AI War Beta 5.061 "*Tackled*, Medic!" Released!

This one adds the first two bonus ship types of the Ancient Shadows expansion: the Zenith Medic Frigate (from one of RCIX's ideas) and the Tackle Drone Launcher (we invented that pain ourselves). Both boldly fill roles where no fleet ship has filled before. Particularly the "push the enemy's ships around like a jerk" role.

This update also adds a third nebula scenario, another step towards the kind of variety we want for champion "offroad" gameplay. This scenario introduces a second Neinzul splinter faction, but it takes a bit of a backseat to the player in this scenario. 5 more champion hull types have been added, including the next size-step up from what's been available previously. There's also 4 new scenario-unlocked module lines for champions available, all of them at least a bit off the wall.

Oh, beating the new scenario can also unlock the Neinzul version of the Modular Fortress. It's pretty similar to the human one right now, but as fortress-versions of some of the champion modules get implemented there'll be more distinction. There's already a pretty big one: the neinzul fort doesn't have multi-repair, but it does have the MkI Cloaker Starship's ability (no, it doesn't cloak turrets, turrets are immune to cloaking ;) ).

Several bugfixes and a few balance changes round out the update. Notably, MkV Younglings no longer self-attrition, making their fabricators far more useful.

Update: 5.062 hotfix is out include the language file updates I accidentally omitted from 5.061, sorry about that!

Update: 5.063 hotfix is out because tackle drones were doing friendly-fire damage with their explosions. A few other fixes in there too :)

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.