Topics

856

AI War / Prerelease/Expans 2.001ZE (Hive Golem, New Save Format, Train Population Nerf)

« on: December 22, 2009, 02:11:46 AM »

Note:  This prerelease is intended for both customers of the expansion AND customers of the base game.  Please see below for details.

Important: This new version introduces a brand new savegame format that is way more efficient, and which should do even better for people first syncing into large multiplayer games over slower broadband connections.  This has been pretty well tested, and seems to be bug-free.  However, with something of this size, just bear in mind that it takes beta trials before it is likely to be 100% bug-free.  This is the first beta version with the new savegame format, so make sure and don't overwrite your existing savegames just in case -- and I would suggest testing your new savegames before you go too far with them, just to make sure everything is okay with them (nothing worse than having to redo hours of playtime, right? So better safe than sorry).  Please report any errors you find, and I'll correct them asap for the next version (not that that will save any lost data from this version, so again, keep backups). Hopefully this warning is completely unneeded and everything will be fine, but with a change like this it deserves some caveats.  This is your fair warning!

The latest prerelease is available at http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar2001ZE.zip

That version is an upgrade from version 2.000, so you have to already have 2.000 (or greater) installed. Just unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else). Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.

Expansion F.A.Q. Answers:
1. If you have the base game, and install this, you will go into trial mode of the expansion.  Feel free to explore the expansion that way, but if you want to go back to full mode without buying the expansion, simply go into Settings, Expansions, and turn off the expansion.
2. All upcoming prereleases for the next few months (until the expansion fully releases) will have a mix of both expansion and non-expansion content.  If you just want the latest non-expansion content, see #1.
3. If you want to preorder the expansion (and get your full license key), see this page.  It's $9.99 USD (or equivalent), and requires a valid copy of the base game to play.
4. If you want to know all about the expansion in general, see that same page.
5. PLEASE NOTE:  The new ships for the expansion are extremely preliminary at this stage.  They are fully functional when added, but they are not well balanced at all just yet.  The balance takes time, playtesting, and a fuller view of more of the ships.  So certain expansion ships are currently underpowered, while others are overpowered.  Your feedback on this is extremely valuable, as this is something we are adjusting at present based on community feedback as well as our own testing, but we don't expect to have things even close to perfectly tuned until sometime in December.  Our first priority is to get everything working and implemented, while honing the balance as much as possible, then to really heavily polish the balance once all the ships are in place.  Just FYI!
6. If you want to update an old savegame to the expansion, simply type "cmd:activate expansion 1" (without quotes).  This includes enabling the expansion ship classes, as well as enabling golems and other new capturables, although the population of those capturables is likely to be different from what it would have been if the expansion had been turned on from the start of the campaign given the same seed and other settings.  There is no way to disable the expansion for an existing game, however, so be sure not to save over your existing file if you want to go back to the non-expansion version of the game.

Steam/Impulse/GamersGate/Direct2Drive/etc F.A.Q. Answers:
1. This prerelease version is compatible with any other version of the game -- Steam, Impulse, whatever.
2. If you use this with your Steam copy of the game, however, you will be asked to enter your AI War CD key (which Steam provides, but normally you do not have to enter), and also the integration with Steamworks leaderboards and achievements will be disabled by default.  New: To enable steamworks integration with the beta versions, simply run the game with the command line argument "steam" (no quotes).  If you put the argument in correctly, you'll then see your Steam interface pop up correctly.
3. If you have preordered through Impulse, you should now have access to your beta key (as of 12/9).  They also provide direct beta downloads through their Impulse Client.
4. Steam will carry the expansion later on, and will have (probably beta-less) preorders, but they don't yet have that online.
5. GamersGate is also currently offering the expansion on preorder, and you do get a beta key, but you'll have to download the beta versions from our forums here.
6. Direct2Drive will be offering the expansion on preorder in a manner very similar to GamersGate, but they are not doing so quite yet.

What's new since 2.001ZA:
(Cumulative release notes since 2.000 are attached at the bottom)

-------------------

-Improvements have been made to the targeting behavior of groups of melee ships.

-New Hive Golem (expansion only):  Large, slow transport that automatically fills over time with up to 500 small wasp ships. When the wasps are unloaded, they will automatically spread out and attack enemy ships on the current planet; they cannot be directly controlled, cannot leave the current planet, and lose health slowly over 3 minutes.

-More about wasps: Very fast and nasty melee ship -- loses health over a 3 minute period, then self-destructs. Created inside Hive Golems, when these are unloaded they are uncontrollable but will viciously attack the enemy on the current planet. Players cannot give direct orders to the wasps.

-Two new cheats have been added for spawning broken or fully-functional versions of the new hive golem: busted and the hegemon, and the hegemon.  These only work when the first expansion is enabled for the current game.

-The savegame format has been drastically updated to a format that is now more compact.  Average size savings are between 14% to 42%, with the average being around 20%.  This not only makes savegames smaller, but also makes it that much faster to connect/sync multiplayer games.  This new format will be even more advantageous as the game continues to develop, preventing the savegames from getting ever larger.

Changes from prior prereleases.
------------------------------

-Fixed several bugs with the regen rates on new units.

-Beam weapons and grenades no longer strike units that are still fading in, or units that the player would not automatically attack. (This actually has not been well tested yet. Feedback is welcome.)

-Fixed several bugs with the interactions of exploding ships and/or beam weapons with forcefields. (This actually has not been well tested yet. Feedback is welcome.)

-Fixed a bug where beam weapons and exploding ships could not damage non-auto-attackable targets that they were directly assigned. (This actually has not been well tested yet. Feedback is welcome.)

-Mines and mine remains can no longer be protected by force fields or other counter-shooters (they don't need it, and it keeps CPU usage as low as possible).

-In past prereleases, all of the astro train variants made up approximately 1/4 of the total trains in the galaxy.  Now, regular astro trains make up 5/14 of the total, turret trains make up 5/14 of the total, booster trains make up 3/14 of the total, and regenerator trains make up 1/14 of the total.  This should make the new, more difficult trains a lot less overpowering.  Note that this will not affect existing savegames, only new campaigns that are started.

Changes in ZC:

-A new method is now being used for line/circle intersection tests.  This method is a bit more of an approximation, but it runs very much faster and also isn't prone to overflow errors.  This fixes errors that had previously been in place with beam weapons (making them hit many targets they should not have been hitting), as well as making the galaxy maps generate more quickly.

-There is now a command line argument "steam" that can be used to force the game to launch in steamworks-enabled mode.  This is useful for Steam players who want to use the game in full steamworks-enabled mode.

-Fixed a crash bug relating to beam/explosion weapons in the last prerelease.

Changes in ZD:

-The health of advanced factories has been increased 4x to make them not quite so brittle and hard to defend.

-The health of bombers have been doubled.

-Ships that are resurrected thanks to an AI regenerator are now warped to a random other AI planet, rather than being sent to the regenerator on the current planet.  This makes threat go up, and those ships will returned to fight again at some point in the future, but it is no longer so overly deadly as it was in prior prereleases.

-Circles of any sort were not being drawn in the last prerelease.  Fixed.

-There was a bug with the wave names not showing properly in all cases in the last prerelease.  Fixed.

-The radar jammer icon was missing in past prereleases.  Fixed.

-The attack power of beam starships has been tripled.

-The health of decoy drones have been thirded, but the human players can now build 3x as many of them.  The experimentalist AI type (the only type that builds decoys) will build the same amount as before.

-Acid Sprayers are now 10x weaker against all non-zenith ships.

-Previously, expansion ships were showing in the planetary summary when F1 was pressed when the expansion was disabled. Fixed.

Changes in ZE:

-The attack recharge on all sentinel frigates except mark IIIs was previously set too low by error.  Fixed.

-The EMP mine buy icon was missing.  Fixed.

-Fixed a crash bug with the explosion targeting.

857

AI War / Prerelease/Expans 2.001ZA (2 New Mines, Remains Rebuilder, Cleanup Drone, Perf+)

« on: December 19, 2009, 05:07:17 AM »

Note:  This prerelease is intended for both customers of the expansion AND customers of the base game.  Please see below for details.

The latest prerelease is available at http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar2001ZA.zip

That version is an upgrade from version 2.000, so you have to already have 2.000 (or greater) installed. Just unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else). Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.

Expansion F.A.Q. Answers:
1. If you have the base game, and install this, you will go into trial mode of the expansion.  Feel free to explore the expansion that way, but if you want to go back to full mode without buying the expansion, simply go into Settings, Expansions, and turn off the expansion.
2. All upcoming prereleases for the next few months (until the expansion fully releases) will have a mix of both expansion and non-expansion content.  If you just want the latest non-expansion content, see #1.
3. If you want to preorder the expansion (and get your full license key), see this page.  It's $9.99 USD (or equivalent), and requires a valid copy of the base game to play.
4. If you want to know all about the expansion in general, see that same page.
5. PLEASE NOTE:  The new ships for the expansion are extremely preliminary at this stage.  They are fully functional when added, but they are not well balanced at all just yet.  The balance takes time, playtesting, and a fuller view of more of the ships.  So certain expansion ships are currently underpowered, while others are overpowered.  Your feedback on this is extremely valuable, as this is something we are adjusting at present based on community feedback as well as our own testing, but we don't expect to have things even close to perfectly tuned until sometime in December.  Our first priority is to get everything working and implemented, while honing the balance as much as possible, then to really heavily polish the balance once all the ships are in place.  Just FYI!
6. If you want to update an old savegame to the expansion, simply type "cmd:activate expansion 1" (without quotes).  This includes enabling the expansion ship classes, as well as enabling golems and other new capturables, although the population of those capturables is likely to be different from what it would have been if the expansion had been turned on from the start of the campaign given the same seed and other settings.  There is no way to disable the expansion for an existing game, however, so be sure not to save over your existing file if you want to go back to the non-expansion version of the game.

Steam/Impulse/GamersGate/Direct2Drive/etc F.A.Q. Answers:
1. This prerelease version is compatible with any other version of the game -- Steam, Impulse, whatever.
2. If you use this with your Steam copy of the game, however, you will be asked to enter your AI War CD key (which Steam provides, but normally you do not have to enter), and also the integration with Steamworks leaderboards and achievements may be disabled.  So you may want to make a separate install of the preorder version if you use Steam, at least for the moment.
3. If you have preordered through Impulse, you should now have access to your beta key (as of 12/9).  They also provide direct beta downloads through their Impulse Client.
4. Steam will carry the expansion later on, and will have (probably beta-less) preorders, but they don't yet have that online.
5. GamersGate is also currently offering the expansion on preorder, and you do get a beta key, but you'll have to download the beta versions from our forums here.
6. Direct2Drive will be offering the expansion on preorder in a manner very similar to GamersGate, but they are not doing so quite yet.

What's new since 2.001Y:
(Cumulative release notes since 2.000 are attached at the bottom)

-------------------

-New expansion-only ship: EMP Mine.  Enemy ships coming too close to these invisible traps will incur heavy damage. If the ship triggering the mine survives, it will also be paralyzed for 60 seconds. The mine is also destroyed in the process. These are particularly useful for stalling out large incoming vesseles that don't have mine avoidance.

-New expansion-only ship: Area Mine.  Enemy ships coming too close to these invisible traps will incur heavy damage. The explosions from these mines also effect other enemy ships that are close by. The mine is also destroyed in the process. These are obviously useful for taking out groups of ships, but they are also useful for hitting ships that have Mine Avoidance -- those ships can still get caught in the blasts of area mines that are triggered by another ship.

-Some internal performance improvements have been made to the simulation logic in a variety of areas.

-Mine remains are now practically invincible to conventional attacks, since those were far too micromangement-intensive in the past to be a valid way to play.  Additionally, this prevents remains from accidentally being destroyed by area attacks or other means.

-New ship: Cleanup Drone.  Removes exploded enemy mines and turrets, to prevent them from being rebuilt by enemy mine/turret layers.  Previously this was accomplished with engineers (once those engineers had finished with anything else that they considered a higher priority, which caused some challenges), or via manual targeted.  Now, having a specialized unit dedicated to cleanup makes it much simpler to clear exploded enemy mines without any micromanagement.

-The following ships now drop remains on their destruction in the same manner that mines always have: advanced warp sensors, tachyon beam emitters and stealth tachyon beam emitters, and all turrets.  Consequently, all of these ship types are also now immune to reclamation.

-Mine Layers have been renamed to Remains Rebuilders, and now are a general purpose rebuilder for any ship types that leave remains.  They also now only will rebuild ships that were owned by the player who controls the rebuilder, rather than also working on allied ships.  These have been moved to the Economy tab, instead of the Defensive tab, along with Cleanup Drones.

-Remains Rebuilders now have cloaking, making them easier for players to keep alive (and more devious for when the AI has them, incidentally).  They also now have 100k more health.  They also no longer require unlocking, and thus no longer have any associated knowledge cost now that they are more of a general-purpose ship.  Their ship cap has also been raised about 3x.

-Ship Remains that belong to AI players, but which are not on AI planets, now automatically explode -- thus saving players the trouble of creating cleanup drones to clean them up manually.

-Previously it was possible for Remains Rebuilders to send a player into negative energy through their rebuilding.  In recent prereleases, they were also doing their rebuilding for free.  All fixed, and now they are not instantly rebuilt, either, but rather are kicked off so that they then construct themselves over time for an ongoing resource cost as with every other aspect of the new economy.  For the first time ever, this also applies to the AI when it is rebuilding ships -- thus the AI Remains Rebuilders are not nearly so threatening as mine builders used to be, since they can't just instantly respawn large numbers of ships.

-Previously, large numbers of mines and remains (as in, 50,000+) in the game could cause significant slowdown.  This has now been fixed so that they cause almost no performance impact whatsoever, except right after the game is loaded (since there are extra messages being sent to the AI, and the save files themselves are larger).

-Ships that are self-building are no longer cloaked while under construction (if they have the cloaking ability, previously that would be engaged while they were still under construction, which was erroneous).

Changes from prior prereleases.
------------------------------

-In the last prerelease, the niche text overlays for ship icons were showing incorrectly offset to the side.

-In 2.001 prereleases, there have been a number of internal math errors that affected the precision of collisions for things such as mines.  These are now fixed, which makes mines vastly more likely to be triggered than they were in recent prereleases.


Updates in 2.001Z:

-Since remains and their cleanup and rebuilding are now so important, when Cloaking is disabled in the lobby options here is now a non-cloaked version of the Remains Rebuilder that players and AIs will use, and a non-cloaked version of the Cleanup Drone that players can use.

-All ships that are immune to reclamation now have a strong attack penalty against the Raid Starship line, and Parasites.

-The movement speed of all parasites has been nearly doubled.

-EMPs and Area Mines now cost 4k knowledge instead of 3k as in the past prerelease.

Updates in 2.001ZA:

-Infiltrators no longer absorb dark matter (and that ability has now been entirely removed as redudnant with the counter-dark-matter flares).

-When lasers are fired into the area around a deflector drone, their power is now reduced to 1/4 of normal, but otherwise they are no longer redirected or absorbed or anything of that nature.  That also means that deflector drones are no longer immune to lasers, though they are quite resistant to them.

-Several bugs from the last prerelease have been fixed relating to remains.

-Fixed a multiplayer desync bug from the last prerelease.

858

AI War / Prerelease/Expans 2.001X (Z Reserves, Dist Nodes, SuperTerminals, Co-Processors)

« on: December 18, 2009, 01:14:12 AM »

Note:  This prerelease is intended for both customers of the expansion AND customers of the base game.  Please see below for details.

The latest prerelease is available at http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar2001X.zip

That version is an upgrade from version 2.000, so you have to already have 2.000 (or greater) installed. Just unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else). Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.

Expansion F.A.Q. Answers:
1. If you have the base game, and install this, you will go into trial mode of the expansion.  Feel free to explore the expansion that way, but if you want to go back to full mode without buying the expansion, simply go into Settings, Expansions, and turn off the expansion.
2. All upcoming prereleases for the next few months (until the expansion fully releases) will have a mix of both expansion and non-expansion content.  If you just want the latest non-expansion content, see #1.
3. If you want to preorder the expansion (and get your full license key), see this page.  It's $9.99 USD (or equivalent), and requires a valid copy of the base game to play.
4. If you want to know all about the expansion in general, see that same page.
5. PLEASE NOTE:  The new ships for the expansion are extremely preliminary at this stage.  They are fully functional when added, but they are not well balanced at all just yet.  The balance takes time, playtesting, and a fuller view of more of the ships.  So certain expansion ships are currently underpowered, while others are overpowered.  Your feedback on this is extremely valuable, as this is something we are adjusting at present based on community feedback as well as our own testing, but we don't expect to have things even close to perfectly tuned until sometime in December.  Our first priority is to get everything working and implemented, while honing the balance as much as possible, then to really heavily polish the balance once all the ships are in place.  Just FYI!
6. If you want to update an old savegame to the expansion, simply type "cmd:activate expansion 1" (without quotes).  This includes enabling the expansion ship classes, as well as enabling golems and other new capturables, although the population of those capturables is likely to be different from what it would have been if the expansion had been turned on from the start of the campaign given the same seed and other settings.  There is no way to disable the expansion for an existing game, however, so be sure not to save over your existing file if you want to go back to the non-expansion version of the game.

Steam/Impulse/GamersGate/Direct2Drive/etc F.A.Q. Answers:
1. This prerelease version is compatible with any other version of the game -- Steam, Impulse, whatever.
2. If you use this with your Steam copy of the game, however, you will be asked to enter your AI War CD key (which Steam provides, but normally you do not have to enter), and also the integration with Steamworks leaderboards and achievements may be disabled.  So you may want to make a separate install of the preorder version if you use Steam, at least for the moment.
3. If you have preordered through Impulse, you should now have access to your beta key (as of 12/9).  They also provide direct beta downloads through their Impulse Client.
4. Steam will carry the expansion later on, and will have (probably beta-less) preorders, but they don't yet have that online.
5. GamersGate is also currently offering the expansion on preorder, and you do get a beta key, but you'll have to download the beta versions from our forums here.
6. Direct2Drive will be offering the expansion on preorder in a manner very similar to GamersGate, but they are not doing so quite yet.

What's new since 2.001V:
(Cumulative release notes since 2.000 are attached at the bottom)

-------------------

-Kills made by electric shuttles and lightning turrets were not previously being correctly logged.  Fixed.

-5 new expansion-only ships: Zenith Reserve Ships Mark I-V.  Destroy to capture a large cache of Zenith vessels for your own use (at some AI Progress cost).Given the large number of ships that come online at once, be sure to have between 400k and 1 million energy available to support them.

-New expansion-only ship: Distribution Node.  Destroy to capture a sizable cache of metal and crystal for the player destroying it (at some AI Progress cost). Be warned, however: around 1/5 of all nodes are actually Trojan Distribution Nodes, which are empty save for a malicious electronic payload that actually cause you to lose a sizable chunk of resources before automated recovery systems can purge the malicious infection.

-Hovering over the AI Progress meter in the resource bar at the top of the screen now shows a breakdown of Total AI Progress, AI Progress Reduction, AI Progress Floor, and finally the Effective AI Progress (which is all that is normally shown).  (For those who are interested, Effective = Total -  Reduction, unless Total - Reduction < Floor, in which case Effective = Floor.  Floor increases as Total goes up.)  This should hopefully make AI Progress value calculations more clear for advanced players.

-New expansion-only ship: AI Co-Processor.  Destroying a co-processor normally increases the AI Progress by 20.  However, when you destroy the last co-processor, the AI Progress takes a massive drop of 120.  Check your Mission Summary (right side of the screen) to see how many co-processors remain; hitting all of them simultaneously is ideal.  Co-Processors also interfere with supply on their planet.

-Niche text overlays were not previously being positioned properly on 64x64 icons.  Fixed.

-Since there are so many secondary mission objectives now (often 10 or more instead of the previous 4), they are now grouped into several categories: Technology, AI Progress, and Economic.

-New expansion-only ship: AI SuperTerminal.  When humans capture the planet on which this resides, they gain direct access to the core network of the AI network, where they can greatly damage the AI's processing capabilities.  Every 30 seconds, this simultaneously increases the total AI Progress by one and reduces the AI Progress by two.  This leads to a net reduction in AI Progress, although if left going long enough it will increase the AI Progress Floor in an undesirable manner (see the hover text over the AI Progress meter at the top of the screen for more info). While this reduction is occurring, AI ships will spew out of the SuperTerminal at a rate proportional to the total current AI Progress Reduction.

Changes from prior prereleases.
------------------------------

-In the last prerelease, planetary shield inhibitors were not properly disabling enemy force fields.  Fixed.

-In the last few prereleases, regen abilities were incorrectly being applied during the 3-seconds-after-being hit period.  Fixed.

-The bug with the astro trains stopping moving at certain planets should be fixed for real, now (knock on wood -- please report it if you see it in W).

UPDATE: Version X Updates The Following:

-Game performance is no longer severely affected when localization files are missing.

-Recent prereleases have had a bug wherein if the expansion was disabled it would trigger localziation errors.  Fixed.

859

AI War / Prerelease/Expans 2.001V (New font, 5 new ships, 11 new AI types)

« on: December 17, 2009, 12:50:33 AM »

Note:  This prerelease is intended for both customers of the expansion AND customers of the base game.  Please see below for details.

The latest prerelease is available at http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar2001V.zip

That version is an upgrade from version 2.000, so you have to already have 2.000 (or greater) installed. Just unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else). Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.

Expansion F.A.Q. Answers:
1. If you have the base game, and install this, you will go into trial mode of the expansion.  Feel free to explore the expansion that way, but if you want to go back to full mode without buying the expansion, simply go into Settings, Expansions, and turn off the expansion.
2. All upcoming prereleases for the next few months (until the expansion fully releases) will have a mix of both expansion and non-expansion content.  If you just want the latest non-expansion content, see #1.
3. If you want to preorder the expansion (and get your full license key), see this page.  It's $9.99 USD (or equivalent), and requires a valid copy of the base game to play.
4. If you want to know all about the expansion in general, see that same page.
5. PLEASE NOTE:  The new ships for the expansion are extremely preliminary at this stage.  They are fully functional when added, but they are not well balanced at all just yet.  The balance takes time, playtesting, and a fuller view of more of the ships.  So certain expansion ships are currently underpowered, while others are overpowered.  Your feedback on this is extremely valuable, as this is something we are adjusting at present based on community feedback as well as our own testing, but we don't expect to have things even close to perfectly tuned until sometime in December.  Our first priority is to get everything working and implemented, while honing the balance as much as possible, then to really heavily polish the balance once all the ships are in place.  Just FYI!
6. If you want to update an old savegame to the expansion, simply type "cmd:activate expansion 1" (without quotes).  This includes enabling the expansion ship classes, as well as enabling golems and other new capturables, although the population of those capturables is likely to be different from what it would have been if the expansion had been turned on from the start of the campaign given the same seed and other settings.  There is no way to disable the expansion for an existing game, however, so be sure not to save over your existing file if you want to go back to the non-expansion version of the game.

Steam/Impulse/GamersGate/Direct2Drive/etc F.A.Q. Answers:
1. This prerelease version is compatible with any other version of the game -- Steam, Impulse, whatever.
2. If you use this with your Steam copy of the game, however, you will be asked to enter your AI War CD key (which Steam provides, but normally you do not have to enter), and also the integration with Steamworks leaderboards and achievements may be disabled.  So you may want to make a separate install of the preorder version if you use Steam, at least for the moment.
3. If you have preordered through Impulse, you should now have access to your beta key (as of 12/9).  They also provide direct beta downloads through their Impulse Client.
4. Steam will carry the expansion later on, and will have (probably beta-less) preorders, but they don't yet have that online.
5. GamersGate is also currently offering the expansion on preorder, and you do get a beta key, but you'll have to download the beta versions from our forums here.
6. Direct2Drive will be offering the expansion on preorder in a manner very similar to GamersGate, but they are not doing so quite yet.

What's new since 2.001U:
(Cumulative release notes since 2.000 are attached at the bottom)

-------------------

-New expansion-only Capturable Ship: Gravity Drill Station.  A large station that bores a hole into the fabric of spacetime.  So brutal is the rending of normal space that the effects radiated from this rupture dramatically interfere with most known forms of propulsion thus rendering any teleportation within the system impossible and reducing the speed of all vessels to 8. Generates free energy, metal, and crystal for the player holding it.

-New expansion-only Capturable Ship: Black Hole Machine.  Prevents all enemy ships (except scouts) from escaping from this planet through wormholes, though enemy ships can still enter through wormholes as normal.

-New expansion-only Capturable Ship: Interplanetary Munitions Booster.  Triples the attack of all allied ship in its planet, as well as adjacent planets.

-New expansion-only Capturable Ship: Planetary Shield Booster.  Triples the shield strength of all allied ships on the current planet, making them far harder to hit.

-New expansion-only Capturable Ship: Planetary Shield Inhibitor.  Disables the shields of all enemy ships on the current planet, making them much easier to hit. Also disables enemy force fields.

-The internal logic for how AI players handle having many starships, and how they handle starships being disabled, is now much improved.

-Previously, AIs would often build far too many counter-snipers when threatened with any snipers.  Fixed.

-New expansion-only AI type: Zenith Descendant.  Aggressive AI that uses only Zenith fleet ships.

-New expansion-only AI type: One-Way Doormaster.  Employs black hole machines on all of its planets, which makes each raid into its territory a one-way trip if the black hole machine is not destroyed.

-New expansion-only AI type: Peacemaker.  Uses anti-golem, anti-starship, anti-warhead, etc, ships on all its planets.

-New expansion-only AI type: Experimentalist.  Aggressive AI that uses a heavy mix of experimental ships along with its normal fleets.

-New expansion-only AI type: Golemite.  Has fully-functioning golems on a great many of its planets.  Since the AI Progress goes up greatly when these are repaired, care must be taken to destroy these all in one wave to avoid any such penalty.

-New expansion-only AI type: Radar Jammer.  Employs radar jammers on all of its planets, which makes long-range ships very ineffective against it.

-New expansion-only AI type: Speed Racer.  All of its mobile ships have been upgraded to move extremely fast.

-New expansion-only AI type: Starfleet Commander.  Aggressive AI that uses starships heavily in place of normal fleet ships.

-New expansion-only AI type: Tag Teamer.  A defensive AI whose guards are extra speedy and don't stay near their posts.  This makes them more challenging to attack.

-New expansion-only AI type: Shield Ninny.  Planets are all heavily defended, often with special boosters for allied shields or inhibitors for enemy shields, but this AI never launches waves at the players.

-New expansion-only AI type: Grav Driller.  Aggressive AI with many gravity drill stations on its planets.  Gravity Drills nullify teleporting units and majorly slow down all other units, but when captured provide free resources and energy.

Changes from prior prereleases.
------------------------------

-In the last prerelease, the Zenith SpaceTime Manipulator was incorrectly enabled for non-expansion use (with errors if the expansion was not on).  Fixed.

-In prior prereleases, the list of AI types in the lobby, and the AI types chosen when a random AI type was selected, were not properly responding to the enabling/disabling of expansions.  Fixed.

-An entirely new font is now being used compared to what was in recent prereleases; this one is much more readable. 

The numbers are still being tweaked with that font, but it is already still much more readable.

-A great many of the larger ships, including starships and golems, are now immune to paralysis attacks.

-Ships that absorb lasers or dark matter now also attract the absorbed type of shots to themselves.  This works similarly to how counter-missiles and related provide a protection radius, but instead of firing a counter-shot, these shots are drawn to the protecting ship and heal it.

-The decoy drone has been updated so that it now provides a protection radius like the absorption ships above, except that its protection radius is vastly larger, it affects all non-AoE/non-melee/non-Beam-weapon shots, and the shots that hit the decoy hurt the decoy instead of healing it.

-Grenade Launchers now only affect enemy units, instead of enemies and allies.

-In the last prereleases, the turrets were not properly being set as immune to munitions boosting.  Fixed.

-Fixed a bug loading some old savegames with the new multi-control-group logic.

-The bug with the astro trains stalling out seems to be fixed, this was apparently an issue with ship commands from the AI getting backed up in too long of a queue, which is now solved.

860

AI War / Prerelease/Expans 2.001U (2 new golems, 19 new ships overall)

« on: December 12, 2009, 12:46:51 AM »

Note:  This prerelease is intended for both customers of the expansion AND customers of the base game.  Please see below for details.

The latest prerelease is available at http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar2001U.zip

That version is an upgrade from version 2.000, so you have to already have 2.000 (or greater) installed. Just unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else). Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.

Expansion F.A.Q. Answers:
1. If you have the base game, and install this, you will go into trial mode of the expansion.  Feel free to explore the expansion that way, but if you want to go back to full mode without buying the expansion, simply go into Settings, Expansions, and turn off the expansion.
2. All upcoming prereleases for the next few months (until the expansion fully releases) will have a mix of both expansion and non-expansion content.  If you just want the latest non-expansion content, see #1.
3. If you want to preorder the expansion (and get your full license key), see this page.  It's $9.99 USD (or equivalent), and requires a valid copy of the base game to play.
4. If you want to know all about the expansion in general, see that same page.
5. PLEASE NOTE:  The new ships for the expansion are extremely preliminary at this stage.  They are fully functional when added, but they are not well balanced at all just yet.  The balance takes time, playtesting, and a fuller view of more of the ships.  So certain expansion ships are currently underpowered, while others are overpowered.  Your feedback on this is extremely valuable, as this is something we are adjusting at present based on community feedback as well as our own testing, but we don't expect to have things even close to perfectly tuned until sometime in December.  Our first priority is to get everything working and implemented, while honing the balance as much as possible, then to really heavily polish the balance once all the ships are in place.  Just FYI!
6. If you want to update an old savegame to the expansion, simply type "cmd:activate expansion 1" (without quotes).  This includes enabling the expansion ship classes, as well as enabling golems and other new capturables, although the population of those capturables is likely to be different from what it would have been if the expansion had been turned on from the start of the campaign given the same seed and other settings.  There is no way to disable the expansion for an existing game, however, so be sure not to save over your existing file if you want to go back to the non-expansion version of the game.

Steam/Impulse/GamersGate/Direct2Drive/etc F.A.Q. Answers:
1. This prerelease version is compatible with any other version of the game -- Steam, Impulse, whatever.
2. If you use this with your Steam copy of the game, however, you will be asked to enter your AI War CD key (which Steam provides, but normally you do not have to enter), and also the integration with Steamworks leaderboards and achievements may be disabled.  So you may want to make a separate install of the preorder version if you use Steam, at least for the moment.
3. If you have preordered through Impulse, you should now have access to your beta key (as of 12/9).  They also provide direct beta downloads through their Impulse Client.
4. Steam will carry the expansion later on, and will have (probably beta-less) preorders, but they don't yet have that online.
5. GamersGate is also currently offering the expansion on preorder, and you do get a beta key, but you'll have to download the beta versions from our forums here.
6. Direct2Drive will be offering the expansion on preorder in a manner very similar to GamersGate, but they are not doing so quite yet.

What's new since 2.001T:
(Cumulative release notes since 2.000 are attached at the bottom)

-------------------

-Ships that absorb lasers or dark matter now also attract the absorbed type of shots to themselves.  Enemy ships that are explicitly targeted onto another nearby target will successfully hit that other kind of target, but the targeting systems will be fooled into erroneously choosing the absorbtion type of ships when looking for best targets.

-A new set of Experimental Ship Fabricators has been added for both the base game and the expansion.  These are new capturables that are scattered around the galaxy map, a count of which can be seen in the Mission Summary in each campaign.  Generally there are 1 per human starting planet.  Each of these experimental ship fabricators, once captured, lets a human player build a single type of Experimental Ship (which otherwise normally are not built at all, or the AI only builds, depending). These experimental ships are fairly expensive, but cost no knowledge to unlock and have very unusual special abilities.
   Players can see what kind of experimental ship will be produced at a experimental ship fabricator before they capture it by hovering over it and looking at its hover text.
   In the base game, currently the only experimental ship is the Anti-Starship Arachnid.  In the expansion, there are a variety of new experimental ships (detailed below).  Not all of the fabricators are in every individual campaign, of course, given the seed numbers noted above.

-New Experimental Ship (expansion only): Decoy Drone. Tough, armored vessel with no significant guns. Tricks enemy ships into targeting only itself when it is in range.

-New Experimental Ship (expansion only): Speed Booster. Mobile ship that increases the speed of all friendly ships in the current system by a small amount. This effect is cumulative when multiple speed boosters are present.

-New Experimental Ship (expansion only): Translocator. Mid-power teleporting fighter that fires shots that cause enemy targets to be teleported far across the current planet when they are hit.

-New Experimental Ship (expansion only): MicroParasite. Reclaims enemy ships it kills (reclaimed ships have health = half damage inflicted by reclamator). Very weak alone, but becomes significantly stronger when many are at the same planet.

-New Defensive Ship (expansion only): Zenith SpaceTime Manipulator. Stationary alien ship that increases the speed of all friendly ships in the current system by a large amount. This effect is cumulative when multiple spacetime manipulators are present. Beware the minor AI Progress increase if this is destroyed.

-New Regenerator Golem (expansion only):  Very little in the way of weapons, but is able to use its own health to resurrect allied mobile ships that are killed on the current planet. Resurrected ships are teleported back to the golem at full health at no cost beyond the health of the golem.

-New Cursed Golem (expansion only):  Cursed Golems continuously take passive damage and cannot be repaired by traditional means.  The only way for this golem to survive is to attack enemy ships, which recovers its health through vampirism.

-Four new cheats have been added for spawning broken or fully-functional versions of the new golems: busted curse me, curse me, busted its a troll, its a troll.  These only work when the first expansion is enabled for the current game.

-Shot effective damage is now capped at the max health of the target being shot at.  This prevents mirrors from being nearly so deadly against ships with very high attack values.

-New AI Ship (expansion only):  Core Warhead Interceptor. Advanced weapon insta-kills warheads (which explode without doing any damage or incurring any AI Progress increase).

-New Capturable Ship (expansion only):  Orbital Mass Driver. Advanced weapon sends projectiles stripped from an iron asteroid to deal heavy damage to starships and golems.

-In the expansion on difficulty 7 and up, the AI home planets and core planets (those next to the home planets) will now always include both an orbital mass driver and a core warhead interceptor.

-Ion Cannons no longer require supply.

-Warheads are now Mark V instead of Mark 0, and they are no longer immune to being insta-killed.

-A new cheat has been added for spawning armored missiles: armor em.

-The insta-kill message no longer appears until ships are actually being hit and killed, rather than appearing when they are being fired upon.

-Several new hotkeys have been added relating to control groups:
Ctrl+X+0-9:   Set control group and remove unit from its other control groups.
Ctrl+Alt+0-9:   Remove units from control group.
Shift+Alt+0-9   Deselected control group ships.

-Anti-starship arachnids have been on the weak side of things in recent times, and so have been given a significant boost (around 3x) against starships.

-New Experimental Ship (expansion only): Experimental Engineer Drone. Advanced prototype model that can regenerate itself as well as repairing other ships very quickly.

-Three new expansion-only ships have been added (difficulty 5 and up only): Astro Speed Booster Trains I-III.  Nearly-indestructible robotic courier.  Slightly damages nearby ships. More importantly, they provide a massive speed boost to all AI ships in the system and reveal any cloaked ships that come near. Destroy Astro Train Stations to re-route them.

-Three new expansion-only ships have been added (difficulty 6 and up only): Astro Regenerator Trains I-III.  Nearly-indestructible robotic courier.  Slightly damages nearby ships. More importantly, is able to use its own health to resurrect AI mobile ships that are killed on the current planet. Resurrected ships are teleported back to the train at full health at no cost beyond the health of the train. They also reveal any cloaked ships that come near. Destroy Astro Train Stations to re-route them.

-New expansion-only Caputrable Ship: Radar Jammer.  Causes all ships on the planet to have extreme trouble targeting at ranges greater than 1000.

-New expansion-only Caputrable Ship: Radar Jammer II.  Causes enemy ships on the planet to have extreme trouble targeting at ranges greater than 1000.

861

AI War / What do the Zenith aliens bring to sci-fi strategy gem AI War? (via Fidget)

« on: December 10, 2009, 03:19:46 PM »

Tom Chick today writes about the upcoming first expansion to AI War on the SyFy gaming blog, Fidget:  http://fidgit.com/archives/2009/12/what_do_the_zenith_aliens_brin.php

862

AI War / Prerelease/Expans 2.001T (Astro Turret Trains, Experimental Starship Fabs)

« on: December 10, 2009, 01:30:13 AM »

Note:  This prerelease is intended for both customers of the expansion AND customers of the base game.  Please see below for details.

The latest prerelease is available at http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar2001T.zip

That version is an upgrade from version 2.000, so you have to already have 2.000 (or greater) installed. Just unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else). Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.

Expansion F.A.Q. Answers:
1. If you have the base game, and install this, you will go into trial mode of the expansion.  Feel free to explore the expansion that way, but if you want to go back to full mode without buying the expansion, simply go into Settings, Expansions, and turn off the expansion.
2. All upcoming prereleases for the next few months (until the expansion fully releases) will have a mix of both expansion and non-expansion content.  If you just want the latest non-expansion content, see #1.
3. If you want to preorder the expansion (and get your full license key), see this page.  It's $9.99 USD (or equivalent), and requires a valid copy of the base game to play.
4. If you want to know all about the expansion in general, see that same page.
5. PLEASE NOTE:  The new ships for the expansion are extremely preliminary at this stage.  They are fully functional when added, but they are not well balanced at all just yet.  The balance takes time, playtesting, and a fuller view of more of the ships.  So certain expansion ships are currently underpowered, while others are overpowered.  Your feedback on this is extremely valuable, as this is something we are adjusting at present based on community feedback as well as our own testing, but we don't expect to have things even close to perfectly tuned until sometime in December.  Our first priority is to get everything working and implemented, while honing the balance as much as possible, then to really heavily polish the balance once all the ships are in place.  Just FYI!
6. If you want to update an old savegame to the expansion, simply type "cmd:activate expansion 1" (without quotes).  This includes enabling the expansion ship classes, as well as enabling golems and other new capturables, although the population of those capturables is likely to be different from what it would have been if the expansion had been turned on from the start of the campaign given the same seed and other settings.  There is no way to disable the expansion for an existing game, however, so be sure not to save over your existing file if you want to go back to the non-expansion version of the game.

Steam/Impulse/GamersGate/Direct2Drive/etc F.A.Q. Answers:
1. This prerelease version is compatible with any other version of the game -- Steam, Impulse, whatever.
2. If you use this with your Steam copy of the game, however, you will be asked to enter your AI War CD key (which Steam provides, but normally you do not have to enter), and also the integration with Steamworks leaderboards and achievements may be disabled.  So you may want to make a separate install of the preorder version if you use Steam, at least for the moment.
3. If you have preordered through Impulse, you should now have access to your beta key (as of 12/9).  They also provide direct beta downloads through their Impulse Client.
4. Steam will carry the expansion later on, and will have (probably beta-less) preorders, but they don't yet have that online.
5. GamersGate is also currently offering the expansion on preorder, and you do get a beta key, but you'll have to download the beta versions from our forums here.
6. Direct2Drive will be offering the expansion on preorder in a manner very similar to GamersGate, but they are not doing so quite yet.

What's new since 2.001S:
(Cumulative release notes since 2.000 are attached at the bottom)

-------------------

-A number of updates have been made to the localization text files to reduce redundant entries and thus both file size and the number of words needing to be translated by around 4,500 in the base game alone.

-Three new expansion-only ships have been added: Astro Turret Trains I-III.  Tough but not nearly-indestructible robotic courier.  Has heavier turrets than normal astro trains, and so poses much more of a threat. More importantly, they reveal any cloaked ships that come near, and they tend to disrupt player minefields. Build Counter-Dark-Matter Turrets to protect against them, destroy Astro Train Stations to re-route them, or attack them head-on. If destroyed, an individual astro turret train is gone forever, but its destruction comes at an AI Progress cost.

-The metal and crystal costs of light starships, flagships, zenith starships, and spire starships have now been reversed.  This makes them cost much more metal than crystal, rather than the other way around.  This provides an excellent counterpoint to many of the other starships and provides a good use for metal if it is too abundant compared to crystal in a campaign.

-The attack range and power of dreadnoughts have been doubled.

-New Starship (expansion only): Warbird Starship.  Extremely fast starship with cloaking and a huge multi-targeting energy burst system. Great for clearing out hordes of enemy ships.

-New Starship (expansion only): Beam Starship. Fires very powerful high-range beam weapons that strike all enemy ships in a line.

-A new set of Experimental Starship Fabricators has been added for both the base game and the expansion.  These are new capturables that are scattered around the galaxy map, a count of which can be seen in the Mission Summary in each campaign.  Generally there are 1 per human starting planet.  Each of these experimental starship fabricators, once captured, lets a human player build a single type of Experimental Starship (which otherwise normally are not built at all, or the AI only builds, depending). These experimental starships are fairly expensive, but cost no knowledge to unlock and are quite powerful.
   Players can see what kind of experimental starship will be produced at a experimental starship fabricator before they capture it by hovering over it and looking at its hover text.
   In the base game, currently the only experimental starship is the Bomber Starship Mark I.  In the expansion, a new Beam Starship and Warbird Starship can also be found.  Not all of the fabricators are in every individual campaign, of course, given the seed numbers noted above.

-It is now possible to put a single ship in multiple control groups.

Changes from prior prereleases.
------------------------------

-Fixed the description text for core fabricators.

-The way that core fabricators are populated at the start has now been changed for the expansion, so that there are more core fabricators available and they are a good mix from the expansion and from the base game.  This will also scale better with future expansions.

863

AI War / Expansion beta keys now available through Impulse preorders.

« on: December 09, 2009, 02:57:38 PM »

http://www.impulsedriven.com/aiwarx1

Impulse joins our site and GamersGate in providing beta keys to customers who preorder the expansion for AI War.  The beta versions are directly downloaded through the Impulse client, or in the case of GamersGate and our site, downloaded through these forums.

864

AI War / Prerelease/Expans 2.001S (Raid Star nerf, Plant Sum+, Rally Posts, Scout Logic+)

« on: December 08, 2009, 04:54:57 PM »

Note:  This prerelease is intended for both customers of the expansion AND customers of the base game.  Please see below for details.

The latest prerelease is available at http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar2001S.zip

That version is an upgrade from version 2.000, so you have to already have 2.000 (or greater) installed. Just unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else). Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.

Expansion F.A.Q. Answers:
1. If you have the base game, and install this, you will go into trial mode of the expansion.  Feel free to explore the expansion that way, but if you want to go back to full mode without buying the expansion, simply go into Settings, Expansions, and turn off the expansion.
2. All upcoming prereleases for the next few months (until the expansion fully releases) will have a mix of both expansion and non-expansion content.  If you just want the latest non-expansion content, see #1.
3. If you want to preorder the expansion (and get your full license key), see this page.  It's $9.99 USD (or equivalent), and requires a valid copy of the base game to play.
4. If you want to know all about the expansion in general, see that same page.
5. PLEASE NOTE:  The new ships for the expansion are extremely preliminary at this stage.  They are fully functional when added, but they are not well balanced at all just yet.  The balance takes time, playtesting, and a fuller view of more of the ships.  So certain expansion ships are currently underpowered, while others are overpowered.  Your feedback on this is extremely valuable, as this is something we are adjusting at present based on community feedback as well as our own testing, but we don't expect to have things even close to perfectly tuned until sometime in December.  Our first priority is to get everything working and implemented, while honing the balance as much as possible, then to really heavily polish the balance once all the ships are in place.  Just FYI!
6. If you want to update an old savegame to the expansion, simply type "cmd:activate expansion 1" (without quotes).  This includes enabling the expansion ship classes, as well as enabling golems and other new capturables, although the population of those capturables is likely to be different from what it would have been if the expansion had been turned on from the start of the campaign given the same seed and other settings.  There is no way to disable the expansion for an existing game, however, so be sure not to save over your existing file if you want to go back to the non-expansion version of the game.

Steam/Impulse/GamersGate/Direct2Drive/etc F.A.Q. Answers:
1. This prerelease version is compatible with any other version of the game -- Steam, Impulse, whatever.
2. If you use this with your Steam copy of the game, however, you will be asked to enter your AI War CD key (which Steam provides, but normally you do not have to enter), and also the integration with Steamworks leaderboards and achievements may be disabled.  So you may want to make a separate install of the preorder version if you use Steam, at least for the moment.
3. If you have preordered through Impulse, you should now have access to your beta key (as of 12/9).  They also provide direct beta downloads through their Impulse Client.
4. Steam will carry the expansion later on, and will have (probably beta-less) preorders, but they don't yet have that online.
5. GamersGate is also currently offering the expansion on preorder, and you do get a beta key, but you'll have to download the beta versions from our forums here.
6. Direct2Drive will be offering the expansion on preorder in a manner very similar to GamersGate, but they are not doing so quite yet.

What's new since 2.001R:
(Cumulative release notes since 2.000 are attached at the bottom)

-------------------

-The planetary summary has once again been updated, to an even-more-readable colorized layout that makes finding ships easier than ever.

-The health of all the ships in the raid starship line have been reduced.  Additionally, their general-purpose attack power has been vastly reduced, but their specialist attack power against force fields, turrets, and heavy defense has been doubled.  Additionally, they no longer have a penalty against resources, constructors, or heavy defenses.  The net effect of this is a nerf for how humans are able to use Raid starships (though keeping them very useful in many specialist roles), while boosting what the AI is likely to be able to do with them by a small amount (as the AI was previously not all that effective with them).

-Perma-cloaked enemy ships now show up as "Perma-Cloaked" on the galaxy map intel summaries.  The only ship that is this way for AIs presently is Wormhole Guard Posts, which will be enabled even when cloaking is disabled in the lobby (perma-cloaked ships don't really function like other cloaked ships, and so don't count for purposes of that feature).

-When ships go through a wormhole into a planet, if they don't have other orders they tend to just sit at the wormhole and wait for more orders, fighting with whatever is there.  That is great for most ships, but disastrous for scouts.  Scouts in that situation will now flee to the outer border of the planetary area, where they are almost sure to be out of range of tachyon beams and thus can wait for further player orders in relative safety.

-A new ship has been added to the defensive tab: Rally Post. Allied ships that are sent to this planet will gather at this rally post. If there are multiple allied rally posts on a single planet, entering ships will pick one of them at random.

865

AI War / Prerelease/Expans 2.001R (Core Fabricators, Zenith Power Gens, Font+)

« on: December 06, 2009, 11:49:08 PM »

The latest prerelease is available at http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar2001R.zip

That version is an upgrade from version 2.000, so you have to already have 2.000 (or greater) installed. Just unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else). Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.

F.A.Q. Answers:
Note:  This prerelease is intended for both customers of the expansion AND customers of the base game only.  Please see below for details.
1. If you have the base game, and install this, you will go into trial mode of the expansion.  Feel free to explore the expansion that way, but if you want to go back to full mode without buying the expansion, simply go into Settings, Expansions, and turn off the expansion.
2. All upcoming prereleases for the next few months (until the expansion fully releases) will have a mix of both expansion and non-expansion content.  If you just want the latest non-expansion content, see #1.
3. If you want to preorder the expansion (and get your full license key), see this page.  It's $9.99 USD (or equivalent), and requires a valid copy of the base game to play.
4. If you want to know all about the expansion in general, see that same page.
5. This prerelease version is compatible with any other version of the game -- Steam, Impulse, whatever.
6. If you use this with your Steam copy of the game, however, you will be asked to enter your AI War CD key (which Steam provides, but normally you do not have to enter), and also the integration with Steamworks leaderboards and achievements may be disabled.  So you may want to make a separate install of the preorder version if you use Steam, at least for the moment.
7. PLEASE NOTE:  The new ships for the expansion are extremely preliminary at this stage.  They are fully functional when added, but they are not well balanced at all just yet.  The balance takes time, playtesting, and a fuller view of more of the ships.  So certain expansion ships are currently underpowered, while others are overpowered.  Your feedback on this is extremely valuable, as this is something we are adjusting at present based on community feedback as well as our own testing, but we don't expect to have things even close to perfectly tuned until sometime in December.  Our first priority is to get everything working and implemented, while honing the balance as much as possible, then to really heavily polish the balance once all the ships are in place.  Just FYI!
8. If you want to update an old savegame to the expansion, simply type "cmd:activate expansion 1" (without quotes).  This includes enabling the expansion ship classes, as well as enabling golems and other new capturables, although the population of those capturables is likely to be different from what it would have been if the expansion had been turned on from the start of the campaign given the same seed and other settings.  There is no way to disable the expansion for an existing game, however, so be sure not to save over your existing file if you want to go back to the non-expansion version of the game.


What's new since 2.001Q:
(Cumulative release notes since 2.000 are attached at the bottom)

-------------------

-All ships that have at least 1 million health are now immune to blades.  This prevents some exploits with the Zenith Viral Shredders, and makes for more sensible attack logic with Cutlasses.

-Turrets can no longer have their munitions boosted or their shields boosted, but they are now immune to minor electric shots and blades.

-Teleport Raiders, Anti-Starship Arachnids, and Teleport Battle Stations are now immune to tractor beams, since they can no longer shoot them.

-Deflector Drones now fire a new Energy Burst ammo type, instead of using minor electric ammo.

-A new set of Core Fabricators has been added for both the base game and the expansion.  These are new capturables that are scattered around the galaxy map, a count of which can be seen in the Mission Summary in each campaign.  Generally there are 2 per human starting planet, same as advanced factories.  Each of these core fabricators, once captured, lets a human player build a single type of Core ship (which otherwise normally only the AI can build).     
   The ship caps for core ships are quite low (and can be seen in the planetary summary by hitting F1 a few times), and the core ships are also very expensive, but they also cost no knowledge to unlock and are quite powerful.
   Players can see what kind of core ship will be produced at a core fabricator before they capture it by hovering over it and looking at its hover text.
   In the base game, all 9 of the core ships from the base ship classes can be found as core fabricators.  In the expansion, those 9 plus an additional 11 core ships from the expansion can be found.  Not all of the fabricators are in every individual campaign, of course, given the seed numbers noted above.

-A new expansion-only capturable, the Zenith Power Generator, has been added: Advanced Zenith power generator that produces a massive amount of energy at a very tiny cost. AI progress goes up by 20 if this is destroyed, and while your team holds it, the AIs will send 2x stronger waves against this planet.

-In the expansion only, the "energize" cheat now creates 10 Zenith Power Generators instead of 10 mark II energy reactors.

Changes from prior prereleases.
------------------------------

-The new font has once again seen a number of readability improvements, most notably with all of the numbers but also with a few of the other characters.

866

AI War / Prerelease/Expans 2.001Q (3 ship classes, .NET 2.0, font+, balance+, planet gfx)

« on: December 04, 2009, 03:30:00 PM »

Important! This version of the game now uses .NET 2.0 instead of .NET 3.5.  You probably already have this installed, but in the event not you will need to download that from the link just mentioned (either the x86 Redistributable if you are on a 32bit OS, or the x64 Redistributable if you are on a 64bit OS).  Please see here for more information about why this shift was made.

The latest prerelease is available at http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar2001Q.zip

That version is an upgrade from version 2.000, so you have to already have 2.000 (or greater) installed. Just unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else). Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.

F.A.Q. Answers:
Note:  This prerelease is intended for both customers of the expansion AND customers of the base game only.  Please see below for details.
1. If you have the base game, and install this, you will go into trial mode of the expansion.  Feel free to explore the expansion that way, but if you want to go back to full mode without buying the expansion, simply go into Settings, Expansions, and turn off the expansion.
2. All upcoming prereleases for the next few months (until the expansion fully releases) will have a mix of both expansion and non-expansion content.  If you just want the latest non-expansion content, see #1.
3. If you want to preorder the expansion (and get your full license key), see this page.  It's $9.99 USD (or equivalent), and requires a valid copy of the base game to play.
4. If you want to know all about the expansion in general, see that same page.
5. This prerelease version is compatible with any other version of the game -- Steam, Impulse, whatever.
6. If you use this with your Steam copy of the game, however, you will be asked to enter your AI War CD key (which Steam provides, but normally you do not have to enter), and also the integration with Steamworks leaderboards and achievements may be disabled.  So you may want to make a separate install of the preorder version if you use Steam, at least for the moment.
7. PLEASE NOTE:  The new ships for the expansion are extremely preliminary at this stage.  They are fully functional when added, but they are not well balanced at all just yet.  The balance takes time, playtesting, and a fuller view of more of the ships.  So certain expansion ships are currently underpowered, while others are overpowered.  Your feedback on this is extremely valuable, as this is something we are adjusting at present based on community feedback as well as our own testing, but we don't expect to have things even close to perfectly tuned until sometime in December.  Our first priority is to get everything working and implemented, while honing the balance as much as possible, then to really heavily polish the balance once all the ships are in place.  Just FYI!
8. If you want to update an old savegame to the expansion, simply type "cmd:activate expansion 1" (without quotes).  This includes enabling the expansion ship classes, as well as enabling golems and other new capturables, although the population of those capturables is likely to be different from what it would have been if the expansion had been turned on from the start of the campaign given the same seed and other settings.  There is no way to disable the expansion for an existing game, however, so be sure not to save over your existing file if you want to go back to the non-expansion version of the game.


What's new since 2.001N:
(Cumulative release notes since 2.000 are attached at the bottom)

-------------------

-All remaining usages of LINQ have been replaced with raw list sorts instead, which are faster.

-The Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 is now used instead of the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1.  This should ease installation woes for those who have trouble installing the bulkier .NET 3.5, and it should also provide better compatibility with Linux and Mac-based systems under WINE and/or Mono.  Players who previously had .NET 3.5 installed but not .NET 2.0 will be inconvenienced by having to install .NET 2.0, but in general this should be a positive change for the playerbase, especially over time.

-A new font is now used for the game text, giving it a more professional sci-fi look: Gputeks.

-The resource display has been adjusted a bit with how the unused metal/crystal harvester spots and the exhausted science labs show.  These should now be easier to see at a glance.

-The function of F1 has been altered somewhat to account for the large amount of new ships in the game:
F1:      Cycle through pages of planetary summary help icons.
Shift+F1:   Jump back to the non-help view of the planetary summary.

-Planets that are cloaked via a planetary cloaking device now have a special cloaked graphic for the planet itself.

-There are now two different destroyed planet graphics that are used for various destroyed planets.

-Three new general-use planet graphics have been added to the game.

-Previously, damage smoke could give away the position of large damaged ships on planets that a player did not have visibility to.  Fixed.

-In the past release, the starting color of players was not being shown correctly in the lobby.  Fixed.

-A wide variety of new player colors have been added.  Some of them are a bit too close together to be comfortably used in the same game as one another (depending on player monitor settings and vision in general), but having more options will allow players to get a setup more like they want, color-wise, in general.

-Previously, non-combat ships were drawing an attack range.  Fixed.

-The version number of the game is now shown on the splash screen as the game is loading; this should make it more obvious to players what version they are running when questions come up.

-In recent releases, when players connected to a host with a different version of the game, they would erroneously go into an empty lobby.  Now it properly kicks them back out to the "find lan games" window with a message about what version they need to run in order to connect.

-The expansion-related text has been moved into a more final format that will be easier to handle with localization partners.

-The effectiveness of melee ships is no longer decreased by their being under protecting force fields.

-New Ship Class (expansion only): Zenith Viral Shredder.  Melee ship that generates build points as it attacks, spawning a free copy of itself when enough are accumulated.

-New Ship Class (expansion only): Impulse Reaction Emitter.  Attacks with ammo that reacts with enemy energy sources, doing much higher damage to ships with higher energy usage.

-New Ship Class (expansion only): Acid Sprayer. Fires an acid shot at close range. Excellent at dissolving organic components found in all Zenith ships.

-Previously, the metal/crystal costs of core ships was irrelevant, because players could never build them.  Now the cost of core ships is normalized to 3x the cost of the mark iv version of its ship type.

-The StrongWeak.xml export now only includes the actual main ship types and bonus ship types once again, as it was always supposed to.

Changes from prior prereleases.
------------------------------

-IKP_VulcanDiamond and IKP_RockyDarkMoon have been updated by the author.

-Zenith Mirrors are now unable to reflect missile attacks.  This makes them still extremely formidable in general, but not so much so against every ship class.

-Cutlasses and Vampires now have a bit of a bonus against Zenith Mirrors, to make them prefer targeting them more.

Updates in version P:

- The description of the Impulse Reaction Emitter has been corrected; it was saying it does more damage to those ships with "higher shielding" in version O, which was incorrect.

-There is now a FontSizesInPixels.xml file in the Fonts folder.  This lets people manually adjust the font sizes (in pixels) used by the game.  This is particularly useful when players may wish to use an alternate font beyond the default.

Updates in version Q:

-A more descriptive error message is now thrown when a font size could not be properly parsed by the game engine.

-Command station cores are now selectable via the B hotkey.

-Beam weapons now interact properly with force fields.  A beam that cuts across many ships in under a forcefield will hurt the forcefield more, but will no longer erroneously hurt the ships under the forcefield.

-The attack power of beam frigates has been halved.

-Beam Frigates now have a mild attack penalty against starships, a middling attack penalty against command stations, and a heavy penalty against heavy defenses and force fields.

-The attack power of beam frigates is now adjusted properly for each ship that it hits with its beam.

-The ship cap of beam frigates has been reduced a bit more, given their power.

-Ship bonuses/penalties against command stations also now apply to command station cores.

-The sizes of the fonts used have been improved some from version O and P.

-In versions O and P, the cloaked planet graphic could be used to tell if a planet had a planetary cloaker on it without scouting.  Fixed.

-In version P, non-American number format settings on the OS could cause the game to crash.  This should now be fixed.

867

AI War / Indie XMas, And The Start Of A New Adventure

« on: December 01, 2009, 10:48:11 AM »

(Cross-posted from my blog)

First off, let me plug the Indie Games Xmas 2009 Calendar. This was something originally proposed over on the excellent GameProducer blog, which we at Arcen quickly knew we wanted to be a part of. The idea is that this is an Advent Calendar wherein every day a new indie game, trailer, or similar is released. As it turns out, the first day (today) is revealing AI War. Be sure to check back every day of the month for more updates on lots of great indie games, however; the idea is to promote some great gems you might not otherwise have heard of during a season where the AAA games typically steal the spotlight.

In other news, coincidentally this is also my first day working fulltime for Arcen Games. Up until now I've also been holding down a day job as the CTO of a SaaS software company, but since our 2.0 release and release on Steam, Arcen is now doing well enough to support myself and our composer fulltime in addition to our artist, who has been fulltime since August.

My posts tend to be lengthy, but for this momentous (to me) post, I'm going to keep it quite brief. I've been at my past company for over 8 years, and I'll really miss the people and the clients there -- it's been a great time there, and I'm a bit bummed to no longer be part of that great team. Of course, it was my own choice to leave, and at the same time as I am a bit sad about leaving my last post, I couldn't be happier or more excited about moving into fulltime game development. There's lots of exciting stuff brewing for Arcen in 2010, so I'll be sure to post about that as they come up!

And, you know, I'll post some more on game development topics before too long, too! It's just been a very busy month.

868

AI War / Prerelease/Expans 2.001N (Bugfixes, Performance+, Simulation Export+)

« on: November 27, 2009, 08:39:33 PM »

The latest prerelease is available at http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar2001N.zip

That version is an upgrade from version 2.000, so you have to already have 2.000 (or greater) installed. Just unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else). Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.

F.A.Q. Answers:
Note:  This prerelease is intended for both customers of the expansion AND customers of the base game only.  Please see below for details.
1. If you have the base game, and install this, you will go into trial mode of the expansion.  Feel free to explore the expansion that way, but if you want to go back to full mode without buying the expansion, simply go into Settings, Expansions, and turn off the expansion.
2. All upcoming prereleases for the next few months (until the expansion fully releases) will have a mix of both expansion and non-expansion content.  If you just want the latest non-expansion content, see #1.
3. If you want to preorder the expansion (and get your full license key), see this page.  It's $9.99 USD (or equivalent), and requires a valid copy of the base game to play.
4. If you want to know all about the expansion in general, see that same page.
5. This prerelease version is compatible with any other version of the game -- Steam, Impulse, whatever.
6. If you use this with your Steam copy of the game, however, you will be asked to enter your AI War CD key (which Steam provides, but normally you do not have to enter), and also the integration with Steamworks leaderboards and achievements may be disabled.  So you may want to make a separate install of the preorder version if you use Steam, at least for the moment.
7. PLEASE NOTE:  The new ships for the expansion are extremely preliminary at this stage.  They are fully functional when added, but they are not well balanced at all just yet.  The balance takes time, playtesting, and a fuller view of more of the ships.  So certain expansion ships are currently underpowered, while others are overpowered.  Your feedback on this is extremely valuable, as this is something we are adjusting at present based on community feedback as well as our own testing, but we don't expect to have things even close to perfectly tuned until sometime in December.  Our first priority is to get everything working and implemented, while honing the balance as much as possible, then to really heavily polish the balance once all the ships are in place.  Just FYI!
8. If you want to update an old savegame to the expansion, simply type "cmd:activate expansion 1" (without quotes).  This includes enabling the expansion ship classes, as well as enabling golems and other new capturables, although the population of those capturables is likely to be different from what it would have been if the expansion had been turned on from the start of the campaign given the same seed and other settings.  There is no way to disable the expansion for an existing game, however, so be sure not to save over your existing file if you want to go back to the non-expansion version of the game.


What's new since 2.001L:
(Cumulative release notes since 2.000 are attached at the bottom)

-------------------

-It is now possible to run the AI War simulation from the command line by using the "runsim" command line argument.  When running it this way, it splits up the work into multiple processes for multi-core machines, and it runs faster than the in-game simulation in general.

-Previously, there was an error with the time taken for conflicts to resolve in the simulation data (it was showing about half the time it really took). Fixed.

-Previously, the threshold for player ships to trigger an Alert on AI planets was 50 units.  Starships and Golems were not weighted any more highly in the past, but now Starships will count for 25, and the Golems and other "major weapons" (the heavy defense category in general) will trigger the alert all by themselves.

-The internal logic for AI reinforcements has seen a number of internal shifts to make them more intelligent in caes of over-full planets in particular.

-A new performance improvement has been introduced for when players are attacking enemy planets with lots of guarding ships.

Changes from prior prereleases.
------------------------------

-In the last prerelease, there was some glitchiness with ship targeting when switching a ship from free-roaming defender to attack-move and back.  Fixed.

-Fixed a variety of bugs with the target acquistion logic, and improved the time-to-find for attack and repair targets.  Yet more performance improvements relating to this, too.

-There may have previously been an issue with incoming fire going through force fields.  Fixed.

-Previously, Beam Frigates were unable to hit must-be-directly-targeted ships.

-In the last prerelease, player ships were unable to hit must-be-directly-targeted ships if there were no autotargetable ships on the same planet.  Fixed.

-In recent prereleases, Backdoor Hackers were not properly getting exo-galaxy wormholes on player planets.  Fixed.

Update: Fixed a few things in a new version N.

-Since the addition of the unified command queue, queing of wormhole commands has sometimes created some invalid travel paths.  Fixed.

-In version M, there was a bug that could cause AI reinforcements to go uncapped at a planet. Fixed.

869

AI War / Prerelease/Expans 2.001L (4 new ship class, major attack rewrite, performance+)

« on: November 20, 2009, 05:02:42 PM »

The latest prerelease is available at http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar2001L.zip

That version is an upgrade from version 2.000, so you have to already have 2.000 (or greater) installed. Just unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else). Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.

F.A.Q. Answers:
Note:  This prerelease is intended for both customers of the expansion AND customers of the base game only.  Please see below for details.
1. If you have the base game, and install this, you will go into trial mode of the expansion.  Feel free to explore the expansion that way, but if you want to go back to full mode without buying the expansion, simply go into Settings, Expansions, and turn off the expansion.
2. All upcoming prereleases for the next few months (until the expansion fully releases) will have a mix of both expansion and non-expansion content.  If you just want the latest non-expansion content, see #1.
3. If you want to preorder the expansion (and get your full license key), see this page.  It's $9.99 USD (or equivalent), and requires a valid copy of the base game to play.
4. If you want to know all about the expansion in general, see that same page.
5. This prerelease version is compatible with any other version of the game -- Steam, Impulse, whatever.
6. If you use this with your Steam copy of the game, however, you will be asked to enter your AI War CD key (which Steam provides, but normally you do not have to enter), and also the integration with Steamworks leaderboards and achievements may be disabled.  So you may want to make a separate install of the preorder version if you use Steam, at least for the moment.
7. PLEASE NOTE:  The new ships for the expansion are extremely preliminary at this stage.  They are fully functional when added, but they are not well balanced at all just yet.  The balance takes time, playtesting, and a fuller view of more of the ships.  So certain expansion ships are currently underpowered, while others are overpowered.  Your feedback on this is extremely valuable, as this is something we are adjusting at present based on community feedback as well as our own testing, but we don't expect to have things even close to perfectly tuned until sometime in December.  Our first priority is to get everything working and implemented, while honing the balance as much as possible, then to really heavily polish the balance once all the ships are in place.  Just FYI!
8. If you want to update an old savegame to the expansion, simply type "cmd:activate expansion 1" (without quotes).  This includes enabling the expansion ship classes, as well as enabling golems and other new capturables, although the population of those capturables is likely to be different from what it would have been if the expansion had been turned on from the start of the campaign given the same seed and other settings.  There is no way to disable the expansion for an existing game, however, so be sure not to save over your existing file if you want to go back to the non-expansion version of the game.


What's new since 2.001I:
(Cumulative release notes since 2.000 are attached at the bottom)

-------------------

-On the technology unlock, "Zenith Starships" were still referred to as "Zinth." Fixed.

-The shield rating and health of advanced research stations have both been reduced to 1/4 their prior values.  This makes them far less invincible as targets to hit, and lets enemy ships target them more sensibly (it makes them a more interesting target for the AI to attack, and for the players to have to defend).

-Higher-level autocannons now get more of a clustering damage multiplier than the lower marks.

-The map population logic for capturables and AI special weapons has been revamped.  This both fixes some bugs that tended to make maps more generic than they should have been, and paves the way for a large influx of new special weapon types, which will individuall be more common in this expansion and the future.  The algorithm now supports randomizing the order in which they are added, and insuring that too many bad things or good things are not bunched on the same planet -- issues that were never a problem before, but would have become a problem over time with the old algorithm.

-Munitions boosting lines are now drawn much more faintly.

-New Ship Class (expansion only): Shield Booster.  Strong fighter in its own right, it also gives a 2x shielding bonus to nearby ships on your team.

-New Ship Class (expansion only): Zenith Polarizer.  Fires straight through shields, and does higher damage to shields with more shielding.

-Enemy ships that are cloaked were previously invisible on the planetary summary sidebar.  Now they show up as a generic cloaking bubble, with a count of how many are present, though with no details on what types of cloaked ships there are.  This is similar to what players are able to see through the galaxy map intel summary.

-The internal logic for ship targeting and a number of other subsystems relating to combat and ship automatic interactions have been heavily revamped, leading to both better performance and better functionality/maintainability/extensibility.

-The free-roaming defender logic is now much improved for all ships, as is autotargeting in general.  The targeting intelligence of multi-shot ships is also particularly improved.

-Tractor Beams now have their own separate targeting cycle from weapon attacks and other similar, making them much more effective at quickly catching incoming ships.

-New Ship Class (expansion only): Beam Frigate.  Fires powerful high-range beam weapons that strike all enemy ships in a line.

-Attrition emitters now have to be explicitly targeted by player ships, like ion cannons, warp gates, etc.

-The blue force fields used by players are no longer damaged by shots being fired out from under them.  Instead, outgoing shots from under the force field are now reduced by 75% in power.

-New Ship Class (expansion only): Zenith Chameleon.  Midrange bomber that takes on the appearance of junk, and is unassailable, when not moving.

-New expansion-only AI type: Camouflager.  All of its mobile ships look like harmless pieces of junk when stationary and not firing.

-The Counter-Shooter ranges now get drawn below everything else, including resources and wormholes, to aid visibility.

-Previously, the counter-shooting ranges of ships was being shown for enemy ships -- even cloaked enemies.  Fixed.

-Previously, moving force fields could push even enemies that are immune to force fields.  Fixed.

-Previously, the Expenses By Player tab of the stats window was omitting any outflows for ships that were try to spending resources, but temporarily unable to actually spend them because of a resource shortage.  Fixed.

Changes from prior prereleases.
------------------------------

-Previously, some of the expansion ship classes were erroneously showing up in lobby even when the expansion was disabled or not installed.  Fixed.

-Previously, it was possible to gift command station cores between players, causing a rather serious exploit.  Fixed.

-Previously, in the new unified command queue, ships were losing their queued targets when they killed an earlier target.

-The "Always display wormhole names in front of ships" setting no longer affects the wormhole far zoom icon.

Edit:  Updated to version K, with the following changes:

-Fixed some performance glitches in version J.

-In past prereleases, ship assist/repair targets were not being queued properly in the new unified command queue.


Edit:  Updated to version L, with the following changes:

-Fixed a crash bug that could occur when Beam Frigates were fighting melee ships at incredibly close range.

870

AI War / Prerelease/Expans 2.001I (Bugfixes, save RAM performance, mirror balance)

« on: November 17, 2009, 05:26:11 PM »

The latest prerelease is available at http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar2001I.zip

That version is an upgrade from version 2.000, so you have to already have 2.000 (or greater) installed. Just unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else). Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.

F.A.Q. Answers:
1. If you have the base game, and install this, you will go into trial mode of the expansion.  Feel free to explore the expansion that way, but if you want to go back to full mode without buying the expansion, simply go into Settings, Expansions, and turn off the expansion.
2. All upcoming prereleases for the next few months (until the expansion fully releases) will have a mix of both expansion and non-expansion content.  If you just want the latest non-expansion content, see #1.
3. If you want to preorder the expansion (and get your full license key), see this page.  It's $9.99 USD (or equivalent), and requires a valid copy of the base game to play.
4. If you want to know all about the expansion in general, see that same page.
5. This prerelease version is compatible with any other version of the game -- Steam, Impulse, whatever.
6. If you use this with your Steam copy of the game, however, you will be asked to enter your AI War CD key (which Steam provides, but normally you do not have to enter), and also the integration with Steamworks leaderboards and achievements may be disabled.  So you may want to make a separate install of the preorder version if you use Steam, at least for the moment.
7. PLEASE NOTE:  The new ships for the expansion are extremely preliminary at this stage.  They are fully functional when added, but they are not well balanced at all just yet.  The balance takes time, playtesting, and a fuller view of more of the ships.  So certain expansion ships are currently underpowered, while others are overpowered.  Your feedback on this is extremely valuable, as this is something we are adjusting at present based on community feedback as well as our own testing, but we don't expect to have things even close to perfectly tuned until sometime in December.  Our first priority is to get everything working and implemented, while honing the balance as much as possible, then to really heavily polish the balance once all the ships are in place.  Just FYI!
8. If you want to update an old savegame to the expansion, simply type "cmd:activate expansion 1" (without quotes).  This includes enabling the expansion ship classes, as well as enabling golems and other new capturables, although the population of those capturables is likely to be different from what it would have been if the expansion had been turned on from the start of the campaign given the same seed and other settings.  There is no way to disable the expansion for an existing game, however, so be sure not to save over your existing file if you want to go back to the non-expansion version of the game.


What's new since 2.001H:
(Cumulative release notes since 2.000 are attached at the bottom)

-------------------

-Ships now prefer to autotarget enemy ships that do not reflect attacks (that are not mirrors).

-Ships now do a bit better autotargeting in general if they are chosing secondary targets.

-Several optimizations have been made to RAM usage when saving huge games.


Changes from prior prereleases.
------------------------------

-The Zenith Mirror ships now have a much stronger main attack, which is still not hugely powerful on its own, but which makes them certainly a mistake to completely ignore in battle (unlike previously, where they could only hurt enemy ships that actually chose to fire at them).

-Previously, there was a crash bug that could occur when a game was being upgraded to include the expansion.  Fixed.

-In the prior release, there was an error with the autotargeting that could cause paralyzers to not properly prioritize keeping as many ships paralyzed as possible.  Fixed.