AI War:Children of Neinzul

What will be in the Children of Neinzul micro expansion?

A: The short explanation is that this expansion is a very small one compared to The Zenith Remnant and our other upcoming full expansion, and so we're calling it a micro-expansion and charging only $3.99 USD for it. All proceeds that Arcen receives for this micro-expansion will be donated to charity, at present it is expected to all go to the Child's Play charity, but we reserve the right to shift that around if there's a need.

This expansion will not be a time-limited thing, meaning that you will be able to buy it anytime from when it comes out onward, and no matter when you buy it its proceeds will still go to charity.

The following link has more details on the rationale behind the expansion, as well as the list of suggestions made by fans for content to include in the expansion: Children of Neinzul subforum.

New Alien Race

Until this expansion, the only known aliens in the AI War universe were the Zenith. This micro-expansion introduces a new alien race, tentatively called the Neinzul. This micro-expansion will be focused around them.

The Neinzul are a race of perpetual "younglings," who live for an extremely short time before death (only around a day), and which are then replaced by fully-aware and vicious replacements. They are a sentient race of essentially "sentient fruit flies." They don't have a hive-mind or anything so cliche, but they are arranged into localized "Enclaves" that form mini-collectives.

Each Enclave is run out of a Neinzul Enclave Starship, and each starship has its own goals and centralized knowledge-store from which its spawned younglings pull their collected memories; this sort of nodal archival system is the only thing that has allowed such a short-lived species to ever advance to star-faring status.

All of the Youngling ship classes will have ships that are exceedingly cheap in terms of metal/crystal, and which are built extremely fast, and which move faster than just about anything else in the game but which will also died after a short period of time (a couple of minutes). Thus they will be more focused around quick-production around the new carrier ships, or around defensively-oriented space docks, one or the other, giving them a feel more along the lines of the Hive Golems (or "minutemen" in various other RTS games) except with a lot more control and strategy possible here.

New Bonus Ship Classes

The base game of AI War includes 27 "bonus" ship classes beyond the base fighter, bomber, frigate, scout quartet that is in every game. The Zenith Remnant adds another 14 classes, and this micro-expansion will add another 5 classes (be sure to see the notes about Youngling ship classes, above). Here is a list of what has been planned so far:

• Neinzul Youngling Commando (I-IV and Core variants)
  • This will be an exceedingly fast ship (speed 120, perhaps) with the Scout ability, but no cloaking, and pretty solid guns (on par with a laser gatling. They will have normal ship cap, not an inflated ship cap as the laser gatlings do, and their range will be much shorter, like that of a fighter,
• Neinzul Youngling Tiger (I-IV and Core variants)
  • An ship with an exceedingly short attack range (like that of a tank), but with a very strong (if somewhat slow) attack and around 20 speed or so, by far the slowest of all the Neinzul ships. They have armor and shielding so powerful that they are unusually resistant to attacks from enemies, but their low lifespan means that they are only a threat for so long.
• Neinzul Youngling Vulture (I-IV and Core variants)
  • This is a ship whose damage is (full damage * (110 - target health percentage)). This makes it effective at finishing off especially high health targets when mixed into a regular fleet. This is a fairly longer-ranged ship, with a fairly high base attack.
  • Thanks to RCIX for suggesting.
• Neinzul Weasel (I-IV and Core variants)
  • Similar to the Deflector Drone in the base game, but oriented towards missiles. These reduce the power of incoming missiles to nearby units and are immune to direct missile fire against themselves.
  • Thanks to Winter Born for suggesting.
• Neinzul Mimic (I-IV and Core variants)
  • Has very weak, very slow weapons. However, every time it strikes a non-reclamation-immune target ship of equal or lower mark level, the mimic creates a full-health copy of that target ship. That copied ship loses health quickly over time, and can't be repaired, the same as the Neinzul ships themselves. Copies that are lower mark level than the mimic that created them last longer.
  • Thanks to Buttons840 for suggesting.

New Minor Factions

This micro-expansion is expected to include 1-3 minor factions themed around the Neinzul. Each one will likely have a specialized sort of Enclave Starship with certain behavior styles and certain types of Neinzul Youngling ships (from the existing described bonus ship classes) attached to it.

• Neinzul Preservation Warden
  • This Neinzul Enclave are obsessed with their ancestral memories of the great beauty of the celestial realm with its many stars and planets. The Enclave is horrified at the rapid consumption of resources and the use of nuclear weapons forever marring the face of the galaxy.
  • Feeling that without action the grand vistas of the galaxy and future memories of its beauty would be denied to their children, this Enclave has emerged from its reverential seclusion to put an end to resource harvesting. The Preservation Warden scours the galaxy on the look out for harvesters and will attempt to destroy any it finds. In their zeal, other vessels and structures like turrets or guard posts, too close to the resource patches may also be destroyed.
  • Thanks to wyvern83 for suggesting!
• Neinzul Minor Faction Placeholder 2
• Neinzul Minor Faction Placeholder 3

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:

• Neinzul Enclave Starships (I-IV variants)
  • These starships are sure to be a fan favorite, basically acting like armored (and armed) mobile space docks. They won't have transport space
  • Mark I of these ships can only build Mark I ships, Mark II can build Mark I and II ships, Mark III can build Marks I-III, and Mark IV can build Marks I-IV, which is incredibly powerful as this completely obviates the needs for Advanced Factories if players choose to unlock these.
    • However, the knowledge costs will be something of a deterrent. Mark I would cost only 1,000 knowledge, but Mark II will cost 2,000 knowledge, Mark III 4,000 knowledge, and Mark IV 8,000 knowledge. Thus it is a total of 15,000 knowledge to unlock all the way up to Mark IV (but only 7,000 to unlock up to Mark III). That's a pretty steep cost, which means that Advanced Factories will still be the preferable option in many cases, but this provides a powerful new option for players that wish to pay the price in knowledge.
  • These ships will be available in any game which has this expansion enabled, assuming that players choose to sink knowledge into this line of starships -- in other words, it doesn't matter if players have any specific Neinzul Youngling bonus ship classes specifically under their control. This is basically the "carrier" idea, which players have been interested in having for a long time.
• Neinzul Regeneration Chambers
  • These immobile structures are able to hold around 500 ships as a transport would, and repair all the ships held within themselves at a fairly slow rate. However, this has the double bonus of (like regular transports) causing the Neinzul ships to not degrade while in transit.
  • The AI thus makes use of these on their planets in order to keep their Neinzul ships healthy while not active, and human players can do the same.

New AI Special Weapons

These are weapons that the AI may use, but which players never (or only indirectly) can ever capture. 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.

• Neinzul Nest
  • These immobile structures are spawning beds for Neinzul Younglings. The nest launches a very low-warning humans destroy any ship on the planet of, or on a planet adjacent to, the Nest's planet. If the humans control a planet next to the Nest, it also launches periodic waves of Neinzul ships.
  • There is an AI Progress cost of 10 to destroying these, and they have unusually high health.
  • Thanks to Nemo for suggesting.

• Neinzul Cluster
  • These immobile structures are defensive weapons invented by the Neinzul. At long range, it fires heavily-damaging single shots similar to an ion cannon. Meanwhile, however, it is storing up Neinzul ships inside itself as time passes, and when player ships get too close, these burst out in full "free" mode. This makes these really dangerous with scouts, as well as just on general planetary defense.
  • There is an AI Progress cost of 2 to destroying these.
  • Thanks to Ancestral for suggesting.

• Neinzul Youngling Viral Swarmer
  • These tiny ships have low health, do very little damage, and lose health over time in the same manner as other Youngling ships. However, they are able to self-replicate (like Zenith Viral Shredders do, just faster), and they also absorb lightning, nukes, EMPs, and similar.
  • AI's that use Neinzul ships will also scatter these viral swarmers in with the mix of their ships on waves, and there is an AI type also that specifically uses a lot of these.
  • Thanks to superking for suggesting.

New AI Types

The base game included 26 AI types, the Zenith Remnant added 14 more, and this micro-expansion will add an additional 6. Here's the list of them:

Easier

• Neinzul AI Type Placeholder 1
• Neinzul AI Type Placeholder 2

Moderate

• Neinzul Viral Enthusiast
  • Has Neinzul Viral Swarmers at every wormhole, making the use of lightning warheads and similar against them... dangerous.
• Neinzul Cluster-Bomber
  • Builds Neinzul Clusters on all of its planets.

Harder

• Neinzul Nester
  • Builds Neinzul Nests on a huge number of its planets.
  • Thanks to Nemo for suggesting.
• Warp Jumper
  • On the bright side, this AI type does not build any warp gates on its planets, which saves 5 AI Progress per plant and avoids the need to gate raid their planets. On the downside, however, this AI type is able to launch waves at any non-warp-jammed planet on the map at any time thanks to their warp drives on their individual ships.

New Map Styles

The expansion will add two new map styles.

• Concentric Circles
  • Planets are arranged in concentric rings.
• X Shaped
  • Planets are organized into four distinct groups only connected via a single central planet.

New Music Tracks

In all, this expansion is expected to add about 3 new in-game music tracks, and will probably not feature a new title theme.

• During-play tracks:
  • Neinzul Music Track Placeholder 1
  • Neinzul Music Track Placeholder 2
  • Neinzul Music Track Placeholder 3

Other Miscellaneous Additions

• There may be a few new cheats.
• There will likely be at least 19 new achievements, just considering the new AI types and minor factions.

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