Release noteshere. Reminder: to play the beta, you MUST go into your Steam properties for the game, go under the Betas tab, and choose the "current_beta" option. Otherwise you're going to be stuck on the pre-fleets version of the game. If you don't know what I'm talking about regarding fleets, then reading this link is a really good thing to do or you are likely to be mighty confused. So what's new in this build? This is obviously an incremental one, headed towards the non-beta full release of 0.900 that we're aiming at in the next... weeks? That timeframe is unclear, and will be based on testing feedback, which has been rolling in well so far; but there will be loads of incremental beta releases during this period. Anyway, what's new:

• Your command stations have been rebalanced a bit, and the descriptions have been updated a lot in order to keep veteran AIWC players from making assumptions that get them into trouble. Aka, economic command stations are not always the answer anymore, and in fact can be kinda risky depending on the scenario.
• Bunch of bugfixes.
• Drones actually work now! At least for the hive golem. Still have not tested them for the third party factions and AI guard posts. Let us know (with savegames, please) if those are having problems.
• Just to save you some pain of hunting down cloaked AI guard posts that are harmless but hiding on your planet, those now lose cloak when their command station dies. This actually can be used in your favor in a couple of combat ways, too, actually: "the enemy's gate is down" on heavily cloaked planets, if you catch my drift.
• There were a bunch of bugs with double-clicking which have been in there forever, and are now fixed.
• The whole "control groups style number buttons" stuff now works again, except that you can't (yet) assign fleets manually to the numbers. But the first 10 you get will automatically be assigned numbers for you. Baby steps! The automation is useful long-term for new players and lazy people (like me) anyway who otherwise might not think to set their control group numbers and just do things the hard way, but the ability to manage that by hand is something that obviously we want you to have, too.
• Dire guard posts no longer wreck your AIP.
• Some of your forcefield units now have a much bigger forcefield, making them way more useful.
• Citadels all shoot much further now, and battlestations all now have much more personal shielding.
• The AI doesn't tech up remotely so fast anymore (by AIP levels), because the AIP increases are a lot more common in the new versions of this game. It's actually a lot more in line with how I used to play the 3.x versions of AIP, where I'd usually have a final AIP of 500ish.
• Note that you can still play a spectrum of high-AIP and low-AIP games in this sequel, but overall that spectrum has been slid a bit more upwards compared to the first game. Frankly this is good, because otherwise the AI stays kind of brainless because it really isn't aware you exist. The new game mostly forces you to get into the territory of "it knows you're there, but just really doesn't care" if you're playing a low-AIP game.

More to come probably tomorrow! I'll be working tomorrow, so might have another build out then. Enjoy! Problem With The Latest Build? If you right-click the game in Steam and choose properties, then go to the Betas tab of the window that pops up, you'll see a variety of options. You can always choosemost_recent_stable from that build to get what is essentially one-build-back. Or two builds back if the last build had a known problem, etc. Essentially it's a way to keep yourself off the very bleeding edge of updates, if you so desire. The Usual Reminders Quick reminder of ournew SteamDeveloper Page. If you follow us there, you'll be notified about any game releases we do. Also:Would you mind leaving a Steam review for some/any of our games? It doesn't have to be much more detailed than a thumbs up, but if you like a game we made and want more people to find it, that's how you make it happen. Reviews make a material difference, and like most indies, we could really use the support. Enjoy! Chris

[ 2019-04-19 22:24:29 CET ] [ Original post ]