AI War:Current Post-6.000 Beta

Prerelease 6.016

(not yet released; we're still working on it!)

• Fixed a bug where, in some cases, the AI would hack your financial information and use the money to hire assassins.
  • Thanks to the families of various players for letting us know.

• To fix a problem in recent versions where some guard posts were countering their triangle counters:
  • Needler Guard Post hull type from Light => Medium (so now countered by fighters, which they do not counter).
  • MLRS Guard Post hull type from Medium => Heavy (so now countered by bombers, which they do not counter).
  • Missile Guard Post hull type from Artillery => Light (so now countered by missile frigates, which they do not counter).
  • Laser Guard Post hull type from Heavy => Neutron (so now countered by missile frigates, which they do not counter).
  • Thanks to TechSY730, Kahuna, Space Cowboy, and many others for inspiring this change.

• 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.
  • 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.
  • Thanks to Space Cowboy for inspiring this change.

• 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.
  • Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.

• 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).
  • 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.
  • Thanks to Wingflier and Toranth for the suggestion.

Prerelease 6.015

(Released March 27th, 2013)

• Fixed a bug in the last version that could cause unhandled errors when launching some exos.
  • Thanks to orzelek for the report and save.

• Fixed several bugs with cloak-boosting in the last version.
  • 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".
  • Thanks to Faulty Logic for the report and save.

Prerelease 6.014 De-Faulting The Logic

(Released March 27th, 2013)

• Fixed a bug in the last version where counterattack posts were mostly just sending ships on AI planets rather than human ones.
  • Thanks to Vyndicu for the report and save.

• Fixed an unhandled-exception bug with the resource auto-conversion logic when player resources would overflow to other players.
  • Thanks to Bronzite and Fleet for reports and saves.

• 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.
  • Thanks to Cowinatub for the report and save.

• 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.
  • 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.
  • This also serves as a buff to cloak-boosting in general, for keeping scouts alive and whantot.
  • Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.

• 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.
  • Thanks to Hearteater for the report and save.

• 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.
  • Thanks to TechSY730 for the suggestion and... a whole lot of players for supporting that mantis record.

• 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.
  • Thanks to vinco and a bunch of supporters for inspiring this change.

• 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.
  • Thanks to Faulty Logic for... "inspiring" this change.

• 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.
  • Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.

• Increased cost-to-the-AI for including a spire starship or zenith starship in an exo.
  • Thanks to Diazo and many others for inspiring this change.

• AI Home Command Stations are now immune to AOE (including warhead detonations).
  • 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.
  • Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.

• 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).
  • 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.

• Normal (non-homeworld) guard posts:
  • Needler, Laser, MLRS, and Missile guard posts have had their shots-per-salvo multiplied by 5, and damage adjusted downward to maintain DPS.
  • Missile guard post DPS down 25%.
  • Anti-starship guard post DPS doubled.
  • Thanks to TechSY730, Hearteater, and many others for feedback on the new guard post stats.

Prerelease 6.013 Core Foamhammer

(Released March 19th, 2013)

• Heavy Bomber Starship:
  • Is now able to hit fleet ships again.
  • Base CapDPS from 120k*mk => 150k*mk.
  • Thanks to Faulty Logic (most recently; probably dozens of players over the past several months) for inspiring this change.

• Regeneration Golem:
  • Instead of having self-attrition (100% to 0% in 2 hours) it now has self-regeneration (0% to 100% in 4 hours).
  • AIP-on-activation (for golems-medium) from 25 => 15.
  • Base Health from 200M => 400M.
  • Metal/Crystal "build" cost (these are never built, but this impacts repair costs) from 20M/20M to 10M/10M.
  • Now has vampirism (heals itself by the damage it does).
  • 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.

• 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).
  • Thanks to ZaneWolfe and others for inspiring this change.

• To make the Astro Train plot a bit less "Automatic Death On Wheels":
  • The Regenerator, Nuclear, EMP, Shield, and Cargo trains are now autotargeted.
  • Cargo train health from 400M => 20M.
  • Cargo train armor from 10k => 1k.
  • Nuke train health from 40M => 10M.
  • EMP train health from 40M => 10M.
  • Thanks to Hearteater, Diazo, and many others for inspiring these changes.

• 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.
  • Thanks to chemical_art, Lancefighter, Winge, and TechSY730 for inspiring this change.

• 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.
  • Thanks to Wingflier for the report and save.

• 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".
  • 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 :)

• 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.
  • Thanks to Diazo and others for inspiring this change.

Congratulating The Winners Of The "Aim the Nerfbat of Damocles: Player-side (III)" Poll

• 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.

• 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:
  • 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.
    • 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.
  • 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).

• In honor of coming in third in the poll, the Spirecraft Scout:
  • Removed normal attrition while on higher-mark enemy planets.
  • Instead limited the range of these like we do with transports:
    • 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.
    • They cannot be repaired by another unit under any circumstances.
    • 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.

Congratulating The Winners Of The "Aim the Nerfbat of Damocles: AI-side (III)" Poll

• 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.

• Ravenous Shadow, in honor of tying for second:
  • Base Speed from 84 => 75.
  • Base Attack Power from 60k => 54k.
  • Shots per salvo from 45 => 40.
  • Base Attack Range from 17k => 15k.
  • 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.

• Interplanetary Munitions Booster, as an honorable mention (4th place, if it matters):
  • AIP-on-death from 20 to 5.

• 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!
  • 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.
  • Grav Turret knowledge unlock cost from 750/3000/4000 => 500/1500/2500.
  • Since gravity is no longer as game-changing, immunity to Gravity has been removed from the following units:
    • Hunter/Killer
    • Spire Starship
    • Raptor
    • Spire Corvette
    • Super Hybrid
    • All Golems (except the Devourer)
    • All Spirecraft (except the Spirecraft Scout; all scouts are immune to gravity)
    • Resistance Fighter ships (from the base game minor faction)
    • Marauder ships (from the base game minor faction)
    • 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.

• In honor of tying for second in the poll, Counterattack guard posts:
  • 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.
  • Wave timer down from 14 minutes => 10 minutes, due to player complaints that it was annoying to have to wait that long.

Core Versions Of 18 Additional Fleet Ship Types

• Added Core (MkV) versions of the 18 fleet ship types (15 base game, 3 TZR) that did not already have them:
  • Space Tank
  • Sniper
  • Electric Shuttle
  • Vorticular Cutlass
  • Infiltrator
  • Eye Bot
  • Autocannon Minipod
  • Deflector Drone
  • Ether Jet
  • Shield Bearer
  • Anti-Armor Ship
  • MLRS
  • Munitions Booster
  • Teleport Raider
  • Teleport Battle Station
  • Zenith Auto Bomb
  • Armor Booster
  • Zenith Viral Shredder

• Core Fabricators for all of the above are now eligible for seeding as fabs during mapgen.

• Since the available variety has increased, the number of Core Fabs seeded during mapgen has been increased by 2.

Prerelease 6.012 Darkened Sky, Altered Starship

(Released March 12th, 2013)

• Fixed a bug where Hive-Golem wasps were contributing way too much charge to a vengeance generator on death.
  • Thanks to Vyndicu for the report.

• 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.
  • Thanks to Faulty Logic for the report.

• 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).
  • Thanks to Wingflier, Moonshine Fox, LaughingThesaurus, Diazo, Winge, TechSY730, and Aeson for inspiring this change.

Starship Rebalance (Later-game power, role compared to fleet ships)

• 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Thanks to chemical_art, TechSY730, Winge, Faulty Logic, Diazo, onyhow, Hearteater, Dichotomy, Jonz0rz, Wingflier, and others for inspiring these changes.

• Amendments/Fixes to some of the Spire/Zenith Starship changes from last version
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

• Added a new type of important capturable structure: the Advanced Starship Constructor.
  • 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.
  • The Scout Starship and Enclave Starship already have mkIV versions at the normal starship constructor and are not on this one's menu.
  • 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).
  • 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.
  • These try very hard to not seed on the same planet as an Adv Fact.
  • In new games with CSGs on, a planet with an ASC will get a CSG-B generator like a planet with an AdvFact would.

• 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.
  • 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).

• 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).

• Spire Corvette:
  • 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.
    • 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.
  • 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).
  • 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.
  • Note that these are really considered a "bonus fleet ship" for balance purposes, they're just built like a starship.

• 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:

• 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

• Flagship:
  • Ship cap from 4 => 2 (health and damage adjusted to maintain cap values).
  • 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.
  • Base CapDPS from 50k => 30k.
  • Cap m/c cost from 240k/160k => 120k/80k.
  • Cap e cost from 40k => 20k.

• Zenith Starship:
  • Ship cap from 2 => 1 (health and damage adjusted to maintain cap values).
  • Base CapDPS from 50k => 40k.
  • Cap m/c cost is 80k/120k (has been since last version, but worth mentioning).
  • Cap e cost is 20k (ditto).

• Spire Starship:
  • Ship cap from 2 => 1 (health and damage adjusted to maintain cap values).
  • Base CapDPS from 300k => 180k.
  • Cap m/c cost is 90k/110k (has been since last version, but worth mentioning).
  • Cap e cost is 20k (ditto).

• Heavy Bomber Starship:
  • Ship cap from 4 => 2 (health and damage adjusted to maintain cap values).
  • CapHealth from 28M => 36M.
  • Base CapDPS from 140k => 120k (would have dropped it more, but generally getting a feel that these felt underpowered previously).
  • Cap m/c cost from 340k/60k => 170k/30k.
  • Cap e cost from 40k => 20k.

• Plasma Siege Starship:
  • Ship cap from 4 => 2 (health and damage adjusted to maintain cap values).
  • Base Cap DPS from 100k => 90k (would have dropped it more, but generally getting a feel that these felt underpowered previously).
  • Cap m/c cost from 60k/340k => 30k/170k.
  • Cap e cost from 40k => 20k.
  • Base move speed from 8 => 12 (now same as missile frigate, the slowest triangle ship).

• Leech Starship:
  • Ship cap from 4 => 2 (health and damage adjusted to maintain cap values).
  • Base Cap DPS from 72k => 40k.
  • Cap m/c cost from 240k/160k => 120k/80k.
  • Cap e cost from 40k => 20k.

Dark Spire Revamp

• The Dark Spire minor faction is a lot of fun, at least for players who like that kind of thing.
  • But over the months two key problems have been identified:
    • 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.
    • Particularly once there are a lot of Dark Spire spawned, they don't really do much.
  • 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.
  • Thanks to Jefferson, chemical_art, Cinth, Vyndicu, Faulty Logic, and others for inspiring these changes.

• The Dark Spire Wraith has had its health, damage, and strength-cost (used when computing how many to spawn) doubled.
  • Effectively this halves the size of their spawns while keeping the overall power of those spawns the same.

• The Vengeance Generators now spawn different versions of the 3 Dark Spire minor faction ships, with different stats to better facilitate spawn "packing":
  • Normal Combat Ship: 5 times as powerful as the Wraith.
  • Advanced Combat Ship: 5 times as powerful as the Normal Combat Ship. So like 25 Wraiths.
  • Command Ship: 5 times as powerful as the Advanced Combat Ship. So like _125_ Wraiths.
  • 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).

• 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.

• 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.

• About every 5 minutes:
  • 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).
  • 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.

• All the vengeance-spawned dark spire ships (not the ones from the nebula) are now immune to the black hole generator.

Prerelease 6.011 Nemesis of the Dubious Honor

(Released March 5th, 2012)

• 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).
  • Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.

• 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.
  • Thanks to Aziphos for the report and save.

• Added a column to the reference export which lists all the types of modules that the ship on that row can mount.
  • Thanks to Diazo for the suggestion.

• Minor faction neinzul younglings (generally launched from roaming enclaves) now give far less "charge" to a Dark Spire Vengeance Generator when they die.
  • Thanks to Vyndicu for reporting where this was causing problems. If by "problems" you mean a galaxy completely overrun by Dark Spire.

Congratulating The Winners Of The 9th Worst-Unit Poll

• Decoy drones, in honor of tying for first in the latest what-needs-a-buff poll:
  • 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).
  • Base energy cost from 1000 => 250.
  • Base speed from 14 => 26 (so now same as bombers).
  • Base health from 200k => 1M.
  • Thanks to Dichotomy, Faulty Logic, LintMan, Vacuity, Diazo, and the voters for inspiring these changes.

• 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) :
  • Short Range Guard Post:
    • Renamed To Needler Guard Post.
    • Hull Type from Medium => Light.
    • Base Health from 700k*mk => 3M*mk (about 1/5th a cap of fighters).
    • Base Attack Range from 6000 => 7500 (same as needler turret).
    • Shots-per-salvo from 1 => 5.
    • Base DPS from 1267*mk => 50k*mk (right around a cap of fighters).
    • 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).
  • MLRS Guard Post:
    • Hull Type from Heavy => Medium.
    • Base Health from 700k*mk => 3M*mk.
    • Base Attack Range from 7000 => 12000 (same as MLRS turret).
    • Shots-per-salvo from 11/21/31/41/51 => 30.
    • Base DPS from 1700*mk => 50k*mk.
    • Vs-Hull-Type bonus list from "Light (16x), Swarmer (8x), Neutron (4x)" => "Light, Swarmer, Neutron, UltraLight, CloseCombat (all 6x)" (same types as MLRS turret).
  • Missile Guard Post:
    • Base Health from 700k*mk => 3M*mk.
    • Seconds-per-salvo from 7/6/5/4/3 => 3.
    • Base Attack Range from 17k/27k/37k/47k/57k => 27k (same as Missile turret).
    • Base DPS from 13k*mk => 50k*mk.
    • Vs-Hull-Type bonus list from "UltraLight (8x), Medium (6x)" => "UltraLight, Medium, Polycrystal, Neutron, Composite (all 6x)" (same types as Missile turret).
  • Passive Guard Post:
    • Renamed To Laser Guard Post (hey, at least it's not now the Passive-Aggressive Guard Post).
    • Hull Type from Structural => Heavy.
    • Base Health from 1.4M*mk => 3M*mk.
    • Shot type from flare => laser.
    • Base Attack Range from 8000 => 9000 (same as Laser turret).
    • Shots-per-salvo from 1 => 4.
    • Base DPS from (negligible) => 50k*mk.
    • Vs-Hull-Type bonus list from (well, nothing) => "Refractive, UltraHeavy, Polycrystal, Heavy (all 6x)" (same types as Laser turret).
  • Anti-Starship Arachnid Guard Post:
    • Hull Type from Light => Polycrystal.
    • Base Health from 1.4M*mk => 3M*mk.
    • Base Attack Range from 10k/12k/14k/16k/18k => 14k.
    • Seconds-per-salvo from 15 => 5.
    • Base DPS from 10k*mk => 500k*mk (bear in mind these cannot target small stuff, it's an anti-starship sort of thing).
    • Vs-Hull-Type bonus list still empty, but now has 0x multiplier vs Scout hull so it doesn't just gank your transports.
    • Shot type from laser => energy wave (so now like a sentinel frigate shot; just aesthetic for the most part, makes it stand out better).
  • Stealth Guard Post: didn't actually need a buff, but:
    • Renamed to Cloaker Guard Post.
    • Are now un-cloakable; they still cloak stuff near them but will always be revealed themselves.
  • 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.
  • Thanks to Faulty Logic, LaughingThesaurus, Vacuity, TechSY730, Diazo, Hearteater, chemical_art, and the voters for inspiring these changes.

• Spire Starships, in honor of coming in third in the poll:
  • Ship cap from 4 => 2, with health and damage adjusted to maintain same cap-health and cap-dps.
  • 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.
  • 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).
  • 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.
  • Base Cap-Health from 16M*mk => 24M*mk.
  • Base Cap-DPS from 240k*mk => 300k*mk.
  • Thanks to Diazo, Faulty Logic, Winge, chemical_art, Dichotomy, TechSY730, and the voters for inspiring these changes.

• Zenith Starships, as an honorable mention from the poll:
  • Ship cap from 4 => 2, with health and damage adjusted to maintain same cap-health and cap-dps.
  • 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.
  • Knowledge cost from 1000/2500/4000 => 1500/3000/4000, in accordance with their effective mark promotion.
  • Base Cap-Health from 24M*mk => 36M*mk.
  • Seconds-per-salvo from 8 => 4, damage adjusted to maintain DPS.
  • Thanks to chemical_art, Faulty Logic, TechSY730, Diazo, and the voters for inspiring these changes.

Reworking The AI's Counterbalance To Champions

• Now, when the humans have champions, the AI gets some offensive nemesis champions.
  • It doesn't check for this until 60 minutes into the game.
  • After that, it checks roughly every minute.
  • 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).
  • 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.
    • The count spawned is 1/10th the target number of champions or 1, whichever is greater.
    • The spawned nemesis champions start in Threatfleet behavior (and there's no rule that can take it out of that).
  • 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.
  • Thanks to Wingflier, Histidine, Faulty Logic, Dichotomy, Confirmation_Bias, and others for inspiring this change.

• 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.
  • Thanks to Wingflier, Histidine, Faulty Logic, Dichotomy, Confirmation_Bias, and others for inspiring this change.

• 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.
  • Thanks to Toranth and others for inspiring this change.

Prerelease 6.010 Back From The Valley

(Released February 22nd, 2013)

• 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.
  • Thanks to Wingflier for the report and save.

• 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).
  • 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.
  • Thanks to Minotaar, TechSY730, Hearteater, Kahuna, and others for anecdotal and log-based evidence of the problem.

• 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.
  • 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?
  • Mainly this is to prevent lag, but also helps bring the friendly enclaves a bit down from their previous overpowered-ness.
  • Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.

• 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.
  • Just trying to keep the CPU impact of these down in the more extreme situations.
  • Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring this change.

• Rebalance of the Ancient Shadows "brutal pick" core posts:
  • Teuthida
    • Drone lifetime from 240 seconds => 60 seconds.
    • Spawner health halved.
  • Wrath Lance
    • Rotation speed halved.
    • Health halved.
  • Grav Reactor
    • Drone lifetime from 240 seconds => 60 seconds.
    • Spawner health halved.
  • Thanks to Diazo, TechSY730, and others for inspiring these changes.

• AI Strategic Reserves:
  • Replenishment rate down to about 2/3rds what it was.
  • 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.
  • Thanks to Kahuna for inspiring these changes.

Prerelease 6.009

(Released November 21st, 2012)

• 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_.
  • 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.
  • Thanks to Zebreu for the report and save.

Prerelease 6.008

(Released November 21st, 2012)

• Fixed a null exception bug that could happen in some cases in the ally-enclave logic.
  • Thanks to ussdefiant for the report and save.

• 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).
  • Thanks to ussdefiant for the report.

Prerelease 6.007 Burying The Hatchet

(Released November 20th, 2012)

• Fixed a bug where the Armor Booster Astro Trains were not actually having the armor boost effect.
  • Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.

• 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.

• 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.
  • Thanks to Wanderer for the report and save.

• 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:
  • (listed as "new name" <= "old name")
  • LogicLog_AIMechanic_CarrierEarlyPopCombination.txt <= CarrierEarlyPopComputationLog.txt
  • LogicLog_AIMechanic_CounterHacking.txt <= CounterSaboteurSpawns.txt
  • LogicLog_AIMechanic_Reinforcements_AIThread.txt <= ReinforcementsLog_AIThread.txt
  • LogicLog_AIMechanic_Reinforcements_MainThread.txt <= ReinforcementsLog_MainThread.txt
  • LogicLog_AIMechanic_SpecialForces.txt <= SpecialForcesLogicLog.txt
  • LogicLog_AIMechanic_StrategicReserve.txt <= SpecialForcesLogicLog.txt (so it's no longer combined with the SF log)
  • LogicLog_AIMechanic_ThreatFleet.txt <= SpecialForcesLogicLog.txt (so it's no longer combined with the SF log)
  • LogicLog_AIMechanic_Waves_AIThread.txt <= AIThreadWaveComputationLog.txt
  • LogicLog_AIMechanic_Waves_MainThread.txt <= MainThreadWaveComputationLog.txt
  • LogicLog_AIPlot_AstroTrains.txt <= AstroTrainLogicLog.txt
  • LogicLog_AIPlot_HybridHives_AIThread.txt <= HybridHyjinksLog_AIThread.txt
  • LogicLog_AIPlot_HybridHives_MainThread.txt <= HybridHyjinksLog_MainThread.txt
  • LogicLog_EventAttackPopulation.txt <= EventAttackCompositionInfoLog.txt
  • LogicLog_MinorFaction_DarkSpire.txt <= DarkSpireMinorFactionLogicLog.txt
  • LogicLog_OffroadScenarios.txt <= OffroadScenarioLog.txt
  • 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.
  • Thanks to Wanderer for inspiring this change.

• Command Station rebuilding behavior:
  • 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.
  • Once the stall timer is over, Remains Rebuilders looking for something new to rebuild will give command station remains absolute priority.
  • The stall timer on non-military command stations from 4 minutes => 2 minutes (military ones still get 1 minute).
  • Thanks to Sunshine, DrTall, TechSY730, Varone, Hearteater, Lancefighter, KDR_11k, and Astilious for inspiring these changes.

• 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.
  • Thanks to Lancefighter and others for the report.

• 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.
  • Thanks to Eternaly_Lost for the report.

• Logistics Stations:
  • Enemy Speed Reduction from 50% at all marks => 18.75% / 37.5% / 50%.
  • Ally Speed Increase from 100% (which all command stations give) to 200%.
    • They also all still give the +40/60/80 to ally speed, which other command stations don't give.
  • 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.

• Spire Railcluster hull type from Polycrystal => Composite.
  • 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.
  • So now the triangle counter for these is the missile frigate, which may survive long enough to kill it.
  • Thanks to Chris_Stalis, TechSY730, and others for inspiring this change.

• 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.
  • Thanks to contingencyplan for the report.

Human-Ally Roaming Enclaves Return

• 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
    • Thanks to Cyborg, Spikey00, TechSY730, Sunshine, Faulty Logic, and others for inspiring these changes.

• 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.
  • 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.
  • There are five basic types of behavior the coherent-fleet logic can do:
    • Priority-defense of human homeworlds.
      • 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.
      • This takes priority over any other behavior.
      • 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.
    • Defend human planets.
      • Considers moving to any planet with a human command station and an AI presence.
      • 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.
    • Assist human attacks.
      • 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).
      • 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.
    • Attack independently.
      • Considers moving to any planet without a command station or with an AI command station, and an AI presence.
      • 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.
    • Idle rally
      • 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).
      • This behavior is always available, you can't tell them to not do nothing if there's nothing to do.
  • When considering behaviors other than the emergency homeworld defense and the "nothing else to do" rally:
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • If more than one planet is found eligible by the enabled behaviors, it picks randomly between the ones nearer the human homeworlds.
    • Once a planet is chosen it sticks with it as long as it remains eligible, or gets the emergency-defend-homeworld override.
  • A note on these enclave-related chat commands:
    • 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).
      • 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.
      • 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.
    • These commands are not cheats (so they do not require "enable cheats", and do not flag the game as having had cheats done).

• 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.

• The spawning logic has also been changed:
  • 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.
    • 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).
  • 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).

• 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:
  • 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.
    • For reference, human-built enclave starships have radar dampening of 8000 or lower, so this particular change may actually be too weak.
  • 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.
  • May now fly through enemy forcefields, but still can't directly shoot things under them.
  • 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.
  • 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.
    • 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).

• 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).

Prerelease 6.006 The Pain Train

(Released November 13th, 2012)

• Rebel Human Colony health from 400k => 5M.
  • Thanks to Don Carsto for reporting a situation where AOE apparently killed one of these as an afterthought.

• Fixed some longstanding GUI issues with the handling of mouse-down (where it should have been mouse-up) with textboxes.

• 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.
  • 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.
  • Thanks to Nypyren and chemical_art for inspiring this change.

• 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:
  • Custom Search (Narrow)
    • 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.
  • Custom Search (Broad)
    • 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.
  • Both of these use the "text filtering" mechanism just implemented for the reference dropdown, so you you can get to the desired selection faster.
  • Both of these can be keybound like all the other galaxy display options, but default is unbound.
  • Thanks to PineappleSam for the suggestion and a whole ton of other players for supporting it on mantis.

• In response to a longstanding request from many players to make Astro Trains interesting:
  • The plot is now like the other variable-intensity plots, with settings from 0 to 10 (can be set differently per AI player).
  • The intensity controls the number of stations seeded during mapgen.
  • 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.
    • This group will move together through the rest of the game.
    • The size of the group is based on plot intensity and whether the AI is a Train Master.
    • 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.
  • 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.
    • None of the new types have guns either. The danger posed by these is based on other mechanics.
  • 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.
  • The following new train varieties have been added (brace yourself, this isn't going to be pretty) :
    • Cargo
      • 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).
    • Tachyon Jammer
      • Prevents human tachyon emitters from working on the planet it's on.
    • Gravity Jammer
      • 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).
    • Tractor Jammer
      • Prevents human tractor beams from working on the planet it's on.
    • Forcefield Jammer
      • Prevents human forcefields/shields from working on the planet it's on.
    • Radar Jammer
      • 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.
    • Armor Booster
      • Acts like the unit of the same name: boosts armor of all AI ships on the planet.
    • Armor Inhibitor
      • 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).
    • Attack Booster
      • Boosts the attack of all AI ships on the planet.
    • Tachyon
      • Provides planetary-wide tachyon coverage for the AI.
    • Gravity
      • Halves the speed of all enemy-to-AI ships on the planet.
    • Tractor
      • Has a bunch of tractor beams.
    • Widow
      • Has a bunch of paralyzing tractor beams.
    • Shield
      • 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.
    • Repair
      • Basically a super-MRS.
    • EMP
      • 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.
    • Nuclear
      • 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.
    • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Thanks to Sunshine, Toranth, Draco18s, TechSY730, Kahuna, Hearteater, and others for inspiring this change. They probably wish they hadn't said anything.

• 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).

• 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.
  • Thanks to Deus Draco for the report.

• 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.
  • Thanks to Lancefighter, Night, Lord Of Nothing, and Drin for reports and saves.

• 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).
  • These carriers, and any ships they deploy, will all be Special Forces and follow that logic.
  • 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.

• Fixed a bug where raid eyes could be triggered by enemy presence on adjacent planets.
  • 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 :)
  • Thanks to Lancefighter and contingencyplan for reporting.

• Spire Corvette main-gun range from 3500 => 8500.
  • This is still shorter range than its shortest-range module, last we checked, so it should still work fine there.
  • Thanks to Cinth for the suggestion.

• 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.
  • Thanks to chemical_art for the suggestion.

• 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.
  • Thanks to Faulty Logic for the suggestion.

Prerelease 6.005 Burning The Candle At Both Ends

(Released October 31st, 2012)

• 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:
  • 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).
  • 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.
  • Thanks to the players who provided feedback and votes on this.

• 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.
  • Thanks to HitmanN for bringing this to our attention and helping us figure out what was happening.

• 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.
  • Thanks to TechSY730 and many other players for suggesting.

• 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).
  • Thanks to the players who provided feedback and votes on this.

• Fixed a bug in the past couple versions where the Spire's Frigate-level champion was using the wrong icon in the planetary summary.
  • Thanks to Jeffersn for the report.

• Redid the far-zoom icons for the 9 LotS bonus ships:
  • Spire Armor Rotter
  • Spire Blade Spawner (and Spire Blade)
  • Spire Gravity Drain
  • Spire Gravity Ripper
  • Spire Maw
  • Spire MiniRam
  • Spire Stealth Battleship
  • Spire Teleporting Leech
  • Spire Tractor Platform
  • Thanks to HitmanN for more excellent pixelart.

• Also in honor of being one of the winners of the "Aim the Nerfbat of Damocles: AI-side (II)" poll, the Zenith Bombard:
  • 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).
  • Thanks to the players who provided feedback and votes on this.

• In honor of being one of the winners of the "Worst Unit Of The (time interval) Award (VIII)" poll, the Teleport Raider:
  • Ship Cap from 488 => 320. (those are high-cap-scale numbers)
    • Health, Attack, M+C cost, and E cost automatically adjusted accordingly, before the further changes below.
    • This just cuts down a bit on the inevitable disadvantages of being so high-cap in terms of damage loss to armor, etc.
  • Cap Health from 5.145M*mk => 10M*mk.
  • Cap Base DPS from 49k*mk => 70k*mk.
  • Armor Piercing from 300*mk => 750*mk.
  • Effective Range from 7k => 8k.
  • Cap Energy cost from 25k => 20k.
  • Thanks to the players who provided feedback and votes on this.

• Also in honor of being one of the winners of the "Worst Unit Of The (time interval) Award (VIII)" poll, the Infiltrator:
  • Ship Cap from 544 => 320. (those are high-cap-scale numbers)
    • Health, Attack, M+C cost, and E cost automatically adjusted accordingly, before the further changes below.
    • This just cuts down a bit on the inevitable disadvantages of being so high-cap in terms of damage loss to armor, etc.
  • Cap Health from 11,124,400*mk => 15M*mk.
  • Cap Base DPS from 49320*mk => 70k*mk.
  • Now has bonus vs medium (of 4x, like its other bonuses).
  • Base Move Speed from 26 => 32.
  • Now has cloaking (between the name and the role, it just doesn't make sense not to).
  • Ammo type from Flare => Dark Matter, to prevent excessive nightmare generation.
  • Thanks to the players who provided feedback and votes on this.

• And in honor of being third place in the winners of the "Worst Unit Of The (time interval) Award (VIII)" poll, the Superfortress:
  • 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.
  • At the same time, removing the AI version's 3x health multiplier. It seems unnecessary now.
  • Base Armor from 5k => 500k.
    • 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.
  • Seconds per salvo from 3 => 2.
  • Shots per salvo from 120 => 250. (I said you could hide)
  • Base move speed from 3 => 12 (same as forts)
  • Thanks to the players who provided feedback and votes on this.

• Fixed a bug in recent versions where the Doom Accelerator Cannon modules were largely confused into thinking they were Impulse Reaction Cannon modules.
  • Thanks to Bognor and chemical_art for the report.

• Honorable mention from the "Worst Unit Of The (time interval) Award (VIII)" poll, the Zenith Power Generator:
  • Build cost (from trader) from 7.2M total m+c => 5M.
  • Base Max Health from 100k => 2M.
  • Ongoing metal+crystal cost (10 each per second) removed.
  • Energy production from 400k => 600k (equivalent to 4 planets' worth of energy collectors).
  • Thanks to the players who provided feedback and votes on this.

• Another honorable mention from the "Worst Unit Of The (time interval) Award (VIII)" poll, the Champion Drone Bays:
  • Bomber Drone base movement speed increased from 70 => 84.
  • Slicer Drone base movement speed increased from 140 => 168.
  • Interceptor Drone base movement speed increased from 90 => 110.
  • Champion Drone bays production:
    • Interval between "batches" from 2 => 5.
    • Batch size from 1 => 3.
  • Thanks to the players who provided feedback and votes on this.

Prerelease 6.004

(Released October 29th, 2012)

• Fixed a bug in the last version that had changed the colors of your ships in the planetary summary.
  • Thanks to Lancefighter for the report.

Prerelease 6.003 Fortress-size It

(Released October 29th, 2012)

• Fixed a longstanding (forever, basically) bug where non-wave AIs (Turtle, Support Corps, etc) would not launch waves even in a Defender-campaign game.
  • Thanks to Gith, Cinth, and others for reporting this.

• AI Home Command Stations have been taught a new self-preservation technique for dealing with a very specific threat.
  • Thanks to Kahuna for inspiring its new sense of humor.

• 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.
  • Note that the majority of champion XP normally comes from winning nebula scenarios, which already give XP to all champions in the game.
  • Thanks to contingencyplan, Moonshine Fox, Wingflier, and Cinth for the suggestion.

• 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).
  • This will not impact AI spire corvettes that already exist in savegames prior to this version; just newly-spawned ones.
  • Thanks to ussdefiant for the report and save.

• 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.
  • Thanks to the participants of this poll and for their feedback on this issue.

• Added modular-fort versions of the following champion modules:
  • Acid Jet.
  • Paralyzer.
  • Polarizer.
  • Impulse-Reaction.
  • Heat Beam.
  • Nanosubverter.
  • Insanity Inducer.
  • Translocator.
  • Doom Accelerator.
  • Photon Lance.
  • Rail Cluster.
  • Rail Cannon.
  • Plasma Siege Cannon.
  • Flak.
  • Bomber Bay.
  • Interceptor Bay.
  • Slicer Bay.
  • 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).
  • 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).
  • Thanks to Cinth for reminding us to make this happen.

• Redid the far-zoom-icons for all the Ancient Shadows bonus ship types:
  • Neinzul Scapegoat.
  • Youngling Firefly.
  • Saboteur.
  • Spire Corvette.
  • Spire Railcluster.
  • Tackle Drone Launcher.
  • Zenith Medic Frigate.
  • Zenith Reprocessor.
  • Zenith Siege Turret.
  • Thanks to HitmanN for the excellent pixelart.

• 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.
  • Thanks to HitmanN for this one too.

• Added two new cheat codes (entered during the game via the chatline, if cheats are enabled) :
  • running with scissors
    • Removes all AI Eyes (sentry/ion/parasite/nuclear/etc) from the game.
  • revenge is best not served
    • Removes all Counterattack Guard Posts from the game.
      • 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.
  • Thanks to triggerman602, LaughingThesaurus, and Lancefighter for inspiring these.

• 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.
  • Thanks to Kahuna for the suggestion.

• Corrected an obsolete description for the counterattack guard post saying the resulting waves were low-warning.
  • Thanks to Lord of Nothing for the report.

Prerelease 6.002 Better Than A Stick In The Eye

(Released October 25th, 2012)

• Fixed a really longstanding bug where human rebel colony rebellions couldn't happen if the player had not conquered any mkII AI planets.
  • Thanks to Faulty Logic and others for reporting.

• 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.

• 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.
  • 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.
  • Thanks to Faulty Logic, Kahuna, Hearteater, and others for inspiring this change.

• 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.
  • Thanks to Faulty Logic for sealing the fate of many.

• Deepstrike threat:
  • Now triggers 1/20th as often, but each spawn is 20 times as big.
  • Now respects relative unit strength (so 1 blade spawner != 1 fighter, cost-wise).
  • Now spawns on a random AI planet instead of always on an AI homeworld.
  • Now spawns with the ThreatFleet behavior instead of just normal threat.
  • Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring these changes.

• Fixed bug where champion-only players could try to build units from the zenith trader. Not really succeed, lacking resources, but try.
  • Thanks to bonreu and Coppermantis for reporting.

• 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).
  • Thanks to Lancefighter for the suggestion.

• Finally got around to finishing the AI Eye changes from the poll it won some months ago.
  • Added the following new eye types:
    • Raid Eye (like a raid engine if it's triggered too long)
    • Nuclear Eye (nukes the planet, and itself, if it's triggered too long, really hurts on AIP)
    • Threatening Eye (spawns threatfleet ships elsewhere in the galaxy every 5 seconds or so of being triggered)
    • Translocating Eye (powered-up version of the mkIII military command station's new weapon, only fires when eye is triggered)
    • Plasma Eye (massively-higher-Rate-of-Fire version of the mkIII plasma siege starship's weapon, only fires when eye is triggered).
  • Added "Core" variants of the Sentry, Raid, Threatening, Translocating, and Plasma eyes.
    • 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).
    • They are immune to nukes and a few other things normal eyes aren't.
    • They emit planet-wide tachyon coverage (even when powered down, for those types that can power down).
  • 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.

Prerelease 6.001 There's Always At Least One

(Released October 22nd, 2012)

• 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.
  • Thanks to Kronic and menzel72 for the reports and save.

• Fixed a bug where unlocking the MkI champion missile module would count as MkV for the purpose of the Specialist achievement.
  • Thanks to Jeffersn for the suggestion.

• Fixed a localization-missing error that could happen on the high scores window.
  • Thanks to Cinth for the report.

• The "Reduce Visual Stimulation" now suppresses the "whiteout" effect of warhead detonations, etc.
  • Thanks to Jeffersn for the suggestion.

• Fixed several potential unhandled-errors and desync situations that could happen with the scrap-wave mechanic.
  • 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.
  • Thanks to Cinth for the report.

• Fixed a longstanding bug where the Stats window -> Military tab -> "# Built" column values ended in a % sign.
  • Thanks to Volatar for the report.

• 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.
  • Thanks to Faulty Logic and chemical_art for the report.

• Fixed a bug where a scapegoat could regen _any number_ of allied ships that died in exactly the same frame, rather than just one.
  • 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.
  • Thanks to Switch for the report and save.

• 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.
  • Thanks to Cinth and Coppermants for the suggestion.

• 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).
  • Note: this won't affect saves from previous versions, because the posts are already seeded there.
  • Thanks to Volatar and other for reporting the confusion.

• Brightened the "Shields" display that shows on the resource bar when using a champion.
  • Thanks to Spikey00 for the suggestion.