Check out what came in this new update 5.008 of the game AI War 2
(Released May 7th, 2022)
Dev Note:
v5.008 includes the fix to the lobby bug in the prior build, and thus also all the other improvements are back from the prior build. Big thanks to Tom Prince for finding that one-character bug of mine.
But also in this build are just piles and piles of new goodies. In no particular order:
Lots of DLC3 updates, many of them Necromancer-related, ranging from balancing tuning from Zeus to quality of life and bugfixes from Tom Prince.
The Skirmisher AI has been heavily nerfed after player feedback, thanks to CRCGamer.
SirLimbo has more updates on the new prototype version of the tooltips (there's a personal settings option to preview it if you want), and Tom Prince also had some new additions there.
Brutal Guardians in DLC3 now have a lot better options for configuring them, thanks for SirLimbo (their original creator).
And then holy cow, there's a whole "Xenophile" update, mostly to the base game, thanks to Arnaud B, a longtime contributor. This has a few bugfixes, but mainly a giant list of balance updates to everything from the Zenith Dyson Sphere (to bring it up to interestingness levels along the lines of the Spire Spheres), the Dyson Ships, the Dark Spire, and Risk Analyzers. He ran these changes by me first, and it's the sort of thing that looks to really enhance the existing factions versus making them fundamentally different, so that was an easy thumbs up from me.
Then we have a new mod called Outguard Party, from first-time modder, long-time tester, Dismiss. This basically makes the Outguard almost-free to acquire, so that it's a lot more fun/interesting to experiment with them. I'd always avoided doing something like this for fear of balance implications, but as a mod this is a really great way to allow more experimentation in that area... and it may not have as notable of balance effects as I had always worried.
AI War 2 Update 5.008 Patch Notes
- Dire GP on homeworld 6 -> 5
- Dire GP on bastion worlds 6 -> 5
- Number of bastion worlds 3 -> 2
- Thanks to CRCGamer for the balance!
- Add initial prototype of displaying drone gun information in tool tips.
- Currently, this shouldn't be visible, since they all currently have system_is_hidden_for_ui="true" set, but is available for testing.
- Thanks to Tom Prince for the fix.
Necromancer
- N. Flagships can no longer be scrapped!
- Bone Dragon buffs
- Now has Regeneration. Full health (from 1) in 3 minutes
- hexes from 5 to 4
- Cap per home from 1 to 2
- Min Mark for Necropolis from 5 to 4
- These were basically too costly to ever justify and required too much investment before they ever paid off. They were too dependent on Igors to heal outside of player territory too. Hopefully, these are much more enticing picks now
- Necropoloeis Summoning Module changes:
- All varieties of summons now use a variant without a tech, so they markup with the Necropoloeis
- Summon caged skeleton warriors (5 every 6 seconds) is now summon base skeletons (15 every 9 seconds)
- Skull Pile should be better about launching full salvo of drones per interval
- Skull Pile Caged skeletons now all use the Tower Defense tech
- Don't seed initial metal harvesters as owned by a necromance empire.
- Thanks to Tom Prince for the fix.
- Mark Igor's as engineers.
- This makes them selectable by the key press (unbound by default) to select them.
- This also cause the mark scale style to be changed, which is a stat buff to them.
- Thanks to Tom Prince for the fix.
- Prevent Haunted/Desecrated Keeps and Necromancer Guardposts from building drones while they are constructing.
- This also prevents any other self-build structures from doing so, though I'm not sure there are any currently.
- Thanks to Tom Prince for the fix.
- Adjust necromancer upgrade for Bone Dragon to match minimum necropolis mark required to build it.
- Thanks to Tom Prince for the fix.
Brutal Guardians
- Brutal Guardians:
- The amount of Brutal Guardian Lairs in the galaxy now has a slider instead of single on/off switch, spawning anywhere from 0 to 6 in the galaxy (no longer 3 per AI), but always 3 if an AI of difficulty 8+ is present or starting with Expert mode.
- Brutal Guardian Lairs now orbit the planet at 0.5°/s, and will spawn at the very outskirts of the planet.
- Brutal Warp Gate Guardians now have a 300 second cooldown between waves instead of 1800 seconds. It was never intended to be this long of a duration.
- For Royal AIs their Brutal Guardian Lairs are exchanged for Royal Brutal Guardian Lairs, which pump out the even-more-dreadful Royal Brutal Guardians. In addition to being twice as tough to destroy the Lair grants 750 instead of 500 science, and 25 instead of 15 hacking points - but also cost 20 instead of 15 AIP to destroy.
- Royal Brutal Guardians have 2x the health and damage of their normal variants for combat models, and 1.5x the health and damage for "special mechanic" models.
Bugfixes
- Fix to lobby being broken in the prior build (causing us to roll back).
- Big thanks to Tom Prince for finding the one missing character that led to this.
- Fixed a bug where the AI Overlords would not display their AIP on death when the planetary AIP had already been "used up" (possibly by Dire Guard Posts).
- Thanks to André Luiz Galvão Rodrigues for reporting with a helpful test save.
- Fixed a bug in the experimental tooltip where capturable fleets would not show the mark level of their ships correctly.
- Prevent repairs to entities that haven't been claimed.
- This allowed engineers to repair things like unclaimed flagships/golems on hostile planets.
- This also caused engineers to double-dip, by claimg and repairing at the same time, on
- friendly planets, and potentially with different metal cost for each.
- Thanks to Tom Prince for the fix.
- When firing a salvo with multiple shots from a drone gun, create a stack of the appropriate size.
- Thanks to Tom Prince for the fix.
- Don't include `MULTI-SHOT` line in drone gun hover text.
- Thanks to Tom Prince for the fix.
- Prevent empty ship lines from triggering Venators.
- This affects Necromancer, as their fleets have every possible ship line, with 0 ship cap.
- Thanks to Tom Prince for the fix.
Xenophile update - Worth the CPU load, by ArnaudB
Changes to Zenith Dyson Sphere
- A huge set of changes to the Zenith Dyson Sphere. It's still medium impact, but can be messed with to dramatically change the game.
- Reduced ships hack duration from 60 to 20 seconds. Reduced hacking response boost for hacking the same sphere from ships from 2.0 to 1.2. Lowered cost increase on hostile worlds from 1.7 to 1.5.
- Increased ship hack cost from 12 to 20 as, due to sphere antagonize swap, the cost doesn't rise with multiple ship hacks. It does correctly prevent you from ship hacking more than three times.
- Reduced Strength/MaxStrength/Range from 180 seconds to 20 seconds. Costs increased from 15 to 20.
- The Sphere will be angry for a while after hacks, thus long hack time is unnecessary. Reduced response to encourage using ships of a faction that cost CPU load.
- Changed Budget hack increase to +2x multiplier per hack, from 0.2x to 2.0x at intensity 1-10. (This means +200% ships production per second per budget hack.)
- Changed Max Strength hack increase to +2x multiplier per hack, from 0.2 to 2.0x at intensity 1-10. (This means +200% max ships capacity per max strength hack)
- Increased Range hack still increase range by 1.
- Tests showed +2x multiplier was a good value to get some impact. Note that the AI will send forces against minor forces, including the Spheres. The AI is perfectly capable of locking down the Dyson if you don't assist it, even with multiple hacks.
- budget multiplier when Sphere below 10% capacity increased to 3x, from 1.25x to 3.0x at intensity 1-10. Added warning in Budget hack.
- It's more capable of fighting off invaders, including the player.
- Changed budget and max strength at all difficulty. Old intensity 5 is now intensity 3.
- Reduced by half the Budget/MaxStrength increase per hour, doubled Budget/MaxStrength increase per 100 AIP.
- This should make the Sphere much more reactive to how the player actually play, especially during shorter games.
- Antagonizer now starts appearing at intensity 5 from 7. Cooldown between antagonizers increased from 2 hours to 2h40. Increased base timer before antagonizer trigger its effect from 60 seconds to 120 seconds, plus 30 seconds per hop from Sphere. Antagonizer is now visually twice as big.
- This is the method for the AI to punish players who recklessly invest in the Sphere. Given the Sphere is now much more capable and can be pushed further, timer and interval have been increased to give more breathing room to players.
- Changes to Dyson Ships
- Dyson Defender now has x2 damage against target with 50% hull or more. Cost for AI lowered to make the Dyson spawn them as primary.
- Dyson Sentinel now has x3 damage against 2tx and above (including turrets!!!) and more range. It's slightly more expensive for the AI.
- Dyson Bulwark now has a weapon jamming AOE instead of its AOE grenade. Its Pulse Laser is now a slow-firing, high damage weapon with 60% pierce and 2x damage against target with 90% hull or more. It's significantly more expensive for the AI to build.
- All those changes should make Dyson Ships far more capable in both foes and allies hands. Each ship offers a distinct benefit for hacking, and synergize together. The Bulwark's finisher will make nesting turrets next to the Dyson Sphere a far costlier proposition.
- All Dyson Ships start at Mark 2. 50% more performance friendly. This technically makes Spheres not stronger, since Sphere fleet is capped by Strength.
Changes to Dark Spire
- More peformance sanity, scaling intensity and interesting hacks.
- Conversion ratio cap at low/mid/high intensity reduced from 100/120/500 to 80/140/200. This should make intensity scales sanely, and it'll save a lot of performance at high intensity.
- Reduced ships hack duration from 120 to 60 seconds. Reduced hacking response boost for hacking the same generator from ships from 2.8 to 1.4. Lowered cost increase on hostile worlds from 1.7 to 1.5.
- Description now mentions the permanent energy income gain, to help players link Dark Spire disaster with their own actions.
- Reduced Provoke Vengeance Strike hack duration to 10 seconds from 300, reduced cost from 20 to 5.
- It was a useless hack that was never used, given the time and cost for a "dubious" effect. Now you can use this to make messes. Satisfaction not guaranteed.
- Render VG vulnerable hack duration increased to 360 seconds from 250. Just so triple ship hacks plus vulnerable VG isn't too easy to pull off.
Change to Dark Spire ships
- reduced AI cost for Wraith to 200 from 300, for Phantom to 250 from 300, Specter from 900 to 1600, Eidolon from 1200 to 5400.
- This should make the Dark Spire fleets more diverse. It should cut down on Eidolon spam : it was the cost-effective ship of the Dark Spire by over ten times, on top of having the highest mark. This is still the best deal for the Dark Spire, but it's no longer breaking all scales.
- Starting Mark of Wraith and Phantom increased to 3 from 1. Starting Mark of Specter increased to 4 from 3.
- Another tool to make DS smaller ships relevant at all stage of the game. It effectively double the health and damage of Phantom and Wraith (except for player's hacked ones).
- Increased speed of Wraith from 400 to 600, Specter and Eidolon from 400 to 500. Phantom remains at 400 speed.
- This should make the Dark Spire disperse a little, and keep their Phantoms a bit behind instead of making them prime target for everything.
- Wraith increased hull/shield from 7000/14000 to 9000/18000.
- A small buff to help it shine with its 0.7 albedo when all others Dark Spire ships have 0.4 (ie, agravic is really bad for Wraith).
- Phantom now has 1.5x damage against 5tx or more, like bombard. Armor lowered from 50 to 30. Hull/Shield increased to 4000/8000 from 3500/7000.
- Better targeting should help casual players, who are now more likely to get their flagship killed before the Dark Spire can snowball from replenishing casualties. Veteran should find their beachheading battlestations and Spire Fleets more smartly focused if they don't take counter-measures.
Risk Analyzers
- RiskAnalysers AI response/exo no longer scales with intensity, instead of scaling from 0.2x to 3.0x. Such scaling already naturally happens from the number of Risk Analysers (1 per intensity) and from a bonus exo income at high intensity.
Others
- Fixed Molotov and Barnacle not using the tag "WeaponJamAsPrimary" for target evaluation. (This should make them MUCH better)
- Eclectic starting Battlestation now has 25 concussion turrets instead of 5, as it wrongly had.
- Pirate starting battlestation traded the Ruffian turret for the Makeshift turret it once had.
- It's much less broken than it once was, and the mix of Blitzkrieg, Makeshift and Scrap is very fun to use. (Expect ban on expert)
New Mod: Outguard Party, by Dismiss
- New mod by Dismiss: Outguard Party
- The purpose of this mod is to remove the steep penalties to outguard and encourage experimentation with their use.
- Outguard are fun to use, but not what wins you the game.
