AI War 2:Zenith Onslaught Patch Notes

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

Feature List/Flavour

Chris, this section is intended as fodder for you for marketing and other writeups. Also check out the section at the bottom for some ideas you might find useful

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

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

New Factions

AI War 2: Dark Zenith

AI War 2: Zenith Architrave

AI War 2: Zenith Miners

AI War 2: Nomad Planets

New Map/Galaxy Types

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

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

New AI Types

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

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

• Ragnarok AI Type: The AI gets Dark Alliance units in addition to its own unit types

• Gladiator AI Type: The AI gets Zenith Architrave units in addition to its own unit types

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

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

New AI Abilities/Units

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

TODOs and patch notes

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

2.096

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

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

Nomad Planets

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

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

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

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

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

Beta 2.093

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

Beta 2.088

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

Beta 2.087

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

• Geneticist Scourge generate Hostile To All zombies

Beta 2.085

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

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

• Some nerfs to the Spire Hammer AI Type

• ZA strength drops off faster during civil war

Dark Zenith

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

• Add some new unit types to the DZ

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

Beta 2.082

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

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

• Fix the Spire Hammer AI Type's description

Beta 2.077

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

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

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

Beta 2.075

• Nerfs to Geneticist
  • Thanks to zeusalmighty for the feedback

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

• Nerfs to the DZ permanent bonus income

• Give some DZ and ZA structures enemy-attrition

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

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

Beta 2.074

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

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

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

• Give the ZM some scarier Miners to spawn over time

Zenith Architrave

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

Beta 2.065

• Add a few Achievements

Zenith Architrave

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

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

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

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

Beta 2.064

Dark Zenith

• Fix some DZ null references

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

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

AI Types

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

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

Beta 2.063

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

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

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

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

Beta 2.062

What I am looking for starting this release

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

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

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

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

• Any other feedback that seems apropos.

Miscellaneous

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

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

• Started adding support for Wormhole Borers

Zenith Architrave

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

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

Dark Zenith

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

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

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

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

Zenith Miners

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

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

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

Nomad Planets

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

• Some nomad planets move clockwise, others widdershins

Version 2.047

Dark Zenith

• Give the DZ some units when they invade

Version 2.045

Dark Zenith

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

Version 2.045

Dark Zenith

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

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

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

Beta 2.044

Zenith Architrave

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

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

Zenith Miners

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

Beta 2.043

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

• Zenith Miners
  • Now have notifications

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

Beta 2.042

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

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

Version 2.031

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

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

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

Version 2.029

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

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

Things that need testing

• Multiple ZAs for the civil war
  • Test that they spawn golems

• How does ZA balance feel? Do they feel impactful?

• Zenith Miners are open for testing! No restrictions. Turn em on and see what happens! Please try the various hacks.

• Nomad planets are open for testing. No restrictions. Turn em on and see what happens!

• Dark Zenith are open for testing. No restrictions. Turn em on and see what happens!

Bug Reports/Feedback/Ideas

This section is to give an easy place for people to mention problems they are having

• Version 2.064
  • Nomads cause heavy galaxy map lag over the course of a game.
    • Can be quickly seen by enabling fast/debug mode in the lobby with 10 Nomads.
  • Reloading the save causes the game to go back to peak performance.

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

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

• New Units
  • Frigate Class
    • Zenith Aggregator
      • Stores 50% of all damage taken as energy, and consumes this energy on death to deal damage in an area around itself.
    • Zenith Compressor
      • Long range, single target weapon that pulls enemies into itself, and high damage, short range, single target, Greater Metabolizing weapon.

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

• Nomad Seeding
  • Nomads can be seeded far away from the regular planets on the Squares map type.
    • The same thing can occur on a smaller scale in the regular Clusters type, but its far less pronounced and usually fits in.

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