AI War 2:The Arrival of Fleets

Known Issues

• The lobby interface is currently temporary, and undergoing a complete overhaul.
  • It's suggested that you use the quick start option instead.

• Various bugs on mantis: https://bugtracker.arcengames.com/view_all_bug_page.php

• Multiplayer is temporarily disabled while we focus on tightening up the single-player loop.

• There are a variety of ships/units that don't have final graphics at the moment, though they all have their icons.

• We're in progress with a major revamp of some systems based on cumulative feedback in order to push the game even more towards the feel of the original game... despite further divergence from it at a mechanical level.

What's this phase all about?

After 3 months of Early Access and 2+ years of development, we've reached a point where we know what we want the 1.0 version of the game to look like. SO very much about this game already works well, but there are some major deficits coming into this phase when comparing this sequel to the original game. The aim of this phase is to close those gaps and make this clearly the superior product in terms of playability, fun factor, the amount of fun thinking-about-interesting-challenges you do during gameplay, and so on.

There's also of course still more polish and bugfixing that we want to get done, and the lobby redo is still scheduled of course (but quick starts are an awesome alternative, and have helped us to defer a final design for the lobby as we formed up some other bits of the game first), but we're feeling really good about this final sprint toward 1.0. We still do need to also finish some graphics for the existing ships, but they all have their icons.

There is some more content coming as part of this phase, kind of by definition -- fleets as a concept Change Everything in a good way -- but the focus is on taking what is a pretty awesome game with a lot of depth and pushing it to a level that we hope beats the pants off the original, finally. Stay tuned.

Version 0.900

(Not yet released -- we're still working on it!)

We are breaking all the savegames again, sorry about that. This should be the last time for real for real, although we've said that before. It's not our practice to do this sort of thing at all, typically, but this game has been going through a lot more pre-release evolution than most of our titles have. The old savegames won't even make sense in the new version, really.

• AI aggressiveness tweaks.
  • The AI will now be less worried about distant mobile enemy forces.
  • The AI will no longer mistakenly count Guard units as Threat in some code paths
  • Make some improvements to hunter/warden fleet routing logic
    • Thanks to zeusalmighty for the Hunter/Warden save game

• Science Labs, Hackers and Scouts are removed. Scout functions of the Sentinel Frigate and Sentry Starship are removed.

• Sentry Starships are now per-planet cap, cannot use wormholes, are built directly (like turrets) and die to remains.
  • They're effectively Decloakers from Classic, but far more convenient.

• Several map types have been improved by Draco.
  • Thanks Draco!

• Dyson Spheres will remain antagonized much longer after hacks

• Engineers are per-planet cap, cap reduced significantly and can't use Wormholes.
  • The new Combat Engineers are able to use Wormholes and are a type of Strikecraft instead.

• Mobile Space Dock and Mobile Builder are not unlockable or buildable, and are instead capturables.

• Remains Rebuilders are removed. Command Stations and Mobile Builders do this now.

• Make the Simple and Realistic map types more interesting by fixing a dumb bug in them.

• The Max/Min number of planets in the galaxy is now defined on a per-map type basis rather than a global (since some maps scale up to larger galaxies better than others)

• Add a highly experimental option to the Game Lobby, "AI Civil War". This will make all of the AI factions hostile to eachother. The Warden and Hunter Fleets are friendly with all the AIs.
  • This is intended for testing purposes and for people who like playing AIW2 as a sandbox simulator

• Gives some units unused voice lines, and the Dyson ships the Zenith voice.
  • Engineers and other similar civilian ships now actually talk!

Hacking changes

• Allow hacks to be done against planets, not just structures
• Allow hacks to be done without a local hacker on the planet
• Allow the AI to launch an attack against the player after hacking is completed
  • These can be set on any hack with an XML tag. So all the previous hacking mechanics can continue to function as usual, but new options are now available.

Bug Fixes

• Fix a bug in the entity hovering ui where it was incorrectly identifying energy overdrive as an attack penalty
  • Thanks to Democracy for the bug report

• Fix a bug where the Zenith Trader (Traitor!) was allowing the AI to buy way too many goodies
  • Thanks to lots of people for reporting this, including Jannik2099 and Ovalcircle

• Fix a null reference exception when handling GameCommands
  • Thanks to jannik for the bug report

• Fix a problem where v-wings were having damage multipliers based on buildings lack of engines
  • Thanks to weaponmaster for the bug report

• Correctly flag the "Download Dyson Sphere Ship" hack as unavailable after that hack has been completed
  • Thanks to Ecthelon on steam

• Fix a bug where vengeance generators were warping in already vulnerable to damage
  • Thanks to WeaponMaster and zeusalmighty for the reports

• Add an Objective for hacking the Spire Archive
  • Thanks to settemio for the reminder

• Only seed one spire archive per AI
  • Thanks to WeaponMaster for the report

• Spire Archive isn't invulnerable to all damage, meaning it properly dies after being hacked.
  • Thanks to Democracy for reporting.

• Spire Archives now show on the galaxy map.

• The Superterminal now explodes after the hack finishes, instead of using a kludgy and bug prone mechanism to prevent it from being hacked multiple times
  • Thanks to Lifestrider for the bug report

Renaming

• Cleaned up all entity names, from in the past when they changed function (i.e LaserTurret to NucleophilicTurret).
• Also cleaned up and standardised all the entity system names, and cleaned out a few that were redundant.
  • This should make it a bit cleaner to work with in future, as there's no weird cases of there being a WidowGuardian, which is really the Paralysis Guardian, but it shows up as the Widow in all the internal files!

• The Widow Mine is now the Paralysis Mine, and the Grenade Launcher fleetship is now Grenade Launcher Corvette - seeing as it has the Corvette icon and all.

• Sentinel Frigates are now Sentinel Gunboats.
  • Anything in future, like Lightning Torpedo Frigate will use the term Gunboat instead.

• Fleetships are now called Strikecraft, and Starships are now called Frigates.

• Space Docks are now simply called Factories, Mobile Space Dock is Mobile Factory, and the Starship Constructor doesn't exist at all now.
  • Both Strikecraft and Frigates come out of the same building.

• Not a rename, but a recolour. Human Resistance Fighters and Marauders have a primary green that shows up better in game, and matches what it is in the lobby.
  • Thanks to TechSY730 for reporting.

Balance Tweaks

• Ark Energy Overdrive is removed for now. Find another place for it (likely in a changed form).

• Sniper damage bonus requirement reduced from speed 1200 to 1000.

• Space Plane gets the damage resistance to anything beyond range 4600 instead of 5600 now.
  • Basically you have to be closer to it to do full damage. Also means that when using Pursuit, they try to stay beyond that.

• MLRS units have half the shots per salvo, but reload in half the time.
  • Helps them retarget more often.

Prior Release Notes

AI War 2: Early Access Starts!