AI War 2 Update 5.500 Patch Notes: Classic Fusion, And A Megaton Otherwise - plusui2.6.2

 (Released July 8th, 2022)

• ExternalWorldBaseInfo objects can now also use the DoOnSpecialEvent_OnMainThread_ClientOrHost methods similar to factions, in order to i.e. directly react to settings or the lobby being changed.

Mod Releases

• Added UI support for enabling and disabling total conversion mods, now that we have one that is releasing (Classic Fusion).
  • Enabling a total conversion mod through the UI closes the game and requires you to reopen it manually, which is unavoidable, but the rest of it is very smooth.
  • Total conversions now show all the same info that regular mods do, including the author and an abbreviation and color and detailed description, etc. They are also shown first in the list of other mods, since they are so huge and also so rare, and they have the prefix T-C rather than Mod.

• When you try to enable a mod that relies on an expansion that is not enabled at the moment, or not installed at all, it now gives you a warning about that and does not allow you to enable said mod.
  • Thanks to Dismiss for reporting that this was not working as expected.

Classic Fusion

• Classic Fusion, a Total Conversion mod by Puffin, is now released, roughly 2 years after it had started on/off development.
  • This conversion attempts to recreate as much as reasonably possible of AI War: Fleet Command, also known as 'Classic', in the second game, and 'fuse' it with the AIW2 specific factions, mechanics, etc. I have attempted to make it as accurate as I can, working within limitations.
  • This means you have all the Classic units, variants of those with AIW2 abilities, AIW2 specific units and factions redesigned to fit into this system, so on. Even some new things, not in either game. It's...big, almost nothing is untouched. It could possibly be seen as an entirely different/new game.
  • These people have assisted in some form (specific details are in-game): DEMOCRACY, StarKelp, Badger, SirLimbo, Chris, Tom, ptarth.
  • A note: Multiplayer is an unknown, due to being unable to test it. Attempts were made to make things work for it, but in practice it is unknown how well it works overall. Please do let me know if you try.

Dyson Sidekick

• This is a new player-controllable faction. Play as a coalition of Zenith, Neinzul, Templar and Spire trying to build a Dyson Sphere, while fighting the AI and the Reapers, the forces of an evil Necromancer..
  • To get raw materials to build the sphere, you must ravage planets. The Reapers can spawn forces at ravaged planets, so be careful where you mine!
  • Playable in Empire and Sidekick form
  • This faction also allows you to destroy planets outright, allowing you to actually kill a Zenith Architrave
  • This faction comes with a "Automatically help defend my planets" setting, to facilitate using the Sidekick in solo-play
  • NOTA BENE: very little effort has gone into balancing this faction.

The Reclaimers

• The Reclaimers by Dismiss are a human faction dedicated to human recovery and advancement in the galaxy, though not through direct combat.
  • Their deep space outposts provide scouting, and research alien technology. They also provide a few metabolic station-keepers to help recover metal after fleet battles.
  • You may also find new station-keepers and turrets from hacks throughout the galaxy.

Mod Updates

• Outguard Party by Dismiss has been updated to v3!
  • Check out 'Galaxy Settings Category: Outguard' and adjust what you want!
  • New Outguard: Hacking Drone Operator, Tactical Shield Generator, Planetary Missile Command Orbital, Planetary Defense Orbital, Mobile Super-Fac.

• DpsHud by Dismiss has been updated to v2!
  • Better coloration for distinguishing damage tier.
  • More precision for single digit Millions (eg. 3.5m).

Re-Released AMU Code Parts

• • Right now AMU is only at about 20% of the code it had before, but a lot of AMU has been integrated into the main game, so the actual progress is probably between 30-40%.
  • The codebase has almost entirely been rewritten to be clearer, better, and actually documented with comments and teaching moments.
  • To all modders: Inspect the code inside AMU (which is included with the mod) to your heart's content. It is designed to make modding easier for others.
  • AMU now has a common "black code magic"-based framework for settings. The main goal is to make settings being read more efficient, easier to be set up and to make it nigh impossible for a misspell to waste time finding it.
    • The new abstract class CachedSettingRoot (which also holds the static functions for this framework) can execute GetAllStaticCachedSettingsOfClass(), which causes it to go through all the fields in the class (and potentially object) given, looking for anything that at its base is a CachedSettingRoot, then tries to find the proper reference of the 3 major base types:
      • The class CachedPersonalSetting includes all settings that a player has in their personal profile.
      • The class CachedGalaxySetting includes all settings in the game lobby, excluding faction settings.
      • The class CachedFactionSetting includes all custom(!) settings a faction can have, and to be set up requires an instance of the class given to GetAllStaticCachedSettingsOfClass(), and a faction being passed inside GetAllStaticCachedSettingsOfClass().
    • Then UpdateAllStaticCachedSettingsOfClass() and UpdateAllStaticCachedSettingsOfClass_FilteredByEventType() can be used to update all settings by the same logic. Both of these factions are fairly costly, so they are only recommended to be used once to update all settings when the current map is loaded/generated, and then filtered by events when a special event (player saves new personal/galaxy/faction settings) is fired.
    • Note that for this to work the name of the setting in XML and the field name in the code need to be the same. For examples, see the new AJEA_Base class.
    • The improvement here is that instead of always having to look into the hash dictionaries and/or do string comparisons for getting the values of settings AMU can simply cache and easily access the value of settings no matter how often they are being used.
    • Additionally, since the XML and field name need to be the same, one being off will automatically thrown an exception instead of potentially being an invisible bug that is hard to find.
  • AJEA (Auto-Juggle Energy Assistant) is back!
    • With more settings than ever before (and its own setting categories) it is now once again possible to have a "smart grid" for building Matter Converters if needed. AJEA is a can of Brownout-Be-Gone.
    • For it to have access to also converting unused energy into metal, the Micro Mod Collection offers that functionality. It is, however, rather unbalanced in the favor of the player and not required for AJEA to work.
    • Note that AJEA has not yet been tested on clients, feedback is required!
  • Capturable Repositioning also has made a comeback.
    • With settings related to defining how close/far from the gravity well, and how far from wormholes immobile capturables and if desired also asteroid mines are being placed CR is now vastly improved.
    • Repositioning happens the very moment the game is unpaused for the first time, so looking at a planet with capturables will immediately show the effect.

Bugfixes

• Fix a bug where AI Relentless Waves were getting stuck on planets that were owned by the wild hives.

• Fixed a bug where if an AI was defeated, but more than one AI remained undefeated the player would get the wrong journal for killing this AI.
  • Thanks to Dismiss for reporting.

• Fix several bugs with hunter fireteams that were against the Fallen Spire
  • They no longer show "Not After You" (they are, in fact, after you), and also they don't take unexpected vacations
  • Thanks to benjbrun for reporting

• Fireteams targeted against crippled units now correclty identify them as "killed", and can get new targets
• The planet sidebar no longer counts the strength of crippled units toward the "Strength" it shows

• • The ForMark field in FleetMembership is immediately set upon deserialization. This prevents potential tooltip exceptions when immediately looking at units after loading or starting a new game.

• • The "Defeat Or Suppress All Hostile AIs" victory condition setting is now named "Defeat Or Suppress All Hostile Minor Factions". The former was simply a visual copy & paste error.

• Fix a bug where the Spire couldn't bolster cruiser/dreadnaught flagships in Expert mode
  • Thanks to JDingDong8_1 for reporting

• Fix a dyson antagonizer bug
  • Thanks to GreatYng for reporting

• Galactic Control Ships unleashed at the end of a Showdown Device event didn't always explode properly and additionally would be replaced by regular phase two overlords on reloading a save. They now go up with a nice big kaboom like they should and additionally don't get the doppelganger treatment on loading a save game.
  • Thanks to Lampshade for providing a save game with the problem.

• Fixed a bug where ships were by default set to being able to do unlimited overkills on stacks - this meant that an Artillery Golem which has one shot with massive damage and, if there were 10 unstacked VWings as its target, could still only kill one of them, could still kill the entire stack in one shot. Now this should be fixed.
  • This padded a bunch of false math for stacks receiving damage and dying, which should now also be fixed.
    • I went through the logs of a few shots with stacks, compressed shots, etc hitting - but there's no way to catch every single encounter and check it for something being wrong. If the amount of damage dealt or received, the amount of stacks dying, etc appears wrong or exceptions pop up, please report it as a bug (with a good description and if possible a savegame or reproduction instructions included).
    • Big thanks to Lampshade for reporting!

• The ZA Portal no longer vanishes when some hacks are cancelled
  • Thanks to Lampshade for reporting

• Jabberwock/Heroic AI Types no longer get blasphemous elderlings that grant science
  • Thanks to JDingDong8_1 for reporting

• The DZ Hersir now uses its proper model
  • Thanks to Lord of Nothing for reporting, and to Puffin for finding model

• Fix a null reference exception for maddened elderlings
  • Thanks to Chuito12 for reporting

• The notification for wormhole borers no longer appears once the AI owning it is defeated
  • Thanks to Matt Dyer for reporting

• Adjust the stack planning logic to account for the fact that combining stacks leaves a stack behind.
  • If you have 110 stacks, you need to combine 11 stacks to end up with 100.
  • Properly calculate the remainder, when calculating how to split a stack on debuff.
  • Now that debuffs are properly applied to stacks, don't cause them to decay faster than normal.
  • When combining stacks, preserve damage and some debuffs on the combined stack.
    • Currently, this preserves:
      • total hull damage, which may cause some ships in the stack to die
      • total shield damage up-to the max shield of a single ship
      • average paralysis, engine stun and weapon jamming seconds remaining.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

• Add fuel producers as potential targets for threat and hunter.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

• Tweak "NOT AFTER YOU" debugging information.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

• Fix a couple of potential use-after-free[1] of `FireteamRequiredTarget`s.
  • This was causing AI Extragalactic budgets and unit's fireteam specifications to get otherwise impossible values, such as being targeted at a faction and at a allegiance that it doesn't belong to. This was usually treated as an "or", though it was not displayed that way.
  • Discovered while looking at the saves from #27469.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

• Switch Minor Faction Beacon hack to use hacking menu abstraction.
  • Convert Tech Vault hack to use the hacking menu abstraction.
  • Make a couple of hacks against elderlings that take 0s actually complete instantly.
  • Remove a bunch of unused attributes on hacks that complete instantly.
    • Also make it an error to specificy any of those values, in that case.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

• Change a couple of places that check if a faction is currently controlled by a player, to intead check if it is a player faction.
  • This was causing the logic for crippled flagships to run only for actions with an active player, (salvage and various bits of Necromancer logic).
  • Change a few more places where sim was depending on whether a player was actively controlling a faction.
  • Also fix a place where a faction index was being looked up in `World_AIW2.Instance.AIFactions`.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

• When I was simplifying the logic for exogalactic attacks, to remove the option for using relentless waves, I accidentally made them always use them. Fix it so it again never does.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

• Add a DoOnAnyCrippleLogic_MyFactionUnitsOnly_HostOnly method to faction deep info.
  • Use this to move the necromancer specific logic out of the scenario logic.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

• Make the two places in GameEntity_Squad which handle crippling have the same logic.
  • One handled the phylactery healing, and didn't then mark it as needing to be repaired.
  • One removed any remaining corrosion damage.
  • Now, both places have the same logic.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

• Record a hacking event when a Necromancer flagship is crippled, if losing HaP.
  • This mirrors the logic for human empires, though it isn't currently visible anywhere.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

• Move the flagship bail out when crippled checks to the scenario, and factor out the counterattack logic to its own function.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

• Add an option to enable officer permadeath for deathwish mode.
  • When enabled, officers will turn into basic transports on death.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for adding!

• Fix speed buff calculation to use allied speed multiplier instead of attack multiplier.
  • This was undoubtedly a copy-paste error.
  • Also, tally the allied and hostile speed and damage multipliers separately, before combining them, to avoid the result depending on ordering. This is an issue, since allied multipliers are additive, whereas hostile multipliers are multiplicative.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

• Cleanup some memory leaks and duplicate logging in the wave planning code when tracing.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

• Remove leftover duplicate direct science tech settings that were being tested during DLC2 development.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

• Add "Use Balanced Golems" galaxy setting, that seeds the re-balanced golems, and force it on in Expert+.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

• Don't show that ships can't be supercharged, if fleet wide bonuses are disabled by galaxy settings.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

• Stop AI threat from being targeted at a random minor faction, if there is not hostile faction with strength on the local planet.
  • There was a small list of possible factions that could randomly be picked[1]. If none of them were present in the game (or hostile to the unit becoming threat), then threat would available for use against any faction.
  • Since it should be fairly rare that there are ships being released from guard duty with no hostile strength present, I think it makes sense to remove this weird edge case behavior, and just always release the threat for general use no mater which factions are in the game. This allows the code to be simplified, and one of the many slightly different faction settings controlling interaction with threat to be removed.
  • I think the only case this can occur (besides the cheat command scrubfoes) may be if a unit being guarded by another unit is killed with no hostile strength (which is likely either a slow shot, or corrosion damage).
  • Also:
    • Remove the `can_be_targeted_by_annoyed_non_human_units` setting from factions, which was only used to trigger this behavior.
    • Remove the `AnnoyingFactionFlags` argument to `PlanetFaction.GetIndexOfMostAnnoyingFaction`, which was only being used to request this behavior.
  • [1] These are the factions that could be randomly picked (if they were hostile):
    • AI Sentinels
    • Marauders
    • Neinzul Custodians
    • Wormhole Invasion
    • Zenith Dyson Sphere
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

• Fix the incorrect subcategory heading being show in the galaxy options sometimes.
  • This was happening when there was subcategories with no visible options.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

• When taking damage (or healing) a percentage of health when a salvo is fired, take into account the number of squads firing.
  • This prevents stacks of units like Rams from doing total damage that is quadratic with the stack size.
  • This also fixes a few units that took a multiple of their total health as damage per salvo.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

• Prevent tractor ships from bouncing around if they are tractored by multiple entities.
  • Now, only the strongest unit tractoring another will cause it to move. Previously, every unit tractoring a given unit would move it each frame, causing tractor ships to move much faster than the tractoring units.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

• When transiting wormoholes with tractored units, ensure that the tractored units are in the grav well.
  • There was existing code that tried to do this, but it only worked if the point opposite the initially chosen invalid position was inside the gravwell. Now, if both the initial point, and the opposite point are outside the gravwell, it picks a point at the edge of the gravwell near the opposite point.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

• Move `starts_already_built` from the fleet design template, to the `ship_membership`/`fleet_membership` and ensure it can only be used on drone lines.
  • Thanks to Tom Prince for fixing!

Balance

• Made several adjustments to the Angelic Ward from the FRS to tune down just how OP it was. Essentially when parked back a bit with engineers nearby it could perform just-in-time instant frigate replacement for under half price metal wise. To say nothing of how its health instead of metal cost makes fast replacement of units like bombards a joke.
  • Shield health removed! All other revival units under player control do not have shields.
  • Base hull health in XML reduced from 250k to 200k. Note that when you hack for the unit in a standard game it starts at Mark 5 with strike scaling. Thus it will still have at least 1.2m health unless you have changed some settings.
  • Base metal cost doubled from 100k to 200k. Rapidly repairing it for instant fleet asset replacement now has somewhat more appropriate costs imposed.
  • Base regen time from almost no health to full increased by 20 seconds. 100 -> 120.

• Added a strength multiplier to the resulting Frag Mines of a Fragmenting Minefield reducing its reported strength to 10% of previous. As a kamikaze unit that tends to explode within the next few seconds it really isn't as strong as it claimed it was.

• Balance adjustments to several different mines.
  • Corruption Mine adjustments:
    • Acid Debuff strength 15 + 15 per mark reduced to 20 + 10 per mark.
    • Acid Debuff duration reduced from 15 to 10 seconds.
    • Parasitic property strength cut in half. Now requires the mine to be at least mark 4 to guarantee a hit target gets converted on death from a single attack.
  • Fragmenting Mine adjustments:
    • Greater Metabolism -> Metabolism
    • The greater property was turning otherwise inadvisable activities into highly lucrative metal printing options when excessive amounts of mines were acquired and placed. The sub-munitions retain the greater property since they have a far more limited impact being single target and only spawned when the minefield dies. Instead of coating hundreds of units as a collective field like the main unit does.
  • Implosion Mine adjustments:
    • Multiplier based on remaining health cut in half. Now only checks in 20% increments instead of 10%. Maximum multiplier for hull health is 5x instead of 10x.
    • Base damage cut by 25% from 1000 to 750.
    • Additional multiplier added against targets above 50% remaining shield health. Starts at 1x at mark one and increases by 0.25 per mark level. Maxes out at 2.5x at mark 7. Leaves the mine as being particularly good against guardians and frigate level threats but considerably weaker against strike.
  • Kinetic Buffer has been adjusted. Essentially with how after the initial reload they fire five times in quick succession a single line of five was capable of dumping up to 40.5m damage in five seconds under ideal circumstances. Given they don't self-damage and are supposed to be crowd control while hitting up to 50 targets at a time this level of damage output was excessive.
    • Base damage 1000 -> 150
    • Multiplier vs low armor 6x -> 4x
    • Single line burst against low armor: 40.5m over 5 seconds per 21 second reload cycle -> 4.05m over 5 seconds per 21 second reload cycle.
    • Against higher armored targets the burst was 6.75m, for a sustained 321.4k DPS. This has been adjusted to ~1m burst, sustained 48.2k DPS.

• Module balance pass over Spire ships, thanks to Lord of Nothing for some of the input resulting in these changes.
  • Spire Frigate:
    • Pulse Laser shots per salvo halved. 20 -> 10
    • Heavy hull/shield mods reduced to Moderate mods that cost 2 instead of 3 points with lower bonuses.
    • Gravity Drain disabled, on non-flagships this now only shows up on Battleships and above.
  • Spire Destroyer:
    • Light Railcannon base damage doubled 3,000 -> 6,000.
    • Heavy hull/shield mods reduced to Moderate mods that cost 2 instead of 3 points with lower bonuses.
    • Gravity Drain disabled, on non-flagships this now only shows up on Battleships and above.
  • Spire Cruiser:
    • Light coilbeam base damage reduced from 37,500 to 30,000. Note that the flagship version keeps the better damage!
    • Tractor Beam module added targets per mark reduced from 12 to 6. Was exceeding the curve established by other ships.
    • Gravity Drain disabled for non-flagship versions. Still enabled for Cruiser Flagships.
    • Gravity effect strength reduced from 30% slow to 20% on Cruiser Flagships.
  • Spire Battleship:
    • Tractor Beam module added targets per mark increased from 5 to 7.
    • Gravitic Core strength reduced from 30% slow to 20%. Global effect on flagship version reduced from 30% to 10%.
  • Spire Dreadnought:
    • Pulse Laser shots per salvo halved. 20 -> 10
    • Gravitic Core strength reduced from 40% slow to 20%. Global effect on flagship reduced from 40% to 15%.
    • Module cost for Gravitic Core on flagship raised from 1 to 3, Engine gX effected for flagship 23 -> 22.
    • Gravitic Railcannon engine gX for slowing reduced from 24 to 22 for both versions.

• Sweeping balance adjustments to Nadir Venator:
  • Health cut by roughly 60%, max health at mark 7 reduced from 21m to 8m.
  • Given a new vampiric sabot weapon that heavily penalizes high mass attackers at range. Note that this weapon is only super effective against tX of 8 or higher and cannot be fired at anything closer than 8000 range. Most standard fleet assets and shorter range turrets will not be impacted all. You might not want to be hitting them with very long range strike however.
  • Engine power increased from 7 to 20 to match other Dire class vessels.

• Implemented Expert mode only versions of two Arks. The Nodorian Turtle and Great A'Thomek
  • Great A'Thomek EX:
    • AIP cost rasied to 12
    • Base health increased to 1.5m hull and 1m shields
    • Self hacks for additional shields reduced to only one hack costing 75 HaP. End result is maximum shield health is 14m instead of 19.6m
    • Ranged damage reduction property against attacks from further away than 5600 lowered from 99% mitigation to 90% mitigation. Max effective shield health just sitting around soaking up sniper fire reduced from 1.96 billion to 140 million. Note than when including hull the long range EHP change is from 2.87b to 245m.
  • Nodorian Turtle EX:
    • AIP cost raised to 15.
    • Base Attrition at all marks damage increased by 50%. 300/s at Mark 7.
    • Damage increasing self hacks reduced from two hacks to one costing 75 HaP. End result is attrition per entity caps at 600 instead of 800. Also the overall max attrition cap is reduced from a million DPS to a half million DPS.
    • Base damage of primary weapon increased from 12,000 to 20,000. Additionally a max targets hit per shot of 10 has been added to prevent excessive damage dilution.

• Caught another entity that could be scrapped for metal that is "free" to make.
  • Rescue Spores created by the Orchid Ark could be scrapped for metal. And since the Ark would create one a second while it had anything to shoot at its correction was merited.

• Post-Game changes:
• All factions can now have 2 new XML fields: creases_hack_responses_if_defeated and creases_hack_responses_if_all_ais_are_defeated, which uses the defeat_condition to figure out if it applies or not.
• The AI as well as all AI subfactions, Templar as well as (for potential modding applications) Astro Trains and Instigators will no longer launch hacking responses when all AIs have been defeated. If the galaxy has been lost to the AI hacking responses and exo strikes won't get it back.
  • Note that AIP for hacks will still apply, because potentially other mechanics related to minor factions or hacking/science gain on AIP gain may still need this.
• Shark B (Exo Strike on command station death) should also no longer triggers when no AI is alive any more.
• This mostly takes the AI out of the game when all AIs have been defeated, at least as far as immediate responses are concerned. If the AI ever pokes into the milky way again it should be after a cost-benefit analysis and in force, not wasting resources trickling units into a black hole.

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