AI War:Current Post-5.000 Beta

Prerelease 5.019

(Note: this prerelease is not publicly available yet, we're still working on it)

• Fixed a divide by zero bug in the previous version.
  • Thanks to Fleet for the report.

Prerelease 5.018

(Released September 30th, 2011)

• Spirecraft Ion normal shot damage from 700 => 14000, and armor piercing from 0 => Max.
  • Previously their damage was just token, but this brings them up to roughly the DPS of the Spirecraft Siege Tower (which, for reference, also has max armor piercing), but can't target anything that's immune to insta-kill (which is basically anything bigger than a fleet ship). The result is that a cap (8) of MkI Spirecraft Ions is capable of doing well against a single cap of even MkV fleet ships unless those fleet ships have a bonus against them (bombers, chameleons, raiders, IRE's, etc), and so on. In general, a lot of these together can put some serious hurt on fleet ships (particularly low health ones) even when they can't insta-kill.
  • Related note: since their seconds-per-salvo is higher on the lower cap scales, and since their shot damage now actually matters, and since just about everything they can target scales with the caps, their damage will now be scale upward on the lower caps.
  • Updated the tooltip, which is reproduced here since it probably helps understand what we're doing here:
    • Like Zenith Ion weapons (which AI Ion Cannons use), Spire Ion weapons insta-kill most ships with a mark level equal to or lower than its mark value, and cannot fire at all on ships immune to Ion weapons (i.e. immune to insta-kill). Unlike Zenith Ion technology, these ships are mobile, much shorter-ranged, and actually do decent damage to higher mark ships.

• Humorously, Ion Cannons, Core Warhead Interceptors, and Orbital Mass Drivers were previously not immune to insta-kill. They now are.

• Added to the Dyson Gatling tooltip to reflect the lack of ability to shoot at Mark V targets.

• If an AI player has a positive handicap that is now factored into that game's TotalSpecialDifficultyModifier which is in turn used for determining the total "population cap" of Hybrids in a game with them on, and also factors in to the budget multiplier for exo waves. Negative handicaps on AI players have no effect, and the higher of the two AI handicaps is used if they're not equal.

• Added a new ability to the Spirecraft Attritioner in hopes of making it more generally useful. From the new tooltip:
  • One unique side effect of Spire attrition technology is that when an enemy ship is destroyed by any cause all its allies (that aren't immune to attrition) take a certain percent of that ship's maximum health as feedback damage. This feedback damage is cumulative with multiple Spirecraft Attritioners and higher mark attritioners cause a higher percentage, but this feedback damage is divided evenly across all affected targets and thus does not greatly damage any one target.
  • Basically, this functions as a small boost to overall fleet dps (averaged out over time), and thus makes the attritioner useful in short engagements where previously its contribution would have been minimal.
  • Current percentages are 0.5%/1.0%/1.5%/2.5%/5.0% for the 5 marks of attritioner. Also, this effect does trigger on enemies killed by attrition/feedback (otherwise it motivates micro to make sure a triggering-source kills big targets). In our tests this has not seemed overpowered though it is likely that further balancing will be needed. Bear in mind that mkV attritioners require the extremely rare Titanite, and mkIVs require the not-much-more-common Adamantite.
  • Thanks to Hearteater and many other players for weighing in with feedback that led to this change.

Prerelease 5.017

(Released September 12th, 2011)

• AI Hunter/Killers are now eligible to be chosen for exogalactic battlegroups. The MkI is considered one notch above the Armored Golem cost-wise, and proceeding up from there. For anyone who remembers the slaughter those things could perform before, their number of shots-per-salvo has been halved but their health has been doubled.
  • chemical_art will probably regret making the suggestion that inspired this.

• Fixed an (apparently) rare array-index-out-of-bounds error in the buy-menu "tooltip" window.
  • Thanks to Cyborg for the report.

• Added a second confirm step when scrapping Spirecraft mining enclosures (since scrapping them does not give you back the asteroid from which they came) and the player home forcefield generator (since it cannot be rebuilt).
  • Thanks to Cyborg for inspiring this.

• Strong forcefields (the same ones that had the blocking effect in 5.015) now have their blocking effect back.
  • The "cannot use a wormhole covered by a hostile forcefield" rule is still in to prevent the bug with teleporting stuff "sneaking" through.
  • The collision detection between blocking forcefields and hostile ships has been refined to include a more precise check for ships that appear to be colliding to the coarse check we've used for a while. This is because the coarse check was making it a lot more likely that AI ships would get "stuck" on a single human forcefield that just happened to be in their way. Now they should slide around a lot more readily.
    • Note that you can still set up blocking walls of multiple forcefields and catch AI ships in a pocket, etc. We aren't thrilled by this as it's basically exploiting the simplistic AI movement logic (it has no pathfinding, just straight line to target, because anything else is cpu-prohibitive for this game) but there are actually more efficient ways to slow down most serious AI assualts (grav turrets under ffs, logistics stations, etc) so this particular "exploit" isn't really breaking the challenge. Maybe one day we'll make it so when the AI detects a blocking wall it retaliates by initiating some gargantuan pathfinding routine and thus churns your processor and framerate to a halt. For now, knock yourselves out :P
  • Thanks to everyone who chimed in with feedback on this!

• Hardened Forcefields:
  • Now shrink with damage like normal forcefields, since the rigidity was making them much more likely to actually die rather than diminish to a point where the AI left it alone, and since they would make the "blocking walls" tactic even more effective than it used to be.
  • Armor from 1 million to 500k, to expand the set of armor-nemesis things that can actually get through it. If this feels too low, let us know!

• For the ships listed below, armor piercing increased from "really high" (6 figures) to 999,999. They're really supposed to just flat out get through any armor, excepting maybe some of the ships so large we don't mention them in release notes because it would be a spoiler.
  • Zenith Polarizer
  • Spire Armor Rotter
  • Youngling Vulture
  • Youngling Nanoswarm
  • Raid Starship
  • Lightning/Armored/EMP/Tachyon-warheads
  • Botnet Golem
  • Devourer Golem
  • Sentinel Frigate
  • Spire Blade
  • Spire Gravity Drain
  • Spirecraft Siege Tower
  • Sniper
  • Electric Shuttle
  • Lightning Turret
  • Sniper Turret
  • Spider Turret
  • And a variety of lesser known but related types.

• Fixed a null exception that could happen rarely when a unit was looking for the next wormhole to move to while moving from planet to planet.
  • Thanks to TechSY730 for the report.

Prerelease 5.016

(Released September 6th, 2011)

• Preservation Wardens previously did not scale at all when there were multiple human homeworlds and/or multiple human players. Now each time the game spawns a warden it instead spawns 1 warden per player/human-homeworld (specifically, the number of human players or the number of human homeworlds, whichever is greater).

• Human Forcefield Generators:
  • Ship-cap from 9/5/5 => 10/6/6
  • HP from 14M/30M/56M => 20M*mk.
  • Metal cost from 4k/6k/12k => 4k*mk.
  • Crystal cost from 19k/35k/70k => 20k*mk.
  • Energy use from 3k/6k/10k => 3k*mk.
  • Build time (seconds) from 240/300/480 => 120 + (120*mk) (240/360/480).

• Added new unlockable support unit type: Hardened Forcefield Generator MkI-III. Basically the same as normal human generators except:
  • 1/4th the HP.
  • 1,000,000 Armor Rating instead of zero (this effectively reduces all incoming damage to 1/5th its normal power, unless the attacker has extremely high armor piercing or very high damage-per-shot).
  • They do not shrink as they take damage, making it easier to know how long a given target will be protected, etc. On the other hand this may make it harder to tell "at a glance" how long the generator has left to hold, so we might need to do something else here.
  • The first mark is not available by default, but costs 1000 knowledge (mkII and III are 2000 and 4000 knowledge each like the normal line).
  • Thanks to Lancefighter for the suggestion (some time ago) that led to this.

• Due to very widespread feedback that ion weaponry is very underpowered, all Ion Cannon and Spirecraft Ion Blasters now fire 4 shots per salvo instead of 1. Other changes are likely to follow, we'll see how it feels to players.

• Put in a fairly radical change to the base forcefields, but bear with us on this -- if it's not workable we'll take it out. And really, in most senses this should be equivalent to the way that things were before, but more CPU-efficient as well as fixing one bug and one exploit. With that out of the way:
  • Change 1: Made it so that strong force fields no longer block enemy ships from passing through them -- on either side. So if you have a forcefield in the way of the AI, or they have a forcefield in your way, your ships can pass right through them with no problem. As with weaker forcefields, the thematic explanation is that you're going around the forcefield in the Z axis, which makes sense. This change has no bearing on the protection of ships under the forcefield; ships are just as well protected now as ever.
    • The exploit in question was a problem with players being able to block enemy ships due to those ships sometimes "sticking" against the force fields. The reason ships would stick is because of the coarseness of the distance check we were using, which was coarse so not to take up so much CPU. Now enemy ships can just fly past your forcefields unimpeded if they're heading to targets beyond them, which -- with one exception, see below -- is what we've always intended in the first place.
    • This is also where we derive our CPU gains from, as normally each ship had to check its relative position to all enemy strong forcefields on a planet every time its position changed even a little. This isn't killer, but in light of the bug and exploit relating to strong forcefields
  • Change 2: Made it so that when a strong forcefield is covering a wormhole, no non-forcefield-immune enemy ships can go through that wormhole from the side the forcefield is on.
    • Players have been using forcefields to do this very thing for a long time, and we think that's great. However, this was taking advantage of ships not being able to move in to actually physically reach the wormhole, and that was thus not working very well for teleporting ships, which would teleport right to the center of the forcefield, then get caught in the wormhole before the forcefield could push them back out. This is the bug we referenced above, and it was very much not in players' favor (unlike the exploit), and this set of changes now fixes it.
  • NET EFFECTS:
    • 1. Players can't use forcefields to interrupt enemy travel on the planet they are on, nor can the AI.
      • Some players would set up forcefield clusters to trap enemies inside when they come through wormholes, but that was already error-prone because enemies would tend to pop out to the other side if the forcefields weren't positioned precisely right. These players should instead put a single forcefield (or all their forcefields, if they really prefer) on the enemy side of their wormhole and that will now provide much better protection than their older method ever did.
    • 2. The AI can't slip teleporting ships past your forcefields over wormholes unless those teleporting units are also forcefield immune, which should be a huge boon to players in games with teleporting enemies.
  • Thanks to mindloss for most directly inspiring these changes, although we've been mulling it for a while based on cumulative feedback.

Prerelease 5.015

(Released August 29th, 2011)

• Previously, the recently added ActivateHighestEfficiencyLowPowerEnergyReactor and PutLowestEfficiencyActiveEnergyReactorIntoLowPower keybinds were considering reactors that were still under construction. Hamster re-education has taken place (bug fixed).
  • Thanks to Ranakastrasz for the report.

• Due to widespread feedback that the martyr is very OP, we've drastically increased the asteroid "cost" of building them:
  • Previously Reptite could be used to build 2 MkI Martyrs. Now it cannot build martyrs at all.
  • Previously Pysite could be used to build 4 MkI Martyrs or 2 MkII Martyrs. Now it can only build 1 MkII (can't build MkIs).
  • Previously Xampite could be used to build 4 MkII Martyrs or 2 MkIII Martyrs. Now it can only build 1 MkIII (can't build MkIIs).
  • Previously Ebonite could be used to build 4 MkIII Martyrs or 2 MkIV Martyrs. Now it can only build 1 MkIV (can't build MkIIIs).
  • Previously Adamantite could be used to build 4 MkIV Martyrs or 2 MkV Martyrs. Now it can only build 1 MkV (can't build MkIVs).
  • Note that the units themselves are just as incredibly powerful as before (we really want them to be highly useful), but hopefully this change puts their real cost more in line with their utility and also puts a saner limit on the total number the players can have in a game. More changes may follow if necessary.
  • For reference, previously the total number of martyrs that could be produced from all asteroids in an average 80-planet galaxy was about 2200 on average (so someone holding 15% of the galaxy might reasonably field 220 over the course of the game, if they didn't use many other spirecraft). Now that total-possible number average about 480 (so that same martyr-happy player would probably only have about 48 to use, unless they take more planets).
  • Thanks to the many players who've weighed in on this subject.

• Zenith Viral Shredders:
  • Simplified the scaling of replication costs (how much damage a shredder has to do to replicate) and made it better at preventing game-breaking swarms of shredders. Now instead of it using a linear multiplier based on the owner's number of shredders on that specific planet, it quadruples the replication cost for every full cap of that mark of shredder owned by that player anywhere in the galaxy (but if they own less than or equal to a full cap, there is no extra cost).
    • So if the mkI cap is 98 (normal cap scale) and you have between 99 and 195 (inclusive) mkI shredders they will have to do 4x as much damage to replicate as normal. If you have between 196 and 293 (inclusive) mkI shredders they will have to do 16x as much damage to replicate as normal. And so on (maximum multiplier is 1024 to avoid arithmetic overflow; at that point a mkIV on low caps would need to do over 376 million damage to replicate).
  • Base Energy Use from 100 => 50 (note: all mkI types use half normal energy).
  • Replication-created shredders now copy the FRD, Attack Move, and any unit commands (movement waypoints and whatnot) of their "parent". Note that they already copy the control groups and "am I currently selected" status of their parent.
  • The end result of all this should be that if you play your shredders well you'll be able to maintain maybe 2 or 3 caps worth of them (a pretty significant advantage over other bonus ship types) but it's going to be difficult to get into the really absurd numbers. On the other hand, maintaining that swarm won't cost as much energy as it used to and it should require less micro due to the commmand copying.
  • Thanks to the players who've told us about their massive abuse of absurdly large shredder swarms.

• For a very long time it's been possible to ward off almost any amount of damage through sufficient micro of a pile of forcefield generators and engineers (to repair the ff's as they collapse within the protection of other generators, or go on low power mode, or are being newly built). While ff's are supposed to be extremely helpful in protecting stuff, it wasn't intended that they be able to do so indefinitely while under constant attack. So:
  • When a forcefield is damaged by enemy fire, all allied forcefields whose fields are in contact (or very close to it) with the damaged ff will take 1 point of damage from the energy conducted along the surface of the field. The damage itself is inconsequential since the ff's have millions of hp, but it will trigger the "cannot be repaired less than 6 seconds after being damaged" logic. This also applies to forcefields currently under construction or in low-power mode. So it won't be possible to repair some forcefields in a ff-pile while others in the same group are under fire.
  • Forcefield generators now cannot be assisted during construction if they have been damaged recently.
  • When a new forcefield is placed for construction, if it is in near any allied forcefields (low power or not) that is currently unrepairable due to recent damage, the newly placed forcefield inherits the longest assist-delay present among those neighbors. So it won't be possible to speed-build new generators under other fields that are currently under fire.
  • This also applies to all the "shield bearer" and module type shields.
  • If this leaves some situations unreasonably hard other changes can be made to compensate, we just wanted to close this "micro to dodge anything" loophole.
  • Thanks to mindloss for most recently bringing this up.

• Put in a small code change that might lead to more efficiency during really large battles with a lot of things being drawn as well as a lot of sound effects being played. It might also make no difference, but it's a good precaution either way; our tests so far have not really been clear as to whether there is any benefit.

Prerelease 5.014

(Released August 4th, 2011)

• Starship costs tweaked around a bit:
  • Bomber starship metal cost reduced from 120k to 80k.
  • Fleet starship metal cost reduced from 60k to 40.
  • Siege starship crystal cost reduced from 120k to 80k.
  • Riot Control starships crystal cost reduced from 80k to 60k, and metal cost reduced from 30k to 20k.
  • Enclave starship costs reduced from 30k metal and crystal to 20k each instead.
  • Thanks to Lancefighter for suggesting.

• Zentih SpaceTime Manipulator energy costs reduced to 20k from 60k.
  • Thanks to Lancefighter for suggesting.

• Removed all mention of the AIP costs on the Zenith SpaceTime manipulator text.
  • Thanks to Zair for reporting.

• Siege Starships renamed to Antimatter Starships for the sake of clarity, and given the following new description text:
  • This starship is the best capital killer in your basic fleet: excellent against starships, guard posts, guardians, most turrets, and other large ships like golems or spirecraft. It is so specialized that it can't even fire upon most small mobile targets. That said, many targets (forcefields, most fortresses and command stations, etc) are specifically protected against its antimatter bombs.
  • All in-game references to them (tutorials, etc) have been adjusted.
  • Thanks to the several dozen players who weighed in on our poll for how to rename these!

Prerelease 5.013

(Released August 1st, 2011)

• Gravity Drills under player control can now be scrapped by that player.
  • Thanks to Wingsofdomain for suggesting.

• Stealth Battleships previously had a bonus of 1.4x against artillery hulls. Now they don't, making them not so overpowered against things like siege starships.

• Speaking of siege starships, they have now gotten doubled health -- making them no longer "glass cannons," which they haven't been in a while anyhow. And making them substantially more useful in general.

• All marks of Spire Stealth Battleship now have an AIPerPlanetShipCap of 8 (only applies to not-freed ships). This is an experiment brought about by continuing feedback that the per-guard-post caps are insufficient forkeeping the populations down to a level that doesn't make the game way harder when the AI happens to roll SSBs as a bonus type. This won't impact their numbers in waves and other offensive uses, but one thing at a time.

• Riot Control Starships mark I are now unlocked from the start of every game. This should help with uncertainty that players would feel about whether or not they would be useful in a given scenario. Now players can try them out and see; and if they are useful and they want more, then the mark II and mark III versions are effectively 1500 knowledge cheaper now, since they no longer have the mark I prerequisite.

• Mark II scout starships now cost 250 knowledge to unlock instead of 1500. Mark III are now 2000 instead of 3500, and mark IV are now 3500 instead of 4500. This brings the mark II down into the realm of "candy tech," and makes the III and IV variants not so cost-prohibitive that nobody uses them.

• Mark I gravity turrets are now 750 knowledge to unlock instead of 2000, making them a lot more feasible for players to experiment with as well.

• Zenith SpaceTime Manipulators no longer have an AI Progress of 1 on their death; that made them very difficult to use. They now cost 2x more energy to use, however (from 30k to 60k). The AI also no longer cares about them at all in terms of extra priority on killing them. And lastly, they now cost 1750 knowledge to unlock instead of 1000.

• Mark II scouts now cost 500 knowledge to unlock instead of 1000. Mark III scouts now cost 2250 instead of 2000, making the entire scout line only slightly cheaper.

• Completely rebalanced armored warheads, as they have been the unused warhead for too long:
  • They now cost 50k energy to run instead of 2.5k.
  • They now cost 10x more metal and crystal to create.
  • They now cost 2/4/6 AIP rather than 10/15/20.
  • They now have the same (much lower) attack stats of their lightning warhead counterparts.

• The attack range of mark III lightning and armored warheads has been increased by 250 -- making them not so much smaller than the mark II versions of the same.

• Some starfield changes:
  • Slightly improved the draw efficiency of the starfields by reusing a single mersenne twister rather than initializing a new one every frame.
  • Changed it so that there is only now one layer of starfield, rather than three. This makes for a more cohesive style with most of the starfields, as well as making the sky not QUITE so incredibly dense with stars. This also removes the parallax effect from the stars themselves, which made the foreground stars really look more like dust than stars.
    • This also is a small boost to performance, and a slight reduction in VRAM usage per frame. On most computers it won't make a substantial difference, though.
  • Added in a parallax effect to the nebulae, making it so that they now have a slight motion and will wrap around the screen view if players scroll enough.
  • Thanks to annikk.exe for inspiring these changes.

• Added a bit more command-queue-related debug info in for hitting F3 and hovering over ships.

• Fixed a bug that would cause ships to sometimes ignore their wormhole orders to instead stay and fight when they have a target. This was most noticeable with astro trains since they are never supposed to stop to fight, but it actually was affecting all AI ships since sometime prior to 5.0 most likely. Possibly as far back as 4.0. This had serious implications to the AI's ability to effectively retreat; the AI should be a lot more swift-footed now, while still getting in pot-shots when it decides to leave.
  • Additionally, a potential desync was discovered where players that were using the F3 debug menu and hovering over ships might cause a desync in multiplayer. Fixed that.
    • Fixing this also reduced the per-ship memory footprint by about 8 bytes, which we're always pleased to do.
  • Thanks to Hearteater for reporting.

• Made Cloaker Starships mark I knowledge-free now, instead of costing 1k knowledge. This helps to compensate players a bit for the generally-increased difficulty of the Zenith expansion.

• Same with the Neinzul Rnclave Starships mark I. They were 2k knowledge, but now they are knowledge-free.

• Mercenary Neinzul Enclave Starships, which would now be pretty well pointless, have also been revamped. Now they are the equivalent of the mark II Neinzul Enclave Starship, rather than the mark I starship. This is very powerful, but they are also now limited to only a single ship in their shipcap, rather than 6 ships.

Prerelease 5.012

(Released July 21st, 2011)

• Added new "Activate Highest Efficiency Low Power Energy Reactor" KeyBind, InGame context, no default binding.
  • Searches through all your energy reactors that are low power, finds the one with the highest efficiency (accounting for penalties from multiple of the same mark on the planet), and takes it out of low power.

• Added new "Put Lowest Efficiency Active Energy Reactor Into Low Power" KeyBind, InGame context, no default binding.
  • Searches through all your energy reactors that are not in low power, finds the one with the lowest efficiency (accounting for penalties from multiple of the same mark on the planet), and puts it into low power.

• Fixed bug where the command-station foldouts each player got on each ally's planet were not executing galaxy-wide or per-planet controls (like Auto-FRD, auto-build engineers, auto-build energy reactors).
  • Thanks to many players for pointing this one out.

• Added new galaxy-wide control toggle: "Prevent Auto Build On Ally Planets".
  • If this toggle is checked, it prevents your galaxy-wide auto-building controls (for stuff like engineers, rebuilders, and energy reactors) from taking effect on ally planets.
  • Your per-planet auto-building controls ignore this toggle.

• Added new galaxy-wide control toggle: "Allow Ally Rebuilders To Rebuild My Remains".
  • If this toggle is checked, ally rebuilders will automatically consider the remains of any of your units to be valid rebuilding targets. Note that starting the rebuilding process costs no resources, the rebuilt unit is yours, and the rest of the rebuilding process is paid for like normal construction.
  • Also, please note that if an ally is using the "Engineers Do Not Assist Allies" toggle, their rebuilders will not automatically consider your remains regardless of your controls.
  • Thanks to lanstro for inspiring this change.

• Fixed bug where Core Starships were not immune to translocation.
  • Thanks to Toll for the report.

• Fixed some old tooltips referring to the expansions tab of the settings screen to correctly refer to the "License / Expansions" window (which is accessible from the main menu).
  • Thanks to FroBodine for the report.

• Fixed a bug that has been causing astro-trains to not be able to attack for the last six months or so.
  • Thanks to Prezombie, Hearteater, and ArcDM for reporting.

• Ships that have "temporary invincibility" (such as Core Shield Generators that are on planets you don't control, or AI Core Guard Posts and AI Core Command Stations when there are Core Shield Generators still active, or AI carriers when there are more than 2k AI ships active on their planet) now show up with a new angry red/yellow ship-style force field that is visually marking them as invulnerable. The actual mechanics haven't changed, but now there is a more clear visual indicator of the pre-existing logic.
  • Thanks to Elok for suggesting.

Prerelease 5.011

(Released June 21st, 2011)

• Fixed rare null exception that could happen when changing control groups.
  • Thanks to leb0fh for the report and save.

• Spire Civilian Leaders are now no longer giftable, to avoid a bug whereby gifting them back and forth would repeat the AIP decrease.
  • Thanks to dnatabar for the report.

• Added a new "Galaxy-Wide Select Own Science Lab" key-bind that works in both planet-view and galaxy-view (like go-to-flare does) and defaults to Ctrl+T.
  • If you are viewing a planet and you own science labs on that planet, this drops any current selection you may have and selects one of those science labs (note that it does not center the viewport, there's another key for centering on the selection if you want that).
  • Otherwise, if you own science labs on another planet in the galaxy, this drops any current selection you may have, switches your view to one of those planets, and selects one of those science labs on that planet, and centers the viewport on that lab.
  • Otherwise (if you own no science labs), this does nothing.
  • Note that this only works with your science labs, it completely ignores science labs of allied players. Also, it does not attempt to rotate through eligible selections the way other selection functions do.
  • The reason for all the caveats of what this doesn't do is that its SOLE purpose is to let you access the tech-research menu from anywhere in the galaxy without having to know specifically where to find a science lab.
  • Thanks to TheDeadlyShoe for the suggestion that inspired this.

• Fixed a bug where a self-destructing aoe weapon with a limited number of secondary targets (autobomb, nanoswarm, etc) would fail to do any damage to anything in some cases where only the main target was hit.
  • Thanks to Nalgas for the report and save.

• Added "Galaxy Layout" item to top-level context menu (when showing the galaxy map). Clicking it shows these options:
  • "Official Layout" - Switches your galaxy view to the official layout, meaning the map as actually generated.
  • "My Layout" - Switches your galaxy view to your alternate layout. If you have not made any changes, this will look like the official layout.
    • While looking at your alternate layout you can move a planet around by holding shift, left clicking the planet, and dragging it aroud while holding the left mouse button.
  • "Player 1 Layout" - Switches your galaxy view to this player's alternate layout.
    • And 7 others just like it for players 2 through 8.

• Fixed bug where copying in your global controls from disk could lead to building engineer IIs and IIIs without the required tech.
  • Thanks to Ranakastrasz (and others) for reporting this.

• Added new global control toggle "Prevent Warhead FRD".
  • If this toggle is checked, it prevents your warheads from entering Free-Roaming-Defender mode even when something like the 'Auto-FRD Military' toggle or a slip of the finger when giving a move order would set them to FRD.
  • If you can imagine a nuclear warhead attached to a roomba, you can imagine cases where you would use this toggle. And cases where you would not.
  • Please note that this will not take any warheads already in FRD out of it.
  • Thanks to Ranakastrasz for inspiring this addition.

• Fixed a bug where Defender games were always being recorded in the high-score list as lost.
  • Thanks to Night for the report and save.

• Fixed a bug where lightning and armored warheads were following the unit-cap-scale.
  • One of the side effects of this is that some Neinzul Rocketry Corps silos (only the lower-mark ones, and only on low or normal caps) were "scaling down" to a maximum internal capacity of zero, effectively making them Neinzul Rocketry Bricks. No longer.
  • Thanks to ArcDM for the report and save that led to this being discovered.

• The "Hostile Warheads on (planet name)" alerts are now shown for all planets you have scouting on, not just human-controlled planets.

Prerelease 5.010

(Released April 14th, 2011)

• Spire Blade Spawners:
  • Now have an attack again (not having an attack was causing all kinds of bugs and unintended behaviors), with a base power of 1000 per shot, 8 shots per salvo, 2 seconds per salvo, and effective range of 6000 (for reference, that's the same as the spire stealth battleship except it's 25% the base power and 1000 lower range).
    • Notably, this should make the BaseAIPerGuardPostShipCap flag work correctly again for them (it's set to 1 for them).
    • But since they were unable to guard stuff in the past due to zero attack, to correct old saves the AI ones just being completely stripped out when loading something from 5.009 or earlier. Human ones are not affected.
  • Have the new DoesNotMoveToPursueUnlessOrderGivenByPlayer flag, which prevents human ones from chasing an auto-targetted target (in FRD or not). Hopefully this will deal with the complaint that lead to the original removal of their guns.
  • Thanks to Sunshine! and techsy730 for reports and saves of the bypassing-caps problem.

Prerelease 5.009

(Released March 28th, 2011)

• The health of the non-core AI Spire Shield Spheres has been reduced by half (for all five mark levels of the non-core versions).
  • Thanks to Vinraith for suggesting.

• Fixed another rare desync that would occur when the "ship to kill" logic was loaded from savegames that were saved during a big battle. Not many people save DURING a big battle, so this one didn't come up much.
  • Thanks once again to Fleet and Tssbackus for reporting, and for their patience. They have all the bad luck!

• Added in a new "aggregate hash" that sums up a few key integer stats from non-cold-storage ships (location xy, destination xy, is destination settled, "ship to kill" object number), to provide a sort of early warning system against desyncs.
  • This makes the game much likely to actually desync quicker when there is a desync going on under the hood, which will make them easier to find, and hopefully also easier to reproduce when a player does run into a desync.
  • This adds a bit to the CPU load, but since it's all addition, it's nothing particularly notable, which is one of the plusses of this.
  • We are, of course, hoping not to have to use this any time soon. But in the event that Fleet and Tssbackus get unlucky again, this should help eliminate any ambiguities that might otherwise come up.

Prerelease 5.008

(Released March 25th, 2011)

• Zenith SpaceTime Manipulators can no longer be swallowed or regenerated.
  • Thanks to FunnyMan for suggesting.

• Human-allied zombies and minor factions were not being properly limited in their pool of planets to fix, thanks to a typo in their logic. It should now be fixed.
  • Thanks to techsy730, Vinraith, and zoutzakje for reporting.

• Zenith Electric Bombers:
  • No longer use scaled caps (due to the 0.1 ship cap multiplier, that can make the additional /2 or /4 from normal and low caps cause a more significant truncation than is desirable).
  • Event attack cost (used for exogalactic strikeforce computations) tiers increased from "Medium Corvette" through "Heavy Frigate" to "Light Frigate" through "Medium Destroyer", since the previous placement was putting mkIII zelecs at the same place as a mkV bomber. It's not a goal to balance the event attack costs terribly precisely, but that was a bit excessive.
  • Thanks to Garthor for bringing the odd cost issue to light.

• Sentinel Frigates:
  • Event attack cost (used for exogalactic strikeforce computations) tiers increased from "Heavy Corvette" through "Light Destroyer" to "Light Frigate" through "Medium Destroyer".

Prerelease 5.007

(Released March 24th, 2011)

• AI ships that are spawned in response to saboteurs, such as the human mark III science lab, are now zombie bots.
  • Thanks to Irxallis for suggesting.

• Fixed a bug with zombie or minor faction electric shuttles, where the shuttles would just sit there. This also should improve the behavior for any ships that explode (including warheads, etc) when controlled by a minor faction, when zombified, when in FRD or attack-move in general, and possibly when in the hands of the AI in some circumstances.
  • Thanks to Burnstreet and BobTheJanitor for reporting.

• Previously, zombiefied ships were being bound by player ship caps, but they should not have been. Fixed.
  • Thanks to Dalden and Ozymandiaz for reporting.

• Previously, allied minor faction and zombie ships would just patrol around player planets endlessly, which was helpful for defense, but problematic for two reasons: first, that it could cause massive amounts of slowdown after many hours of them stacking up, and second, that it could cause massive buildups of AI stalkers, who never dare to attack the planets with so many defenders, which leads to something akin to stalemate situations.
  • Thus the allied minor faction and zombie logic has been adjusted as follows:
    • Neutral planets are now considered the same as allied planets, and the ships will patrol to them like any others.
    • If there are more than about 100 of AI threat ships on an adjacent planet, the ships will also patrol to that planet to clean them off.
    • If the human-allied team has more than a token military force (more than about 10 ships) on a planet, then these ships will patrol to there, to help aid in that attack.
      • This allows for small raids to still happen with raid starships or whatever without assistance from these minor factions, but it enlists their help for larger-scale engagements.
  • Thanks to many players for weighing in on this, including Burnstreet, Draco18s, TechSY730, vinco, BluePhoenix, and ArcDM for reporting various things related to this, with various suggestions.

• Dyson Gatlings are now immune to paralysis attacks.
  • Thanks to Sunshine for suggesting.

• Slightly improved the targeting handling when a ship is targeting a teleporting ship that is out of range.

• Spirecraft Penetrator balance:
  • Mark I moved from pysite to xampite. Mark II moved to ebonite, and now produce two per asteroid. All the other marks not moved around.
  • Penetrator health reduced 8x.
  • Penetrator perma-cloaking replaced with normal cloaking.
  • Thanks to Irxallis for suggesting.

• Fixed a problem with too-low throttles on minor faction / zombie ships preventing them from even attacking at all in some cases.
  • Thanks to zoutzakje for reporting.

• The devourer golem is now completely invincible -- it was never meant to be killable in the first place, but recent changes to the game made that so that it was possible post-5.0. Like the dyson sphere, the devourer is more intersting when it is indestructible.
  • Thanks to ArcDM for inspiring this, although I'm not sure if that's what he really was hoping for.

• Minor factions now shoot low-power ships without prejudice, which means that devourer golems actually will devourer more again.
  • Thanks to ArcDM for reporting.

• Zenith SpaceTime Manipulators, like forcefields, now have the ability to move very slowly but not to go through wormholes, to allow for better repositioning of them.
  • Thanks to vinco for suggesting.

• Gifting a ship now copies across its current attack recharge, cloaking recharge, and similar, preventing a few exploits related to that and penetrators in particular.
  • Thanks to Irxallis for reporting.

• Fixed the bug with two buttons for mark V fighters showing up in the mark V fighter fabricator.
  • Thanks to leb0fh, Orelius, akbr1984, and snelg for reporting.

• Previously, when command stations were replaced, colony ships and mobile builders were still dying even though they shouldn't have been. Fixed.
  • Thanks to Red Spot and TechSY730 for reporting.

• Improved the clarity of the colony ship description.
  • Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting.

• Previously, when a player was controlling an ally's ships and tried to put that ship into a control group, it would add it to the ally's control group instead of the local player's control group. Having cross-player control groups is not possible without really expanding the control group data structure, which doesn't seem like a good idea to do at the present time, so for the time being allied ships simply won't go into control groups if a player tries to put them in there, at least cutting out the worst of the confusion.
  • Thanks to FunnyMan for reporting.

• The Zenith Trader previously had incorrect line breaks. Fixed.
  • Thanks to doctorfrog for reporting.

• Previously, if there were fewer than 30 enemy-to-the-AI ships and none of them were both uncloaked and had attack strength of 0, then the planet was incorrectly being put into cold storage. Now it's only in cold storage if there are fewer than 30 enemy-to-the-AI ships and all of them have full cloaking, which was the intended logic from the start.
  • This should fix some issues with the devourer golem not really doing its thing, and in general some minor faction issues in general.
  • Thanks to Fleet and TechSY730 for reporting related bugs.

• Previously, adding and removing ships to control groups was way slower than it should have been. In terms of bulk add/removes, it was way, WAY slower than it should have been. This was a past optimization that was not fully optimized -- it had one critical flaw, mainly. This is now fixed, and it has a couple of major effects:
  • Obviously, when editing control groups in bulk, it's hugely improving the speed of that (it could cause "Waiting For Players" messages, before).
  • Unexpectedly, it also makes savegames load in less than half the time they used to. As it turns out, there was a lot of "take this ship out of the control group it already wasn't in" going on in there, and that was just eating performance.
  • Thanks to FunnyMan for reporting.

• AI Progress reduction messages now show up as light green instead of light red, to avoid being misleading.
  • Thanks to sgt_deacon for suggesting.

• The radar dampening range of marauders and resistance fighters has been changed to be about 1000 greater than their attack range in all cases, soo that they always have to come into range of their targets in order to fire on their targets. This makes it so that turrets and other fixed-position defenses are not completely powerless against them.
  • Thanks to Draco Cretel for suggesting.

• Spire Civilian Leader Outposts are now included in the galaxy map filter for Detected AI Progress Reducers.
  • Thanks to Orelius and c4sc4 for suggesting.

• Spire Civilian Leader Outposts previously did not have their minor faction stance properly set, so they could not be attacked. Now they are properly noted as AI Allies until captured by the human team. They are still direct-only to attack, though, so unless you accidentally mis-click on them your ships won't attack them.
  • Thanks to chemical_art for reporting.

• Armored Warhead health reduced from over 2 billion to 40 million. This is still a huge amount of health, but they are no longer infinitely survivable. This also fixes a bug where the interface was having an overflow exception and rendering their health as 1.
  • Thanks to rustayne for reporting.

• When planet-wide EMP or tachyon detonations occur, as from a warhead or an EMP guardian, a chat message is now sent to the human players telling them who detonated what, and where. This message is also clickable. The goal here is preventing EMP guardians from punching QUITE so impenetrable a hole in player defenses without notice.
  • Thanks to KDR_11k for suggesting.

• Warhead Interceptors have been nonfunctional since slightly before 5.0 of the game (I disabled them, but never did get around to re-enabling them. They should work once again, but I haven't had a test case to work on it to be sure. If anyone has a save with them not working after this version, please let us know.
  • Thanks to Orelius for reminding us of this.

• The efficiency of gravitational slowing (gravity drains, gravity turrets) has been greatly improved, such that big battles that previously would grind to a halt because of them can now be played at 3x their prior framerate in one test case in particular.
  • One major improvement was to exclude checking of gravitational slowing for ships that can't move or aren't moving at the moment (since they don't need to be slowed!), and the other was to skip redundant gravitational slowing checks for gravitational sources that are the same and which are too close together. This last is very similar to how the speed improvements on the range data display (from way back pre-2.0 days) works.
  • Thanks to rustayne for reporting.

Prerelease 5.006

(Released March 23rd, 2011)

• Astro Trains are now immune to translocation and gravity effects, since both of those cause more problems for players than they would ever solve.
  • Thanks to Sunshine for suggesting.

• Adjusted controls window to be more likely to fit within 1024-wide resolutions; previously it was functional but didn't quite fit.
  • Thanks to Balthier for the repot.

• Double-clicking a profile name in the profile list now selects it, rather than opening it for editing.

• When a desync is encountered, the clients are now notified of that instead of them thinking it's just a regular waiting for players.

• FINALLY fixed a long-standing and excruciatingly rare desync that nevertheless was reliably hit by two of our players, Fleet and Tssbackus. Huge thanks to them for their persistence in helping us figure this out. For all the details, here's the mantis issue: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=3077

• The planetary summary now makes substantially better use of its available vertical space, thus saving horizontal space in many cases.
  • Thanks to gamewarlord777 for suggesting.

• Guard posts, fortresses, superfortresses, force fields, and exo-shields are all now immune to regeneration from regenerator golems/trains.
  • Thanks to FunnyMan for reporting.

• AI Motherships are now considered large ships for purposes of bomber starships and siege starships being able to hit them.
  • Thanks to TechSY730 for reporting.

• When an engineer is repairing a ship, and it was not set to repair that ship explicitly by the player, and it's not in free-roaming defender mode or attack-move mode, it will no longer try to chase the ship it is repairing. Instead it will just find a better target and keep its position. This allows for players to exercise more tight control over their engineers now that engineers have a huge repair range and no longer teleport.
  • Thanks to Sunshine for suggesting.

• In recent versions, the self attrition time has been reporting a negative time. Fixed.
  • Thanks to Garthor for reporting.

• When a ship is translocated away from its current location, all incoming projectiles now are also immediately translocated to its new destination, and thus will hit it instead of fizzling. This makes the military command stations a lot less unwieldy.
  • Thanks to KDR_11k for suggesting.

• Raid starship rebalance, thanks to many players for various suggestions:
  • Raid Starship health has been increased from 1.6 million health * mark level to 2 million health * mark level.
  • The AI now has separate versions of the Raid Starships, which have only 1/2 the health of the human counterparts.

Prerelease 5.005

(Released March 17th, 2011)

• Savegames from 5.004 were accidentally all uncompressed, though flagged as compressed, which caused them to not be able to be read back in. Two fixes:
  • First, fixed the actual cause of this, so new savegames in 5.005 will be saved properly.
  • Second, updated the load savegame process so that it can read even the "corrupt" saves from 5.004 without issue.
  • Thanks to SpaceJelly for reporting!

• Spire Blade Spawner:
  • Ship cap from 0.05 of normal to 0.03 of normal (in practice, from 9 to 5 for mkI). Note that this impacts AI usage as well as human.
  • BaseAIPerGuardPostShipCap from 2 => 1.

• Spire Gravity Drain:
  • Grav range from 3000*mk => 8000 (flat).

• Spire Gravity Ripper:
  • Attack power from 1000*mk => 2000*mk.
  • Seconds-per-salvo from 1 => 2.
  • So basically the gravity ripping effect is being nerfed to 50% of what it was, and the normal attack is better against armor. We'll see where to go from there.

• Spire Miniram:
  • Ship cap multiplier from 0.25 => 0.20.

• Spire Stealth Battleship:
  • Effective Attack range from 6500 + (500*mk) => 7000 flat (thus, they can no longer engage while still protected by their 8000 radar dampening range).

• Spire Tractor Platform:
  • Hull Type from Turret => Heavy.

• Previously, turtle AI types had over 13 times as many AI Eyes as "normal". Moderately defensive ones (Shield Ninny, Grav Driller, and Peacemaker) had only 2 times as many as normal. Turtles now have about 2.6 times as many as normal.

• Light Starship:
  • Base Health from 1.5m => 2m.
  • Armor Rating from 500 => 1000.
  • Given Radar Dampening of 8000 (to make it harder to deny a fleet its fleet starship munitions boost by ganking the fleet starships from long range). For reference, its munitions boost range is 3000.

• Flagship:
  • Base Health From 4,875k => 6m.
  • Given Radar Dampening of 8000. For reference, its munitions boost range is 6000.

• Neinzul Youngling Commando:
  • Base Health from 6600*mk => 8000*mk.
  • Base Attack Power from 1000*mk => 1200*mk.

• Impulse Reaction Emitter:
  • Now has a minimum multiplier of 5 (roughly what it would get vs a ship with 5,000 energy cost). This might be excessive, we'll see, but the ship was having significant "used as a paperweight" issues against anything at all small.

• Zenith Mirrors:
  • When a shot is reflected, the returned shot's power is now increased 4x. Thought to be a perpetual motion machine until the first power bill arrived. More seriously, this is an attempt to correct for the fact that things now tend to have a higher ratio of hp to damage (particularly against their own hull type) than when the mirrors were first added.

Prerelease 5.004

(Released March 16th, 2011)

• Added "Toggle Use-Group-Move-By-Default" In-Game key-bind (no default key, but you can set one on the In-Game tab of the input bindings window):
  • Toggles the value of the Use-Group-Move-By-Default global control (normally changed through the controls screen, but can be set this way for convenience).
  • Note that if you have the controls window open while using this key-bind, the controls window will not automatically update to reflect the change as that would destroy any changes made since the window was opened.
  • To make it easier to know which way it was toggled (without having to open the controls window, which would defeat the purpose), using this toggle displays a local message on the screen noting the change.

• HUGE Memory breakthrough.
  • Bad news first: the bad news is that this touched 63 different code files, and has resulted in approximately 4500 disparate lines of code being changed in a spiderweb pattern all throughout the application. So... expect some bugs. So far we haven't seen any, but with an organization change this drastic some are inevitable. Why, oh why, would we do this?
  • Well, that brings us to the good news: the baseline heap memory usage for the application has been literally HALVED, and in large savegames it's also... well, about halved in most cases. For those players that had been experiencing the dreaded "Too Many Heap Sections" error (thanks to Unity 3D's less than stellar garbage collector bounding capping out at about 900MB), this is tremendous news.
  • As a small ancillary bonus, this also makes both the program itself and individual savegames load a bit faster. The older your CPU, the more you will notice this effect (on older CPUs, it could shave off multiple seconds, actually).
  • As another not-so-small bonus, this restructuring cuts down on some confusing cases with the spirecraft and how some of the by-unit-scale stuff works. Long-term, this should mean a lot fewer bugs related to the unit cap scales, which is also welcome news. Some subtle bugs related to the armor rating have already been fixed as just part of making this transition, though we don't think anyone reported these specific ones.

• The regen ability now shows how long, in time, it will take to completely heal the ship from 0 hitpoints to full hitpoints, rather than showing the per-second gain. Thus some mental math is removed, and the display of this can be consistent between different unit cap scales.

• Ever since the porting to unity, annoyingly, we've had a bug of our own making that caused the first profile to always be the one used, rather than whatever you last used. Fixed.

• Player profiles are also now once again sorted by name, which they used to be but haven't been since the switch.

• A new "Don't Compress Savegames" toggle has been added to the Advanced tab.
  • The only time you should turn this on is if your save process is being inordinately slow, or if you are getting "Too Many Heap Sections" crashes. Otherwise, you'll want this on, as uncompressed savegames are pretty huge. But enabling this will save on RAM use during savegame compression and decompression -- the larger the save, the more the savings in RAM with the compression disabled.

Prerelease 5.003

(Released March 8th, 2011)

• Updated the Unit Cap Scale "High" option's lobby tooltip to note the chance of the game simply running out of memory in the late game and that autosaving and reloading every couple hours can be necessary to get through it.

• Fixed a typo in the first Fallen Spire journal entry.
  • Thanks to Neck for the report.

• Fixed a bug where the "I Have A Bad Feeling About This" achievement was not being awarded.
  • Thanks to Tirulii for the report and save.

• The AI's (announced) exogalactic strikeforces provoked by the Fallen Spire stuff now also contribute points to a sort of "homeworld defense fund". If that has any points and an AI homeworld comes under major assault, a defense force is immediately spawned on that homeworld. This can prove... unpleasant.

• Minor faction Fallen Spire ships (NOT the human-controllable ones) buffed quite a bit.

• Previously the controls window was not fitting vertically on 1024x600 (which isn't officially supported but we try to make it playable). Fixed to fit better.
  • Thanks to Talaraine for the report.

• Courtesy of the current #1 on the mantis vote tallies: Added "Copy To Disk" and "Copy From Disk" buttons to bottom of the controls screen.
  • Copy To File creates a copy of your global controls (excluding per-planet stuff, but including ship designs) as "copiedGlobalControlSet.dat" in your RuntimeData directory.
  • Copy From File prompts you to confirm first, and if you confirm it overwrites all your global control (excluding per-planet stuff, but including ship designs) from what's in "copiedGlobalControlSet.dat" in your RuntimeData directory. If you don't actually have such a file it doesn't do anything when you confirm.
  • Thanks to Fleet for the suggestion that inspired this feature.

• Courtesy of the new #2 item on the mantis vote tallies list: Added "Mobile Tractors With Full Load Rally" toggle to the global tab of the controls screen.
  • If this toggle is checked, when one of your mobile units with tractor beams (notably Etherjets, Spire Tractor Platforms, Spirecraft Martyrs, and Black Widow Golems) has a "full load" (all tractors active), it will look for a rally post to rally to. If that rally post happens to be a redirector, that will work as it normally does, etc.
  • When the rally trigger kicks in, all other orders (including FRD and attack-move, etc) will be canceled on the tractoring unit. But if you give the ship an order after the rally behavior is triggered, it won't retry the rally unless it it loses one of its tractor targets and then fills up again.
  • Note that this does not apply to Riot Control Starships with tractor modules, because the modules themselves are not mobile units.
  • Thanks to PineappleSam for the suggestion inspiring this control.

• Another from the vote tallies: Artillery Golems are now immune to radar dampening.
  • Thanks to Fleet for the suggestion.

• Courtesy of the new #2 item on the mantis vote-tallies: Added "Auto-Scout-Picket" command to the context menu (there's also an key bind, unbound by default):
  • Tell all cloaking scout units in the selection to try to station themselves on a planet where you do not currently have scout intel. Basically it:
    • 1) Makes a list of all scouts with cloaking in your selection.
    • 2) Makes a list of all planets you do not have current (less than 5 seconds ago) scout intel.
    • 3) Sorts that list of planets by distance (ascending) to the planet with your selection.
    • 4) Tells the first scout in the first list to go to the first planet in the second list, and so on. If it runs out of planets it loops back to the beginning of the planet list and thus it will double up, etc. When it runs out of scouts it stops.
  • Please remember that this order (and auto-explore) are only intended to automate simple scouting situations and thus save you time giving otherwise trivial orders. If your scouts all die before accomplishing anything that means that it's not a simple scouting situation and you'll need to take manual control to get good results.
  • Thanks to Malibu Stacey for the suggestion that inspired this command.

• AI War engine upgraded to Unity 3.3, from previously being Unity 3.1.

Prerelease 5.002

(Released February 22nd, 2011)

• Fixed bug in last version where maws had no ship cap.
  • Thanks to Orelius for the report.

• Removed the (somewhat jokingly named) "HasWarpEngineMufflers" UnitData flag, and replaced it with per-unit logic that looks at ActionStatus (Normal, MinorFaction, or Zombie) and tells it to not play wormhole-transition sounds for MinorFaction or Zombie ships that are allied with the player.

• Fixed bug on the stats window resource-flows tab where most construction/repair/etc outflows were reported as positive instead of negative.

• Fixed bug that was greatly delaying the onset of gravity slowdown on units entering grav range in some cases.
  • Thanks to chemical_art for the report and save.

• Courtesy of being really high on the vote tallies: previously double-clicking a single unit would select all (your) units of that exact type on the screen. Now triple-clicking will do the same thing except it will include all units of the same general type (ShipType). Meaning that triple-clicking a fighter of any mark will select all your fighters of any mark on the screen.
  • Caveat: the general categorization being used is sometimes more general than mark; notably remains rebuilders have the same ShipType as engineers. Requests to make triple-clicking an engineer not also select remains rebuilders are likely to be ignored ;)
  • Also, we have to do this triple-click detection manually, so basically it's looking for a third click within 3 tenths of a second after the double-click selection. If this timing is problematic, let us know.
  • Thanks to Toll for the suggestion.

• In response to the number-one-on-the-vote-tallies mantis issue:
  • Added new PlanetView KeyBind: "Show Strong/Weak Info":
    • Defaults to Alt+W.
    • When this is active and the mouse cursor is over a ship, each planetary summary sidebar entry will display Win/Lose/Draw (and a % indicating intensity of win or loss, if it's not a draw) as a rough indicator of how effective a cap of the ship type under the cursor would be against a cap of the entry's ship type. Since planetary summary entries frequently include multiple distinct types of ships, this is perhaps most useful in conjunction with the "Guide" mode of the planetary summary that shows all ships of a given mark level (the default key for switching to guide mode is F1). However, even in normal mode this can be useful to at least get a rough feel for which of your ships on the planet are the best you have on hand against a specific target.
    • Caveat: this is not using a full simulation or anything like that, it uses the same simplified formula as the reference tab uses. So stuff with modules won't really get accurate results (because it's only counting the base hull), etc.
    • Suggestions on text color, default keys, etc, are quite welcome; we're not totally happy with the effect right now but don't have a lot of time to fiddle with alternatives.
  • Added new PlanetView KeyBind: "Strong/Weak => One Vs One":
    • Defaults to Alt+E (so the full combination would be to hold Alt+W+E).
    • When both this and the "Show Strong/Weak Info" keybind are active, the strong/weak info shown will use a one-ship vs. one-ship comparison instead of the normal cap vs. cap comparison.

• Snipers (the ship, not the turrets) :
  • Bonus vs UltraLight from 6 => 1.
  • Bonus vs Light from 1 => 6.

• On to #2 on the vote tallies list: The mouseover tooltip for the AI Progress display on the resource bar now displays each of the tech level thresholds for each AI Player.
  • Thanks to wyvern83 for the suggestion.

• Fixed a moderately longstanding bug where having the first AI player at tech level 1 and the second AI player at tech level 2 would actually draw as the text "II/II" instead of "I/II" on the resource bar.

• The "selection description" window in the bottom right of the hud that shows the count of each type in the selection now shows two percents: the first is the average percent-of-max-health of the living ships of that type (this used to be there before the Unity port, and it's back now!), the second is the lowest percent-of-max-health of the living ships of that type.
  • Thanks to Vinraith for reminding us about the missing average-health info.

• The selection description window will now try to display up to 30 entries without resorting to a scrollbar, instead of only 5.

• Replaced the old "if CanUseNeinzulRegenerator then multiply by 2" wave-size rule with a more general UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier UnitData field.
  • Everything with CanUseNeinzulRegenerator (which is just the 5 youngling types), gets a 2 for this.
  • As an experiment, Bombers get 0.8 and Fighters and Missile Frigates get 1.2. Bomber waves will probably still be more dangerous (as is intended) but it might make the difference in "interestingness" less. Not planning to touch the bonus ship types because if the AI has a particularly bomber-like bonus ship type that should just be a characteristic of the kind of difficulty you'll be facing in that game, etc.

• Exogalactic strikeforces provoked by the Broken-Golems-Hard or Spirecraft-Hard minor factions (but not Fallen Spire ones) now have a chance (50% for Broken-Golems, 20% for Spirecraft) of using an alternate composition distribution that heavily favors a large lead ship and a single battlegroup.

• Broken-Golems-Hard and Spirecraft-Hard exogalactic strikeforce initial-strength, per-minute-increment-amount, and maximum-strength all increased roughly 10%.
  • Thanks to Shrugging Khan for pointing out that these are a bit on the easy side right now. In other words, blame him if these slaughter you now.

• The Armored, Black-Widow, Artillery, and Regenerator Golems used in exogalactic strikeforces are now different than the "standard" AI golems (like those used by the Golemite AI Type). The main difference is that they lack the 1/10th-health-of-a-normal-golem rule (but the Armored variants still have a 1/2 health modifier, since they're so buff).
  • Thanks to Shrugging Khan for continuing to provoke the golems.

• Black Widow golem health and Attack Power boosted a bit (15%-ish).

• Regenerator Golem health doubled, in response to various concerns that they're less useful than other golems.

• The "shot travels at least 40 speed faster than its target's current speed" logic has been extended to include "shot travels at least 40 speed faster than its target's tractor-er's current speed", since in the "tow" case the target's current speed is almost always zero.
  • Thanks to kjara for the report.

Prerelease 5.001

(Released February 16th, 2011)

• Made it possible to bind Mouse2, Mouse3, Mouse4, Mouse5, or Mouse6 to the primary key of a KeyBinding. For reference, Mouse2 is the middle mouse button. Mouse0 is left-click, Mouse1 is right-click, and both are excluded from this due to being used in many other ways by the main input code. Mouse3-6 don't exist on most mice, but are available for those who have them.
  • One example use of this is to bind OpenDefaultContextMenu to Mouse2 (middle mouse). We're not sure if this would cause major conflicts with middle-mouse-scrolling or mouse-wheel-zooming (due to accidental click-downs during wheeling); if you try it please let us know how it goes. Seemed ok in our testing.

• Fixed a bug where the special-move context menu's catch-right-clicks option was basically failing to do anything. Now when it is toggled on it properly re-interprets right clicks outside the menu as "set destination to clicked point and then execute".

• Updated tooltips for:
  • Armored Golem.
  • Artillery Golem.
  • Black Widow Golem.
  • Cursed Golem.
  • Regenerator Golem.
  • Hive Golem.
  • Botnet Golem.
  • Military Command Stations.
  • Captive Human Settlements.
  • Fallen Spire lobby tooltip (reference to wiki removed due to complaints).
  • Thanks to Burnstreet, c4sc4, techsy730, and Sunshine! for contributing suggestions about these.

• Fixed a bug where hybrids were... basically completely broken. Sigh. The "don't let hybrids rebuild modules if they've recently been damaged" code was inverted in such a way that they could never build modules. And because they could never get modules, they were never satisfied that they were ready to go attack or defend or whatever.
  • For reference, this bug went unreported for roughly 20 versions. The Hybrids are plotting revenge.
  • Thanks to Draco18s and Draco Cretel for reporting. The Hybrids might spare them.

• Reclamators (excluding zombie-reclamators) :
  • Replaced the "cannot do reclamation damage to ships more than one mk level higher" rule: the reclamation effect of the actual damage done is multiplied as follows:
    • If the reclamator is 4 mks higher than the target (mkV shooting mkI), multiply by 64.
    • If the reclamator is 3 mks higher than the target, 48.
    • If the reclamator is 2 mks higher than the target, 32.
    • If the reclamator is 1 mk higher than the target, 16.
    • If the reclamator is the same mk as the target, 8.
    • If the reclamator is 1 mk lower than the target, 4.
    • If the reclamator is 2 mks lower than the target, 2.
    • If the reclamator is 3 mks lower than the target, 1.
    • There is no 4-mk-lower case because mkV are not reclaimable.
  • Leech Starship base attack power from 120k*mk => 30k*mk.
  • Parasite base attack power from 4000*mk => 1000*mk.
  • Nanoswarms inherent 16x-reclamation property down to 2x, but no reduction in actual damage.
  • Spire Teleporting Leech base attack power also not reduced, because the general feeling is that these are pretty underpowered already. Might nerf these later if this proves to be too much.

• Parasites:
  • Effective range from 3700 => 6000.
  • Armor piercing from 0 => 750*mk.
  • Base Health from 7200*mk => 14400*mk.

• Fixed a relatively longstanding bug where AIPerPlanetShipCap and AIPerGuardPostShipCap were generally not being enforced when loading a game (either just-starting or loading later).

• Some triangle rebalancing:
  • The rationale here is that bombers have been having their way with forcefields a bit too much, and having fighters be so much more "general-dps" than the other two has made them much less a natural predator of the Bomber. Also, the Missile Frigate is still being reported as the least desirable by a significant margin.
  • Fighters (including the tachyon and bulletproof variants) :
    • Bonus vs Polycrystal from 2.4 => 5.
  • Bombers:
    • Bonus vs UltraHeavy from 10 => 6.
    • Bonus vs Structural from 10 => 6.
    • Bonus vs Heavy from 10 => 6.
    • Bonus vs Artillery from 10 => 6.
    • Base Attack Power from 1900*mk => 2400*mk.
  • Missile Frigates:
    • Bonus vs Light from 10 => 6.
    • Bonus vs UltraLight from 10 => 6.
    • Bonus vs Swarmer from 10 => 6.
    • Bonus vs Neutron from 10 => 6.
    • Bonus vs Composite from 10 => 6.
    • Bonus vs Refractive from 10 => 6.
    • Base Attack Power from 1600*mk => 2400*mk.
    • Base Crystal Cost from 700 => 500.

• Fixed a bug with the electric shuttle "chain lightning" mechanic where it could hit a single forcefield way more times than intended. Used to be as many as 200 per shot, but now down to 5 (anything can be hit 5 times per shot).
  • Thanks to Draco18s for reporting.

• Fixed bug where electric shuttles were able to chain-hit the same target 10 times in one blast (thus getting maximum efficiency against groups 20 or larger) instead of 5 (thus needing to hit at least 40 to get full damage).

• Fixed a bug where Spire Blades, Spire Minirams, and Spire Rams would not actually automatically die (but just self-damage by some amount) when attacking.

• Tractor Beam Turrets:
  • Base Health from 210k/840k/1680k => 560k*mk.
  • Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 450*mk.

• Beam Guardians:
  • Bonus Vs Turret from 8 => 1.
  • Bonus Vs UltraLight from 8 => 1.
  • Bonus Vs Artillery from 2 => 1.
  • Base Attack Power from 4000*mk => 4500*mk.
  • Base Armor Rating from 600*mk => 300*mk.

• Laser Guardians:
  • Base Armor Rating from 1000*mk => 300*mk.
  • Base Health from 1.4*(standard guardian health) to 1.1*(standard).
  • Shots Per Salvo from 3 => 15.
  • Seconds Per Salvo from 4 => 2.
  • Base Attack Power from 17k*mk => 1700*mk.
  • Base Armor Piercing from 500*mk => 300*mk.
  • Base Attack Range from 7000 => 5000.

• Raider Guardians:
  • Now Have Radar Dampening Range of 8000.

• Lightning Guardians:
  • Base Armor Rating from 800*mk => 600*mk.
  • Now use the same "can hit up to 200 targets max, but can do max damage to as few as 40 by hiting each target up to 5 times" logic as Electric Shuttles.
  • Base Attack Power from 1600*mk => 2400*mk (for reference, Electric shuttles on low caps have 1600*mk, albeit somewhat slower reloading).

• Tractor Guardians:
  • Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 450*mk.

• Spider Guardians:
  • Base Armor Rating from 1000 (flat) => 150*mk.

• Sniper Guardians:
  • Base Armor Rating from 1000 (flat) => 150*mk.

• Tachyon Guardians:
  • Base Armor Rating from 400 (flat) => 150*mk.

• Gravity Guardians:
  • Max Target Base Speed from 10/8/6/4/2 => 11/10/9/8/7.
  • Grav Beam Base Range from 8k/10k/12k/14k/16k => 7k/8k/9k/10k/11k.
  • Base Armor Rating from 100*mk => 300*mk.

• Zombie Guardians:
  • Shots Per Salvo from 2/3/4/5/6 => flat 2.
  • Base Armor Rating from 5000*mk => 300*mk.
  • Base Attack Range from 9000 => 7000.

• EMP Guardians:
  • Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 300*mk.

• Carrier Guardians:
  • Base Armor Rating from 1200 (flat) => 300*mk.

• Note: the guardian rebalancing is far from done, this was just to tone down some more obvious issues.

• Handicap now has the following effects, all of which is new unless otherwise noted:
  • AI
    • Previously it affected the speed at which the AI reinforced. It no longer does.
    • Increases the number of ships in each wave and reinforcement, and decreases when negative.
    • Roaming Enclaves and Preservation Wardens are spawned sooner or later into the game.
    • Scrap waves are scaled accordingly.
    • Specifically "forced waves" are scaled accordingly.
    • Cross planet atacks are scaled accordingly.
    • Saboteur and deep strike reactions are scaled accordingly.
    • For now, event attacks are NOT affected by this.
    • Initial seeding of AI planets are intentionally not affected by this -- same as human players get no starting benefit from handicaps.
  • Player
    • Increases the amount of resources gathered from producers (using a new formula), and decreases when negative (also using the new formula).
  • Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting we revisit this.

• The tech level of the AI is now only inflated by 1 artificially when playing on greater than difficulty 9, rather than greater than difficulty 8.
  • Thanks to TechSY730 for suggesting.