AI War:The Zenith Remnant

What exactly is added via The Zenith Remnant expansion?

A: The short explanation is that the expansion is focused on adding more grand strategic variety to the game, and more variety in general. Or, put another way, making each game more varied and having more unique things to find and do throughout the galaxy. But that's more than a little vague. Here's, specifically, what the expansion adds:

New Bonus Ship Classes

The base game of AI War includes about 25 "bonus" ship classes beyond the base fighter, bomber, frigate, scout quartet that is in every game. The Zenith Remnant adds another 13 classes. Here is a list of them, along with what they add to the game in general:

• Zenith Bombardment Ships (I-IV and Core variants)
  • These ships are wicked expensive, but are also extremely long range, moreso than anything in the base game on both counts. They pack with a big punch, too. They have only moderate hull health, so if you bring them into too close of combat they won't fare well, but from a distance these guys are absolutely unmatched.
• Zenith AutoBombs (I-IV variants)
  • These units are unique in that they are suicidal, and die on impact, dealing area damage. In many ways, they are like miniature, AI-Progress-free lightning warheads.
• Grenade Launchers (I-IV and Core variants)
  • These are something of a fan favorite, as they can be deadly against masses of ships. They launch mid-power grenades over a medium distance, and the grenades explode and deal area damage to enemies. These are less potent per-impact compared to AutoBombs, but they also don't have to be rebuilt constantly. Combined with a good set of complementary ships, these can really wreak some havoc.
• Zenith Electric Bombers (I-IV and Core variants)
  • These huge bombers are almost like starships, they have so much health and attack power. They have a cluster penalty, which encourages using only around 8 or so per planet, per mark level of the bombers. Thus several small squads of these can be set up and used, and they can do the job of a vastly larger fleet of normal bombers. These things can be an absolute terror in the hands of the AI, too.
• Sentinel Frigates (I-IV and Core variants)
  • These are the most powerful and expensive snipers you could imagine. Like the electric bombers, these have a cluster penalty. In the case of this unit, the penalty is steep enough that it is wise only to have 2 sentinel frigates per planet. These aren't hugely useful on offense in most cases, but having these spread around your planets on defense can provide a huge amount of security. These also include an onboard advanced warp sensor, which gives you all the benefits of knowing exactly which wormholes AI ships will be coming through without actually having to spend the knowledge on the standalone advanced warp sensor.
• Zenith Mirrors (I-IV and Core variants)
  • These are one of the more bizarre and fearsome ships in the expansion, depending on what sort of ship mix you and the AI has. These tiny cubes have incredible health, and a fairly middling main attack, but they have the special ability of not only amplifying incoming firepower against themselves, but also reflecting it back against the ships that are firing on them.
    • This has two effects: first, it makes most ships prefer not to shoot the mirrors if there is any other choice, since it can be self-suicide, and this thus gives the mirrors a free hand to use their main weapons to do a lot of damage earlier in large battles; and second, at the end of a battle it means that many types of ships will find themselves exploding in the face of their own firepower from the mirrors (which are also damaged by shots they reflect).
    • Mirrors are not all-powerful, though -- certain types of shots, such as missiles, they are unable to reflect. So they are very weak against missile-heavy opposing ship mixes, while they absolutely cleave through more laser/shell/energy weapon ship mixes.

New Golems

The massive new golem ships were a new feature as of The Zenith Remnant in general. This expansion added 7 golems that could be captured and rebuilt by the human players, as well as 4 golems that are used exclusively by the four minor factions added in the expansion. Golems are a pretty hefty topic, so they are covered in way more depth on the Golems wiki page.

New AI Special Weapons

One aspect of the AI War universe that was only explored to a small degree in the base game was the idea of specialized AI weapons that would be on specific AI planets. Examples from the base game include Super Fortresses, Captive Human Settlements, and more semi-common weapons like Ion Cannons. Certain of these weapons are mostly limited to use by a specific AI type, but there is always a small chance of them showing up on a planet or two in any game. One huge focus of The Zenith Remnant was to add vastly more content of this sort, making for hugely increased variance in campaigns played using the expansion compared to just the base game. Here is a list of them, along with what they add to the game in general, broken out into various sub-categories by general function.

Situational Awareness AI Weapons

Situational awareness refers mainly to scouting further than just to the planet that you directly plan to attack, and keeping an eye on effects that might come from adjacent planets instead of just the planet you are currently on. Thus one planet can be something of a "modifier" to the planets around it, and having a more accurate picture of the neighborhood of a potential target is suddenly much more relevant than in the base game.

• Alarm Posts
  • When an AI Command Station is destroyed on the alarm post's planet, or an adjacent planet, all of the guards at the current planet will desert their posts and go on the attack. If the alarm post itself is attacked and destroyed, there is only a 50% chance of it alerting the guards.
• Special Forces Alarm Posts
  • When an AI Command Station is destroyed on the alarm post's planet, or an adjacent planet, all of the "special forces" ships in the entire galaxy will turn aggressive and attack the humans. If the alarm post itself is attacked and destroyed, there is only a 50% chance of it alerting the special forces ships.
• Raid Engines
  • Launches brutal 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, contain a broad mix of AI ships, and use the tech level of the planet if that is higher than the current wave level for the controlling AI player.

Other New Ships Available For Direct Unlock By Players

These ships are unlockable at any time, in any game, through either command stations, starship constructors, or similar. They provide more options for players in fleet customization during any game, to let the players better adapt to the many new possible scenarios that the expansion sets up. Here is a list of them, along with what they add to the game in general:

• Cloaker Starships (I-III variants)
  • Very fast starship that cloaks other ships near it, even if those other ships normally do not have cloaking. This has been put to excellent use for everything from sneak attacks to knowledge raid blitzing, and so forth. They are pretty hard to use effectively for most new players, honestly, but these are something that a lot of expert players really adore.

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