A Valley Without Wind Showing At E3, 1.1 Update Arrives Next Week

Indie developer Arcen Games is excited to announce the inclusion of A Valley Without Wind in this year's Indiecade E3 Showcase, as well as details on the massive (and free) 1.1 update set to arrive for the game during the show next week.

Content additions and improvements abound across nearly 50 post-release beta updates set to make-up the first official AVWW post-launch release. Over 160 new room maps, 30 new enemies (such as the Nightmare Octopus and Dread Gazebo), seven new minibosses (such as the Giant Clockwork Wasp and Dark Dragon), new Freefall and Boss Delve missions, three new spells, five new enchants, five new music tracks, and over a dozen added or improved major features will be packed as part of next week's release.

It's not all about the numbers though. We've worked heavily with the game's player base to address some of the major issues that were taking away from the fun factor. A rebalanced, streamlined strategic flow to the game has been worked in, vastly improving how players can navigate and progress their individual world. The reworked gameplay also encourages spell variety and experimentation by the player.

Monster variety has also been tackled head on, not only with the aforementioned additions, but with the introduction of enemy elites and infestations/traps. Seeding of these dangers throughout all of the different regions has had yet another layer added to it, to make each chunk that much more of a unique area to the player. That goes for more than just monsters and infestations, there's better seeding in chunks regarding interior rooms, music tracks, puzzle rooms, NPCs, and more. Upgrade stones have been ditched for a reworked enchant slot system that adds flexibility to character creation/customization, with time-period bonus abilities and new options such as re-roll and rename offered for characters as well.

'What else' you say? The Opal Guardian Store is open for business and accepting your hard earned consciousness shards (which are now all the same color) collected in the wild as currency, the shopping list arrives as part of an improved planning menu, windstorms have been tweaked so that they're more fun and more of a threat to take on, exploration with the minimap is much better, and the game now offers support for texture packs.

It's truly an exhausting list of stuff, but it's all in effort to make huge refinements to the core concepts we've been building on. Almost everything you love as a player is still there and made better, and the major items annoying players have been addressed and majorly reworked.

All this will arrive during our showing of A Valley Without Wind at E3 2012. We're excited to join a slew of other indie developers to exhibit our game as part of IndieCade's Showcase booth. The booth will be open during exhibiting hours June 5-7 and is located in the Concourse Foyer at the Los Angeles Convention Center (on Level 1 in the West Hall entrance).

About A Valley Without Wind

A 2D sidescroller without a linear path. An action game with tactical combat and strategic planning. An adventure game that lets you free-roam a vast, procedurally-generated world. A Valley Without Wind defies genre stereotypes. Unlike other procedurally-generated games, you also get a logical progression in difficulty, plus helpful tips and checklists to guide your travels (should you need them).

Choose for yourself how to prepare to face the vastly stronger Overlord. Complete a variety of missions to earn arcane rewards, and/or roam the wilds to uncover secret missions and stashes of magical loot. Customize your characters with unique combinations of enchants and spells that change how you move, jump, and fight. Or rescue people and bring them back to your settlement, recruiting them to help you in return.

You choose how to play, and the world adapts around you.

The full version is available now on PC and Mac. A demo is also available, and grants full access to the game/multiplayer with only some tier restrictions. Even though AVWW has launched, it continues to grow with new content and improvements added nearly every weekday. Follow the game and its updates/discussions on Facebook, Google+, Reddit, and Twitter. To be a part of how AVWW evolves in any and/or all of its aspects join the ongoing discussion taking place within our forums.

For members of the media: review keys and press kits are available upon request.

About Arcen Games

Arcen Games entered the PC indie scene in 2009 with their cult classic AI War: Fleet Command, which was named the 40th best-reviewed PC game of the year by MetaCritic. Their second year was a busy one, seeing the release of The Zenith Remnant, the first full expansion for AI War; Tidalis, an innovative block-based puzzle with casual appeal and hardcore depth; and Children of Neinzul, a micro-expansion for AI War with all profits benefiting the Child's Play charity, of which Arcen is a platinum sponsor.

AI War's third and largest expansion Light of the Spire marked Arcen's first release of 2011, and now the company has shifted its focus and excitement to the development of A Valley Without Wind. Originally a one-man shop, Arcen Games has grown to have half a dozen part-time or fulltime contributors to its various titles. For all the latest news, media coverage, and some of our other musings, follow us on our developer and individual game pages on Facebook or on Twitter: @ArcenGames; as well as Arcen lead Chris Park's Games By Design blog.

AI War: The Light of the Spire Expansion Now Available as Game Hits Version 5.0

The Light of the Spire
Arcen Games is proud to announce the release of AI War: The Light of the Spire, the game's biggest expansion ever. Available now for $10 through ArcenGames.com and coming soon to digital distributors.

The expansion is packed full of new additions.  The "Fallen Spire" campaign brings in-game linear story elements to the title for the first time, and culminates in a whole new way to win. Players with minutes instead of hours should take to the new Defender Mode, offering bite-sized timed games against crazy AI aggression.

Light of the Spire also brings 180 new ships, including the powerful "Spirecraft" vessel class which stands as the second largest unit class in the game. New music from composer Pablo Vega, new AI types, map types, bonus ship classes, minor factions and quite a bit more packs the expansion to the brim. Prepare for a new war!

More information and a trailer can be found here, along with a comprehensive feature list: http://www.arcengames.com/w/index.php/aiwar-spire



AI War 5.0
Arriving alongside the LotS expansion is AI War 5.0, a massive update free to owners of the base game. Version 5.0 refines the title by taking the best of all past versions and blending them into the definitive AI War experience. While the game will continue to grow and evolve, 5.0 now serves as the foundation for the future.

With this update, nearly every combat ship in the game has been rebalanced in an effort to integrate all the new units added over the past year. Golems have been completely revamped and the AI have received major intelligence upgrades such as more proactive retreats, a network of core shield generators, and the new "stalking" mechanic where it lies in wait until the player is at their most vulnerable.

Players should also be pleased with significant adjustments to overall difficulty and the shortening of the early part of the game -- allowing you to "get to the good part" faster. Not to mention tons of performance improvements, as well as more of a general accessibility regardless of what level of player you are.

Interested parties can read all the additions, improvements and changes in massive detail here: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_5.000_Release

Updated Demos
Demos of both AI War 5.0 and Light of the Spire can be downloaded here: http://www.arcengames.com/w/index.php/aiwar-downloads

The demo can be unlocked into the full version of the game with a purchased license key.

About Arcen Games
Arcen Games entered the PC indie scene in 2009 with their cult classic AI War: Fleet Command, which was named the 40th best-reviewed PC game of the year by MetaCritic.  Their second year was a busy one, seeing the release of The Zenith Remnant, the first full expansion for AI War; Tidalis, an innovative block-based puzzle with casual appeal and hardcore depth; and Children of Neinzul, a micro-expansion for AI War with all profits benefiting the Child's Play charity, of which Arcen is a platinum sponsor.

Light of the Spire is Arcen's first release of 2011, but fans of the company are also excited about the upcoming procedural adventure game known as A Valley Without Wind.  Originally a one-man shop, Arcen Games has grown to have half a dozen part-time or fulltime contributors to its various titles.

Tidalis Official 1.016 Released, Along With Official Release Of Tidalis Lite!

Tidalis Official 1.016
This release doesn't include any new content, but it really improves the game in general. The biggest change here is an upgrade of the Unity 3D engine (which powers Tidalis) from version 2.6 to version 3.1. The number of improvements in the Unity engine between those two versions is nothing short of staggering, and that alone fixes the unable-to-set-screen-resolution issues on OSX, as well as making performance better in general. It also resolved some annoying font wrapping issues that were caused by the Unity 2.6 engine.


Going along with that, for AI War 4.0 we had to develop out a new, higher-performance rendering pipeline to go on top of the Unity engine; the rendering pipeline we'd been using in Tidalis just wasn't nearly fast enough to handle AI War. Tidalis is a much lighter-weight game visually compared to AI War, but even so we've backported the new pipeline from AI War to Tidalis, and the result is a puzzle game that runs even smoother, and which will run well on even slower hardware. Great news for netbooks and older laptops.

Another huge mechanics addition is the addition of a second keyboard player. Previously, Tidalis supported one mouse player and one keyboard player. Now it supports one mouse player and up to two keyboard players, all on one computer. This is particularly useful for those players who are mapping gamepads to the keyboard keys. It also increases the game from being up to 2 player local (6 player online) to being 3 payer local (6 player online), although it's still a maximum of two actual game boards in local or online play.

Aside from all of the above, there are also a small number of general polish bugfixes.

Tidalis Lite
The other big news is that we've introduced Tidalis Lite, a scaled-down web version of the game that players can enjoy for free. Tidalis Lite is an interesting experiment for us.  It's not a demo -- we already have one of those -- and yet it's not quite a full game, either.


We took the idea from the iPhone space, where paid full versions and free lite versions are the norm.  People are free to enjoy the lite version of a game as basically a bite-sized experience that stands on its own, or if they like it enough and want more, they can move up to the full version.

Heck, if you aren't sure after trying the lite version, you can try out the full demo.  The lite version and the demo version have a lot of overlap in what they give away for free, but there's quite a bit that is only in one version or the other.  The lite version is the quickest, easiest way to dip your toes into the game: it's only a 6.7mb download, assuming you already have the unity web player (which is tiny, too).

Tidalis 1.016 Full Installer Links
Don't yet have Tidalis, or haven't yet tried the demo?  You can now get the full 1.005 installer from our Download Tidalis page, rather than starting with 1.000 and upgrading after the fact.

Tidalis 1.016 Manual Patch Links
The in-game updater should work just fine for anyone with an Internet connection, but if you'd like a patch that you can manually apply, here are the links for that. Bear in mind that you must already have version 1.005 or later of the game for these patches to work -- they are not cumulative for versions older than 1.005.

• Windows 1.016 Patch
• Mac OSX 1.016 Patch

AI War Official 4.021 Released!

This release has a small number of bugfixes and tweaks that came up post-4.0, and we wanted to go ahead and get this into your hands as soon as possible just to make sure things remain clean.  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.

AI War: Fleet Command 4.0 and AI War: Children of Neinzul Released!

This release is unreservedly huge. It's a full re-imagining of AI War, practically a sequel (but free to existing customers). Frankly there were more updates here than in a lot of sequels we've seen. So it is with some difficulty that we compile these highlights, as even the list of highlights is enormous, yet omits a lot of major changes. Listed here are just the things that have changed in the base game itself, this isn't even including all the stuff that was added as part of the new Children of Neinzul micro-expansion. So here we go:

• A grand total of 147 new ships have been added to the game. Again, this is NOT counting the new ones added as part of CoN. Most of these new ships went to the AI or are things that the players must capture, but there are also dozens and dozens of goodies for the players in the form of new warheads, new mercenaries, new turrets, and new lines of command stations.

• An enormous graphical overhaul has taken place. Every special effect in the game has been replaced and majorly improved, the HUD and GUI has been completely redesigned and has a cleaner feel to it, and the starfields/nebulae have seen a rather startling improvement as well. Those new ships come with a bunch of new prerendered-3D graphics, as well.

• The soundtrack to both AI War and The Zenith Remnant have been completely remastered and re-edited, and in a number of cases have new live performances for trumpet and electric guitar (adding to the existing live vocals and piano). The soundtrack for Children of Neinzul was also done at this new quality level, of course. Additionally, two completely-new bonus tracks have been added for free to the base AI War game, and an old track ("Thor") that had been dropped due to quality issues is back and awesome with a live performance. 

• The interface has been streamlined all over the place, in ways that have really been exciting our hardcore fanbase (who helped design some of the changes). The biggest amongst these changes are perhaps the more-readable galaxy map, the new context menu (alt+right-click) with things like Auto-Gather-Knowledge and special Transport-Unloading logic, the complete removal of "control nodes" in favor of a much cleaner set of menus, and a larger display-on-demand minimap replacement (hold T).

• Many new teach-yourself-to-play-better features have been added: or, as we like to call them, "discoverability features." The new Objectives and References tabs provide a lot of guidance for players without hand-holding them, a new Tip of the Day system on the main menu shows player-submitted tips, and all of the tutorials in the game have been completely redone and updated, and are more helpful than ever before. A fan even did some awesome new video tutorials for us, which replaced our older 2.0-era series of the same.

• Along the theme of streamlining: Knowledge raiding has been completely rebalanced to no longer be easy or necessary, returning it to the proper role of "last ditch effort to get out of a hole". This was a really tedious activity since players were embarking on it too often. Similarly, the endgame was ALWAYS a grind in the old versions, to the point where very few players actually won games, but now the endgame has been completely redone and is more exciting and full of back-and-forth power struggles than ever. Gameplay activities that were tedious have been cropped and replaced with something more fun, with a great deal of public player testing and feedback.

• Brace yourself: but the entire combat, repair, economic, and construction models have been almost completely rewritten. To the novice player these changes are subtle enough that it feels like basically the same game. To the more experienced player, these changes are a dream come true, shaving off rough edges left and right and leaving something simpler and more elegant in its place. We had a corps of 95 community members giving us feedback, after all, so there's been a lot of vetting of this from both newer and experienced players. The main benefits of these particular changes are simplicity, transparency-to-the-player, and internal accuracy in outlier situations.

• As part of the new combat model, the old concept of "shields" (as distinct from "force fields") has been removed, and the random-hit-chance and range-related components of the hit chance calculations are gone. In place of this is a new, simpler, and far better "armor" system that affects damage output instead of hit chance.

• One key simplification in this new version is the removal of all the internal ship-specific damage multipliers. In their place, we now have a small number of new "hull types," and ships get visible bonuses against them. This also removes the "Strong Vs and Weak Vs" display in favor of both the raw hull attack multipliers display and a new Reference tab when really detailed data is needed (presumably not often).

• Following on with those massive changes, every last ship in the game has been rebalanced to a heavy degree, sometimes pretty much completely. With a game of this scope, we expect there are still some rough edges in there, but overall it's far better balanced -- and easier to understand the balance in a meaningful way -- than ever before. As part of this, the turrets and starships have both become a lot more specialized and interesting, and more of them are available to players right from the start of the game.

• Performance has gotten a major boost in general with the new version, but additionally we now have new "Performance Profiles" that let the game more easily run on a variety of hardware. Best of all, these profiles can be swapped in and out in realtime while playing. This lets borderline computers lower their simulation/graphics load temporarily during a massive battle, then turn those factors back up when the battle concludes. The game in general also now does a better job of degrading its framerate instead of its overall run speed, which is an enormous boon for multiplayer games where one player is on iffy hardware. And as if all that wasn't enough, we also have a variety of simple new performance-diagnosing tools right in the Players tab that lets players see each others' framerates, how fast the game is running at the moment compared to realtime, and other helpful things like that.

• This next change is also a shocker: we've reduced the default ship caps in the game. The game has always advertised having 30,000+ ships in realtime, but the truth was that often players were running more like 70,000 to 120,000 ships in large games. This was simply more of a CPU drain than it needed to be, and tended to make a lot of the AI worlds a grind. We now have Unit Cap Scales that you can set in the lobby -- and the old "High" option is still there -- but the new default uses about half as many ships, which is still significantly more than we've ever advertised as supporting. And for iffy hardware, you can actually quarter the number of ships in the game, which is ideal for slower laptops or similar.

• Part of the reason for the shift away from just huge numbers of fleet ships is our new emphasis on larger centerpieces. The AIs have massive new command stations and guard posts, as well as mobile Guardians that not only defend but launch often-brutal counterattacks. Going along with these are the exciting new AI Eye that emphasizes de-blobbing, the new AI Barracks that lets the AIs store up overflow reinforcements for later use, and the AI Carriers which are the late-game AI equivalent of transports. All of these new things take the place of turrets, which the AI no longer uses at all, and in general they lead to a vastly different feel of game. It's a lot quicker to resolve battles (without making you rushed -- just no longer a grind), and in general it makes planets feel more unique and fun before you even get into the various special weapons that have always been a cornerstone of AI War.

• The AIs aren't the only ones who have been getting a makeover, though. We already mentioned that players now get a lot more starting turrets and starships for free (and both of those unit classes are now far more central to the game). Players also now get a lot more knowledge in general (3,000 per planet now, instead of 2,000), and the player economy -- especially in the early game -- has had a massive boost. Your typical income without economic upgrades will be almost double what it used to be, meaning you can field far more ships, faster, including starships. Speaking of faster, the player ships used to be 1.4x faster than the AI ships, but now they are a full 2x faster. This asymmetry plays well into the enhanced feel of the player as a guerrilla warrior against a superior foe. This unique aspect of the game is really emphasized a lot more, now, and players have responded really well to it in beta.

• Did we mention Mac OSX support? Thanks to our switch to the Unity 3D engine, AI War is no longer just for Windows. And while Linux isn't directly supported, we have word that it runs flawlessly in the latest versions of WINE. And, along these lines, AI War no longer has any prerequisites -- installation and setup is far more painless than in the past.

 

And these were just the highlights. Read the full release notes if you want all the gory details: it's taken us 170 days, 81 releases, 95 testers, and untold man-months to get this awesome new version out. We're really excited not only about what is represented here already, but what this re-launch of the game will enable us to do both with future free updates and future paid expansions. Thanks to everyone for their support during this long process!


Read on for information about Children of Neinzul.

Today I am born, today I die.
The Neinzul are an insectoid race of perpetual "younglings" that live for an extremely short span before dying and being superseded by fully-aware and vicious replacements. Their Enclaves form mini-collectives with their own personalities, goals, and desires. In this second expansion to AI War, players face off against the Neinzul minor factions, against new AI types in general, and enlist the help of the friendlier members of this new alien presence.

Enclave Starships bring a long-awaited feature: mobile space docks. New map types and new capturables add more excitement. Optionally, Hybrid Hives bring a new type of AI logic to the game: these free agents are like a coordinated pack of velociraptors hunting you against the backdrop of the regular AI forces. For advanced players, the Hybrid Hives provide more cut-throat opposition than ever.

 

Child's Play
When you purchase AI War: Children Of Neinzul, you're not only getting an exciting new expansion, you're also supporting an important cause. Arcen Games has partnered with the Child's Play charity, pledging 100% of the profits from sale of Children of Neinzul (excepting any taxes and distributor fees) to helping sick kids in need.  The staff at Arcen has long admired the work done by Child's Play, and we're very excited to finally be able to contribute in a substantial manner.

Key Features
* 36 new ships, including:
   * 5 new ship classes with a variety of abilities.
   * Enclave Starships and Regeneration Chambers for direct unlock.
   * 6 new AI special weapons.
* 6 new AI Types.
* 3 Neinzul alien minor factions (NPCs).
* Devastating new Hybrid Hives AI plot.
* 3 new in-game music tracks, plus a new title music track.
* Two new map styles: X and Concentric Circles.

Tidalis Official 1.007 (Bugfixes)

The full release notes are here.

This update fixes some serious-but-rare bugs that a few players were encountering in specific circumstances. The next release with "free DLC" will be within the next 1-2 months, but for now we wanted to go ahead and get these fixes out the door in an official capacity even though they only affect a smallish subset of players.

Our goal is always to have the play experience be as smooth as possible for all players!

Beta Updates Cumulatively Included In This Official Release

• August 29th, 2010: 1.006 Beta (Monitor Resolution Support Improved)

Tidalis Official 1.005 Released (First Official Free DLC and Bugfixes)

This official release includes a lot of new stuff for players to enjoy, a lot of it suggested by fans. It adds the new VS - Race multiplayer ruleset for use against the AI or against other players, as well as a new Boarded Up block type. It has a lot more flexibility in what fullscreen resolutions players can use, even if their graphics card/OS doesn't report a resolution that they want to use as being supported. There is also a revamped sound subsystem that lets the game load faster, play multiple copies of the same sound effect at once (which sounds much better), and which avoids some issues on OSX.

Also included are 12 new Brainteaser levels created by players, a new visual block style created by a player, and updated stream graphics that look a bit fancier. Music tracks also now fade in when starting, which is a noticeable aural improvement. Aside from the above, this release has a number of bugfixes and other, more minor player-suggested tweaks.

All in all, an exciting first bit of free DLC, both with Arcen-created content and community-created content.
Enjoy!

Click here for the full release notes

Full Installer Links
Don't yet have Tidalis, or haven't yet tried the demo?  You can now get the full 1.005 installer from our Download Tidalis page, rather than starting with 1.000 and upgrading after the fact.

Manual Patch Links

Unfortunately, after the 1.001 version was released it was discovered that the 1.000 version of the game has a broken download mechanism for its installer. We ran into this one other time, all the way back at 0.401, so fortunately we have a simple mechanism for dealing with that. If you simply download and run the manual patch program below for your operating system (Windows or Mac), then you'll be all set and future automatic updates should work just fine.

• Windows 1.005 Patch
• Mac OSX 1.005 Patch

We apologize for the inconvenience of this -- the 1.000 version fixed a problem with the Mac version of the updater, and unintentionally introduced this larger problem to both the Windows and Mac versions of the game.

If you have a copy of the game from Steam or Impulse, no worries -- the automatic updaters that are native to those platforms will take care of you.  In fact, with them you don't need to worry about manual patching at all unless you want betas in advance of when the cumulative official release comes out.

AI War 3.120 Released!

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

AI War 3.060 Released!

Since January, Arcen’s focus has shifted from large-scale development of AI War to our other upcoming titles -- with AI War, our intent had been to simply maintain and refine the existing game, while adding a handful of exciting new features every month as free DLC.  As you may imagine, therefore, we were quite surprised to realize that this new version, 3.060, is the largest monthly update we’ve ever done.

There aren’t many huge single features here aside from the new Riot Control Starships (which introduce modular ship design to the game).  However, the number of small refinements are just staggering (the release notes are over 10,000 words), and we’ve made a number of significant performance improvements, too.

Here’s the list of particularly notable features out of the hundreds of changes:
- Simple Formation movement, as well as arc-movement.
- New, modular, riot control starships.
- Many various performance improvements.
- Manufactories now auto-manage themselves by default.
- Transports are now extremely more useful.
- Astro Trains are now much less fearsome.
- Cleanup drones can now remove mines (even perma-mines).
- Gate-raiding is now cheaper in terms of AI Progress.
- Hit chance logic is slightly simplified to avoid player confusion.
- New screenshot key (F12).
- Control nodes and rally points now knowledge-free.
- Option for historical autosaves.
- Dozens and dozens of balance tweaks.
- Other various bugfixes and small changes.
A big part of the reason for the impressiveness of this update is Keith LaMothe, Arcen’s new part-time programmer, who joined the team in January.  Keith is tasked with keeping AI War growing and improving while Chris Park, AI War’s lead designer and (previously sole) programmer is working on Arcen’s other upcoming titles.  Of course, Chris still plays AI War several hours per week and so can’t help but make some weekly changes to the game himself, and is still very much involved in Arcen’s ever-growing forum community, and overall design of AI War.

Arcen is quite pleased to see that AI War’s playerbase continues to grow so steadily ten months after the base game’s initial release -- we’ve seen a 300% increase in total customers since AI War 2.0 -- and in turn we’re making the continual refinement and feature-growth of the game an ongoing priority beyond the smaller monthly DLC releases that had been planned.  A second paid expansion for the game is also still planned for late this year.

Next month’s free DLC will include more player-requested changes, as well as our first work on new endgame scenarios and auto-created epilogues, both of which should really take the late stages of the game to new heights.

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 visit the Arcen forums.

Files:
- The official installer can be found via one of our mirrors.
- The raw full files of 3.060 in a zip can be found here: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar3060Full.zip
- The manual patch of 3.0 to 3.060 can be downloaded from here: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar3060Patch.zip

 

Full release notes

AI War 3.0 Released!

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet Command version 3.000. You can download a trial version of the game, as well as purchase a license key to unlock the full version. If you already have the game or demo installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to get the latest patch.  
- Updated art for many ships, including larger and more impressive command stations, space docks, fortresses, colony ships, and more!
-New starships: The Raid Starship line has been split, so that now there is a Raid Starship line (Mark I-III), and a separate Leech Starship line (Mark I-III).
-New capturables: Fabricators, which let you manufacture (the previously AI-only) Mark V ships, Bomber Starships, and more!
-Co-op improvements: Players who have lost their home station, or who join the game late, now get a “Home Command Station Core,” which provides them with the resources and build capacity they need to keep playing in a fun way without slowing the other players down.  Other minor changes also abound, such as messages to allied players when technologies are unlocked, and improvements to engineer assistance from allies.
-AI Improvements:  The AI is smarter and more devious than ever, while some of the more game-flow-interrupting tactics such as Cross-Planet Attacks have also been made less frequent.  Ship autotargeting is now notably better for both the players and AI.
-Performance Improvements: The game now performs 400% to 1000% better in supermassive games of (those with 100,000 to 200,000 units on the map), and on average 20% to 80% better on regular sized games (usually 80,000 units or fewer).
-Interface Improvements: A wide variety of player-suggested minor tweaks have been made to the interface, leading to ever-improved usability.  The planetary summary now has category-colorization on mouseover, planet names are colorized by owner status in the galaxy map, “control nodes” have been added to allow new automation options for players, amongst many others.
-Other New Ships: Rally Posts allow for directing incoming allied forces to a specific place on a planet, Cleanup Drones remove exploded enemy mines and turrets, and Mine Layers have turned into more generalized Remains Rebuilders which can auto-rebuild turrets as well as mines for players (both AI and human, so be sure to use Cleanup Drones on enemy planets).
-New Minor Factions: Minor Factions aren’t just for customers of the expansion!  Three new minor factions have also been added to version 3.0 for all AI War players (optionally enable any combination of them through the lobby).  
-Human Marauders are a hostile minor faction that will sometimes attack you or the AI from deep space, using their powerful new Buzz Bombs and Dagger Frigates.
-Human Resistance Fighters are an allied minor faction that will sometimes decloak from deep space and join you in assaulting AI worlds with their powerful new Fighter/Bombers and Frigates.
-Rebelling Human Colonies are formerly-captive human cities that need your help in order to survive -- fail and you’ll see an increase in AI Progress, but succeed and your entire team will be able to build the powerful new ships used by the Resistance Fighters.
-Ship Balance Updates: Many minor and major ship balance adjustments have been made – the most notable of these is that the core fighter/cruiser/bomber triangle has been redefined into an easier-to-follow fighter/bomber/frigate triangle.
-Game Flow Improvements: Not only are the disruptive cross-planet attacks less frequent, but all human ships now move 40% faster (making it easier to stage defenses or coordinate assaults – especially so since AI ships are still the same speed as before), many new automations have been built into the interface (the most notable of which is that metal/crystal harvesters are now automatically rebuilt on human planets after hostile AI forces are gone), and a few key structures (space docks, factories, etc) have been made more robust.  Players will spend less time than ever on repetitive tasks, letting especially new players take to the stars faster.
-And Much More: The full release notes for version 3.0 (not including expansion notes) are over 10,000 words long.  This is by the largest single release AI War has ever seen, and no small wonder – it was three months in the making!  Future free DLC updates will resume their monthly schedule.

AI War 2.0 (Achievements, Leaderboards, Steam and Direct2Drive!)

Arcen Games is very pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet Command version 2.0, which marks the culmination of our long-running post-release overhaul. To see just how epic this journey has been, take a look at this: AI War 2.0 vs. 1.0, A Retrospective. The cumulative post-release notes, included near the end, are literally novella-length (46,573 words). That's how much has changed in the since our initial release.
You can download a trial version of the game, as well as purchase a license key to unlock the full version. If you already have the game or demo installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to get the latest patch.  

Achievements

High Scores

AI War Comes To Steam and Direct2Drive!
Direct2Drive and Steam join Impulse and GamersGate in offering AI War-- be sure to check them out! The Steam version includes online leaderboards and Steam achievements (other versions are all local-only for those features). If you've previously purchased your copy of AI War from another platform and would like to activate it on Steam to get those features, you will be able to do so in the near future. In celebration of the release of 2.0, AI War is also going to be 25% off at Steam through Oct. 27th -- and look for similar sales at other partners very soon.
   
Many Updates:
- New local high scoreboards for everyone, and online high scoreboards through Steam.
- 129 Achievements, which can be logged locally and/or through Steam.
- Player ships can now be assigned preferred target types, which greatly increases tactical control.
- A number of co-op-related interface improvements: see allied resources, more informative gifting lists, etc.
- Several new visual effects: smoke trails and sparking for damaged ships, etc.
- Much improved (or entirely replaced) graphics for over 50 different ships.
- Ships now accelerate and decelerate when moving, making them much more graceful.
- New Collision Priorities make placement of larger/fixed ships in a group of smaller mobile ships much easier.
- Players can now select multiple AI Modifiers at once in the lobby. Turrets have been rebalanced and made more distinct and interesting.
- Custom planet name lists can now be used for those who don't like the random names.
- Networking improvmeents.
- Many other bugfixes and balance tweaks.
The above list is just a sampling of what has changed since 1.301, however, so be sure to check out the full release notes to see everything. And remember, to see everything since 1.0, see this: AI War 2.0 vs. 1.0, A Retrospective.

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As an added note, if you are a player who is is unable to install patches for whatever reason (this is usually a windows issue), you can download the patch files through the following link: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1000To2000.zip

Then unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else).  Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.  This is a cumulative update, so as long as you have at least version 1.000 of the game installed, this will update you to the latest version (2.000) without any issues.

This update now available for Impulse customers.

For existing GamersGate customers, you can always upgrade your copy from the "Check For Updates" link in the game just like customers from our direct site can.  The latest version of the installer will also be coming to GamersGate, but that will affect new customers only.

AI War 1.301 (Co-Op Enhancements, UDP Networking, Supply)

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet Command version 1.301. You can download a trial version of the game, as well as purchase a license key to unlock the full version. If you already have the game or demo installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to get the latest patch.  
Many Updates:
- 4 new ships: Decloaker, and three levels of a new Gravitational Turret.
- Major visual improvements -- the HUD, the galaxy map, menus, and ship icons have all been revamped.  We have updated our screenshots, which gives a nice before/after contrast.
- Co-op Enhancements -- players can drop in and out of games if needed, and all ships can be swapped around between players much better now.
- New "Supply" game mechanic augments the military importance of captured planets.
- Several AI improvements to add better tactical intelligence in a number of different scenarios.
- New UDP-based network code performs vastly better in high-latency or high-packet-loss environments.
- New render caching performance improvement reduces GPU load in large battles by 1/2 to 2/3.
- More updated battle sound effects, and an updated battle sound effect engine, makes the sounds of battles much better.
- Resizable minimap -- helpful in particular for larger monitors, there are now 3 minimap sizes.
- Force Fields controlled by players are now damaged by shots fired out from under them, but FFs can all now be moved and repaired.
- Many other balance tweaks, ship logic improvements, and other enhancements and bugfixes.
The above list is just a sampling, however, so be sure to check out the full release notes to see everything (all 4,800 words worth included in the next post in this topic). This DLC release is not quite as large as the last one (which took a full month to make), but the visual improvements alone make this version feel almost like a whole new game.  Expect our next DLC release within a month or less, but the exact timing is going to be dependent on how much testing is ultimately needed for new features -- the next release is going to be the highly anticipated 2.0 version!  You can always get the latest public prerelease beta versions from our forums if you'd like to see what's coming down the pike.  Lots more exciting updates are on the way!

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As an added note, if you are a player who is is unable to install patches for whatever reason (this is usually a windows issue), you can download the patch files through the following link: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1000To1301.zip

Then unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else).  Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.  This is a cumulative update, so as long as you have at least version 1.000 of the game installed, this will update you to the latest version (1.301) without any issues.

This update also now available for Impulse customers.

For existing GamersGate customers, you can always upgrade your copy from the "Check For Updates" link in the game just like customers from our direct site can.  The latest version of the installer will also be coming to GamersGate, but that will affect new customers only.

AI War 1.201 (Major Economic, AI, and Graphical update with 16 new ship types)

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet Command version 1.201. You can download a trial version of the game, as well as purchase a license key to unlock the full version. If you already have the game or demo installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to get the latest patch.  
Huge Updates:
- 16 new ships: 1 new energy reactor, 3 new starships, 8 new turrets, new mercenary space dock with 3 new mercenary ships.
- Major visual improvements -- planets and backgrounds, some effects, parts of the HUD, and a few ship classes.
- Massively updated economy that is easier to manage and which scales better to very long games.
- New Energy model that provides more incentive for expansion while also fitting within the updated economy.
- Faster Starts:  The repetitive activities from the first 5 or so minutes of a new campaign have now been automated to let players get right to the real game.
- Several major AI improvements: tactical retreats, better aggression against key targets, better tactical intelligence in a number of different scenarios.
- Revamped cross-planet attacks that are better balanced for players.
- A good number of performance improvements make giant battles perform better than ever.
- Network latency settings allow players to tune their game for high-latency networks.
- Improvements to the interface in general, most notably the planetary summary upgrades and the addition of the Threat Meter at the top of the screen.
- Drag-building of ships is now possible, and placement is even easier with Ctrl and Alt hotkeys while placing ships.
- Some updated battle sound effects.
- New "Energy Storm" music track replaces older "Thor" track.
- Many smaller balance tweaks, ship logic improvements, and other minor enhancements and bugfixes.
The above list is just a sampling, however, so be sure to check out the full release notes to see everything (included in the next post in this topic). This DLC release was so massive that it was a month in the making.  Expect our next DLC release to come sooner than that, but the exact timing is going to be dependent on how much testing is ultimately needed for new features.  You can always get the latest public prerelease beta versions from our forums if you'd like to see what's coming down the pike.  Lots more exciting updates are on the way!

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As an added note, if you are a player who is is unable to install patches for whatever reason (this is usually a windows issue), you can download the patch files through the following link: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1000To1201.zip

Then unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else).  Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.  This is a cumulative update, so as long as you have at least version 1.000 of the game installed, this will update you to the latest version (1.201) without any issues.

This update is also available directly through Stardock's Impulse for customers purchasing the game through that platform.

For existing GamersGate customers, you can always upgrade your copy from the "Check For Updates" link in the game just like customers from our direct site can.  The latest version of the installer will also be coming to GamersGate, but that will affect new customers only.

AI War 1.013 (Free DLC, Player Suggestions, And Major Graphics Update)

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet Command version 1.013. You can download a trial version of the game, as well as purchase a license key to unlock the full version. If you already have the game or demo installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to get the latest patch.  
More Free DLC:
- Major improvements to all special effects, including shots, explosions, and other ship-to-ship effects.
- Major improvements to all star backgrounds, especially on high resolutions.
- Major improvements to about half of the planet graphics.
- Faster starts:  Players now start with 20,000 each of metal and crystal, and 10,000 knowledge.
- No more planetary boundary -- ships can go out as far as they like, though fixed-position ships can only be built the same distance from the planet area center as before.
- Yet more efficiency improvements for graphics and the simulation.
- Ion cannons are much more deadly.
- New visual zoom indicator shows zoom level as "letterbox" black bars at the top and bottom of the view.
- Some of the battle sound upgrades (more are coming).
- Several AI tweaks and ship balance adjustments.
- Several fixes to the tutorials to update them to the latest gameplay.
- Various other bugfixes.
The above list is just a sampling, however, so be sure to check out the full release notes to see everything (attached at the end of this post). More free DLC to hit in a week or so. Feel free to check out our updated screenshots gallery for a better look at our new visuals (of which lots more is scheduled for the upcoming months)!

AI War 1.012 Hotfix Released

If you already have the game or demo installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to get the latest patch.  This hotfix corrects an issue in the official 1.011 release.

-Fixed a bug with AI ships not properly guarding the command posts they are supposed to reinforce, instead attacking player planets too much.
-AI was getting too many engineer drones in some reinforcements.
-Planets that are on alert now appear with a yellow border instead of a crimson one.
-Planets that have incoming waves now flash their borders black and red.

The above list is the entirety of this hotfix.  We do our best to insure a high degree of quality in every official release we make, but in this case one rather critical issue slipped through.  The best we can do in these circumstances is issue an official hotfix as soon as possible, but of course with our normal QA testing and the testing of those players who opt to download our prerelease versions, we try very hard to make sure the inconvenience of hotfixes like this does not arise.  Thanks for your patience!

AI War 1.011 Released (Free DLC & Player Suggestions)

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet Command version 1.011. You can download a trial version of the game, as well as purchase a license key to unlock the full version. If you already have the game or demo installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to get the latest patch.  
More Free DLC:
- Several art upgrades -- much more to come in future releases.
- Starships now have various bonuses against force fields, and have munitions booster ability.
- AI wave logic updated: the relative size of the wave now depends partly on the time since the last wave.
- AI players now periodically send devastating cross-planet attacks on difficulty 5 and up.
- All turret health has been greatly increased.
- The network command logic has been completely redone, and is now significantly more efficient.
- Collision logic improved and sped up, and ships no longer bunch up so much when moving in large groups.
- Greatly improved ship types: eyebots, shield bearers, deflector drones, anti-armor ships.
- The build buttons and tech buttons are now organized into columns as well as rows, making for much easier management.
- AI reinforcement and tactical logic has been made more intelligent in several ways.
- Force fields are now larger, but shrink in size as they take damage.
- The minimum system requirements have been lowered thanks to all the recent performance improvements.
- Fixed issue with the AI thread stalling out in some very specific late-game circumstances.
- Various other bugfixes.

The above list is just a sampling, however, so be sure to check out the full release notes to see everything (attached at the end of this post). More free DLC to hit in a week or so. Enjoy!

AI War 1.010 Released (Free DLC & Player Suggestions)

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet Command version 1.010. You can download a trial version of the game, as well as purchase a license key to unlock the full version. If you already have the game or demo installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to get the latest patch.  
More Free DLC: Two new ships, the MLRS Turret III (shown right), and the Tachyon Missile, have been added. The new turret provides new high-level defensive options, while the missile reveals for 30 seconds all ships on the planet at which it detonates.


This release also contains another large batch of improvements, tweaks, and extensions based on player suggestions.  Here are some of the highlights:
- Players can now select more than one home planet when starting the game.
- Energy Reactor efficiency now drops if you cluster too many of them on the same planet.
- Missile Silos and Missiles are now much less expensive, but missile detonation always comes with at least a minor AI Progress increase.
- Screen position, unit selection, and zoom are now remembered when switching back and forth between planets.
- Right-clicking the planetary summary now cycles through ships, making them easier to find.
- Most ships that are non-repairable now have a self-regen ability (including force fields and fortresses).
- Munitions Booster range has been increased, but they now only work while not moving.
- The attack range of Spiders has been greatly increased, making them more dangerous.
- The protection range of all force fields is now larger.
- Teleporting ships can now travel through wormholes, but certain ships are now immune to their attacks.
- Fighters are now more resistant to cruiser shots, making them much more formidable.
- Mark III Engineers now have teleporting in addition to their existing other abilities.
- Several new hotkeys, including "Stop Units" (End) and several unit selection filters (N+0-5, N+8, N+9) .
- Fixed a bug relating to all AI planets on every map having Mark III force fields, rather than variable levels.
- Several bugfixes relating to space tugs.
- Various other bugfixes.
The above list is just a sampling, however, so be sure to check out the full release notes to see everything (attached at the end of this post). It's vacation season around here, so the next batch of free DLC won't be hitting for another two or three weeks -- but we've got some great stuff planned, so stay tuned. After that break, we'll be back to our regular weekly schedule. Enjoy!

AI War 1.009 Released (Free DLC & Player Suggestions)

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet Command version 1.009. You can download a trial version of the game, as well as purchase a license key to unlock the full version. If you already have the game or demo installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to get the latest patch.
 
More Free DLC: In addition to a new Mark III engineer being added, mobile repair station can now build five different variants of space tug, which are very fast ships with tractor beams that can automatically bring ships back to the nearest mobile repair station for healing, then send the ships back into the fray.

This release also contains another large batch of improvements, tweaks, and extensions based on player suggestions.  Here are some of the highlights:
- New ship counts when dragging selection boxes over ship.
- New Team Income display in Galaxy Map Intel Summary.
- New Z+A key combo allows seeing selected ship ranges at mouse cursor.
- F1 key now shows all ship types in planetary summary.
- There is now a visual and auditory warning when any of your command stations are attacked.
- The game now supports cheats.  See the ArcenWiki for a full listing.
- The AI is much more deadly with how it sends its freed ships through wormholes.
- Health bars are now colorized, and now there is an option to show them even in far zoom.
- New ship:  Mark III engineers
- New ships: Mobile Repair Stations can now build 5 different kinds of Space Tug for combat repairs.
- Several efficiency improvements have been added for how the host deals with the AI thread.
- It is now possible to keep playing after a victory/loss, just without score increases.
- If a music stream gets corrupted, it will no longer crash the game.
- Fixed a bug in the prior release with long-range shots aimed at force fields missing.
- The last uses of floating point math have been removed, which helps to avoid desyncs.
- Various other bugfixes.

The above list is just a sampling, however, so be sure to check out the full release notes to see everything (attached at the end of this post).  More free DLC will be heading your way next week. Enjoy!

AI War 1.008 Released (Free DLC & Player Suggestions)

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet Command version 1.008. You can download a trial version of the game, as well as purchase a license key to unlock the full version. If you already have the game or demo installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to get the latest patch.  
More Free DLC: The primary upgrade in this release is improvements to the AI and how the players can interact with them.  Planets on the galaxy map now show up as red (as seen below left) when the AI is likely to reinforce at them.  This helps the human players avoid tipping their hand too soon and causing key AI planets to reinforce too heavily.

Additionally, AI players will now reinforce their wormholes much like the human players tend to do.  This makes deep raiding much more difficult and interesting, and requires many new tactics.  In response to this, the human scouts are now much upgraded -- they all now include Cloaking, and most also now have a Cloaking Booster ability (as seen below right) that makes them even more effective in groups.

 

In addition to the above, this release also contains another large batch of improvements, tweaks, and extensions based on player suggestions.  Here are some of the highlights:
- Capturable ships now are now only captured after a command station is finished being built.
- Parasite costs have increased.
- Waypoints can now be queued in conjunction with wormhole-movement commands.
- Ships can now move between planets in attack-move or free-roaming defender modes.
- Repair Stations and Mark II Engineers have had a range upgrade.
- Cloaked ships will no longer auto-fire at enemy ships unless in attack-move/free-roaming mode.  This helps them maintain invisibility on longer raids.
- New Ship: Wormhole Command Posts are a perma-cloaked ship used by AIs to reinforce their wormholes. Kill the command station to kill these.
- Scouts and EyeBots have been heavily upgraded to deal with the newer wormhole threats; they now all have cloaking, and most have a new Cloaking Booster ability.
- Control group icons are now included in the planetary summary.
- Mark II Science Labs and Missile Silos are now less expensive.
- The range of all tachyon beam emitters is now higher.
- The way the AI reinforces is now tech-level dependent (higher techs get fewer reinforcements).
- Lightning Missiles have been made a bit more durable.
- A new "AI Alert Level" is now shown on the galaxy map intel summaries, showing at which planets the AI is likely to do reinforcements.
- Fixed several fairly rare bugs, including a multiplayer desync relating to attacking forcefields.
- Fixed Astro Trains just hanging out at their stations.
- Fixed a bug with AI players getting new ship types at too fast a rate.
- Fixed a 1.007 bug where too many Advanced Research Stations and Data Centers were being created on maps 80 planets and up.

The above list is just a sampling, however, so be sure to check out the full release notes to see everything (attached at the end of this post).  More free DLC will be heading your way next week. Enjoy!

AI War 1.007 Released (Free DLC & Player Suggestions)

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet Command version 1.007. You can download a trial version of the game, as well as purchase a license key to unlock the full version. If you already have the game or demo installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to get the latest patch.  
More Free DLC: A new transport ship (shown below) can now be unlocked from the DEF tab of your command stations.  This transport is hugely useful for ferrying your weaker ships past heavy enemy defenses (across minefields, past ion cannons, etc).  Transports can also be used for ferrying teleporting ships between planets (very useful, since teleporting ships were previously locked to their current planet).



In addition to the new ships, this release also contains another large batch of improvements, tweaks, and extensions based on player suggestions.  Here are some of the highlights:
- Music streaming has been improved, which speeds up loading savegames and the game itself.
- Suggested paths between planets are now much better.
- Several AI enhancements.
- Harvester ExoShields have been made more useful.
- Fighters have been rebalanced, making them more useful.
- Several new graph options are now available.
- Overzoom is now an option.
- Efficiency of drawing hundreds or thousands of ship attack ranges is now much better.
- Multiple constructors can now be managed at once (space docks, missile silos, etc).
- It is now possible to issue commands to ships still being built (which they will execute after completion).
- Galaxy maps as small as 10 planets are now supported.
- A new Auto AI Progress option has been added, allowing game pacing to be greatly adjusted.
- Performance in very active games with more than 80,000 ships has been greatly improved.
- Trial players can now play with full retail players for the trial duration (1 hour).
- Waypoints now work better with attack-move mode.

The above list is just a sampling, however, so be sure to check out the full release notes to see everything (attached at the end of this post).  More free DLC will be heading your way next week. Enjoy!