AI War 2:The Neinzul Abyss Patch Notes

This is for alpha testing for The Neinzul Abyss. I'm using this to keep patch notes.

Nota Bene

Please don't discuss anything you learn from this page with others unless Badger or Chris has publicly talked about those features already.

Feature List/Flavour

Other Player-Controlled Factions

• Champions
  • Making their triumphant return

• Necromancer
  • Another player is able to control Anti-AI Zombies. A MP only feature, since a single player can't control two factions simultaneously

Galaxy options

• Hidden Galaxy
  • Available in the Game Lobby as a setting under Scouting. Only Explored planets, or planets adjacent to Explored planets are visible. As you explore more planets the rest of the galaxy will appear.

• Squares Map Type: Squares is like the Clusters type, but each cluster is aligned on a grid. There are lots of different tunables so you can get a big range of galaxies.

• Dissonance Map Type: This map type has areas that are rich in planets, and areas that are empty. It's trying to evoke the Simple/Realistic map types from AIWC

Roguelike Features

• Ironman Mode is now available as a Galaxy Setting under Permadeath. It can be enabled in the Game Lobby.
  • When enabled, you lose the ability to manually save the game. Instead, the game autosaves very frequently, while keeping only the most recent autosave.
  • You will have only ever the most recent save game to work with. You are allowed to reload your save as many times as you like though, and still consider a resulting victory 'Ironman'
  • All cheats are disabled in ironman mode

• There's a Save On Quit setting that basically works like Ironman Lite
  • It makes a save game whenever you quit, so always loading from the "Most Recent Quit" save will basically be like Ironman mode, except you don't have the Ironman limitations; you can choose to savescum, cheat, etc...

• Random Factions : You can now request "Random Factions", and can choose its allegiance and impact.
  • You can also ask for "Bonus Random Factions" in the Galaxy Design section of the Game Lobby, to make it really easy to have a bunch of unknown factions

• Implementation notes for Random Factions: you select an impact (Low/Moderate/High/Brutal). If you pick a moderate impact then you might get a high-intensity but weak faction (for example, an intensity 8 HRF) or a low intensity but strong faction (maybe a 1 intensity nanocaust). Or you might get a real "moderate" faction like an intensity 6 Astro Trains
  • For the Bonus Random Factions, there are extra tuning options to say "How impactful should the bonus factions be" and "What sort of allegiances should they have"

Bug Reports

• None, thank Science

Patch Notes

2.702

• Add Necromancer Faction, gated behind the "Controllable Zombies" galaxy setting under Balance. This allows a second player to control Anti-AI Zombies. You can't control a "Regular" player faction and the Zombies at once, so this is a Multiplayer only.
  • To use, enable Controllable Zombies. Go to the Edit Factions menu and give your friend control of the Necromancer.

2.643

• There are now Objectives for Champion stuff

2.635

• Champions can now move more quickly when hacking, have stronger engines and repair sooner