ArcenGames.com has been
overhauled, and as part of that we've pulled both of our blogs (our News
blog and our Games By Design blog) into the main site itself.
Please
update your bookmarks, or your RSS feeds (although RSS subscribers from
Games By Design should already find themselves repointed thanks to
feedburner).
The new blog itself is on the main ArcenGames.com website, and combines the content from both prior blogs. The RSS feeds are a bit better set up now, too:
If
you want to get absolutely EVERYTHING (the equivalent of previously
subscribing to both blogs), then here's your link for that RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcenGames. That's a new url, so if you want that you'll need to subscribe to it fresh.
If
you want just the main newsworthy stuff, not all the smaller product
updates and minor sales and such, then the following is the RSS for you:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcenGamesNewsworthy.
Note that all previous subscribers to the Games By Design blog automatically are now getting the equivalent of the http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcenGamesNewsworthy feed, but under the name http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChristopherMPark-Blog,
since that's what that particular RSS feed has been called since 2007.
You can either switch to the ArcenGamesNewsworthy feed or stay on
ChristopherMPark-Blog, they are both the same and will both remain live.
Also,
another cool feature! If you want to subscribe to a particular
category -- any category you see on our site -- you can now do so. For
instance:
- For this category: http://arcengames.com/category/aiwar/
-- There is this feed: http://arcengames.com/category/aiwar/feed/
- And this category: http://arcengames.com/category/gamedesign/
-- Has this feed: http://arcengames.com/category/gamedesign/feed/
And so on. Pretty handy!
Monday, December 1, 2014
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Reminder: This blog has moved!
ArcenGames.com has been
overhauled, and as part of that we've pulled both of our blogs (our News
blog and our Games By Design blog) into the main site itself.
Please update your bookmarks, or your RSS feeds (although RSS subscribers from Games By Design should already find themselves repointed thanks to feedburner).
The new blog itself is on the main ArcenGames.com website, and combines the content from both prior blogs. The RSS feeds are a bit better set up now, too:
If you want to get absolutely EVERYTHING (the equivalent of previously subscribing to both blogs), then here's your link for that RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcenGames. That's a new url, so if you want that you'll need to subscribe to it fresh.
If you want just the main newsworthy stuff, not all the smaller product updates and minor sales and such, then the following is the RSS for you: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcenGamesNewsworthy.
Note that all previous subscribers to the Games By Design blog automatically are now getting the equivalent of the http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcenGamesNewsworthy feed, but under the name http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChristopherMPark-Blog, since that's what that particular RSS feed has been called since 2007. You can either switch to the ArcenGamesNewsworthy feed or stay on ChristopherMPark-Blog, they are both the same and will both remain live.
Also, another cool feature! If you want to subscribe to a particular category -- any category you see on our site -- you can now do so. For instance:
- For this category: http://arcengames.com/category/aiwar/
-- There is this feed: http://arcengames.com/category/aiwar/feed/
- And this category: http://arcengames.com/category/gamedesign/
-- Has this feed: http://arcengames.com/category/gamedesign/feed/
And so on. Pretty handy!
Please update your bookmarks, or your RSS feeds (although RSS subscribers from Games By Design should already find themselves repointed thanks to feedburner).
The new blog itself is on the main ArcenGames.com website, and combines the content from both prior blogs. The RSS feeds are a bit better set up now, too:
If you want to get absolutely EVERYTHING (the equivalent of previously subscribing to both blogs), then here's your link for that RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcenGames. That's a new url, so if you want that you'll need to subscribe to it fresh.
If you want just the main newsworthy stuff, not all the smaller product updates and minor sales and such, then the following is the RSS for you: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcenGamesNewsworthy.
Note that all previous subscribers to the Games By Design blog automatically are now getting the equivalent of the http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcenGamesNewsworthy feed, but under the name http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChristopherMPark-Blog, since that's what that particular RSS feed has been called since 2007. You can either switch to the ArcenGamesNewsworthy feed or stay on ChristopherMPark-Blog, they are both the same and will both remain live.
Also, another cool feature! If you want to subscribe to a particular category -- any category you see on our site -- you can now do so. For instance:
- For this category: http://arcengames.com/category/aiwar/
-- There is this feed: http://arcengames.com/category/aiwar/feed/
- And this category: http://arcengames.com/category/gamedesign/
-- Has this feed: http://arcengames.com/category/gamedesign/feed/
And so on. Pretty handy!
Monday, June 30, 2014
Reminder: This blog has moved!
ArcenGames.com has been
overhauled, and as part of that we've pulled both of our blogs (our News
blog and our Games By Design blog) into the main site itself.
Please update your bookmarks, or your RSS feeds (although RSS subscribers from Games By Design should already find themselves repointed thanks to feedburner).
The new blog itself is on the main ArcenGames.com website, and combines the content from both prior blogs. The RSS feeds are a bit better set up now, too:
If you want to get absolutely EVERYTHING (the equivalent of previously subscribing to both blogs), then here's your link for that RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcenGames. That's a new url, so if you want that you'll need to subscribe to it fresh.
If you want just the main newsworthy stuff, not all the smaller product updates and minor sales and such, then the following is the RSS for you: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcenGamesNewsworthy.
Note that all previous subscribers to the Games By Design blog automatically are now getting the equivalent of the http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcenGamesNewsworthy feed, but under the name http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChristopherMPark-Blog, since that's what that particular RSS feed has been called since 2007. You can either switch to the ArcenGamesNewsworthy feed or stay on ChristopherMPark-Blog, they are both the same and will both remain live.
Also, another cool feature! If you want to subscribe to a particular category -- any category you see on our site -- you can now do so. For instance:
- For this category: http://arcengames.com/category/aiwar/
-- There is this feed: http://arcengames.com/category/aiwar/feed/
- And this category: http://arcengames.com/category/gamedesign/
-- Has this feed: http://arcengames.com/category/gamedesign/feed/
And so on. Pretty handy!
Please update your bookmarks, or your RSS feeds (although RSS subscribers from Games By Design should already find themselves repointed thanks to feedburner).
The new blog itself is on the main ArcenGames.com website, and combines the content from both prior blogs. The RSS feeds are a bit better set up now, too:
If you want to get absolutely EVERYTHING (the equivalent of previously subscribing to both blogs), then here's your link for that RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcenGames. That's a new url, so if you want that you'll need to subscribe to it fresh.
If you want just the main newsworthy stuff, not all the smaller product updates and minor sales and such, then the following is the RSS for you: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcenGamesNewsworthy.
Note that all previous subscribers to the Games By Design blog automatically are now getting the equivalent of the http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcenGamesNewsworthy feed, but under the name http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChristopherMPark-Blog, since that's what that particular RSS feed has been called since 2007. You can either switch to the ArcenGamesNewsworthy feed or stay on ChristopherMPark-Blog, they are both the same and will both remain live.
Also, another cool feature! If you want to subscribe to a particular category -- any category you see on our site -- you can now do so. For instance:
- For this category: http://arcengames.com/category/aiwar/
-- There is this feed: http://arcengames.com/category/aiwar/feed/
- And this category: http://arcengames.com/category/gamedesign/
-- Has this feed: http://arcengames.com/category/gamedesign/feed/
And so on. Pretty handy!
Monday, June 23, 2014
This blog has moved!
ArcenGames.com has been overhauled, and as part of that we've pulled both of our blogs (our News blog and our Games By Design blog) into the main site itself.
Please update your bookmarks, or your RSS feeds (although RSS subscribers from Games By Design should already find themselves repointed thanks to feedburner).
The new blog itself is on the main ArcenGames.com website, and combines the content from both prior blogs. The RSS feeds are a bit better set up now, too:
If you want to get absolutely EVERYTHING (the equivalent of previously subscribing to both blogs), then here's your link for that RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcenGames. That's a new url, so if you want that you'll need to subscribe to it fresh.
If you want just the main newsworthy stuff, not all the smaller product updates and minor sales and such, then the following is the RSS for you: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcenGamesNewsworthy.
Note that all previous subscribers to the Games By Design blog automatically are now getting the equivalent of the http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcenGamesNewsworthy feed, but under the name http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChristopherMPark-Blog, since that's what that particular RSS feed has been called since 2007. You can either switch to the ArcenGamesNewsworthy feed or stay on ChristopherMPark-Blog, they are both the same and will both remain live.
Also, another cool feature! If you want to subscribe to a particular category -- any category you see on our site -- you can now do so. For instance:
- For this category: http://arcengames.com/category/aiwar/
-- There is this feed: http://arcengames.com/category/aiwar/feed/
- And this category: http://arcengames.com/category/gamedesign/
-- Has this feed: http://arcengames.com/category/gamedesign/feed/
And so on. Pretty handy!
Please update your bookmarks, or your RSS feeds (although RSS subscribers from Games By Design should already find themselves repointed thanks to feedburner).
The new blog itself is on the main ArcenGames.com website, and combines the content from both prior blogs. The RSS feeds are a bit better set up now, too:
If you want to get absolutely EVERYTHING (the equivalent of previously subscribing to both blogs), then here's your link for that RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcenGames. That's a new url, so if you want that you'll need to subscribe to it fresh.
If you want just the main newsworthy stuff, not all the smaller product updates and minor sales and such, then the following is the RSS for you: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcenGamesNewsworthy.
Note that all previous subscribers to the Games By Design blog automatically are now getting the equivalent of the http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcenGamesNewsworthy feed, but under the name http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChristopherMPark-Blog, since that's what that particular RSS feed has been called since 2007. You can either switch to the ArcenGamesNewsworthy feed or stay on ChristopherMPark-Blog, they are both the same and will both remain live.
Also, another cool feature! If you want to subscribe to a particular category -- any category you see on our site -- you can now do so. For instance:
- For this category: http://arcengames.com/category/aiwar/
-- There is this feed: http://arcengames.com/category/aiwar/feed/
- And this category: http://arcengames.com/category/gamedesign/
-- Has this feed: http://arcengames.com/category/gamedesign/feed/
And so on. Pretty handy!
Friday, June 20, 2014
Steam Summer Sale 2014: Arcen Titles 25-80% Off (Ends June 30th)
- The Last Federation -- 25% off
- AI War Collection, base game and all expansions -- 60% off
- Bionic Dues -- 50% off
- Skyward Collapse and Nihon no Mura expansion -- 60% off
- Shattered Haven -- 80% off
- A Valley Without Wind Dual Pack (1 & 2) and Four Pack -- 75% off
- Tidalis -- 80% off
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Announcing AI War: Destroyer of Worlds
When in doubt, use bigger warheads.
AI War: Destroyer of Worlds, the sixth expansion pack for AI War: Fleet Command, focuses on two new optional features:
Nomad Planets introduces dynamic topology to AI War for the first time, giving the player new challenges and opportunities beyond the previously-static wormhole network. One of the Nomads also holds a secret weapon of truly dire power (that gives the expansion its title, hint hint).
The Exodian Blade is a powerful alternate way-to-win, but getting there is a multi-stage journey with a great deal of desperate fighting once things get going.
Beyond those two key features, this expansion also adds:
* 8 new AI types, from the humorous/annoying "Kite Flier" and "Cowardly" to the monomaniacal "Starship Fanatic" to the aptly named "Brutal". There's also "Mime". Never trust mimes.
* A new "Encapsulated" map style (screenshot).
* 4 new Bonus Ship Types, including the Neinzul Combat Carrier (with Beam Drones, Rail Drones, Spider Drones, and Grav Drones) and the Maw-gone-mad Powerslaver.
* 2 new AI Guardian types, including the Combat Carrier Guardian (so humans don't get to have all the ludicrous-drone fun).
* A new "Preemption" optional AI Plot that lets the AI start taking more direct action against you from the start.
* More awesome music from Pablo Vega! (that's still being worked on, but will be added for the official release)
A more in-depth look at the expansion can be found here.
AI War: Destroyer of Worlds is slated for official release in August 2014, and we'll be running a closed beta until then. If you're interested in testing and providing feedback on the expansion during the closed beta, please send me (keith.lamothe) a PM on our forums.
We'll be contacting the first wave of testers that have already signed up later this afternoon.
In other news, we've also added Steam Trading Cards for AI War. Enjoy!
AI War: Destroyer of Worlds, the sixth expansion pack for AI War: Fleet Command, focuses on two new optional features:
Nomad Planets introduces dynamic topology to AI War for the first time, giving the player new challenges and opportunities beyond the previously-static wormhole network. One of the Nomads also holds a secret weapon of truly dire power (that gives the expansion its title, hint hint).
The Exodian Blade is a powerful alternate way-to-win, but getting there is a multi-stage journey with a great deal of desperate fighting once things get going.
Beyond those two key features, this expansion also adds:
* 8 new AI types, from the humorous/annoying "Kite Flier" and "Cowardly" to the monomaniacal "Starship Fanatic" to the aptly named "Brutal". There's also "Mime". Never trust mimes.
* A new "Encapsulated" map style (screenshot).
* 4 new Bonus Ship Types, including the Neinzul Combat Carrier (with Beam Drones, Rail Drones, Spider Drones, and Grav Drones) and the Maw-gone-mad Powerslaver.
* 2 new AI Guardian types, including the Combat Carrier Guardian (so humans don't get to have all the ludicrous-drone fun).
* A new "Preemption" optional AI Plot that lets the AI start taking more direct action against you from the start.
* More awesome music from Pablo Vega! (that's still being worked on, but will be added for the official release)
A more in-depth look at the expansion can be found here.
AI War: Destroyer of Worlds is slated for official release in August 2014, and we'll be running a closed beta until then. If you're interested in testing and providing feedback on the expansion during the closed beta, please send me (keith.lamothe) a PM on our forums.
We'll be contacting the first wave of testers that have already signed up later this afternoon.
In other news, we've also added Steam Trading Cards for AI War. Enjoy!
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
AI War Beta 7.036-7.040 "Sanding Before The Storm" Released!
This one is more bugfixes and balance work. Important stuff, especially the metal/energy-related changes, but just polish.
What's more than polish is the upcoming expansion, which we'll announce with actual details tomorrow (Thursday, probably noonish eastern time).
We'll be doing a closed beta that will run until the expansion's official release (alongside the 8.0 offficial release) in early August. If you're interested in being part of the beta please PM me (keith.lamothe) on the forums.
Update: 7.037 is out with some text updates specific to the new expansion.
Update: 7.038 is out to hotfix some problems with unlocking the mkII/III versions of the bonus ship types from the new expansion.
Update: 7.039 is out to fix several bugs discovered early in the new expansion's beta, so the testers can proceed without them in the way.
Update: 7.040 is out with another batch of fixes for the new expansion's beta.
Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.
What's more than polish is the upcoming expansion, which we'll announce with actual details tomorrow (Thursday, probably noonish eastern time).
We'll be doing a closed beta that will run until the expansion's official release (alongside the 8.0 offficial release) in early August. If you're interested in being part of the beta please PM me (keith.lamothe) on the forums.
Update: 7.037 is out with some text updates specific to the new expansion.
Update: 7.038 is out to hotfix some problems with unlocking the mkII/III versions of the bonus ship types from the new expansion.
Update: 7.039 is out to fix several bugs discovered early in the new expansion's beta, so the testers can proceed without them in the way.
Update: 7.040 is out with another batch of fixes for the new expansion's beta.
Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.
Saturday, June 7, 2014
AI War Beta 7.034-7.035 "When Cities Attack!" Released!
This one is mainly an iteration on recently-in-progress stuff:
- Hacking used to scale just with your hacking balance, but this could lead to hacks not getting more dangerous). Then it was changed to scale just with hacking-spent, but that got uncontrollably dangerous past a certain point no matter your hacking balance). So now it's something of a middle ground, with the balance reducing the response again but with a minimum response that increases with hacking-spent. Long story short you shouldn't be stuck with large hacking balances that you can't spend without the sky falling, but the response should also never be anemic. We'll see; more feedback is of course welcome (and needed).
- Spire Cities are now much more fearsome, to correct for years of numeric creep among non-superweapon units. This is one of those changes made easier by the recent global stat-downscaling. The AI looks pretty unhappy about this.
- Champion Alt-Progress is now much more streamlined in how you get new module/hull/mod-fort/etc unlocks: it just all comes through gaining levels now (which is done entirely through gaining knowledge), rather than needing to capture/hack certain things. This is a more passive approach, but ultimately the normal-progress approach of nebula scenarios to gain XP and unlocks is the "active" option, and alt-progress is just for folks who'd like to have their champion toys without having to go radically out of their way to get them. So we'll see how that goes. For any of you interested in the alt-progress approach to champions, please do let us know how it feels.
And there's a bunch of various bugfixes and smaller balance changes, etc, including fixing some bugs preventing the loading of some older saves (from 3.x or earlier days).
Update: 7.035 is out to hotfix a null-exception bug in last version's attempt to fix thing with exo ships with cloaked targets camping the cloaked target.
Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.
- Hacking used to scale just with your hacking balance, but this could lead to hacks not getting more dangerous). Then it was changed to scale just with hacking-spent, but that got uncontrollably dangerous past a certain point no matter your hacking balance). So now it's something of a middle ground, with the balance reducing the response again but with a minimum response that increases with hacking-spent. Long story short you shouldn't be stuck with large hacking balances that you can't spend without the sky falling, but the response should also never be anemic. We'll see; more feedback is of course welcome (and needed).
- Spire Cities are now much more fearsome, to correct for years of numeric creep among non-superweapon units. This is one of those changes made easier by the recent global stat-downscaling. The AI looks pretty unhappy about this.
- Champion Alt-Progress is now much more streamlined in how you get new module/hull/mod-fort/etc unlocks: it just all comes through gaining levels now (which is done entirely through gaining knowledge), rather than needing to capture/hack certain things. This is a more passive approach, but ultimately the normal-progress approach of nebula scenarios to gain XP and unlocks is the "active" option, and alt-progress is just for folks who'd like to have their champion toys without having to go radically out of their way to get them. So we'll see how that goes. For any of you interested in the alt-progress approach to champions, please do let us know how it feels.
And there's a bunch of various bugfixes and smaller balance changes, etc, including fixing some bugs preventing the loading of some older saves (from 3.x or earlier days).
Update: 7.035 is out to hotfix a null-exception bug in last version's attempt to fix thing with exo ships with cloaked targets camping the cloaked target.
Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.
Thursday, June 5, 2014
TLF Version 1.024-1.025 Released (Disease Resistance)
Version 1.024 is out, and while it is small it does have some really notable balance shifts in there. Specifically:
- The way that research and property development dispatches are handled, and the way goons are used up with them, is now daily rather than monthly. This makes it a lot more fair to you when you stop at any given time (if you don't complete the research all in one go).
- You can't farm the AFA missions for Credit anymore, at least not to the degree you previously could.
- Selling prisoners and free return of prisoners now work properly in all cases, which is a pretty big deal in your favor.
- Races now do their ship upgrade research in a secondary tech line, making it so that they don't get bogged down that anymore. This will put a lot more pressure on you, incidentally, on higher difficulties later in the game.
- Diseases are no longer so ridiculously insta-devastating to certain populations. They can still be really harsh, and further tuning may be needed there, but this is at least a very big step in the right direction. Diseases should be meaningful, but not quite so overdramatic as they were.
UPDATE: 1.025 is now out with some bugfixes, both from this past version and some prior ones.
--------------- What's With The Shift In Schedule This Week? ---------------
This week has been a bit crazy for me. My sister got married this past weekend, and I've had some things related to that that I've been working on while she is on her honeymoon. I'd rather not say what, as it's a semi-surprise. Anyway, that has sucked up a huge amount of my time, and I've been taking some time off to help work on that. It's not a long-term thing, obviously, but it's something that I wanted to take some time and do for my sister since there's nothing direly important in terms of short-term schedule right now (for once).
Also I've been working on design work this week for both the remaining parts of the first TLF expansion (measure twice, cut once), and for the upcoming 4x that we are (at least for the moment) calling Spectral Empire, to come out next April.
There's also just been some general boring business-related stuff that had stacked up that I have been getting taken care of, too. So it's been kind of an off week for me, but that won't be the case next week. Thanks for understanding!
--------------- Ongoing Updates ---------------
The support of the community, and the growth of it, remain amazing to me. It's been about a month and a half since launch, and it's clear we definitely have a winner here. We're continuing to expand the improve the game via bugfixes, balance updates, and new content, and plan to do so for the foreseeable future.
It won't always be on a consistent schedule, but if you're familiar with our post-release support for AI War: Fleet Command over the past 5 years, that's basically the arc that we are currently expecting here unless something unexpectedly changes.
At present we are also working on expansions for both AI War and TLF (TLF: Betrayed Hope). The expansion for TLF is expected to be available for preorder through our site in early June, with access to the current beta of the expansion. The actual full release of the expansion is expected to be in early July, on all the existing distributors that carry the base game.
More to come soon. Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you. To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do so.
- The way that research and property development dispatches are handled, and the way goons are used up with them, is now daily rather than monthly. This makes it a lot more fair to you when you stop at any given time (if you don't complete the research all in one go).
- You can't farm the AFA missions for Credit anymore, at least not to the degree you previously could.
- Selling prisoners and free return of prisoners now work properly in all cases, which is a pretty big deal in your favor.
- Races now do their ship upgrade research in a secondary tech line, making it so that they don't get bogged down that anymore. This will put a lot more pressure on you, incidentally, on higher difficulties later in the game.
- Diseases are no longer so ridiculously insta-devastating to certain populations. They can still be really harsh, and further tuning may be needed there, but this is at least a very big step in the right direction. Diseases should be meaningful, but not quite so overdramatic as they were.
UPDATE: 1.025 is now out with some bugfixes, both from this past version and some prior ones.
--------------- What's With The Shift In Schedule This Week? ---------------
This week has been a bit crazy for me. My sister got married this past weekend, and I've had some things related to that that I've been working on while she is on her honeymoon. I'd rather not say what, as it's a semi-surprise. Anyway, that has sucked up a huge amount of my time, and I've been taking some time off to help work on that. It's not a long-term thing, obviously, but it's something that I wanted to take some time and do for my sister since there's nothing direly important in terms of short-term schedule right now (for once).
Also I've been working on design work this week for both the remaining parts of the first TLF expansion (measure twice, cut once), and for the upcoming 4x that we are (at least for the moment) calling Spectral Empire, to come out next April.
There's also just been some general boring business-related stuff that had stacked up that I have been getting taken care of, too. So it's been kind of an off week for me, but that won't be the case next week. Thanks for understanding!
--------------- Ongoing Updates ---------------
The support of the community, and the growth of it, remain amazing to me. It's been about a month and a half since launch, and it's clear we definitely have a winner here. We're continuing to expand the improve the game via bugfixes, balance updates, and new content, and plan to do so for the foreseeable future.
It won't always be on a consistent schedule, but if you're familiar with our post-release support for AI War: Fleet Command over the past 5 years, that's basically the arc that we are currently expecting here unless something unexpectedly changes.
At present we are also working on expansions for both AI War and TLF (TLF: Betrayed Hope). The expansion for TLF is expected to be available for preorder through our site in early June, with access to the current beta of the expansion. The actual full release of the expansion is expected to be in early July, on all the existing distributors that carry the base game.
More to come soon. Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you. To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do so.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
AI War Beta 7.032-7.033 "Peaceful Interlude" Released!
This one takes a break from fixing The Bug (10/10 being winnable) so the changes already made in that direction can be evaluated. Instead the focus is on dealing with a couple other long-discussed requests:
- The main combat turrets have been switched from a galaxy-wide-cap on MkI/II/III and a per-planet cap on MkV to a per-planet-cap on MkI/II/III and a galaxy-wide-cap on MkV (and the newly-added MkIVs).
-- The MkI/II/IIIs now have a smaller cap, as a result, but the Spider and Sniper turrets have been given their own I-V lines, so between that and the MkIVs your chokepoint-defense potential hasn't been significantly nerfed (indeed, buffed slightly, from roughly 23k strength to roughly 24k strength)
-- And distributed-defense is now immediately possible from the beginning of the game, so long as you have the necessary metal and energy production.
- The health and attack stats (and armor and armor piercing) have been scaled down two orders of magnitude (divided by 100) to help with readablity and to pave the way towards later changes that will deal with some longstanding balance issues (mainly, that some superweapons are underwhelming because the normal units have gotten so powerful).
There's also some important bugfixes/etc. Including one hilarious one where capturing an AI HW would give you command of any future champ-nemesis exo spawned from there...
Update: 7.033 is out to scale some stats that I forgot wouldn't be automatically scaled with health and attack, etc (thus ending the Night When The Mines And Attritioners Rose In Terrible Wrath). Also fixed some bugs related to sniper/spider turret unlocks.
Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.
- The main combat turrets have been switched from a galaxy-wide-cap on MkI/II/III and a per-planet cap on MkV to a per-planet-cap on MkI/II/III and a galaxy-wide-cap on MkV (and the newly-added MkIVs).
-- The MkI/II/IIIs now have a smaller cap, as a result, but the Spider and Sniper turrets have been given their own I-V lines, so between that and the MkIVs your chokepoint-defense potential hasn't been significantly nerfed (indeed, buffed slightly, from roughly 23k strength to roughly 24k strength)
-- And distributed-defense is now immediately possible from the beginning of the game, so long as you have the necessary metal and energy production.
- The health and attack stats (and armor and armor piercing) have been scaled down two orders of magnitude (divided by 100) to help with readablity and to pave the way towards later changes that will deal with some longstanding balance issues (mainly, that some superweapons are underwhelming because the normal units have gotten so powerful).
There's also some important bugfixes/etc. Including one hilarious one where capturing an AI HW would give you command of any future champ-nemesis exo spawned from there...
Update: 7.033 is out to scale some stats that I forgot wouldn't be automatically scaled with health and attack, etc (thus ending the Night When The Mines And Attritioners Rose In Terrible Wrath). Also fixed some bugs related to sniper/spider turret unlocks.
Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
TLF Version 1.023 Released (Uprisings)
Version 1.023 is finally out, and is a real whopper. Hardcore fans in particular should be very pleased.
- A bunch of balance changes (in your favor) have been made to the various federation formation rules, so that in particular getting the federation started is not so hard. Actually this one should make everyone quite happy. But there are a variety of other things that are now easier in terms of attitude and influence in this regard, too, depending on the desperation of the race, for instance.
- There is a new "Join Federation When Militarily Supreme" way to get all of the races except for the Burlusts and the Thoraxians into the federation. This one actually is comparably rare in terms of your being able to use it, I expect, but it's really great for when you can engineer the situation to meet these criteria.
- In general the Credit costs for getting races to join the federation have just fallen through the floor, to avoid late-game grinding.
- In place of the grinding (which was never intended, but just kind of a byproduct), there are now several new mechanics in place where non-federation races react to the existence of the federation. In particular, this makes it a lot harder to just militarily roll the non-federation races once you get a sufficient mass of federation races. Even better, it also puts a lot more strategy into which races you invite first, as the potential negative reaction of that race to not being in the federation is something that you can use either for your gain or that you have to work around.
- Overall the balance of the solar map has shifted away from bombing-heaviness and in to ground-combat heaviness, which was always the intent but lately had not been the reality. This gives greater weight to races with higher ground combat strengths, which was the intent from the start -- so the Thoraxians and the Burlusts now live up to their reputations much better.
- A bunch of technologies now are available to more races, and a bunch of others are now gated by years into the game. These things really change the early dynamic, because it makes it so that weaker races can't immediately compensate for underwhelming ground power (for instance) based on simply being technologically superior. They can to some degree, but not to an extreme degree. But the longer they survive, the more they are able to level the playing field with technology, which makes sense.
- The Thoraxians now have an "evolution" mechanic, where they get progressively stronger in terms of ground power as the game goes on. Even from the start they are still the strongest at ground power, but it's no longer so extreme. They also now have an even higher home-field advantage when it comes to ground combat, meaning the odds of them getting kicked out of the game early on in is very very low.
- Oh! Also, there is a huge new mechanic for in combat where we are able to define complex shot behaviors through xml. If you're into that sort of thing, you can do that as well and submit designs to us for potential inclusion in the game. This lets us design much more interesting ship battles, in particular "boss like" battles. Expect changes to the Burlust Duels in the future in particular, and a vast reduction in the use of homing missiles in the game. The basic flagships used by the enemy have already been updated, and actually a new variant has also been added during this release (Model X2).
- And lastly, a number of improvements and adjustments have been made to bribe items, making them both more usable and better balanced.
--------------- Ongoing Updates ---------------
The support of the community, and the growth of it, remain amazing to me. It's been about a month and a half since launch, and it's clear we definitely have a winner here. We're continuing to expand the improve the game via bugfixes, balance updates, and new content, and plan to do so for the foreseeable future.
It won't always be on a consistent schedule, but if you're familiar with our post-release support for AI War: Fleet Command over the past 5 years, that's basically the arc that we are currently expecting here unless something unexpectedly changes.
At present we are also working on expansions for both AI War and TLF (TLF: Betrayed Hope). The expansion for TLF is expected to be available for preorder through our site in early June, with access to the current beta of the expansion. The actual full release of the expansion is expected to be in early July, on all the existing distributors that carry the base game.
More to come soon. Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you. To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do so.
- A bunch of balance changes (in your favor) have been made to the various federation formation rules, so that in particular getting the federation started is not so hard. Actually this one should make everyone quite happy. But there are a variety of other things that are now easier in terms of attitude and influence in this regard, too, depending on the desperation of the race, for instance.
- There is a new "Join Federation When Militarily Supreme" way to get all of the races except for the Burlusts and the Thoraxians into the federation. This one actually is comparably rare in terms of your being able to use it, I expect, but it's really great for when you can engineer the situation to meet these criteria.
- In general the Credit costs for getting races to join the federation have just fallen through the floor, to avoid late-game grinding.
- In place of the grinding (which was never intended, but just kind of a byproduct), there are now several new mechanics in place where non-federation races react to the existence of the federation. In particular, this makes it a lot harder to just militarily roll the non-federation races once you get a sufficient mass of federation races. Even better, it also puts a lot more strategy into which races you invite first, as the potential negative reaction of that race to not being in the federation is something that you can use either for your gain or that you have to work around.
- Overall the balance of the solar map has shifted away from bombing-heaviness and in to ground-combat heaviness, which was always the intent but lately had not been the reality. This gives greater weight to races with higher ground combat strengths, which was the intent from the start -- so the Thoraxians and the Burlusts now live up to their reputations much better.
- A bunch of technologies now are available to more races, and a bunch of others are now gated by years into the game. These things really change the early dynamic, because it makes it so that weaker races can't immediately compensate for underwhelming ground power (for instance) based on simply being technologically superior. They can to some degree, but not to an extreme degree. But the longer they survive, the more they are able to level the playing field with technology, which makes sense.
- The Thoraxians now have an "evolution" mechanic, where they get progressively stronger in terms of ground power as the game goes on. Even from the start they are still the strongest at ground power, but it's no longer so extreme. They also now have an even higher home-field advantage when it comes to ground combat, meaning the odds of them getting kicked out of the game early on in is very very low.
- Oh! Also, there is a huge new mechanic for in combat where we are able to define complex shot behaviors through xml. If you're into that sort of thing, you can do that as well and submit designs to us for potential inclusion in the game. This lets us design much more interesting ship battles, in particular "boss like" battles. Expect changes to the Burlust Duels in the future in particular, and a vast reduction in the use of homing missiles in the game. The basic flagships used by the enemy have already been updated, and actually a new variant has also been added during this release (Model X2).
- And lastly, a number of improvements and adjustments have been made to bribe items, making them both more usable and better balanced.
--------------- Ongoing Updates ---------------
The support of the community, and the growth of it, remain amazing to me. It's been about a month and a half since launch, and it's clear we definitely have a winner here. We're continuing to expand the improve the game via bugfixes, balance updates, and new content, and plan to do so for the foreseeable future.
It won't always be on a consistent schedule, but if you're familiar with our post-release support for AI War: Fleet Command over the past 5 years, that's basically the arc that we are currently expecting here unless something unexpectedly changes.
At present we are also working on expansions for both AI War and TLF (TLF: Betrayed Hope). The expansion for TLF is expected to be available for preorder through our site in early June, with access to the current beta of the expansion. The actual full release of the expansion is expected to be in early July, on all the existing distributors that carry the base game.
More to come soon. Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you. To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do so.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Bionic Dues Launches on Humble Store
A brief note that you can now purchase Bionic Dues from the Humble Store. It's available for $4.99 (50% off) for the first week and includes both a DRM-free copy and a Steam key. Discount ends June 3rd.
Friday, May 23, 2014
TLF Version 1.022 Released (What Lies Beneath)
Version 1.022 is out, and is comparably minor. Still, a number of good things in here.
- First of all, there's some rules about alliance members that have been improved such that they will behave better towards one another.
- Fixed a couple of display bugs with showing RCI impacts and with showing the defender figures at planets.
- You now start the game with the larger number of tech unlocks even if you don't do the survey platform option on the first battle.
- The balance with outpost construction by players and resource gains from freighter distress calls, has been much improved.
There are a number of other things as well, some of which show up as minor items in the release notes, such as no longer baking the ship class stats into each savegame. That's a minor thing on the surface, but it's something that is indicative of all the underlying work that went into this release.
In other words, the reason why this release is so small in surface features is that we spent the majority of our time doing plumbing, so to speak. We've been getting things ready for an influx of new content in the expansion, we've been working on some cool new physics additions that will let us really do some new stuff with bullets in both the base game and the expansion, and so on. That last is something that will be the ultimate solution to the Burlust duels being boring, for instance, but it's something that takes a lot of pipe-laying first.
The new bullet physics stuff is still ongoing, but the expansion-framework stuff is now complete, so that's a big thing off the list for us in the next month. Lots of stuff still coming for the base game as well, though, of course!
--------------- Ongoing Updates All This Month ---------------
The support of the community, and the growth of it, remain amazing to me. I've been promising daily new features, but since launch it has became clear that there are other things more on your mind. Things like added interfaces, new AI behaviors and options, and things like that. So, you know what? I'm just going to go with that -- those count as features, really, in that they help to make the game more interesting and easier to understand and play.
So what else is going on? Well, we're going to be working at this pace on the game for at least the rest of this month, which means that you're going to be seeing lots of good things coming. We do have expansions for both AI War and TLF (TLF: Betrayed Hope) in the works at the moment (just internally for now). Suffice it to say, neither one of these two are going to impact the general updates, improvements, and free additions to TLF that are coming over this month.
More to come soon. Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you. To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do so.
- First of all, there's some rules about alliance members that have been improved such that they will behave better towards one another.
- Fixed a couple of display bugs with showing RCI impacts and with showing the defender figures at planets.
- You now start the game with the larger number of tech unlocks even if you don't do the survey platform option on the first battle.
- The balance with outpost construction by players and resource gains from freighter distress calls, has been much improved.
There are a number of other things as well, some of which show up as minor items in the release notes, such as no longer baking the ship class stats into each savegame. That's a minor thing on the surface, but it's something that is indicative of all the underlying work that went into this release.
In other words, the reason why this release is so small in surface features is that we spent the majority of our time doing plumbing, so to speak. We've been getting things ready for an influx of new content in the expansion, we've been working on some cool new physics additions that will let us really do some new stuff with bullets in both the base game and the expansion, and so on. That last is something that will be the ultimate solution to the Burlust duels being boring, for instance, but it's something that takes a lot of pipe-laying first.
The new bullet physics stuff is still ongoing, but the expansion-framework stuff is now complete, so that's a big thing off the list for us in the next month. Lots of stuff still coming for the base game as well, though, of course!
--------------- Ongoing Updates All This Month ---------------
The support of the community, and the growth of it, remain amazing to me. I've been promising daily new features, but since launch it has became clear that there are other things more on your mind. Things like added interfaces, new AI behaviors and options, and things like that. So, you know what? I'm just going to go with that -- those count as features, really, in that they help to make the game more interesting and easier to understand and play.
So what else is going on? Well, we're going to be working at this pace on the game for at least the rest of this month, which means that you're going to be seeing lots of good things coming. We do have expansions for both AI War and TLF (TLF: Betrayed Hope) in the works at the moment (just internally for now). Suffice it to say, neither one of these two are going to impact the general updates, improvements, and free additions to TLF that are coming over this month.
More to come soon. Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you. To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do so.
Arcen Soundtracks Now Available on Spotify
- A Valley Without Wind 2
- AI War: Ancient Shadows
- The Last Federation
- Shattered Haven
- Skyward Collapse
- Skyward Collapse: Nihon no Mura
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
TLF Version 1.021 Released (Of Armadas And Outposts)
Version 1.021 is out, and will make you very happy.
- The AI for NPC armadas on the solar map has gotten some substantial upgrades centering around allies helping allies. If races are in the same alliance, they now have a number of behaviors that involve them sending ships to defend the planets of their allies that are under attack.
- When flotillas were removed, the logic for how many flagships would show up in a mission was changed around. Overall this was a vast improvement, but there were a few edge cases where this actually exposed some other underlying issues (this is also related to armadas becoming fewer but with higher base power levels).
Anyway, what this version changes is how many flagships come into battles if it's not a "let's attack everybody at this planet" sort of battle. In other words, when a race wants to oppose you during a quest, it doesn't send an enormous armada with 18+ flagships to do so; it instead sends a much smaller force that doesn't make your battle drag out forever (and also doesn't cause balance issues with the AI leaving itself undefended, etc.
- Other improvements to quest-related opposition armadas have also been made. Previously there were cases where a quest would be canceled simply because there was no longer an opposition armada around for you to fight. That can still happen if the opposition race gets completely wiped out -- and that's fine, that's actually proper. But now if the race is still alive, they will instead dig into emergency squadrons or even spend economy RCI points in order to make sure that you have an opposition force to fight (while at the same time not just making it up out of thin air with no cost to the race).
- Outposts have had a ton of updates. You can now capture or destroy them in one stage, rather, than requiring two. Capturing or destroying them is now more involved and interesting of a battle. A clever exploit involving repetitive cooperative construction of outposts, followed by stealing those outposts, has been solved.
- Two new dispatch missions have been added at the black market. One lets you create outposts all by yourself without the help of any race, and the second lets you do research all by yourself without the help of any race. There are downsides to this in terms of no credit/influence gains, and it taking longer, but this is something that players have wanted for a while and it definitely is a sensible addition.
- The research tech dispatch has been split so that you can only now (once again) research techs that race doesn't already know with the main version. But there is now a second version where you learn a tech from a race that already knows it. This is something that players have asked for for a while as well, and it also lets us make the influence requirements for this action be different from the main action.
- This is one of my favorites: you can now hire the relevant sorts of goons in the friendly actions window at planets, and on your outposts. Boy does this save a lot of time! Some folks had asked for something along these lines quite a while ago; apologies for taking so long to put in this.
--------------- Ongoing Updates All This Month ---------------
The support of the community, and the growth of it, remain amazing to me. I've been promising daily new features, but since launch it has became clear that there are other things more on your mind. Things like added interfaces, new AI behaviors and options, and things like that. So, you know what? I'm just going to go with that -- those count as features, really, in that they help to make the game more interesting and easier to understand and play.
So what else is going on? Well, we're going to be working at this pace on the game for at least the rest of this month, which means that you're going to be seeing lots of good things coming. We do have expansions for both AI War and TLF (TLF: Betrayed Hope) in the works at the moment (just internally for now). Suffice it to say, neither one of these two are going to impact the general updates, improvements, and free additions to TLF that are coming over this month.
More to come soon. Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you. To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do so.
- The AI for NPC armadas on the solar map has gotten some substantial upgrades centering around allies helping allies. If races are in the same alliance, they now have a number of behaviors that involve them sending ships to defend the planets of their allies that are under attack.
- When flotillas were removed, the logic for how many flagships would show up in a mission was changed around. Overall this was a vast improvement, but there were a few edge cases where this actually exposed some other underlying issues (this is also related to armadas becoming fewer but with higher base power levels).
Anyway, what this version changes is how many flagships come into battles if it's not a "let's attack everybody at this planet" sort of battle. In other words, when a race wants to oppose you during a quest, it doesn't send an enormous armada with 18+ flagships to do so; it instead sends a much smaller force that doesn't make your battle drag out forever (and also doesn't cause balance issues with the AI leaving itself undefended, etc.
- Other improvements to quest-related opposition armadas have also been made. Previously there were cases where a quest would be canceled simply because there was no longer an opposition armada around for you to fight. That can still happen if the opposition race gets completely wiped out -- and that's fine, that's actually proper. But now if the race is still alive, they will instead dig into emergency squadrons or even spend economy RCI points in order to make sure that you have an opposition force to fight (while at the same time not just making it up out of thin air with no cost to the race).
- Outposts have had a ton of updates. You can now capture or destroy them in one stage, rather, than requiring two. Capturing or destroying them is now more involved and interesting of a battle. A clever exploit involving repetitive cooperative construction of outposts, followed by stealing those outposts, has been solved.
- Two new dispatch missions have been added at the black market. One lets you create outposts all by yourself without the help of any race, and the second lets you do research all by yourself without the help of any race. There are downsides to this in terms of no credit/influence gains, and it taking longer, but this is something that players have wanted for a while and it definitely is a sensible addition.
- The research tech dispatch has been split so that you can only now (once again) research techs that race doesn't already know with the main version. But there is now a second version where you learn a tech from a race that already knows it. This is something that players have asked for for a while as well, and it also lets us make the influence requirements for this action be different from the main action.
- This is one of my favorites: you can now hire the relevant sorts of goons in the friendly actions window at planets, and on your outposts. Boy does this save a lot of time! Some folks had asked for something along these lines quite a while ago; apologies for taking so long to put in this.
--------------- Ongoing Updates All This Month ---------------
The support of the community, and the growth of it, remain amazing to me. I've been promising daily new features, but since launch it has became clear that there are other things more on your mind. Things like added interfaces, new AI behaviors and options, and things like that. So, you know what? I'm just going to go with that -- those count as features, really, in that they help to make the game more interesting and easier to understand and play.
So what else is going on? Well, we're going to be working at this pace on the game for at least the rest of this month, which means that you're going to be seeing lots of good things coming. We do have expansions for both AI War and TLF (TLF: Betrayed Hope) in the works at the moment (just internally for now). Suffice it to say, neither one of these two are going to impact the general updates, improvements, and free additions to TLF that are coming over this month.
More to come soon. Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you. To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do so.
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