AI War 2:Zenith Onslaught Patch Notes

This is for alpha testing for the Zenith Onslaught. I'm using this to keep patch notes.

Feature List/Flavour

Chris, this section is intended as fodder for you for marketing and other writeups. Feel free to change anything to your taste. Also check out the section at the bottom for some ideas and mechanics you might find useful

It was thought that the Zenith were long-dead. But they are far from gone; they have come back with a vengeance. A dreadful Zenith Onslaught. It started one day when a strange Zenith probe turned up on your sensors. After checking out a particularly mineral-rich planet, the probe was followed by a giant Zenith Miner who proceeded to devour the planet. And now it seems like everywhere you look there are new Zenith menaces come to make your life harder...

The Zenith Onslaught is the second expansion for AI War 2. It's an expansion focused on making the galaxy feel rich and complex and changeable in new ways. It primarily provides Zenith-based factions that have their own agendas independent of humanity, unlike The Spire Rises, where all the factions cared about the player.

New Factions

AI War 2: Dark Zenith

AI War 2: Zenith Architrave

AI War 2: Zenith Miners

AI War 2: Nomad Planets

New Map/Galaxy Types

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

• Compass Map Type: Compass starts with a Cluster at the center of the galaxy, then a series of planets in rings around the central cluster that can only be accessed via that central cluster.

• Nomad Galaxy: All planets in the galaxy will move as if they are nomad planets. Leads to extremely chaotic and unique play.

New AI Types

• Geneticist AI Type: The AI gets Scourge units in addition to its own unit types

• Spire Hammer AI Type: The AI gets Spire units in addition to its own unit types

• Ragnarok AI Type: The AI gets Dark Alliance units in addition to its own unit types - do not use until chris does unit design

• Gladiator AI Type: The AI gets Zenith Architrave units in addition to its own unit types - do not use until chris does unit design

• Vengeful AI Type: Killing this AI's structures will provoke small exogalactic strikeforces against you

• Praetor AI Type: This AI has an extra-strong praetorian guard which is allowed to roam further from its Homeworld.
  • Has 2 implementations, Medium (praetorian can strike 4 planets from homeworld, up from 3) and Hard (praetorian can strike 6 planets from the homeworld).

New AI Abilities and Game Features

• Random Factions : You can now request "Random Factions", and can choose its allegiance and impact.

• Wormhole Borers : The AI now has the ability to create wormholes to allow its ships to bypass your defenses. They will spawn "Wormhole Borers", which will create a new wormhole. These are powerful structures, but you can destroy them to prevent the new wormhole from being created. Borers are gated behind an AIP threshold, and can be disabled in the game lobby as well.

Some unique interactions with previous factions

• Dyson Spheres can be set to spawn on a Nomad Planet if you have Nomad Planets enabled

• Dyson Spheres can be killed by Zenith Miners

Backported Features

• The AI can send Exogalactic War Units against minor factions that get too powerful

TODOs and patch notes

• Nomads should have a "regular orbits" and "Crazy shit" mode, where they can start at unusual spots and change orbits and stuff.

• Maybe another hack against the ZA ("Take an extra planet of Territory" perhaps? "Trigger an extra powerful Expansion mode (but you get some science)"? Perhaps a "ZA will give up this planet in its Territory, but will take several other planets")

• ZA do not appear to be spawning their unique Golems (noted by Zeus)

• Maybe a special interaction with the DZ? Players are not incentivized to interact with them currently. Players like incentives to include factions. Generally, the higher the risk, the higher the reward. Perhaps a unique Golem flagship with a complement of DZ units if players manage to kill a Jormangadur (noted by Zeus)

• make Jormangandur and/or they DZ in general have a scaling mechanism ties to how many FS cities the players have

It only took me like 5 cities before I was able to clear the DZ out -- The DS has a nice notification when you get a new city so that would be nice for the DZ if we go this route

Proposed DZ and ZA changes:

• The DZ will generate one powerful structure that is hackable like an ARS, but for a large selection of DZ units.
  • This is intended to be really hard, optional, but giving players access to those units should be really fun

• Each ZA portal will have a choice of 3 hacking options.
  • First is the Truce option, which works as it does now
  • Second is an ARS-style hack, where you get to steal a ship line from the ZA
  • Third is a forced-quiesce, where the ZA will be stuck not-in-war-mode for a while (15 minutes was suggested) so you can crush them easily.
    • You only ever get to make one choice.
    • If you pick item 2 or 3, the ZA will A. take a few more planets of Territory and B. dislike you permanently. Maybe they'll periodically send golems against you or something?

• Note that once the minor-faction ARS code is in, it would be possible to use this for any other faction/units. Maybe a ship line of Scourge warriors.....

2.117

• Fix a bug with Random Factions that was causing some exceptions
  • Thanks for Arnaud for the report

2.116

• The ZA will now spawn Golems

• The ZA is better at retreating its forces after a civil war and doing less damage

2.115

• Fix a problem with ZA pioneers
  • Thanks to oval for reporting

• Chris fixed a problem where the DZ planets weren't spawning correctly
  • Thanks Chris! Reported by Oval

2.114

• Both Praetor AI types have a 50% chance of generating a second dragon

• The Praetor AI types now invest even more resources in their Praetorian Guards
  • Thanks to Vinco for the feedback

• Spire Hammer Units have been made much tankier
  • Thanks to Arnaud for the report

• Some improvements to Random Factions; fix a bug where they could keep Allegiances between encounters. Improve the picking of minor faction teams

• Add a message to the player when the ZA has resumed a truce with you. Untested
  • Prompted by a discussion with Vinco

• Zenith Miners are now limited to one per galaxy
  • Mentioned by Starkelp

• ZA has some minor buffs

Geneticist Nerfs

• The AI now gets more 'regular AI units' and fewer scourge units. Make the scourge units more expensive and nerf their damage
• Many of the racial warriors are now zombifiable
  • Thanks to Arnaud for the report, and further discussion with zeusalmighty

2.113

• Fix some exceptions with the Zenith Miners
  • Thanks to zeus for reporting

• Fix a bug where the Spire Hammer ai type was getting the wrong Spire Unit
  • Thanks to Arnaud for reporting? I think?

• You can now have Random Factions

2.112

• Nomad planets now move faster

2.111

• The compass map type defaults to using two rings
  • Thanks to Puppet Master for reporting

• The ZA now says how many planets it needs to trigger a civil war in the threat menu tooltip.
  • Pupper Master requested

• Turning on nomads with debug mode and nomad galaxy now causes all the planets to move quickly, allowing the gameplay slowdowns to be triggered very quickly

• Once in a civil war, the ZAs will send their Pioneers home and allow them to despawn
  • This prevents the ZA's from expanding during a civil war. This is untested.
  • Thanks to Puppet Master for reporting
    • The other choice is to allow ZAs to build only on neutral planets during a civil war? I'm open to this if people would prefer it.

• Minor buffs to DZ invasion at higher difficulties

2.110

• Add the Compass map type
  • Thanks to Democracy for suggesting

• Spire hybrids are now less common for the geneticist. Some nerfs to the Spire Hybrid weapons for the geneticist, and general range nerfs for the geneticist
  • Thanks to Arnaud for reporting

• Add some additional checks to try to prevent the nomad galaxy from splitting
  • Thanks to Puffin for reporting

• Fix a bug where wormholes to destroyed planets would still exist after a Miner ate them
  • Thanks to zeusalmighty for reporting

• Some minor improvements to the ZM code and hovertext

• Nomad planets can move a bit more quickly. Fewer nomads in a galaxy means they will move a bit faster (the logic here being "I'd like the Nomads to feel like they're doing something, and if you only have one nomad then it needs to move faster in the hopes it will be impactful)
  • Thanks to Puppet Master for a bug report

Zenith Architrave

• Fix some bugs with the way ZA allegiances were working in the civil war.

• Minor improvements to the Notification hovertext for civil war and pioneers/expansion

• After a civil war:
  • the ZA's units will all attrition very quickly for a while
  • The ZA will also stay peaceful to the AI for a while while the units retreat

• Thanks to Puppet Master for some saves that brought all of these problems to my attention

Dark Zenith

• Dark Zenith now gets two wormholes into the galaxy instead of just one

• The DZ is required to capture a few planets around their homeworlds before going on a domination spree. This will make it harder for counterattacks to reach their home planets and guarantee them at least some sort of defensive perimeter

• DZ spawns some defensive structures when they warp in appear

• The DZ now attack more quickly after spawning

• Fix a bug where the DZ wouldn't get around to attacking for a few minutes after each time you loaded a save game

• Add some variety to the DZ unit abilities and icons. These are still all slated to be replaced by Chris later, but I'd like testing to be a less frustrating experience

• The DZ would sometimes leave units in 'non-attacker' mode and I don't know why, so the LRP thread will check for such units and make them attack.

• Fix a bug where DZ fireteams would sometimes just sit there and never attack

• The DZ now gets bonus strength for their initial invasion based on the AI difficulty. This should let the DZ adjust for very powerful AIs without being OP against lower difficulty AIs
  • Note: this is a major difficulty increase, since I'm not sure the DZ has been scary enough. If this is too much I now have more dials to tune the strength

• Thanks to ArnaudB for some feedback that started me down this very helpful rabbit hole

2.107

Zenith Miner

• Buff the Zenith Miner units; this is temporary since Chris will redo the units, but this should make them easier to test

• Clarify that you can fight the Zenith Miners when they arrive in the Notification tooltip and the journal entry.
• Make ZO specific hacks cheaper, by and large.

• Killing a Zenith Miner now grants science and hacking points (seems only fitting given how big and powerful they are).
  • Plus since hacking the Probes will drain your resources, its only reasonable that the miners should refill your coffers
    • Thanks to Puppet Master for the feedback

• Add some journal entries for the Zenith Miners when they are attacking a Dyson Sphere

• Additional tooltip tweaks for specific minor faction interactions

Zenith Architrave

• The AI is not allowed to reconquer planets from the ZA during the civil war
  • Thanks to Arnaud for reporting

• Add text to the faction description for the ZA pointing out that it can make Data Centers or other critical targets harder to get to
  • Thanks to Arnaud for suggesting

• The ZA now defaults to 4 planet Territories
  • Thanks to Puppet Master for suggesting

• Add some journal entries for when the Zenith Architraves break the truce, and add some text to the Notifications saying 'The ZA is violating the truce'
  • Thanks for Arnaud for reminding me that this mechanic can be confusing

• The ZA is no longer allowed to be friendly to the player or the AI; it messes with some other mechanics.
  • Note that you can have a truce with the ZA anyway, so removing the "friendly to players" option isn't a big deal

Nomad Planets

• Incremental nerfs to the Nomad Planet hack; the Exostrikes are a bit smaller and a bit less frequent. How does it feel now?
  • Thanks to Arnaud for reporting

• Clarify the "Crash Nomad Planet" hack description and text
  • Thanks to Arnaud for reporting

Dark Zenith

• Fix a bug with DZ serialization. Note this probably breaks all saves with the DZ in it.

Misc

• Allow for Spire/Geneticist ship types to show up as unique Exogalactic Strikeforce leaders
• Rejigger Spire Hammer units to stay low health but be much cheaper for the AI to buy
  • Thanks to Arnaud for reporting

• The Dyson Sphere now has a "seed me on a nomad if possible" setting
  • Thanks to a number of people for suggesting, most recently Puppet Master

2.106

• When a Zenith Miner attacks a Dyson planet, instead of eating the planet it will kill the Dyson Sphere gate.
  • Zenith Miners really like eating dyson spheres; they have an increased chance for landing on dyson planets
  • Contains a Chris TODO for "Here's a spot in the Sim Stage3 code for when the dyson planet visuals should change"
  • Totally untested.

• Slightly improve the hovertext for ZM notifications

2.102

• The Dark Zenith now makes a good faith effort to spawn far from any ZA's territory
  • Thanks to zeusalmighty for suggesting

• Nerf the Geneticist's scourge subjugators; a bit less damage and tankiness, much less lifesteal
  • Thanks to zeusalmighty for suggesting

• Fix a bug when serializing dark zenith data
  • thanks to zeusalmighty for reporting

• Dark Zenith ships should no longer be counted as Threat. This only applies to new games; existing games will still have high threat numbers.
  • Thanks to Ovalcircle for reporting

2.099

• Change the way Nomad Planets spawn, to make sure they are more evenly distributed through the galaxy and move more cleanly. This in particular is an improvement for the Squares map type.
  • Thanks to zeusalmighty for the bug report.

• Fix a bug where we weren't updating some Pathing data on the Planet objects when the DZ planets spawn
  • Thanks to StarKelp for the bug report.

• Improve the ZA civil war notifier for clarity in terms of what's going on.
  • Thanks to zeusalmighty for suggesting.

• Fix a bug where Zenith Miners were missing a tag
  • Thanks to zeusalmighty for reporting

Journals

• Add a Journal Entry for when the Dark Zenith spawn
• Add two Journal Entries for the Zenith Miners
  • One for when the first Probe spawns, one for when the first Miner spawns.

• Add Zenith Architrave journal entries
  • An entry for when we first find the ZA, explaining to be careful about attacking their territory
  • An entry for when we've explored all the ZA planets, explaining we might be able to make a truce with them by hacking their Portal.
  • An entry for when Pioneers spawn
  • An entry for the civil war
  • An entry for when a truce is declared (after hacking)
    • If people could make sure these are all being displayed, and give feedback on the text (with a specific focus on mechanics that should be explained), that would be great.

Dark Zenith Jormugandr

• Add the DZ Jormugandr, to give them a cool new way of defending themselves against attack. The Jormugandr is the most powerful DZ unit, but it can only move fully into our galaxy when one of the initial DZ homeworlds (ie the new planets created when the DZ attack the galaxy) is attacked.
  • When there aren't any any attacks going on, the Jormugandr just wander around the homeworlds.
  • Once a homeworld is attacked, the Jormugandr are free to demolish any attackers and then start rampaging through the galaxy for a few minutes, then it must retreat to the DZ homeworlds again.
  • Each time the DZ homeworlds are attacked, the Jormugandr are unleashed for longer.
  • There is 1 Jormugandr spawned for difficulties 1-8, 2 on difficulty 9, 3 on difficulty 10.
    • From a discussion with StarKelp and zeusalmighty.

2.096

• Add the Gladiator AI Type. This AI gets Zenith Architrave units along with their regular units.
  • Currently doesn't do anything; waiting for Chris' unit development

• Add the Ragnarok AI Type. This AI gets Dark Alliance units along with their regular units.
  • Currently doesn't do anything; waiting for Chris' unit development

Nomad Planets

• There are now 3 types of Nomad Nexus; the 'off' one, the 'can be crashed into ai homeworld' one, and the 'en route to ai homeworld one. The Off one is immune to damage. The 'Can be Crashed' on can be attacked by the player. The 'En Route' one can be attacked by anyone
  • This should allow players to safely hack the Disabled Nomad Nexus, but also allow minor factions to snipe a nomad nexus that's crashing.

• Allow wormhole borers to bore from disabled nomads
  • Thanks to zeus for reminding me

• Nomad planets now take between 5 and 13 minutes (give or take a bit) to crash into an AI homeworld, depending on the nomad's distance from the AI homeworld. When you hover over the Hack button, you will get a rough time estimate.
  • The first minute features weaker exos, so the player can use this hack to move an unwanted nomad out of the way and then disable it.
  • Thanks to zeus for suggesting

Dark Zenith (Nota Bene: This patch breaks all games with the DZ)

• Fix a bug where the DZ wasn't correctly loading all its data. The new error checking will cause all previous DZ save games to break (technically, the DZ didn't really work at all after a reload anyway)
  • Noticed by zeusalmighty

Beta 2.093

• Major nerfs to the Geneticist AI type; I've rebalanced all the scourge units that the AI owns

Beta 2.088

• Wormhole Borers can't interact with Nomad Planets (no point; the wormholes would just disappear)
  • Practically this means the nomad galaxy won't feature Borers
  • Thanks to zeus for spotting this interaction

Beta 2.087

• Make the ZA civil wars more endable by giving other ZA factions ways to send steadily increasing bonus strikes once the civil war goes on long enough

• Geneticist Scourge generate Hostile To All zombies

Beta 2.085

• Add the Praetor AI type, whose Praetorian Guard is extra strong and has extra range. Comes in "Medium" and "Strong" flavours
  • Thanks to ynof for the suggestion

• Add a new Map Type for the ZO, "Squares"
  • It is like clusters, but all the clusters are aligned on a grid.
  • There are lots of settings so you can get some extremely varied galaxies

• Some nerfs to the Spire Hammer AI Type

• ZA strength drops off faster during civil war

Dark Zenith

• Rework how the DZ chooses where to spawn planets, to make them less likely to spawn in weird places

• Add some new unit types to the DZ

• Give the DZ some additional strength at the beginning of the game

Beta 2.082

• The ZA will never ally with the Dark Spire or Dark Zenith during a civil war
  • Thanks to Zeus for reporting

• The ZA now has different income for its defensive structures, so it should be easier to whittle them down at all times
  • Thanks to Zeus for reporting

• Fix the Spire Hammer AI Type's description

Beta 2.077

• Add the Spire Hammer AI type. It's targeted at the "Hard" difficulty level. I messed with the unit balance for the AI copies of the units, so let me know about the balance.

• Mapgen code now tries to seed multiple copies of the same faction very far apart, with a 'retry with less strict requirements if it fails' mechanism.
  • Thanks to Oval for reporting that my previous mechanism still wasn't good enough

• More nerfs to geneticist. Make scourge units a bit rarer in general, in particular Evuck Warriors
  • Thanks to zeus, demo and oval

Beta 2.075

• Nerfs to Geneticist
  • Thanks to zeusalmighty for the feedback

• DZ can now upgrade itself to be able to build Terminii or Epistyles

• Nerfs to the DZ permanent bonus income

• Give some DZ and ZA structures enemy-attrition

• The 'Vengeful' AI type now actually works
  • Every time you or a player-allied faction kill an AI structure that is A. a guardpost, B. Changes AIP, C. is a NormalPlanetNastyPick, or D. is a command station (its own category, so reconquest command stations will trigger it too), you will generate an Exo that's 1/3 of a wave (minimum exo size: 0.8 strength).
  • A fancier mechanism was suggested, but honestly I think this is fine. And it takes hours less of time to implement and test.

• Add Wormhole Borers to the game.
  • With Wormhole Borers, I'm declaring myself feature complete. Other changes will be done in response to feedback, but this is all the big stuff I wanted to have done.

Beta 2.074

• Fix a bug where the DZ wouldn't spawn for a week.

• Actually give the Dark Zenith a beacon
  • Thanks to zeusalmighty for reminding me

• Make the Geneticist AI much scarier. Please restart your games to get the new changes

• Give the ZM some scarier Miners to spawn over time

Zenith Architrave

• Completely rework the ZA income code to make them scale up more quickly during a war. This should let them expand more readily

Beta 2.065

• Add a few Achievements

Zenith Architrave

• The ZA will de-nomadify planets it captures if in the Nomad Galaxy

• When seeding multiple ZAs, enforce some distance between each ZA faction; requested by a lot of people

• The ZA can build tractors and gravity generators near wormholes to make attacking them harder.

• Allow the player to hack the ZA home spawner for a truce.

Beta 2.064

Dark Zenith

• Fix some DZ null references

• Some decent improvements in DZ infrastructure logic.
  • They are now much more quick to expand to fill recently cleared enemy planets, which should give them a stronger economy
  • Improvements to "DZ bootstraps iteself" logic; the DZ will no longer try to build things it can't afford, and will be better at recovering if it takes a lot of damage. It should be able to recover as long as you leave it a single Metal Terminus. For eaxmple, it will no longer attempt to build anything it can't afford.

• Allow Metal Harvesters to go to a different planet if all the metal terminii are killed

AI Types

• Add the Geneticist AI Type, which has access to both Scourge units and regular AI units
  • Its intended to be in the Hard or Brutal categories, and feedback is requested to make sure it feels that way

• Add the Vengeful AI type; note this doesn't do anything yet.

Beta 2.063

• Fixed the bug that Ovalcircle was seeing with -1s being serialized in the Dark Zenith in a place they should not have been.
  • Also added some extra info for deserialization errors on Dark Zenith.

• Fix a nomad planet bug
  • Thanks to zeus for reporting

• Lower the DZ's overall power level to prevent the AI from sending extragalactic war ships immediately
  • Thanks to Oval's feedback

• Make the DZ a bit stronger at higher difficulties. Make them more likely to expand into new territory

Beta 2.062

What I am looking for starting this release

• The code is essentially feature complete for all the DLC2 factions. So I am now looking for more types of feedback; these are all things I'd love to hear how you feel about.

• Notifications
  • Typos. Clarity; do you understand what's being conveyed? Is there more information you want/need?

• Overall Gameplay bugs. This includes things that you think are probably features but feel uncertain about.

• Balance! Overall here's about how I feel on the impact of all the Factions. Overall everything but the DZ should feel "texturing"; it should add new stuff to the game, feel interesting and unique, but unless you crank the difficulty really high they shouldn't dominate. It's about making the galaxy feel big and complex and alive.
  • Zenith Miners: You should be able to defeat a Miner with a reasonably late game fleet, but otherwise it should be a major challenge. This faction isn't intended to be super scary; it's intended to give you a new objective to think/plan about.
  • Nomad Planets: These should be relatively low impact (except the Nomad Crash event, which should be extremely hard, like the Imperial Spire final battle).
  • Zenith Architrave: These should be medium impact; they should take over and be able to hold their chunk of the galaxy; fighting them should be winnable but a lot of effort. The ZA civil war should be Scary.
  • Dark Zenith: These should be the scariest minor faction in the game. This is where the "Zenith Onslaught" name comes from, and they want to live up to it.

• Any other feedback that seems apropos.

Miscellaneous

• Fix some bugs with ships/pathfinding trying to interact with already dead planets (in particular, threat waiting against dead planets)

• Add the Nomadic Galaxy to the game; this is a setting in the Game Lobby that will cause all planets to move around the map like Nomad Planets.
  • This was originally manifested as a bug when the ZMs nomadified planets, but Starkelp suggested making it an an actual feature.

• Started adding support for Wormhole Borers

Zenith Architrave

• Some buffs at the highest intensity levels
  • Thanks to Astillious for the report

• Improve the notification for incoming Pioneers
  • Thanks to Astillious for the report

Dark Zenith

• DZ has a balance mechanism for its invasion and a first pass at balance. The DZ are intended to have their initial invasion force scale based on the OverallPowerLevel of all factions in the galaxy.
  • Open Season!

• DZ fireteams will start as Defensive for a brief time you a chance to respond to the invasion

• DZ can in theory build defenses; I'd love some feedback as to whether this is happening.

• The Dark Alliance code is functional. Enabling the Dark Zenith in "Dark Alliance" mode will make the Dark Spire join them in their invasion. Having the Dark Zenith and Dark Spire enabled at once should be SCARY

Zenith Miners

• Zenith Miners have improved notification hovertext
• Zenith Miners no longer vanish instantly
  • Thanks to Strategic Sage for reporting

• Fix a bug where Zenith Probes were never appearing
  • Thanks to Astillious for reporting

• Allow Zenith Miners to 'Nomadify' a planet; the planet will then move around the map like a Nomad planet. However, the planet lacks a Nomad Nexus so you won't be able to stop the planet wandering, or to crash the planet
  • Thanks to StarKelp for the suggestion

Nomad Planets

• Nomad planets can't be hacked to crash if an AI Overlord hasn't been found. If you've only found some of the Overlords it will use the closest visible Overlord
• Nomad Planets don't have the crash hack available after being hacked
• Nomad Planets always take about 6 minutes to crash into the AI homeworld, regardless of where in the galaxy you hack it. Also the AI now actually sends some responses to this.
  • All thanks to Strategic Sage for the bug reports

• Some nomad planets move clockwise, others widdershins

Version 2.047

Dark Zenith

• Give the DZ some units when they invade

Version 2.045

Dark Zenith

• Add some unique units. Much more to be done, but it's a start

Version 2.045

Dark Zenith

• Fix a bug where the DZ was friendly with the Hunter Fleet/Instigators/etc...
  • Thanks to Oval for reporting

• The C# to support a DZ that is minor-faction allied is in. I don't intend for this to be available in the base game, but I intend for the modding support to be just a little bit of XML

• Add DZ Pirates! Some Epistyles are Pirate Epistyles.
  • Pirate Epistyles are outcasts. Transports won't give them resources. So Pirate Epistyles build Privateers to go attack Transports and steal the resources.
  • Once a Privateer has stolen resources it will return back to the Pirate Epistyle.
  • Pirate Epistyles build unique combat ships as well
    • TODO: there should be some chance that an Epistyle "turns pirate", or that the DZ "attacks" a pirate epistyle and turns it back into a regular Epistyle

Beta 2.044

Zenith Architrave

• The ZA actually has some unique ships and defensive structures now
  • They are themed based on roman gladiators

• The ZA has a budget for building defenses over time, and it can replace killed defenses, instead of the old rather hacky approach

Zenith Miners

• There are now more hacks for the Zenith Miner probe
  • You can move the probe to a random adjacent planet, so the miner will attack that planet instead
  • You can cause the Miner to modify the planet to permanently speedup or slowdown all ships on that planet. If this option is chosen then the miner will vanish after its time is up. The miner will still attack everything though.
    • Potential use case: the Probe is on a planet adjacent to a heavily defended AI planet that has an Ark you want. You can reprogram the Miner to speedup all units, then try to move the probe and hope it goes to the defended planet. Then the Miner will do your dirty work for you.

Beta 2.043

• Dark Zenith
  • Can now actually invade the galaxy. "Open" for stability testing. No attempt at balance or unit creation has been made.

• Zenith Miners
  • Now have notifications

• Nomads and Zenith Miners
  • Planets should now be properly destroyed

Beta 2.042

• Zenith Architrave
  • Give them a few new defensive structures
  • Remove some mentions of the militant dyson from notification tooltips. Thanks to Starkelp for reporting
  • Fix a bug where Golems weren't going to spawn

• Dark Zenith
  • Dark Zenith now actually spawn new planets
  • First pass at DZ economy done. Can be turned on for testing, though they only do economic stuff right now

Version 2.031

• Nomad Changes
  • Fix a null reference exception in the nomad planet notifier, and minor text tweaks there.
  • Don't let an AI homeworld be placed on a Nomad planet
  • Faction-specific stuff can't seed at game start time on a Nomad planet. This prevents the Dyson or ZA from being on a Nomad
  • Nomad Planets that are also player homeworlds can't be crashed into the AI
  • Nomad Planets now spawn exos in a reasonable fashion once the Nomad Planets are en route to crash. Balance levers in XML

• Zenith Architrave
  • Give the ZA some actual units (stolen from the Dyson for now).
  • Give the ZA some golems that spawn only during the Civil War.
  • Some buffs to the ZA

• Dark Zenith
  • New planets should now spawn when the Invasion Starts. Planet locations need work, and debugging code is still enabled for it
  • Planets can now have varying initial amounts of science. Used to make Dark Zenith planets worth extra science.
  • Start the XML for dark zenith economy.

Version 2.029

Factions open for testing: Zenith Architrave, Zenith Miners, Nomad Planets

• Add a debug setting (in the game lobby) to make Nomad Planets move more often
• Fix a null reference from clicking on the nomad planet notification
• Don't let the AI homeworld be placed on a Nomad planet

Bug Reports/Feedback

Please put bug reports here!

•Add a win condition involving Dark Zenith, so players could ally with the AI (or have allied + enemy AI) and still get a victory. (Win if you succesfully lock down the Dark Zenith planets with a hack for some time?) <=== Badger says "I do have thoughts along this lines, but not likely to DLC2. I think this expansion is already very large"

• • Perhaps an Exodian Blade retcon could be fitting here? (DLC 3) Introduce the Exodian Blade as the arch-enemy of the DZ that arrives to the player galaxy broken and scattered throughout the galaxy. Find the pieces and escort it to fight Jormangdur, etc. (noted by Zeus)

• • Badger hates the Exodian Blade in AIWC and what it stood for in Lore, and I will strongly oppose any usage of it in relation to any of my work.

•The Dark Zenith Ultimate Golem (Norse Dragon of Ragnarok starting with J thing) gets confused between staying in its cluster and rampaging after getting aggroed by an AI reconquest wave targeting the Dark Zenith planets. It loops back and forth between the wormholes of the AI planet and the connected DZ planet. - ArnaudB (https://discord.com/channels/240637654717300736/698572497171251200/737653691472937030)

•Architrave portal is frustrating... Seeing health and shields, I expect to be able to attack it and destroy the faction. The fact that I cannot is unwelcome. I understand they can be hacked to enter a truce mode, but being able to actually eliminate them would be welcome. →Maybe you can destroy the portal, but it only stop them temporarily, and the portal come back 20min or 1h later. - ArnaudB (Zeus 2nded)

• Make Zenith Miners and the Devourer Golem allied to each other. - Ovalcircle

• Change the Compass defaults, as the minimum values give a fairly bad first impression. Perhaps 2/2/Medium?

• Architrave will pound at the same planet over and over to make it part of its territory, even if it has only its homeplanet under control, and weaker planets (that afterward becomes part of its territory) are available. (ie: it doesn't rotate among planets which is either annoying or exploitable.) - ArnaudB
  • This is correct; just how the ZA works.

Suggestions, ideas and mechanics for Chris

• An UI rework might be needed to deal with the various notifications. It becomes really hard to keep track of what's going on with the growing number of factions. Maybe split the notifications threatening the players and those "informing" the player of events? (suggested by Arnaud, echoed by Puppet Master)

• • Badger think something like this might be necessary, given the sheer number of possible Notifications. Players keep requesting new Notifications (since that's how people keep track of things) and that number is getting ever-larger. We discussed potentially having several rows of Notifications, or Notifications being different sizes to connote importance

• Forcefield Variations (Starkelp)
  • • For both the Architrave and players in the form of a rare GCA drop
    • Optionally as a potential Architrave hack?
      • Layered: Reduced damage the farther away a target is.
      • Hardened: Heavily reduced damage while above 50% Shield strength.
      • Impact: Radius (substantially) increases in Radius as it takes damage, starting small.
      • Fortified: Much higher shield value, but much lower shield Radius.
      • Glue: Also acts as a Tractor Array; does not decrease in size with damage.
      • Corrosive: Also comes with a built-in Aoe Acid effect.

• Suggestion: Give the player a mechanism to spawn wormholes like the Wormhole Borer. Maybe "you have a start structure and an end structure, and can activate them to make a wormhole between the planets"?

• New Units
  • Frigate Class
    • Zenith Aggregator
      • Stores 50% of all damage taken as energy, and consumes this energy on death to deal damage in an area around itself.
    • Zenith Compressor
      • Long range, single target weapon that pulls enemies into itself, and high damage, short range, single target, Greater Metabolizing weapon.
    • Zenith Needle
      • Melee range, disables bubble shields on contact, converting them into personal shields.
  • Strikecraft Class
    • Zenith Bracketeer
      • All units that are on the same planet act as through they have shared Hull and Shield pools, which damage equally divided among them.
  • Mosquito (Exsanguinator)
    • Melee swarmer ship (for players/AI) that has "reverse" death grip-harmonic tractor beams. The idea is that it only can tractor super units but the super unit can move as normal, the mosquitoes are stuck to it. The mosquitos get the harmonic and death grip bonus so they do deal a lot more damage when they swarm the same unit.
  • Ninja (Melee Frigate)
    • Cloaked frigate with NO base weapons. However, launches special torpedos -- "corrosive shurikens" that deal high base damage to a single target (preferably guardian+) and minor AOE acid damage to nearby units. Shurikens are IMMUNE to gravity effects and are high speed.
  • Experimental 'Wing' Mechanic
    • Carrier Frigates that fire off sub units like a Tesla Torpedo, which decay over time, that come with their own sub units.
      • Zenith Forcefield Torpedo Frigate
        • Shoots off slow moving Torpedoes that deploy up to 3 Degenerating Forcefield Generators, which lose 2% shield per second.
      • Zenith Spiderweb Frigate
        • Shoots off Minelayer Drones which have a weak melee carving weapon, and deploy Paralyzing Mines while enroute.

• We could probably put the Zenith Mirror ability back in; probly something like "when we call TakeDamage, spawn a new shot going back to the old shot's target, but cap the mirrored shot's damage"

• Vengeful Messages
  • My name is {AIName/Type}. You killed my {EntityThatDied}. Prepare to die.
  • GuardpostName will have it's revenge from beyond the grave.
  • GuardpostName says "Have a nice day! :D"
  • I am GuardpostName, son of GuardpostName. You killed my father!
  • You have lost reputation with GuardpostName.
  • GuardpostName will remember that.
  • GuardpostName thinks you are a stinky poo.
  • From hell's heart, GuardpostName stabs at you.
  • The ghost of GuardpostName is haunting you.

• Zenith Miners need some fun mechanics; possibly including damage reduction for long range enemies? Maybe some powerful translocation?