Arcen’s primary focus has still been on Tidalis since the release of
our last massive 3.060 update to AI War: Fleet Command, but nonetheless a
ton has been happening over the last few months with our massive
strategy title. The AI has learned some new tricks, performance and
balance are better than ever, Golems (from The Zenith Remnant) are
vastly more useful, and we’ve laid the groundwork for a lot of features
that we’re planning on expanding over the coming months (auto-generated
epilogues, AI Plots, and so forth).
Here’s the list of particularly notable features out of the
typical-for-Arcen hundreds of changes:
-Major new Border
Aggression behavior for the AI is the largest single new addition
to the AI since Cross Planet Attacks were introduced.
-Four new Heavy Beam Cannons (Mark I-IV).
-Huge performance improvements for the largest battles, game
loading, and more.
-Focus fire control node options added, along with other various new
control nodes.
-Many various improvements to ship autofire targeting in general.
-Many significantly rebalanced units, including MLRS, Anti-Armor,
Transports, Sentinel Frigates, Scout Starships, all melee ships, mines,
all Golems. Many of these units are like all-new (and much more useful)
ships.
-ClearType text is now used, resulting in vastly more attractive
fonts.
-New AI modifiers for optional less-Tower-Defense-inspired gameplay
for advanced players: No Wave Warnings, Cross Planet Waves
-New AI Plots feature for more exciting endgames: the first one,
Avenger, is now available and more will come in the coming months.
-New lobby options for starting with a largely invisible galaxy
which is only revealed as exploration is undertaken (normally you can
see all the planets and their connections, just not any details
whatsoever about the planets).
-Dozens upon dozens of other, smaller, balance tweaks, interface
tweaks, and bugfixes.
Our next major version will probably be a couple of months out, as we’re
realizing that bi-monthly official releases simply fit our schedule and
testing cycle better. New beta versions come out regularly a couple of
times per week, so you can always keep up to date on the latest and
greatest inwork features through the AI War
forums or via the in-game updater.
In August we’re planning on releasing a version that switches the
game to prerequisite-less Unity 3D, and also adds a Mac OSX version of
the game, along with some other updates that will be in tandem with that
(better updater tools, etc). The second expansion for AI War is
currently planned come after both Tidalis and Alden Ridge are released,
which means most likely we won’t see another full-fledged expansion for
AI War until late Q1 2011 at the earliest. However, with the upcoming
Mac version of the game, and all the huge updates that are always coming
out as free DLC, there’s certainly no risk of the game getting
stagnant!
New to the game? You can download
a trial version of the game, or purchase a license key to
unlock the full version. If you already have the game or demo
installed, just use the “Updates” button inside the game to get the
latest patch. For complete release notes, please see the “Updates”
button inside the game, or see the following posts in this topic.
Files:
– The official installer can be found via one of
our mirrors.
– The raw full files of 3.120 in a zip can be found
here: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar3120Full.zip
–
The manual patch of 3.060 to 3.120 can be downloaded from here: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar3120Patch.zip
