AI War Beta 6.041 "Brutalizing Expansion Features" Released!

This one contains the last new content for the expansion (the two new "Brutal-pick" Core Guard Posts) and starts the polish-phase for the expansion and 7.0 in earnest.

The two new Brutal Core Guard posts are the Shredder and the Hunter-Killer Factory. C'mon, H/K, say hi to the audience.

... guess not. Anyway.

The main points from the polish are:

- The Neinzul Combat Carrier is basically gone (except from saves that already had them), with the "Youngling Shrike" type that had been buildable by the NCC becoming the new bonus ship type to fill its place. We've heard some ideas that may work to bring the NCC back later, but there's not time in the expansion's development schedule and honestly the shrike is pretty cool anyway.

- The Lightning Torpedo Frigate is now player-only, so the AI won't be able to pile up 300 of them in its Special Forces and wipe out an essentially infinite number of player ships from the universe (each torpedo only hits 200 targets max... but that's enough, it seems).

- The Protector Starship's counter-modules have been reined in from essentially infinite capability to shut down the most dangerous enemy units in the game. Their newly-finite power is still pretty impressive, though.

- The Showdown Devices minor faction has been majorly rebalanced to not be so punishingly difficult. It may be a little too easy now, but if so we can easy do some judicious ratcheting-it-back-up.

- The Shark Plot has been split into Shark-A and Shark-B because some players really wanted the "non-permanent" part (Shark-B, with the mini-exos and next-CPA buffs) of the AI bonuses without the permanent +AIP component (now in Shark-A).

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.