AI War Beta 6.033-6.034 "Bonus Tricks" Released!

This one includes another big chunk of content for the upcoming Vengeance of the Machine expansion. We've already got quite a few alpha testers smashing at it, but it would benefit from more so if you're interested in alpha testing for the expansion, please shoot me (username is keith.lamothe) a PM in the forums.


Anyway, this release includes 4 of the 6 new bonus ship types planned for the expansion:

* The Lightning Torpedo Frigate, which fires miniature lightning warheads.

* The Zenith Devastator, a starship that isn't really a raider (kinda slow, for one), but can shoot right through forcefields to get at the juicy targets underneath. So more helpful in a stand-up battle versus a big pile of shields (exos, anyone?) than a Raid Starship.

* The Neinzul Railpod, a two-shot railgun that can be mass produced at alarming speed.

* The Zenith Hydra, which breathes flame and regenerates (no idea where Hearteater could have gotten the idea from).


There are also seven new types of AI guardian, ranging from the relatively straightforward (but dangerous) Needler Guardian to the outright terrifying Infiltration Guardian.


Perhaps most interesting of all (to me, anyway) is the new AI Planetary Subcommanders: generally only a few planets in a given game will have one, and you won't see them flying around or whatever, but you'll probably notice when you see the very... um, peculiar choices they make in command stations, guard posts, and where to put those.


There's also several (not necessarily expansion-related) bugfixes and balance changes and miscellaneous improvements. For one, I'm sure many of you will be happy to see your blade spawners and ally enclaves (and player enclaves, for that matter) not dumping endless numbers of ships onto your homeworld just because of that stupid subspace signal off in deep space.

Update: 6.034 hotfix to fix an unhandled errors problem with CPA launches due to the attempt to make the carriers not drop on neutered planets. A few other small changes 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.