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!
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.
