a singleplayer game with a champion. Several tooltips and messages have been amended to gently shepherd people trying to use a champion in this direction ;)<br />
** The existing "Champion" role has been retained so you can still have champion-only players in MP and "extra" champions beyond the number of extra players.<br />
*** Old saves started with Champion players will still be using this role.<br />
** The "Reserved For Champion" slot state has been renamed to "Extra Champion" to emphasize that it is no longer the main way to add a champion to a singleplayer game.<br />
** The "Open (Can Add Champion)" text has been changed back to "Open" everywhere since it was at least as confusing as it was helpful.<br />
** Thanks to contingencyplan for the specific suggestion that inspired this, and to many players for pointing out the tons of problems of the "1 Normal Player + 1 Champion Player" approach being the way to use champions in singleplayer.<br />
<br />
* Champion ships now have a build rate of zero, making it more explicit that they require a friendly engineer drone nearby.<br />
** Thanks to TyberZann for reporting what was happening when a champion somehow got its hands on m+c, and to TechSY730 for inspiring the specific fix.<br />
<br />
* There's now also a line shown in the alert box if a champion has a module in its queue that it could mount (slot is not full) and it doesn't currently have support from an engineer drone.<br />
** Thanks to orzelek and others for helping us understand that it was really not clear why the champion modules were not building.<br />
<br />
* Champion module upgrade clarification:<br />
** The "champion has unlock points to spend" alert now ends in the text "(click to spend)" (clicking it was already taking you to the unlock screen)<br />
** On the ship-design/unlock screen for a champion, instead of displaying "LOCKED" modules that are "in reach" but not unlocked now display "NEED MORE UNLOCK POINTS" or "CLICK TO UNLOCK" depending on whether you have enough points to unlock them.<br />
** Thanks to Varone for pointing out how not-friendly-to-new-users the system was.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the modular fortress could be researched without Ancient Shadows enabled. It still couldn't be built, though.<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar for uncovering our nefarious (albeit unintentional) marketing ploy.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.055 ==<br />
(Released August 8th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that caused unhandled exceptions when you had a saved modular fortress design and opened the SUP build tab.<br />
** Note that it was never intended that the designs show up on the build tab as the ship cap for the forts is 1 and even if you have more than one (in a multi-HW game) you can fairly simply apply a template to them all right after placement using Ctrl+M or the context menu View-Ship-Modules option to Apply Design to Ship(s).<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that could cause unhandled exceptions in some cases after a champion respawn due to it trying to place modules in slots that don't exist.<br />
** Thanks to TyberZann for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the lobby was not clearing a specific champion-related flag when the user quit out of the lobby, potentially causing erroneous color conflicts on later attempts to start a game from the lobby.<br />
** Thanks to Kalias for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.054 ==<br />
(Released August 8th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Further clarified the lobby situation by changing the "Host cannot start the game until at least one player selects the "Normal" role." message to "Host cannot start the game until at least one player selects the "Normal" role. If you are trying to play a singleplayer game with a Champion player (a feature of the Ancient Shadows expansion) just keep player 1 as a "Normal" player and set the player 2 slot to "Reserved for Champion". You'll be able to control Player 2's units (the champion) just fine."<br />
<br />
* Amended the lobby logic so that the slot text only says "Open (Can Add Champion)" on the slot itself, and still "Open" on the expanded dropdown list.<br />
** Thanks to x40-wait, he works here, nevermind.<br />
<br />
* The lobby player slot state dropdowns (the ones that can be Open, Closed, or Reserved for Champion) now have tooltips to explain the setting under the mouse cursor.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where various champion-related player data was not getting cleared between games, leading to crashes and some cases (and inevitably desyncs in others).<br />
** Thanks to Kalias for the report.<br />
<br />
* The GalaxyWideSelectChampion keybind (which defaults to Ctrl+H) has been changed to also switch UIs to the player controlling the champion.<br />
** Thanks to LaughingThesaurus for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.053 ==<br />
(Released August 8th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where several of the champion modules were having their close-zoom images loaded using the wrong path (backslashes instead of forward slashes, OSX no likey).<br />
** Thanks to relmz32 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Unoccupied human player slots in the lobby now say "Open (Can Add Champion)" instead of just "Open" when the Ancient Shadows expansion is enabled.<br />
** Thanks to many players for expressing consternation at how the feature might be enabled (particularly in single-player).<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.052 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/08/ai-war-ancient-shadows-betapreorders.html From The Shadows] ==<br />
(Released August 8th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to doctorfrog for reporting the issues with them previously.<br />
<br />
* Building modular ships with a template or using the ship-design window to apply a design (whether or not that design is a saved template or just ad-hoc) will now try a lot harder to put the modules in the specific assigned slots instead of just any slot that can hold the module at the time.<br />
** This is basically just a cosmetic difference, but it's nice.<br />
** Note that now you'll probably want to not manually add to a build queue of a modular ship that's received its current build queue from a template (just built) or the ship design window (the Apply button); later we may make it physically impossible to do so, we'll see. Basically the interaction would be very difficult to define.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art and others for periodically reminding us that it didn't really try to do this before.<br />
<br />
* Removed the "Reserved" option that was recently for player-slot-state in the lobby. It doesn't really work well in conjunction with either of the available roles (helper because a reserved helper does nothing, normal because you can't pick their homeworlds).<br />
<br />
* The blue "shield health" bar that shows on ships with module-generated forcefields now has more internal contrast and is easier to read.<br />
<br />
* Changed it so that planets are no longer hue-shifted. This was causing artifacts on some client computers, and the added variety provided by the hue shifts was not substantial enough to be worth the planets looking markedly bad on some machines.<br />
** Thanks to martyn_van_buren and Draco18s for reporting.<br />
<br />
=== ---------------------------- First Beta Of Ancient Shadows Expansion ---------------------------- ===<br />
<br />
* You can get the Ancient Shadows expansion installer [http://www.arcengames.com/w/index.php/aiwar-downloads here].<br />
<br />
* Added new player role: Champion.<br />
** You can set a populated player slot (one with a connected player in it) to this using the role select dropdown.<br />
** You can also just mark a slot as "Reserved For Champion" using the slot-state select dropdown (previously just said Open or Closed) and that champion can be controlled by any human player.<br />
*** Notably, this is the easiest way to add a champion when starting a new singleplayer game. Note that there always has to be at least one human player with the "Normal" role for a game to be started. Various changes have been made over the previous months to make controlling both a "normal" player and a "champion" player (in either SP or MP) easy.<br />
** What? Oh, what ARE Champions? Ah, right. A champion player starts with only one unit: a modular super-starship.<br />
*** The champion gains XP when in the vicinity (20,000 range) of certain kinds of units when they die. This includes AI guard posts and command stations, but that's not the main source of XP.<br />
**** To see how much XP you have, switch to the champion player's UI.<br />
*** When the champion gets enough XP to level up they get an unlock point. Unlock points can be spent to get more powerful modules on the ship design screen.<br />
*** If the champion dies it respawns (for free) at a human home command station. It will need engineer assistance to rebuild its modules, but that's a quick process.<br />
*** The presence of a champion player increases AI response in most of the same ways that another normal player would, but not to the same degree. Balance is ongoing.<br />
*** Champions are the only units that can fly through special wormholes (colored blue, and act much like normal ones do when "Show Unexplored Planets" is off, unless FOW is set to complete visibility) to the new nebula "planets".<br />
*** In those nebulae the champions will encounter splinter factions of the 4 races (right now there's just 2 splinter factions, both human) and be able to help potential allies. Journal entries will provide details when you enter a nebula.<br />
*** The enemies you encounter in nebulae will all (generally) give XP.<br />
*** Completing a nebula's objectives successfully (permanent failure is possible) rewards some or all of the following:<br />
**** Bonus XP to all champion players in the game.<br />
**** Bonus Knowledge to to all normal human players in the game.<br />
**** New lines of equipment modules (which you can then upgrade with unlock points).<br />
**** New champion hulls (each champion player can only control one at a time, but you can switch and you'll respawn as the new one), both of larger sizes and of different racial tech-bases (human is all that's implemented right now).<br />
**** Ongoing assistance from the splinter faction you just helped, if applicable.<br />
<br />
* Added some new keybinds to help playing both a normal player and a champion player in the same game:<br />
** Galaxy-Wide Select Champion.<br />
*** Defaults to Ctrl+H.<br />
*** Selects and centers your view on a Champion unit you can control (owned by you or by a team member who is allowing team control of units). If you already have one selected (with nothing else selected) it tries to cycle through other such units.<br />
** View Ship Modules (this already existed in the context menu, but this keybind works outside that)<br />
*** Defaults to Ctrl+M.<br />
*** Opens the Ship Design tab of the Controls window so you can see and modify the current module configuration of this ship.<br />
*** If you have multiple distinct designable ship types chosen, this option is not available, but it does work for groups of the same designable type.<br />
*** If the ship is controlled by a different player (as in the case of a champion unit, often) than the UI you're looking at, it switches your UI to that player.<br />
** Switch Back To Local Player UI.<br />
*** Defaults to Ctrl+L.<br />
*** If you've switched to the UI of another player (through the switch-to-UI buttons in the Stats window or by viewing the modules of another player's ship) this keybind will switch you back to the UI of the player slot in which you actually connected to the game.<br />
<br />
* Added new researchable unit to the normal command-station/mobile-builder build menu: Modular Fortress.<br />
** Ship Cap of 1 (normal fort has cap of 5).<br />
** 5x as much health as a MkI fort.<br />
** Has 8 light module slots that can hold Needler, Laser, MLRS, and Missile modules.<br />
*** Each of those has mkI, mkII, and mkIII variants. The first is already available and the second two are unlocked by corresponding turret research (Needler = Basic).<br />
** Has 4 heavy module slots that can hold Shield and Heavy Beam modules.<br />
*** Each of those has mkI, mkII, and mkIII variants. The first shield is already available, and the second two (and all the heavy beam ones) are unlocked by corresponding forcefield (non-hardened) and turret research.<br />
** Right now it's balanced so that having mkII modules in all the light slots and mkII HB modules in all the heavy slots gives a total dps (including the modular fort hull itself) in the overall ballpark as a cap of MkI forts. With mkIII modules it's even higher. It's pretty beastly, all told.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.051 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/07/ai-war-beta-5051-optical-repair-released.html Optical Repair] ==<br />
(Released July 30th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* When human ships are told to go through a wormhole and they aren't able to because of a black hole machine, it will now tell the owner in a chat line that this happened (the chat window isn't visible on the galaxy map, but it's a step in the right direction).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions where mk3 nukes wouldn't actually destroy anything (aside from you, via +5000 AIP).<br />
** Thanks to Kalias for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed several issues where units with "infinite engine health" were not being handled consistently.<br />
** For example, a neinzul enclave starship had an internal engine health value high enough to be listed as "infinite" but not high enough to actually refuse to set engine damage to a value > 0. This could lead to protracted (and expensive, in previous versions) periods of trying to repair engine damage.<br />
** Thanks to bongotron2000 and Minotaar for the reports and saves leading to this discovery.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* Improved the various lines in the game for repair and such things so that they no longer seem to blip around like they were in the recent few versions.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, some planets were not attractive when hue-shifted to certain values.<br />
** The images for 14 and 31 have been adjusted so that they now will be.<br />
** Numbers 1, 4, 5, 7, 13, 27, 28, 29, 30, 33, 48, and 49 are now barred from doing hue shifts at all.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for starting the complaining about this. ;)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last few versions where if you had a textbox selected, then clicking a button would not register properly the first time (it would just deselect the textbox and not click the button). Now it clicks the button without deselecting the textbox.<br />
<br />
* We _think_ the issue with the explosions not appearing properly the first time they are shown in a new run of the game has been resolved, but if you see that or any other explosion-related bugs again, please let us know.<br />
<br />
=== Repair Rebalancing/Retweaking ===<br />
<br />
* Repairing engines now does not cost m+c (if health is also being repaired at the same time that costs m+c).<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Repair cost in general is now based off half the construction cost instead of the full construction cost.<br />
** Thanks to sarudak, TechSY730, Kahuna, and MaxAstro for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Diazo for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* 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) :<br />
** Armored golem from 30M+30M m+c => 10M+10M.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Artilery golem from 10M+10M => 8M+8M (lots of feedback that these are OP lately).<br />
** Black Widow golem from 25M+25M => 10M+10M (ditto).<br />
** 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).<br />
** Cursed golem from 10M+10M => 3M+3M (a slight buff, but these aren't all that popular in general).<br />
** Hive golem from 20M+20M => 7M+7M (a slight nerf, but these are quite strong).<br />
** 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)<br />
** Thanks to sarudak for bringing the unintentend consequence to our attention and TechSY730, zharmad, Kahuna, Cinth, MaxAstro, Hearteater, Diazo, Draco18s, Eternaly_Lost, and Minotaar for further feedback.<br />
<br />
=== AI Eye Rework, Round 1 ===<br />
<br />
* The AI Eye won our first "Aim the nerfbat (AI-side)" poll by a landslide, but it's taken a bit to figure out how exactly to best handle that request. Thanks to many players for weighing in on that. Below are the first additions of new eye types to make them less monotonous. More changes/variants will follow but the other changes above warranted a release before the rest of this was done.<br />
<br />
* The Sentry/Ion Eye alert text now says how many human ships over the triggering threshold the planet was when that particular pulse triggered.<br />
<br />
* Renamed the AI Eye to the Sentry Eye.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for the specific suggestion, and many players for voicing frustation trying to pronounce the unit name (though often "Aieeeee!" was a perfectly appropriate pronunciation).<br />
<br />
* Added new type of AI Eye: the Ion Eye.<br />
** Has same trigger conditions.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Added new type of AI Eye: the Parasite Eye.<br />
** Has same trigger conditions. <br />
** 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.<br />
*** Standard "what can be reclaimed" rules apply.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** In case you're curious, the results are not zombies and can be re-reclaimed if you're so inclined.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.050 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/07/ai-war-beta-5050-botnet-escape-released.html Botnet Escape] ==<br />
(Released July 26th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* The Zenith Starship and Spire Starship (previously mkIII and mkIV of the "flagship" line), in honor of tying for second in our seventh "worst unit" poll, have each been made into a separate line of combat-focused starships and made distinct from their previous role and each other.<br />
** Both lines have 3 marks.<br />
** Neither has munitions boosting (the main feature of the flagship line).<br />
** The Zenith Starships are now basically brawlers with quite a bit of health and mount 25 short/medium-range missile launchers each.<br />
** The Spire Starships now mount a single photon lance (the continuous beam weapon used by the Fallen Spire capital ships, etc, but much weaker in this instance) and are a bit longer ranged than the Zenith Starships and a bit less durable.<br />
** Also adjusted the remaining "flagship" line to fit the new structure:<br />
*** The Light Starship has been renamed Flagship.<br />
*** The former Flagship has become Flagship MkII.<br />
*** A new Flagship MkIII has been added.<br />
** Thanks to many players for feedback on what these had become (not so interesting) over the past months and for participating in the poll.<br />
<br />
* As an honorable mention from the seventh worst-unit poll, the Golemite-AI-type golems (as distinct from human golems and exo golems), except for the Golemite-Botnet, have had their health increased from 0.1 times the normal version of that golem => 0.5 times that normal value.<br />
** Specifically, this means the Golemite-Armored, Golemite-Artillery, Golemite-Widow, and Golemite-Regenerator golems. There are no golemite versions of the other types (except the botnet, which was purposefully skipped in this instance; Botnets are terrors upon the galaxy).<br />
** Thanks to the players for participating in the poll.<br />
<br />
* The exos from BrokenGolemsHard and SpirecraftHard are now more aggressive:<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
*** This minimum stops going up at 250 (20 hours). (thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting that)<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** This is basically like the Broken Golems faction except:<br />
*** It only seeds the Broken Botnet, and it only seeds one of them (Broken Golems no longer seeds any botnets, needless to say).<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** The botnet's energy cost on Moderate went from 400k => 800k.<br />
*** The broken-botnet's AIP-on-metamorphsis on Moderate went from 40 => 100.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** Note: the golemite AI's version of the Botnet's health is still what it was.<br />
** 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?<br />
*** 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).<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic, Kahuna, and others for showing how overpowered the Botnet was. Thanks to Cyborg, chemical_art, and others for showing how this was awesome. And thanks to the poll participants, of course.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** If this causes economic hardship, let us know ;)<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for the report leading to this discovery.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the new lobby-setup-script grammar where the AddAIModifier, RemoveAIModifier, AddOptionalShipCategory, and RemoveOptionalShipCategory commands were not being recognized.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for the report.<br />
<br />
* The Cryogenic Pods and Human Home Settlements that start next to each human home command station are now immune to the splash effect from being under a forcefield net hit by a plasma-siege shot. Previously it was possible to be in an early-game situation where it was nearly impossible to keep them from being destroyed by Plasma Siege Starships coming in with waves on a wormhole within firing range of the home command station.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater, Wanderer, and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* The Human Home Command Station now costs 1% as much to repair as it used to, so the repair cost falls below the default threshold where engineers won't auto-assist something because it's expensive.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00, TechSY730, doctorfrog, and topper for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* The Player Home Forcefield Generator, in honor of tying for second in the seventh "worst unit" poll (seriously, it's a freebie unit, but if it floats your boat...) :<br />
** 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).<br />
** Now projects tachyon coverage of 6600 radius (3 times its forcefield radius, 600 more than a MkIII Scout Starship).<br />
** Thanks Hearteater and Diazo for the suggestion, and to the poll participants for the feedback.<br />
<br />
* Previously any youngling type used in a wave would have its quantity doubled to compensate for the short lifetime. That made sense at the time but younglings have received many buffs (particularly the tiger, which is much like a bomber) since then. So the multiplier has been changed from 2 => 1.5.<br />
** Further balance feedback, in either direction, is quite welcome.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for reporting an... unfortunate incident involving 4 digits worth of youngling tigers.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Galactic Sandpaper Incorporated has already filed for bankruptcy.<br />
** Thanks to the poll participants for the feedback.<br />
<br />
* Spire Stealth Battleship, in honor of tying for second in our first "Aim The Nerfbat (AI-Side)" poll:<br />
** Radar Dampening from 8000 => 10000.<br />
** Base Move Speed from 18 => 16. (for reference, a fighter's is 28, this is before a variety of other calculation steps)<br />
** Thanks to the poll participants for the feedback, and to TechSY730, Cyborg, and barryvm for specific suggestions in this direction.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.049 ==<br />
(Released July 25th, 2012) <br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug from 2 versions ago where it would starting a new game could try to seed a spire archive on an invalid planet and crash the start-game process.<br />
** Thanks to death2cupbots for the report leading to this discovery.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.048 ==<br />
(Released July 24th, 2012) <br />
<br />
* Removed the "periodically clear the sprite pool" optimization from the last version as it was causing something very like a memory leak.<br />
** Thanks to amethyst, platinawolf, and Cinth for the reports and saves.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.047 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/07/ai-war-beta-5047-archived-memory.html Archived Memory] ==<br />
(Released July 24th, 2012) <br />
<br />
* Added new slider to the Advanced tab of the Settings window: Sprite Pool Size<br />
** This option was mainly added to help players find some memory-crash and performance-regression problems and in general you shouldn't change it unless you know what that means.<br />
** Low pool sizes will keep possible memory footprint lower and help keep the pool from causing excessive memory use, but will also substantially reduce performance when there are not enough objects in the pool to handle all the things being drawn in a given frame.<br />
** High pool sizes have the opposite advantage/disadvantage.<br />
** The default of 5000 should handle most sane cases but shift-clicking around with a bunch of selected ships can pile up a bunch of lines (and thus sprites) in a hurry.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth, BlackCobra, vadatajs for providing reports and saves of the memory and performance problems.<br />
<br />
* Made the sprite pool periodically release the memory its holding (at the same times the game trims other parts of heap usage).<br />
<br />
* Fixed the spire-shard-reactor close-zoom sprite having an invalid height.<br />
** Thanks to platinawolf for the report.<br />
<br />
* Warheads killed by warhead interceptors no longer cause AIP-on-death.<br />
** Thanks fo Faulty Logic and others for suggesting/reporting.<br />
<br />
* Spire Archives, in honor of winning our seventh "Worst Unit" poll:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Knowledge gain rate from 1/sec => 5/sec. <br />
*** 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).<br />
** When their planet is exhausted of all 9000 knowledge, they automatically die without causing AIP.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar, Faulty Logic, and others for the suggestions/votes in this direction.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* Zenith Electric Bomber is now immune to insta kill, like other low-cap fleet ships.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater and others for periodically asking for this.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.046 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/07/ai-war-beta-5046-ai-is-not-amused.html The AI Is Not Amused] ==<br />
(Released July 21st, 2012) <br />
<br />
* Planets are no longer hue-shifted when the nebulas are disabled, as that could look bad out of context.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna and TechSY730 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Added a "Nebula Intensity" slider to the graphics tab of the settings window, that controls how faded-out the background nebulae are.<br />
** The default is about 80% of the intensity in the previous version; if you want it back there you can turn it all the way up.<br />
** Thanks to doctorfrog for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for reporting recent out of memory exceptions. Not that playing 16-Homeworld games on a 120-planet map is going to be able to always avoid those, but we'll see.<br />
<br />
=== High (and not so high) Difficulty Rebalance, Round 2 (Subtitle: the AI Launches A Wave) ===<br />
<br />
* People are [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11118.msg111832.html#msg111832 still] [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11130.msg111125.html#msg111125 beating] [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11152.msg111762.html#msg111762 up] on the 10/10 AI (even in non-superweapon cases) and it's getting kind of annoyed, so:<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for suggesting this approach.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** This effectively reduces the return on superterminal hacking since it does +1 and -2 AIP per trigger.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* AIP floor minimum is now 10 instead of 1.<br />
** Thanks to rabican for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* The schizo wave modifier now only causes waves to be mixed 75% of the time. The other 25% of waves will be normal.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer and other players for feedback that schizo all-the-time is actually somewhat easier than games with the occasional all-bombers wave. Can't have that!<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Let us know if this results in excessive hilarity. The reinforcement logs (if enabled) will record when it happens.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for reporting a case where this happened.<br />
<br />
=== Core Guard Post Rebalance, Round 1 ===<br />
<br />
* Did a balance pass on most of the core guard posts.<br />
** This is going to hurt.<br />
** Many things have been suggested to help bring the "multi-part boss battle" theme out better, but this at least brings the math into a more reasonable range for now.<br />
<br />
* Previously there was a fair bit of variance in how many core guard posts would go on a homeworld, and there tended to be quite a few (like 15 on Diff 10). Now it will always try for 8 (including the 0-2 "brutal" picks).<br />
<br />
* All Core Guard Posts:<br />
** Base Energy Cost from 500 => 10000 (doesn't matter except for IRE fire).<br />
<br />
* Core Heavy Beam Guard Post:<br />
** Total base attack power (this is divided amongst all its beams) from 8M => 4M.<br />
** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 4 => 3.<br />
** Multiplier vs Refractive from 3.5 => 3.<br />
** Multiplier vs UltraLight from 3.25 => 3.<br />
** Multiplier vs Medium from 2.5 => 3.<br />
** Multiplier vs Heavy from 1.75 => 3.<br />
<br />
* Core Electric Guard Post:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Can now hit a maximum of 200 units per shot <br />
*** 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.<br />
** Base Health from 6M => 12M.<br />
** Multiplier vs Artillery from 4 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Neutron from 2 => 1.<br />
** Seconds Per Salvo from 13 => 20.<br />
** Damage Per Shot from 3k => 50k.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 13k => 8k.<br />
<br />
* Core Missile Guard Post:<br />
** Basically balancing this against a cap of MkV missile frigates, but with way less durability.<br />
** Base Health from 6M => 18M.<br />
** Multiplier vs UltraLight from 8 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Medium from 6 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Light from 1 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 1 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Neutron from 1 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Composite from 1 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Refractive from 1 => 4.<br />
** Effective Attack Range from 36000 => 12000.<br />
** Seconds Per Salvo from 5 => 1.<br />
** Damage Per Shot from 80k => 200k.<br />
<br />
* Core Sentinel Guard Post:<br />
** Basically balancing this against a cap of MkV Zenith Beam Frigates, but with maybe half the power and way less durability.<br />
** Can now hit a maximum of 20 targets per shot.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Base Health from 3M => 18M.<br />
** Damage Per Shot from 4k => 100k.<br />
** Effective Attack Range from 9000 => 8000.<br />
** Multiplier vs Light from 16 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 8 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Neutron from 4 => 1.<br />
<br />
* Core Leech Guard Post:<br />
** Basically balancing this against a cap of MkV Parasites, but with way less durability.<br />
*** Interestingly, the attack power was basically already spot-on.<br />
** Base Health from 6M => 12M.<br />
** Multiplier vs Medium from 3 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Neutron from 1 => 4.<br />
** Effective Attack Range from 5000 => 6000 (slightly further out than its radar dampening range).<br />
<br />
* Core Zenith Bombard Guard Post:<br />
** Basically balancing this against a cap of MkV Zenith Bombards, but with way less durability and about half the attack power.<br />
** Base Health from 6M => 12M.<br />
** Damage Per Shot from 60k => 900k.<br />
** Effective Attack Range from 53k => 34k.<br />
** Multiplier vs Heavy from 1.75 => 2.<br />
** Multiplier vs UltraHeavy from 1 => 2.<br />
** Multiplier vs Structural from 1 => 2.<br />
** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 4 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Refractive from 3.5 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs UltraLight from 3.25 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Medium from 2.5 => 1.<br />
<br />
* Core Zenith Fortress Guard Post:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Shot type from (default? it doesn't appear to be set?) => Flamewave.<br />
<br />
* Core Spire Shield Guard Post:<br />
** Base Health from 392M => 200M.<br />
<br />
* Core Neinzul Melee Guard Post:<br />
** Basically balancing this against a theoretical cap of MkV cutlasses, but with way less durability.<br />
** Base Health from 6M => 36M (it's a self-damaging melee unit, it needs it).<br />
** Base Move Speed from 30 => 44.<br />
** Damage Per Hit from 106k => 300k.<br />
** Multiplier vs Neutron from 3 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Light from 3 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Scout from 2 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Composite from 1 => 4.<br />
<br />
* Core Booster Guard Post:<br />
** Base Health from 6M => 18M.<br />
** Munitions Boost and Armor Boost range from 8k => 16k.<br />
** Intentionally leaving the attack alone here: that's not really the point of the unit.<br />
<br />
* Thanks to Hearteater and many other players for their thoughts on making core guard posts more interesting; they will probably need more than this but it's a start.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.045 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/07/ai-war-beta-5045-its-full-of-something.html It's Full Of Something Other Than Stars!] ==<br />
(Released July 19th, 2012) <br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994920323/indie-graphics-builder-create-your-own-sprites Eldon Harris] for creating the nebulae effects used.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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!<br />
<br />
* Updated the description of the Counter Dark Matter Turrets to be more clear about how they actually work.<br />
** Thanks to doctorfrog for reporting this one.<br />
<br />
* Unlike in AVWW, the game now returns to precalculating its materials rather than pooling them, since this may have been adversely affecting performance in recent versions.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.044 ==<br />
(Released July 19th, 2012) <br />
<br />
* Fixed the close-zoom image for the AI Core Neinzul Spawner Guard Post having a height that wasn't a power of 2.<br />
** 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.<br />
** But in the recent backporting we added some extra sanity checks that catch this when the player tries to look at it.<br />
** Thanks to Fleet for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Made a minor improvement to the Spirecraft Ion Blaster's behavior: in FRD it's now much better about going after stuff that's outside of its range (previously it was only really doing that while it was reloading). The improvement is "minor" in that there are still problems with its behavior (dancing back and forth during FRD with valid targets it could be chasing, after it fires, etc) but we needed to get the attempt at fixing the recent performance problems out in a hotfix asap.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for reporting the "not chasing in FRD" problem.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.043 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/07/ai-war-beta-5043-dubious-honor-released.html A Dubious Honor] ==<br />
(Released July 18th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* In honor of it winning the latest worst-unit poll, Zenith Reserves:<br />
** AIP cost on death from 5*mk => 1*mk.<br />
** Amount of ships granted increased roughly 33%.<br />
** Thanks to many players for telling us for months how the AIP cost made these not much of a choice in harder scenarios, and to the voters in general.<br />
<br />
* In honor of coming in second in the most recent worst-unit poll, the Decloaker:<br />
** In general, moving this from a mobile tachyon unit with outdated stats to a mobile tachyon unit with roughly mkI-starship stats. <br />
*** Note the tachyon range of 20k was already huge, no buff seemed necessary there.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** No longer has the IsBlind flag.<br />
** Now has cloaking.<br />
** Base Damage-per-shot from 36k => 50k.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 10 => 2.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Base Health from 40k => 2M (again, in the general range of mkI starships).<br />
** Base Energy Use from 100 => 1000.<br />
** Base Metal Cost from 5000 => 10000.<br />
** Base Crystal Cost from 7500 => 20000.<br />
** Now has most common-to-starship immunities.<br />
** Thanks to players who voted on the worst-unit poll and provided their feedback.<br />
<br />
* Captive Human Settlement, in honor of coming in third in the "worst unit" poll: AIP-on-death from 100 => 15.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to players who voted on the worst-unit poll and provided their feedback.<br />
<br />
* Spire Armor Rotter, in honor of coming in fourth in the latest "worst unit" poll:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Base Health from 14,500*mk => 23k*mk (this gives them a similar cap-health as fighters).<br />
** Multiplier vs UltraHeavy from 2 => 3.<br />
** Multiplier vs Heavy from 2 => 3.<br />
** Multiplier vs Polycrystal from 1 => 3.<br />
** Thanks to players who voted on the worst-unit poll and provided their feedback.<br />
<br />
* Microparasite, because it (like other experimentals we need to get back to) had really outdated stats:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Metal Cost from 1800 => 1400.<br />
** Crystal Cost from 240 => 3400.<br />
** Base Health from 7200 => 36k.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 500 => 1500.<br />
** Base Damage-per-shot from 8000 => 2000.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Base Armor Piercing from 0 => 3000.<br />
** Effective Attack Range from 4600 => 6000.<br />
** Multiplier vs Polycrystal from 20 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Artillery from 1 => 4.<br />
<br />
* Special Forces Guard Posts no longer count as reinforcement-warp-gates and are no longer autotargeted (by player or player-ally-minor-faction ships).<br />
** 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. <br />
** 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).<br />
** With the cheese gone, there's no longer a need to make it hard to keep these alive, so the autotargeting could go away.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic, Wanderer, rabican and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to rabican for the preemptive report and wave-calc logs uncovering the decloaker plot to conquer the galaxy before it could be set in motion.<br />
<br />
* Adjusted the last version's addition of radar dampening to mkII+ basic, laser, mlrs, and HBC turrets:<br />
** MkII's from Attack Range - 1000 => Attack Range - 2500.<br />
** MkIII+'s from Attack Range - 1000 => Attack Range - 4000.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for showing how the previous values did not accomplish the stated goal of preventing wormhole-exit-alpha-strike by waves on those kinds of turrets.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some missing-loca errors in the previous version.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Note that this will not affect stuff the AI has already bought off the trader.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer and others for periodically reminding us that this was putting a cramp on their desire to include the trader, particularly in harder scenarios.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.042 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/07/ai-war-beta-5042-pay-no-attention-to.html Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain] ==<br />
(Released July 17th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* The textbox improvements from AVWW have been backported to AI War.<br />
** Note that since we can't backport the entire AVWW GUI at this time (AI War has some controls that are simply not compatible with the AVWW-style GUI at the moment), there may still be some wonkiness with the textboxes in some cases. If you see any that are reproducible, please do let us know.<br />
** However, in the most-annoying-cases of things like the chat box losing focus, the hope is that these changes have fixed that issue. Knock on wood!<br />
<br />
* Backported the ability to do hue shifts via shader from AVWW.<br />
<br />
* Backported an enormous amount of the new render pipeline from AVWW; this doesn't involve much of the sorting that AVWW was doing, because AI War already had its own highly-evolved and engine-appropriate way of doing its graphical sorting.<br />
** However, this does decouple most of the graphics from the main CPU processing such that if your GPU is having trouble keeping up, it will impact the speed of gametime much less or not at all.<br />
** Additionally, as we saw with AVWW, we're now making more efficient use of GPU time in general by parallelizing some of that work, which leads to various gains (not really higher framerates here, but less likely of a drop in framerate and more flexibility about what target framerate you select, since that's something that can be manually set in this game).<br />
<br />
* Neinzul enclave drones are now immune to reclamation.<br />
** Thanks to Tssbackus for reporting oddities when the AI reclaimed drones.<br />
<br />
* Made the clamp/repeat status of images explicit rather than implicit inside the code, which lets us do a number of new visual effects when needed.<br />
** The immediate effect is that the various beams (repair, cloaking, etc) now have a slightly higher fidelity to themselves.<br />
<br />
* Non-square images are now supported by the game (more backporting from AVWW).<br />
<br />
* Sprite dictionaries are now supported by the game (again more backporting from AVWW).<br />
<br />
* All of the explosion effects in the game now use sprite dictionaries, which makes the initial game load quite a bit faster as it has to load 140ish fewer files (though the amount of data is roughly the same, it's still faster).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the new energy model where if you had zero home command stations (even in MP, where losing your home command isn't game-over) the energy collectors would produce 15k energy instead of 150k. <br />
** Thanks to Kalias for the report.<br />
<br />
* Invincible modules now don't show some of the irrelevant data about them (health, armor, certain immunities, etc).<br />
<br />
* Fixed bugs where several of the seeding frequencies of some things were based off the total number of "planets" in the game, including black holes and some other stuff that is solely tracked for the purpose of where-not-to-put-planets-or-links-in-mapgen and display on the galaxy map. Some map types don't even have those cosmetic bits, making them somewhat different from those that did.<br />
** This included special forces guard posts, astro train stations, and AI Eyes.<br />
<br />
* Added "Reserved" slot type in the lobby; just makes it so that that player is in the game at the start even if there's no human to fill the spot. Doesn't really do anything right now, though possibly it would allow creating singleplayer Multi-HW games that play like normal MP games, but the other player names would probably be "???".<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last version where right-clicking the units-to-place button in the line-place context menu would close the menu instead of reducing the amount of units-to-place.<br />
** Thanks to vadatajs and Eternaly_Lost for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some missing-loca bugs with the parts of the view-controls window pertaining to the line place context menu.<br />
<br />
* Shield Bearers (the normal ones; this was already true of the spirecraft ones) are now immune to insta-kill.<br />
** Thanks to Varone for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* All non-shield modules are now immune to armor boosting (they're invincible, it'd be a waste).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* AI Carriers:<br />
** Effective range from 6000 => 3000.<br />
** Base Health from 3M*mk => 2M*mk.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.041 ==<br />
(Released July 11th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Added "Line Place" context menu option for when you open the context menu (defaults to alt+right-click) while you have the build menu open and an item selected for direct placement. <br />
** From the line-place menu instructions:<br />
*** Step 1: Click where you want one end of the line segment to be. This line segment doesn't actually set the final location of anything, Instead it tells the game the length and angle of the segment.<br />
*** Step 2: Click where you want the other end of the line segment to be.<br />
*** Step 3: Specify the maximum number of units you want to place below (left click the number to increase, right click to decrease, and the usual keys for multiplying by 5, 10, or 50), pick whether you want a packed line (good for mines), and then left-click where you want to place the units.<br />
** The main use case in mind for this was efficient use of mines, but can also be helpful for many defensive emplacements, or simply for aesthetic appeal. The interface could be cleaner but this is what we had time for right now.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring this addition.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.040 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/07/ai-war-betas-5036-5041-released.html Reenergized] ==<br />
(Released July 10th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for the suggestion<br />
<br />
* Added some extra logging on the calculation of wave-time-intervals (when advanced logging is enabled).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Mick for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Forcefield-protection no longer prevents a cloaked unit from being revealed by tachyon beams.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for pointing out that this was happening, and wasn't much fun if the cloaked unit in question was a guard post.<br />
<br />
* Grenade Launcher grenade explosion radius from 200/300/400/500/600 => flat 500.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for pointing out that at 200 the MkI was frequently not hitting max targets even when fired into a relatively dense group.<br />
<br />
* Flak grenade (from guardians and turrets) radius from 300/350/400/450/500 => flat 500.<br />
<br />
=== Energy System Rework ===<br />
<br />
* The motivation here:<br />
** 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.<br />
** But there were a number of problems pointed out by players over the years, the most bothersome being:<br />
*** 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.<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg and other players for making this point, and being patient as we tried to find a better model.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** If you're curious about the comparison math, check out this post: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11031.msg110117.html#msg110117<br />
** Anyway, on to the specific changes:<br />
<br />
* Removed the Energy Reactors (all of them, MkI, MkII, MkIII).<br />
<br />
* Added the "Energy Collector", which is like the energy reactors were except:<br />
** Produces 150,000 energy.<br />
*** For reference, in the previous model an EnergyI+EnergyII+EnergyIII produced 125,000.<br />
** No ongoing m+c cost.<br />
*** For reference, in the previous model an EnergyI+EnergyII+EnergyIII cost 57m+57c per second to run.<br />
** Can only build one per planet per player.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Cannot be low-powered (there'd be no point).<br />
<br />
* Added the "Matter Converter", which is like the energy reactors were except:<br />
** Produces 50,000 energy.<br />
** Costs 100m+100c per second to run.<br />
** No construction cap, and also no efficiency penalty for stacking.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Cannot be low-powered, since the main point of this rework is to avoid "player-time-tax" micro.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Putting units in low-power mode now no longer reduces their energy use.<br />
** Again: removing the motive to micro stuff for energy purposes is one of the driving motivations here.<br />
** Renamed "Low Power mode" to "Stand Down mode", since it's no longer for the purpose of reducing energy.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Added new slider to galaxy-wide per-player-controls screen: Energy Buffer To Maintain<br />
** If this is set above zero, the game will try to maintain that amount of "buffer" energy above zero. A few examples:<br />
*** Docks will not build ships that would take you below the buffer amount.<br />
*** Ships will not be reclaimed if it would take you below the buffer amount.<br />
*** Broken Golems will not be activated if it would take you below the buffer amount.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Note that this will not stop you from scrapping energy producing units (however low that may take your net energy), so be careful.<br />
*** This is because going negative energy never stopped scrapping before, so that part wasn't changed.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* When upgrading saves from 5.039 and earlier:<br />
** For all EnergyI, EnergyII, and EnergyIII units:<br />
*** If that player already has an Energy Collector on that planet, the reactor is replaced by a Matter Converter.<br />
*** Otherwise, the reactor is replaced by an Energy Collector.<br />
** After that, while the player has > 60,000 spare energy and any remaining Matter Converters:<br />
*** Scrap a Matter Converter on the planet with the most remaining Matter Converters controlled by that player.<br />
** The result should be that:<br />
*** 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+.<br />
*** It won't give you a lot of Matter Converters you don't need.<br />
*** 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 ;)<br />
<br />
* The automated energy hamsters have taken off without giving notice, but we suspect they're on vacation in Bermuda.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Thanks to many, many players over the years for weighing in with feedback on the energy model. Keep it up, we know this one isn't perfect either ;) Particularly:<br />
** Cyborg, for originally getting through to us that the old model was no more challenging than "making change for a dollar", and a lot more time-consuming.<br />
** Hearteater, for proposing multiple alternate models (including the one that inspired the one we ultimately went with above).<br />
** chemical_art, Diazo, Wingflier, Wanderer, TechSY730 for lots of participation in the discussions/debates/etc.<br />
** And many others I'm sure I'm forgetting; the forum search engine appears to have forgotten about the relevant threads to avoid further trauma.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.039 ==<br />
(Released July 8th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Remains Rebuilders no longer require supply, to make rebuilding a "satellite" planet at least possible.<br />
** If this makes some wild exploits possible please let us know, but since most of the stuff that can be rebuilt requires supply anyway...<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for pointing out the tension between these requiring supply and the newly added rebuildable-ness of command stations.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Now they'll generally _move_ to a point near the target wormhole, but they won't try to traverse the wormhole itself.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to zharmad and TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to iob for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.038 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/07/ai-war-betas-5036-5041-released.html If You Rebuild It They Will Come]==<br />
(Released July 7th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where the AI fortresses in the tutorial were the mkIII _human_ versions, not the AI versions.<br />
<br />
* Human Fortresses now drop remains and can be rebuilt (and due to the 50% discount on a rebuild vs. a fresh build it's more than just a convenience).<br />
** Note that this does not impact AI fortresses at all.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art and many other players for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Human Forcefield generators (including hardened ones) now drop remains and can be rebuilt.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art and other players for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Human command stations (other than the home command station) now drop remains and can be rebuilt.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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. If this is wrong, let us know :)<br />
** Thanks to buttons840 and many other players for pointing out how much micro this could be.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where remains-dropping-units destroyed by the forcefield-cascade-splash-damage from a siege plasma shot would not drop remains.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last couple versions where the detect-loss-of-focus-windowed-mode (on windows) logic was causing the game to stop rendering a lot of stuff just because the window didn't have focus, though the window could actually still be visible.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed several bugs in the rule that changed possible wave time based on number of entry points, and added info on that computation to the wave logging logic.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for the report that led to this discovery.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.037 ==<br />
(Released July 7th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last version where the new neinzul drones were not being selection-filtered the same way as most mobile military ships (it was because they can't go through wormholes, incidentally).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to RogueThunder and others for (reluctantly) notifying us of how exploitative this was.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a typo in wave size calculation logging.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar and Wanderer for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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".<br />
** Thanks to HTL2001 and TechSY730 for the reports.<br />
<br />
* Further improved the maw swallow-target logic to not get stuck on invalid targets (like if it's shooting at a starship, etc, it will now try to swallow valid targets on its target list).<br />
** Fixed a related bug where maws could try to swallow-target a starship (which it cannot swallow).<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for reporting that they were still getting stuck.<br />
<br />
* Nuanced the new wave-time-calculation rule added in the last version such that it is not in effect at the very beginning, and gradually phases in so that it is fully in effect at the two-hour mark. So at the 30 minute mark it has about 25% impact, giving you a chance to expand the number of "entry points" before the AI starts throwing max time waves at you automatically.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for reporting a test game where this rule rather... decisively concluded the game early.<br />
<br />
* Carriers now display "x(Variable, see below)" next to their attack power to make clearer that their salvo size varies (by the number of contained ships).<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Carrier hull type from Scout => Ultra-Heavy.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.036 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/07/ai-war-betas-5036-5041-released.html The Wandering AI] ==<br />
(Released July 3rd, 2012) <br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Made Maws try to vacuum their shoot-at target if for some reason vacuuming their "assist" target failed.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer and Eternaly_Lost for providing saves where Maws had lockjaw.<br />
<br />
* Amended the reinforcement logging to better reflect the impact of alert on the order that planets are checked for reinforcement.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for pointing out that what it was saying was not what was happening.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where when the AI picked engineers or remains-rebuilders for reinforcements, it was "spending" too much on them.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for submitting the log that showed this.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for the report and save of player Spire Blades having this problem.<br />
<br />
* Core CPA Guard Posts now start a timer-for-CPA instead of instantly triggering a CPA.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Core CPA Guard Posts now trigger in response to >= 1 enemy human military ship being present, rather than > 1.<br />
** So that Artillery Golem won't get by on the ol' "But I'm just *one* ship!" excuse anymore.<br />
<br />
* Since the recent mine rebalance it's become apparent that the EMPs were made a bit too strong, and the Area mines hadn't been given enough to justify the 4k Knowledge cost.<br />
<br />
** EMP mines:<br />
*** Health halved, which halves the number of times a single one will go off before needing to be rebuilt.<br />
*** Knowledge cost from 1500 => 1000.<br />
** Area mines:<br />
*** Knowledge cost from 4000 => 2000.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Spire Maw vacuum-recharge-seconds from 2 => 5/4/3/2/1.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for pointing out that trying to cover these with Riot starship forcefields could lead to a Riot displacing the hacker and resetting the timer.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the AI would not attack armored warheads (due to a "very low priority target" flag on those unit definitions).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* The rest of the "official" lobby setup scripts have been updated to use the new grammar.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug with the do-not-auto-pause-on-lost-focus toggle where the lost-focus logic was still suppressing basically all game logic even though it wasn't entering a formally paused state.<br />
** Thanks to amethyst for the report.<br />
<br />
* Put in an experimental method of detecting that the game has lost focus in windowed mode (our recent solution for this only works in fullscreen mode). Once loss-of-focus is detected, the existing logic for that state will apply (not scrolling, resetting input afterward to clear stuck keys, autopausing unless the no-autopause toggle is on).<br />
** For now it only works on Windows (the new method is not even tried on Mac), sorry about that, but if this works out we can probably get something similar to work on Mac too.<br />
<br />
* Previously Core CPA Guard Post spawns were scaling with Floor(AIP/50) instead of actually AIP/50 due to the data type used to store the result; now that part does not get floored, allowing a more granular factoring-in of AIP.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Shieldbearers:<br />
** Can now be put in low power mode (shutting off their projected shield).<br />
** Now their projected shield no longer shrinks as the shieldbearer loses health.<br />
*** 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).<br />
** Now have AI-only variants that can be chosen for exos.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** These still have the shrink-when-damaged behavior, to make them a bit easier to handle.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
=== Rebalancing High (and-not-so-high) Difficulties ===<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** A Diff 9+ player will seed 1 less data center than normal (but no fewer than 1 if it would have seeded any).<br />
** On Diff 8+ the first step of the [[AI War:Why Do Enemy Waves Get So Large%3F#How_Wave_Sizes_Are_Calculated|wave size formula]] has been changed from:<br />
*** ( AIProgress * AIDifficulty ) / ( 13 - AIDifficulty ) <br />
*** to ( ( ( AIProgress * 0.8 ) ^ 1.1 ) * AIDifficulty ) / ( 13 - AIDifficulty ) <br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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):<br />
*** 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).<br />
*** If there are 5 wave-targetable planets the random is from (AIDifficulty*-30) to (AIDifficulty*120).<br />
*** If there are 4 the random is from 0 to (AIDifficulty*120).<br />
*** If 3, from (AIDifficulty*30) to (AIDifficulty*120).<br />
*** If 2, from (AIDifficulty*60) to (AIDifficulty*120).<br />
*** If 1, from (AIDifficulty*90) to (AIDifficulty*150) (making it actually able to hit single-chokepoints harder than it used to).<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players (including zoutzakje, Diazo, Wanderer, rabican, Orelius, chemical_art, and probably others I can't remember right now) for the past few months of 9+ playtesting and related suggestions. No good deed goes unpunished.<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** That automatic tech level increase has been removed.<br />
** 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:<br />
*** 9 = 210 (same as before).<br />
*** 9.3 = 148.<br />
*** 9.6 = 85.<br />
*** 9.8 = 43.<br />
*** 10 = 0 (so diff 10 starts at tech 2).<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1400*mk => 19200*mk (the base strength of 16 fighters on high caps, but without the fighter's bonuses).<br />
** Seconds-Per-Salvo from 2 => 4 (same as fighter, cuts down a bit on shot-spam).<br />
** Can no longer fire as though ignoring through forcefields, but it can still move through them.<br />
** Shot type from dark matter => energy bomb as the idea is not for these to be easily counterable via counter-dark-matter turrets.<br />
** Hull-bonus against Turret from 0.1 => 1.<br />
** Hull-bonus against Structural from 0.1 => 1.<br />
** Hull-bonuses against Scout and Command-Grade staying at 0.1.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** On Diff 8+ it randomly rolls (per homeworld) between one and two picks.<br />
*** On Diff 7+ it always gets one pick.<br />
*** Below Diff 7 it randomly rolls between zero and one picks.<br />
** As the set of core guard posts expands in the future (expansions, mainly), this "brutal" set can also be added to.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
=== New Drones For The Neinzul Enclave Starship ===<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** Neinzul Laser Drone I-IV<br />
*** MkI and II require Laser Turret II technology. MkIII and IV require Laser Turret III technology.<br />
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that Laser Turrets have a bonus against.<br />
** Neinzul Needler Drone I-IV<br />
*** MkI and II require Basic Turret II technology. MkIII and IV require Basic Turret III technology.<br />
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that Basic Turrets have a bonus against.<br />
** Neinzul MLRS Drone I-IV<br />
*** MkI and II require MLRS Turret II technology. MkIII and IV require MLRS Turret III technology.<br />
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that MLRS Turrets have a bonus against.<br />
** Neinzul Missile Drone I-IV<br />
*** MkI and II require Missile Turret II technology. MkIII and IV require Missile Turret III technology.<br />
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that Missile Turrets have a bonus against.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Stat wise:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Drones are pretty flimsy, but dying from enemy fire isn't much of an event for these.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Drones cannot traverse wormholes.<br />
*** Drones are super, super cheap in both metal/crystal and energy.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** The motivation behind these:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players for feedback on a variety of issues that inspired this addition.<br />
<br />
=== Better Scaling For Multi-Homeworld Games ===<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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). <br />
** This was generally fine but:<br />
*** 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. <br />
*** Also, now that carriers will be more of a threat, it would be nice for them to see use in those circumstances.<br />
*** 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,<br />
** So now:<br />
*** 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.<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** 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).<br />
**** 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).<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer, Eternaly_Lost, and others for feedback on multi-HW play (notably the lots-of-non-carrier-waves thing).<br />
<br />
* When Spirecraft are enabled and there's more than one human homeworld, the number of asteroids seeded will go up.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.035 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/05/ai-war-beta-5035-teleport-battle.html Teleport Battle Stations And The Return Of The Dyson Sphere] ==<br />
(Released May 24th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where the new pop-cap mechanic for the dyson sphere was setting the population cap properly according to faction-intensity... and then setting it to 2. Yeaaaaah. Dyson's on vacation in 5.034, boys and girls!<br />
** Thanks to platinawolf for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an omission in the previous version where the variable intensity of the Advanced Hybrids plot did not do anything (all values 1-10 did exactly the same thing as Advanced Hybrids being on before variable-intensity was implemented).<br />
** At intensity 1, hybrids get access to the more advanced modules and maturity classes normally granted by Advanced Hybrids.<br />
** At intensity 2, the super hybrid can execute the first stage of the Hybrid-Dyson plot.<br />
*** Note that said plot no longer happens at all with Advanced Hybrids off; the super hybrid can still spawn but it'll just be a beefier hybrid in general.<br />
** At intensity 4, the second stage of the Hybrid-Dyson plot becomes possible.<br />
** At intensity 7, the third stage of the Hybrid-Dyson plot becomes possible.<br />
** Fixed a bug in the previous version in the computation of how much each maturity gain contributed to the hybrids' "central dirty tricks bank" where it was doubling it if Advanced Hybrids was _off_, not when it was on.<br />
*** Also adjusted the computation so that instead of simply doubling it when Advanced Hybrids is on, it adds 25% of the original amount per point of the Advanced Hybrid plot's intensity (if the AI's have different intensities for it, picks the higher of the two). So on 4 it just doubles it, like before the variable-intensity thing.<br />
** More can and probably will be done with the different intensities, but it's a start.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg for the report.<br />
<br />
* The Lobby now has a "role" dropdown for each occupied human player slot. The only options are Normal and Helper, but that makes it possible to have someone join from the start as a Helper. A few notes:<br />
** At least one human player has to be in the "Normal" role for the game to be started. This does not have to be the first player (i.e. host).<br />
** Helpers cannot select homeworlds (and are not given any units or planets at the start of the game).<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Dazio for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Marauders and Resistance Fighters can now be targeted by ships that cannot target small units (Bomber Starship, etc).<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for pointing out that the Marauder Frigate wasn't already like this.<br />
<br />
* Since the Riot Starship MkIII did pretty well in the last worst-ship poll:<br />
** Gave them tachyon coverage matching the MkIII scout starship.<br />
** Added a couple additional options for its highest-level hardpoint:<br />
*** Grav Tazer<br />
**** 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.<br />
**** Note that these share the same planet-wide stagger category as Riot II tazers, to prevent these making permanent tazer lock possible again.<br />
*** Grav Generator<br />
**** Basically a ship-mounted grav turret, requires research of Grav Turret Is.<br />
** Thanks to many players for feedback indicating that they didn't really see a reason to upgrade from Riot IIs to Riot IIIs.<br />
<br />
* This doesn't really impact the player at all, but some may care: Implemented another, far saner grammar for the Lobby Setup Scripts.<br />
** Only BeginnerGame.xml, BeginnerGame2.xml, and RandomFactions1.xml have been updated to use it, but that covers all the unique syntax necessary to re-implement the others, too. Currently the game will still parse the old grammar, but that will go away when the rest of the "official" scripts have been converted.<br />
<br />
* Teleport Battlestations, in honor of doing pretty well in the last worst-unit poll:<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to many players for feedback on these.<br />
<br />
* Added new toggle to Interface tab of Settings window: Disable Pause On Lost Focus.<br />
** Normally the game will automatically pause if it detects that the game has lost focus (it can only detect this in fullscreen mode, not windowed mode).<br />
** Enabling this toggle will suppress that auto-pause behavior, which may be helpful for multiplayer games and some other situations.<br />
** Thanks to amethyst for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.034 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/05/ai-war-beta-5034-is-it-really-minor.html Is It Really A 'Minor' Faction If You Scale It That High?] ==<br />
(Released May 7th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version where Neinzul Rocketry Corps lightning warheads were causing AIP-on-death (despite saying they don't).<br />
** Thanks to dragon95046 for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** Spire Stealth Battleship<br />
** Spire Blade Spawner<br />
** Spire Maw<br />
** Spire Tractor Platform<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art and other players for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* 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 :)<br />
** Thanks to amethyst and Minotaar for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to zoutzakje and others for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer (and others, more recently) for pointing out how dominating the Dyson Sphere could be.<br />
<br />
=== New Variety for Existing Minor Factions ===<br />
<br />
* Human Resistance Fighters:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.<br />
<br />
* Marauders:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.<br />
<br />
* Human Colony Rebellions<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.<br />
<br />
* Dyson Sphere:<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
** So if you want a game-dominating dyson sphere, you can still get it :)<br />
<br />
* Zenith Miners<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.<br />
<br />
* Broken Golems (Hard)<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see VERY strong exogalactic strikeforces (their frequency does not change).<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Preservation Wardens:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Roaming Enclaves:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Rocketry Corps:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see a LOT of these (Would you like to play a game of... ?).<br />
<br />
* Fallen Spire<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see VERY strong exogalactic strikeforces (their frequency does not change).<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft (Hard)<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see VERY strong exogalactic strikeforces (their frequency does not change).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
=== New Variety For Existing AI Plots ===<br />
<br />
* Hybrid Hives<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see a LOT of these.<br />
<br />
=== Lobby Setup Scripts ===<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** Numerous new players asking "What's a good setup for my first game?"<br />
** Variable-strength minor factions and AI plots (which could be handled just by the above changes, but read on)<br />
** Randomized minor factions and AI plots, particularly combined with variable-strength.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Some kind of overall "difficulty ranking" for a particular game setup.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** The following scripts are available in this version:<br />
*** Beginner Game<br />
**** A fairly simple, fairly easy scenario that may be a good next step for new players who have just completed the intermediate tutorial.<br />
*** Beginner Game 2<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** Random Factions 1<br />
**** This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game (no expansions required).<br />
***** 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.<br />
*** Random Factions 2<br />
**** This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game and The Zenith Remnant expansion.<br />
*** Random Factions 3<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** Random Factions 4<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** Unknown Factions 1<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** Unknown Factions 2<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** Unknown Factions 3<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** Unknown Factions 4<br />
**** 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.<br />
<br />
* Thanks to HitmanN, Chris Fifty-Two, KDR_11k, Vinraith, Sunshine (and probably others) for suggesting randomized minor factions and AI plots.<br />
* Thanks to zebramatt and others for advocating for scenario difficulty-scores, even though we can't quite do that.<br />
* Thanks to topper and others for requesting some kind of "suggested settings" or "presets" for the lobby, particularly for new players.<br />
<br />
=== Major Improvements Relating To Loss Of Window Focus In Fullscreen Mode ===<br />
<br />
* Some recent breakthroughs with the unity engine from A Valley Without Wind have now been backported to AI War. Specifically:<br />
** The game now knows if it has focus or not if you're running in fullscreen mode (not windowed, sorry).<br />
** If the game does not have focus, it now stops doing any edge scrolling (so you don't return to find yourself out in the middle of nowhere.<br />
** If the game does not have focus, it issues a pause command just one time -- that way, in solo or multiplayer, accidental clicks onto a secondary monitor out of fullscreen now pause the game without spamming pauses at other players.<br />
** IF the game does not have focus OR if the Steam Overlay is brought up, it now does a better job of resetting all the input. This should finally resolve that stupid "stuck keys" thing with alt-tabbing and shift-tabbing.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.033 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/04/ai-war-beta-5033-and-other-times-there.html And Other Times There Are A Few Too Many Ponies] ==<br />
(Released April 17th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Metal/Crystal Harvester Upgrades:<br />
** MkII production from 31 => 30.<br />
** MkIII production from 73 => 55.<br />
** Results/Rationale:<br />
*** 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).<br />
*** MkII upgrades are better than EconII if you have 1, 2, 3, or greater than 12 planets, but are worse from 4 to 11.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** All in all, the question of "do I upgrade harvesters or econ stations?" should now be more situational and map-based.<br />
** Thanks to many players for feedback on the recent harvester buffs, including strident efficiency graphs and amusing anecdotes of overrunning the galaxy with unending waves of constant production.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a null exception that happened when gifting a spirecraft mining enclosure to another player.<br />
** Thanks to topper for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Enclave Starships, in honor of winning the fifth "Worst Unit" poll.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1000 flat => 1000*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 500K*mk => 3M*mk.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Now have radar dampening of 8000/7500/7000/6500.<br />
*** 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).<br />
** Knowledge Costs from 0/3000/5000/10000 => 0/2000/2000/14000.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
*** This is because previously using these efficiently basically required engineer support (specifically, engineer mkIII support). Engies still help, but it's not as critical.<br />
** Thanks to many players for providing feedback on these in recent months, and for voting in the poll.<br />
<br />
* Armored Warheads, in honor of placing second in the fifth "Worst Unit" poll:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 300k/1.5M/2.4M => 1M*mk.<br />
** Explosion Size from 1500/1250/750 => 1500*mk.<br />
** Now do 10k*mk armor damage, enough to strip all the armor off most units that aren't some kind of boss fight.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players for providing feedback on these in recent months, and for voting in the poll.<br />
<br />
* Lightning Warheads:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 300k/1.5M/2.4M => 800k*mk.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Explosion size changed to match the new armored warheads: 1500/1250/750 => 1500*mk.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players for suggesting an increase in scale for these, and for voting in the poll.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.032 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/03/ai-war-beta-5032-then-pendulum-swung.html Then The Pendulum Swung Back] ==<br />
(Released March 30th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed an omission in the previous release; nanoswarm attack power was supposed to be doubled and their reclamation double-efficiency flag removed. The latter happened, but not the former. Now both are in.<br />
** Thanks to Dazio for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and many other players reporting odd and/or brutal populations of these kinds of units from reinforcements over the past year and some months.<br />
<br />
* Now that the AI is no longer able to get a ton of low-cap ships where it should only be getting a few of them, the AI-specifc per-guard-post caps on those low-cap types have been removed (and some per-planet ones, but the ones on stuff like engineers): those had just been bandaids to prevent massive swarming by those ship types because we didn't know what was going on there or how to fix it.<br />
** This is particularly important because the bandaid was pretty brutal about making sure it was enforced, so the AI would wind up sending a reinforcement and part/most of it would be ditched without spawning because it would violate the caps, etc.<br />
<br />
* Just under "Enable Advanced Logging" on the Advanced tab of the Settings window, added a "Enable Reinforcement Logging" toggle.<br />
** 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.<br />
** This is off by default because:<br />
*** 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<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Lots of disk I/O during the game causes instability on some systems.<br />
** All that said, if you're curious about the numbers, and especially if you think something is wrong (there certainly was plenty wrong for a while now, though it worked ok in most scenarios), have a look and let us know :)<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Niccus for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Added new button to Galaxy Layout context menu: "Reset My Layout To Official"<br />
** Prompts you to confirm the action, and if you confirm it sets the positions of all planets in your alternate layout to the official positions.<br />
** Thanks to Nodor (and others, previously) for pointing out the need for this in case the planet positions get messed up (as can sometimes happen on load and/or changing resolutions).<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to Tharrick for reporting that it was actually possible for one of these to get destroyed if the AI did a tachyon burst during hacking to drop the marker's perma-cloak. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" apparently wasn't sinking in.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for reporting the highly-sub-optimal behavior.<br />
<br />
* Mobile Repair Stations, in belated honor of doing well in the last "worst unit" poll<br />
** Maximum simultaneous repairs from 100 => 20.<br />
** Repair rate reduced.<br />
** Time it must remain stationary before starting repairs from 60 seconds => 5.<br />
** Now has cloaking.<br />
*** This doesn't break when repairing, but beware AI tachyons.<br />
** Thanks to many players for feedback on how this unit just didn't seem worth the trouble; hopefully now it will be worth 4000 K but also not be so "insta-heal entire fleet" overpowered as it was before the last rework (but if you have all 9 in range of a fleet not much will stay damaged unless it is under ongoing fire). If there are still problems please let us know :)<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to mlhibou for providing a report and save of this apocalyptic situation, and to Niccus for a similar report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s, SpaceBrotha, and Caseycc for providing reports and saves.<br />
<br />
* The Tech buttons on the ARS tab of a science ship on an ARS planet are now sorted so that the leftmost one is the one that would be unlocked by capturing without hacking.<br />
** This is more info than it really should give, but getting the info is a simple savescum operation so we may as well shortcircuit that.<br />
<br />
* Added new galaxy display mode "Detected Immobile Minor Factions".<br />
** This shows "DS" next to the planet with the Dyson Sphere, "RC" for a Neinzul Rocketry Corps Silo, and "HC" for a Rebelling Human Colony.<br />
<br />
* Mostly as a visual improvement (via more variety of shot speed) and somewhat to make some weapons a little more effective:<br />
** Laser shot speed tripled (wait, why does a laser shot have a speed?)<br />
** Minor electric shot speed doubled.<br />
** Shell shot speed increased to 1.5x what it was.<br />
** Ion shot speed doubled.<br />
** Combat style now applies to all shot speeds, not only artificially-increased ones.<br />
** Note: shots will always move at least 40 faster than their target.<br />
** Feedback is very welcome on whether these changes make combat more interesting, or are a detriment; just an experiment, really.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where a superterminal could be "paused" by scrapping your command station, saving, and reloading.<br />
** Thanks to Niccus for the report and save.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.031 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/03/ai-war-beta-5031-harvest-of-unloved.html Harvest Of The Unloved] ==<br />
(Released March 21st, 2012)<br />
<br />
* The hacking-response wild-roll for "short range warp jump" can now generate a much wider range of spawn points.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for reporting that it was always picking points in two relatively small areas.<br />
<br />
* Now when a unit dies while under the influence of a parasite infestation ("reclamation damage"), those parasites will behave far more efficiently:<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players over the past year or so for reminding us that reclamators are more fun when it's easier to get some kind of reliable reclamation-rate out of them (even if said rate is not OP).<br />
<br />
* Youngling Nanoswarm:<br />
** Base attack power from 400*mk => 800*mk. Still not much at all, but it allows:<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* Mines:<br />
** 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?<br />
** Standard Mines:<br />
*** 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).<br />
**** Note that the build time for all 3 mine types is still 90 seconds.<br />
** Area Mines:<br />
*** Base Metal+Crystal cost from 1080+3600 => 40+80.<br />
*** Now hit a maximum of 10 targets with their aoe.<br />
*** Base Damage per hit from 7500 => 52500 (half as much damage as a normal single-target mine).<br />
** EMP Mines:<br />
*** Base Metal+Crystal cost from 720+2400 => 60+120.<br />
*** Fixed an error in the tooltip: it said the paralysis was 60 seconds long, but it's really only 10 seconds.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and several other players for recent feedback on mines, leading to these changes.<br />
<br />
* Harvester Exo-Shields, in honor of winning the 4th "Worst Unit" poll (and the first one for which it was eligible) :<br />
** Now has cloaking.<br />
** Now cloaks the protected harvester.<br />
** No longer halves production of protected harvester.<br />
** 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.<br />
** The result is that:<br />
*** They have a much lower operational cost which no longer scales up with higher harvester marks or with your energy efficiency.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players for their feedback on why this unit was very rarely an interesting choice.<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** A bit of background:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** So, to do something about this pretty vast disparity:<br />
*** Harvester II:<br />
**** Knowledge cost from 3250 => 2000.<br />
**** Production from 28 => 31 (so +8 => +11).<br />
*** Harvester III:<br />
**** Knowledge cost from 4000 => 2500 (so 4500 total).<br />
**** Production from 36 => 73 (so +16 => +53).<br />
***** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg and many other players for pointing out the fact that harvester upgrades were basically just universally inferior (with some small exception) to econ station upgrades.<br />
<br />
* Warp Jammer Command Stations, in honor of tying for third in the first "Worst Unit" poll it was eligible for:<br />
** Now prevent their planets from putting adjacent AI planets on alert. <br />
*** 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).<br />
*** But this still allows a new strategic choice in shaping the AI's response to your presence.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Also fixed a longstanding bug where these counted (for display purposes only, apparently) as an AI reinforcement warp gate.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for broaching the subject of how to make these more interesting, and to many other players for confirming the idea that the jammer needed something more.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.030 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/03/ai-war-beta-5030-refined-hacking.html Refined Hacking] ==<br />
(Released March 14th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the wave-mouseover-to-show-ship-info feature in the last version that would display a blank info window and throw some (thankfully harmless) errors if the ship-type-info window had last been used to display an unlocked ship type with a "(x out of y in service)" addendum (like from mouseovering the buy queue items on a space dock).<br />
** Many thanks to zoutzakje, Cyborg, and Ranakastrasz for the reports and saves to track this one down, it was pretty elusive.<br />
<br />
* The "AI is responding to your hacking on (planet name)" messages now specify whether it's knowledge-hacking or ship-design hacking, to avoid confusion. If both are actually happening on one planet, it will display both messages.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Previously if a planet had multiple AI Advanced Research Stations on it then doing a ship-design-hack on the planet and then capturing the planet would only let you unlock 1 bonus type (capturing it without sd-hacking led to the normal multiple types being unlocked) out of the normal set of 3. Fixed it to let you unlock n bonus types out of a set of n*3, where n is the number of AI Advanced Research Stations on the planet. In general multi-hacking like this is more advantageous, but it's very much an edge case due to the small planet counts necessary to get more than 1 ARS on a planet.<br />
** This change applies retroactively to uncaptured ARS's from old saves, but could not be applied to already-captured ARS's, sorry about the inconvenience.<br />
** Thanks to Nic for the report.<br />
<br />
* Now the tech menu's ARS tab (which is used to view and select what bonus type you want to unlock after hacking and capturing an ARS) displays even if no hacking has been done, so you can make a decision about whether you want to hack or not without savescumming (not that anyone would do that).<br />
** The tab still won't show if there were never AI-controlled ARS's on the planet, since then the planet has no bonus types to show.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Superterminal-hacking response:<br />
** Surges no longer automatically set the recharge time for the next pulse to 1 second (15 seconds is the normal time), as chain-surges were entertaining to the developer but not so much to the players.<br />
*** Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring this change.<br />
** Fixed a bug where multiple surges could happen on the same spawn; two surges on the same spawn on diff 7 would multiply spawn strength by 12.25. Ow. This wasn't intended, but a flag wasn't being set right. Now surge-rolls after the first on a spawn are treated like a "multiply by 1.5" roll, similar to how the short-range-warp-jump roll is treated as a x1.5 roll if it's already happened for that spawn.<br />
** When spawn strength is over the cap (500), the way it "trades" strength for higher-mark-level-spawns and shorter-recharge-to-next-pulse has been significantly changed:<br />
*** Instead of trading for tech until <= 200 and then trading for recharge until <= 500, it randomly picks one to trade for if over 500; if it's still over 500 it randomly picks again, etc. Max tech level is 5, of course, and minimum recharge is 1 second.<br />
*** When trading for tech, it now multiplies strength by current_mark/next_mark instead of deducting a flat 150, to better represent the linearly-increasing power that typically happens with higher marks.<br />
**** Thanks to Hearteater for inspiring this change.<br />
*** When trading for lower recharge time, it now multiplies strength by new_time/old_time instead of deducting a flat 33, to better represent the increasing impact of multiple cooldown reductions.<br />
<br />
* Changed the Ship-Design-Hacker's description to be a bit clearer.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater and Wanderer for suggestions on how to reword it.<br />
<br />
* Previously hacking response wild-rolls that increased spawn strength did so by multiplying the current strength value by some x%. The exponential growth this caused with higher numbers of rolls was intentional but turned out to get wildly out of control, doing things like spawning 4000 raid starships (heh) or arithmetic overflow, etc. So it's been changed to be an additive boost instead, adding x% of the pre-rolls strength to the current strength value.<br />
** To compensate, the now-additive bonuses are a bit higher in magnitude than they used to be.<br />
** The one exception to this is the superterminal's "surge" roll, which is still mutiplicative, but can only happen once per spawn. Still, it can put on some real hurt if it happens after a bunch of additive boosts (but nothing that will challenge the domain of the datatype storing the strength value).<br />
** (posthumous) Thanks to Toranth for warning us of the 4000+ raid starship spawn.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the "spawn raid starships" wild-roll was giving the AI the kind of raid starship reserved for human use. Now gives the AI-variant. Already-created ones will probably remain as they are, but it shouldn't be a big deal.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Previously hacking responses continued after the hacking was "done" (all knowledge gathered by a knowledge hacker, or the planet successfully sd-hacked by a ship-design hacker). This was intentional, to motivate getting the hacker out of there or in a transport or whatever, but it's a reasonable request to have the responses stop without player intervention, so that's what will happen now.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* The "spawn raid starships" wild-roll no longer creates "zombie" raid starships that blindly agress upon whatever humans are in vision, but rather non-zombies that are coordinated like an exo and go charging after some juicy human target.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for the suggestion; please direct your rotten fruit in his direction (assuming it doesn't have a bonus vs. Ultra-Light hulls, you'll need those).<br />
<br />
* The grav well display circles now use much more subtle colors and rotate 1/8th as fast as they used to.<br />
** Thanks to clone, doctorfrog, Wanderer and others for suggestions on how to make these less Yeargh!-inducing.<br />
<br />
* Previously there was no way to know how ticked off the AI was at previous hacking attempts and thus what to expect in future ones. This was somewhat by design, as this isn't another AIP or whatever, but if the player is to make strategic decisions about hacking some kind of feedback (other than angry-ships-to-the-face) is important. So now once there's been any hacking antagonism actually generated (note: ship-design hacking doesn't actually increase that value until the hack is complete, since you haven't gained anything until then) an alert will display with a general descriptor ("Very Low", "Low", "Moderate", etc) of where things are.<br />
** The numeric ranges represented are pretty broad and somewhat guesses, so let us know if the AI hacking response just roflstomped the galaxy at "Low", etc.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Previously the bonus-type selection buttons on the ARS tab of the tech menu for ship-design-hacked planets would still show the "KNWL" indicator over the top of buttons for which you didn't have enough knowledge to do the unlock if you were unlocking mkII of that type normally. Except you aren't spending knowledge by clicking them, so it shouldn't show the KNWL thing, and now it no longer does.<br />
** Thanks to HTL2001 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Now picking a bonus type from the ARS tab of the tech menu after a ship-design-hack is a per-player decision in multiplayer (and in singleplayer, but the difference isn't noticeable unless other players join).<br />
** If you think you might have players joining later, don't forget which planets had the ARS unlocks :)<br />
** Note that normal (no hacking) capture of an ARS still gives the same bonus type to all players, which gives ship-design hacking an additional advantage in multiplayer (though remember there's still only 3 types to pick from per ARS, so it's not all that much of an advantage).<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Dyson Antagonizer/Converter alert messages now contain the planet name if you've scouted the planet since that unit came into existence, not just when you've actively got a scout on the planet.<br />
** Thanks to Shrugging Khan for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where helper players were getting the overflow from other players resources income-past-cap.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Mercatio for the report.<br />
<br />
* Reference tab of stats window:<br />
** The label on the "Display Comparisons For Ship" dropdown has been changed to "Target Ship".<br />
** The labels on the columns have been changed from "Them > Me" to "Opponent Attacking" (note: the header of the first column on the table is "Opponent") and from "Me > Them" to "Target Attacking". Also, "Result?" has been changed to "Opponent Wins?" and the Win/Loss text switched.<br />
** The Opponent-Attacking columns have been swapped with the Target-Attacking columns so that the Opponent-Attacking ones are first.<br />
** The overall idea behind the above changes is that the reference comparison is most often used to see "what do I have that can efficiently kill a bunch of the target type?", and not often used to see "what can the target type kill efficiently?".<br />
** Thanks to Ragnorak for reminding us about this.<br />
<br />
* The mouse wheel will no longer do affect zooming of the main game window while the stats window is visible (previously it was a real pain when trying to mousewheel-scroll through the various tables and dropdowns, etc).<br />
** Thanks to many players for repeatedly reminding us about this.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the reference export where flak guardians were showing as firing only one shot per salvo.<br />
** Thanks to Dazio for the report.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft-Medium and Broken-Golems-Medium no longer have a score penalty.<br />
** Thanks to many players over the months pointing out that medium's counterbalance is at least as effective as hard's.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the hacking data (how much you'd done, and thus how annoyed the AI was) was not getting reset between games (the logic was there, but the wrong function was getting called).<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report leading to the discovery of this.<br />
<br />
* Added a sanity check preventing QueueAnotherSpawnAfterThisOne wild-rolls from causing an theoretically infinite loop on spawns with a very high number of rolls. This probably wasn't happening, but it was probably happening enough to bog things down if you hacked all 5 Advanced Research Stations or whatever.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for reporting a hang during hacking, which was probably due to this (and the multiplicative spawn strength stuff).<br />
<br />
* Knowledge-Hacking / Ship-Design-Hacking responses now honor the last "mutate" roll instead of the first, and can now roll to switch back to a normal-ship spawn. Previously as roll count got high basically all the spawns would be mutated (raid or zombie guardian, currently) and this wasn't as fun as genuine variety.<br />
** Thanks to _K_ for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.029 ==<br />
(Released March 5th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a critical data-loss bug in 5.028 where mkII/mkIII unlocks of bonus ship types would be lost upon loading the game (i.e. don't save in 5.028!)<br />
** Many thanks to Physical Original for the report and save.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.028 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/03/ai-war-beta-5028-hacker-revolution.html Hacker Revolution] ==<br />
(Released March 5th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Added new toggle to CTRLS window: Brave Scout Starships.<br />
** If this toggle is checked, your Scout Starships will suppress their normal self-preservation instincts. Specifically:<br />
*** They will not evade (run to a far-off spot) upon exiting a wormhole under any circumstances.<br />
*** They will not avoid being included in a selection with military ships.<br />
** This will tend to reduce the effectiveness of their automatic behavior for the purpose of scouting, but may make them much more useful for providing tachyon and counter-sniper coverage for a fleet.<br />
** Note: this applies to the scout starships of the player who's brave-scout-starships toggle is checked, regardless of who is trying to control them in a multiplayer game with Allow Team Control on. Allied Scout Starships will still be wimps unless their owners check this toggle too.<br />
** Thanks to many players for requesting a way of making their scout starships not imitate Sir Robin.<br />
<br />
* Scout Starship:<br />
** Base Health from 120k/480k/960k/1.2M => 300k*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1500 flat => 1500*mk.<br />
** Tachyon Range from 750/950/1150/1550 => 2000*mk.<br />
** Ship Cap from 5/4/3/2 => 5/5/5/2.<br />
** Energy Use from 2000/4000/6000/6000 => 2000/2000/2000/5000.<br />
** Base Move Speed from 224/464/704/704 => 240/480/720/720.<br />
** 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.<br />
** The MkIV Scout Starship:<br />
*** Now provides counter-missile coverage.<br />
*** 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).<br />
** Thanks to many players for feedback leading to these changes.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to ArcDM for the report and Solarity for a more recent report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some longstanding (since introduction of group move trying to handle immune-to-speed-boosting units) bugs with group move:<br />
** 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.<br />
*** This bug has been captured, stuffed, and placed in the museum. It couldn't get away fast enough.<br />
** Thanks to HellishFiend and Spikey00 (among others) for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s for the (initial) report and save.<br />
<br />
* Knowledge Raiding:<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Now each spawn makes a number of "wild rolls" which apply various effects to what happens.<br />
**** 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.<br />
**** At first there is only 1 roll per spawn, but this goes up by 1 for every 1500 knowledge raided.<br />
** 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.<br />
** For the detailed discussion see http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9906.0.html , but in brief the rationale is:<br />
*** K-raiding's main purpose is to let players dig themselves out of a hole by gaining power without increasing AIP.<br />
*** 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.<br />
**** 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).<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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 :)<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater, Wanderer , techsy730, chemical_art, and others for feedback on how k-raiding was (still) exploitable and boring, and on proposals to improve it.<br />
<br />
* Science Lab III:<br />
** Has been renamed to "Knowledge Hacker"<br />
** Is now mobile, cloaked, and significantly more durable.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Superterminal Hacking:<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
*** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
*** 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 :)<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer and others for various feedback over the past year showing how much people could run away with the game using the superterminal, generally stopping due to boredom rather than threat. Now you'll die of something else before you die of boredom :)<br />
<br />
* Advanced Research Station Hacking:<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** In summary: if you don't "use" your opportunity to hack for k-raiding, or for the super-terminal, you can use it here to get more flexibility in your fleet composition. You can also do all three activities, but remember that they each make the others more dangerous.<br />
<br />
* Amended Bomber Starship description to note that it is unable to hit small targets.<br />
** Thanks to rabican for reminding us that it wasn't admitting to this particular limitation.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where aoe shots would do fail to hit a forcefield they detonated against unless the actual forcefield-generating unit was in range of the explosion. Now the collision check is done against the forcefield's current radius rather than its center point.<br />
** Specifically, this deals with plasma siege starships firing upon but being unable to damage an AI forcefield (when it was high enough health, at least).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and rabican for reporting and providing saves.<br />
<br />
* Dyson Antagonizer (hybrid plot) :<br />
** Now tries to be built somewhat closer to the AI's border.<br />
** Health from 80M => 40M.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to various players for feedback on this.<br />
<br />
* The "Detected AI Progress Reducers" galaxy map display used to just show "DC " followed by the total number of reducers on the planet (for planets with any). Now it shows "DC", "CP", "ST", or "CL" (Data Center, Co-processor, SuperTerminal, Civlian Leader) and if there are multiple on a planet it shows them with spaces inbetween (so potentially something like "ST DC DC").<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for pointing out that the previous display left something to be desired.<br />
<br />
* Impulse Reaction Emitter, in recognition of winning the 3rd "worst ship" award:<br />
** Effective Range from 4200 => 6000.<br />
** Base Move Speed from 20 => 30. This makes it slightly faster than a fighter.<br />
** Base Metal+Crystal cost from 300+300 => 250+250. That's mkI; other marks use normal progression.<br />
** Minimum multiplier from 5 => 8.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to the poll voters for bestowing this dubious honor, and for more specific feedback on what the unit actually was lacking.<br />
<br />
* Space Plane, in recognition of doing really well in the 3rd "worst ship" poll:<br />
** Vs-Hull multipliers from 2.4 => 3.2.<br />
*** For reference, that's against Light (Fighter), Polycrystal (Bomber), Heavy (... a lot of things), and UltraHeavy.<br />
*** Eyebots have 3.2, and a somewhat lower base-dps, but can shoot through forcefields.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 3 => 9.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 600*mk => 1800*mk. <br />
*** 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.<br />
** Base Energy Use from 100 => 50, because with the 1.75x ship cap the default energy use (100) was kind of excessive.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to the poll voters for their feedback on this unit.<br />
<br />
* Vampire Claw, also in recognition of runner-up-for-worst-ship:<br />
** Base Health from 5000*mk => 10000*mk. <br />
*** 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.<br />
** Now have cloaking. Be afraid. Bring tachyons. And garlic.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Base Energy Use from 200 => 160.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 650 => 850.<br />
** Added Artillery to the hull types this has a bonus against (om nom missile frigate tasty).<br />
** Now has a 0.3x multiplier against the command-grade hull type.<br />
** Thanks to the poll voters for their feedback on this unit.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Tiger:<br />
** Base Metal+Crystal from 40+40 => 25+25, same as commandos and weasels.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Vulture:<br />
** Base Metal+Crystal from 40+40 => 25+25, same as commandos and weasels (and tigers, now).<br />
<br />
* Spire Gravity Drain:<br />
** 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.<br />
** These need more rebalancing attention, but ran out of time for that in this release.<br />
<br />
* Spire Gravity Ripper:<br />
** Base Metal+Crystal from 1800+1200 => 1000+500. Was similar to the grav drain's situation.<br />
** These need more rebalancing attention, but ran out of time for that in this release.<br />
<br />
* Spire Armor Rotter:<br />
** Base Metal+Crystal from 800+1900 => 450+900. Was 3rd most expensive.<br />
** These need more rebalancing attention, but ran out of time for that in this release.<br />
<br />
* Space Tank:<br />
** Base Metal+Crystal from 1100+0 => 600+100. Was 5th most expensive, and more expensive than bombers, now slightly less expensive than bombers.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 2600*mk => 2300*mk.<br />
** Vs-Hull-Type multipliers from 3.2 => 6. <br />
*** 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.<br />
** Effective range from 4800+200*mk => 6300+200*mk. Since they're so slow.<br />
<br />
* Grenade Launcher:<br />
** Base Energy Use from 400 => 150. It had twice the cap-energy-use of the next highest fleet ship type.<br />
<br />
* Sentinel Frigate:<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Made end-of-Fallen-Spire spawns yet more enthusiastic, due to the opposition they sometimes face on 10/10. That AI sure is stubborn...<br />
<br />
* On planet view, the game now draws two circles representing the key zones of the planet's "gravity well". These will generally only be seen when zoomed very far out. The inner circle (60000 range from planet center) represents the bounds of the area within which stationary structures may be built and transports may unload. The outer circle (80000 range from planet center) represents the boundary beyond which ship engines are unable to maintain a useful velocity.<br />
** The underlying rules have been there for over a year, but seeing the ranges involved the minimap.<br />
** To go with this, added new toggle: Disable Planet Area Display, which disables this new drawing behavior. If there's a bunch of complaints this toggle may be changed to default to "on", but we'll see :)<br />
** Thanks to clone for reminding us how little clue the game gave (particularly to new players) about the existence and importance of these two ranges.<br />
<br />
* Now for wave alerts that list the actual ship type being sent at you: moving your mouse cursor over a wave alert will bring up that ship's data, similar to mousing-over a ship of that type.<br />
** Thanks to clone for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Science Labs I/II/III, the Survey Ship, and the new Ship Design Hacker are now all immune to the maw's swallow effect. This has nothing to do with a recent test going unexpectedly and terribly awry, of course.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.027 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/02/ai-war-beta-5027-superterminal-overload.html SuperTerminal Overload] ==<br />
(Released February 23rd, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the stages of the hybrid-dyson plot that were supposed to only happen when Advanced Hybrids were on were happening when only Normal Hybrids were on.<br />
** Note: the antagonizer is part of what should happen with normal hybrids, but we're working towards more flexibility there too.<br />
** Thanks to orzelek for the report.<br />
<br />
* AI Super-Terminals:<br />
** 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.<br />
*** Thanks to Atomjack for pointing out that it was too easy to keep turning the terminal on and off previously.<br />
** Now each super-terminal "pulse" has a 10% chance to be a "surge":<br />
*** It puts a message in the chat log letting you know there was a surge.<br />
*** 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).<br />
*** It sets the time until the next pulse to 1 second instead of the usual 15. "Chain surges" are therefore possible, albeit fairly unlikely.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for reporting a game where the dyson sphere was bordering 3 core worlds. Ouch.<br />
<br />
* Riot Tazer:<br />
** Paralysis Time from 1 => 3 (internally 2 => 4, but the first second generally gets eaten due to processing order).<br />
** Reload Time from 2 => 8.<br />
** Per-planet stagger from 2 seconds => 6 seconds.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for reporting the transient stunlocks.<br />
<br />
* Anti-Starship Arachnid V:<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for reporting that he shot his monitor after finding 2 Anti-Starship V fabricators. At least, that's what's on the police report.<br />
<br />
* Spider Bots:<br />
** Engine Damage per shot from 15 => 60.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* Beam Starship:<br />
** Rebalancing as a MkV starship, since the fleet ship fabricators produce MkV stuff.<br />
** Base Move Speed from 14 => 22.<br />
** Base Health from 4.5M => 22.5M. Now on par with the Core Starship for cap-health.<br />
** Max targets hit per shot from infinite => 9. Same as Zenith Beam Frigate.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 5 => 2. Not the same as Zenith Beam Frigate.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to zharmad for the reminder that these have needed a rebalance since before 4.0.<br />
<br />
* Warbird Starship:<br />
** Rebalancing as a MkV starship, since the fleet ship fabricators produce MkV stuff.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** From no vs-hull-type multipliers => 4 vs polycrystal, heavy, ultra-heavy, and structural.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 5 => 2.<br />
** Shots-per-salvo from 40 => 16.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for the reminder that these needed a rebalancing.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to soMe_RandoM and (more recently) zharmad for bringing to our attention how sub-optimal the targeting used to be.<br />
<br />
* Reference tab balance export:<br />
** Removed a lot of no-longer-relevant columns.<br />
** Added columns for base shot strength, targets hit per shot, shots per salvo, seconds per salvo, minimum and maximum special multipliers (for vulture/IRE/polarizer), short name, wave name, etc.<br />
** Improved computation of non-bonus and bonus dps to be right in more cases (still off for autobombs/minirams/nanoswarms, etc).<br />
** Thanks to Dazio for suggestions on what would be helpful for working on the new wiki pages for each ship (and thanks to him and others for that work, of course!)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the minimum special multiplier wasn't working for Zenith Polarizers against targets that literally had zero armor, so their dps was 1/4 the intended value in those cases. Fixed a related bug for Impulse Reaction Emitters, but that probably wasn't affecting any significant cases.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Acid Sprayers:<br />
** Base Attack from 450 => 600. This puts the non-bonus cap-dps pretty exactly at the fighter's.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Vs Hull Type Multipliers from 6 => 8. The fighter's vs-polycrystal bonus is 5, for reference.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to the many players weighing in the poll naming the Acid Sprayer as the second winner of the "worst ship" award. In honor of these changes, the award has been optimistically confiscated.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.026 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/02/ai-war-beta-5026-pay-attention-exos.html Pay Attention, Exos!] ==<br />
(Released February 15th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version where broken-golems-hard and spirecraft-hard exos could sometimes pick any human-controlled unit as their main target.<br />
** Thanks to dotjd for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Vorticular Cutlass:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Base Speed from 16 => 54. So from slower than a fighter to slightly faster than an etherjet.<br />
** Base Metal/Crystal cost from 200/50 => 30/30. Now the same price as infiltrators, a bit lower than tele-raiders, etc.<br />
** Base Energy use from 100 => 20.<br />
** Thanks to many players for ongoing feedback about these being, possibly, [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9820.0.html the least useful fleet ship in the game] since its last major changes.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to techsy730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Nanoswarm:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Engine damage from 2*mk => 10*mk.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.025 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/02/ai-war-beta-5025-balance-beam-released.html Balance Beam] ==<br />
(Released February 13th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Notably, this restores the Plasma Siege Starship's ability to target Raid Starships, which was unintentionally lost in the previous version.<br />
** Thanks to techsy730 for pointing out the error, and several players for the suggested mechanic change.<br />
<br />
* Added new toggle to CTRLS window: "Make Multi-Planet FRD Patrol" (defaults to on).<br />
** If this toggle is checked, your FRD units will pursue and engage enemy units on the same planet even if currently under orders to proceed to a different planet.<br />
** Otherwise, your FRD units will prioritize a "move to different planet order" and will not break off to pursue enemy units.<br />
** Note: This used to be the default behavior but was changed during the last year. Several requests to return to the previous behavior have led to this change, but the suppress-patrol behavior is available by unchecking this toggle, for those who want it (or to use it for a certain period of time). More granular control could be added, but we didn't want to overbuild this.<br />
** Thanks to many players for reminding us that they really like it when FRD means "Patrol".<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many, many players asking for this over the years.<br />
<br />
* Added new unit cap scale option: Ultra Low<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for submitting a save that showed a Low-caps battle making a modern CPU cry.<br />
<br />
* Flak Turrets:<br />
** Effective range from 4000/5000/6000 => 4500/5500/6500 to make them a little easier to place around a wormhole.<br />
** Now when under a firepower-reducing forcefield they retain 75% of their attack power instead of the customary 25%.<br />
** Hopefully they'll now be closer to the general usefulness of other turrets in that they don't have to die immediately (if protected).<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art, techsy730, Wanderer and other players for weighing in on the flak's recent usefulness and making suggestions.<br />
<br />
* Lightning Turrets:<br />
** Now when under a firepower-reducing forcefield they retain 75% of their attack power instead of the customary 25%.<br />
<br />
* 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) :<br />
** All marks:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** For reference, these aren't really "aoe", they're "blast-through"; a beam loses strength as it does damage.<br />
** MkI<br />
*** For reference, MkI unit cap is 12 for these, and each fires 3 beams every 7 seconds. <br />
*** Base Health from 250k => 850k. This brings cap-health a bit higher than missile turrets, which are the squishy end of turret types.<br />
*** Base Energy Use from 750 => 1650. This brings cap-energy to just slightly above MLRS and several other turret types.<br />
*** Base Metal/Crystal Cost from 8000/14000 => 6500/11000. This brings cap-mc to slightly below most turret types.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Knowledge cost from 2000 => 500. The other mkI turrets are free.<br />
** MkII<br />
*** For reference, MkII unit cap is 8 for these, and each fires 6 beams every 6 seconds.<br />
*** Base Health from 1.25M => 2.55M. Basically: mkI health * (2 for being mkII) * (1.5 for smaller unit cap)<br />
*** Base Energy Use from 1300 => 2500. (roughly mkI * 1.5 for cap)<br />
*** Base Metal/Crystal Cost from 16000/28000 => 13000/22000. (mkI * 2, customary for mkII)<br />
*** Base Attack Power from 50000 => 180000. Basically: mkI damage * (0.429 for rate-of-fire-difference) * (2 for mkII) * (1.5 for unit cap)<br />
*** Knowledge cost from 3000 => 2500. Most other mkII turrets are 2000-3000.<br />
** MkIII<br />
*** For reference, MkIII unit cap is 4 for these, and each fires 12 beams every 5 seconds.<br />
*** Base Health from 2.25M => 7.65M. Basically: mkI health * (3 for mark) * (3 for unit cap)<br />
*** Base Energy Use from 2000 => 5000. (roughly mkI * 3 for cap)<br />
*** Base Metal/Crystal Cost from 32000/56000 => 26000/44000. (mkI * 4, customary for mkIII)<br />
*** Base Attack Power from 50000 => 225000. Basically: mkI damage * (0.179 for rof diff) * (3 for mark) * (3 for cap)<br />
*** Knowledge cost from 3500 => 3000. That's pretty normal for a mkIII turret.<br />
** MkIV<br />
*** For reference, MkIV unit cap is _1_ for these, and it fires 40 beams every 4 seconds.<br />
*** Base Health from 3.25M => 40M. Basically: mkI health * (4 for mark) * (12 for unit cap)<br />
*** Base Energy Use from 2000 => 20000. (roughly mkI * 12 for cap)<br />
*** Base Metal/Crystal Cost from 64000/112000 => 52000/88000. (mkI * 8, customary for mkIV)<br />
*** Base Attack Power from 50000 => 290000. Basically: mkI damage * (0.043 for rof diff) * (4 for mark) * (12 for cap)<br />
*** Knowledge cost staying at 3000. Thought about 3500, but it really is just one unit.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater and others for feedback that inspired these changes.<br />
<br />
* All modules (except those that generate forcefields) are now invincible and thus untargetable, etc.<br />
** This really helps prevent a lot of fiddliness when losing modules on a Riot (or whatever), especially when you've got a build queue competing with the ship's auto-replacement logic, etc.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where modules would not always decloak their parent ship when firing.<br />
** Thanks to several players for reporting that the previous fix for this wasn't working.<br />
<br />
* Now when a modular ship is in low-power-mode, all its modules act as if in low-power-mode.<br />
** Note that if a module was already in low power mode and the parent is made low-power and then taken out of low-power, that module will stay in low-power. The other modules that were not in low-power before will come out of it when the parent does.<br />
<br />
* Riot Starships:<br />
** Ship Cap from 4/3/2 => 4 flat. Most of the special starship types have non-decreasing caps already.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Base Speed from 20/17/14 => flat 20.<br />
** Base Energy Cost from 3000/4000/5000 => flat 3000.<br />
** Base mkI Metal+Crystal Cost from 20k+60k => 30k+50k (mkII is 2x, mkIII is 4x).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Base Engine Damage from 40/55/70 => 40*mk.<br />
** Multiplier vs Medium from 2 => 4. Its other 4 bonuses were already 4.<br />
** All Modules:<br />
*** No longer have an energy cost. 12k cap-e for the hulls is enough.<br />
** Machine Gun Modules:<br />
*** Engine Damage Percent Floor from 50%/30% => 40%/20%.<br />
** Laser Modules:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 5 => 4.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Neutron from 3 => 4.<br />
** Shotgun Modules:<br />
*** Base Attack Power from 40 => 400.<br />
*** Engine Damage from 28 => 36. Makes these 2x as efficient as MGs for total EDPS.<br />
*** Shots per salvo from 25/49 => 25*mk.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 6 => 4.<br />
*** Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 5 => 4.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Refractive from 5 => 4.<br />
** Tazer Module: <br />
*** Multiplier vs Medium from 3 => 4.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Artillery from 3 => 4.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Thanks to Wanderer for being the one to confirm the long-held suspicion that these were horribly exploitable.<br />
** Tractor Modules:<br />
*** Tractor Range from 1700*mk => flat 4400. Same as mkIII tractor turrets.<br />
*** Tractor Count from 10/40 => 72*mk. Same as mkII/mkIII tractor turrets (but mobile and not needing supply).<br />
**** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** This was another long-overdue rebalancing, hence the magnitude of changes.<br />
<br />
* Orbital Mass Drivers:<br />
** Now when under a firepower-reducing forcefield they retain 75% of their attack power instead of the customary 25%.<br />
** Thanks to techsy730 for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Leech Starship:<br />
** Base Energy Use from 10k/14k/18k => flat 5k. So cap-e is same now as Raids (the next highest for combat starships)<br />
** All vs-hull-type bonuses removed, to allow for a bit more of an overall damage buff and thus more general reclamation utility.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players for feedback that this was an underwhelming unit.<br />
<br />
* Light Starship/Flagship/Zenith Starship/Spire Starship/Core Starship<br />
** Ship Cap from 5/3/2/2/2 => 4 flat.<br />
** Base Speed from 15/18/18/24/22 => 22 flat.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1000/2500/2500/2500/2500 => 1000*mk.<br />
** Base Energy Use from 2k/10k/20k/20k/20k => 4k flat.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 1500/4800/3000/10000/500 => 3000+(200*mk).<br />
** 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).<br />
** Shots-per-salvo from 5/9/14/4/5 => 5 flat.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 4/4/2/2/5 => 4 flat.<br />
** Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 12/12/1/1/1 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Medium from 8/8/1/6/1 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Light from 6/6/1/1/1 => 1/1/4/1/4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Polycrystal from 1/1/0.01/4/1 => 4/1/1/4/4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Artillery from 1 => 1/4/1/1/4.<br />
** Multiplier vs UltraLight from 1/1/1/4/1 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 1/1/1/1/0.1 => 1.<br />
*** 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!).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Munitions boost range from 3k/6k/5k/8k = 2k+(1k*mk).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Golems-Hard and Spirecraft-Hard exos are now a bit more wily about what their primary objectives. FS exos may follow suit later.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.024 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/02/ai-war-beta-5024-carrier-rules-of.html Carrier Rules Of Engagement] ==<br />
(Released February 6th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed an... interesting omission in the previous version: Plasma Siege Starship base range was supposed to have gone from 16k to 4k, but did not. On further thought, the change was made to 6500/7000/7500 instead (same as mkI/II/III missile frigate).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and Wanderer for the report.<br />
<br />
* Spider turrets:<br />
** Base Metal Cost from 6000 => 1200.<br />
** Base Crystal Cost 15000 => 2400.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to c4sc4 for pointing out that the costs hadn't changed.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version where Ally counts on the galaxy map display were higher than they should have been (specifically, it was taking the total number of friendly ships and adding the number of "my ships" instead of subtracting it).<br />
** Thanks to dorenthas for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a display bug where a constructor that had to stop building would sometimes still show in some places as continuing to spend resources. They were not actually continuing to spend resources while unable to build, but it looked like it.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where a constructor that had to stop a build in mid-construction due to the ship cap for that type becoming full (another constructor "won the race", so to speak) would usually fail to refund the resources it had already spent on the ship being built.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg for the report that led to this being found.<br />
<br />
* Stats Window -> Resource Flows Tab, detail (i.e. non-summary) mode:<br />
** The unit type name for each entry is now a button.<br />
*** Left clicks center your view on the unit (and switch to its planet, if different from your current view).<br />
*** Right clicks try to toggle whether the unit is in low power mode (note that a unit in low power mode will typically not be shown in detail mode because it only shows stuff with a non-zero metal or crystal impact).<br />
*** Fixed a bug where the "Reason" column always said "Normal Operation", even if it was supposed to say Assisting, Repairing, Self-Building, Build Queue, or Low Power Operation.<br />
<br />
* After a few months of etiquette classes, player-ally zombie ships have learned to die silently. (Note: minor faction player-ally ships already knew this)<br />
** Thanks to Red Spot for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* AI Carriers:<br />
** Are no longer invincible if there's >= 2000 AI ships already on the planet.<br />
*** Previously this was necessary to avoid too many AI ships on a planet at once for decent cpu/ram performance. <br />
** Now, when a carrier deploys (it deploys when destroyed):<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
**** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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 :)<br />
** Note: none of this impacts Barracks; they're still invincible in such cases, but we haven't heard many reports of players being frustrated by barracks invincibility.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Added new toggle to controls (CTRLS) window: Auto-target Carriers.<br />
** If this toggle is checked, your units will consider AI Carriers normally when picking targets automatically. Otherwise, they will not automatically fire upon an AI Carrier (it may still fire upon a carrier that it has already put on its target list, but that will last no longer than the current engagement).<br />
** Regardless of this toggle, you may still directly order your ships to fire upon an AI Carrier.<br />
** This toggle is useful because killing a Carrier can be dangerous (due to what comes out), but sometimes it's more important to make sure your defenses don't ignore them.<br />
** This defaults to off. If you want your units to auto-target carriers, you will need to turn it on.<br />
** Note: implementing this involved a fundamental change to the logic that controls "can this unit be targeted at all?" and "can this unit be automatically targeted?". Specifically, that was always previously decided solely based on the potential target's type, and now it has to consider the player that owns the unit trying to do the targeting. While these changes were tested and very carefully checked it's certainly possible that a bug slipped through and will cause all manner of strange and wonderful consequences. Mantis and enjoy.<br />
<br />
* Plasma Siege Starship<br />
** Shot now has a traditional (lightning-type) aoe that does 6.25% of normal damage to up to 14 extra nearby targets.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players for the feedback leading to these changes.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version where the siege splash damage from the Plasma Siege Starship could hit targets normally untargetable or direct-target-only.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for the report and to the brave (if unwitting) Advanced Research Station that died discovering this bug.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Shield Bearers:<br />
** Ship cap doubled.<br />
** Amounts produced:<br />
*** Reptite: from 0 => 1 mkI (so can now be built from Reptite)<br />
*** Pysite: from 1 => 2 mkI<br />
*** Xampite: from 1 => 2 mkII<br />
*** Ebonite: from 1 => 2 mkIII<br />
*** Adamantite: from 1 => 2 mkIV<br />
*** Titanite: from 1 => 2 mkV<br />
** Hopefully this will bring their costs more into line with their actual utility (as non-repairable shields).<br />
** Thanks to techsy730 and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where ships with no attack power would still display hull attack multipliers if they were internally defined (such as with ships that used to have an attack, like Spirecraft Shield Bearers).<br />
** Thanks to techsy730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Lightning Turrets <br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* 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. <br />
** 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.<br />
** It also looked really cool in testing.<br />
<br />
* Player-Ally Dyson Gatlings are no longer unable to shoot mkV units.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players over time reminding us (sometimes unintentionally) how much they wanted their ally gatlings to shoot mkV things.<br />
<br />
* Hybrids:<br />
** If either player has Advanced Hybrids enabled, hybrid maturity-xp contributions to the central dirty-tricks "bank" are now doubled compared to Normal Hybrids.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks for Wanderer for the testing and feedback leading to these changes.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.023 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/01/ai-war-beta-5023-plasma-siege-starships.html Plasma Siege Starships] ==<br />
(Released January 30th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version where all tractor beams (instead of just the black widow golem tractor beams) were doing the paralysis effect.<br />
** Thanks to Fleet for the report.<br />
<br />
* Zombie and minor faction ships no longer count as part of the "My" counts on the galaxy map. Those that used to count as part of that total now count as part of the "Allied" total.<br />
** Thanks to BobTheJanitor for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions where the context menus never had scroll-bars and thus the galaxy-map-display select couldn't be used to select some of the further-down items.<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar for the report.<br />
<br />
* Removed the "press slash while mousing over an option for more info" text from the bottom of the context menu since there wasn't actually such info to be had on a lot of items in various modes of the context menu.<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar for the report.<br />
<br />
* Artillery Golem:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 0 => 4000.<br />
** Base Recharge Time from 30 => 8.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Orelius and others for feedback on golems.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version where the Black Widow paralyzing tractors would only apply a maximum of 2 seconds of paralysis, with quick gaps in the middle every 2 seconds. Now it correctly applies 2 seconds of paralysis damage per 1 second of tractoring.<br />
<br />
* Regenerator Golem:<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Cursed Golem:<br />
** Self-attrition reduced by 50% (now would go from 100% to 0% in 60 minutes instead of 40).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the new munitions boost listing where it was displaying +70% as -31% or suchlike. Also fixed a rounding bug (+19% instead of the actual +20%, etc) in both that listing and the maximum-personal-boost listing.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where units with no attack were showing the new maximum-personal-boost listing.<br />
** Thanks to Nice Save for the report.<br />
<br />
* Turret base energy costs:<br />
** Basic Turret from 150 => 100.<br />
** MLRS Turret from 150 => 100.<br />
** Flak Turret from 300 => 200.<br />
** Missile Turret from 150 => 100.<br />
** Counter-Dark-Matter Turret from 4000 => 1000.<br />
** Counter-Missile-Turret from 4000 => 1000.<br />
** Counter-Sniper-Turret from 4000 => 1000.<br />
** Sniper & Spider Turrets from 250 => 150.<br />
** Grav Turret from 500/8000/10000 => 400*mk.<br />
** Tractor Turret left alone (150/240/300).<br />
** Laser Turret (150) and Heavy Beam Cannon (750/1300/2000/20000) left alone. They're energy weapons.<br />
** Lightning Turret from 500/1000/2000 => 400 flat. Energy weapon, yes, but that was a bit high.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg, Hearteater, and others for feedback leading to this.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine and others for reporting this.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for the report.<br />
<br />
* The Shards recovered in the Fallen-Spire events are no longer cloakable. Previously they could be cloaked via a cloaking starship; this was not deliberate on our part and made those recoveries way easier than they really should be.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for reminding us about this.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Beam Frigate Base Range from 7500+100*mk => 6500+100*mk.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for the feedback inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Previously in step 8 any difficulty greater than 7 received a 2.5 multiplier (7 got 2.25, and lower the lower you went).<br />
** Now:<br />
*** 7.3 through 9 still get 2.5.<br />
*** 9.3 gets 2.75 (10% harder than before).<br />
*** 9.6 gets 3.00 (20% harder than before).<br />
*** 9.8 gets 3.80 (52% harder than before).<br />
*** 10 gets 4.5 (would be 80% harder than before, but see next change).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater and others for the feedback inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** Base Metal Cost from 1500 => 300.<br />
** Base Crystal Cost from 7500 => 1500.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer and others for reminding us of how skewed this was.<br />
<br />
* Antimatter Starship:<br />
** Yes, this one is getting _another_ revamp. Some background:<br />
*** First, they were called dreadnoughts. They did tons of engine damage. Too much. Nerfed.<br />
*** Then, they were called useless. For a long time.<br />
*** 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").<br />
*** But this broke a lot balance because you could just camp around your siege starships from across the planet and bomb everything to bits.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** And now, the next episode...<br />
** Base range from 16000 => 4000.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** Note: even stuff the starship itself cannot aim at (small units and cloaked units, etc) can be hit by the splash damage.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Has been renamed to the Plasma Siege Starship.<br />
** The end result:<br />
*** Still longer-ranged than the bomber starship, but much shorter than before, so not worrying that it will break balance in that way.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players for continuing to remind us that they want this starship to be cool.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/01/ai-war-beta-5022-minor-tweaks-and-fixes.html5.022 Minor Tweaks And Fixes] ==<br />
(Released January 27th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous prerelease that broke all the tutorials.<br />
** Thanks to Lorini for the report.<br />
<br />
* Black Widow Golem:<br />
** Number of tractors from 100 => 200.<br />
*** 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 :)<br />
** This golem's tractors now do 2 seconds of paralysis damage per second to each held ship. Ships immune to paralysis are not affected.<br />
** Base Health from 80M => 200M.<br />
** Basically just trying to make this golem a lot more useful and a lot less likely to die when not baby-sat.<br />
** Thanks to Orelius and others for some recent feedback on this golem.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for feedback that inspired this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.021 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/01/ai-war-beta-5021-hybrid-helper-pie.html Hybrid Helper Pie] ==<br />
(Released January 24th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Added some lightweight extra debug info to GameButton.RenderSelf to help us find the bug that's causing really intermittent null exceptions in there somewhere (we can't reproduce it ourselves, and user reports don't have code line numbers, but this new info should help).<br />
<br />
* Added a note to the context menu about how to get info on what a menu item does.<br />
<br />
* Sentinel Frigates and Zenith Electric Bombers are now considered large enough targets for ships like the Antimatter Starship.<br />
** Thanks to techsy730 for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Now, when a Hybrid is at maximum maturity, additional "experience points" go towards a fund for ruining the player's day. Their first funding goal seems to involve the Dyson Sphere.<br />
** To clarify: this doesn't mean that they're building or spawning dyson spheres or whatever. Something more sinister.<br />
<br />
* All Hunter-Killers have been shifted up one "tier" in terms of the "cost" the AI has to pay to include them in an exogalactic strikeforce. This should help avoid them happening unintentedly-early in MP games, etc.<br />
** Thanks to several players for sharing their, um, "experiences" with early/mid-game HKs.<br />
<br />
* Decoy Drone energy cost from 18000 => 1000, to let the unit's use not be obscured by the power cost.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for reminding us of how high it was.<br />
<br />
* Wave size calculation: the minimum base wave size is now 34, regardless of difficulty.<br />
** The minimum base size of a wave used to be (AI Player Difficulty * 10 * AI Player Handicap). Assuming no positive or negative handicap this generally meant that the first few points of AIP would not increase wave size and the initial wave size was prevented from being embarrassingly tiny.<br />
*** This has served us well but caused the first wave on very high difficulties to be disproportionately difficult such that it's a punishing puzzle to survive the first 7 minutes and after that holding on is significantly easier (though still very tough) because then the player has had more time to actually build initial defenses and so on. It's better for the first wave to not be way more difficult than the second wave on non-trivial difficulties, so the minimum is now just 34. This actually makes difficulties 1-3 harder, but those are so incredibly easy to start with that it's not likely to make much difference.<br />
** Now AIP increases will actually have an impact on wave size much earlier on difficulties 4+.<br />
** AI handicap is still factored in (so with 300% it will have a minimum size of 102).<br />
** The [[AI War:Why Do Enemy Waves Get So Large%3F#How_Wave_Sizes_Are_Calculated|wave size calculation article]] has been updated to reflect this change, and is a good reference if you want more info.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to a number of players for observing that the alternate victory was not always resolving in a timely fashion.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Added new "Switch To UI" buttons to the Stats window (Scores tab) that allows you to switch your UI to display what another player is seeing.<br />
** This only works if the target player has the "Allow Team Control Of Ships" control enabled.<br />
** This is different from the already existing team-control in that:<br />
*** Your resource bar will show the resources for target player, rather than your own.<br />
*** Your planetary summary and so forth will display ships as if the target players ships were "yours"; any ships of your own will show like "ally" ships.<br />
*** The control group keybinds will respond according to the control groups set for the target player, not your own.<br />
*** The CTRLS screen will show (and allow manipulation of) the target player's control options. Yes, that's a lot of power, and some additional "permissions" may prove necessary. But in general: please cooperate :) If it's a problem, just don't use allow-team-control.<br />
**** To clarify: this is options like focus-fire, auto-frd, etc. None of this has anything to do with what keys/buttons are mapped to what commands, that's all local to each machine and doesn't change regardless of whose interface you're looking at.<br />
*** In general, the game's UI should work just like the target player's UI.<br />
** All that said, this would be somewhat limited in usefulness, were it not for the next feature in these notes.<br />
** This is in need of a lot of testing to make sure it works right, so don't be surprised by bugs, just report them :)<br />
<br />
* Added new human player role: "Helper" (probably not the best description, but it's more than "Observer", which is the usual term for a non-playing "player").<br />
** Currently the only way for a player to get into this role is:<br />
*** Host opens "Manage Players" menu.<br />
*** Host sets a previously unused player slot to:<br />
**** Name = profile name of the player who wants to join as an observer/helper<br />
**** Change "Disabled" to "Active" <br />
**** Change "Role: None" to "Role: Helper" <br />
*** Host clicks "Save"<br />
*** The player who wants to join as an observer/helper connects and joins the game.<br />
** A player in the "Helper" role has no (and cannot be given) units, metal, crystal, energy, or knowledge. More generally, they have nothing in the game.<br />
** However (and the resource bar tells them this, in lieu of an m/c/e/k display) they can use the new "Switch To UI" buttons on the Stats screen to "switch" to another player who has the "Allow Team Control Of Ships" control enabled, and then can play normally as if they were connected as that player.<br />
** Also, they can simply observe the game as they have the same vision as the other human players.<br />
** These "Helper" players do not provoke extra waves or other increased threats normally associated with a multiplayer game.<br />
** Some possible uses of this feature:<br />
*** If you want to play a game with other people but want to play against a single-player level of challenge with a single-player level of resources, albeit with more hands helping to control (and micromanage, if desired).<br />
*** If you want to let someone simply watch a game without impacting the balance at all.<br />
*** If you want to help someone learn some part of the game; they can play and you can jump in or out as needed.<br />
** Like the switch-to-ui feature, this is in need of a lot of testing to make sure it works right, so don't be surprised by bugs, just report them :)<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Youngling Tigers:<br />
** Time-to-live from 2 minutes => 4 minutes, which is the same as other youngling types.<br />
** Metal and Crystal cost from 50/50 => 40/40.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 300*mk => 600*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 11k*mk => 13k*mk.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for suggesting/inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Youngling Vulture:<br />
** Metal and Crystal cost from 50/50 => 40/40.<br />
<br />
* Spire Teleporting Leech:<br />
** Base Energy Cost from 400 => 200.<br />
** Base Metal Cost from 2200 => 1200.<br />
** Base Crystal Cost from 800 => 500.<br />
<br />
* Science Lab MkII:<br />
** Base Health from 120k => 500k.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1500 => 5000.<br />
** Now has cloaking.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* AI Superfortress:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Health regen halved.<br />
** Thanks to several players for pointing out that superforts had not been changed in line with the other fort types.<br />
<br />
* AI Fortress I/II/III: health regen halved.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where the galaxy-nav code of AI-ally Dyson Gatlings was getting distracted from its main purpose.<br />
<br />
* Ships that generate attack (munitions) boosts now show the magnitude of the boost in the tooltip, not just the range.<br />
** Thanks to SpaceBrotha for the question that reminded us that this info wasn't directly displayed anywhere.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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. Which may be for the best, but feedback is welcome :)<br />
<br />
* Hybrids will no longer try to take Spire Mini-Rams as drones, as generally melee drones don't work that great.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.020 ==<br />
(Released November 3rd, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Fallen-Spire city-provoked exogalactic strikeforces "buildup" rate (this only impacts the time between attacks, not their size or composition) redistributed a bit:<br />
** Spire City Hubs now generate 1/4 the "aggro" they used to.<br />
** Spire Shard Reactors, Habitation Centers, and Shipyards now, instead of generating zero "aggro", generate 1/8th what the Spire City Hub used to generate.<br />
** So a city with all 6 building slots taken up causes exactly the same amount of buildup as before.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Nanoswarm:<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Explosion range from 200/225/250/275/300 => flat 1000.<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* AI Fortress health from 6x human fortress equivalents => 3x human fortress equivalents.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players for weighing in on this subject.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.019 ==<br />
(Released October 5th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a divide by zero bug in the previous version.<br />
** Thanks to Fleet for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.018 ==<br />
(Released September 30th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Ion normal shot damage from 700 => 14000, and armor piercing from 0 => Max.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Updated the tooltip, which is reproduced here since it probably helps understand what we're doing here:<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* Humorously, Ion Cannons, Core Warhead Interceptors, and Orbital Mass Drivers were previously not immune to insta-kill. They now are.<br />
<br />
* Added to the Dyson Gatling tooltip to reflect the lack of ability to shoot at Mark V targets.<br />
<br />
* If an AI player has a positive handicap that is now factored into that game's TotalSpecialDifficultyModifier which is in turn used for determining the total "population cap" of Hybrids in a game with them on, and also factors in to the budget multiplier for exo waves. Negative handicaps on AI players have no effect, and the higher of the two AI handicaps is used if they're not equal.<br />
<br />
* Added a new ability to the Spirecraft Attritioner in hopes of making it more generally useful. From the new tooltip:<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater and many other players for weighing in with feedback that led to this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.017 ==<br />
(Released September 12th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** chemical_art will probably regret making the suggestion that inspired this.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an (apparently) rare array-index-out-of-bounds error in the buy-menu "tooltip" window.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg for the report.<br />
<br />
* Added a second confirm step when scrapping Spirecraft mining enclosures (since scrapping them does not give you back the asteroid from which they came) and the player home forcefield generator (since it cannot be rebuilt).<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg for inspiring this.<br />
<br />
* Strong forcefields (the same ones that had the blocking effect in 5.015) now have their blocking effect back.<br />
** The "cannot use a wormhole covered by a hostile forcefield" rule is still in to prevent the bug with teleporting stuff "sneaking" through.<br />
** The collision detection between blocking forcefields and hostile ships has been refined to include a more precise check for ships that appear to be colliding to the coarse check we've used for a while. This is because the coarse check was making it a lot more likely that AI ships would get "stuck" on a single human forcefield that just happened to be in their way. Now they should slide around a lot more readily.<br />
*** Note that you can still set up blocking walls of multiple forcefields and catch AI ships in a pocket, etc. We aren't thrilled by this as it's basically exploiting the simplistic AI movement logic (it has no pathfinding, just straight line to target, because anything else is cpu-prohibitive for this game) but there are actually more efficient ways to slow down most serious AI assualts (grav turrets under ffs, logistics stations, etc) so this particular "exploit" isn't really breaking the challenge. Maybe one day we'll make it so when the AI detects a blocking wall it retaliates by initiating some gargantuan pathfinding routine and thus churns your processor and framerate to a halt. For now, knock yourselves out :P<br />
** Thanks to everyone who chimed in with feedback on this!<br />
<br />
* Hardened Forcefields:<br />
** Now shrink with damage like normal forcefields, since the rigidity was making them much more likely to actually die rather than diminish to a point where the AI left it alone, and since they would make the "blocking walls" tactic even more effective than it used to be.<br />
** Armor from 1 million to 500k, to expand the set of armor-nemesis things that can actually get through it. If this feels too low, let us know!<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Zenith Polarizer<br />
** Spire Armor Rotter<br />
** Youngling Vulture<br />
** Youngling Nanoswarm<br />
** Raid Starship<br />
** Lightning/Armored/EMP/Tachyon-warheads<br />
** Botnet Golem<br />
** Devourer Golem<br />
** Sentinel Frigate<br />
** Spire Blade<br />
** Spire Gravity Drain<br />
** Spirecraft Siege Tower<br />
** Sniper<br />
** Electric Shuttle<br />
** Lightning Turret<br />
** Sniper Turret<br />
** Spider Turret<br />
** And a variety of lesser known but related types.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.016 ==<br />
(Released September 6th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Preservation Wardens previously did not scale at all when there were multiple human homeworlds and/or multiple human players. Now each time the game spawns a warden it instead spawns 1 warden per player/human-homeworld (specifically, the number of human players or the number of human homeworlds, whichever is greater).<br />
<br />
* Human Forcefield Generators:<br />
** Ship-cap from 9/5/5 => 10/6/6<br />
** HP from 14M/30M/56M => 20M*mk.<br />
** Metal cost from 4k/6k/12k => 4k*mk.<br />
** Crystal cost from 19k/35k/70k => 20k*mk.<br />
** Energy use from 3k/6k/10k => 3k*mk.<br />
** Build time (seconds) from 240/300/480 => 120 + (120*mk) (240/360/480).<br />
<br />
* Added new unlockable support unit type: Hardened Forcefield Generator MkI-III. Basically the same as normal human generators except:<br />
** 1/4th the HP.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for the suggestion (some time ago) that led to this.<br />
<br />
* 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. Other changes are likely to follow, we'll see how it feels to players.<br />
<br />
* Put in a fairly radical change to the base forcefields, but bear with us on this -- if it's not workable we'll take it out. And really, in most senses this should be equivalent to the way that things were before, but more CPU-efficient as well as fixing one bug and one exploit. With that out of the way:<br />
** Change 1: Made it so that strong force fields no longer block enemy ships from passing through them -- on either side. So if you have a forcefield in the way of the AI, or they have a forcefield in your way, your ships can pass right through them with no problem. As with weaker forcefields, the thematic explanation is that you're going around the forcefield in the Z axis, which makes sense. This change has no bearing on the protection of ships under the forcefield; ships are just as well protected now as ever.<br />
*** The exploit in question was a problem with players being able to block enemy ships due to those ships sometimes "sticking" against the force fields. The reason ships would stick is because of the coarseness of the distance check we were using, which was coarse so not to take up so much CPU. Now enemy ships can just fly past your forcefields unimpeded if they're heading to targets beyond them, which -- with one exception, see below -- is what we've always intended in the first place.<br />
*** This is also where we derive our CPU gains from, as normally each ship had to check its relative position to all enemy strong forcefields on a planet every time its position changed even a little. This isn't killer, but in light of the bug and exploit relating to strong forcefields<br />
** Change 2: Made it so that when a strong forcefield is covering a wormhole, no non-forcefield-immune enemy ships can go through that wormhole from the side the forcefield is on.<br />
*** Players have been using forcefields to do this very thing for a long time, and we think that's great. However, this was taking advantage of ships not being able to move in to actually physically reach the wormhole, and that was thus not working very well for teleporting ships, which would teleport right to the center of the forcefield, then get caught in the wormhole before the forcefield could push them back out. This is the bug we referenced above, and it was very much not in players' favor (unlike the exploit), and this set of changes now fixes it.<br />
** NET EFFECTS:<br />
*** 1. Players can't use forcefields to interrupt enemy travel on the planet they are on, nor can the AI.<br />
**** Some players would set up forcefield clusters to trap enemies inside when they come through wormholes, but that was already error-prone because enemies would tend to pop out to the other side if the forcefields weren't positioned precisely right. These players should instead put a single forcefield (or all their forcefields, if they really prefer) on the enemy side of their wormhole and that will now provide much better protection than their older method ever did.<br />
*** 2. The AI can't slip teleporting ships past your forcefields over wormholes unless those teleporting units are also forcefield immune, which should be a huge boon to players in games with teleporting enemies.<br />
** Thanks to mindloss for most directly inspiring these changes, although we've been mulling it for a while based on cumulative feedback.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.015 ==<br />
(Released August 29th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Previously, the recently added ActivateHighestEfficiencyLowPowerEnergyReactor and PutLowestEfficiencyActiveEnergyReactorIntoLowPower keybinds were considering reactors that were still under construction. Hamster re-education has taken place (bug fixed).<br />
** Thanks to Ranakastrasz for the report.<br />
<br />
* Due to widespread feedback that the martyr is very OP, we've drastically increased the asteroid "cost" of building them:<br />
** Previously Reptite could be used to build 2 MkI Martyrs. Now it cannot build martyrs at all.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to the many players who've weighed in on this subject.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Viral Shredders:<br />
** 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).<br />
*** 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).<br />
** Base Energy Use from 100 => 50 (note: all mkI types use half normal energy).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to the players who've told us about their massive abuse of absurdly large shredder swarms.<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Forcefield generators now cannot be assisted during construction if they have been damaged recently.<br />
** 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.<br />
** This also applies to all the "shield bearer" and module type shields.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to mindloss for most recently bringing this up.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.014 ==<br />
(Released August 4th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Starship costs tweaked around a bit:<br />
** Bomber starship metal cost reduced from 120k to 80k.<br />
** Fleet starship metal cost reduced from 60k to 40.<br />
** Siege starship crystal cost reduced from 120k to 80k.<br />
** Riot Control starships crystal cost reduced from 80k to 60k, and metal cost reduced from 30k to 20k.<br />
** Enclave starship costs reduced from 30k metal and crystal to 20k each instead.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Zentih SpaceTime Manipulator energy costs reduced to 20k from 60k.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Removed all mention of the AIP costs on the Zenith SpaceTime manipulator text.<br />
** Thanks to Zair for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Siege Starships renamed to Antimatter Starships for the sake of clarity, and given the following new description text:<br />
** This starship is the best capital killer in your basic fleet: excellent against starships, guard posts, guardians, most turrets, and other large ships like golems or spirecraft. It is so specialized that it can't even fire upon most small mobile targets. That said, many targets (forcefields, most fortresses and command stations, etc) are specifically protected against its antimatter bombs.<br />
** All in-game references to them (tutorials, etc) have been adjusted.<br />
** Thanks to the several dozen players who weighed in on our poll for how to rename these!<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.013 ==<br />
(Released August 1st, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Gravity Drills under player control can now be scrapped by that player.<br />
** Thanks to Wingsofdomain for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Stealth Battleships previously had a bonus of 1.4x against artillery hulls. Now they don't, making them not so overpowered against things like siege starships.<br />
<br />
* Speaking of siege starships, they have now gotten doubled health -- making them no longer "glass cannons," which they haven't been in a while anyhow. And making them substantially more useful in general.<br />
<br />
* All marks of Spire Stealth Battleship now have an AIPerPlanetShipCap of 8 (only applies to not-freed ships). This is an experiment brought about by continuing feedback that the per-guard-post caps are insufficient forkeeping the populations down to a level that doesn't make the game way harder when the AI happens to roll SSBs as a bonus type. This won't impact their numbers in waves and other offensive uses, but one thing at a time.<br />
<br />
* Riot Control Starships mark I are now unlocked from the start of every game. This should help with uncertainty that players would feel about whether or not they would be useful in a given scenario. Now players can try them out and see; and if they are useful and they want more, then the mark II and mark III versions are effectively 1500 knowledge cheaper now, since they no longer have the mark I prerequisite.<br />
<br />
* Mark II scout starships now cost 250 knowledge to unlock instead of 1500. Mark III are now 2000 instead of 3500, and mark IV are now 3500 instead of 4500. This brings the mark II down into the realm of "candy tech," and makes the III and IV variants not so cost-prohibitive that nobody uses them.<br />
<br />
* Mark I gravity turrets are now 750 knowledge to unlock instead of 2000, making them a lot more feasible for players to experiment with as well.<br />
<br />
* Zenith SpaceTime Manipulators no longer have an AI Progress of 1 on their death; that made them very difficult to use. They now cost 2x more energy to use, however (from 30k to 60k). The AI also no longer cares about them at all in terms of extra priority on killing them. And lastly, they now cost 1750 knowledge to unlock instead of 1000.<br />
<br />
* Mark II scouts now cost 500 knowledge to unlock instead of 1000. Mark III scouts now cost 2250 instead of 2000, making the entire scout line only slightly cheaper.<br />
<br />
* Completely rebalanced armored warheads, as they have been the unused warhead for too long:<br />
** They now cost 50k energy to run instead of 2.5k.<br />
** They now cost 10x more metal and crystal to create.<br />
** They now cost 2/4/6 AIP rather than 10/15/20.<br />
** They now have the same (much lower) attack stats of their lightning warhead counterparts.<br />
<br />
* The attack range of mark III lightning and armored warheads has been increased by 250 -- making them not so much smaller than the mark II versions of the same.<br />
<br />
* Some starfield changes:<br />
** Slightly improved the draw efficiency of the starfields by reusing a single mersenne twister rather than initializing a new one every frame.<br />
** Changed it so that there is only now one layer of starfield, rather than three. This makes for a more cohesive style with most of the starfields, as well as making the sky not QUITE so incredibly dense with stars. This also removes the parallax effect from the stars themselves, which made the foreground stars really look more like dust than stars.<br />
*** This also is a small boost to performance, and a slight reduction in VRAM usage per frame. On most computers it won't make a substantial difference, though.<br />
** Added in a parallax effect to the nebulae, making it so that they now have a slight motion and will wrap around the screen view if players scroll enough.<br />
** Thanks to annikk.exe for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Added a bit more command-queue-related debug info in for hitting F3 and hovering over ships.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** Fixing this also reduced the per-ship memory footprint by about 8 bytes, which we're always pleased to do.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Same with the Neinzul Rnclave Starships mark I. They were 2k knowledge, but now they are knowledge-free.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.012 ==<br />
(Released July 21st, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Added new "Activate Highest Efficiency Low Power Energy Reactor" KeyBind, InGame context, no default binding.<br />
** Searches through all your energy reactors that are low power, finds the one with the highest efficiency (accounting for penalties from multiple of the same mark on the planet), and takes it out of low power.<br />
<br />
* Added new "Put Lowest Efficiency Active Energy Reactor Into Low Power" KeyBind, InGame context, no default binding.<br />
** Searches through all your energy reactors that are not in low power, finds the one with the lowest efficiency (accounting for penalties from multiple of the same mark on the planet), and puts it into low power.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to many players for pointing this one out.<br />
<br />
* Added new galaxy-wide control toggle: "Prevent Auto Build On Ally Planets".<br />
** If this toggle is checked, it prevents your galaxy-wide auto-building controls (for stuff like engineers, rebuilders, and energy reactors) from taking effect on ally planets.<br />
** Your per-planet auto-building controls ignore this toggle.<br />
<br />
* Added new galaxy-wide control toggle: "Allow Ally Rebuilders To Rebuild My Remains".<br />
** If this toggle is checked, ally rebuilders will automatically consider the remains of any of your units to be valid rebuilding targets. Note that starting the rebuilding process costs no resources, the rebuilt unit is yours, and the rest of the rebuilding process is paid for like normal construction.<br />
** Also, please note that if an ally is using the "Engineers Do Not Assist Allies" toggle, their rebuilders will not automatically consider your remains regardless of your controls.<br />
** Thanks to lanstro for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where Core Starships were not immune to translocation.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some old tooltips referring to the expansions tab of the settings screen to correctly refer to the "License / Expansions" window (which is accessible from the main menu).<br />
** Thanks to FroBodine for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that has been causing astro-trains to not be able to attack for the last six months or so.<br />
** Thanks to Prezombie, Hearteater, and ArcDM for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Ships that have "temporary invincibility" (such as Core Shield Generators that are on planets you don't control, or AI Core Guard Posts and AI Core Command Stations when there are Core Shield Generators still active, or AI carriers when there are more than 2k AI ships active on their planet) now show up with a new angry red/yellow ship-style force field that is visually marking them as invulnerable. The actual mechanics haven't changed, but now there is a more clear visual indicator of the pre-existing logic.<br />
** Thanks to Elok for suggesting.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.011 ==<br />
(Released June 21st, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Fixed rare null exception that could happen when changing control groups.<br />
** Thanks to leb0fh for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Spire Civilian Leaders are now no longer giftable, to avoid a bug whereby gifting them back and forth would repeat the AIP decrease.<br />
** Thanks to dnatabar for the report.<br />
<br />
* Added a new "Galaxy-Wide Select Own Science Lab" key-bind that works in both planet-view and galaxy-view (like go-to-flare does) and defaults to Ctrl+T.<br />
** If you are viewing a planet and you own science labs on that planet, this drops any current selection you may have and selects one of those science labs (note that it does not center the viewport, there's another key for centering on the selection if you want that).<br />
** Otherwise, if you own science labs on another planet in the galaxy, this drops any current selection you may have, switches your view to one of those planets, and selects one of those science labs on that planet, and centers the viewport on that lab.<br />
** Otherwise (if you own no science labs), this does nothing.<br />
** Note that this only works with your science labs, it completely ignores science labs of allied players. Also, it does not attempt to rotate through eligible selections the way other selection functions do.<br />
** The reason for all the caveats of what this doesn't do is that its SOLE purpose is to let you access the tech-research menu from anywhere in the galaxy without having to know specifically where to find a science lab.<br />
** Thanks to TheDeadlyShoe for the suggestion that inspired this.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Nalgas for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Added "Galaxy Layout" item to top-level context menu (when showing the galaxy map). Clicking it shows these options:<br />
** "Official Layout" - Switches your galaxy view to the official layout, meaning the map as actually generated.<br />
** "My Layout" - Switches your galaxy view to your alternate layout. If you have not made any changes, this will look like the official layout.<br />
*** While looking at your alternate layout you can move a planet around by holding shift, left clicking the planet, and dragging it aroud while holding the left mouse button.<br />
** "Player 1 Layout" - Switches your galaxy view to this player's alternate layout.<br />
*** And 7 others just like it for players 2 through 8.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where copying in your global controls from disk could lead to building engineer IIs and IIIs without the required tech.<br />
** Thanks to Ranakastrasz (and others) for reporting this.<br />
<br />
* Added new global control toggle "Prevent Warhead FRD".<br />
** If this toggle is checked, it prevents your warheads from entering Free-Roaming-Defender mode even when something like the 'Auto-FRD Military' toggle or a slip of the finger when giving a move order would set them to FRD.<br />
** If you can imagine a nuclear warhead attached to a roomba, you can imagine cases where you would use this toggle. And cases where you would not.<br />
** Please note that this will not take any warheads already in FRD out of it.<br />
** Thanks to Ranakastrasz for inspiring this addition.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where Defender games were always being recorded in the high-score list as lost.<br />
** Thanks to Night for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where lightning and armored warheads were following the unit-cap-scale.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to ArcDM for the report and save that led to this being discovered.<br />
<br />
* The "Hostile Warheads on (planet name)" alerts are now shown for all planets you have scouting on, not just human-controlled planets.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.010 ==<br />
(Released April 14th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Spire Blade Spawners:<br />
** 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).<br />
*** Notably, this should make the BaseAIPerGuardPostShipCap flag work correctly again for them (it's set to 1 for them).<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine! and techsy730 for reports and saves of the bypassing-caps problem.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.009 ==<br />
(Released March 28th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* The health of the non-core AI Spire Shield Spheres has been reduced by half (for all five mark levels of the non-core versions).<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks once again to Fleet and Tssbackus for reporting, and for their patience. They have all the bad luck!<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** We are, of course, hoping not to have to use this any time soon. But in the event that Fleet and Tssbackus get unlucky again, this should help eliminate any ambiguities that might otherwise come up.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.008 ==<br />
(Released March 25th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Zenith SpaceTime Manipulators can no longer be swallowed or regenerated.<br />
** Thanks to FunnyMan for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to techsy730, Vinraith, and zoutzakje for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Electric Bombers:<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Garthor for bringing the odd cost issue to light.<br />
<br />
* Sentinel Frigates:<br />
** Event attack cost (used for exogalactic strikeforce computations) tiers increased from "Heavy Corvette" through "Light Destroyer" to "Light Frigate" through "Medium Destroyer".<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.007 ==<br />
(Released March 24th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* AI ships that are spawned in response to saboteurs, such as the human mark III science lab, are now zombie bots.<br />
** Thanks to Irxallis for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Burnstreet and BobTheJanitor for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, zombiefied ships were being bound by player ship caps, but they should not have been. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Dalden and Ozymandiaz for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thus the allied minor faction and zombie logic has been adjusted as follows:<br />
*** Neutral planets are now considered the same as allied planets, and the ships will patrol to them like any others.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
**** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players for weighing in on this, including Burnstreet, Draco18s, TechSY730, vinco, BluePhoenix, and ArcDM for reporting various things related to this, with various suggestions.<br />
<br />
* Dyson Gatlings are now immune to paralysis attacks.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Slightly improved the targeting handling when a ship is targeting a teleporting ship that is out of range.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Penetrator balance:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Penetrator health reduced 8x.<br />
** Penetrator perma-cloaking replaced with normal cloaking.<br />
** Thanks to Irxallis for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a problem with too-low throttles on minor faction / zombie ships preventing them from even attacking at all in some cases.<br />
** Thanks to zoutzakje for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to ArcDM for inspiring this, although I'm not sure if that's what he really was hoping for.<br />
<br />
* Minor factions now shoot low-power ships without prejudice, which means that devourer golems actually will devourer more again.<br />
** Thanks to ArcDM for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to vinco for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Irxallis for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed the bug with two buttons for mark V fighters showing up in the mark V fighter fabricator.<br />
** Thanks to leb0fh, Orelius, akbr1984, and snelg for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, when command stations were replaced, colony ships and mobile builders were still dying even though they shouldn't have been. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Red Spot and TechSY730 for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Improved the clarity of the colony ship description.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to FunnyMan for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The Zenith Trader previously had incorrect line breaks. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to doctorfrog for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, if there were fewer than 30 enemy-to-the-AI ships and none of them were both uncloaked and had attack strength of 0, then the planet was incorrectly being put into cold storage. Now it's only in cold storage if there are fewer than 30 enemy-to-the-AI ships and all of them have full cloaking, which was the intended logic from the start.<br />
** This should fix some issues with the devourer golem not really doing its thing, and in general some minor faction issues in general.<br />
** Thanks to Fleet and TechSY730 for reporting related bugs.<br />
<br />
* Previously, adding and removing ships to control groups was way slower than it should have been. In terms of bulk add/removes, it was way, WAY slower than it should have been. This was a past optimization that was not fully optimized -- it had one critical flaw, mainly. This is now fixed, and it has a couple of major effects:<br />
** Obviously, when editing control groups in bulk, it's hugely improving the speed of that (it could cause "Waiting For Players" messages, before).<br />
** Unexpectedly, it also makes savegames load in less than half the time they used to. As it turns out, there was a lot of "take this ship out of the control group it already wasn't in" going on in there, and that was just eating performance.<br />
** Thanks to FunnyMan for reporting.<br />
<br />
* AI Progress reduction messages now show up as light green instead of light red, to avoid being misleading.<br />
** Thanks to sgt_deacon for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Draco Cretel for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Spire Civilian Leader Outposts are now included in the galaxy map filter for Detected AI Progress Reducers.<br />
** Thanks to Orelius and c4sc4 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to rustayne for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to KDR_11k for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Orelius for reminding us of this.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to rustayne for reporting.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.006 ==<br />
(Released March 23rd, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Astro Trains are now immune to translocation and gravity effects, since both of those cause more problems for players than they would ever solve.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Adjusted controls window to be more likely to fit within 1024-wide resolutions; previously it was functional but didn't quite fit.<br />
** Thanks to Balthier for the repot.<br />
<br />
* Double-clicking a profile name in the profile list now selects it, rather than opening it for editing.<br />
<br />
* When a desync is encountered, the clients are now notified of that instead of them thinking it's just a regular waiting for players.<br />
<br />
* 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<br />
<br />
* The planetary summary now makes substantially better use of its available vertical space, thus saving horizontal space in many cases.<br />
** Thanks to gamewarlord777 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Guard posts, fortresses, superfortresses, force fields, and exo-shields are all now immune to regeneration from regenerator golems/trains.<br />
** Thanks to FunnyMan for reporting.<br />
<br />
* AI Motherships are now considered large ships for purposes of bomber starships and siege starships being able to hit them.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* In recent versions, the self attrition time has been reporting a negative time. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Garthor for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to KDR_11k for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Raid starship rebalance, thanks to many players for various suggestions:<br />
** Raid Starship health has been increased from 1.6 million health * mark level to 2 million health * mark level.<br />
** The AI now has separate versions of the Raid Starships, which have only 1/2 the health of the human counterparts.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.005 ==<br />
(Released March 17th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Savegames from 5.004 were accidentally all uncompressed, though flagged as compressed, which caused them to not be able to be read back in. Two fixes:<br />
** First, fixed the actual cause of this, so new savegames in 5.005 will be saved properly.<br />
** Second, updated the load savegame process so that it can read even the "corrupt" saves from 5.004 without issue.<br />
** Thanks to SpaceJelly for reporting!<br />
<br />
* Spire Blade Spawner:<br />
** 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.<br />
** BaseAIPerGuardPostShipCap from 2 => 1.<br />
<br />
* Spire Gravity Drain:<br />
** Grav range from 3000*mk => 8000 (flat).<br />
<br />
* Spire Gravity Ripper:<br />
** Attack power from 1000*mk => 2000*mk.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 1 => 2.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Spire Miniram:<br />
** Ship cap multiplier from 0.25 => 0.20.<br />
<br />
* Spire Stealth Battleship:<br />
** Effective Attack range from 6500 + (500*mk) => 7000 flat (thus, they can no longer engage while still protected by their 8000 radar dampening range).<br />
<br />
* Spire Tractor Platform:<br />
** Hull Type from Turret => Heavy.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Light Starship:<br />
** Base Health from 1.5m => 2m.<br />
** Armor Rating from 500 => 1000.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Flagship:<br />
** Base Health From 4,875k => 6m.<br />
** Given Radar Dampening of 8000. For reference, its munitions boost range is 6000.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Youngling Commando:<br />
** Base Health from 6600*mk => 8000*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1000*mk => 1200*mk.<br />
<br />
* Impulse Reaction Emitter:<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Mirrors:<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.004 ==<br />
(Released March 16th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Added "Toggle Use-Group-Move-By-Default" In-Game key-bind (no default key, but you can set one on the In-Game tab of the input bindings window):<br />
** Toggles the value of the Use-Group-Move-By-Default global control (normally changed through the controls screen, but can be set this way for convenience).<br />
** Note that if you have the controls window open while using this key-bind, the controls window will not automatically update to reflect the change as that would destroy any changes made since the window was opened.<br />
** To make it easier to know which way it was toggled (without having to open the controls window, which would defeat the purpose), using this toggle displays a local message on the screen noting the change.<br />
<br />
* HUGE Memory breakthrough.<br />
** 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?<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* The regen ability now shows how long, in time, it will take to completely heal the ship from 0 hitpoints to full hitpoints, rather than showing the per-second gain. Thus some mental math is removed, and the display of this can be consistent between different unit cap scales.<br />
<br />
* Ever since the porting to unity, annoyingly, we've had a bug of our own making that caused the first profile to always be the one used, rather than whatever you last used. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Player profiles are also now once again sorted by name, which they used to be but haven't been since the switch.<br />
<br />
* A new "Don't Compress Savegames" toggle has been added to the Advanced tab.<br />
** The only time you should turn this on is if your save process is being inordinately slow, or if you are getting "Too Many Heap Sections" crashes. Otherwise, you'll want this on, as uncompressed savegames are pretty huge. But enabling this will save on RAM use during savegame compression and decompression -- the larger the save, the more the savings in RAM with the compression disabled.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.003 ==<br />
(Released March 8th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Updated the Unit Cap Scale "High" option's lobby tooltip to note the chance of the game simply running out of memory in the late game and that autosaving and reloading every couple hours can be necessary to get through it.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a typo in the first Fallen Spire journal entry.<br />
** Thanks to Neck for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the "I Have A Bad Feeling About This" achievement was not being awarded.<br />
** Thanks to Tirulii for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* The AI's (announced) exogalactic strikeforces provoked by the Fallen Spire stuff now also contribute points to a sort of "homeworld defense fund". If that has any points and an AI homeworld comes under major assault, a defense force is immediately spawned on that homeworld. This can prove... unpleasant.<br />
<br />
* Minor faction Fallen Spire ships (NOT the human-controllable ones) buffed quite a bit.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Talaraine for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Fleet for the suggestion that inspired this feature.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Note that this does not apply to Riot Control Starships with tractor modules, because the modules themselves are not mobile units.<br />
** Thanks to PineappleSam for the suggestion inspiring this control.<br />
<br />
* Another from the vote tallies: Artillery Golems are now immune to radar dampening.<br />
** Thanks to Fleet for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* 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):<br />
** 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:<br />
*** 1) Makes a list of all scouts with cloaking in your selection.<br />
*** 2) Makes a list of all planets you do not have current (less than 5 seconds ago) scout intel.<br />
*** 3) Sorts that list of planets by distance (ascending) to the planet with your selection.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Malibu Stacey for the suggestion that inspired this command.<br />
<br />
* AI War engine upgraded to Unity 3.3, from previously being Unity 3.1.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.002 ==<br />
<br />
(Released February 22nd, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug in last version where maws had no ship cap.<br />
** Thanks to Orelius for the report.<br />
<br />
* Removed the (somewhat jokingly named) "HasWarpEngineMufflers" UnitData flag, and replaced it with per-unit logic that looks at ActionStatus (Normal, MinorFaction, or Zombie) and tells it to not play wormhole-transition sounds for MinorFaction or Zombie ships that are allied with the player.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug on the stats window resource-flows tab where most construction/repair/etc outflows were reported as positive instead of negative.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug that was greatly delaying the onset of gravity slowdown on units entering grav range in some cases.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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 ;)<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* In response to the number-one-on-the-vote-tallies mantis issue: <br />
** Added new PlanetView KeyBind: "Show Strong/Weak Info":<br />
*** Defaults to Alt+W.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Added new PlanetView KeyBind: "Strong/Weak => One Vs One":<br />
*** Defaults to Alt+E (so the full combination would be to hold Alt+W+E).<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* Snipers (the ship, not the turrets) :<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 6 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 1 => 6.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to wyvern83 for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith for reminding us about the missing average-health info.<br />
<br />
* The selection description window will now try to display up to 30 entries without resorting to a scrollbar, instead of only 5.<br />
<br />
* Replaced the old "if CanUseNeinzulRegenerator then multiply by 2" wave-size rule with a more general UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier UnitData field.<br />
** Everything with CanUseNeinzulRegenerator (which is just the 5 youngling types), gets a 2 for this.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Broken-Golems-Hard and Spirecraft-Hard exogalactic strikeforce initial-strength, per-minute-increment-amount, and maximum-strength all increased roughly 10%.<br />
** Thanks to Shrugging Khan for pointing out that these are a bit on the easy side right now. In other words, blame him if these slaughter you now.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to Shrugging Khan for continuing to provoke the golems.<br />
<br />
* Black Widow golem health and Attack Power boosted a bit (15%-ish).<br />
<br />
* Regenerator Golem health doubled, in response to various concerns that they're less useful than other golems.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to kjara for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.001 ==<br />
(Released February 16th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Made it possible to bind Mouse2, Mouse3, Mouse4, Mouse5, or Mouse6 to the primary key of a KeyBinding. For reference, Mouse2 is the middle mouse button. Mouse0 is left-click, Mouse1 is right-click, and both are excluded from this due to being used in many other ways by the main input code. Mouse3-6 don't exist on most mice, but are available for those who have them.<br />
** One example use of this is to bind OpenDefaultContextMenu to Mouse2 (middle mouse). We're not sure if this would cause major conflicts with middle-mouse-scrolling or mouse-wheel-zooming (due to accidental click-downs during wheeling); if you try it please let us know how it goes. Seemed ok in our testing.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the special-move context menu's catch-right-clicks option was basically failing to do anything. Now when it is toggled on it properly re-interprets right clicks outside the menu as "set destination to clicked point and then execute".<br />
<br />
* Updated tooltips for:<br />
** Armored Golem.<br />
** Artillery Golem.<br />
** Black Widow Golem.<br />
** Cursed Golem.<br />
** Regenerator Golem.<br />
** Hive Golem.<br />
** Botnet Golem.<br />
** Military Command Stations.<br />
** Captive Human Settlements.<br />
** Fallen Spire lobby tooltip (reference to wiki removed due to complaints).<br />
** Thanks to Burnstreet, c4sc4, techsy730, and Sunshine! for contributing suggestions about these.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** For reference, this bug went unreported for roughly 20 versions. The Hybrids are plotting revenge.<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s and Draco Cretel for reporting. The Hybrids might spare them.<br />
<br />
* Reclamators (excluding zombie-reclamators) :<br />
** 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:<br />
*** If the reclamator is 4 mks higher than the target (mkV shooting mkI), multiply by 64.<br />
*** If the reclamator is 3 mks higher than the target, 48.<br />
*** If the reclamator is 2 mks higher than the target, 32.<br />
*** If the reclamator is 1 mk higher than the target, 16.<br />
*** If the reclamator is the same mk as the target, 8.<br />
*** If the reclamator is 1 mk lower than the target, 4.<br />
*** If the reclamator is 2 mks lower than the target, 2.<br />
*** If the reclamator is 3 mks lower than the target, 1.<br />
*** There is no 4-mk-lower case because mkV are not reclaimable.<br />
** Leech Starship base attack power from 120k*mk => 30k*mk.<br />
** Parasite base attack power from 4000*mk => 1000*mk.<br />
** Nanoswarms inherent 16x-reclamation property down to 2x, but no reduction in actual damage.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Parasites:<br />
** Effective range from 3700 => 6000.<br />
** Armor piercing from 0 => 750*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 7200*mk => 14400*mk.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a relatively longstanding bug where AIPerPlanetShipCap and AIPerGuardPostShipCap were generally not being enforced when loading a game (either just-starting or loading later).<br />
<br />
* Some triangle rebalancing:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Fighters (including the tachyon and bulletproof variants) :<br />
*** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 2.4 => 5.<br />
** Bombers:<br />
*** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs Structural from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs Heavy from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs Artillery from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Base Attack Power from 1900*mk => 2400*mk.<br />
** Missile Frigates:<br />
*** Bonus vs Light from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs UltraLight from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs Swarmer from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs Neutron from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs Composite from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs Refractive from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Base Attack Power from 1600*mk => 2400*mk.<br />
*** Base Crystal Cost from 700 => 500.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Tractor Beam Turrets:<br />
** Base Health from 210k/840k/1680k => 560k*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 450*mk.<br />
<br />
* Beam Guardians:<br />
** Bonus Vs Turret from 8 => 1.<br />
** Bonus Vs UltraLight from 8 => 1.<br />
** Bonus Vs Artillery from 2 => 1.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 4000*mk => 4500*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 600*mk => 300*mk.<br />
<br />
* Laser Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1000*mk => 300*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 1.4*(standard guardian health) to 1.1*(standard).<br />
** Shots Per Salvo from 3 => 15.<br />
** Seconds Per Salvo from 4 => 2.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 17k*mk => 1700*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Piercing from 500*mk => 300*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 7000 => 5000.<br />
<br />
* Raider Guardians:<br />
** Now Have Radar Dampening Range of 8000.<br />
<br />
* Lightning Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 800*mk => 600*mk.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1600*mk => 2400*mk (for reference, Electric shuttles on low caps have 1600*mk, albeit somewhat slower reloading).<br />
<br />
* Tractor Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 450*mk.<br />
<br />
* Spider Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1000 (flat) => 150*mk.<br />
<br />
* Sniper Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1000 (flat) => 150*mk.<br />
<br />
* Tachyon Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 400 (flat) => 150*mk.<br />
<br />
* Gravity Guardians:<br />
** Max Target Base Speed from 10/8/6/4/2 => 11/10/9/8/7.<br />
** Grav Beam Base Range from 8k/10k/12k/14k/16k => 7k/8k/9k/10k/11k.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 100*mk => 300*mk.<br />
<br />
* Zombie Guardians:<br />
** Shots Per Salvo from 2/3/4/5/6 => flat 2.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 5000*mk => 300*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 9000 => 7000.<br />
<br />
* EMP Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 300*mk.<br />
<br />
* Carrier Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 300*mk.<br />
<br />
* Note: the guardian rebalancing is far from done, this was just to tone down some more obvious issues.<br />
<br />
* Handicap now has the following effects, all of which is new unless otherwise noted:<br />
** AI<br />
*** Previously it affected the speed at which the AI reinforced. It no longer does.<br />
*** Increases the number of ships in each wave and reinforcement, and decreases when negative.<br />
*** Roaming Enclaves and Preservation Wardens are spawned sooner or later into the game.<br />
*** Scrap waves are scaled accordingly.<br />
*** Specifically "forced waves" are scaled accordingly.<br />
*** Cross planet atacks are scaled accordingly.<br />
*** Saboteur and deep strike reactions are scaled accordingly.<br />
*** For now, event attacks are NOT affected by this.<br />
*** Initial seeding of AI planets are intentionally not affected by this -- same as human players get no starting benefit from handicaps.<br />
** Player<br />
*** Increases the amount of resources gathered from producers (using a new formula), and decreases when negative (also using the new formula).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting we revisit this.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
[[Category:AI War Release Notes]]</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:Current_Post-5.000_Beta&diff=29856AI War:Current Post-5.000 Beta2017-09-16T16:07:47Z<p>Nat: Add Category:AI War Release Notes</p>
<hr />
<div>== Release 6.001 ==<br />
<br />
* Patch notes for game version 6.001 and up can be found at [http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI War:Current_Post-6.000_Beta Current Post 6.000 Beta].<br />
<br />
== Release 6.000 ==<br />
(Released October 19th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Updated the player-community credits to reflect contributions during the 5.0-to-6.0 run. Thanks everyone!<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.097 Release Candidate 2 ==<br />
(Released October 17th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last version where the list of available modules wasn't showing on the ship design at all, if your monitor (not resolution) was above a certain size.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth and Toranth for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.096 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/10/ai-war-beta-5096-release-candidate-1.html Release Candidate 1] ==<br />
(Released October 17th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Previously, when your ships exploded anywhere in the galaxy it played the same audio cue. Now if they are on a different planet from your view, it plays a much more muted, distant-sounding, quieter explosion sound effect. And there was much rejoicing.<br />
<br />
* Added 25 champion-related achievements.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that was letting the buy menu (with MODS button and abilities) show when multiple champions (of the same hull) type were selected. In some ways this was convenient but it's just asking for bug-trouble because of differences in what unlocks each player might have.<br />
** This also prevents some genuinely bizarre behavior when the multi-player selection is opened for modification in the ship design window, since they can no longer be opened in that window now.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Each champion/normal+champion player now starts with 100 shadow capacitor charge so that the champion-only players can immediately spawn rather than waiting 20 seconds or so to build up the initial charge.<br />
<br />
* Ship Design Window: changed the positioning of the list of available modules for the selected slot so that it's always the same horizontal distance from the right edge of the window. Previously the "floating" behavior sometimes made sense but more recently it's just made it look buggy in some cases.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed several errors and misleading bits in various unit descriptions.<br />
** Thanks to Bognor, RCIX, Draco18s, KingRaptor, and KDR_11k for the reports.<br />
<br />
* Reduced the quantity of nemesis champions the AI gets to defend itself against champion assassination, since it seemed like even dislodging a non-respawning population (after raising AIP a bit) would be inappropriately difficult.<br />
<br />
* Added the higher-mark-version images for most of the champion module lines.<br />
** Thanks to HitmanN for the art.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.095 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/10/ai-war-beta-5095-apply-core-sanding.html Apply Core Sanding Machine] ==<br />
(Released October 17th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a typo in the kill-second-AI-homeworld objective text that made it nonsensical. It had said you had to destroy the CSG network Second instead of first... real cute; obviously the AI shouldn't have been assigned to proofread that part.<br />
** Thanks to Bognor for the report.<br />
<br />
* Now when a champion respawns, it automatically queues up the highest eligible mark of each module instead of just keeping exactly the modules that were on it before dying/warping.<br />
** Also, there is now a "Switch To Best Module Versions Available" button on the ship design interface (only shows when there's actually a module on the design that has an eligible higher-mark version available) which switches in the eligible higher-mark versions. It doesn't actually apply the changes (we can make it do that if preferred, but this seemed more flexible), but the apply-to-selection button is just above.<br />
*** In theory it could just do this automatically, but that would cause apply-to-selection to make changes the player did not consciously make, in some cases, so this seemed safer.<br />
** Thanks to LordSloth, Eternaly_Lost and TechSY730 for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater,chemical_art, Faulty Logic, TechSY730, Cinth, Wanderer, Dichotomy, LaughingThesaurus, Volatar, and Winge for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Champion module unlock costs from 1/1/2/3/3 => 1/1/2/2/2, so upgrading a mkI module to mkV now costs 7 points instead of 9, allowing for a bit more flexibility with the two larger champion hull sizes.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth, Dichotomy, Eternaly_Lost, chemical_art, and orzelek for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Previously if a player champion entered a nebula and no scenario was eligible to be seeded, it would duplicate a previous scenario since the beta was ongoing and more scenarios were being added. Since the 6.0 set of scenarios is complete, this duplication now no longer happens and such a nebula will simply stay empty.<br />
** The first time this "empty nebula" logic is encountered in a game, it will trigger a short journal entry explaining the situation, so that it doesn't look like a bug.<br />
** If later on a scenario is eligible to seed there and the player has a champion there (or brings one there), one of the now-eligible scenarios will spawn. The emptiness won't prevent that from happening.<br />
** If you really want more than 9 scenarios in a game, you may use the "cmd:allow duplicate nebula scenarios" command from the chatline to re-enable the old behavior.<br />
*** Note: this is not a cheat! It does not require that cheats be enabled, and does not flag the game as having had cheats used. This is because the additional scenarios still use the proper balancing scaling based on your hull size, number of previous victories, etc. It's up to the player if they want to do more scenarios after 9, though hopefully we'll eventually have enough defined that even the largest galaxy (120 planets, 15 nebulae) won't run out and this command will become moot.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Added a note to the Dark Spire description indicating it's intentional chaoticity (by way of warning the player).<br />
** Thanks to Dichotomy for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where strategic reserve ships could be freed as threat while attacking.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for the report.<br />
<br />
* Dark Spire minor faction ships will no longer kill warp gates.<br />
** Note: the rationale with these is that they're supposed to have a chaotic and uncontrollable effect on the game if included and triggered. If you want minor factions that don't cause AIP or other badness, those factions already exist :) But the DS still won't kill command stations or warp gates because those: 1) Increase AIP substantially. AND 2) Are very common (i.e. on every planet). There's no strategy in avoiding DS spawns near those, because they're everywhere.<br />
*** So something that is merely common, but does not increase AIP much (Special Forces Guard Post, +1 AIP) is fair game.<br />
*** And something that substantially increases AIP, but is rare (Black Hole Generator) is fair game.<br />
*** And something like a counter-attack-guard-post is also fair game. If you play with Dark Spire on you'll want to pay close attention to things like that which are in striking distance of a DS spawner.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a textual error in the captive human settlement description.<br />
** Thanks to Volatar and KingRaptor for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.094 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/10/ai-war-beta-5094-apply-mkiv-sanding.html Apply MkIV Sanding Machine] ==<br />
(Released October 16th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Zenith Reprocessors are now immune to reclamation, because otherwise the player could have zombie reprocs giving them m+c which just seemed weird.<br />
** Thanks to rabican for the report.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Medic Frigates are now immune to reclamation, because zombies healing other zombies doesn't really work right (on many levels).<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the large starbases were repairing the champion about 100x faster than they should have been due to a testing flag being left on.<br />
** Note that the module construction part is unaffected.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed several minor issues with the tutorials, in preparation for 6.0.<br />
<br />
* Added a welcome message (referencing the tutorial and the "Beginner Game" setup script) to the lobby for the first time it is opened under a given profile (this is suppressed if the game detects that the profile has already started playing a real game at least once).<br />
<br />
* Adjusted the energy-surplus-achievement trigger thresholds to better fit the current model's numbers (and not trigger any achievements immediately upon starting the game).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where minifortresses had a ship-cap of zero in defender games.<br />
** Thanks to Gith for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the Spire Corvette was still available in some games with starships off.<br />
** Thanks to X14U2NVX for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where hacking an ARS, capturing the planet, saving, quitting, and reloading could cause another ARS to spawn somewhere in the galaxy.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the fallen spire campaign could spawn two of the same shard-signal.<br />
** Thanks to contingencyplan for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Nebulae are no longer considered by the "Knowledge Found" galaxy map display mode.<br />
<br />
* Fixed several bugs that could cause the new "large starbases can repair/assist champions" rule to not work sometimes.<br />
** Thanks to Underfot, Faulty Logic, Cinth, chemical_art for reporting, and to chemical_art again for the save that demonstrated yet another bug with this.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to LordSloth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a couple longstanding bugs that would cause very old saves to not load properly.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to vortexion for the report.<br />
<br />
* Champion respawn rebalance:<br />
** Now, if a "dead" champion's shadow capacitor charge is lower than 100, it does not respawn until the charge reaches 100.<br />
** Respawning now completely discharges the champion's shadow capacitor.<br />
** The confirm prompt for scrapping now displays alternate text if only champions are selected, since it's actually a "warp home" function rather than a "scrap" one. Follows exactly the same rules as normal respawning, either way.<br />
** Also amended the opening champion journal entry to note the respawn rules.<br />
<br />
* Added "Champions" galaxy map display mode so you can see where your champion(s) are from the galaxy map.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the resource bar metal/crystal/energy/knowledge mouseover tooltips would show lines for champion-only players.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.093 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/10/ai-war-beta-5093-apply-mkiii-sanding.html Apply MkIII Sanding Machine] ==<br />
(Released October 13th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* The large allied starbases in nebula missions can now (slowly) repair your champion and assist it in constructing new modules, allowing you to switch loadouts mid-mission without keeping an engineer team on the other side of the wormhole.<br />
** To make this work, champions and all nebula units are now free to repair (minor faction bases having no m+c reserves of their own to draw upon), which now makes the player-buildable versions of the nebula faction ships a bit more attractive to use.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth, Marmel, and other players for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where hybrids, exo ships, and the like could switch to threat-fleet behavior.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Military Command Stations:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Fixed a bug where the mkII and mkIII were still showing the mkI descriptive text, despite that now not being the same.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Winge, TechSY730, rabican, and Kahuna for reports/suggestions on these.<br />
<br />
* AI Strategic Reserves:<br />
** Fixed a bug where the spawns were only considering the first player's available ship types (so if the second player's core planet was under attack, nothing would spawn).<br />
** Fixed a bug where non-homeworld spawns were not trying to leave the correct percent-of-max-reserve remaining.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Significantly rebalanced how the ally and enemy large-starbase "how fast do these build units?" rates are computed in the nebula scenarios, notably:<br />
** Most of the modifiers are now applied additively, not multiplicatively, so that the numbers stay under control longer.<br />
** The base-vs-base scenarios are now more consistent in how losses of small starbases impact ally/enemy production concentration into the large bases.<br />
** Ally production now scales up with the factor based on number of champions, number of won scenarios, and biggest available champion hull. It doesn't scale up as much as the enemies do (as otherwise the overall challenge wouldn't really change, where it does need to get harder as the player progresses), but it should keep it from feeling quite so one-sided in highly scaled scenarios.<br />
** If you have advanced logging on, each multi-ship group spawn in an offroad scenario will log an entry to OffroadScenarioLog.txt giving info on what was spawned and how frequently spawns are happening at that point.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth, Winge, chemical_art, Histidine, Mermel, and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* The earlier base-vs-base scenarios now use similar autotargeting-logic-modifications to what is used in some of the later scenarios, to keep the enemies and allies from getting near an objective and then haring off to the other corner of the map because they could get better damage against some target.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the Dark Spire minor faction could kill AI command stations indirectly through plasma-siege splash damage.<br />
** Thanks to Histidine for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed several display bugs with champion hulls on the ship design screen.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Nebula scenarios can now grant both a new hull-race and a new hull-size at once. Previously a new hull-size would override, which could lead to not having all races by the end.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.092 ==<br />
(Released October 10th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Nebula seeding:<br />
** Every map now always seeds at least 9 nebulae; though 80+ planet maps seed more (up to 15 on 120 planets, as before).<br />
** Nebulae try to seed 4 hops apart, falling back on seeding closer together if there winds up not being enough room later on in the seeding.<br />
*** This helps with the fact that nebulae have to be seeded before homeworlds are chosen, by generally avoiding large concentrations of or gaps between nebulae.<br />
<br />
* Added "Nebula Wormholes" galaxy display mode that shows all planets with a wormhole that leads to a nebula.<br />
** The "Unexplored Wormholes" galaxy display mode no longer counts these wormholes, to avoid confusion.<br />
** This display mode doesn't work (and doesn't show up in the list on the galaxy map) if there are no champion or normal+champion players.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where a cpa deploying could cause unhandled errors.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version that was interfering with group moves through wormholes.<br />
** Thanks to Histidine for the report.<br />
<br />
* The Neinzul Mourner large starbase can now also spawn the player-gift facility after you win a scenario with the mourners in it, instead of just the small starbase (possibly the small starbase being able to do so will go away later, since it's the only faction that can happen with). In any event, it should still be true that at most one player-facility per splinter faction per nebula will spawn.<br />
<br />
* The IMT player-gift facility now responds to the D hotkey.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the reminder.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.091 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/10/ai-war-beta-5091-apply-mkii-sanding.html Apply MkII Sanding Machine] ==<br />
(Released October 9th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Diazo for reporting that interference.<br />
<br />
* Military Command Stations:<br />
** 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)<br />
** Metal,Crystal production from 16,16/32,32/64,64 => 24,24/48,48/96,96 (the same as logistics stations).<br />
** Now do not suffer damage reduction when firing from under a normal human-tech forcefield.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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)<br />
** Is now immune to radar dampening.<br />
** 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).<br />
** MkII and MkIII versions now do 200 engine damage per shot.<br />
** MkIII versions now apply 5 seconds of paralysis per shot.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Miniforts:<br />
** Now immune to translocation<br />
*** Thanks to Diazo for reporting what a clever AI shadow frigate did with that fact.<br />
** No longer provide counter-dark-matter coverage.<br />
** Can now receive up to a +100% munitions boost.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** And a related bug where some of the special forces spawn logic could only access the special ship types of the first AI player.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report leading to these discoveries.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for reporting that there were still issues here.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where Youngling Fireflies were eligible to be picked as AI reinforcements. Maybe it was for entertaining bored guard ships.<br />
** Thanks to rabican for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some remaining cases where giving a group-move order to an all-teleporter group would cause them to use normal engines instead of teleporting.<br />
** Thanks to Eternaly_Lost for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730, Toranth, Kahuna, and Cinth for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The nebula faction structures that produce ships for the player will now send their ships to a starship-constructor intragalactic warp gate, if you have one active.<br />
** This seemed a better way of handling the request for a warp gate for these than a whole new dedicated gate type, as that could be a bit tricky to know when to include in the buy menu.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and many other players for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.090 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/10/ai-war-beta-5090-fish-or-cut-bait.html Fish Or Cut Bait] ==<br />
(Released October 6th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Now when you give a group-movement movement command to a group containing only teleporting units, it ignores the group-movement part so that the teleporters do not use their normal engines.<br />
** Thanks to contingencyplan and Valorian_Nova for pointing out the undesirable side effect of the change in the last version.<br />
<br />
* Made the Youngling Vulture's description more clear about how its damage is computed, and copied the details of that to the Doom Accelerator module rather than just referencing the vulture.<br />
** Thanks to idont for pointing out how unclear the descriptions were for this purpose.<br />
<br />
* Removed the initial prompt to import settings from 3.x, since that hasn't been current in over two years.<br />
** The importer is still available from the settings menu, if anyone for some reason actually needs it.<br />
<br />
* Since "make the threatballs fish or cut bait" was #1 on the second round of the 6.0 poll:<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** If an AI homeworld or core world is under attack, the threat fleet will rally to defend it.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Otherwise, it picks a planet in AI territory to hang out at until either of the two above conditions are met.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** For the curious who have advanced logging on, the target-planet selection process is logged in the special forces log file.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer, TechSY730, Faulty Logic, Hearteater, many other players over the months, and the 6.0 poll voters for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* CPAs are now partly "funded" from the AI's strategic reserve if the reserve is over 50% full. Also, if that plus cpa-freed ships does not fill out the proper number of ships the strategic reserve will contribute even beyond the 50% line to try to fill it up.<br />
** If you're curious about the math of how the strategic reserve contributes to CPAs, the actual sending of the CPA will add an entry to the special forces log (where the rest of the strategic reserve logging goes) detailing what it did. Assuming advanced logging is on, of course.<br />
** Thanks to Trandrin for reporting some circumstances where the barracks population was running out relatively soon in games.<br />
<br />
* The issue of multi-ingress being so much harder than single-ingress came in #2 on the second round of the 6.0 poll, so here's a start: The time-between-waves adjustment for the number of player-territory ingress points has been adjusted to narrow the random range somewhat and to be somewhat more forgiving on multiple-ingress-point cases.<br />
** Thanks to Diazo for the suggestion, and the poll voters for emphasizing how important this was to them.<br />
<br />
* Also for helping with the multi-ingress/satellite-worlds thing: 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** These don't have the penalty vs polycrystal (or scout) hulls, making them actually able to deal with bombers.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer and the other poll voters for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where minor faction and zombie ships could be affected by the player auto-kite controls.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and Faulty Logic for reporting this.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where auto-knowledge-gather and auto-scout would sometimes still consider nebulae.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and Vinco for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where line-place would try to pack things in too closely on certain angles, which would lead to every other spot being skipped.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for the report.<br />
<br />
* Command station remains can now be rebuilt even when energy is negative, to avoid the "you need power to get power" catch-22.<br />
** Thanks to motai for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed several bugs that were preventing champions (and their assisting engineers) from building modules while the controlling player's energy was negative.<br />
** Normally this would be fine, but since champions are supposed to function as independent players, no player's energy budget should impact them directly.<br />
** This also fixes some issues where 0-energy things could not be built during negative energy.<br />
** Thanks to motai for the reports.<br />
<br />
* Spire Tractor Platform:<br />
** MkI-Cap-Health from 10.5M => 8M.<br />
** Base move speed from 18 => 15.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for inspiring these changes, and other player for their feedback on what happens when the AI gets Dire Honeycombs.<br />
<br />
* Most champion modules (basically everything except paralyzer) and the champion main guns are now better at not spreading out their fire too much, and thus at staying focused on the preferred target designated by the player.<br />
** Thanks to orzelek for the report and save leading to this change.<br />
<br />
* Changed champion paralyzer module:<br />
** Shots per salvo from 11 => 1.<br />
** Seconds per salvo from 8 => 2.<br />
** Base MkI Attack Power from 6250 => 17k.<br />
** Paralyze-seconds from 6+(2*mk) => 18+(6*mk).<br />
** Mainly this is because the paralyze autotargeting logic doesn't work well with multi-shot salvos (they tend to all hit the same target). Now it's much more efficient at spreading out.<br />
** Thanks to many players for reporting the inefficiency, and orzelek for a save that helped demonstrate the problem.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to... has anyone not reported this?<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.089 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/10/ai-war-beta-5089-apply-sanding-machine.html Apply Sanding Machine] ==<br />
(Released October 3rd, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where viewing a Core Spire Corvette Fabricator could cause unhandled exceptions (and the queue buttons to not show).<br />
** Thanks to Niwantaw for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* In honor of basically winning the "what most needs attention for 6.0?" poll, the remains rebuilders have received a logic overhaul and now:<br />
** 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.<br />
** If in FRD, they now are much less likely to "yoyo" back to the FRD-point between rebuilds until all the targets are rebuilt.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** This is actually a fairly significant buff to the unit, but it's probably not a big balance impact to start the rebuilding faster. Let us know if we're wrong about that.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer and the other voters for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Another high-scorer from the 6.0 poll: Advanced Fabricators and Fabricators now use the same "don't put this near a wormhole" logic as human home command stations.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna and the other voters for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Also from the 6.0 poll: 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.<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar for reporting this.<br />
<br />
* Changed the seeding quantity calculations of fabricators a bit; should be a similar amount as before but now there are somewhat more core fabs and somewhat fewer experimental fabs (should be same number of experimental-starship fabs).<br />
** Mainly, this is because there's so many more types of core fabs that more variety can be had there.<br />
<br />
* Another popular one from the 6.0 poll (and mantis voting) : Human-player teleporting units now use normal engines when group-moving.<br />
** Along with this, increased the normal-engine speed of all teleporting units to the speed of a fighter, for those lower than that.<br />
** Thanks to FunnyMan for the suggestion and many players for supporting it on mantis and in the 6.0 poll.<br />
<br />
* Since it also did very well in the 6.0 poll: engineers have had a "what to assist" logic overhaul such that:<br />
** If is Prefer-Non-Military toggle is on, and one is military and the other is not, prefer the non-military one.<br />
** If one has more currently assisting engineers than the other, prefer the one with less.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** Also, distance is now considered zero if the target is already within range, which helps a lot because previously it was masking other considerations.<br />
** If one object is a damaged irreplaceable unit and the other is not, prefer the damaged irreplaceable.<br />
** If one object is in stand-down and the other is not, prefer the one not in stand-down.<br />
** If one object's remaining-health-percent is less than half the other's, prefer the lower-health one.<br />
*** This was being considered before (it always went for the lowest percent-health), but only by teleporting repairers.<br />
** If one object has taken more than 25% engine damage and the other has not, prefer the engine-damaged one.<br />
** If one object's metal+crystal cost is more than twice the other's, prefer the more expensive one.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer and the other voters for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.088 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/10/ai-war-beta-5088-strategic-reserve.html Strategic Reserve] ==<br />
(Released October 1st, 2012)<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** The reserve starts at zero and increases periodically, so it can be whittled away.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* A longtime favorite on the mantis voting: Added a mouseover tooltip to the game clock in the upper-left corner that displays:<br />
** "Game Time", the clock that's already there, which speeds up or slows down with the simulation and stops while the game is paused.<br />
** "Local Time", as in real-world, according to your computer.<br />
** "Real Time Spent In Game", which is the amount of real time you've spent playing that particular game (i.e. that particular savegame), and ignores simulation speed and pausing, etc.<br />
** Thanks to Prezombie and many others for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Added a "Control-Group-Specific" tab to the CTRLS window, similar to the "Planet-Specific" tab:<br />
** Instead of selecting a planet on this tab, you select one of your 10 control groups from a dropdown.<br />
** Currently the tab has:<br />
*** Auto-FRD Military<br />
**** When this is set to "On", all your military units in this control group will be set to Free-Roaming Defender. Note: certain ship types (like fortresses that multi-repair, and zenith siege engines) never auto-FRD.<br />
**** When this is set to "Default", the global Auto-FRD toggle will govern.<br />
**** When this is "Off", this behavior will not happen for ships in this control group even if the global Auto-FRD toggle is on.<br />
**** If a ship is in multiple control groups with conflicting settings for this, the priority order is as follows: Off, On, Default.<br />
*** Auto-FRD Engineers<br />
**** When this is set to "On", all your engineer/rebuilder units in this control group will be set to Free-Roaming Defender.<br />
**** When this is set to "Default", the global Auto-FRD toggle will govern.<br />
**** When this is "Off", this behavior will not happen for ships in this control group even if the global Auto-FRD toggle is on.<br />
**** If a ship is in multiple control groups with conflicting settings for this, the priority order is as follows: Off, On, Default.<br />
*** Auto Kite<br />
**** When this is set to "On", all your non-melee, non-sniper ships in this control group will automatically pull away from their target so that they are (effective range - 500) range units away. Note: certain ship types (like fortresses that multi-repair, and zenith siege engines) never kite, and certain other ship types (like raptors) always kite.<br />
**** When this is set to "Default", the global Auto-Kite threshold will govern.<br />
**** When this is "Off", this behavior will not happen for ships in this control group even if the global Auto-Kite threshold would apply to them.<br />
**** If a ship is in multiple control groups with conflicting settings for this, the priority order is as follows: Off, On, Default.<br />
** Thanks to kezziny and many others for the high-on-the-mantis-votes suggestion that inspired this change.<br />
<br />
* The Galaxy-Wide, Per-Planet, and Per-Control-Group tabs of the CTRLS window now notify you if you're about to discard unsaved changes when you try to close the window, switch to another tab, or switch to a different target for the same tab (for the per-planet and per-control-group ones).<br />
<br />
* Answering another longstanding top-of-the-mantis-voting request: 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine! TyberZann, Draco18s, and many others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.087 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/09/ai-war-beta-5087-brawl-royale-released.html Brawl Royale] ==<br />
(Released September 27th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version where EER missions were rewarding with IMT facilities (and last time the problem was the other way around, ha; now they each give the right one).<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where player-built IMT ships were basing their caps on EER facilities.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Added the last "main" nebula scenario.<br />
** And the largest champion hull size.<br />
<br />
* Added better graphics for the champion (and corvette) plasma siege cannon.<br />
** Thanks to HitmanN for the art (for this and all the other champion module graphics, though most of them have not been individually announced).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the available-module-list button set on the ship design window wasn't fitting horizontally within the window.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.086 ==<br />
(Released September 24th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version that would grant a ton of stuff to champions as soon as you loaded the game (a bit of test code that had been disabled, but had a bug that applied to other cases, sigh...).<br />
** Thanks to Arkillion for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.085 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/09/ai-war-beta-5085-shady-carriers-released.html Shady Carriers] ==<br />
(Released September 24th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the most recent scenario where the new splinter faction was giving an EER reward building instead of the right one.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Added two more nebula scenarios.<br />
<br />
* Made "what can I autotarget?" logic more consistent so that player-ally minor factions don't pop AI carriers.<br />
** Thanks to Trandrin for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that could cause Dark Spire spawns on AI planets at the beginning of the game.<br />
** Thanks to Trandrin for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that was causing champion ships to still be able to get into a transport.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the report.<br />
<br />
* The special-difficulty scaling (used for exos and other superweapon stuff, mainly, but some other stuff as well) is now higher on higher difficulties.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Combat Guardians rebalance:<br />
** This just focuses on the base-game guardians (the guardians added in LotS are more special-purpose) and doesn't touch the Tachyon guardian since it's not really focused on combat.<br />
** Basically balancing these to be fairly powerful offensively (roughly like a starship with a cap of 4), but defensively much lower health than that (roughly that of a fleet ship with a cap of 20).<br />
*** If this proves too tame, can always ratchet it up later, but wanted to bring the threat levels from the different guardians closer together.<br />
** Laser Guardian shots-per-salvo from 15 => 8 (previously these things had really high dps for also having 5x bonuses vs light and polycrystal).<br />
** Sniper Guardian:<br />
*** Base damage per shot from 12k*mk => 19k*mk (yielding a cap-dps a bit below where the laser guardian now is, with 4x bonuses).<br />
*** Health from 1/3th normal guardian health to 1/2.<br />
** Spider Guardian: <br />
*** Base damage per shot from 600*mk => 3k*mk (cap-dps is now 80% that of the sniper guardian).<br />
*** Health from 1/3th normal guardian health to 1/2.<br />
** Tractor Guardian base damage per shot from 3600*mk => 35k*mk (bonus cap-dps now around that of the sniper guardian, but it only gets bonuses vs turrets)<br />
** Lightning Guardian:<br />
*** Base damage per shot from 2400*mk => 6000*mk (base cap-dps when hitting at least 40 targets is a little lower than the bonus cap dps of the laser guardian)<br />
*** All vs-hull-type bonuses removed.<br />
** Flak Guardian:<br />
*** Shots-per-salvo from 31 => 5 (previously the dps on this thing was way up there, able to hit 155 targets per salvo).<br />
*** Seconds-per-salvo from 8 => 10.<br />
*** Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 8 => 5.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Refractive from 8 => 5.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Turret from 0.1 => 1.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Composite from 3 => 5.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Heavy from 0.3 => 1.<br />
*** Multiplier vs UltraHeavy from 0.2 => 1.<br />
*** Base damage per shot from 1500*mk => 5.5k*mk (base and bonus cap-dps now in range of laser guardian's new numbers).<br />
** Beam Guardian:<br />
*** Beam can now hit a maximum of 9 targets instead of everything on the line (that is, it now uses the same rules as the zenith beam frigate).<br />
*** Base damage per shot from 4500*mk => 33k*mk (base cap-dps when hitting 9 targets is a bit higher than the lightning guardian's ideal dps; neither has bonuses)<br />
** Artillery Guardian:<br />
*** Multiplier vs UltraHeavy from 3 => 5.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Heavy from 2 => 5.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Turret from 2 => 5.<br />
*** Fixed bug where it had a multiplier vs Artillery of 0.1, now that's a multiplier vs Scout.<br />
*** Base damage per shot staying at 160k*mk (base and bonus cap-dps now in range of laser guardian's new numbers).<br />
*** Health from 1/5th normal guardian health to 1/2.<br />
** Raider Guardian:<br />
*** Multiplier vs CommandGrade from 3 => 5.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Structural from 2 => 5.<br />
*** Multiplier vs UltraHeavy from 2 => 5.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Turret from 0.2 => 1.<br />
*** Base damage per shot from 36k => 11k (base and bonus cap-dps now in range of laser guardian's new numbers).<br />
*** Health from 1/8th normal guardian health to 1/2.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic, Hearteater, and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Fixed military tutorial to expect you to build half your mark I cap of the ARS-granted unit, instead of 20, since 20 could be higher than the cap.<br />
** Thanks to Honknatter, Arkillion, and ElOhTeeBee for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a number of other issues with the military tutorial (the other tutorials will be getting a full go-over closer to the next official release).<br />
<br />
* Changed the rewards scaling for the IMT scenario to be based primarily on how well the allied bases survived (in count and health %), instead of primarily on the number of surviving enclaves.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the feedback inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.084 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/09/ai-war-beta-5084-diplomatic-incident.html Diplomatic Incident] ==<br />
(Released September 20th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Added a new nebula scenario, with a somewhat different kind of gameplay than the previous ones, and includes a couple old friendly foes (hence the release title).<br />
** Includes the last splinter faction, incidentally it is a human one.<br />
<br />
* Nerfed the champion/corvette plasma siege cannons because they were really a bit much as it was.<br />
<br />
* Exos now get less bonus from the presence of human Champions in the game.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth, Faulty Logic, and others for the feedback inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Kills by the Devourer Golem or Enemy-to-all Roaming Enclaves (or their squadrons) no longer contribute to the Dark Spire counter when on the same planet as one of the vengeance generators.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine and other players for reporting how badly that could go. Hilarious but... a bit much.<br />
<br />
* Champions can no longer be loaded into transports.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the feedback (read: record of a jumpship made out of limburger) inspiring this change, and Soyweiser for also pointing it out.<br />
<br />
* Champion main weapon ranges normalized so they don't exceed the range of their modules (and thus cause the auto-movement logic to not close to the proper range).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for reporting that this was happening.<br />
<br />
* Dark Spire spawns no longer get stronger based on the number of previous dark-spire-spawns, because this was still causing things to get out of control even at a very low value (+1% per previous spawn, so additive and not exponential), and this is probably inevitable in some situations like FS shard-chase-exos.<br />
** Thanks to Arkillion for the feedback and save inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Dark Spire vengeance generators now only get 1/10th the normal charge from a ship dying if it belongs to an exo attack.<br />
** Thanks to Arkillion for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Put in some save-game repair logic to deal with a case where the next-exo-size variable was being saved as a really large number in version 5.078 (and propagated for those particular savegames since then), which would effectively disable the affected exo source.<br />
** Thanks to orzelek for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Reprocessor: <br />
** MkI-base-cap-dps from 30k => 45k (for reference, Acid Sprayers have 58.8k, and the same bonuses).<br />
** Now immune to tractors.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to LordSloth for the experiments and feedback that inspired these changes.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.083 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/09/ai-war-beta-5083-core-values-released.html Core Values] ==<br />
(Released September 18th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Added roughly (there's some randomization) one "brutal pick" to each AI homeworld on difficulties 7+.<br />
<br />
* Added new "brutal pick" Core Guard Post for Ancient Shadows: The Wrath Lance.<br />
** As long as it detects hostile military ships on the planet, fires several massive long-range continuous beam weapon cannons in different directions. Does not actually aim, but the beams move as the post rotates.<br />
<br />
* Added new "brutal pick" Core Guard Post for Ancient Shadows: The Teuthida.<br />
** An AI/Neinzul hybrid experiment gone wrong. When hostiles are present, this post continuously generates nanoswarm-like drones. Instead of merely doing reclamation damage, however, the organisms released by these drones instantly transform the targets into "zombie" vessels.<br />
** Ships immune to reclamation are spared this fate, but are not spared from the extremely powerful cluster of railcannons mounted on the post itself.<br />
<br />
* Added new "brutal pick" Core Guard Post for Ancient Shadows: The Grav Reactor. <br />
** An enormously powerful reactor based on some kind of gravitational energy manipulation. Generates a strong gravity well that prevents most enemy ships from leaving the system, and greatly slows enemy ships that stray too near the reactor itself. Also builds gravity drones that rush hostile ships to slow them down and damage them upon detonation.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.082 ==<br />
(September 17th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that could cause basically all buy menus to be empty. Whoops.<br />
** Thanks to ussdefiant for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.081 ==<br />
(Released September 17th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for noting the effective-invincibility problem.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version that could cause unhandled exceptions when opening the buy menu of a core fabricator.<br />
** Thanks to Battlecrydnx for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where some toggles on the CTRLS screen were taking up more horizontal space than necessary, causing it to not quite fit on a 1024-wide resolution.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the feedback inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Firefly death-explosion base power cut to 25% of what it was; can still get multiplied by up to 20 (so 5x of what the base power used to be) by getting a lot of shots in before dying.<br />
** This may be too low, in which case we'll buff these again, but these were really brutal in the hands of the AI in the previous version with a couple dozen fireflies basically able to vaporize an early-game human fleet.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the feedback inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** The actual attack power of the unit is unchanged, this is just fixing a bug in the internal balancing model.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for the feedback inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to mithrandi for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* 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) :<br />
** Mad Bomber reinforcement multiplier from "you get one ship" on non-core-worlds (and 0.25 on core worlds) => 0.7, on all worlds.<br />
** Neinzul Youngster reinforcement multiplier from 0.25 => 0.8.<br />
** Vicious Raider, Extreme Raider, and Technologist Raider multiplier from 0.3 => 0.8.<br />
** Attritioner, Zenith Descendant, Spireling, Starfleet Commander, Experimentalist, and Grav Driller reinforcement multiplier from 0.4 => 0.9.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
** The Core reinforcement multiplier from 0.3 => 0.5 (same as its wave multiplier).<br />
<br />
* Removed the AI-Type-inherent effects where reinforcement and/or waves would act like AIP was a certain number of points higher than it actually was, since this tended to make the early game much harder for no obvious reason, but not have much impact on the balance later in the game.<br />
<br />
* Made the wave alert-text logic better handle mixed-tech waves: if it's 100 mkI fighters and 100 mkII fighters, it will now stay "Fighters" instead of just enemy ships as if it were truly a mixed wave.<br />
** Thanks to pheonix89 for reporting that it was frequently not giving a ship type for waves like that.<br />
<br />
* Removed the wave-calc rule that was preventing more than 1 of a specific starship type from being added; normally it wouldn't make much difference but it was impairing the Spire Hammer, Heroic, Starfleet Commander, and Extreme Raider AIs from scaling up their extra wave components.<br />
<br />
* Made the AI-Type-specific units added to waves (Spire Hammer, Heroic, and Extreme Raider AIs do this) scale up quantity-wise with AIP (based partly on AI Difficulty) as well as wave size, but also scale down with higher-tech-level variants.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth and Dazio for pointing out how these could be punishing in the early game but nearly irrelevant later on.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous verion's addition of automatic gradual engine self-repair where anything with less than about 250 max engine health was not being impacted at all.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.080 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/09/ai-war-beta-5080-bonus-round-released.html Bonus Round] ==<br />
(Released September 15th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed several bugs where some ways of killing a ship were not even checking for "should this ship be reclaimed?".<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the most common way of killing a ship was not checking for "should this ship be reprocessed?" (meaning that it took damage from a Zenith Reprocessor and should grant m+c to the player who did that damage).<br />
** Thanks to LordSloth, Nic, Lancefighter, KDR_11k, and others for reporting the... lack of effect.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where reclamation damage and reprocessing damage were not persisting across save/load.<br />
<br />
* Added new Ancient Shadows bonus ship type: Youngling Firefly.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to soMe_RandoM for the suggestion that inspired this ship.<br />
<br />
* Added new Ancient Shadows bonus ship: Saboteur.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for the suggestion that inspired this ship.<br />
<br />
* Added new Ancient Shadows bonus ship: Spire Corvette.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Built from the SCRV tab of the Starship Constructor.<br />
<br />
* Corrected some omissions to the Hybrids drone-preference logic, to reduce the likelihood of their picking up a ton of Spire Tractor Platforms, Spire Stealth Battleships, and/or Spire Railclusters. The Super Hybrid actually prioritizes these and similarly devastating escorts, however.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug with the display of the champion decoy ability.<br />
** Thanks to Jeffersn for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** But tactical usage should still be very viable for kiting around a planet, spreading out an incoming attack, etc.<br />
** Thanks to many players (who may wish to remain nameless) for feedback over the past several months pointing to this being necessary.<br />
<br />
* Corrected a balance-math error with Zenith Medic Frigate attack power, mkI-cap-dps from 446,250 => 100,000 (for reference, the spire stealth battleship has 90,000, with 1.4 multipliers; the medic frigate has no multipliers).<br />
<br />
* Zenith Siege Engine:<br />
** MkI-cap-health from 16.8M => 10M.<br />
** Corrected an... interesting balance-math error where it had 720k mkI-cap-dps AND 10x multipliers (against structural, heavy, ultraheavy, and turret):<br />
*** Multipliers from 10x => 5x.<br />
*** 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).<br />
** Reload time from 15 => 10.<br />
*** Damage adjusted to maintain dps.<br />
** Now pay no attention to auto-FRD or auto-kite.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring these changes, as little consolation as that may be to the many ships (including spire capital ships) <br />
* All modular forts now pay no attention to auto-kite (previously some did, and some didn't).<br />
<br />
* Zenith Reprocessor:<br />
** MkI-cap-health from 8.4M => 15M (now in the neighborhood of fighters).<br />
** MkI-cap-dps from 17.2k => 30k (has 8x multipliers).<br />
** Thanks to LordSloth, Kahuna, and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Eternaly_Lost and others for periodically raising laments at the length of time it can take to get one of those things back home.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.079 ==<br />
(Released September 10th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the recent change to remains-rebuilder logic that could cause a null exception.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a savegame/gamestate corruption bug that could happen when the Dark Spire faction was enabled.<br />
** Very sorry about that, actual corruption bugs are quite rare. Apparently a zombie apocalypse wasn't the only thing the Dark Spire had planned!<br />
** This could also impact new games (probably just in multiplayer; the same code that does savegames is used to send gamestates over the network), cause nebulae to be empty, etc.<br />
** Thanks to Jeffersn, Toranth, Lilli, eduran1984, and Lancefighter for providing reports and saves leading to this being discovered.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.078 ==<br />
(Released September 4th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the cap-overhaul where microparasites and translocators had a ship cap of 1.<br />
** Thanks to Nic for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version where the AI had stopped respecting unit-cap-scale when sending waves. Clever girl.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report and logs.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.077 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/09/ai-war-beta-5077-cap-tectonics-released.html Cap Tectonics] ==<br />
(Released September 4th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* After thinking about it for about a month: removed the rule where fleet ships have lower caps at higher marks. So instead of 98 MkI fighters (on normal caps), 88 MkII fighters, etc, it's now just 98 for each mark of fighter.<br />
** Hopefully this will make the higher-mark unlocks, and fabricators, more attractive.<br />
** This does increase how much the AI gets too, though as it turns out the mark level of a ship was being factored into wave sizes _twice_ (so MkII waves were about 10% smaller than they should have been, etc), which wasn't really good anyway.<br />
** Thanks to many players for weighing in with votes and discussion on [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11244.0.html the poll], and Faulty Logic for starting said.<br />
<br />
* 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+ <br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Still not applied on difficulties under 5 since the waves are so small there anyway.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the spire blade, tackle drone, and various other drones were valued far higher than intended for purposes of the amount of energy their death provides dark-spire generators.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Turrets still need to be done, of course, but I've had enough swimming-in-numbers for one day.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater and others for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug which could occasionally cause unhandled errors when trying to spawn a barracks/carrier.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Dark Spire minor faction toned down to avoid it causing a "zombie apocalypse" in the first hour:<br />
** Number of spawners from (FactionIntensity+1)*2 => FactionIntensity*2.<br />
** Spawners can no longer be placed on planets with an advanced factory, super terminal, or dyson sphere.<br />
** Base spawn intensity is now 1/4th of what it used to be.<br />
** Spawn intensity is now doubled on the planet actually triggering the spawn (so it's 1/2 of what it used to be, total).<br />
** The increase in spawn intensity from previous spawns from +10%-per-previous-spawn => +1%-per-previous-spawn.<br />
** Fixed a bug where the spawns were giving champion XP.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for reporting the... apocalyptic nature of the first implementation.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where clicking an "allied ship" group on the planetary summary (right sidebar of planet view) would only actually select those ships if the controlling player(s) were disabled (e.g. loading a multiplayer save and disabling the other players so you can play it in singleplayer). Now it will work whenever you are allowed team-control of those ships, for whatever reason.<br />
<br />
* Added new toggle to the Galaxy-Wide tab of the CTRLS window: Brave Cloaker Starships.<br />
** If this toggle is checked, your Cloaker Starships will suppress their normal self-preservation instincts to avoid being included in a selection with military ships.<br />
** Note: this applies to the cloaker starships of the player who's brave-cloaker-starships toggle is checked, regardless of who is trying to control them in a multiplayer game with Allow Team Control on. Allied Cloaker Starships will still be wimps unless their owners check this toggle too.<br />
<br />
* Fixed the health and damage of the neinzul viral swarmer (only used by one AI type) and the neinzul bomber (used by roaming enclaves and preservation wardens) to not be abysmally low.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Rams, Martyrs, Siege Towers, Ion Blaster, and Implosion Artillery can now be placed into stand-down mode to keep them from firing (or, in the case of a ram, blowing itself up; thankfully martyrs already didn't try to do that automatically).<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Ram far-zoom icons now rotate according to their facing.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where a remains rebuilder could target the remains of an energy-producer before the command station went down, be unable to actually rebuild the energy-producer due to the command station being down, and keep trying to perform the rebuild. Now when it notices that the command station is down while trying to rebuild, it will abort the rebuild and look for something else to do.<br />
** Thanks to Sigma7 and Lancefighter for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to Drin for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the addition of Microcosm Clusters had caused Simple Clusters to be generated the same way as the new variant.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where hybrids were considering nebulae for the purposes of eligible planets to defend, attack, etc.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a really longstanding bug where shots on a planet were sometimes visible even through the fog of war.<br />
** Thanks to chrism, Nice Save, Tssbackus, zharmad, and others for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where Helper players could not switch to the Champion-only role (they could already switch to Normal and Normal+Champion).<br />
** Thanks to LordSloth for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.076 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/09/ai-war-beta-5076-clusters-of-pain.html Clusters Of Pain] ==<br />
(Released September 1st, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Added new Ancient Shadows Map Style: Microcosm Clusters:<br />
** Similar to Clusters in overall structure, but each cluster picks from a set of different methods of placing and connecting the intra-cluster planets.<br />
<br />
* Added new Ancient Shadows Minor Faction (this is not related to nebulae or champions, just another "Minor Faction" that can be enabled from the lobby): Dark Spire<br />
** Several mysterious, ancient structures exist on AI planets throughout the galaxy. They cannot be harmed, and do not have any weapons, but they absorb energy when a ship dies on the same planet. What happens when they absorb too much?<br />
** The intensity of this faction can be set from 0 to 10; 0 is disabled, 1 is trivial-impact, 4 is normal, 10 is potentially-dominating.<br />
** The structures are marked as "DaS" on the immobile-minor-faction galaxy filter (similar to how it shows the dyson sphere, rocketry corps silos, etc), so you can see their known locations pretty quickly.<br />
** Balance is ongoing on these, if you think it's out of line please:<br />
*** Turn on advanced logging.<br />
*** Play for a bit until it does what you think is out of line.<br />
*** Send us the DarkSpireMinorFactionLogicLog.txt from your RuntimeData directory, along with a description of what seems off to you. Thanks!<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the application of the reinforcement-focus logic to the initial ship seeding was crashing the tutorial.<br />
** Thanks to DrGonzo for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.075 ==<br />
(Released August 30th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* The reinforcement-focus concept from the previous version is now also applied to the initial seeding of guard ships onto AI planets.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an array-index-out-of-bounds error on the AI thread from the reinforcements-focus logic.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.074 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/08/ai-war-beta-5074-focused-forces-released.html Focused Forces] ==<br />
(Released August 30th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the fifth direct-use champion ability was never being given as a scenario reward.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where one of the scenario-reward ship production facilities was not responding to the D hotkey.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
=== Special Forces made more interesting ===<br />
<br />
* AI Special Forces:<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater, Faulty Logic, Martyn van Buren, Diazo, TechSY730, Lancefighter, Sunshine!, Bossman, Draco18s, Ozymandiaz, Wingflier, and chemical_art for feedback inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
=== Combat Starship rebalance ===<br />
<br />
* By "Combat Starship" we mean: Flagship, Zenith Starship, Spire Starship, Bomber Starship, Plasma Siege Starship, and Leech Starship. The Raid and Riot lines are not considered here since they have very different roles and/or stat baselines (the Raid is largely for independent raids, and the Riot does hardly any damage). The Cloaker, Enclave, and Scout lines are all not directly involved in combat. The Leech is borderline but fits well enough.<br />
<br />
* Not making any extreme changes here, just refinements based on feedback from the last several months' changes. Some of those changes have been pretty substantial, so some of these are too.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter, chemical_art, TechSY730, Diazo, Faulty Logic, Hearteater, Draco18s, sol_ilya, and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Leech Starship:<br />
** Ship cap from 3 => 4.<br />
** Seconds Per Salvo from 4 => 2.<br />
** Shots Per Salvo from 3= > 6.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 30k => 2k (24k base-cap-dps, parasite has 12.25k)<br />
*** 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.<br />
**** 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.<br />
** Base Armor Piercing from 0 => 750*mk (same as parasite).<br />
<br />
* Knowledge costs:<br />
** Flagship was 0/2000/5000.<br />
** Zenith Starship was 1000/2500/6000.<br />
** Starship Starship was 1000/2500/6000.<br />
** Bomber Starship was 0/5000/7000.<br />
** Plasma Siege Starship was 0/5000/7000.<br />
** Leech Starship was 0/5000/6000.<br />
** MkI costs (or lack thereof) unchanged.<br />
** MkII costs are now all 2500.<br />
** MkIII costs are now all 4000.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Health:<br />
** "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).<br />
** Flagship from 3.75M*mk => 5M*mk (20M cap-hp).<br />
** Zenith from 4.5M*mk => 6M*mk (24M cap-hp).<br />
** Spire from 3M*mk => 4M*mk (16M cap-hp).<br />
** Bomber from 4.7M*mk => 7M*mk (28M cap-hp)<br />
** Plasma Siege unchanged at 5M*mk.<br />
** Leech from 3.2M*mk => 4M*mk (16M cap-hp).<br />
<br />
* Metal+Crystal/Energy costs:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Cap-e is more consistent for fleet ships, typically about 20k (halved for mkI types). So targeting about 40k for a mkI cap here.<br />
** The m+c costs listed are for mkI, mkII are 2x, mkIII are 4x. E costs do not change with mark.<br />
** Flagship from 40k+24k / 4k e => 60k+40k / 10k.<br />
** Zenith from 24k+40k / 4k e => 40k+60k / 10k.<br />
** Spire from 30k+34k / 4k e => 45k+55k / 10k.<br />
** Bomber from 80k+8k / 2k e => 85k+15k / 10k.<br />
** Plasma Siege from 8k+80k / 2k e => 15k+85k / 10k.<br />
** Leech from 60k+40k / 5k e => 60k+40k / 10k.<br />
<br />
* Spire Starship:<br />
** Hull type from Neutron => Medium.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 120k*mk => 600k*mk.<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* Bomber Starship renamed to Heavy Bomber Starship.<br />
** This is obviously the most important change of the batch.<br />
<br />
=== Fighter/Bomber role adjustment ===<br />
<br />
* In general, nothing earthshaking, but hopefully making life a bit more dangerous for the bombers of the galaxy, and a bit more interesting for the fighters.<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar, Wingflier, Diazo, chemical_art, Martyn van Buren, RCIX, doctorfrog, Winge, Wanderer, zebramatt, Nodor, relmz32, Kahuna, rchaneberg, LaughingThesaurus, Drjones013, Eternaly_Lost, MaxAstro, and Irxallis for feedback inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Fighter (including tachyon-micro and bulletproof variants):<br />
** Base Move Speed from 28 => 32.<br />
** Multiplier vs Polycrystal from 5 => 6.<br />
** Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 2.4 => 6.<br />
** Multiplier vs Medium from 2.4 => 6.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1200 => 1000 (similar for the variants).<br />
<br />
* Bomber Base Move Speed from 28 => 26.<br />
<br />
* The following guardians now have the medium hull type:<br />
** EMP (was Neutron)<br />
** Heavy Beam (was Heavy) <br />
** Laser (was Swarmer)<br />
** Lightning (was Composite) <br />
** Special Forces Rally (was Heavy)<br />
** Spire Implosion (was Artillery)<br />
** Starship Disassembler (was UltraHeavy)<br />
** Tachyon (was Refractive)<br />
** Tractor (was Neutron)<br />
** Vampire (was Artillery)<br />
<br />
=== AI Reinforcement Focus ===<br />
<br />
* AI planets now pick a primary, secondary, and tertiary type of ship to focus their reinforcements on. <br />
** It's not purely random, sometimes it picks ships that fit certain roles.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Whenever the AIs unlock new ship types due to AI progress, all AI planets "reroll" their focus types.<br />
** Thanks to... basically everyone in the list for the fighter/bomber changes :) The point that "everything, everywhere" is at least as practically-homogenous as "one thing, everywhere" came up during that discussion.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.073 ==<br />
(Released August 28th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the modular zenith fortress was trying to load the wrong far-zoom icon.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.072 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/08/ai-war-beta-5072-revised-experience.html A Revised Experience] ==<br />
(Released August 28th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Nebula minor faction ships are now a bit more focused on getting the job done:<br />
** All use focus-fire, thus indirectly more likely to shoot at the stuff that will take the most damage.<br />
** All the "bomber-role" ships will heavily prioritize enemy starbases, and thus are more likely to make progress towards scenario conclusion one way or another.<br />
** All no longer prefer mobile targets to immobile targets.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug in FRD target sorting that was sometimes being overly sensitive to differences in how far away two targets were.<br />
<br />
* Knowledge rewards from offroad scenarios have been substantially reduced.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for reporting how... intense they could be.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* Reverted the change in the last version that applied the special difficulty modifier to forced carrier pops; it now applies only a difficulty-based modifier and doesn't factor in the number of homeworlds or champions.<br />
** Thanks to Eternaly_Lost for feedback about how brutal that change had made things.<br />
<br />
* Added a new scenario that can seed in a nebula.<br />
** Introduces the second Zenith splinter group, along with another old acquaintance.<br />
** Added 3 new module lines and 1 new ability the rewards you can get from some nebula scenarios.<br />
** Implemented the Modular Zenith Fortress and added it to the rewards you can get from some nebula scenarios.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where abilities that had not been unlocked yet were showing on the champion ability menu.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Gives a bit more motivation to unlock the higher engineer marks, if you're having trouble getting enough assistance/repair out.<br />
** Thanks to LordSloth for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Changed how champion hull unlocks are handled in nebula scenario rewards:<br />
** As before, you can't get destroyer hulls until the second scenario is over, and can't get cruiser hulls until the fifth scenario is over.<br />
** But now when you get a new size, you get the new size in all the races you've already got access to.<br />
** On scenarios where you are not given a new size, and you do not already have the race-tech-base-form corresponding to the faction you just helped, you get that form in all sizes you've already got access to (though it only announces the largest one).<br />
*** If you've already got that racial-tech-base-form it just gives you an extra module line instead.<br />
** Since there really isn't a point in using the smaller forms after you've got a larger one, only the largest ones will be shown (in an old save if you have, say, human frigate, human destroyer, and zenith frigate, it will show the H-DD and the Z-FF).<br />
** Thanks to Shrugging Khan for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Changed main way to gain XP as a champion:<br />
** Nebula ships now only grant 1/10th as much XP as they did.<br />
*** Starbases and anything outside a nebula give the same as they used to.<br />
** Winning a scenario now rewards a substantial amount of XP that:<br />
*** Scales up with the level of the highest level champion in the game, though significantly slower than the xp-required-to-level scales up.<br />
*** Scales up the better you do:<br />
**** On the Neinzul Mourner and Gray Spire scenarios, this isn't directly related to time as those scenarios are basically over one way or another after a certain period of time anyway.<br />
**** On the other scenarios where it's possible to drag it out to "farm" kill-based XP, this is now tied to how quickly you finish the scenario. So you can still farm if that's what entertains you, but you won't really get an XP advantage.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art, orzelek, and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.071 ==<br />
(Released August 27th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed some bugs with the Fortress King's modular fort command stations:<br />
** Previously they did not have the "+15 AIP on death" attribute. Heh. Fixed.<br />
** Previously they used the wrong "requires supply" flag. Fixed.<br />
** Previously they were auto-targeted by human ships. Fixed.<br />
** Previously they did not function as warp-gate-reinforce. Fixed.<br />
** Also made the homeworld versions get most of the home-command-specific attributes.<br />
** Made the Fortress King command forts no longer limit themselves to mark 2 modules (instead accepting that they then proceed to 3).<br />
** Fixed a bug where Fortress King command forts were using champion shield modules instead of fort shield modules.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for reporting most of these.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where a forcefield that just turned on would sometimes take a long time to actually apply protection to a unit inside it (generally more likely with minor-faction allies than player-controlled ships).<br />
** Thanks to Tssbackus for the report and save leading to this discovery.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Battlecrydnx for the report.<br />
<br />
* CPA size calculations ares now structured more like the wave size calculations, in order to make sure they produce results bigger than wave size calculations, without being too crazy on Diff 7 and thereabouts.<br />
<br />
* Barracks are now seeded on some AI planets at the start of the game (and retroactively into old saves):<br />
** The higher the difficulty, the more planets get them.<br />
** The higher the difficulty, the more ships in them.<br />
** None are placed closer than 3 hops from a human homeworld, to not be too cruel.<br />
** These serve two purposes:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Making the AI's defensive response to the loss of a planet (with a barracks on it) something more of an event.<br />
** Thanks to many players for feedback about underwhelming (still) CPAs and underwhelming AI defensive behavior.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where the AI would only produce carriers if the target planet already had 2 barracks, instead of 1.<br />
** Thanks to the players who reported this, regrettably mantis doesn't seem interested in telling us who right now.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a graphical bug with the border drawn around barracks icons in some contexts.<br />
<br />
* Popping a carrier such that it has to "combine" ships due to high AI population on the planet already will now produce somewhat more... enthusiastic results on higher difficulties.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.070 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/08/ai-war-beta-5070-once-and-fortress-king.html The Once And Fortress King] ==<br />
(Released August 23rd, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions where self-exploding units (autobombs, nanoswarms, etc) were not updating their destination to match the target's current location frequently enough.<br />
<br />
* New Ancient Shadows Bonus Ship Type: Zenith Siege Engine:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine! for the suggestion inspiring this unit.<br />
<br />
* New Ancient Shadows Bonus Ship Type: Zenith Reprocessor:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Can damage ships immune to reclamation, but cannot reprocess them.<br />
<br />
* New Ancient Shadows Hard AI Type: Fortress King.<br />
** Generally solid AI that has Modular Fortresses in place of most command stations. Expect grievous pain.<br />
<br />
* Removed a "go for the command station over everything else when AI" behavior from a number of units, including:<br />
** Leech Starships.<br />
** Flagships.<br />
** Zenith Starships.<br />
** Spire Starships.<br />
** Riot Starships.<br />
** Thanks to Prezombie for the report of the CC-ramming leech starships.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where Neinzul Rocketry Corps silos could be antagonized by stuff in an adjacent nebula.<br />
** Thanks to motai for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where shadow charge was not persisting across save/load.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where shadow-charge-created projections were being affected by the champion's controlling player (a normal+champion player) having a negative energy balance (shields shutting off, etc). In theory that could work as a balancing mechanism but it wouldn't work because champion-only players have no energy balance.<br />
** Thanks to motai for the report.<br />
<br />
* The "Zenith Descendant" and "One Way Doormaster" AI Types have been promoted from the "easy" category to the "moderate" category, due to sustained player feedback that they are not, in fact, easy.<br />
** Thanks to the many players who died to bring us this information.<br />
<br />
* New Ancient Shadows Map Style: Clusters<br />
** Planets are organized into a small number of clusters, each of which has only a few wormholes that lead to other clusters. Planets within a cluster each have a moderate number of connections to other planets within that cluster.<br />
** Thanks to shugyosha for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.069 ==<br />
(Released August 22nd, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Reworked the CPA formula to be more aggressive on higher difficulties, since it's been sadly anemic lately.<br />
** Also added cpa-size calculations to the wave logs, when advanced logging is enabled.<br />
** Thanks to many players for reporting the embarrassing CPA sizes they've been seeing.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where only one type of nebula scenario was seeding.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where minor-faction ships with plasma-siege shots could hurt/kill AI command stations that happened to be under forcefields.<br />
** Thanks to Jeffersn for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where champion ships were not causing AI planets to go on alert.<br />
** Thanks to LordSloth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Champion module unlock costs from 1/2/3/4/5 => 1/1/2/3/3.<br />
** Note that there's only one module (missile) you can pay to unlock the mkI version of, and no currently available champion hull can use the mkV versions.<br />
** Note also that this is tentative and the balance may not stay here. It's probably too generous, but the previous setup appeared to be too stingy.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth, orzelek, Nodor, LaughingThesaurus, and others for feedback inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.068 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/08/ai-war-beta-5068-old-enmity-reclaimed.html Old Enmity Reclaimed] ==<br />
(Released August 21st, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Added a new nebula scenario.<br />
** Introduces a second Spire splinter faction.<br />
** Reintroduces an old foe/friend in a new context.<br />
** Added 3 new possible reward champion hulls (different race, nothing bigger than what was previously available, yet).<br />
** Added 4 new possible reward module lines.<br />
** Added 2 new possible reward champion abilities.<br />
<br />
* Put in new graphics for the needler, laser, mlrs, and missile modules used by champions and modular forts.<br />
** Thanks to HitmanN for these (and many other) module graphics.<br />
<br />
* The champion hulls now have slightly different movement speeds, based on which racial tech-base they use.<br />
<br />
* Heroic AI type balance changes:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Its non-wave champion spawns now start at Frigate-level at tech-level 1, not Destroyer-level.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna and Nodor for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul champion hulls are now immune to black hole machines.<br />
** Thanks to MaxAstro for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Champion XP gain from being near enough to a dying AI command station or guard post doubled.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* 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. These specific ships now have the flag that suppresses the redding out (let us know if we missed one) :<br />
** Champions.<br />
** Spire Capital Ships.<br />
** Riot Control Starships.<br />
** Neinzul Enclave Starships.<br />
** Spire Mining Ships.<br />
** Nebula faction structures the player gets after winning a scenario.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00, ArcDM, Kemeno, and others for reporting this.<br />
<br />
* Added four new keybinds, each like: Use First Champion Ability<br />
** Shortcut to the first item on the selected Champion's Ability menu. Does not actually uses the ability, just puts your interface into "placement mode" so you can click the place to use the ability without moving your mouse cursor down to the Ability menu itself.<br />
** Only works if you have a single champion selected.<br />
** There's also a second-ability, third-ability, and fourth-ability version, though as of this version no champion has more than two abilities. The ability descriptions themselves tell you which keybind can be used to trigger them.<br />
** The default bindings for these are Ctrl+Q, Ctrl+W, Ctrl+E, Ctrl+R, and all will override other non-context-menu keybinds (if you have a single champion selected) if you rebind them to something that conflicts. For instance, if you change the first one to Q instead of Ctrl+Q, and leave Q's default keybind alone then if you have a single champion selected Q will trigger the first-ability keybind and if you do not have a single champion selected Q will do the normal "zoom in really close" function.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Tackle Drone Launcher rebalance:<br />
** Tackle Drone speed halved, and is no longer affected by combat style (so its effective speed is now what it was in the previous version on Epic comat style).<br />
** Tackle Drones are now immune to speed boosting.<br />
** Tackle Drone Launchers time to produce a drone from 3 seconds => 6 seconds.<br />
** Thanks to Nodor, Coppermantis, and others for feedback on these.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Scapegoat:<br />
** Ship cap halved.<br />
** Health doubled.<br />
** Attack doubled.<br />
** M+C cost doubled.<br />
** Energy cost doubled.<br />
** Ship cap now scales UP (instead of down) with ship cap, so that you can have 2x as many MkIIs as MkIs, 3x as many MkIIIs as MkIs, etc.<br />
*** This corrects the main problem with the previous design: higher marks didn't get more of the unit's actually-important ability (one-shot regen) than mkIs, and in fact got less.<br />
** All other its stats that used to scale up with mark level no longer do.<br />
** Thanks to soMe_RandoM, Hearteater, Cinth, and others for feedback on these.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.067 ==<br />
(Released August 20th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last few versions where only the first 3-4 nebulae were generating scenarios.<br />
** Thanks to Irxallis, vadatajs, and RCIX for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Spire Blade and Tackle Drone speed halved, since their being changed to not need to accelerate (which helps them make consistent use of their time-to-live when time to get a target is variable) increased their effective distance travelled substantially.<br />
** Thanks to RCIX for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Tackle drones now automatically self-destruct when at or beyond the outer grav-well ring.<br />
** Note: this applies to player and AI tackle drones, even though AI ships are not affected by the outside-grav-well speed debuff.<br />
** Thanks to Battlecrydnx, platinawolf, and RCIX for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Offroad scenario enemy scaling:<br />
** Per scenario previously successfully completed, from +30% => +15%.<br />
** Per extra champion present, from +50% => 25%.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth, bonesbro, and orzelek for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where nebulae were being considered by the rule that a spire city hub cannot be built on a planet with only one wormhole<br />
** It couldn't really be left as-is because a game started with Ancient Shadows enabled always generates the nebulae even if you can't see them, which would lead to inconsistent results from the player perspective.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.066 ==<br />
(Released August 18th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed inadvertent change to bomber drone speed, so that it's now the same as it was on normal-combat-style a few versions ago.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where using Ctrl+M or the Mods button to open a champion in Ship Design could sometimes result in a blank ship design window if the selected champion was controlled by a different player than the interface you were using at the time.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report and save.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.065 ==<br />
(Released August 18th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the Ship Design tab where it wouldn't show any modules for a line where the highest unlock mark was not usable by the selected champion hull.<br />
** Thanks to Kemeno for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where Shadow Charge was not actually being prevented from accumulating past the maximum storage amount.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where opening the ship design tab to edit a champion, selecting a different hull type, switching to another tab, and switching back to the ship design tab would... do weird things.<br />
** Thanks to Kemeno for the report.<br />
<br />
* Bomber Drones:<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo back from 3 => 5.<br />
** Seconds it takes a bay module to produce one from 3 => 2.<br />
** Time to live from 20 => 21.<br />
*** Just to make it less likely that they'll lose the last shot because of not instantly targeting.<br />
** In short, this should maintain the same total shots produced over a given minute, but with more drones in the air at any given time.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the feedback that the drones' numbers were more important than the total number of shots produced.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.064 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/08/ai-war-beta-5064-abilities-unlocked.html Abilities Unlocked] ==<br />
(Released August 18th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* A new Ancient Shadows bonus ship class has been added: Neinzul Scapegoat (Mark I-V).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to soMe_RandoM for the idea that inspired this.<br />
<br />
* Another new Ancient Shadows bonus ship class has been added: Spire Railcluster (Mark I-V).<br />
** Large Spire fleet ship mounting multiple short-range railcannons. Highly effective against very small ships.<br />
** Thanks to superking for the idea that inspired this.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where Extreme Raider and Spire Hammer were not adding their AI-type specific extra ships to non-schizo waves.<br />
<br />
* Improved the extra-homeworld/champion scaling for Extreme Raider and Spire Hammer AI-type-specific wave-add-ons.<br />
<br />
* Added new Hard AI Type: Heroic.<br />
** Generally solid AI that can also add a powerful Champion ships to each wave (in addition to the normal starship). Also periodically spawns a Champion ship on one of its own planets that joins the general AI forces threatening you. At higher tech levels it uses bigger Champion ships.<br />
** Note: these AI-version Champions are not exactly like human-controlled ones: they cannot traverse blue wormholes, they do not gain experience, and they do not respawn when killed. They're just big nasty modular ships.<br />
** Added 3 achievements for beating a Heroic AI, beating one on 7+, and beating one on 9+, respectively.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* The rule that "if a forcefield-projecting unit is fully cloaked, it turns off its forcefield" now no longer applies to player-controlled modules. It was messing with modular-fort shield modules pretty effectively.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Nebula scenario buildings that let you build units now respond to the D (default for selecting space docks and similar) keybind.<br />
** Thanks to Twinge for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where core/starship/experimental fabricators were not being considered by the D keybind.<br />
** Thanks to Twinge for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where Insanity-Inducer and Translocator champion modules were not scaling up at all at higher marks. They now gain an extra shot-per-salvo per mark above 1.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Champion Bomber Drones, to make them less likely to score kills outside the champion's XP-gaining envelope and otherwise extend its reach beyond the intended:<br />
** Speed no longer scales with combat style (it's now always like it was on normal combat style).<br />
** Is now immune to speed-boosting.<br />
** Time-to-live from 30 seconds => 20 seconds.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 5 => 3 (so it can still fire 6 times before dying, and is now more likely to get that last shot in).<br />
** Effective Range from 8000/8400/8800/9200/9600 => flat 8000.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report of the xp-gathering issue.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where saving a design on the Ship Design tab of the CTRLS window would switch you to a different tab (the save would work, but it could be very annoying).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where nanoswarms, autobombs, spire blades, and tackle drones could be slowed down artificially (to very low speeds) due to changing targets in midflight.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Added new resource to champion and normal+champion players: Shadow Charge.<br />
** Consumed by the new direct-use abilities added in this version.<br />
** Current and max charge is displayed on the champion UI.<br />
** Regenerates over time.<br />
<br />
* Added "ABILITY" tab to the champion's build menu. Only two are currently implemented:<br />
** Human and Zenith champions can "Project Shadow Shield":<br />
*** Creates an immobile forcefield at the target point for 20 seconds (taking damage reduces the duration).<br />
*** Must be initially placed within 4000 range of the champion.<br />
*** Consumes 200 Shadow Charge.<br />
** Neinzul champions can "Project Shadow Repair Field":<br />
*** Creates an immobile generator at the target point for 20 seconds (taking damage reduces the duration).<br />
**** Repairs all friendly units in range (except golems), at no m+c cost.<br />
*** Must be initially placed within 4000 range of the champion.<br />
*** Consumes 500 Shadow Charge.<br />
<br />
* Changed the existing "MODS" tab of the champion build menu to not have the buy buttons for the modules but instead say "Click "MODS" to change Champion modules.".<br />
** And clicking MODS again when it is already showing now opens the Ship Design menu just like pressing Ctrl+M.<br />
** The reason for the change is that the normal buy-menu interface for modular ships to build their modules has always been a bit wonky, and the Champion stuff is only making that moreso. One of the big problems is that there's not really a way to infer from normal buy menu operations what module loadout the game should "save" to be redone after a respawn (the Ship Design screen knows to do this when you use Apply To Selection).<br />
** Since this may turn out to not be the best way to go (though we will try to make it work) : Added new toggle to the Advanced tab of the Settings window: Show Module Build Menu For Champion Ships.<br />
*** If this toggle is enabled, selecting a champion ship's modules tab displays the old-style build menu that works just like other queue-builders (space dock), etc. This mode has a number of quirks due to the differences between producing modules and producing separate ships, and the Ship Design window is much better at communicating what you're doing, but some players may find the old menu more convenient for certain use cases.<br />
<br />
* Added new "Champion Unlocks" tab to the CTRLS window:<br />
** Previously the "modules available for this slot" list on the Ship Design tab would, for champions, display all available modules plus the next locked module in each line if the selected champion hull could use it. Unlocks were performed by clicking on those locked options. This functioned but is increasingly unwieldy as the number of modules increases.<br />
** Now the Ship Design tab's list of available modules (when viewing a champion) only displays the highest-usable-on-that-hull module in each line that is unlocked, and does not display anything locked.<br />
** Now, to unlock a higher module for your champion, you go to the Champion Unlocks tab where each available module line is displayed with the currently unlocked mark, and how many points it costs to unlock the next-higher mark.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for the suggestion to create a separate interface for unlocking this stuff.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where bomber drones launched from champion hangar bays could be scrapped (and resources gained from it).<br />
** Thanks to Drin for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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. Please let us know if you run into weirdness, as the game's gotten pretty "used" to that bug and it may be that something was inadvertently made to rely on it. Things look fine in our tests, though.<br />
<br />
* Offroad Scenarios now scale up somewhat in difficulty with the number of champions present in that particular nebula. The amount of increase is low enough that it's still always a significant advantage to bring more champions, but it's hopefully no longer a situation where a scenario is tough if you bring 1 champion and trivial if you bring 2.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.063 ==<br />
(Released August 16th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed some typos in some of the champion ship hulls' short-names.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where tackle drone explosions could damage friendly targets.<br />
** Thanks to Draco Cretel for the report.<br />
<br />
* The following units are now omitted from control group selection since control groups for them are just part of getting newly constructed ships assigned to the right control group and moved to the right spot:<br />
** All human intragalactic warp gates.<br />
** Human Rebel Colony (base game).<br />
** Spire Refugee Colony (Fallen Spire).<br />
** Spire Shipyard (Fallen Spire).<br />
** All splinter-faction construction facilities (Ancient Shadows).<br />
** Thanks to jerith for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Tackle Drones no longer make an explosion sound on death (they already had the same muffling flag as the spire blades, but their actual damage-causing explosion-on-death was a separate code path).<br />
** Thanks to MaxAstro and Draco Cretel for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where inherently-cloaked ships were not decloaked by their modules firing (externally-cloaked ships were already working properly).<br />
** Thanks to Kemeno for the report.<br />
<br />
* Spire Civilian Leaders now do their first "pulse" of AIP change at one hour into the game, instead of one minute into the game, to avoid skewing the very-early difficulty of a high-diff game.<br />
** Thanks to motai for the suggestion, and many others for similar thoughts.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.062 ==<br />
(Released August 15th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Includes the language file updates accidentally omitted from 5.061.<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar, phoenix89, Eternaly_Lost, and others for reporting.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.061 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/08/ai-war-beta-5061-tackled-medic-released.html *Tackled*, Medic!] ==<br />
(Released August 15th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* A new Ancient Shadows bonus ship class has been added: Zenith Medic Frigate (Mark I-V).<br />
** Moderately large frigate with capable weaponry, but the main point of a medic frigate is the multiplex repair beam emitter that allows it to heal nearby ships (note: cannot heal a ship for a few seconds after that ship has taken damage).<br />
** Thanks to RCIX for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Another new Ancient Shadows bonus ship class has been added: Tackle Drone Launcher (Mark I-V).<br />
** Has guns of its own but primarily attacks by launching small tractor-equipped drones. The drones fly in a straight line dragging any enemy they can tractor along with them and explode when they reach their maximum range, dealing damage to up to (5*drone level) nearby targets. The drones are thus very effective at taking smaller craft out of a fight, but cannot damage tractor-immune ships in any way.<br />
** Give these a try, they're hilarious.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where nebulae were being counted as human territory for deepstrike checks.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where super-hybrid logic for determining which planets were the right distance into AI territory for a dyson antagonizer was considering nebulae to be non-AI territory.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for the report leading to this discovery.<br />
<br />
* Reduced the distance-into-AI-territory super-hybrids try to plant dyson antagonizers by 1, hopefully making them less excruciating to find.<br />
** Thanks to quite a lot of players for public lamentations regarding this.<br />
<br />
* The initial seeding of AI fleet-ships during mapgen now pays more attention to ship cap.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for the report of a planet starting with ~43 Spire Stealth Battleships.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Diazo, Toll, and others for bringing the need to our attention.<br />
<br />
* Nebula-faction units and champions now have the same speed on all combat styles (equal to their prior speed on Normal combat style).<br />
** Thanks to Eternaly_Lost for pointing out that scenarios taking 30 to 60 minutes on normal took... a really really long time on Epic.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic and others for pointing out the oddness of it being transportable.<br />
<br />
* Now nebulae don't pick a scenario type during mapgen, but instead when first entered by a champion. Earlier in development it was possible for nebulae map placement to be different depending on the scenario, but this is no longer the case.<br />
** This won't impact games already in progress before 5.061, but games started in this version or later will adjust more gracefully to the addition of new scenario types, and this helps in some other areas too.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the question inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Amended the paralyzer module's tooltip to not call it "low base damage", since it isn't really.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Added Neinzul Modular Fortress:<br />
** Quite similar to the normal modular fortress, but with different specialized modules available (when they're implemented, anyhow), and instead of the repair ability it has cloaking and cloaking-superboost (same ability as the cloaker starship).<br />
** Right now the only way to unlock this is via nebula-scenario reward in the soon-to-be-released third type of scenario, but that will change to at least some extent.<br />
<br />
* The Core (mark 5) variants of the youngling ships no longer self-attrition.<br />
** Mainly this is to make the fabricators that produce them more useful.<br />
** Thanks to the players who participated in the [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,10871.0.html poll] where this came up, and to Wingflier for organizing that.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in previous versions where it was possible for a nebula to reward a champion hull when you didn't already have the smaller size-steps of that line.<br />
<br />
* Added a new nebula (offroad "planet") scenario for champions.<br />
** Includes 1 new neinzul splinter group.<br />
** Added 5 new possible unlock-champion-hull-type rewards, including the next size step up for the human and zenith lines and a new neinzul line (that gets fewer modules but a key special ability at each size step).<br />
** Added 4 new possible unlock-module-line rewards, some given only from this new scenario, some also eligible to be given from the existing one.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.060 ==<br />
(Released August 13th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where various Fallen-Spire seeding logic was considering nebulae. Spawning a shard-signal there is cute, but wrong.<br />
** Thanks to Eternaly_Lost for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding but very intermittent null-exception in tech-menu-button rendering.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for the report and log.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the past couple of versions where non-minor-faction photon lances (spire capital ship main weapons, etc) were considering a smaller subset of enemy units as targets.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where photon lances fired at forcefields overlapping the firing ship could wind up firing in a totally wrong direction.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Dark Spire starbases now fire more rapidly (but with less power) to better deal with attacking enemies and juking champions (the latter will still have an advantage, that's fine, not all starbases should require the same tactics).<br />
<br />
* The Devourer can no longer attack champion ships. The Devourer camping the auto-respawning champion at a human home command station was... hilarious, but we don't want the Devourer to get a nutritional imbalance.<br />
** Thanks to soMe_RandoM for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed another bug that was letting auto-explore scouts consider nebulae and thus getting stuck.<br />
** Thanks to fflaguna and Draco Cretel for the report.<br />
<br />
* Switching from the Normal role to Normal+Champion in mid-game is no longer rejected as an invalid role switch.<br />
<br />
* Opening the ship design window by clicking the CTRLS button and then the Ship-Design tab now tries to enable the "Apply To Ship(s)" button (which is now called "Apply To Selection" to be clearer). Previously it would only try to do this if opened through the context menu "View Ship Modules" or Ctrl+M.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for pointing out that it was confusing for 2 out of three ways to get to this screen would do this, but the other would not.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.059 ==<br />
(Released August 11th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where offroad planets (nebula) were counting as non-AI-controlled-worlds for the purposes of determining how many worlds the AI could reinforce.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the recent changes to the reinforcement logic causing N guard posts on a single planet to get reinforced with (Strength*1)+(Strength*2)+(Strength*3)+...+(Strength*N) total strength, rather than just (Strength*N).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for spotting this in the reinforcement logs, and to LordSloth for providing logs.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the reinforcement logging where it wouldn't list alerted planets in the "this is the order planets will be reinforced in". The order was correct, the logging was not (and it really helps for it to be right when finding problems like the above).<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.058 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/08/ai-war-beta-5058-further-shadows.html Further Shadows] ==<br />
(Released August 11th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* When playing as the Normal+Champion role it now only shows the Champion UI (XP/Hull/Shields) instead of the Normal UI (Metal/Crystal/Energy/Knowledge) when you have the champion selected and are in planet view on the same planet as the champion.<br />
** Thanks to LaughingThesaurus and Volatar for the suggestions.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a couple more bugs where the modular fortress was on the tech and buy menus even when Ancient Shadows was not enabled.<br />
** Thanks to Draco Cretel and Draco18s for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Added support for the chatline command "cmd:activate expansion 4", which lets you turn on the expansion midway through the game. Notes:<br />
** This will not add the nebulas (offroad "planets") to the game, so while you could in theory add champions to the game after enabling the expansion it would be a truncated experience.<br />
** Any expansion-specific special structures that have a chance of being seeded onto planets will have a chance to seed at this time, but there's nothing like that implemented yet.<br />
** What this will do, as of this writing, is give you access to research and build modular forts.<br />
<br />
* The Z+X keybind combo now shows NPC/minor-faction ranges as well as enemy ranges.<br />
** This is particularly helpful in the nebula/offroad areas when playing with champions.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to... is there anyone who has NOT reported this? Anyway, thanks for making sure we knew :)<br />
<br />
* Fixed relatively recent issue where photon lance beams would not actually draw all the way to the end of the beam (either the natural range or the poor thing it was currently incinerating).<br />
<br />
* Added a new nebula (offroad "planet") scenario for champions.<br />
** Includes 3 new splinter groups: one zenith, one neinzul, one spire.<br />
** Total of 16 new units from those groups, 3 of which have player-usable variants.<br />
** Added 2 new possible unlock-champion-hull-type rewards (not bigger than the existing ones, that's for later), only given from this new scenario right now.<br />
** Added 5 new possible unlock-module-line rewards, some given only from this new scenario, one also eligible to be given from the existing one.<br />
<br />
* Champion shields now regen twice as fast (the delay between last-damage-taken and the start of regen is the same, though).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bunch of places where the existence of champions was not increasing AI response.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where multiple human homeworlds (in SP or MP) were not increasing the guard post part of reinforcements.<br />
<br />
* Made the guard post part of reinforcements start increasing at a lower AIP.<br />
** Before it was basically stuck to the floor until 270 AIP or so, which was fine in the older system but appears to have been dragging things down since the AI started not getting blade spawners and laser gatlings in the same proportions.<br />
** Thanks to many players for pointing out how underwhelming reinforcements have been recently; this may or may not help much, we'll see.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.057 ==<br />
(Released August 9th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Zenith Reserves and Distribution Nodes no longer grant stuff to champion-only players, but instead to the first normal or normal+champion player in the game.<br />
** Thanks to TyberZann for reporting that these were working for champions.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where auto-explore and auto-knowledge-gather ships would consider offroad/nebula "planets", which could lead to odd behavior and stalling out since they cannot enter those areas.<br />
** Thanks to Draco Cretel for the report.<br />
<br />
* Champion ship, champion modules, and the NPC nebula combatant's have all had their base ranges doubled, but now being in a nebula acts as if there's always a radar jammer present (which halves effective ranges).<br />
** The result is that the in-nebula ranges are the same (as they are intentionally shorter than folks are used to since it's easier to make something tactically interesting with shorter ranges) but the champion and NPC ships aren't so nearsighted in the rest of the galaxy.<br />
** Thanks to phoenix89 for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Champion ship effective speed has been doubled and the NPC nebula combatant speed has been increased to maintain a smaller margin over the champion ship, but now being in a nebula acts as if there's always a speed-halver present.<br />
** The result is that the champion's in-nebula speed is the same and the NPC in-nebula speed is a little lower (as they are intentionally slower than folks are used to since it's easier to make something tactically interesting with slower speeds) but neither is so slow in the rest of the galaxy.<br />
** Thanks to Varone for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* The facility that spawns in the current nebula scenario when it is successfully completed now provides scout intel on the nebula.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the prior version where playing a normal+champion player with multiple homeworlds would cause you to start the game with multiple champion units.<br />
** Thanks to phoenix89 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug with the new Normal+Champion role where viewing the modules of an existing non-champion modular ship (like a Riot or a Mod-Fort) would let you use the switch-to-ship button. That button's only supposed to work for heroes, and caused odd things when used on other stuff.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug with the ship design screen where you could apply a design from a different ship type to your selected ship. Result = Hilarity.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.056 ==<br />
(Released August 9th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Added "Normal+Champion" to the player role dropdown:<br />
** In this role you get both your normal starting units (home command station, etc) AND a champion.<br />
*** Notably, this lets you put your champion ship in the same control group as other of your units (though if the champion ship dies it does get removed from control groups), and prevents confusion when using your science lab to unlock something from another player's interface, etc.<br />
** It displays the champion UI (XP/hull/shields) while you have the champion ship selected, and the normal UI otherwise.<br />
** Hopefully this will greatly simplify the process of starting a singleplayer game with a champion. Several tooltips and messages have been amended to gently shepherd people trying to use a champion in this direction ;)<br />
** The existing "Champion" role has been retained so you can still have champion-only players in MP and "extra" champions beyond the number of extra players.<br />
*** Old saves started with Champion players will still be using this role.<br />
** The "Reserved For Champion" slot state has been renamed to "Extra Champion" to emphasize that it is no longer the main way to add a champion to a singleplayer game.<br />
** The "Open (Can Add Champion)" text has been changed back to "Open" everywhere since it was at least as confusing as it was helpful.<br />
** Thanks to contingencyplan for the specific suggestion that inspired this, and to many players for pointing out the tons of problems of the "1 Normal Player + 1 Champion Player" approach being the way to use champions in singleplayer.<br />
<br />
* Champion ships now have a build rate of zero, making it more explicit that they require a friendly engineer drone nearby.<br />
** Thanks to TyberZann for reporting what was happening when a champion somehow got its hands on m+c, and to TechSY730 for inspiring the specific fix.<br />
<br />
* There's now also a line shown in the alert box if a champion has a module in its queue that it could mount (slot is not full) and it doesn't currently have support from an engineer drone.<br />
** Thanks to orzelek and others for helping us understand that it was really not clear why the champion modules were not building.<br />
<br />
* Champion module upgrade clarification:<br />
** The "champion has unlock points to spend" alert now ends in the text "(click to spend)" (clicking it was already taking you to the unlock screen)<br />
** On the ship-design/unlock screen for a champion, instead of displaying "LOCKED" modules that are "in reach" but not unlocked now display "NEED MORE UNLOCK POINTS" or "CLICK TO UNLOCK" depending on whether you have enough points to unlock them.<br />
** Thanks to Varone for pointing out how not-friendly-to-new-users the system was.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the modular fortress could be researched without Ancient Shadows enabled. It still couldn't be built, though.<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar for uncovering our nefarious (albeit unintentional) marketing ploy.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.055 ==<br />
(Released August 8th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that caused unhandled exceptions when you had a saved modular fortress design and opened the SUP build tab.<br />
** Note that it was never intended that the designs show up on the build tab as the ship cap for the forts is 1 and even if you have more than one (in a multi-HW game) you can fairly simply apply a template to them all right after placement using Ctrl+M or the context menu View-Ship-Modules option to Apply Design to Ship(s).<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that could cause unhandled exceptions in some cases after a champion respawn due to it trying to place modules in slots that don't exist.<br />
** Thanks to TyberZann for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the lobby was not clearing a specific champion-related flag when the user quit out of the lobby, potentially causing erroneous color conflicts on later attempts to start a game from the lobby.<br />
** Thanks to Kalias for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.054 ==<br />
(Released August 8th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Further clarified the lobby situation by changing the "Host cannot start the game until at least one player selects the "Normal" role." message to "Host cannot start the game until at least one player selects the "Normal" role. If you are trying to play a singleplayer game with a Champion player (a feature of the Ancient Shadows expansion) just keep player 1 as a "Normal" player and set the player 2 slot to "Reserved for Champion". You'll be able to control Player 2's units (the champion) just fine."<br />
<br />
* Amended the lobby logic so that the slot text only says "Open (Can Add Champion)" on the slot itself, and still "Open" on the expanded dropdown list.<br />
** Thanks to x40-wait, he works here, nevermind.<br />
<br />
* The lobby player slot state dropdowns (the ones that can be Open, Closed, or Reserved for Champion) now have tooltips to explain the setting under the mouse cursor.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where various champion-related player data was not getting cleared between games, leading to crashes and some cases (and inevitably desyncs in others).<br />
** Thanks to Kalias for the report.<br />
<br />
* The GalaxyWideSelectChampion keybind (which defaults to Ctrl+H) has been changed to also switch UIs to the player controlling the champion.<br />
** Thanks to LaughingThesaurus for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.053 ==<br />
(Released August 8th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where several of the champion modules were having their close-zoom images loaded using the wrong path (backslashes instead of forward slashes, OSX no likey).<br />
** Thanks to relmz32 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Unoccupied human player slots in the lobby now say "Open (Can Add Champion)" instead of just "Open" when the Ancient Shadows expansion is enabled.<br />
** Thanks to many players for expressing consternation at how the feature might be enabled (particularly in single-player).<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.052 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/08/ai-war-ancient-shadows-betapreorders.html From The Shadows] ==<br />
(Released August 8th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to doctorfrog for reporting the issues with them previously.<br />
<br />
* Building modular ships with a template or using the ship-design window to apply a design (whether or not that design is a saved template or just ad-hoc) will now try a lot harder to put the modules in the specific assigned slots instead of just any slot that can hold the module at the time.<br />
** This is basically just a cosmetic difference, but it's nice.<br />
** Note that now you'll probably want to not manually add to a build queue of a modular ship that's received its current build queue from a template (just built) or the ship design window (the Apply button); later we may make it physically impossible to do so, we'll see. Basically the interaction would be very difficult to define.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art and others for periodically reminding us that it didn't really try to do this before.<br />
<br />
* Removed the "Reserved" option that was recently for player-slot-state in the lobby. It doesn't really work well in conjunction with either of the available roles (helper because a reserved helper does nothing, normal because you can't pick their homeworlds).<br />
<br />
* The blue "shield health" bar that shows on ships with module-generated forcefields now has more internal contrast and is easier to read.<br />
<br />
* Changed it so that planets are no longer hue-shifted. This was causing artifacts on some client computers, and the added variety provided by the hue shifts was not substantial enough to be worth the planets looking markedly bad on some machines.<br />
** Thanks to martyn_van_buren and Draco18s for reporting.<br />
<br />
=== ---------------------------- First Beta Of Ancient Shadows Expansion ---------------------------- ===<br />
<br />
* You can get the Ancient Shadows expansion installer [http://www.arcengames.com/w/index.php/aiwar-downloads here].<br />
<br />
* Added new player role: Champion.<br />
** You can set a populated player slot (one with a connected player in it) to this using the role select dropdown.<br />
** You can also just mark a slot as "Reserved For Champion" using the slot-state select dropdown (previously just said Open or Closed) and that champion can be controlled by any human player.<br />
*** Notably, this is the easiest way to add a champion when starting a new singleplayer game. Note that there always has to be at least one human player with the "Normal" role for a game to be started. Various changes have been made over the previous months to make controlling both a "normal" player and a "champion" player (in either SP or MP) easy.<br />
** What? Oh, what ARE Champions? Ah, right. A champion player starts with only one unit: a modular super-starship.<br />
*** The champion gains XP when in the vicinity (20,000 range) of certain kinds of units when they die. This includes AI guard posts and command stations, but that's not the main source of XP.<br />
**** To see how much XP you have, switch to the champion player's UI.<br />
*** When the champion gets enough XP to level up they get an unlock point. Unlock points can be spent to get more powerful modules on the ship design screen.<br />
*** If the champion dies it respawns (for free) at a human home command station. It will need engineer assistance to rebuild its modules, but that's a quick process.<br />
*** The presence of a champion player increases AI response in most of the same ways that another normal player would, but not to the same degree. Balance is ongoing.<br />
*** Champions are the only units that can fly through special wormholes (colored blue, and act much like normal ones do when "Show Unexplored Planets" is off, unless FOW is set to complete visibility) to the new nebula "planets".<br />
*** In those nebulae the champions will encounter splinter factions of the 4 races (right now there's just 2 splinter factions, both human) and be able to help potential allies. Journal entries will provide details when you enter a nebula.<br />
*** The enemies you encounter in nebulae will all (generally) give XP.<br />
*** Completing a nebula's objectives successfully (permanent failure is possible) rewards some or all of the following:<br />
**** Bonus XP to all champion players in the game.<br />
**** Bonus Knowledge to to all normal human players in the game.<br />
**** New lines of equipment modules (which you can then upgrade with unlock points).<br />
**** New champion hulls (each champion player can only control one at a time, but you can switch and you'll respawn as the new one), both of larger sizes and of different racial tech-bases (human is all that's implemented right now).<br />
**** Ongoing assistance from the splinter faction you just helped, if applicable.<br />
<br />
* Added some new keybinds to help playing both a normal player and a champion player in the same game:<br />
** Galaxy-Wide Select Champion.<br />
*** Defaults to Ctrl+H.<br />
*** Selects and centers your view on a Champion unit you can control (owned by you or by a team member who is allowing team control of units). If you already have one selected (with nothing else selected) it tries to cycle through other such units.<br />
** View Ship Modules (this already existed in the context menu, but this keybind works outside that)<br />
*** Defaults to Ctrl+M.<br />
*** Opens the Ship Design tab of the Controls window so you can see and modify the current module configuration of this ship.<br />
*** If you have multiple distinct designable ship types chosen, this option is not available, but it does work for groups of the same designable type.<br />
*** If the ship is controlled by a different player (as in the case of a champion unit, often) than the UI you're looking at, it switches your UI to that player.<br />
** Switch Back To Local Player UI.<br />
*** Defaults to Ctrl+L.<br />
*** If you've switched to the UI of another player (through the switch-to-UI buttons in the Stats window or by viewing the modules of another player's ship) this keybind will switch you back to the UI of the player slot in which you actually connected to the game.<br />
<br />
* Added new researchable unit to the normal command-station/mobile-builder build menu: Modular Fortress.<br />
** Ship Cap of 1 (normal fort has cap of 5).<br />
** 5x as much health as a MkI fort.<br />
** Has 8 light module slots that can hold Needler, Laser, MLRS, and Missile modules.<br />
*** Each of those has mkI, mkII, and mkIII variants. The first is already available and the second two are unlocked by corresponding turret research (Needler = Basic).<br />
** Has 4 heavy module slots that can hold Shield and Heavy Beam modules.<br />
*** Each of those has mkI, mkII, and mkIII variants. The first shield is already available, and the second two (and all the heavy beam ones) are unlocked by corresponding forcefield (non-hardened) and turret research.<br />
** Right now it's balanced so that having mkII modules in all the light slots and mkII HB modules in all the heavy slots gives a total dps (including the modular fort hull itself) in the overall ballpark as a cap of MkI forts. With mkIII modules it's even higher. It's pretty beastly, all told.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.051 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/07/ai-war-beta-5051-optical-repair-released.html Optical Repair] ==<br />
(Released July 30th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* When human ships are told to go through a wormhole and they aren't able to because of a black hole machine, it will now tell the owner in a chat line that this happened (the chat window isn't visible on the galaxy map, but it's a step in the right direction).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions where mk3 nukes wouldn't actually destroy anything (aside from you, via +5000 AIP).<br />
** Thanks to Kalias for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed several issues where units with "infinite engine health" were not being handled consistently.<br />
** For example, a neinzul enclave starship had an internal engine health value high enough to be listed as "infinite" but not high enough to actually refuse to set engine damage to a value > 0. This could lead to protracted (and expensive, in previous versions) periods of trying to repair engine damage.<br />
** Thanks to bongotron2000 and Minotaar for the reports and saves leading to this discovery.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* Improved the various lines in the game for repair and such things so that they no longer seem to blip around like they were in the recent few versions.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, some planets were not attractive when hue-shifted to certain values.<br />
** The images for 14 and 31 have been adjusted so that they now will be.<br />
** Numbers 1, 4, 5, 7, 13, 27, 28, 29, 30, 33, 48, and 49 are now barred from doing hue shifts at all.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for starting the complaining about this. ;)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last few versions where if you had a textbox selected, then clicking a button would not register properly the first time (it would just deselect the textbox and not click the button). Now it clicks the button without deselecting the textbox.<br />
<br />
* We _think_ the issue with the explosions not appearing properly the first time they are shown in a new run of the game has been resolved, but if you see that or any other explosion-related bugs again, please let us know.<br />
<br />
=== Repair Rebalancing/Retweaking ===<br />
<br />
* Repairing engines now does not cost m+c (if health is also being repaired at the same time that costs m+c).<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Repair cost in general is now based off half the construction cost instead of the full construction cost.<br />
** Thanks to sarudak, TechSY730, Kahuna, and MaxAstro for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Diazo for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* 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) :<br />
** Armored golem from 30M+30M m+c => 10M+10M.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Artilery golem from 10M+10M => 8M+8M (lots of feedback that these are OP lately).<br />
** Black Widow golem from 25M+25M => 10M+10M (ditto).<br />
** 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).<br />
** Cursed golem from 10M+10M => 3M+3M (a slight buff, but these aren't all that popular in general).<br />
** Hive golem from 20M+20M => 7M+7M (a slight nerf, but these are quite strong).<br />
** 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)<br />
** Thanks to sarudak for bringing the unintentend consequence to our attention and TechSY730, zharmad, Kahuna, Cinth, MaxAstro, Hearteater, Diazo, Draco18s, Eternaly_Lost, and Minotaar for further feedback.<br />
<br />
=== AI Eye Rework, Round 1 ===<br />
<br />
* The AI Eye won our first "Aim the nerfbat (AI-side)" poll by a landslide, but it's taken a bit to figure out how exactly to best handle that request. Thanks to many players for weighing in on that. Below are the first additions of new eye types to make them less monotonous. More changes/variants will follow but the other changes above warranted a release before the rest of this was done.<br />
<br />
* The Sentry/Ion Eye alert text now says how many human ships over the triggering threshold the planet was when that particular pulse triggered.<br />
<br />
* Renamed the AI Eye to the Sentry Eye.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for the specific suggestion, and many players for voicing frustation trying to pronounce the unit name (though often "Aieeeee!" was a perfectly appropriate pronunciation).<br />
<br />
* Added new type of AI Eye: the Ion Eye.<br />
** Has same trigger conditions.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Added new type of AI Eye: the Parasite Eye.<br />
** Has same trigger conditions. <br />
** 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.<br />
*** Standard "what can be reclaimed" rules apply.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** In case you're curious, the results are not zombies and can be re-reclaimed if you're so inclined.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.050 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/07/ai-war-beta-5050-botnet-escape-released.html Botnet Escape] ==<br />
(Released July 26th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* The Zenith Starship and Spire Starship (previously mkIII and mkIV of the "flagship" line), in honor of tying for second in our seventh "worst unit" poll, have each been made into a separate line of combat-focused starships and made distinct from their previous role and each other.<br />
** Both lines have 3 marks.<br />
** Neither has munitions boosting (the main feature of the flagship line).<br />
** The Zenith Starships are now basically brawlers with quite a bit of health and mount 25 short/medium-range missile launchers each.<br />
** The Spire Starships now mount a single photon lance (the continuous beam weapon used by the Fallen Spire capital ships, etc, but much weaker in this instance) and are a bit longer ranged than the Zenith Starships and a bit less durable.<br />
** Also adjusted the remaining "flagship" line to fit the new structure:<br />
*** The Light Starship has been renamed Flagship.<br />
*** The former Flagship has become Flagship MkII.<br />
*** A new Flagship MkIII has been added.<br />
** Thanks to many players for feedback on what these had become (not so interesting) over the past months and for participating in the poll.<br />
<br />
* As an honorable mention from the seventh worst-unit poll, the Golemite-AI-type golems (as distinct from human golems and exo golems), except for the Golemite-Botnet, have had their health increased from 0.1 times the normal version of that golem => 0.5 times that normal value.<br />
** Specifically, this means the Golemite-Armored, Golemite-Artillery, Golemite-Widow, and Golemite-Regenerator golems. There are no golemite versions of the other types (except the botnet, which was purposefully skipped in this instance; Botnets are terrors upon the galaxy).<br />
** Thanks to the players for participating in the poll.<br />
<br />
* The exos from BrokenGolemsHard and SpirecraftHard are now more aggressive:<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
*** This minimum stops going up at 250 (20 hours). (thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting that)<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** This is basically like the Broken Golems faction except:<br />
*** It only seeds the Broken Botnet, and it only seeds one of them (Broken Golems no longer seeds any botnets, needless to say).<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** The botnet's energy cost on Moderate went from 400k => 800k.<br />
*** The broken-botnet's AIP-on-metamorphsis on Moderate went from 40 => 100.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** Note: the golemite AI's version of the Botnet's health is still what it was.<br />
** 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?<br />
*** 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).<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic, Kahuna, and others for showing how overpowered the Botnet was. Thanks to Cyborg, chemical_art, and others for showing how this was awesome. And thanks to the poll participants, of course.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** If this causes economic hardship, let us know ;)<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for the report leading to this discovery.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the new lobby-setup-script grammar where the AddAIModifier, RemoveAIModifier, AddOptionalShipCategory, and RemoveOptionalShipCategory commands were not being recognized.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna for the report.<br />
<br />
* The Cryogenic Pods and Human Home Settlements that start next to each human home command station are now immune to the splash effect from being under a forcefield net hit by a plasma-siege shot. Previously it was possible to be in an early-game situation where it was nearly impossible to keep them from being destroyed by Plasma Siege Starships coming in with waves on a wormhole within firing range of the home command station.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater, Wanderer, and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* The Human Home Command Station now costs 1% as much to repair as it used to, so the repair cost falls below the default threshold where engineers won't auto-assist something because it's expensive.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00, TechSY730, doctorfrog, and topper for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* The Player Home Forcefield Generator, in honor of tying for second in the seventh "worst unit" poll (seriously, it's a freebie unit, but if it floats your boat...) :<br />
** 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).<br />
** Now projects tachyon coverage of 6600 radius (3 times its forcefield radius, 600 more than a MkIII Scout Starship).<br />
** Thanks Hearteater and Diazo for the suggestion, and to the poll participants for the feedback.<br />
<br />
* Previously any youngling type used in a wave would have its quantity doubled to compensate for the short lifetime. That made sense at the time but younglings have received many buffs (particularly the tiger, which is much like a bomber) since then. So the multiplier has been changed from 2 => 1.5.<br />
** Further balance feedback, in either direction, is quite welcome.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for reporting an... unfortunate incident involving 4 digits worth of youngling tigers.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Galactic Sandpaper Incorporated has already filed for bankruptcy.<br />
** Thanks to the poll participants for the feedback.<br />
<br />
* Spire Stealth Battleship, in honor of tying for second in our first "Aim The Nerfbat (AI-Side)" poll:<br />
** Radar Dampening from 8000 => 10000.<br />
** Base Move Speed from 18 => 16. (for reference, a fighter's is 28, this is before a variety of other calculation steps)<br />
** Thanks to the poll participants for the feedback, and to TechSY730, Cyborg, and barryvm for specific suggestions in this direction.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.049 ==<br />
(Released July 25th, 2012) <br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug from 2 versions ago where it would starting a new game could try to seed a spire archive on an invalid planet and crash the start-game process.<br />
** Thanks to death2cupbots for the report leading to this discovery.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.048 ==<br />
(Released July 24th, 2012) <br />
<br />
* Removed the "periodically clear the sprite pool" optimization from the last version as it was causing something very like a memory leak.<br />
** Thanks to amethyst, platinawolf, and Cinth for the reports and saves.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.047 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/07/ai-war-beta-5047-archived-memory.html Archived Memory] ==<br />
(Released July 24th, 2012) <br />
<br />
* Added new slider to the Advanced tab of the Settings window: Sprite Pool Size<br />
** This option was mainly added to help players find some memory-crash and performance-regression problems and in general you shouldn't change it unless you know what that means.<br />
** Low pool sizes will keep possible memory footprint lower and help keep the pool from causing excessive memory use, but will also substantially reduce performance when there are not enough objects in the pool to handle all the things being drawn in a given frame.<br />
** High pool sizes have the opposite advantage/disadvantage.<br />
** The default of 5000 should handle most sane cases but shift-clicking around with a bunch of selected ships can pile up a bunch of lines (and thus sprites) in a hurry.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth, BlackCobra, vadatajs for providing reports and saves of the memory and performance problems.<br />
<br />
* Made the sprite pool periodically release the memory its holding (at the same times the game trims other parts of heap usage).<br />
<br />
* Fixed the spire-shard-reactor close-zoom sprite having an invalid height.<br />
** Thanks to platinawolf for the report.<br />
<br />
* Warheads killed by warhead interceptors no longer cause AIP-on-death.<br />
** Thanks fo Faulty Logic and others for suggesting/reporting.<br />
<br />
* Spire Archives, in honor of winning our seventh "Worst Unit" poll:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Knowledge gain rate from 1/sec => 5/sec. <br />
*** 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).<br />
** When their planet is exhausted of all 9000 knowledge, they automatically die without causing AIP.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar, Faulty Logic, and others for the suggestions/votes in this direction.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* Zenith Electric Bomber is now immune to insta kill, like other low-cap fleet ships.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater and others for periodically asking for this.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.046 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/07/ai-war-beta-5046-ai-is-not-amused.html The AI Is Not Amused] ==<br />
(Released July 21st, 2012) <br />
<br />
* Planets are no longer hue-shifted when the nebulas are disabled, as that could look bad out of context.<br />
** Thanks to Kahuna and TechSY730 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Added a "Nebula Intensity" slider to the graphics tab of the settings window, that controls how faded-out the background nebulae are.<br />
** The default is about 80% of the intensity in the previous version; if you want it back there you can turn it all the way up.<br />
** Thanks to doctorfrog for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Cinth for reporting recent out of memory exceptions. Not that playing 16-Homeworld games on a 120-planet map is going to be able to always avoid those, but we'll see.<br />
<br />
=== High (and not so high) Difficulty Rebalance, Round 2 (Subtitle: the AI Launches A Wave) ===<br />
<br />
* People are [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11118.msg111832.html#msg111832 still] [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11130.msg111125.html#msg111125 beating] [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11152.msg111762.html#msg111762 up] on the 10/10 AI (even in non-superweapon cases) and it's getting kind of annoyed, so:<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for suggesting this approach.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** This effectively reduces the return on superterminal hacking since it does +1 and -2 AIP per trigger.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* AIP floor minimum is now 10 instead of 1.<br />
** Thanks to rabican for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* The schizo wave modifier now only causes waves to be mixed 75% of the time. The other 25% of waves will be normal.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer and other players for feedback that schizo all-the-time is actually somewhat easier than games with the occasional all-bombers wave. Can't have that!<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Let us know if this results in excessive hilarity. The reinforcement logs (if enabled) will record when it happens.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for reporting a case where this happened.<br />
<br />
=== Core Guard Post Rebalance, Round 1 ===<br />
<br />
* Did a balance pass on most of the core guard posts.<br />
** This is going to hurt.<br />
** Many things have been suggested to help bring the "multi-part boss battle" theme out better, but this at least brings the math into a more reasonable range for now.<br />
<br />
* Previously there was a fair bit of variance in how many core guard posts would go on a homeworld, and there tended to be quite a few (like 15 on Diff 10). Now it will always try for 8 (including the 0-2 "brutal" picks).<br />
<br />
* All Core Guard Posts:<br />
** Base Energy Cost from 500 => 10000 (doesn't matter except for IRE fire).<br />
<br />
* Core Heavy Beam Guard Post:<br />
** Total base attack power (this is divided amongst all its beams) from 8M => 4M.<br />
** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 4 => 3.<br />
** Multiplier vs Refractive from 3.5 => 3.<br />
** Multiplier vs UltraLight from 3.25 => 3.<br />
** Multiplier vs Medium from 2.5 => 3.<br />
** Multiplier vs Heavy from 1.75 => 3.<br />
<br />
* Core Electric Guard Post:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Can now hit a maximum of 200 units per shot <br />
*** 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.<br />
** Base Health from 6M => 12M.<br />
** Multiplier vs Artillery from 4 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Neutron from 2 => 1.<br />
** Seconds Per Salvo from 13 => 20.<br />
** Damage Per Shot from 3k => 50k.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 13k => 8k.<br />
<br />
* Core Missile Guard Post:<br />
** Basically balancing this against a cap of MkV missile frigates, but with way less durability.<br />
** Base Health from 6M => 18M.<br />
** Multiplier vs UltraLight from 8 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Medium from 6 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Light from 1 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 1 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Neutron from 1 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Composite from 1 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Refractive from 1 => 4.<br />
** Effective Attack Range from 36000 => 12000.<br />
** Seconds Per Salvo from 5 => 1.<br />
** Damage Per Shot from 80k => 200k.<br />
<br />
* Core Sentinel Guard Post:<br />
** Basically balancing this against a cap of MkV Zenith Beam Frigates, but with maybe half the power and way less durability.<br />
** Can now hit a maximum of 20 targets per shot.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Base Health from 3M => 18M.<br />
** Damage Per Shot from 4k => 100k.<br />
** Effective Attack Range from 9000 => 8000.<br />
** Multiplier vs Light from 16 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 8 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Neutron from 4 => 1.<br />
<br />
* Core Leech Guard Post:<br />
** Basically balancing this against a cap of MkV Parasites, but with way less durability.<br />
*** Interestingly, the attack power was basically already spot-on.<br />
** Base Health from 6M => 12M.<br />
** Multiplier vs Medium from 3 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Neutron from 1 => 4.<br />
** Effective Attack Range from 5000 => 6000 (slightly further out than its radar dampening range).<br />
<br />
* Core Zenith Bombard Guard Post:<br />
** Basically balancing this against a cap of MkV Zenith Bombards, but with way less durability and about half the attack power.<br />
** Base Health from 6M => 12M.<br />
** Damage Per Shot from 60k => 900k.<br />
** Effective Attack Range from 53k => 34k.<br />
** Multiplier vs Heavy from 1.75 => 2.<br />
** Multiplier vs UltraHeavy from 1 => 2.<br />
** Multiplier vs Structural from 1 => 2.<br />
** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 4 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Refractive from 3.5 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs UltraLight from 3.25 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Medium from 2.5 => 1.<br />
<br />
* Core Zenith Fortress Guard Post:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Shot type from (default? it doesn't appear to be set?) => Flamewave.<br />
<br />
* Core Spire Shield Guard Post:<br />
** Base Health from 392M => 200M.<br />
<br />
* Core Neinzul Melee Guard Post:<br />
** Basically balancing this against a theoretical cap of MkV cutlasses, but with way less durability.<br />
** Base Health from 6M => 36M (it's a self-damaging melee unit, it needs it).<br />
** Base Move Speed from 30 => 44.<br />
** Damage Per Hit from 106k => 300k.<br />
** Multiplier vs Neutron from 3 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Light from 3 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Scout from 2 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Composite from 1 => 4.<br />
<br />
* Core Booster Guard Post:<br />
** Base Health from 6M => 18M.<br />
** Munitions Boost and Armor Boost range from 8k => 16k.<br />
** Intentionally leaving the attack alone here: that's not really the point of the unit.<br />
<br />
* Thanks to Hearteater and many other players for their thoughts on making core guard posts more interesting; they will probably need more than this but it's a start.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.045 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/07/ai-war-beta-5045-its-full-of-something.html It's Full Of Something Other Than Stars!] ==<br />
(Released July 19th, 2012) <br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994920323/indie-graphics-builder-create-your-own-sprites Eldon Harris] for creating the nebulae effects used.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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!<br />
<br />
* Updated the description of the Counter Dark Matter Turrets to be more clear about how they actually work.<br />
** Thanks to doctorfrog for reporting this one.<br />
<br />
* Unlike in AVWW, the game now returns to precalculating its materials rather than pooling them, since this may have been adversely affecting performance in recent versions.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.044 ==<br />
(Released July 19th, 2012) <br />
<br />
* Fixed the close-zoom image for the AI Core Neinzul Spawner Guard Post having a height that wasn't a power of 2.<br />
** 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.<br />
** But in the recent backporting we added some extra sanity checks that catch this when the player tries to look at it.<br />
** Thanks to Fleet for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Made a minor improvement to the Spirecraft Ion Blaster's behavior: in FRD it's now much better about going after stuff that's outside of its range (previously it was only really doing that while it was reloading). The improvement is "minor" in that there are still problems with its behavior (dancing back and forth during FRD with valid targets it could be chasing, after it fires, etc) but we needed to get the attempt at fixing the recent performance problems out in a hotfix asap.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for reporting the "not chasing in FRD" problem.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.043 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/07/ai-war-beta-5043-dubious-honor-released.html A Dubious Honor] ==<br />
(Released July 18th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* In honor of it winning the latest worst-unit poll, Zenith Reserves:<br />
** AIP cost on death from 5*mk => 1*mk.<br />
** Amount of ships granted increased roughly 33%.<br />
** Thanks to many players for telling us for months how the AIP cost made these not much of a choice in harder scenarios, and to the voters in general.<br />
<br />
* In honor of coming in second in the most recent worst-unit poll, the Decloaker:<br />
** In general, moving this from a mobile tachyon unit with outdated stats to a mobile tachyon unit with roughly mkI-starship stats. <br />
*** Note the tachyon range of 20k was already huge, no buff seemed necessary there.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** No longer has the IsBlind flag.<br />
** Now has cloaking.<br />
** Base Damage-per-shot from 36k => 50k.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 10 => 2.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Base Health from 40k => 2M (again, in the general range of mkI starships).<br />
** Base Energy Use from 100 => 1000.<br />
** Base Metal Cost from 5000 => 10000.<br />
** Base Crystal Cost from 7500 => 20000.<br />
** Now has most common-to-starship immunities.<br />
** Thanks to players who voted on the worst-unit poll and provided their feedback.<br />
<br />
* Captive Human Settlement, in honor of coming in third in the "worst unit" poll: AIP-on-death from 100 => 15.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to players who voted on the worst-unit poll and provided their feedback.<br />
<br />
* Spire Armor Rotter, in honor of coming in fourth in the latest "worst unit" poll:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Base Health from 14,500*mk => 23k*mk (this gives them a similar cap-health as fighters).<br />
** Multiplier vs UltraHeavy from 2 => 3.<br />
** Multiplier vs Heavy from 2 => 3.<br />
** Multiplier vs Polycrystal from 1 => 3.<br />
** Thanks to players who voted on the worst-unit poll and provided their feedback.<br />
<br />
* Microparasite, because it (like other experimentals we need to get back to) had really outdated stats:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Metal Cost from 1800 => 1400.<br />
** Crystal Cost from 240 => 3400.<br />
** Base Health from 7200 => 36k.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 500 => 1500.<br />
** Base Damage-per-shot from 8000 => 2000.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Base Armor Piercing from 0 => 3000.<br />
** Effective Attack Range from 4600 => 6000.<br />
** Multiplier vs Polycrystal from 20 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Artillery from 1 => 4.<br />
<br />
* Special Forces Guard Posts no longer count as reinforcement-warp-gates and are no longer autotargeted (by player or player-ally-minor-faction ships).<br />
** 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. <br />
** 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).<br />
** With the cheese gone, there's no longer a need to make it hard to keep these alive, so the autotargeting could go away.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic, Wanderer, rabican and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to rabican for the preemptive report and wave-calc logs uncovering the decloaker plot to conquer the galaxy before it could be set in motion.<br />
<br />
* Adjusted the last version's addition of radar dampening to mkII+ basic, laser, mlrs, and HBC turrets:<br />
** MkII's from Attack Range - 1000 => Attack Range - 2500.<br />
** MkIII+'s from Attack Range - 1000 => Attack Range - 4000.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for showing how the previous values did not accomplish the stated goal of preventing wormhole-exit-alpha-strike by waves on those kinds of turrets.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some missing-loca errors in the previous version.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Note that this will not affect stuff the AI has already bought off the trader.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer and others for periodically reminding us that this was putting a cramp on their desire to include the trader, particularly in harder scenarios.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.042 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/07/ai-war-beta-5042-pay-no-attention-to.html Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain] ==<br />
(Released July 17th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* The textbox improvements from AVWW have been backported to AI War.<br />
** Note that since we can't backport the entire AVWW GUI at this time (AI War has some controls that are simply not compatible with the AVWW-style GUI at the moment), there may still be some wonkiness with the textboxes in some cases. If you see any that are reproducible, please do let us know.<br />
** However, in the most-annoying-cases of things like the chat box losing focus, the hope is that these changes have fixed that issue. Knock on wood!<br />
<br />
* Backported the ability to do hue shifts via shader from AVWW.<br />
<br />
* Backported an enormous amount of the new render pipeline from AVWW; this doesn't involve much of the sorting that AVWW was doing, because AI War already had its own highly-evolved and engine-appropriate way of doing its graphical sorting.<br />
** However, this does decouple most of the graphics from the main CPU processing such that if your GPU is having trouble keeping up, it will impact the speed of gametime much less or not at all.<br />
** Additionally, as we saw with AVWW, we're now making more efficient use of GPU time in general by parallelizing some of that work, which leads to various gains (not really higher framerates here, but less likely of a drop in framerate and more flexibility about what target framerate you select, since that's something that can be manually set in this game).<br />
<br />
* Neinzul enclave drones are now immune to reclamation.<br />
** Thanks to Tssbackus for reporting oddities when the AI reclaimed drones.<br />
<br />
* Made the clamp/repeat status of images explicit rather than implicit inside the code, which lets us do a number of new visual effects when needed.<br />
** The immediate effect is that the various beams (repair, cloaking, etc) now have a slightly higher fidelity to themselves.<br />
<br />
* Non-square images are now supported by the game (more backporting from AVWW).<br />
<br />
* Sprite dictionaries are now supported by the game (again more backporting from AVWW).<br />
<br />
* All of the explosion effects in the game now use sprite dictionaries, which makes the initial game load quite a bit faster as it has to load 140ish fewer files (though the amount of data is roughly the same, it's still faster).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the new energy model where if you had zero home command stations (even in MP, where losing your home command isn't game-over) the energy collectors would produce 15k energy instead of 150k. <br />
** Thanks to Kalias for the report.<br />
<br />
* Invincible modules now don't show some of the irrelevant data about them (health, armor, certain immunities, etc).<br />
<br />
* Fixed bugs where several of the seeding frequencies of some things were based off the total number of "planets" in the game, including black holes and some other stuff that is solely tracked for the purpose of where-not-to-put-planets-or-links-in-mapgen and display on the galaxy map. Some map types don't even have those cosmetic bits, making them somewhat different from those that did.<br />
** This included special forces guard posts, astro train stations, and AI Eyes.<br />
<br />
* Added "Reserved" slot type in the lobby; just makes it so that that player is in the game at the start even if there's no human to fill the spot. Doesn't really do anything right now, though possibly it would allow creating singleplayer Multi-HW games that play like normal MP games, but the other player names would probably be "???".<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last version where right-clicking the units-to-place button in the line-place context menu would close the menu instead of reducing the amount of units-to-place.<br />
** Thanks to vadatajs and Eternaly_Lost for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some missing-loca bugs with the parts of the view-controls window pertaining to the line place context menu.<br />
<br />
* Shield Bearers (the normal ones; this was already true of the spirecraft ones) are now immune to insta-kill.<br />
** Thanks to Varone for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* All non-shield modules are now immune to armor boosting (they're invincible, it'd be a waste).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* AI Carriers:<br />
** Effective range from 6000 => 3000.<br />
** Base Health from 3M*mk => 2M*mk.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.041 ==<br />
(Released July 11th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Added "Line Place" context menu option for when you open the context menu (defaults to alt+right-click) while you have the build menu open and an item selected for direct placement. <br />
** From the line-place menu instructions:<br />
*** Step 1: Click where you want one end of the line segment to be. This line segment doesn't actually set the final location of anything, Instead it tells the game the length and angle of the segment.<br />
*** Step 2: Click where you want the other end of the line segment to be.<br />
*** Step 3: Specify the maximum number of units you want to place below (left click the number to increase, right click to decrease, and the usual keys for multiplying by 5, 10, or 50), pick whether you want a packed line (good for mines), and then left-click where you want to place the units.<br />
** The main use case in mind for this was efficient use of mines, but can also be helpful for many defensive emplacements, or simply for aesthetic appeal. The interface could be cleaner but this is what we had time for right now.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring this addition.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.040 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/07/ai-war-betas-5036-5041-released.html Reenergized] ==<br />
(Released July 10th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for the suggestion<br />
<br />
* Added some extra logging on the calculation of wave-time-intervals (when advanced logging is enabled).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Mick for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Forcefield-protection no longer prevents a cloaked unit from being revealed by tachyon beams.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for pointing out that this was happening, and wasn't much fun if the cloaked unit in question was a guard post.<br />
<br />
* Grenade Launcher grenade explosion radius from 200/300/400/500/600 => flat 500.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for pointing out that at 200 the MkI was frequently not hitting max targets even when fired into a relatively dense group.<br />
<br />
* Flak grenade (from guardians and turrets) radius from 300/350/400/450/500 => flat 500.<br />
<br />
=== Energy System Rework ===<br />
<br />
* The motivation here:<br />
** 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.<br />
** But there were a number of problems pointed out by players over the years, the most bothersome being:<br />
*** 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.<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg and other players for making this point, and being patient as we tried to find a better model.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** If you're curious about the comparison math, check out this post: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11031.msg110117.html#msg110117<br />
** Anyway, on to the specific changes:<br />
<br />
* Removed the Energy Reactors (all of them, MkI, MkII, MkIII).<br />
<br />
* Added the "Energy Collector", which is like the energy reactors were except:<br />
** Produces 150,000 energy.<br />
*** For reference, in the previous model an EnergyI+EnergyII+EnergyIII produced 125,000.<br />
** No ongoing m+c cost.<br />
*** For reference, in the previous model an EnergyI+EnergyII+EnergyIII cost 57m+57c per second to run.<br />
** Can only build one per planet per player.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Cannot be low-powered (there'd be no point).<br />
<br />
* Added the "Matter Converter", which is like the energy reactors were except:<br />
** Produces 50,000 energy.<br />
** Costs 100m+100c per second to run.<br />
** No construction cap, and also no efficiency penalty for stacking.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Cannot be low-powered, since the main point of this rework is to avoid "player-time-tax" micro.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Putting units in low-power mode now no longer reduces their energy use.<br />
** Again: removing the motive to micro stuff for energy purposes is one of the driving motivations here.<br />
** Renamed "Low Power mode" to "Stand Down mode", since it's no longer for the purpose of reducing energy.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Added new slider to galaxy-wide per-player-controls screen: Energy Buffer To Maintain<br />
** If this is set above zero, the game will try to maintain that amount of "buffer" energy above zero. A few examples:<br />
*** Docks will not build ships that would take you below the buffer amount.<br />
*** Ships will not be reclaimed if it would take you below the buffer amount.<br />
*** Broken Golems will not be activated if it would take you below the buffer amount.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Note that this will not stop you from scrapping energy producing units (however low that may take your net energy), so be careful.<br />
*** This is because going negative energy never stopped scrapping before, so that part wasn't changed.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* When upgrading saves from 5.039 and earlier:<br />
** For all EnergyI, EnergyII, and EnergyIII units:<br />
*** If that player already has an Energy Collector on that planet, the reactor is replaced by a Matter Converter.<br />
*** Otherwise, the reactor is replaced by an Energy Collector.<br />
** After that, while the player has > 60,000 spare energy and any remaining Matter Converters:<br />
*** Scrap a Matter Converter on the planet with the most remaining Matter Converters controlled by that player.<br />
** The result should be that:<br />
*** 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+.<br />
*** It won't give you a lot of Matter Converters you don't need.<br />
*** 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 ;)<br />
<br />
* The automated energy hamsters have taken off without giving notice, but we suspect they're on vacation in Bermuda.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Thanks to many, many players over the years for weighing in with feedback on the energy model. Keep it up, we know this one isn't perfect either ;) Particularly:<br />
** Cyborg, for originally getting through to us that the old model was no more challenging than "making change for a dollar", and a lot more time-consuming.<br />
** Hearteater, for proposing multiple alternate models (including the one that inspired the one we ultimately went with above).<br />
** chemical_art, Diazo, Wingflier, Wanderer, TechSY730 for lots of participation in the discussions/debates/etc.<br />
** And many others I'm sure I'm forgetting; the forum search engine appears to have forgotten about the relevant threads to avoid further trauma.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.039 ==<br />
(Released July 8th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Remains Rebuilders no longer require supply, to make rebuilding a "satellite" planet at least possible.<br />
** If this makes some wild exploits possible please let us know, but since most of the stuff that can be rebuilt requires supply anyway...<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for pointing out the tension between these requiring supply and the newly added rebuildable-ness of command stations.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Now they'll generally _move_ to a point near the target wormhole, but they won't try to traverse the wormhole itself.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to zharmad and TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to iob for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.038 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/07/ai-war-betas-5036-5041-released.html If You Rebuild It They Will Come]==<br />
(Released July 7th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where the AI fortresses in the tutorial were the mkIII _human_ versions, not the AI versions.<br />
<br />
* Human Fortresses now drop remains and can be rebuilt (and due to the 50% discount on a rebuild vs. a fresh build it's more than just a convenience).<br />
** Note that this does not impact AI fortresses at all.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art and many other players for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Human Forcefield generators (including hardened ones) now drop remains and can be rebuilt.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art and other players for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Human command stations (other than the home command station) now drop remains and can be rebuilt.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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. If this is wrong, let us know :)<br />
** Thanks to buttons840 and many other players for pointing out how much micro this could be.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where remains-dropping-units destroyed by the forcefield-cascade-splash-damage from a siege plasma shot would not drop remains.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last couple versions where the detect-loss-of-focus-windowed-mode (on windows) logic was causing the game to stop rendering a lot of stuff just because the window didn't have focus, though the window could actually still be visible.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed several bugs in the rule that changed possible wave time based on number of entry points, and added info on that computation to the wave logging logic.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for the report that led to this discovery.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.037 ==<br />
(Released July 7th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the last version where the new neinzul drones were not being selection-filtered the same way as most mobile military ships (it was because they can't go through wormholes, incidentally).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to RogueThunder and others for (reluctantly) notifying us of how exploitative this was.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a typo in wave size calculation logging.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar and Wanderer for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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".<br />
** Thanks to HTL2001 and TechSY730 for the reports.<br />
<br />
* Further improved the maw swallow-target logic to not get stuck on invalid targets (like if it's shooting at a starship, etc, it will now try to swallow valid targets on its target list).<br />
** Fixed a related bug where maws could try to swallow-target a starship (which it cannot swallow).<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for reporting that they were still getting stuck.<br />
<br />
* Nuanced the new wave-time-calculation rule added in the last version such that it is not in effect at the very beginning, and gradually phases in so that it is fully in effect at the two-hour mark. So at the 30 minute mark it has about 25% impact, giving you a chance to expand the number of "entry points" before the AI starts throwing max time waves at you automatically.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for reporting a test game where this rule rather... decisively concluded the game early.<br />
<br />
* Carriers now display "x(Variable, see below)" next to their attack power to make clearer that their salvo size varies (by the number of contained ships).<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Carrier hull type from Scout => Ultra-Heavy.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.036 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/07/ai-war-betas-5036-5041-released.html The Wandering AI] ==<br />
(Released July 3rd, 2012) <br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Made Maws try to vacuum their shoot-at target if for some reason vacuuming their "assist" target failed.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer and Eternaly_Lost for providing saves where Maws had lockjaw.<br />
<br />
* Amended the reinforcement logging to better reflect the impact of alert on the order that planets are checked for reinforcement.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for pointing out that what it was saying was not what was happening.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where when the AI picked engineers or remains-rebuilders for reinforcements, it was "spending" too much on them.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for submitting the log that showed this.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for the report and save of player Spire Blades having this problem.<br />
<br />
* Core CPA Guard Posts now start a timer-for-CPA instead of instantly triggering a CPA.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Core CPA Guard Posts now trigger in response to >= 1 enemy human military ship being present, rather than > 1.<br />
** So that Artillery Golem won't get by on the ol' "But I'm just *one* ship!" excuse anymore.<br />
<br />
* Since the recent mine rebalance it's become apparent that the EMPs were made a bit too strong, and the Area mines hadn't been given enough to justify the 4k Knowledge cost.<br />
<br />
** EMP mines:<br />
*** Health halved, which halves the number of times a single one will go off before needing to be rebuilt.<br />
*** Knowledge cost from 1500 => 1000.<br />
** Area mines:<br />
*** Knowledge cost from 4000 => 2000.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Spire Maw vacuum-recharge-seconds from 2 => 5/4/3/2/1.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for pointing out that trying to cover these with Riot starship forcefields could lead to a Riot displacing the hacker and resetting the timer.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wingflier for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the AI would not attack armored warheads (due to a "very low priority target" flag on those unit definitions).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* The rest of the "official" lobby setup scripts have been updated to use the new grammar.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug with the do-not-auto-pause-on-lost-focus toggle where the lost-focus logic was still suppressing basically all game logic even though it wasn't entering a formally paused state.<br />
** Thanks to amethyst for the report.<br />
<br />
* Put in an experimental method of detecting that the game has lost focus in windowed mode (our recent solution for this only works in fullscreen mode). Once loss-of-focus is detected, the existing logic for that state will apply (not scrolling, resetting input afterward to clear stuck keys, autopausing unless the no-autopause toggle is on).<br />
** For now it only works on Windows (the new method is not even tried on Mac), sorry about that, but if this works out we can probably get something similar to work on Mac too.<br />
<br />
* Previously Core CPA Guard Post spawns were scaling with Floor(AIP/50) instead of actually AIP/50 due to the data type used to store the result; now that part does not get floored, allowing a more granular factoring-in of AIP.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Shieldbearers:<br />
** Can now be put in low power mode (shutting off their projected shield).<br />
** Now their projected shield no longer shrinks as the shieldbearer loses health.<br />
*** 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).<br />
** Now have AI-only variants that can be chosen for exos.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** These still have the shrink-when-damaged behavior, to make them a bit easier to handle.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
=== Rebalancing High (and-not-so-high) Difficulties ===<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** A Diff 9+ player will seed 1 less data center than normal (but no fewer than 1 if it would have seeded any).<br />
** On Diff 8+ the first step of the [[AI War:Why Do Enemy Waves Get So Large%3F#How_Wave_Sizes_Are_Calculated|wave size formula]] has been changed from:<br />
*** ( AIProgress * AIDifficulty ) / ( 13 - AIDifficulty ) <br />
*** to ( ( ( AIProgress * 0.8 ) ^ 1.1 ) * AIDifficulty ) / ( 13 - AIDifficulty ) <br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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):<br />
*** 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).<br />
*** If there are 5 wave-targetable planets the random is from (AIDifficulty*-30) to (AIDifficulty*120).<br />
*** If there are 4 the random is from 0 to (AIDifficulty*120).<br />
*** If 3, from (AIDifficulty*30) to (AIDifficulty*120).<br />
*** If 2, from (AIDifficulty*60) to (AIDifficulty*120).<br />
*** If 1, from (AIDifficulty*90) to (AIDifficulty*150) (making it actually able to hit single-chokepoints harder than it used to).<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players (including zoutzakje, Diazo, Wanderer, rabican, Orelius, chemical_art, and probably others I can't remember right now) for the past few months of 9+ playtesting and related suggestions. No good deed goes unpunished.<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** That automatic tech level increase has been removed.<br />
** 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:<br />
*** 9 = 210 (same as before).<br />
*** 9.3 = 148.<br />
*** 9.6 = 85.<br />
*** 9.8 = 43.<br />
*** 10 = 0 (so diff 10 starts at tech 2).<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1400*mk => 19200*mk (the base strength of 16 fighters on high caps, but without the fighter's bonuses).<br />
** Seconds-Per-Salvo from 2 => 4 (same as fighter, cuts down a bit on shot-spam).<br />
** Can no longer fire as though ignoring through forcefields, but it can still move through them.<br />
** Shot type from dark matter => energy bomb as the idea is not for these to be easily counterable via counter-dark-matter turrets.<br />
** Hull-bonus against Turret from 0.1 => 1.<br />
** Hull-bonus against Structural from 0.1 => 1.<br />
** Hull-bonuses against Scout and Command-Grade staying at 0.1.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** On Diff 8+ it randomly rolls (per homeworld) between one and two picks.<br />
*** On Diff 7+ it always gets one pick.<br />
*** Below Diff 7 it randomly rolls between zero and one picks.<br />
** As the set of core guard posts expands in the future (expansions, mainly), this "brutal" set can also be added to.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
=== New Drones For The Neinzul Enclave Starship ===<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** Neinzul Laser Drone I-IV<br />
*** MkI and II require Laser Turret II technology. MkIII and IV require Laser Turret III technology.<br />
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that Laser Turrets have a bonus against.<br />
** Neinzul Needler Drone I-IV<br />
*** MkI and II require Basic Turret II technology. MkIII and IV require Basic Turret III technology.<br />
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that Basic Turrets have a bonus against.<br />
** Neinzul MLRS Drone I-IV<br />
*** MkI and II require MLRS Turret II technology. MkIII and IV require MLRS Turret III technology.<br />
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that MLRS Turrets have a bonus against.<br />
** Neinzul Missile Drone I-IV<br />
*** MkI and II require Missile Turret II technology. MkIII and IV require Missile Turret III technology.<br />
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that Missile Turrets have a bonus against.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Stat wise:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Drones are pretty flimsy, but dying from enemy fire isn't much of an event for these.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Drones cannot traverse wormholes.<br />
*** Drones are super, super cheap in both metal/crystal and energy.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** The motivation behind these:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players for feedback on a variety of issues that inspired this addition.<br />
<br />
=== Better Scaling For Multi-Homeworld Games ===<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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). <br />
** This was generally fine but:<br />
*** 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. <br />
*** Also, now that carriers will be more of a threat, it would be nice for them to see use in those circumstances.<br />
*** 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,<br />
** So now:<br />
*** 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.<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** 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).<br />
**** 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).<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer, Eternaly_Lost, and others for feedback on multi-HW play (notably the lots-of-non-carrier-waves thing).<br />
<br />
* When Spirecraft are enabled and there's more than one human homeworld, the number of asteroids seeded will go up.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.035 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/05/ai-war-beta-5035-teleport-battle.html Teleport Battle Stations And The Return Of The Dyson Sphere] ==<br />
(Released May 24th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where the new pop-cap mechanic for the dyson sphere was setting the population cap properly according to faction-intensity... and then setting it to 2. Yeaaaaah. Dyson's on vacation in 5.034, boys and girls!<br />
** Thanks to platinawolf for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an omission in the previous version where the variable intensity of the Advanced Hybrids plot did not do anything (all values 1-10 did exactly the same thing as Advanced Hybrids being on before variable-intensity was implemented).<br />
** At intensity 1, hybrids get access to the more advanced modules and maturity classes normally granted by Advanced Hybrids.<br />
** At intensity 2, the super hybrid can execute the first stage of the Hybrid-Dyson plot.<br />
*** Note that said plot no longer happens at all with Advanced Hybrids off; the super hybrid can still spawn but it'll just be a beefier hybrid in general.<br />
** At intensity 4, the second stage of the Hybrid-Dyson plot becomes possible.<br />
** At intensity 7, the third stage of the Hybrid-Dyson plot becomes possible.<br />
** Fixed a bug in the previous version in the computation of how much each maturity gain contributed to the hybrids' "central dirty tricks bank" where it was doubling it if Advanced Hybrids was _off_, not when it was on.<br />
*** Also adjusted the computation so that instead of simply doubling it when Advanced Hybrids is on, it adds 25% of the original amount per point of the Advanced Hybrid plot's intensity (if the AI's have different intensities for it, picks the higher of the two). So on 4 it just doubles it, like before the variable-intensity thing.<br />
** More can and probably will be done with the different intensities, but it's a start.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg for the report.<br />
<br />
* The Lobby now has a "role" dropdown for each occupied human player slot. The only options are Normal and Helper, but that makes it possible to have someone join from the start as a Helper. A few notes:<br />
** At least one human player has to be in the "Normal" role for the game to be started. This does not have to be the first player (i.e. host).<br />
** Helpers cannot select homeworlds (and are not given any units or planets at the start of the game).<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Dazio for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Marauders and Resistance Fighters can now be targeted by ships that cannot target small units (Bomber Starship, etc).<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for pointing out that the Marauder Frigate wasn't already like this.<br />
<br />
* Since the Riot Starship MkIII did pretty well in the last worst-ship poll:<br />
** Gave them tachyon coverage matching the MkIII scout starship.<br />
** Added a couple additional options for its highest-level hardpoint:<br />
*** Grav Tazer<br />
**** 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.<br />
**** Note that these share the same planet-wide stagger category as Riot II tazers, to prevent these making permanent tazer lock possible again.<br />
*** Grav Generator<br />
**** Basically a ship-mounted grav turret, requires research of Grav Turret Is.<br />
** Thanks to many players for feedback indicating that they didn't really see a reason to upgrade from Riot IIs to Riot IIIs.<br />
<br />
* This doesn't really impact the player at all, but some may care: Implemented another, far saner grammar for the Lobby Setup Scripts.<br />
** Only BeginnerGame.xml, BeginnerGame2.xml, and RandomFactions1.xml have been updated to use it, but that covers all the unique syntax necessary to re-implement the others, too. Currently the game will still parse the old grammar, but that will go away when the rest of the "official" scripts have been converted.<br />
<br />
* Teleport Battlestations, in honor of doing pretty well in the last worst-unit poll:<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to many players for feedback on these.<br />
<br />
* Added new toggle to Interface tab of Settings window: Disable Pause On Lost Focus.<br />
** Normally the game will automatically pause if it detects that the game has lost focus (it can only detect this in fullscreen mode, not windowed mode).<br />
** Enabling this toggle will suppress that auto-pause behavior, which may be helpful for multiplayer games and some other situations.<br />
** Thanks to amethyst for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.034 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/05/ai-war-beta-5034-is-it-really-minor.html Is It Really A 'Minor' Faction If You Scale It That High?] ==<br />
(Released May 7th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version where Neinzul Rocketry Corps lightning warheads were causing AIP-on-death (despite saying they don't).<br />
** Thanks to dragon95046 for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** Spire Stealth Battleship<br />
** Spire Blade Spawner<br />
** Spire Maw<br />
** Spire Tractor Platform<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art and other players for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* 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 :)<br />
** Thanks to amethyst and Minotaar for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to zoutzakje and others for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer (and others, more recently) for pointing out how dominating the Dyson Sphere could be.<br />
<br />
=== New Variety for Existing Minor Factions ===<br />
<br />
* Human Resistance Fighters:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.<br />
<br />
* Marauders:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.<br />
<br />
* Human Colony Rebellions<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.<br />
<br />
* Dyson Sphere:<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
** So if you want a game-dominating dyson sphere, you can still get it :)<br />
<br />
* Zenith Miners<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.<br />
<br />
* Broken Golems (Hard)<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see VERY strong exogalactic strikeforces (their frequency does not change).<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Preservation Wardens:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Roaming Enclaves:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Rocketry Corps:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see a LOT of these (Would you like to play a game of... ?).<br />
<br />
* Fallen Spire<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see VERY strong exogalactic strikeforces (their frequency does not change).<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft (Hard)<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see VERY strong exogalactic strikeforces (their frequency does not change).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
=== New Variety For Existing AI Plots ===<br />
<br />
* Hybrid Hives<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see a LOT of these.<br />
<br />
=== Lobby Setup Scripts ===<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** Numerous new players asking "What's a good setup for my first game?"<br />
** Variable-strength minor factions and AI plots (which could be handled just by the above changes, but read on)<br />
** Randomized minor factions and AI plots, particularly combined with variable-strength.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Some kind of overall "difficulty ranking" for a particular game setup.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** The following scripts are available in this version:<br />
*** Beginner Game<br />
**** A fairly simple, fairly easy scenario that may be a good next step for new players who have just completed the intermediate tutorial.<br />
*** Beginner Game 2<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** Random Factions 1<br />
**** This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game (no expansions required).<br />
***** 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.<br />
*** Random Factions 2<br />
**** This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game and The Zenith Remnant expansion.<br />
*** Random Factions 3<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** Random Factions 4<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** Unknown Factions 1<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** Unknown Factions 2<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** Unknown Factions 3<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** Unknown Factions 4<br />
**** 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.<br />
<br />
* Thanks to HitmanN, Chris Fifty-Two, KDR_11k, Vinraith, Sunshine (and probably others) for suggesting randomized minor factions and AI plots.<br />
* Thanks to zebramatt and others for advocating for scenario difficulty-scores, even though we can't quite do that.<br />
* Thanks to topper and others for requesting some kind of "suggested settings" or "presets" for the lobby, particularly for new players.<br />
<br />
=== Major Improvements Relating To Loss Of Window Focus In Fullscreen Mode ===<br />
<br />
* Some recent breakthroughs with the unity engine from A Valley Without Wind have now been backported to AI War. Specifically:<br />
** The game now knows if it has focus or not if you're running in fullscreen mode (not windowed, sorry).<br />
** If the game does not have focus, it now stops doing any edge scrolling (so you don't return to find yourself out in the middle of nowhere.<br />
** If the game does not have focus, it issues a pause command just one time -- that way, in solo or multiplayer, accidental clicks onto a secondary monitor out of fullscreen now pause the game without spamming pauses at other players.<br />
** IF the game does not have focus OR if the Steam Overlay is brought up, it now does a better job of resetting all the input. This should finally resolve that stupid "stuck keys" thing with alt-tabbing and shift-tabbing.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.033 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/04/ai-war-beta-5033-and-other-times-there.html And Other Times There Are A Few Too Many Ponies] ==<br />
(Released April 17th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Metal/Crystal Harvester Upgrades:<br />
** MkII production from 31 => 30.<br />
** MkIII production from 73 => 55.<br />
** Results/Rationale:<br />
*** 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).<br />
*** MkII upgrades are better than EconII if you have 1, 2, 3, or greater than 12 planets, but are worse from 4 to 11.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** All in all, the question of "do I upgrade harvesters or econ stations?" should now be more situational and map-based.<br />
** Thanks to many players for feedback on the recent harvester buffs, including strident efficiency graphs and amusing anecdotes of overrunning the galaxy with unending waves of constant production.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a null exception that happened when gifting a spirecraft mining enclosure to another player.<br />
** Thanks to topper for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Enclave Starships, in honor of winning the fifth "Worst Unit" poll.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1000 flat => 1000*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 500K*mk => 3M*mk.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Now have radar dampening of 8000/7500/7000/6500.<br />
*** 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).<br />
** Knowledge Costs from 0/3000/5000/10000 => 0/2000/2000/14000.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
*** This is because previously using these efficiently basically required engineer support (specifically, engineer mkIII support). Engies still help, but it's not as critical.<br />
** Thanks to many players for providing feedback on these in recent months, and for voting in the poll.<br />
<br />
* Armored Warheads, in honor of placing second in the fifth "Worst Unit" poll:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 300k/1.5M/2.4M => 1M*mk.<br />
** Explosion Size from 1500/1250/750 => 1500*mk.<br />
** Now do 10k*mk armor damage, enough to strip all the armor off most units that aren't some kind of boss fight.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players for providing feedback on these in recent months, and for voting in the poll.<br />
<br />
* Lightning Warheads:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 300k/1.5M/2.4M => 800k*mk.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Explosion size changed to match the new armored warheads: 1500/1250/750 => 1500*mk.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players for suggesting an increase in scale for these, and for voting in the poll.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.032 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/03/ai-war-beta-5032-then-pendulum-swung.html Then The Pendulum Swung Back] ==<br />
(Released March 30th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed an omission in the previous release; nanoswarm attack power was supposed to be doubled and their reclamation double-efficiency flag removed. The latter happened, but not the former. Now both are in.<br />
** Thanks to Dazio for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and many other players reporting odd and/or brutal populations of these kinds of units from reinforcements over the past year and some months.<br />
<br />
* Now that the AI is no longer able to get a ton of low-cap ships where it should only be getting a few of them, the AI-specifc per-guard-post caps on those low-cap types have been removed (and some per-planet ones, but the ones on stuff like engineers): those had just been bandaids to prevent massive swarming by those ship types because we didn't know what was going on there or how to fix it.<br />
** This is particularly important because the bandaid was pretty brutal about making sure it was enforced, so the AI would wind up sending a reinforcement and part/most of it would be ditched without spawning because it would violate the caps, etc.<br />
<br />
* Just under "Enable Advanced Logging" on the Advanced tab of the Settings window, added a "Enable Reinforcement Logging" toggle.<br />
** 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.<br />
** This is off by default because:<br />
*** 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<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Lots of disk I/O during the game causes instability on some systems.<br />
** All that said, if you're curious about the numbers, and especially if you think something is wrong (there certainly was plenty wrong for a while now, though it worked ok in most scenarios), have a look and let us know :)<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Niccus for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Added new button to Galaxy Layout context menu: "Reset My Layout To Official"<br />
** Prompts you to confirm the action, and if you confirm it sets the positions of all planets in your alternate layout to the official positions.<br />
** Thanks to Nodor (and others, previously) for pointing out the need for this in case the planet positions get messed up (as can sometimes happen on load and/or changing resolutions).<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to Tharrick for reporting that it was actually possible for one of these to get destroyed if the AI did a tachyon burst during hacking to drop the marker's perma-cloak. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" apparently wasn't sinking in.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for reporting the highly-sub-optimal behavior.<br />
<br />
* Mobile Repair Stations, in belated honor of doing well in the last "worst unit" poll<br />
** Maximum simultaneous repairs from 100 => 20.<br />
** Repair rate reduced.<br />
** Time it must remain stationary before starting repairs from 60 seconds => 5.<br />
** Now has cloaking.<br />
*** This doesn't break when repairing, but beware AI tachyons.<br />
** Thanks to many players for feedback on how this unit just didn't seem worth the trouble; hopefully now it will be worth 4000 K but also not be so "insta-heal entire fleet" overpowered as it was before the last rework (but if you have all 9 in range of a fleet not much will stay damaged unless it is under ongoing fire). If there are still problems please let us know :)<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to mlhibou for providing a report and save of this apocalyptic situation, and to Niccus for a similar report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s, SpaceBrotha, and Caseycc for providing reports and saves.<br />
<br />
* The Tech buttons on the ARS tab of a science ship on an ARS planet are now sorted so that the leftmost one is the one that would be unlocked by capturing without hacking.<br />
** This is more info than it really should give, but getting the info is a simple savescum operation so we may as well shortcircuit that.<br />
<br />
* Added new galaxy display mode "Detected Immobile Minor Factions".<br />
** This shows "DS" next to the planet with the Dyson Sphere, "RC" for a Neinzul Rocketry Corps Silo, and "HC" for a Rebelling Human Colony.<br />
<br />
* Mostly as a visual improvement (via more variety of shot speed) and somewhat to make some weapons a little more effective:<br />
** Laser shot speed tripled (wait, why does a laser shot have a speed?)<br />
** Minor electric shot speed doubled.<br />
** Shell shot speed increased to 1.5x what it was.<br />
** Ion shot speed doubled.<br />
** Combat style now applies to all shot speeds, not only artificially-increased ones.<br />
** Note: shots will always move at least 40 faster than their target.<br />
** Feedback is very welcome on whether these changes make combat more interesting, or are a detriment; just an experiment, really.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where a superterminal could be "paused" by scrapping your command station, saving, and reloading.<br />
** Thanks to Niccus for the report and save.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.031 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/03/ai-war-beta-5031-harvest-of-unloved.html Harvest Of The Unloved] ==<br />
(Released March 21st, 2012)<br />
<br />
* The hacking-response wild-roll for "short range warp jump" can now generate a much wider range of spawn points.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for reporting that it was always picking points in two relatively small areas.<br />
<br />
* Now when a unit dies while under the influence of a parasite infestation ("reclamation damage"), those parasites will behave far more efficiently:<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players over the past year or so for reminding us that reclamators are more fun when it's easier to get some kind of reliable reclamation-rate out of them (even if said rate is not OP).<br />
<br />
* Youngling Nanoswarm:<br />
** Base attack power from 400*mk => 800*mk. Still not much at all, but it allows:<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* Mines:<br />
** 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?<br />
** Standard Mines:<br />
*** 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).<br />
**** Note that the build time for all 3 mine types is still 90 seconds.<br />
** Area Mines:<br />
*** Base Metal+Crystal cost from 1080+3600 => 40+80.<br />
*** Now hit a maximum of 10 targets with their aoe.<br />
*** Base Damage per hit from 7500 => 52500 (half as much damage as a normal single-target mine).<br />
** EMP Mines:<br />
*** Base Metal+Crystal cost from 720+2400 => 60+120.<br />
*** Fixed an error in the tooltip: it said the paralysis was 60 seconds long, but it's really only 10 seconds.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and several other players for recent feedback on mines, leading to these changes.<br />
<br />
* Harvester Exo-Shields, in honor of winning the 4th "Worst Unit" poll (and the first one for which it was eligible) :<br />
** Now has cloaking.<br />
** Now cloaks the protected harvester.<br />
** No longer halves production of protected harvester.<br />
** 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.<br />
** The result is that:<br />
*** They have a much lower operational cost which no longer scales up with higher harvester marks or with your energy efficiency.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players for their feedback on why this unit was very rarely an interesting choice.<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** A bit of background:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** So, to do something about this pretty vast disparity:<br />
*** Harvester II:<br />
**** Knowledge cost from 3250 => 2000.<br />
**** Production from 28 => 31 (so +8 => +11).<br />
*** Harvester III:<br />
**** Knowledge cost from 4000 => 2500 (so 4500 total).<br />
**** Production from 36 => 73 (so +16 => +53).<br />
***** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg and many other players for pointing out the fact that harvester upgrades were basically just universally inferior (with some small exception) to econ station upgrades.<br />
<br />
* Warp Jammer Command Stations, in honor of tying for third in the first "Worst Unit" poll it was eligible for:<br />
** Now prevent their planets from putting adjacent AI planets on alert. <br />
*** 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).<br />
*** But this still allows a new strategic choice in shaping the AI's response to your presence.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Also fixed a longstanding bug where these counted (for display purposes only, apparently) as an AI reinforcement warp gate.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for broaching the subject of how to make these more interesting, and to many other players for confirming the idea that the jammer needed something more.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.030 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/03/ai-war-beta-5030-refined-hacking.html Refined Hacking] ==<br />
(Released March 14th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the wave-mouseover-to-show-ship-info feature in the last version that would display a blank info window and throw some (thankfully harmless) errors if the ship-type-info window had last been used to display an unlocked ship type with a "(x out of y in service)" addendum (like from mouseovering the buy queue items on a space dock).<br />
** Many thanks to zoutzakje, Cyborg, and Ranakastrasz for the reports and saves to track this one down, it was pretty elusive.<br />
<br />
* The "AI is responding to your hacking on (planet name)" messages now specify whether it's knowledge-hacking or ship-design hacking, to avoid confusion. If both are actually happening on one planet, it will display both messages.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Previously if a planet had multiple AI Advanced Research Stations on it then doing a ship-design-hack on the planet and then capturing the planet would only let you unlock 1 bonus type (capturing it without sd-hacking led to the normal multiple types being unlocked) out of the normal set of 3. Fixed it to let you unlock n bonus types out of a set of n*3, where n is the number of AI Advanced Research Stations on the planet. In general multi-hacking like this is more advantageous, but it's very much an edge case due to the small planet counts necessary to get more than 1 ARS on a planet.<br />
** This change applies retroactively to uncaptured ARS's from old saves, but could not be applied to already-captured ARS's, sorry about the inconvenience.<br />
** Thanks to Nic for the report.<br />
<br />
* Now the tech menu's ARS tab (which is used to view and select what bonus type you want to unlock after hacking and capturing an ARS) displays even if no hacking has been done, so you can make a decision about whether you want to hack or not without savescumming (not that anyone would do that).<br />
** The tab still won't show if there were never AI-controlled ARS's on the planet, since then the planet has no bonus types to show.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Superterminal-hacking response:<br />
** Surges no longer automatically set the recharge time for the next pulse to 1 second (15 seconds is the normal time), as chain-surges were entertaining to the developer but not so much to the players.<br />
*** Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring this change.<br />
** Fixed a bug where multiple surges could happen on the same spawn; two surges on the same spawn on diff 7 would multiply spawn strength by 12.25. Ow. This wasn't intended, but a flag wasn't being set right. Now surge-rolls after the first on a spawn are treated like a "multiply by 1.5" roll, similar to how the short-range-warp-jump roll is treated as a x1.5 roll if it's already happened for that spawn.<br />
** When spawn strength is over the cap (500), the way it "trades" strength for higher-mark-level-spawns and shorter-recharge-to-next-pulse has been significantly changed:<br />
*** Instead of trading for tech until <= 200 and then trading for recharge until <= 500, it randomly picks one to trade for if over 500; if it's still over 500 it randomly picks again, etc. Max tech level is 5, of course, and minimum recharge is 1 second.<br />
*** When trading for tech, it now multiplies strength by current_mark/next_mark instead of deducting a flat 150, to better represent the linearly-increasing power that typically happens with higher marks.<br />
**** Thanks to Hearteater for inspiring this change.<br />
*** When trading for lower recharge time, it now multiplies strength by new_time/old_time instead of deducting a flat 33, to better represent the increasing impact of multiple cooldown reductions.<br />
<br />
* Changed the Ship-Design-Hacker's description to be a bit clearer.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater and Wanderer for suggestions on how to reword it.<br />
<br />
* Previously hacking response wild-rolls that increased spawn strength did so by multiplying the current strength value by some x%. The exponential growth this caused with higher numbers of rolls was intentional but turned out to get wildly out of control, doing things like spawning 4000 raid starships (heh) or arithmetic overflow, etc. So it's been changed to be an additive boost instead, adding x% of the pre-rolls strength to the current strength value.<br />
** To compensate, the now-additive bonuses are a bit higher in magnitude than they used to be.<br />
** The one exception to this is the superterminal's "surge" roll, which is still mutiplicative, but can only happen once per spawn. Still, it can put on some real hurt if it happens after a bunch of additive boosts (but nothing that will challenge the domain of the datatype storing the strength value).<br />
** (posthumous) Thanks to Toranth for warning us of the 4000+ raid starship spawn.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the "spawn raid starships" wild-roll was giving the AI the kind of raid starship reserved for human use. Now gives the AI-variant. Already-created ones will probably remain as they are, but it shouldn't be a big deal.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report.<br />
<br />
* Previously hacking responses continued after the hacking was "done" (all knowledge gathered by a knowledge hacker, or the planet successfully sd-hacked by a ship-design hacker). This was intentional, to motivate getting the hacker out of there or in a transport or whatever, but it's a reasonable request to have the responses stop without player intervention, so that's what will happen now.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* The "spawn raid starships" wild-roll no longer creates "zombie" raid starships that blindly agress upon whatever humans are in vision, but rather non-zombies that are coordinated like an exo and go charging after some juicy human target.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for the suggestion; please direct your rotten fruit in his direction (assuming it doesn't have a bonus vs. Ultra-Light hulls, you'll need those).<br />
<br />
* The grav well display circles now use much more subtle colors and rotate 1/8th as fast as they used to.<br />
** Thanks to clone, doctorfrog, Wanderer and others for suggestions on how to make these less Yeargh!-inducing.<br />
<br />
* Previously there was no way to know how ticked off the AI was at previous hacking attempts and thus what to expect in future ones. This was somewhat by design, as this isn't another AIP or whatever, but if the player is to make strategic decisions about hacking some kind of feedback (other than angry-ships-to-the-face) is important. So now once there's been any hacking antagonism actually generated (note: ship-design hacking doesn't actually increase that value until the hack is complete, since you haven't gained anything until then) an alert will display with a general descriptor ("Very Low", "Low", "Moderate", etc) of where things are.<br />
** The numeric ranges represented are pretty broad and somewhat guesses, so let us know if the AI hacking response just roflstomped the galaxy at "Low", etc.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Previously the bonus-type selection buttons on the ARS tab of the tech menu for ship-design-hacked planets would still show the "KNWL" indicator over the top of buttons for which you didn't have enough knowledge to do the unlock if you were unlocking mkII of that type normally. Except you aren't spending knowledge by clicking them, so it shouldn't show the KNWL thing, and now it no longer does.<br />
** Thanks to HTL2001 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Now picking a bonus type from the ARS tab of the tech menu after a ship-design-hack is a per-player decision in multiplayer (and in singleplayer, but the difference isn't noticeable unless other players join).<br />
** If you think you might have players joining later, don't forget which planets had the ARS unlocks :)<br />
** Note that normal (no hacking) capture of an ARS still gives the same bonus type to all players, which gives ship-design hacking an additional advantage in multiplayer (though remember there's still only 3 types to pick from per ARS, so it's not all that much of an advantage).<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Dyson Antagonizer/Converter alert messages now contain the planet name if you've scouted the planet since that unit came into existence, not just when you've actively got a scout on the planet.<br />
** Thanks to Shrugging Khan for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where helper players were getting the overflow from other players resources income-past-cap.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Mercatio for the report.<br />
<br />
* Reference tab of stats window:<br />
** The label on the "Display Comparisons For Ship" dropdown has been changed to "Target Ship".<br />
** The labels on the columns have been changed from "Them > Me" to "Opponent Attacking" (note: the header of the first column on the table is "Opponent") and from "Me > Them" to "Target Attacking". Also, "Result?" has been changed to "Opponent Wins?" and the Win/Loss text switched.<br />
** The Opponent-Attacking columns have been swapped with the Target-Attacking columns so that the Opponent-Attacking ones are first.<br />
** The overall idea behind the above changes is that the reference comparison is most often used to see "what do I have that can efficiently kill a bunch of the target type?", and not often used to see "what can the target type kill efficiently?".<br />
** Thanks to Ragnorak for reminding us about this.<br />
<br />
* The mouse wheel will no longer do affect zooming of the main game window while the stats window is visible (previously it was a real pain when trying to mousewheel-scroll through the various tables and dropdowns, etc).<br />
** Thanks to many players for repeatedly reminding us about this.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the reference export where flak guardians were showing as firing only one shot per salvo.<br />
** Thanks to Dazio for the report.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft-Medium and Broken-Golems-Medium no longer have a score penalty.<br />
** Thanks to many players over the months pointing out that medium's counterbalance is at least as effective as hard's.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the hacking data (how much you'd done, and thus how annoyed the AI was) was not getting reset between games (the logic was there, but the wrong function was getting called).<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for the report leading to the discovery of this.<br />
<br />
* Added a sanity check preventing QueueAnotherSpawnAfterThisOne wild-rolls from causing an theoretically infinite loop on spawns with a very high number of rolls. This probably wasn't happening, but it was probably happening enough to bog things down if you hacked all 5 Advanced Research Stations or whatever.<br />
** Thanks to Toranth for reporting a hang during hacking, which was probably due to this (and the multiplicative spawn strength stuff).<br />
<br />
* Knowledge-Hacking / Ship-Design-Hacking responses now honor the last "mutate" roll instead of the first, and can now roll to switch back to a normal-ship spawn. Previously as roll count got high basically all the spawns would be mutated (raid or zombie guardian, currently) and this wasn't as fun as genuine variety.<br />
** Thanks to _K_ for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.029 ==<br />
(Released March 5th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a critical data-loss bug in 5.028 where mkII/mkIII unlocks of bonus ship types would be lost upon loading the game (i.e. don't save in 5.028!)<br />
** Many thanks to Physical Original for the report and save.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.028 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/03/ai-war-beta-5028-hacker-revolution.html Hacker Revolution] ==<br />
(Released March 5th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Added new toggle to CTRLS window: Brave Scout Starships.<br />
** If this toggle is checked, your Scout Starships will suppress their normal self-preservation instincts. Specifically:<br />
*** They will not evade (run to a far-off spot) upon exiting a wormhole under any circumstances.<br />
*** They will not avoid being included in a selection with military ships.<br />
** This will tend to reduce the effectiveness of their automatic behavior for the purpose of scouting, but may make them much more useful for providing tachyon and counter-sniper coverage for a fleet.<br />
** Note: this applies to the scout starships of the player who's brave-scout-starships toggle is checked, regardless of who is trying to control them in a multiplayer game with Allow Team Control on. Allied Scout Starships will still be wimps unless their owners check this toggle too.<br />
** Thanks to many players for requesting a way of making their scout starships not imitate Sir Robin.<br />
<br />
* Scout Starship:<br />
** Base Health from 120k/480k/960k/1.2M => 300k*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1500 flat => 1500*mk.<br />
** Tachyon Range from 750/950/1150/1550 => 2000*mk.<br />
** Ship Cap from 5/4/3/2 => 5/5/5/2.<br />
** Energy Use from 2000/4000/6000/6000 => 2000/2000/2000/5000.<br />
** Base Move Speed from 224/464/704/704 => 240/480/720/720.<br />
** 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.<br />
** The MkIV Scout Starship:<br />
*** Now provides counter-missile coverage.<br />
*** 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).<br />
** Thanks to many players for feedback leading to these changes.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to ArcDM for the report and Solarity for a more recent report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some longstanding (since introduction of group move trying to handle immune-to-speed-boosting units) bugs with group move:<br />
** 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.<br />
*** This bug has been captured, stuffed, and placed in the museum. It couldn't get away fast enough.<br />
** Thanks to HellishFiend and Spikey00 (among others) for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s for the (initial) report and save.<br />
<br />
* Knowledge Raiding:<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Now each spawn makes a number of "wild rolls" which apply various effects to what happens.<br />
**** 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.<br />
**** At first there is only 1 roll per spawn, but this goes up by 1 for every 1500 knowledge raided.<br />
** 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.<br />
** For the detailed discussion see http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9906.0.html , but in brief the rationale is:<br />
*** K-raiding's main purpose is to let players dig themselves out of a hole by gaining power without increasing AIP.<br />
*** 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.<br />
**** 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).<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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 :)<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater, Wanderer , techsy730, chemical_art, and others for feedback on how k-raiding was (still) exploitable and boring, and on proposals to improve it.<br />
<br />
* Science Lab III:<br />
** Has been renamed to "Knowledge Hacker"<br />
** Is now mobile, cloaked, and significantly more durable.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Superterminal Hacking:<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
*** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
*** 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 :)<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer and others for various feedback over the past year showing how much people could run away with the game using the superterminal, generally stopping due to boredom rather than threat. Now you'll die of something else before you die of boredom :)<br />
<br />
* Advanced Research Station Hacking:<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** In summary: if you don't "use" your opportunity to hack for k-raiding, or for the super-terminal, you can use it here to get more flexibility in your fleet composition. You can also do all three activities, but remember that they each make the others more dangerous.<br />
<br />
* Amended Bomber Starship description to note that it is unable to hit small targets.<br />
** Thanks to rabican for reminding us that it wasn't admitting to this particular limitation.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where aoe shots would do fail to hit a forcefield they detonated against unless the actual forcefield-generating unit was in range of the explosion. Now the collision check is done against the forcefield's current radius rather than its center point.<br />
** Specifically, this deals with plasma siege starships firing upon but being unable to damage an AI forcefield (when it was high enough health, at least).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and rabican for reporting and providing saves.<br />
<br />
* Dyson Antagonizer (hybrid plot) :<br />
** Now tries to be built somewhat closer to the AI's border.<br />
** Health from 80M => 40M.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to various players for feedback on this.<br />
<br />
* The "Detected AI Progress Reducers" galaxy map display used to just show "DC " followed by the total number of reducers on the planet (for planets with any). Now it shows "DC", "CP", "ST", or "CL" (Data Center, Co-processor, SuperTerminal, Civlian Leader) and if there are multiple on a planet it shows them with spaces inbetween (so potentially something like "ST DC DC").<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for pointing out that the previous display left something to be desired.<br />
<br />
* Impulse Reaction Emitter, in recognition of winning the 3rd "worst ship" award:<br />
** Effective Range from 4200 => 6000.<br />
** Base Move Speed from 20 => 30. This makes it slightly faster than a fighter.<br />
** Base Metal+Crystal cost from 300+300 => 250+250. That's mkI; other marks use normal progression.<br />
** Minimum multiplier from 5 => 8.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to the poll voters for bestowing this dubious honor, and for more specific feedback on what the unit actually was lacking.<br />
<br />
* Space Plane, in recognition of doing really well in the 3rd "worst ship" poll:<br />
** Vs-Hull multipliers from 2.4 => 3.2.<br />
*** For reference, that's against Light (Fighter), Polycrystal (Bomber), Heavy (... a lot of things), and UltraHeavy.<br />
*** Eyebots have 3.2, and a somewhat lower base-dps, but can shoot through forcefields.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 3 => 9.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 600*mk => 1800*mk. <br />
*** 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.<br />
** Base Energy Use from 100 => 50, because with the 1.75x ship cap the default energy use (100) was kind of excessive.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to the poll voters for their feedback on this unit.<br />
<br />
* Vampire Claw, also in recognition of runner-up-for-worst-ship:<br />
** Base Health from 5000*mk => 10000*mk. <br />
*** 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.<br />
** Now have cloaking. Be afraid. Bring tachyons. And garlic.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Base Energy Use from 200 => 160.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 650 => 850.<br />
** Added Artillery to the hull types this has a bonus against (om nom missile frigate tasty).<br />
** Now has a 0.3x multiplier against the command-grade hull type.<br />
** Thanks to the poll voters for their feedback on this unit.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Tiger:<br />
** Base Metal+Crystal from 40+40 => 25+25, same as commandos and weasels.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Vulture:<br />
** Base Metal+Crystal from 40+40 => 25+25, same as commandos and weasels (and tigers, now).<br />
<br />
* Spire Gravity Drain:<br />
** 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.<br />
** These need more rebalancing attention, but ran out of time for that in this release.<br />
<br />
* Spire Gravity Ripper:<br />
** Base Metal+Crystal from 1800+1200 => 1000+500. Was similar to the grav drain's situation.<br />
** These need more rebalancing attention, but ran out of time for that in this release.<br />
<br />
* Spire Armor Rotter:<br />
** Base Metal+Crystal from 800+1900 => 450+900. Was 3rd most expensive.<br />
** These need more rebalancing attention, but ran out of time for that in this release.<br />
<br />
* Space Tank:<br />
** Base Metal+Crystal from 1100+0 => 600+100. Was 5th most expensive, and more expensive than bombers, now slightly less expensive than bombers.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 2600*mk => 2300*mk.<br />
** Vs-Hull-Type multipliers from 3.2 => 6. <br />
*** 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.<br />
** Effective range from 4800+200*mk => 6300+200*mk. Since they're so slow.<br />
<br />
* Grenade Launcher:<br />
** Base Energy Use from 400 => 150. It had twice the cap-energy-use of the next highest fleet ship type.<br />
<br />
* Sentinel Frigate:<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Made end-of-Fallen-Spire spawns yet more enthusiastic, due to the opposition they sometimes face on 10/10. That AI sure is stubborn...<br />
<br />
* On planet view, the game now draws two circles representing the key zones of the planet's "gravity well". These will generally only be seen when zoomed very far out. The inner circle (60000 range from planet center) represents the bounds of the area within which stationary structures may be built and transports may unload. The outer circle (80000 range from planet center) represents the boundary beyond which ship engines are unable to maintain a useful velocity.<br />
** The underlying rules have been there for over a year, but seeing the ranges involved the minimap.<br />
** To go with this, added new toggle: Disable Planet Area Display, which disables this new drawing behavior. If there's a bunch of complaints this toggle may be changed to default to "on", but we'll see :)<br />
** Thanks to clone for reminding us how little clue the game gave (particularly to new players) about the existence and importance of these two ranges.<br />
<br />
* Now for wave alerts that list the actual ship type being sent at you: moving your mouse cursor over a wave alert will bring up that ship's data, similar to mousing-over a ship of that type.<br />
** Thanks to clone for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Science Labs I/II/III, the Survey Ship, and the new Ship Design Hacker are now all immune to the maw's swallow effect. This has nothing to do with a recent test going unexpectedly and terribly awry, of course.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.027 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/02/ai-war-beta-5027-superterminal-overload.html SuperTerminal Overload] ==<br />
(Released February 23rd, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the stages of the hybrid-dyson plot that were supposed to only happen when Advanced Hybrids were on were happening when only Normal Hybrids were on.<br />
** Note: the antagonizer is part of what should happen with normal hybrids, but we're working towards more flexibility there too.<br />
** Thanks to orzelek for the report.<br />
<br />
* AI Super-Terminals:<br />
** 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.<br />
*** Thanks to Atomjack for pointing out that it was too easy to keep turning the terminal on and off previously.<br />
** Now each super-terminal "pulse" has a 10% chance to be a "surge":<br />
*** It puts a message in the chat log letting you know there was a surge.<br />
*** 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).<br />
*** It sets the time until the next pulse to 1 second instead of the usual 15. "Chain surges" are therefore possible, albeit fairly unlikely.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for reporting a game where the dyson sphere was bordering 3 core worlds. Ouch.<br />
<br />
* Riot Tazer:<br />
** Paralysis Time from 1 => 3 (internally 2 => 4, but the first second generally gets eaten due to processing order).<br />
** Reload Time from 2 => 8.<br />
** Per-planet stagger from 2 seconds => 6 seconds.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for reporting the transient stunlocks.<br />
<br />
* Anti-Starship Arachnid V:<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for reporting that he shot his monitor after finding 2 Anti-Starship V fabricators. At least, that's what's on the police report.<br />
<br />
* Spider Bots:<br />
** Engine Damage per shot from 15 => 60.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* Beam Starship:<br />
** Rebalancing as a MkV starship, since the fleet ship fabricators produce MkV stuff.<br />
** Base Move Speed from 14 => 22.<br />
** Base Health from 4.5M => 22.5M. Now on par with the Core Starship for cap-health.<br />
** Max targets hit per shot from infinite => 9. Same as Zenith Beam Frigate.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 5 => 2. Not the same as Zenith Beam Frigate.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to zharmad for the reminder that these have needed a rebalance since before 4.0.<br />
<br />
* Warbird Starship:<br />
** Rebalancing as a MkV starship, since the fleet ship fabricators produce MkV stuff.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** From no vs-hull-type multipliers => 4 vs polycrystal, heavy, ultra-heavy, and structural.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 5 => 2.<br />
** Shots-per-salvo from 40 => 16.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for the reminder that these needed a rebalancing.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to soMe_RandoM and (more recently) zharmad for bringing to our attention how sub-optimal the targeting used to be.<br />
<br />
* Reference tab balance export:<br />
** Removed a lot of no-longer-relevant columns.<br />
** Added columns for base shot strength, targets hit per shot, shots per salvo, seconds per salvo, minimum and maximum special multipliers (for vulture/IRE/polarizer), short name, wave name, etc.<br />
** Improved computation of non-bonus and bonus dps to be right in more cases (still off for autobombs/minirams/nanoswarms, etc).<br />
** Thanks to Dazio for suggestions on what would be helpful for working on the new wiki pages for each ship (and thanks to him and others for that work, of course!)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the minimum special multiplier wasn't working for Zenith Polarizers against targets that literally had zero armor, so their dps was 1/4 the intended value in those cases. Fixed a related bug for Impulse Reaction Emitters, but that probably wasn't affecting any significant cases.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Acid Sprayers:<br />
** Base Attack from 450 => 600. This puts the non-bonus cap-dps pretty exactly at the fighter's.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Vs Hull Type Multipliers from 6 => 8. The fighter's vs-polycrystal bonus is 5, for reference.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to the many players weighing in the poll naming the Acid Sprayer as the second winner of the "worst ship" award. In honor of these changes, the award has been optimistically confiscated.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.026 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/02/ai-war-beta-5026-pay-attention-exos.html Pay Attention, Exos!] ==<br />
(Released February 15th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version where broken-golems-hard and spirecraft-hard exos could sometimes pick any human-controlled unit as their main target.<br />
** Thanks to dotjd for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Vorticular Cutlass:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Base Speed from 16 => 54. So from slower than a fighter to slightly faster than an etherjet.<br />
** Base Metal/Crystal cost from 200/50 => 30/30. Now the same price as infiltrators, a bit lower than tele-raiders, etc.<br />
** Base Energy use from 100 => 20.<br />
** Thanks to many players for ongoing feedback about these being, possibly, [http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9820.0.html the least useful fleet ship in the game] since its last major changes.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to techsy730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Nanoswarm:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Engine damage from 2*mk => 10*mk.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.025 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/02/ai-war-beta-5025-balance-beam-released.html Balance Beam] ==<br />
(Released February 13th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Notably, this restores the Plasma Siege Starship's ability to target Raid Starships, which was unintentionally lost in the previous version.<br />
** Thanks to techsy730 for pointing out the error, and several players for the suggested mechanic change.<br />
<br />
* Added new toggle to CTRLS window: "Make Multi-Planet FRD Patrol" (defaults to on).<br />
** If this toggle is checked, your FRD units will pursue and engage enemy units on the same planet even if currently under orders to proceed to a different planet.<br />
** Otherwise, your FRD units will prioritize a "move to different planet order" and will not break off to pursue enemy units.<br />
** Note: This used to be the default behavior but was changed during the last year. Several requests to return to the previous behavior have led to this change, but the suppress-patrol behavior is available by unchecking this toggle, for those who want it (or to use it for a certain period of time). More granular control could be added, but we didn't want to overbuild this.<br />
** Thanks to many players for reminding us that they really like it when FRD means "Patrol".<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many, many players asking for this over the years.<br />
<br />
* Added new unit cap scale option: Ultra Low<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for submitting a save that showed a Low-caps battle making a modern CPU cry.<br />
<br />
* Flak Turrets:<br />
** Effective range from 4000/5000/6000 => 4500/5500/6500 to make them a little easier to place around a wormhole.<br />
** Now when under a firepower-reducing forcefield they retain 75% of their attack power instead of the customary 25%.<br />
** Hopefully they'll now be closer to the general usefulness of other turrets in that they don't have to die immediately (if protected).<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art, techsy730, Wanderer and other players for weighing in on the flak's recent usefulness and making suggestions.<br />
<br />
* Lightning Turrets:<br />
** Now when under a firepower-reducing forcefield they retain 75% of their attack power instead of the customary 25%.<br />
<br />
* 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) :<br />
** All marks:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** For reference, these aren't really "aoe", they're "blast-through"; a beam loses strength as it does damage.<br />
** MkI<br />
*** For reference, MkI unit cap is 12 for these, and each fires 3 beams every 7 seconds. <br />
*** Base Health from 250k => 850k. This brings cap-health a bit higher than missile turrets, which are the squishy end of turret types.<br />
*** Base Energy Use from 750 => 1650. This brings cap-energy to just slightly above MLRS and several other turret types.<br />
*** Base Metal/Crystal Cost from 8000/14000 => 6500/11000. This brings cap-mc to slightly below most turret types.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Knowledge cost from 2000 => 500. The other mkI turrets are free.<br />
** MkII<br />
*** For reference, MkII unit cap is 8 for these, and each fires 6 beams every 6 seconds.<br />
*** Base Health from 1.25M => 2.55M. Basically: mkI health * (2 for being mkII) * (1.5 for smaller unit cap)<br />
*** Base Energy Use from 1300 => 2500. (roughly mkI * 1.5 for cap)<br />
*** Base Metal/Crystal Cost from 16000/28000 => 13000/22000. (mkI * 2, customary for mkII)<br />
*** Base Attack Power from 50000 => 180000. Basically: mkI damage * (0.429 for rate-of-fire-difference) * (2 for mkII) * (1.5 for unit cap)<br />
*** Knowledge cost from 3000 => 2500. Most other mkII turrets are 2000-3000.<br />
** MkIII<br />
*** For reference, MkIII unit cap is 4 for these, and each fires 12 beams every 5 seconds.<br />
*** Base Health from 2.25M => 7.65M. Basically: mkI health * (3 for mark) * (3 for unit cap)<br />
*** Base Energy Use from 2000 => 5000. (roughly mkI * 3 for cap)<br />
*** Base Metal/Crystal Cost from 32000/56000 => 26000/44000. (mkI * 4, customary for mkIII)<br />
*** Base Attack Power from 50000 => 225000. Basically: mkI damage * (0.179 for rof diff) * (3 for mark) * (3 for cap)<br />
*** Knowledge cost from 3500 => 3000. That's pretty normal for a mkIII turret.<br />
** MkIV<br />
*** For reference, MkIV unit cap is _1_ for these, and it fires 40 beams every 4 seconds.<br />
*** Base Health from 3.25M => 40M. Basically: mkI health * (4 for mark) * (12 for unit cap)<br />
*** Base Energy Use from 2000 => 20000. (roughly mkI * 12 for cap)<br />
*** Base Metal/Crystal Cost from 64000/112000 => 52000/88000. (mkI * 8, customary for mkIV)<br />
*** Base Attack Power from 50000 => 290000. Basically: mkI damage * (0.043 for rof diff) * (4 for mark) * (12 for cap)<br />
*** Knowledge cost staying at 3000. Thought about 3500, but it really is just one unit.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater and others for feedback that inspired these changes.<br />
<br />
* All modules (except those that generate forcefields) are now invincible and thus untargetable, etc.<br />
** This really helps prevent a lot of fiddliness when losing modules on a Riot (or whatever), especially when you've got a build queue competing with the ship's auto-replacement logic, etc.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where modules would not always decloak their parent ship when firing.<br />
** Thanks to several players for reporting that the previous fix for this wasn't working.<br />
<br />
* Now when a modular ship is in low-power-mode, all its modules act as if in low-power-mode.<br />
** Note that if a module was already in low power mode and the parent is made low-power and then taken out of low-power, that module will stay in low-power. The other modules that were not in low-power before will come out of it when the parent does.<br />
<br />
* Riot Starships:<br />
** Ship Cap from 4/3/2 => 4 flat. Most of the special starship types have non-decreasing caps already.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Base Speed from 20/17/14 => flat 20.<br />
** Base Energy Cost from 3000/4000/5000 => flat 3000.<br />
** Base mkI Metal+Crystal Cost from 20k+60k => 30k+50k (mkII is 2x, mkIII is 4x).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Base Engine Damage from 40/55/70 => 40*mk.<br />
** Multiplier vs Medium from 2 => 4. Its other 4 bonuses were already 4.<br />
** All Modules:<br />
*** No longer have an energy cost. 12k cap-e for the hulls is enough.<br />
** Machine Gun Modules:<br />
*** Engine Damage Percent Floor from 50%/30% => 40%/20%.<br />
** Laser Modules:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 5 => 4.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Neutron from 3 => 4.<br />
** Shotgun Modules:<br />
*** Base Attack Power from 40 => 400.<br />
*** Engine Damage from 28 => 36. Makes these 2x as efficient as MGs for total EDPS.<br />
*** Shots per salvo from 25/49 => 25*mk.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 6 => 4.<br />
*** Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 5 => 4.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Refractive from 5 => 4.<br />
** Tazer Module: <br />
*** Multiplier vs Medium from 3 => 4.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Artillery from 3 => 4.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Thanks to Wanderer for being the one to confirm the long-held suspicion that these were horribly exploitable.<br />
** Tractor Modules:<br />
*** Tractor Range from 1700*mk => flat 4400. Same as mkIII tractor turrets.<br />
*** Tractor Count from 10/40 => 72*mk. Same as mkII/mkIII tractor turrets (but mobile and not needing supply).<br />
**** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** This was another long-overdue rebalancing, hence the magnitude of changes.<br />
<br />
* Orbital Mass Drivers:<br />
** Now when under a firepower-reducing forcefield they retain 75% of their attack power instead of the customary 25%.<br />
** Thanks to techsy730 for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Leech Starship:<br />
** Base Energy Use from 10k/14k/18k => flat 5k. So cap-e is same now as Raids (the next highest for combat starships)<br />
** All vs-hull-type bonuses removed, to allow for a bit more of an overall damage buff and thus more general reclamation utility.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players for feedback that this was an underwhelming unit.<br />
<br />
* Light Starship/Flagship/Zenith Starship/Spire Starship/Core Starship<br />
** Ship Cap from 5/3/2/2/2 => 4 flat.<br />
** Base Speed from 15/18/18/24/22 => 22 flat.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1000/2500/2500/2500/2500 => 1000*mk.<br />
** Base Energy Use from 2k/10k/20k/20k/20k => 4k flat.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 1500/4800/3000/10000/500 => 3000+(200*mk).<br />
** 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).<br />
** Shots-per-salvo from 5/9/14/4/5 => 5 flat.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 4/4/2/2/5 => 4 flat.<br />
** Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 12/12/1/1/1 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Medium from 8/8/1/6/1 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Light from 6/6/1/1/1 => 1/1/4/1/4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Polycrystal from 1/1/0.01/4/1 => 4/1/1/4/4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Artillery from 1 => 1/4/1/1/4.<br />
** Multiplier vs UltraLight from 1/1/1/4/1 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 1/1/1/1/0.1 => 1.<br />
*** 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!).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Munitions boost range from 3k/6k/5k/8k = 2k+(1k*mk).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Golems-Hard and Spirecraft-Hard exos are now a bit more wily about what their primary objectives. FS exos may follow suit later.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.024 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/02/ai-war-beta-5024-carrier-rules-of.html Carrier Rules Of Engagement] ==<br />
(Released February 6th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed an... interesting omission in the previous version: Plasma Siege Starship base range was supposed to have gone from 16k to 4k, but did not. On further thought, the change was made to 6500/7000/7500 instead (same as mkI/II/III missile frigate).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and Wanderer for the report.<br />
<br />
* Spider turrets:<br />
** Base Metal Cost from 6000 => 1200.<br />
** Base Crystal Cost 15000 => 2400.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to c4sc4 for pointing out that the costs hadn't changed.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version where Ally counts on the galaxy map display were higher than they should have been (specifically, it was taking the total number of friendly ships and adding the number of "my ships" instead of subtracting it).<br />
** Thanks to dorenthas for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a display bug where a constructor that had to stop building would sometimes still show in some places as continuing to spend resources. They were not actually continuing to spend resources while unable to build, but it looked like it.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where a constructor that had to stop a build in mid-construction due to the ship cap for that type becoming full (another constructor "won the race", so to speak) would usually fail to refund the resources it had already spent on the ship being built.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg for the report that led to this being found.<br />
<br />
* Stats Window -> Resource Flows Tab, detail (i.e. non-summary) mode:<br />
** The unit type name for each entry is now a button.<br />
*** Left clicks center your view on the unit (and switch to its planet, if different from your current view).<br />
*** Right clicks try to toggle whether the unit is in low power mode (note that a unit in low power mode will typically not be shown in detail mode because it only shows stuff with a non-zero metal or crystal impact).<br />
*** Fixed a bug where the "Reason" column always said "Normal Operation", even if it was supposed to say Assisting, Repairing, Self-Building, Build Queue, or Low Power Operation.<br />
<br />
* After a few months of etiquette classes, player-ally zombie ships have learned to die silently. (Note: minor faction player-ally ships already knew this)<br />
** Thanks to Red Spot for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* AI Carriers:<br />
** Are no longer invincible if there's >= 2000 AI ships already on the planet.<br />
*** Previously this was necessary to avoid too many AI ships on a planet at once for decent cpu/ram performance. <br />
** Now, when a carrier deploys (it deploys when destroyed):<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
**** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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 :)<br />
** Note: none of this impacts Barracks; they're still invincible in such cases, but we haven't heard many reports of players being frustrated by barracks invincibility.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Added new toggle to controls (CTRLS) window: Auto-target Carriers.<br />
** If this toggle is checked, your units will consider AI Carriers normally when picking targets automatically. Otherwise, they will not automatically fire upon an AI Carrier (it may still fire upon a carrier that it has already put on its target list, but that will last no longer than the current engagement).<br />
** Regardless of this toggle, you may still directly order your ships to fire upon an AI Carrier.<br />
** This toggle is useful because killing a Carrier can be dangerous (due to what comes out), but sometimes it's more important to make sure your defenses don't ignore them.<br />
** This defaults to off. If you want your units to auto-target carriers, you will need to turn it on.<br />
** Note: implementing this involved a fundamental change to the logic that controls "can this unit be targeted at all?" and "can this unit be automatically targeted?". Specifically, that was always previously decided solely based on the potential target's type, and now it has to consider the player that owns the unit trying to do the targeting. While these changes were tested and very carefully checked it's certainly possible that a bug slipped through and will cause all manner of strange and wonderful consequences. Mantis and enjoy.<br />
<br />
* Plasma Siege Starship<br />
** Shot now has a traditional (lightning-type) aoe that does 6.25% of normal damage to up to 14 extra nearby targets.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players for the feedback leading to these changes.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version where the siege splash damage from the Plasma Siege Starship could hit targets normally untargetable or direct-target-only.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for the report and to the brave (if unwitting) Advanced Research Station that died discovering this bug.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Shield Bearers:<br />
** Ship cap doubled.<br />
** Amounts produced:<br />
*** Reptite: from 0 => 1 mkI (so can now be built from Reptite)<br />
*** Pysite: from 1 => 2 mkI<br />
*** Xampite: from 1 => 2 mkII<br />
*** Ebonite: from 1 => 2 mkIII<br />
*** Adamantite: from 1 => 2 mkIV<br />
*** Titanite: from 1 => 2 mkV<br />
** Hopefully this will bring their costs more into line with their actual utility (as non-repairable shields).<br />
** Thanks to techsy730 and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where ships with no attack power would still display hull attack multipliers if they were internally defined (such as with ships that used to have an attack, like Spirecraft Shield Bearers).<br />
** Thanks to techsy730 for the report.<br />
<br />
* Lightning Turrets <br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* 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. <br />
** 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.<br />
** It also looked really cool in testing.<br />
<br />
* Player-Ally Dyson Gatlings are no longer unable to shoot mkV units.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players over time reminding us (sometimes unintentionally) how much they wanted their ally gatlings to shoot mkV things.<br />
<br />
* Hybrids:<br />
** If either player has Advanced Hybrids enabled, hybrid maturity-xp contributions to the central dirty-tricks "bank" are now doubled compared to Normal Hybrids.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks for Wanderer for the testing and feedback leading to these changes.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.023 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/01/ai-war-beta-5023-plasma-siege-starships.html Plasma Siege Starships] ==<br />
(Released January 30th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version where all tractor beams (instead of just the black widow golem tractor beams) were doing the paralysis effect.<br />
** Thanks to Fleet for the report.<br />
<br />
* Zombie and minor faction ships no longer count as part of the "My" counts on the galaxy map. Those that used to count as part of that total now count as part of the "Allied" total.<br />
** Thanks to BobTheJanitor for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in recent versions where the context menus never had scroll-bars and thus the galaxy-map-display select couldn't be used to select some of the further-down items.<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar for the report.<br />
<br />
* Removed the "press slash while mousing over an option for more info" text from the bottom of the context menu since there wasn't actually such info to be had on a lot of items in various modes of the context menu.<br />
** Thanks to Minotaar for the report.<br />
<br />
* Artillery Golem:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 0 => 4000.<br />
** Base Recharge Time from 30 => 8.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Orelius and others for feedback on golems.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous version where the Black Widow paralyzing tractors would only apply a maximum of 2 seconds of paralysis, with quick gaps in the middle every 2 seconds. Now it correctly applies 2 seconds of paralysis damage per 1 second of tractoring.<br />
<br />
* Regenerator Golem:<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Cursed Golem:<br />
** Self-attrition reduced by 50% (now would go from 100% to 0% in 60 minutes instead of 40).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the new munitions boost listing where it was displaying +70% as -31% or suchlike. Also fixed a rounding bug (+19% instead of the actual +20%, etc) in both that listing and the maximum-personal-boost listing.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where units with no attack were showing the new maximum-personal-boost listing.<br />
** Thanks to Nice Save for the report.<br />
<br />
* Turret base energy costs:<br />
** Basic Turret from 150 => 100.<br />
** MLRS Turret from 150 => 100.<br />
** Flak Turret from 300 => 200.<br />
** Missile Turret from 150 => 100.<br />
** Counter-Dark-Matter Turret from 4000 => 1000.<br />
** Counter-Missile-Turret from 4000 => 1000.<br />
** Counter-Sniper-Turret from 4000 => 1000.<br />
** Sniper & Spider Turrets from 250 => 150.<br />
** Grav Turret from 500/8000/10000 => 400*mk.<br />
** Tractor Turret left alone (150/240/300).<br />
** Laser Turret (150) and Heavy Beam Cannon (750/1300/2000/20000) left alone. They're energy weapons.<br />
** Lightning Turret from 500/1000/2000 => 400 flat. Energy weapon, yes, but that was a bit high.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg, Hearteater, and others for feedback leading to this.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine and others for reporting this.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for the report.<br />
<br />
* The Shards recovered in the Fallen-Spire events are no longer cloakable. Previously they could be cloaked via a cloaking starship; this was not deliberate on our part and made those recoveries way easier than they really should be.<br />
** Thanks to Spikey00 for reminding us about this.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Beam Frigate Base Range from 7500+100*mk => 6500+100*mk.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for the feedback inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Previously in step 8 any difficulty greater than 7 received a 2.5 multiplier (7 got 2.25, and lower the lower you went).<br />
** Now:<br />
*** 7.3 through 9 still get 2.5.<br />
*** 9.3 gets 2.75 (10% harder than before).<br />
*** 9.6 gets 3.00 (20% harder than before).<br />
*** 9.8 gets 3.80 (52% harder than before).<br />
*** 10 gets 4.5 (would be 80% harder than before, but see next change).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater and others for the feedback inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** Base Metal Cost from 1500 => 300.<br />
** Base Crystal Cost from 7500 => 1500.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer and others for reminding us of how skewed this was.<br />
<br />
* Antimatter Starship:<br />
** Yes, this one is getting _another_ revamp. Some background:<br />
*** First, they were called dreadnoughts. They did tons of engine damage. Too much. Nerfed.<br />
*** Then, they were called useless. For a long time.<br />
*** 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").<br />
*** But this broke a lot balance because you could just camp around your siege starships from across the planet and bomb everything to bits.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** And now, the next episode...<br />
** Base range from 16000 => 4000.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** Note: even stuff the starship itself cannot aim at (small units and cloaked units, etc) can be hit by the splash damage.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Has been renamed to the Plasma Siege Starship.<br />
** The end result:<br />
*** Still longer-ranged than the bomber starship, but much shorter than before, so not worrying that it will break balance in that way.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players for continuing to remind us that they want this starship to be cool.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/01/ai-war-beta-5022-minor-tweaks-and-fixes.html5.022 Minor Tweaks And Fixes] ==<br />
(Released January 27th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the previous prerelease that broke all the tutorials.<br />
** Thanks to Lorini for the report.<br />
<br />
* Black Widow Golem:<br />
** Number of tractors from 100 => 200.<br />
*** 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 :)<br />
** This golem's tractors now do 2 seconds of paralysis damage per second to each held ship. Ships immune to paralysis are not affected.<br />
** Base Health from 80M => 200M.<br />
** Basically just trying to make this golem a lot more useful and a lot less likely to die when not baby-sat.<br />
** Thanks to Orelius and others for some recent feedback on this golem.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for feedback that inspired this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.021 [http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/01/ai-war-beta-5021-hybrid-helper-pie.html Hybrid Helper Pie] ==<br />
(Released January 24th, 2012)<br />
<br />
* Added some lightweight extra debug info to GameButton.RenderSelf to help us find the bug that's causing really intermittent null exceptions in there somewhere (we can't reproduce it ourselves, and user reports don't have code line numbers, but this new info should help).<br />
<br />
* Added a note to the context menu about how to get info on what a menu item does.<br />
<br />
* Sentinel Frigates and Zenith Electric Bombers are now considered large enough targets for ships like the Antimatter Starship.<br />
** Thanks to techsy730 for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* Now, when a Hybrid is at maximum maturity, additional "experience points" go towards a fund for ruining the player's day. Their first funding goal seems to involve the Dyson Sphere.<br />
** To clarify: this doesn't mean that they're building or spawning dyson spheres or whatever. Something more sinister.<br />
<br />
* All Hunter-Killers have been shifted up one "tier" in terms of the "cost" the AI has to pay to include them in an exogalactic strikeforce. This should help avoid them happening unintentedly-early in MP games, etc.<br />
** Thanks to several players for sharing their, um, "experiences" with early/mid-game HKs.<br />
<br />
* Decoy Drone energy cost from 18000 => 1000, to let the unit's use not be obscured by the power cost.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for reminding us of how high it was.<br />
<br />
* Wave size calculation: the minimum base wave size is now 34, regardless of difficulty.<br />
** The minimum base size of a wave used to be (AI Player Difficulty * 10 * AI Player Handicap). Assuming no positive or negative handicap this generally meant that the first few points of AIP would not increase wave size and the initial wave size was prevented from being embarrassingly tiny.<br />
*** This has served us well but caused the first wave on very high difficulties to be disproportionately difficult such that it's a punishing puzzle to survive the first 7 minutes and after that holding on is significantly easier (though still very tough) because then the player has had more time to actually build initial defenses and so on. It's better for the first wave to not be way more difficult than the second wave on non-trivial difficulties, so the minimum is now just 34. This actually makes difficulties 1-3 harder, but those are so incredibly easy to start with that it's not likely to make much difference.<br />
** Now AIP increases will actually have an impact on wave size much earlier on difficulties 4+.<br />
** AI handicap is still factored in (so with 300% it will have a minimum size of 102).<br />
** The [[AI War:Why Do Enemy Waves Get So Large%3F#How_Wave_Sizes_Are_Calculated|wave size calculation article]] has been updated to reflect this change, and is a good reference if you want more info.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to a number of players for observing that the alternate victory was not always resolving in a timely fashion.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Added new "Switch To UI" buttons to the Stats window (Scores tab) that allows you to switch your UI to display what another player is seeing.<br />
** This only works if the target player has the "Allow Team Control Of Ships" control enabled.<br />
** This is different from the already existing team-control in that:<br />
*** Your resource bar will show the resources for target player, rather than your own.<br />
*** Your planetary summary and so forth will display ships as if the target players ships were "yours"; any ships of your own will show like "ally" ships.<br />
*** The control group keybinds will respond according to the control groups set for the target player, not your own.<br />
*** The CTRLS screen will show (and allow manipulation of) the target player's control options. Yes, that's a lot of power, and some additional "permissions" may prove necessary. But in general: please cooperate :) If it's a problem, just don't use allow-team-control.<br />
**** To clarify: this is options like focus-fire, auto-frd, etc. None of this has anything to do with what keys/buttons are mapped to what commands, that's all local to each machine and doesn't change regardless of whose interface you're looking at.<br />
*** In general, the game's UI should work just like the target player's UI.<br />
** All that said, this would be somewhat limited in usefulness, were it not for the next feature in these notes.<br />
** This is in need of a lot of testing to make sure it works right, so don't be surprised by bugs, just report them :)<br />
<br />
* Added new human player role: "Helper" (probably not the best description, but it's more than "Observer", which is the usual term for a non-playing "player").<br />
** Currently the only way for a player to get into this role is:<br />
*** Host opens "Manage Players" menu.<br />
*** Host sets a previously unused player slot to:<br />
**** Name = profile name of the player who wants to join as an observer/helper<br />
**** Change "Disabled" to "Active" <br />
**** Change "Role: None" to "Role: Helper" <br />
*** Host clicks "Save"<br />
*** The player who wants to join as an observer/helper connects and joins the game.<br />
** A player in the "Helper" role has no (and cannot be given) units, metal, crystal, energy, or knowledge. More generally, they have nothing in the game.<br />
** However (and the resource bar tells them this, in lieu of an m/c/e/k display) they can use the new "Switch To UI" buttons on the Stats screen to "switch" to another player who has the "Allow Team Control Of Ships" control enabled, and then can play normally as if they were connected as that player.<br />
** Also, they can simply observe the game as they have the same vision as the other human players.<br />
** These "Helper" players do not provoke extra waves or other increased threats normally associated with a multiplayer game.<br />
** Some possible uses of this feature:<br />
*** If you want to play a game with other people but want to play against a single-player level of challenge with a single-player level of resources, albeit with more hands helping to control (and micromanage, if desired).<br />
*** If you want to let someone simply watch a game without impacting the balance at all.<br />
*** If you want to help someone learn some part of the game; they can play and you can jump in or out as needed.<br />
** Like the switch-to-ui feature, this is in need of a lot of testing to make sure it works right, so don't be surprised by bugs, just report them :)<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Youngling Tigers:<br />
** Time-to-live from 2 minutes => 4 minutes, which is the same as other youngling types.<br />
** Metal and Crystal cost from 50/50 => 40/40.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 300*mk => 600*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 11k*mk => 13k*mk.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for suggesting/inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Youngling Vulture:<br />
** Metal and Crystal cost from 50/50 => 40/40.<br />
<br />
* Spire Teleporting Leech:<br />
** Base Energy Cost from 400 => 200.<br />
** Base Metal Cost from 2200 => 1200.<br />
** Base Crystal Cost from 800 => 500.<br />
<br />
* Science Lab MkII:<br />
** Base Health from 120k => 500k.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1500 => 5000.<br />
** Now has cloaking.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater and others for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* AI Superfortress:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Health regen halved.<br />
** Thanks to several players for pointing out that superforts had not been changed in line with the other fort types.<br />
<br />
* AI Fortress I/II/III: health regen halved.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where the galaxy-nav code of AI-ally Dyson Gatlings was getting distracted from its main purpose.<br />
<br />
* Ships that generate attack (munitions) boosts now show the magnitude of the boost in the tooltip, not just the range.<br />
** Thanks to SpaceBrotha for the question that reminded us that this info wasn't directly displayed anywhere.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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. Which may be for the best, but feedback is welcome :)<br />
<br />
* Hybrids will no longer try to take Spire Mini-Rams as drones, as generally melee drones don't work that great.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.020 ==<br />
(Released November 3rd, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Fallen-Spire city-provoked exogalactic strikeforces "buildup" rate (this only impacts the time between attacks, not their size or composition) redistributed a bit:<br />
** Spire City Hubs now generate 1/4 the "aggro" they used to.<br />
** Spire Shard Reactors, Habitation Centers, and Shipyards now, instead of generating zero "aggro", generate 1/8th what the Spire City Hub used to generate.<br />
** So a city with all 6 building slots taken up causes exactly the same amount of buildup as before.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Nanoswarm:<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Explosion range from 200/225/250/275/300 => flat 1000.<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* AI Fortress health from 6x human fortress equivalents => 3x human fortress equivalents.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players for weighing in on this subject.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.019 ==<br />
(Released October 5th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Fixed a divide by zero bug in the previous version.<br />
** Thanks to Fleet for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.018 ==<br />
(Released September 30th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Ion normal shot damage from 700 => 14000, and armor piercing from 0 => Max.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Updated the tooltip, which is reproduced here since it probably helps understand what we're doing here:<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* Humorously, Ion Cannons, Core Warhead Interceptors, and Orbital Mass Drivers were previously not immune to insta-kill. They now are.<br />
<br />
* Added to the Dyson Gatling tooltip to reflect the lack of ability to shoot at Mark V targets.<br />
<br />
* If an AI player has a positive handicap that is now factored into that game's TotalSpecialDifficultyModifier which is in turn used for determining the total "population cap" of Hybrids in a game with them on, and also factors in to the budget multiplier for exo waves. Negative handicaps on AI players have no effect, and the higher of the two AI handicaps is used if they're not equal.<br />
<br />
* Added a new ability to the Spirecraft Attritioner in hopes of making it more generally useful. From the new tooltip:<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater and many other players for weighing in with feedback that led to this change.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.017 ==<br />
(Released September 12th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** chemical_art will probably regret making the suggestion that inspired this.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an (apparently) rare array-index-out-of-bounds error in the buy-menu "tooltip" window.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg for the report.<br />
<br />
* Added a second confirm step when scrapping Spirecraft mining enclosures (since scrapping them does not give you back the asteroid from which they came) and the player home forcefield generator (since it cannot be rebuilt).<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg for inspiring this.<br />
<br />
* Strong forcefields (the same ones that had the blocking effect in 5.015) now have their blocking effect back.<br />
** The "cannot use a wormhole covered by a hostile forcefield" rule is still in to prevent the bug with teleporting stuff "sneaking" through.<br />
** The collision detection between blocking forcefields and hostile ships has been refined to include a more precise check for ships that appear to be colliding to the coarse check we've used for a while. This is because the coarse check was making it a lot more likely that AI ships would get "stuck" on a single human forcefield that just happened to be in their way. Now they should slide around a lot more readily.<br />
*** Note that you can still set up blocking walls of multiple forcefields and catch AI ships in a pocket, etc. We aren't thrilled by this as it's basically exploiting the simplistic AI movement logic (it has no pathfinding, just straight line to target, because anything else is cpu-prohibitive for this game) but there are actually more efficient ways to slow down most serious AI assualts (grav turrets under ffs, logistics stations, etc) so this particular "exploit" isn't really breaking the challenge. Maybe one day we'll make it so when the AI detects a blocking wall it retaliates by initiating some gargantuan pathfinding routine and thus churns your processor and framerate to a halt. For now, knock yourselves out :P<br />
** Thanks to everyone who chimed in with feedback on this!<br />
<br />
* Hardened Forcefields:<br />
** Now shrink with damage like normal forcefields, since the rigidity was making them much more likely to actually die rather than diminish to a point where the AI left it alone, and since they would make the "blocking walls" tactic even more effective than it used to be.<br />
** Armor from 1 million to 500k, to expand the set of armor-nemesis things that can actually get through it. If this feels too low, let us know!<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Zenith Polarizer<br />
** Spire Armor Rotter<br />
** Youngling Vulture<br />
** Youngling Nanoswarm<br />
** Raid Starship<br />
** Lightning/Armored/EMP/Tachyon-warheads<br />
** Botnet Golem<br />
** Devourer Golem<br />
** Sentinel Frigate<br />
** Spire Blade<br />
** Spire Gravity Drain<br />
** Spirecraft Siege Tower<br />
** Sniper<br />
** Electric Shuttle<br />
** Lightning Turret<br />
** Sniper Turret<br />
** Spider Turret<br />
** And a variety of lesser known but related types.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.016 ==<br />
(Released September 6th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Preservation Wardens previously did not scale at all when there were multiple human homeworlds and/or multiple human players. Now each time the game spawns a warden it instead spawns 1 warden per player/human-homeworld (specifically, the number of human players or the number of human homeworlds, whichever is greater).<br />
<br />
* Human Forcefield Generators:<br />
** Ship-cap from 9/5/5 => 10/6/6<br />
** HP from 14M/30M/56M => 20M*mk.<br />
** Metal cost from 4k/6k/12k => 4k*mk.<br />
** Crystal cost from 19k/35k/70k => 20k*mk.<br />
** Energy use from 3k/6k/10k => 3k*mk.<br />
** Build time (seconds) from 240/300/480 => 120 + (120*mk) (240/360/480).<br />
<br />
* Added new unlockable support unit type: Hardened Forcefield Generator MkI-III. Basically the same as normal human generators except:<br />
** 1/4th the HP.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for the suggestion (some time ago) that led to this.<br />
<br />
* 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. Other changes are likely to follow, we'll see how it feels to players.<br />
<br />
* Put in a fairly radical change to the base forcefields, but bear with us on this -- if it's not workable we'll take it out. And really, in most senses this should be equivalent to the way that things were before, but more CPU-efficient as well as fixing one bug and one exploit. With that out of the way:<br />
** Change 1: Made it so that strong force fields no longer block enemy ships from passing through them -- on either side. So if you have a forcefield in the way of the AI, or they have a forcefield in your way, your ships can pass right through them with no problem. As with weaker forcefields, the thematic explanation is that you're going around the forcefield in the Z axis, which makes sense. This change has no bearing on the protection of ships under the forcefield; ships are just as well protected now as ever.<br />
*** The exploit in question was a problem with players being able to block enemy ships due to those ships sometimes "sticking" against the force fields. The reason ships would stick is because of the coarseness of the distance check we were using, which was coarse so not to take up so much CPU. Now enemy ships can just fly past your forcefields unimpeded if they're heading to targets beyond them, which -- with one exception, see below -- is what we've always intended in the first place.<br />
*** This is also where we derive our CPU gains from, as normally each ship had to check its relative position to all enemy strong forcefields on a planet every time its position changed even a little. This isn't killer, but in light of the bug and exploit relating to strong forcefields<br />
** Change 2: Made it so that when a strong forcefield is covering a wormhole, no non-forcefield-immune enemy ships can go through that wormhole from the side the forcefield is on.<br />
*** Players have been using forcefields to do this very thing for a long time, and we think that's great. However, this was taking advantage of ships not being able to move in to actually physically reach the wormhole, and that was thus not working very well for teleporting ships, which would teleport right to the center of the forcefield, then get caught in the wormhole before the forcefield could push them back out. This is the bug we referenced above, and it was very much not in players' favor (unlike the exploit), and this set of changes now fixes it.<br />
** NET EFFECTS:<br />
*** 1. Players can't use forcefields to interrupt enemy travel on the planet they are on, nor can the AI.<br />
**** Some players would set up forcefield clusters to trap enemies inside when they come through wormholes, but that was already error-prone because enemies would tend to pop out to the other side if the forcefields weren't positioned precisely right. These players should instead put a single forcefield (or all their forcefields, if they really prefer) on the enemy side of their wormhole and that will now provide much better protection than their older method ever did.<br />
*** 2. The AI can't slip teleporting ships past your forcefields over wormholes unless those teleporting units are also forcefield immune, which should be a huge boon to players in games with teleporting enemies.<br />
** Thanks to mindloss for most directly inspiring these changes, although we've been mulling it for a while based on cumulative feedback.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.015 ==<br />
(Released August 29th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Previously, the recently added ActivateHighestEfficiencyLowPowerEnergyReactor and PutLowestEfficiencyActiveEnergyReactorIntoLowPower keybinds were considering reactors that were still under construction. Hamster re-education has taken place (bug fixed).<br />
** Thanks to Ranakastrasz for the report.<br />
<br />
* Due to widespread feedback that the martyr is very OP, we've drastically increased the asteroid "cost" of building them:<br />
** Previously Reptite could be used to build 2 MkI Martyrs. Now it cannot build martyrs at all.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Thanks to the many players who've weighed in on this subject.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Viral Shredders:<br />
** 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).<br />
*** 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).<br />
** Base Energy Use from 100 => 50 (note: all mkI types use half normal energy).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to the players who've told us about their massive abuse of absurdly large shredder swarms.<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Forcefield generators now cannot be assisted during construction if they have been damaged recently.<br />
** 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.<br />
** This also applies to all the "shield bearer" and module type shields.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to mindloss for most recently bringing this up.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.014 ==<br />
(Released August 4th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Starship costs tweaked around a bit:<br />
** Bomber starship metal cost reduced from 120k to 80k.<br />
** Fleet starship metal cost reduced from 60k to 40.<br />
** Siege starship crystal cost reduced from 120k to 80k.<br />
** Riot Control starships crystal cost reduced from 80k to 60k, and metal cost reduced from 30k to 20k.<br />
** Enclave starship costs reduced from 30k metal and crystal to 20k each instead.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Zentih SpaceTime Manipulator energy costs reduced to 20k from 60k.<br />
** Thanks to Lancefighter for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Removed all mention of the AIP costs on the Zenith SpaceTime manipulator text.<br />
** Thanks to Zair for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Siege Starships renamed to Antimatter Starships for the sake of clarity, and given the following new description text:<br />
** This starship is the best capital killer in your basic fleet: excellent against starships, guard posts, guardians, most turrets, and other large ships like golems or spirecraft. It is so specialized that it can't even fire upon most small mobile targets. That said, many targets (forcefields, most fortresses and command stations, etc) are specifically protected against its antimatter bombs.<br />
** All in-game references to them (tutorials, etc) have been adjusted.<br />
** Thanks to the several dozen players who weighed in on our poll for how to rename these!<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.013 ==<br />
(Released August 1st, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Gravity Drills under player control can now be scrapped by that player.<br />
** Thanks to Wingsofdomain for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Stealth Battleships previously had a bonus of 1.4x against artillery hulls. Now they don't, making them not so overpowered against things like siege starships.<br />
<br />
* Speaking of siege starships, they have now gotten doubled health -- making them no longer "glass cannons," which they haven't been in a while anyhow. And making them substantially more useful in general.<br />
<br />
* All marks of Spire Stealth Battleship now have an AIPerPlanetShipCap of 8 (only applies to not-freed ships). This is an experiment brought about by continuing feedback that the per-guard-post caps are insufficient forkeeping the populations down to a level that doesn't make the game way harder when the AI happens to roll SSBs as a bonus type. This won't impact their numbers in waves and other offensive uses, but one thing at a time.<br />
<br />
* Riot Control Starships mark I are now unlocked from the start of every game. This should help with uncertainty that players would feel about whether or not they would be useful in a given scenario. Now players can try them out and see; and if they are useful and they want more, then the mark II and mark III versions are effectively 1500 knowledge cheaper now, since they no longer have the mark I prerequisite.<br />
<br />
* Mark II scout starships now cost 250 knowledge to unlock instead of 1500. Mark III are now 2000 instead of 3500, and mark IV are now 3500 instead of 4500. This brings the mark II down into the realm of "candy tech," and makes the III and IV variants not so cost-prohibitive that nobody uses them.<br />
<br />
* Mark I gravity turrets are now 750 knowledge to unlock instead of 2000, making them a lot more feasible for players to experiment with as well.<br />
<br />
* Zenith SpaceTime Manipulators no longer have an AI Progress of 1 on their death; that made them very difficult to use. They now cost 2x more energy to use, however (from 30k to 60k). The AI also no longer cares about them at all in terms of extra priority on killing them. And lastly, they now cost 1750 knowledge to unlock instead of 1000.<br />
<br />
* Mark II scouts now cost 500 knowledge to unlock instead of 1000. Mark III scouts now cost 2250 instead of 2000, making the entire scout line only slightly cheaper.<br />
<br />
* Completely rebalanced armored warheads, as they have been the unused warhead for too long:<br />
** They now cost 50k energy to run instead of 2.5k.<br />
** They now cost 10x more metal and crystal to create.<br />
** They now cost 2/4/6 AIP rather than 10/15/20.<br />
** They now have the same (much lower) attack stats of their lightning warhead counterparts.<br />
<br />
* The attack range of mark III lightning and armored warheads has been increased by 250 -- making them not so much smaller than the mark II versions of the same.<br />
<br />
* Some starfield changes:<br />
** Slightly improved the draw efficiency of the starfields by reusing a single mersenne twister rather than initializing a new one every frame.<br />
** Changed it so that there is only now one layer of starfield, rather than three. This makes for a more cohesive style with most of the starfields, as well as making the sky not QUITE so incredibly dense with stars. This also removes the parallax effect from the stars themselves, which made the foreground stars really look more like dust than stars.<br />
*** This also is a small boost to performance, and a slight reduction in VRAM usage per frame. On most computers it won't make a substantial difference, though.<br />
** Added in a parallax effect to the nebulae, making it so that they now have a slight motion and will wrap around the screen view if players scroll enough.<br />
** Thanks to annikk.exe for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Added a bit more command-queue-related debug info in for hitting F3 and hovering over ships.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** Fixing this also reduced the per-ship memory footprint by about 8 bytes, which we're always pleased to do.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Same with the Neinzul Rnclave Starships mark I. They were 2k knowledge, but now they are knowledge-free.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.012 ==<br />
(Released July 21st, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Added new "Activate Highest Efficiency Low Power Energy Reactor" KeyBind, InGame context, no default binding.<br />
** Searches through all your energy reactors that are low power, finds the one with the highest efficiency (accounting for penalties from multiple of the same mark on the planet), and takes it out of low power.<br />
<br />
* Added new "Put Lowest Efficiency Active Energy Reactor Into Low Power" KeyBind, InGame context, no default binding.<br />
** Searches through all your energy reactors that are not in low power, finds the one with the lowest efficiency (accounting for penalties from multiple of the same mark on the planet), and puts it into low power.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to many players for pointing this one out.<br />
<br />
* Added new galaxy-wide control toggle: "Prevent Auto Build On Ally Planets".<br />
** If this toggle is checked, it prevents your galaxy-wide auto-building controls (for stuff like engineers, rebuilders, and energy reactors) from taking effect on ally planets.<br />
** Your per-planet auto-building controls ignore this toggle.<br />
<br />
* Added new galaxy-wide control toggle: "Allow Ally Rebuilders To Rebuild My Remains".<br />
** If this toggle is checked, ally rebuilders will automatically consider the remains of any of your units to be valid rebuilding targets. Note that starting the rebuilding process costs no resources, the rebuilt unit is yours, and the rest of the rebuilding process is paid for like normal construction.<br />
** Also, please note that if an ally is using the "Engineers Do Not Assist Allies" toggle, their rebuilders will not automatically consider your remains regardless of your controls.<br />
** Thanks to lanstro for inspiring this change.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where Core Starships were not immune to translocation.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some old tooltips referring to the expansions tab of the settings screen to correctly refer to the "License / Expansions" window (which is accessible from the main menu).<br />
** Thanks to FroBodine for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that has been causing astro-trains to not be able to attack for the last six months or so.<br />
** Thanks to Prezombie, Hearteater, and ArcDM for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Ships that have "temporary invincibility" (such as Core Shield Generators that are on planets you don't control, or AI Core Guard Posts and AI Core Command Stations when there are Core Shield Generators still active, or AI carriers when there are more than 2k AI ships active on their planet) now show up with a new angry red/yellow ship-style force field that is visually marking them as invulnerable. The actual mechanics haven't changed, but now there is a more clear visual indicator of the pre-existing logic.<br />
** Thanks to Elok for suggesting.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.011 ==<br />
(Released June 21st, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Fixed rare null exception that could happen when changing control groups.<br />
** Thanks to leb0fh for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Spire Civilian Leaders are now no longer giftable, to avoid a bug whereby gifting them back and forth would repeat the AIP decrease.<br />
** Thanks to dnatabar for the report.<br />
<br />
* Added a new "Galaxy-Wide Select Own Science Lab" key-bind that works in both planet-view and galaxy-view (like go-to-flare does) and defaults to Ctrl+T.<br />
** If you are viewing a planet and you own science labs on that planet, this drops any current selection you may have and selects one of those science labs (note that it does not center the viewport, there's another key for centering on the selection if you want that).<br />
** Otherwise, if you own science labs on another planet in the galaxy, this drops any current selection you may have, switches your view to one of those planets, and selects one of those science labs on that planet, and centers the viewport on that lab.<br />
** Otherwise (if you own no science labs), this does nothing.<br />
** Note that this only works with your science labs, it completely ignores science labs of allied players. Also, it does not attempt to rotate through eligible selections the way other selection functions do.<br />
** The reason for all the caveats of what this doesn't do is that its SOLE purpose is to let you access the tech-research menu from anywhere in the galaxy without having to know specifically where to find a science lab.<br />
** Thanks to TheDeadlyShoe for the suggestion that inspired this.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Nalgas for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Added "Galaxy Layout" item to top-level context menu (when showing the galaxy map). Clicking it shows these options:<br />
** "Official Layout" - Switches your galaxy view to the official layout, meaning the map as actually generated.<br />
** "My Layout" - Switches your galaxy view to your alternate layout. If you have not made any changes, this will look like the official layout.<br />
*** While looking at your alternate layout you can move a planet around by holding shift, left clicking the planet, and dragging it aroud while holding the left mouse button.<br />
** "Player 1 Layout" - Switches your galaxy view to this player's alternate layout.<br />
*** And 7 others just like it for players 2 through 8.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where copying in your global controls from disk could lead to building engineer IIs and IIIs without the required tech.<br />
** Thanks to Ranakastrasz (and others) for reporting this.<br />
<br />
* Added new global control toggle "Prevent Warhead FRD".<br />
** If this toggle is checked, it prevents your warheads from entering Free-Roaming-Defender mode even when something like the 'Auto-FRD Military' toggle or a slip of the finger when giving a move order would set them to FRD.<br />
** If you can imagine a nuclear warhead attached to a roomba, you can imagine cases where you would use this toggle. And cases where you would not.<br />
** Please note that this will not take any warheads already in FRD out of it.<br />
** Thanks to Ranakastrasz for inspiring this addition.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where Defender games were always being recorded in the high-score list as lost.<br />
** Thanks to Night for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where lightning and armored warheads were following the unit-cap-scale.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to ArcDM for the report and save that led to this being discovered.<br />
<br />
* The "Hostile Warheads on (planet name)" alerts are now shown for all planets you have scouting on, not just human-controlled planets.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.010 ==<br />
(Released April 14th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Spire Blade Spawners:<br />
** 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).<br />
*** Notably, this should make the BaseAIPerGuardPostShipCap flag work correctly again for them (it's set to 1 for them).<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine! and techsy730 for reports and saves of the bypassing-caps problem.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.009 ==<br />
(Released March 28th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* The health of the non-core AI Spire Shield Spheres has been reduced by half (for all five mark levels of the non-core versions).<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks once again to Fleet and Tssbackus for reporting, and for their patience. They have all the bad luck!<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** We are, of course, hoping not to have to use this any time soon. But in the event that Fleet and Tssbackus get unlucky again, this should help eliminate any ambiguities that might otherwise come up.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.008 ==<br />
(Released March 25th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Zenith SpaceTime Manipulators can no longer be swallowed or regenerated.<br />
** Thanks to FunnyMan for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to techsy730, Vinraith, and zoutzakje for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Electric Bombers:<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Garthor for bringing the odd cost issue to light.<br />
<br />
* Sentinel Frigates:<br />
** Event attack cost (used for exogalactic strikeforce computations) tiers increased from "Heavy Corvette" through "Light Destroyer" to "Light Frigate" through "Medium Destroyer".<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.007 ==<br />
(Released March 24th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* AI ships that are spawned in response to saboteurs, such as the human mark III science lab, are now zombie bots.<br />
** Thanks to Irxallis for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Burnstreet and BobTheJanitor for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, zombiefied ships were being bound by player ship caps, but they should not have been. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Dalden and Ozymandiaz for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thus the allied minor faction and zombie logic has been adjusted as follows:<br />
*** Neutral planets are now considered the same as allied planets, and the ships will patrol to them like any others.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
**** 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.<br />
** Thanks to many players for weighing in on this, including Burnstreet, Draco18s, TechSY730, vinco, BluePhoenix, and ArcDM for reporting various things related to this, with various suggestions.<br />
<br />
* Dyson Gatlings are now immune to paralysis attacks.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Slightly improved the targeting handling when a ship is targeting a teleporting ship that is out of range.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Penetrator balance:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Penetrator health reduced 8x.<br />
** Penetrator perma-cloaking replaced with normal cloaking.<br />
** Thanks to Irxallis for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a problem with too-low throttles on minor faction / zombie ships preventing them from even attacking at all in some cases.<br />
** Thanks to zoutzakje for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to ArcDM for inspiring this, although I'm not sure if that's what he really was hoping for.<br />
<br />
* Minor factions now shoot low-power ships without prejudice, which means that devourer golems actually will devourer more again.<br />
** Thanks to ArcDM for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to vinco for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Irxallis for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Fixed the bug with two buttons for mark V fighters showing up in the mark V fighter fabricator.<br />
** Thanks to leb0fh, Orelius, akbr1984, and snelg for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, when command stations were replaced, colony ships and mobile builders were still dying even though they shouldn't have been. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Red Spot and TechSY730 for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Improved the clarity of the colony ship description.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to FunnyMan for reporting.<br />
<br />
* The Zenith Trader previously had incorrect line breaks. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to doctorfrog for reporting.<br />
<br />
* Previously, if there were fewer than 30 enemy-to-the-AI ships and none of them were both uncloaked and had attack strength of 0, then the planet was incorrectly being put into cold storage. Now it's only in cold storage if there are fewer than 30 enemy-to-the-AI ships and all of them have full cloaking, which was the intended logic from the start.<br />
** This should fix some issues with the devourer golem not really doing its thing, and in general some minor faction issues in general.<br />
** Thanks to Fleet and TechSY730 for reporting related bugs.<br />
<br />
* Previously, adding and removing ships to control groups was way slower than it should have been. In terms of bulk add/removes, it was way, WAY slower than it should have been. This was a past optimization that was not fully optimized -- it had one critical flaw, mainly. This is now fixed, and it has a couple of major effects:<br />
** Obviously, when editing control groups in bulk, it's hugely improving the speed of that (it could cause "Waiting For Players" messages, before).<br />
** Unexpectedly, it also makes savegames load in less than half the time they used to. As it turns out, there was a lot of "take this ship out of the control group it already wasn't in" going on in there, and that was just eating performance.<br />
** Thanks to FunnyMan for reporting.<br />
<br />
* AI Progress reduction messages now show up as light green instead of light red, to avoid being misleading.<br />
** Thanks to sgt_deacon for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Draco Cretel for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Spire Civilian Leader Outposts are now included in the galaxy map filter for Detected AI Progress Reducers.<br />
** Thanks to Orelius and c4sc4 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to rustayne for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to KDR_11k for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Orelius for reminding us of this.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to rustayne for reporting.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.006 ==<br />
(Released March 23rd, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Astro Trains are now immune to translocation and gravity effects, since both of those cause more problems for players than they would ever solve.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Adjusted controls window to be more likely to fit within 1024-wide resolutions; previously it was functional but didn't quite fit.<br />
** Thanks to Balthier for the repot.<br />
<br />
* Double-clicking a profile name in the profile list now selects it, rather than opening it for editing.<br />
<br />
* When a desync is encountered, the clients are now notified of that instead of them thinking it's just a regular waiting for players.<br />
<br />
* 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<br />
<br />
* The planetary summary now makes substantially better use of its available vertical space, thus saving horizontal space in many cases.<br />
** Thanks to gamewarlord777 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Guard posts, fortresses, superfortresses, force fields, and exo-shields are all now immune to regeneration from regenerator golems/trains.<br />
** Thanks to FunnyMan for reporting.<br />
<br />
* AI Motherships are now considered large ships for purposes of bomber starships and siege starships being able to hit them.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Sunshine for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* In recent versions, the self attrition time has been reporting a negative time. Fixed.<br />
** Thanks to Garthor for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to KDR_11k for suggesting.<br />
<br />
* Raid starship rebalance, thanks to many players for various suggestions:<br />
** Raid Starship health has been increased from 1.6 million health * mark level to 2 million health * mark level.<br />
** The AI now has separate versions of the Raid Starships, which have only 1/2 the health of the human counterparts.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.005 ==<br />
(Released March 17th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Savegames from 5.004 were accidentally all uncompressed, though flagged as compressed, which caused them to not be able to be read back in. Two fixes:<br />
** First, fixed the actual cause of this, so new savegames in 5.005 will be saved properly.<br />
** Second, updated the load savegame process so that it can read even the "corrupt" saves from 5.004 without issue.<br />
** Thanks to SpaceJelly for reporting!<br />
<br />
* Spire Blade Spawner:<br />
** 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.<br />
** BaseAIPerGuardPostShipCap from 2 => 1.<br />
<br />
* Spire Gravity Drain:<br />
** Grav range from 3000*mk => 8000 (flat).<br />
<br />
* Spire Gravity Ripper:<br />
** Attack power from 1000*mk => 2000*mk.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 1 => 2.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Spire Miniram:<br />
** Ship cap multiplier from 0.25 => 0.20.<br />
<br />
* Spire Stealth Battleship:<br />
** Effective Attack range from 6500 + (500*mk) => 7000 flat (thus, they can no longer engage while still protected by their 8000 radar dampening range).<br />
<br />
* Spire Tractor Platform:<br />
** Hull Type from Turret => Heavy.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Light Starship:<br />
** Base Health from 1.5m => 2m.<br />
** Armor Rating from 500 => 1000.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Flagship:<br />
** Base Health From 4,875k => 6m.<br />
** Given Radar Dampening of 8000. For reference, its munitions boost range is 6000.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Youngling Commando:<br />
** Base Health from 6600*mk => 8000*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1000*mk => 1200*mk.<br />
<br />
* Impulse Reaction Emitter:<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Mirrors:<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.004 ==<br />
(Released March 16th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Added "Toggle Use-Group-Move-By-Default" In-Game key-bind (no default key, but you can set one on the In-Game tab of the input bindings window):<br />
** Toggles the value of the Use-Group-Move-By-Default global control (normally changed through the controls screen, but can be set this way for convenience).<br />
** Note that if you have the controls window open while using this key-bind, the controls window will not automatically update to reflect the change as that would destroy any changes made since the window was opened.<br />
** To make it easier to know which way it was toggled (without having to open the controls window, which would defeat the purpose), using this toggle displays a local message on the screen noting the change.<br />
<br />
* HUGE Memory breakthrough.<br />
** 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?<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* The regen ability now shows how long, in time, it will take to completely heal the ship from 0 hitpoints to full hitpoints, rather than showing the per-second gain. Thus some mental math is removed, and the display of this can be consistent between different unit cap scales.<br />
<br />
* Ever since the porting to unity, annoyingly, we've had a bug of our own making that caused the first profile to always be the one used, rather than whatever you last used. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Player profiles are also now once again sorted by name, which they used to be but haven't been since the switch.<br />
<br />
* A new "Don't Compress Savegames" toggle has been added to the Advanced tab.<br />
** The only time you should turn this on is if your save process is being inordinately slow, or if you are getting "Too Many Heap Sections" crashes. Otherwise, you'll want this on, as uncompressed savegames are pretty huge. But enabling this will save on RAM use during savegame compression and decompression -- the larger the save, the more the savings in RAM with the compression disabled.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.003 ==<br />
(Released March 8th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Updated the Unit Cap Scale "High" option's lobby tooltip to note the chance of the game simply running out of memory in the late game and that autosaving and reloading every couple hours can be necessary to get through it.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a typo in the first Fallen Spire journal entry.<br />
** Thanks to Neck for the report.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the "I Have A Bad Feeling About This" achievement was not being awarded.<br />
** Thanks to Tirulii for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* The AI's (announced) exogalactic strikeforces provoked by the Fallen Spire stuff now also contribute points to a sort of "homeworld defense fund". If that has any points and an AI homeworld comes under major assault, a defense force is immediately spawned on that homeworld. This can prove... unpleasant.<br />
<br />
* Minor faction Fallen Spire ships (NOT the human-controllable ones) buffed quite a bit.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Talaraine for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Fleet for the suggestion that inspired this feature.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Note that this does not apply to Riot Control Starships with tractor modules, because the modules themselves are not mobile units.<br />
** Thanks to PineappleSam for the suggestion inspiring this control.<br />
<br />
* Another from the vote tallies: Artillery Golems are now immune to radar dampening.<br />
** Thanks to Fleet for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* 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):<br />
** 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:<br />
*** 1) Makes a list of all scouts with cloaking in your selection.<br />
*** 2) Makes a list of all planets you do not have current (less than 5 seconds ago) scout intel.<br />
*** 3) Sorts that list of planets by distance (ascending) to the planet with your selection.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Malibu Stacey for the suggestion that inspired this command.<br />
<br />
* AI War engine upgraded to Unity 3.3, from previously being Unity 3.1.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.002 ==<br />
<br />
(Released February 22nd, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug in last version where maws had no ship cap.<br />
** Thanks to Orelius for the report.<br />
<br />
* Removed the (somewhat jokingly named) "HasWarpEngineMufflers" UnitData flag, and replaced it with per-unit logic that looks at ActionStatus (Normal, MinorFaction, or Zombie) and tells it to not play wormhole-transition sounds for MinorFaction or Zombie ships that are allied with the player.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug on the stats window resource-flows tab where most construction/repair/etc outflows were reported as positive instead of negative.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug that was greatly delaying the onset of gravity slowdown on units entering grav range in some cases.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for the report and save.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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 ;)<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Toll for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* In response to the number-one-on-the-vote-tallies mantis issue: <br />
** Added new PlanetView KeyBind: "Show Strong/Weak Info":<br />
*** Defaults to Alt+W.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Added new PlanetView KeyBind: "Strong/Weak => One Vs One":<br />
*** Defaults to Alt+E (so the full combination would be to hold Alt+W+E).<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* Snipers (the ship, not the turrets) :<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 6 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 1 => 6.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to wyvern83 for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Vinraith for reminding us about the missing average-health info.<br />
<br />
* The selection description window will now try to display up to 30 entries without resorting to a scrollbar, instead of only 5.<br />
<br />
* Replaced the old "if CanUseNeinzulRegenerator then multiply by 2" wave-size rule with a more general UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier UnitData field.<br />
** Everything with CanUseNeinzulRegenerator (which is just the 5 youngling types), gets a 2 for this.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Broken-Golems-Hard and Spirecraft-Hard exogalactic strikeforce initial-strength, per-minute-increment-amount, and maximum-strength all increased roughly 10%.<br />
** Thanks to Shrugging Khan for pointing out that these are a bit on the easy side right now. In other words, blame him if these slaughter you now.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to Shrugging Khan for continuing to provoke the golems.<br />
<br />
* Black Widow golem health and Attack Power boosted a bit (15%-ish).<br />
<br />
* Regenerator Golem health doubled, in response to various concerns that they're less useful than other golems.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to kjara for the report.<br />
<br />
== Prerelease 5.001 ==<br />
(Released February 16th, 2011)<br />
<br />
* Made it possible to bind Mouse2, Mouse3, Mouse4, Mouse5, or Mouse6 to the primary key of a KeyBinding. For reference, Mouse2 is the middle mouse button. Mouse0 is left-click, Mouse1 is right-click, and both are excluded from this due to being used in many other ways by the main input code. Mouse3-6 don't exist on most mice, but are available for those who have them.<br />
** One example use of this is to bind OpenDefaultContextMenu to Mouse2 (middle mouse). We're not sure if this would cause major conflicts with middle-mouse-scrolling or mouse-wheel-zooming (due to accidental click-downs during wheeling); if you try it please let us know how it goes. Seemed ok in our testing.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the special-move context menu's catch-right-clicks option was basically failing to do anything. Now when it is toggled on it properly re-interprets right clicks outside the menu as "set destination to clicked point and then execute".<br />
<br />
* Updated tooltips for:<br />
** Armored Golem.<br />
** Artillery Golem.<br />
** Black Widow Golem.<br />
** Cursed Golem.<br />
** Regenerator Golem.<br />
** Hive Golem.<br />
** Botnet Golem.<br />
** Military Command Stations.<br />
** Captive Human Settlements.<br />
** Fallen Spire lobby tooltip (reference to wiki removed due to complaints).<br />
** Thanks to Burnstreet, c4sc4, techsy730, and Sunshine! for contributing suggestions about these.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** For reference, this bug went unreported for roughly 20 versions. The Hybrids are plotting revenge.<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s and Draco Cretel for reporting. The Hybrids might spare them.<br />
<br />
* Reclamators (excluding zombie-reclamators) :<br />
** 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:<br />
*** If the reclamator is 4 mks higher than the target (mkV shooting mkI), multiply by 64.<br />
*** If the reclamator is 3 mks higher than the target, 48.<br />
*** If the reclamator is 2 mks higher than the target, 32.<br />
*** If the reclamator is 1 mk higher than the target, 16.<br />
*** If the reclamator is the same mk as the target, 8.<br />
*** If the reclamator is 1 mk lower than the target, 4.<br />
*** If the reclamator is 2 mks lower than the target, 2.<br />
*** If the reclamator is 3 mks lower than the target, 1.<br />
*** There is no 4-mk-lower case because mkV are not reclaimable.<br />
** Leech Starship base attack power from 120k*mk => 30k*mk.<br />
** Parasite base attack power from 4000*mk => 1000*mk.<br />
** Nanoswarms inherent 16x-reclamation property down to 2x, but no reduction in actual damage.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Parasites:<br />
** Effective range from 3700 => 6000.<br />
** Armor piercing from 0 => 750*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 7200*mk => 14400*mk.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a relatively longstanding bug where AIPerPlanetShipCap and AIPerGuardPostShipCap were generally not being enforced when loading a game (either just-starting or loading later).<br />
<br />
* Some triangle rebalancing:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Fighters (including the tachyon and bulletproof variants) :<br />
*** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 2.4 => 5.<br />
** Bombers:<br />
*** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs Structural from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs Heavy from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs Artillery from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Base Attack Power from 1900*mk => 2400*mk.<br />
** Missile Frigates:<br />
*** Bonus vs Light from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs UltraLight from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs Swarmer from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs Neutron from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs Composite from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs Refractive from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Base Attack Power from 1600*mk => 2400*mk.<br />
*** Base Crystal Cost from 700 => 500.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to Draco18s for reporting.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Tractor Beam Turrets:<br />
** Base Health from 210k/840k/1680k => 560k*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 450*mk.<br />
<br />
* Beam Guardians:<br />
** Bonus Vs Turret from 8 => 1.<br />
** Bonus Vs UltraLight from 8 => 1.<br />
** Bonus Vs Artillery from 2 => 1.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 4000*mk => 4500*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 600*mk => 300*mk.<br />
<br />
* Laser Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1000*mk => 300*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 1.4*(standard guardian health) to 1.1*(standard).<br />
** Shots Per Salvo from 3 => 15.<br />
** Seconds Per Salvo from 4 => 2.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 17k*mk => 1700*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Piercing from 500*mk => 300*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 7000 => 5000.<br />
<br />
* Raider Guardians:<br />
** Now Have Radar Dampening Range of 8000.<br />
<br />
* Lightning Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 800*mk => 600*mk.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1600*mk => 2400*mk (for reference, Electric shuttles on low caps have 1600*mk, albeit somewhat slower reloading).<br />
<br />
* Tractor Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 450*mk.<br />
<br />
* Spider Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1000 (flat) => 150*mk.<br />
<br />
* Sniper Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1000 (flat) => 150*mk.<br />
<br />
* Tachyon Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 400 (flat) => 150*mk.<br />
<br />
* Gravity Guardians:<br />
** Max Target Base Speed from 10/8/6/4/2 => 11/10/9/8/7.<br />
** Grav Beam Base Range from 8k/10k/12k/14k/16k => 7k/8k/9k/10k/11k.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 100*mk => 300*mk.<br />
<br />
* Zombie Guardians:<br />
** Shots Per Salvo from 2/3/4/5/6 => flat 2.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 5000*mk => 300*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 9000 => 7000.<br />
<br />
* EMP Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 300*mk.<br />
<br />
* Carrier Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 300*mk.<br />
<br />
* Note: the guardian rebalancing is far from done, this was just to tone down some more obvious issues.<br />
<br />
* Handicap now has the following effects, all of which is new unless otherwise noted:<br />
** AI<br />
*** Previously it affected the speed at which the AI reinforced. It no longer does.<br />
*** Increases the number of ships in each wave and reinforcement, and decreases when negative.<br />
*** Roaming Enclaves and Preservation Wardens are spawned sooner or later into the game.<br />
*** Scrap waves are scaled accordingly.<br />
*** Specifically "forced waves" are scaled accordingly.<br />
*** Cross planet atacks are scaled accordingly.<br />
*** Saboteur and deep strike reactions are scaled accordingly.<br />
*** For now, event attacks are NOT affected by this.<br />
*** Initial seeding of AI planets are intentionally not affected by this -- same as human players get no starting benefit from handicaps.<br />
** Player<br />
*** Increases the amount of resources gathered from producers (using a new formula), and decreases when negative (also using the new formula).<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting we revisit this.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting.<br />
<br />
[[Category:AI War Release Notes]]</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=Category:AI_War_Release_Notes&diff=29855Category:AI War Release Notes2017-09-16T15:57:21Z<p>Nat: Created blank page</p>
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<div></div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:6.000_Release&diff=29854AI War:6.000 Release2017-09-16T15:56:20Z<p>Nat: Add Category:AI War Release Notes</p>
<hr />
<div>== Statistics For The Curious ==<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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!<br />
<br />
A full 149 Players are thanked in this series.<br />
<br />
This document is the ''abbreviated'', organized version of the full release notes ([[AI War:Current Post-5.000 Beta|here]]).<br />
<br />
== Highlights ==<br />
<br />
=== Huge ===<br />
<br />
* Ancient Shadows, an entire new (paid) expansion, has been added to the game! Briefly summarizing the additions:<br />
** 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.<br />
** 9 New Bonus Ship Types, including the hilarious Tackle Drone Launcher and the first-ever bonus starship.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Modular Fortresses, a long requested addition to the player's heavy defensive lineup.<br />
** 2 New AI Types: The tough-as-nails Heroic AI that throws champions at you, and the modular-fortress-happy Fortress King AI.<br />
** 2 New Map Types: The long-requested "Clusters" map type and a more advanced "Microcosm Clusters" variant.<br />
** 3 _Nasty_ new Core Guard Post types for the AI to defend its homeworlds with.<br />
** Over 90 minutes of new music from Pablo Vega.<br />
<br />
* Hacking! We finally found a solution to knowledge-raiding that's both balanceable and fun:<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Massively reworked the energy system to cut out the "trivial to compute, time-consuming to do" micromanagement that the previous system encouraged:<br />
** 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. <br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Totally revamped AI Carriers:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Can no longer shoot through forcefields (but can still fly through them).<br />
** 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).<br />
** There's now a toggle on the CTRLS window to tell your ships whether to auto-target carriers or not.<br />
<br />
* Cross-Planet Attacks have been substantially reworked to be a much more serious threat.<br />
<br />
* Each AI planet now picks 3 ship types to focus its reinforcements on, making each planet feel more distinct.<br />
<br />
=== Big ===<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Substantially rebalanced waves, particularly on the higher difficulties.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The starfield backgrounds have been completely redone with something much more interesting.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to all the participants who contributed nominations, discussion, and votes to our "what's the worst unit?" (and other) community polls!<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
=== Important ===<br />
<br />
* AI War engine upgraded to Unity 3.3 from Unity 3.1. <br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Added Hardened Forcefields: an alternate form of human-tech forcefield that relies on reducing incoming damage more than absorbing it.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Exogalactic strikeforces can now contain Hunter/Killers. Be afraid. And throw the rotten fruit at chemical_art for suggesting it.<br />
<br />
* Exogalactic strikeforces are now more wily about picking targets. Get used to defending your outlying assets if you play with any exo sources.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed all remaining desync bugs; haven't had a reported desync in months.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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".<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Added the first per-control-group control options so you have finer control over auto-Free-Roaming-Defender and auto-kiting behavior.<br />
<br />
== AI Updates ==<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thus the allied minor faction and zombie logic has been adjusted as follows:<br />
*** Neutral planets are now considered the same as allied planets, and the ships will patrol to them like any others.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
**** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Reworked the CPA formula to be more aggressive on higher difficulties, since it's been sadly anemic lately.<br />
** Also added cpa-size calculations to the wave logs, when advanced logging is enabled.<br />
<br />
* Removed a "go for the command station over everything else when AI" behavior from a number of units, including:<br />
** Leech Starships.<br />
** Flagships.<br />
** Zenith Starships.<br />
** Spire Starships.<br />
** Riot Starships.<br />
<br />
* Barracks are now seeded on some AI planets at the start of the game (and retroactively into old saves):<br />
** The higher the difficulty, the more planets get them.<br />
** The higher the difficulty, the more ships in them.<br />
** None are placed closer than 3 hops from a human homeworld, to not be too cruel.<br />
** These serve two purposes:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Making the AI's defensive response to the loss of a planet (with a barracks on it) something more of an event.<br />
<br />
* AI planets now pick a primary, secondary, and tertiary type of ship to focus their reinforcements on. <br />
** It's not purely random, sometimes it picks ships that fit certain roles.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Whenever the AIs unlock new ship types due to AI progress, all AI planets "reroll" their focus types.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** The reserve starts at zero and increases periodically, so it can be whittled away.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* AI Special Forces:<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Since "make the threatballs fish or cut bait" was #1 on the second round of the 6.0 poll:<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** If an AI homeworld or core world is under attack, the threat fleet will rally to defend it.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Otherwise, it picks a planet in AI territory to hang out at until either of the two above conditions are met.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** For the curious who have advanced logging on, the target-planet selection process is logged in the special forces log file.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a relatively longstanding bug where AIPerPlanetShipCap and AIPerGuardPostShipCap were generally not being enforced when loading a game (either just-starting or loading later).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
== General Large Gameplay Additions ==<br />
<br />
* Advanced Research Station Hacking:<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Superterminal Hacking:<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
*** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
*** 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 :)<br />
<br />
=== Lobby Setup Scripts ===<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** Numerous new players asking "What's a good setup for my first game?"<br />
** Variable-strength minor factions and AI plots (which could be handled just by the above changes, but read on)<br />
** Randomized minor factions and AI plots, particularly combined with variable-strength.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Some kind of overall "difficulty ranking" for a particular game setup.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** The following scripts are available in this version:<br />
*** Beginner Game<br />
**** A fairly simple, fairly easy scenario that may be a good next step for new players who have just completed the intermediate tutorial.<br />
*** Beginner Game 2<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** Random Factions 1<br />
**** This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game (no expansions required).<br />
***** 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.<br />
*** Random Factions 2<br />
**** This script sets up some randomized minor factions and AI plots from the base game and The Zenith Remnant expansion.<br />
*** Random Factions 3<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** Random Factions 4<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** Unknown Factions 1<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** Unknown Factions 2<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** Unknown Factions 3<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** Unknown Factions 4<br />
**** 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.<br />
<br />
=== Energy System Rework ===<br />
<br />
* The motivation here:<br />
** 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.<br />
** But there were a number of problems pointed out by players over the years, the most bothersome being:<br />
*** 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.<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Cyborg and other players for making this point, and being patient as we tried to find a better model.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** If you're curious about the comparison math, check out this post: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11031.msg110117.html#msg110117<br />
** Anyway, on to the specific changes:<br />
<br />
* Removed the Energy Reactors (all of them, MkI, MkII, MkIII).<br />
<br />
* Added the "Energy Collector", which is like the energy reactors were except:<br />
** Produces 150,000 energy.<br />
*** For reference, in the previous model an EnergyI+EnergyII+EnergyIII produced 125,000.<br />
** No ongoing m+c cost.<br />
*** For reference, in the previous model an EnergyI+EnergyII+EnergyIII cost 57m+57c per second to run.<br />
** Can only build one per planet per player.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Cannot be low-powered (there'd be no point).<br />
<br />
* Added the "Matter Converter", which is like the energy reactors were except:<br />
** Produces 50,000 energy.<br />
** Costs 100m+100c per second to run.<br />
** No construction cap, and also no efficiency penalty for stacking.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Cannot be low-powered, since the main point of this rework is to avoid "player-time-tax" micro.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Putting units in low-power mode now no longer reduces their energy use.<br />
** Again: removing the motive to micro stuff for energy purposes is one of the driving motivations here.<br />
** Renamed "Low Power mode" to "Stand Down mode", since it's no longer for the purpose of reducing energy.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Added new slider to galaxy-wide per-player-controls screen: Energy Buffer To Maintain<br />
** If this is set above zero, the game will try to maintain that amount of "buffer" energy above zero. A few examples:<br />
*** Docks will not build ships that would take you below the buffer amount.<br />
*** Ships will not be reclaimed if it would take you below the buffer amount.<br />
*** Broken Golems will not be activated if it would take you below the buffer amount.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Note that this will not stop you from scrapping energy producing units (however low that may take your net energy), so be careful.<br />
*** This is because going negative energy never stopped scrapping before, so that part wasn't changed.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* When upgrading saves from 5.039 and earlier:<br />
** For all EnergyI, EnergyII, and EnergyIII units:<br />
*** If that player already has an Energy Collector on that planet, the reactor is replaced by a Matter Converter.<br />
*** Otherwise, the reactor is replaced by an Energy Collector.<br />
** After that, while the player has > 60,000 spare energy and any remaining Matter Converters:<br />
*** Scrap a Matter Converter on the planet with the most remaining Matter Converters controlled by that player.<br />
** The result should be that:<br />
*** 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+.<br />
*** It won't give you a lot of Matter Converters you don't need.<br />
*** 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 ;)<br />
<br />
* The automated energy hamsters have taken off without giving notice, but we suspect they're on vacation in Bermuda.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
== Co-Op Improvements ==<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where helper players were getting the overflow from other players resources income-past-cap.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
== Performance Improvements ==<br />
<br />
* HUGE Memory breakthrough.<br />
** 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?<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Added new unit cap scale option: Ultra Low<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
== Interface Improvements ==<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The selection description window will now try to display up to 30 entries without resorting to a scrollbar, instead of only 5.<br />
<br />
* Replaced the old "if CanUseNeinzulRegenerator then multiply by 2" wave-size rule with a more general UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier UnitData field.<br />
** Everything with CanUseNeinzulRegenerator (which is just the 5 youngling types), gets a 2 for this.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to wyvern83 for the suggestion.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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 ;)<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* In response to the number-one-on-the-vote-tallies mantis issue: <br />
** Added new PlanetView KeyBind: "Show Strong/Weak Info":<br />
*** Defaults to Alt+W.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Added new PlanetView KeyBind: "Strong/Weak => One Vs One":<br />
*** Defaults to Alt+E (so the full combination would be to hold Alt+W+E).<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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):<br />
** 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:<br />
*** 1) Makes a list of all scouts with cloaking in your selection.<br />
*** 2) Makes a list of all planets you do not have current (less than 5 seconds ago) scout intel.<br />
*** 3) Sorts that list of planets by distance (ascending) to the planet with your selection.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Malibu Stacey for the suggestion that inspired this command.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Thanks to Talaraine for the report.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Note that this does not apply to Riot Control Starships with tractor modules, because the modules themselves are not mobile units.<br />
<br />
* Fixed the close-zoom image for the AI Core Neinzul Spawner Guard Post having a height that wasn't a power of 2.<br />
** 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.<br />
** But in the recent backporting we added some extra sanity checks that catch this when the player tries to look at it.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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!<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a graphical bug with the border drawn around barracks icons in some contexts.<br />
<br />
== New Ships ==<br />
<br />
* Added new unlockable support unit type: Hardened Forcefield Generator MkI-III. Basically the same as normal human generators except:<br />
** 1/4th the HP.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* Science Lab III:<br />
** Has been renamed to "Knowledge Hacker"<br />
** Is now mobile, cloaked, and significantly more durable.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Added new type of AI Eye: the Parasite Eye.<br />
** Has same trigger conditions. <br />
** 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.<br />
*** Standard "what can be reclaimed" rules apply.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** In case you're curious, the results are not zombies and can be re-reclaimed if you're so inclined.<br />
<br />
* Added new type of AI Eye: the Ion Eye.<br />
** Has same trigger conditions.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* A new Ancient Shadows bonus ship class has been added: Neinzul Scapegoat (Mark I-V).<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Another new Ancient Shadows bonus ship class has been added: Spire Railcluster (Mark I-V).<br />
** Large Spire fleet ship mounting multiple short-range railcannons. Highly effective against very small ships.<br />
<br />
* New Ancient Shadows Bonus Ship Type: Zenith Reprocessor:<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* New Ancient Shadows Bonus Ship Type: Zenith Siege Engine:<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Added new Ancient Shadows bonus ship: Spire Corvette.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Built from the SCRV tab of the Starship Constructor.<br />
<br />
* Added new Ancient Shadows bonus ship: Saboteur.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Added new Ancient Shadows bonus ship type: Youngling Firefly.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** These don't have the penalty vs polycrystal (or scout) hulls, making them actually able to deal with bombers.<br />
<br />
== Ship Logic Updates ==<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** But tactical usage should still be very viable for kiting around a planet, spreading out an incoming attack, etc.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Engineers have had a "what to assist" logic overhaul such that:<br />
** If is Prefer-Non-Military toggle is on, and one is military and the other is not, prefer the non-military one.<br />
** If one has more currently assisting engineers than the other, prefer the one with less.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** Also, distance is now considered zero if the target is already within range, which helps a lot because previously it was masking other considerations.<br />
** If one object is a damaged irreplaceable unit and the other is not, prefer the damaged irreplaceable.<br />
** If one object is in stand-down and the other is not, prefer the one not in stand-down.<br />
** If one object's remaining-health-percent is less than half the other's, prefer the lower-health one.<br />
*** This was being considered before (it always went for the lowest percent-health), but only by teleporting repairers.<br />
** If one object has taken more than 25% engine damage and the other has not, prefer the engine-damaged one.<br />
** If one object's metal+crystal cost is more than twice the other's, prefer the more expensive one.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer and the other voters for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Human-player teleporting units now use normal engines when group-moving.<br />
** Along with this, increased the normal-engine speed of all teleporting units to the speed of a fighter, for those lower than that<br />
<br />
* Advanced Fabricators and Fabricators now use the same "don't put this near a wormhole" logic as human home command stations.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
== Balance Updates ==<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Broken-Golems-Hard and Spirecraft-Hard exogalactic strikeforce initial-strength, per-minute-increment-amount, and maximum-strength all increased roughly 10%.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Thanks to Shrugging Khan for continuing to provoke the golems.<br />
<br />
* Black Widow golem health and Attack Power boosted a bit (15%-ish).<br />
<br />
* Regenerator Golem health doubled, in response to various concerns that they're less useful than other golems.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Spire Blade Spawner:<br />
** 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.<br />
** BaseAIPerGuardPostShipCap from 2 => 1.<br />
<br />
* Spire Gravity Drain:<br />
** Grav range from 3000*mk => 8000 (flat).<br />
<br />
* Spire Gravity Ripper:<br />
** Attack power from 1000*mk => 2000*mk.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 1 => 2.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Spire Miniram:<br />
** Ship cap multiplier from 0.25 => 0.20.<br />
<br />
* Spire Stealth Battleship:<br />
** Effective Attack range from 6500 + (500*mk) => 7000 flat (thus, they can no longer engage while still protected by their 8000 radar dampening range).<br />
<br />
* Spire Tractor Platform:<br />
** Hull Type from Turret => Heavy.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Light Starship:<br />
** Base Health from 1.5m => 2m.<br />
** Armor Rating from 500 => 1000.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Flagship:<br />
** Base Health From 4,875k => 6m.<br />
** Given Radar Dampening of 8000. For reference, its munitions boost range is 6000.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Youngling Commando:<br />
** Base Health from 6600*mk => 8000*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1000*mk => 1200*mk.<br />
<br />
* Impulse Reaction Emitter:<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Mirrors:<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Raid starship rebalance, thanks to many players for various suggestions:<br />
** Raid Starship health has been increased from 1.6 million health * mark level to 2 million health * mark level.<br />
<br />
* Guard posts, fortresses, superfortresses, force fields, and exo-shields are all now immune to regeneration from regenerator golems/trains.<br />
<br />
* AI Motherships are now considered large ships for purposes of bomber starships and siege starships being able to hit them.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Astro Trains are now immune to translocation and gravity effects, since both of those cause more problems for players than they would ever solve<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Spire Civilian Leader Outposts are now included in the galaxy map filter for Detected AI Progress Reducers.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Minor factions now shoot low-power ships without prejudice, which means that devourer golems actually will devourer more again.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Dyson Gatlings are now immune to paralysis attacks.<br />
<br />
* Slightly improved the targeting handling when a ship is targeting a teleporting ship that is out of range.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Penetrator balance:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Penetrator health reduced 8x.<br />
** Penetrator perma-cloaking replaced with normal cloaking<br />
<br />
* AI ships that are spawned in response to saboteurs, such as the human mark III science lab, are now zombie bots<br />
<br />
* Zenith SpaceTime Manipulators can no longer be swallowed or regenerated.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Electric Bombers:<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Sentinel Frigates:<br />
** Event attack cost (used for exogalactic strikeforce computations) tiers increased from "Heavy Corvette" through "Light Destroyer" to "Light Frigate" through "Medium Destroyer".<br />
<br />
* Spire Blade Spawners:<br />
** 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).<br />
*** Notably, this should make the BaseAIPerGuardPostShipCap flag work correctly again for them (it's set to 1 for them).<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Same with the Neinzul Rnclave Starships mark I. They were 2k knowledge, but now they are knowledge-free.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Starship costs tweaked around a bit:<br />
** Bomber starship metal cost reduced from 120k to 80k.<br />
** Fleet starship metal cost reduced from 60k to 40.<br />
** Siege starship crystal cost reduced from 120k to 80k.<br />
** Riot Control starships crystal cost reduced from 80k to 60k, and metal cost reduced from 30k to 20k.<br />
** Enclave starship costs reduced from 30k metal and crystal to 20k each instead.<br />
<br />
* Zentih SpaceTime Manipulator energy costs reduced to 20k from 60k<br />
<br />
* Due to widespread feedback that the martyr is very OP, we've drastically increased the asteroid "cost" of building them:<br />
** Previously Reptite could be used to build 2 MkI Martyrs. Now it cannot build martyrs at all.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* Zenith Viral Shredders:<br />
** 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).<br />
*** 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).<br />
** Base Energy Use from 100 => 50 (note: all mkI types use half normal energy).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Forcefield generators now cannot be assisted during construction if they have been damaged recently.<br />
** 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.<br />
** This also applies to all the "shield bearer" and module type shields.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Zenith Polarizer<br />
** Spire Armor Rotter<br />
** Youngling Vulture<br />
** Youngling Nanoswarm<br />
** Raid Starship<br />
** Lightning/Armored/EMP/Tachyon-warheads<br />
** Botnet Golem<br />
** Devourer Golem<br />
** Sentinel Frigate<br />
** Spire Blade<br />
** Spire Gravity Drain<br />
** Spirecraft Siege Tower<br />
** Sniper<br />
** Electric Shuttle<br />
** Lightning Turret<br />
** Sniper Turret<br />
** Spider Turret<br />
** And a variety of lesser known but related types.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Added a new ability to the Spirecraft Attritioner in hopes of making it more generally useful. From the new tooltip:<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Hearteater and many other players for weighing in with feedback that led to this change.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Ion normal shot damage from 700 => 14000, and armor piercing from 0 => Max.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Updated the tooltip, which is reproduced here since it probably helps understand what we're doing here:<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* Fallen-Spire city-provoked exogalactic strikeforces "buildup" rate (this only impacts the time between attacks, not their size or composition) redistributed a bit:<br />
** Spire City Hubs now generate 1/4 the "aggro" they used to.<br />
** Spire Shard Reactors, Habitation Centers, and Shipyards now, instead of generating zero "aggro", generate 1/8th what the Spire City Hub used to generate.<br />
** So a city with all 6 building slots taken up causes exactly the same amount of buildup as before.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Nanoswarm:<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Explosion range from 200/225/250/275/300 => flat 1000.<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* AI Fortress health from 6x human fortress equivalents => 3x human fortress equivalents.<br />
** 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<br />
<br />
* Ships that generate attack (munitions) boosts now show the magnitude of the boost in the tooltip, not just the range.<br />
** Thanks to SpaceBrotha for the question that reminded us that this info wasn't directly displayed anywhere.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Youngling Tigers:<br />
** Time-to-live from 2 minutes => 4 minutes, which is the same as other youngling types.<br />
** Metal and Crystal cost from 50/50 => 40/40.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 300*mk => 600*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 11k*mk => 13k*mk.<br />
** Thanks to chemical_art for suggesting/inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Youngling Vulture:<br />
** Metal and Crystal cost from 50/50 => 40/40.<br />
<br />
* Spire Teleporting Leech:<br />
** Base Energy Cost from 400 => 200.<br />
** Base Metal Cost from 2200 => 1200.<br />
** Base Crystal Cost from 800 => 500.<br />
<br />
* Science Lab MkII:<br />
** Base Health from 120k => 500k.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1500 => 5000.<br />
** Now has cloaking.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* AI Superfortress:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Health regen halved.<br />
<br />
* AI Fortress I/II/III: health regen halved.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Sentinel Frigates and Zenith Electric Bombers are now considered large enough targets for ships like the Antimatter Starship.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Black Widow Golem:<br />
** Number of tractors from 100 => 200.<br />
*** 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 :)<br />
** This golem's tractors now do 2 seconds of paralysis damage per second to each held ship. Ships immune to paralysis are not affected.<br />
** Base Health from 80M => 200M.<br />
** Basically just trying to make this golem a lot more useful and a lot less likely to die when not baby-sat.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Previously in step 8 any difficulty greater than 7 received a 2.5 multiplier (7 got 2.25, and lower the lower you went).<br />
** Now:<br />
*** 7.3 through 9 still get 2.5.<br />
*** 9.3 gets 2.75 (10% harder than before).<br />
*** 9.6 gets 3.00 (20% harder than before).<br />
*** 9.8 gets 3.80 (52% harder than before).<br />
*** 10 gets 4.5 (would be 80% harder than before, but see next change).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** Base Metal Cost from 1500 => 300.<br />
** Base Crystal Cost from 7500 => 1500.<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* Antimatter Starship:<br />
** Yes, this one is getting _another_ revamp. Some background:<br />
*** First, they were called dreadnoughts. They did tons of engine damage. Too much. Nerfed.<br />
*** Then, they were called useless. For a long time.<br />
*** 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").<br />
*** But this broke a lot balance because you could just camp around your siege starships from across the planet and bomb everything to bits.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** And now, the next episode...<br />
** Base range from 16000 => 4000.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** Note: even stuff the starship itself cannot aim at (small units and cloaked units, etc) can be hit by the splash damage.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Has been renamed to the Plasma Siege Starship.<br />
** The end result:<br />
*** Still longer-ranged than the bomber starship, but much shorter than before, so not worrying that it will break balance in that way.<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Beam Frigate Base Range from 7500+100*mk => 6500+100*mk.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Turret base energy costs:<br />
** Basic Turret from 150 => 100.<br />
** MLRS Turret from 150 => 100.<br />
** Flak Turret from 300 => 200.<br />
** Missile Turret from 150 => 100.<br />
** Counter-Dark-Matter Turret from 4000 => 1000.<br />
** Counter-Missile-Turret from 4000 => 1000.<br />
** Counter-Sniper-Turret from 4000 => 1000.<br />
** Sniper & Spider Turrets from 250 => 150.<br />
** Grav Turret from 500/8000/10000 => 400*mk.<br />
** Tractor Turret left alone (150/240/300).<br />
** Laser Turret (150) and Heavy Beam Cannon (750/1300/2000/20000) left alone. They're energy weapons.<br />
** Lightning Turret from 500/1000/2000 => 400 flat. Energy weapon, yes, but that was a bit high.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Artillery Golem:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 0 => 4000.<br />
** Base Recharge Time from 30 => 8.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Thanks to Orelius and others for feedback on golems.<br />
<br />
* Regenerator Golem:<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Cursed Golem:<br />
** Self-attrition reduced by 50% (now would go from 100% to 0% in 60 minutes instead of 40).<br />
<br />
* Lightning Turrets <br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* 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. <br />
** 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.<br />
** It also looked really cool in testing.<br />
<br />
* Player-Ally Dyson Gatlings are no longer unable to shoot mkV units.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Hybrids:<br />
** If either player has Advanced Hybrids enabled, hybrid maturity-xp contributions to the central dirty-tricks "bank" are now doubled compared to Normal Hybrids.<br />
** 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<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Shield Bearers:<br />
** Ship cap doubled.<br />
** Amounts produced:<br />
*** Reptite: from 0 => 1 mkI (so can now be built from Reptite)<br />
*** Pysite: from 1 => 2 mkI<br />
*** Xampite: from 1 => 2 mkII<br />
*** Ebonite: from 1 => 2 mkIII<br />
*** Adamantite: from 1 => 2 mkIV<br />
*** Titanite: from 1 => 2 mkV<br />
** Hopefully this will bring their costs more into line with their actual utility (as non-repairable shields).<br />
<br />
* Plasma Siege Starship<br />
** Shot now has a traditional (lightning-type) aoe that does 6.25% of normal damage to up to 14 extra nearby targets.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* AI Carriers:<br />
** Are no longer invincible if there's >= 2000 AI ships already on the planet.<br />
*** Previously this was necessary to avoid too many AI ships on a planet at once for decent cpu/ram performance. <br />
** Now, when a carrier deploys (it deploys when destroyed):<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
**** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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 :)<br />
<br />
* Spider turrets:<br />
** Base Metal Cost from 6000 => 1200.<br />
** Base Crystal Cost 15000 => 2400.<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* Riot Starships:<br />
** Ship Cap from 4/3/2 => 4 flat. Most of the special starship types have non-decreasing caps already.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Base Speed from 20/17/14 => flat 20.<br />
** Base Energy Cost from 3000/4000/5000 => flat 3000.<br />
** Base mkI Metal+Crystal Cost from 20k+60k => 30k+50k (mkII is 2x, mkIII is 4x).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Base Engine Damage from 40/55/70 => 40*mk.<br />
** Multiplier vs Medium from 2 => 4. Its other 4 bonuses were already 4.<br />
** All Modules:<br />
*** No longer have an energy cost. 12k cap-e for the hulls is enough.<br />
** Machine Gun Modules:<br />
*** Engine Damage Percent Floor from 50%/30% => 40%/20%.<br />
** Laser Modules:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 5 => 4.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Neutron from 3 => 4.<br />
** Shotgun Modules:<br />
*** Base Attack Power from 40 => 400.<br />
*** Engine Damage from 28 => 36. Makes these 2x as efficient as MGs for total EDPS.<br />
*** Shots per salvo from 25/49 => 25*mk.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 6 => 4.<br />
*** Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 5 => 4.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Refractive from 5 => 4.<br />
** Tazer Module: <br />
*** Multiplier vs Medium from 3 => 4.<br />
*** Multiplier vs Artillery from 3 => 4.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Thanks to Wanderer for being the one to confirm the long-held suspicion that these were horribly exploitable.<br />
** Tractor Modules:<br />
*** Tractor Range from 1700*mk => flat 4400. Same as mkIII tractor turrets.<br />
*** Tractor Count from 10/40 => 72*mk. Same as mkII/mkIII tractor turrets (but mobile and not needing supply).<br />
**** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** This was another long-overdue rebalancing, hence the magnitude of changes.<br />
<br />
* Orbital Mass Drivers:<br />
** Now when under a firepower-reducing forcefield they retain 75% of their attack power instead of the customary 25%.<br />
<br />
* Leech Starship:<br />
** Base Energy Use from 10k/14k/18k => flat 5k. So cap-e is same now as Raids (the next highest for combat starships)<br />
** All vs-hull-type bonuses removed, to allow for a bit more of an overall damage buff and thus more general reclamation utility.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Light Starship/Flagship/Zenith Starship/Spire Starship/Core Starship<br />
** Ship Cap from 5/3/2/2/2 => 4 flat.<br />
** Base Speed from 15/18/18/24/22 => 22 flat.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1000/2500/2500/2500/2500 => 1000*mk.<br />
** Base Energy Use from 2k/10k/20k/20k/20k => 4k flat.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 1500/4800/3000/10000/500 => 3000+(200*mk).<br />
** 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).<br />
** Shots-per-salvo from 5/9/14/4/5 => 5 flat.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 4/4/2/2/5 => 4 flat.<br />
** Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 12/12/1/1/1 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Medium from 8/8/1/6/1 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Light from 6/6/1/1/1 => 1/1/4/1/4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Polycrystal from 1/1/0.01/4/1 => 4/1/1/4/4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Artillery from 1 => 1/4/1/1/4.<br />
** Multiplier vs UltraLight from 1/1/1/4/1 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 1/1/1/1/0.1 => 1.<br />
*** 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!).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Munitions boost range from 3k/6k/5k/8k = 2k+(1k*mk).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Flak Turrets:<br />
** Effective range from 4000/5000/6000 => 4500/5500/6500 to make them a little easier to place around a wormhole.<br />
** Now when under a firepower-reducing forcefield they retain 75% of their attack power instead of the customary 25%.<br />
** Hopefully they'll now be closer to the general usefulness of other turrets in that they don't have to die immediately (if protected).<br />
<br />
* Lightning Turrets:<br />
** Now when under a firepower-reducing forcefield they retain 75% of their attack power instead of the customary 25%.<br />
<br />
* 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) :<br />
** All marks:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** For reference, these aren't really "aoe", they're "blast-through"; a beam loses strength as it does damage.<br />
** MkI<br />
*** For reference, MkI unit cap is 12 for these, and each fires 3 beams every 7 seconds. <br />
*** Base Health from 250k => 850k. This brings cap-health a bit higher than missile turrets, which are the squishy end of turret types.<br />
*** Base Energy Use from 750 => 1650. This brings cap-energy to just slightly above MLRS and several other turret types.<br />
*** Base Metal/Crystal Cost from 8000/14000 => 6500/11000. This brings cap-mc to slightly below most turret types.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Knowledge cost from 2000 => 500. The other mkI turrets are free.<br />
** MkII<br />
*** For reference, MkII unit cap is 8 for these, and each fires 6 beams every 6 seconds.<br />
*** Base Health from 1.25M => 2.55M. Basically: mkI health * (2 for being mkII) * (1.5 for smaller unit cap)<br />
*** Base Energy Use from 1300 => 2500. (roughly mkI * 1.5 for cap)<br />
*** Base Metal/Crystal Cost from 16000/28000 => 13000/22000. (mkI * 2, customary for mkII)<br />
*** Base Attack Power from 50000 => 180000. Basically: mkI damage * (0.429 for rate-of-fire-difference) * (2 for mkII) * (1.5 for unit cap)<br />
*** Knowledge cost from 3000 => 2500. Most other mkII turrets are 2000-3000.<br />
** MkIII<br />
*** For reference, MkIII unit cap is 4 for these, and each fires 12 beams every 5 seconds.<br />
*** Base Health from 2.25M => 7.65M. Basically: mkI health * (3 for mark) * (3 for unit cap)<br />
*** Base Energy Use from 2000 => 5000. (roughly mkI * 3 for cap)<br />
*** Base Metal/Crystal Cost from 32000/56000 => 26000/44000. (mkI * 4, customary for mkIII)<br />
*** Base Attack Power from 50000 => 225000. Basically: mkI damage * (0.179 for rof diff) * (3 for mark) * (3 for cap)<br />
*** Knowledge cost from 3500 => 3000. That's pretty normal for a mkIII turret.<br />
** MkIV<br />
*** For reference, MkIV unit cap is _1_ for these, and it fires 40 beams every 4 seconds.<br />
*** Base Health from 3.25M => 40M. Basically: mkI health * (4 for mark) * (12 for unit cap)<br />
*** Base Energy Use from 2000 => 20000. (roughly mkI * 12 for cap)<br />
*** Base Metal/Crystal Cost from 64000/112000 => 52000/88000. (mkI * 8, customary for mkIV)<br />
*** Base Attack Power from 50000 => 290000. Basically: mkI damage * (0.043 for rof diff) * (4 for mark) * (12 for cap)<br />
*** Knowledge cost staying at 3000. Thought about 3500, but it really is just one unit.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* All modules (except those that generate forcefields) are now invincible and thus untargetable, etc.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Notably, this restores the Plasma Siege Starship's ability to target Raid Starships, which was unintentionally lost in the previous version.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Nanoswarm:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Engine damage from 2*mk => 10*mk.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Vorticular Cutlass:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Base Speed from 16 => 54. So from slower than a fighter to slightly faster than an etherjet.<br />
** Base Metal/Crystal cost from 200/50 => 30/30. Now the same price as infiltrators, a bit lower than tele-raiders, etc.<br />
** Base Energy use from 100 => 20.<br />
<br />
* Acid Sprayers:<br />
** Base Attack from 450 => 600. This puts the non-bonus cap-dps pretty exactly at the fighter's.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Vs Hull Type Multipliers from 6 => 8. The fighter's vs-polycrystal bonus is 5, for reference.<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* Riot Tazer:<br />
** Paralysis Time from 1 => 3 (internally 2 => 4, but the first second generally gets eaten due to processing order).<br />
** Reload Time from 2 => 8.<br />
** Per-planet stagger from 2 seconds => 6 seconds.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Anti-Starship Arachnid V:<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* Spider Bots:<br />
** Engine Damage per shot from 15 => 60.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* Beam Starship:<br />
** Rebalancing as a MkV starship, since the fleet ship fabricators produce MkV stuff.<br />
** Base Move Speed from 14 => 22.<br />
** Base Health from 4.5M => 22.5M. Now on par with the Core Starship for cap-health.<br />
** Max targets hit per shot from infinite => 9. Same as Zenith Beam Frigate.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 5 => 2. Not the same as Zenith Beam Frigate.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Warbird Starship:<br />
** Rebalancing as a MkV starship, since the fleet ship fabricators produce MkV stuff.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** From no vs-hull-type multipliers => 4 vs polycrystal, heavy, ultra-heavy, and structural.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 5 => 2.<br />
** Shots-per-salvo from 40 => 16.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* AI Super-Terminals:<br />
** 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.<br />
*** Thanks to Atomjack for pointing out that it was too easy to keep turning the terminal on and off previously.<br />
** Now each super-terminal "pulse" has a 10% chance to be a "surge":<br />
*** It puts a message in the chat log letting you know there was a surge.<br />
*** 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).<br />
*** It sets the time until the next pulse to 1 second instead of the usual 15. "Chain surges" are therefore possible, albeit fairly unlikely.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Science Labs I/II/III, the Survey Ship, and the new Ship Design Hacker are now all immune to the maw's swallow effect.<br />
<br />
* Impulse Reaction Emitter, in recognition of winning the 3rd "worst ship" award:<br />
** Effective Range from 4200 => 6000.<br />
** Base Move Speed from 20 => 30. This makes it slightly faster than a fighter.<br />
** Base Metal+Crystal cost from 300+300 => 250+250. That's mkI; other marks use normal progression.<br />
** Minimum multiplier from 5 => 8.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* Space Plane, in recognition of doing really well in the 3rd "worst ship" poll:<br />
** Vs-Hull multipliers from 2.4 => 3.2.<br />
*** For reference, that's against Light (Fighter), Polycrystal (Bomber), Heavy (... a lot of things), and UltraHeavy.<br />
*** Eyebots have 3.2, and a somewhat lower base-dps, but can shoot through forcefields.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 3 => 9.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 600*mk => 1800*mk. <br />
*** 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.<br />
** Base Energy Use from 100 => 50, because with the 1.75x ship cap the default energy use (100) was kind of excessive.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Vampire Claw, also in recognition of runner-up-for-worst-ship:<br />
** Base Health from 5000*mk => 10000*mk. <br />
*** 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.<br />
** Now have cloaking. Be afraid. Bring tachyons. And garlic.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Base Energy Use from 200 => 160.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 650 => 850.<br />
** Added Artillery to the hull types this has a bonus against (om nom missile frigate tasty).<br />
** Now has a 0.3x multiplier against the command-grade hull type.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Tiger:<br />
** Base Metal+Crystal from 40+40 => 25+25, same as commandos and weasels.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Vulture:<br />
** Base Metal+Crystal from 40+40 => 25+25, same as commandos and weasels (and tigers, now).<br />
<br />
* Spire Gravity Drain:<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Spire Gravity Ripper:<br />
** Base Metal+Crystal from 1800+1200 => 1000+500. Was similar to the grav drain's situation.<br />
<br />
* Spire Armor Rotter:<br />
** Base Metal+Crystal from 800+1900 => 450+900. Was 3rd most expensive.<br />
<br />
* Space Tank:<br />
** Base Metal+Crystal from 1100+0 => 600+100. Was 5th most expensive, and more expensive than bombers, now slightly less expensive than bombers.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 2600*mk => 2300*mk.<br />
** Vs-Hull-Type multipliers from 3.2 => 6. <br />
*** 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.<br />
** Effective range from 4800+200*mk => 6300+200*mk. Since they're so slow.<br />
<br />
* Grenade Launcher:<br />
** Base Energy Use from 400 => 150. It had twice the cap-energy-use of the next highest fleet ship type.<br />
<br />
* Sentinel Frigate:<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Made end-of-Fallen-Spire spawns yet more enthusiastic, due to the opposition they sometimes face on 10/10. That AI sure is stubborn...<br />
<br />
* Dyson Antagonizer (hybrid plot) :<br />
** Now tries to be built somewhat closer to the AI's border.<br />
** Health from 80M => 40M.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Knowledge Raiding:<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Now each spawn makes a number of "wild rolls" which apply various effects to what happens.<br />
**** 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.<br />
**** At first there is only 1 roll per spawn, but this goes up by 1 for every 1500 knowledge raided.<br />
** 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.<br />
** For the detailed discussion see http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9906.0.html , but in brief the rationale is:<br />
*** K-raiding's main purpose is to let players dig themselves out of a hole by gaining power without increasing AIP.<br />
*** 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.<br />
**** 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).<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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 :)<br />
<br />
* Scout Starship:<br />
** Base Health from 120k/480k/960k/1.2M => 300k*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1500 flat => 1500*mk.<br />
** Tachyon Range from 750/950/1150/1550 => 2000*mk.<br />
** Ship Cap from 5/4/3/2 => 5/5/5/2.<br />
** Energy Use from 2000/4000/6000/6000 => 2000/2000/2000/5000.<br />
** Base Move Speed from 224/464/704/704 => 240/480/720/720.<br />
** 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.<br />
** The MkIV Scout Starship:<br />
*** Now provides counter-missile coverage.<br />
*** 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).<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft-Medium and Broken-Golems-Medium no longer have a score penalty.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Now when a unit dies while under the influence of a parasite infestation ("reclamation damage"), those parasites will behave far more efficiently:<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Nanoswarm:<br />
** Base attack power from 400*mk => 800*mk. Still not much at all, but it allows:<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* Mines:<br />
** 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?<br />
** Standard Mines:<br />
*** 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).<br />
**** Note that the build time for all 3 mine types is still 90 seconds.<br />
** Area Mines:<br />
*** Base Metal+Crystal cost from 1080+3600 => 40+80.<br />
*** Now hit a maximum of 10 targets with their aoe.<br />
*** Base Damage per hit from 7500 => 52500 (half as much damage as a normal single-target mine).<br />
** EMP Mines:<br />
*** Base Metal+Crystal cost from 720+2400 => 60+120.<br />
*** Fixed an error in the tooltip: it said the paralysis was 60 seconds long, but it's really only 10 seconds.<br />
<br />
* Harvester Exo-Shields, in honor of winning the 4th "Worst Unit" poll (and the first one for which it was eligible) :<br />
** Now has cloaking.<br />
** Now cloaks the protected harvester.<br />
** No longer halves production of protected harvester.<br />
** 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.<br />
** The result is that:<br />
*** They have a much lower operational cost which no longer scales up with higher harvester marks or with your energy efficiency.<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** A bit of background:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** So, to do something about this pretty vast disparity:<br />
*** Harvester II:<br />
**** Knowledge cost from 3250 => 2000.<br />
**** Production from 28 => 31 (so +8 => +11).<br />
*** Harvester III:<br />
**** Knowledge cost from 4000 => 2500 (so 4500 total).<br />
**** Production from 36 => 73 (so +16 => +53).<br />
***** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* Warp Jammer Command Stations, in honor of tying for third in the first "Worst Unit" poll it was eligible for:<br />
** Now prevent their planets from putting adjacent AI planets on alert. <br />
*** 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).<br />
*** But this still allows a new strategic choice in shaping the AI's response to your presence.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Also fixed a longstanding bug where these counted (for display purposes only, apparently) as an AI reinforcement warp gate.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** 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)<br />
<br />
* Mobile Repair Stations, in belated honor of doing well in the last "worst unit" poll<br />
** Maximum simultaneous repairs from 100 => 20.<br />
** Repair rate reduced.<br />
** Time it must remain stationary before starting repairs from 60 seconds => 5.<br />
** Now has cloaking.<br />
*** This doesn't break when repairing, but beware AI tachyons.<br />
<br />
* Metal/Crystal Harvester Upgrades:<br />
** MkII production from 31 => 30.<br />
** MkIII production from 73 => 55.<br />
** Results/Rationale:<br />
*** 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).<br />
*** MkII upgrades are better than EconII if you have 1, 2, 3, or greater than 12 planets, but are worse from 4 to 11.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** All in all, the question of "do I upgrade harvesters or econ stations?" should now be more situational and map-based.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a null exception that happened when gifting a spirecraft mining enclosure to another player.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Enclave Starships, in honor of winning the fifth "Worst Unit" poll.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1000 flat => 1000*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 500K*mk => 3M*mk.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Now have radar dampening of 8000/7500/7000/6500.<br />
*** 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).<br />
** Knowledge Costs from 0/3000/5000/10000 => 0/2000/2000/14000.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
*** This is because previously using these efficiently basically required engineer support (specifically, engineer mkIII support). Engies still help, but it's not as critical.<br />
<br />
* Armored Warheads, in honor of placing second in the fifth "Worst Unit" poll:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 300k/1.5M/2.4M => 1M*mk.<br />
** Explosion Size from 1500/1250/750 => 1500*mk.<br />
** Now do 10k*mk armor damage, enough to strip all the armor off most units that aren't some kind of boss fight.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Lightning Warheads:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 300k/1.5M/2.4M => 800k*mk.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Explosion size changed to match the new armored warheads: 1500/1250/750 => 1500*mk.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** Spire Stealth Battleship<br />
** Spire Blade Spawner<br />
** Spire Maw<br />
** Spire Tractor Platform<br />
<br />
* 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 :<br />
<br />
* Teleport Battlestations, in honor of doing pretty well in the last worst-unit poll:<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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)<br />
<br />
* Marauders and Resistance Fighters can now be targeted by ships that cannot target small units (Bomber Starship, etc).<br />
<br />
* Since the Riot Starship MkIII did pretty well in the last worst-ship poll:<br />
** Gave them tachyon coverage matching the MkIII scout starship.<br />
** Added a couple additional options for its highest-level hardpoint:<br />
*** Grav Tazer<br />
**** 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.<br />
**** Note that these share the same planet-wide stagger category as Riot II tazers, to prevent these making permanent tazer lock possible again.<br />
*** Grav Generator<br />
**** Basically a ship-mounted grav turret, requires research of Grav Turret Is.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
=== Rebalancing High (and-not-so-high) Difficulties ===<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** A Diff 9+ player will seed 1 less data center than normal (but no fewer than 1 if it would have seeded any).<br />
** 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:<br />
*** ( AIProgress * AIDifficulty ) / ( 13 - AIDifficulty ) <br />
*** to ( ( ( AIProgress * 0.8 ) ^ 1.1 ) * AIDifficulty ) / ( 13 - AIDifficulty ) <br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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):<br />
*** 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).<br />
*** If there are 5 wave-targetable planets the random is from (AIDifficulty*-30) to (AIDifficulty*120).<br />
*** If there are 4 the random is from 0 to (AIDifficulty*120).<br />
*** If 3, from (AIDifficulty*30) to (AIDifficulty*120).<br />
*** If 2, from (AIDifficulty*60) to (AIDifficulty*120).<br />
*** If 1, from (AIDifficulty*90) to (AIDifficulty*150) (making it actually able to hit single-chokepoints harder than it used to).<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** That automatic tech level increase has been removed.<br />
** 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:<br />
*** 9 = 210 (same as before).<br />
*** 9.3 = 148.<br />
*** 9.6 = 85.<br />
*** 9.8 = 43.<br />
*** 10 = 0 (so diff 10 starts at tech 2).<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1400*mk => 19200*mk (the base strength of 16 fighters on high caps, but without the fighter's bonuses).<br />
** Seconds-Per-Salvo from 2 => 4 (same as fighter, cuts down a bit on shot-spam).<br />
** Can no longer fire as though ignoring through forcefields, but it can still move through them.<br />
** Shot type from dark matter => energy bomb as the idea is not for these to be easily counterable via counter-dark-matter turrets.<br />
** Hull-bonus against Turret from 0.1 => 1.<br />
** Hull-bonus against Structural from 0.1 => 1.<br />
** Hull-bonuses against Scout and Command-Grade staying at 0.1.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** On Diff 8+ it randomly rolls (per homeworld) between one and two picks.<br />
*** On Diff 7+ it always gets one pick.<br />
*** Below Diff 7 it randomly rolls between zero and one picks.<br />
** As the set of core guard posts expands in the future (expansions, mainly), this "brutal" set can also be added to.<br />
<br />
=== New Drones For The Neinzul Enclave Starship ===<br />
<br />
* 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:<br />
** Neinzul Laser Drone I-IV<br />
*** MkI and II require Laser Turret II technology. MkIII and IV require Laser Turret III technology.<br />
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that Laser Turrets have a bonus against.<br />
** Neinzul Needler Drone I-IV<br />
*** MkI and II require Basic Turret II technology. MkIII and IV require Basic Turret III technology.<br />
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that Basic Turrets have a bonus against.<br />
** Neinzul MLRS Drone I-IV<br />
*** MkI and II require MLRS Turret II technology. MkIII and IV require MLRS Turret III technology.<br />
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that MLRS Turrets have a bonus against.<br />
** Neinzul Missile Drone I-IV<br />
*** MkI and II require Missile Turret II technology. MkIII and IV require Missile Turret III technology.<br />
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that Missile Turrets have a bonus against.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Stat wise:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Drones are pretty flimsy, but dying from enemy fire isn't much of an event for these.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Drones cannot traverse wormholes.<br />
*** Drones are super, super cheap in both metal/crystal and energy.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** The motivation behind these:<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
=== Better Scaling For Multi-Homeworld Games ===<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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). <br />
** This was generally fine but:<br />
*** 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. <br />
*** Also, now that carriers will be more of a threat, it would be nice for them to see use in those circumstances.<br />
*** 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,<br />
** So now:<br />
*** 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.<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** 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).<br />
**** 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).<br />
<br />
* When Spirecraft are enabled and there's more than one human homeworld, the number of asteroids seeded will go up.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft Shieldbearers:<br />
** Can now be put in low power mode (shutting off their projected shield).<br />
** Now their projected shield no longer shrinks as the shieldbearer loses health.<br />
*** 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).<br />
** Now have AI-only variants that can be chosen for exos.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** These still have the shrink-when-damaged behavior, to make them a bit easier to handle.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Thanks to TechSY730 and others for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* Spire Maw vacuum-recharge-seconds from 2 => 5/4/3/2/1.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* Core CPA Guard Posts now start a timer-for-CPA instead of instantly triggering a CPA.<br />
<br />
* Core CPA Guard Posts now trigger in response to >= 1 enemy human military ship being present, rather than > 1.<br />
** So that Artillery Golem won't get by on the ol' "But I'm just *one* ship!" excuse anymore.<br />
<br />
** EMP mines:<br />
*** Health halved, which halves the number of times a single one will go off before needing to be rebuilt.<br />
*** Knowledge cost from 1500 => 1000.<br />
** Area mines:<br />
*** Knowledge cost from 4000 => 2000.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* Made Maws try to vacuum their shoot-at target if for some reason vacuuming their "assist" target failed.<br />
<br />
* Carrier hull type from Scout => Ultra-Heavy.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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<br />
<br />
* Human Forcefield generators (including hardened ones) now drop remains and can be rebuilt.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Human command stations (other than the home command station) now drop remains and can be rebuilt.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* Remains Rebuilders no longer require supply, to make rebuilding a "satellite" planet at least possible.<br />
** If this makes some wild exploits possible please let us know, but since most of the stuff that can be rebuilt requires supply anyway..<br />
<br />
* Grenade Launcher grenade explosion radius from 200/300/400/500/600 => flat 500.<br />
<br />
* Flak grenade (from guardians and turrets) radius from 300/350/400/450/500 => flat 500<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Shield Bearers (the normal ones; this was already true of the spirecraft ones) are now immune to insta-kill.<br />
<br />
* All non-shield modules are now immune to armor boosting (they're invincible, it'd be a waste).<br />
<br />
* AI Carriers:<br />
** Effective range from 6000 => 3000.<br />
** Base Health from 3M*mk => 2M*mk.<br />
** Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring these changes.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* In honor of it winning the latest worst-unit poll, Zenith Reserves:<br />
** AIP cost on death from 5*mk => 1*mk.<br />
** Amount of ships granted increased roughly 33%.<br />
<br />
* In honor of coming in second in the most recent worst-unit poll, the Decloaker:<br />
** In general, moving this from a mobile tachyon unit with outdated stats to a mobile tachyon unit with roughly mkI-starship stats. <br />
*** Note the tachyon range of 20k was already huge, no buff seemed necessary there.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** No longer has the IsBlind flag.<br />
** Now has cloaking.<br />
** Base Damage-per-shot from 36k => 50k.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 10 => 2.<br />
** 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).<br />
** Base Health from 40k => 2M (again, in the general range of mkI starships).<br />
** Base Energy Use from 100 => 1000.<br />
** Base Metal Cost from 5000 => 10000.<br />
** Base Crystal Cost from 7500 => 20000.<br />
** Now has most common-to-starship immunities.<br />
<br />
* Captive Human Settlement, in honor of coming in third in the "worst unit" poll: AIP-on-death from 100 => 15.<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* Spire Armor Rotter, in honor of coming in fourth in the latest "worst unit" poll:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Base Health from 14,500*mk => 23k*mk (this gives them a similar cap-health as fighters).<br />
** Multiplier vs UltraHeavy from 2 => 3.<br />
** Multiplier vs Heavy from 2 => 3.<br />
** Multiplier vs Polycrystal from 1 => 3.<br />
<br />
* Microparasite, because it (like other experimentals we need to get back to) had really outdated stats:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Metal Cost from 1800 => 1400.<br />
** Crystal Cost from 240 => 3400.<br />
** Base Health from 7200 => 36k.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 500 => 1500.<br />
** Base Damage-per-shot from 8000 => 2000.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Base Armor Piercing from 0 => 3000.<br />
** Effective Attack Range from 4600 => 6000.<br />
** Multiplier vs Polycrystal from 20 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Artillery from 1 => 4.<br />
<br />
* Special Forces Guard Posts no longer count as reinforcement-warp-gates and are no longer autotargeted (by player or player-ally-minor-faction ships).<br />
** 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. <br />
** 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).<br />
** With the cheese gone, there's no longer a need to make it hard to keep these alive, so the autotargeting could go away.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
=== Core Guard Post Rebalance ===<br />
<br />
* All Core Guard Posts:<br />
** Base Energy Cost from 500 => 10000 (doesn't matter except for IRE fire).<br />
<br />
* Core Heavy Beam Guard Post:<br />
** Total base attack power (this is divided amongst all its beams) from 8M => 4M.<br />
** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 4 => 3.<br />
** Multiplier vs Refractive from 3.5 => 3.<br />
** Multiplier vs UltraLight from 3.25 => 3.<br />
** Multiplier vs Medium from 2.5 => 3.<br />
** Multiplier vs Heavy from 1.75 => 3.<br />
<br />
* Core Electric Guard Post:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Can now hit a maximum of 200 units per shot <br />
*** 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.<br />
** Base Health from 6M => 12M.<br />
** Multiplier vs Artillery from 4 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Neutron from 2 => 1.<br />
** Seconds Per Salvo from 13 => 20.<br />
** Damage Per Shot from 3k => 50k.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 13k => 8k.<br />
<br />
* Core Missile Guard Post:<br />
** Basically balancing this against a cap of MkV missile frigates, but with way less durability.<br />
** Base Health from 6M => 18M.<br />
** Multiplier vs UltraLight from 8 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Medium from 6 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Light from 1 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 1 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Neutron from 1 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Composite from 1 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Refractive from 1 => 4.<br />
** Effective Attack Range from 36000 => 12000.<br />
** Seconds Per Salvo from 5 => 1.<br />
** Damage Per Shot from 80k => 200k.<br />
<br />
* Core Sentinel Guard Post:<br />
** Basically balancing this against a cap of MkV Zenith Beam Frigates, but with maybe half the power and way less durability.<br />
** Can now hit a maximum of 20 targets per shot.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Base Health from 3M => 18M.<br />
** Damage Per Shot from 4k => 100k.<br />
** Effective Attack Range from 9000 => 8000.<br />
** Multiplier vs Light from 16 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 8 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Neutron from 4 => 1.<br />
<br />
* Core Leech Guard Post:<br />
** Basically balancing this against a cap of MkV Parasites, but with way less durability.<br />
*** Interestingly, the attack power was basically already spot-on.<br />
** Base Health from 6M => 12M.<br />
** Multiplier vs Medium from 3 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Neutron from 1 => 4.<br />
** Effective Attack Range from 5000 => 6000 (slightly further out than its radar dampening range).<br />
<br />
* Core Zenith Bombard Guard Post:<br />
** Basically balancing this against a cap of MkV Zenith Bombards, but with way less durability and about half the attack power.<br />
** Base Health from 6M => 12M.<br />
** Damage Per Shot from 60k => 900k.<br />
** Effective Attack Range from 53k => 34k.<br />
** Multiplier vs Heavy from 1.75 => 2.<br />
** Multiplier vs UltraHeavy from 1 => 2.<br />
** Multiplier vs Structural from 1 => 2.<br />
** Multiplier vs Swarmer from 4 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Refractive from 3.5 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs UltraLight from 3.25 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Medium from 2.5 => 1.<br />
<br />
* Core Zenith Fortress Guard Post:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Shot type from (default? it doesn't appear to be set?) => Flamewave.<br />
<br />
* Core Spire Shield Guard Post:<br />
** Base Health from 392M => 200M.<br />
<br />
* Core Neinzul Melee Guard Post:<br />
** Basically balancing this against a theoretical cap of MkV cutlasses, but with way less durability.<br />
** Base Health from 6M => 36M (it's a self-damaging melee unit, it needs it).<br />
** Base Move Speed from 30 => 44.<br />
** Damage Per Hit from 106k => 300k.<br />
** Multiplier vs Neutron from 3 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Light from 3 => 4.<br />
** Multiplier vs Scout from 2 => 1.<br />
** Multiplier vs Composite from 1 => 4.<br />
<br />
* Core Booster Guard Post:<br />
** Base Health from 6M => 18M.<br />
** Munitions Boost and Armor Boost range from 8k => 16k.<br />
** Intentionally leaving the attack alone here: that's not really the point of the unit.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* AIP floor minimum is now 10 instead of 1.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** This effectively reduces the return on superterminal hacking since it does +1 and -2 AIP per trigger.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Electric Bomber is now immune to insta kill, like other low-cap fleet ships.<br />
<br />
* Spire Archives, in honor of winning our seventh "Worst Unit" poll:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Knowledge gain rate from 1/sec => 5/sec. <br />
*** 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).<br />
** When their planet is exhausted of all 9000 knowledge, they automatically die without causing AIP.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Warheads killed by warhead interceptors no longer cause AIP-on-death.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Galactic Sandpaper Incorporated has already filed for bankruptcy.<br />
<br />
* Spire Stealth Battleship, in honor of tying for second in our first "Aim The Nerfbat (AI-Side)" poll:<br />
** Radar Dampening from 8000 => 10000.<br />
** Base Move Speed from 18 => 16. (for reference, a fighter's is 28, this is before a variety of other calculation steps)<br />
<br />
* The Player Home Forcefield Generator:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Now projects tachyon coverage of 6600 radius (3 times its forcefield radius, 600 more than a MkIII Scout Starship).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** This is basically like the Broken Golems faction except:<br />
*** It only seeds the Broken Botnet, and it only seeds one of them (Broken Golems no longer seeds any botnets, needless to say).<br />
**** 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.<br />
*** The botnet's energy cost on Moderate went from 400k => 800k.<br />
*** The broken-botnet's AIP-on-metamorphsis on Moderate went from 40 => 100.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** Note: the golemite AI's version of the Botnet's health is still what it was.<br />
** 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?<br />
*** 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).<br />
<br />
* The exos from BrokenGolemsHard and SpirecraftHard are now more aggressive:<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
*** This minimum stops going up at 250 (20 hours). (thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting that)<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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) :<br />
** Armored golem from 30M+30M m+c => 10M+10M.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** Artilery golem from 10M+10M => 8M+8M (lots of feedback that these are OP lately).<br />
** Black Widow golem from 25M+25M => 10M+10M (ditto).<br />
** 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).<br />
** Cursed golem from 10M+10M => 3M+3M (a slight buff, but these aren't all that popular in general).<br />
** Hive golem from 20M+20M => 7M+7M (a slight nerf, but these are quite strong).<br />
** 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)<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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<br />
<br />
* Repair cost in general is now based off half the construction cost instead of the full construction cost.<br />
<br />
* Repairing engines now does not cost m+c (if health is also being repaired at the same time that costs m+c).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Heroic AI type balance changes:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Its non-wave champion spawns now start at Frigate-level at tech-level 1, not Destroyer-level.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul champion hulls are now immune to black hole machines.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Leech Starship:<br />
** Ship cap from 3 => 4.<br />
** Seconds Per Salvo from 4 => 2.<br />
** Shots Per Salvo from 3= > 6.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 30k => 2k (24k base-cap-dps, parasite has 12.25k)<br />
*** 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.<br />
**** 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.<br />
** Base Armor Piercing from 0 => 750*mk (same as parasite).<br />
<br />
* Knowledge costs:<br />
** Flagship was 0/2000/5000.<br />
** Zenith Starship was 1000/2500/6000.<br />
** Starship Starship was 1000/2500/6000.<br />
** Bomber Starship was 0/5000/7000.<br />
** Plasma Siege Starship was 0/5000/7000.<br />
** Leech Starship was 0/5000/6000.<br />
** MkI costs (or lack thereof) unchanged.<br />
** MkII costs are now all 2500.<br />
** MkIII costs are now all 4000.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Health:<br />
** "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).<br />
** Flagship from 3.75M*mk => 5M*mk (20M cap-hp).<br />
** Zenith from 4.5M*mk => 6M*mk (24M cap-hp).<br />
** Spire from 3M*mk => 4M*mk (16M cap-hp).<br />
** Bomber from 4.7M*mk => 7M*mk (28M cap-hp)<br />
** Plasma Siege unchanged at 5M*mk.<br />
** Leech from 3.2M*mk => 4M*mk (16M cap-hp).<br />
<br />
* Metal+Crystal/Energy costs:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Cap-e is more consistent for fleet ships, typically about 20k (halved for mkI types). So targeting about 40k for a mkI cap here.<br />
** The m+c costs listed are for mkI, mkII are 2x, mkIII are 4x. E costs do not change with mark.<br />
** Flagship from 40k+24k / 4k e => 60k+40k / 10k.<br />
** Zenith from 24k+40k / 4k e => 40k+60k / 10k.<br />
** Spire from 30k+34k / 4k e => 45k+55k / 10k.<br />
** Bomber from 80k+8k / 2k e => 85k+15k / 10k.<br />
** Plasma Siege from 8k+80k / 2k e => 15k+85k / 10k.<br />
** Leech from 60k+40k / 5k e => 60k+40k / 10k.<br />
<br />
* Fighter (including tachyon-micro and bulletproof variants):<br />
** Base Move Speed from 28 => 32.<br />
** Multiplier vs Polycrystal from 5 => 6.<br />
** Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 2.4 => 6.<br />
** Multiplier vs Medium from 2.4 => 6.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1200 => 1000 (similar for the variants).<br />
<br />
* Bomber Base Move Speed from 28 => 26.<br />
<br />
* The following guardians now have the medium hull type:<br />
** EMP (was Neutron)<br />
** Heavy Beam (was Heavy) <br />
** Laser (was Swarmer)<br />
** Lightning (was Composite) <br />
** Special Forces Rally (was Heavy)<br />
** Spire Implosion (was Artillery)<br />
** Starship Disassembler (was UltraHeavy)<br />
** Tachyon (was Refractive)<br />
** Tractor (was Neutron)<br />
** Vampire (was Artillery)<br />
<br />
* Spire Starship:<br />
** Hull type from Neutron => Medium.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 120k*mk => 600k*mk.<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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+ <br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Siege Engine:<br />
** MkI-cap-health from 16.8M => 10M.<br />
** Corrected an... interesting balance-math error where it had 720k mkI-cap-dps AND 10x multipliers (against structural, heavy, ultraheavy, and turret):<br />
*** Multipliers from 10x => 5x.<br />
*** 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).<br />
** Reload time from 15 => 10.<br />
*** Damage adjusted to maintain dps.<br />
** Now pay no attention to auto-FRD or auto-kite.<br />
** Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring these changes, as little consolation as that may be to the many ships (including spire capital ships) <br />
* All modular forts now pay no attention to auto-kite (previously some did, and some didn't).<br />
<br />
* Zenith Reprocessor:<br />
** MkI-cap-health from 8.4M => 15M (now in the neighborhood of fighters).<br />
** MkI-cap-dps from 17.2k => 30k (has 8x multipliers).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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) :<br />
** Mad Bomber reinforcement multiplier from "you get one ship" on non-core-worlds (and 0.25 on core worlds) => 0.7, on all worlds.<br />
** Neinzul Youngster reinforcement multiplier from 0.25 => 0.8.<br />
** Vicious Raider, Extreme Raider, and Technologist Raider multiplier from 0.3 => 0.8.<br />
** Attritioner, Zenith Descendant, Spireling, Starfleet Commander, Experimentalist, and Grav Driller reinforcement multiplier from 0.4 => 0.9.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
** The Core reinforcement multiplier from 0.3 => 0.5 (same as its wave multiplier).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** The actual attack power of the unit is unchanged, this is just fixing a bug in the internal balancing model.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Reprocessor: <br />
** MkI-base-cap-dps from 30k => 45k (for reference, Acid Sprayers have 58.8k, and the same bonuses).<br />
** Now immune to tractors.<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* Military Command Stations:<br />
** 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)<br />
** Metal,Crystal production from 16,16/32,32/64,64 => 24,24/48,48/96,96 (the same as logistics stations).<br />
** Now do not suffer damage reduction when firing from under a normal human-tech forcefield.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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)<br />
** Is now immune to radar dampening.<br />
** 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).<br />
** MkII and MkIII versions now do 200 engine damage per shot.<br />
** MkIII versions now apply 5 seconds of paralysis per shot.<br />
<br />
* In honor of basically winning the "what most needs attention for 6.0?" poll, the remains rebuilders have received a logic overhaul and now:<br />
** 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.<br />
** If in FRD, they now are much less likely to "yoyo" back to the FRD-point between rebuilds until all the targets are rebuilt.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** This is actually a fairly significant buff to the unit, but it's probably not a big balance impact to start the rebuilding faster.<br />
<br />
* Spire Tractor Platform:<br />
** MkI-Cap-Health from 10.5M => 8M.<br />
** Base move speed from 18 => 15.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
*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.<br />
<br />
* Handicap now has the following effects, all of which is new unless otherwise noted:<br />
** AI<br />
*** Previously it affected the speed at which the AI reinforced. It no longer does.<br />
*** Increases the number of ships in each wave and reinforcement, and decreases when negative.<br />
*** Roaming Enclaves and Preservation Wardens are spawned sooner or later into the game.<br />
*** Scrap waves are scaled accordingly.<br />
*** Specifically "forced waves" are scaled accordingly.<br />
*** Cross planet atacks are scaled accordingly.<br />
*** Saboteur and deep strike reactions are scaled accordingly.<br />
*** For now, event attacks are NOT affected by this.<br />
*** Initial seeding of AI planets are intentionally not affected by this—same as human players get no starting benefit from handicaps.<br />
** Player<br />
*** Increases the amount of resources gathered from producers (using a new formula), and decreases when negative (also using the new formula).<br />
<br />
* Some triangle rebalancing:<br />
** 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.<br />
** Fighters (including the tachyon and bulletproof variants) :<br />
*** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 2.4 => 5.<br />
** Bombers:<br />
*** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs Structural from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs Heavy from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs Artillery from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Base Attack Power from 1900*mk => 2400*mk.<br />
** Missile Frigates:<br />
*** Bonus vs Light from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs UltraLight from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs Swarmer from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs Neutron from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs Composite from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Bonus vs Refractive from 10 => 6.<br />
*** Base Attack Power from 1600*mk => 2400*mk.<br />
*** Base Crystal Cost from 700 => 500.<br />
<br />
* Tractor Beam Turrets:<br />
** Base Health from 210k/840k/1680k => 560k*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 450*mk.<br />
<br />
* Beam Guardians:<br />
** Bonus Vs Turret from 8 => 1.<br />
** Bonus Vs UltraLight from 8 => 1.<br />
** Bonus Vs Artillery from 2 => 1.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 4000*mk => 4500*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 600*mk => 300*mk.<br />
<br />
* Laser Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1000*mk => 300*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 1.4*(standard guardian health) to 1.1*(standard).<br />
** Shots Per Salvo from 3 => 15.<br />
** Seconds Per Salvo from 4 => 2.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 17k*mk => 1700*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Piercing from 500*mk => 300*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 7000 => 5000.<br />
<br />
* Raider Guardians:<br />
** Now Have Radar Dampening Range of 8000.<br />
<br />
* Lightning Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 800*mk => 600*mk.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1600*mk => 2400*mk (for reference, Electric shuttles on low caps have 1600*mk, albeit somewhat slower reloading).<br />
<br />
* Tractor Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 450*mk.<br />
<br />
* Spider Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1000 (flat) => 150*mk.<br />
<br />
* Sniper Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1000 (flat) => 150*mk.<br />
<br />
* Tachyon Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 400 (flat) => 150*mk.<br />
<br />
* Gravity Guardians:<br />
** Max Target Base Speed from 10/8/6/4/2 => 11/10/9/8/7.<br />
** Grav Beam Base Range from 8k/10k/12k/14k/16k => 7k/8k/9k/10k/11k.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 100*mk => 300*mk.<br />
<br />
* Zombie Guardians:<br />
** Shots Per Salvo from 2/3/4/5/6 => flat 2.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 5000*mk => 300*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 9000 => 7000.<br />
<br />
* EMP Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 300*mk.<br />
<br />
* Carrier Guardians:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 300*mk.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* Reclamators (excluding zombie-reclamators) :<br />
** 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:<br />
*** If the reclamator is 4 mks higher than the target (mkV shooting mkI), multiply by 64.<br />
*** If the reclamator is 3 mks higher than the target, 48.<br />
*** If the reclamator is 2 mks higher than the target, 32.<br />
*** If the reclamator is 1 mk higher than the target, 16.<br />
*** If the reclamator is the same mk as the target, 8.<br />
*** If the reclamator is 1 mk lower than the target, 4.<br />
*** If the reclamator is 2 mks lower than the target, 2.<br />
*** If the reclamator is 3 mks lower than the target, 1.<br />
*** There is no 4-mk-lower case because mkV are not reclaimable.<br />
** Leech Starship base attack power from 120k*mk => 30k*mk.<br />
** Parasite base attack power from 4000*mk => 1000*mk.<br />
** Nanoswarms inherent 16x-reclamation property down to 2x, but no reduction in actual damage.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Parasites:<br />
** Effective range from 3700 => 6000.<br />
** Armor piercing from 0 => 750*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 7200*mk => 14400*mk.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Gives a bit more motivation to unlock the higher engineer marks, if you're having trouble getting enough assistance/repair out.<br />
<br />
== Misc Changes ==<br />
<br />
* AI War engine upgraded to Unity 3.3, from previously being Unity 3.1.<br />
<br />
* Spire Civilian Leaders are now no longer giftable, to avoid a bug whereby gifting them back and forth would repeat the AIP decrease.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Mostly as a visual improvement (via more variety of shot speed) and somewhat to make some weapons a little more effective:<br />
** Laser shot speed tripled (wait, why does a laser shot have a speed?)<br />
** Minor electric shot speed doubled.<br />
** Shell shot speed increased to 1.5x what it was.<br />
** Ion shot speed doubled.<br />
** Combat style now applies to all shot speeds, not only artificially-increased ones.<br />
** Note: shots will always move at least 40 faster than their target.<br />
<br />
* 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)<br />
<br />
* Just under "Enable Advanced Logging" on the Advanced tab of the Settings window, added a "Enable Reinforcement Logging" toggle.<br />
** 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.<br />
** This is off by default because:<br />
*** 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<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** Lots of disk I/O during the game causes instability on some systems.<br />
<br />
=== New Variety for Existing Minor Factions ===<br />
<br />
* Human Resistance Fighters:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.<br />
<br />
* Marauders:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.<br />
<br />
* Human Colony Rebellions<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.<br />
<br />
* Dyson Sphere:<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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).<br />
** So if you want a game-dominating dyson sphere, you can still get it :)<br />
<br />
* Zenith Miners<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.<br />
<br />
* Broken Golems (Hard)<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see VERY strong exogalactic strikeforces (their frequency does not change).<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Preservation Wardens:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Roaming Enclaves:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see these happening a LOT.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Rocketry Corps:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see a LOT of these (Would you like to play a game of... ?).<br />
<br />
* Fallen Spire<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see VERY strong exogalactic strikeforces (their frequency does not change).<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft (Hard)<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see VERY strong exogalactic strikeforces (their frequency does not change).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
=== New Variety For Existing AI Plots ===<br />
<br />
* Hybrid Hives<br />
** 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).<br />
** Don't use a high value unless you want to see a LOT of these.<br />
<br />
* Amended the reinforcement logging to better reflect the impact of alert on the order that planets are checked for reinforcement.<br />
<br />
* Renamed the AI Eye to the Sentry Eye.<br />
<br />
* Bomber Starship renamed to Heavy Bomber Starship.<br />
<br />
* Added 25 champion-related achievements.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
== Bugfixes ==<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug on the stats window resource-flows tab where most construction/repair/etc outflows were reported as positive instead of negative.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug that was greatly delaying the onset of gravity slowdown on units entering grav range in some cases.<br />
<br />
* 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<br />
<br />
* The Zenith Trader previously had incorrect line breaks. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Previously, when command stations were replaced, colony ships and mobile builders were still dying even though they shouldn't have been. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Improved the clarity of the colony ship description.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Previously, zombiefied ships were being bound by player ship caps, but they should not have been. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where Defender games were always being recorded in the high-score list as lost.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where lightning and armored warheads were following the unit-cap-scale.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where copying in your global controls from disk could lead to building engineer IIs and IIIs without the required tech.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that has been causing astro-trains to not be able to attack for the last six months or so.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the "I Have A Bad Feeling About This" achievement was not being awarded.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where Core Starships were not immune to translocation.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** Fixing this also reduced the per-ship memory footprint by about 8 bytes, which we're always pleased to do.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an (apparently) rare array-index-out-of-bounds error in the buy-menu "tooltip" window.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where modules would not always decloak their parent ship when firing.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* Fixed some longstanding (since introduction of group move trying to handle immune-to-speed-boosting units) bugs with group move:<br />
** 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.<br />
*** This bug has been captured, stuffed, and placed in the museum. It couldn't get away fast enough.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a problem with too-low throttles on minor faction / zombie ships preventing them from even attacking at all in some cases.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where a superterminal could be "paused" by scrapping your command station, saving, and reloading.<br />
<br />
* Fixed the bug with two buttons for mark V fighters showing up in the mark V fighter fabricator.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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,<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the AI would not attack armored warheads (due to a "very low priority target" flag on those unit definitions).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where when the AI picked engineers or remains-rebuilders for reinforcements, it was "spending" too much on them.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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".<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Now they'll generally _move_ to a point near the target wormhole, but they won't try to traverse the wormhole itself.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where multiple human homeworlds (in SP or MP) were not increasing the guard post part of reinforcements.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding but very intermittent null-exception in tech-menu-button rendering.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where core/starship/experimental fabricators were not being considered by the D keybind.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where the AI would only produce carriers if the target planet already had 2 barracks, instead of 1.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug in FRD target sorting that was sometimes being overly sensitive to differences in how far away two targets were.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Made "what can I autotarget?" logic more consistent so that player-ally minor factions don't pop AI carriers.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where viewing a Core Spire Corvette Fabricator could cause unhandled exceptions (and the queue buttons to not show).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where minor faction and zombie ships could be affected by the player auto-kite controls.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where a cpa deploying could cause unhandled errors.<br />
<br />
* Military Command Stations:<br />
** 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).<br />
** Fixed a bug where the mkII and mkIII were still showing the mkI descriptive text, despite that now not being the same.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the fallen spire campaign could spawn two of the same shard-signal.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where the galaxy-nav code of AI-ally Dyson Gatlings was getting distracted from its main purpose.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a couple longstanding bugs that would cause very old saves to not load properly.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where hybrids, exo ships, and the like could switch to threat-fleet behavior.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** And a related bug where some of the special forces spawn logic could only access the special ship types of the first AI player.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed rare null exception that could happen when changing control groups.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a really longstanding bug where shots on a planet were sometimes visible even through the fog of war.<br />
<br />
[[Category:AI War Release Notes]]<br />
[[Category:Release Notes]]</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:5.000_Release&diff=29853AI War:5.000 Release2017-09-16T15:55:53Z<p>Nat: Add Category:AI War Release Notes</p>
<hr />
<div>== Statistics For The Curious ==<br />
<br />
* Between 4.021 and 5.000, we pushed out 53 distinct public beta releases over 91 days. That's an average of one release every 41 hours. <br />
<br />
* Community contributors assisted us with over 680 distinct bugs and suggestions-that-were-implemented (counting 133 distinct contributors).<br />
<br />
* The combined release notes for those 53 betas total over 360 kilobytes of text.<br />
<br />
* This document (which is over 41,000 words long) is the ''abbreviated'', organized version of the full release notes ([[AI War:Current Post-4.000 Beta|here]]).<br />
<br />
== Highlights ==<br />
<br />
* In general, if version 4.0 was a re-imagining of the game, version 5.0 is a refinement of the game to a mirror-like gloss. It takes the best of all the past versions, and blends them into what we feel is the definitive AI War experience. The game will continue to evolve, but 5.0 is the new rock-solid foundation upon which all future work will rest.<br />
<br />
* Nearly every combat ship in the game has been rebalanced. These things drift with time, and with the recent introduction of so many ships in the last two expansions and AI War 4.0, a sweeping overhaul was in order. The hardcore players have been really pleased with how the new balance is, and collaborated on it with us in depth. At an advanced level, this alone makes it like a whole new game.<br />
<br />
* The AI has gotten some major intelligence upgrades. It has a new "stalking" mechanic where it bides its time and attacks when you are most vulnerable and least expect it. It also is more proactive about retreats, better handles play deep strikes, has a network of core shield generators, uses carriers more effectively, and has other effectiveness upgrades.<br />
<br />
* The difficulty of the game in general hit a low point in the 3.x era, which a lot of players complained about. The game allows for any skill level, but at the upper end of play it was becoming too easy, and players were having to shift their difficulty level up to the point that it was getting grindy. Version 4.0 addressed this a bit, but there were so many balance changes there with the introductions of the new guard posts and guardians, not to mention the new player economy in that version, that it still wasn't everything we wanted. Now, with version 5.0, the old difficulty of the 2.x days returns with a vengeance. For those players playing on an inflated difficulty based on 3.x or 4.x, they should be prepared to get crushed.<br />
<br />
* The early game is now faster, and the game now "gets to the good part" a lot faster. Consequently, players playing on too high of a difficulty have even been finding themselves losing in the first ten or fifteen minutes of play. This is very helpful, as then you don't have to play for an hour or two to find out you're outclassed. On the flip side, the players are able to get going and start taking territory from the AI faster than ever when they are playing on their proper difficulty.<br />
<br />
* Lots and lots of internal performance and particularly memory improvements. The shift from the .NET platform to Unity/Mono was not without its drawbacks, and some things required a protracted amount of changing in order to get running super-smooth on the Mono runtime.<br />
<br />
* A complete revamp for Golems (from the TZR Expansion): they're now full-blown superweapons without tons of restrictions. The player can now choose from the "easy", "medium", and "hard" version of the new "Broken Golems" minor faction to determine what kind of challenge (if any) should balance out the advantage provided by the ultra-powerful Golems.<br />
<br />
* A whole new (paid) expansion has also been added to the game! Light of the Spire becomes available along with this updated release of the base game. Briefly summarizing the additions:<br />
** 3 New Minor Factions, including:<br />
*** Larger-than-starships, smaller-than-golems "Spirecraft" superweapons the player can build by mining a variety of finite (and quite rare on the upper end) asteroids.<br />
*** The "Fallen Spire" scripted-campaign (with an optional alternate path to victory!). Gratuitous plug: Has player-controllable modular capital ships LARGER than Golems.<br />
** Defender Mode, where your only goal is to hold off the AI until the timer runs out. Allows games as short as 15 minutes or as long as 4 hours (45 minutes is a good place to start).<br />
** 9 New Bonus Ship Types.<br />
** 8 New AI Types.<br />
** 8 New Map Types.<br />
** Over 40 minutes of new music from Pablo Vega.<br />
** And quite a bit more!<br />
<br />
== AI Updates ==<br />
<br />
* Hybrids will now launch an attack if at least 7/8ths of the hybrids that are coming are ready, and will not intentionally wait for the last 1/8th.<br />
<br />
* On difficulty 7 and up, AI ships now spread out 2x as much as before. AI ships that are waiting before going through a wormhole to a human planet now spread out 4x more diffusely to make them even harder for players to hit.<br />
<br />
* The AI now uses the intel data it has about the relative strengths of planets (as human players do), when determining whether or not to send its ships through a wormhole they are waiting on. This is different from the prior method, which was partly randomized, partly based on an accumulated number of 200 ships, and partly based on having a lot of ships incoming.<br />
** This is a far-reaching change to the emergent behavior, which will have many effects on the gameplay, some of which are likely to be unanticipated at this time. The general expected result is that the AI will not attack players with "trickles" of ships very often anymore, and will instead choose to build up before breaching. The other expected result is the AI acting more sensibly when its command station has been prematuraly destroyed or when ships are freed from a guard post.<br />
** On lower difficulties (<5), the AI actually overestimates its strength 5x, leading it to make dumber decisions. On difficulties less than 6, it overestimates its strength by half, leading it to make occasional stupid decisions there. Both of these are examples of the intentionally-sometimes-off decisions that make the lower-level AIs easier while also making reasonable mistakes a human might.<br />
** On difficulty 9 and up, the AI actually underestimates its strength by half, leading to it to have a greater tendency to wait to strike with overwhelming force.<br />
** These changes should also make the AI more effective in defender mode.<br />
<br />
* On difficulty 7 and up, when the AI forces on a planet are more than 2x outgunned in terms of firepower, the guards will be freed and will either engage the player forces en masse or will escape to fight another day, as appropriate.<br />
<br />
* When AI ships are fleeing from a planet, they will now tend to scatter a lot more than they used to, and have a much greater chance of circling around to an undefended or unexpected part of player territory. Paired with other recent changes that make the AIs more smart about when to attack a planet they are "stalking," this will make them a lot less predictable and a lot more dangerous.<br />
<br />
* New behavior for the AI! When the player goes on distant deepstrike runs—defined as having any human military ships more than four hops away from any human or neutral planet—the AIs both goes on high alert and starts spewing out ships from their home planets (or a random planet if their home planets are destroyed).<br />
** The tech level of the spawned ships will be whatever the AI's current tech level is, plus one (obviously between 1-5). Unless it's an AI home planet that is being deepstruck, or a planet adjacent to an AI home planet (we call these core planets), in which case the tech level is always 5. Watch out for that: you'll want some sort of launch pad within 4 hops of the AI home planet in order to take it without massive pain.<br />
** The spawned ships will be random fleet ships that the AI is allowed to use in waves, and each AI player will spawn a certain number of ships ship per event-second.<br />
** The event-second interval is defined as ( 11 - Floor(AIDifficultyLevel) ). So, for difficulty 7 or 7.6, that would be 11 - 7 = 4 seconds per interval.<br />
** The number of ships is defined as Floor(AIDifficultyLevel/2). So for difficulty 7, it would be 3 ships every 4 seconds, per AI player. On difficulty 8, it would be 4 ships every 3 seconds, per AI player.<br />
** These spawned ships are in free/threat mode, and will eventually attack the human players in whatever way they think will be most disruptive. They may engage the deep strikers, but more likely they will try to kill the planets of the players instead.<br />
** Note that all of these numbers are PER PLANET that has a deepstrike on it. So if you are deepstriking four planets, multiply those numbers by four. It's best to keep your forces together, and make the deepstrike raids as brief and effective as possible to avoid too strong a retaliation against your forces.<br />
<br />
* Border Aggression has always had a mechanism whereby it would get more severe the longer players played: the cap of total attacking units plus threat would increase by 20 per hour of play. The cap would basically not release any ships to border aggression if the total number of enemies attacking and/or threatening exceeds that cap.<br />
** However, there was a catch: the cap was capped at 1/4 the total size of the player's current military. This cap on the cap has now been removed, so very long games now get ever-increasing border aggression caps.<br />
** Note that this doesn't mean that border aggression will definitely increase linearly over an entire long game, but it won't be artificially kept low if it would have been high late in a 60-hour game or whatever.<br />
<br />
* Border Aggression is now keyed based on firepower. The caps for BA now go up by the equivalent of 20 mark III bombers per hour.<br />
<br />
* The AI now only has a 8% chance of swarming after "irreplaceable" units like ion cannons, ARSes, etc, rather than a 70% chance.<br />
** The AI already has logic in place for valuing targets even beyond this, but much more flexible and less gap-in-the-wall type logic, so having this be very infrequent is good. However, still having it present is also good, so that occasionally the AI will mass their ships on a frontal assault on something valuable, always a good thing.<br />
<br />
* Hybrids looking for attack missions are now more likely to heavily prefer a "main target" planet.<br />
<br />
* When Advanced Hybrids are on for their player, Defensive Hybrids will now switch to an offensive role to add pressure to certain other major AI offensives. This can make them more of a danger in the mid/late game. When this happens an alert message ("Defensive Hybrids Are Mobilizing") will be displayed for about 2 minutes after the "switch".<br />
<br />
* Put in a change that should make the AI react better when saboteur-type ships, or player immobile structures, are on an AI planet.<br />
<br />
* AI ships will now be angered (rather than just alerted) when firing upon human ships within roughly 11,000 range, which will make them (and their guard posts and fellow guards) fall under normal targeting rules, thus hopefully fixing the situations where human ships were being shot at by a relatively nearby AI ship but not retaliating (they shouldn't retaliate if the AI ship is way far away, as otherwise this can cause long range human ships to aggro the entire planet pretty quick).<br />
<br />
* Non-melee AI ships that are under a protecting strong force field now will no longer move until they are out from under the force field (from it dying or whatever), though they will still receive orders from the AI as normal. This makes the AI-ships-under-AI-forcefield case really a lot more back like how it used to be in the 2.0 days, where those were interesting and tricky nests of AI ships to take out.<br />
<br />
* In the past, for the AI to be allowed to retreat from a planet it had to have had at least half of its ships on the planet for at least 30 seconds. That prevented a number of back-and-forth behaviors that are now prevented by other means, and this behavior was now leading to some "gap in the wall" type exploits. The limit has now been changed to 3 seconds instead.<br />
<br />
* The AI will now more properly react to cloaked ships on its planet; much the same as a human player, it now knows how many ships are there and the general threat at that planet, just not specifically which ships are there or where they are. Actually, in some cases the AI has long known this (same as the AI), but in some critical decision-making logic it was incorrectly barred from that data.<br />
<br />
* When looking for ships to add as part of a CPA, the AI now also looks inside barracks and pulls ships out to use in the CPA. Some (but definitely not all) of the smaller-than-they-should-have-been CPAs were relate to lots of ships being stuck in barracks.<br />
<br />
* When there are simply too few ships in the galaxy for the desired tech level of CPA, in the past it always has counted downwards.<br />
** So, for example, if you were supposed to get 5000 mark II ships in a CPA but it could only find 1000, then it would look to mark I ships to see if it could find any more.<br />
** However, there were many common cases where there would even still be too few ships in the galaxy of the correct or lower levels. Now the game will loop back around and start including higher mark ships.<br />
*** So, to continue the example from above, if it had found 1000 mark II ships and, say, 500 mark I ships, then it would start adding mark III ships to the CPA as well. Odds are very good that it would find the remaining 3500 ships in even just one mark higher, so that would fulfill the order for 5000 ships.<br />
*** Of course, in the event that it doesn't find enough ships directly in the level above, it just keeps counting up, all the way to mark V.<br />
** Bear in mind that certain ships are specifically excluded from CPAs: immobile ships, ships under force fields, ships in carriers, ships that are already free/threat, ships that are minor factions or zombies, ships that are being coordinated by a hybrid hive or similar, ships that aren't counted as "extended mobile military," starships, and guardians. These restrictions aren't new, but bear mentioning.<br />
<br />
* Made some various internal improvements to how the AI decides to stay at a planet to defend itself against enemy threats (most notably cloaked enemy threats, but in general). The specific rules are difficult to really explain as it's all internal math, but in general the result should be for it to more properly weight threats and react more like what a human would do.<br />
<br />
== General Large Gameplay Additions ==<br />
<br />
* (LotS-only) New Campaign Type: Defender Mode.<br />
<br />
* (LotS-only) New Minor Faction: Fallen Spire.<br />
<br />
* (LotS-only) New Minor Factions: Spirecraft Easy, Spirecraft Medium, Spirecraft Hard.<br />
<br />
* Three new minor factions have been added to The Zenith Remnant (nearly a year after the expansion's release—crazy, right?). The purpose of these is to provide a more satisfactory range of experiences with golems to match player tastes, rather than the old "there are always three there" method. The three minor factions are:<br />
** Broken Golems (Easy)<br />
*** Massive broken golems can be found around the galaxy, ready for humanity to capture and repair them. Once repaired, they represent enormous power to use against the AI.<br />
*** The EASY version of this minor faction simply gives you the golems with nothing in the way of benefit to the AI. Consequently, your adjusted score is also halved.<br />
** Broken Golems (Moderate)<br />
*** Massive broken golems can be found around the galaxy, ready for humanity to capture and repair them. Once repaired, they represent enormous power to use against the AI.<br />
*** The MODERATE version of this minor faction gives you the golems at a moderate energy cost and with a small AI Progress increase upon repairing them from their broken states. Consequently, your adjusted score is also reduced by 1/3.<br />
*** Using the moderate version will automatically disable the easy version if the easy version is also selected.<br />
** Broken Golems (Hard)<br />
*** Massive broken golems can be found around the galaxy, ready for humanity to capture and repair them. Once repaired, they represent enormous power to use against the AI.<br />
*** The HARD version of this minor faction simply gives you the golems with nothing in the way of benefit to the AI. However, whether or not you choose to capture any golems, the AI will be launching periodic large exogalactic strikeforces against you—so you're highly advised to get some golems in order to survive.<br />
*** Using the hard version will automatically disable the easy and moderate versions if either of them is also selected.<br />
<br />
* (LotS-only) New AI types: Vanilla and Everything.<br />
<br />
* A new Minor Faction has been added for Light of the Spire: Spire Civilian Leaders<br />
** Up to 10 Spire Civilian Leader Outposts are scattered throughout the galaxy in the control of the AI. Against their will, every hour each outpost increases the AI Progress by 1. You have the choice of either destroying these outposts for colloduing with the AI, or freeing the outposts by capturing the planet from the AI. When freed, each of these outposts will gratefully decrease the AI Progress by 3 every hour.<br />
<br />
* Six new maze-like maps have been added for Light of the Spire:<br />
** Maze A<br />
*** Planets are organized into a maze-like grid that uses the Recursive Backtracker algorithm on a grid to create the maze.<br />
** Maze A Easy<br />
*** Planets are organized into a maze-like grid that uses the Recursive Backtracker algorithm on a grid to create the maze, but with random extra links added in various spots.<br />
** Maze B<br />
*** Planets are organized into a maze-like grid that uses the Recursive Backtracker algorithm on a crosshatch to create the maze.<br />
** Maze B Easy<br />
*** Planets are organized into a maze-like grid that uses the Recursive Backtracker algorithm on a crosshatch to create the maze, but with random extra links added in various spots.<br />
** Maze C<br />
*** Planets are organized into a maze-like grid that uses the Prims algorithm on a grid to create the maze.<br />
** Maze D<br />
*** Planets are organized into a maze-like grid that uses the Prims algorithm on a crosshatch to create the maze.<br />
<br />
* Two new grid-like maps have been added for Light of the Spire:<br />
** Grid<br />
*** Planets are organized into an orderly grid.<br />
** Crosshatch<br />
*** Planets are organized into an orderly grid with the angles also filled in.<br />
<br />
* Added a new LotS AI Plot: Beachheads<br />
** Each wave that the AI sends has a 10% chance of being half-size, but including a Beachhead structure that interferes with supply on the planet being attacked (thus knocking out everything from turrets to forcefields until the beachhead is destroyed), as well as preventing player ships from retreating. Counterattack waves, event waves, raid engine waves, and other specialized forms of waves won't ever include a beachhead.<br />
** Five marks of AI Beachhead have also been added:<br />
*** Tough, armored, immobile long-range AI ship that gets sent along with some waves. Interferes with supply on the planet being attacked (thus knocking out everything from turrets to forcefields until the beachhead is destroyed), as well as preventing its enemies' ships from retreating.<br />
<br />
* New Moderate AI Type: Spireling<br />
** Fairly aggressive AI that uses only Spire fleet ships.<br />
** Extra Ships: All Spire fleet ships.<br />
<br />
* New Moderate AI Type: Thief<br />
** Fairly aggressive AI that uses ships with tractor beams and leech capabilities. This can lead to a distinct disregard for player property rights.<br />
** Extra Ships: Etherjet tractors, Spire Tractor Platforms, Parasites<br />
<br />
* New Hard AI Type: Retaliatory<br />
** Starts with Counterattack Guard Posts on most planets, and can actually have more than one on a planet (if that planet would have gotten one normally). This can lead to devastating counter attacks particularly when taking a mkIV planet.<br />
<br />
* New Hard AI Type: Crafty Spire<br />
** Starts with various Spirecraft (which are generally bigger than starships and smaller than golems) on its planets.<br />
** Extra Ships: Spirecraft.<br />
<br />
* New Hard AI Type: Extreme Raider<br />
** Very nasty AI that uses raid-oriented fleet ships and really likes sending Raid Starships along with normal waves.<br />
** Extra Ships: Raider, Spire Stealth Battleship, Cutlass, Vampire, Teleport Raider<br />
<br />
* New Hard AI Type: Spire Hammer<br />
** Generally solid AI that also adds a powerful Spire ship to each wave (in addition to the normal starship). At higher tech levels it will even send Capital-ship level vessels.<br />
** Extra Ships: Spire Frigates and Capital Ships.<br />
<br />
* Added 32 new achievements (2 base-game, 30 LotS).<br />
<br />
== Co-Op Improvements ==<br />
<br />
* In multiplayer games, all player-controlled command stations now automatically fold out into mobile builders for allied players. This saves time and hassle with sending mobile builders around and keeping them alive, making the actual mobile builders now simply a matter for use in enemy/neutral territory.<br />
<br />
* All fabricators now have foldouts (like advanced factories), so that when one player captures a core fabricator in a multiplayer game, all the players on his/her team now also gain access to use the fabricator. This prevents the incentivization of players to gift fabricators back and forth between one another, while also raising the usefulness of fabricators in multiplayer games by a substantial margin.<br />
<br />
* Rebelling Human Colonies now have ship-production foldouts for other players when controlled by the human team.<br />
<br />
* Re-implemented the Give Resources context menu.<br />
<br />
== Performance Improvements ==<br />
<br />
* GZip compression is now used instead of Zip compression for savegames. This has the advantages of: 1) resulting in significantly smaller save files, especially for large savegames—as much as 30% savings at the upper end; 2) resulting in the correspondingly smaller full sync network requirements for multiplayer; 3) hopefully solving the "pthread_getschedparam" issue on OSX, which seems to quite likely have been related to unintentionally-multithreaded zip processing in the autosave process.<br />
<br />
* The way that the AI thread keeps track of Astro Train Stations and Special Forces Rally Points (of all sorts) is now significantly more efficient and effective, resulting in somewhat lower RAM and CPU use on the AI thread in general.<br />
<br />
* The way that expansion enabled status is checked and set in code is now more efficient on RAM and CPU use.<br />
<br />
* The method for randomizing lists has been made generic rather than object-based, so that lots of boxing and casting no longer occurs with it, saving a bit of CPU and more transient memory usage.<br />
<br />
* Guardians and guard posts no longer try to load colormasks off the disk (which were all blank, anyway) to save a bit of RAM use and disk access time.<br />
<br />
* The way that unit data is synced to the AI thread is now better for purposes of cold storage and similar in particular.<br />
<br />
* An ENORMOUS number of memory-static-ness updates have been made, primarily centering around converting some very central generic dictionaries to arrays. This also serves as a performance boost, and makes savegames load a little faster, as well as the game itself.<br />
<br />
* Added some measures to make the game less likely to hang onto memory it no longer needs (excess rollup list space, dead ships still linked to other objects, etc).<br />
<br />
* The range circles no longer draw with partially-transparent colors for the lines, thus reducing their GPU overhead quite a bit, more or less depending on the GPU in question.<br />
<br />
* Improved memory/cpu performance of sending/saving planet state (string.concat -> StringBuilder.Append). Not done terribly commonly, but every bit helps.<br />
<br />
* A number of rollup lists on the Player object that were really human-only (but which were bloated by lots of AI ships on the AI versions of the objects) have been made human-only. A few have been removed. This lets the functionality remain the same while having a bit less ram usage and a bit faster loading of savegames.<br />
<br />
* The old mission summary was still in the game, taking up time getting periodically recalculated, but invisible. This was just a porting artifact, and it has now been removed.<br />
<br />
* A revised savegame format has now been put in place, with an emphasis on using less RAM to create it.<br />
** One happy side effect of this is that that savegame files are now about 7/8 to 4/5 of their former size. They still load in about the same amount of time, though.<br />
** Another side effect is that the new savegames actually show their loading process as they load, now, rather than just sitting there silently on parsing data.<br />
** At any rate, the chief purpose of this is to make the creation of savegames as well as the syncing of multiplayer network state into a lower-RAM-using process to avoid GC heap errors when players are already running near the RAM redline. The new format is vastly superior in that regard, possibly using as little as half as much RAM as before, depending on the exact circumstances of the save.<br />
<br />
* Put in a new CPU-efficiency-improving shift in the targeting logic for ships in FRD mode: while in FRD mode (and always for ships that are snipers), a much-less-accurate but much-faster-to-calculate range value is now used. Normally accurate ranges are important in battle, because ships have to know if they are in range to hit their target, etc. However, for ships in FRD mode, they can move to hit their target, so they only need to get a rougher idea of which ships are vaguely closest.<br />
** The main side effect of this change, aside from the speed boost, is that ships in FRD mode will choose more poorly between targets that are close together and also at a diagonal from the targeting ship.<br />
<br />
* The "are we on the same team" logic, which gets called a lot, is now more efficient in the general all-ais-versus-all-humans cases.<br />
<br />
* An even more enormous change has been made to how the rollups are calculated, basically making huge chunks of them per-team. This is a notable speed and RAM boost for large games and especially for multiplayer games. It particularly makes it more efficient for ships to change planets, and for savegames to be loaded.<br />
<br />
* Massively refactored the AI-thread rollups in general, so that way fewer object references are required (somewhere around 1/3 as many references as before in single player, and an even lower percentage in multiplayer). These shifts in general will improve RAM and CPU use on the host computer, amongst the gameplay benefits already noted above.<br />
<br />
* AI mobile military ship combining is no longer player-specific. This means that AI ships will be condensed further than they once were when needed (when both AIs have ships at a planet), and it also means that this process requires less CPU to calculate.<br />
** The same is also now true for the creation of AI Carriers out of mobile AI ships, which will result in fewer, more-appropriately-filled-to-capacity carriers in most cases.<br />
<br />
* Put in a number of internal efficiency improvements with regard to properly clearing internal rollup lists and releasing their memory.<br />
<br />
* Put in a number of internal transient-RAM-reductions related to converting some AI thread dictionaries to int arrays.<br />
<br />
* The AI thread now thinks almost entirely in terms of team-based tactics, but especially in terms of things like warp gates, etc. Thus there really should never again be any situations where one AI player is unable to find a planet to warp into just because there is only one warp gate bordering human planets and that warp gate belongs to the other AI player.<br />
<br />
* Added in a couple of "safety garbage collections" into the load savegame process to attempt to prevent the game from grabbing any more memory than it has to when loading large savegames.<br />
<br />
* Since it did more than we thought it would for the memory efficiency of planet serialization, converted player serialization from string.concat to StringBuilder.Append.<br />
<br />
* A bunch of more optimizations internal to the foreground objects (ships, structures, etc) has been made. The general effect of these changes is once again to reduce the memory footprint a bit, but in this case also to help reduce the CPU overhead of creating new foreground objects. This should help savegame loading speed a small bit, but in our testing it doesn't seem to have been much help so far.<br />
** All in all, these changes plus the other ones earlier in this same release version account for about 205 bytes of RAM saved per ship in the game: that's about 2MB per 10k ships. Even just in a 70k ship game, that's fairly notable that we could save 14mb there in this fashion. A lot of these also boost CPU efficiency to a minor degree, which is also cool.<br />
<br />
* Okay, wow. We majorly restructured the way that "other objects" (basically, everything that is not a ship: explosions, shots, junk, rocks, shield hits, etc) is stored and initialized in memory. A lot of this was very old code that hadn't been reimagined significantly since early alpha, way before 1.0.<br />
** Not only did our restructuring result in lower overall RAM use for these objects (both ongoing and transient), it also resulted in lower CPU for creating new copies of them—this helps a small bit during very large battles, but it also has extremely reduced the amount of time it requires to load a savegame. For a savegame that previously took 16 seconds, it now takes 10 seconds, etc. The effect of this is larger on maps with more planets.<br />
** Also fixed a rather obscure potential desync related to shot movement as part of this. Nobody had reported it, but it could have randomly struck in fairly uncommon circumstances.<br />
<br />
* Made ships much more likely to clear their autotargeting lists and release the memory used for them in a timely fashion when no longer in combat.<br />
<br />
* Some notable performance improvements have been made to the ship collision-avoidance movement algorithms, which are some of the most expensive in the game.<br />
<br />
* The AI is a lot more savvy now with some of its internal firepower weightings, using different kinds of weights for different situations. Overall this makes it feel a lot smarter when it comes to how it decides to do stuff with its free/threat ships.<br />
<br />
* A lot of internal changes have been made to make the code for referencing the art more efficient and compact.<br />
<br />
== Interface Improvements ==<br />
<br />
* Added 2 new planet-specific controls:<br />
** Alert When # Enemy Units Present<br />
** Alert When # Aggressive Units Present<br />
** If set to something higher than zero, the alert window will note when the planet has >= the specified number of enemy or threat (respectively) units. This only works if you have scout intel on the planet (command station or scout drone provide that, among others).<br />
<br />
* Augmented the tooltip of the "Threat" section of the resource bar to display a list of all planets with known threat units, and the count thereof. Only displays planets you have scout intel on.<br />
<br />
* Added a new tab to the Controls screen called "Ship Design", for defining custom templates for modular ships (i.e. the three marks of Riot Control Starship).<br />
<br />
* Added context menu item for when you have a single ship selected that is modular, for opening the ship design window with that ship's modules prepopulated into the slots so that you can save the design. You can also change the modules manually or select another defined custom design and apply it to the ship you used to get to the window.<br />
<br />
* Cross-planet gather points (for docks and otherwise) now visually show movement lines on the planet itself, thus making it far more clear what's going on.<br />
<br />
* If a rally post is in FRD mode or attack-move mode, it will now set those modes on any ships that are directed to/through that rally post.<br />
<br />
* The "View Ship Modules" context menu item now works on groups of more than one of the same designable type. If more than one distinct designable type is in the selection, the option is not available. Please note that it will only actually display the modules for one of the selected ships, but changes applied to the ships will be applied to them all (meaning that they will all wind up with the same design if you apply anything to the ships).<br />
<br />
* Added new "Auto Load" command.<br />
** Can be issued via Unit Commmand context menu (either click the button or via context-menu-specific keybind, which has no default binding) or the Auto Load keybind (which also has no default binding).<br />
** When issued:<br />
*** Tells all can-be-transported units in the selection to try to load themselves into a transport on their planet. If insufficient transport space is available, those that can find room will try to load while the others may do nothing.<br />
*** If any transports are currently in the selection, only those transports are eligible for the auto-load operation. If no transports are in the selection, all allied transports on the planet are eligible.<br />
*** Each ship to be loaded will prefer nearby transports, but if multiple transports are within roughly 5000 range units of one another, ships will generally prefer to fill one transport before beginning to fill the next.<br />
<br />
* Added new control to the Planet-Specific tab of the Controls window: "Redirection Tries To Maintain Garrison Of".<br />
** When this is greater than zero, and the number of allied mobile military ships on the planet is less than the specified number, redirection rally posts won't actually redirect ships entering the planet.<br />
** Functionally this allows you to tell the planet to hold onto a "garrison" of X ships, filling up from the redirection-post patrols you've set up.<br />
** Note that you have relatively little control over the composition of the garrison, since faster ships will tend to fill empty slots unless you've got your patrol groups on group-move. Nonetheless, this can be useful for making sure a planet has some kind of defensive force without having to nanny it.<br />
<br />
* Added new control to the Planet-Specific tab of the Controls window: "Stop Building Military If Have Garrison Of".<br />
** When this is greater than zero, and the number of allied mobile military ships on the planet is greater than or equal to the specified number, build queues on the planet will be suspended (not actually paused, per se, but similar to that).<br />
** This also allows establishing a garrison, and gives you more control over composition but requires that you build a space dock (or whatever) on the planet and set up the queue, etc. Anyway, you can set up a looping queue of, say, 5 fighters, 1 bomber, and 1 missile frigate and a garrison threshold of 50 and it will produce ships until it hits 50 ships and then stop until some of the ships die or leave; it will then replace those (though not necessarily with the same type, of course).<br />
** Does not impact self-building units like turrets, or the construction of modules on modular ships.<br />
<br />
* The "Mobile Military" filter option on the galaxy map has been renamed to "Mobile Military (Units)." A new option, called "Mobile Military (Firepower)" has been added, which shows the My, Allied, and Team values in terms of the firepower rating of their ships (divided by 10,000) instead of by the raw number of ships.<br />
** When enabled, this also effects the display of the enemy ship counts on the galaxy map.<br />
** This option makes it a lot easier to tell the relative strengths of planets, since ship counts are all but meaningless now: what with spirecraft, golems, guardians, and other large ships making it so that one or two ships can take on hundreds or thousands of smaller ships. This also helps to account for the relative mark levels of ships, too.<br />
<br />
* Fabricators will now be listed under the "Build Queues" quick button at the bottom of the screen.<br />
<br />
* Added both a global and a per-planet "Non Military Do Not Rally" control to the controls window.<br />
** If this toggle is checked, all your non-military ships will ignore all rally posts.<br />
** Please note that if the "Reclaimed Ships Rally To Rally Post" global control is enabled, a non-military ship that has just been reclaimed will still try to rally.<br />
<br />
* New galaxy map filters have been added for advanced research stations, advanced factories, core fabricators, experimental fabricators, experimental starship fabricators, and broken golems. The default keybindings are all unbound.<br />
<br />
* New galaxy map filters have been added for all of the various detected core shield generators. This makes it way easier to plot an attack with them. The default keybindings are all unbound.<br />
<br />
* New galaxy map filters have been added for each of the asteroid types. The default keybindings are unbound.<br />
<br />
* New galaxy map filters have been added for detected AI Progress reducers (combined counts of co-processors, data centers, and superterminals). The default keybindings are unbound.<br />
<br />
* There are now buttons for both the high scores and achievements in the in-game menu, so that players don't have to go out to the main menu to see those.<br />
<br />
* Added "Export Balance Stats" button to reference tab; its tooltip explains how it functions but basically it's just for use in our new effort to systematically establish a rough-baseline balance of the fleet ship types. That's still very much a work in progress, of course.<br />
<br />
* Reimplmented "Give Resources" context menu.<br />
** Keybind: OpenGiveResourcesContextMenu can open this menu any time in the game (unless a nearer-scope active context has the same key bound, of course), no default binding.<br />
** Keybind: ContextMenu_TopLevel_OpenGiveResourcesContextMenu can open this menu from the top-level context menu (which is also new in this version).<br />
** Keybinds: ContextMenu_GiveResources_ToggleGivingToPlayer1 (and 7 other ones for player 2, 3, ... , 8) works on the give-resources menu and toggles whether the specified player will receive the resources when given. Defaults to Alpha1 through Alpha8 (top-of-keyboard number keys). Note that giving to multiple players gives the full amount to each, not splitting it or anything complicated like that.<br />
** Keybind: ContextMenu_GiveResources_IncreaseMetal works on the give-resources menu and increases the metal-to-give by 1,000. Defaults to Alpha9.<br />
** Keybind: ContextMenu_GiveResources_IncreaseCrystal works on the give-resources menu and increases the crystal-to-give by 1,000. Defaults to Alpha0.<br />
** Keybind: ContextMenu_GiveResources_DecreaseMetal works on the give-resources menu and decreases the metal-to-give by 1,000. Defaults to Minus (next to Alpha0 on many keyboards).<br />
** Keybind: ContextMenu_GiveResources_DecreaseCrystal works on the give-resources menu and decreases the crystal-to-give by 1,000. Defaults to Equals (next to Minus on many keyboards).<br />
** Keybind: ContextMenu_GiveResources_MakeAmount10000 works on the give-resources menu; while it is held the amount of the increase/decrease metal/crystal keybinds is 10,000 instead of 1,000. Defaults to LeftControl (and on default settings RightControl is an alias to LeftControl).<br />
** Keybind: ContextMenu_GiveResources_MakeAmount100000 works on the give-resources menu; while it is held the amount of the increase/decrease metal/crystal keybinds is 100,000 instead of 1,000. Defaults to LeftAlt.<br />
** Keybind: ContextMenu_GiveResources_ExecuteGive works on the give-resources menu, it executes the give operation configured using the other buttons. Defaults to Backspace (which may prove to be ill-advised, dunno, but it's next to Equals on many keyboards and you can change the bind and a lot of people just use the mouse anyway). Note that this will also close the context menu unless you're holding the SuppressContextMenuAutoClose keybind that's been around for a while (it defaults to LeftShift).<br />
<br />
* Added new top-level context menu that opens when you alt+right-click (that's the default binding) empty space when you have no ships selected (if you have ships selected it still opens the with-selection top-level menu). The only thing on this new menu is the now-re-implemented Give Resources menu.<br />
<br />
* Added Galaxy-Wide and Planet-Specific versions of three new toggle controls: Auto Build MkI Energy Reactor, Auto Build MkII Energy Reactor, Auto Build MkIII Energy Reactor.<br />
<br />
* Added "Experimental Auto-Kite Behavior" textbox to the galaxy controls window.<br />
** This is an experimental control, use at your own risk.<br />
** Valid values are 0 through 50,000 (no commas in the textbox, please). If this is not zero, all your non-melee, non-sniper ships with greater than the specified range will automatically pull away from their target so that they are (effectiveRange - 500) range units away.<br />
** We're working with some players to see if this results in desirable behavior.<br />
<br />
* All of the various galaxy map filters now have both Units and Firepower variants.<br />
<br />
* The Attacking ships tooltip has been updated to show the same kind of sorted per-planet info that the threatening ships tooltip does.<br />
<br />
* Added new Galaxy Display Mode: "Detected Threat"; only displays data from planets with current scout intel.<br />
<br />
* Added new Galaxy Display Mode: "Detected Threat Firepower"; only displays data from planets with current scout intel. This displays the total rough firepower of the threat ships (the raw value is divided by 1000 to make it a bit easier to read; it's a relative value anyway).<br />
<br />
* Added new Galaxy Display Mode: "Detected Core Shield Generators"; works like the previously-existing single-type modes, displays all 5 types of core shield generator each with a different color.<br />
** The old single-type modes have been removed.<br />
<br />
* When players have scouted a planet, forever after it will include counts in the upper-left alerts window whenever there are enemy warp gates (reinforce or warp) at a planet. This should greatly help with player confusion on a number of fronts, the most frequent of which is the AI Eyes in recent times.<br />
<br />
* Spirecraft, golems, hunter/killers, and avengers all now count as "massive" ships that give the player a warning in the alerts box onscreen while the AI has these ships in free/threat mode. This way players are still warned about oversized ships that are a particular threat to them, without needing to make the actual Attack and Threat displays into something confusing (aka firepower-based). <br />
<br />
* When placing ships via far-zoom, their niche images now show if they have them. This makes it a lot clearer what's going on there.<br />
<br />
* The buy buttons in ship menus now include the niche images if they have them. This makes it a lot easier to tell apart the various types of command stations, and things of that nature.<br />
<br />
* The tech buttons in the science menu now also includes the niche images, rather than including hard-to-read overlay text.<br />
<br />
* Filenames for savegames are now fully validated, avoiding characters that are not allowed, filenames that are not allowed on windows (CON, LPT1, etc), and things like directory path separators that would cause the file to get saved into a subdirectory by accident.<br />
<br />
* Added a toggle to the Resource Flows tab of the Stats window, defaulting to un-toggled, that:<br />
** If unchecked, the grid is in "detail" mode and displays one row per ship with a non-zero metal or crystal impact (units with only an energy impact are omitted due to sheer volume).<br />
** If checked, the grid is in "summary" mode and displays one row for each distinct type of ship with a non-zero metal, crystal, or energy impact. This can be very helpful for figuring out where all your energy is going.<br />
<br />
* When ships such as viral shredders replicate, they now are automatically added to any control groups that their source ship was in.<br />
<br />
* When ships such as viral shredders replicate, if the original was selected, the new ship will also be selected.<br />
<br />
* The icons on the intel summary in the galaxy map now are colorized by player and include the niche icons.<br />
<br />
* A message is now shown in the alerts window when an enemy black hole machine is at the current planet being viewed.<br />
<br />
* The different kinds of alerts in the upper left are now colorized by type, to make telling them apart easier to do.<br />
<br />
* The "Result" column on the reference tab of the stats screen now displays a percent next to each Win or Loss value, representing the margin of win or loss. <br />
** So Win(80%) on a row in the table means that the type selected in the dropbox above the table will beat that row's type and still have 80% health/ships left (if it's one vs one it roughly corresponds to how much health the individual will have left, if it's cap vs cap it roughly corresponds to how much total health the ships will have left). <br />
** A Loss(80%) means that row's type will beat the dropdown's type with 80% left. <br />
** Sorting by the Result column will now sort from Win(100%) to Win(1%) to Draw to Loss(1%) to Loss(100%) and vice versa.<br />
<br />
* When in the lobby, if players Ctrl+click a planet that is a valid starting point, they will automatically claim all the planets that have not yet been claimed. Similarly, ctrl+right-clicking deselects all planets that player had previously selected. This shows up in the keybindings window under the Anytime controls.<br />
<br />
* The counts of scouts on the galaxy display mode now just displays literal scouts, rather than everything that has scouting ability (like commandos).<br />
<br />
* A message is now sent to the human players in the chat log if a warp gate guardian is added on a planet adjacent to one of their planets (or next to a neutral planet), stating what type of warp gate guardian was added and on which AI planet.<br />
** In exchange, warp gate guardians, which are pretty nasty, are now twice as likely to occur. This is still incredibly unlikely however, something like a 2 in 400 chance at the moment—and it will only get less likely as more guardians are added over time (as happens with the dispersal of all guardians).<br />
<br />
* The command station foldouts in multiplayer now process the auto-frd-engineers and auto-frd-military controls in the same way as a command station.<br />
<br />
* Added galaxy-wide and per-planet integer-textbox controls for "Engineers Do Not Assist Large Projects".<br />
** If this is not zero, your engineers will not auto-assist a self-building structure or repair a structure with a per-second metal or crystal cost that is equal to or greater than the specified value.<br />
** This ONLY applies to assisting self-building units and repairing units, it does not apply to assisting build queues (of a Space Dock, for example).<br />
** It only triggers on the higher of the metal or crystal cost-per-second values, not the sum of them.<br />
** If you've defined a value for this at the per-planet level and at the galaxy-wide level, the game will use the per-planet value and ignore the galaxy-wide value for that planet.<br />
** The galaxy-wide version defaults to 400. There aren't very many things you can normally build that are that high, even on low caps. But Sniper Turrets and Fortresses and whatnot are certainly up there. The per-planet versions default to 0, meaning disabled.<br />
<br />
* The standard galaxy-map number-under-planet display of "how many dangerous AI ships are on this planet" will now also display the total number of ships in AI barracks and carriers in parenthesis next to the main number (if that's zero, it doesn't display anything extra).<br />
<br />
* When cross planet attacks arrive, they now state (via chat messages) how many ships of each mark level were just freed.<br />
<br />
* When AI Eyes or SuperTerminals are spewing out ships, a warning message (like the "you have flown into a minefield" message) is now shown. This is helpful particularly with the AI Eye for making sure that players (especially new players) aren't accidentally setting them off.<br />
<br />
* When alarm posts are triggered, there is now a chat message sent saying what kind of alarm post was triggered and on what planet.<br />
<br />
* The game now makes it clear when a wave or CPA that is incoming was triggered by a ship—guard post, raid engine, scrap wave, or otherwise. This should substantially help reduce confusion about the deep raids into player territory.<br />
<br />
== Graphical Improvements ==<br />
<br />
* The game is no longer able to use multiple copies of the same starfield background to draw the starfield effect (that was able to make it look blurry when that happened).<br />
<br />
* The awesome modified version of the short range guard post, missile guard post, and MLRS guard post that were created by HitmanN as a mod have now been integrated into the main game.<br />
<br />
* Spire ships now have a new blue explosion animation, like the Zenith ships have a green explosion.<br />
<br />
* The awesome modified version of the beam guardian that was created by HitmanN as a mod has now been integrated into the main game.<br />
<br />
* Laser Cannon Modules (for the Riot Control Starships, Hybrids, and Spire capital ships) now use new laser shot graphics generously donated by HitmanN, the Hybrid and Spire lasers use different colors for the different power levels (mkI = red, mkII = orange, mkIII = green, mkIV = blue) and the Riot laser mkI and mkII also use different colors.<br />
<br />
* The actual hull of ships no longer show up as pink or green while being munitions-boosted or shield-boosted. This looked rather odd, was unneeded, and especially made the spire ships bubble-gum pink, heh.<br />
<br />
* "Weak" force fields that protect their allied ships as normal but which do not collide with enemy ships (such as those by shield bearers, etc) now have their own special graphic to denote this.<br />
<br />
* Put in place the fancy new forcefield-hit effects by Hans-Martin Portmann, which he'd originally created as a mod.<br />
<br />
* The graphics for shield modules have been changed to much, much nicer ones provided by HitmanN, thanks!<br />
<br />
* The "active" wormholes shown when an advanced warp sensor is present are now shown in a bright yellow instead of the dull red, to avoid issues for red/green colorblind players.<br />
<br />
== New Ships ==<br />
<br />
* At long last, due to popular demand, there are now Mark V Fighters in the game. What's more, there are also now Mark V Bulletproof Fighters and MicroFighters.<br />
<br />
** There are also now core fabricators for all three of these ship types.<br />
<br />
* Four new AI Core Guard Posts have been added for LotS: Booster, Cross Planet Attack, Heavy Beam, and Raid Engine.<br />
** All four of these basically add variety to the end-of-game scenarios (most specifically the CPA guard post is wildly different), which has been a long-term goal for the game for a while now. Because of the comparative rarity of AI Core Guard Posts (they only show up on the AI homeworlds), we won't be adding too many of these in this expansion, though—more focus will be going into the regular Guard Posts (mark I-V) that show up on all the AI planets randomly, as variety is even more critical there (in one sense).<br />
<br />
* 35 new guardians have been added to LotS (5 marks each of 7 new guardian types): Carrier, EMP, Self Destruction, Special Forces Rally, Vampire, Warp Gate, and Zombie.<br />
** EMP guardians only appear on difficulty 7 and up.<br />
** Self-destruction guardians only appear on difficulty 8 and up.<br />
** Warp gate guardians only appear on difficulty 7 and up.<br />
** The rest of the guardians have a more normal difficulty spread, and thus appear at all difficulty levels.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS bonus ship class has been added: Spire Gravity Drain (Mark I-V)<br />
** Large, slow ship slows the movement of enemy ships near to it. Also has powerful short-range lasers.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS bonus ship class has been added: Spire Gravity Ripper (Mark I-V)<br />
** Large, high-health, slow ship temporarily halts the movement of enemy ships with every hit of its weak, short-range, rapid-fire energy bursts. Best used in combination with other ships to keep fast targets from escaping.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS bonus ship class has been added: Spire Mini Ram (Mark I-V)<br />
** This miniature battering ram specializes in high-health targets, crashing into them for high damage and destroying itself in the process. Unable to hit smaller ships.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS bonus ship class has been added: Spire Tractor Platform (Mark I-V)<br />
** Large, slow alien vessel is bristling with small guns but most importantly many tractor beams. This has obvious defensive uses, but can also be used to hold enemy ships at bay while longer range allied ships take them out.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS bonus ship class has been added: Spire Teleporting Leech (Mark I-V)<br />
** Large teleporting ship fires lightning shots. Reclaims enemy ships it kills (reclaimed ships have health = half damage inflicted by reclamator).<br />
<br />
* A new LotS bonus ship class has been added: Spire Stealth Battleship (Mark I-V)<br />
** Powerful battleship with onboard cloaking options as well as a portable radar dampener that makes enemy ships have to be in very close range to hit it at all (radar dampening does not affect the ability of enemy ships to hit other ships, just this one).<br />
<br />
* The last of the new LotS bonus ship classes has been added: Spire Armor Rotter (Mark I-V)<br />
** Shots do fairly little damage, but eat away at the armor of ships they hit with each shot. Ship armor gradually regenerates over time (it takes up to 10 minutes to fully regenerate, depending on how much armor the target has), but cannot be directly repaired. Thus the armor rotters can create a window of opportunity for other ships to strike high-armor ships.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS bonus ship class has been added: Spire Maw (Mark I-V)<br />
** Huge alien vessel that swallows transportable enemy ships and gradually attritions them. If the maw is destroyed, they are ejected with whatever health they have left. External guns also fire at targets at short range while it chews on the swallowed ships.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS bonus ship class has been added: Spire Blade Spawner (Mark I-V)<br />
** Large central ship has weak guns, but continously spawns smaller independent blades that crash into enemy ships.<br />
** This also adds mark I-V of Spire Blades.<br />
*** Extremely fast melee ship—loses health over a 10-second period, then self-destructs. Created inside Spire Blade Spawners, these are uncontrollable but will viciously attack the enemy on the current planet. Players cannot give direct orders to the blades.<br />
<br />
* Spire Mining Ships have been added to the game for the LotS expansion.<br />
** This ship allows the construction of mining enclosures on asteroids. Each tab in its build menu corresponds to a type of asteroid on which specific mining enclosures can be built.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS Spirecraft ship class (built on the new asteroids) has been added: Martyr (Mark I-V)<br />
** This massive ship has no guns, but is bristling with tractor beams. When it dies, it explodes for extreme damage to enemy ships within its tractor range.<br />
** These each get created as 2 ships from one asteroid ranging from Reptite to Adamantite, Mark I-V ships, or as 4 ships from one asteroid ranging from Pysite to Adamantite, Mark I-IV ships.<br />
** Spirecraft are massive ships using advanced materials that mean they can't be repaired by any known technology. Use them wisely, or find a new asteroid belt to build encampments and replace them.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS Spirecraft ship class (built on the new asteroids) has been added: Shield Bearer (Mark I-V)<br />
** Does relatively low damage, but has very high health and provides a sizable force field to protect allied ships. Its force field does not reduce the attack power of protected ships.<br />
** These each get created as 1 ship from one asteroid ranging from Pysite to Titanite, Mark I-V ships.<br />
** Spirecraft are massive ships using advanced materials that mean they can't be repaired by any known technology. Use them wisely, or find a new asteroid belt to build encampments and replace them.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS Spirecraft ship class (built on the new asteroids) has been added: Ram (Mark I-V)<br />
** This massive battering ram specializes in high-health targets, crashing into them for extreme damage and destroying itself in the process. Unable to hit smaller ships.<br />
** These each get created as 2 ships from one asteroid ranging from Reptite to Adamantite, Mark I-V ships, or as 4 ships from one asteroid ranging from Pysite to Adamantite, Mark I-IV ships.<br />
** Spirecraft are massive ships using advanced materials that mean they can't be repaired by any known technology. Use them wisely, or find a new asteroid belt to build encampments and replace them.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS Spirecraft ship class (built on the new asteroids) has been added: Ion Blaster (Mark I-V)<br />
** Advanced weapon insta-kills most ships with a mark level equal to or lower than its mark value. Cannot fire upon ships immune to insta-kill. Unlike the fixed-position ion cannons, these ion ships are both mobile and much shorter-ranged, but they are still extremely deadly.<br />
** These each get created as 1 ship from one asteroid ranging from Pysite to Titanite, Mark I-V ships. <br />
** Spirecraft are massive ships using advanced materials that mean they can't be repaired by any known technology. Use them wisely, or find a new asteroid belt to build encampments and replace them.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS Spirecraft ship class (built on the new asteroids) has been added: Penetrator (Mark I-V)<br />
** Perma-cloaked ship that cannot hit most smaller fleet ships and which must be manually targeted to fire. It does absolutely astronomical damage, and then is uncloaked and unable to fire for the next half hour. This ship is Blind, and thus requires the support of scouts or other similar ships to see its target, but otherwise it works best as a lone wolf sort of ship, delivering its payload and then returning to friendly space to rest and recuperate.<br />
** These each get created as 1 ship from one asteroid ranging from Pysite to Titanite, Mark I-V ships. <br />
** Spirecraft are massive ships using advanced materials that mean they can't be repaired by any known technology. Use them wisely, or find a new asteroid belt to build encampments and replace them.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS Spirecraft ship class (built on the new asteroids) has been added: Implosion Artillery (Mark I-V)<br />
** Large, high-range, middling-health artillery weapon that does damage based on a percentage of the enemy ship's remaining health (not to be less than 1 damage). This is most effective when enemy ships have very high remaining health.<br />
** These each get created as 1 ship from one asteroid ranging from Reptite to Adamantite, Mark I-V ships. <br />
** Spirecraft are massive ships using advanced materials that mean they can't be repaired by any known technology. Use them wisely, or find a new asteroid belt to build encampments and replace them.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS Spirecraft ship class (built on the new asteroids) has been added: Siege Tower (Mark I-V)<br />
** Huge, slow, low-range, high-piercing, highly-armored, radar-dampened battlestation with multiple shots excellent for taking out large swathes of enemy ships while repelling a beating in return.<br />
** These each get created as 1 ship from one asteroid ranging from Reptite to Adamantite, Mark I-V ships. <br />
** Spirecraft are massive ships using advanced materials that mean they can't be repaired by any known technology. Use them wisely, or find a new asteroid belt to build encampments and replace them.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS Spirecraft ship class (built on the new asteroids) has been added: Jumpship (Mark I-V)<br />
** Expensive, tiny-capacity transport with advanced teleportation and no self-attrition-per-wormhole. The advanced teleportation lets the jumpship pass through wormholes and across planets without the normal few-second delays that regular teleporting ships face. On planets with a higher mark than the jumpship, the jumpship expires in about twenty seconds, however.<br />
** These each get created as 2 ships from one asteroid ranging from Pysite to Titanite, Mark I-V ships, or as 4 ships from one asteroid ranging from Xampite to Titanite, Mark I-IV ships.<br />
** Spirecraft are massive ships using advanced materials that mean they can't be repaired by any known technology. Use them wisely, or find a new asteroid belt to build encampments and replace them.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS Spirecraft ship class (built on the new asteroids) has been added: Attritioner (Mark I-V)<br />
** This massive ship has weak direct guns, but does high attrition damage to all enemy ships once per second (on the order of multiple fixed-position attrition emitters). Enemy ships on the current planet will notice that they are damaged by attrition and will turn aggressive, however, so be careful of stirring up enemy planets with the attritioners.<br />
** These each get created as 1 ship from one asteroid ranging from Pysite to Titanite, Mark I-V ships.<br />
** Spirecraft are massive ships using advanced materials that mean they can't be repaired by any known technology. Use them wisely, or find a new asteroid belt to build encampments and replace them.<br />
<br />
* A new LotS Spirecraft ship class (built on the new asteroids) has been added: Scout (Mark I-V)<br />
** These scouts are all perma-cloaked, but move pretty slowly and rapidly lose health if they are on an enemy planet of a higher mark level than the scout itself. Most of these except for the Mark IV or V spirecraft scouts make for better long-term sentries (thus freeing up your normal scouts to do mobile scouting) rather than as literal scouts that explore.<br />
** These each get created as 2 ships from one asteroid ranging from Pysite to Titanite, Mark I-V ships, or as 4 ships from one asteroid ranging from Xampite to Titanite, Mark I-IV ships. <br />
** Spirecraft are massive ships using advanced materials that mean they can't be repaired by any known technology. Use them wisely, or find a new asteroid belt to build encampments and replace them.<br />
<br />
* A new capturable ship type has been added for LotS: Spire Archive.<br />
** These powerful science vessels can be found nearby or on the AI homeworlds. Capturing them will provide +1/s knowledge income on the archive's planet for all human players while the archive lives, up to a cap that is 3x that of the normal per-planet cap. If the archive is destroyed, however, there is a hefty AI Progress cost.<br />
<br />
* New "Redirector Rally Posts" have been added to the base game. These are NOT mobile, but which can have gather points set like that of a space dock. You can use this to give cross-planet move orders, and even to set up cross-planet roving patrols of ships if you set up a looping pattern of redirectors.<br />
** The old rally posts are now called "Mobile Rally Posts," since their key feature is that they are mobile.<br />
<br />
* Added a new LotS AI Guardian: Gravity<br />
** Enormous gravity distortion effect slows enemy ships over a wide area. Middling firepower specially geared towards starships and other large targets.<br />
<br />
* Added a new LotS AI Guardian: Starship Disassembler<br />
** Huge alien guardian that swallows enemy starships and gradually attritions them. If the guardian is destroyed, they are ejected with whatever health they have left. External guns also fire at targets at short range while it chews on the swallowed ships.<br />
<br />
* Added a new LotS AI Guardian: Implosion<br />
** Mid-range, middling-health artillery weapon that does damage based on a percentage of the enemy ship's remaining health (not to be less than 1 damage). This is most effective when enemy ships have very high remaining health.<br />
<br />
* Five new types of Core Shield Generators have been added to the game: These must be destroyed before the AI Core Guard Posts and AI Home Command Station can be damaged. The planet on which this shield generator sits must be controlled by the humans before it can be damaged. These only get seeded on difficulty 4 and up.<br />
** Group A-Prime<br />
*** One of these is seeded on every planet with an advanced research station.<br />
*** The A-Prime shield generators are linked into a very strong network. All but one of them must be destroyed before the last generator in the group will self-destruct.<br />
** Group B-Secondary<br />
*** One of these is seeded on every planet with an advanced factory.<br />
*** The B-Secondary shield generators are linked into a weak network. Destroy any one of the generators in the group, and the rest will self-destruct.<br />
** Group C-Secondary<br />
*** One of these is seeded on every planet with a fabricator and without an advanced factory.<br />
*** The C-Secondary shield generators are linked into a weak network. Destroy any one of the generators in the group, and the rest will self-destruct.<br />
** Group D-Secondary<br />
*** One of these is seeded on every planet with a counterattack guard post, but with no other core shield generators already in place.<br />
*** The D-Secondary shield generators are linked into a weak network. Destroy any one of the generators in the group, and the rest will self-destruct.<br />
** Group E-Secondary<br />
*** These are scattered on some random planets that do not already have an existing shield generator.<br />
*** The E-Secondary shield generators are linked into a weak network. Destroy any one of the generators in the group, and the rest will self-destruct.<br />
*** This new mechanic is designed to require players capture at least a certain small baseline number of planets before they can even attack the AI homeworlds. This ensures that ultra-conservative low-planets-held strategies simply aren't valid, and the alternative is somewhere the game been before: having the AI homeworlds be so beefy that they are incredibly grindy in the late game, which also isn't good. That had led to most players "declaring they had won" and stopping before they actually had won. The logical solution, then, is a multi-stage AI takedown procedure that requires you to take certain planets that it was expected you were required to take, anyway.<br />
*** To those that would complain about how this will prevent certain playstyles: yes, it will. But only the ones that don't allow for a natural progression of AI difficulty, and so short-circuit (and thus drastically break) the game. Deep striking and raiding are still a great thing to do, and in fact may be more important than every in some circumstances now, but you can't use that in a preemptive "the enemy's gate is down" sort of fashion to win the game. If you'll recall, even the battle school teachers changed the rules after Ender used that tactic once, and for good reason: it's fun once, but leads to a broken game after that.<br />
*** Note that achieving the alternate victory in the Fallen Spire progression will take care of this shield network for you, since that victory condition already involves taking plenty of territory, etc.<br />
** These are not seeded into old savegames, but do default to "on" for new games. They can be turned off on the ships tab of the lobby when setting up a game.<br />
<br />
* Okay, this one is super exciting. Six new kinds of Intra-galactic warp gates have been added for players under the CONST tab—no knowledge required to unlock, as these are essentially logistical tools that people would find to be must-unlock techs (like the transports and rally posts had turned out to be—we learned our lesson with that sort of thing). Here's a description of perhaps the most exciting one of the six:<br />
** Intra-Galactic Warp Gate - Advanced Factories<br />
*** When this gate is not in low power mode, all ships produced by the controlling player at any advanced factories will emerge at this gate. When there are multiple gates of this type, ships emerge from one at random. Ships that emerge are paralyzed for 60 seconds on account of their ordeal of warping. If this gate is on an enemy or neutral planet, they are paralyzed for 2 minutes instead. A gather point, ship stance (FRD, attack move, etc), and so forth can be set on the gate just like on a normal constructor, and the created ships will obey those orders.<br />
** However, there are six in all, one type each for space docks, starship constructors, advanced factories, mercenary space docks, fabricators, and missile silos.<br />
** There is a cap of five per type. Given that these can be paused and re-enabled, that's pretty useful.<br />
** The short description of this feature basically that the logistical challenges of unit production and delivery are a thing of the past.<br />
*** Before anyone complains about the game "playing itself," note that this is of no help with units that have already been placed. As has always been the case, you still need to make sure and build your ships in a sensible place for defense or offense, or you can get caught unawares.<br />
*** In terms of space docks, what this new mechanic saves is time of tearing down the docks and rebuilding them somewhere else (at the cost of temporary paralysis, of course, which means that it's not always the best choice for space docks. But it can save a lot of time when you don't want to be having to repeatedly set up queues as you move your docks around, though.<br />
*** In terms of fabricators and advanced factories, the benefit is absolutely enormous: those are immobile and you don't get to choose where to put them, so in many games that could make them of marginal use simply because of the hassle factor. Now you can deliver ships to or near to the front lines for the very minor setback of the temporary paralysis on arrival—quite a fair trade.<br />
**** One of the reasons for advanced factories and fabricators being immobile and set in specific positions, however, is that this can lead to interesting situations where you have to defend a planet you might not otherwise want to. The beauty of this solution is that that dynamic is unharmed, because you still have to defend those distant planets. All it removes is the logistical challenge of moving the goods from that planet out into the rest of the galaxy.<br />
** In the end, given the AI's exo-galaxy warps for unit creation, it only makes sense that the humans would get something similar for intra-galaxy warps with unit creation. The symmetry there is actually pretty cool, and at any rate the goal here is savings in micromanagement, which it delivers in spades.<br />
<br />
== Ship Logic Updates ==<br />
<br />
* AI ships will now come out of low-power mode (but not free, as a result of just this) when a shot targeting them is in the air; this will tend to also wake up the rest of their guard group.<br />
<br />
* Previously, zombie ships and all the other minor faction ships would really wander far and wide, much moreso than they should have. Fixed so that they'll now wander only to adjacent planets near to the planet they are currently on each time they decide to go a-wandering.<br />
<br />
* Engineers will no longer ignore moving ships when searching for targets to repair.<br />
<br />
* A whole host of internal logic changes have been made to forcefields. Most of them are a bit difficult to explain, but the upshot is that now instead of caring about "strong" and "Weak" forcefields in most cases (aside from collision with forcefields), the game just tracks a single protecting forcefield for all the ships, and tracks an additional "firepower-reducing forcefield" for the human ships only. The only firepower-reducing forcefields for the humans at the moment are those three basic ones and the player home planet ones. In the past, there was a lot of logic that was incorrectly only looking at "Strong" forcefields for decision making purposes, and now all of that just looks at the generic forcefield protector, which should lead to a lot of subtle ship targeting improvements. It may also lead to some new issues, go figure, but that's kind of unavoidable as a risk.<br />
<br />
* When determining firepower against a ship under a forcefield (and thus also hit chance, etc), ships now use the firepower they would have against the forcefield, rather than the ship itself (assuming the attacker isn't immune to force fields). Given that's the firepower that would hit the forcefield, that's more accurate for decision-making in general, but this is particularly critical as of late because of how some ships are now unable to hit some forcefields (ie, the anitmatter bombs). This change should prevent things like siege starships from trying to fire against ships that are under a forcefield that just nullifies out all their damage.<br />
<br />
* Large ships that are colliding with one another, like starships or golems or spirecraft, now do a better job of hanging close together in a group rather than spreading quite so far out.<br />
<br />
* Mobile ships with tractors now make an effort to move into tractor range as well as attack range if they are chasing a target. Again, this way etherjet tractors are a lot more likely to actually capture targets (in the past that was less of an issue because of the old shielding model, but now it's a definite concern).<br />
<br />
* Ships that have regen or vampirism now are automatically overkilled by a corresponding amount by enemy ships; this makes automated fleets of ships (and AI fleets of ships in general) able to actually take care of ships with high regen or high vampirism.<br />
<br />
* Ships with the reclamator ability now all do their best to target ships they can actually reclaim. This is particularly important because of the new ship-level restrictions that reclamators have, but it's also important new logic that they never had in general (previously hitting stuff that was immune to reclamation just as commonly).<br />
<br />
* Zenith Autobombs and Neinzul Youngling Nanoswarms now do a better job of splitting up rather than focusing on a small set of targets.<br />
<br />
* Human ships no longer automatically open fire on low-power AI ships, though they do still put them in their targeting lists as normal (so that as soon as the AI ship comes out of low-power mode, they are able to fire on them just as quickly as before). This prevents long-range human ships from accidentally stirring up the guards of AI guard posts unless the player specifically orders them to. In general this will make the AI guards bumrush the player ships a lot less frequently than they were recently doing, while not losing the first-mover advantage of the human ships against the low-power AI ships.<br />
<br />
* Human ships no longer automatically open fire on guard posts of the AI if those guard posts have not already been "angered." This means that long-range human ships won't just snipe them without being told to do so, but as soon as the guard posts have entered the battle at all, they will fire at will. Like the other change about low-power ships, this also doesn't impact the putting of guard posts into the targeting lists, so it doesn't hurt the first-mover advantage of the player ships. Generally when players get at all in the vicinity of the guard posts the guard post gets angered, so this just prevents snipers and similar from alerting the entire planet without the player desiring for that to happen, for instance.<br />
<br />
* Human ships no longer automatically open fire on guardians of the AI if those guardians have not already been "angered" AND they are on active guard duty. This works basically on the same principles as the above change to the guard posts, except for guardians that are already freely moving around it ignores them.<br />
<br />
== Balance Updates ==<br />
<br />
* Heavy Beam Cannon health increased by 5x, to make them not insta-die so readily.<br />
<br />
* Further balancing of the guardians, specifically:<br />
** Most of the offensive types had their number of shots multiplied by their mark level; since their attack power was already being multiplied by their mark level each level was a much larger increase in dps than might be expected. For now, all those types now have the same number of shots that the mkIII versions used to have.<br />
** Those types with bonuses against turrets have had those bonuses reduced; Flak guardians in particular will do much less damage against turrets as they're supposed to be the bane of mobile lightly-armored stuff, not everything that has the audacity to exist. Guardians are still very effective vs turrets (particularly mkI turrets) and are intended to be so.<br />
** The artillery guardian's base range reduced from 25000 + 4000*mk to 30000 + 1000*mk.<br />
** Laser guardian reload time from 2sec => 4sec, shots-per-salvo from 19 = > 11, attack power from 400*mk => 1600*mk. This makes them even more effective against armored targets (already having 500*mk armor-piercing).<br />
<br />
* Fortress balancing to deal with ineffectiveness vs. armored targets and stuff with high bonuses vs UltraHeavy:<br />
** Reload time from 3sec => 6sec.<br />
** Shots-per-salvo from 60/80/100 => 30/40/50.<br />
** Attack power from 2000/3500/5000 => 8000/14000/20000.<br />
** Health from 2,800,000/4,800,000/8,800,000 => 4,000,000/8,000,000/12,000,000.<br />
<br />
* Since the introduction of armor, the different unit scales have provided pretty radically different balance between scaled-types (like a bomber) and non-scaled-types (like a flak guardian). This is due to the fact that 2x as many bombers each with 1/2 as much armor (high caps) are going to die way more than 2x faster against a flak guardian. Similarly, 1/2x as many bombers each with 2x as much armor (low caps) are going to have a much easier time surviving against the same unscaled flak guardian (even leaving aside the aoe aspect of that). We've now put in a fix that will make scaled ships always have the same effective armor against non-scaled ships, while maintaining their scaled armor ratings versus each other (since if we just stopped scaling armor at all then scaled ships would take a _lot_ longer to kill each other on some settings).<br />
<br />
* Lightning Guardians now have 100000 armor-piercing (like lightning turrets), 4x previous attack power, and 1/2x previous base range (actual range differs from base range due to some post-processing on stats).<br />
<br />
* Removed AI Progress cost for killing any Neinzul cluster (Neinzul Nests still cost 10 AIP to kill).<br />
<br />
* Colony ships no longer have any energy cost.<br />
<br />
* Cutlasses now have a heavy penalty against command grade hulls, and their attack power (and health) have also been significantly reduced.<br />
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* All of the fleet ships, starships, and turrets (and a few other types of ships) now have a completely revamped cost structure. In the case of their mark I variants, the costs have been tweaked somewhat, often reduced slightly or even significantly in cases of ships that were exceedingly expensive before. In the case of their mark II, III, IV, and V variants, they are now based on multipliers from the mark I version.<br />
** Those multipliers are x2, x4, x6, and x8, respectively. This makes the mark V variants enormously more expensive than the mark I variants, which accomplishes two things: first it once again increases the utility of those lower-level ships, and secondly it makes it so that the economy becomes more strained the further into the game players go. This makes the early game simpler (as it has been lately), while not making the late-game too easy in terms of the decisions regarding territory, economic unlocks, and so forth.<br />
<br />
* The health of all the AI force fields has been increased by 3x, in light of all the new ultra-damaging starships and such that the humans have.<br />
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* Home planet command stations for the human players now have 2 million health instead of 300k.<br />
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* The AI now has a separate fortress line with 10x more health and without the ability to be repaired. Player fortresses can now be directly repaired, but those fortresses now take 10x longer to build and repair.<br />
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* Raid Starships now have 100x more armor than before, and now have 100k armor piercing. They also now have 5x lower health. In general, this transforms them into a ship specializing in killing highly-armored targets, including fleet ships such as armor ships, which is a unique role for them amongst starships. The extra armor that they have, in turn, makes them better suited than ever for doing long-range raids except when they run up against raw-damage-dealing ships such as siege starships and so forth.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Cockroaches no longer fire translocation shots, as this was overpowered and made offense a lot tougher with them around.<br />
<br />
* The first set of waves now comes sooner from the AIs, more like it used to in the 2.0 era of the game. It's been a longstanding bug since 3.0 or thereabouts where the first set of waves always fizzled.<br />
<br />
* The logic for when raid engines trigger is now a lot tougher (it happens when there are ANY human military ships, whereas in the past it took a military fleet of size 100 to trigger them (which was basically a free pass to starships—no longer).<br />
<br />
* Turret rebalance:<br />
** Basic, MLRS, Flak, Laser health to 5/3x of what it was.<br />
** Lightning Turrets health to 5x what it was.<br />
** Missile Turrets health to 1/3x of what it was.<br />
** Laser Turret base range from 6000 to 9000.<br />
<br />
* Various major-electric ships now have the corresponding extreme-armor-piercing (core electric guard post, tazer, all warheads, electric shuttles).<br />
<br />
* Following guardians now have 1.4x as much health as before: Tractor, Lightning, Flak, Beam, Laser.<br />
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* Bomber starship rebalance:<br />
** Attack power 1/3x what it was.<br />
** Reload time 1/9x what it was.<br />
** Attack range from 5000 => 2500.<br />
** Health to 2x what it was.<br />
<br />
* The ship cap for colony ships has been dropped from 60 to 5, to prevent people from just storing up so many extra colony ships now that there is no energy cost per colony ship.<br />
<br />
* Laser Guardian<br />
** Bonus against polycrystal 45x => 5x.<br />
** Bonus against light 45x => 5x.<br />
** Bonus against refractive 15x => 5x.<br />
** Bonus against turrets 3x => 1x.<br />
** Base attack power 1800*Mk => 4800*Mk.<br />
<br />
* Raider Guardian<br />
** Bonus against heavy 18x => 5x.<br />
** Bonus against artillery 12x => 3x.<br />
** Bonus against turrets 3x => 2x.<br />
** Bonus against swarmer 4x => 3x.<br />
** Base attack power 1200*Mk => 1800*Mk.<br />
<br />
* FF Bearers (Shield Bearers):<br />
** Health increased from 88000*Mk to 100000*Mk.<br />
** Armor decreased from 4000 to 200.<br />
** FF coverage radius increased by 50%.<br />
<br />
* Armor ship:<br />
** Reload Time from 4 seconds to 3 seconds.<br />
** Armor from 15,000 to 3,000/3,200/3,400/3,600/4,000 for I/II/III/IV/V.<br />
<br />
* Superfortress health from 90,000,000 to 150,00,000 to be more in line with the recent AI fort hp bonuses.<br />
<br />
* Special difficulty factor (currently only used for hybrids and fallen-spire stuff) now scales more granular-ly with difficulty. For example, it used to be that 7, 7.3, and 7.6 all multiplied the factor by 1 (i.e. no change), and 8 multiplied it by 1.5. now 7 = 1, 7.3 = 1.15, 7.6 = 1.3, and 8 = 1.5. And so on with the other partial difficulties.<br />
<br />
* Increased Avenger hull hp to be somewhat greater than a superfortress, again in line with recent hp changes to fortresses.<br />
<br />
* Transports can now not unload further than 60,000 range units from planet-center (for reference, the maximum distance anything can be built at is 60,000), to avoid some of the more exploitative usages.<br />
<br />
* Core Starship rebalance:<br />
** Armor from 5000 => 2500.<br />
** Health from 65,000,000 => 25,350,000 (twice the Spire Starship's).<br />
** Attack Power from 40,000 => 60,000.<br />
<br />
* Spire Starship given 16000 armor piercing, because it strangely had none despite both the Zenith and the Core starship having it.<br />
<br />
* All Fabricators from base health of 60,000 to 1,000,000, since they are lost forever if destroyed and previously a player could lose one before they even realized there were hostiles near it.<br />
<br />
* Several things with HullType.UltraHeavy changed to HullType.Heavy, since they just didn't have the hp to play in that league.<br />
<br />
* Most bonuses vs HullType.Heavy reduced to 20-25% of what they were, since they were much more in line with bonuses vs. HullType.UltraHeavy, leading to alarmingly rapid destruction.<br />
<br />
* AI-only Black Widow golems 1/2 health modifier (it used to have less than a core starship, and not much more than an old spire starship).<br />
<br />
* A completely new formula for wave sizes has now been put in place, and it puts a much more linear weight on AI Progress and difficulty when determining wave size. This attempts to go back to some of the earlier 2.0-and-before feel of the AI Progress increases while staying away from extreme early game difficulty with the first waves.<br />
<br />
* Impulse Reaction Emitter damage is now multiplied by (sqrt(targetEnergyUse)/10) instead of (targetEnergyUse/100) (the root is computed when the energy use is set, not each time it is needed, of course), much like the zenith polarizer now multiplies by the square root of armor rating instead of armor rating. Also using the lower divisor to make it more granular. Base damage is half what it used to be (except the core version which had a much higher base, down to like 1/4 of what it was).<br />
<br />
* Raid Starships are no longer immune to missiles.<br />
<br />
* FF Bearers are no longer immune to or absorb EMPs (to make it possible to disable their ff coverage via emp).<br />
<br />
* The health of all the scout starships have been doubled.<br />
<br />
* The health and other stats of the scouts have been improved a bit.<br />
<br />
* Fleet, Bomber, Siege, Raid, Leech, and Riot Starships all now cost 2x more metal and crystal than before, and thus also take 2x longer to build. This should hopefully bring their cost-to-benefit ratios more inline with the fleet ships.<br />
<br />
* Dyson Gatling Health increased by factor of 10. Also, they now take 1000 seconds to auto-decay instead of 200 seconds (it had been 1000 before the removal of a standard 5x health multiplier). Also can now hit UltraHeavy and Structural hulltypes again, but should still be unable to hit all guard posts to avoid freeing stuff.<br />
* Marauder Buzz Bomb and Marauder Dagger Frigate health and attack power increased by factor of 10.<br />
* Resistance FighterBomber and Frigate health and attack power increased by factor of 3.<br />
* Player-Ally and Enemy-To-All Neinzul Roaming Enclaves health increased by factor of 10; AI-ally ones left as-is since those are painful enough.<br />
* Neinzul Preservation Wardens health and move speed increased up to same as AI-Ally Roaming Enclaves.<br />
<br />
* When a target ship gets into a transport or goes through a wormhole, shots that are incoming to that ship will now hit the the ship immediately. This prevents players or the AI from being able to use wormholes or transports to fire pot-shots and then disappear.<br />
<br />
* Warp Jammer Command Stations now block counterattack waves.<br />
<br />
* Counterattack waves are now 4x larger than normal, but take a full 14 minutes to arrive. This makes them more of an event than they used to be, even, but also makes them much easier to prepare for and deal with.<br />
<br />
* Previously, there was an extra wave per wave event for difficulty 8, two extra waves for difficulty 9, and three extra waves for difficulty 10. This made the game WAY harder for solo play on those difficulties, but much easier the more players you have (since this didn't scale per the number of players).<br />
** Now it has been changed so that there are no extra waves per wave event on difficulties 8 and 9 (as the more recent changes to wave sizing make this unneeded, anyway), and the number of waves per wave event is simply doubled on difficulty 10 (so that way it scales appropriately with the number of players). Normally there is one wave per home planet of the players per wave event.<br />
<br />
* Sniper, Tractor, Tachyon, Artillery, and Laser guardian shots-per-salvo significantly reduced, damage-per-shot increased to maintain same raw dps. Should shred fleet ships somewhat less. Flak, Lightning, and Raider guardians a bit more distinctively-against-large-groups now.<br />
<br />
* Gravity turrets and other ships with gravitational effects now only affect enemy ships, rather than all ships. This makes them significantly more valuable and less annoying to use.<br />
<br />
* The Spire Starship has had its range increased by 10k, it's attack power roughly tripled, and its number of shots cut by half.<br />
<br />
* The Attack Power of the Zenith Starship has been increased 3x, as it was actually lower than the flagship (though with more shots) lately.<br />
<br />
* Space planes now have a new "Radar Dampening" ability that makes them impossible to hit beyond a certain distance. This even affects snipers, ion cannons, and the like—they can't target the space planes until the planes get close enough to them.<br />
<br />
* Scout drones 1-3 now also have the radar dampening ability, to counteract the recent nerf to scouts based on making them unable to outrun shots through wormholes.<br />
<br />
* Warbird Starship health 300,000 => 3,000,000.<br />
* Beam Starship health 900,000 => 4,500,000.<br />
<br />
* Fighters and bulletproof fighters have been rebalanced a fair bit.<br />
** Their attack power and health, etc, scales up more linearly by mark level, making the higher-level ships much more powerful than before.<br />
** Their attack power in general has increased 5x, while their hull attack multipliers have been dropped 5x. Any hull multipliers that were less than 5 have simply been removed.<br />
<br />
* The wave sizes of the aggressive AI types have been toned down quite a bit, from being 2x or 3x larger than normal, to being 1.25x or 1.5x larger in general, or 2x for the mad bomber (which was previously the sole 3x-larger one).<br />
<br />
* Bulletproof fighter changed from Heavy hull type to Medium hull type.<br />
<br />
* The health of armored and artillery golems has been increased 10x.<br />
<br />
* The Core Neinzul Melee Guard Posts and all the spire Mini Rams now have a shot type of Ram instead of Blades. The Ram is also a melee type, but ships aren't immune to it.<br />
<br />
* Ion cannons, orbital mass drivers, and core warhead interceptors are no longer immune to minor electric shots.<br />
<br />
* Previously, when AI waves got too large (more than about 2000 ships), the extra ships of the AI would simply not be included in the wave, leading to very inflexible wave caps. Now waves are free to get infinitely large, but any ships over the wave caps get added inside carriers instead of as roaming ships. There is a separate cap for starships in waves (always was), and now the excess starships also go into carriers rather than being cropped out. The net effect of this change is to make the danger from high AI Progress levels continue to rise linearly, rather than capping out at some certain value. However, the reason for the wave caps in the first place was to protect performance, and the use of carriers still accomplishes that while not reducing difficulty overmuch.<br />
<br />
* The ship cap of the shield bearer ship class has been cut in half, but their individual force field sizes have been doubled, their health has been tripled, and their attack power has been doubled. Their costs have also been doubled.<br />
<br />
* The radius of all the human force fields (but not AI force fields) have been increased substantially.<br />
<br />
* Heavy Beam Cannons buffed:<br />
** MkI beam count 1 => 3<br />
** MkII beam count 3 => 6<br />
** MkIII beam count 7 => 12<br />
** All Marks armor piercing from 2000*mk => 8000 (flat, not multiplied by mark)<br />
<br />
* All of the human-controlled golems now have a self-attrition that makes them require ongoing maintenance from player engineers. The attrition is slow, however, taking the golems from full health to the brink of death over a two hour span (except for the cursed golem, which takes a mere 40 minutes—still up from the prior 20 minutes there).<br />
** This creates an optional non-energy-related ongoing cost for golems that players can choose to pay or not pay; if they don't wish to repair golems, they can simply be placed out of service somewhere safe. This also seems fitting with the status of golems as uber-powereful, extremely ancient weapons in poor repair. And boy are they powerful, they do need something to counteract them a bit even on the Hard golem minor faction.<br />
** AI-controlled golems don't have the self-attrition, but instead have 10x lower health and an inability to be repaired.<br />
<br />
* Hive Golem health has been increased 3x (to 48m). Hive Golem attack has been increased 50x, but their attack range has been reduced by 3k. Hive Golems also now have a radar dampening range of 10000. The speed of creation of wasps has been increased 4x.<br />
<br />
* The health of the botnet golem has been increased 10x. Armor Piercing on the Botnet Golem has gone up 10x. The number of secondary shots fired by the botnet golem has been doubled.<br />
<br />
* The previous concept of AI Wave Bonuses (the crazy multipliers that could lead to waves of 700,000 ships, for example) have been removed entirely. This buffs a number of structures for human use, including captive human settlements, zenith power generators, gravity drill stations, zenith spacetime manipulators, and ion cannons.<br />
<br />
* The cost of all ion cannons has gone up 3x. The cost of the higher-mark ion cannons now go up even more exponentially than before.<br />
<br />
* The AI Wave and reinforcement bonuses of all golems have been removed. Golems also no longer require the proximity of AI Warp Gates.<br />
<br />
* Armored Golem health has once again gone up 10x (to 500m). The base attack power of armored golems has gone up 100x. The number of shots of armored golems has gone down to 1/6th of its prior value. The armor piercing of armored golems has increased from 10k to 999k.<br />
<br />
* Artillery Golem health has been increased 20x (to 100m). The base attack power of them has gone up to 50m per shot. The armor piercing of armored golems has increased from 100k to 999k.<br />
<br />
* Black Widow Golems now have 70m health instead of 30m. The attack range of black widow golems has been increased 4k, and their tractor range has also gone up 4k. The armor piercing of 1k has been removed from black widow golems, and their attack power has increased from 3k to 60k.<br />
<br />
* Regenerator Golem attack power has been increased 100x.<br />
<br />
* Cursed Golem range has been increased 100x, and health up by 3x (to 60m). The number of shots has also increased from 3 to 20.<br />
<br />
* The number of shots of the raider guardians have been cut about 10x, and the attack power of their shots has bee increased about 20x. Their bonuses have also been changed to specialize against commandgrade, structural, and ultraheavy, with a penalty against turrets.<br />
<br />
* The speed of raid starships has been increased about 50%, and their attack power has gone up 5x. They also have gained a hefty bonus against command grade ships, while losing their bonus against turrets and instead having a penalty. The armor rating of raid starships has also been increased 3x.<br />
<br />
* Missile Frigate Rebalance:<br />
** Reload Time from 20/15/10/8/7 => 11 - ShipLevel (10/9/8/7/6).<br />
** Base Range from 7000 for all marks => 6500 + 500*mk (7000/7500/8000/8500/9000).<br />
** Health from 4,800/16,000/22,000/28,000/33,000 => 9000*mk (9,000/18,000/27,000/36,000/45,000).<br />
** Armor from 150/150/300/600/300 => 150 for all marks.<br />
** Attack Power for MkV from 8000 => 5000.<br />
** Bonus against Neutron from 3x => 5x.<br />
** Added 5x bonuses against Composite and Refractive (previously, no triangle ship had a bonus against either of those).<br />
<br />
* Youngling Nanoswarm Rebalance:<br />
** Removed all damage bonuses (trying to avoid their autotargeting prioritizing damage over other stuff).<br />
** Maximum targets affected from 1/3/5/7/9 => 3/5/7/9/11.<br />
** Now does 100*mk armor damage (i.e. "armor rotter" damage) to each affected target.<br />
** Now adds 1*mk seconds of paralysis to each affected target.<br />
** Now does 2*mk engine damage to each affected target.<br />
** Note that the nanoswarm cannot directly target stuff that is immune to reclamation, and may have similar difficulties with ships immune to its new debuffs, but that often other ships caught in the blast may be affected by those debuffs they are not immune to. Nanoswarms will pay house calls to individuals found filing mantis reports resulting from not reading this release note.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Electric Bomber hull type changed from Heavy to Neutron.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the enforcement of the IsEligibleForHomogenousWave flag that was leading to a wave that would be composed entirely of a non-eligible type simply being a nearly-empty wave (basically it would just have the starship(s)). Now the wave will only be empty if it somehow does not have any eligible types, but that should be impossible.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Roaming Enclaves:<br />
** Now are much prompter about retreating when under heavy fire.<br />
** Move Speed from 34 => 51, effective range from 5,000 => 10,000, and removed the x0.2 penalties against Light and Ultra Heavy (apples to preservation wardens too).<br />
** HumanAlly variant now has 30x the base health instead of 10x.<br />
** HumanAlly variant can no longer be repaired (this could hurt your economy before, and it's got plenty of self-regen by itself).<br />
<br />
* Random wave sizing factor changed from a number between 1.0 and 1.3 to a number between 0.8 and 1.1. Wiki updated to reflect the new number.<br />
<br />
* Hybrids can no longer get the starship-esque Spire bonus ships (Blade Spawner, Maw, Stealth Battleship, Tractor Platform) as drones, since its "drone cap" doesn't differentiate by ship power and it would be painfully unbalanced to get hit by a bunch of hybrids escorted by a horde of such ships.<br />
<br />
* Since vampires are refractive, flak turrets and flak guardians now have an 8x bonus against refractive (that's what they've had against close-combat for a while).<br />
<br />
* Armor maximum percent damage blocked from 95% => 80%. Health of some high-armor units increased to offset this somewhat:<br />
** Vorticular Cutlass health a bit less than doubled.<br />
** Armor Ship health a bit more than doubled.<br />
** Grenade Launcher had _really_ low health so it's been increased 10x.<br />
** Zenith Electric Bomber health increased somewhat and made more linear with mark level: 20k/40k/80k/160k/320k => 30k/60k/120k/150k/180k.<br />
** Raid Starship health from 800,000*mk => 1,600,000*mk.<br />
<br />
* Raid Starships:<br />
** Multiplier against command-grade hull type (primarily command stations) from 4 => 1. This should help make them less insta-homeworld-death against the human, but still quick-homeworld-death.<br />
** Multiplier against ultra-heavy hull type from 2 => 4.<br />
** No longer immune to snipers.<br />
<br />
* Snipers, Sniper Turrets, and Sniper Guardians all now have 100,000 armor piercing.<br />
<br />
* Sniper base damage was way out of line (MkII did 900 damage every 9 seconds with a 0.2 ship cap multiplier, Sniper Turret did 3600 damage every 6 seconds with a 1.2 ship cap multiplier, a ratio of 1:36), so base damage from 450*mk => 8100*mk. making the mkIV Sniper have a roughly equivalent dps-for-cap as the sniper turret, and the mkI sniper have roughly 1/4 of that, etc.<br />
<br />
* Sniper Turrets now get a 5x vs Close-Combat hulls (Snipers already had this).<br />
<br />
* The armor rating on metal and crystal harvesters has been reduced 10x.<br />
<br />
* Home Cores are now immune to blade attacks.<br />
<br />
* Data Centers were previously seeded on the core planets (those next to the AI home planets) in great abundance. Often it would be five or six of them, a huge treasure trove and between the two AI planets constituting often nearly half of the total data centers in the galaxy. On higher-linked AI home planets, the effect of this could be multiplicative, making them even more crazily overpowered. These have now been removed, but the seeding of other data centers throughout the galaxy has been unchanged.<br />
** This obviously makes for way fewer data centers in general (on average perhaps 1/3 the prior numbers), and it also means there tends to be a max of usually 1 per planet, rather than huge clusters of them.<br />
** This will also strip out the extra data centers on the core planets from existing saves.<br />
<br />
* The [http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI War:Why_Do_Enemy_Waves_Get_So_Large%3F#Step_7: AI Wave level modifiers] from tech levels have been adjusted to the following:<br />
{| {{table}}<br />
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Mark Level'''<br />
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Multiplier'''<br />
|-<br />
| 1||1.5<br />
|-<br />
| 2||0.9<br />
|-<br />
| 3||0.7<br />
|-<br />
| 4||0.6<br />
|-<br />
| 5||0.5<br />
|-<br />
| <br />
|}<br />
<br />
* New hybrids will no longer mature into builder classes, since they were responsible with numerous crimes against humanity including "the ai is still building turrets", "good grief that's a lot of forcefields", and "why won't my fleet autotarget those 200 neinzul clusters".<br />
** Builders will be back when we have appropriate things for them to build in moderation.<br />
<br />
* Engineers mark I-III now take 4x as much damage when on enemy planets. This makes them still just as useful while on beachheads or in other protected circumstances where they are under forcefields or whatever and thus not taking fire while in enemy territory. But it makes them vastly less effective in actual combat situations, so that they don't work well mixed in with your main fleet WHILE it is attacking. However, on defense and on player planets they are just as effective as ever, which is also important.<br />
<br />
* The multi-repair-range of superfortresses has been doubled, although it's still much smaller than that of the other fortresses. That's simply not its primary function.<br />
<br />
* SuperFortresses, Fortresses, and Mobile Repair Stations now have to remain stationary to do their multi-repairs. After moving, they must recharge for 60 seconds before they can start doing repairs again: it's best to find a good position for them and leave them there until you're ready to deploy them in a new locale. In the case of fortresses/superfortresses, this doesn't affect their ability to attack while stationary or moving.<br />
** The intent here is to keep mobile repair stations from being used as mobile heal-instantly fleet-life extenders.<br />
<br />
* Further Parasite/Leech rebalance:<br />
** The Parasites now have a further 10x added to their attack power, but now always have an 8-second recharge time rather than one that diminishes with their mark level. Their bonus against medium hulls has thus been cut from 6 to 3.<br />
** The MicroParasite attack recharge has been put back to 2s instead of 8, and now has an attack power of 8000 instead of 800. Their health has also been doubled.<br />
** The Leech Starship has had their attack buffed a further 40x, giving them a pretty sizble DPS. Their number of shots has been further reduced from 4x to 1x, helping to make them a lot more likely to convert enemy ships.<br />
** The overall goal is to make Parasites rather slow-firing so that they are not converting everything in sight, but with a high enough DPS that they have a reasonable chance of success in mixed fleets, or with allies, or on their own (in order from least to most successful, there). These changes are a start, at least, and we'll see how these feel.<br />
<br />
* Attrition emitters now have teeth: they now do 400 damage per second, rather than 20.<br />
<br />
* Now when an Advanced Research Station is captured, it unlocks not only a new bonus ship type, but also the mark II technology of that ship type.<br />
** This helps to allow players to experiment with more bonus ship types without fear, since normally if you are getting a mark I bonus ship type late in the game, that's not very useful and it's hard to tell if the higher-mark ships would be useful. Those extra ships wind up just being put on guard duty. This way, players also get mark II ships that are a lot more useful later in the game, and they can make a better decision about whether or not they want mark III/IV variants.<br />
** Of course, it also sweetens the deal for capturing Advanced Research Stations.<br />
<br />
* The knowledge cost of mark III fleet ships has been raised from 5000 to 6000. This is partly to counterbalance the change above, but also to better account for the fact that you get mark III AND IV ships out of the deal of just unlocking III (assuming you have and hold an advanced factory).<br />
<br />
* All mkI fleet ships (triangle and bonus types) cost 1/2 as much energy as they used to, to ease the early game energy economy somewhat and to make them more attractive for garrison/support roles later in the game.<br />
<br />
* Bulletproof fighter tweaks<br />
** Base range changed to fighter's base range +2000.<br />
** Attack power * 1.1.<br />
** Health changed from fighter's health * 1.1 => 1.75.<br />
** Armor Rating changed from fighter's armor * 0.8 => 1.5 (the 0.8 was from when they were called shields).<br />
<br />
* Tachyon Microfighter rebalanced in a similar fashion as the Bulletproof Fighter to basically be a fighter, but with the following modifiers:<br />
** Obviously, the tachyon range, and the mine immunity that they've always had.<br />
** Half metal cost.<br />
** Double crystal cost.<br />
** Reload time from 4 seconds to 3.<br />
** Base range +1000.<br />
** Attack power * 0.75.<br />
** Armor piercing * 0.75.<br />
** Armor rating * 0.75.<br />
** Health * 0.75.<br />
** Ship cap multiplier from 1 => 1.5.<br />
<br />
* Autocannon Minipod rebalance:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 84/85/86/88 to 84 across the board.<br />
** Given 3*mk armor damage per shot, to help counteract their very low power-per-shot and total lack of armor piercing when used in larger groups.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 4/8/16/32 to 160*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 3300/5900/8900/14100 to 6000*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 45 => 3.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 45 => 3.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 35 => 3.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 28 => 3.<br />
** The goal here is a cloaked ship that does pretty good "ambush" dps against lightly armored stuff but has a "spin up" time versus more heavily armored targets. In general they may need more than this to get up to the desired level of usefulness, but this should help bring them out of the bottom-of-the-bin.<br />
<br />
* One-way doormasters now seed with 3x as many data centers as normal, to make up for the AI Progress cost of all those black hole machines (30 each). It's still a harder AI than normal, but now not so egregiously so.<br />
<br />
* Zenith viral Shredders are now immune to reclamation, as they unintentionally could multiply from 1 captured by a player to hundreds or thousands.<br />
<br />
* The parasite line of ships has had their stats rebalanced in general, and linearized. They now have a lower attack speed, but massively higher attack values (which they now need).<br />
<br />
* Leech Starships now cost 2x as much energy to run, and their stats have been linearized also. They also now have 10x fewer shots, and do 10x more damage than before.<br />
<br />
* All mark V ships are now immune to reclamation (this was always the intent, but a few slipped through before).<br />
<br />
* Ships with the reclamation ability are now only able to reclaim ships that are, at most, one mark level above their current level. So mark I ships can reclaim mark II ships, and so on.<br />
<br />
* When reclamators damage an enemy ship, it will only be reclaimed if at least 50% of the damage to that ship was done by the parasites of the current player.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Chameleon rebalance:<br />
** Move Speed from 28/25/22/18/28 to simply 28 across the board.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 400/1800/2800/4000/8000 to 4000*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 2600/3600/4000/4000 to 4000 across the board.<br />
** Health from 10,000/18,000/30,000/28,000 to 13,000*mk.<br />
** Armor from 500/1000/1500/2000/2500 to 150*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 18 => 3.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 10 => 3.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 1 => 3.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 1 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs CommandGrade from 5 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 4 => 1.<br />
** The goal here is a moderately durable, moderately cheap ship providing solid dps (particularly vs big stuff) plus it's little bonus of the stationary-camo.<br />
<br />
* Raid Starships now have radar dampening of 8000, helping to protect them from the likes of artillery guardians.<br />
<br />
* Mark I-III Scout Starships now have radar dampening like the mark I-III regular scouts do.<br />
<br />
* Cursed Golems are now immune to both snipers and gravity effects.<br />
<br />
* Scouts, Scout Starships, Raptors, and Spire Starships are now immune to "gravity effects," which includes the gravity drill, gravity ripper, gravity drains, gravity turret, and similar effects.<br />
<br />
* Ion Cannons, Mass Drivers, and Counter Spies now scrap for 0.1% of their cost rather than 10%, to bring the usefulness of melting captured ones down closer to the usefulness of keeping them.<br />
** We won't point any fingers on this one.<br />
<br />
* Decoy Drones and AI Carriers can now be targeted and damaged by siege starships and bomber starships.<br />
<br />
* Trying to make parasites not slaughter everything with their newfound dps:<br />
** Base Attack power from 40,000*mk => 4,000*mk.<br />
** Ship Cap Multiplier from 1.5 => 0.5.<br />
<br />
* To make them more reasonable as fighter+ types:<br />
** Bulletproof fighter hull type from Medium => Light.<br />
** Tachyon microfighter hull type from Swarmer => Light.<br />
<br />
* Bomber:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 28/25/22/18/30 => a flat 28 (same as a fighter).<br />
** Base Attack Power from 600/2700/4200/9000/15000 => 1500*mk.<br />
** Base Range from 1000/1300/3000/3400/3000 => 800 + (200*mk).<br />
** Attack Reload Time from 12/12/12/12/8 => a flat 12.<br />
** Base Health from 8,000/20,000/36,000/60,000/65,000 => 9,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 500/1500/3500/3500/5500 => 200 + (300*mk).<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 10 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs CommandGrade from 10 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 10 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery 7 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 2 => 3 (Yes, increased).<br />
** Note that Space Tank stats are based off Bomber stats with several multipliers and changes.<br />
<br />
* Space Tank:<br />
** Move Speed from 0.5 * Bomber's => a flat 12 (same as a missile frigate).<br />
** Metal Cost from 1.2 * Bomber's => 2.2 * Bomber's (note that it has no crystal cost).<br />
** Same bonus changes as the Bomber, except Tanks have a bonus against Polycrystal instead of CommandGrade (and it went from 10 => 6).<br />
<br />
* Sentinel Frigate:<br />
** Base Health from 120,000/160,000/220,000/280,000/330,000 => 90,000*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 2,000*mk => 20,000*mk (note, this unit has no bonuses).<br />
<br />
* Acid Sprayer:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 40*mk => 450*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs. Composite from 50 => 9.<br />
** Bonus vs. Neutron from 50 => 9.<br />
** Bonus vs. Polycrystal from 38 => 7.<br />
** Bonus vs. Refractive from 38 => 7.<br />
** Base Health from 11,600/15,600/19,600/23,600/31,600 => 12,000*mk.<br />
<br />
* Sniper:<br />
** Base Health from 6000/8000/10000/12000 => 30,000*mk.<br />
<br />
* Raptor:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 300/550/800/1050/1800 => 1200*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 1600/2600/3800/6200/9800 => 3500*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 0 => 500*mk.<br />
** Bonus against Light from 8 => 3.<br />
** Bonus against UltraLight from 4 => 1.5.<br />
** Bonus against Swarmer from 2 => 1.<br />
** Bonus against Refractive from 1 => 2.<br />
<br />
* Infiltrator:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 120*mk => 270*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 1440/1680/2480/3280 => 2000*mk.<br />
** Bonus against Turret from 10 => 1.<br />
** Bonus against Heavy from 2 => 4.<br />
** Bonus against UltrayHeavy from 4 => 6.<br />
** Bonus against Scout from 2 => 1.<br />
<br />
* Eye Bot:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 2000*mk => 1800*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 360/420/620/820 => 1000*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 4 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 20 => 10.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 20 => 5.<br />
** Bonus vs Scout from 2 => 1.<br />
<br />
* Space Plane:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 44/45/46/48/50 => flat 44.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 500/1500/3500/5500/10000 => 600*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 2000/3000/3500/4000/4000 => 2000 + (500*mk).<br />
** Base Health from 600/900/1400/2000/2000 => 1500*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 2 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 10 => 5.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 3 => 4.<br />
<br />
* Stealth Battleship:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 8800*mk => 4500*mk.<br />
** Shots-Per-Salvo from 8/10/12/14/16 => flat 8.<br />
** Energy use from 100 => 800<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 0.5 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 1 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 1 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 1 => 2.<br />
<br />
* Laser Gatling:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 24/25/26/27/28 => flat 24.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 180*mk => 150*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 0 => 500*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 1300/1900/2900/3700/3600 => 1750*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 120/220/320/320/460 => 120*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs PolyCrystal from 15 => 3.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 15 => 3.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 5 => 3.<br />
<br />
* Anti-Armor:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1200/2000/3200/6000 => 900*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 10000/14000/18000/22000 => 10000*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 1600/3600/5600/7600 => 2000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 100/150/200/250 = 100*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 14 => 5.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 10 => 5.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 6 => 5.<br />
<br />
* Fighter and Tachyon Microfighter base attack power from 1500 => 1300*mk (Bulletproof Fighter staying roughly the same).<br />
<br />
* Zenith Bombardment:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 8,000*mk => 45,000*mk (note, this unit has no bonuses).<br />
** Base Health from 10,000*mk => 20,000*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 0.5 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Close Combat from 0.5 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 0.25 => 1.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Electric Bomber:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 8,000/27,000/56,000/80,000/120,000 to 32,000*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 30,000*mk => 60,000*mk.<br />
** Armor rating from 1500/2500/4500/4500/4500 to (1000 + 200*mk).<br />
<br />
* Both the Gravity Driller and One Way Doormaster types now have 2x as many data centers as normal (in the prior release, one way doormasters had 3x the norm, but that was a miscalculation on my part).<br />
<br />
* The Starfields have been adjusted to no longer try and draw if they failed to initialize, thus preventing flooding of a ton of issues into a single log file.<br />
<br />
* Sniper Turrets:<br />
** Base Health from 24,000 => 100,000.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 1 => 6.<br />
** This is to compensate for the Raid Starship getting the 8000 radar dampener range, because now you'll need to plant snipers close to where you expect to face the Raid starships. Doing so should maintain the sniper turret's use as a counter to the raid starship, however.<br />
<br />
* Spider Turrets now have the same attack power, bonuses, and health as sniper turrets.<br />
<br />
* All major weapons are now immune to camouflaging, EMPs/paralysis, munitions boosting, shield boosting, and gravity effects. This partially buffs them and partially nerfs them, but underscores their epic nature, at least.<br />
<br />
* Roaming enclaves now only hold 30% as many ships, but when the game spawns new roaming enclaves it spawns an additional enclave (of the same alignment) for every 75 AIP.<br />
<br />
* Sniper:<br />
** Base Health from 30,000*mk => 18,750*mk.<br />
** Armor rating from 800+100*mk => 0.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 8100*mk => 7500*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 8 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 5 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs CloseCombat from 5 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Medium from 3 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 2 => 6.<br />
** Energy use from 100 => 250 (mkI has half energy cost, as usual).<br />
** Metal cost from 1200 => 1500.<br />
<br />
* Eyebot:<br />
** Base Health from 1000*mk => 7200*mk.<br />
** Armor rating from 500 => 0.<br />
** Attack Power from 1800*mk => 2000*mk.<br />
** Metal cost from 60 => 100.<br />
** Crystal cost from 60 => 100.<br />
** Energy cost from 10 => 100.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 6 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 10 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 5 => 3.2.<br />
<br />
* Stealth Battleship:<br />
** Base Health from 250,000*mk => 275,000*mk.<br />
** Energy Use from 800 => 2000.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 4,500*mk => 4,000*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 2 => 1.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 2 => 1.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 2 => 1.4.<br />
<br />
* Tachyon Microfighter:<br />
** Base Health from 10,440*0.9*mk => 7,000*mk.<br />
** Armor rating from 75 => 150*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 975*mk => 700*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs CloseCombat from 4 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 3.2 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Bulletproof Fighter:<br />
** Base Health from 20300*mk => 16000*mk.<br />
** Armor rating from 150 => 300*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1625*mk => 1400*mk.<br />
** Metal Cost from 200 => 400.<br />
** Armor piercing from 1000*mk => 750*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs CloseCombat from 4 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 3.2 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Fighter:<br />
** Armor rating from 100 => 150*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1300*mk => 1200*mk.<br />
** Armor piercing from 1000*mk => 750*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs CloseCombat from 4 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 3.2 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Autocannon Minipod:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 160*mk => 140*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 6000*mk => 3900*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 3 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 3 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 3 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 3 => 3.2.<br />
<br />
* Raptor:<br />
** Base Health from 3500*mk => 3600*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1200*mk => 1000*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 3 => 1.8.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 1.5 => 1.8.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 2 => 1.8.<br />
<br />
* Sentinel Frigate:<br />
** Base Health from 90,000*mk => 75,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 800 => 300*mk.<br />
<br />
* Anti-Armor:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 900*mk => 950*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 100*mk => 150*mk.<br />
** Energy Cost from 100 => 50.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 5 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 5 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 5 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 4 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Space Plane:<br />
** Base Health from 1500*mk => 2100*mk.<br />
** Energy Cost from 150 => 100.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 4 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 5 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 4 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 4 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Acid Sprayer:<br />
** (fixed bug where it wasn't actually multiplying attack power, health, or armor piercing by mark level)<br />
** Base Health from 11,600*mk => 11,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 500*mk => 450*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 1000 => 450*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 9 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 9 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 7 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 7 => 6.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Chameleon:<br />
** Base Health from 13,000*mk => 14,500*mk.<br />
** Energy Use from 100 => 50.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 3 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 3 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 3 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 2 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Infiltrator:<br />
** Base Health from 2000*mk => 2900*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 500 => 150*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 200+200*mk => 300*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 6 => 4.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Electric Bomber:<br />
** (fixed bug where health was not multiplied by mark)<br />
** Base Health from 60,000*mk => 75,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 1000+200*mk => 600*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 32,000*mk => 38,000*mk.<br />
** Energy Cost from 1000 => 500.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 10 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 2 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 2 => 3.2.<br />
** Removed 0.5 penalty against CloseCombat.<br />
<br />
* Lazer Gatling:<br />
** (fixed bug where health was not multiplied by mark)<br />
** Base Health from 1,750*mk => 1,400*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 120*mk => 150*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 500*mk => 600*mk.<br />
** Energy Cost from 50 => 20.<br />
** Metal Cost from 150 => 80.<br />
** Crystal Cost from 150 => 80.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 3 => 1.8.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 3 => 1.8.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 3 => 1.8.<br />
<br />
* Bomber:<br />
** Base Health from 9000*mk => 11,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 200+300*mk => 600*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1500*mk => 1900*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 6 => 10.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 6 => 10.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 3 => 10.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 4 => 10.<br />
<br />
* Space Tank:<br />
** Base Health from 7200*mk => 7300*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 200+300*mk => 750*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1800*mk => 2600*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 6 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 6 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 6 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 3 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 4 => 3.2.<br />
<br />
* Missile Frigate:<br />
** Base Health from 9000*mk => 11,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 150 => 150*mk.<br />
** Attack Reload Time from 10/9/8/7/6 => flat 10.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1000*mk => 1600*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 5 => 10.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 5 => 10.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 5 => 10.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 5 => 10.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Bombardment:<br />
** Base Health from 20,000*mk => 27,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 150 => 150*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 1 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 1 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 1 => 2.<br />
** Removed penalties against Artillery, CloseCombat, and Light.<br />
<br />
* Armored:<br />
** Base Health from 40,000/60,000/80,000/100,000/140,000 => 25,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 3,000/3,200/3,400/3,600/4,000 => 750*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 400/1,200/2,000/3,000/6,000 => 800*mk.<br />
** Base Range from 200/500/600/800/900 => 300+100*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 9 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs CommandGrade from 6 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 6 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 6 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 6 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 6 => 4.<br />
<br />
* Raider:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 36/38/40/42/45 => flat 36.<br />
** Base Health from 1600/3200/5200/10000/13600 => 3000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 150/225/300/375/500 => 150*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 200/400/600/800/1200 => 200*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 3000/4000/5000/6000/7000 => 10000.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 4000/4000/5000/6000/7000 => 4000+100*mk.<br />
** Metal Cost from 100 => 40.<br />
** Crystal Cost from 300 => 120.<br />
** Energy Cost from 50 => 20.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 8 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 12 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 5 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 1 => 4.<br />
<br />
* MLRS:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 240/600/960/1120 => 800*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 2800/3200/3800/3800 => 2800+200*mk.<br />
** Shots-Per-Salvo from 4/6/8/12 => flat 8.<br />
** Reload Time from 6 => 12.<br />
** Base Health from 16800/24800/30800/36800 => 14,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 600/800/1000/1000 => 600*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 16 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 10 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 8 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 4 => 2.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Nesters, Raid Engines, and Alarmist AI types now have 2x the normal number of data centers seeded to offset their AI-Progress-increasing weapons to some extent. Special Forces captains now have 1.4x the normal number of data centers because of all their special forces guard posts.<br />
** Note that this will not affect existing savegames, since the data center seeding there is already past.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Electric Bombers and Sentinel Frigates now use AIPerGuardPostShipCap (of 4/2/1 on high/normal/low caps, respectively) to avoid big concentrations on AI planets, and to make it easier to engage them a few at a time when attacking AI planets (since planets with many guard posts may still have a pretty scary number of them but they won't generally all dogpile you).<br />
<br />
* Youngling Tiger:<br />
** Base Health from 10,000/15,000/20,000/25,000/30,000 => 11,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 400 => 300*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 2400/3000/3600/4200/5000 => 2800*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 40 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 20 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 20 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Medium from 8 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 4 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 1 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Commando:<br />
** Base Health from 10,000/15,000/20,000/25,000/30,000 => 6,600*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 120/220/320/320/460 => 150*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 270/540/810/1080/2250 => 1000*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 15 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 10 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 8 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 8 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 1 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs CloseCombat from 1 => 2.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Vulture:<br />
** Base Health from 12,000/16,000/20,000/24,000/28,000 => 15,400*mk<br />
** Armor Rating from 400 => 450*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1/3/6/8/10 => 77*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 0 => 100000.<br />
** Attack multiplier (from enemy health) now has a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 90.<br />
** Penalty against UltraHeavy removed.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Weasel:<br />
** Base Health from 4000/6000/10000/16000/24000 => 15,400*mk<br />
** Armor Rating from 120/220/320/320/460 => 600*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 900/1200/1500/1800/2500 => 2250*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 20 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 2 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 2 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 1 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 1 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 1 => 4.<br />
<br />
* To compensate for the pretty significant buffing of mkIII younglings (by virtue of the new base values for mkI and the linearization of stats by mk) and thus the minor-faction versions, Roaming Enclave and Preservation Warden "hangar size" has been reduced to half of what it was (300 => 150 for roaming, 500 => 250 for wardens), and the time-to-"build"-one-internal-ship has been doubled. Similar changes made to Neinzul Clusters and Neinzul Privacy Clusters (not to bomber or viral clusters yet, since the neinzul bomber and neinzul viral swarmer haven't been changed yet).<br />
<br />
* Space Tank:<br />
** MkI Metal Cost from 1540 => 1000.<br />
<br />
* Spire Gravity Drain:<br />
** Base Health from 5000+5000*mk => 7,300*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 46,000*mk => 8,200*mk (it was way, way out there).<br />
** Armor Piercing from 50,000 => 100,000.<br />
** Energy Cost from 100 => 400.<br />
** MkI Crystal Cost from 5000 => 3000.<br />
<br />
* Spire Gravity Ripper:<br />
** Energy Cost from 100 => 300.<br />
** MkI Metal Cost from 3000 => 1800.<br />
** MkI Crystal Cost from 2000 => 1200.<br />
** Base Health from 15,000+15,000*mk => 30,000*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 4000*mk => 1000*mk.<br />
<br />
* Spire Teleporting Leech:<br />
** Energy Cost from 100 => 400.<br />
** MkI Metal Cost from 3200 => 2200.<br />
** MkI Crystal Cost from 1200 => 800.<br />
** Base Health from 10000*mk => 8,200*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 750*mk => 150*mk.<br />
** Attack Power from 1600*mk => 440*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 1500 => 750*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 6 => 3.2.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 6 => 3.2.<br />
<br />
* Teleport Battlestation:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 400/700/1000/1300 => 310*mk.<br />
** Shots-per-salvo from 8/12/16/20 => flat 8.<br />
** Base Health from 2800/3800/4800/5800 => 14,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 600/800/1000/1000 => 450*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 0 => 600*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 10 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 10 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 10 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 2 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Shield Bearer:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 22/23/24/25 => flat 22.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 240/480/840/1220 => 3000*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 150,000*mk => 90,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 200 => 0.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 10 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 10 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs Medium from 10 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 10 => 2.<br />
<br />
* Teleport Raider:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 100/300/500/700 => 120*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 0 => 150*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 400/800/1400/2000 => 1500*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 150/225/300/375 => 0.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 30 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 4 => 2.<br />
<br />
* Deflector Drone:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 26/27/28/29 => flat 26.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 900/1500/2100/2700 => 1400*mk.<br />
** Base Health from 300/500/700/1200 => 1900*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 320/420/520/620 => 300*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 20 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 2 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 2 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 2 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* The Unit Formerly Known As Shield Booster:<br />
** Base Health from 11200/15200/19200/23200 => 37,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 3200/3400/3800/4400 => 750*mk.<br />
** Energy Cost from 200 => 500.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 300/600/1200/2400 => 1000*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 10 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 10 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 5 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 5 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 2 => 6.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Polarizer:<br />
** Base Health from 11600/15600/19600/23600/28600 => 11,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 500 => 450*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 24/48/72/96/180 => 48*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 10,000 => 100,000.<br />
** The multiply-damage-by-square-root-of-target-armor mechanic now gives a minimum attack multiplier of 4 even against targets with less than 16 armor, and a maximum attack multiplier of 100 even against targets with more than 10,000 armor.<br />
<br />
* Munitions Booster:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 18/19/19/20 => flat 18.<br />
** Base Health from 2800/3800/4800/5800 => 37,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 600/800/1000/1000 => 300*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 300/600/1200/2400 => 1000*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 10 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 10 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 2 => 6.<br />
<br />
* Parasite:<br />
** Base Health from 6600*mk => 7200*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 400+100*mk => 450*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Medium from 3 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 2 => 4.<br />
<br />
* Impulse Reaction Emitter:<br />
** Base Health from 11600/15600/19600/23600/31600 => 11,000*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 150/300/450/600/720 => 150*mk.<br />
** Damage/energy scaling changed from multiplying by sqrt(energy)/10 to multiplying by 1 + (energy/1024), with a maximum multiplier of 30. Note that partial units of 1024 are counted, so something with an energy use of 200 will take roughly 1.2x damage.<br />
<br />
* Spire Armor Rotter:<br />
** Base Health from 11000*mk => 14500*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 700*mk = 1200*mk.<br />
** Energy Cost from 100 => 250.<br />
** (MkI) Metal Cost from 1000 => 800.<br />
** (MkI) Crystal Cost from 2400 => 1900.<br />
<br />
* Spider (MkI-IV):<br />
** Base Health from 3600/4200/6200/8200 => 3600*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 60 => 150*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 100/300/450/700 => 1000*mk.<br />
** Engine Damage from 15/30/50/90 => 15*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 8 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 2 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 1 => 6.<br />
** Bonus vs CloseCombat from 1 => 6.<br />
<br />
* Etherjet:<br />
** Base Health from 2400/3600/5400/7800 => 2400*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 100/300/700/1100 => 600*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 1000/1500/1750/2000 => 1000+(250*mk).<br />
** Tractor Range from 400/450/500/600 => 400+(50*mk).<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 20 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 3 => 4.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Mirror:<br />
** Base Health from 10,000/25,000/45,000/75,000/95,000 => 11,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 500/1000/2000/4000/8000 => 600*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 100/200/400/800/1600 => 500*mk.<br />
<br />
* Spire Tractor Platform:<br />
** Base Health from 60,000*mk => 300,000*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 200*mk => 3,500*mk.<br />
** Shots per salvo from 21/24/27/30/33 => flat 21.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 3000*mk => 750*mk.<br />
** Removed penalty vs Polycrystal.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 1 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 1 => 2.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Paralyzer:<br />
** Base Health from 3500*mk => 3600*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 350 => 450*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1/2/4/8/16 => 625*mk (this still gives them a really low dps-at-cap, but it's not completely useless).<br />
** Paralysis seconds per shot from 8/10/12/14/18 => 6+(2*mk).<br />
<br />
* Human Resistance ship counter-accumulation-rate now scales somewhat with AIP (not that they have any connection to the AI, but it's a decent index for "how big should this be").<br />
<br />
* The AI home command station has had it's health increased 20x. It was previously actually 10x lower than expected, but it could have used a boost even above that in light of all the recent changes to the game.<br />
<br />
* Zombified ships are all now immune to reclamation (it doesn't say this in their tooltip, as these are regular ships that have been reclaimed as zombies, and they are only reclamation-immune in their zombified state).<br />
<br />
* Both SuperTerminals and AI Eyes now spawn ships as zombie bots, so that they are extra aggressive as well as being non-reclaimable. This is a nerf from them being reclamator farms.<br />
<br />
* All marauders and resistance fighters are now immune to Attrition, being insta-killed, camouflaging, EMPs, gravity effects, shield boosting, munitions boosting, paralysis attacks, nuclear explosions, tractor beams, translocation, and black hole machines. They all also now include a radar dampening range of 4000.<br />
<br />
* The attack power of the resistance fighter/bombers and resistance frigates has gone up 10x, and their bonuses against hull types has gone down 10x. Their health has also gone up 10x, and they are also both now including warp detection and blind in their abilities list. Speed up from 18 to 48, also. Their ships caps have been reduced to 1/3 of what it was before, and their metal/crystal cost has gone up 3x.<br />
<br />
* Marauders have been overhauled:<br />
** Marauder BuzzBombs have had their speed decreased from 82 to 60. Health increased 100x. Their armor rating and EMP-absorption have been removed, and they no longer explode themselves to deal area damage. They now fire area-of-effect grenades, instead. This is much, much scarier and more effective, as their firepower remains the same as before—but is now something they can do over and over again.<br />
** Marauder Dagger Frigates have had their speed increased from 20 to 60. Health increased 100x (it was very low in recent times, unintentionall so).<br />
<br />
* Metal and crystal manufactories now have 5x more health.<br />
<br />
* All Warheads (except armored) now have 5x more health.<br />
<br />
* The attack power of all the lightning warheads have been increased by 3x due to recent game rebalances. Additionally, their ranges have been increased by 0/250/250.<br />
<br />
* Hybrids now cannot rebuild modules if they have been angered (fired upon by human player ships) within the last 30 seconds.<br />
<br />
* MLRS Turret:<br />
** Base Health from 58,000/74,000/130,000 => 100,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 600/800/800 => 450*mk.<br />
** Base Range from 7000 => 12000.<br />
** Build time from 70/120/170 => 60*mk.<br />
** The dps of this thing was simply _out there_, even at mkI, so with great regret:<br />
** Shots-per-salvo from 12/24/48 => flat 12.<br />
** Seconds-per-salvo from 4 => 8.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1240/1600/2000 => 700*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 16 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 8 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 4 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 1 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs CloseCombat from 1 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Flak Turret:<br />
** Ship cap multiplier from 1.2 => 0.5.<br />
** Base Health from 110,000*mk => 250,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 100+100*mk => 750*mk.<br />
** Energy Use from 150 => 300.<br />
** Base Metal Cost from 1150 => 2000.<br />
** Base Crystal Cost from 225 => 400.<br />
** Build time from 70 => 120*mk.<br />
** Base Range from -1000+750*mk => 1000*mk (Translation: the real in-game range is going from 2250/3000/3750 => 4000/5000/6000).<br />
** Seconds-Per-Salvo from 8-mk => 7 flat.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 3000*mk => 6,000*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs CloseCombat from 8 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 8 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 3 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 1 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Basic Turret:<br />
** Base Health from 46,000/92,000/400,000 => 75,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 600 => 300*mk.<br />
** Build Time from 60/90/120 => 60*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1800/3600/7200 => 4000*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 0 => 150*mk.<br />
** Base Crystal Cost from 0 => 400.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 2 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 1 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 3 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 1 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Missile Turret:<br />
** Base Health from 56,000/86,000/130,000 => 50,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 1200 => 150*mk.<br />
** Base Range from 27,000/27,000/33,000 => 27,000 flat.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 3600/5600/7600 => 5400*mk.<br />
** Base Metal Cost from 300 => 800.<br />
** Base Crystal Cost from 1200 => 300.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 8 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Medium from 6 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 4 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 1 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 1 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Lazer Turret<br />
** Base Health from 200,000/300,000/400,000 =>150,000*mk.<br />
** Armor Rating from 800 => 300*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 600/2000/3000 => 1500*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 500/1500/3500 => 750*mk.<br />
** Build Time from 130/210/250 => 60*mk.<br />
** Base Metal Cost from 600 => 200.<br />
** Base Crystal Cost from 1800 => 900.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 15 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 8 => 2.4<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 1 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Heavy from 1 => 2.4.<br />
<br />
* Translocator health has been increased 7x. <br />
<br />
* Distribution nodes previously granted players between 20k and 200k of metal and crystal each on being burst. With all the recent economic changes, that's in no way worth even 1 AIP. Now they give between 300k and 400k of metal and crystal each on being burst (except the trojan ones, obviously, which take away half that).<br />
<br />
* Hunter/Killers are now immune to both artillery and mass drivers. As are all mark V guardians. As are core shield generators. As are all of the AI core guard posts, and the AI home command station.<br />
<br />
* The max health of advanced research stations has been reduced by 1/5th.<br />
<br />
* All spire bonus ship types, and the zenith electric bombers and sentinel frigates, are all now immune to paralysis attacks.<br />
<br />
* All guardians are now immune to paralysis attacks, as are carriers now.<br />
<br />
* A couple of force field rebalancements:<br />
** The health of mark I and player home force fields has gone up from 9 million to 14 million.<br />
** The health of mark II force fields has gone up from 18 million to 30 million.<br />
<br />
* Metal and crystal harvesters mark II now each cost 3250 knowledge rather than 3000.<br />
<br />
* Tachyon beam emitters now cost 250 knowledge to unlock instead of 500. The stealth tachyon emitters now cost 1500 knowledge instead of 1000 to unlock.<br />
<br />
* The regen rate of exo-shields has now been dropped considerably, to regenerating over 20 minutes instead of a ludicrous 30 seconds. They also now drop remains, however, so that rebuilders can come along and put them back up.<br />
<br />
* Rather than having exo-shields cost a simple -2 metal and crystal per second, they simply halve the amount of resources generated by whatever ship it is they are protecting. They also now cos 750 knowledge to unlock instead of 500.<br />
<br />
* EtherJet Tractors now have significantly boosted tractor beam ranges (about 500 less than their attack range), so that their likelihood of actually tractoring any enemies goes way up. And, so that they do a better job of holding enemies at arms' length (though enemies can hit them anyway, they don't have the same luck with whatever is near the etherjets). In the past, the range of etherjets was short enough that sometimes it seemed like their tractors weren't even working.<br />
<br />
* The bonus that guardians have against scouts has been changed from 0 to 0.01, again to prevent scouting from being too easy.<br />
<br />
* All ships with force fields on them are now immune to paralysis attacks (since having the paralysis attacks disable the force fields would make the paralyzers way overpowered).<br />
<br />
* The Starfleet Commander AI type has been completely reinvented. Now it gets no extra starships in reinforcements, and its per-planet starship caps are just as normal. On defense, it's just essentially a lightly-defended AI. However, on offense it now gets 4x the normal starships with every wave, making it a pretty interesting and dangerous offensive raider-type AI. It was already offensive-oriented, but now it is much more so.<br />
** This makes this AI type significantly easier, as before it could collect dozens of starships at its planets.<br />
<br />
* Lightning and Armored Warheads now scale with the ship caps, so that their damage output is higher on the lower cap scale settings, retaining their value appropriately.<br />
<br />
* The tachyon drone's range has been doubled from 750 to 1500, and the decloaker's range has been increased from 15k to 20k.<br />
<br />
* The ship cap of fortresses has been moved to 5/4/3 for marks I/II/III.<br />
<br />
* Armored Warhead attack powers have been increased 40x, making them significantly more awesome and perhaps actually strategically viable for once.<br />
<br />
* Lightning Warhead attack powers have been increased 2x to make them a lot more strategically tempting again, too.<br />
<br />
* To be consistent with the other fortresses, there is now an AI superfortress with 5x more health than the human counterpart.<br />
<br />
* Fortresses have been significantly buffed:<br />
** Fortresses mark I-III now fire flame waves rather than missiles (superfortresses already did). This lets them now hit ships that are immune to missiles, obviously, but it also increases the movement speed of their shots from 54 to 178: a tremendous boost to their ability to wreak a lot of havoc on ships that are fast and/or distant.<br />
** Fortresses mark I-III now have 5x more health (superfortresses already had way more), making them much more substantial in terms of their own survivability.<br />
*** The AI versions of fortresses now only have 5x the health of their human counterparts, not 10x.<br />
** The attack power of fortresses and superfortresses have all been increased 10x, making them a lot more formidable again.<br />
** Superfortresses are now 2.5x more expensive than they were before.<br />
** Regular fortresses are now 10x more expensive than they were before.<br />
** Fortresses mark I-III now cost 3x more energy than before, and cannot be put in low-power mode.<br />
** Superfortresses now cost 15x more energy than before, and cannot be put in low-power mode.<br />
<br />
* Ion cannons, core warhead interceptors, orbital mass drivers, and counterspies are all now immune to radar dampening.<br />
** This is another nerf to scouts, as well as a general buff back to all these ships.<br />
<br />
* Spider turrets are no longer immune to sniper attacks.<br />
<br />
* Both spider and sniper turrets are now immune to radar dampening, which makes them a lot more interesting and powerful against AI raid starships again (recall that only the humans get these turrets).<br />
<br />
* Scout health is now 3/5 of its prior value.<br />
<br />
* Fortresses and superfortresses now only do 10% damage to scout hulls (which includes transports).<br />
<br />
* A new special ability, "Self Attrition Only When Not Low-Power," is now applied to most units with self-attrition (the spirecraft scouts and jumpships, and the AI special forces guard posts, being the exceptions). This ability makes it so that things like golems, Neinzul Younglings, etc, can be put into low-power mode whenever they are not actually attacking.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where Neinzul Youngling Vultures were scaling damage up from a minimum at 100% target health to a maximum at 90% (or lower) target health, they were intended to (and will now) scale from a minimum at 100%-90% target health to a maximum at 10%-0% target health.<br />
<br />
* Further Teleport Raider rebalancing:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 120*mk => 600*mk.<br />
** Seconds-Per-Salvo from 2 => 8.<br />
** Bonus vs Polycrystal from 2 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 2 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Refractive from 2 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 2 => 4.<br />
<br />
* Scouts I-IV, Scout Starships I-IV, (non-AI) Remains Rebuilders, and Engineers II-III and Experimental (Engineer mkIs _not_ included) are now immune to attrition.<br />
<br />
* Scout starships have received some rebalancement:<br />
** Mark I now have 120k health instead of 80k.<br />
** Mark II now have 4x the health of mark I instead of 2x.<br />
** Mark III now have 8x the health of mark I instead of 4x.<br />
** Mark IV now have 10x the health of mark I instead of 6x.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Youngling Commandos now have armor piercing of 750*mk (same as fighters).<br />
<br />
* The silent doubling of player ship speed has been removed.<br />
** In its place, all of the human command stations now have an ability that doubles the speed of all allied ships on that planet. This gives the players their same home-field advantage as always, while not letting them run in circles around the AIs on the AI planets. Also, it really gives a tactical penalty when a command station is lost for the players.<br />
** The AI home planet command stations also now have this new doubles-allied-ship-speed ability, too. This is new, and makes it so that the AI home planets always have a home-field speed advantage similar to what your ships do on all your planets.<br />
<br />
* The Core Missile Guard posts have had their attack increased about 4.4x, and their range increased about 2x.<br />
<br />
* The movement speed of transport ships has been doubled, from 128 to 248. They are also now immune to speed boosting.<br />
<br />
* The movement speed of colony ships has been doubled, from 36 to 72. They are also now immune to speed boosting.<br />
<br />
* All of the scout ships are now immune to speed boosting, as are eyebots.<br />
<br />
* SuperFortresses and all regular fortresses are now immune to speed boosting, munitions boosting, and shield boosting.<br />
<br />
* All AI guardians are now immune to speed boosting.<br />
<br />
* The gravity drill now generates 90/s metal and crystal for players, rather than 30/s, in keeping with the new, larger economies.<br />
<br />
* The Spire Shield Sphere guard posts (core and regular) now have vastly more health, in keeping with other force fields (but a bit stronger).<br />
<br />
* Some melee ship changes, at last:<br />
** Vorticular Cutlasses, Hive Golem Wasps, and Spire Blades are now the only ships with the Blade ammo type at the moment.<br />
** Vampires and Zenith Viral Shredders and Neinzul Viral Swarmers now all have a new Fusion Cutter ammo type (with a creepy new sound effect).<br />
** Previously, all ships with health larger than 1 million were immune to blades. Now they are immune to fusion cutters instead.<br />
** Previoulsy, all turrets were immune to blades. Now they are immune to fusion cutters instead.<br />
*** The counter-whatever turrets and sniper/spider turrets remain immune to both blades and fusion cutters.<br />
** Military orbital command stations mark I-III, home command station cores I-III, experimental engineers, home human settlements, human cyro pods, mines of all sorts, raid starships I-III, lightning and armored warheads, fallen spire shards and survey markers, spire civilian outposts, and spire archives remain immune to both blade attacks and fusion cutters.<br />
** Self-Destruction Guardians, leech starships, riot control starships, impulse reaction emitters, and acid sprayers are now immune to fusion cutters instead of blades.<br />
** Home Command Stations and fortresses for both the player and the AI are now immune to blades again—in the past they were simply because of those "greater than 1 million health" rule that got moved to fusion cutters.<br />
<br />
* Laser Gatling:<br />
** Base health from 1400*mk => 2800*mk (a cap of Laser Gatlings MkIs used to have roughly 1/3rd as much totaly hp as a cap of Fighter MkIs, now it will be 2/3rds).<br />
** Base MkI Metal/Crystal from 80/80 => 50/50 (so now is half of fighters per-individual, and about 1.4x comparing cap to cap).<br />
<br />
* The fortress bonus against the scout hull type has been further reduced from 0.1 to 0.05.<br />
<br />
* Apparently all guardians had a 10x bonus against the scout hull type recently. This has been removed. Artillery guardians additionally now have a 0.1 penalty against the scout hull type. This was hugely hurting both transports and scouts.<br />
<br />
* Marauder rebalancing. <br />
** The rough target is to balance each like a MkIV fleet ship type with a 0.2x ship cap (i.e. a ship type that would have a mkI cap of 40 ships on high caps), since on difficulties less than 9 it's generally unlikely that more than 40 total marauders will spawn unless it's been a long time since there were any eligible cases for a marauder spawn.<br />
** The marauder spawning code will now not spawn more than twice the "high cap", regardless of how long it's been since a marauder spawn. On difficulties greater than 5 and lower than 9, the high cap is 40, so this new absolute cap will be 80 (which generally means 40 dagger frigates and 40 buzz bombs) on those difficulties.<br />
** Marauder Dagger Frigate:<br />
*** Base Health from 3,300,000 => 2,200,000.<br />
*** Armor Rating from 3,000 => 600.<br />
*** Base Attack Range from 30,000 => 15,000.<br />
*** Bonus vs Structural from 30 => 2.4.<br />
*** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 8 => 2.4.<br />
*** Bonus vs Turret from 8 => 2.4.<br />
*** Bonus vs Light from 6 => 2.4.<br />
*** Bonus vs CommandGrade from 4 => 2.4.<br />
** Marauder Buzz Bomb:<br />
*** Base Health from 3,000,000 => 2,000,000.<br />
*** Base Attack Power from 15,000 => 12,000 (note that these shots can hit 14 targets at once).<br />
*** In many ways this is now a condensed version of the MkIV Grenade Launcher, rather than the Autobomb, so it's been renamed the Marauder Buzz Bomb Launcher.<br />
<br />
* Grenade Launcher rebalancing:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 28/25/22/18/28 => flat 28.<br />
** Base Health from 15,000/25,000/45,000/65,000/95,000 => 15,000*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 4000 => 300*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 900/1800/3600/7200/14400 => 1000*mk (note that these shots hit 8/10/12/14/16 targets each).<br />
** Seconds-Per-Salvo from 15/15/10/8/7 => flat 15.<br />
<br />
* Eyebots now have missile ammo, and so it's much easier for the player to protect their command stations and whatnot by simply building counter-missile turrets (which have a tech cost, of course—but note that any counter-whatever turret can be unlocked directly, they are not part of a tech line with prerequisites).<br />
<br />
* Starship constructors now have a health of 300k instead of 48k, in keeping with the other constructors.<br />
<br />
* The Zenith Trader now has a 20% chance of leaving goodies for the AI players on each planet, rather than a 10% chance.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Mirror health increased by 10x to compensate for the 10x bonus everything gets against it (when they were rebalanced, it was without respect to that bonus, thus effective health was pretty pitiful).<br />
<br />
* Devourer Golems and Zenith Trade ships are both now immune to gravity and speed boosting.<br />
<br />
* Cursed Golems are now immune to snipers, like all the other golems already were.<br />
<br />
* Hive Golem Wasps now have 10x more health and attack power.<br />
<br />
* The damage output of the spider turret now properly matches that of the sniper turret.<br />
<br />
* AI fortresses of all marks now have 6x the health of their human counterparts (instead of 5x), but now have 3x lower range than the human versions. They also are now immobile.<br />
<br />
* AI Superfortresses now have simply been adjusted to be immobile, but have the same range and health as before.<br />
<br />
* The health of both mark II and mark III tractor beam turrets have been doubled.<br />
<br />
* Gravitational turrets now cost about 30% more, but have twice the health they used to have.<br />
<br />
* Dyson gatling attack has been doubled, and health has also been doubled. Fear these.<br />
<br />
* Military Orbital Command Stations all now have translocation lightning as their attack type instead of missiles.<br />
<br />
* Okay, so that command-stations-must-be-built-within-proximity-to-the-colony-ship thing wasn't a hit. It was tedious and fiddly, and didn't really accomplish its core goal, anyway. So, the following changes have been made:<br />
** The proximity thing has been removed completely, so as far as how colony ships go, they are back to working like they used to.<br />
** However, whenever a human command station is blown up (NOT when it is scrapped), any colony ships OR mobile builders on that planet are also blown up. Even if they are currently inside a transport on that planet.<br />
*** These sorts of ships can exist in planets not controlled by a human player, obviously—they have to. So in their case, it's just a matter of their being on the planet at the exact instant that the command station dies. If they are, then that's when they are killed.<br />
*** This meets the original goal a lot better, which was to prevent players from too-easily just instantly rebuilding outlying command stations that were lost, with no real delay in the ability to rebuild.<br />
**** With planets near other planets it will still be fast to rebuild—of course—but this provides some incentive to keep planets clustered where possible. This incentive of clustering planets which is obviously at odds with the goal of keeping AI Progress low, which is the idea: competing incentives, tough choices, etc. Best if you don't lose the planet at all in the first place, of course. But now it will feel like you do if that planet was a more distant waypoint between multiple of your planets on an important transport route, for instance.<br />
<br />
* Previously, there was a AIDifficulty percent chance, per AI player, of a mark I or II fortress being added on each planet in the galaxy (for all difficulties 4 and up).<br />
** Now there is a flat ( AIDifficulty / 2 ) * ( totalPlanets < 80 ? totalPlanets / 80 : 1.0 ) fortresses per AI player on the map, rounded up.<br />
*** For difficulty 7.3 on a 40 planet map, that would be ( 7.3 / 2 ) * ( 40 / 80 ) = 3.65 * .5 = 1.825 = 2 fortresses per AI player.<br />
*** For difficulty 8 on an 80+ planet map, that would be ( 8 / 2 ) * 1.0 = 4 fortresses per AI player.<br />
** Fortress Barons, in addition to the other fortresses (superfortresses and mark III fortresses) that they already get, now get 8x the normal number of mark I and II fortresses in addition (not to exceed the total number of planets controlled by the fortress baron player).<br />
** Mad Bombers now get absolutely no additional fortresses.<br />
** Vicious raiders, technologist raiders, speed racers, special forces captains, radar jammers, and extreme raiders now all get half the normal number of extra fortresses, not to be less than 1 fortress.<br />
** Whether or not the seeded fortress is mark I or II depends on the mark level of the planet. Mark I and II planets get a mark I fortress, everything higher gets a mark II fortress.<br />
<br />
* Normally there are a number of "extra forcefields" that are seeded around the AI planets, per AI. There are normally AIDifficulty * 2 planets with each having either 1 or 2 extra forcefields added per planet. The following frequency changes for these have been made:<br />
** Shield Ninnies now get 4x the normal number of planets with extra forcefields, as well as 3x the normal number of extra forcefields per planet.<br />
** Turtles, technologist turtles, and teleporter turtles now get 3x the normal number of planets with extra forcefields, as well as 2x the normal number of extra forcefields per planet.<br />
** Peacemakers and alarmists now have 2x the normal number of extra forcefields per planet, but on the normal number of planets.<br />
** Mad Bombers now get absolutely no extra forcefields.<br />
** Vicious raiders, technologist raiders, speed racers, special forces captains, radar jammers, and extreme raiders now all get half the normal number of planets with extra forcefields, not to be less than 1 planet.<br />
<br />
* AI Eyes now have 400 million health (same as wormhole guard posts) instead of 6 million, and are now destroyed when the last non-wormhole guard post of the AI on that planet is destroyed.<br />
** In general, many fewer AI Eyes are now seeded, but the exact amount fewer is hard to express because it involves a divisor, the number of planets, a floor value of 2 per galaxy, and differences by AI type.<br />
*** In general, with the defensive-type AIs that had extreme numbers of Eyes in the past (just tons and tons of them, they now have about 3x fewer than before. In terms of the other AI types that had more moderate numbers already, they now have maybe 10% fewer, or thereabouts.<br />
*** Unfortunately, due to the nature of the seeding, the number of AI Eyes will only be reduced in future savegames, not in existing ones.<br />
<br />
* All AI guard posts (except wormhole guard posts and special forces guard posts) now have radar dampening of 7500/7000/6500/6000/5500.<br />
<br />
* Laser Cannon Module (including variants used by Hybrids, Spire Capital Ships, and Spire city defenses) base range from 20k => 10k.<br />
<br />
* Siege Starship:<br />
** Base Range from 35000 => 16000 (meaning that actual range from 38000 => 19000).<br />
** Base Health from 1,000,000 => 2,500,000.<br />
<br />
* AI Beam Guardian Base Range from 10k/12k/14k/16k/18k => flat 7k.<br />
* AI Artillery Guardian Base Range from 31k/32k/33k/34k/35k => flat 15k (so slightly less than a siege starship).<br />
* AI Laser Guardian Base Range from 7k/8k/9k/10k/11k/12k => flat 7k.<br />
* AI Vampire Guardian Base Range from 13k/16k/19k/22k/25k => flat 7k.<br />
<br />
* Spire Starship Base Range from 17k => 10k.<br />
<br />
* Spire Tractor Platform base energy use from 100 => 2000 (it was a bug, 100 is what a ship gets if we forget to define it).<br />
<br />
* Spire Armor Rotter:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 44 => 26.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 8k/9k/10k/11k/12k => flat 4k.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Bombard Guard posts, AI Core booster guard posts, siege starships, starship disassemblers, and zenith bombards now all fire a new "Antimatter bomb" ammo type instead of their former energy bomb type. Antimatter bombs move about 50% faster than the older shots of these types used to, and most importantly some ships now will be able to have immunity to antimatter bombs (no ships are immune to energy bombs).<br />
** Note that, importantly, bomber starships and bombers in general still have the regular energy bomb ammo type.<br />
<br />
* The following ships now have immunities to antimatter bombs, shifting the balance around some in a way intended to prevent too-easy sniping on both sides in a way that was formerly not interesting because of bombards and siege starships:<br />
** Counter-missile, counter-sniper, and counter-dark-matter turrets, as well as sniper and spider turrets, and harvester exo-shields (a benefit to the humans).<br />
** All of the standalone force fields for both players and AIs (a benefit for both the humans and the AI).<br />
** The AI fortresses and superfortress for the AI (a benefit for the AI only).<br />
** The human home command stations, as well as the human military command stations mark I-III, home cores, and the warp jammer command stations (a benefit for the humans only).<br />
** All AI command stations, special forces guard posts, and warp gates (a benefit for the AI only).<br />
<br />
* Snipers and sniper turrets are no longer immune to (able to fire through) force fields.<br />
<br />
* All of the player mark I-III force fields are no longer able to go through wormholes (the AI ones are immobile, so that would be redundant). Actually, mark III AI force fields were mobile before, but are no longer.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Beam Frigate:<br />
** Base Health from 22k/26k/32k/38k/54k => 22k*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 200/250/300/350/500 => 150*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 500/1000/1500/2000/3000 => 4000*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 8k/9k/10k/12k/12k => 6k/6.5k/7k/7.5k/8k.<br />
** Bonus vs Turret from 8 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 8 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 2 => 1.<br />
** Can now hit a maximum of 10 targets with one shot; there is no particular logic (closest, etc) for selecting which 10 if there are more than that on the line, nor is it desired that there be.<br />
** Beams now always go the full range, rather than stopping at the primary target.<br />
<br />
* Raider:<br />
** Ship cap multiplier from 2.5 => 2.<br />
** Base health from 3000*mk => 5500*mk (so, compensating for ship cap change and an additional x1.5 on top of that).<br />
** Base attack from 200*mk => 250*mk (just compensating for ship cap change).<br />
** Bonus vs Turrets from 4 => 1.<br />
<br />
* Riot Shield I/II radius from 300/500 => 600*mk.<br />
<br />
* The move speed of all the player force fields have dropped to a flat 4 (the amount of the mark I forcefields), and they are now immune to speed boosting, and no longer scale up their speeds with faster combat styles. This reflects that the movement of the forcefields are just for small adjustments, and not any sort of larger tactical engagements, which would be glacially, ridiculously, slow.<br />
<br />
* Reclamation:<br />
** Fixed bug where non-zombie reclamation actually required 100% reclaim damage instead of 50% (this made it seem like a reclamator had to get the actual killshot, which wasn't strictly speaking the case, but in practice felt like it).<br />
** Reclaimed ships now have health equal to the reclamation damage done to them (or max health, whichever is less) regardless of whether a zombie reclamator was involved (previously non-zombie reclamations got half that amount of health).<br />
** The reclamation amount for determining "is this reclaimed" and "how much health does it get when reclaimed" is now the sum of what various players have done, though the reclaimed ship still goes to the player with the highest individual reclamation amount against that target.<br />
** Minor faction ships killing a target can no longer trigger reclamation (this was an edge case, but it could have led to a damaged-long-ago AI ship wandering back into AI territory, getting killed by the devourer, and transforming into a human ship on a planet the humans had never been to, etc).<br />
<br />
* Youngling Nanoswarm:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 200+(200*mk) => 400*mk.<br />
** Armor piercing from 500 => 100k.<br />
** For the purposes of reclamation, nanoswarm damage is now multiplied by 16.<br />
<br />
* Manufactory input/output from 12-gives-8 => 20-gives-14 (since 20 is the amount produced by a mkI harvester).<br />
<br />
* Zenith Beam Frigate base range from 5500+(500*mk) => 7500+(100*mk).<br />
<br />
* Human Resistance Fighter spawn rebalance:<br />
** Instead of incrementing the counter every 80 seconds by 1 + (AIP / 50), it now increments by 1 + (AI Tech Level - 1) (or, more simply, by AI Tech Level), but capped at 3.<br />
** All difficulties below 8 now have capLow and capHigh of 10 and 40 (previously difficulties < 5 got 2 and 8). Difficulties >= 8 still have 20 and 80. For reference, after the increment it generates a random number between capLow and capHigh, and if the current value of the resistance fighter counter is greater than the random number it tries to generate a resistance fighter spawn.<br />
** Now uses the same absoluteCap rule (equal to capHigh*2) as maruaders, to prevent really massive spawns.<br />
** Re-did the logic of "is planet XYZ eligible for a resistance fighter spawn":<br />
*** It now considers all planets, not just AI-controlled ones.<br />
*** It requires the presence of at least 400 human ships (on high caps, 200 on normal, 100 on low).<br />
*** It requires the presence of at least 300 AI ships (on high caps, 150 on normal, 75 on low).<br />
*** It requires that the number of AI ships be greater than the number of human ships.<br />
*** It requires that (AIShipCount-HumanShipCount) be less than or equal to 8x the number of resistance fighters it's planning to spawn (on high caps, 4x on normal, 2x on low).<br />
<br />
* Resistance Frigate rebalanced to be more like the Marauder Dagger Frigate (not that they're the same ship, but it's easier to balance them together than separately). FYI, the maruader frigate is balanced roughly as a .2 ship-cap mkIV/mkV bonus-type ship.<br />
** Base Move Speed from 48 => 60.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 150k => 48k.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 20k => 15k.<br />
** Base Health from 1.5m => 2.2m.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 3000 => 600.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 3 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 1 => 2.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 1 => 2.4.<br />
** Energy Use from 3000 => 1000.<br />
<br />
* Resistance Fighter Bomber:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 48 => 60.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 180k => 100k.<br />
** Base Attack Range from 3400 => 4000.<br />
** Base Health from 1.8m => 2.4m.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 3000 => 1800.<br />
** Engine Health from 200 => Infinite (oddly, the unit def had both a line setting it to infinite, and a line setting it to 200, but the second was later and thus took precedence).<br />
** Base Armor Piercing from 1000 => 1800.<br />
** Bonus vs Medium from 4 => 1.4.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 2 => 1.4.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 2 => 1.4.<br />
** Energy Use from 3000 => 1000.<br />
<br />
* The decoy drone attack power has gone up 10x.<br />
<br />
* Dyson Gatlings are all now immune to being insta-killed, and immune to sniper attacks.<br />
<br />
* Anti-Starship Arachnids are now completely unable to hit any other sort of ship other than starships, but they retain their very powerful nature against starships specifically.<br />
<br />
* The Zenith Reserve Mark I-V AIP previously was 10*ShipLevel, which got really non-worthwhile by the upper end of that scale. Now it is 5*shiplevel for AIP.<br />
<br />
* All astro trains now have command grade hulls rather than ultra heavy. This acts like a massive boost to their health.<br />
<br />
* Missile Turrets now have armor piercing of a flat 90,0000. This gives players one more recourse against raid starships in the hands of the AI (along with sniper turrets, fighters, and a couple of other turrets).<br />
<br />
* Wormhole guard posts and AI Eyes now have command-grade hulls instead of ultra heavy.<br />
<br />
* AI Eyes always now seed next to the command stations of the AI, rather than next to guard posts, to prevent them from being under spire shield spheres.<br />
** This won't help existing saves, but it will affect all new campaigns.<br />
<br />
* Advanced Warp Sensors now have a ship cap of 50, and no longer act as scouts.<br />
<br />
* Vorticular Cutlass:<br />
** Base Speed from 16/16/16/17 => flat 16.<br />
** Base Health from 7k/12k/18k/24k => 7k*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 2500/2600/2600/2700 => 750*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 3600/6200/9200/12200 => 360*mk.<br />
*** That's a pretty big change, here's the rationale:<br />
*** Generally we let mkI fleet ship types have between 30k and 100k cap-dps (on epic/high) vs non-bonus targets, and scale the bonuses between them (so something with 100k has no bonuses, something with 30k can have a bonus of up to 10x).<br />
*** Previously, the mkI cutlass had a cap-dps of approximately 1.4 _million_ (392 ships * 3600 damage-per-shot / 1 second-per-shot).<br />
*** Provisionally, we're figuring that a melee ship can have 1.5x as much dps, to compensate for the difficulty of actually getting that close, etc.<br />
*** Also, we're figuring that the self-damaging attribute of cutlasses should allow for an additional 2x factor to the dps, for a total factor of 3.<br />
*** So, starting with a div-by-10 nerf, that brings it down to 141k, and accounting for the 3-factor (for melee and self-damaging) that's 47k on the 30-100 scale, so it's actually in the allowed range. On the sliding-scale of allowed bonuses that comes to about 4.<br />
*** Bear in mind that cutlasses have 10k armor piercing, so they'll basically always get the full damage per shot.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 6 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 3 => 4.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 2 => 4.<br />
<br />
* Vampire Claw:<br />
** Base Speed from 44/44/44/44/54 => flat 44.<br />
** Base Health from 4400/7800/10500/19200/20400 => 5k*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Piercing from 0 => 10k.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 600/1200/2400/4800/9600 => 650*mk.<br />
*** We're considering the heals-by-damaging attribute to allow 0.75x as much dps as normal, which combines with the 1.5x melee factor into 1.125x.<br />
*** Previous mkI cap-dps was about 70k, or 62k on the 30-100 scale, which allows a bonus of about 3, which is exactly what it already had, interestingly; there was room for a minor buff too.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Viral Shredder:<br />
** Base Speed from 16/16/16/17 => flat 16.<br />
** Base Health from 9600/14200/18200/24200 => 11k*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 500/600/600/700 => 450*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Piercing from 0 => 10k.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 500/1000/1750/2625 => 575*mk.<br />
*** We're counting the self-replicating capability as allowing 0.75x as much dps as normal, so 1.125x combined with the melee attribute.<br />
*** Previous mkI cap-dps was about 98k, or 87k on the 30-100 scale, and we decided to go with no-bonuses since the replication depends on actual damage done rather so replication rate was highly dependent on whether bonus targets were available and while that's not the end of the world we'd like to try things without that factor involved, so a cap-dps of about 112k is acceptable (and is about what they have now).<br />
** Bonus vs Neutron from 3 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Composite from 2 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Medium from 2 => 1.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Traders now path randomly between any planets, not just AI planets. That still means they will be a lot less likely to visit you in the start of the game, but it also means that they have a chance of visiting even your homeworld again (even if it's in a dead end), though the chance is way smaller. The longer the game goes on, of course, the better the chance. And if you wind up controlling most of the planets in the galaxy, the trader will spend most of their time on your planets.<br />
<br />
* Various astro train changes:<br />
** Attack range increased 10x.<br />
** Max health up from 200m to 800m.<br />
** Turret trains:<br />
*** Attack range increased 10x.<br />
*** Max health changed from 1m/2m/200m to 30m/50m/70m.<br />
** Booster trains:<br />
*** Attack range increased 10x.<br />
*** Max health up from 20m to 600m.<br />
** Regenerator trains:<br />
*** Attack range increased 10x.<br />
*** Max health up from 20m to 600m.<br />
<br />
* Bomber Starship:<br />
** Base Move Speed from 45/44/43/42 => flat 45.<br />
** Base Health from 4m/6m/16m/20m => 4.7m*mk (to a cap health of about 20m).<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 3000/3700/4400/5100 => 1500*mk (2x max fleet-ship armor).<br />
** Base Attack Power from 93k/120k/143k/173k => 70k*mk.<br />
*** Our approach to balancing starships is still a work in progress, but the previous mkI cap-dps was 186k. This change brings it below 150k which is still pretty high but between the high cost (compared to fleet ships, anyway), short range, and can't-hit-small-stuff attributes we figure that's worth a 1.5 factor. The linearization of the attack power is going to make the higher mark versions pretty intimidating, in any event.<br />
<br />
* Siege Starship:<br />
** Energy Use from 2000/2000/2400 => flat 2k.<br />
** Base Health from 2.5m/3m/3.5m => 2.5m*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 200 => 300*mk.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 192k/330k/450k => 200k*mk.<br />
*** This is a slight buff from the existing 120k mkI cap-dps. If anything this is a bit low with the restrictions on antimatter-bomb ammo but these are already so strong that we don't want to buff them too much on this pass.<br />
** Engine Damage from 5000/7500/10000 => 5k*mk.<br />
<br />
* Leech Starship:<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 300 => 300*mk.<br />
** Bonus vs Light from 4 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 4 => 2.<br />
** Bonus vs Swarmer from 4 => 2.<br />
<br />
* Spire Mini-Ram<br />
** Base Health from 20k/30k/40k/50k/60k => 30k*mk.<br />
** Metal Cost from 6000 => 1500.<br />
** Leaving attack power at 200k*mk.<br />
*** We've had reports of these being underpowered, but we'd like to see how the recently added 2x bonus vs structural (i.e. forcefields) affects things. Currently a full cap of mkI rams has a base dps of just under _10 million_. Or 20 million against forcefields. Or 40 million against forcefields on normal or blitz combat style. An AI forcefield mkI has 52 million hitpoints. So we'll boost the bonus a bit so a full cap of mkI rams can take down a mkI AI ff.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 2 => 3.<br />
<br />
* Spire Blade Spawner<br />
** Base Health from 30k*mk => 150k*mk (these have a really low ship cap).<br />
** Energy Cost from 100 => 1000 (mkI costs half, as usual).<br />
** Leaving Blade attack power at 60k*mk.<br />
*** It spawns 1 blade every 2 seconds, so that's roughly 30k dps per spawner or 270k dps at a cap of 9 spawners (on high caps). That's pretty high, actually, but most feedback has seemed to indicate a feeling that these are underpowered. We'll see.<br />
<br />
* Spire Maw<br />
** Base Health from 200k*mk => 300k*mk (very, very low ship cap).<br />
** Base Attack Power from 1100*mk => 1400*mk<br />
*** This brings the base cap-dps up to 30k, the very low end for direct dps, but normally has 10x bonuses. No bonuses in this case, instead that's accounted for by the swallow-and-attrition behavior.<br />
** Shots-per-salvo from 8/10/12/14/16 => flat 8.<br />
** Energy Use from 100 => 2000 (mkI costs half).<br />
<br />
* Sniper base attack power from 7500*mk => 6000*mk.<br />
<br />
* Sentinel Frigate base attack power from 20k*mk => 14k*mk.<br />
<br />
* Teleport Raider:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 600*mk => 800*mk.<br />
** Base Armor Piercing from 150*mk => 300*mk.<br />
<br />
* Teleport Battlestation Base Attack Power from 310*mk => 400*mk.<br />
<br />
* Teleporting Leech Base Attack Power from 440*mk => 550*mk.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Awesomebomb (oops, I mean Autobomb)<br />
** Base Health from 10k/20k/30k/40k => 11k*mk.<br />
** Can now hit a maximum of 10 units.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 4k/6k/8k/10k => 4k*mk.<br />
** Armor Piercing from 0 => 10k.<br />
*** We've gotten a lot of reports of these being overpowered, and we think that's primarily due to the fact that it could hit any number of targets within their radius. The actual "what's an acceptable dps?" question is a lot more complicated.<br />
*** Their previous cap-dps for mkI was about 784k. And that's when hitting only one target. But that also assumes that you're hitting a target with a full cap of autobombs every second, which isn't realistic. Assuming that you're producing 2 autobombs per second that's about 1/100th of a cap, multiplied by 10 targets per hit, we could say that it's ok for the standard cap-dps calculation to be 10x what it is for a standard fleet ship type. That means on the 30-100 scale that autobombs are about 78k.<br />
*** So, rather than tweak it around more, we'll just leave the mkI damage as-is and make the other marks linear with it. The allowed bonus in that range is roughly 2.<br />
** Bonus vs. Polycrystal from 5 => 2.<br />
** "Bonus" vs. CloseCombat from 0.5 => 1.<br />
** "Bonus" vs. Artillery from 0.5 => 1.<br />
<br />
* Youngling Nanoswarm<br />
** Base Health from 500 + 50*mk => 3400*mk (not that health matters terribly much for these).<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 75 + 25*mk => 0.<br />
** Base Attack Power intentionally left at 400*mk.<br />
*** In parallel to the comments on the Zenith Autobomb, the "cap-dps" (oddly computed as it is) for nanoswarms is about 313k. But it has an attribute that makes that count 16x times as much for reclamation purposes, putting it in roughly the 5-million category for that. Also, Nanoswarms can only hit 3/5/7/9/11 targets, which shifts it a bit downward from the autobomb (except for the higher marks... may need to make the target-count thing a flat 5 or so). But the main thing is that the nanoswarm is intentionally not about the damage, it's just supposed to do _some_, and to be an effective reclamator, and apply a variety of other debuffs (armor damage, engine damage, paralysis) just for the fun of it.<br />
<br />
* Electric Shuttle<br />
** Base Energy Cost from 100 => 400 (MkIs, as usual, have half energy cost).<br />
** Metal Cost from 100 => 300.<br />
** Crystal Cost from 500 => 1500 (the main reason for the resource cost increase is that these are a 1/4 cap ship, so the build-to-cap expenses were way lower than is normal).<br />
** Base Health from 7200/10000/14000/20000 => 30k*mk (this brings their cap health up to 10m, average is 15m).<br />
** Base Armor Rating from 100 => 150*mk.<br />
** Seconds-Per-Salvo from 20/19/18/17 => flat 20.<br />
** Base Attack Power from 200/600/1000/1500 => 400*mk.<br />
*** Previously these had a mkI cap-dps of... 490. That's against one target, obviously. Against 100 targets that's 49000, which is inside the 30-100 scale, but against 1000 targets or 2000 targets, etc, it gets really high. It's not too insanely high but in order to maintain that the more "normal" cases have to have a much lower than average dps.<br />
*** So we're introducing a new form of "aoe-capping" to avoid the truly asymptotic cases and also avoid the ship being too ineffective against a small number of targets, and removing the normal bonuses; basically it has a "bonus" against larger groups.<br />
** Can hit a maximum of 200 targets in one blast, but if there are fewer than that many eligible targets in range it will keep hitting them until it has done 200 hits or until it has hit all of them 5 times.<br />
*** This means that the cap-dps vs groups of 40 or more is about 196k, and the cap-dps against a single target is only 4900 (which is reallllly low, but still 10x what it used to be and basically they're not supposed to be good against single targets).<br />
** The "staggering" mechanic is still in place to prevent alpha strikes (which has both positive and negative impacts on the unit's effectiveness, actually), we can look at reducing the stagger post-5.0.<br />
** None of these various "number of targets" value scale with unit caps; we may change that later but in general it's not a priority to maintain exactly the same balance across different caps, so long as each has a reasonable balance of its own.<br />
** Bonus vs Artillery from 4 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs UltraLight from 4 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs Structural from 4 => 1.<br />
** Bonus vs CommandGrade from 4 => 1.<br />
** "Bonus" vs Medium from 0.75 => 1.<br />
<br />
* All cross planet attacks are now twice as large as they used to be. In essence, this puts them back to where they were on Normal before the prior version, as that seemed like a good level what with the new, larger wave sizes and such. On Low ship caps they will still be 1/2 what they were a couple of releases back, based on being quartered and now doubled. And for High ship caps, it's just now twice as large as it's ever been.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Beam Frigate:<br />
** Base Attack Power from 4000*mk => 3200*mk.<br />
** Max targets hit per shot from 10 => 9.<br />
<br />
* Spire Blade Spawner:<br />
** Seconds-per-blade-spawn from 2 => 3.<br />
** Blade health from 60k*mk => 30k*mk.<br />
** Blade damage from 60k*mk => 50k*mk.<br />
** Blade lifetime from 10 seconds => 15 seconds.<br />
<br />
* Bomber Starship armor from 1500*mk => 600*mk (now the same as bombers).<br />
<br />
* Marauders:<br />
** Spawns now only happen when the marauder counter is "fully charged" (40 for diffs < 9, 80 otherwise) instead of having a random chance of triggering early.<br />
** The counter is now capped at the "fully charged" level instead of 2x that, to avoid "stockpiling" resulting in multiple spawns over a short interval.<br />
** The "number of marauders to spawn" was computed by roughly "number of human military ships here" minus "number of AI military ships here" (and capped at the value of the marauder counter). It now takes simply either "number of human military ships here" or "number of AI military ships here", whichever is larger (though capped at 4x the smaller value) and divides it by 8. This number is then doubled on normal unit caps, and quadrupled on low caps. Anyway, the upshot should be less chance of small marauder spawns that cause the marauder counter to stay "stockpiled".<br />
<br />
== Misc Changes ==<br />
<br />
* Various AI types are now disabled based on the current options in the lobby.<br />
** If an AI belongs to a specific expansion, it is now disabled if that expansion is disabled in the LOBBY, not just in the overall License Keys / Expansions setting for the game itself.<br />
** If Mines are disabled, so is the Mine Enthusist.<br />
** If Starships are disabled, so is the Starfleet Commander.<br />
** If Heavy Defense is disabled, so is the Fortress Baron.<br />
** If Teleporting is disabled, so is the Teleporter Turtle.<br />
** If Parasites are disabled, so are the Technologist Parasite and Feeding Parasite.<br />
** If Cloaking is disabled, so are the Camoflager, the Counter Spy, the Shadow Master, and the Stealth Master.<br />
** If the Astro Trains AI Plot is disabled for either player, then those players cannot be a Train Master.<br />
<br />
* Decreased the difficulty of the player-adjacent Mark IV planet in the intermediate tutorial.<br />
<br />
* Added explicit logic for preventing most non-ai-ally minor faction ships from being able to hit anything that can cause freeing of ai ships (namely command stations and guard posts); this had been handled properly before but after the switch to hull-type-based bonuses some gaps opened up, and may be responsible for some of the inexplicable early-game attacks people have been seeing.<br />
<br />
* Spire Starships are now considered Mark IV, instead of Mark III.<br />
<br />
* The remaining trial time is now shown as a countdown timer in the alerts box in the upper left of the screen while playing. This should make it a lot more obvious when players accidentally start a trial game, as well as making it more clear how much time remains for players who did intend to start a trial game.<br />
<br />
* Auto-created manufactories are always now disabled at the start of the game.<br />
<br />
* Achievements for victories against AI types, minor factions, AI plots, on various planet counts, for controlling various planet counts, winning and losing in general or against certain difficulties, and so forth are all now Conquest-only. Other achievements, based on things such as points, time, resources, kills/losses, and reclaimining/scrap are still able to be won in Defender mode.<br />
<br />
* Re-implemented the small window that used to draw when placing a ship, that tells you why the icon is red if the proposed location is not valid.<br />
<br />
* A new version of the Unity Engine, 3.1, is now in use (updating from prior version 3.0).<br />
<br />
* The way that the text wrapping is handled on the intel summary is now better, appropriate to its new taller-but-narrower appearance.<br />
<br />
* The EMP on death ability now shows how many seconds the EMP is for.<br />
<br />
* Guns have been removed from the Neinzul Enclave Starships, at the request of players to have these work more like space docks (not selecting with military ships, etc).<br />
<br />
* The "Grid" map type from The Zenith Remnant has been renamed to "Lattice" instead, as it really was not a true grid.<br />
<br />
* All ships that have tractor beams on them are now immune to the tractor beams of other ships.<br />
<br />
* Added a new cheat for Light of the Spire: Impact Is Imminent (+1 Of Each Asteroid Type On The Current Planet)<br />
<br />
* AI Reinforce-guard-post logic now stops prioritizing the "majority" type at that guard post when a certain cap is reached, that cap is related to the human ship cap, this should help avoid massive piles of z-bombers and stealth battleships, though it won't completely prevent them.<br />
<br />
* Minimum ship cap multiplier for wave size from 0.3 => 0.03. This should help with the killer waves of zenith electric bombers, spire stealth battleships, etc.<br />
<br />
* Spire Blades (from a Spire Blade Spawner) and Wasps (from a Hive Golem) no longer get regenerated by Regenerator Golems/Trains.<br />
<br />
* All ships that are unable to be repaired now automatically get infinite engine health (to prevent them from being permanently stranded).<br />
<br />
* Three new commands have been added to Light of the Spire for enabling the new minor factions in existing savegames (but ONLY if none of the three is already on—you can't use this to switch back and forth between them):<br />
** cmd:activate spirecraft easy<br />
** cmd:activate spirecraft moderate<br />
** cmd:activate spirecraft hard<br />
<br />
* Three new commands have been added to The Zenith Remnant for enabling the new minor factions in existing savegames (but ONLY if none of the three is already on—you can't use this to switch back and forth between them):<br />
** cmd:activate broken golems easy<br />
** cmd:activate broken golems moderate<br />
** cmd:activate broken golems hard<br />
<br />
* Broken Golems are no longer seeded as a part of the base Zenith Remnant campaigns (it used to seed 3 in every TZR campaign) -- however, any preexisting seeded golems will remain in existing saves.<br />
<br />
* The ability "AI Reinforces When This Enters AI Planet" has been removed from the game, as only golems used it and now they do not.<br />
<br />
* The ability "Requires Proximity Of AI Warp Gate" has been removed from the game, as only golems used it and now they do not.<br />
<br />
* All map seeds now give twice as many possible starting positions (16 instead of 8), to allow for players to have greater variety with less clicking through map seeds to find the ships they want (especially with all the new ship types lately).<br />
** If there are fewer than the allotted number of ship types available given the current expansions and ship complexity, then the number of valid starting positions will be reduced as appropriate.<br />
<br />
* The Enable Advanced Logging setting now also causes two new logs to be written: MainThreadWaveComputationLog and AIThreadWaveComputationLog (which is only written on the host's machine in an mp game). These will have a lot of details in how a wave's size was computed, which is helpful in diagnosing exactly what's going on if we continue to have unexpectedly-sized (generally unexpectedly-large) waves.<br />
<br />
* Enclave Starship collision priority from 9000 => 875, putting it below rally posts (and standard ff-gens and command station cores) but above just about everything else that's mobile.<br />
<br />
* Shield Bearers and Spirecraft Shield Bearers now have collision priority of 566, making them less likely to be bounced out to the edges of a group and more likely to cover more units.<br />
<br />
* When players have exhausted the ship cap for a type of ship, that now takes precedence over the ENER error message on the buttons when players are in low-energy situations.<br />
<br />
* Special Forces ships that arrive on player planets now go into "free" mode instead of just passing through while on special forces mode. Similarly, whenever special forces ships find themselves on a planet with a human-controlled non-scout/scout-starship unit, they will also go into "free" mode. This is how it used to be, but sometime since 4.0 it's changed, likely because minor factions were accidentally stirring up special forces units. That will no longer happen. Also, Zombie units will be ignored for these purposes.<br />
<br />
* There were still some cases of commands being issued to AI ships that were in low-power mode, so we've added a much more aggressive check that makes it essentially impossible for a low-power-mode AI ship to receive a UnitCommand.<br />
<br />
* Rather than having Counterattack Guard Posts die (and launch a counterattack wave) when the command station on their planet is now killed, instead they now provide protection to their command station until they are killed. Thus the same net effect is in place for players—players can't kill the command station without also killing the counterattack guard post—but it is no longer possible for players to ACCIDENTALLY trigger the counterattack guard post, which is a big improvement.<br />
<br />
* Guardians are now immune to the effect of the camouflager.<br />
<br />
* AI Stealth Guard Posts now have the cloaking super boost ability.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Cockroaches are now immune to reclamation.<br />
<br />
* All Neinzul ships in general are now immune to reclamation. This makes them excellent against botnet golems in particular now.<br />
<br />
* Wasps and Spire Blades are now immune to reclamation.<br />
<br />
* Science Labs are no longer seeded on AI planets, or able to be captured on planet ownership change. It was just clutter, was slightly confusing, and was slightly problematic with the new logic.<br />
<br />
* When an AI ship that is captured upon planet ownership change is on a player planet, that AI ship now changes hands automatically to the player who controls the planet.<br />
<br />
* Added a new cheat: Military Takeover<br />
** Spawn Military Command Station, Thus Capturing The Planet Even If The AI Held It<br />
<br />
* Added a new cheat: Like Dynamiting Fish In A Bucket<br />
** Spawn an Advanced Research Station under the control of the first AI.<br />
<br />
* Distribution nodes and Zenith reserves are now captured on planet ownership change. It allows them to be scrapped when needed instead of having to send ships to already secured planets on the other side of the galaxy.<br />
<br />
* Other mouse-move and middle-mouse-scrolling handling changes and another way of updating the world-point each frame, in hopes that it won't break something else.<br />
<br />
* Wasps and Spire Blades no longer make an explosion sound when they die.<br />
<br />
* Wasps and Spire Blades no longer effect the counts of number of ships lost or built, and no longer effect score.<br />
<br />
* The Exo-Galactic Wormholes now spawn way further out than beofre when in the hands of a Backdoor Hacker. This prevents bombers and similar from being in immediate range of the home forcefields with these.<br />
<br />
* Rather than there being three cloaking states—full, partial, and none—there are now only two—full and none. Now there is never a case where players can shoot at an enemy ship without being able to see what it is. Ships are either cloaked or they are not.<br />
<br />
* Ships with shot-out engines are no longer completely unable to move. Now they just have the infuriatingly-slow move speed of 1. This prevents such situations as wormhole guard posts permanently trapping player ships. Now ships can always at least move away, albeit extremely slowly, to then be later repaired. This also helps to reduce the micro needed with engineers related to engine health.<br />
<br />
* Neinzul Cockroaches can no longer be regenerated.<br />
<br />
* Attrition Emitters can no longer be reclaimed.<br />
<br />
* There is now a "Has Cheated" option shown in the Galaxy Stats window, since that's the internal value that score-modifiers go on rather than Cheats Enabled. It doesn't care if you have cheats enabled, it just cares if you used any. Now that's more clear when that's the case and when it's not. Commands don't count as cheats, of course.<br />
<br />
* The current game version is now shown in the galaxy stats window, so that players have a way of checking the game version from within the game itself.<br />
<br />
* When a player uses a command, it now shows "CMD" instead of "CHEAT" for the sake of clarity.<br />
<br />
* When a ship is having its radar jammed by a global planetary effect (this does NOT refer to radar dampening against a single ship), the drawn attack range of the ship is shown as halved.<br />
<br />
* When players unlock higher-mark metal or crystal harvesters, all existing lower-mark harvesters are immediately upgraded to the new higher-mark versions at full health, at no metal/crystal cost.<br />
** However, any lower-mark harvesters that are still under construction won't upgrade until after they finish constructing.<br />
<br />
* Planets that have been destroyed, or which don't have supply for the local player, now won't be included in pathing that should be limited to planets that have knowledge left (those planets are considered as having no knowledge left).<br />
<br />
* Ships that are immune to speed boosting now actually have that shown in their list of immunities.<br />
<br />
* All ships that are not directly autotargeted by human players are now immune to the effects of attrition. This prevents things like spirecraft attritioners from harming enemy-held fabricators, ARSes, etc.<br />
<br />
* All ships that can be captured on planet ownership change, or which swallow enemy ships, are now immune to camouflaging.<br />
<br />
* The logic for "excess starship removal" on AI planets is now significantly better, and will never clean up starships because of an excess of free/threat starships, which might just have clustered on a planet. Only "planetary roamer" starships will be kept to a specific cap, now.<br />
<br />
* Additionally, AI ships that have active commands from the AI will no longer be automatically put back into low-power mode even if they otherwise would be.<br />
<br />
* Two new cheats have been added to the game:<br />
** Fog This! (Change Fog of War To "Complete Visibility")<br />
** Better Than Trelawney (Reveal Random AI Types)<br />
<br />
* A new command has been added to the game: "cmd:enable cheats" turns on cheats for the current campaign, but does not itself count as a cheat.<br />
** Note: Having cheats enabled does not affect score or the game's outcome at all, until players actually use the cheats. Disabling cheats is simply a "safety net" mechanism so that players don't accidentally use cheats, and so that players can't grief by suddenly cheating out of the blue.<br />
** Further note that this command cannot be used when there is more than one active player (in other words, if you use "manage players" to disable all the players but the host, you ''can'' use this command). This is another anti-griefing safety measure.<br />
** Lastly, this specific alteration to the savegame does not require a full sync and so does not create a conversion save file, etc. It just makes the changes right in memory, as it's a comparably simple change to the save.<br />
<br />
* The small buttons on the left of the galaxy map for the display mode and display filter have been removed, as they were redundant with the much better dropdowns at the bottom of the screen since 4.0.<br />
<br />
* Mobile Builders are now immune to reclamation.<br />
<br />
* Doubled number of precomputed circular offset points for pre-displacement stuff like large-number-of-unit moves and exiting wormholes, etc.<br />
<br />
* Colony ships are now immune to reclamation.<br />
<br />
* Added a new cheat: We Like Carriers, which spawns in a MASSIVE wave with 1 second left on the timer. (As you may guess from many of our cheats, this was added for testing, even though it's interesting outside of that context).<br />
<br />
* Previously, the logic for human resistance fighters to spawn was a bit fiddly and wasn't always working as intended. It's been overhauled so that on AI planets, resistance fighters have a chance of joining in when there are at least 300 human-allied military ships, and the AI still outnumbers the humans in terms of ship count; while on human or neutral planets, there must be at least 400 human-enemy military ships, and the resistance fighters may join in.<br />
<br />
* Zombie and Minor Faction ships are no longer allowed to be regenerated.<br />
<br />
* The spawning logic for human marauders previously was that there had to be at least 100 enemy-to-AI and AI-allied ships on the planet, unless the difficulty was set to 8 or higher, in which case it was just completely random.<br />
** The spawning logic has been changed so that on AI planets or neutral planets, there must be at least 100 human military ships present (so that marauders are more likely to show up during big attacks); and so that on human planets there must be at least 10 AI-allied military ships on the planet. The AI difficulty level no longer has any impact on this.<br />
<br />
* The way that rebelling human colonies work has now been completely revamped in terms of what happens once you capture them:<br />
** They now provide foldouts in multiplayer.<br />
** They cannot be used to create ships while the minor faction still controls them (previously, when the rebel colony was in supply, they could).<br />
** The ships they create are now created through a queue as you would expect, rather than through direct placement.<br />
** The colonies are captured on planet ownership change, rather than continuing to belong to a minor faction.<br />
** This fixes a number of prior bugs and logical issues with the rebelling human colonies:<br />
*** Previously, the colonies gave no economic benefit to players, despite claiming to, because they were controlled by a minor faction.<br />
**** Interestingly, no-one ever reported this one.<br />
*** Recently, it was impossible to build any ships using the colonies.<br />
<br />
* Previously, there was no "Event flare" for rebelling human colonies on the galaxy map. Now there is, when they are still in the hands of the AI.<br />
<br />
* Mining Golem attack power has been increased 10x, armor has been decreased 3x. Health of the mining golem has been increased from 40m to 120m.<br />
** When mining golems explode, they now destroy the planet and all the resource points, but no ships. This means that there is no risk of AI Progress increase from them, they just cut off access to resources.<br />
** Mining golems are now only seeded on planets in player territory, or within one hop of player territory.<br />
** Instead of a single mining golem per planet, it is now one per human player in multiplayer games.<br />
** Instead of a single planet getting a mining golem at once, three planets all get them at the same time, now.<br />
** Mining golems are now spawned every four hours (or so), rather than every 8ish hours.<br />
** The net effect here is that with this minor faction on, you'll have planets exploding and sometimes you'll just need to let them explode. This can put crimps in your and/or AI supply, and can also put the pressure on in terms of resource availability.<br />
** Mining Golems also now have 10k radar dampening.<br />
** Now that Mining Golems spawn so close to the human planets, there is only a 30-minute countdown timer on them, rather than 90 minutes.<br />
<br />
* Advanced Factories, Fabricators, and Captive Human Settlements are now immune to nukes.<br />
<br />
* Player-Ally Dyson Gatlings no longer self-attrition on human-controlled planets. This shouldn't be too unbalancing because the humans would have to capture a contiguous line of planets, the spawns only come so fast, etc.<br />
<br />
* Modules can no longer be assigned to a control group, since that was really buggy and unintended anyway.<br />
<br />
* If either of the two icon rows on the intel summary in the galaxy map need to get wider than they can, they now will wrap down to the next line.<br />
<br />
* The "Can't Go Through Wormholes" ability has been removed from any ships that are unable to move, thus preventing useless text in their descriptions.<br />
<br />
* Bomber Starships now use the energy wave shot type, rather than energy burst, so that their attack is visually and aurally more impressive.<br />
<br />
* Ships with modules can no longer be camouflaged.<br />
<br />
* The alerts box now remembers its widths from the last 12 seconds, and doesn't shrink below whatever the max size was during that period (it keeps track of the sizes once per second). This prevents the alerts box from jittering around in size as numbers count down on the wave timers, for instance.<br />
<br />
* Some tweaks to the resource bar display:<br />
** The parentheses around the unused resource gatherers label on the resource bar has been removed to prevent wrapping issues.<br />
** The total income display on the resources bar next to the current net income for metal and crystal has been removed. Those are both accessible through the tooltip for those items, and it was both cluttering and causing-of-wrapping-issues to have it included.<br />
** Both the metal and crystal resource sections of the resource bar are now 10px narrower each. On 1024px-wide screen resolutions, this should prevent threat, etc, from ever going off the right side of the screen, while still not having any wrapping like we used to have here (thanks to the above change).<br />
<br />
* A change has been put in place to make ships immediately re-check for new forcefield protection as soon as they lose protection from a prior force field. This was previously the case for command stations only. This will have some performance impact, but will greatly help correctness in the case of multi-stacked force fields.<br />
<br />
* Ships that are still under construction are now immune to all forms of paralysis—paralysis shots, EMPs, whatever. This prevents a number of little issues.<br />
<br />
* The exo-shield and energy reactor remains now can't be rebuilt when on a planet that doesn't have a player command station (the exo shields because those are linked to nonexistent harvesters, so those are pointless).<br />
<br />
* Energy reactors now drop remains when they die, so that remains rebuilders can rebuild them automatically.<br />
<br />
* Improved the AI thread's information about guarding objects and exo-shields. This should fix some of the issues relating to units dancing, etc.<br />
<br />
* The way that exo-shields work has now been completely re-done. Rather than providing a single-ship forcefield, the exo-shield now just adds its health to that of the original ship. For purposes of the AI thread, the AI is now WAY better at deciding when to attack ships under exo-shields (in the past it would pretty much just ignore them). Additionally, the way that exo-shields work is a lot more RAM-efficient. Also, a ship can now be protected by both a regular force field and an exo-shield at the same time, unlike before. The visuals of exo-shields also now show up like the "ship based force fields" of riot starships and similar.<br />
<br />
* Exo-shields no longer die when their target protected object dies, they simply become unlinked and will later link with anything valid that is within range of them.<br />
<br />
* The various resource-gathering-type ships are no longer including the "captured on planet ownership" flag, as that was pointless given that the AI no longer has them.<br />
<br />
* All metal and crystal harvesters and all energy reactors are now destroyed on a planet when the command station is lost. The main goal of this is making the loss of a command station more meaningful again, as it used to be for other reasons, but it happily also means that energy reactors can no longer be constructed on neutral/enemy planets (thus preventing circumvention of the AI Progress needed for energy via that sort of strategy).<br />
<br />
* When there are extra metal or crystal harvesters on a planet (typically from old and semi-messed-up-saves), all of the harvesters of the type-in-excess are now removed (and presumably are then rebuilt afterward). This prevents some situations of essentially accidental-cheating. A message is sent when the harvesters of a planet are reset in this way.<br />
<br />
* The effects of gravity drills, gravitational turrets, etc, are now calculated approximately 3x more frequently, and thus increase CPU load a bit but at the same time make the gravity turrets in particular more effective.<br />
<br />
* Much improved the colors of the control group labels on the planetary summary, so that they are actually legible again (first time these have been legible since the port to unity).<br />
<br />
* It is now possible to replace an existing command station that belongs to you all in one action: simply build the new command station on an planet and it will replace the existing one.<br />
** Additionally, when this action is taken, it no longer triggers the when-command-station-dies logic for other ships on the planet; they don't notice the swap. This is extremely useful for reactors and harvesters, which otherwise would be unavoidably destroyed when the command station was scrapped before the replacement was built.<br />
** This also causes the planet to not leave control of the player, even while the command station replacement is self-building, whereas before it would normally have been neutral in color for a while. <br />
<br />
* Normally tractor beams will not latch onto ships with an effective speed of 0 (from engine damage or whatever), but now that logic is only for IMMOBILE tractor beam sources. Mobile ships like martyrs, etherjets, etc, can now pick up ships with zero current move speed that would normally have move speed.<br />
<br />
* Barracks checks were previously always 200 only occurring if there were an excess 200 units at the planet, even though the barracks capacity amounts were scaled with the different unit cap scales. This meant that barracks/carriers were rarely being seeded into normal and low ship cap scale games, except for older savegames that had these.<br />
** This has been fixed so that the check floor is now 200/100/50 at high/normal/low ship caps, which means that barracks and carriers are WAY likelier to show up in those kinds of games. Correspondingly, now border aggression is less of a thing there, as it already was on high (still a thing, just not so much of one).<br />
<br />
* Fortresses no longer have the ability to transport ships. That was somewhat useless, and the counter for the transport overlapped with the repair-ability counter. Any fortresses transporting ships in existing saves will eject them.<br />
<br />
* Spire Blades and Hive Golem Wasps are now immune to being insta-killed so that they don't distract ion cannons.<br />
<br />
* When one resource is at the resource cap and the other is not, the manufactories now start turning on to minimize the wasted overflow.<br />
<br />
* The AI players should now properly value the per-planet ship caps for creating experimental and support-corps ships, and in general will flood them into planets a whole lot less.<br />
<br />
* The experimentalist and support corps ships are now more likely to send their specialty ships along with waves.<br />
<br />
* Player ships that are in low power mode no longer are able to recharge their weapons. Note that when this happens, the recharge bar will automatically be shown for the ship, no matter what the context, to let the player know what is happening. This prevents the incentive to use some micro-intensive tactics.<br />
<br />
* The yellow color of players in the tutorials is now brighter (on new savegames only) to be easier to see.<br />
<br />
* In the past, the combat styles would just invisibly affect the attack powers and movement speeds of ships. Now it actually shows the real values in the interface, to be clearer what is happening there.<br />
<br />
* Scouts and scout starships have had their base movement speed doubled. However, their speed also no longer increases like other ships when the combat style is increased. This prevents scouting from being too easy/hard on the various combat styles.<br />
<br />
* Similarly, human transports and AI carriers no longer scale up in speed with the faster combat styles, but have had their base speed doubled.<br />
<br />
* Ships that metamorphose (like Golems), that replicate (like viral shredders), which get rebuilt by rebuilders, and which get created via things like the mining enclosures (like spirecraft) now properly count as being built.<br />
<br />
* Various "short name" changes have been made for consistency:<br />
** Z Elec Bomber is now Electric Bomber.<br />
** Frigate is now Missile Frigate.<br />
** MicroFight is now MicroFighter.<br />
** Shuttle is now Elec Shuttle.<br />
** Infil is now Infiltrator.<br />
** Laser is now Laser Gat.<br />
** Autocan is now Autocannon.<br />
** Deflect is now Deflector.<br />
** Grenade is now Grenade Launch.<br />
** Z Mirror is now Mirror.<br />
** Z Paralyzer is now Paralyzer.<br />
** Z Beam Frigate is now Beam Frigate.<br />
** Z Chameleon is now Chameleon.<br />
** Z Polarizer is now Polarizer.<br />
** Z Shredder is now Viral Shredder.<br />
** Commando is now Yng Commando.<br />
** Tiger is now Yng Tiger.<br />
** Vulture is now Yng Vulture.<br />
** Weasel is now Yng Weasel.<br />
** Nanoswarm is now Yng Nanoswarm.<br />
** S Armor Rotter is now Armor Rotter.<br />
** S Blade Spawner is now Blade Spawner.<br />
** S Gravity Drain is now Gravity Drain.<br />
** S Gravity Ripper is now Gravity Ripper.<br />
** S Maw is now Maw.<br />
** S Mini Ram is now Mini Ram.<br />
** S Stealth Battleship is now Stealth Battleship.<br />
** S Teleporting Leech is now Teleporting Leech.<br />
** S Tractor Platform is now Tractor Platform.<br />
<br />
* Various "wave name" changes have been made for consistency:<br />
** Frigates are now Missile Frigates.<br />
** Tanks are now Space Tanks.<br />
** Cutlasses are now Vorticular Cutlasses.<br />
** Spiders are now Spider Bots.<br />
** Autocannons are now Autocannon Minipods.<br />
** Planes are now Space Planes.<br />
** EtherJets are now EtherJet Tractors.<br />
** Force Field Bearers are now Shield Bearers.<br />
** Armors are now Armor Ships.<br />
** Anti-Armors are now Anti-Armor Ships.<br />
** Bombards are now Zenith Bombards.<br />
** AutoBombs are now Zenith AutoBombs.<br />
** Commandos are now Neinzul Youngling Commandos.<br />
** Tigers are now Neinzul Youngling Tigers.<br />
** Vultures are now Neinzul Youngling Vultures.<br />
** Weasels are now Neinzul Youngling Weasels.<br />
** Nanoswarms are now Neinzul Youngling Nanoswarms.<br />
<br />
* Various "full name" changes have been made for consistency:<br />
** Heavy Bombers are now Bombers.<br />
<br />
* Various "ship type name" changes have been made for consistency/clarity:<br />
** Z Elec Bomber is now Elec Bomber.<br />
** Z Mirror is now Mirror.<br />
** Z Paralyzer is now Paralyzer.<br />
** Z Beam Frigate is now Beam Frigate.<br />
** Z Chameleon is now Chameleon.<br />
** Z Polarizer is now Polarizer.<br />
** Z Shredder is now Shredder.<br />
** Z AutoBomb is now AutoBomb.<br />
** Z Bombardment is now Bombard.<br />
** Spire Armor Rotter is now Armor Rotter.<br />
** Spire Blade Spawner is now Blade Spawner.<br />
** Spire Gravity Drain is now Gravity Drain.<br />
** Spire Gravity Ripper is now Gravity Ripper.<br />
** Spire Stealth Battleship is now Stealth Battleship.<br />
** Spire Teleporting Leech is now Teleporting Leech.<br />
** Spire Tractor Platform is now Tractor Platform.<br />
** Spire Maw is now Maw.<br />
** Spire Mini Ram is now Mini Ram.<br />
** These changes also affecet the sort order of the ship icons in the planetary summary.<br />
<br />
* When AI ships are EMP'd or paralyzed or tractored, they are now both angered and—this last only if they are an AI ship—taken out of low power mode. This makes them autotargetable, and also means they probably just became free-threat.<br />
<br />
* Riot Control Starships now show up with a ship type of Riot Starship rather than Fleet Starship, to avoid confusion.<br />
<br />
* Science Labs Mark III now count as "sabotage" units that stirs up the AI into creating threat/free ships from its command station sort of like how an AI Eye would work. This replaces the old way of stirring up the existing ships sitting on the planet, which didn't work too well for a lot of reasons.<br />
** Science Labs Mark III also no longer cause the AI to get a reinforcement bonus, and they now generate 6/s knowledge instead of 2/s. This makes them a lot more attractive to actually use, but also substantially more risky.<br />
<br />
* Windowing system reworked from using GUI.Window to the more primitive GUI.Box, handling the various other windowing stuff in our own code. GUI.Window did a pretty good job but we were butting up against several limitations and thus decided to just "roll our own". Thankfully, the engine is flexible enough to allow this. Note that this is a pretty wide-reaching change and may cause all kinds of odd problems. For what it's worth, in our tests we were able to play just fine.<br />
<br />
* The Raptor retreat radius has been increased from 5k to 9k.<br />
<br />
* When a planet is being viewed by a human player, the AI ships will no longer be in cold storage. This prevents issues with things like planetary cloakers, camouflager AI types, etc.<br />
<br />
* AI Carriers are now able to be hit by the various types of ships that can't hit fleet ships (siege starships, etc).<br />
<br />
* Additionally, AI Carriers can now be hit by orbital mass drivers.<br />
<br />
* Ships that are immune to being scrapped now show that in their immunities list.<br />
<br />
* When command stations are scrapped, the colony ships on that planet are now destroyed the same as if the command station was killed by enemies.<br />
<br />
* When random AI types are assigned, the game now explicitly tries to avoid assigning the same AI type to both players.<br />
<br />
* Put in a fix to prevent older savegames and the tutorials from having their resource points and wormholes all rearranged because of the new random stuff. This was tougher than perhaps it sounds, actually. The placement of stuff in the tutorials (not wormholes or resource points) is still going to be a bit different than it used to be, though—so any feedback folks care to give us on how that's working and if there's anything amiss in the tutorials, would be much appreciated!<br />
<br />
* Added new command: "cmd:copy game setup to lobby", that tries to populate your "LastMapStyle" and whatnot settings from the game currently loaded (it has to kinda guess at planet count in some cases). Mostly useful for the developers to debug mapgen situations from a save, but some players may have use of it.<br />
<br />
* When ships are regenerated by a regenerator golem, they are now revived with full engine and armor health.<br />
<br />
* The Support Corps AI Type will no longer seed its ships in a guard capacity, and instead will have vastly more of them seeded with its ally's waves. The support corps AI type also no longer includes engineer drone IIs.<br />
<br />
* The AI is now completely disallowed from using mobile repair stations. They didn't use them correctly, and it was just a hassle in general with them. They will be automatically removed from existing savegames where the AI has them.<br />
<br />
* AI Special Forces Rally Post Guardians now have zero extra armor and zero extra health compared to the basic guardian template. Their attack is now 10k * shiplevel rather than just a token shiplevel value. They no longer have cloaking, they no longer have self-attrition, they no longer hunt the human homeworlds, and they are no longer direct-only targeted.<br />
** However, they now have a new ability: not only do they draw the AI special forces ships to them in the way they always have, but the AI also gets special forces reinforcements added at this guardian during each reinforcement event at the guardian's planet (they don't count as a guard post in any other fashion, though - not for ship counts or anything like that).<br />
<br />
* All of the AI forcefields, and the AI spire shield spheres (except the core ones on the AI home planets) now automatically die if they are protecting no ships and not on an AI planet.<br />
<br />
* Some of the older AI types now have new unlocks (assuming the appropriate expansions and enabled ships, etc):<br />
** Teleporter Turtles now get Spire Teleporting Leeeches.<br />
** Mad Bombers now get Zenith Electric Bombers, Zenith Chameleons, and Zenith Bombards.<br />
** The Tank now gets Youngling Tigers.<br />
** Shadow Master and Stealth Master now get the Spire Stealth Battleships.<br />
** The Feeding Parasite and Technologist Parasite now get the Spire Teleporting Leeches and Youngling Nanoswarms.<br />
<br />
* Two new Light of the Spire cheats have been added:<br />
** Spirecraft To The Rescue (+1 Of Each Spirecraft Type On The Current Planet)<br />
** Fallen Friends Arise (+1 Of Each Fallen Spire Military Vessel Type On The Current Planet)<br />
<br />
* Added a new base game cheat: Gimme Absolutely Positively Everything, which gives the player one of every type of ship. Even AI ships, etc.<br />
<br />
* When desyncs are encountered, a new DesyncErrors.txt is logged on the host. I'm not sure why we never did this before.<br />
** It also shows individual chat messages to all players saying who desynced. This is a bit redundant with the other chat message that gets sent, but it's from a different branch of code and thus even though probably both will fire, at least we can be sure one of them will definitely do so in all cases.<br />
<br />
* AI Eyes are no longer auto-targeted.<br />
<br />
* Re-implemented the dump button (when debug mode is on) on the save-game screen; the load-game screen version's one is still not implemented.<br />
<br />
* When players are being waited on or have desynced, a message to that effect now goes out from the game host.<br />
<br />
* There are now separate messages for "Waiting for Players..." and "DESYNC..." to help remove any confusion on those points.<br />
<br />
* Marauder spawn-chance-and-size logic now the same for diffs 1-4 as for diffs 5-8.6; previously the 1-4 diffs would get much smaller but much more frequent marauder spanws that could lead to significant player-annoyance without actually increasing the challenge much.<br />
<br />
* Since Hybrid facilities are no longer (for now) constructed during the game, the Hybrid Facilities galaxy map filter will now display data for all planets you've ever scouted.<br />
<br />
* AI ships that create forcefields will now never be put into low-power mode by the AI.<br />
<br />
* The "template abbreviation" drawn on top of each template option in the buy menu for riot control starships and spire capital ships was previously always drawn in one color (black); that displayed fine for the spire ships but not well for the riot ships. Now it will use white for the riot ships and black for the spire ships.<br />
<br />
* Resistance Fighter Bombers and Resistance Frigates now have the "HasWarpEngineMufflers" flag, which prevents the warp-in and warp-out sounds from playing when they go through a wormhole (kinda nice when they're patrolling your planets at a rapid pace).<br />
<br />
* Changed the relationship between AI difficulty and wave size to a new algorithm that hopefully provides a more useful/granular range of difficulty while also compensating for the difficulty-spike (on low-caps particularly) introduced in 4.072. Details omitted since they're somewhat complex and are likely to change significantly in the next release.<br />
<br />
== Bugfixes ==<br />
<br />
* Resolved various issues (related sound, GUI textures, error logging, etc) causing instability on OSX. This involved multiple sweeping rewrites of the sound subsystem, but hey, whatever it takes.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a rare bug that could cause the lobby to draw without the planets actually showing, while throwing a lot of exceptions, upon the second or third run of the program (but not always!). This seems to only have happened if the players were viewing the galaxy map when they exited out of the game, and possibly only if they were hovering over a plant at the time.<br />
<br />
* Hopefully fixed a rare AI Assertions bug that could be caused by a "race condition" of sorts when starting a new game or restarting the AI thread.<br />
<br />
* Since the 4.0 switch, the "Automatically Check for Updates" settings option was doing nothing. Now it properly disabled automatic update checks.<br />
<br />
* Added a new "Left Mouse <=> Right Mouse" AnyTime KeyBind (defualts to None on windows, defaults to LeftApple on a mac), for people who were having problems getting the normal ctrl+left = right logic on a mac one-button mouse.<br />
<br />
* When the AI Type that would be selected is unavailable (due to options being changed as above, for instance), it now defaults to Random Moderate/Easier instead.<br />
<br />
* When the player or AI colors would be set to nothing in the lobby based on their old values not being available, it now sets them to the first entry in the list instead.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where Youngling Commando MkIIIs were not scaling with the unit cap.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug preventing the galaxy-map helper-window from switching out of displaying the last find-mode target. Also changed the find-mode text to reflect that left clicking empty space ends it, rather than right-clicking empty space.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug occasionally causing a null exception in GameButton.SelfRender early in the game. This was being caught, logged, and ignored so it probably wasn't hurting anything, but definitely good to have it fixed.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug preventing player from buying ships from a human rebel colony.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug preventing the mercenary space dock from building a ship whose base type was prohibited by the Available Ships lobby setting (so if you had it on "simple" you couldn't build ether jets or beam frigates from the mercenary space dock, but now you'll be able to).<br />
<br />
* Fixed an (apparently) rare crash bug in the tutorial that happens right after capturing the ARS. If the underlying bug happens it may cause problems, but at least shouldn't crash.<br />
<br />
* Previously the save window, load window, and stats window would not functionally fit on a 1024x600 screen (1024x768 is the lowest resolution supported, but we try to make 1024x600 work at least minimally functional), fixed the sizing of controls so this works now.<br />
<br />
* Also fixed the settings window to fit (albeit barely) on 1024x600.<br />
<br />
* Also fixed the lobby window for 1024x600, though this one is a bit more intrusive: when the lobby window first initializes, if the height of the current resolution is less than 768, it omits the logo at the top of the right window, so there's room for the start game button at the bottom. This looks a bit weird but it's at least functional.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the "Attack Recharge" was also being used as an "Ability recharge" for a growing number of ships (raid engines, cleanup drones, rebuilders, etc). That led to a number of bugs so subtle that no-one has ever reported them (mostly with the raid engine), but now we've split these apart and the various bugs are thus resolved.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where if you had the game in non-trial mode and your last-started-game's available ships setting was something other than "Simple", and then switched to trial mode (by adding an expansion without a key), and then tried to start a new game it would fail.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some inconsistencies in AI "can I give another order to this unit yet?" logic.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some bugs skewing the overall "special difficulty" modifier (based on homeworld/player count and AI difficulty); it was only used for hybrids, so the problems may not have been apparent.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some rare null-exception bugs in the lobby when coming in with a messed up settings.dat.<br />
<br />
* The images for the AI Carrier, Raider Guardian, and Laser Guardian have once again been included in this beta release since the 4.021 update on Steam for some reason still didn't include them.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that's probably been around since unit scaling and armor where the game was frequently using the normal-cap base-attack-value instead of low, when playing on low. With this fixed, it is likely that stuff will die faster on low now.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a null-exception bug in hybrid-hive logic that was killing the ai thread when it was unable to pathfind to certain objects.<br />
<br />
* A message is now shown when a savegame is saved, to provide visual feedback that the save actually did occur. It's only been since SlimDX that this message was missing, incidentally, but it's fixed now.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where the minor-faction-shots-never-anger-AI logic was causing it to not even apply the repair-cooldown from the damage. Changed to handle LastDamaged separately from LastAngered.<br />
<br />
* Fixed swapping of text between two keybinds on the controls window.<br />
<br />
* System.IO.File.AppendAllText is no longer used, in favor of a wrappered System.IO.StreamWriter. It is apparently possibly the case that the AppendAllText does not close properly, or uses a secondary thread, in Mono on OSX. That's not 100% certain, but as a matter of safety at this stage we're trying to eliminate extra held handles that might exist. <br />
<br />
* Fixed index out of bounds exception in reference tab.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a sizing issue that was causing an error message and for the special forces guardian to not appear in far zoom.<br />
<br />
* Modules firing will now apply the same "cannot be cloaked for x seconds" logic to their parent ships as to themselves.<br />
<br />
* AI Carriers engine health from 100 => infinity.<br />
<br />
* Multi-shot ships no longer are able to get any "freebie" shots if their target dies while their shots are incoming against it. This nerfs the mutli-shot ships to a minor degree, but more significantly it is a CPU-cheap way of solving a huge bug that was recently leading to multi-shot ships sometimes getting loads and loads of freebie shots that they weren't supposed to—leading to things like the "rapid fire artillery guardian," for instance.<br />
<br />
* Shot damage is now recalculated right when a ship is hit, so that if targets were changed (was the forcefield, now the ship, or vice-versa) the appropriate damage is now done rather than an inflated or reduced amount.<br />
<br />
* Previously, SuperTerminals and AI Eyes were not limited in what they spawned based on the types that the controlling AI had unlocked. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Put in a fix that prevents a semi-rare exception from killing the AI thread.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where superterminal would stop generating ships once it tried to cross from MkIV to MkV ships. For now it will just stick with MkIV.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where AI players were having no wave-eligible core ship types unlocked, and in some cases no core ship types unlocked at all. This caused various problems. Now all AI players will have the core fighter, core bomber, and core missile frigate unlocked. This will be applied retroactively to savegames as they are loaded.<br />
<br />
* The way AI/minor-faction ships with module templates are created fixed to be much less fiddly (this was leading to avengers and AI-controlled Riots spawning with no modules).<br />
<br />
* Previously, when an AI ship contained other ships (carriers, etc) that was not reflected in the threat/attack meters properly. Now it is.<br />
<br />
* "Ally to all" minor faction ships were previously being affected by attrition. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Previously, rally posts were able to be damaged by mines. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where minor faction ships were consuming player energy.<br />
<br />
* Previously, self-attrition was impairing engineers from being able to repair ships with self-attrition. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* The AI now has some new logic for cleaning up certain old ships on its thread, to hopefully avoid issues with "ghost" warp gates and such that would lead to waves that shouldn't happen. That may or may not have been happening before, but we suspect it might have been and this adds on some safety checks to hopefully prevent it.<br />
<br />
* Nanoswarm now considered to use non-shell ammo, so bulletproof stuff should no longer be immune to them.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where multiple science lab mkIIIs on one planet were reporting as if multi-stacking the reinforcement multipliers, even though they were not actually multiplying them.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some discrepancies in applying AI-Type-specific modifiers to wave sizes between mixed-wave and homogenous-wave branches.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the WaveSize multiplicative factor was being applied twice (once on the AI thread, once on the main thread), leading to factors < 1 causing smaller-than-intended waves and factors > 1 causing larger-than-intended waves. In some cases the factors were >= 10, and you can imagine how bad that got.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some mixed-wave messages showing up as homogenous and thus misleading the player as to the content of the wave (now just says Enemy Ships in those cases).<br />
<br />
* Fixed unintended inflation of counter-attack-wave size. May still be some issues but this should fix the biggest of them.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that would allow the selection of a non-available bonus ship type in the lobby, but not actually allow the construction of that type in the game. Fixed to not allow the choice in the first place.<br />
<br />
* Warheads produced by the Neinzul Rocketry Corps will now actually do something. Their behavior was probably disabled a while ago when a wholesale revision was made to how the AI thread issued commands for minor faction ships (or, more precisely, how it does not).<br />
** Be afraid.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where the game was not recomputing the coordinate in "world space" under the mouse cursor if the game was moving under the cursor without the cursor actually moving (panning, zooming, switching planets, etc).<br />
<br />
* Fixed unintended inflation of schizo waves where each distinct type would have a minimum of its effective ship-cap; now ignores that rule for waves containing at least two non-starship types.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug causing the "minimum wave size for difficulty" logic to be twice as high as intended.<br />
<br />
* Raid Engines now no longer trigger on zombie ships since the human player has no way of controlling where they go.<br />
<br />
* Raid Engines used to be capable of triggering multiple times at once if multiple adjacent planets and/or the engine's own planet satisfied the conditions at once. Changed to only trigger at most once per "reload".<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug preventing ships from leaving cold storage if they were on a planet with > 4000 attack+threat ships (this led to capturables not being captured, zero-health ships not going away, ai ships sitting there and not firing and not fireable-upon, etc).<br />
<br />
* The galaxy map filter for detection of hybrid hives and hybrid hive facilities now works properly when fog of war is off.<br />
<br />
* The Unity resolution configuration screen is no longer allowed to be opened. It was pointless, anyway, as the game overrides it.<br />
<br />
* The "runsim" command line argument was previously crashing the game when used. As it's no longer supported, it's now been removed.<br />
<br />
* Previously, shot damage was only being reduced by 75% at the time of attack, not when the shot damage was actually being calculated for things like estimated damage display. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Previously, shot damage was being capped at the maximum health of the target at the time of firing. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Previously, if overkill damage was being dealt to an enemy ship, it would self-heal, self-damage, or help-with-replication at the overkill amount rather than the actual amount of damage needed to kill the ship. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Previously, shots that self-heal, self-damage, or help-with-replication, were taking effect when they were shot, rather than when they hit. This was particularly troublesome with self-damaging shots, which could cause a ship to massively over-damage itself for very little gain. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* AI MRS and Fortresses were still repairing broken golems preemptively. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* When the game is unable to unlock a bonus ship type for human players/home-planets that is unique for their team (usually due to playing with a lot of players on the simple ship types with no or few expansions), it now unlocks something that is unique for each player instead of for the team as a whole. The only time players would get nothing is if they already had all the ship types available.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the game had a chance to sometimes hang if it was unable to unlock a new bonus ship for a player at various junctures. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* The WithSelection context is now only active in planet-view, never in galaxy-view. It now also overrides any conflicting PlanetView binds. These two changes should resolve some really confusing input-causing-multiple-unrelated-things-to-happen issues we've been seeing (including the K causing both low-power-mode and knowledge-display-filter thing).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a fairly longstanding bug that was totally messing up the detection of whether one input context was "narrower" than another, and thus should have precedence when one if its keybinds conflicted with another active context's keybinds. <br />
<br />
* Distribution nodes and zenith reserves will no longer be targeted or damaged by AI ships.<br />
<br />
* Distribution nodes and zenith reserves that are scrapped will now give their proper benefit.<br />
<br />
* The ship caps and other stats in the planetary summary are now always synced with the local player's stats. Previously they often used global defauts that weren't correct for the current game.<br />
<br />
* Put in a fix that should make it harder for AI ships to be brought out of low-power-mode when the player attacks and then drop back into low-power during the battle.<br />
<br />
* Fixed odd bug with the code that sends updates on planets (specifically on the wormholes, in this case) to the AI thread.<br />
<br />
* Fixed up some age-old nonsensical code from the AI thread, the unclarity of which had been the cause of some recent bugs with threat accumulating.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a major longstanding typo in the AI loop dating back to sometime pre-3.120, wherein huge numbers of the AI's planets often would not be evaluated for AI logic, attacking, etc. Actually, depending on the circumstances of the savegame, it could affect no planets or it could affect virtually all of them. In one example save from Spikey00, for instance, it was only processing 4 planets out of 120 for the AI... with the result that over 17,000 ships accumulated in threat.<br />
** This one took forever to track down, but was super worth it. A lot of the "why didn't the CPA ships actually attack" issues probably trace back to this. Not sure why exactly this issue has been seeming more prevalent in the last week (perhaps related to the other, more recent issues reported in the line item above), but it's very clearly some code that dates all the way back to the initial import to Unity and before.<br />
<br />
* Previously, AI ships that were being "coordinated" by other AI ships (such as hybrid hives) were counting as threat. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a since-the-port-to-Unity bug with ships being selected, where if you drag-selected once it would select military-only, and then on the second time over the same group it would select all.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a number of issues with per-planet AI ship count limiters kicking in when they should not have been. This is most notable for things like AI starships that are included in a wave to an AI planet, or just included to a planet in general, for instance. Now only guarding or planetary roamer ships are even included in the ship caps—free/threat ships, special forces ships, etc, don't count, since they are all transient, anyhow.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that could cause uv textures to become accidentally flipped.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a hang-causing bug in processing the removal of a ship with coordinated underlings (like a Hybrid).<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug that could result in resistance fighter ships built by a human player at a resistance colony being produced as minor faction units and thus not costing energy (until the game was saved and reloaded, apparently, potentially resulting in a nasty shock).<br />
<br />
* Fixed some bugs with the Resource Flows tab of the Stats window where it wouldn't include everything that was causing an impact on metal or crystal (notably self-building turrets, etc).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that could cause "ghosting" of old graphics (and thus both incorrect drawing as well as performance degradation) in certain circumstances. We never actually saw evidence of this occurring in AI War—we found it via Tidalis—but it's something that definitely could have been happening, especially temporarily as images were being loaded in to the game.<br />
<br />
* The logic used for most minor faction and zombie ships for deciding to move on to a different planet should now ignore the presence of any enemy target that they are incapable of actully hitting (so neutral and player-ally Dyson Gatlings won't get stuck because of mk5 ships on the planet, etc).<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where neinzul clusters were only checking for non-mine military enemy units to see if they should spawn their internal squadrons. Now checks all enemy units. Will still not trigger on scouts unless it's a privacy cluster (though it will trigger in that case, it hasn't been for a while).<br />
<br />
* Reworked the AutoCreateUnitOutside behavior used by Neinzul Clusters and Hybrid Hive Spawners to not require that the source ship still exist when the command is processed, and to be triggered on death, so that taking out a cluster in one shot does not bypass its spawning of its internal squadrons.<br />
<br />
* AI ships that are immune to force fields will never now prioritize attacking them over ships under it (this makes raid starships way more dangerous than before in the hands of the AI, incidentally). It was previously simply a property being mis-applied on some ships that later got ff immunity belatedly. Now it automatically removes that flag for anything with the immunity.<br />
<br />
* All guardians are now immune to being insta-killed.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an inaccuracy in the Zenith Reserve tooltip.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an inaccuracy in the decoy drone description.<br />
<br />
* Previously, using 0 as the seed on some map types could cause the game to lock up. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an inaccuracy in the Tachyon Guardian description.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where modules would not always draw on top of their parent ship.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an extremely longstanding bug (since pre-1.0) where in certain rare circumstances, specific harvesters could not be built.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an inaccuracy in the Armored Golem description text.<br />
<br />
* Clarified the description text on Zenith SpaceTime Manipulators and Speed Boosters to note that they affect all friendly ships EXCEPT minor faction ships (in other words, your ships and allied human ships).<br />
<br />
* Previously, speed boosters and similar could override the cap of things like gravity drills, which made combos like gravity drills plus logistics command stations ridiculously overpowered. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in the resource flows that could previously cause self-building ships to stall out, most notably force fields under some various circumstances (such as being shot, but not just limited to that).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause the health of a self-building ship to be artificially too-high. This could cause all sorts of problems, such as engineers ceasing helping to repair it, etc.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a related bug that could sometimes cause the remaining time-to-build to be massively incorrectly reported.<br />
<br />
* Previously, EMP detonations were causing force fields to blink on and off rather than disabling them completely. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an issue that previously existed where when ships were group-moving and speed-boosted, but some of the ships were immune to speed boosting, and those ships would then get left behind.<br />
<br />
* Previously, very old games were not having their AI units upgraded to their new counterparts properly. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the "Show Ship Recharge Bars" setting was not properly being read out of the settings file into the settings visual display, causing it to reset to the default if players closed the application and later restarted it and opened the settings screen again. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug since the first Unity versions where disabling a trial-mode expansion would not fully bring the game out of trial mode (even if it was the only trial-mode piece left) until you restarted the application. This also fixes the same bug for when a valid license key was actually entered and previously the game had to be restarted before that key fully "took."<br />
<br />
* If a handicap was previously set on a player, then it wouldn't get reset properly when a new game or tutorial was started. This is a bug going all the way back to 1.0 or before, apparently. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the Zenith Power Generator did not show up in the reactors quick-button lists. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that was causing the Warp Jumper AI type to not always be able to attack any human planet that wasn't warp jammed.<br />
<br />
* Previously, when a bully or assassin AI type could not find a valid planet to attack belonging to the weakest/strongest player (respectively), they would warp in to ???. Now they will warp in against other players if their favorite target is not available.<br />
<br />
* Put in more exception-preventing code in the single-select dropdowns to prevent a rare issue.<br />
<br />
* Fixed loooooongstanding bug where a completed game would not show up on the high scores list if another record was already there with the same map seed and a higher score. It will now prefer a record with the IsGameOver flag, even if the score is equal or lower. Also made it log the game result more promptly after IsGameOver is set.<br />
<br />
* Fixed several typos in the tutorial.<br />
<br />
* The speed floor for Speed Racer and tag teamer ships wasn't working correctly with the new way that the combat style speeds are applied (as in, it was correct only on Epic). Fixed.<br />
<br />
* The global "speed limit" was previously 150, including various speed boosts, etc. However, the "silent doubling" for player ships was applied after that. This meant that in the last version, the speed of player ships was now capping out at 150 instead of 300. Worse, because the combat style speed bonuses were previously after-the-speed-limit as with the silent doubling, those were also getting capped at 150... rather than 1200 in terms of blitz for player-controlled ships. Yikes. The new speed cap is now 1400, to account for the cumulative old cap plus a little extra wiggle room to account for even-speedier ships.<br />
<br />
* The gravitational turret mark II/III health was unintentionally lower than mark I. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the "Can't use wormholes" tag was uselessly applied to mark II/III command stations. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* En-dashes and Em-dashes are now automatically converted to hyphens when checking license key validity. This prevents issues with players typing the wrong kind of dash and it saying their license key is not valid.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the low-power hotkey (K) would not toggle ships with build queues. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Fixed longstanding bugs with icon-grouping that would cause ships and health bars to be drawn in spurious places.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug that was having multiplied-by-square-root-of-target-armor (zenith polarizer) and multiplied-by-100-minus-percent-of-target-health-remaining (youngling vulture) attack power calculations use the minimum and maximum multipliers of the _target_ rather than the attacker. Now uses the attacker's min/max. FYI, the polarizer is supposed to have a min/max of 4x/100x and the vulture is supposed to have a min/max of 10x/90x (the defaults both was getting most of the time were 1x/100x).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding issue that affected a very small number of players (but more recently was suddenly more widespread... actually a good thing in terms of finding and fixing it) where the mouse edge scrolling did not work properly in some circumstances, most notably in windowed mode. The explanation on this one is long and convoluted: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=937#c7847<br />
<br />
* Previously, using very high or low speed modifiers would cause explosions and similar to have the inverse amount of animation speed from what they should have. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Converted away all internal references from Time.smoothDeltaTime to our own Game.Instance.GameDeltaTime, which prevents occasional skipping and lag in certain animations and scrolling the background stars as players pan the view, etc.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the Neinzul Enclave Starship mercenaries used the old graphics for the actual ship, but the new graphic for the icon. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* The objectives window will no longer act like nuked planets can be knowledge-gathered.<br />
<br />
* The lobby Map Type, Campaign Type, Minor Faction, and AI Plot lists now properly update when an expansion is enabled or disabled in the lobby expansion list.<br />
<br />
* Auto-explore/Auto-gather-knowledge orders were previously not being persisted through save/load, but now are.<br />
<br />
* Auto-explore/Auto-gather-knowledge orders were previously not clearing when a ship was given another direct order, but only when given the "stop" order; they now clear whenever the ship clears all its commands (generally when given an order to do something else without the shift key held).<br />
<br />
* Previously it was possible for using the "quick buttons" at the bottom to select ships in such a way that ships from multiple distinct planets were in your selection, leading to various problems like unintended orders. Now when using the quick buttons the selection will be completely cleared first.<br />
<br />
* Removed the Map Button context menu from the list on the input-bindings screen, since it didn't actually have any bindings and would cause an error if you tried to open it.<br />
<br />
* Added a couple missing localization strings for the edit-binding screen.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where very high-sensitivity mice could actually have their inputs periodically rounded down to zero when edge scrolling, or where having a very high performance profile could cause this even with normal mice.<br />
<br />
* Fixed inaccuracy in Riot Tazer tooltip.<br />
<br />
* Ship modules now automatically take on the cloaking status of their parent ship.<br />
<br />
* Previously, AI ships would remain in cold storage if there were only cloaked player ships on a planet, which was problematic with things like spire penetrators. Fixed so that it only does this for ships that are cloaked AND which have no attack power (aka, scouts).<br />
<br />
* Previously, when a ship that was actively tractoring other ships was loaded into a transport, it was still tractoring those ships. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a number of text wrapping and overlap issues in the ship hover window.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Mirrors are once again immune to blades, to prevent cutlasses from one-shotting themselves against the mirrors.<br />
<br />
* Previously, group movement could override the effects of gravity beams and drills. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* There was also some logic that was previously causing ships to be capped at 2x their normal movement speed from some but not all kinds of speed boosters. That was some old logic that hung around too long, apparently. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Previously, there was a bug that was causing ships that were immune to gravity effects to not be able to be speed-boosted when group moving. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the total number of allowed lines in the alerts window was 16. That meant that if there were a ton of waves plus other messages, some messages could be invisible. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Scouts, spirecraft scouts, and spirecraft jumpships are now immune to being swallowed. Scout starships already were.<br />
<br />
* When an EMP goes off, it is now assured to hit AI ships that were in cold storage; apparently in some rare circumstances previously it was able to miss ships in cold storage. Since this bug could possibly also happen with tachyon warheads, a safety check was put in place to make sure that was prevented, too. Nukes were already assured of not having this problem.<br />
<br />
* A pretty sweeping internal change has been made for how group move is tracked and applied. This should hopefully resolve all the problems with the mixtures of group moving and speed boosting and speed-boost-immune ships.<br />
** This may cause some accidental bugs if we typed something wrong (that's the architecturally-dstructive part, and why we avoided doing that before), but it should also fix the actual bugs it's meant to fix.<br />
** The core of this change is basically tracking two group move speeds, rather than one: slowest boostable speed, and slowest non-boostable speed.<br />
** Ships in savegames that are already group-moving might be still acting briefly wrong. Simply giving them another group-move order will straighten them out, if so. By "briefly wrong," we mean that they might be moving too fast or too slow compared to what they really should be, the same as they were already moving in the old savegame.<br />
** This should also fix the "player ships are always moving too slowly" bug that was in the last version (it was really just a group-move thing).<br />
<br />
* Fixed bugs with ship coordination where ships left behind on a planet by the coordinator could get _really_ confused about whether to go to the appropriate wormhole to catch up or to go to the coordinator's coordinates.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug with various beam weapons where the firing ship would stay slightly out of range and the beam wouldn't hit anything. Will now always fire such that the beam will reach the primary target (unless stopped by some other object, in the case of human and spire beam weapons).<br />
<br />
* The Resource Flows tab of the stats screen now uses LastEnergyProduced instead of UnitData.EnergyProduction for reporting positive energy flows, thus fixing the bug where it was inacurrately reporting the energy contribution of poor-efficiency reactors.<br />
<br />
* The tooltips for the various random ai type options in the lobby now refresh properly when expansion-enabledness is changed, etc.<br />
<br />
* Fixed textual bug that was making the "abilities" line in ship data always reflect high-cap numbers (notably, for armor piercing), now refreshes the abilities line if the cap has changed since the last time.<br />
<br />
* The Bonus-ship-type-detail-window used on lobby mouseovers now snaps to the bottom of the screen rather than displaying from the same top-left as the options window if it's too tall for that to fit on the screen.<br />
<br />
* Put in some changes to the per-second logic for command stations to make it much less likely that the auto-construction controls would "double-build", by making a command station wait about 3 seconds after being constructed to start looking at auto-build stuff, and also wait at least 1 whole second (and potentially 2) between checking the logic instead of potentially checking it at the end of one second and again at the beginning of another.<br />
<br />
* When drawing in-game, the Settings window now snaps to the top of the screen rather than the bottom of the resource bar when the resolution is not tall enough to accomodate both.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a surprisingly longstanding (but heretofore unrecognized) bug that was making the random number generator sometimes be highly non-random. This was leading to things like a very odd default pattern of collision offsetting.<br />
** Really, this changes EVERYTHING about the seeding in the game. Map seeds now will give completely different (and much more varied) results, there will be less "false statistical clustering" going on, and even the patterns of where guard posts are seeded in planets looks pretty different. This bug dates back to March 6, 2009, before the game was even released—one of the longest-standing bugs we've seen, especially of this magnitude.<br />
** This also seems to fix the "all new ships seed in a line" bug that has been around for a while.<br />
<br />
* Fixed another couple of bugs where the game's random number generator was recently not as random as one might have hoped. These were much more recent, in the main, as issues.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some bugs that were inflating AI Eye seeding by roughly 2x.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that may have been causing AI ships to aggro when firing on a minor-faction ship.<br />
<br />
* Previously, only mark V guard posts were immune to being insta-killed. Now they all are.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the AI could still get gravitational turrets from the Zenith Trader. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Minor Faction ships are no longer barred from shooting at low-power AI ships. This fixes some issues with the devourer not doing its job, as well as the dyson gatlings not doing their thing always, too.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where auto-knowledge-gather ships would "give up" after a few planets, even if more eligible ones were available.<br />
<br />
* Previously there was a bug where the ship icons on the galaxy view intel summary would appear even when the proper scouting had not been done. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* Allied minor faction ships (including asteroids) are no longer able to be seen in the planetary summary sidebar on planets where the player does not have a scout.<br />
<br />
* Since the port to unity, the cloaked enemy ships indicator was never showing on the planetary summary sidebar. This was a pretty handy indicator, especially for helping with confusion for newer players, and it has finally been brought back.<br />
<br />
* Previously CPA size was not scaled with unit caps. Odd that it's taken so long to notice. Anyway, fixed.<br />
<br />
* The game will now check Enter and Return together, like it does leftalt/rightalt, etc. This should help clear up some confusion with the chat textbox on certain OSX keyboards.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a couple of murky pieces of code that could have been desyncs, but probably were not. At least they are clearer as to being correct, now.<br />
<br />
* Fixed another really obscure desync that no one had actually run into yet. It would only occur if one player had their UI turned off and the other didn't, and a grenade went off.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a desync that would occur whenever the harvesters were reset in a multiplayer game.<br />
<br />
* Previously, enemy-to-all minor faction units (like marauders and some roaming enclaves) could get protection from human forcefields, counter-sniper turrets and the like. Fixed so that these particular units cannot get those protections from any source at all (none of them have such inherently, and being an enemy-to-all precludes getting them from anyone else).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a potential desync bug related to objects tracking which ships they've shot so far in a cycle.<br />
<br />
* Ships that emit attrition effects are now immune to cloaking and camouflaging.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a relatively longstanding error (since unit cap scale was introduced) in wave size computation: previously the wave size would be multiplied by the unit-cap-scale-multiplier (high = 1, normal = 0.5, low = 0.25) and then later by the ship-type-specific ship cap multiplier (e.g. on high fighter = 1, sentinel-frigate = 0.1, zenith-bombard = 0.25); the problem is that thte ship-type-specific cap was _already_ multiplied by the overall unit-cap-scale multiplier. So waves on high had the correct size, normal waves were 1/2 the correct size, and low waves were 1/4 the correct size.<br />
** Since the balance of wave sizes has been generally acceptable lately, we don't want to just totally shatter that to fix this math mistake on our part. Instead we are fixing that but also dividing the base size of waves by 2. So waves on normal will continue to be the same size as before, waves on high will actually be half the previous size, and waves on low will be double the previous size.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where the lobby bonus-type tooltips would always display ship caps as if the base cap were 100 instead of 196.<br />
<br />
== Community Contributors ==<br />
<br />
* 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) :<br />
** amonchakad (3)<br />
** ArcDM (3)<br />
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[[Category:AI War Release Notes]]<br />
[[Category:Release Notes]]</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:4.000_Release&diff=29852AI War:4.000 Release2017-09-16T15:55:24Z<p>Nat: Category:AI War Release Notes</p>
<hr />
<div>== Statistics For The Curious ==<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Community contributors assisted us with over 800 distinct bugs and suggestions-that-were-implemented (counting 95 distinct contributors).<br />
<br />
* The combined release notes for those 81 betas total over 300 kilobytes of text.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
== Highlights ==<br />
<br />
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:<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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!<br />
<br />
== AI Updates ==<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* AI players are no longer allowed to reinforce their planets if there are more than 175,000 ships currently in the game.<br />
<br />
* There are now AI-specific versions of the following golems that are used by the Golemite: Armored, Artillery, Black Widow, Regenerator, Botnet.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* New "AI Barracks" have been added.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Now the Border Aggression will never kick in at all if the attack + threat level is already 500 or more.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* The AIs now have a per-planet ship cap of 6 engineers of each mark level.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The AI will no longer abandon guard posts to pursue the scout starships of the player.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The AIs now send leech starships in waves and reinforcements at lower tech levels than they did in the past.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* It is definitely now not possible for starships or guardians to be part of cross-planet attacks or border aggression.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The ship ability "AI Will Abandon Post To Pursue," and its related functions, has been removed.<br />
<br />
* The per-guard-post cap of guardians is difficulty-dependent:<br />
** On difficulty 5 and below, the only guardians that the AI gets are the "freebie" tachyon guardians.<br />
** These are always there at every difficulty level mentioned hereafter.<br />
** On difficulty 6, the AI only gets a single guardian at each guard post, and it cannot ever rebuild these when they die.<br />
** On difficulty 7+, the AI can rebuild guardians, but only gets a single one per guard post (and only starts with one).<br />
** On difficulty 8+, the AI can rebuild guardians and gets two per guard post (and starts with two).<br />
** On difficulty 10+, the AI can rebuild guardians and gets three per guard post (and starts with two).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* AI Waves in general are now more of an interesting event, like they were in the pre-2.0 versions.<br />
** On difficulty 6+, waves are 3x larger.<br />
** On difficulty 7+, waves are 6x larger.<br />
** On difficulty 8+, waves are 9x larger.<br />
<br />
* Also, the single-starship-with-every-wave is now only included on difficulty 6 and up.<br />
** However, on difficulty 8+ it now includes two of them.<br />
** And on difficulty 9+, it now includes three of them.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
== General Large Gameplay Additions ==<br />
<br />
* The starting human outpost now contains:<br />
** Home Command Station<br />
** A special MkI forcefield that covers a much larger area (but has the same durability as a standard MkI),<br />
** A Space Dock.<br />
** A Starship Constructor.<br />
** One each of Energy Reactor MkI, MkII, and MkIII.<br />
** Ten each of metal and crystal manufactories.<br />
** On higher difficulties, a mobile builder and a mercenary space dock.<br />
** Depending on difficulty (the higher the more), a number of the new Home Human Settlements and Human Cryogenic Pods.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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). <br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** All of the above DOES affect all existing savegames loaded in the new version. Enjoy!<br />
<br />
* 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".<br />
<br />
* 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".<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The way that the "Game Speed" options (+/-) on the keyboard work is now completely different.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** Our settings importer tool also moves across savegame files as a convenience, although there is no compatibility issue with them.<br />
<br />
* For CoN:<br />
** Added Hybrid Hives AI Plot.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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+).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
* Added Neinzul Preservation Warden minor faction. When this is enabled:<br />
** The game will periodically check if it should spawn one of these enclave starships. They are always allied with the AI.<br />
** The original spawn points are generally on AI core worlds.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** The chance of enclave spawn and the rate of youngling production is directly related to the number of extractors currently running in the galaxy.<br />
* Added Neinzul Roaming Enclave minor faction. When this is enabled:<br />
** The game will periodically check if it should spawn one of these enclave starships. <br />
** When spawning, it randomly picks between AI-ally, Human-ally, and Enemy-to-all versions of the roaming enclave starship. <br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* Not really gameplay, but this is huge: completely remastered soundtracks for AI War and TZR!<br />
<br />
* 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):<br />
** Most large-cap ships have half the standard cap (Fighter MkI = 50), and are roughly twice as expensive, twice as strong, etc.<br />
*** This puts the lowest possible load on the your CPU when you have the biggest-possible battles.<br />
** Normal caps (Fighter MkI = 99), costs, and strengths.<br />
*** This puts a moderate load on your CPU when you have really large-scale battles.<br />
** Most large-cap ships have double the standard cap (Fighter MkI = 198) and are roughly half as expensive, half as strong, etc.<br />
***This puts a lot more load on the your CPU when you have the biggest-possible battles.<br />
<br />
* A new in-game music track, "The Last Chapter," has been added to the base game.<br />
<br />
== Co-Op Improvements ==<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
== Performance Improvements ==<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Made a rather notable performance improvement to ship explosions (which are just visual, not part of the simulation itself):<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The seek CPU efficiency of teleporting engineers has been increased significantly.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Some performance improvements to collision checking, target list filtering and sorting, and the generic basic range checking function.<br />
<br />
* Some performance improvements to the "move ship" logic that handles a lot of every-cycle logic for non-cold-storage ships.<br />
<br />
* A minor performance improvement to CheckForTargetListUpdate.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Some small performance improvements in overall main loop code and AI determination of "how much strength is protecting ship X".<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* Some more efficiency improvements to the AI thread.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Previously it was possible for the automatic AI engineer retreat logic to place an undue load on the CPU, fixed to pace these calculations.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** To clarify, a turn is 200ms long.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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!).<br />
<br />
* Converted some remaining string.concat list-building blocks to StringBuilder.Append, to prevent some (non-impossible) cases that would cause out-of-memory crashes.<br />
<br />
* There are no longer any prerequisites for running the game.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Thanks largely to the removal of the GDI+ components, the game application itself opens markedly faster now.<br />
<br />
* The draw-framerate is now independent from the simulation-framerate.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.\<br />
<br />
* The buttons along the bottom of the screen (and buy buttons, etc) have been massively upgraded to be far more efficient.<br />
<br />
* Performance Profile can now be changed from the Scores tab of the Stats screen.<br />
<br />
* Added Performance Profile dropdown to Game Options tab of Lobby.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Some fair performance improvements have been made to large battles on AI planets with a lot of low-power ships.<br />
<br />
* 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<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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%.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Another similar large improvement has been made to the pooling of explosions, shot graphics, etc.<br />
<br />
* A similar, but smaller improvement has been made to the sending of large, mult-part network messages.<br />
<br />
* Yet more work has been done to improve the rate of memory utilization in the mono gc.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
== Interface Improvements ==<br />
<br />
*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.<br />
<br />
*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.<br />
<br />
*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.<br />
<br />
*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).<br />
<br />
*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).<br />
<br />
*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.<br />
<br />
*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.<br />
<br />
*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.<br />
<br />
* Added "Auto Gather Knowledge (Science Only)" to the context menu. When executed, selected science ships will be automatically issued the following orders:<br />
** if not on friendly planet, no orders<br />
** else if on friendly planet but there's knowledge left to get, and not under a strong forcefield:<br />
*** if command station is under strong forcefield, set destination to that forcefield<br />
*** else if there are allied forcefields on the planet, set destination for the one nearest to the command station<br />
*** else set destination for the command station<br />
** 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).<br />
** else no orders (but periodically check again)<br />
** (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)<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Command Stations are now shown on the Planetary Summary icon lists on the galaxy map.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* The lobby tooltips now show the costs for each of the starting ship classes (mark I only, but still).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Additionally, this gets rid of the need to have energy use on the line with the ship caps, etc.<br />
** And lastly, it now lets the repair cost move out of the abilities section and into the costs line.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Added 2 galaxy map display overlays: detected hybrids and detected hybrid facilities. Only displays info on planets that you current have visibility.<br />
<br />
* Control Nodes have been removed and replaced with a Controls interface, accessed via the CTRLS button in the lower-left corner of the screen.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Added some basic alert messages when a human planet is under attack by Hybrids, Preservation Wardens, (hostile) Roaming Enclaves, or hostile warheads.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The way that links between planets are drawn in the galaxy map has been altered substantially:<br />
** 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.<br />
** The relationship between the two linked planets are now shown via the color of the line.<br />
*** Gray lines now denote unknown relationship, or a link between two neutral planets.<br />
*** Yellow lines now denote links between friendly and neutral planets.<br />
*** Green lines now denote links between friendly planets.<br />
*** Orange lines now denote links between friendly and enemy planets.<br />
*** Red lines now denote links between enemy planets or enemy and neutral planets.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Ship contruction keycodes have been made consistent:<br />
*** It is now possible to build queue-constructed ships in groups of 10 by holding alt.<br />
*** It is now possible to build directly-placed ships in groups of 50 by holding ctrl.<br />
** 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):<br />
*** When holding Shift, it now adds the new ship to the selection rather than centering on it.<br />
*** When holding Space, it now centers on the ship.<br />
** 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. <br />
*** 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.<br />
** The keyboard shortcuts for "frame skip" have been removed, as that feature no longer exists (it's no longer needed).<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Warnings about energy levels are now shown directly in the resource bar, and more concisely, with a tooltip over them to explain further.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The main menu is now nigh unrecognizable, it's seen so much rework.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* The Debug window (hit F3 to see) has been reworkd a bit to be more compact and yet more helpful. <br />
** 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). <br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* Added a new context menu: Special Unload.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Displays 1 button with the total number of ships loaded into transports in your selection.<br />
** Displays 1 button for each distinct ship type (so fighter I, fighter II, bomber I, etc), with the number of that type.<br />
** If you left click one of the buttons, it will give the order to unload 1 ship of that category.<br />
*** If the SpecialUnload_MakeUnload_10 keybind (defaults to LeftShift) is active, it does 10 ships instead.<br />
*** If the SpecialUnload_MakeUnload_50 keybind (defaults to LeftCtrl) is active, 50.<br />
*** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** Note that this works with fortresses, etc, not just "Transports" proper.<br />
<br />
* Added UnloadAll keybind (context: with-selection, no default binding) that is just an alias for the basic Unload button.<br />
<br />
* It is now possible to hide the tutorial instructional messages by holding down the Alt key.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The attack-move function has been moved to X, and the "open move menu" function has been moved to left alt.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Removed Pause-All-Constructors and Lone/Group-toggle button from the bottom global button row, replaced with:<br />
** Map button, toggles between galaxy and planet view (will also be used for showing the minimap, when that is implemented).<br />
** Controls button, opens a new window for changing a variety of galaxy-wide and planet-specific settings.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The pause function is now mapped to both the pause key and the p key.<br />
<br />
* Low-power ships now show up as grayed out even in far zoom, which is quite helpful.<br />
<br />
* Implemented Special Move context menu section, and the Unit Commands context menu section.<br />
<br />
* 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. <br />
<br />
* 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. <br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* The number of starships included with each enemy wave is now shown in the alert for the wave.<br />
<br />
* Added new Reference tab to the Stats screen, it's a fairly powerful tool for seeing which ship types are strong against which.<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Previously, the max zoom level was determined based on the screen resolution. Changed to be resolution-independent.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* There are now separate sliders for the mouse wheel zoom speed and the keyboard zoom speed.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The planetary summary overlay in the galaxy map has gotten a bit of a visual revamp.<br />
** It is now tall and thin, rather than fat and wide.<br />
** The counts for the icons at the top are actually now legible.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Tachyon Guardians are now shown as icons on the intel summary for planets, as they are very relevant for scouting.<br />
<br />
* Added several features to the Reference tab of the Stats window:<br />
** Filter By "Scope" can be used to restrict the compared types to:<br />
*** Ships in My Selection<br />
*** My Ships On This Planet (empty if you have no scout intel)<br />
*** Friendly Ships On This Planet (empty if you have no scout intel)<br />
*** Hostile Ships On This Planet (empty if you have no scout intel)<br />
*** My Ships (anywhere you have scout intel)<br />
*** Friendly Ships (anywhere you have scout intel)<br />
*** Hostile Ships (anywhere you have scout intel)<br />
*** Ships I Can Build (default) (currently doesn't account for fabricators or advanced factory)<br />
*** Ships I Can Build Or Unlock<br />
** Filter By "Category"<br />
*** Noncombatants<br />
*** Non-warhead Combatants (default)<br />
*** Fleet Ships<br />
*** Starships<br />
*** Turrets<br />
*** Warheads<br />
** The ship types now use TypeName instead of ShortName for description, and so are easier to identify.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Clicking one of the names in the first column of the grid will select it in the dropdown.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
== Graphical Improvements ==<br />
<br />
*Updated icon for Heavy Beam Cannons to a new graphic donated by HitmanN.<br />
<br />
* The graphics for the Mercenary Space dock have been overhauled so that it now looks like an evil version of the regular space dock.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The accuracy of drawing angled lines has been improved fairly substantially.<br />
<br />
* 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) :<br />
** 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.<br />
** Riot laser modules now fire 8 shots per salvo per 8 seconds instead of 4 shots per salvo per 4 seconds.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The galaxy map has seen a number of improvements.<br />
** 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.<br />
** The lines between the planets on the galaxy map also now use shaders and have a much more modern, realistic look to themselves.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The way that the galaxy map in the lobby is drawn has been completely reworked to look better.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Every last shot/weapon visual effect in the game has been completely redone in a much higher-res, fancier fashion.<br />
<br />
* The explosion visuals have been completely replaced and upgraded.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* All of the old "fuzzy line" effects have been replaced with much fancier and better-looking uv-animated special effects.<br />
<br />
* Beam weapon effects are now animated, and have a different color and animation per mark level (from 0 to V).<br />
<br />
* Improvements to angled line drawing accuracy.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Starship Constructors now have their own icon in far zoom, which a lot of people have been asking for for a while.<br />
<br />
* Recharge bars no longer show for ships that have fewer than 2 seconds total recharge, even if the recharge bars are turned on.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* "Niche icons" have replaced all the older "niche text" instances on ship icons in far zoom.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** A huge thanks to I-KP for providing the base image that was used for this.<br />
<br />
* 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!<br />
<br />
* The visual look for non-attack ranges such as counter-shooting radii, etc, has been updated to look better.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
== New Ships ==<br />
<br />
* Added a new "Home Human Settlement" unit that is only found on the starting human home planets.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Added a new "Human Cryogenic Pod" unit that is only found on the starting human home planets.<br />
** 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.<br />
** The AI Progress goes up by 1 if these are destroyed.<br />
<br />
*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)<br />
<br />
* Two new units have been added: Fortress, and Fortress Mark II, which are scaled down (and cheaper) versions of the Fortress Mark III.<br />
<br />
* There are now three separate levels of basic AI command stations, same as the basic human command stations have three levels.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** Existing savegames and new games now use only AI command station variants for the AIs, as follows:<br />
*** On the AI home planets, they use AI Core Command Stations (same as always).<br />
*** On Mark I and II planets, they use AI Command Stations Mark I.<br />
*** On Mark III planets, they use AI Command Stations Mark II.<br />
*** On Mark IV planets, they use AI Command Stations Mark III.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** The previously-existing warp jammer command stations have not been touched.<br />
** The prior Mark I-III command stations have been renamed to Economic command stations, but their functionality is unchanged.<br />
** There are now Mark I-III Military command stations.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** There are now Mark I-III Logistical command stations.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* In Zenith-Remnant-Enabled games, there are now Mercenary Beam Frigates.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** These will be seeded into existing savegames, but the seed rules in general are as follows:<br />
*** Mark III ion cannons are only ever seeded for AI players of difficulty 6 or higher, and at most with 1 per planet.<br />
*** Mark IV ion cannons are only ever seeded for AI players of difficulty 7 or higher, and at most with 1 per planet.<br />
*** Mark V ion cannons are only ever seeded for AI players of difficulty 8 or higher, and at most with 1 per planet.<br />
*** 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.<br />
<br />
* Mark II and III metal and crystal harvesters have been added as four new unlockable technologies.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Transport Ships Mark II have been added:<br />
** These cost far more energy to operate, but they slowly heal all ships contained within themselves; Neinzul Younglings are healed faster.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Nuclear warhead mark II has been added (costs 750k metal and crystal):<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Nuclear warhead mark III (doomsday device) has been added (costs 7.5 million metal and crystal):<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 9 New types of Special AI-Homeworld Guard Posts that have to be destroyed before the home command station itself can be destroyed.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Dreadnought I/II/III renamed to Siege Starship I/II/III and given much more distinctive role:<br />
** Speed from 12 to 8.<br />
** Shields from 1500 to 200.<br />
** Base health from 300,000/600,000/900,000 to 1000,00/120,000/140,000.<br />
** 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).<br />
** No longer able to fire on fleet ships (this actually makes its autotargeting behavior much more efficient at its real job).<br />
** Base attack power from 3200/4800/6400 to 6400/11000/15000.<br />
** Engine damage per shot from 150/250/350 to 5000/7500/10000.<br />
** Multiplier against normal forcefields from 1 to 30.<br />
** Multiplier against starship-based forcefields from 1 to 15.<br />
** Multiplier against turrets from 1 to 30.<br />
** Multiplier against heavy defense from 21 to 30 (this includes fortresses, and 1/2 bonus against guard posts and 1/3 against ion cannons).<br />
** Multiplier against hybrid facilities from 1 to 10.<br />
** Multiplier against warheads from 0.2 to 1.<br />
** Removed multipliers against Fighter, Bulletproof-fighter, Microfighter, Zenith Autobombs, Zenith Bombardment, Raider, Teleport Raider, Teleport Battlestation, and Munitions Boosters.<br />
** Autotargeting now prefers starships (the 30x multiplier against them is still there).<br />
** Knowledge unlock cost from 2500/4000/6000 to 3000/5000/7000.<br />
<br />
* For CoN:<br />
** Starship Class: Neinzul Enclave Starships Mark I-IV.<br />
** Bonus Ship Type: Neinzul Youngling Commandos Mark I-V.<br />
** Bonus Ship Type: Neinzul Youngling Tigers Mark I-V.<br />
** Bonus Ship Type: Neinzul Youngling Weasel I-V.<br />
** Bonus Ship Type: Neinzul Youngling Vulture I-V.<br />
** Bonus Ship Type: Neinzul Youngling NanoswarmI-V.<br />
** Neinzul Regeneration Chamber.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* A new AI Carrier unit has been added to the game:<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
== Ship Logic Updates ==<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** This also makes a clearer delineation on not allowing Mobile Repair Stations to assist the construction of units.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* "Mines" have now become "minefields." The following changes now apply to all mines, including regular, EMP, and Area mines.<br />
** The max health of mines is now 8x higher, as is their regen rate.<br />
** The metal and crystal costs of mines are now 6x higher.<br />
** The ship caps on mines are now 4x lower.<br />
** Minefields are now 16x larger than the older mines used to be (256x256 instead of 64x64).<br />
** The damage dealt by an individual minefield is now 3x what it was before, and is now shown in the tooltip.<br />
** Minefields now take 3x longer to build.<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Additionally, the repair speed bonuses of higher-level engineers now also apply to engine repair, whereas before they did not.<br />
<br />
* The recharge rate of ships is no longer affected by fast & dangerous or blitz combat styles.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Regeneration, attrition, and self-attrition are now dealt out in per-second bursts, rather than as a continual stream.<br />
<br />
* 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):<br />
** The ship caps on mark III ships (for humans only) are now about 114% of their prior values.<br />
** The ship caps on mark IV ships (for humans only) are now about 280% of their prior values.<br />
** The ship caps on mark V ships (for humans only) are now about 330% of their prior values.<br />
** The size of mark II waves of ships (for AIs only) are now about 112% of their prior values.<br />
** The size of mark III waves of ships (for AIs only) are now about 133% of their prior values.<br />
** The size of mark IV waves of ships (for AIs only) are now about 175% of their prior values.<br />
** The size of mark V waves of ships (for AIs only) are now about 171% of their prior values.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* Electric shuttles are now a lot more effective about not getting right on top of their targets.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Space tugs have been removed from the game, as they have always been fiddly and problematic, as well as a moderate micromanagement need.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* The old "Shields" mechanic (not to be confused with force fields) has been removed.<br />
** 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).<br />
** This also removes the random element from attacks, which is a positive thing for a strategy game of this style.<br />
<br />
* A new Armor Rating reduces the power of all shots by its value, but not below 5% of the incoming shot.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* A new "Hull" field is now shown by the Armor field. The Hull and Armor fields don't have any impact on one another. <br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
== Balance Updates ==<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Mark II now provides 40 of each instead of 28 of each.<br />
** Mark III now provides 64 of each instead of 40 of each.<br />
** For the sake of comparison, the Mark I still produces 16 of each, and the Home command station still produces 80 of each.<br />
<br />
* Science Lab, Science Lab Mk II,and Advanced Research Station can no longer gather knowledge from AI-held planets.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Science Lab Mk II move speed from 16 to 20, knowledge gather rate from 2 to 3.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The knowledge costs of engineer drones mark II and III have now been reduced by 1,000 each.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* The energy cost of the missile silo from 40k to 10k.<br />
<br />
* The energy cost of all the starship lines has been doubled, except for the raid and leech starship lines.<br />
<br />
* The attack power of the fortress has been halved, but the number of shots it gets has been quadrupled.<br />
<br />
* The number of shots that the superfortress gets has been doubled.<br />
<br />
* The knowledge cost of unlocking the flagship has been reduced from 2000 to 1000.<br />
<br />
* The knowledge cost of unlocking the spire starship has been increased from 4000 to 6000.<br />
<br />
* The knowledge cost of unlocking the Mark I dreadnought has been increased from 1000 to 1500.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The knowledge costs of Tractor Beam II and III turrets have been increased from 1000 and 2000 respectively to 2000 and 4000.<br />
<br />
* The knowledge costs of Gravitational Turrets III and III have been reduced from 4000 and 6000 to 3000 and 4000.<br />
<br />
* The knowledge costs of Laser Turret II and III have been increased from 2000 and 3000 to 2500 and 3500.<br />
<br />
* The knowledge costs of MLRS Turrets II and III have been reduced from 2500 and 3500 to 2000 and 3000.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The metal/crystal costs of all the Counter turrets has been quadrupled, and the energy use of them has all been doubled.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The following munitions boosting range changes have been made:<br />
** Light Starship from 900 to 3000.<br />
** Flagship from 1100 to 4000.<br />
** Zenith Starship from 1200 to 5000.<br />
** Spire Starship from 1400 to 6000.<br />
** Core Starship from 1600 to 8000.<br />
** Mark I Munitions Boosters from 1200 to 5000.<br />
** Mark II Munitions Boosters from 1400 to 6000.<br />
** Mark III Munitions Boosters from 1600 to 7000.<br />
** Mark IV Munitions Boosters from 1800 to 8000.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Instead, the circular area that is actually allowed has now been divided by 6.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* The following shield boosting range changes have been made:<br />
** Mark I Shield Boosters from 600 to 3000.<br />
** Mark II Shield Boosters from 800 to 4000.<br />
** Mark III Shield Boosters from 1000 to 5000.<br />
** Mark IV Shield Boosters from 1200 to 6000.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Attrition Emitters can no longer be paused, and now only use 10k energy instead of 18k.<br />
<br />
* The energy use of Zenith Electric Bombers has been reduced from 10k to 1k (except for the Core variant, which is now 2k).<br />
<br />
* Cloaker Starships also now provide both counter-sniper and counter-dark-matter protection, in addition to their cloaking duties.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Ships in transports now still cost the normal energy they would cost outside the transport.<br />
** Previously, transports could be used to too great of effect in terms of minimizing energy needs simply by loading ships into them.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The existing Fortress is now renamed to Fortress Mark III, and has had its stats (and costs) increased somewhat.<br />
<br />
* The Cursed Golem can no longer drop below 1 health from self-attrition.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Turret Trains are now autotargeted by player ships like any other ships would be.<br />
** The three types of Turret Trains have now had their attack increased by a linear 1000 points.<br />
<br />
* Warheads, Fortresses, Golems, Starships, and Mark V ships now all no longer absorb EMPs, but now only are immune to them instead.<br />
<br />
* Golems have been majorly rebalanced, to create a new strategic landscape for them—they have long been the most underused units in the game.<br />
** There is no longer and AI Progress cost associated with golems in any way, from repairing them or otherwise.<br />
** Golems now have significantly higher repair costs after being initially repaired to be operational.<br />
** Golems now require supply, which means that they are useless for long-range raiding.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
*** This prevents players from using golems to play "goalie" on their home plants, which could have created impossible-to-lose scenarios for players.<br />
*** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Acid Sprayers have been completely rebalanced.<br />
** They have 10x more base damage, and 10x less bonus against Zenith ships.<br />
** They now have 50% of Zenith bonuses against starships and resources, 40% of Zenith bonuses against engineers, and 25% of Zenith bonuses against turrets.<br />
** They now have 10x lower shields.<br />
<br />
* The ship cap of sniper turrets has been doubled, and their cost has been halved.<br />
** The cost of spider turrets has also been halved, but the cap of spider turrets is the same.<br />
** These changes don't affect the AI, but make the sniper turrets more useful for human players.<br />
<br />
* The Avenger no longer repairs nearby ships.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
** The above applies to both snipers-the-unit and sniper turrets.<br />
<br />
* Scouts are now immune to sniper shots.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* All of the fabricators now use only 0 energy instead of 10000.<br />
<br />
* The ship cap of lightning warheads has been reduced from 8 to 6.<br />
<br />
* The ship cap of EMP warheads has been reduced from 4 to 2.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* All tractor-beam generating units are now immune to paralysis.<br />
<br />
* Gravitation turrets no longer have any effect if out of supply.<br />
<br />
* Regenerator golems now no longer regenerate ships if they are in low-power mode or are out of supply.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The ship cap on mark I force field generators has been increased from 5 to 9.<br />
<br />
* Flagships, zenith starships, and spire starships have all been made more 1000 knowledge more expensive.<br />
<br />
* Mark II fleet ships now only cost 2,500 knowledge to unlock instead of 3,000 knowledge.<br />
<br />
* Mark III/IV fleet ships now cost 5,000 knowledge to unlock instead of 4,000 knowledge.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The speed of the energy bombs fired by resistance fighter/bombers, neinzul bombers, and zenith bombards have all been doubled.<br />
<br />
* The health of light starships, flagships, zenith starships, and spire starships have all now been doubled.<br />
<br />
* The metal and crystal cost of nuclear warheads has been increased from 50k each to 75k each.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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!<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Tachyon Warheads now have a ship cap of 2 per player rather than 4 per player.<br />
<br />
* Riot Starships are now immune to blades, which is thematically fitting for them and also makes them not so incredibly prey to vampires.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* The reinforcement penalties on all of the golems have been massively reduced, making them significantly more powerful.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Starships and warheads now build 3x faster than before, or basically an equivalent rate to space dock units.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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). <br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Special Forces Guard Posts now have 4 million health instead of 400k. Their attack range has been reduced from 1500 to 1000.<br />
<br />
* Made engineers, cleanup drones, and rebuilders blind.<br />
<br />
* Bonuses against heavy defense now give a bonus against Avengers too.<br />
<br />
* Metal and Crystal Harvesters no longer require energy to operate—they produce enough energy for themselves directly.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The engineering range on mobile repair stations has been increased from 15,000 to 20,000.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Remains can no longer be gifted.<br />
<br />
* Fortresses now have infinite engine health, as they are unable to have their engines repaired.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Siege starships can now hit one type of fleet ship: the Force-Field Bearer. Hard.<br />
<br />
* The various minor faction Neinzul ships are now all immune to reclamation.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* EMP Mines now paralyze their targets for 10 seconds instead of 3.<br />
<br />
* Riot control tazers now paralyze their targets for a full second instead of half a second.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The recharge rate of snipers and sniper turrets has been decreased from 60 seconds to 30 seconds.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Turrets have all had their costs, health, and attack powers have all been increased 3x.<br />
** MLRS turrets have also had their number of shots increased 3x.<br />
** Missile turrets have also had their range increased 3x (although that range no longer goes up with higher marks of them).<br />
** Tractor beam turrets are each now able to tractor 3x as many ships as before.<br />
** The attack range of laser turrets has also been cut in half.<br />
** The attack power of spider and sniper turrets has only been doubled, but their firing rate has increased 3x.<br />
** These changes exclude heavy beam cannons, counter-anything turrets, gravitational turrets, and lightning turrets.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Missile turrets have also been weakened against those kinds of ships they are particularly poor against (fighters, raiders, that sort of thing).<br />
** Laser turrets have basically had all their bonuses completely redone, too.<br />
** These changes exclude heavy beam cannons, counter-anything turrets, gravitational turrets, tractor beams, and lightning turrets.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Paralyzers now fire way less frequently, but paralyze their targets for far longer.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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!<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Ion cannons are no longer able to shoot at warheads in general (before it was just their high mark level that was preventing it).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Shield Inhibitors are now Armor Inhibitors, and remove all the Armor Rating from all enemy ships at the planet.<br />
<br />
* Zenith Polarizers now get a bonus based on enemy Armor Rating, since Shields are gone.<br />
<br />
* Radar Jammers now halve the effective range of all ships on their planet.<br />
<br />
* "Immunity To Beam Weapons" is now separate from "Immunity To AOE".<br />
** The following AOE-immune units are no longer immune to beam weapons:<br />
*** Missile Frigates<br />
*** Transports<br />
*** Raid Starships<br />
*** Riot Starships<br />
** The following AOE-immune units are also immune to beam weapons:<br />
*** Scouts<br />
*** Scout Starships<br />
*** Cleanup Drones<br />
*** Non-forcefield-generating modules<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* Orbital mass drivers are now able to attack guardians.<br />
<br />
* Engineer drone health has been increased 10x, as has mobile builder health. Cleanup and rebuilder health was already at or above these levels.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Missile Turret II and II now costs an extra 1000 knowledge each, and Flak Turrets II and III now cost an extra 750 each.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* The energy required for tractor beam turrets and gravitational turrets was excessive, and has been reduced by 10x.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Home human settlements and human cryogenic pods are now both immune to blade attacks.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Once this force field is lost, you'll have to build from your standard pool of force fields, as these can't be rebuilt.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** Armor ships now have 10x higher attack, and 10x lower attack bonuses.<br />
** Acid Sprayers now have 4x higher attack, and 4x lower attack bonuses.<br />
** Resistance fighter/bombers, resistance frigates, and anti-armor ships now have 2x higher attack, and 2x lower attack bonuses.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Players now get two mark II scouts at the start, rather than just one, and now get more manufactories of each type.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The counter-missle, counter-sniper, and counter-dark-matter turrets no longer require supply.<br />
<br />
* Player ships now move 2x as fast as enemy ships, rather than 1.4x as fast.<br />
<br />
* The health of captive human settlements, home human settlements, and human cryogenic pods, has all been increased 10x.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Core Warhead Interceptors are no longer destroyed with the AI command station. This means that they can actually be captured now.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The ranges of the human tractor beam turrets have been significantly increased.<br />
<br />
* Previously, black hole machines had an infinite ship cap, but they now have a ship cap of 2.<br />
<br />
* The following Zenith Trader costs have changed in light of the new (more powerful) player economy:<br />
** Black Hole Machines are now 4x more expensive.<br />
** Ion Cannons Mark I and II are now 4x more expensive.<br />
** Higher-mark Ion Cannons are now 2x more expensive.<br />
** Counter Spies are now 4x more expensive.<br />
** Super Fortresses are now 4x more expensive.<br />
** Orbital Mass Drivers are now 6x more expensive.<br />
** Zenith Power Generators are now 3x more expensive.<br />
** Planetary Armor Boosters and Inhibitors are now 6x more expensive.<br />
** Radar Jammers I and II are now 5x more expensive.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The ship cap of transports has been dropped from 60 to 20, but transports now only cost 1/5th the former amount of energy.<br />
<br />
* The health of scouts is now 7x lower; they were overpowered, lately.<br />
<br />
* The AI Progress costs of the Zenith Reserves have all been about cut in half.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Sentinel Frigates are now immune to insta-kill.<br />
<br />
* Harvester Exo-Shield regeneration increased so that self-healing from nearly dead to full takes 30 seconds, instead of 2 hours.<br />
<br />
* The artillery golem no longer self-damages as it attacks. It has vastly less health, though, and now only fires half as often.<br />
<br />
* The armored golem is no longer self-damaging as it attacks, but also has vastly less health—but vastly more armor.<br />
<br />
* The botnet golem is no longer self-damaging, but now has a lot less health and far lowered move speed.<br />
<br />
* Lightning Turrets now have extremely high armor piercing ability, as well as a hefty bonus against refractive hulls.<br />
<br />
== Misc Changes ==<br />
<br />
*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).<br />
<br />
*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).<br />
<br />
*MkIV scout now no longer evades after exiting a wormhole.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
* added parametrized version of ai progress cheat: "Get Angry,x" (where x is an integer >= -2000 and <= 2000) changes AIP by x.<br />
<br />
* A new, Unity-friendly way of handling version numbers has been implemented.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Added 24 achievements. 1 for the base game (win a game with the Avenger plot enabled), and 23 for CoN.<br />
<br />
* Human-controlled attrition emitters now do not damage AI-held units that cause AI progress on death (like distribution nodes and zenith reserves).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The AI will no longer use the following ships as homogenous waves:<br />
** Forcefield Bearers<br />
** Munitions Boosters<br />
** Zenith Autobombs<br />
** Shield Boosters<br />
** Youngling Nanoswarms<br />
** Zenith Paralyzers<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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!<br />
<br />
* It is no longer possible to manually select a starfield type in the game settings—a completely new starfield generation algorithm is now used.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* The "Show Window Toolbar" settings option has been removed, as unfortunately that's not something we can control in Unity.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The screenshots function (F12) was previously unable to function on some computers. It should now work for everyone.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* A number of refinements have been made to the tutorial playback engine (scrolling messages, clickable messages, etc).<br />
<br />
* All of the tutorials in the game have been revised fairly substantially.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The debug-related keybindings for F6, F9, and F10 have all been removed.<br />
<br />
* The toggle score display (F2) option has been removed, as the score is no longer shown directly on the screen at all times.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The score benefit from using mercenary ships has now been slashed 10x.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Removed the Galaxy Display for starship constructors, since they are already counted in the All Constructors display.<br />
<br />
* It is now possible to see the screen/viewport sizes in the F3 debug menu.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Ship damaged smoke and embers have been removed.<br />
<br />
* Player Home Command Stations are now considered mark V.<br />
<br />
* Advanced Research Stations are now considered Mark V ships.<br />
<br />
* Warheads are now actually marks I-III rather than all being mark V.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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."<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* Added some "defensive programming" to prevent crashes due to occasional problems loading sound files on OSX.<br />
<br />
* The old "Snap Cursor To Window" game setting has been removed, as there is no way to do this in Unity.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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".<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The armor booster tooltip has been updated to be more clear, saying 3X instead of 200% (they are actually equivalent).<br />
<br />
* Autosave is now enabled for tutorials.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The "this key has been held down for x seconds" display no longer shows when the hud has been disabled (for those scenic views).<br />
<br />
* The description of the Harvester Exo-Force-Field has been made more brief.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The pdf game manual has been updated and revised.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* The intermediate tutorial in particular has been hugely revamped (even moreso than the other three, which saw huge updates):<br />
** It now introduces the CTRLS screen, including rebuilders and engineer FRD automation.<br />
** It now covers using starships as a key part of every offensive, as well as the benefits of scout starships.<br />
** It now includes a LOT more offensive/defensive tips that players really ought to know when playing for real.<br />
** 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.<br />
** It now includes tips for a better economy, as well.<br />
** Knowledge Raiding is no longer included in this tutorial, as it's now quite secondary.<br />
** It covers getting surprised by the enemy, and instructing the player to pause to have time to react.<br />
** 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
== Bugfixes ==<br />
<br />
* Fixed a couple of potential desyncs.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
*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.<br />
<br />
*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).<br />
<br />
*Fixed two internal overflow exceptions that previously could potentially have caused desyncs.<br />
** Both of these also lead to some small speed boost, especially for games that are already running very fast.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an overflow exception when ships with more than 2 billion combined health were selected together.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a couple of potential overflow exceptions related to focus firing (these may have contributed to desyncs in prior versions).<br />
<br />
*Fixed arithmetic overflow relating to the devourer golem's auto-target logic.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** For super-high AI Progress games there was a check in particular that was causing issues here.<br />
** Freed AI ships are now vastly more effective at traveling between their own planets in fluid groups now.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where crystal harvesters were not properly auto-rebuilding if there were no _metal_ harvest points eligible for auto-rebuilding.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed some potential desyncs for cases where a player played a game, quit it without quitting the application, and joined a multiplayer game.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug in game-loading code that was confusing the values of CloakingPartialCount and CloakingRechargeCount.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an obscure crash bug relating to ship movement.<br />
<br />
* Fixed an overflow error in the adjusted score calculations which sometimes was resulting in players with invalid reported scores.<br />
** Note: in the process, this also makes some subtle changes to how adjusted scores are calculated, but the effects should be minor overall.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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".<br />
<br />
* The human-controlled Command Station Home Cores, and the AI-controlled Core Command Station, did not have their internal mark levels correctly set. Fixed.<br />
<br />
*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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that was causing engineers to bunch up on ships in an ineffectual manner.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where heavy beam cannons could shoot at astro trains but would never actually hit them.<br />
<br />
* Previously, "experimental" ships could not get into transports. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* The attrition rate of transports is now shown via an ability in their tooltip list of abilities.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that was causing the wrong tooltip to be displayed when in ship-placement mode.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a desync relating to loading multiplayer savegames with AI ships caught in player tractor beams.<br />
<br />
* Shots and explosions are no longer visible through the fog of war.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a rare overflow exception with wormhole guard posts being repaired.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed typo in the Zenith Starship description.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where ai tech level was not always properly recalculated when setting the negative AIP offset (like when loading the game).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where a CPA could quietly not happen at a specific AI tech level and difficulty level.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
** 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where Zenith SpaceTime Manipulators previously did not have a proper metal/crystal/energy cost set.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Added missing -100% value to handicap dropdown.<br />
<br />
* Fixed obsolete Munitions Booster tooltip.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where loading a game with inbound schizo waves would display the wave alerts like a non-schizo wave.<br />
<br />
* Units out of supply (that require supply) will no longer try to attack, chase, etc.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Gifting multiple units at once now combines into one game command, preventing hangs when gifting rather large amounts of units at once.<br />
<br />
* Fixed ambiguity in unexplored planets option description.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug that was causing move orders of thousands of ships to take more processing time than necessary.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Previously there was a bug that would cause units in cold storage not to be affected by nuclear explosions. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where holding control could let you see the location of exo-galaxy wormholes on planets you had not scouted yet.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* Fixed inaccuracy in science station description.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where mines were not regenerating health if all enemies left the planet before they had a chance to regen.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where minor faction ships wouldn't run any "what next?" logic if no enemies were in the system.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a bug where AI ships in cold storage on a planet with a planetary cloaker would not be treated as cloaked.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Scout starships are no longer counted in the "EnemyStarships" group, which prevents them from very easily making AI planets go on-alert.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where Alarm Posts would not trigger when being killed, instead of having a 50% chance to trigger as they should.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
* Transports can no longer be scrapped on a hostile planet (they can still be scrapped on a friendly or neutral planet).<br />
* MkII Transports gradual unload rate increased from 10/second to 20/second (mkI is still 10/second).<br />
<br />
* Fixed some longstanding ants-in-the-pants issues with AI melee and autobomb units (frequent switching between destinations).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug in auto-assist logic where repairers were not properly prioritizing lower-health-percent ships.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where paralyzed ships could be put into cold storage, which would stop their de-paralyze countdown.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Added protective mechanism to prevent a crash when closing the game after disconnecting the original sound output device.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a few bugs that would sometimes allow the placement of harvesters on resource points that were still covered by AI guard posts.<br />
<br />
* (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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed bug where mk III harvesters were not "redding out" like mkI and mkII when no spots were available.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where grenade and flak ships did not realize they could not damage immune-to-aoe ships and would fire ineffectively.<br />
<br />
* Previously, regen was still taking effect when units were still under construction. Fixed.<br />
<br />
* 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).<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* 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.<br />
<br />
* Fixed a longstanding bug where loading savegames of tutorials with incoming waves was resetting the wave timers.<br />
<br />
== Community Contributors ==<br />
<br />
* 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) :<br />
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<br />
[[Category:AI War Release Notes]]<br />
[[Category:Release Notes]]</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:3.060_Release&diff=29851AI War:3.060 Release2017-09-16T15:54:54Z<p>Nat: Add Category:AI War Release Notes</p>
<hr />
<div>Co-Op Improvements<br />
----<br />
<br />
-Cross Planet Attacks now scale less severely with number of human players (multiplier is 1 + 0.33 for each additional player now instead of just the number of players).<br />
<br />
AI Updates<br />
----<br />
<br />
-Anti-starship arachnids were spawning in response to minor human player starship presence, now the chance of the spawns is proportional to the intensity of the starship presence.<br />
<br />
-Added support for removing individual AI types from consideration for random selection by placing disabledaitypes.txt file in your exe's directory (just like altplanetnames.txt) with a line for each AIType code to disable.<br />
<br />
-AI Progress Floor calculations now extended to 300 Floor at 1450+ total progress (previously only went up to 100 floor at 450+ progress.<br />
<br />
-AI floor calculation is now more granular, increasing floor by 1 per 5 total progress instead of 10 per 50 progress.<br />
<br />
-Fixed a longstanding bug with cross-planet attacks (CPAs). Basically, a CPA is always uses ships that are the same level as the current tech level of the AI, but it won't use ships from any planets that have significant player presence on them. And if there were too few ships—well, too bad, the CPA would just be undersized. Now the game will go back for subsequent passes at higher tech levels to fill out the full roster of the CPA. So if you've been playing a particularly long game and all the planets have been upgraded to Mark IV simply because of densityof the ships (this would be 30+ hours of gametime, usually), then you're in for much more wicked CPAs than before, even if your AIP is low.<br />
<br />
Performance Improvements<br />
----<br />
<br />
-When there are more than 100 "fuzzy lines" being drawn on the screen (as with tractor beams, etc), the game now switches to a lower-fidelity mode for those lines until fewer of them are being drawn. This helps performance quite a lot during large battles that include many tractor beams.<br />
<br />
-Previously, there was a bug with the basic tutorials stuttering. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-New music streaming code should do a better job under high latency conditions on some audio drivers.<br />
<br />
-The rendering of many attack ranges has now become a bit more efficient.<br />
<br />
-Added interface option "Icon Grouping Distance" which, if enabled (as it now is by default), groups far-zoom icons together to save rendering time. At the default setting, this makes render performance approximately doubled when zoomed out on a planet with a few thousand ships or more on it.<br />
<br />
-GameCommand and AICommand objects now pooled for some performance boost.<br />
<br />
-Several performance improvements have been made to how very large battles (more than a few thousand ships at a time) work. In general, this about triples performance when there are more than 2000 ships on each of two opposing sides on a planet. On smaller battles the effect is somewhat less striking, but still really significant.<br />
<br />
-The game no longer checks for jpg versions of missing pngs, which makes it load faster.<br />
<br />
-All of the various error files are now cleared at the start of every run of the program, preventing those files from getting too huge and causing game slowdowns because of missing images or whatever other cosmetic issues.<br />
<br />
-Ships that are placed into cold storage are no longer removed and re-added to their planet's secondary rollups (they are just kept in those rollups the entire time). This removes the lag at the start of games from ships going into cold storage, as well as about all of the lag when ships are coming into and out of planets that are in cold storage. This makes transports that are traveling through many large planets that are in cold storage no longer cause the game to repeatedly hitch for about 2 seconds every time they enter or leave the planets of that sort, while still keeping practically all the benefits of cold storage itself.<br />
<br />
-More targeting performance improvements have been made, and the FRD logic for ships has also been improved.<br />
<br />
-Previously, free-roaming defender mode (which all minor factions use) could really slow down battles because of the extra compuation involved. Ships now weight frd computation as a higher issue, thus causing them to appropriately slow their target acquisition based on that to thus avoid such slowdown. This makes it far more feasible (if still inadvisable) to use frd mode on enemy planets, and also makes it so that minor factions don't slow down the game as they could before.<br />
<br />
-Ships are now put into cold storage as part of the sync process, which takes extra time but prevents lag at the start of the game (aside from the lag of transferring data to the AI thread). Additionally, it now shows a status counter as part of the "Linking FG Objects" part of the sync, to make it clear what progress is being made during that period.<br />
<br />
-Putting AI Ships into cold storage, and loading savegames with large numbers of AI ships in general, is now faster.<br />
<br />
-Fixed a slowdown when playing against tag teamer AI types in particular when its ships were on player planets, but also when attacking command stations of AI players in general.<br />
<br />
-Added system for aggregate targeting, if a ship is near enough to a ship of the same type that is owned by the same player and has already computed its target list, it just uses that list instead of computing its own. Currently this is used mainly to speed up the rate at which large groups of ships get their target lists (particularly noticeable on loading a game), but we could shift this to a cpu savings if it seems necessary.<br />
<br />
Interface / Other Graphical Improvements<br />
----<br />
<br />
-The game now plays the buzz sound effect when a ship cannot be scrapped.<br />
<br />
-The modeless message boxes are now larger, to make sure all text is always able to fit with the larger font that is now present.<br />
<br />
-In addition to drawing ship-to-ship lines, munitions boosting is now indicated by ships having a pink hue to them when you are zoomed far in on them, and shield boosting is now indicated by ships having a light green hue to them when you are zoomed far in. There is now an option to turn off the munitions/shield lines in the settings window, since in extreme cases that could adversely affect performance.<br />
<br />
-Alt-clicking ships in the planetary summary now deselects them.<br />
<br />
-New interface feature: shift-left-clicking an item from the popup lists from the tabs at the bottom of the screen will now attempt to toggle it's paused state. This works for all of the ships that actually pauseable (i.e. not command stations or colony ships) but should work for the others just fine (including the low-power-mode tab for taking items off that list).<br />
<br />
-Added J+right-click combination for new "formation-move" order that maintains each ship in the selection's relative offset from their weighted center.<br />
<br />
-Added "Sticky Formations" control node that makes move orders honor formation offsets if they exist.<br />
<br />
-Stop order (End key) now clears formation offsets (J+right-click does not clear formation offsets if they're already set).<br />
<br />
-Added ;+right-click as basic "arc move" function: select ships, ;+right-click-and-hold the center of the desired circle, continue holding ; and right-mouse-button while moving the cursor to a point the desired radius away (it will show a line), then release to give the selected ships the order to position themselves in the designated circle.<br />
<br />
-Added "No Friendly Evade" control node that prevents scout evasion behavior when exiting a wormhole onto a friendly planet.<br />
<br />
-Added "Stay with MRS" control node that makes ships repaired by your multi-repair ships stay with the MRS unit rather than returning to their previous location.<br />
<br />
-Added basic middle-mouse-click-and-drag panning.<br />
<br />
-Added shift+middle-mouse-click-and-move to simulate the moving the cursor to the current point on the minimap, clicking left-mouse, and moving around.<br />
<br />
-The "I" (incoming waves) overlay for the galaxy map now shows a timer on each planet with an incoming wave. representing time-to-arrival for the earliest wave that will hit that planet.<br />
<br />
-Added "Don't Overwrite Previous Autosaves" checkbox to Settings -> Game menu. With this option checked, autosave file names will use the format Autosave_YYYY_MM_DD_hh_mm_ss.sav and thus will not overwrite each other (unless you somehow trigger multiple autosaves in the same second).<br />
<br />
-Galaxy View Find Mode now displays the number of matching ships currently in transports in parentheses next to the normal counts.<br />
<br />
-Added new control node that "Makes engineers prefer to assist non-mobile-military ships so they don't get bogged down repairing your fleets."<br />
<br />
-Solving one of the more annoying pockets of micromanagement of the game, manufactories now auto-optimize their on/off states to keep resources flows as positive as possible (assuming there is enough free energy to turn them on).<br />
<br />
-A new control node has been added to disable the new auto-management of manufactories, so that players can continue to manually manage them as before<br />
<br />
-Added in-game screenshot key (F12), images are saved as .png files to the Screenshots directory under the local application data directory (so it's a sibling directory to the Saves directory).<br />
<br />
-When hovering the selection box over ships, the game now only shows military units in the main count, and shows non-military units parenthetically after that.<br />
<br />
-Previously, ships that were being transported would show up in the count of the quick buttons at the bottom of the screen, but not directly in the list itself. Now they show up as normal in the quick button lists of ships, with a flag of "Transported" behind them.<br />
<br />
-Added "Sniper Focus Fire" control node that makes units with infinite range (sniper turrets, snipers, etc) use an alternate autotargetting behavior to focus on maximizing rapid enemy casualties.<br />
<br />
-Added "Non-Sniper Focus Fire" control node that makes non-sniper units use an alternate autotargetting behavior to focus on maximizing rapid enemy casualties. This behavior was developed for sniper units, so use with caution.<br />
<br />
New Ships<br />
----<br />
<br />
-Four new space tugs have been added: One for picking up starships with less than 100% health remaining, and three for picking up ships with varying degrees of engine damage (they ignore ships without engine damage).<br />
<br />
-New Riot Starship MkI added to the starship constructor (requires tech to unlock). This is a customizable modular ship, which is also a new feature in general.<br />
<br />
-Added Riot Control Starship MkII and MkIII and associated modules.<br />
<br />
Ship Logic Updates<br />
----<br />
<br />
-Previously, permamines were autotargeted by player ships to great disaster. Now, any ships with >= 2 billion health are automatically direct-only targets.<br />
<br />
-Instead of patrolling at random, patrolling ships will now patrol between the guard posts on a planet if there are at least two such guard posts. If there are not, then they will patrol at random.<br />
<br />
-Previously, ships with shorter range could not attack force fields that had a radius greater than their range unless they were targeting some ship under the force field. Fixed so that now there is always at least a 5% chance that they will be able to hit such ships.<br />
<br />
-Previously, Zenith Trade Ships would immediately exit dead-end worlds. Now they will first travel to the command station and back on the world before leaving.<br />
<br />
-Remains Rebuilders now have a delay before they will start rebuilding. For players, that delay is a simple 3 seconds, but for the AI that delay is 2 minutes. This makes the burden of cleanup drones significantly less onerous.<br />
<br />
-All non-melee ships in the game now have an extra 2,000 range. This solves many of the targeting issues for fighters in attack-move stance, etc, and provides for a better large-battle experience in general.<br />
<br />
-Cleanup Drones are now able to dismantle enemy mines (including permamines) on allied planets.<br />
<br />
-Units that are hit by translocation shots are no longer translocated if they are already held by a tractor beam.<br />
<br />
-There is now an absolute maximum ship cap of 1500 for any specific ship type (so 1500 Viral Shredder MkIs, 1500 MkIIs, etc).<br />
<br />
-Since ships immune to their own damage types are now effectively immune to reflected shots, their autotargetting will now not be prejudiced towards saving mirrors for last (same with ships otherwise immune to reflected shots).<br />
<br />
-Large ships (radius >= 256) are now immune to translocation.<br />
<br />
-The calculation of "which forcefield is protecting me" for each ship is now much more likely to pick the "outer" forcefield of a set of forcefields where one completely encapsulates another. This makes incoming fire less likely to visually "penetrate" the outer field to damage the inner. Will not do much better in cases where the forcefields overlap but one is not contained within the other.<br />
<br />
-Previously if AI ship was regenerated (e.g. by a regenerator train) it was being regen'd free-to-hunt-human-players even if killed by a minor faction ship (e.g. a Devourer) in the complete absence of human player ships. Fixed so that there needs to be at least one human player ship on the planet for the freeing to take place.<br />
<br />
-Previously if an AI ship was chasing a minor faction ship and moved beyond a certain distance from its guard poing, it would be freed to hunt the human players. Fixed to not be thus freed unless there is at least one human player ship on the planet.<br />
<br />
-When a ship module is destroyed the parent ship automatically queues a replacement (assuming a conflicting order hasn't already been queued).<br />
<br />
-Modified the "don't chase teleporting units" code to prevent a problem causing human player ships in FRD mode to do nothing because they were constantly picking a teleporting target and dropping it again.<br />
<br />
-Modified evade-at-wormhole-end logic so that ONLY the following ships use this behavior: Scout I-IV, Scout Starship.<br />
<br />
-Cloaking boosters now boost ships not in low-power-mode before ships in low-power-mode.<br />
<br />
-New rule in hit chance calculation: if the defender is held in a tractor beam and the defender is within the attacker's normal range, the attacker's minimum hit chance is 5%.<br />
<br />
-Ships that are within the normal attack range of enemy ships are now given a 1% chance of hitting the enemy ship, whereas previously they could have a 0% hit chance if the enemy ship had shields that were too high. This prevents confusion when turrets, etc, just sit there stupidly when a highly-shielded target is in their outer range, but not in their effective range.<br />
<br />
-Modified autotargetting-throttling to be quicker about digging through a massive line of ships waiting for autotargetting (mainly when just loading a game with tons of ships fighting) to avoid large groups of ships sitting there doing nothing for minutes.<br />
<br />
-Previously, area of effect shots could hit cloaked ships, which caused numerous problems with scouts and other units being hit when they seemingly should not have been. This has been changed so that cloaking now provides immunity from being hit by area of effect attacks.<br />
<br />
-Autotargeting has been much improved in terms of better accounting for targets that are killed or recloaked, which is especially notable for FRD mode but also relevant in general for all battles. It makes ships act with more purpose, and avoid lulls where they were just sitting around.<br />
<br />
Balance Updates<br />
----<br />
<br />
-The repair range of mobile repair stations is now up to 3000 from 1000, but they can now only repair a maximum of 50 ships at once.<br />
<br />
-Anti-Starship Arachnids will now do a much better job of preferring to shoot at starships.<br />
<br />
-Dyson Gatlings now have 10x more health.<br />
<br />
-The force field radius, and the health, of force field bearers has been increased.<br />
<br />
-Cursed Golems now lose health half as fast as they previously did.<br />
<br />
-Electric Shuttles now have a smaller maximum damage modifier against any enemy ships.<br />
<br />
-Dyson Gatlings are now unable to hit core ships.<br />
<br />
-Rebel Colonies will no longer spawn on AI planets that have an original tech level greater than II.<br />
<br />
-Scouts and scout starships are now immune to force fields to prevent them from ever getting stuck on enemy planets while traveling automatically.<br />
<br />
-The cost of resistance ships has been increased by 33%, but rebelling human colonies now produce +55 metal and crystal per second. This makes capturing multiple rebel colonies valuable.<br />
<br />
-Ships are no longer able to be put inside Hive Golems as a transport; hive golems only transport the wasps that they create themselves. This also fixes an issue with engineers being unable to repair hive golems.<br />
<br />
-Engineers and Mobile Repair Stations no longer require supply to function. This lets them work on enemy planets to support longer-range raids if players desire (thus letting no-engine ships be healed in those circumstances), and it also allows players to repair broken golems on nuked planets, and other similar circumstances.<br />
<br />
-Marauders and human resistance fighters will now have half as many ships as before.<br />
<br />
-Armored and Lightning Warheads no longer hurt allied ships when they go off, and now properly hit enemy command stations and similar.<br />
<br />
-Human players must now have at least 100 military ships on an AI planet for the resistance fighters to join in.<br />
<br />
-Marauders and resistance fighers were starting way too far out in the middle of nowhere. Changed so that they start around 10x closer now.<br />
<br />
-Vampires, Cutlasses, and Wasps now have 2,000 more shields each.<br />
<br />
-All of the weapons have been removed from the cloaker starships, as this would cause them to blow their own cover and was fairly pointless for them to have, anyway.<br />
<br />
-Cleanup Drones now work half as quickly as before. With all the other recent shifts, they were otherwise becoming too powerful when used alone or in pairs.<br />
<br />
-Mobile Repair Stations now have infinite engine health, since there is no way for their engine health to be regained.<br />
<br />
-Engineers, cleanup drones, remains rebuilders, mobile builders, mobile repair stations, and space tugs are all now able to pass through enemy force fields. This prevents them from ever getting stuck while trying to do their work.<br />
<br />
-Warheads, Ion Cannons, Orbital Mass Drivers, and Core Warhead Interceptors can no longer be munitions boosted.<br />
<br />
-Dyson Gatlings are now immune to reclamation.<br />
<br />
-On spokes maps only AI planets with >= 5 wormholes get Core Forcefields (previously every single AI planet got one on those maps).<br />
<br />
-Mines no longer have engine damage strength (used to have 300, though it didn't seem to be working, and it was decided they shouldn't do engine damage anyway).<br />
<br />
-Transports were still evading after exiting a wormhole (like scouts), despite the change where a dying transport's passengers are safely dumped rather than destroyed immediately. Changed to not use the scout behavior.<br />
<br />
-Electric shuttle attack power lowered 30% (I: 400 -> 280, II: 1200 -> 840, III: 2000 -> 1400, IV: 3000 -> 2100).<br />
<br />
-Added player-planet-wide delay between electric shuttle attacks (so each player can have a shuttle fire every 15 turns or whatever it is).<br />
<br />
-Counter turrets (-sniper,-darkMatter,-missiles) now have increased range and much increased health. -darkMatter and -missiles have lowered knowledge cost.<br />
<br />
-Lowered SelfBuildTime of several units sold through Zenith Trader, as they were so large (20000 in one case) that they were causing precision errors in determining the per-turn metal/crystal cost of self-construction, leading to ships like the Zenith Power Generator consuming a much lower rate for 95% of the build time and then spiking at the end to make up the difference.<br />
<br />
-Increased repair costs of units sold through Zenith Trader.<br />
<br />
-The auspicious Zenith Trader now offers a fine selection of Counter Spy units (well, only one ship type, but you know).<br />
<br />
-AI viral shredders now only have a 10% chance of replicating when they amass enough build points to replicate.<br />
<br />
-Reduced Electric Shuttle attack power to 50% of what it was in 3.0 (so 200,600,1000,1500)<br />
<br />
-Reduced Electric Shuttle aoe-delay from 15 to 12 to speed up the rolling thunder a bit<br />
<br />
-Electric Shuttles now do 30% of normal damage against Teleport Raiders (who they used to eat alive)<br />
<br />
-Made it so that Interplanetary Munitions Boosters will not be placed on or adjaent to AI homeworlds.<br />
<br />
-Made it so that Dyson Sphere Golems will not be placed on AI homeworlds (but can still be adjacent).<br />
<br />
-Turret and mine remains, as well as mines themselves, are now blind so as not to provide inappropriate scout intel by existing on enemy planets.<br />
<br />
-Changed Electric Shuttle damage against tele-raiders from 30% of normal to 50%<br />
<br />
-There is now a maximum of 4 advanced factories created during map generation.<br />
<br />
-Scouts and scout starships are now immune to area of effect attacks.<br />
<br />
-Tripled energy cost of all space planes, along with doubling their metal/crystal costs.<br />
<br />
-Space plane cap multiplier changed from 2.5 to 1.75.<br />
<br />
-Cleanup drones are now immune to tractor beams and aoe damage.<br />
<br />
-Sentinel Frigate rebalance: towards usefulness to the player and somewhat less to the AI: tripled damage, recharge time from 100 to 80, 40% cluster penalty to 45%, attack power floor from 6% to 2%<br />
<br />
-Anti-Armor rebalance: 2x health, reduced ship cap multiplier from 1.5 to 1.3.<br />
<br />
-Bulletproof Fighter rebalance: increased health to 80% of fighters, added minHitPercent of 15 (fighters have 30), increased attack to halfway between where they are now (200 for MkI) and fighters (300 for MkI).<br />
<br />
-Cloaker starship mkI cloaking range 400 -> 700, cloaking cap 30 -> 20; mkII range 800 -> 900, cap 90 -> 80.<br />
<br />
-Zenith mirrors are now immune to snipers.<br />
<br />
-Bulletproof fighters now have the exact same stats as fighters except that they are bulletproof and (new) immune to insta-kill.<br />
<br />
-Previously shots reflected by Zenith mirrors were damaging ships immune to their own damage types, fixed (the shots will no longer reflect).<br />
<br />
-Dyson Gatlings are now immune to shot reflection.<br />
<br />
-Dyson Gatlings now have infinite engine health to avoid a huge parking lot of them on AI planets with ion cannons killing the CPU with repeated failed pathfinding.<br />
<br />
-All munitions boosting ships now have a cap on the number of ships they can simultaneously boost:<br />
Light Starship: 10 (range still 2000)<br />
Flagship: 20 (range still 2000)<br />
Zenith Starship: 40 (range 1000 -> 2000)<br />
Spire Starship: 80 (range still 2000)<br />
Core Starship: 100 (range still 2000)<br />
Munitions Booster I: 200 (range 600 -> 2000)<br />
Munitions Booster II: 350 (range 800 -> 2000)<br />
Munitions Booster III: 500 (range 1000 -> 2000)<br />
Munitions Booster IV: 600 (range 1200 -> 3000)<br />
<br />
-Zenith Viral Shredder replication is now more complex:<br />
-- replication requires that the shredder have at least a certain health percent (20% for MkI)<br />
-- replication results in the shredder and the new shredder having a certain percent of the old shredder's health (75% for MkI)<br />
-- replication cost scales up with the number of that ship type on the planet in excess of the normal ship cap for that type.<br />
<br />
-Zenith Viral Shredder base replication cost slightly (by 1/9) reduced.<br />
<br />
-Anti-starship arachnid attack power doubled.<br />
<br />
-Missile frigates bonus against anti-starship arachnids (and other spider types) increased from 3x to 6x (for reference, their bonus against fighters is 10x).<br />
<br />
-Munitions Boosts no longer stack, the highest available to a given ship is used.<br />
<br />
-Munitions Boosts are now more incremental instead of 100%, 200%, etc.<br />
<br />
-Munitions Booster speed from 12 to 24 (will almost certainly nerf this back down).<br />
<br />
-Bulletproof fighter stats adjusted to be more unique from the fighter.<br />
<br />
-Devourer Golem now completely unable to damage guard posts and command stations, in order to prevent them from freeing high mark AI ships to attack the player in the first 10 minutes. Same applied to Dyson Gatlings, Marauders, and Resistance Fighters (this is not ideal as we would like gatlings/marauders to be able to blow up player command stations, so may revisit this).<br />
<br />
-Previously non-cold-storage lighting turrets would fire even if only fully cloaked enemy ships were present. Fixed so that they will not fire unless there is some legitimate target provoking them.<br />
<br />
-Force fields are now immune to translocation.<br />
<br />
-Added some autotargetting optimizations for Riot Control Starships to disable the engines of as many enemy ships as possible. Also applied same logic to spiders and spider turrets.<br />
<br />
-Interplanetary Munitions Boosters now only give a 100% boost (to 2x) instead of a 200% boost (to 3x).<br />
<br />
-Previously SpiderIVs did the same engine damage as SpiderIIIs despite having a much lower cap, whereas SpiderIIIs had a significant better engine damage than SpiderIIs (and IIs than Is), so changed SpiderIVs to fire 3 shots instead of 1, maintaining a decent progression of effectiveness. To compensate a bit, SpiderIV energy cost doubled from 30 to 60.<br />
<br />
-All of the various types of astro trains are now unable to be repaired. This helps to mitigate their effects at least a tiny bit over the course of longer games. They also no longer have bonuses against engineers.<br />
<br />
-All enginers, cleanup drones, rebuilders, space tugs, mobile repair stations, transports, harvesters, and colony ships are now immune to dark matter. This makes them effectively invisible to astro trains.<br />
<br />
-Fortresses are now immune to Devourer golems. Golems more hungry as a result.<br />
<br />
-Changed Impulse Reaction Emitter shots to have a maximum multiplier of 2500 (for ships that use 25,000 or more energy) so that they aren't so incredibly powerful against golems (where they could normally get a multiplier of 40,000+).<br />
<br />
-The move speeds of all the scouts, and the scout starship, have all been doubled to counter the effects of the much-larger tachyon beams that are now on planets.<br />
<br />
-Warp gates now only cost 5 AI Progress to destroy, while command stations now cost 15. Thus making it cheaper to gate-raid, but the same price to take a new planet.<br />
<br />
-Alarm posts, Raid Engines, and Black Hole machines now increase the AI Progress by half as much as before when they die.<br />
<br />
-Made Astro Trains immune to paralysis attacks.<br />
<br />
-Previously cluster attack penalties were more harsh than intended, changed to a more gradual (but increasing) rate of decline.<br />
<br />
-Transports now move vastly faster, have almost doubled shields, have 10x more health, and cost 2x as much crystal.<br />
<br />
-Transports are no longer of a higher priority than any other ships.<br />
<br />
-Engineers can now assist an MRS's build queue.<br />
<br />
-Made special forces AI ships less likely to pursue minor faction ships (including devourers).<br />
<br />
-Mining golems are now immune to sniper shots.<br />
<br />
-Ships with attack bonuses against all other starships now have similar bonuses against experimental starships (the beam and bird starships).<br />
<br />
-Devourer Golems now have 9x as much health as before.<br />
<br />
-Bombers now do only 3/4 their prior damage to force fields and heavy defenses (fortresses, etc).<br />
<br />
-Dreadnoughts now only do about 2/3 their prior damage to heavy defenses, teleport battle stations, and zenith bombardments.<br />
<br />
-Infiltrators now have much lower bonuses against those ships they specialize against, with the largest drop being against heavy defenses and force fields.<br />
<br />
-Eyebots now do half their prior bonus against heavy defenses, force fields, scouts, and engineers.<br />
<br />
-Zenith Electric Bombers now have much lower damage bonuses against tanks, force fields, and heavy defenses.<br />
<br />
-Zenith Chameleons now have halved damage bonuses against all ships, except for resource ships, which they now have a doubled bonus against.<br />
<br />
-Astro Train Stations now only have 5/8 as much health as before.<br />
<br />
-Tachyon Drones and Decloakers no longer require supply.<br />
<br />
Misc Changes<br />
----<br />
<br />
-The game now auto-corrects for AI ships that were accidentally placed on top of one another in past versions of the game, though it doesn't touch the placement of player ships.<br />
<br />
-AI immobile ships are now unable to be placed directly on top of wormholes.<br />
<br />
-The logic for when harvesters are auto-created by command stations has been improved so that if any non-mine military units of the enemy are present, it will not auto-create them.<br />
<br />
-The wording for when ships do not have supply has been improved so as to be more clear when supply is blocked for some reason other than distance from allied planets.<br />
<br />
-Previously, if the low-energy text was being shown over a ship, then no other hover text (such as knowledge counts on science labs) was shown. Changed so that it now shows both.<br />
<br />
-Remains are now omitted from the ship icon guide (F1), as they have no useful traits to show and took up too much vertical space on hover.<br />
<br />
-Sizing updates have been made to many of the menu panels and windows to make them more localization-friendly.<br />
<br />
-The resource bar at the top of the screen now sizes itself in a more dynamic way, so that it is more localization-friendly.<br />
<br />
-It is no longer possible for players to manually attack remains, as that often led to accidental pointless clicks during the middle of battle.<br />
<br />
-Individual waves are now capped at a map of 2,000 AI units. Since the AI can send up to two waves per human player, this can still be an enormous number of ships overall if players have a huge number of wave-multiplying assets on a target planet.<br />
<br />
-If the game is for whatever reason unable to load settings.dat, it now tries to load settings.bak. If it fails loading that as well, then it will instead launch with an empty settings file. Previously, the game would just crash in these cases.<br />
<br />
-DNS hostnames can now be entered into the direct connect server box, whereas previously it would only allow IP Addresses.<br />
<br />
-Planetary shield boosters, planetary shield inhibitors, radar jammers, and radar jammer IIs can now be scrapped.<br />
<br />
-Changes have been made to auto-wrap text in foreign languages, and to correct localization artifacts on game load, thus optimizing the look of the game in more localizations.<br />
<br />
-Made Core Warhead Interceptor much lower priority target for AI.<br />
<br />
-Modified maximum value of "Show Icons At" slider on Settings -> Interface menu from 800 to 100; as any value about 97 or so basically means "never show icons". (if you have a setting higher than 100 it will be set to 100 when you open the settings screen to prevent a crash).<br />
<br />
-Cluster attack bonus ability description in ship info now shows the third decimal place since it was misleading to show autocannon minipod mk2s as only have 0.02% bonus per ship when it is really 0.025%.<br />
<br />
-Auto-FRD-Engineers and Auto-FRD-Mobile-Military control node knowledge costs removed (were 250 each).<br />
<br />
-Added sanity check to prevent the AI from generating a ship on a planet that already has at least 6000 AI units.<br />
<br />
-Amended perma-mine description to note to clarify that Cleanup drones can only remove them once you own the planet.<br />
<br />
-Previously, if an expansion folder existed, it would treat the expansion as installed. This could lead to problems with the beta for people without the real expansion installed. Changed so that it now only treats an expansion as installed if the Version.txt file exists inside the expansion folder.<br />
<br />
-Changed negative shield boost text to be a bit clearer that it is a negative modifier.<br />
<br />
-A stop command to a ship now also counts as a stop command to each of its modules (for the purpose of clearing preferred targets, for example).<br />
<br />
-Rally posts no longer cost knowledge.<br />
<br />
-Control nodes can no longer be paused.<br />
<br />
-Made the ControlNodeFRDLimitedTo80000 node apply to non-military ships as well.<br />
<br />
-Ships over a certain cost threshold (500,000 right now, for either metal or crystal) now use an alternate build-increment timing so they only update every game-second instead of every cycle (20 cycles a game-second). This should help prevent cost-rate spikes towards the end of building a Zenith Power Generator, for example.<br />
<br />
-Made Riot Control Starship forcefield module center on the ship instead of stick to the normal module attachment point.<br />
<br />
-Made Riot Control Starship module construction non-assistable if the ship has been damaged in the past few seconds (same threshold as repairs).<br />
<br />
-The Delete button on the Save and Load screens were previously showing up with gray text, which made them look disabled when they are not. Changed to simply show these as white.<br />
<br />
-Relaxed "am I out of range" checks on shots that were causing them to disappear mysteriously in a lot of cases (particularly involving decoys).<br />
<br />
-Clarified Devourer Golem description to note that they also eat scouts despite scouts not having attack power (they are mobile military despite this).<br />
<br />
-Previously, AI ships could be set free by chasing scouts too far away from their guard posts, which could lead to early waves of higher-level ships if players were unlucky in their scouting. This was most noticeable against the Tag Teamer AI type. Resolved.<br />
<br />
-Updated tooltip for paralysis attacks to display partial seconds of duration.<br />
<br />
-Changed super terminal description to be (hopefully) less confusing.<br />
<br />
-Auto-build-harvester behavior is now disabled for tutorials 1 and 2, to let players learn how to manage this on their own.<br />
<br />
-Changed name of "Remains Rebuilders" unit to "Remains Rebuilder".<br />
<br />
-Modular ships (just the Riots, right now) now properly flag their build queues as non-assistable when they don't contain any queue items that are currently buildable (i.e. queued modules with no hardpoint to fit on).<br />
<br />
-Made planetary shield booster description clearer.<br />
<br />
-Gave cloaker starships slightly higher collision priority than other starships.<br />
<br />
-Super Terminals added to the list of units that absolutely, positively, must not move when the game is loaded (Exo-wormholes are the other such unit).<br />
<br />
-More localization-related changes.<br />
<br />
-Attrition Emitters are no longer put in cold storage.<br />
<br />
-Transport boarding distance is now considerably more forgiving to teleporting units (previously it was very difficult to load a teleporting unit into a moving transport).<br />
<br />
-The way that line breaks are handled for the Strong/Weak data is now much improved so that it no longer leads to odd wrapping. This is particularly notable in non-English versions of the game.<br />
<br />
-Riot Control Starship's module buy menu now color coded by hardpoint type to make somewhat clearer which modules "compete" with each other for space.<br />
<br />
-The little starship icon underneath planets on the galaxy map is no longer used, now it just shows the regular ship icon always.<br />
<br />
-All forcefield creating units are now listed as immune to tractor beams (anything under a forcefield is already immune to tractors, but it doesn't show in the tooltip).<br />
<br />
-AI self-building units now temporarily suspend construction if damaged, to make it less likely that overkill-prevention will result in the AI ship not being destroyed. This construction-suspension rule does not currently apply to non-AI ships.<br />
<br />
NEW ART<br />
----<br />
-Added new Riot Control Starship graphics by I-KP.<br />
<br />
-Added ship-based forcefield graphic from I-KP, and it is used for the forcefield generator module that can be mounted on the Riot Control Starship.<br />
<br />
-A new lightning sprite by I-KP has replaced the old one, making for a nicer look as well as making it easier to see the source of lightning bursts.<br />
<br />
-A better-looking small explosion effect (for shot hits) has been added by Hans-Martin Portmann.<br />
<br />
NEW SOUND EFFECTS<br />
----<br />
-Added shotgun noise from I-KP to the Riot Control Shotgun Module shot.<br />
<br />
-Riot Control Tazer module now uses a special sound effect from I-KP.<br />
<br />
Bugfixes<br />
----<br />
<br />
-Previously there was a bug that would sometimes prevent players from gifting under-construction or paused reactors to their allies. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Collision-detection on cold storage planets should now be more efficient, and should avoid the "stacks" of ships that were previously possible.<br />
<br />
-Previously, Marauders and some other minor factions were getting the same 40% speed boost as player ships. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Planetary Cloakers are no longer put in cold storage (this was causing their cloaked ships to be revealed).<br />
<br />
-Guards that were previously "dancing" should now just abandon their guard posts instead.<br />
<br />
-Positive handicaps will no longer affect negative resource outflows.<br />
<br />
-Previously, area damage was not damaging ships that must be directly targeted. Fixed so that it simply doesn't damage ships that cannot be targeted at all.<br />
<br />
-Previously, shield boosters could affect minor factions. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, FRD engineers could "stick" to docks instead of repairing other allied ships. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, the multi-repairs of fortresses to other units were not working correctly. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-The collision-detection issues with objects in cold storage have now been fully resolved; objects now collide with objects in cold storage as if they were not.<br />
<br />
-Leech Starships were previously not counting as starships. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-The logic for resistance fighters spawning was incorrect, and they never were. They will actually start showing up now.<br />
<br />
-Previously, the "niche text" on icons was not being shown in ship placement mode until the ship was actually placed. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, lightning warheads and other explosion-type units (warheads, autobombs, etc) were detonating too early against very large structures. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Lack of metal or crystal no longer prevents allies from having their ships be assisted in self-construction or queue-construction.<br />
<br />
-Previously, command station home cores were not being created for a new player to a game until they were given at least one other ship from another player. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, some listbox popups could hang off the bottom of the screen. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, the Auto AI Progress values were not being set properly from the game lobby. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously it was possible for expansion minor factions to be enabled in non-expansion games. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, there were some glitches with the health of very high-health ships such as PermaMines, which was causing them to be targetable when they should not have been, and autoattacked in FRD mode, etc. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, using shift+right click to deselect groups of units from the unit type selection box was not working properly. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Space tugs were not visually showing up correctly in the build queue. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-When hovering over a marauder with your units selected, it was previously not giving targeting info. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Fixed an issue with engineer beams flashing green right at the start when they are assigned to a unit they cannot actually assist at the moment.<br />
<br />
-Previously, engineers were charging players for repairing space docks that they were assisting, even if they were not doing actual repairs. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Fixed a bug that could lead to indecisive AI units if they were simultaneously trying to escape and attack.<br />
<br />
-Previously, there was a bug where steam achievements would reactivate on every game load. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-The text in the tutorials window was being cut off in recent versions. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Command Stations will now only autobuild ships at planets that have supply.<br />
<br />
-Fixed a collision issue that could previously cause allied ships to dance around instead of stopping in rare cases.<br />
<br />
-Previously, the +/- buttons would not always respond to being pressed. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, tachyon warheads were enabled when cloaking was disabled. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, there was an issue with Zenith Traders not always going through wormholes correctly when a player planet was on the other side. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, cloaked ships that were revealed by a tachyon beam could not be manually targeted by player ships. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Fixed a bug relating to enemy units turning into threat via chasing marauders and other minor faction ships. This was most noticeable with core ships chasing devourer golems.<br />
<br />
-Experimental starships (warbirds, beams) were not being treated as starships, fixed (this also fixes the cannot-put-them-in-low-power-mode problem).<br />
<br />
-Planetary shield inhibitors (and similar) were having full effect even while still under construction, fixed to not "activate" until construction is complete.<br />
<br />
-AI combat ship tactics are now much less likely to switch between high-priority (irreplaceable) targets when they have a significant advantage on a planet.<br />
<br />
-Z key (i.e. Z+X hotkey) now only checks for drawing ship ranges if planet has normal visibility.<br />
<br />
-Fixed a bug where starting a second instance of the game on a single-screen system caused a crash instead of just displaying an error message and exiting the second instance (as it behaved before).<br />
<br />
-Fixed Lobby not retaining proper checked-ness of minor faction types.<br />
<br />
-Fixed AI ships stopping and starting a lot during movement towards a high-priority target (e.g. command station) out of its effective range.<br />
<br />
-Fixed bug where ships put into frd by auto-frd control node were not returning to their original point after doing something on frd (like an engineer auto-assisting something).<br />
<br />
-Previously, a bug was preventing players with greater than version 3.0 of the game from installing the expansion through the Arcen updater. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Fixed bugs preventing the AI taunt conditions from ever being true.<br />
<br />
-Fixed a bug where very long range ships (like Zenith Bombard; not snipers or other infinite-range ones since those are handled differently) were not auto-firing at all due to an overflow calculating their guard range.<br />
<br />
-Fixed a bug where "pause all" was not properly causing the game to realize that the paused constructors were not assistable, so frd engineers would sometimes waste time assisting them.<br />
<br />
-Fixed bug where you could get an achievement from playing a game started in someone else's profile.<br />
<br />
-Fixed bug where group-moving through a wormhole to a planet with a rally post was causing the ships to break out of group-move and travel full speed.<br />
<br />
-Fixed bug where a unit assisting an allied constructor could not assist if the allied constructor's player did not have sufficient resources.<br />
<br />
-Fixed bug where an engineer that had previously failed to assist (due to a space dock queue running out or some such) would draw a red fuzzy line instead of a green fuzzy line when repairing a ship, even though it was successfully repairing the target.<br />
<br />
-Fixed bug where giving an attack order during execution of a move order would cause a complete stop before re-accelerating (move during move just changed direction, no slowdown).<br />
<br />
-Fixed bug where auto-frd node was overwriting AttackMovePoint with LocationCenter even when AttackMovePoint was not empty.<br />
<br />
-Previously, if a player tried to connect to a game with the same name as the game host, it was failing silently instead of giving them the appropriate duplicate player message. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Ships immune to black hole machines were not saying so on the tooltip, fixed.<br />
<br />
-AI should no longer taunt player for scrapping a command station.<br />
<br />
-Fixed a bug where joining a multiplayer game as a client, quitting, and loading another game for single-player play would leave you stuck "Waiting for players".<br />
<br />
-Fixed "Cloaked Enemey Ship" typo.<br />
<br />
-Previously ships that were self-built that could unload passengers could not have their construction paused because the Unload button was being drawn on top of the pause button, fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously ships in FRD would sometimes ignore distant ships based on guard radius, fixed to not regard guard radius in FRD.<br />
<br />
-Previously when loading a save (generally an autosave) that was created on the exact same Game Second as an auto AI progress increase, it would apply the auto increase again despite it having also been applied before the save was created. Fixed to remember the last auto increment Game Second and not increment again until enough additional seconds have passed.<br />
<br />
-Previously exo-wormholes were being treated as AI units during loading of a game, which could cause them to fail a collision check against other stationary objects and move out of the way, resulting in the exo-wormhole not being in the same place after loading a game. Fixed to not consider collision-moving for exo-wormholes.<br />
<br />
-Previously ships that were able to fire through forcefields were completely unable to fire at targets protected by a decoy drone AND completely unable to fire at the drone (other ships could at least shoot the drone). Fixed so that ships able to fire through forcefields are able to fire at ships protected by a decoy drone as if the drone were not there.<br />
<br />
-Fixed a bug that could cause the load/save screen to take over a minute to come up in some circumstances.<br />
<br />
-Fixed an inaccuracy and a typo in the Interplanetary Munitions Booster description.<br />
<br />
-Updated descriptions for Remains objects to not wrap in odd places.<br />
<br />
-Previously, the game would crash if it was missing any of the images used by its GDI components. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Fixed the issue with the raid and leech starship mark levels being visually offset.<br />
<br />
-Previously units with IsScout set were having a lot of orders (FRD, etc) cleared when loading a game, fixed to not reset these.<br />
<br />
-Fixed Co-processor description line breaks to display better.<br />
<br />
-Previously if an object was somehow created on the exact center of the planet (coordinates 0,0) it would behave very oddly (notably most shots would not progress towards them). This typically only happened with cheat-created ships. Fixed to make sure that objects are never added directly on 0,0.<br />
<br />
-Previously ships towed through a wormhole were switching planets without changing location coordinates, resulting in very odd positions and very long tractor beams. Fixed to set the location of the towed ship to the location of the towing ship after switching planets.<br />
<br />
-Previously clicking the "reset all queues" button with some currently self-building units would scrap the self-building units. Fixed so that reset does nothing to units still self-building.<br />
<br />
-Overhauled cursor position detection to properly account for the window toolbar (if enabled) and window positions other than screen coordinate (0,0).<br />
<br />
-Previously Marauder Buzz Bombs were considering human ships as friendly when exploding (and thus not damaging them), fixed to consider them as enemy in that case.<br />
<br />
-Previously, if an overly long name was entered for the profile, it would not be visible in the main menu. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously ships reduced to very low percentages of engine health (particularly those like dreadnoughts with low normal speeds) could sometimes fail to move despite having an effective speed of 1. Fixed to be able to move at the slowest possible speed in those cases, even if it's more than they deserve.<br />
<br />
-Previously AI engineers in FRD mode could get into a cycle of moving to a nearby guard post and then back to their FRD anchor point over and over again. Fixed to re-anchor their FRD point to the guard post.<br />
<br />
-Fixed Tutorial 3 to prevent AI ships from entering FRD mode and thus attacking human player ships when the instructions specifically state that this will not happen.<br />
<br />
-Previously cleanup drones could start cleaning up permamines when the human player had begun construction of a command station on the planet. Fixed to not allow the cleanup drones to start cleaning up permamines until the command station is complete.<br />
<br />
-Changed line breaks in distribution node description to prevent odd wraps.<br />
<br />
-Fixed the ship mark icons on the tachyon beam emitters.<br />
<br />
-Previously ships were sometimes failing to perform "opportunity fire" while pursuing a primary target currently outside their range. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously units with extremely high single-shot attack power (e.g. Devourer) were massively overkilling targets. Fixed to cap overkill at 100% (i.e. will keep shooting until health = -maxHealth).<br />
<br />
-Fixed rare wrapping oddity in galaxy map planetary summary hover text.<br />
<br />
-Previously it was possible in very rare cases for ships to get "stuck" on the edge of a hostile strong forcefield. Fixed to use more exact distance checking in case of possible collision to check for a real collision.<br />
<br />
-Previously if a scrolling key (up/down/left/right) was pressed while clicking on the scores screen, after the scores screen was closed the game would still think the scrolling key was pressed (thus leaving the screen scrolling until the same key was pressed and released). Fixed to clear the pressed-ness of those keys when closing the scores screen.<br />
<br />
-Fixed a bug where AI taunts were ignoring the "Disable Sound" setting.<br />
<br />
-Previously, when a raid engine finished counting down on a planet with no command station, it would cause the game to crash.<br />
<br />
-Fixed some inaccuracies/omissions in Riot module descriptions.<br />
<br />
CHANGES TO PAST PRERELEASES<br />
=======<br />
<br />
<br />
SPECIAL THANKS<br />
----<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Hans-Martin Portmann for suggesting the fuzzy line performance improvement, from suggesting the removal of munitions boosting lines, for reporting that shield boosters could affect minor factions, for reporting the issue with fortress repairs, for suggesting the health boost to dyson gatlings, for suggesting that multiple rebel colonies still provide some benefit to the players, for the better-looking small shot effect.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Blahness for suggesting the increase in MRS range, for reporting that the increase to MRS range didn't actually work the first time, and for suggesting the starship tug 100.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to kjara for suggesting the engine tugs, for reporting that anti-starship arachnids were not targeting starships with preference, for suggesting the improvement to patrols, for reporting that marauders were getting the player speed boost, for reporting the issue with marauders spawning way too far out on enemy planets, for reporting the issue with targeting issue not appearing when hovering over marauders, for suggesting the shield boost to melee ships, for reporting the issue with vertical space on the remains hover in the F1 windows, for suggesting that transports no longer use the scout-evade behavior after exiting wormhole, for reporting that it was possible to detect fully cloaked enemy ships in Icon Grouping rendering mode, for pointing out that zenith mirrors do really poorly under sniper fire, for reporting that zenith-mirror-reflected shots were not respecting immunity, for noting that the devourer description didn't clearly state that it eats scouts, for reporting that the tooltip for Zenith Paralyzers was always saying x0, for reporting that giving an attack order during execution of a move order would cause a complete stop before re-accelerating, for reporting that devourers were devouring inordinate numbers of special forces ships, for suggesting the change to the AIP costs of warp gates and command stations, for reporting that teleporting units had a very hard time boarding moving transports.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Oewyn for reporting the bug with gifting reactors, for reporting the issue with planetary cloakers in cold storage, for reporting the lack of resistance fighters, for reporting the issue with engineers charging players for repairs of fully-healed docks, for pointing out that mine remains were still targetable, for suggesting buffs for counter-turrets, for pointing out that AI Taunts were never playing, for pointing out that core warhead interceptors were much too highly prioritized as a target by the AI, for reporting that a unit assisting an allied constructor could not assist if the allied constructor's player did not have sufficient resources, for reporting and providing a save to demonstrate the occasional unwillingness of ships to shoot at secondary targets while their primary target was out of range, for suggesting that the ControlNodeFRDLimitedTo80000 apply to non-military ships too, for noting that electric shuttles were pretty brutal and for their save file and suggestions on fixing this, for reporting that attrition emitters were not functioning in cold storage, for reporting that experimental starships didn't have the expected starship weaknesses.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to SNAFU for reporting the issue with ships autoattacking permamines.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to RCIX for reporting the turret stacking, for reporting the persistence of the dancing guards issue, for suggesting the improvements to the force field bearers, for suggesting the reduction in cursed golem health drain rate, for suggesting the change to how rebel colonies spawn, for suggesting the change to the cloaker starships, for suggesting a cap on the number of ships an MRS can repair simultaneously, for suggesting an option for MRS-repaired ships staying with the MRS rather than returning to their previous location, for reporting that enemy ships were sometimes still being drawn after the human players had lost visibility.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to HellishFiend for reporting the issue with Zenith Trade Ships on dead-end worlds, for reporting the issue with positive handicaps affecting negative resource outflows, for reporting the issue with short-range ships targeting high-radius force fields, for reporting the issue with assisting allies failing when they have zero of a resource, for reporting the issue with engineers trying to teleport into enemy force fields, for reporting the omitted knowledge counts on science labs when there is low energy, for reporting the issue with translocators hitting ships that are held by tractor beams, for reporting the issue with Zenith Traders going through wormholes, for suggesting that cloaked ships in general not be immune to AOE damage, for reporting the oddly steep effect of attack cluster penalties, for reporting that Devourer Golems were indulging in ridiculous amounts of overkill, for reporting that ships were getting stuck on the edges of hostile forcefields.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Kalzarius for reporting the issue with area damage and direct-targeted enemy ships, for reporting the inability to repair hive golems, for reporting the issues with lightning warhead targeting, for providing the updated game music streaming code, for reporting the issue with the find listbox hanging off the bottom of the screen, for suggesting the larger stream buffer size for game music, and for reporting that lightning turrets were firing even when the only enemy ships in range were fully cloaked.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Velox for reporting the issue with engineers sticking to docks, for suggesting that the buzz sound effect play when ships cannot be scrapped, for helping diagnose the problem with permamines being autoattacked, for reporting the issue with harvesters rebuilding when enemy turrets were present, for reporting the issue with manually targeting ships revealed by a tachyon beam, and for reporting that engineers sometimes drew red lines instead of green when successfully repairing ships.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to SpencerK and ownu for reporting the stuttering bug in the basic tutorials.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to akronia for reporting the issue with the multi-planet warning text in the lobby being cut off, for reporting the issue with ship text on placement mode not showing up, for reporting that Dyson gatling reclamation led to weird behavior (they're not supposed to be reclaimable).<br />
<br />
-Thanks to SkyWest for reporting the issue with leech starships not counting as starships.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Amonchakad for reporting the issue with scouts getting stuck on force fields, for reporting the broken Auto AI Progress settings.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Collic for suggesting that the munitions lines simply be an option to turn off.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to arthurp for suggesting that alt-clicking items in the planetary summary should deselect them.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to NahtanoJ88 for reporting the issue with command station home cores for new players.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Lars Bull for reporting the issue with minor factions from the expansion being able to be enabled in non-expansion games, for reporting the issue with shift+right clicking the selected units dropdown, for reporting the issue with the +/- key not always working, for reporting that starting a second instance of the game on a single-screen system causes a crash.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Anticept for reporting the issue with space tugs not showing up correctly in queues, for reporting the issue with mobile repair station engine health being unrepairable, and for reporting that pausing control nodes does not deactivate them.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to carlosjuero for suggesting the change to make resistance fighters only spawn when there are a certain number of human ships at a planet, for suggesting automatic DNS resolution of host names for direct connect, and for the example code that worked very well.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to TheDeadlyShoe for providing a save to show indecisive AI ships and for suggesting that astro trains be made immune to paralysis attacks.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to intently for inspiring the ability to let cleanup drones remove mines on allied planets.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to frags for reporting the issue with Steam achievements activating on every savegame load.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to I-KP for reporting the issue with command stations still autobuilding when they have no supply, for reporting that fortress construction could not be paused, for contributing a lot sfx and graphics for the new Riot starship line, for suggesting a disabledaitypes.txt file to save GUI programming time on the disabling-individual-ai's feature, for pointing out that micro-ing ships to constantly fly over a mobile repair station was allowing the simultaneous repair of an arbitrary number of ships, for creating the new lightning sprite, for suggesting that Advanced Factories "fold out" rather than replicate on capture, for suggesting the engine-damage-floor concept, for suggesting revised preconfigurations for the Riot.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to PLivesey for reporting the issue with "no supply" text being incorrect.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to orzelek for reporting the collision issue that caused dancing allied ships, for reporting that the lobby was not retaining proper checked-ness of minor faction types, for reporting that engineers set to frd by the auto frd engineer control node were not returning to their original spot after doing something, for pointing out that modules should honor stop commands to the parent ship, for providing a save to investigate the mysterious-disappearing-shots problem, and for pointing out that translocation was working in some pretty absurd cases (fortresses, etc).<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Thasero for reporting that warbird experimental starships can't be put in low-power mode, for reporting that the hover text of mines reported 300 engine damage strength but no such engine damage was observed in practice, for reporting that experimental starships (warbirds, beams) were not being treated as starships, for suggesting that munitions boosting ships have a cap on the number of ships they can simultaneously boost, for reporting that icon groups were disappearing if their top ship died, and for suggesting that Interplanetary Munitions Boosters not be placed adjacent to AI homeworlds and that Dyson Spheres not be placed on AI homeworlds.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to PineappleSam for reporting the fact that tachyon warheads were enabled when cloaking was off.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Doddler for suggesting that remains not be manually attackable, for reporting AI ships stopping and starting a lot, for reporting the issue with scouts freeing guards when they should not, and for reprting that cleanup drones could start cleaning up permamines when the human player had begun construction of a command station on the planet instead of waiting for the station to complete.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Ruges for reporting that planetary shield inhibitors (and similar) were having full effect even while still under construction, for reporting that ion cannons were getting munitions-boosted, for reporting that raid starships were unable to fire at decoy-drone-protected ships or the drones themselves despite the fact that they should be able to ignore the drones altogether, and for reporting that it's possible to get over 7000 viral shredders of a given level by abusing the game horribly.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Johnthesavage for reporting that spokes maps had a core AI forcefield on every single AI planet.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to vonduus for reporting indecisive ai behavior when multiple high priority targets were available, particularly when one started construction in the middle of the battle, and for reporting the out of memory exception that can come from Game Command pooling, for reporting the wrong mark level icon showing on the tachyon beam emitter.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Bobtree for reporting that lightning warheads can be munitions-boosted, for reporting that Z+X hotkey was showing ship ranges on planets where the players had no visibility.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to billboo151 for reporting the issue with installing the expansion on certain versions of the game.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Unspoken for suggesting a way to ease toggling pause on energy reactors.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Ozymandiaz for reporting Zenith Power Generators (and similar) consuming extreme amounts of resources at the end of construction.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to aZmoDen for reporting that Zenith Bombards were not auto-firing as they should.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Buttons840 for reporting that FRD engineers were sometimes distracted by constructors paused by "pause all" in a way that wasn't true of manually paused constructors, for reporting the issue with mine remains providing line of sight data, for reporting that fortresses lose their FRD status after a save, and for reporting that loading autosaves was sometimes resulting in additional AI progress.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Baka^Ni for pointing out the problems with a player unlocking achievements by playing a game started under another player's profile.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Goekhan for reporting that ships group-moving through a wormhole to a planet with a rally post were breaking out of group-move.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Florian for suggesting that the back-and-forth gifting of advanced factories in multiplayer games be made unnecessary.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Echo35 for pointing out that the icon draw distance slider pretty much meant "never draw icons" past about 1/16th up the slider.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Lancefighter for suggesting that scouts be immune to AOE damage.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Black for suggestions on initial rebalancing of space planes, for reporting that exo wormholes were moving between saves, and for suggestions on non-linear mechanics of viral shredder replication.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Malibu Stacey for pointing out the inaccuracy of the autocannon mk2 tooltip.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Venma for suggestions on making the middle-mouse click-and-drag pan more usable.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to deMangler for providing a save to fix that stubborn bug with auto-frd-mobile-miltary control nodes overriding constructor gather points.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to HitmanN for reporting that with Icon Grouping enemies remain on screen even when no player ships on a planet and for reporting that ships emerging from a wormhole were sometimes not being drawn until zooming in and back out, for pointing out that forcefield generating ships did not note in their tooltips that they are immune to tractors.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Fleet for reporting that FRD ships were sometimes ignoring distant ships, for reporting that the descriptions for remains and co-processors were wrapping in odd places, for pointing out that the effect text for shield inhibiting was unclear, for pointing out that the perma-mine description does not indicate that planet ownership is required for cleanup drones to clean them up, for reporting that ships etherjet-tractored through a wormhole were showing up at very odd positions, for reporting that reset was scrapping constructors still under construction, for reporting that warp gates were not auto-exploding in the absence of a friendly command station, for reporting that AI engineers sometimes teleport back and forth between various spots in an enemy system for no apparent reason, for reporting a problem causing human player ships in FRD mode to do nothing because they were constantly picking a teleporting target and dropping it again, for reporting a rare galaxy map planetary summary tex wrapping oddity, and that sometimes the game deselected the Star buy category on starship constructors.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Iskabis for reporting that translocators were affecting forcefields, rendering them much less useful than they should be.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to dumpsterKEEPER for reporting a typo in the Interplanetary Munitions Booster description.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to MaxAstro for suggesting that engineers be immune to dark matter, for suggesting a control node to make engineers prefer to assist non-mobile-military ships, and for reporting that Marauder Buzz Bombs were not damaging player ships, for reporting the issue with self-building manufactories incorrectly being auto-managed.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Dmdunn for reporting that it was sometimes possible to tell that a fully cloaked enemy ship was present by mousing over the location and for pointing out the oddness of a smaller forcefield completely within another forcefield being damaged before the outer forcefield.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Minty for reporting that using the middle-mouse-button scroll feature while in ship placement mode would make the screen jump in an unhelpful manner.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Simoyd for reporting that cursor position detection was still off in some cases for some players when the window was not based at screen coordinate 0,0.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to triggerman602 for reporting that impulse reaction emitters were doing improbable amounts of damage against golems and for reporting that Riot Control Starships with un-buildable build queue items were incorrectly attracting engineer assistance (which would then fail).<br />
<br />
-Thanks to corfe83 for suggesting that Galaxy View find mode account for ships in transports.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to quickstix for reporting that if Icon Grouping was enabled and multiple constructors with rally points were selected, only the rally point of the "top" constructor would be drawn, for pointing out that the planetary shield booster description was somewhat ambiguous, for reporting that autosaves were saving as "Autosave_".<br />
<br />
-Thanks to fbgbt for reporting that engineers were not reporting their outflows on the expenses-by-player stats screen in some cases.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to vnena for reporting that AI ships in tutorial 3 were sometimes attacking the human player when the instructions specifically state that this would not happen.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Lyrae for pointing out that the economy tutorial was confusing with the new auto-build-harvester behavior.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to zebramatt for pointing out that the "Remains Rebuilders" unit was inconsistently using the plural form for it's main name.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to vince0018 for providing improved versions of the sound effects for ShotTiny and ShotTinyRapid.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to lazerwolf for suggesting the improvement to the descriptions of manufactories.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to WraithOD for reporting the sticky-scrolling-key problem with the scores screen.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Shardz for (repeatedly) suggesting an in-game screenshot key.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Tssbackus for reporting that FRD ships were just sitting there doing nothing when there were tons of ships fighting at once (mostly just after loading a game).<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Nightchill for suggesting that Devourer Golems have more health.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Drutt-Myth for reporting the crash with raid engines on non-controlled planets.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to KaOSoFt and dlcooper for reporting the issue with the tutorial window text being cut off.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Ruges and orzelek for reporting that planetary shield boosters and radar jammers could not be scrapped.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[AI War:AI War]]<br />
[[Category:AI War Release Notes]]<br />
[[Category:Release Notes]]</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:3.000_Release&diff=29850AI War:3.000 Release2017-09-16T15:54:11Z<p>Nat: Add Category:AI War Release Notes</p>
<hr />
<div>NEW ART -All of the new art is by Philippe Chabot except where here noted.<br />
----<br />
-The Leech Starship has all-new graphics, and the Raid Starship graphics have been much improved.<br />
-All of the ship graphics have been updated so that they look better around their edges when slightly zoomed out.<br />
-The graphics for the colony ships and transports have been majorly updated, and those units are also now larger than before.<br />
-The Advanced Factory and Space Dock have been updated and are now much larger and more visually impressive. Space docks and advanced factories also now have more health.<br />
-All of the command stations except for the AI home planet command station now have new, larger graphics and icons. This includes the command station cores. This makes them more attractive, but also easier to see and select when zoomed very far out (including locating them on enemy planets).<br />
-Omega Drive, Resistance Fighter Bomber, Resistance Frigate, Marauder DaggerFrigate, Marauder Buzz Bomb are by Daniel Cook / Chris Park.<br />
-New planets by I-KP: IKP_RockyDarkMoon, IKP_VulcanDiamond, IKP_RockyIcy, IKP_ForestCracked, IKP_GasClouds, IKP_ExplodedState, IKP_Cloaked<br />
-New colorized planetary summary panel graphics and new explosion graphics by Hans-Martin Portmann.<br />
-New ship graphics by I-KP: Orbital Mass Driver (and related shot), Distribution Node, Gravity Drill Station, AI Co-Processor, replacement SuperFortress and SuperFortress<br />
-Updated Fortress and SuperFortress graphics by I-KP.<br />
<br />
<br />
NEW SOUND EFFECTS<br />
----<br />
-All of the new sounds are by Pablo Vega except where here noted.<br />
ShotArtillery<br />
ShotMassDriver, by I-KP<br />
AlarmPost<br />
ShotAcid<br />
ShotImpulseReactive<br />
New ShotBasicLaser<br />
New ShotDoubleLaser, ShotDoubleLaser2<br />
<br />
<br />
Various Notable New Features<br />
----<br />
-A new expansions tab has been added to the Settings window, with a way to enable/disable expansions, and/or unlock them for full rather than trial use. All of the other logic relating to having expansions that are unlockable (but first in trial mode) has also been added.<br />
<br />
-It is now possible to enable or disable expansions for a given savegame, and the high scores and galaxy map totals now include information about which expansions were enabled for their play.<br />
<br />
-It is now possible to select which expansions will be used in a game during the lobby. The game won't start unless all players have the selected expansions. Additionally, players loading a savegame or joining a game-in-progress won't be able to load/join if they don't have the expansions in use by the existing game. Existing savegames cannot be upgraded to the expansion or downgraded from having the expansion (since the expansion content has a large effect on the entire game).<br />
<br />
-The map population logic for capturables and AI special weapons has been revamped. This both fixes some bugs that tended to make maps more generic than they should have been, and paves the way for a large influx of new special weapon types, which will individually be more common in this expansion and the future. The algorithm now supports randomizing the order in which they are added, and insuring that too many bad things or good things are not bunched on the same planet—issues that were never a problem before, but would have become a problem over time with the old algorithm.<br />
<br />
-Previously, when ships had queued waypoints for movement, they would decelerate and re-accelerate at each waypoint. Now they don't lose speed when turning.<br />
<br />
-A new set of Core Fabricators has been added for both the base game and the expansion. These are new capturables that are scattered around the galaxy map, a count of which can be seen in the Mission Summary in each campaign. Generally there are 2 per human starting planet, same as advanced factories. Each of these core fabricators, once captured, lets a human player build a single type of Core ship (which otherwise normally only the AI can build). The ship caps for core ships are quite low (and can be seen in the planetary summary by hitting F1 a few times), and the core ships are also very expensive, but they also cost no knowledge to unlock and are quite powerful.<br />
Players can see what kind of core ship will be produced at a core fabricator before they capture it by hovering over it and looking at its hover text.<br />
In the base game, all 9 of the core ships from the base ship classes can be found as core fabricators. In the expansion, those 9 plus an additional 11 core ships from the expansion can be found. Not all of the fabricators are in every individual campaign, of course, given the seed numbers noted above.<br />
<br />
-A new set of Experimental Starship Fabricators has been added for both the base game and the expansion. These are new capturables that are scattered around the galaxy map, a count of which can be seen in the Mission Summary in each campaign. Generally there are 1 per human starting planet. Each of these experimental starship fabricators, once captured, lets a human player build a single type of Experimental Starship (which otherwise normally are not built at all, or the AI only builds, depending). These experimental starships are fairly expensive, but cost no knowledge to unlock and are quite powerful.<br />
Players can see what kind of experimental starship will be produced at a experimental starship fabricator before they capture it by hovering over it and looking at its hover text.<br />
In the base game, currently the only experimental starship is the Bomber Starship Mark I. In the expansion, a new Beam Starship and Warbird Starship can also be found. Not all of the fabricators are in every individual campaign, of course, given the seed numbers noted above.<br />
<br />
-A new updater has been put in place for the game. This new updater does not use MSI patches, and so does not require that the game have been installed via our MSI installer—this lets the updater work with the game regardless of what source it was pulled from (Impulse, Steam, anything).<br />
The updater is no longer simply for official updates—it now lets users check for official updates, beta updates, and updates to content for any expansions to the game (right now just The Zenith Remnant).<br />
The updater automatically checks for updates in the background when the application is started, so players always know when there is something new (this can be turned off in the settings interface). Players can also manually check for updates to download via the updater, or they can manually load an update into the updater from their file system (useful for computers without a direct connection to the Internet).<br />
<br />
<br />
Co-Op Improvements<br />
----<br />
-Previously, when a desync was encountered it would alert the host with a beeping noise and a bunch of text, but would let the game continue. Now it halts the game immediately, instead.<br />
<br />
-Major new co-op mechanic: In a multiplayer game, when a human player loses his/her home command station(s), they now will get a new "Orbital Command Station Home Core." which produces more energy and resources than the original orbital command station. These ships are also mobile and can move between planets, and don't have any bearing on capturing planets unlike regular full command stations.<br />
There are three different levels of orbital command station home core, and each produces more resources and has more health. The higher-level cores are granted when the AI tech level is higher (the core that is granted is equal to the highest current tech level of the AIs). <br />
If the core of a player is lost, there is an AI Progress hit that is also larger than the hit from losing the original home command station, but a replacement core is immediately granted. Cores are always created on the safest allied home planet possible.<br />
<br />
-Major new co-op mechanic: When a new player is added to an existing co-op game, they will be given an orbital command station home core" right from the start, since they do not have a home planet command station. This gives late-added players a significant resource income right from the start, and makes them no longer completely dependent on gifts of ships from allied players. This gets newly-added players up and running more quickly, and also avoids having the game slow down too much for the short time right after their addition.<br />
<br />
-Players are no longer able to gift home command stations between each other. With the addition of home command station cores, this is no longer neccessary, and it also prevents an exploit.-Players are no longer able to gift home command stations between each other. With the addition of home command station cores, this is no longer neccessary, and it also prevents an exploit.<br />
<br />
-Previously, if engineers from Player A assisted in the construction of a unit belonging to Player B, then this would add to Player B's cost and not cost Player A anything. This was highly unintuitive, and has now been switched so that the controller of the engineers now always pays the cost. Additionally, the expense associated with the engineer is now reported as part of the engineer itself rather than as part of the constructor/building-unit in the Expenses By Player tab (even when both units are controlled by the same player. The same applies to ships that are being built through queues.<br />
<br />
-It is now possible to gift ships to disabled players.<br />
<br />
-A new "Networking Help" section has been added to the Game tab of the settings window to aid new users in setting up multiplayer games of AI War. Covers port forwarding, finding a public IP, and so on.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
AI Updates<br />
----<br />
-New AI Type: Random Harder Non-Technologist. A random AI type that includes only the higher-difficulty types, but none of the "technologist" types.<br />
<br />
-New AI Type: Random All Non-Technologist. A random AI type that includes all types except the technologist types.<br />
<br />
-New AI Modifier: Reveal Random AI Types. When a random AI type is chosen, the name of the randomly-selected will be visible to players (normally it would be obscured).<br />
<br />
-Previously, the threshold for player ships to trigger an Alert on AI planets was 50 units. Starships and Golems were not weighted any more highly in the past, but now Starships will count for 25, and the Golems and other "major weapons" (the heavy defense category in general) will trigger the alert all by themselves.<br />
<br />
-The internal logic for AI reinforcements has seen a number of internal shifts to make them more intelligent in caes of over-full planets in particular.<br />
<br />
-The internal logic for how AI players handle having many starships, and how they handle starships being disabled, is now much improved.<br />
<br />
-On difficulty 7 and up, the AI is now smarter about taking out key targets when it is outnumbered; now sometimes managing suicide runs instead of always falling back in this situation.<br />
<br />
-The logic for cross-planet attacks has been majorly updated so that it is more consistent between single-player and multiplayer. Also, all AI types now do cross-planet attacks, whereas previously the turtle types would not—since CPAs are from more than one AI type at a time, this only makes sense. Lastly, cross-planet attacks are more than three times less frequent than before.<br />
<br />
-The AI is no longer able to issue movement or attack orders to its ships if they are stuck in tractor beams. This lets low-level autotargeting make better short-term decisions.<br />
<br />
-Starships and golems and will now patrol around at random if they are AI-controlled and without any targets to attack. This makes them less predictable, and keeps them from "clumping" and thus becoming easy targets for area damage attacks.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Performance Improvements<br />
----<br />
-There is now a new unified command queue for attack, move, go-through-wormhole, get-in-transport, and assist/repair commands. Previously, there were separate queues for attack, move, and go-through-wormhole commands, but they could not be comingled with one another or with the queue-less commands. Now they can all be comingled as needed, so that a player can (for instance) queue up a series of attacks and then also the escape, without having to micromanage the entire process as it goes to pull something like that off.<br />
<br />
-Added some minor performance improvements to the target chasing logic and targeting in general, and to speed calculations.<br />
<br />
-The MTU of the application networking is now 1400 instead of 1459, which should provide better network performance across some internet connections, and no change to those that were already fine.<br />
<br />
-Several optimizations have been made to RAM usage when saving huge games.<br />
<br />
-The internal logic for ship targeting and a number of other subsystems relating to combat and ship automatic interactions have been heavily revamped, leading to both better performance and better functionality/maintainability/extensibility.<br />
<br />
-A new performance improvement has been introduced for when players are attacking enemy planets with lots of guarding ships.<br />
<br />
-All remaining usages of LINQ have been replaced with raw list sorts instead, which are faster.<br />
<br />
-Game performance is no longer severely affected when localization files are missing.<br />
<br />
-Some internal performance improvements have been made to the simulation logic in a variety of areas.<br />
<br />
-A new method is now being used for line/circle intersection tests. This method is a bit more of an approximation, but it runs very much faster and also isn't prone to overflow errors. This fixes errors that had previously been in place with beam weapons (making them hit many targets they should not have been hitting), as well as making the galaxy maps generate more quickly.<br />
<br />
-Improved the timeliness of scout data being returned on planets after loading a savegame and waiting for multiple players (sometimes it was fine before, but sometimes not).<br />
<br />
-Several efficiency improvements have been made with regard to ship aggregations on the main simulation thread.<br />
<br />
-A new "cold storage" backend ship code technique is now implemented, leading to massive performance gains with high ship counts. In benchmarks with a 202k unit game the performance boost was 500%, while in a benchmark with a 104k unit game the performance boost was right at 1000%. The performance increase will vary by the scenario, and scenarios with very few ships will see no gain at all, but in general maps with more than even just 20k units should see some gain, both in simulation speed and (at times) in targeting performance. This performance boost does not really help in large battles, except insofar as it leaves the CPU freer to process said large battles—but battle performance itself is not directly improved by these changes. In games with very many ships, the performance will be the same as it was previously for approximately 1 second per 4k ships in the game—then it will jump greatly upwards. The special forces captain AI Type, it should be noted, sees particularly little gain from this n<br />
ew technique.<br />
<br />
-Ships that are in cold storage were previously not being drawn at all when the players were looking at them with hidden scouts or with complete visibility turned on. Now these ships are shown with a black border.<br />
<br />
-Error handling for corrupt game images is now better. It now says specifically which image is corrupt, and doesn't crash the game.<br />
<br />
-Previously, the "protection ranges" were being drawn for all ships whenever the player was in build mode. This could cause some performance problems, however—now the game will only draw those ranges if the player holds Z, whether in build mode or not.<br />
<br />
<br />
Interface / Other Graphical Improvements<br />
----<br />
-The splash screen now shows status messages for the progress of loading the game. This also prevents windows 7 and vista from thinking the program is nonresponsive on startup.<br />
<br />
-An icon is now shown for wormholes at far zoom, making them far easier to click (previously players had to zoom all the way in to effectively click them). Holding the Ctrl key now pops the far zoom icon to the front, as well as the text.<br />
<br />
-Human home planet command stations now have "Home" written on their icon, making them easier to identify at a glance compared to other kinds of command stations.<br />
<br />
-Holding shift while clicking a ship to sub-select in the "Selected ship types" popup listbox now sub-selects the entire ship class (e.g., all fighters), rather than just the individual ship type clicked (e.g., fighters mark II).<br />
<br />
-Munitions boosting lines are now drawn much more faintly.<br />
<br />
-Enemy ships that are cloaked were previously invisible on the planetary summary sidebar. Now they show up as a generic cloaking bubble, with a count of how many are present, though with no details on what types of cloaked ships there are. This is similar to what players are able to see through the galaxy map intel summary.<br />
<br />
-The Counter-Shooter ranges now get drawn below everything else, including resources and wormholes, to aid visibility.<br />
<br />
-The resource display has been adjusted a bit with how the unused metal/crystal harvester spots and the exhausted science labs show. These should now be easier to see at a glance.<br />
<br />
-Planets that are cloaked via a planetary cloaking device now have a special cloaked graphic for the planet itself.<br />
<br />
-There are now two different destroyed planet graphics that are used for various destroyed planets.<br />
<br />
-Three new general-use planet graphics have been added to the game.<br />
<br />
-A wide variety of new player colors have been added. Some of them are a bit too close together to be comfortably used in the same game as one another (depending on player monitor settings and vision in general), but having more options will allow players to get a setup more like they want, color-wise, in general.<br />
<br />
-The version number of the game is now shown on the splash screen as the game is loading; this should make it more obvious to players what version they are running when questions come up.<br />
<br />
-The planetary summary has once again been updated, to an even-more-readable colorized layout that makes finding ships easier than ever.<br />
<br />
-Perma-cloaked enemy ships now show up as "Perma-Cloaked" on the galaxy map intel summaries. The only ship that is this way for AIs presently is Wormhole Guard Posts, which will be enabled even when cloaking is disabled in the lobby (perma-cloaked ships don't really function like other cloaked ships, and so don't count for purposes of that feature).<br />
<br />
-The insta-kill message no longer appears until ships are actually being hit and killed, rather than appearing when they are being fired upon.<br />
<br />
-Hovering over the AI Progress meter in the resource bar at the top of the screen now shows a breakdown of Total AI Progress, AI Progress Reduction, AI Progress Floor, and finally the Effective AI Progress (which is all that is normally shown). (For those who are interested, Effective = Total - Reduction, unless Total - Reduction < Floor, in which case Effective = Floor. Floor increases as Total goes up.) This should hopefully make AI Progress value calculations more clear for advanced players.<br />
<br />
-Since there are so many secondary mission objectives now (often 10 or more instead of the previous 4), they are now grouped into several categories: Technology, AI Progress, and Economic.<br />
<br />
-There is a new category under command stations and mobile builders: CTRL. In this category, various "control nodes" can be built. These are basically very cheap control options that are perma-cloaked and which can be built by players in order to change how the current campaign works. In many respects, these are simply like per-player lobby options, except that they can be set at any time during the game's play. These are distinct from the overall settings options in that they are per-player, and a per-campaign. Most settings will continue to be accessed via the lobby or the settings screens, but certain gameplay-centric options that need to be per-player per-campaign will be available via the new CTRL category at the command stations. These options will typically center around ship behavior.<br />
<br />
-New Control Node: Allow Team Control Of Ships. Allows all teammates to share control of your ships on any planet. This is useful when players wish to share control of their empires with allies, but doesn't require that all players in a multiplayer game share control of their empires at once. Player A can share control of their empire, while Players B and C keep control of their own ships to themselves, for example.<br />
<br />
-New Control Node: Auto-Build Engineers Mark II. Each command station you control will automatically maintain one Mark II Engineer at each planet you control. Building multiple of this control node causes multiple engineers to be maintained at each planet. Replacement engineers will only be built if there are fewer than 100 mobile enemy ships on the planet.<br />
<br />
-New Control Node: Auto-Build Engineers Mark III. Each command station you control will automatically maintain one Mark III Engineer at each planet you control. Building multiple of this control node causes multiple engineers to be maintained at each planet. Replacement engineers will only be built if there are fewer than 100 mobile enemy ships on the planet.<br />
<br />
-New Control Node: Auto-FRD Engineers. Automatically places all of your engineers (including secondary engineers such as remains rebuilders) into Free-Roaming Defender mode if they are on planets you control.<br />
<br />
-New Control Node: Auto-FRD Mobile Military. Automatically places all of your mobile military ships into Free-Roaming Defender mode if they are on planets you control.<br />
<br />
-New Control Node: Auto-Build Remains Rebuilders. Each command station you control will automatically maintain one Remains Rebuilder at each planet you control. Building multiple of this control node causes multiple rebuilders to be maintained at each planet. Replacement rebuilders will only be built if there are fewer than 100 mobile enemy ships on the planet.<br />
<br />
-New Control Node: Engineers To Not Auto-Assist Queues. Prevents your engineers from automatically assisting build queues (keeping them on repair duty only, unless they are given explicit orders to accelerate a queue).<br />
<br />
-New Control Node: Engineers To Not Auto-Assist Allies. Prevents your engineers from automatically assisting any allied ships (though you can still manually assign them to assist specific allied ships).<br />
<br />
-The intel summaries on the galaxy map now include labels for all of their icons to make it easier to tell what planets might deserve more investigation without having to use the help palettes in the planetary summary.<br />
<br />
-The list of scouts in the scouts button now only includes the specific scout ships (Scout I-IV) and the Scout Starship. Other units that provide scout intel, such as eyebots or command stations, are not included in this list.<br />
<br />
-Instead of showing a percent full, transports now show how many ships are inside them out of how many they can hold in total.<br />
<br />
-The Auto AI Progress and AI Modifiers settings have moved from the Game Options tab of the lobby to a new AI Options tab in the lobby.<br />
<br />
-A new "Minor Factions To Include" setting has been added to the AI Options tab of the lobby, allowing players to select one or more minor factions to use.<br />
<br />
-Larger selection circles are now drawn for oversized ships such as fortresses and golems.<br />
<br />
-The new colors on the planetary summary were making it easier to see categories of ships, but harder to see ship shapes themselves, and particularly hard to see local versus ally versus enemy colors. The old type of color scheme has been returned to for the default, but now when the planetary summary is moused-over, it switches to the new color scheme to provide the best of both worlds: easy category visibility as well as easy icon/team visibility, depending on the context.<br />
<br />
-Previously, only AI ships were showing up in the icon row on the intel summary. This has now been changed so that it also displays ships belonging to minor factions and human players. This makes it far easier for players to inventory their own planets as well as inventorying enemy planets.<br />
<br />
-The gridviews used on the high scores, achievemetns, and in-game stats windows have been completely recoded from scratch to replace the stock Microsoft versions that were being used before. This fixes a number of bugs with the old ones. The new gridviews also use color to make the data more readable.<br />
<br />
-Advanced Factories and starship constructors now use different icons from space docks.<br />
<br />
-The savegame and loadgame windows have once again been made wider.<br />
<br />
-It is now possible to simultaneously select multiple savegames at once in the save and load windows for purposes of deleting multiple saves simultaneously.<br />
<br />
-The colors for wormhole text now show properly for allied and local-controlled planets.<br />
<br />
-The names of planets in the galaxy map are now color-coded in the same manner that wormhole text is colorized for planets.<br />
<br />
-A checkbox has been added to the updates window that allows for updates to optionally be applied without invoking admin rights. This only works on pre-Vista machines, or when the game is installed somewhere other than Program Files.<br />
<br />
-There is now a Close button on the game sync window to let players cancel out of syncs that have failed due to network conditions or host cancelation or similar.<br />
<br />
-A new "Use Simple Render For Far Zoom Icons (Slower, But Prevents Invisible Icons On Some Graphics Card Drivers)" option has been added to Settings, Graphics. A very few graphics card driver / directx combinations have trouble with the way that icons are normally written in memory before they are drawn, which in those instances leads to invisible icons. This new option lets players bypass the invisible icons issue (which can also usually be solved with a graphics card driver update), but at some performance penalty (the in-memory writing is present specifically to be a speed improvement).<br />
<br />
-The minimap is now more accurate.<br />
<br />
<br />
New Ships<br />
----<br />
-A new ship has been added to the defensive tab: Rally Post. Allied ships that are sent to this planet will gather at this rally post. If there are multiple allied rally posts on a single planet, entering ships will pick one of them at random.<br />
<br />
-New ship: Cleanup Drone. Removes exploded enemy mines and turrets, to prevent them from being rebuilt<br />
by enemy mine/turret layers. Previously this was accomplished with engineers (once those engineers had finished with anything else that they considered a higher priority, which caused some challenges), or via manual targeted. Now, having a specialized unit dedicated to cleanup makes it much simpler to clear exploded enemy mines without any micromanagement.<br />
<br />
-New Minor Faction: Human Marauders. Hostile human vagabonds who live in deep space and will occasionally raid human or AI planets via traditional propulsion methods. Unlike pretty much any hostile threat, these don't always come through wormholes, in other words.<br />
<br />
-New Minor Faction: Human Resistance Fighters. Pockets of human allies still live in deep space around AI planets; when they see you attacking the AI, sometimes they will reveal themselves and join you.<br />
<br />
-New Minor Faction Ship: Marauder Buzz Bomb. Hostile human vagabonds who live in deep space will occasionally send these automated bombs at human and AI settlements to destroy what they can so that they can escape with the resulting scrap. The buzz bomb explodes on contact with its target, dealing area damage. If the planet is cleared of enemy forces, the marauders will remain in place as guards against all comers. They won't attack any AI ships that human players must normally manually target.<br />
<br />
-New Minor Faction Ship: Marauder Dagger Frigate. Hostile human vagabonds who live in deep space will occasionally send these extremely long-range frigates at human and AI settlements to destroy what they can so that they can escape with the resulting scrap. If the planet is cleared of enemy forces, the marauders will remain in place as guards against all comers. They won't attack any AI ships that human players must normally manually target.<br />
<br />
-New Minor Faction Ship: Resistance Fighter/Bomber. Pockets of human allies who still live in deep space around AI planets will occasionally send these versatile fighter/bomber hybrids to aid you in the fight against the AI at their local planet. If the planet is cleared of AI forces, the resistance fighters will remain as guards against future AI incursions. They won't attack any AI ships that human players must normally manually target.<br />
<br />
-New Minor Faction Ship: Resistance Frigate. Pockets of human allies who still live in deep space around AI planets will occasionally send these very long-range frigates to aid you in the fight against the AI at their local planet. If the planet is cleared of AI forces, the resistance fighters will remain as guards against future AI incursions. They won't attack any AI ships that human players must normally manually target.<br />
<br />
-New Minor Faction: Human Colony Rebellions. Most human settlements have been destroyed or completely subdued, but every five or so hours one will rise against the machines. However, these civilians are always outmatched despite their enthusiasm. If you do not help them take back their planet, they will die and the AI Progress will go up. Save them, and their unique ship production facilities are yours to use. Only works with galaxy maps with 30+ planets.<br />
<br />
-New Minor Faction Ship: Rebelling Human Colony. A formerly captive city filled with living humans. AI progress will skyrocket by 100 if this is destroyed. These civilians have decided to rebel, and have erected a temporary invisibility cloak while they call for aid. When the cloak dissipates, they'll be vulnerable to attacks from the AI, and surely won't last long. When the rebels have supply, your entire team can use their facilities to build rebel ships. While you hold the planet on which they are located, their invisibility cloak will remain at full power.<br />
<br />
<br />
Ship Logic Updates<br />
----<br />
-Colony Ships now have mine avoidance, are immune to sniper shots, and are immune to tractor beams. This should make colonizing certain planets more feasible, since Mobile Builders now require supply and so can't always be used to build a colony ship on site.<br />
<br />
-The following ships can now be transported by transports, in addition to all of the general mobile military ships: engineers i-iii, mine layers, mobile builders, space tugs (all kinds), colony ships, science labs i and ii, decloakers, and tachyon drones.<br />
<br />
-All of the tachyon beam emitters, including the tachyon drone and the decloaker, now have mine avoidance to make them a bit more useful and require less micro.<br />
<br />
-Harvester Exo-Shields can no longer be paused, as previously this encouraged too much micromanagement.<br />
<br />
-Attrition emitters are now capturable.<br />
<br />
-Ships that damage engines should now do a better job of preferring to target ships whose engines can actually be damaged.<br />
<br />
-Ships are now more intelligent about how they will try to autotarget enemy ships that are paralyzed (and thus which temporarily can't shoot back).<br />
<br />
-Ships now prefer to autotarget enemy ships that do not reflect attacks (that are not mirrors).<br />
<br />
-Ships now do a bit better autotargeting in general if they are chosing secondary targets.<br />
<br />
-The free-roaming defender logic is now much improved for all ships, as is autotargeting in general. The targeting intelligence of multi-shot ships is also particularly improved.<br />
<br />
-Tractor Beams now have their own separate targeting cycle from weapon attacks and other similar, making them much more effective at quickly catching incoming ships.<br />
<br />
-When ships go through a wormhole into a planet, if they don't have other orders they tend to just sit at the wormhole and wait for more orders, fighting with whatever is there. That is great for most ships, but disastrous for scouts. Scouts in that situation will now flee to the outer border of the planetary area, where they are almost sure to be out of range of tachyon beams and thus can wait for further player orders in relative safety.<br />
<br />
-It is now possible to put a single ship in multiple control groups.<br />
<br />
-The following ships now drop remains on their destruction in the same manner that mines always have: advanced warp sensors, tachyon beam emitters and stealth tachyon beam emitters, and all turrets. Consequently, all of these ship types are also now immune to reclamation.<br />
<br />
-Improvements have been made to the targeting behavior of groups of melee ships.<br />
<br />
-Ships such as rebuilders and engineers would previously go all the way to their free-roaming point when given a free-roaming move order before they would do any target seeking. Now they will properly start target seeking immediately, as with all other ships, and only go to their destination if their destination is not accessible.<br />
<br />
-If rebuilders cannot rebuild a ship from remains due to that ship already being at cap, the remains will instead be scrapped and a chat message will be sent to the player controlling the remains that were removed.<br />
<br />
-Ships that are rebuilt from remains now start out with 50% health when they are starting to be rebuilt. This both makes them half as expensive as they were to build the first time, as well as making them take half as long to rebuild. This makes it much cheaper to maintain well-designed defenses.<br />
<br />
-Fortresses now provide scout data on the planet they are on if that planet changes control from the player with the fortress.<br />
<br />
-Transports now use the scout-style logic at their last wormhole and move away from the wormhole to avoid taking so much direct fire.<br />
<br />
-In the spirit of minimizing micromanagement, when transports are destroyed they now safely eject their cargo, rather than losing all of it.<br />
<br />
-The Leech and Raid Starship lines have now been split, so that there are three in each of two lines, rather than them being a shared line. The Raid Starships are now much faster and hard-hitting against single targets, while the leech starships are now much weaker but strike many more ships, tagging them all for reclamation as soon as any ships finishes them off. The caps for all of these starships has also been cut in half, as they are individually now far more useful than they previously were.<br />
<br />
-The health of parasites and core leeches has significantly increased.<br />
<br />
-Astro Train stations are now only attacked by player ships when given a direct order.<br />
<br />
-Mobile builders now count as constructors instead of engineers.<br />
<br />
<br />
Ship Balance Updates<br />
----<br />
-Laser Gatlings are now weaker against cruisers and Zenith Bombard Ships, and Cruisers now have a bonus against laser gatlings.<br />
<br />
-The attack power of space planes has been increased 5x. They still die extremely quickly, but they now also do a ton more damage to their opponents.<br />
<br />
-Laser gatlings have had their attack power reduced by 1/4, as they were previously more than a bit overpowered.<br />
<br />
-Vampires have had their health increased 3x, making them much more formidable and able to maintain their attack longer. They are also now immune to sniper shots and missiles, making them able to close distance on most units more effectively.<br />
<br />
-Autocannon Minipods are now a bit more expensive, and they now have an even lower base attack strength, but they now have a 2% cluster attack bonus, which makes them extremely much more powerful in large swarms. Their internal ship bonuses have also been adjusted.<br />
<br />
-The shield rating and health of advanced research stations have both been reduced to 1/4 their prior values. This makes them far less invincible as targets to hit, and lets enemy ships target them more sensibly (it makes them a more interesting target for the AI to attack, and for the players to have to defend).<br />
<br />
-Turrets can no longer have their munitions boosted or their shields boosted, but they are now immune to minor electric shots and blades.<br />
<br />
-Teleport Raiders, Anti-Starship Arachnids, and Teleport Battle Stations are now immune to tractor beams, since they can no longer shoot them.<br />
<br />
-The health of all the ships in the raid starship line have been reduced. Additionally, their general-purpose attack power has been vastly reduced, but their specialist attack power against force fields, turrets, and heavy defense has been doubled. Additionally, they no longer have a penalty against resources, constructors, or heavy defenses. The net effect of this is a nerf for how humans are able to use Raid starships (though keeping them very useful in many specialist roles), while boosting what the AI is likely to be able to do with them by a small amount (as the AI was previously not all that effective with them).<br />
<br />
-The attack range and power of dreadnoughts have been doubled.<br />
<br />
-The metal and crystal costs of light starships, flagships, zenith starships, and spire starships have now been reversed. This makes them cost much more metal than crystal, rather than the other way around. This provides an excellent counterpoint to many of the other starships and provides a good use for metal if it is too abundant compared to crystal in a campaign.<br />
<br />
-The range of spire starships has been increased from 3000 to 7000. The speed of the spire starships has also been increased from 18 to 24.<br />
<br />
-Player-held Attrition Emitters no longer give a bonus to incoming AI waves.<br />
<br />
-Higher-level autocannons now get more of a clustering damage multiplier than the lower marks.<br />
<br />
-The effectiveness of melee ships is no longer decreased by their being under protecting force fields.<br />
<br />
-Previously, the metal/crystal costs of core ships was irrelevant, because players could never build them. Now the cost of core ships is normalized to 3x the cost of the mark iv version of its ship type.<br />
<br />
-Deflector Drones now fire a new Energy Burst ammo type, instead of using minor electric ammo.<br />
<br />
-Ships that absorb lasers or dark matter now also attract the absorbed type of shots to themselves. This works similarly to how counter-missiles and related provide a protection radius, but instead of firing a counter-shot, these shots are drawn to the protecting ship and heal it.<br />
<br />
-Shot effective damage is now capped at the max health of the target being shot at. This prevents mirrors from being nearly so deadly against ships with very high attack values.<br />
<br />
-All ships that have at least 1 million health are now immune to blades. This prevents some exploits with the Zenith Viral Shredders, and makes for more sensible attack logic with Cutlasses.<br />
<br />
-Ion Cannons no longer require supply.<br />
<br />
-Warheads are now Mark V instead of Mark 0, and they are no longer immune to being insta-killed.<br />
<br />
-Anti-starship arachnids have been on the weak side of things in recent times, and so have been given a significant boost (around 3x) against starships.<br />
<br />
-Remains Rebuilders now have cloaking, making them easier for players to keep alive (and more devious for when the AI has them, incidentally). They also now have 100k more health. They also no longer require unlocking, and thus no longer have any associated knowledge cost now that they are more of a general-purpose ship. Their ship cap has also been raised about 3x.<br />
<br />
-Ships that are self-building are no longer cloaked while under construction (if they have the cloaking ability, previously that would be engaged while they were still under construction, which was erroneous).<br />
<br />
-Since remains and their cleanup and rebuilding are now so important, when Cloaking is disabled in the lobby options there is now a non-cloaked version of the Remains Rebuilder that players and AIs will use, and a non-cloaked version of the Cleanup Drone that players can use.<br />
<br />
-All ships that are immune to reclamation now have a strong attack penalty against the Raid Starship line, and Parasites.<br />
<br />
-The movement speed of all parasites has been nearly doubled.<br />
<br />
-Infiltrators no longer absorb dark matter (and that ability has now been entirely removed as redundant with the counter-dark-matter flares).<br />
<br />
-When lasers are fired into the area around a deflector drone, their power is now reduced to 1/4 of normal, but otherwise they are no longer redirected or absorbed or anything of that nature. That also means that deflector drones are no longer immune to lasers, though they are quite resistant to them.<br />
<br />
-The health of advanced factories has been increased 4x to make them not quite so brittle and hard to defend.<br />
<br />
-The health of bombers have been doubled.<br />
<br />
-The core Figher -> Cruiser -> Bomber -> Figher relationship has been redefined to Figher -> Bomber -> Cruiser -> Figher.<br />
<br />
-Space Tanks now have 30x more shields than before, making them much harder to hit at range.<br />
<br />
-Fortresses and SuperFortresses now have fewer shots, but do much more damage and have a very long range. They also now have a big bonus against all starships, a sizeable bonus against raiders and teleporting ships, and a pretty big bonus against most cloaked ships. Fortresses also now have 500 transport capacity, making them able to protect ships until they are ready to be ejected.<br />
<br />
-Bombers now have a 50% penalty against bombers.<br />
<br />
-Frigates now have a 10x bonus against space planes and etherjets.<br />
<br />
-EtherJets now have a better bonus against fighters and bombers and armor ships.<br />
<br />
-Raptors now have a better bonus against fighters and frigtes, and a penalty against bombers.<br />
<br />
-Teleport battle stations now have a better bonus against fighters, raiders, tele-raiders, and tanks.<br />
<br />
-The knowledge and crystal costs of decloakers have been halved, and their ship cap has been doubled.<br />
<br />
-The attack power of mark IV and V bombers has been increased.<br />
<br />
-Force fields now provide protection from tractor beams and tachyon beams.<br />
<br />
-Human ships are now 40% faster than their stated values, in fast & dangerous and normal modes (this amplifies whatever the effective speed was from these two modes). This also causes the human ships to accelerate that much faster. This gives player ships an edge over the AI ships, to make chasing down incoming AI incursions easier with free-roaming defender mode. This also speeds up the game a bit without making it any more difficult (in fact, making it easier, because it is then easier to react to things while the AI is still the same speed as before).<br />
<br />
-Fortresses and superfortresses now act as allied rally posts and mobile repair stations.<br />
<br />
-Colony ships and transports both now have a ship cap of 60. However, they also now each take 4,000 energy to run instead of 50 in order to discourage having large numbers of these ships just sitting around as free decoys against the AI.<br />
<br />
-Mobile Repair Stations now move at speed 12 instead of 8, have about 4x more health than before, and regenerate their own health about twice as fast. The AI also now cares much less about these now.<br />
<br />
-PermaMines now have 2 billion health instead of being truly invincible. This makes it so that they can die in nuclear blasts and such.<br />
<br />
-Decloakers are now immune to being insta-killed.<br />
<br />
-The radii of force fields have been greatly increased to accomodate the larger space docks, and make them a bit more useful in general.<br />
<br />
-Mark I Engineers, Cleanup Drones, and Remains Rebuilders all now have teleportation.<br />
<br />
-Engineers and other economic ships that have teleportation are no longer disabled when teleportation is disabled. Instead, they simply switch to regular propulsion.<br />
<br />
-Teleporting engineers now ignore the range to their targets (assuming that the target is within their effective range), instead preferring to repair ships that are most damaged.<br />
<br />
-All golems and astro trains are now immune to black hole machines.<br />
<br />
-Dreadnought Starships no longer have multiple shots per attack, but now have a stronger attack. They also do much more engine damage now. They also will try to disable the engines of all ships before trying to finish ships off.<br />
<br />
-The cost of all the lightning turret techs have been reduced by 1500 each.<br />
<br />
-Shots that are incoming from longer than 20,000 distance are now not used in short-range overkill prevention, which leads to quicker kills in most cases. Previously it had to be a sniper shot.<br />
<br />
-All of the attack bonuses of fortresses and superfortresses have been removed, as their shots are so powerful on baseline that is no longer needed. This is particularly relevant for when they are facing starships. Note that their penalties against tanks and bombers remain.<br />
<br />
-Command stations now automatically rebuild metal and crystal harvesters on all planets you control. Replacement harvesters will only be built if there are fewer than 100 mobile enemy ships on the planet.<br />
<br />
-Ships that stuck in tractor beams now always have at least a 25% chance of hitting the tractor beam that is holding them if they would normally be able to hit the tractor beam from closer range. This makes tractor beams no longer so instantly fatal to bombers and other shorter-ranged ships.<br />
<br />
-Ship bonuses against turrets no longer ocunt against tractor beams or ion cannons. This levels the playing field a bit for all ships with these, without making some ships absolutely useless against them and others ridiculously overpowered against them.<br />
<br />
-Engineers Mark I and III, and cleanup drones and remains rebuilders, all now have longer ranges for doing their repairs.<br />
<br />
-Engineers now will not to auto-assist constructor queues that have only maxed-out ships in them, or that are otherwise un-assistable, unless the player has explicitly assigned them to that constructor.<br />
<br />
-The health of Mark I engineers have been reduced by about 60% to reduce their power when in the hands of the AI.<br />
<br />
-Astro Train Stations no longer provide a force field effect.<br />
<br />
-The effective ranges of all the gravitation turrets have been increased by 2000 each.<br />
<br />
-The actual attack range of both electric shuttles and lightning turrets was far less than they were showing as their range circle. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-The effective range of armored missiles has been doubled, making them more effective.<br />
<br />
-The attack range of electric shuttles has been tripled, making them more useful in general as massive-but-weak-powered area damage.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
New Cheats<br />
----<br />
-Two new cheats have been added: "advanced fat" adds an advanced factory, and "core of the star" adds a core starship.<br />
<br />
-New cheat: "activate the omega" creates a new "Omega Drive" unit. This omega drive generates incredible amounts of resources (+1000/s metal and crystal, and +1 million energy), but will cause a boost of 1,000 AI progress if detroyed. This new unit will only ever appear in the game through the use of this cheat. It's useful for testing, and for players who want a certain style of deathmatch play.<br />
<br />
-Six new cheats have been added for spawning broken or fully-functional versions of the new golems: busted teensy, teensy, busted ohm, busted shinra, shinra. These only work when the first expansion is enabled for the current game.<br />
<br />
-There is now a much more severe penalty to the ranked/weighted scores for using cheats. And, there is also now a 100,000 points score cap for ranked/weighted scores during the first hour of the game, to prevent extremely low gametimes from being able to create astronomically high scores.<br />
<br />
-Entering the chat text "cmd:activate expansion 1" (without quotes) now allows for the first expansion to be enabled for a campaign that did not already have the expansion enabled. This includes enabling the expansion ship classes, as well as enabling golems and other new capturables, although the population of those capturables is likely to be different from what it would have been if the expansion had been turned on from the start of the campaign given the same seed and other settings.<br />
<br />
-A new cheat has been added for spawning armored missiles: armor em.<br />
<br />
-There is now a command line argument "steam" that can be used to force the game to launch in steamworks-enabled mode. This is useful for Steam players who want to use the game in full steamworks-enabled mode.<br />
<br />
-Three new cheats have been added to the base game to trigger the three new minor factions in the base game: Spawn Angry Colonists, Spawn Vagabonds, Spawn The Conners.<br />
<br />
-Added a new "cmd:toggle hud" command that allows the game hud to be turned off and on (useful for screenshots and videos).<br />
<br />
<br />
Misc Changes<br />
----<br />
<br />
-Trial mode now allows players to use all ship types, not just the simple ones. This is particularly useful for people who want to test the expansion ships without buying them.<br />
<br />
-The descriptions of dreadnoughts have been updated to reflect the fact that they are no longer good against force fields. Additionally, dreadnoughts have gotten a boost in general, with new bonuses against munitions boosters, zenith bombardment ships, teleport battle stations, fighters of all sorts, zenith autobombs, raiders, and tele-raiders. This makes dreadnoughts a much more versatile and interesting ship in general, especially against the power of massed AI zenith bombardment ships.<br />
<br />
-The time limit on campaigns in the trial of the game and expansion is now 3 hours instead of 1 hour. This is something that has been requested by players as a way to really get a better feel for the game than can be had in a single hour. It's still not enough time to finish even a short campaign, however, so it's not "giving away the farm."<br />
<br />
-There were previously two spelling errors on the network sync popup tooltip. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-On the technology unlock, "Zenith Starships" were still referred to as "Zinth." Fixed.<br />
<br />
-The blue force fields used by players are no longer damaged by shots being fired out from under them. Instead, outgoing shots from under the force field are now reduced by 75% in power.<br />
<br />
-It is now possible to run the AI War simulation from the command line by using the "runsim" command line argument. When running it this way, it splits up the work into multiple processes for multi-core machines, and it runs faster than the in-game simulation in general.<br />
<br />
-The Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 is now used instead of the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. This should ease installation woes for those who have trouble installing the bulkier .NET 3.5, and it should also provide better compatibility with Linux and Mac-based systems under WINE and/or Mono. Players who previously had .NET 3.5 installed but not .NET 2.0 will be inconvenienced by having to install .NET 2.0, but in general this should be a positive change for the playerbase, especially over time.<br />
<br />
-There is now a FontSizesInPixels.xml file in the Fonts folder. This lets people manually adjust the font sizes (in pixels) used by the game. This is particularly useful when players may wish to use an alternate font beyond the default.<br />
<br />
-A number of updates have been made to the localization text files to reduce redundant entries and thus both file size and the number of words needing to be translated by around 4,500 in the base game alone.<br />
<br />
-The function of F1 has been altered somewhat to account for the large amount of new ships in the game:<br />
F1: Cycle through pages of planetary summary help icons.<br />
Shift+F1: Jump back to the non-help view of the planetary summary.<br />
<br />
-Several new hotkeys have been added relating to control groups:<br />
Ctrl+X+0-9: Set control group and remove unit from its other control groups.<br />
Ctrl+Alt+0-9: Remove units from control group.<br />
Shift+Alt+0-9 Deselected control group ships.<br />
<br />
-Mine remains are now practically invincible to conventional attacks, since those were far too micromangement-intensive in the past to be a valid way to play. Additionally, this prevents remains from accidentally being destroyed by area attacks or other means.<br />
<br />
-Mine Layers have been renamed to Remains Rebuilders, and now are a general purpose rebuilder for any ship types that leave remains. They also now only will rebuild ships that were owned by the player who controls the rebuilder, rather than also working on allied ships. These have been moved to the Economy tab, instead of the Defensive tab, along with Cleanup Drones.<br />
<br />
-Ship Remains that belong to AI players, but which are not on AI planets, now automatically explode—thus saving players the trouble of creating cleanup drones to clean them up manually.<br />
<br />
-The savegame format has been drastically updated to a format that is now more compact. Average size savings are between 14% to 42%, with the average being around 20%. This not only makes savegames smaller, but also makes it that much faster to connect/sync multiplayer games. This new format will be even more advantageous as the game continues to develop, preventing the savegames from getting ever larger.<br />
<br />
-Invincible ships and ships with 2 billion health or more are now omitted from the strong/weak data, as there is no useful data collected for them, anyway.<br />
<br />
-There is now a chat message sent every time a player unlocks a tech, which is particularly helpful for coordination in co-op.<br />
<br />
-There is now a chat message sent when a player finishes rebuilding a golem. This is helpful in co-op and in solo.<br />
<br />
-The way that the names of technologies are loaded is now more efficient for localization, and also prevents a redudancy in the notification-of-unlock message text that is now shown.<br />
<br />
-The count of the number of enemy ships at enemy and neutral planets are now calculated the same way that the counts on local player planets are: only including "dangerous" enemy ships (not non-attacking ships, astro trains, mines, or remains, etc).<br />
<br />
-The Ctrl+Alt+F8 output now also creates a new AIProgressIncreases.txt file, which lists all of the possible sources of AI Progress increase and decrease.<br />
<br />
-New ShotAcid sound effect.<br />
<br />
-New ShotImpulseReactive sound effect.<br />
<br />
-There is now a sound effect that plays when alarm posts are set off.<br />
<br />
-A new numbering system has been put in place for versions, which is all-numeric and more compatible with general windows updater software packages.<br />
<br />
-The official game manual can now be launched via the tutorial screen—its omission was an oversight previously.<br />
<br />
-The game now buzzes if players try to gift a ship that cannot be gifted, to give some feedback rather than silently failing.<br />
<br />
-Previously, the game would silently fail to unpause ships if there was not enough energy to unpause them. Now the game plays the buzz sound effect. Hovering over the ship shows how much energy it takes to unpause it, which should make the source of the issue much clearer to players having a trouble with it.<br />
<br />
-The prereleases are now able to autodetect when Steamworks is supposed to be turned on, rather than requiring the "steam" command line argument to force them on. The command line argument is being left in place in case users need to force it on, however.<br />
<br />
-Steam achievements will now automatically resubmit on game start if they were previously logged locally, but failed to get to Steam for whatever reason. This should both resolve this particular issue, and should also allow players to play the game offline, get some achievements, and then have those achievements actually be logged when they next play the game online via Steam.<br />
<br />
-If AI War was launched with command-line arguments, and then the updater is run, the game will be restarted with the same command line arguments after the update is complete.<br />
<br />
-The new updater now runs in UAC mode, to allow updating the game when it is installed in the Program Files folder or other OS-protected folders.<br />
<br />
-3 new achievements have been added to the base game relating to the new minor factions.<br />
<br />
-4 new achievements have been added to the base game relating to the new expansion minor factions.<br />
<br />
-42 new achievements have been added to the base game relating to the new expansion AI types factions.<br />
<br />
-The game now uses an averaging process for determining the "center of mass" of units on which the camera is to be centered. This affects centering the camera on a group of selected units, centering the camera on all friendly units when switching to a new planet, and similar. Before it was a literal center of a bounding box of all the units in question, which could lead to a camera view in the middle of nowhere if units were spread very far apart. Now it will trend the camera toward the largest concentrations of units.<br />
<br />
-Now the game will autosave as Autosave_AfterGameOver.sav after a game over has been reached, rather than overwriting Autosave.sav. This lets players continue past a game over if they wish, without risk of losing their prior autosaves.<br />
<br />
-The simulation that generates the strong/weak data now starts the ships off at about 16,000 range, making it so that range is now properly valued in the strong/weak calculations.<br />
<br />
-Attrition emitters now have to be explicitly targeted by player ships, like ion cannons, warp gates, etc.<br />
<br />
-The internals of the wave name logic have been revamped so that they are more consistent and accurate, and so that they are now fully localization-friendly. Additionally, waves now show what tech level they are, since now with the new Raid Engines the tech level of waves can vary by planet. Waves that are incoming to non-visible planets now still show up in the list of incoming warps, but with a destination of "???" Previously, those waves showed up in the wave count, but not in the list of incoming waves. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
EXPANSION-ONLY CHANGES<br />
----<br />
<br />
Expansion-Only New Ships & Ship Classes<br />
----<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only Ship: Raid Engine. Launches brutal waves against its own planet or any adjacent planets, if those planets are not controlled by AI players, or if the human players have a significant fleet there. If human players don't have warp sensors on these planets, the waves may well arrive unanncounced. These waves arrive around every four minutes, contain a broad mix of AI ships, and use the tech level of the planet if that is higher than the current wave level for the controlling AI player.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only Ship: Alarm Post. When an AI Command Station is destroyed on the alarm post's planet, or an adjacent planet, all of the guards at the current planet will desert their posts and go on the attack. If the alarm post itself is attacked and destroyed, there is only a 50% chance of it alerting the guards.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only Ship: Special Forces Alarm Post. When an AI Command Station is destroyed on the alarm post's planet, or an adjacent planet, all of the "special forces" ships in the entire galaxy will turn aggressive and attack the humans. If the alarm post itself is attacked and destroyed, there is only a 50% chance of it alerting the special forces ships.<br />
<br />
-Three new expansion-only ships have been added (difficulty 5 and up only): Astro Speed Booster Trains I-III. Nearly-indestructible robotic courier. Slightly damages nearby ships. More importantly, they provide a massive speed boost to all AI ships in the system and reveal any cloaked ships that come near. Destroy Astro Train Stations to re-route them.<br />
<br />
-Three new expansion-only ships have been added (difficulty 6 and up only): Astro Regenerator Trains I-III. Nearly-indestructible robotic courier. Slightly damages nearby ships. More importantly, is able to use its own health to resurrect AI mobile ships that are killed on the current planet. Resurrected ships are teleported to another AI planet at full health at no cost beyond the health of the train. They also reveal any cloaked ships that come near. Destroy Astro Train Stations to re-route them.<br />
<br />
-5 new expansion-only ships: Zenith Reserve Ships Mark I-V. Destroy to capture a large cache of Zenith vessels for your own use (at some AI Progress cost).Given the large number of ships that come online at once, be sure to have between 400k and 1 million energy available to support them.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only ship: Distribution Node. Destroy to capture a sizable cache of metal and crystal for the player destroying it (at some AI Progress cost). Be warned, however: around 1/5 of all nodes are actually Trojan Distribution Nodes, which are empty save for a malicious electronic payload that actually cause you to lose a sizable chunk of resources before automated recovery systems can purge the malicious infection.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only ship: AI Co-Processor. Destroying a co-processor normally increases the AI Progress by 20. However, when you destroy the last co-processor, the AI Progress takes a massive drop of 120. Check your Mission Summary (right side of the screen) to see how many co-processors remain; hitting all of them simultaneously is ideal. Co-Processors also interfere with supply on their planet.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only ship: AI SuperTerminal. When humans capture the planet on which this resides, they gain direct access to the core network of the AI network, where they can greatly damage the AI's processing capabilities. Every 30 seconds, this simultaneously increases the total AI Progress by one and reduces the AI Progress by two. This leads to a net reduction in AI Progress, although if left going long enough it will increase the AI Progress Floor in an undesirable manner (see the hover text over the AI Progress meter at the top of the screen for more info). While this reduction is occurring, AI ships will spew out of the SuperTerminal at a rate proportional to the total current AI Progress Reduction.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only ship: EMP Mine. Enemy ships coming too close to these invisible traps will incur heavy damage. If the ship triggering the mine survives, it will also be paralyzed for 60 seconds. The mine is also destroyed in the process. These are particularly useful for stalling out large incoming vesseles that don't have mine avoidance.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only ship: Area Mine. Enemy ships coming too close to these invisible traps will incur heavy damage. The explosions from these mines also effect other enemy ships that are close by. The mine is also destroyed in the process. These are obviously useful for taking out groups of ships, but they are also useful for hitting ships that have Mine Avoidance—those ships can still get caught in the blasts of area mines that are triggered by another ship.<br />
<br />
-Three new expansion-only Starships: Cloaker Starship I-III. Very fast starship that cloaks other ships near it, even if those ships normally do not have cloaking.<br />
<br />
-Three new expansion-only ships have been added: Astro Turret Trains I-III. Tough but not nearly-indestructible robotic courier. Has heavier turrets than normal astro trains, and so poses much more of a threat. More importantly, they reveal any cloaked ships that come near, and they tend to disrupt player minefields. Build Counter-Dark-Matter Turrets to protect against them, destroy Astro Train Stations to re-route them, or attack them head-on. If destroyed, an individual astro turret train is gone forever, but its destruction comes at an AI Progress cost.<br />
<br />
-New Starship (expansion only): Warbird Starship. Extremely fast starship with cloaking and a huge multi-targeting energy burst system. Great for clearing out hordes of enemy ships.<br />
<br />
-New Starship (expansion only): Beam Starship. Fires very powerful high-range beam weapons that strike all enemy ships in a line.<br />
<br />
-New Ship Class (expansion only): Zenith Bombardment Ship (and core). Fires very powerful, very long-range energy bombs, but is expensive and has a very slow reload time.<br />
<br />
-New Ship Class (expansion only): Zenith AutoBomb. Suicidal unit destroys itself when attacking in order to deal focused area damage to enemies.<br />
<br />
-New Ship Class (expansion only): Grenade Launcher (and core). Launches mid-power grenades over medium distance. Grenades explode on contact and deal area damage to enemies.<br />
<br />
<br />
-New Ship Class (expansion only): Zenith Electric Bomber (and core). Expensive bomber that delivers a tremendous payload, but loses attack power due to interference when too many are on the same planet. Most efficient in groups of 5 or less.<br />
<br />
-New Ship Class (expansion only): Sentinel Frigate (and core). Very powerful and expensive frigate with sniper-style shots, that loses attack power due to interference when too many are on the same planet. Most efficient in groups of 2 or less. Also includes an onboard advanced warp sensor.<br />
<br />
-New Ship Class (expansion only): Zenith Mirror (and core). Extraordinarily weak main attack, but has the unique ability to reflect all incoming shots against its attackers. With its shielding, can often deal out significantly more damage that it actually receives in this way. Mirrors are very weak to area-of-effect or melee attacks, however, since those cannot be reflected.<br />
<br />
-New Ship Class (expansion only): Zenith Paralyzer (and core). Very weak-but-fast attack, but inflicts temporary paralysis against targets it hits. Great when combined with other ship types.<br />
<br />
-New Ship Class (expansion only): Shield Booster. Strong fighter in its own right, it also gives a 2x shielding bonus to nearby ships on your team.<br />
<br />
-New Ship Class (expansion only): Zenith Polarizer. Fires straight through shields, and does higher damage to shields with more shielding.<br />
<br />
-New Ship Class (expansion only): Beam Frigate. Fires powerful high-range beam weapons that strike all enemy ships in a line.<br />
<br />
-New Ship Class (expansion only): Zenith Chameleon. Midrange bomber that takes on the appearance of junk, and is unassailable, when not moving.<br />
<br />
-New Ship Class (expansion only): Zenith Viral Shredder. Melee ship that generates build points as it attacks, spawning a free copy of itself when enough are accumulated.<br />
<br />
-New Ship Class (expansion only): Impulse Reaction Emitter. Attacks with ammo that reacts with enemy energy sources, doing much higher damage to ships with higher energy use.<br />
<br />
-New Ship Class (expansion only): Acid Sprayer. Fires an acid shot at close range. Excellent at dissolving organic components found in all Zenith ships.<br />
<br />
-New Experimental Ship (expansion only): Decoy Drone. Tough, armored vessel with no significant guns. Attracts all fire from enemy ships to itself in place of ships within its protection area.<br />
<br />
-New Experimental Ship (expansion only): Speed Booster. Mobile ship that increases the speed of all friendly ships in the current system by a small amount. This effect is cumulative when multiple speed boosters are present.<br />
<br />
-New Experimental Ship (expansion only): Translocator. Mid-power teleporting fighter that fires shots that cause enemy targets to be teleported far across the current planet when they are hit.<br />
<br />
-New Experimental Ship (expansion only): MicroParasite. Reclaims enemy ships it kills (reclaimed ships have health = half damage inflicted by reclamator). Very weak alone, but becomes significantly stronger when many are at the same planet.<br />
<br />
-New Experimental Ship (expansion only): Experimental Engineer Drone. Advanced prototype model that can regenerate itself as well as repairing other ships very quickly.<br />
<br />
-New Defensive Ship (expansion only): Zenith SpaceTime Manipulator. Stationary alien ship that increases the speed of all friendly ships in the current system by a large amount. This effect is cumulative when multiple spacetime manipulators are present. Beware the minor AI Progress increase if this is destroyed.<br />
<br />
-New AI Ship (expansion only): Core Warhead Interceptor. Advanced weapon insta-kills warheads (which explode without doing any damage or incurring any AI Progress increase).<br />
<br />
-More about wasps: Very fast and nasty melee ship—loses health over a 3 minute period, then self-destructs. Created inside Hive Golems, when these are unloaded they are uncontrollable but will viciously attack the enemy on the current planet. Players cannot give direct orders to the wasps.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only Minor Faction: Zenith Devourer. The nigh-indestructible Devourer Golem makes its way slowly around the galaxy, absorbing all of the non-core mobile military ships on planets it visits in order to power and repair itself. Only works with galaxy maps with 30+ planets.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only Minor Faction Ship: Devourer Golem. This nigh-indestructible Golem makes its way slowly around the galaxy, absorbing all of the non-core mobile military ships on planets it visits in order to power and repair itself. It's attack power is so high that it will insta-kill most ships, but it will only attack non-core ships that are both mobile and which have attack power. The only way for those ships to survive is for them to flee to another planet until the devourer has moved on.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only Minor Faction: Zenith Miners. Every five hours or so, a Mining Golem will appear from deep space, and will spend time consuming a planet unless it is destroyed before it complete its task. The destruction of this planet may prove advantageous or not, depending on where it lies, but the usual AI Progress increases do apply if it is an AI planet. If one Mining Golem is destroyed, the Zenith miners will simply send another one at the next allotted time. Only works with galaxy maps with 30+ planets.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only Minor Faction Ship: Mining Golem. This golem is sent from deep space for one purpose: to consume the planet it is heading toward. It will fire on human ships that approach it, but it emits a signal that tricks AI ships into ignoring it as harmless. It takes it quite a while to reach the planet, but as soon as it does, it causes a blast the same as if a nuclear weapon had been set off—destroying all the resources and most ships, and making the planet unable to sustain supply.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only Minor Faction: Zenith Traders. These alien traders are happy to do business with anyone who can pay. They travel around the galaxy, providing special ships (for a hefty fee) to both human and AI players alike. Only works with galaxy maps with 30+ planets.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only Minor Faction Ship: Zenith Trade Ship. These neutral traders are happy to trade with humans or AIs, although they charge quite a lot in return—and their wares are a bit different for AIs versus humans. The trade ship travels slowly around the galaxy, and when it has supply from your team, your entire team can use it to build very expensive and powerful ships that you can't directly build any other way. The AI will use it to build such things as even new Warp Gates or Astro Train Stations—but they only make purchases about 1% of the time when the trader exits a system belonging to them.<br />
<br />
<br />
Expansion-Only New Golems<br />
----<br />
-New Regenerator Golem (expansion only): Very little in the way of weapons, but is able to use its own health to resurrect allied mobile ships that are killed on the current planet. Resurrected ships are teleported back to the golem at full health at no cost beyond the health of the golem.<br />
<br />
-New Cursed Golem (expansion only): Cursed Golems continuously take passive damage and cannot be repaired by traditional means. The only way for this golem to survive is to attack enemy ships, which recovers its health through vampirism.<br />
<br />
-New Armored Golem (expansion only): Incredibly highly armored, this golem fires 30x powerful flame waves in quick succession, letting it really chew through groups of enemies. Each shot also damages itself, however.<br />
<br />
-New Artillery Golem (expansion only): Must be manually assigned targets, but fires extremely, extremely powerful artillery shots over long ranges. Is very slow, and heavily damages itself when firing, though. Great for taking out very heavily defended targets.<br />
<br />
-New Black Widow Golem (expansion only): Relatively low health for a golem, but doesn't damage itself when firing. Fires 50x fairly powerful shots at a time, dealing extreme engine damage with each volley. Excellent for immobilizing or outright destroying large fleets.<br />
<br />
-New Hive Golem (expansion only): Large, slow transport that automatically fills over time with up to 500 small wasp ships. When the wasps are unloaded, they will automatically spread out and attack enemy ships on the current planet; they cannot be directly controlled, cannot leave the current planet, and lose health slowly over 3 minutes.<br />
<br />
-New Botnet Golem (expansion only): Reclaims enemy ships it kills (reclaimed ships have health = full damage inflicted by reclamator). Reclaimed ships come back as Zombie Bots, which cannot be controlled but which will attack enemy ships mercilessly until they die. Zombie bots will travel to enemy planets if no enemies present. This golem damages itself with zombie-creating shots, and cannot attack ships that are immobile, have no attack, or are immune to reclamation.<br />
<br />
<br />
Expansion-Only New Capturables<br />
----<br />
-New Capturable Ship (expansion only): Orbital Mass Driver. Advanced weapon sends projectiles stripped from an iron asteroid to deal heavy damage to starships and golems.<br />
<br />
-A new expansion-only capturable, the Zenith Power Generator, has been added: Advanced Zenith power generator that produces a massive amount of energy at a very tiny cost. AI progress goes up by 20 if this is destroyed, and while your team holds it, the AIs will send 2x stronger waves against this planet.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only Capturable Ship: Radar Jammer. Causes all ships on the planet to have extreme trouble targeting at ranges greater than 1000.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only Capturable Ship: Radar Jammer II. Causes enemy ships on the planet to have extreme trouble targeting at ranges greater than 1000.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only Capturable Ship: Gravity Drill Station. A large station that bores a hole into the fabric of spacetime. So brutal is the rending of normal space that the effects radiated from this rupture dramatically interfere with most known forms of propulsion thus rendering any teleportation within the system impossible and reducing the speed of all vessels to 8. Generates free energy, metal, and crystal for the player holding it.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only Capturable Ship: Black Hole Machine. Prevents all enemy ships (except scouts) from escaping from this planet through wormholes, though enemy ships can still enter through wormholes as normal.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only Capturable Ship: Interplanetary Munitions Booster. Triples the attack of all allied ship in its planet, as well as adjacent planets.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only Capturable Ship: Planetary Shield Booster. Triples the shield strength of all allied ships on the current planet, making them far harder to hit.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only Capturable Ship: Planetary Shield Inhibitor. Disables the shields of all enemy ships on the current planet, making them much easier to hit. Also disables enemy force fields.<br />
<br />
<br />
Expansion-Only Ship Logic Updates<br />
----<br />
-Regarding all golems: Golems are extremely powerful ships, and thus are very concerning to the AI. Golems cause the AI to send larger waves and reinforcements to the planets the golems are on, as well as causing the AI Progress to increase when they are repaired. All golems start out in a broken state when captured by players, with 25% of their health remaining, and must be repaired to full health before they will become operational. This initial repair generally increases AI Progress by 100, but the power of the golem itself is a match for that.<br />
<br />
-Golems are now immune to sniper shots and minor electric shots, and can no longer be boosted by munitions boosters.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Expansion-Only AI Types<br />
----<br />
-New expansion-only AI type: Raid Engine. Uses Raid Engines on a huge number of their planets. Makes for very frequent, short-term brutal waves in addition to the normal waves unless players carefully kill these engines.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only AI type: Alarmist. Uses alarm posts (special forces or regular) on all of their planets. Makes for massive cross-planet attacks unless players carefully kill these alarms.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only AI type: Camouflager. All of its mobile ships look like harmless pieces of junk when stationary and not firing.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only AI type: Zenith Descendant. Aggressive AI that uses only Zenith fleet ships.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only AI type: One-Way Doormaster. Employs black hole machines on all of its planets, which makes each raid into its territory a one-way trip if the black hole machine is not destroyed.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only AI type: Peacemaker. Uses anti-golem, anti-starship, anti-warhead, etc, ships on all its planets.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only AI type: Experimentalist. Aggressive AI that uses a heavy mix of experimental ships along with its normal fleets.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only AI type: Golemite. Has fully-functioning golems on a great many of its planets. Since the AI Progress goes up greatly when these are repaired, care must be taken to destroy these all in one wave to avoid any such penalty.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only AI type: Radar Jammer. Employs radar jammers on all of its planets, which makes long-range ships very ineffective against it.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only AI type: Speed Racer. All of its mobile ships have been upgraded to move extremely fast.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only AI type: Starfleet Commander. Aggressive AI that uses starships heavily in place of normal fleet ships.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only AI type: Tag Teamer. A defensive AI whose guards are extra speedy and don't stay near their posts. This makes them more challenging to attack.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only AI type: Shield Ninny. Planets are all heavily defended, often with special boosters for allied shields or inhibitors for enemy shields, but this AI never launches waves at the players.<br />
<br />
-New expansion-only AI type: Grav Driller. Aggressive AI with many gravity drill stations on its planets. Gravity Drills nullify teleporting units and majorly slow down all other units, but when captured provide free resources and energy.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Expansion-Only Misc<br />
----<br />
-When the expansion is installed and available or in trial mode (not disabled), it now shows a new expansion-specific logo and splash screen.<br />
<br />
-Two new map styles are now available (expansion only): Tree and Spokes. Tree tends to have lots of little branches and long corridors, with very long numbers of hops between the sides of the map (but not always). Spokes tends to have certain hub planets that have super-high numbers of connections (10 to 14 or even more), and usually any part of the map is a bit closer (but again, not always).<br />
<br />
-The expansion-related text has been moved into a more final format that will be easier to handle with localization partners.<br />
<br />
-In the expansion only, the "energize" cheat now creates 10 Zenith Power Generators instead of 10 mark II energy reactors.<br />
<br />
-Four new cheats have been added for spawning broken or fully-functional versions of the new golems: busted curse me, curse me, busted its a troll, its a troll. These only work when the first expansion is enabled for the current game.<br />
<br />
-In the expansion on difficulty 7 and up, the AI home planets and core planets (those next to the home planets) will now always include both an orbital mass driver and a core warhead interceptor.<br />
<br />
-Two new cheats have been added for spawning broken or fully-functional versions of the new hive golem: busted and the hegemon, and the hegemon. These only work when the first expansion is enabled for the current game.<br />
<br />
-Two new cheats have been added for spawning broken or fully-functional versions of the new botnet golem: busted zombie bots, zombie bots. These only work when the first expansion is enabled for the current game.<br />
<br />
-Four new cheats have been added to the expansion to trigger the four new minor factions in the expansion: Go Go Trade Pact, Spawn Miners, Calling Mr Miles, Invoke Unicron.<br />
<br />
-Spokes maps are particularly vulnerable to supply, so all AI players now get a core force field covering all of their command stations in that map style—this adds some challenge back, and essentially deepens the scenario as a counterpoint to how you can take advantage of them with supply denial.<br />
<br />
-A warning message is now shown whenever a devourer is on one of your team's planets, or on an adjacent planet to your team.<br />
<br />
-Three new expansion-only map styles have been added to the game: Snake, Vines, and Grid. They provide somewhat more orderly alternatives to Tree and Spokes, with explorations in different sorts of connection-patterns between planets, providing more variety in terms of planet adjacency, numbers of hops, and so on.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Bugfixes<br />
----<br />
-The game will no longer crash when it is missing images, but instead will log the error and will display a pink square instead.<br />
<br />
-Previously, there was a problem with lightning missiles not always detonating immediately upon reaching a player-set target. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Fixed a network multiplayer glitch that could occur in the 2.0 version when Skip Batch Network Sending was not enabled.<br />
<br />
-In recent releases, AI Parasites were not taking over human ships. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, there was an issue where multiplayer connections would fail the first time, but succeed the second time, for some players. This should now be fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, there was still a minimum range set on the raptor mark II, which caused it to act strangely. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Since version 2.0, it was possible to select ships that were not your own (and not belonging to a disabled player) by single-clicking them. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-The display of strong/weak data had some glitches in it previously for turrets and starships. Fixed. Starships were still giving nonuseful data, however, so the algorithm for checking those has been changed to a good degree. Future exports of data for starships, heavy defense, golems, and force fields should be more informative.<br />
<br />
-In previous versions of the game, there was an exceptionally rare bug where players who were fast-clickers in above-averge-lag situations could cause invalid planetary travel paths for ships. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, the counter-shooting ranges of ships was being shown for enemy ships—even cloaked enemies. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, moving force fields could push even enemies that are immune to force fields. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, the Expenses By Player tab of the stats window was omitting any outflows for ships that were try to spending resources, but temporarily unable to actually spend them because of a resource shortage. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, there was an error with the time taken for conflicts to resolve in the simulation data (it was showing about half the time it really took). Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, damage smoke could give away the position of large damaged ships on planets that a player did not have visibility to. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-In the past release, the starting color of players was not being shown correctly in the lobby. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, non-combat ships were drawing an attack range. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-In recent releases, when players connected to a host with a different version of the game, they would erroneously go into an empty lobby. Now it properly kicks them back out to the "find lan games" window with a message about what version they need to run in order to connect.<br />
<br />
-The StrongWeak.xml export now only includes the actual main ship types and bonus ship types once again, as it was always supposed to.<br />
<br />
-Previously, AIs would often build far too many counter-snipers when threatened with any snipers. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Kills made by electric shuttles and lightning turrets were not previously being correctly logged. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Niche text overlays were not previously being positioned properly on 64x64 icons. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously it was possible for Remains Rebuilders to send a player into negative energy through their rebuilding. In recent prereleases, they were also doing their rebuilding for free. All fixed, and now they are not instantly rebuilt, either, but rather are kicked off so that they then construct themselves over time for an ongoing resource cost as with every other aspect of the new economy. For the first time ever, this also applies to the AI when it is rebuilding ships—thus the AI Remains Rebuilders are not nearly so threatening as mine builders used to be, since they can't just instantly respawn large numbers of ships.<br />
<br />
-Several bugs with the strong/weak export have now been fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, large numbers of mines and remains (as in, 50,000+) in the game could cause significant slowdown. This has now been fixed so that they cause almost no performance impact whatsoever, except right after the game is loaded (since there are extra messages being sent to the AI, and the save files themselves are larger).<br />
<br />
-The Stealth Tachyon Beam Emitter was supposed to have regular Tachyon Beam Emitters as a prerequisite technology, but did not. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Fixed a bug where ships could be built on non-controlled planets using a control group exploit.<br />
<br />
-Previously, there were several bugs with engineers assisting objects under construction and how the costs were calculated and reported. All fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously there was a bug that would sometimes cause AI ships—most notably bombers—to act indecisive when they are generally outnumbered but also still have a target of value that they can kill. This is now fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, if the low-energy count was shown over a ship that had a countdown timer or a transport text, the text was all overlapping. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, there was a bug where reclaimed ships always came back with 50% health no matter how much damage had been dealt to them by reclamators. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, the tooltips in the lobby were often jittery at the edge of the screen. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, the up and down arrows were not working correctly on the custom scrollbars used by the game. They have now simply been removed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, ships could be manually targeted onto ships that they could not hit at all (due to shot immunities, mainly), which was problematic. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, sometimes just-created ships would flash fully-visible and red while still fading in. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, if players had energy less than zero, then various services would shut off. Occasionally it seems that builders will let energy accidentally go to -50 or so, and other minor events can also cause this very temporarily, which would cause (essentially) brownouts. In order to smooth this out (and because this new logic makes more sense in terms of a power grid anyway), the threshold for "negative energy" has now been changed to -30,000. The only way players would ever get energy that is this negative is if they lost an energy reactor. Having a zero or less balance of will still prevent new ship construction as before, but it won't cause brownouts until this more extreme threshold is passed. This retains the general character of the risk of losing reactors, without having small events cause such major fluctuations.<br />
<br />
-Previously there were a few situations where it was possible for players starting a game, or joining a game late, to not get their starting allotment of metal, crystal, and knowledge. All fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, via gifting ships it was possible to send yourself or allies into negative energy balances. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, when switching to a new planet the camera would center on enemy command stations (even if the enemy command station was not visible). Fixed so that it never centers on enemy command stations.<br />
<br />
-Previously, structures larger than 120 radius did not show a circle around themselves when cloaked or under force fields; players could only tell if they were protected when looking at them very zoomed out. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, when selecting both science labs and advanced research stations together, the tech menu would not show. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, when an etherjet was trying to move and got stuck on the edge of a force field, its tractored cargo would keep moving. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, sometimes the planetary summary would show a blank space instead of a zero for a ships that was no longer present. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, group-move commands would not function with any ships with move speed less than 6. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, the selection hotkeys (B, D, S, O, etc) were working on both ships belonging to the local player, as well as the ships of disabled players. This was confusing and could lead to input errors, so it has changed to just cylcing through ships belonging to the local player.<br />
<br />
-Previously, the planetary summary would often start as one long row and then jump to its correct size when loading a game. In a super-rare case, this could even cause it to overlap the score. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, there was a bug in the second tutorial where if the science labs were sent to another planet and actually made it there before the player hit enter, the tutorial would get stuck. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, it was possible for some game input to erroneously reach the game when the game did not have input focus, or when the game loading window was showing. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, hosting a multiplayer and then immediately switching to being a client of another game could cause a crash. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, ships heading for a transport or a wormhole would collision-detect in advance (as is appropriate with a move order) and select new destinations adjacent to their true target. This caused some slowdown with wormholes and a ton of slowdown with transports, and was undesirable in the first place because the collision detection is not even needed or correct. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, command stations that are attacked on planets that used to be the AI's home planet were giving the wrong warning message. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-The tooltip on the tachyon warheads was indicating that their effect only lasts for 30 seconds, when the effect really lasts for 5 minutes. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, when the host of a multiplayer game quit back to the main menu, it was not completely shutting down the server process—this would leave "phantom" games in play that could cause issues. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, it was possible for clicking through a wormhole to cause unintentional ship selections on the far side of the wormhole. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, scrapping in-progress ships would give back too many resources. Fixed so that it simply gives back 10% of the resources equivalent to the current health of the self-bulder being scrapped, as with any other ship.<br />
<br />
-Previously, there was a bug with manufactories not working when the resource they would produce is at zero. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-The game now saves a settings.bak file before saving to settings.dat, just to make sure that if the write is interrupted before completing, data is not lost.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
SPECIAL THANKS<br />
----<br />
<br />
-Thanks to kjara for reporting the issue with AI parasites note taking over human ships, for reporting exploits to the adjusted score calculation, for suggesting the new bonuses for higher-mark autocannons, for reporting that in prior versions expansion ships could show up in the lobby when the expansion was disabled or not installed, for suggesting that attrition emitters must be directly attacked by player ships, for suggesting the improvements to when the AI goes on alert, for reporting the issue with the colors not showing correctly in multiplayer lobbies, for suggesting some of the new player colors, for suggesting the Speed Boosters, for suggesting eyebots not show up in the scouts tab, for reporting that under-construction units were not receiving any protections in the prereleases.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Nibelung44 for reporting the issue with the raptor IIs still having a minimum range.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to twobitshift for suggesting the colony ship improvements.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to etgfrogs for suggesting that golems be immune to minor electric shots, for reporting that Beam Frigates were unable to hit must-be-directly-targeted ships in 2.001L, for suggesting the AI SuperTerminal.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to RCIX for suggesting the Artillery Golem, for suggesting the Black Widow Golem, for suggesting the Armored Golem, for doing original sketches for the Grenade Launcher and the Zenith Polarizer, for suggesting the Zenith Chameleons, for suggesting the Acid Sprayers, for suggesting that players be able to set font sizes for replacement fonts, for reporting balance issues with the beam frigates, for suggesting the Zenith Power Generator, for suggesting the Core Warhead Interceptor, for suggesting the Zenith Reserve Ships, for suggesting EMP Mines, for suggesting that the strong/weak simulations be run at range, for suggesting that any ships that can fire through force fields can also fire through decoy protection radii, for reporting the exploit with control groups and building on non-controlled planets, for suggesting the Mining Golem, for reporting the visual issue with ships fading in, for suggesting the Dyson Golem, for reporting the rotating mark iii force fields, for suggesting the lightning turret rebalance, for suggesting that grenade launchers be moved to normal complexity in the lobby, for reporting the new shot outrunning problem, for reporting the issue with units collision-detecting while on the way to get into a transport, for reporting the sleeping alarm posts in 2600, for reporting the issue with blinking protecting from exo-forcefields.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Ktoff for suggesting the buffs to the spire starships.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Joshua Yu for suggesting that tachyon emitters have mine avoidance, for reporting the grenade launcher IV range error, for reporting the issue with the game version mismatch throwing players into an empty lobby, for reporting the exploit with viral shredders, for reporting that the description of teleporting units in the lobby was out of date, for suggesting Cursed Golems, for suggesting the Black Hole Machine, for reporting the missing wave names in some prereleases, for suggesting the rebalance of beam starships, for suggesting that tanks get a buff, for reporting the exploit with gifting home command stations, for suggesting that control nodes not be giftable, for suggesting the AI Superterminals not interfere with supply, for suggesting that decloaker be immune to being insta-killed, for reporting the errors in the mrls and mlrs turret descriptions, for suggesting the knowledge cost reduction in cloaker starships, for reporting the issue with speed boosters acting while under construction.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Calvin Southwood for suggesting that laser gatlings be weak against cruisers, for suggesting that harvester exo-shields not be pausable, for reporting the bug with the simulation data in the 2.001F, for suggesting the Stealth Leech Starships, for reporting the issue with ships forgetting queued attacks, for coding out the change to make ships able to be in multiple control groups at once, for identifying the overflow error in the line-circle intersection tests, for reporting that you could gift allies into negative energy, for suggesting the change to cold storage ships being blacked out.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Vaos for reporting the crash bug in 2.001C, for reporting the ucc wormhole additive bug in 2.001E, for suggesting that mirror ships should have a stronger primary attack, for reporting that paralyzers were not properly prioritizing ships in 2.001H.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Velox for reporting the fact that attrition emitters were not capturable, but should have been, for suggesting the Sentinel Frigates, for suggesting the Zenith Virtal Shredder, for reporting the confusing way that turrets interacted with most ships that fire minor electric shots, for suggesting the Core Fabricator, for suggesting the Zenith SpaceTime Manipulator, for suggesting the Experimental Fabricator and Experimental Starship Fabricators, for suggesting Regenerator Golems, for suggesting Hive Golems, for suggesting Devourer Golems, for reporting the description of fleet and alien starships being off, for reporting the gather points bug in 2200, for reporting the raid engine adjaceny issue, for reporting the issue with ship selection when clicking through wormholes.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Nailer for suggesting that wormholes should have a clickable icon in far zoom.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to dumpsterKEEPER for reporting the two bugs with the unified command queue in 2.001F, for reporting two spelling errors on the network sync popup text, for reporting the error with FRD ships and rally posts, for reporting the crash when converting some savegames to the expansion, for reporting the issue with paralyzed self-builders, for reporting the incorrect "your income" line items in the intel summary.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Desmond Kaplan for suggesting the orbital command station home cores.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to inchoate for suggesting the altered MTU as a way to solve the transmission problems that a few players were having over certain network setups.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to keith.lamothe for suggesting that ships prefer not to autotarget mirrors when possible.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Vade for reporting the Zenith Starship misspelling on the technology button.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to laxrulz777 for suggesting the Zenith Polarizers, for suggesting the Interplanetary Munitions Booster.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Oewyn for suggesting Shield Boosters, for reporting the issue with counter-shooter ranges appearing for enemy ships, for reporting the issue with non-combat ships showing attack ranges, for reporting a misspelling in the Raid Starship descriptin text, for suggesting the hard counter to impulse reaction emitters, for reporting a crash bug in ZF, for reporting the issue with transport percents, for suggesting that turret trains not be auto-attacked, for reporting the clipping in the stats window, for suggesting the cost reduction for EMP mines, for reporting the temporary issue with colony ships requiring supply, for reporting the temporary mixup with permamine health, for suggesting that mirrors not reflect starship attacks, for suggesting that astro train stations only be attacked via direct orders, for suggesting that fortresses not have such a huge bonus against starships, for suggesting the buzzbomb rebalance, for reporting the issue with the incorrect message being shown when player ships flew into enemy minefields, for suggesting the increase in engineer ranges, for suggesting the better range for rebel/mining spawns, for suggesting that the range of gravitational turrets be increased, for reporting that resistance fighters were not spawning, for suggesting the warning when devourers are on or next to player planets, for reporting the harvesters rebuilding too frequently, for reporting another issue with FRD ships chasing teleporters, for reporting the issue with devourer positions being revealed by some galaxy map counts, for reporting the cold storage issue with waves to unknown planets, for reporting the issues with SuperTerminals.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Lars Bull for suggesting the separate target search cycle for tractor beams, for reporting the issue with exo-galaxy wormholes in certain prereleases, for pointing out that the new cloaked planets could be used to circumvent scouting, for suggesting that Zenith ships have a different color of explosion, for suggesting the improved rally post attributes, for suggesting that mobile builders count as constructors instead of engineers, for reporting the issue with energy going minorly negative, for reporting that you could gift yourself into negative energy, for suggesting the change to cold storage ships being blacked out, for suggesting the widening of the minor faction listbox, for suggesting that the view never center on enemy command stations by default, for reporting the issues with acceleration and group move, for reporting the visual issue with zeroed ship counts on the planetary summary, for suggesting the change to autosave after game over, for suggesting that building hotkeys not include ships of disabled players, for reporting the issue with engineers improperly charging allies for dock acceleration, for reporting the crash when joining a multiplayer game after hosting, for reporting that group-moving into transports was not working, for reporting the miscolorization of planet names on wormholes, for reporting that cloaked ships were being shown during game syncs.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Kiro for reporting the exploit with command station cores.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Draxis for reporting the issue with force fields being able to push cutlasses.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to I-KP for suggesting that the "Always display wormhole names in front of ships" setting no longer affect the wormhole far zoom icon, for contributing a variety of graphics noted above, for suggesting the Orbital Mass Driver, for suggesting the Gravity Drill Station, for suggesting the Distribution Node, for suggesting the AI Co-Processor, for suggesting that force fields provide protection from tractor beams, for suggesting the method for making ships borders look better at partial zoom, for reporting the issue with etherjets stuck against force fields, for suggesting the improvements to the electric shuttles and reporting the issue with their stated-vs-actual ranges, for suggesting the colorized planet names in the galaxy map.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Minty for reporting the bug with incoming fire going through forcefields in the 2.001L prerelease, for suggesting that trade ships be immune to force fields.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to sparkler for reporting the bug in prerelease M that would allow unbounded ship reinforcements.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to StealthArcher for suggesting the Impulse Reaction Emitter.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Hans-Martin Portmann for reporting balance issues with the beam frigates, for suggesting adjustments to the font sizes from prereleases O and P, for creating the new colorized planetary summary panel graphics, for suggesting the Planetary Shield Booster and Planetary Shield Inhibitor, for providing the new explosion graphics (red, green, and blue), for suggesting the buff of forts, for suggesting that astro train stations no longer create a force field, for suggesting that the rebel human colony event be a bit easier, for reporting the issue with ships firing too early on radar jammer planets, for suggesting that minor factions be blind for allied humans, for reporting the issue with clicking minor faction ships in the planetary summary, for suggesting that command stations never shift on game load.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to damador for reporting the issue with the font size loading being problematic in version P.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to freeofme for suggesting the translocator.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to OniRyo for suggesting the decoy drone.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to CogDissident for suggesting that golems be immune to paralysis attacks, for reporting the issue with beam frigate targeting.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Cintia for reporting a bug in the prereleases where munitions boosting was still working with turrets.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Lancefighter for reporting the bug in a few prereleases with regen abilities incorrectly being applied during the 3-seconds-after-being hit period, for reporting that Stealth Tachyon Beam Emitters did not have a proper prerequistie, for suggesting that forts be mrses and rally posts, for suggesting the rebalance of dreadnoughts, for reporting the issue with FRD ships and teleporters in 2.600, for reporting that enemy force fields were visible in enemy territory with fog of war on again.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Echo35 for suggesting that turrets leave remains in the same manner of mines, for reporting the disappearing fonts, for reporting the clipping of the header text in the stats window, for suggesting the simple render option for far zoom icons.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to darke for suggesting that advanced factories should get a health boost, for suggesting that bombers should get a health boost.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Darloth for reporting the missing EMP Mine buy icon, for reporting the issue with the reload speed of sentinel frigates, for reporting the crash bug in ZD.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to raptor331 for suggesting that fortresses be able to store units as a transport to keep them safe until they are ready to be ejected, for suggesting the option to not require admin rights to install updates.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to JfpOne23 for suggesting the rebalance of sentinel frigates.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to FFLaguna for reporting the issue with rebuilders not working correctly when ships were at cap, for reporting the issue with rebuilders going all the way to their FRD destination before actually target searching, for suggesting teleporting remains rebuilders and cleanup drones.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to HellishFiend for suggesting the improvements to the mobile repair stations, for reporting the desyn in 2201, for reporting the missing dangerous ship counts on the command station button list, for reporting the issue with under-construction ships forgetting their orders on completion.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Volatar for suggesting the botnet golem, for reporting that too many bonuses were being shown in the strong/weak data for ships.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Kalzarius for reporting the issues with the scrollbar arrows, for reporting the issue with silent failure of unpausing low-power ships when not enough energy, for reporting that the tooltip on the tachyon warhead was out of date, for reporting the issue with old server sessions not always being cleaned up correctly, for reporting the issue with AIs growing out of control in 2801.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Epsilon Plus for suggesting that golems and astro trains be immune to black hole machines, for suggesting the alert when traders are visiting a player planet, for suggesting the FRD range limiting control node.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Haagenti for reporting the out of date description of raptors, for suggesting the extra AI force fields on spokes maps.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Marisa Park for her work in maximizing the readability of the new font.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to TheWordWillSetYouFree for suggeting the rebalance of light starships.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Dere011 for reporting the issue with fortresses not properly accting as an MRS in some prereleases.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to NahtanoJ88 for reporting the issue with FRD mode in 2200.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to tombom for reporting the map seed textbox being too small in prereleases.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Guardia for reporting the issue with engineers teleporting agains astro train stations in 2201.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Cubittus for reporting issues with engineers assisting queues that were fully empty.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to maritime for reporting the issues with marauders getting stranded by engine damage.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to aspo for suggesting the reduction of Mark I Engineer health.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Shardz for reporting the counts of ships being off in cold storage planets, for reporting the enemy counts being off in the global summary button, for reporting the planetary summary sizing issue, for reporting the costs overlap issue.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to quickstix for reporting the issue with rally posts not properly setting the FRD target of ships to themselves, for reporting the broken cross-planet attacks, for reporting the issue with clicking enemies on the planetary summary when they were in cold storage, for reporting the issue with attack-move mode working like FRD mode in 2.600.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Thiima for reporting the AI being laconic about its command stations being under attack, for reporting the issue with the wrong message being shown when a command station on the AI's old home planet was attacked.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Kaptein for reporting that engineers could repair ships even when in low power mode.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to orzelek for reporting several targeting issues, for reporting that marauders were kiling traders, for reporting the targeting issues with turrets and mining golems in 2600.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Pandemic for reporting the issue with science labs and ARSes not being able to use the tech menu when selected together.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to JoeFosterX for reporting the issue with group moving with non-military ships.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Rifleman for inspiring the change to make marauders and such patrol when idle.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to dragoniv for reporting the bug in tutorial 2.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to SingleMalt for reporting the issue with scrapping returning too many resources for in-progress ships.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to kjara, Pantera, Dr_Mario, Calvin Southwood, and Lars Bull for reporting and helping to diagnose the multiplayer connection issue relating the batch network sending.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Admiral and freeofme for suggesting the ability to reveal the random AI types, for suggesting the Cloaker Starships.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Lars Bull and Calvin Southwood for originally suggesting the unified command queue, and Nibelung44 for bringing the issue back up more recently, as well as the dozen or more other forum members who commented on this feature, for reporting the issue with the keyboard input sometimes registering when there is no focus.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to kjara and Haagenti for suggesting the reduced penalty for holding an attrition emitter.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to HellishFiend and RCIX for reporting the crash bug when upgrading an existing savegame to include the expansion.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Cintia and TheWordWillSetYouFree for reporting the bug where player ships were unable to hit must-be-directly-targeted ships sometimes in 2.001L.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Lars Bull, Calvin Southwood, dumpsterKEEPER, RCIX, kjara, and eRe4s3r for reporting the queued wormhole command issue in the unified command queue prereleases.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Velox, Joshua Yu, I-KP, Hans-Martin Portmann, and Vaos for their input on how to rebalance the regenerator trains.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Lancefigher and Oewyn for suggesting the buffs to decloakers.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to I-KP, HellishFiend, CogDissident, Velox, and quickstix for reporting the issues with the FRD mode.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to PineappleSam and Hobbit for reporting the missing control node technologies.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Oewyn and I-KP for reporting the jumbled galaxy map text in some prereleases.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Hans-Martin Portmann and maritime for reporting the issues with the Zenith Trade Ship balance.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Pandemic and PineappleSam for reporting the issues with starting resources not being properly granted in some cases.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to aspo and quickstix for reporting the missing strong/weak data in 2201.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Harry and LanceFighter for reporting the issue with command stations counting as scouts.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[AI War:AI War]]<br />
[[Category:AI War Release Notes]]<br />
[[Category:Release Notes]]</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:2.000_Release&diff=29849AI War:2.000 Release2017-09-16T15:53:50Z<p>Nat: Add Category:AI War Release Notes</p>
<hr />
<div>NEW ART - Philippe Chabot<br />
----<br />
All remaining shot effects.<br />
ExplosionSmall (shot hit)<br />
Updated CrystalHarvester<br />
Updated CrystalManufactory<br />
Updated Gather Point Flag<br />
Updated Energy Capsule (Metal Harvester Build Point)<br />
Updated MetalHarvester<br />
Updated MetalManufactory<br />
Updated ScienceLab, ScienceLabII, Advanced Research Station<br />
Achievements Icons<br />
Updated Game Icon<br />
Explosion Embers<br />
Explosion Damage Smoke<br />
Explosion Debris<br />
Flare<br />
Updated Electric Shuttle I, II, III, IV<br />
Updated Raider I, II, III, IV<br />
Updated Space Dock<br />
Updated Game Logo<br />
Updated Command Station Home, I, II, III<br />
Updated Force Field Generator I, II, III<br />
Updated Deflector Drone I, II, III, IV<br />
Updated Engineer Drone I, II, III<br />
Updated Infiltrator I, II, III, IV<br />
Updated Missile Silo<br />
Updated Starship Constructor<br />
Updated Orbital Command Station - Warp Jammer<br />
Updated Bomber I, II, III, IV, Core<br />
Updated Cruiser I, II, III, IV, Core<br />
Updated Fighter I, II, III, IV<br />
<br />
<br />
Various Notable New Features<br />
----<br />
<br />
-The game now has a local high scores list. Whenever a game is saved or closed, it updates itself. Only the highest Player Score Over Time is logged for an individual map seed (variants of that map seed, based on position, available ships, or other factors all count as the same). Each player profile has a separate high scores list, so changing the profile also changes the high scores list.<br />
A new way of calculating an "adjusted score" for purposes of the high scoreboards has now been arrived at. This formula takes into account the difficulty level of both AIs, whether the player has a positive handicap relative to the AIs, the AI modifiers, and all the other relevant start-game factors, multiplied times the Score Over Time. This allows for consolidated, meaningful online leaderboards.<br />
<br />
-Achievements have now been added to the game! 129 of them, in fact (43 bronze, 40 silver, and 46 gold). Many achievements are not unlocked until the end of a campaign, but others are unlocked as the game progresses. The achievements that are checked in-game are checked right after autosaves, every two minutes, and right on load of a savegame.<br />
<br />
-Ships now remember the last ship type that they were assigned by a player (human or AI) to kill. They will then adjust their targeting accordingly, preferring ships of that specific type, or if a ship of that type is not available, then any ships of that class. For example, if a group of fighters is targeted on a Raid Starship, then those specific fighters will forever more prefer to kill Raid Starships, or if those are not available, then Starships in general, or else whatever else they would normally kill.<br />
The preferred targets are shown in the hover text when hovering over a ship. If it doesn't have a line for the preferred target, then it was never explicitly ordered to attack a certain ship type.<br />
Ships will still only attack targets within their normal ranging rules. In other words, they will only attack ships that are within range if they are in normal mode or attack-move mode, or they will attack preferred ships anywhere on the planet in free-roaming defender mode.<br />
In general, this new mechanic allows for a lot more automation of ship battles, without as much micromanagement.<br />
Ships that are not auto-targeted by player ships will no longer become preferred targets when players give orders to attack them.<br />
The "Stop Units" hotkey (end) now also clears the preferred target type.<br />
<br />
-There is now an altplanetnames.txt file in the main directory of the application. Players can add their preferred names to this file, and when they host planets will take on names from this list once the game has started. This does not affect the lobby at all (since players may have differing values in their txt files), and once the game has started everyone is synced to the values from the host player. If there are too few entries in the txt file for the size of map that was selected, it will instead use the autogenerated style of planet names for any remaining planets.<br />
<br />
-AI War now integrates with Steamworks (optionally, for an upcoming public release for people who have Steamworks). As part of this, the following features have been added:<br />
-AI War now logs achievements to Steam as well as locally.<br />
-There is now a high scoreboard on Steam, that logs the best adjusted score of each player, and another that logs the raw scores.<br />
-The GDI windows of AI War, which normally block DirectX-based overlays like Steam, now are moved out of the way when the Steam client is activated, allowing for a full and normal use of the Steam client at any point in the game.<br />
<br />
<br />
Co-Op Improvements<br />
----<br />
<br />
-The confirmation message for gifting ships between players has been updated to reflect why ships can sometimes not be gifted.<br />
<br />
-Each entry in the Give button's popup listing now includes a "Can Be Given" count, which shows how many of the selected ships can be given to each allied player (based on the rules of prior unlocks, ship caps, etc). This will help prevent confusion in multiplayer games when players want to gift ships but cannot.<br />
<br />
-When a player is disabled, their ships are removed from Pause All mode if they were previously in that mode.<br />
<br />
-The metal, crystal, knowledge, and energy HUD data is now visible for all allies (active or disabled) in the tooltip when hovering over the HUD indicators for the local player. This lets players more effectively manage disabled players' economies, and keep up with how each other's economies are doing without having to ask.<br />
<br />
<br />
AI Updates<br />
----<br />
<br />
-On difficulty 6 and up, AI home planets are now much less responsive to neutering. This gives a more realistic, more dramatic, final-battle feel to these planets.<br />
<br />
-The AI will no longer abandon its command posts to pursue tachyon warheads.<br />
<br />
-AI players will now make more of an effort to kill advanced research stations.<br />
<br />
-The AI no longer taunts players after tactical retreats, or after players scrap units.<br />
<br />
<br />
Performance Improvements<br />
----<br />
<br />
-The algorithm for nebula generation has been updated so that it now has a more even distribution (which is nicer to integrated/older graphics cards).<br />
<br />
-Several performance improvements have been made to the collision detection algorithm, which really improves performance when a large group of ships are moving to near a large group of existing ships.<br />
<br />
-Engineer target acquisition has been made more efficient.<br />
<br />
-A new keyboard shortcut has been added: Shift+F3 now shows network debug info, including dropped/resent packets, etc. This is crucial for debugging poor network performance.<br />
<br />
-Previously, on some connections the performance when loading a savegame across the network was really poor (and in a few edge cases, ridiculously extremely poor). This was due to packet loss rates, and partly due to the network adapter incorrectly being flooded by the network library we use. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-A new Network Sync Performance Settings section has been added to the General tab of the Settings window. Generally players will not need to touch these settings, but it provides some advanced configuration problems to improve game sync transfer rates for those players who have performance issues with the default settings.<br />
<br />
<br />
Interface / Other Graphical Improvements<br />
----<br />
<br />
-The totals screen in the galaxy map now shows the available ship types (from the dropdown), as well as the selected map style. Maps created with an older version of the game will show "Unknown" for the map style.<br />
<br />
-It is now possible to select more than one AI modifier at a time in the lobby.<br />
<br />
-The selected AI modifiers and Disabled Ships are now shown in the Totals button on the galaxy map in each game. Now, all of the chosen lobby settings are basically shown in some fashion or other in-game.<br />
<br />
-The old Strong Vs and Weak Vs text was misinterpreted by the vast majority of players (who thought it was a bonus, when it is actually performance data). The notation and data shown for these categories has therefore been updated to be more clear. These are actually showing performance stats from after simulated encounters. It now shows the name of the ship, the % health remaining of the victor, and the time taken for the victorious ships to kill all of the losing ships in the simulation. This is NOT the time it takes a single ship of one type to kill a single ship of the other type, but it should be good enough as a rough guide to see which ship classes will kill the target class most quickly.<br />
<br />
-Midsize ships and upwards that explode now throw off chunks of debris and embers. Before they explode, they also now start smoking when they are damaged down to 66% health, and smoking more heavily and shooting off embers when they are damaged down to 33% or more. Mobile military ships do not emit damage smoke even if they are large (this helps performance).<br />
<br />
-A new Expenses By Player tab has been added to the Stats window. This new tab shows a sorted list of all the current resource outflows, making it possible for players to diagnose higher-than-it-should-be expenses of metal and crystal (which are usually due to errant engineers or some ships that were under construction but which were forgotten about by the players).<br />
<br />
<br />
New Ships<br />
----<br />
<br />
-New Ship: Core AI Force Fields are immune to nuclear blasts, don't require supply, have even more health, and a protection radius 2x larger than any other force field. These are used on core/home AI planets only. AI Force fields once again have a very slow regen (but still can't be repaired). The Mark III and Core AI Force Fields are mobile.<br />
<br />
<br />
Ship Logic Updates<br />
----<br />
<br />
-It now costs resources to repair all ships. This cost is pretty low for most ships, and is listed in amongst the other abilities for ships that can be repaired.<br />
<br />
-Starships now have higher repair costs, depending on their ship level and the type of starship. This fixes the exploit of players using starships and then repairing them as a way to have "free" offensive forces.<br />
<br />
-Ships that are disabled due to lack of supply are now the lowest priority out of all ships for autotargeting.<br />
<br />
-Ships now accelerate and decelerate when moving, which makes their movement look a lot more natural.<br />
<br />
-Attacking ships with multi-shot capability now do a much better job of concentrating their fire on (human or AI) player-selected targets. This makes Starships in particular much more effective against tough targets, or even each other, when there are other smaller ships in the vicinity.<br />
<br />
-The color of a planet no longer changes until it is fully captured (until the command station is complete). This affects supply, and various other unit behaviors, in a more sensible way.<br />
<br />
-Shots now accelerate to match their target in these sorts of cases. The benefit of ships moving fast is meant to be useful in other ways, not for dodging bullets. This adjustment should help with raptors and autocannons and etherjets dodging bullets.<br />
<br />
<br />
-When ships are entering or exiting wormholes or being first created from a dock (and thus fading in/out), the following changes have now been made. They cannot fire at enemy ships or use any of their active special abilities—including teleportation—and enemy ships cannot fire at them (including Area Of Effect attacks) or use tractor beams on them. All ships also now come out of wormhole at a constant move rate of 12, regardless of normal or free-roaming defender mode and regardless of their normal movement abilities or even if their engines have been disabled.<br />
-This also fixes the very rare occasional "superships" issue.<br />
-This also fixes the issue with teleporting ships seeming to appear at any place on a planet, rather than emerging from a wormhole and then moving to their destination.<br />
<br />
-Collision priorities have been added. When a higher-priority ship would collide with a lower-priority ship of the same team, the lower-priority ship moves out of the way instead of the higher-priority ship looking for a new location. This can make it easier to place immobile ships into a group of mobile ships, or to position something with a booster ability in the middle of a group of ships to boost. This also makes it much easier to put fixed-position ships (resources, mines, turrets, etc) in the midst of a group of mobile allied defenders.<br />
Current priorities (numeric values are irrelevant, just relative values matter):<br />
10000: Immobile ships<br />
10000: Heavy Defense (Forts, mainly)<br />
10000: Force Fields<br />
10000: Movable Command Stations<br />
1000: Mobile Repair Station<br />
800: Transports<br />
500: Starships<br />
200: Munitions Boosters<br />
100: Engineers<br />
50: Warheads<br />
50: Resource ships (science lab, etc)<br />
50: Sensors (tachyon drones, etc)<br />
50: Colony Ships<br />
<br />
-Guard posts (not command stations) of the AI will now start trending to being more specialized than before. Whenever they get reinforcements, around half of the reinforcements they recieve will be of the same type as whatever their most predominant type is. So there will still be a good variety at each one, but they will be much less homogenous.<br />
<br />
<br />
Ship Balance Updates<br />
----<br />
<br />
-Tachyon Drones now have much greater speed, cloaking, and a 50% larger tachyon beam coverage area.<br />
<br />
-Sniper and Ion Cannon shots are now twice as fast as before.<br />
<br />
-Ion cannons are now immune to nuclear blasts.<br />
<br />
-The energy cost of autocannon minipods has been reduced from 100 to 25.<br />
<br />
-The metal/crystal costs of mark II and III laser turrets have been increased.<br />
<br />
-Core turrets no longer require supply.<br />
<br />
-The detonation from tachyon warheads now reveals cloaked ships for 5 minutes instead of 30 seconds. This makes tachyon warheads a lot more useful.<br />
<br />
-The energy cost of tachyon warheads and EMPs has been reduced from 5,000 to 2,000. The move speed of these two warheads has also been upped 3x.<br />
<br />
-Scouts and Scout Starships have a new "Unaffected By Negative Energy" ability, which makes them remain cloaked even when their controller's energy balance drops below zero.<br />
<br />
-The regen rate of mobile military ships (most notably cutlasses) was previously far too low when present. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-All warheads have a new "blind" ability, which makes them unable to provide visibility into enemy systems. If non-blind local/allied ships are present, they will be able to function as normal, but this basically prevents armored missiles from being used as scouts on distant enemy planets without support.<br />
Blind ships no longer collision-detect with ships they cannot see. This allows for lightning warheads to easily pop out of a wormhole and not move at all from the target location.<br />
<br />
-The cost of unlocking Mark III command stations has been dropped from 8,000 to 5,000 knowledge. Its metal and crystal production has been dropped from 48/sto 32/s. It's health has been increased from 99,999 to 599,999. The ship cap has been reduced from 8 to 6. They are also now immune to sniper shots.<br />
<br />
-The metal and crystal output of Mark II command stations has been dropped from 32/s to 24/s. It's unlock cost has been dropped from 5,000 to 4,000 knowledge. It's health has been increased from 99,999 to 299,999. The ship cap has been reduced from 8 to 6.<br />
<br />
-Warheads, Vampire Claws, and Vorticular Cutlasses no longer decelerate when reaching their targets, though they do still have to accelerate up to their maximum speed.<br />
<br />
-The following ships now have 2X acceleration rate: Fighters, Bombers, Bulletproof, MicroFighter, Engineer I, Laser Gatling.<br />
<br />
-The following ships now have 3X acceleration rate: Raiders, Vampires, Raptors, Scouts (except Mark IV), Space Tug, Electric Shuttle, Cutlass, EyeBot, Autocannon, Space Plane, EtherJet.<br />
<br />
-Raptors are now the fastest ship in the game, with 148 move speed. They also now have a large attack range of 9,000. They also now cost significantly more metal and crystal than before.<br />
<br />
-Raiders now cost far more than they previously did, to hopefully bring them back into balance with other ships. Their bonus against bombers has also been removed.<br />
<br />
-Starships and Turrets now all do 1/5 their normal damage to warheads.<br />
<br />
-Sniper and Spider Turrets now do 3x more damage, but also cost 3x more.<br />
<br />
-Snipers I-IV now do 3x more damage, and have costs that are increased by 3x (or more, in the case of the higher-level snipers.<br />
<br />
-Ion cannons now do a better job of not overkilling enemy ships. They also now do engine damage, but only fire a single shot at a time, rather than four shots at a time. Lastly, they are now able to hit ships higher than their level, now that they do engine damage. This basically makes them like a supercharged spider turret against higher-level ships, and their usual insta-killing selves against equal or lower levels.<br />
<br />
-The attack bonuses of snipers and sniper turrets have been reduced by around 1/3, to make it so that they are not so overwhelmingly more effective against bombers and other similar ships.<br />
<br />
-Snipers now have a .2 penalty against resource structures, and a .3 penalty against engineers.<br />
<br />
-Tractor Beams are now considered their own ship class, rather than being part of the general turret ship class. This makes them show up separately in the galaxy map intel summary counts, and also makes it so that setting target preferences of tractor beams will secondarily prefer all tractor beams of all levels, rather than all turrets of all levels.<br />
<br />
-Turrets now do half damage against other turrets and against tractor beams.<br />
<br />
-Laser Turrets now cost far less knowledge to unlock, and have major bonuses against cutlass, vampire, armored, tank, figher, raptor, raider, space plane, and parasite, while having a lower attack in general, and a major penalty against bomber, cruiser, anti-armor, laser gatling, and autocannon.<br />
<br />
-Missile Turrets now have a penalty instead of a bonus against fighters, and now have a bonus against bombers, infiltrators, infiltrators, raptors, scouts, anti-armor, teleport stations, snipers, and spiders, and a penalty against cruisers.<br />
<br />
-MLRS Turrets now have a bonus against Cutlasses, Fighters, Raiders, Tanks, Parasites, Raptors, Laser Gatlings, and Autocannons. They now have a penalty instead of a bonus agains armored and anti-armor ships. They also now have a penalty against autocannons, deflectors, and space planes.<br />
<br />
-Non-starship space tugs no longer pick up starships, since this often resulted in starships being prematurely yanked from battle.<br />
<br />
-All of the different starship and turret types are now broken out into various subclasses now. This makes for more informative intel summaries, for one thing, as well as more possible specialization of attack bonuses, as well as MUCH more informative data on the strong against / weak against lists.<br />
<br />
-Mobile Repair Tugs are no longer able to pick up force fields, fortresses, mobile repair stations, command stations, or other large-yet-mobile ships.<br />
<br />
-Transports are now their own ship type, rather than being lumped into the colony ship ship type, which makes them show up independently on the intel summary.<br />
<br />
-When players don't have enough energy to support capturing a ship via parasites, the ship will not be captured. Previously it would send the player into negative energy, which was far more dangerous.<br />
<br />
-The knowledge costs of tachyon beam emitters and stealth tachyon beam emitters have been halved. Additionally, their tachyon beam ranges have been increased from 750 and 1000 to 4000 and 8000, respectively.<br />
<br />
-Cutlasses and vampire now have a 5,000 target seek range instead of 10,000, which gives players greater control over them (this doesn't affect the AI). Previously, these melee ships would often run off too early and die.<br />
<br />
<br />
Misc Changes<br />
----<br />
<br />
-The game now keeps track of the exact second at which a victory/loss was achieved, and the timer stops counting at that second even though the game keeps going.<br />
<br />
-Tachyon Beam emitters (the two fixed-position variants) have been moved to the Turret tab, off of the DEF tab, so that they are better grouped with the other ships that would be being built around the same time (and so that more players notice them and remember to build them).<br />
<br />
-The "Negative Energy" shot type has been renamed to "Dark Matter" to make it more clearly distinct from discussions of "negative energy" as it refers to the energy balance of players.<br />
<br />
-The Zinth race has been renamed to Zenith for the sake of clarity.<br />
<br />
-Shield Bearers have been renamed to Force Field Bearers, as this is more befitting to their revamped (as of 1.013 or so) abilities: mini force fields in place of their older superhigh shields. This also makes their short-name text now "FF Bearer" instead of "Shield," which is much less confusing for players who might think this refers to force fields, etc.<br />
<br />
-Scrolling the game window is now disabled when the in-game menu is visible.<br />
<br />
-The starting rotation of black holes in the galaxy map is now randomized (as it always was in the lobby), so that they don't all look synchronized if there are multiple.<br />
<br />
-The planetary summary now indicates if "last seen" ships were enemy, allied, or local player's ships.<br />
<br />
-The color of the abilities text is now brighter and thus more noticeable/readable.<br />
<br />
-When Complete Visibility is turned on, the "last scouted" time is always now 0 seconds ago, which gives complete intel summary info.<br />
<br />
-There are now settings options under Graphics, Special Effects, for disabling explosion debris/embers, damaged ship smoke, and force field rotation.<br />
<br />
-Exo-Shields have been renamed to Exo-Force-Fields to be more consistent with other uses of the word "shield" (which is distinct from force fields).<br />
<br />
-When mine layers rebuild mines, it no longer makes the mine placement sound.<br />
<br />
-The "NOT YET COMPILED" strong/weak text has been changed to "INFORMATION UNAVAILABLE IN PRERELEASE VERSION."<br />
<br />
-The excel exports now include ship acceleration rates, and also the internal damage multipliers used for each ship type.<br />
<br />
-The engine damage of ships now shows just as a number, without an x in front of the number. Previously it looked like a multiplier, which it is not.<br />
<br />
-The countdown timer on incoming waves is now shown in a more brief format.<br />
<br />
-The client now gets a popup message when unable to connect to a host.<br />
<br />
-The hostile wormhole counts were previously slightly off when Exo-Galaxy wormholes were present. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-The outdated installer slideshow images of the game have now been updated.<br />
<br />
-When ships are under construction, their far zoom icon border flashes green. This is now a lot more obvious of a green, rather than being very low-contrast as before, so it is much easier to find ships that are being built.<br />
<br />
-Short-range turrets have been renamed to Basic turrets, which is now a more appropriate name for them.<br />
<br />
-The population algorithm for ARSes is now better—before it was only ever seeding them on planets belonging to the first AI, but now it will seed them on the planets of both AIs. This will affect the layout of existing map seeds, but not existing savegames.<br />
<br />
-The initial population algorithm for Advanced Factories is now better—this really only affects very tiny maps with large numbers of starting planets. All AFs are placed in enemy territory, but this could now include home planets of the AIs, and multiple AFs per planet if needed. The number of AFs will normally be 2x the number of starting player home planets, but it will also now never exceed 2x the number of starting AI home planets. The changes to this algorithm will not affect existing savegames.<br />
<br />
-More vertical size has been added to the Save and Load windows.<br />
<br />
-The "You Have," "Enemies Have," "Allies Have," and "Last Seen" text line items from the planetary summary sidebar have now been combined with the line stating the name of each ship, in order to conserve vertical space as well as make these data items a bit more prominent.<br />
<br />
-The AI Forcefields and Player Forcefields are now shown in different icons in the F1 planetary summary display, so that they all fit on the screen at once properly (and because they belong in two different categories: fixed nonmilitary and mobile nonmilitary, respectively).<br />
<br />
-When items in build queues are reordered, they now keep the count of how many they have already built, rather than resetting to zero. This makes reordering queues less disruptive to the relative unit makeup.<br />
<br />
-Starship Constructors now use the same icon as space docks in far zoom, rather than the icon used by mobile builders. Starship Constructors have a "Star" label under themselves, and now show up separately on the planetary summary sidebar, which makes selecting groups of mobile builders or starship construcotrs much simpler.<br />
<br />
-Zooming in on the graphs now only zooms the X-axis, rather than the Y-axis. This lets players then see full data for a selection of time when switching between the graph segments.<br />
<br />
-"Team Income" on the galaxy map intel summaries has now been replaced with "Your Income," and now includes energy production as well as metal/crystal income. "Your Income" is much more actionable than the income of the entire team when playing multiplayer.<br />
<br />
-The "Resources" section of the galaxy map intel summary now includes counts of how many Mark I, Mark II, and Mark III energy reactors have ben built by the local player at that planet. This makes energy distribution planning much easier to do.<br />
<br />
-Previously, selecting a mix of ships in low and normal power modes and hitting K would invert each ship individually, whereas clicking the pause button in the interface would toggle them all to either on or off. Now the K key works more like the interface button, thought not exactly. If any of the ships are in low-power mode, then it tries to put them in high-power mode. Otherwise, it puts them all into low-power mode.<br />
<br />
-Harvester exo-force-fields can now be auto-placed by ctrl-clicking, same as with the harvesters themselves.<br />
<br />
-Melee ships now show their target seek range as an attack range when the attack ranges are shown (Z key).<br />
<br />
-The counter-shot ranges, tractor/gravitational ranges, and force field ranges for incomplete/disabled force fields are now shown while the player is in placement mode for placing new ships. This makes it much easier to place ships under a forcefield or a counter-shooter, for instance.<br />
<br />
-The bounding circles of to-be-placed ships are now shown in white during placement mode, which makes it far easier for players to tightly pack groups of ships.<br />
<br />
-There were a number of menus that were using the MS Sans Serif Font. Those have all been switched to using Arial.<br />
<br />
-The spacing of some of the lobby options has been improved, so that users with larger fonts won't see any overlap.<br />
<br />
-Mine Layers now have 4x as much health as before, so hopefully they will not die so frequently. They also now have regen so that they don't take so much micromanagement to keep healed.<br />
<br />
-Engineers and repair stations will no longer try to heal damaged mine remains.<br />
<br />
-Previously, there was a ship cap on mine remains, which was lower than the ship cap for mines themselves, which caused mine remains to not always appear for players. Fixed so that there is no longer any ship cap on mine remains, which makes mine remains always appear when a mine dies.<br />
<br />
<br />
Bugfixes<br />
----<br />
<br />
-Previously, the text on allied planets was showing up as red for players, instead of white. This made it harder to see hostile wormholes at a glance. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-In the last release, snipers, infiltrators, and other ships that are supposed to be able to fire through force fields (lightning missiles aside) were instead damaging the force fields like normal. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-There was previously a rare crash bug that could occur when assigning ships to a control group. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-In recent releases, it was difficult or impossible to give cutlasses move orders if they were already chasing a target ship. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-In 1.301, there was a bug where ships under the mouse cursor were selected when a planet was clicked in the galaxy map. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Fixed several glitches with the scrollbars in the high scores and scores windows.<br />
<br />
-Previously, Force-Field Bearers were damaged by shots being fired out from under them. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, cutlasses would ignore wormhole move orders in favor of attacking more ships. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-In recent versions of the game, the "Killed With" column in the stats was not working right. Now it works correctly, and it has been renamed to "Kills Made By."<br />
<br />
-Previously, when force fields were disabled, shots would still disappear at the edge of it as if it were enabled if ships shot directly at it. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, pausing or unpausing the game would cancel placement mode for ships, and would cancel the selection box area. This was counter to being TBS-friendly. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-The collision raidus (and thus also the exo-forcefield radius) was much too small on crystal harvesters. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-The tooltip text for command stations was out of date regarding destroyed planets and supply. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-On some computers, previously some of the settings options could show as cut off. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-With 10 planet maps, there was still a very rare chance of having a disconnected planet. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-In recent releases deselecting ships using the selected objects button required two clicks. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Fixed a super rare crash bug when changing music tracks.<br />
<br />
-Previously, using the N+2 or N+3 or N+1 filters would cause non-military ships to be selected when they otherwise would not be. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Fixed a minor localization error in part of the intermediate tutorial.<br />
<br />
-Fixed a bug with loading certain player stats data.<br />
<br />
-Fixed a bug with loading ships that are heading to a transport but which are not yet in the transport.<br />
<br />
-There was previously a bug where certain very old savegames were not rembmering the players' home planets correctly, especially for when their game was first loaded and for AI decision making purposes. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Since the addition of Supply, all ships that require supply have had incorrect strong/weak data. This most notably applies to turrets. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-In recent releases (since 1.201 or so, most likely), on maps smaller than 80 planets there were often too few Advanced Research Stations. This was initially by design, but it made the smaller maps harder than expected. There are now always 5 ARSes on every map, and existing savegames will be updated on their next load to include the correct number of ARSes.<br />
-On very tiny maps, especially 10 planet maps that have 8 planets starting out belonging to players, this can lead to duplicate ARSes on individual AI planets.<br />
<br />
-Previously it was possible to use a mobile builder to Ctrl+click and build harvesters on planets not owned by you. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, cloaked ships that were revealed by tachyon beams (yet were not completely visible) were not able to be caught in tractor beams. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-In recent releases, the game has not been recovering properly from a lost graphics device. This affected computers that locked after going to screensaver, or Vista/Windows 7 machines where Ctrl+Alt+Delete was pressed while the game was active. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, ships that were directly placed would sometimes jump to the side. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Fortresses were incorrectly noting that they were a fixed structure in their tooltips. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, the health of many directly-placed ships was counting upwards too slowly, and then jumping to full at the end. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-In recent releases, the estimated build times for ships was always off from the actual build time when higher-tier engineers were used. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Corrected several parts of the in-game credits.<br />
<br />
-Previously, forcefield auras and a few other calculations were not being adjusted properly when the game state was paused and the ships were paused/unpaused or otherwise altered. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, if cutlasses/vampires were locked onto a target, it could be very difficult to get them to give them wormhole commands and actually have them carry those commands out. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-There was previously an annoying issue where the tooltip from the main menu might still be visible (and in the way) when clicking into sub-menus. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, warheads that were targeted on an enemy were not always exploding right when they hit the enemy. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, engineers would not automatically repair ships that were in low-power mode. Additionally, they would often do nothing at all if there were damaged ships in low power mode nearby. Fixed so that now they prefer to repair ships that are not in low power mode, but the other two issues are resolved.<br />
<br />
-Previously, mobile repair stations were unable to repair ships in low-power mode. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, mobile repair stations could erroneously be used to accelerate build queues. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Some improvements to how the game over state is calculated have been made. This allows for the game to continue for a team if the only player with a home command station is disabled.<br />
<br />
-Previously, teleport battle stations and teleport raiders were not properly being disabled as ship types when those options were turned off in the lobby. Similarly, eyebots were not being disabled when cloaking was disabled.<br />
<br />
-Previously, disabling cloaked or teleporting ships in the lobby was not disabling all the appropriate types for the AIs. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, the warning message for still-constructing command stations that were under attack was incorrect. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Unsupplied command stations were previously flashing and giving warning messages that were incorrect. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-There was previously a bug when tugs had tractored a ship that escaped to a new planet just as the other ship was being tractored. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, enemy force fields were visible through the fog of war. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, AI waves coming from core/home planets were always a Mark IV/V mix. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, space tugs that were set in attack-move or free-roaming defender mode would dance around in a very unhelpful way while waiting at the repair station for the repair station to do its work. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, the mouseovers on the resource bar were not working properly in galaxy view. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, sometimes the hover text would be for a different unit than what was selected when the mouse button was clicked. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, sometimes the splash screen could get in the way of the license key entry data screen. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, groups of low-power ships would form superships when ordered to move to a destination together. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, it was possible for players to accidentally send themselves into negative energy by building groups of ships simultaneously. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, multiple exo-force-fields could be placed on one harvester, which then caused various problems. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Attack-moving or Free-Roaming ships that were moving back to their base position in a group would also be very indecisive about their pathing. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Paused energy reactors were showing some outdated and confusing messages about their status. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, when ships were destroyed while in low power mode, they were not being properly removed from the list of low-power units. They ceased showing up in the list, but kept showing up in the count. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, when part of the Arial font was missing on the user's computer, but part of it was present, the game would crash (if the entire font was missing, the game would use another Sans-Serif font and move on). This is a basic behavior of .NET Windows Forms and cannot be overridden for designer-created files. However, the game will now popup a better error message, with easy instructions for how to resolve this issue when it occurs (just look in the Fonts subfolder in the AI War folder, and install them from there).<br />
<br />
-Previously, there was a slight difference in the clickable area of the planetary summary icons, compared to the area in which the icon would highlight. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Fixed another very rare crash when changing music tracks.<br />
<br />
<br />
SPECIAL THANKS<br />
----<br />
<br />
-A HUGE thanks to Lars Bull for his awesome work in making the game localization-enabled. This was an enormous task, and not having to devote my own time to it has helped accelerate 1.301 and 2.0.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Lars Bull for reporting the issue with snipers attacking force fields, for suggesting the enhancements to the Totals button in the galaxy map, for reporting the bug with ships being selected when planets are clicked on the galaxy map, for reporting the sizing issue of exo-forcefields on crystal harvesters, for reporting the issue with removing units from the selected group, for reporting the minor localization error in part of the intermediate tutorial, for reporting the minor glitches with the in-game credits, for sugesting that parasites be unable to capture ships that the player's current energy cannot support, for reporting the issues with engineers that try to repair low-power ships, for suggesting that mark iii AI force fields become mobile again, for reporting the issue with force fields being visible through the fog of war, for suggesting that vampire/cutlass target seek range be lowered, and that melee ship ranges be shown as attack ranges, for suggesting that the bounding circles be shown for to-be-placed ships, for reporting hte issue with Attack-moving or Free-Roaming ships that were moving back to their base position in a group.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to ldlework for suggesting that scrolling be disabled when the in-game menu is visible, for suggesting the Player # Kills column on the high scores list.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to dumpsterKEEPER for suggesting that the black holes have a random starting rotation in the galaxy map, for reporting the issue with building ships smoking as if damaged, for suggesting that ships not prefer targets that are not autotargeted, for reporting a spelling mistake in a prerelease, for reporting the display issue with the backgroung box behind incoming wave warnings, for reporting the inaccuracy of the hover text on command stations regarding destroyed planets, for reporting the misordering of a number of achievements, for suggesting the improvements to the Team Income display.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to darke for suggesting the tachyon drone buffs, for inspiring the changes to how the AI home planet reinforcements are handled, for suggesting the reduction in energy cost of autocannon minipods, for suggesting that ion cannons be immune to nuclear blasts, for suggesting that laser turrets have a scaling cost, for suggesting moving tachyon beams to the turrets tab, for suggesting that core turrets no longer require supply, for suggesting the rebalancing of many of the warheads, for suggesting the command station II and III balance updates, for suggesting the reprioritization of targeting ships without supply, for suggesting that starships do less damage to warheads, for suggesting the strong/weak not yet compiled text change, for suggesting that ships have differening acceleration rates, for reporting the issue with shots targeting disabled force fields, for reporting another broken map seed, for suggesting the changes to AF population on the smallest maps, for suggesting that guard post makeup be less homogenous, for reporting the issue with cheats causing achievements to award repeatedly, for reporting the issue with pausing forcefields while paused not showing the aura updated, for reporting the outdated messages on paused energy reactors, for reporting the second rare crash when switching music tracks.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Shadow Hornet for reportig the crash bug with the control group assignment.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to quickstix for reporting the performance issues with the old nebula algorithm on some planets on some GPUs.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Kalzarius for suggesting the enhancements to the "Last Seen" entry on the planetary summary, for suggesting the nerf of turrets damaging warheads, for suggesting the improvements to the concentration of fire of multi-shot ships, for reporting the issue with pausing/unpausing affecting placement mode, for reporting the super rare crash bug when changing music tracks, for reporting the visibility issue with ships that are under construction and flashing in far zoom, for reporting the bug with home planets not being remembered correctly from very old savegames, for reporting the incorrect tooltip for fortresses, for reporting the build time inacuraccies, for reporting the issue with warheads not always detonating when hitting their targets, for reporting the mouseover/click selection discrepancy.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to liq3 for reporting the issue with the cutlass regen being too low, for reporting the issue with engineers being unable to assist docks, for suggesting the Blind ability for warheads, for suggesting that when mine layers rebuild mines it no longer make the mine placement sound, for reporting the issue with cutlasses ignoring wormhole move orders in favor of attacking more ships, for reporting the issue with the repair rates, for suggesting the sniper buffs, for reporting the issue with tugs picking up force fields, for reporting the issue with cutlasses going through wormholes.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to RCIX for reporting the confusion with the old short name of shield bearers, for suggesting the Player Most Built column on the high scores list, for reporting the issue with shield bearers being damaged by allied shots from under themselves, for reporting the flipped bomber buy/tech buttons, for reporting the fortress collision priority mismatch, for reporting the issue with the new core bomber graphic rotation, for reporting the bug with multiple exo-ffs being assigned to a single harvester.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Rogue for suggesting the settings option for disabling force field rotation.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Valarauka for suggesting that Exo-Shields be renamed to Exo-Force-Fields, for suggesting a clear preferred targets button, for suggesting the ctrl-click placement of harvester exo-force-fields.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Echo35 for reporting the naming error with Counter-Dark-Matter Turrets in the prereleases in the tech menu, for suggesting the improvement to the countdown timer on incoming waves, for reporting the issues with cut off text in the settings screen, for reporting the outdated installer slideshow images, for reporting the naming error with Basic Turrets in the prereleases in the tech menu, for reporting the issue with metal harvester health counting upwards incorrectly while they were being built.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to kjara for suggeting the buff to spider turret engine damage once their cost was increased, for suggesting the improvement to the engine damage text, for reporting the extra debug messages, for suggesting the penalties to snipers against resources, for suggesting several additions to the collision priority chain, for suggesting that turrets do half damage against other turrets and against tractor beams, for reporting the bug in a prerelease with being able to build too many harvesters, for reporting the issues with the F1 display on 768-high monitors, for reporting the issue with mobile repair stations being able to assist queues, for reporting the issue with the warning message for still-constructing command stations that were under attack, for reporting the bug when tugs had tractored a ship that escaped to a new planet just as the other ship was being tractored.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to irongamer for suggesting the message to clients unable to connect to a host.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Ashery for reporting the ion cannon overkill.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Oewyn for reporting the raptors circle-strafing exploit, and for reporting the raptor minimum-range bugs, for suggesting the reduction of the sniper turret bonuses, for reporting the bugs with loading certain stats and with loading savegames with ships heading for transports but not in them, for suggesting that tractor beams be their own class separate from turrets, for reporting the issue with building harvesters on planets you don't own, for reporting the issue with the expenses by player tab not refreshing correctly in tandem with the players dropdown, for reporting the ships wandering issue in some prereleases, for reporting the exo-shield insta-death in some prereleases, for reporting the issue with tugs picking up force fields, for reporting the imbalance with tractor beams in the prereleases, for reporting that in prereleases the exo-force-fields were not showing their protection aura over their protected ships, even though they were properly protecting the ships, for suggesting the buff to tachyon beam emitters, for suggesting the improvement to zooming in the graphs, for reporting the inconsistency in the clickable/hover area in the planetary summary.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Desmond Kaplan for reporting the issue with non-military ships being selected with the N+2 or N+3 or N+1 filters.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Calvin Southwood for suggesting the ship positioning priorities, for reporting the issues with unsupplied command stations constructing, for reporting the issue with low-power ships forming superships when moving together.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Velox for reporting the drifting repair stations, for reporting the issue with buildings getting created at the wrong location when placed, for reporting that repair stations could not repair ships that were in low-power mode, for reporting the dancing ship collision, for reporting the issues with tugs in attack-move or FRD modes, for reporting the issue with CTRL-building harvesters potentially causing the energy to go negative, for suggesting that the counter-shooter ranges be shown in placement mode, for suggesting the buff to minelayer durability, for reporting the issue with mines not always leaving remains.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to fibio for reporting the issue with there being too few ARSes on 40-planet maps.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to keith.lamothe for reporting the issue with tractor beams not being able to capture tachyon-revealed cloaked ships.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Bumster for suggesting that transports be their own ship type, for reporting the issue with holding shift and placing ships for disabled allies.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Andrew Leach for reporting the issues with the cloaked and teleporting options in the lobby.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Haagenti for suggesting the improvement to the K key functionality.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Coded One for reporting the game crash when the system copy of the Arial font was corrupt.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Calvin Southwood and Lars Bull for reporting the issue with the Killed With column.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to liq3 and darke for suggesting that scouts no longer be affected by negative energy balances.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to liq3 and Haagenti for suggesting the nerf to raiders.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Admiral, Volatar, and kjara for suggesting the addition of the altplanetnames.txt functionality.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Atesc, spelk, Revenantus, eRe4s3r, Tankor Smash, and RCIX for contributing ideas for achievements.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Idlework, Volatar, and darke for contributing ideas to the new style of wormhole egress.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Magitek, darke, Revenantus, Oewyn, Haagenti, RCIX, and Gankenstein for reporting the crash bug with lost graphics devices.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Oewyn and Revenantus for suggesting that build queues retain their built counts for items that are reordered.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to darke and kjara for suggesting the change to how the starship constructor icon is handled.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to NewName, Revenantus, Fiskbit, and Michael Park for reporting and helping to diagnose the poor savegame transfer performance.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to darke and RCIX for reporting the wrong wave level problem.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to dumpsterKEEPER and Admiral for suggesting the addition of the energy section to the resoures display on galaxy map intel summaries.<br />
<br />
-Thanks to Echo35 and Lars Bull for reporting the low power mode counts getting incorrect.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[AI War:AI War]]<br />
[[Category:AI War Release Notes]]<br />
[[Category:Release Notes]]</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:1.003_Release&diff=29848AI War:1.003 Release2017-09-16T15:52:32Z<p>Nat: Add Category:AI War Release Notes</p>
<hr />
<div>-New Lightning Missiles have been added at Missile Silos.<br />
<br />
-It is now possible for a player to build up to four EMPs at one time.<br />
<br />
-All missiles now are immune to mines, and have scout abilities (and thus also show up in the list of scouts).<br />
<br />
-The scouts quick-button at the bottom of the screen is now labeled "Scouts & Missiles."<br />
<br />
-All missiles and starships are now immune to sniper shots.<br />
<br />
-In recent releases, the numeric range in the hover text for ships was being shown as 1,000 too much on all ships (though the range indicator in the game itself—hold Z to see—was fine).<br />
<br />
-New Armored Missles have been added at Missile Silos.<br />
<br />
-In the last release, there was a crash bug that could be encountered when starting a game on some maps. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-The AI is no longer allowed to cluster reinforcements in quite the same way as before, which means that they will tend to be more evenly spread apart.<br />
<br />
-Four player games and up now get even more of a resource bonus than before.<br />
<br />
-The AI is back to only building a single ion cannon on planets on difficulties 7 and 8.<br />
<br />
-There is now more variance in a minority of galaxy maps, providing more variance overall.<br />
<br />
-The map random seed is now shown on totals button hover text on the galaxy map.<br />
<br />
[[AI War:AI War]]<br />
[[Category:AI War Release Notes]]<br />
[[Category:Release Notes]]</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:1.004_Release&diff=29847AI War:1.004 Release2017-09-16T15:52:09Z<p>Nat: Add Category:AI War Release Notes</p>
<hr />
<div>-Core Starships have now been added. These terrifying ships are only available to the Harder AI Types, and only show up on core and home AI planets, but they are quite a force to be reckoned with.<br />
<br />
-All missiles in the game are now immune to being insta-killed (by ion cannons or what have you).<br />
<br />
-The installer should no longer have false-positives of SlimDX detection on Vista machines (this only happened occasionally to begin with).<br />
<br />
-For versions of the game that are installed via our installer, the start menu folder for the game now includes entires for the System Requirements, Credits, Controls, and License documents.<br />
<br />
-PermaMines have been added. These mines don't have cloaking, but also don't get destroyed when they damage enemy ships. Higher-difficulty AIs have a better chance of having more minefields made of these.<br />
<br />
-The background of the Pause All button is now green instead of teal.<br />
<br />
-A new "Ship Movement Style" button has been added next to the Pause All button. It allows for ship movement commands to cause all ships to move at the slower speed, or not.<br />
<br />
-Previously there was a minor graphical bug wherein the yellow "extra text" line on ship hover info could extend outside the background panel. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-The G key can now be held in order to put ships into group movement mode.<br />
<br />
-Ships that are currently in group movement mode now show up with a teal border in far zoom, to make them easier to identify.<br />
<br />
-There is now a "Free Roaming Defender" mode that can be set on ships, which means that they will attack anything at the current planet, regardless of range. Ships in this mode show up with a pink border in far zoom mode. Hold down the V button while issuing a move order to put ships into this mode.<br />
<br />
-Pressing the L key now selects half of the currently selected ships.<br />
<br />
-Tachyon MicroFighters, Autocannon Minipods, and Parasites now have twice the attack power and health, but only half as many get created at once.<br />
<br />
-Infiltrators now have 4x the attack power and health, but only half as many get created at once. The amount of engine damage dealt by infiltrators is also now markedly lower, making them less effective at dealing engine damage than spiders.<br />
<br />
-A huge improvement to processing large numbers of ships has been made. This makes it possible to have 80,000 or more ships in a game with no lag—and really the number could get as high as 160,000 ships at the upper end, under optimal circumstances on a 2.4Ghz dual core machine. Basically, the game no longer does any processing for ships that are immobile or guarding when the ships are on a planet where there are no enemies.<br />
<br />
-Trial saved games were unable to be loaded. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-The G key now just inverts the ship movement mode—before it always made it grouped mode, but now if it is already grouped mode it will make it work as lone mode.<br />
<br />
-The game no longer scales itself up by default on larger monitors, though there is an option to turn this on in the settings (it caused issues with display quality).<br />
<br />
-The Starfield images now scale up properly whether the rest of the game is being scaled or not.<br />
<br />
-Added a new "No Enemy Waves" AI Modifier.<br />
<br />
SPECIAL THANKS<br />
----<br />
Thanks to Maxim Kuschpel for his excellent suggestions that were used in this release. The Group Move, Free-Roaming Defender mode, and new L key functionality were all his idea.<br />
<br />
Thanks also to Sorceresss for inspiring the "No Enemy WaveS" AI Modifier.<br />
<br />
[[AI War:AI War]]<br />
[[Category:AI War Release Notes]]<br />
[[Category:Release Notes]]</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:1.008_Release&diff=29846AI War:1.008 Release2017-09-16T15:51:45Z<p>Nat: Add Category:AI War Release Notes</p>
<hr />
<div>-Capturable ships do not come under player control until a command station is finished being built (previously they came under control as soon as it started being built, which is when planet control changes).<br />
<br />
-When a command station is finished being built, there is now a 50% chance that any local enemy guards might desert their posts. This is in addition to the existing 50% chance when the enemy command station is lost.<br />
<br />
-"Unknown Path" no longer flashes next to each planet on the galaxy map before the actual number of hops are calculated.<br />
<br />
-The metal, crystal, and energy costs of parasites have been doubled. This is to compensate for all the "free" ships that parasites capture. For the similar reasons of balance the range of parasites has also been cut in half. They are still deadly, but this takes the edge off of them so that they are not too overpowered.<br />
<br />
-Queuing up any waypoint or attack commands no longer clears the wormhole travel path for ships. Any queued commands will be executed, and then the ships will go on their wormhole travel path. This also had the side effect of finally fixing the movement bug reported by Quitch.<br />
<br />
-Two new hotkeys: F9 and F10. They let players toggle off or on the "far zoom" icons.<br />
<br />
-The selection radius for the Advanced Research Station was too small. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, sometimes the Auto-placement of harvesters would fail in situations where the manual placement would succeed. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-It is now possible for ships to stay in attack-move mode or free-roaming-defender mode when moving between planets. If there is an allied command station on the destination side, they will move there, otherwise they will move just inside the wormhole. These new kinds of move commands work from the galaxy map or the main planetary view. This also works with setting constructors in attack-move or FRD mode, and setting their gather point on another planet (produced ships will emerge in the target mode, and go to the destination planet while staying in that mode).<br />
<br />
-The options to force software sound/music mixing have been removed, as they are not actually needed.<br />
<br />
-The settings screen now has options for setting specific zoom and pan speeds.<br />
<br />
-There is a new "Extra Tooltip Font Size" option in the settings screen, which allows some of the font sizes in the game to be increased or decreased. More may be done with this in the future.<br />
<br />
-A new "Omit Numerals From Mark I Ship Icons" option has been added to the settings screen.<br />
<br />
-There is a new "Show Intel Summary By Cursor" option in the settings screen.<br />
<br />
-The overzoom border is now displayed better on large/wide monitors, or those monitors with an unusual resolution.<br />
<br />
-There is now a "Show Details" option in the Save and Load menus, which lets players see the dates of each savegame. The Details view also has sortable columns, and the game remembers whether the user last used Details or normal view.<br />
<br />
-The backslash key now selects the first idle ship from the current selection.<br />
<br />
-Fixed a very rare bug where blocked shots could cause enemy ships to become unshootable because of how their total damage was too high.<br />
<br />
-The amount of collected knowledge at the current planet is now shown over top of all science labs (like Exhausted shows), and in the popup menu for quick-selection of science labs. This makes science labs quicker and easier to check the status of.<br />
<br />
-The filter for Mobile Military in the galaxy map was incorrectly calculating the values for Allies and Team. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-A bug with astro trains commonly just hanging out at their train stations should now be fixed.<br />
<br />
-The hover-tips now work while waiting for players in a multiplayer game.<br />
<br />
-Minor fixes to the tutorial text.<br />
<br />
-When a tractor beam grabs a ship that is already fading out through a wormhole, the graphics no longer briefly glitch on the far side of the wormhole.<br />
<br />
-Mark II engineers now have 10x the range for doing repairs, which makes them able to repair ships at the center of larger groups.<br />
<br />
-The status messages regarding engineers (in the hover-text of the engineers quick button) are now more informative about what the engineers are up to).<br />
<br />
-EtherJet Tractors will now approach their target until they have grappled it (if it can be grappled), rather than just until they are in firing distance.<br />
<br />
-Stealth command posts no longer fire on enemy ships (since that would reveal them).<br />
<br />
-A new ship, Wormhole Command Posts, has been added for the AI. This ship is completely invisible and cannot be revealed, like the Mark IV scout for the human players. These command posts let the AI do reinforcements right at their wormholes, like a player would. The command posts are destroyed only when the central command station for the planet is destroyed. These are automatically inserted into older savegames.<br />
<br />
-The AI will now send some of its reinforcements to wormhole command posts on planets at which it otherwise would not reinforce. This should make sustained deep raids into enemy territory a lot more difficult.<br />
<br />
-The AI will no longer use Scout Starships against the players.<br />
<br />
-Scouts have been rebalanced in response to the AIs now protecting wormholes better. Mark I and Mark II now have cloaking (so that all scouts now have cloaking), and they also thus no longer have any shields (no cloaking ships have shields). The health of the armored scout has thus been quadrupled, and the health of the Mark III scout has been doubled. Mark I and II scouts also no longer have any weapons (Mark III and IV already did not), so they will never accidentally decloak themselves in order to attack an enemy ship.<br />
<br />
-The AI will now intentionally route its special forces ships to any core or home planets that are under attack.<br />
<br />
-If the AI players have different tech levels, they will now both be shown in the AI Progress section, rather than just showing one of them.<br />
<br />
-Since the new style of AI Progress was introduced, the AI players were getting new ship types at much too fast a rate. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Items in the build queue that are delayed for being finished will no longer show negative time estimates.<br />
<br />
-Cloaked ships (controlled by players or the AI) will no longer auto-attack targets unless they are in attack-move mode or free-roaming defender mode. Instead they will only attack the targets that they are issued by the player. This helps to preserve their cloaked state, and gives them a combat edge in many situations (such as raids into enemy territory).<br />
<br />
-When initially loading a savegame, sometimes the AI tech levels would be slightly off until the player did something new to affect the overall AI progress.<br />
<br />
-Engineers and Mine Layers would previously stop to perform other duties when given a wormhole command by players. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-When issuing an assist order to an engineer, or a "get in transport" command to any ships, if the free-roaming defender mode or attack-move mode buttons were held, the ships would not get into that mode. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Previously, science labs would not display as exhausted until they were finished being constructed. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-The planetary summary now includes icons for the control groups the player has set. The icon shows up as blue if any ships from that control group are at the current planet, or as white if not. Hovering over the icon allows players to see exactly what and how many ships are in the control group, and how many of each are on the current planet vs elsewhere. Left and right clicking this icon works just like the other buttons in the planetary summary, simply selecting or selecting and centering on all ships of the clicked control group (on the local planet only).<br />
<br />
-Previously, if a selected mobile builder was killed, players could keep building turrets if they were already building them. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-In recent releases (1.007 and on), maps that are 80 planets or larger were creating far too many data centers and advanced research stations on each map, making the game much easier than it otherwise would be. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-When a munitions booster's object goes out of range, dies, or switches planets, the munitions booster now reacts to this more quickly and removes the link.<br />
<br />
-Ships that are unable to hurt shield bearers will no longer auto-attack them as targets. This makes shield bearers less of a targeting distraction in battles.<br />
<br />
-Previously, the AI would just stop dead and not know what to do if the only enemy ships on a planet were fully cloaked. Now the AI will ignore them as if they were not even there, instead of waiting around for them to decloak.<br />
<br />
-Since version 1.006, the Astro Trains were sometimes stopping permanently at train stations. Now they might stop for a little while, but they will quickly resume travel like they used to before some of the waypoint shifts.<br />
<br />
-When ships controlled by the human team are only partially-cloaked, they now no longer show the cloaking graphic under them. This makes it clear when ships are at least visible enough to be shot, versus being fully cloaked and unshootable (before the difference between fully cloaked and partially cloaked for your own team's ships was imperceptible—now the difference between partially-cloaked and decloaked is imperceptible, but when it is a ship you control there is no gameplay difference between these two states, anyway).<br />
<br />
-Engineers now only clear mines when there is nothing else for them to do inside their search range.<br />
<br />
-A total count has been added to the new Control Group icon tooltips.<br />
<br />
-Mines are now immune to blade-based ships (vampire and cutlass), which will prevent those ships from attacking mines (and dying) when the mines are visible.<br />
<br />
-There was previously a desync that could be caused in multiplayer if one player was looking at a force field when new ships were added or the force field went down, and other players were not. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Wormhole Command Posts are now positioned on the wormhole they are guarding, rather than to the side.<br />
<br />
-Non-mobile enemy ships are no longer displaced by mobile force fields' movement.<br />
<br />
-The metal/crystal cost of Mark II Science Labs has been much reduced, and their shields have been reduced from 2500 to 1500.<br />
<br />
-The range of all the tachyon beam emitter variants have been increased.<br />
<br />
-Both the counter-shooter range and the attack range is now shown during ship placement mode for ships that have both (like Fortresses).<br />
<br />
-The position of the attack ranges during ship placement mode was drawn slightly off. This was only notable for very large ships, like Fortresses. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Until now, the AI was not properly limiting its reinforcements based on the tech level of each reinforcement. Now it is, which means that the hugely vast numbers of ships on the final planets are somewhat less likely to occur, making things a bit more equivalent for players when they get there (given equal AI progress). On the other hand, the AI will now build Mark V ships on the home and core planet command posts during reinforcements, whereas before it only build Mark IV ships there. The overall balance shift should be a bit in favor of the human players, which is good given the other behavior changes in this release in favor of the AI.<br />
<br />
-Previously, when a constructor had a cross-planet gather point, resetting the gather point to the current planet would not work. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-The AI alert level is now shown in the intel summary of enemy planets. This shows if the AI is likely to reinforce or not at a given planet, based on how aware it is of your presence. The border color of the enemy ship icons and planet icons on the galaxy map will also turn crimson when the AI is on alert and prepared to reinforce at a given planet.<br />
<br />
-When players have a negative crystal or metal income rate, they are now still allowed to build more ships. Previously, it stopped them from doing so.<br />
<br />
-Previously, when players had a negative crystal or metal rate, it would show +- in the top of the hud, rather than just -. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-Mark I through III scouts now have a "cloaking booster" ability, which lets them work better in groups. When scouts are traveling in groups, some of them will boost the cloaks of the others, which protects the boosted scouts from being revealed by tachyon beam emitters. The scouts doing the boosting cannot themselves be boosted, which means that some of the scouts are likely to be picked off or at least damaged at every tachyon beam emitter that is passed. Higher-level scouts can boost multiple ships at once, and also have a bigger boost range.<br />
<br />
-The cost of the Missile Silo has been reduced from 100k metal and crystal to only 25k metal and crystal. The missiles are still just as expensive, but having the silo be less expensive creates less of a barrier for players to at least try out missiles.<br />
<br />
-The range of mobile repair stations is now 10x its prior value, for similar reasons as to the Mark II engineer.<br />
<br />
-Scout Starships are now treated like other scouts and are not selected when the selection box includes military ships.<br />
<br />
-EyeBots now have cloaking and the cloaking booster ability.<br />
<br />
-The health of lightning missiles has been doubled, and they are now immune to missiles, blades, and can pass under force fields. Armored missiles did not get a health bonus, but got all the other improvements.<br />
<br />
-The MLRS Turret II technology no longer depends on the Missile Turret tech having been unlocked.<br />
<br />
-When ships fully recloak, any incoming shots don't hit them.<br />
<br />
FIXES FROM PAST PRERELEASES<br />
----<br />
<br />
Took out the following, since it was just overpowered and unexpected: "-Ships guarding "core" AI planets will now come to the aid of a core AI command station that is under attack, attempting to prevent the AI player from going out of the game. If they succeed in killing the ships on the AI home planet, they will then turn on the human players, so this can be extremely dangerous and even game-ending if not handled carefully. This behavior is so potentially deadly that it will only be used by AIs of difficulty 7 or higher."<br />
<br />
<br />
SPECIAL THANKS<br />
----<br />
<br />
Thanks to Revenantus for suggesting the improvement to when capturable ships are captured, for reporting the issue with mobile builder death, for inspiring the "cloaking booster" feature.<br />
<br />
Thanks to darke for suggesting a rebalancing of parasites, for reporting the issue with the advanced research station selection radius, for reporting the issue with the auto-placement of harvesters, for reporting the AI's new difficulty with harvester attacks, for suggesting the update to Mark II Engineers, for suggesting the increases in tachyon range, for suggesting the improvement to mobile repair stations, for suggesting that scout starships not be selected with other mobile military ships, for suggesting the improvements to lightning missiles, for suggesting the change to the prerequisite for MLRS Turret II.<br />
<br />
Thanks to yllamana for inspiring the improvements to how commands are queued before wormhole movement commands.<br />
<br />
Thanks to Admiral for suggesting the F9 and F10 toggles, for suggesting the Omit Numerals option, for suggesting the new Show Intel Summary By Cursor option.<br />
<br />
Thanks to Quitch for suggesting the zoom/pan speed sliders, for suggesting the Details view on Save/Load menus, for reporting the graphical issue with tractor beams and wormholes, for suggesting the engineers quick button text improvement, for suggesting full row select on the details view of save/load, for inspiring the Wormhole Command Posts, for inspiring the change to the AI progress display, for reporting the issue with the build queue estimated times going negative, for reporting the issue with the AI progress being a bit off at load, for reporting the issues with engineers and mine layers disobeying wormhole move orders, for reporting the issue with engineers and free-roam/attack-move modes when given assist orders, for reporting the issue with science labs not showing as exhausted until fully constructed, for suggesting the change to engineer mine remain cleaning, for suggesting the total count in the control group icon tooltips, for reporting the issue with vampires attacking visible mines, for reporting the issue with the attack ranges being off with fortresses, for reporting the issue with cross-planet gather points.<br />
<br />
Thanks to keith.lamothe for suggesting the backslash functionality.<br />
<br />
Thanks to vendolis for reporting the minor issues with the tutorial text.<br />
<br />
Thanks to Admiral and darke for suggesting the tooltip size option.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[AI War:AI War]]<br />
[[Category:AI War Release Notes]]<br />
[[Category:Release Notes]]</div>Nathttps://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:1.002_Release&diff=29845AI War:1.002 Release2017-09-16T15:50:36Z<p>Nat: Add Category:AI War Release Notes</p>
<hr />
<div>-The metal/crystal produced by ships now scales upward with increased numbers of players.<br />
<br />
-The "ship level" text that is shown with the far zoom image of ships is now prerendered and always sorted by texture, putting significantly less load on older graphics cards when vast numbers of ships are onscreen at once.<br />
<br />
-The color of the "core" ship level is now a bright red instead of the soft purple that it was before.<br />
<br />
-The rendering of control group numbers (when Ctrl is held down) is now prerendered, putting significantly less load on older graphics cards when vast numbers of control-grouped ships are onscreen at once while Ctrl is held down.<br />
<br />
-The loading of music tracks has been revamped rather heavily, to allow for more efficient streaming off of slower/burdened hard drives.<br />
<br />
-The F3 text now shows what percent complete playback is of the current track, and it also shows what the next music track will be and how far along it is.<br />
<br />
-The far zoom icons for ships now fade out when they are going through wormholes, same as their zoomed-in counterparts do, thus making it easier to tell when a ship is going through a wormhole on far zoom.<br />
<br />
-Previously, when right-clicking a full-health ship with an engineer that was in attack-move mode, the engineer would stay in attack-move mode. This was different from right-clicking a ship that was in need of repairs, and is now fixed.<br />
<br />
-Advanced Research Stations now show up in the button that lists Science Labs.<br />
<br />
-The abbreviated names for Fighters, Bombers, Cruisers, Snipers, and a few other minor ship types are now more readable.<br />
<br />
-When ships are moving towards an enemy ship that dies, previously they would continue inwards even after the enemy ship was removed. Now they instead stop where they are, to avoid mistakenly taking them into danger for no reason.<br />
<br />
-Ctrl+Comma and Shift+Comma no longer center the view on the selected ships.<br />
<br />
-CounterSpies and Ion Cannons are now better at automatically choosing their targets, and they also now switch targets more quickly after insta-killing each target ship.<br />
<br />
-Ion cannons and counterspies now ONLY fire at lower-level ships and cloaked ships respectively. This makes it so that the ion cannon noise is much more meaningful, in the sense that it means it is insta-killing ships if it is firing at all.<br />
<br />
-Anti-Starship Arachnids now properly show their strength against starships in their Strong Vs. list.<br />
<br />
-Previously, after the application was loaded or refocused, the screen would blip the first time that Alt or F10 was pressed. Fixed.<br />
<br />
-A new "Totals" button on the galaxy map shows stats for how many planets and ships are held by the local player, allies, and enemies across all planets. This information is of little strategic value, but it does provide an interesting indicator of the overall progress of a given campaign.<br />
<br />
-Missle Silos have been added as a new type of constructor for players to build.<br />
<br />
-Nuclear Missiles and EMPs have been added as very expensive missiles that can be built at the missile silos.<br />
<br />
-Deflector Drones and Shield Bearers now absorb EMPs (it does not paralyze them, and in fact it heals them instead).<br />
<br />
-Shield Bearers are now immune to nuclear explosions.<br />
<br />
-All Starships and core ships are now immune to nuclear explosions and absorb emps.<br />
<br />
-It is now less likely for starships to be included in any given reinforcement that an AI does. In recent releases, the AI has been having way too many starships at the highest-level planets.<br />
<br />
-The crystal cost of vampires has been quartered, since they were previously too expensive to be useful.<br />
<br />
-The sound effect for nuclear explosions has been improved somewhat—there is now a third component to it, a dying grumble that lasts until the whiteout is gone.<br />
<br />
-The way that dangerous ships are calculated for player planets is now much more sensible. Pretty much everything but mines and astro trains is now counted.<br />
<br />
-In a change from the prior release, the metal and crystal costs of mark iii and iv ships no longer scale up so much as they previously did. Basically, those costs are back to how they previously were.<br />
<br />
-EMPs now (temporarily) disable mines as well as force fields.<br />
<br />
-Engineers, Mine Layers, and Mobile Builders now have mine avoidance.<br />
<br />
-Engineers are now able to remove enemy mine remains in an automated fashion.<br />
<br />
-The AI now handles cloaked ships better, only de-cloaking them when it is at the target it wishes to shoot.<br />
<br />
-Cloaked ships now re-cloak twice as fast after decloaking.<br />
<br />
-Advanced Research Stations can now be used to unlock technologies, and they also are now (very, very slowly) mobile.<br />
<br />
-On AI Difficulty 5 and up, the AI now uses smarter targeting.<br />
<br />
-Previously, the AI Tech level would never go down after it was increased, even if the AI Progress was later reduced. The AI Tech level is now able to go down if the AI Progress is reduced.<br />
<br />
-The AI Tech level now increases more slowly for AI players, giving the human players a little more breathing room.<br />
<br />
-Up to 2 billion license keys are now supported, increased from the previous cap.<br />
<br />
[[AI War:AI War]]<br />
[[Category:AI War Release Notes]]<br />
[[Category:Release Notes]]</div>Nat