AI War:Light of the Spire

What exactly is added in the Light of the Spire expansion?

A: This expansion is still in beta: beta means it's not finished, and that you should expect bugs and balance issues until it gets out of beta. But we're making it available to folks early, because there's already some seriously cool stuff in here that we think you'll enjoy, and we'd also love feedback on it all. Light of the Spire will be released in the first week of December or thereabouts, so the development time schedule is very short on this one -- we're leveraging a lot of groundwork that we put in place in 4.0, as well as picking the features that go into this very carefully, in order to make this possible.

But, even so, we're obviously concerned about scope creep and want to avoid having to go back on a feature we promise. So with that in mind, we're being rather uncharacteristically secretive about the features in this expansion until they come out. Basically, the only stuff we'll talk about in concrete terms in advance are things we know we can without a doubt accomplish in this timeframe. Stay tuned over the next three weeks or so, and all will be revealed as that time passes. If you want to wait until after that period to order or preorder this one, we quite understand. We think you'll agree that this is the best expansion yet to AI War when you see it, though. Again: stay tuned!

New Alien Race

Ravaged by their recent encounters with the same AIs that pushed humanity to the brink of extinction, the Spire are an alien race that have also been all but destroyed. However, while the AIs were successful in their surprise attack against the Spire, the Spire are far more powerful than even the AIs seem to have realized. The Zenith were broken-down and ancient when humanity encountered them, but the Spire were at the height of their deadly power until quite recently.

Now the splintered remains of their race are regrouping, and entering the galaxy with a vengeance. Their attitude toward humanity, who after all spawned the AIs that harmed the Spire so, is unclear. Proceed with caution.

New Bonus Ship Classes

There are 9 new bonus ship classes added as part of this expansion, comprising 50 ships in all (45 for the bonus ship types themselves, then 5 additional for the spire blades that the spire blade generators create):

• Spire Stealth Battleship (Mark I-V)
  • 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).
  • Thanks to KDR_11k for suggesting.

• Spire Teleporting Leech (Mark I-V)
  • Large teleporting ship fires lightning shots. Reclaims enemy ships it kills (reclaimed ships have health = half damage inflicted by reclamator).

• Spire Gravity Drain (Mark I-V)
  • Large, slow ship slows the movement of enemy ships near to it. Also has powerful short-range lasers.

• Spire Gravity Ripper (Mark I-V)
  • 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.
  • Thanks to KDR_11k for suggesting.

• Spire Mini Ram (Mark I-V)
  • 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.
  • Thanks to RCIX for suggesting.

• Spire Tractor Platform (Mark I-V)
  • 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.

• Spire Maw (Mark I-V)
  • 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.

• Spire Blade Spawner (Mark I-V)
  • Large central ship has weak guns, but continously spawns smaller independent blades that crash into enemy ships.
  • This also adds mark I-V of Spire Blades.
    • 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.
  • Thanks to soMe_RandoM for suggesting.

• Spire Armor Rotter (Mark I-V)
  • 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.
  • Thanks to Salamander for suggesting.

New Minor Factions

• Fallen Spire
  • "Minor" faction is something of a misnomer with this one. The fallen spire minor faction adds in a scripted progression of events (sort of like a "quest") that players can opt to pursue or not in any game with the minor faction turned on. While the scripted progression is always the same, it interacts with the dynamic components of the game in such a way that that the experience should be satisfyingly different for many playthroughs.
  • This is one of the anchor features of the expansion, but as it's still heavily inwork we're keeping quiet on a lot of the planned features for this until we've got them implemented.

New AI Plots

At this time it is undecided if there will be new AI Plots -- probably not, our focus is elsewhere.

Other New Ships Available For Direct Unlock By Players

At this time it is undecided if there will be new ships for direct unlock by players -- probably not, our focus is on ships unlocked via a new mechanism unique (so far) to this expansion.

New "Advanced Materials"

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.

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.

New Ship Class: Spirecraft

This is to be another anchor feature of the expansion, and it's really cool, but we're keeping a bit quiet on the specifics until we have the first ones implemented. But the general idea is that you'll have to go on missions into AI territory, and then construct these ships inside AI territory, which is a new dynamic. Then the ships themselves have powerful and exciting abilities, putting them partway between a starship and a golem in terms of power. Though there will be far more of these available to players in general, and in any given campaign, than there are golems.

Stay tuned for more details, but in the meantime we are actively looking for player suggestions for spirecraft ideas in our Idea Tracker. There's a lot of cool stuff planned already, but players always surprise us with things we never would have thought of.

Campaign Types

In the past, the only way to play the game was in what we're now calling "Conquest" mode: in other words, you play until the AI kills your home command stations or you kill theirs. An anchor feature of this expansion is the addition of new campaign types that completely change how that works.

• Defender
  • An alternate ruleset for AI War, where your goal is to survive for a certain length of time instead of conquering the AIs. You can select as many starting homeworlds as you want, and then you must defend them from brutal AI aggression (the No Waves AI modifier won't help you here). It is HIGHLY recommended that you select multiple planets to start if you want any chance of survival (unlike in Conquest, this won't affect ship caps). As long as at least one of your homeworlds is standing when the timer runs out, you win! In trial mode, the max trial time is 1/3 of the time limit.
  • There are variants for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, 2 hours, and 4 hours. We don't allow more flexibility in the time limits because each one requires a specific balance to be playable.
  • There are a lot of changes that come into play with the game when you use this mode. Among them:
    • Most of the good capturables are not seeded into the galaxy for players to capture. It's not expected that you'll be doing any capturing of AI planets.
    • There are no AI homeworlds, and all of the AI planets are mark V brutes.
    • Depending on combined the difficulty level you select for the two AIs, and what time limit variant you select, you'll have a lot of AI Progress right at the start of the game (in some cases 1000 or more), and the AI Progress automatically jumps upwards with every AI wave that is declared.
    • AI Waves are ever-present: the instant as one arrives, the next is declared. Depending on the time-limit variant you choose, though, the waves are spaced further apart.
    • Players start with 3x more resources, including knowledge, and Mark III Economic command stations on all their planets. However, colony ships, mercenary space docks, and missile silos are unavailable -- so when you lose a planet, you can't re-take it.
    • There are 16 possible starting home planets that confer bonus ship types to players, rather than just 8 (assuming the map is large enough to contain them all). However, there is no other way for players to get more bonus ship types during the course of the game.
    • All of the planets on the map can be chosen as starting home planets for players, whether or not they give a bonus ship type to them. Players can select literally every planet on the map if they like, or just one or two.
    • Unlike in conquest mode, having multiple planets at the start does not affect player ship caps (though it does still affect the number of AI Waves at a time). It's expected that usually players would choose a couple of planets with bonus ship types, and then a number without, to have a chance of surviving. The lower-time variants are particularly brutal, as they're basically a cage match with a very angry AI.
    • Most everything else from the Conquest campaign type is still in place, including multiplayer support, minor factions, AI plots (though not all would function, given that the Avenger would never have a chance to come out, for instance), AI types, map styles and planet counts, and so forth.

• Constructor
  • Details on this one aren't quite available yet, but the basic idea is that it's like Defender mode except without the time limit, and instead you have to build a certain number of a certain kind of structure in order to win.

New AI Special Weapons

This is going to be another big focus for the game, as usual for expansions. Expect around 10 each of new guard posts and guardians, for one thing, along with other special AI weapons and guardians.

Core AI Guard Posts

4 core AI guard posts have been added as part of this expansion.

• AI Core Raid Engine Guard Post
  • Launches brutal mark V 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 unannounced. These waves arrive around every four minutes and contain a broad mix of AI ships.

• AI Core Cross Planet Attack Guard Post
  • Launches brutal galaxy-wide cross planet attacks as soon as the human players bring military ships to this post's planet. These CPAs happen around every 13 minutes and are heavily influenced in their size by both the current AI Progress and the difficulty level of the AI controlling this post.

• AI Core Heavy Beam Guard Post
  • A massive long-range beam cannon can vaporize very many smaller craft in one blast, or do extreme damage to a larger target.

• AI Core Booster Guard Post
  • Middling weaponry, but significantly boosts both the munitions and the armor of all nearby AI ships.

AI Guardians

35 new AI guardians (5 marks each of 7 overall types) have been added as part of this expansion.

• AI Carrier Guardian
  • Mid-power, very high-health guardian that starts out with no ships inside it. As AI ships are damaged on the planet the carrier is on, they get inside the carrier and are slowly healed. When the carrier has enough ships inside it, it makes a beeline for player homeworlds.

• AI EMP Guardian
  • Quick mid-power guardian that lets off a planet-wide burst of EMP that only affects human ships -- stunning all of the non-EMP-immune human ships on the planet for a bit -- when it emerges from any wormhole.
  • Only appears on difficulty 7 and up.

• AI Self-Destruction Guardian
  • Exceptionally fragile but also quite vicious, this guardian is dangerous in death: like a lightning warhead, it emits a burst of area damage when it goes down.
  • Only appears on difficulty 8 and up.

• AI Special Forces Rally Guardian
  • Heavily armored, cloaked, fairly weak combatant acts as a mobile rally post for special forces AI ships. Unlike the special forces guard post, new AI ships won't spawn at this guardian, but they will rally to it as one of their patrol points -- this guardian thus does its best to get to the human homeworlds, thus attracting streams of other special forces ships when it can.

• AI Vampire Guardian
  • Tough long-range combatant that heals itself as it damages enemy ships.

• AI Warp Gate Guardian
  • High-health short-range combatant that also acts as a mobile warp gate. Careful of these, as when they are attacking into your territory they can provoke raids in unexpected places that were otherwise inaccessible to the AI via warp. Particularly hunts for the player homeworlds.
  • Only appears on difficulty 7 and up.

• AI Zombie Guardian
  • 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 guardian cannot attack ships that are immobile, have no attack, or are immune to reclamation.

New AI Types

The base game included 26 AI types, the Zenith Remnant added 14 more, and Children of Neinzul added an additional 6. Light of the Spire will add a few more AI types, but it's not yet decided how much of a focus that will be compared to the anchor features.

Easier

• Vanilla
  • Has absolutely no unusual powers. Just a plain old basic AI, with whatever unlocks happen to come with the map seed.

Harder

• Everything
  • Has absolutely every fleet ship and core ship type unlocked from the start.

New Map Styles

Eight new map types in all are added as part of this expansion, based on three overall stylings.

• Grid
  • Planets are organized into an orderly grid.
• Crosshatch
  • Planets are organized into an orderly grid with the angles also filled in.
• Maze A
  • Planets are organized into a maze-like grid that uses the Recursive Backtracker algorithm on a grid to create the maze.
• Maze A Easy
  • 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.
• Maze B
  • Planets are organized into a maze-like grid that uses the Recursive Backtracker algorithm on a crosshatch to create the maze.
• Maze B Easy
  • 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.
• Maze C
  • Planets are organized into a maze-like grid that uses the Prims algorithm on a grid to create the maze.
• Maze D
  • Planets are organized into a maze-like grid that uses the Prims algorithm on a crosshatch to create the maze.

New Music Tracks

In all, this expansion is expected to add several new in-game music tracks, although the exact number and length has not yet been determined. Tracks that are already complete are listed below.

• During-play tracks:
  • Light of the Spire

Other Miscellaneous Additions

• There may be a few new cheats.
• There will likely be some new achievements, just considering the new AI types and minor factions.

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