AI War:6.000 Release

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Statistics For The Curious

AI War 5.0 - 6.0 spanned from Feb. 15th, 2011 through Oct. 18th, 2012 and it was full of some HUGE changes! 895 distinct changes were made as part of 97 different releases over the course of 611 days. One does not simply stroll through AI War patch notes, indeed.

Even though this was during the period that A Valley Without Wind was developed and released, we managed to keep up an average of 1 release every six days (though some periods were very light with releases and others were very dense with them, if you look at the actual dates; the average makes it sound more regular than it was). Given the length of time between 5.0 and 6.0, it's essentially the same length of time that was between 1.0 and 5.0. So that's certainly a good reason to have such huge patch notes and so many changes!

A full 149 Players are thanked in this series.

This document is the abbreviated, organized version of the full release notes (here).

Highlights

Huge

  • Ancient Shadows, an entire new (paid) expansion, has been added to the game! Briefly summarizing the additions:
    • Champions! Optional hero units that can be added at the beginning of the game or midway through, these have the unique ability to fly through special wormholes into the new nebulae. In those new areas, champions encounter both friendly and hostile human, zenith, neinzul, and spire splinter factions. As your champion gains experience and recovers artifacts, you can guide its progression from a super-starship to a truly awesome powerhouse.
    • 9 New Bonus Ship Types, including the hilarious Tackle Drone Launcher and the first-ever bonus starship.
    • A New Minor Faction: the Dark Spire. These only awaken when many ships die near their spawners, but once they really get going neither the AI nor player will find them easy to stop.
    • Modular Fortresses, a long requested addition to the player's heavy defensive lineup.
    • 2 New AI Types: The tough-as-nails Heroic AI that throws champions at you, and the modular-fortress-happy Fortress King AI.
    • 2 New Map Types: The long-requested "Clusters" map type and a more advanced "Microcosm Clusters" variant.
    • 3 _Nasty_ new Core Guard Post types for the AI to defend its homeworlds with.
    • Over 90 minutes of new music from Pablo Vega.
  • Hacking! We finally found a solution to knowledge-raiding that's both balanceable and fun:
    • Knowledge raiding and Superterminal hacking now both increase the same "hacking antagonism" value on the AI, and as that value gets higher the AI's response to any hacking activity gets increasingly powerful and erratic.
    • On top of this, we added a new "Ship Design Hacking" mechanic whereby you can hack an AI-controlled Advanced Research Station so that when you later capture it you can select from one of three randomly-chosen bonus ship types to unlock, instead of just being given one of them. This shares in the hacking-antagonism mechanic used by knowledge hacking and superterminal hacking.
  • Completely redid the AI's Special Forces to make them an extremely important defensive mechanic that adapts to the player's offensive deployments and tries to thwart them where it counts.
  • Added a new AI mechanic: the Strategic Reserve. The AI gradually adds strength to this reserve and deploys ships from it to critical defense actions, especially homeworld defenses. It also uses the reserve to contribute to Cross Planet Attacks, taking some of the burden off local defense forces.
  • Added another new AI mechanic: the Threat Fleet. "Freed" AI ships will still do their normal stalk and attack behavior for about half an hour, but after that the AI figures that they've probably been stymied by strong human defenses and pulls them into a cohesive offensive fleet that waits for an opportunity to strike the human where it hurts.
  • Massively reworked the energy system to cut out the "trivial to compute, time-consuming to do" micromanagement that the previous system encouraged:
    • There's no such thing as an inefficient reactor anymore: you can have one free-to-run energy-collector on each planet, and as many high-but-constant-cost matter-converters as you want anywhere.
    • Putting units in low-power-mode no longer reduces their energy cost (or ongoing m+c cost, for the energy-producers), so there's no motive to micro them up and down to pay the minimum m+c for the minimum energy necessary.
    • The free-energy collectors scale up with the number of homeworlds so that a multi-HW player doesn't have such an energy disadvantage compared to multiple single-HW players.
  • Several minor factions and AI plots now have variable intensity that allows more game variety: want to play a game with TONS of human resistance fighters? Or where the Dyson Sphere has a dominant impact? Want just a few human marauders? Or hybrids on, but in much lower numbers? Or hybrids on, and massively amplified? It's all there.
  • Totally revamped AI Carriers:
    • When there's too many AI ships on the planet for them to fully deploy (without unduly hurting game performance), they're no longer invincible but if you pop them they combine their contents into nasty mkV ships and mkV guardians.
    • Can no longer shoot through forcefields (but can still fly through them).
    • Now get more shots-per-salvo based on the ships being carried, so they're not so much less a threat when not-yet-deployed (previously high-carrier waves tended to be like several waves in series, which is much easier than intended).
    • There's now a toggle on the CTRLS window to tell your ships whether to auto-target carriers or not.
  • Cross-Planet Attacks have been substantially reworked to be a much more serious threat.
  • Each AI planet now picks 3 ship types to focus its reinforcements on, making each planet feel more distinct.

Big

  • Re-implemented custom galaxy layouts for each player, so you can move planets around the map to get the strategic view looking the way you want.
  • Substantially rebalanced waves, particularly on the higher difficulties.
    • Notably, 10/10 used to be totally lethal... unless you somehow pulled out some massive cheese and survived the first couple waves to get a foothold. Now the early 10/10 challenge is a much better "advertisement" for the kind of challenge that lies beyond the initial period. Accordingly, 10/10 has been massively rebalanced to be harder in those later parts of the game, as certain players have displayed the temerity to _win_ on that difficulty.
    • Also smoothed out several "difficulty cliffs" along the 7-to-10 range where one difficulty step was massively more significant than either the one just below or just above.
  • The Botnet Golem has been split off into an entirely separate minor faction with its own costs/risks because it was so powerful. We could have just nerfed it down near the other golems, but this way is much more fun.
  • The starfield backgrounds have been completely redone with something much more interesting.
  • Rebalanced... honestly, it might be easier to list the units that were _not_ rebalanced during the 5.0-to-6.0 run than those that were.
    • Thanks to all the participants who contributed nominations, discussion, and votes to our "what's the worst unit?" (and other) community polls!
  • Added a devious super-hybrid plot to Advanced Hybrids (on high enough intensity). That's a nice Dyson Sphere you've got there, it'd be a shame if anything happened to it.
  • Finally found a way to detect loss-of-focus from within the Unity engine, allowing us to auto-pause the game when this happens (there's a toggle to suppress the auto-pause, if you like).
    • Note: this doesn't work on the Mac in windowed mode, but it does work on the Mac in full-screen mode and on Windows in either mode.

Important

  • AI War engine upgraded to Unity 3.3 from Unity 3.1.
  • The Siege Starship (formerly known as the Dreadnaught) was too effective as "park at extreme range and pick off the enemy" ship so it was nerfed into the Antimatter Starship. That couldn't really hit anything, so it was re-imagined again into the Plasma-Siege Starship, which is much shorter ranged than the old siege starship but fires special ammo that does aoe damage, engine damage, and causes extra splash damage to targets under any forcefield it hits.
  • The MkIII Riot Control Starship was given some new exclusive module possibilities (grav tazer, etc) to better set them apart from the MkI and MkII.
  • Added Hardened Forcefields: an alternate form of human-tech forcefield that relies on reducing incoming damage more than absorbing it.
  • Added the ability to switch your UI to display what another human player sees, making team control significantly more convenient and paving the way for other features.
  • Added the "Helper" player role which is much like the "observer" or "spectator" role from other RTS games but they can also control the units of any human player allowing team control.
  • Added a new Ultra-Low unit-cap-scale with 1/8th the caps of High, for folks on low-end hardware or wanting to play something crazy like a 16-homeworld game.
  • Added a scripting language for generating lobby game-setups within a set of desired parameters, and a number of default scripts that ship with the game (including a few "Beginner Game" scripts, a few scripts for randomized minor factions, and a few scripts for randomized _and undisclosed_ minor factions).
  • Added short-lived "Drones" that the player's Neinzul Enclave Starships can build. These are based on unlocked turret technology and provide more of a "carrier with fighters" feel.
  • Made defending multiple planets much more viable (relative to the viability of defending one planet) by changes to wave interval (which impacts wave size), re-imagining the Military Command Station's weaponry, and adding the new per-planet-cap'd Minifortress.
  • AI Eyes now have 3 varieties: Sentry Eyes (the old behavior), Ion Eyes, and Parasite Eyes. Each is pretty lethal against no-thought-blob attacks, in a different way.
  • The ramp-up from one AI tech level to the next is now much more gradual, with waves containing a percentage of the next-higher tech level that increases as you approach the threshold.
  • Reclamation damage is now much more likely to have a consistent impact because any reclamator nanites unable to reclaim their host when it dies "hop" to another nearby eligible target.
  • Exogalactic strikeforces can now contain Hunter/Killers. Be afraid. And throw the rotten fruit at chemical_art for suggesting it.
  • Exogalactic strikeforces are now more wily about picking targets. Get used to defending your outlying assets if you play with any exo sources.
  • Several golems have been substantially buffed, to provide an appropriate reward for the costs/risks of playing on Golems-Medium or Golems-Hard. Enjoy your new "has tractors that paralyze!" Black Widow Golem and "that thing can kill anything, once every 8 seconds!" Artillery Golem.
  • The game's RAM usage has been substantially reduced in many cases, leading to far fewer out-of-memory errors in remotely-sane scenarios (and even some clearly-insane scenarios, we've noted).
  • Massively reworked the way the AI determines how many ships it gets in a reinforcement, so that it properly pays attention to how much a ship should "cost" relative to others (based on relative ship cap, mainly). This makes it much less likely that the AI will pile up huge amounts of low-cap ships on a planet, and if it does create such a pile up at least the proper price (in terms of fewer other ships elsewhere) was paid.
  • Fixed all remaining desync bugs; haven't had a reported desync in months.
  • Now when a forcefield is damaged, every other overlapping allied forcefield also takes a minimal amount of damage, preventing the old far-too-effective-to-be-balanceable tactic of having engineers repair inner forcefields while the outer ones tanked the damage. It was fun, but properly micro'd it was effectively invincible before.
  • AI Homeworld structure seeding now distinguishes between normal and "brutal" structures: the core raid engine, core CPA guard post, and AI Eye were far more significant than the other structures being considered, and the difference between an AI HW with none of them and an AI HW with 5 core raid engines could be the difference between "pushover" and "impossible".
  • Made fortresses, forcefield generators, and command stations drop rebuildable remains when they die, greatly reducing the need for micro when rebuilding after a significant AI breakthrough.
  • Added the first per-control-group control options so you have finer control over auto-Free-Roaming-Defender and auto-kiting behavior.

AI Updates

  • Reworked the CPA formula to be more aggressive on higher difficulties, since it's been sadly anemic lately.
    • Also added cpa-size calculations to the wave logs, when advanced logging is enabled.
  • Removed a "go for the command station over everything else when AI" behavior from a number of units, including:
    • Leech Starships.
    • Flagships.
    • Zenith Starships.
    • Spire Starships.
    • Riot Starships.
  • Barracks are now seeded on some AI planets at the start of the game (and retroactively into old saves):
    • The higher the difficulty, the more planets get them.
    • The higher the difficulty, the more ships in them.
    • None are placed closer than 3 hops from a human homeworld, to not be too cruel.
    • These serve two purposes:
      • Making it far less likely that the AI will simply not have enough ships for a CPA, while still letting players whittle away at "the reserve" if they want to.
      • Making the AI's defensive response to the loss of a planet (with a barracks on it) something more of an event.
  • AI planets now pick a primary, secondary, and tertiary type of ship to focus their reinforcements on.
    • It's not purely random, sometimes it picks ships that fit certain roles.
    • When picking a new reinforcement ship for the central pulse or a non-special-forces guard-post-pulse, it has a 10% chance to pick any available ship like usual, and a 90% chance to pick one of its focus types. When picking a focus type, it has 3 times as much chance to pick the primary as the secondary, and 3 times as much chance to pick the secondary as the tertiary. If that doesn't make sense, don't worry about it.
    • Whenever the AIs unlock new ship types due to AI progress, all AI planets "reroll" their focus types.
  • The AI now has a "strategic reserve" it can deploy to defend critical planets (the homeworld, the core worlds, and the superterminal world; though it still holds onto most of it when defending the latter two) and pulls back up (off the board) if the attack goes away.
    • Reserve ships are basically just normal mkV fleet ships, but they are not allowed to leave the planet so they can't be easily baited to their doom.
    • The reserve starts at zero and increases periodically, so it can be whittled away.
    • The max size of the reserve and its increase rate are proportional to the difficulty of the AI player in question (each AI has its own reserve) and AIP. On Diff 7 with non-insane AIP it's pretty tame. Higher up, it gets more intense.
    • If you're curious about the numbers, with advanced logging on they go into the special forces log (since the concept is somewhat similar, and didn't seem to need a separate log; might change that).
    • Thanks to Faulty Logic and others who voted on this poll for inspiring this change (more coming eventually in response to that, for that matter).
  • AI Special Forces:
    • Now get periodic extra spawns (in addition to the usual trickle from reinforcements) if under a "special forces population cap" determined by difficulty, AIP, etc.
      • The spawns are spread out among all special forces posts (and special forces guardians) in the galaxy, except those in non-AI territory. Each post in non-AI territory instead increases the special-forces-population-cap by about 5%. So there's a reason to kill them, in tension with the +1 AIP from killing them.
      • If you're curious about the math, etc, turn on Advanced Logging and check SpecialForcesLogicLog.txt in your RuntimeData directory after the game has run for a bit. There's some minor spoilers in there about what ships each AI has, but nothing you probably won't find out looking at a few AI planets anyway.
    • Will now rally to defend an AI planet that is under significant attack and at least mildly important (AI Homeworld, core world, or a planet with a CSG, ARS, Advanced Factory, Super Terminal, or Broken Golem on it, giving priority to HWs/core-worlds).
    • Now keep the special-forces flag even when they have encountered the enemy, so that rallying to a planet does not just dump all the special forces there as normal threat.
    • When not rallying to defend a planet, will select a staging planet about 3 hops deep into AI territory and rally there until an eligible AI planet is attacked.
    • To prevent a player's first attack from running into several hundred AI ships out for blood, as entertaining as it was during testing, special forces ships are no longer seeded during the initial map seeding.
  • Since "make the threatballs fish or cut bait" was #1 on the second round of the 6.0 poll:
    • Threat ships behave as they used to for about 30 minutes after being freed, but after that they are switched to an alternate "Threat Fleet" behavior that is somewhat similar to the new Special Forces mechanic.
      • Note: this only happens on Difficulty 6+, as it's not the AI getting anything extra, it's just behaving more intelligently (in theory) with what it has.
    • If an AI homeworld or core world is under attack, the threat fleet will rally to defend it.
    • Otherwise, if it sees an accessible non-AI planet with a significant human presence that it thinks it can take out, it goes to attack that (it will still pool up at the entry wormhole in some cases, until enough of them are there to pass the threshold, so they don't march in to the grinder one-by-one).
    • Otherwise, it picks a planet in AI territory to hang out at until either of the two above conditions are met.
    • If a carrier is spontaneously formed from ships that have a significant threat-fleet population, the carrier (and anything it spawns) is also considered threat-fleet.
    • When a special forces alarm post is triggered it converts all special forces in the galaxy directly into threat-fleet, and then blows up the alarm post (not causing AIP, unless it was triggered because it was shot to death).
    • For the curious who have advanced logging on, the target-planet selection process is logged in the special forces log file.
  • Fixed a relatively longstanding bug where AIPerPlanetShipCap and AIPerGuardPostShipCap were generally not being enforced when loading a game (either just-starting or loading later).
  • 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.

General Large Gameplay Additions

Co-Op Improvements

Performance Improvements

  • Fixed a longstanding (since March 2011) bug where several per-unit computations were being done every frame instead of every 6 or so frames as designed.

Interface Improvements

  • The Z+X keybind combo now shows NPC/minor-faction ranges as well as enemy ranges.
  • Reduced the distance-into-AI-territory super-hybrids try to plant dyson antagonizers by 1, hopefully making them less excruciating to find.
  • Fixed a bug where super-hybrid logic for determining which planets were the right distance into AI territory for a dyson antagonizer was considering nebulae to be non-AI territory.
  • The following units are now omitted from control group selection since control groups for them are just part of getting newly constructed ships assigned to the right control group and moved to the right spot:
    • All human intragalactic warp gates.
    • Human Rebel Colony (base game).
    • Spire Refugee Colony (Fallen Spire).
    • Spire Shipyard (Fallen Spire).
    • All splinter-faction construction facilities (Ancient Shadows)
  • Spirecraft Rams, Martyrs, Siege Towers, Ion Blaster, and Implosion Artillery can now be placed into stand-down mode to keep them from firing (or, in the case of a ram, blowing itself up; thankfully martyrs already didn't try to do that automatically).
  • Spirecraft Ram far-zoom icons now rotate according to their facing.
  • Added new toggle to the Galaxy-Wide tab of the CTRLS window: Brave Cloaker Starships.
    • If this toggle is checked, your Cloaker Starships will suppress their normal self-preservation instincts to avoid being included in a selection with military ships.
    • Note: this applies to the cloaker starships of the player who's brave-cloaker-starships toggle is checked, regardless of who is trying to control them in a multiplayer game with Allow Team Control on. Allied Cloaker Starships will still be wimps unless their owners check this toggle too.
  • Removed the wave-calc rule that was preventing more than 1 of a specific starship type from being added; normally it wouldn't make much difference but it was impairing the Spire Hammer, Heroic, Starfleet Commander, and Extreme Raider AIs from scaling up their extra wave components.
  • Made the wave alert-text logic better handle mixed-tech waves: if it's 100 mkI fighters and 100 mkII fighters, it will now stay "Fighters" instead of just enemy ships as if it were truly a mixed wave.
  • Fixed military tutorial to expect you to build half your mark I cap of the ARS-granted unit, instead of 20, since 20 could be higher than the cap.
  • The Galaxy-Wide, Per-Planet, and Per-Control-Group tabs of the CTRLS window now notify you if you're about to discard unsaved changes when you try to close the window, switch to another tab, or switch to a different target for the same tab (for the per-planet and per-control-group ones).
  • Added a "Control-Group-Specific" tab to the CTRLS window, similar to the "Planet-Specific" tab:
    • Instead of selecting a planet on this tab, you select one of your 10 control groups from a dropdown.
    • Currently the tab has:
      • Auto-FRD Military
        • When this is set to "On", all your military units in this control group will be set to Free-Roaming Defender. Note: certain ship types (like fortresses that multi-repair, and zenith siege engines) never auto-FRD.
        • When this is set to "Default", the global Auto-FRD toggle will govern.
        • When this is "Off", this behavior will not happen for ships in this control group even if the global Auto-FRD toggle is on.
        • If a ship is in multiple control groups with conflicting settings for this, the priority order is as follows: Off, On, Default.
      • Auto-FRD Engineers
        • When this is set to "On", all your engineer/rebuilder units in this control group will be set to Free-Roaming Defender.
        • When this is set to "Default", the global Auto-FRD toggle will govern.
        • When this is "Off", this behavior will not happen for ships in this control group even if the global Auto-FRD toggle is on.
        • If a ship is in multiple control groups with conflicting settings for this, the priority order is as follows: Off, On, Default.
      • Auto Kite
        • When this is set to "On", all your non-melee, non-sniper ships in this control group will automatically pull away from their target so that they are (effective range - 500) range units away. Note: certain ship types (like fortresses that multi-repair, and zenith siege engines) never kite, and certain other ship types (like raptors) always kite.
        • When this is set to "Default", the global Auto-Kite threshold will govern.
        • When this is "Off", this behavior will not happen for ships in this control group even if the global Auto-Kite threshold would apply to them.
        • If a ship is in multiple control groups with conflicting settings for this, the priority order is as follows: Off, On, Default.
  • Added a mouseover tooltip to the game clock in the upper-left corner that displays:
    • "Game Time", the clock that's already there, which speeds up or slows down with the simulation and stops while the game is paused.
    • "Local Time", as in real-world, according to your computer.
    • "Real Time Spent In Game", which is the amount of real time you've spent playing that particular game (i.e. that particular savegame), and ignores simulation speed and pausing, etc.
  • Command station remains can now be rebuilt even when energy is negative, to avoid the "you need power to get power" catch-22.
  • Removed the initial prompt to import settings from 3.x, since that hasn't been current in over two years.
  • Now when you give a group-movement movement command to a group containing only teleporting units, it ignores the group-movement part so that the teleporters do not use their normal engines.
  • Ship Design Window: changed the positioning of the list of available modules for the selected slot so that it's always the same horizontal distance from the right edge of the window. Previously the "floating" behavior sometimes made sense but more recently it's just made it look buggy in some cases.
  • Fixed a textual error in the captive human settlement description.
  • Fixed a typo in the kill-second-AI-homeworld objective text that made it nonsensical. It had said you had to destroy the CSG network Second instead of first... real cute; obviously the AI shouldn't have been assigned to proofread that part.
  • Previously, when your ships exploded anywhere in the galaxy it played the same audio cue. Now if they are on a different planet from your view, it plays a much more muted, distant-sounding, quieter explosion sound effect.
  • 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
  • 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"
  • 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)
  • Fixed several minor issues with the tutorials, in preparation for 6.0.
  • Added a welcome message (referencing the tutorial and the "Beginner Game" setup script) to the lobby for the first time it is opened under a given profile (this is suppressed if the game detects that the profile has already started playing a real game at least once).

Graphical Improvements

  • Fixed a graphical bug with the border drawn around barracks icons in some contexts.

New Ships

  • A new Ancient Shadows bonus ship class has been added: Neinzul Scapegoat (Mark I-V).
    • Mature Neinzul organism without the short lifespan of a Youngling. Capable combatant in its own right, but also sacrifices itself to regenerate military fleet ships on the same planet when they take critical damage.
  • Another new Ancient Shadows bonus ship class has been added: Spire Railcluster (Mark I-V).
    • Large Spire fleet ship mounting multiple short-range railcannons. Highly effective against very small ships.
  • New Ancient Shadows Bonus Ship Type: Zenith Reprocessor:
    • A larger, specialized version of the Acid Sprayer, this ship's shots actually "metabolize" the enemy target. When the target dies, a percentage of the target's metal+crystal construction cost will be granted to the player that did the most reprocessing damage to it. The more reprocessing damage the ship has taken, the larger the percentage of resources reprocessed.
  • New Ancient Shadows Bonus Ship Type: Zenith Siege Engine:
    • Moderately large vessel built around an outsized plasma siege cannon. The ship does not have enough power to both move and keep the weapon online, so it must remain immobile for a full reload cycle before it can fire. When it fires, however, the enemy will feel it.
  • Added new Ancient Shadows bonus ship: Spire Corvette.
    • A starship-sized vessel developed by retrofitting the smallest Imperial Spire combat design with human technology. Has a moderately powerful photon lance, but can also mount a small number of modules.
    • Built from the SCRV tab of the Starship Constructor.
  • Added new Ancient Shadows bonus ship: Saboteur.
    • Fires hostile nanites at enemy ships. Unlike reclamation nanites, these focus on overloading the target's power systems with the goal of causing it to explode violently. This target does not go critical until its health is reduced to zero normally, but once that happens it will explode and damage up to 40 nearby friendly (to the exploding ship) units. The damage done to each victim of the explosion is based on how much damage the exploding ship took from overload-nanites, and generally cannot exceed one-tenth the maximum health of the exploding ship.
  • Added new Ancient Shadows bonus ship type: Youngling Firefly.
    • Small, shortlived ship that builds up a charge as it successfully attacks other units. When it dies it explodes violently to damage up to 20 nearby enemy units. The explosion damge done to each victim starts at about the same strength as the Firefly's normal shot, but increases with the charge the ship has accumulated, up to a maximum of 20 times that.
  • Added a new "Mini-Fortress" unit to the SUP tab of the command-station/mobile-builder buy menu (this is a base-game unit, not tied to an expansion).
    • These are basically a MkI fortress on a 1/10th scale (stat-wise), and you can only build 2 per planet (per player, also scales with multiple homeworlds), but there's no galaxy-wide cap so putting them on your satellite worlds does not take away any cap your main defenses could be using.
    • Unlocking these costs 1000 knowledge (for reference, MkI forts cost 3000 knowledge to unlock, and provide 25x as much firepower at cap for your main line but not the per-planet-cap flexibility of these).
    • These don't have the penalty vs polycrystal (or scout) hulls, making them actually able to deal with bombers.

Ship Logic Updates

  • Ships with engine damage now automatically repair their own engines, such that it takes a bit over four minutes to go from 0% engine-health to 100% engine-health.
    • Basically, until now it's been too easy to long-term-disable AI ships via engine damage. Not many players abused this thoroughly, but some definitely did, to hilarious (and disappointing, from a challenge perspective) results.
    • But tactical usage should still be very viable for kiting around a planet, spreading out an incoming attack, etc.
  • The logic for when a carrier is popped early now tries a lot harder to produce something similar to what's actually in the carrier, and tries to avoid exo-like spawning logic.
    • Regardless of what it winds up spawning, it no longer scales up with difficulty level (since the ship numbers that led to the generation of the carrier were already a result of difficulty level).
    • If its contents fit under a certain threshold (under 150 if there are < 2000 AI ships on the planet, under 50 if there are < 3000 AI ships on the planet, etc), it just spawns whatever is in the carrier.
    • Else, it promotes all triangle/bonus fleetships in the carrier to max mark (mark 5 for most types, mark 4 for some) and scales down the quantity accordingly (mkI to mkV divides quantity by 5, etc).
    • If that's still not enough to get the quantity under the threshold, it divides the quantities in the carrier by some number (determined by how badly over-count it still is) and uses that extra strength to add mkV guardians to the carrier instead. Since a single mkV guardian is worth about the same as ~2.2 full caps of mkI fighters, that's pretty good compression.
    • If that's somehow still not enough, it falls back on the exo-like population it's used in the past, but without the extra multiplier from difficulty.
    • For the curious, having advanced logging on when a carrier does early-pop logic like this will generate a log entry in the corresponding log file in your RuntimeData directory, explaining the computation.
  • Engineers have had a "what to assist" logic overhaul such that:
    • If is Prefer-Non-Military toggle is on, and one is military and the other is not, prefer the non-military one.
    • If one has more currently assisting engineers than the other, prefer the one with less.
    • If the repairer is not a teleporter and the difference in distance to each unit is larger than about 4000 range units, prefer the nearer.
      • Also, distance is now considered zero if the target is already within range, which helps a lot because previously it was masking other considerations.
    • If one object is a damaged irreplaceable unit and the other is not, prefer the damaged irreplaceable.
    • If one object is in stand-down and the other is not, prefer the one not in stand-down.
    • If one object's remaining-health-percent is less than half the other's, prefer the lower-health one.
      • This was being considered before (it always went for the lowest percent-health), but only by teleporting repairers.
    • If one object has taken more than 25% engine damage and the other has not, prefer the engine-damaged one.
    • If one object's metal+crystal cost is more than twice the other's, prefer the more expensive one.
    • Thanks to Wanderer and the other voters for inspiring these changes.
  • Human-player teleporting units now use normal engines when group-moving.
    • Along with this, increased the normal-engine speed of all teleporting units to the speed of a fighter, for those lower than that
  • Advanced Fabricators and Fabricators now use the same "don't put this near a wormhole" logic as human home command stations.
  • Removed energy cost from Logistics and Military command stations, since the cost was pretty minor and the units certainly aren't in danger of overshadowing the econ station at this point, and the costs were interfering with the logic for rebuilding their remains in some cases.
    • Also removed it from warp-jammer stations, but since that wasn't so minor also increased that station's direct per-second m+c cost.
  • Fixed a longstanding bug where attack-move units with no other orders would auto-target stuff that should not be auto-targeted (wormhole guard posts, AIP-on-death structures, etc) if the unit in question shot them first.
  • 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.

Balance Updates

  • Spire Refugee Ship (the starship recovered in the second stage of Fallen Spire) can no longer be put in a transport, since the chase logic doesn't work right with stuff in transports and jumpships make it pretty trivial.
  • The game now tries to seed human home command stations further away from wormholes and tries harder to find such a spot. This should help prevent "AI says: I have a plasma siege starship, gg" situations.
  • Heroic AI type balance changes:
    • Is now considered a technologist type for the purposes of lobby logic and display (specifically, being displayed in RED), though it does not get higher tech levels than usual.
    • Its non-wave champion spawns now start at Frigate-level at tech-level 1, not Destroyer-level.
  • Neinzul champion hulls are now immune to black hole machines.
  • Plasma Siege Starship ship cap from 5 => 4. Most of the others here were at 4 already, and it's been pretty widely considered the best of the combat starships lately.
  • Leech Starship:
    • Ship cap from 3 => 4.
    • Seconds Per Salvo from 4 => 2.
    • Shots Per Salvo from 3= > 6.
    • Base Attack Power from 30k => 2k (24k base-cap-dps, parasite has 12.25k)
      • Previously Leech Starships had nearly _five times_ the base-cap-dps of the equivalent fleet ship type (the Parasite). That parasite has 4x multipliers where the leech has none, so they don't need to be all that close, but the leech having a higher base dps than the parasite's bonus dps... no.
        • This change was done rather than buffing the parasites because the parasites seem to be reclaiming at a good rate already; further feedback on this is quite welcome.
    • Base Armor Piercing from 0 => 750*mk (same as parasite).
  • Knowledge costs:
    • Flagship was 0/2000/5000.
    • Zenith Starship was 1000/2500/6000.
    • Starship Starship was 1000/2500/6000.
    • Bomber Starship was 0/5000/7000.
    • Plasma Siege Starship was 0/5000/7000.
    • Leech Starship was 0/5000/6000.
    • MkI costs (or lack thereof) unchanged.
    • MkII costs are now all 2500.
    • MkIII costs are now all 4000.
    • The idea being that you're paying for 1x/2x/3x the raw stats, with a 0/500/1000 "surcharge" for the fact that 2x health and 2x attack power is more than 2x as useful, etc.
  • Health:
    • "Normal" cap-hp for a fleet ship type is about 15M (ranging from 10M to 30M), Normal for a starship type is about 22.5M (but normal cap-dps is lower).
    • Flagship from 3.75M*mk => 5M*mk (20M cap-hp).
    • Zenith from 4.5M*mk => 6M*mk (24M cap-hp).
    • Spire from 3M*mk => 4M*mk (16M cap-hp).
    • Bomber from 4.7M*mk => 7M*mk (28M cap-hp)
    • Plasma Siege unchanged at 5M*mk.
    • Leech from 3.2M*mk => 4M*mk (16M cap-hp).
  • Metal+Crystal/Energy costs:
    • Cap-m+c for fleet ship types varies widely, from about 40k for fighters to about 160k for bombers even just within the triangle. Starships are supposed to be substantially more expensive than fleet ships in exchange for being easier to keep alive. Also, the econ part of the game has been a lot easier since changes to the energy system and harvesters. So targeting about 400k m+c for a mkI cap here.
    • Cap-e is more consistent for fleet ships, typically about 20k (halved for mkI types). So targeting about 40k for a mkI cap here.
    • The m+c costs listed are for mkI, mkII are 2x, mkIII are 4x. E costs do not change with mark.
    • Flagship from 40k+24k / 4k e => 60k+40k / 10k.
    • Zenith from 24k+40k / 4k e => 40k+60k / 10k.
    • Spire from 30k+34k / 4k e => 45k+55k / 10k.
    • Bomber from 80k+8k / 2k e => 85k+15k / 10k.
    • Plasma Siege from 8k+80k / 2k e => 15k+85k / 10k.
    • Leech from 60k+40k / 5k e => 60k+40k / 10k.
  • Fighter (including tachyon-micro and bulletproof variants):
    • Base Move Speed from 28 => 32.
    • Multiplier vs Polycrystal from 5 => 6.
    • Multiplier vs CloseCombat from 2.4 => 6.
    • Multiplier vs Medium from 2.4 => 6.
    • Base Attack Power from 1200 => 1000 (similar for the variants).
  • Bomber Base Move Speed from 28 => 26.
  • The following guardians now have the medium hull type:
    • EMP (was Neutron)
    • Heavy Beam (was Heavy)
    • Laser (was Swarmer)
    • Lightning (was Composite)
    • Special Forces Rally (was Heavy)
    • Spire Implosion (was Artillery)
    • Starship Disassembler (was UltraHeavy)
    • Tachyon (was Refractive)
    • Tractor (was Neutron)
    • Vampire (was Artillery)
  • Spire Starship:
    • Hull type from Neutron => Medium.
    • Base Attack Power from 120k*mk => 600k*mk.
      • The previous number was the result of multiple math errors during the balancing process. Specifically: its dps was computed using a seconds-per-salvo of 8 when it's actually 10 due to the photon lance's firing time, and its base dps was balanced as if it had 4x bonuses despite not having any bonuses.
  • All fleet ship caps have been adjusted to be multiples of 8 (generally by rounding down, unless something was 1 away from the next higher multiple, in some cases), except for those fleet ships which don't change caps at different unit cap scales.
    • This involved about 5 metric tons of relatively minor changes to health, attack power, metal cost, crystal cost and energy cost. Mostly cap-health and cap-dps didn't change by more than 1% in either direction; cap-m,c,e costs vary a bit more but nothing earthshaking. The numbers are internally arranged in a much better fashion now which should help with other changes going forward.
    • The main immediate benefit of this is that the ultra-low-caps setting no longer impacts the balance of fleet ship types whose caps are not multiples of 8, because, well, they are now.
  • Previously on Diff 9+ if you were part of the way from one AI-tech-level to the next, each wave would have a proportionate percentage of its ships "promoted" to the next tech level to make the transition in difficulty feel smoother. Now this happens on difficulty 5+
    • Mathematically speaking this makes the game somewhat more difficult and that's why it was restricted to 9+. In practice it seems to make the game easier because you're testing your defenses against waves more like the ones you're going to get at the next tech level, rather than getting the jump all at once.
    • The main motivation for changing this now is that since the double-application of the mark-level downwards-multiplier on wave sizes has been changed to only applying it once (as mentioned above), the higher-mark waves will be larger and the feeling of a "challenge cliff" between AI tech levels greater. This really helps avoid those cliffs.
  • Zenith Siege Engine:
    • MkI-cap-health from 16.8M => 10M.
    • Corrected an... interesting balance-math error where it had 720k mkI-cap-dps AND 10x multipliers (against structural, heavy, ultraheavy, and turret):
      • Multipliers from 10x => 5x.
      • MkI-cap-dps from 720k => 360k (which is still really, really high for a base-dps even with no multipliers, but the must-reload-after-move mechanic is still really new, etc).
    • Reload time from 15 => 10.
      • Damage adjusted to maintain dps.
    • Now pay no attention to auto-FRD or auto-kite.
    • Thanks to Faulty Logic for inspiring these changes, as little consolation as that may be to the many ships (including spire capital ships)
  • All modular forts now pay no attention to auto-kite (previously some did, and some didn't).
  • Zenith Reprocessor:
    • MkI-cap-health from 8.4M => 15M (now in the neighborhood of fighters).
    • MkI-cap-dps from 17.2k => 30k (has 8x multipliers).
  • The Shards in the Fallen Spire campaign now move 4x as fast (still immune to all forms of speed-boosting, combat style, etc) and the response "chase spawns" now happen about 4x as often.
  • AI Type reinforcement/wave multipliers, since some of these are really old and the reinforcement ones in particular can have a disproportionately large impact on the feel of the game (to the extent that picking a particular AI type can make reinforcements look "broken", as in barely happening) :
    • Mad Bomber reinforcement multiplier from "you get one ship" on non-core-worlds (and 0.25 on core worlds) => 0.7, on all worlds.
    • Neinzul Youngster reinforcement multiplier from 0.25 => 0.8.
    • Vicious Raider, Extreme Raider, and Technologist Raider multiplier from 0.3 => 0.8.
    • Attritioner, Zenith Descendant, Spireling, Starfleet Commander, Experimentalist, and Grav Driller reinforcement multiplier from 0.4 => 0.9.
    • The Tank reinforcement multiplier from 0.3 => 0.9, and wave multiplier from 1.0 => 1.25 (same as the attritioner, zd, etc group above).
    • Feeding Parasite, Thief, Technologist Parasite, Bully, Assassin, and Speed Racer reinforcement multiplier from 1.0 => 0.9 (since they already had a 1.25 wave multiplier).
    • The Core reinforcement multiplier from 0.3 => 0.5 (same as its wave multiplier).
  • Corrected a balance-math problem where the game was counting the 14 "secondary hits" of siege plasma without considering the fact that they only hit for 1/16th of normal strength. This means that the zenith siege engine's mkI-cap-base-dps is 45k instead of 360k.
    • The actual attack power of the unit is unchanged, this is just fixing a bug in the internal balancing model.
    • But since it's now clear that the numbers are more reasonable than previously thought, the siege engine's multipliers have been increased from 5 back up to 10.
  • Human Cryo Pods and Home Settlements (the buildings that start next to a human home command station) are now immune to aoe (but not to beam weapons, i.e. not immune to linear-aoe), to avoid excessive-frustration issues with units like the firefly.
  • Spire Corvette shield modules now cost 2000*mk each of metal, instead of 1m+1c to avoid the ship being effectively invincible due to immediately rebuilding its own shield. As it is a mkI shield can be "brought back online" in less than 20 seconds, but as normal engineers cannot assist if the ship has taken damage in the past few seconds.
  • Zenith Reprocessor:
    • MkI-base-cap-dps from 30k => 45k (for reference, Acid Sprayers have 58.8k, and the same bonuses).
    • Now immune to tractors.
    • Now have cloaking (and thus will not be included in future games with cloaking turned off, but will still be present in games already created with cloaking turned off).
  • Military Command Stations:
    • Base Health from 500k/1.5M/3M => 1M/4M/9M. (puts it on the low end of a fleet ship or starship with a cap of 10, but with the mkII/mkIII versions much stronger to help justify knowledge cost)
    • Metal,Crystal production from 16,16/32,32/64,64 => 24,24/48,48/96,96 (the same as logistics stations).
    • Now do not suffer damage reduction when firing from under a normal human-tech forcefield.
      • Yes, it's now just an obvious move to put a shield on these; presumably that was already true if you cared about keeping the planet. And it still costs shield cap, so not 100% obvious.
    • Base Damage per shot from 3200*mk => 5k*mk. (puts it on par with a fleet ship or starship with a cap of 10, but since shots-per-salvo is also mark-based this makes mkII/mkIII versions much stronger to help justify knowledge cost)
    • Is now immune to radar dampening.
    • Shot type changed from translocating lightning to a new "knockback railgun" mechanic. So the shots are now insta-hit, and actually still do the translocation code path but instead of sending the target to a random angle and random distance from the planet center they send the target directly away from the military station out to a distance about 2000 units short of the station's maximum firing range (assuming it wasn't further out than that already).
    • MkII and MkIII versions now do 200 engine damage per shot.
    • MkIII versions now apply 5 seconds of paralysis per shot.
  • In honor of basically winning the "what most needs attention for 6.0?" poll, the remains rebuilders have received a logic overhaul and now:
    • Try not to target the same thing as another remains rebuilder. If there are fewer rebuild targets than rebuilders on the planet they'll generally spread out pretty evenly across the targets.
    • If in FRD, they now are much less likely to "yoyo" back to the FRD-point between rebuilds until all the targets are rebuilt.
    • Recharge time from 10 seconds => 1 second. The recharge time wasn't particularly easy to notice before because rebuilders would all pile up on the same target and while the ones not actually doing the rebuild would not incur the 10 second recharge time they would have to wait about 1 second to retarget. With a pile of 20 rebuilders it was hard to notice the one that did the initial rebuild took 10 seconds before it could actually rebuild something.
      • This is actually a fairly significant buff to the unit, but it's probably not a big balance impact to start the rebuilding faster.
  • Spire Tractor Platform:
    • MkI-Cap-Health from 10.5M => 8M.
    • Base move speed from 18 => 15.
  • The AI Core Grav Reactor Post now no longer receives protection from the Core Shield Generator network, to avoid generating maps (mainly snake ones) that were literally impossible due the homeworld having an invincible black-hole-generator-effect unit.
  • To provide a counterbalance against the player's ability to build up a powerful champion (and nebula-ally fleet) without increasing AIP much (if at all, depending on map layout and tolerance for deepstrikes), each AI homeworld now gets "nemesis" champions in proportion to the number of human champions, the highest champion hull size unlocked for human players, and that AI's difficulty.
    • Critically, the "population cap" of these nemesis spawns actually goes _down_ as AIP increases (bottoming out at 150 AIP) to simulate the AI having less to invest into its nemesis spawns as AIP increases and waves, special forces, strategic reserve, and other responses are being given more and more resources. More importantly, this allows the nemesis spawns to counter an "early AIP" champion rush without making a more "normal AIP" approach massively harder to the point of stalemate.
    • Nemesis spawns are not immediately replaced up to the population cap (takes a little over 10 minutes to go from zero to the cap), and spawns remain even if the cap drops below the current population (but once you kill them off the extras don't come back).
    • Nemesis spawns never go through wormholes, so they won't ever leave the homeworld they're defending. This is good and bad for the player, but good all around for their intended purpose.
  • 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.
  • 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).
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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).
  • 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).
  • 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.
  • Changed Engineer II and Engineer III caps from 0.75 and 0.5 of the Engineer I cap to 1.5 and 2.0 of the Engineer I cap, respectively.
    • Gives a bit more motivation to unlock the higher engineer marks, if you're having trouble getting enough assistance/repair out.

Misc Changes

  • Bomber Starship renamed to Heavy Bomber Starship.
  • Added 25 champion-related achievements.
  • The shard seeding in Fallen Spire now only cares about how far from the human homeworlds a planet is, rather than the current border of AI territory. This can make it easier depending on how much territory you've taken (particularly on something like a snake map, but that's something of an edge case), but in light of various recent changes this may not be a bad thing, and the seeding being relative to what you'd conquered was pretty annoying and encouraged some strange playstyles.
    • The last shard is an exception: it still doesn't pay attention to what you've conquered, but it always tries to seed on an AI core planet (so bordering a homeworld, but never on a homeworld).

Bugfixes

  • Fixed a bug where multiple human homeworlds (in SP or MP) were not increasing the guard post part of reinforcements.
  • Fixed a longstanding (back to the unity port) bug where the buy/tech menus would also draw the buttons from the menus above them, commonly resulting in "ghosts" of build queue buttons, etc.
  • Fixed a longstanding but very intermittent null-exception in tech-menu-button rendering.
  • Fixed bug where core/starship/experimental fabricators were not being considered by the D keybind.
  • Fixed a bug where remains currently in the process of rebuilding could get "stuck" at 1 hp despite being under very heavy fire until its actual stored resources were exhausted.
  • Fixed a longstanding bug where buy menu buttons were showing up red outside supply even when the ship doing the building can build fine outside supply.
  • Fixed a longstanding bug where the AI would only produce carriers if the target planet already had 2 barracks, instead of 1.
  • Fixed a bug where Fallen Spire events would spawn the recoverable objects (and thus anything they go on to build) as belonging to the first player even when the first player was champion-only. Now it gives them to the first normal or normal+champion player.
  • Fixed omission in the new CPA-size logic that was making it not consider one of the later parts of the wave-size calculations (making it a bit too high on lower difficulties and not as high as intended on higher difficulties).
  • Fixed a longstanding bug in FRD target sorting that was sometimes being overly sensitive to differences in how far away two targets were.
  • Fixed a bug where it was possible to start placement of an item (like an engineer or turret) and switch to another planet via control-group-selection and still be in the middle of placing that item (and if you had supply, actually be able to place it).
  • Fixed a bug where a bunch of science ships on auto-knowledge-gather but with no eligible targets could "clog" the auto-explore throttle such that auto-explore for scouts would stop working. Now auto-knowledge-gather has its own separate throttle.
  • Made "what can I autotarget?" logic more consistent so that player-ally minor factions don't pop AI carriers.
  • Fixed a bug where viewing a Core Spire Corvette Fabricator could cause unhandled exceptions (and the queue buttons to not show).
  • Fixed a really longstanding bug where giving a ship an attack order against something already in range would cause it to move towards the target a little bit before stopping again. This was mildly annoying with most units but very troublesome with units like fortresses and zenith siege engines that have to recharge (either their ability or their weapon) after moving at all.
  • Fixed a bug where minor faction and zombie ships could be affected by the player auto-kite controls.
  • Fixed a bug where a cpa deploying could cause unhandled errors.
  • Military Command Stations:
    • Fixed a bug where the mkII and mkIII versions no longer had a unit cap (leaving it that way was entertained, but ultimately would require more sweeping changes to command stations than is a good idea right now, if it would be a good idea at all).
    • Fixed a bug where the mkII and mkIII were still showing the mkI descriptive text, despite that now not being the same.
    • The knockback logic now launches stuff 2000 range units outside the station's effective range rather than 2000 range units inside, to help the autotargeting not get stuck on a few targets when its main use is best served by spreading shots out.
  • Fixed a bug where the fallen spire campaign could spawn two of the same shard-signal.
  • Fixed a fairly longstanding bug where disabling an expansion from within the lobby would not properly remove several expansion-specific options (map types, setup scripts, minor factions, etc), which could lead to very odd behavior.
  • Fixed a couple longstanding bugs that would cause very old saves to not load properly.
  • Fixed a bug where hybrids, exo ships, and the like could switch to threat-fleet behavior.
  • Fixed some bugs where special forces and strategic reserve spawns could result in an AI player controlling a type of ship only available to the other AI.
    • And a related bug where some of the special forces spawn logic could only access the special ship types of the first AI player.
  • Overhauled how line-place determines space between points to be closer to how the game will actually accept or reject a given placement. Hopefully this will avoid "skipping every other one" bugs without adding excessive padding between points on a packed-line pattern.
  • Fixed a bug where changing per-planet settings on one planet, then opening the CTRLS window from another planet would do the confirm-discard-changes check, which led to various other tomfoolery.
  • Fixed a bug where MkV Spider fabricators were still considered experimental fabricators instead of core fabricators, which incidentally handles an issue where there was a very high chance of there being 2 of these per map.
  • Fixed a really longstanding bug where shots on a planet were sometimes visible even through the fog of war.

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