<a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_features.php"/><img src="http://arcengames.com/img/side_aiwar.png"</img></a>
AI War <a href"http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400">Steam community hub</a>
<i>AI War <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AIWarFleetCommand">Facebook page</a>
Arcen Games' <a href="https://www.facebook.com/arcengames">Facebook page</a>
Tidalis <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Tidalis">Facebook page</a>
A Valley Without Wind <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Valley-Without-Wind/164979970229916">Facebook page</a>
Our <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php">community forums</a></i>
Report bugs and suggestions on <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/">MantisBT</a>
<a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_irc.php">AI War web IRC</a> / irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
<b><a href="http://arcengames.blogspot.ca/2014/05/ai-war-beta-7032-peaceful-interlude.html">Please see the original post here</a></b>
<b><a href="http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Post-7.000_Beta#Prerelease_7.032_Peaceful_Interlude">Changelog may be found here</a></b>

This one takes a break from fixing The Bug (10/10 being winnable) so the changes already made in that direction can be evaluated. Instead the focus is on dealing with a couple other long-discussed requests:

- The main combat turrets have been switched from a galaxy-wide-cap on MkI/II/III and a per-planet cap on MkV to a per-planet-cap on MkI/II/III and a galaxy-wide-cap on MkV (and the newly-added MkIVs).
-- The MkI/II/IIIs now have a smaller cap, as a result, but the Spider and Sniper turrets have been given their own I-V lines, so between that and the MkIVs your chokepoint-defense potential hasn't been significantly nerfed (indeed, buffed slightly, from roughly 23k strength to roughly 24k strength)
-- And distributed-defense is now immediately possible from the beginning of the game, so long as you have the necessary metal and energy production.

- The health and attack stats (and armor and armor piercing) have been scaled down two orders of magnitude (divided by 100) to help with readablity and to pave the way towards later changes that will deal with some longstanding balance issues (mainly, that some superweapons are underwhelming because the normal units have gotten so powerful).

There's also some important bugfixes/etc. Including one hilarious one where capturing an AI HW would give you command of any future champ-nemesis exo spawned from there...

Update: 7.033 is out to scale some stats that I forgot wouldn't be automatically scaled with health and attack, etc (thus ending the Night When The Mines And Attritioners Rose In Terrible Wrath). Also fixed some bugs related to sniper/spider turret unlocks.

<i>The <b></b> Winter 2013 <a href="http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400/discussions/0/666825525015589392/">AI War Sortie Bulletin</a> topic at the community hub is a place to find other players.</i>

<i>This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 6.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 6.000 or later, you can download that <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_buy.php">here.</a></i>

AI War <a href"http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400">Steam community hub[/url]
AI War Facebook page
Arcen Games' Facebook page
Tidalis Facebook page
A Valley Without Wind Facebook page
Our community forums
Report bugs and suggestions on MantisBT
AI War web IRC / irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
Please see the original post here
Changelog may be found here

This one takes a break from fixing The Bug (10/10 being winnable) so the changes already made in that direction can be evaluated. Instead the focus is on dealing with a couple other long-discussed requests:

- The main combat turrets have been switched from a galaxy-wide-cap on MkI/II/III and a per-planet cap on MkV to a per-planet-cap on MkI/II/III and a galaxy-wide-cap on MkV (and the newly-added MkIVs).
-- The MkI/II/IIIs now have a smaller cap, as a result, but the Spider and Sniper turrets have been given their own I-V lines, so between that and the MkIVs your chokepoint-defense potential hasn't been significantly nerfed (indeed, buffed slightly, from roughly 23k strength to roughly 24k strength)
-- And distributed-defense is now immediately possible from the beginning of the game, so long as you have the necessary metal and energy production.

- The health and attack stats (and armor and armor piercing) have been scaled down two orders of magnitude (divided by 100) to help with readablity and to pave the way towards later changes that will deal with some longstanding balance issues (mainly, that some superweapons are underwhelming because the normal units have gotten so powerful).

There's also some important bugfixes/etc. Including one hilarious one where capturing an AI HW would give you command of any future champ-nemesis exo spawned from there...

Update: 7.033 is out to scale some stats that I forgot wouldn't be automatically scaled with health and attack, etc (thus ending the Night When The Mines And Attritioners Rose In Terrible Wrath). Also fixed some bugs related to sniper/spider turret unlocks.

The Winter 2013 AI War Sortie Bulletin topic at the community hub is a place to find other players.

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 6.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 6.000 or later, you can download that here.

<a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_features.php"/><img src="http://arcengames.com/img/side_aiwar.png"</img></a>
AI War <a href"http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400">Steam community hub</a>
<i>AI War <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AIWarFleetCommand">Facebook page</a>
Arcen Games' <a href="https://www.facebook.com/arcengames">Facebook page</a>
Tidalis <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Tidalis">Facebook page</a>
A Valley Without Wind <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Valley-Without-Wind/164979970229916">Facebook page</a>
Our <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php">community forums</a></i>
Report bugs and suggestions on <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/">MantisBT</a>
<a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_irc.php">AI War web IRC</a> / irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
<b><a href="http://arcengames.blogspot.ca/2014/05/ai-war-beta-7029-extermination-protocol.html">Please see the original post here</a></b>
<b><a href="http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Post-7.000_Beta#Prerelease_7.029_Extermination_Protocol_MkII">Changelog may be found here</a></b>

<i>Updates went live on May 20th, with 7.031 on the 21st.</i>

This one continues progress towards fixing The Bug (10/10 being winnable) but also provides some significant quality-of-life improvements along with the quality-of-extermination ones. Specifically:

- Counterattack Guard Posts are no longer core-game. They're still available as an AI plot if you want them (and there's the AI type that gets a bunch of them either way), but their core-game role is now filled by <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,15112.0.html">Warp Relays</a>, which can be very threatening but are much less likely to act as annoying speedbumps.

- The revenge exos launched by dying Core Guard Posts have been replaced by a different form of exo provoked by AI-Homeworld-assault that isn't as strict about when the player needs to switch back to defense. It will hopefully still fulfill the goal of making most AI-HW assaults a "multi-stage boss fight", but there won't be as many stages and it won't be as tied to your specific actions during the fight (so you're basically never motivated to "hold back" to avoid tripping the next "stage", etc).

And various other changes like some improvements to make out-of-memory errors less likely in intense gamestates, rebalancing Planetary Armor Inhibitors, giving Econ stations more energy production, and making interaction between Carriers and Mines far more... entertaining (previously Carriers had Mine Evasions, but on reflection it was realized they probably had all the evasion of a cow on rollerskates), etc.

Update: 7.030 is out to hotfix the Counterattack Guard Post's last gasp of revenge: ANY AI wave could go to ANY planet. Curious.

Update: 7.031 is out to shift the warp relays to a separate AI Plot (instead of being core-game) as the feedback on the idea rather changed once the feature was actually implemented. Also some superterminal rebalancing.


<i>The <b></b> Winter 2013 <a href="http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400/discussions/0/666825525015589392/">AI War Sortie Bulletin</a> topic at the community hub is a place to find other players.</i>

<i>This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 6.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 6.000 or later, you can download that <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_buy.php">here.</a></i>

AI War <a href"http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400">Steam community hub[/url]
AI War Facebook page
Arcen Games' Facebook page
Tidalis Facebook page
A Valley Without Wind Facebook page
Our community forums
Report bugs and suggestions on MantisBT
AI War web IRC / irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
Please see the original post here
Changelog may be found here

Updates went live on May 20th, with 7.031 on the 21st.

This one continues progress towards fixing The Bug (10/10 being winnable) but also provides some significant quality-of-life improvements along with the quality-of-extermination ones. Specifically:

- Counterattack Guard Posts are no longer core-game. They're still available as an AI plot if you want them (and there's the AI type that gets a bunch of them either way), but their core-game role is now filled by Warp Relays, which can be very threatening but are much less likely to act as annoying speedbumps.

- The revenge exos launched by dying Core Guard Posts have been replaced by a different form of exo provoked by AI-Homeworld-assault that isn't as strict about when the player needs to switch back to defense. It will hopefully still fulfill the goal of making most AI-HW assaults a "multi-stage boss fight", but there won't be as many stages and it won't be as tied to your specific actions during the fight (so you're basically never motivated to "hold back" to avoid tripping the next "stage", etc).

And various other changes like some improvements to make out-of-memory errors less likely in intense gamestates, rebalancing Planetary Armor Inhibitors, giving Econ stations more energy production, and making interaction between Carriers and Mines far more... entertaining (previously Carriers had Mine Evasions, but on reflection it was realized they probably had all the evasion of a cow on rollerskates), etc.

Update: 7.030 is out to hotfix the Counterattack Guard Post's last gasp of revenge: ANY AI wave could go to ANY planet. Curious.

Update: 7.031 is out to shift the warp relays to a separate AI Plot (instead of being core-game) as the feedback on the idea rather changed once the feature was actually implemented. Also some superterminal rebalancing.


The Winter 2013 AI War Sortie Bulletin topic at the community hub is a place to find other players.

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 6.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 6.000 or later, you can download that here.

<a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_features.php"/><img src="http://arcengames.com/img/side_aiwar.png"</img></a>
AI War <a href"http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400">Steam community hub</a>
<i>AI War <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AIWarFleetCommand">Facebook page</a>
Arcen Games' <a href="https://www.facebook.com/arcengames">Facebook page</a>
Tidalis <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Tidalis">Facebook page</a>
A Valley Without Wind <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Valley-Without-Wind/164979970229916">Facebook page</a>
Our <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php">community forums</a></i>
Report bugs and suggestions on <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/">MantisBT</a>
<a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_irc.php">AI War web IRC</a> / irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
<b><a href="http://arcengames.blogspot.ca/2014/05/ai-war-beta-7025-extermination-protocol.html">Please see the original post here</a></b>
<b><a href="http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Post-7.000_Beta#Prerelease_7.025_Extermination_Protocol_MkI">Changelog may be found here</a></b>

This one focuses on polishing recently-introduced rough edges (mainly in terms of balance) and in general is the first step in a new effort to fix The Bug (10/10 being winnable). We don't want that setting to be an immediate "you die in the first 30 minutes, no questions asked" button, but things have clearly gotten out of hand.

Some other highlights:

- Hacking now has an extra source of suspense and challenge: once the hacking _stops_ there will be a rapid short-term post-hacking response from the AI proportional to how much you ticked it off during the hack. If you're adequately prepared this won't be too big a problem (though I hope it will add to the excitement). But if you've dug yourself too deep a hole... well, have fun with that ;)

- Carriers can no longer fly through your forcefields. They've come a long way from the super-cheesy "literally invincible, ignores forcefields completely" incarnation of old, and are now basically just a hyper-concentrated ball of death that can attack and be attacked in a very similar fashion as... well, a big pile of ships. Their attack is now more similar in potency to the ships inside, and is longer ranged (otherwise the larger forcefields and/or radar jamming really mess with them) but in general they won't just "cheat" their way through your defenses anymore. They'll just hammer them flat, unless you're adequately prepared.

- The alt-progress for champs no longer asks you to walk into the lion's den of pain just to make all the toys available. Previously you had to go to intensity 9, and if you followed the lobby's (bad, then) advice of setting a matching alt-nemesis intensity it was... well, varying from "interesting" to unwinnable.

- Salvage is now much less capable of making the Metal mechanic irrelevant for significant chunks of time (mainly this was a problem in superweapon games).


Update: 7.026 hotfix for several severe balance issues with the new hacking post-responses, and a few other fixes and changes that snuck in since 7.025.

Update: 7.027 just to do a quick balance iteration on the champion nemesis exos.

Update: 7.028 is another balance iteration on the champion nemesis exo stuff, along with a few other small changes from feedback during the week.

<i>The <b></b> Winter 2013 <a href="http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400/discussions/0/666825525015589392/">AI War Sortie Bulletin</a> topic at the community hub is a place to find other players.</i>

<i>This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 6.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 6.000 or later, you can download that <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_buy.php">here.</a></i>

AI War <a href"http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400">Steam community hub[/url]
AI War Facebook page
Arcen Games' Facebook page
Tidalis Facebook page
A Valley Without Wind Facebook page
Our community forums
Report bugs and suggestions on MantisBT
AI War web IRC / irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
Please see the original post here
Changelog may be found here

This one focuses on polishing recently-introduced rough edges (mainly in terms of balance) and in general is the first step in a new effort to fix The Bug (10/10 being winnable). We don't want that setting to be an immediate "you die in the first 30 minutes, no questions asked" button, but things have clearly gotten out of hand.

Some other highlights:

- Hacking now has an extra source of suspense and challenge: once the hacking _stops_ there will be a rapid short-term post-hacking response from the AI proportional to how much you ticked it off during the hack. If you're adequately prepared this won't be too big a problem (though I hope it will add to the excitement). But if you've dug yourself too deep a hole... well, have fun with that ;)

- Carriers can no longer fly through your forcefields. They've come a long way from the super-cheesy "literally invincible, ignores forcefields completely" incarnation of old, and are now basically just a hyper-concentrated ball of death that can attack and be attacked in a very similar fashion as... well, a big pile of ships. Their attack is now more similar in potency to the ships inside, and is longer ranged (otherwise the larger forcefields and/or radar jamming really mess with them) but in general they won't just "cheat" their way through your defenses anymore. They'll just hammer them flat, unless you're adequately prepared.

- The alt-progress for champs no longer asks you to walk into the lion's den of pain just to make all the toys available. Previously you had to go to intensity 9, and if you followed the lobby's (bad, then) advice of setting a matching alt-nemesis intensity it was... well, varying from "interesting" to unwinnable.

- Salvage is now much less capable of making the Metal mechanic irrelevant for significant chunks of time (mainly this was a problem in superweapon games).


Update: 7.026 hotfix for several severe balance issues with the new hacking post-responses, and a few other fixes and changes that snuck in since 7.025.

Update: 7.027 just to do a quick balance iteration on the champion nemesis exos.

Update: 7.028 is another balance iteration on the champion nemesis exo stuff, along with a few other small changes from feedback during the week.

The Winter 2013 AI War Sortie Bulletin topic at the community hub is a place to find other players.

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 6.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 6.000 or later, you can download that here.

<a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_features.php"/><img src="http://arcengames.com/img/side_aiwar.png"</img></a>
AI War <a href"http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400">Steam community hub</a>
<i>AI War <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AIWarFleetCommand">Facebook page</a>
Arcen Games' <a href="https://www.facebook.com/arcengames">Facebook page</a>
Tidalis <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Tidalis">Facebook page</a>
A Valley Without Wind <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Valley-Without-Wind/164979970229916">Facebook page</a>
Our <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php">community forums</a></i>
Report bugs and suggestions on <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/">MantisBT</a>
<a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_irc.php">AI War web IRC</a> / irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
<b><a href="http://arcengames.blogspot.ca/2014/05/ai-war-beta-7023-so-this-carrier-and.html">Please see the original post here</a></b>
<b><a href="http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Post-7.000_Beta#Prerelease_7.023_So_This_Carrier_And_A_MkIII_Lightning_Warhead_Walk_Into_A_Bar...">Changelog may be found here</a></b>

This one is kind of a beast. With TLF doing so well most of our time is going in that direction, but since it's doing well we also have a little time to spare for stuff like AIW. Which is nice.

The biggest individual thing is a major revision of the Alternate Champion Progress feature introduced in the previous non-hotfix release. I'd thought people who didn't want the nebula scenarios wanted a relatively low-impact version of the champion that didn't fundamentally change gameplay. Based on feedback it would appear I was wrong ;)

Anyway, this new iteration does allow that low-power, low-response option but you can also crank the intensity of the progress and the response up to levels where you're getting just as much power by late/end-game as you would with the normal progress mechanic. And probably just as much pain in return, we'll see how the balancing worked out there. If you're feeling cheesy or like providing the compensating challenge in some other way you can also crank up the progression and leave the response low or off.

Please keep the feedback coming; "champion revisions" won #2 on the big-items-for-8.0 poll and I'd really like to get champs to a place where they have a wider appeal.

All that aside, some other major changes in this beta release:

- Carriers are now always fully autotargeted, and damage to them is simply passed on to the contained units. This actually makes carriers way easier to deal with, so further balance changes are likely to come later, but most importantly this also makes them way less annoying to deal with, and thus makes the game more fun. It's very satisfying to see a wall of 1000-load carriers fly into the teeth of exo-class defenses and start melting.

- Lightning/Armored Warheads and Spirecraft Martyrs have been made essentially finite in damage potential now, though one may not normally think of "Ten Billion Damage" as "finite". Essentially these now spread X damage over all available targets rather than doing X damage to EACH target in range. More balance to come, I'm sure, but now these are at least theoretically capable of being balanced.

- Fixed a major bug in recent versions where the second AI player's threat/threatfleet/special-forces ships were often just stuck on worlds with no human presence at all. Also made several other important fixes and improvements to AI threat behavior in general.

- Reinforcements have had further refactoring, and now have a much more coherent sense of budget (i.e. not getting anything for "free"). Perhaps more importantly, any reinforcement strength "lost" to the various capping rules (which are there to prevent the AI just defensively stonewalling you when it's not a Turtle AI Type or whatever) is passed on to the Strategic Reserve (until it is full) and then towards augmenting waves. Neither use is particularly threatening in moderate doses (though if the redirect-to-SR thing turns into homeworld-stonewalling please let us know and we'll change that) but this way the "cost" of AIP no longer goes down when that cap is reached, etc.

- More Golem and Spirecraft balance changes; not as many as last time but we hope it helps move those towards where they need to be.

<i>The <b></b> Winter 2013 <a href="http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400/discussions/0/666825525015589392/">AI War Sortie Bulletin</a> topic at the community hub is a place to find other players.</i>

<i>This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 6.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 6.000 or later, you can download that <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_buy.php">here.</a></i>

AI War <a href"http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400">Steam community hub[/url]
AI War Facebook page
Arcen Games' Facebook page
Tidalis Facebook page
A Valley Without Wind Facebook page
Our community forums
Report bugs and suggestions on MantisBT
AI War web IRC / irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
Please see the original post here
Changelog may be found here

This one is kind of a beast. With TLF doing so well most of our time is going in that direction, but since it's doing well we also have a little time to spare for stuff like AIW. Which is nice.

The biggest individual thing is a major revision of the Alternate Champion Progress feature introduced in the previous non-hotfix release. I'd thought people who didn't want the nebula scenarios wanted a relatively low-impact version of the champion that didn't fundamentally change gameplay. Based on feedback it would appear I was wrong ;)

Anyway, this new iteration does allow that low-power, low-response option but you can also crank the intensity of the progress and the response up to levels where you're getting just as much power by late/end-game as you would with the normal progress mechanic. And probably just as much pain in return, we'll see how the balancing worked out there. If you're feeling cheesy or like providing the compensating challenge in some other way you can also crank up the progression and leave the response low or off.

Please keep the feedback coming; "champion revisions" won #2 on the big-items-for-8.0 poll and I'd really like to get champs to a place where they have a wider appeal.

All that aside, some other major changes in this beta release:

- Carriers are now always fully autotargeted, and damage to them is simply passed on to the contained units. This actually makes carriers way easier to deal with, so further balance changes are likely to come later, but most importantly this also makes them way less annoying to deal with, and thus makes the game more fun. It's very satisfying to see a wall of 1000-load carriers fly into the teeth of exo-class defenses and start melting.

- Lightning/Armored Warheads and Spirecraft Martyrs have been made essentially finite in damage potential now, though one may not normally think of "Ten Billion Damage" as "finite". Essentially these now spread X damage over all available targets rather than doing X damage to EACH target in range. More balance to come, I'm sure, but now these are at least theoretically capable of being balanced.

- Fixed a major bug in recent versions where the second AI player's threat/threatfleet/special-forces ships were often just stuck on worlds with no human presence at all. Also made several other important fixes and improvements to AI threat behavior in general.

- Reinforcements have had further refactoring, and now have a much more coherent sense of budget (i.e. not getting anything for "free"). Perhaps more importantly, any reinforcement strength "lost" to the various capping rules (which are there to prevent the AI just defensively stonewalling you when it's not a Turtle AI Type or whatever) is passed on to the Strategic Reserve (until it is full) and then towards augmenting waves. Neither use is particularly threatening in moderate doses (though if the redirect-to-SR thing turns into homeworld-stonewalling please let us know and we'll change that) but this way the "cost" of AIP no longer goes down when that cap is reached, etc.

- More Golem and Spirecraft balance changes; not as many as last time but we hope it helps move those towards where they need to be.

The Winter 2013 AI War Sortie Bulletin topic at the community hub is a place to find other players.

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 6.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 6.000 or later, you can download that here.

<a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_features.php"/><img src="http://arcengames.com/img/side_aiwar.png"</img></a>
AI War <a href"http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400">Steam community hub</a>
<i>AI War <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AIWarFleetCommand">Facebook page</a>
Arcen Games' <a href="https://www.facebook.com/arcengames">Facebook page</a>
Tidalis <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Tidalis">Facebook page</a>
A Valley Without Wind <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Valley-Without-Wind/164979970229916">Facebook page</a>
Our <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php">community forums</a></i>
Report bugs and suggestions on <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/">MantisBT</a>
<a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_irc.php">AI War web IRC</a> / irc.appliedirc.com / #aiwar
<b><a href="http://arcengames.blogspot.ca/2014/04/ai-war-beta-7021-champion-alter-ego.html">Please see the original post here</a></b>
<b><a href="http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Post-7.000_Beta#Prerelease_7.021_Champion_Alter-Ego">Changelog may be found here</a></b>

This one is fairly hefty, compared to other recent patches. After the April 18th release of <a href="http://arcengames.com/w/index.php/tlf-features">The Last Federation</a> and a week of heavy post-release support for that game (which is still very much ongoing, but not quite 100% of our time now) I finally had time to get 7.021 ready.

The most important thing here is definitely the new alternate-champion-progress lobby option, in response to "Revising Champions" winning the #2 spot in the <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13501.0.html">Big Items For 8.0 poll</a>.

Basically if you want to play with Champions but don't want to mess with nebulae (and their scenarios) just turn this on and your champions will gain their XP alongside your normal Knowledge gathering, and will gain new unlocks when you capture or hack Advanced Research Stations, Advanced Factories, etc.

I'm sure this needs further balancing and polish and perhaps isn't even the right tree to bark up, but <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,15029.msg166456.html#msg166456">recent discussion</a> indicated it was worth a try. And even if this option is worked out perfectly there's probably other revisions needed for champions. Anyway, more feedback is very welcome :)

Other high points from the release:
* The AI (on Diff 7+) now has "overrun" logic to recognize when its normal-threat forces are way more than needed at a specific planet (even when there's still some human presence). It then leaves a goodly chunk to mop up and sends the excess after another target.
* Most of the Golems have been buffed to better fit their balance targets, so they should be more interesting to play with. Unless it's the AI with the golems. Then it's more interesting to play with.
* The Spirecraft Siege Tower and Spirecraft Ion Blaster have been reimagined as much more combat-effective ships.
* Fixed a couple of bugs that were causing Desyncs in multiplayer. Always a relief to nail some of those.
* The AI's Implosion Guardians (including the Dires) have been nerfed. And there was much rejoicing.

There's also quite a few other bugfixes and balance changes.

<i>The <b></b> Winter 2013 <a href="http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400/discussions/0/666825525015589392/">AI War Sortie Bulletin</a> topic at the community hub is a place to find other players.</i>

<i>This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 6.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 6.000 or later, you can download that <a href="http://www.arcengames.com/aiwar_buy.php">here.</a></i>

AI War <a href"http://steamcommunity.com/app/40400">Steam community hub[/url]
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Please see the original post here
Changelog may be found here

This one is fairly hefty, compared to other recent patches. After the April 18th release of The Last Federation and a week of heavy post-release support for that game (which is still very much ongoing, but not quite 100% of our time now) I finally had time to get 7.021 ready.

The most important thing here is definitely the new alternate-champion-progress lobby option, in response to "Revising Champions" winning the #2 spot in the Big Items For 8.0 poll.

Basically if you want to play with Champions but don't want to mess with nebulae (and their scenarios) just turn this on and your champions will gain their XP alongside your normal Knowledge gathering, and will gain new unlocks when you capture or hack Advanced Research Stations, Advanced Factories, etc.

I'm sure this needs further balancing and polish and perhaps isn't even the right tree to bark up, but recent discussion indicated it was worth a try. And even if this option is worked out perfectly there's probably other revisions needed for champions. Anyway, more feedback is very welcome :)

Other high points from the release:
* The AI (on Diff 7+) now has "overrun" logic to recognize when its normal-threat forces are way more than needed at a specific planet (even when there's still some human presence). It then leaves a goodly chunk to mop up and sends the excess after another target.
* Most of the Golems have been buffed to better fit their balance targets, so they should be more interesting to play with. Unless it's the AI with the golems. Then it's more interesting to play with.
* The Spirecraft Siege Tower and Spirecraft Ion Blaster have been reimagined as much more combat-effective ships.
* Fixed a couple of bugs that were causing Desyncs in multiplayer. Always a relief to nail some of those.
* The AI's Implosion Guardians (including the Dires) have been nerfed. And there was much rejoicing.

There's also quite a few other bugfixes and balance changes.

The Winter 2013 AI War Sortie Bulletin topic at the community hub is a place to find other players.

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 6.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 6.000 or later, you can download that here.