AI War Beta 5.087 "Brawl Royale" Released!

This one contains the last new content that was part of the original promise in the Ancient Shadows expansion, namely the last "main" nebula scenario (which is where I got the release name, it's pretty intense) and the largest champion hull size. There's still other things I may add over the next few weeks (modular fortress versions of some champion modules, some more active-use abilities for the champions, maybe more scenarios, etc), but that's it for the publicly released features list when we opened up preorders. I've still got to close up the loophole that allows duplicate scenarios within one game, but I'm waiting until I'm sure all the scenarios for 6.0 are defined before doing that.

Fixed a few bugs too, but was focused on the scenario so not much else got done. More of the usual smaller-but-more-numerous-changes updates to come soon :)

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 Beta 5.085-5.086 "Shady Carriers" Released!

This one is probably the second-to-last update containing new Ancient Shadows content (though additional scenarios beyond the next may be added between now and release, time permitting). It adds two new scenarios for seeding in the nebulae.

There's also a significant rebalance of AI guardians and AI carriers (what happens when you blow up a carrier, at least). I suspect the result with both will be a bit too much on the easy side, but I think the new situation for both is a lot more consistent (guardians had wildly different dps from each other, previously, and carrier pops were a multidimensional pinata), so we can work up from here as necessary.

And it's got a number of miscellaneous bugfixes and changes, like usual.

Update: 5.086 hotfix is out to fix a bug in 5.085 that would give a bunch of stuff to each champion upon loading the game (here I was thinking that simply turning off the test branch was sufficient, but noooo, I had to have a bug in part of that that could trigger anyway).

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 Beta 5.084 "Diplomatic Incident" Released!

This one continues our process of finishing up the last new content for the Ancient Shadows expansion, and adds another scenario that can seed in a nebula. There are a few old friend/foes/friendly-foes in there, hence the title of this release.

Several balance changes, particularly to the bring the Dark Spire minor faction back into some semblance of sanity (they're supposed to destabilize the situation, not destabilize your computer), and playtesting shows good results there.

The Zenith Reprocessor now has a bit more "character", now being something of a sneaky raider (i.e. "dude, where's my car?").

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 Beta 5.083 "Core Values" Released!

This one is a relatively small release, for us, but the impact on the endgame should be... interesting. It's the last of the non-champion-related new content for Ancient Shadows and adds 3 new Core Guard Posts that the AI can use its "brutal" picks on when populating an AI homeworld's defenses during mapgen. They're all beatable, but they'll take a chunk out of your fleet(s) first. Balance feedback is welcome, as always.

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 Beta 5.080-5.082 "Bonus Round" Released!

This one adds the last three bonus ship types of the Ancient Shadows expansion:

The Youngling Firefly is sort of a mix between the youngling idea, the zenith viral shredder, and a bugzapper. Basically it's an ok fighter that does an AOE explosion when it dies, but that aoe explosion gets stronger based on how much damage it did during its lifetime.

The Saboteur is sort of like flipping the firefly idea around: instead of blowing up when it dies, it makes the stuff it shoots cause an AOE explosion when those victims die. General theme thus far: make stuff blow up.

The Spire Corvette is the first "bonus starship" in the game, and is built from the starship constructor mainly because it is modular and needs its own buy-menu-tab, which the starship mechanic is better setup to support than the space-dock-ship mechanic. Anyway, these are straight-up combat starships, but with half the cap of the Spire Starship so they can be more individually awesome (beware though, your accountant will probably have a heart attack on the higher-mark ones). A selection of modules is available from the start, but the higher-mark versions piggyback on existing research much like the fallen-spire modules, neinzul enclave drones, and modular fortress modules.

This release also has several bugfixes and balance changes, some of them pretty important.

Update: 5.081 hotfix is out to fix some important bug and balance issues in 5.080, and make a number of other changes/fixes that should hopefully improve things overall.

Update: 5.082 hotfix is out to fix a nasty one in 5.081 that could cause basically all buy menus to be empty. Whoops.

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.

Back Home After A Fun And Busy PAX

The emotional roller coaster that is exhibiting at PAX is behind us for the second time this year. I was able to snap/dig up a handful of photos at the event showing the Indie Megabooth crew, our indie dev talk, the Arcen station, and one shot of me looking particularly frowny (think that was near the end of day two, so I may have been unconscious). Wish I had taken more, but it's such a frantic weekend I'm glad to have gathered what I did.

The Megabooth (exhibitors pictured) felt like a smashing success. The attendees bought into the wide variety of games and developer-run booths, and honestly there wasn't anything on the show floor that compared. Lots of great comments and compliments on the effort as a whole and our own specific games as well.

Showing A Valley Without Wind and Shattered Haven was a blast too. People had heard of Valley and/or Arcen a lot more than I was accustomed to, which was awesome. Shattered Haven was a surprise for both myself and attendees, as we weren't totally sure if we could ready a demo by that Friday morning. We managed to pull it off along with officially announcing the game, and those who asked got to check out the PAX-exclusive build.

Most enjoyed playing the games, and they seemed intrigued by all the developments taking place in the coming months for both titles as well as AI War.

PAX Indie Interviews
In my limited spare time I worked to get several video interviews of attending indies with the help of my friend and Arcen's trailer maker Kevin Harland behind the camera. I think we have some 16 or so in the can, with about a quarter edited and uploaded so far. I've highlighted our chat with Andy Schatz about his top-down heist game Monaco on IGM. It's one of the more anticipated indies in recent memories, and finally it's about done and ready for release.

AVWW Beta Keys Now Register On Steam
I believe this was semi-announced, not fully. So just to pass on the good news again: your A Valley Without Wind beta key will now register on Steam. That goes for keys purchased from other stores for the official release as well. We're very happy to be able to finally deliver on this promise, albeit very tardily. We really appreciate everyone sticking with us on it.

Beyond that it's been a pretty quiet period for the game in general, but trust me when I say things are going to get loud for it very soon.

Games Coverage/Videos
It's been a long time since I last updated, so there's quite a few links to pass on. Enough that I separated them out into a few categories in fact. I also included some links to developers I got to spend time with over the weekend. These guys are fantastic and so are their games.

General Megabooth Coverage
Kotaku -- Sweet Mother Of Pearl, There’ll Be A Lot Of Indie Games At PAX This Year

Destructoid -- Here are the games of the PAX Prime Indie Megabooth

Joystiq -- Indie Megabooth site up now for PAX Prime

Polygon -- Indie Megabooth brings 30 devs and more than 30 games to PAX Prime

IndieGames.com -- Indie Megabooth Occupies Pax Prime 2012

Indie Game Magazine -- PAX Prime: Indie Mega Booth Announcement

XBLA Fans -- Indie Mega Booth returns for PAX Prime with 30+ games

Hit Reset -- There Will Be Lots Of Indie Games At Pax Prime

We Got This Covered -- Indie Megabooth PAX Prime Roster Revealed

Other Megabooth Developers You Ought To Follow
Young Horses (Octodad)

Dejobaan Games (Drunken Robot Pornography, Drop That Beat Like An Ugly Baby)

Radial Games (Monster Loves You)

Broken Rules (Chasing Aurora)

Vlambeer (Super Crate Box and Luftrausers)

Ska Studios (Charlie Murder, The Dishwasher Series)

General Arcen Games Coverage
Full Nova Zero -- PAX Prime Preview: Indie Developer Arcen Games

IndieGames.com -- Trailer: Shattered Haven (Arcen Games)

VG247 -- Shattered Haven teaser trailer reveals a pixelated zombie apocalypse

Blue's News -- Shattered Haven Announced

Gamers Haven -- Shattered Haven teaser trailer

Weaboos With Controllers -- PAX Prime 2012: Shattered Haven is not your typical zombie game

Weaboos With Controllers -- PAX Prime 2012: A Valley Without Wind is procedurally awesome

Violent Gamer -- A.I. War: Ancient Shadows Expansion

YouTube Videos/Clips Of Our Games
Gaming With Cloud8745 Episode 1: Tidalis [Let's Play]

FrozenCereal's A Valley Without Wind Let's Play (3 Parts)

Shisno's A Valley Without Wind Let's Play (4 Parts)

Elite Effect Gaming -- Turbo Plays A Valley Without Wind (8 Parts)

Dwarro Games -- A Little Look At A Valley Without Wind Part 1 and Part 2

SoldierJens -- A Valley Without Wind [Let's Play]

NoNeedToBeHuman -- A Valley Without Wind - Level 1 Boss Tower Mission

A Valley Without Wind Demo [Let's Play] (Hungarian)

AI War Beta 5.077-5.079 "Cap Tectonics" Released!

This one finally implements a change that's been on the table in the forums for a month or so: fleet ship caps no longer go down at higher marks. This will help them be more attractive to human players and more useful for both players and the AI (previously a cap of mkV fleet ships actually had a lower cap-dps than a cap of mkIV fleet ships, for instance). The AI still gets a modifier to wave size to keep the higher-tech waves in check, but it's no longer being applied twice like it was. Also, to keep the tech-level difference from being too sudden in waves, the mixed-tech-level-wave rule from diff 9+ now applies to diff 5+.

Since all that was getting shaken up anyway, we went ahead and normalized the cap of all fleet ships that change with unit-cap-scale to be a multiple of 8. This makes it so playing on Low or Ultra-Low caps doesn't "chop off" any part of the cap when dividing it by 4 or 8. To make this work without changing balance, however, a ton of numbers had to be changed to maintain cap-dps and cap-health (and metal, crystal, and energy costs) compared to the previous version. There's still some balance change, but it's within a pretty narrow margin. And the good news is that while these changes were made the internal math was also made a lot more consistent with how we're actually balancing these things now.

There's also several bugfixes and balance changes, most notably reducing the "zombie apocalypse" potential of the recently-added Dark Spire minor faction. I thought it was entertaining ;)

Update: 5.078 hotfix is out to fix a bug where the AI was ignoring unit-cap-scale when sending waves. Result = hilarity.

Update: 5.079 hotfix is out to fix two nasty bugs, including one that could actually corrupt a savegame. Sorry about that! It was those nasty Dark Spire again *shakes fist*. I knew I was adding something mean to the game with those, but there's been this and the (unintentionally severe) zombie apocalypse a few versions ago, so it would seem I had no idea.

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 Beta 5.076 "Clusters Of Pain" Released!

This one is out tonight instead of Monday because a recent change broke the tutorial.

But it also contains two significant bits of content for the Ancient Shadows expansion: a variant of the Clusters map type with more outlandish intra-cluster arrangement, and a new minor faction: the Dark Spire.

Some of you may be thinking "Hey, I've already run into the Dark Spire in a nebula!". Well, you're right, and there's a degree of overlap here. But this is actually a Minor Faction that can be enabled in the lobby, and doesn't have anything to do with the nebula scenarios or champions. It can be pretty intense, though the balance numbers are only based on preliminary testing and may need substantial adjustment.

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 Beta 5.074-5.075 "Focused Forces" Released!

This one includes some key enhancements to the base game we wanted to get in with enough testing time left before 6.0.

Players have been telling us for a while that the AI's Special Forces units were basically... irrelevant. They used to be far more significant but many changes over the years have resulted in a mechanic that just doesn't make a lot of difference in most games. So we rewired it.

Now the galaxy's AI Special Forces will act as a sort of defensive response force, pushing back whenever you attack a planet the AI cares about (which is not all of them). In testing this produced a pretty cool feeling of maneuver and counter-maneuver, but as always we'll really see if it works out when the players get their hands on it. I think it's a step in the right direction, at least.

Speaking of AI defense, here's another thing the players have been asking for: now each AI planet picks three typs of ships to "focus" on when spawning reinforcements. In one sense this reduces the distinct number of ships you're likely to encounter in large numbers in the midgame (in the early game they still start with the same distribution as before), but actually increases the gameplay variety as each planet's mix will be different.

Mere balance changes seem mundane compared to mechanics changes like the above, but there are some pretty important ones to starships and the triangle: The six "combat" starship lines have been given another balance pass. K costs are now more in line with what you're getting, notably. And the fighter is now faster than the bomber was (and the bomber slightly slower) and has more of a role on the attack due to several guardians being switched to hull types that are vulnerable to the fighter. All in all, none of the balance changes are earthshaking, but they're one more step in the right direction.

The release has a couple bugfixes, as well.

Update: 5.075 hotfix is out to fix an array-index-out-of-bounds error in what I did to the AI reinforcements logic. Also made the focused-reinforcements logic apply to initial ship seeding, which should make at least one player happy.

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 Beta 5.072-5.073 "A Revised Experience" Released!

This one adds another nebula scenario that the game can pick to throw at you. "Throw" is somewhat literal, as you will see. Also added some more champion toys to the potential-scenario-reward toybox, and the last modular fortress (Zenith), for your AI-smashing pleasure.

More important than another scenario (though that is cool) are several important changes to the champion experience:
1) Nebula faction ships are now more focused on their jobs (as they see them, you may disagree).
2) Hull-sizes and hull-races are now granted such that you never have a larger hull of one race than another, so the choice of what hull to use is much more a matter of what you prefer than how the dice rolled.
3) XP gain is now way less based on what you kill in the nebulae (which was encouraging farming) and more based on how well you do in the scenarios.

And there's some other changes and fixes, as usual. All in the notes :)

Update: 5.073 hotfix is out to fix the zenith modular fortress trying to use the wrong far zoom icon.

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.

AVWW Post-Release 1.207 "Double Lightning" Released!

This one is the next in our series of adding a new spell and other new tweaks each week while the game is undergoing its art revamp for the next few months.

There are really a lot of good things in this one.  For one, the new spell is just made of awesomesauce: it's easily my favorite spell ever, just for the visual effect alone.  But it's also really fun to catch multiple enemies in your cloud of lightning when you can.  zebramatt suggested the idea as a fire spell, but since other players were pointing out the lack of air-element spells I thought this one would do well to fit both needs at once.

Next up we have yet another 100 rooms thanks to Benmiff.  He.  Is.  A. Machine.  It's no question now that well over half of the room maps in the game are now created by him; it might be closer to 2/3 of them now, I'm not sure.  And we had hundreds to start with!

The name "double lightning" for the post comes about because of Lightning Storm (the new spell mentioned above) plus lot of heavy changes to Lightning Rocket.  Mainly it now moves way faster and drains the mana faster also.  That makes it sort of like a super mega jump, rather than a slow ride upwards.  Boy oh boy, is that fun.  Ulrox really had a great idea with those changes, it's almost like a new spell.

Next up are a variety of bugfixes and balance tweaks, the majority of which seem to either involve Pyrrhic or Misery or both.  Huge thanks to both of them, and all the other players involved as well.  The gift-giving interface is now way less hard to find as part of these changes, and perhaps what might be the most significant change of this release despite all the great stuff above:

The percentages of what seeds in stash rooms is now vastly improved. The little pointless bits of shards, and the extra enchant-charge containers (both of which can be found elsewhere plenty easily) no longer seed. The overall density of the good items has more than doubled as part of these changes

More to come next week.  Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 0.500 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 0.500 or later, you can download that here.

AI War Beta 5.070 "The Once And Fortress King" Released!

This one adds two new bonus ship types: the Zenith Reprocessor, and the much-anticipated Zenith Siege Engine. The latter has to stay immobile for 15 seconds before firing, but it hits like a truck once it does. A truck loaded with plasma torpedoes, that is.

Another long-requested change, from the top of the mantis voting page: the Clusters map type. In a way, it organizes the galaxy into 2 to 6 smaller units, each of which only has a few connections to other clusters.

The name of this release, however, comes from the new AI Type: the Fortress King. Fortress Baron not enough for you? Well, here you go. There's a small mercy included: AI planets bordering your homeworld (unless they're somehow AI homeworlds) will only have the normal command stations. All the other Fortress King planets will have mammoth modular fortresses (that eat bombers for breakfast) that function as command stations. Each one rolls its modular armament separately from a set of templates, so it adds a bit of variety to how your fleet will be (repeatedly) eaten.

Several other fixes and changes, as usual. I'd intended to get the next nebula scenario into this release but I'm probably going to need to divert to helping Chris with a particular subsystem of Shattered Haven, so I wanted to get this into player hands now rather than later :)

Update: 5.071 hotfix is out to fix several bugs with the Fortress King AI type. Also fixed some other issues and packed in some further changes to CPAs and some funny business involving barracks.

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.

Arcen Games Heading To PAX Prime With Indie Mega Booth

We had a lot of fun exhibiting at PAX East earlier this year in Boston. So much so we decided we just couldn't pass up the chance to do the same at PAX Prime next week in Seattle. So if you're attending, keep an open spot in your schedule to stop by! (Or even better, give us a heads-up ahead of time* to ensure I haven't run off to lunch.)

We'll be one of the 30 developers making up the incredibly amazing Indie Mega Booth (just look at all those notable developers and good games). We got to know a lot of these guys at PAX East, and we're excited to be a part of the massive collection of indie game exhibitors this time around. Specifically, I'll be located in booth #868 sharing space with the awesome folks of 24 Caret Games--developers of PS3 title Retro/Grade which just arrived this week on PSN. 

As noted in the trailer below, A Valley Without Wind will be playable. There may be some new artwork stuff to showoff there as well. I'll be chatting up the Ancient Shadows expansion with those who want to talk about it, but I doubt anyone would get much out of a short floor demo for a game like AI War. We're also planning some giveaways of our titles both on-sight and online; plus we may have something else to debut. Not sure yet, we'll see.

On top of that, I'll be heading up the 'Open Development for Indies: Why Cooperative Trumps Competitive' panel with a handful of other indie devs in the Serpent Theater, 3:00 PM on Sunday (September 2nd). If you're interested in indie development at all, or if you just want to say hi, make sure not to miss us in the afternoon during the final day of the conference.

If you want updates on what we and all the other devs in the mega booth are up to, or if you just want to support us all in general, the Indie Mega Booth Facebook and Twitter stuff is a go.

9 days and counting!

Here's the latest coverage coming in, mostly from the AVWW Steam sale (now concluded) and art update:

Joystiq -- A Valley Without Wind's impending art revamp in version 1.3, sale now

VG247 -- A Valley Without Wind 50% off on Steam, headed for graphical overhaul

Co-Optimus -- A Valley Without Wind On Sale at 50% Off

Blue's News -- A Valley Without Wind Art Upgrade Coming

PCGamersN -- A Valley Without Wind patch 1.206 “Watery Warp” released

DealSpwn -- A Valley Without Wind Getting Massive Art Overhaul

TheBitBag -- A Valley Without Wind 50% off on Steam, major graphic overhaul incoming

GameZone -- A Valley Without Wind getting graphical redesign

HardReset -- A Valley Without Wind Review

DealSpwn -- AI War Ancient Shadows DLC Enters Public Beta

Forum User Hartmann -- Let's Play A Valley Without Wind! (A Gainax Production)

*That goes for both press and attendees. If you happen to be media and are interested in our Indie Mega Booth press kit, head here.

AI War Beta 5.068-5.069 "Old Enmity Reclaimed" Released!

This one adds another scenario that can be seeded in a nebula. The usual goes with it: more champion hulls and module lines are possible as rewards. There's also a couple new abilities that can be unlocked through nebula rewards.

A few important balance changes were made to recently-added stuff: Tackle Drone Launchers got nerfed heavily. Scapegoats got something of a nerf, but the higher-mark versions now actually deliver more of their unique utility than the first mark, rather than less.

Also added keybinds to make champion direct-ability-use easier, now that it's a thing. Basically Ctrl+Q to use your first ability, Ctrl+W to use your second, and so on, though you can only get 2 on any one champion right now. If you prefer the Q,W,E,R (without holding Ctrl) method, you can change the binding and it will only apply when you have a single champion selected so it won't interfere with the normal zoom-functions of those keys at any other time.

There's also a few other miscellaneous changes and fixes, as usual.

Update: 5.069 hotfix is out to fix a bug where only the most-recently-added scenario was being seeded in nebulae. What do you mean, "did you leave testing code in, Keith?" Have I ever done such a thing? ... um, yea. Anyway, a few other important fixes in there (like preventing minor-faction ships with plasma-siege shots from "helpfully" killing forcefield-protected AI command stations for you) and a long-needed buff to CPAs on higher difficulties, though we probably aren't done on that front.

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 Beta 5.064-5.066 "Abilities Unlocked" Released!

This one adds two more bonus ship types for the Ancient Shadows expansion: the Neinzul Scapegoat and the Spire Railcluster. The Scapegoat has a one-shot version of the Regenerator Golem's ability (only works on fleet ships) and I expect to hear tales of absurd exploits and thus have to nerf it, but have fun figuring them out ;) The Railcluster isn't as unique as the Scapegoat or the others added thus far for AS (the medic frigate and the tackle drone launcher) but in another way it is unique: it's the first "Spire fleet ship" that's purely oriented towards straight-up combat. It shreds little stuff particularly.

If you play versus the new "Heroic" AI Type, expect to see some now-familiar toys getting thrown back in your face. The AI's champions are much simpler than human ones (no nebula travel, XP gain, etc) but they come with nasty modules (from a randomly picked template, for variety) and should spice things up a bit.

Speaking of champions, I'd meant to have another scenario ready for this release but other champion-related issues took priority. Specifically:

The interface for managing the modules has been pretty schizophrenic with both the normal build-queue method and the specialized "ship design window" method because the champion's situation is so unique. So now it just directs you to the ship-design-window method for champions, with a settings toggle for getting the old build-queue method back if you really want it. Feedback on this would be quite welcome.

Further, the interface for spending unlock points was... unwieldy. So now the ship design tab doesn't try to do any of that, and that function is now performed by the "Champion Unlocks" tab of the same window. Personally I think it looks pretty nice, but it is still a user interface designed by an engineer, so your mileage may vary ;)

Finally, another tab has been added to the normal HUD you see when you have a champion selected: in addition to the "MODS" tab (which used to hold the build queue stuff and now is just a shortcut to ship-design) you now have an "ABILITY" tab. You'll only see one ability there right now (a neinzul champion gets a different one) but the idea is that they spend a newly-added champion resource: Shadow charge. It was part of the original design but I'd gone back and forth on whether it really made sense to have directly-triggered abilities in this game. Since then player feedback has made it clear that it really would help make the champions feel more interesting to use, so here we go.

Oh, and there's several bugfixes and balance changes, but you probably already guessed that from previous releases :)

Update: 5.065 hotfix is out to fix a bug where Shadow Charge was accumulating without cap, and a few nasty UI bugs with the ship-design tab. Also revised the bomber-drone balance change.

Update: 5.066 hotfix is out to fix a UI bug when trying to open another player's champion in ship-design. Would generally only come up in singleplyer games with multiple champions, but it's pretty annoying in that case.

Update: 5.067 hotfix is out to fix a bug where nebulae past the third or fourth were not generating scenarios, and a few other bugfix/balance changes.

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.