AI War 2 has left early access!
about 5 years ago – Wed, Oct 23, 2019 at 01:46:21 AM

Chris here! By any sane metric I can think of, AI War 2 shouldn’t exist. And yet it’s more than I ever imagined it could be.

(Store links: Steam, Humble, GOG)

When we first set out to make this game three years ago, it was far less ambitious. Even that was going to be really hard. Somehow, in the process of falling down the stairs over and over again during this period, we wound up with a game that seems to be superior to the original.

This game shouldn’t exist, but it does, and I’m both proud and stunned.

The Secret? Community

The intro to this post runs the risk of sounding like I’m tooting my own horn, but it’s not actually about me. I’m not capable of making — even just designing — this game on my own. I don’t think anyone is, really.

The fact that this game exists isn’t a testament to me having some brilliant insight or a singular vision that I doggedly pursued. The reviews of the game are lovely, but give me entirely too much personal credit.

The state of this game is thanks to dozens of people critically thinking about this game — what this one and the original means to them and to others — and then a process of relentless, continuous, arduous iteration and improvement.

MVP Award: BadgerBadger

This section is long, and in some ways tangential, but if you read it you’ll understand why I’ve put it here so prominently. You have this guy to thank as much as me or Keith for this game existing.

Badger has been involved since the kickstarter, with questions and comments and key insights. For a lot of the first year, he was responsible for something like 80% of the bug reports and feature ideas on our idea tracker. When a lot of other people were just bouncing off the game and waiting around for Keith LaMothe and I to figure things out on our own — understandable, really — Badger was there providing really key insight and ideas.

But that was barely the start for him. After a while I was essentially like “so, do you just want source code access, given how much you’re doing here?” Because he had started doing some mods — nanocaust and macrophage, at the time, IIRC — and it was clear he would be less hand-tied if he had more access.

What happened next was essentially us getting a developer — volunteer, no less — who contributed as much to the design of the game as I did, in my opinion. Not only did he single-handedly conceive of and implement the nanocaust and macrophage, but he also did the dark spire and marauder impelementations, among many, many other things.

Some of the most brilliant and devious things that the AI has in this game compared to the first one? Badger. Some of your favorite UI detail screens, like metal flows? Badger.

Not to mention all the bugfixes, balance tweaks, and… just oodles more. This game wouldn’t exist in anything like the state it does now without Badger. Any credit for my “singular vision” on the game is doing him a major disservice, but he’s a quiet sort of guy when it comes to taking credit, so I wanted to take this chance to call him out in particular.

Growing Volunteer Developer Corps

So, Badger is not remotely the only person I need to call out as being absolutely indispensable.

RocketAssistedPuffin has also been involved heavily for the last year plus, and has taken over huge numbers of things that I never would have had time for. After I implemented the new tech system one way, he’s the one who figured out how to make it substantially more balanced. Most of the voluminous “balance change” sections on the release notes are from him working with other players or just reasoning things out himself.

Puffin has also had a ton of ideas on how to make things better in all sorts of sections of the game, and there was a period of about three months late last year where he and Badger were basically doing ALL the development on the game and I just pushed out releases of what they were doing. I was going through a really painful divorce and had a ton of anxiety and couldn’t face work, and these two kept things alive and improving.

But it never stopped there. Those new tutorials you like? Puffin. I wrote the bulk of the “How To Play” in-game wiki sections, but the most basic and understandable ones for new players were… again, Puffin. I’m excellent at writing encyclopedic entries that fill you in on huge numbers of details, but he’s the one who distilled “what’s the most central stuff you need to know, as briefly as possible” so that people can actually get into the game in any reasonable timeframe. Compare his work here to the tutorials I did in the original game, and it’s night and day.

And I’m still selling Puffin short, frankly, because he’s done so many things over such a long period that I can’t remember it all now.

More recently, we’ve had folks like WeaponMaster and Asteroid joining in and adding lots of bugfixes and quality of life improvements that I never would have had the time to do myself. Things like hovering over galaxy map links to see information on them were Asteroid. Endless tricky bugfixes were WeaponMaster. I’m selling them both short, but the release notes are filled with things that they either implemented or suggested or both.

And it doesn’t stop there. Quinn stepped in an made a bunch of additions. Keith laid the original groundwork for the entire game simulation and multithreading (he was the main programmer and designer for the first year and a half, and actually on staff during that time).

And there were so, so many others. And more each month!

Volunteers Beat Modders, I Think

I’m pretty free with the source code access, because I’d rather have a consolidated community of people helping rather than a bunch of mods that you have to hunt down and find.

So a lot of the folks that have turned into volunteers are what would have been modders on most other games. They would have made their own thing that you had to install and then wonder about the cross-compatibility of.

This game does have a ton of moddability, and for anyone who wants to “just” be a modder, that’s absolutely fine with me. But for a lot of the mods that are getting the most love, I’m happy to share source code access with those folks so that they’re in no way hobbled, and so that their work can go out as additional content that every player can find via in-game options without having to hunt through Steam Workshop or whatever else.

It’s an unorthodox approach, but a lot more team-oriented and lets us do quality control on each others’ stuff, “mods” included, which is a big win. If someone wants to steal the source code for this game, they can just decompile it like any other game for the most part. I’d rather put my trust in people and see things flourish rather than retain a stranglehold out of fear or pride.

What Did I Actually Do, Then?

All of this help from others let me focus on some of the really tricky architectural and design problems, which led to things like us even being able to HAVE a simulation of this size, and to have it perform as smoothly as it does.

I got to build lots of mechanics that other people then actually turned into specific units. It also gave me time to focus on some really nagging problems that just made the early versions of the game… unpleasant.

If I hadn’t had the time to think and talk to people about all those things, we never would have seen all the game evolve this way; I would have been mired in content development and other items just to get the basics out for the game.

The original design for this was something that Keith and I put together as a pair, but it only worked out so well. It was a good foundation, but needed… a lot of help. We both pushed that forward a lot, until the money situation got to the point where he (and all the other staff, eventually) had to step away, and I carried on “alone” (but with all those volunteers).

There came a couple of major turning points where I was reflecting on why I was so unhappy with this game as it existed, and listening to the various gripes that playtesters had, and then I was able to spend a month or three implementing something drastically new.

Fleets are the most notable of those, and they were initially met with a lot of mixed feelings and distaste because only part of my idea was there on the first public launch of those. Only in the last month or so has that feature completely come into its own, and that also had a lot to do with continuous feedback from people in early access telling me what they needed and what they did and didn’t like.

We also had a number of points during development where we just couldn’t escape certain performance problems, because there were suddenly battles that were an order of magnitude larger than the first game (which was itself the largest strategy game simulation of individual units that I’m aware of on the market until this sequel). So I got to focus on a whole bunch of crazy improvements and data structure inventions and even GPU shader tricks in order to make all this stuff work.

Without the rest of the community helping, there’s no way I could have had time to work on all that sort of thing, even in three years of development. A game of this scope shouldn’t run this well — it shouldn’t be possible — but it is because I was given the gift of time by so many others.

A Decade In The Making

It has been 10 years to the day since the first AI War came to Steam, and it’s been 3 years of developing this sequel.

We didn’t do any work on any AI War games from late 2014 through late 2016, but the rest of that time has been spent at least partly working on the original game or this sequel.

From version 5.0 of the original game through version 8.0, Keith was pretty much the sole developer on that while I focused on other things. He built out a ton of creative and clever things that made a return in this game, and also pushed the concept of what the AI could be — adding in some traditional decision-tree style logic in places in addition to the more decentralized-style AI that I had come up with back in 2009. That one that originally made waves on slashdot and reddit and hackernews and so on.

I’ve worked as the producer and design lead on this sequel, among my many other roles, and so the fact that there seems to be a “singular vision” is hopefully a sign that I did a good job in that role. But the degree to which this is a product of dozens of people’s work, over an extremely long period of time, really can’t be understated.

That’s what I meant all the way back at the start. This sort of thing shouldn’t have happened. It’s just so… unlikely. A ton of people came together over a decade and helped make something unlike anything else on the market.

That’s before even getting into other major (former) staff contributors like Daniette “Blue” Shinkle doing the vast majority of the art and coming up with the way-prettier style of ship that evolved AFTER the kickstarter, the awesome score by Pablo Vega, and 25 voice actors who did a fantastic job as various humans and the AI.

And good grief, I’d be remiss not to mention Erik and Craig and all the other folks at Indie Bros, who helped manage so many aspects of this game, as well as often doing work like helping clean up voice lines, etc.

A Few Common Questions

If you’re interested in what is coming in the very short term, there’s a post for that.

Similar if you want to know what the plan is for multiplayer.

For kickstarter backers (or anyone else who is curious), there’s an FAQ as well as roadmap of stuff for the next few quarters relating to kickstarter stretch goals.

And I just have to once-again plug this awesome After Action Report by zeusalmighty.

My Deepest Thanks

I never wanted to make this game, because I didn’t think I could. The original AI War seemed to be the high water mark of my career, and I spent a lot of time trying to make peace with that. But when the market shifted in 2015 and 2016 and finances started getting tight, it became clear that returning to the game that started it all was what made the most sense.

Thanks to all of the kickstarter backers for believing that we even COULD build this game. Keith and I felt like we could do something that would make you happy, but probably not something that would top the original. It took two extra years of development and an enormous village of people to make THAT a reality. So thanks to everyone for their patience and support during that time.

I also want to say a big thanks to everyone for their understanding during my divorce, which happened shortly after entering Early Access for this game. That made everything so much harder, and took me out of commission for a full three months or so where I just couldn’t work much. I had to learn how to be me again, and come to terms with being a dad with shared custody rather than a full-time father, and all of that was incredibly hard.

But the good news is that, as has happened with this game itself, a lot of things in my personal life have turned out unexpectedly, improbably well in the last year. After deciding to date again (after 18 years off the market, wow), I wound up meeting the woman who is now my fiancée surprisingly quickly (all things considered). Kara and her daughter have made my entire world so much richer than I realized it could be, and my son finally has the sister he’s wanted for so much of his life.

I feel incredibly fortunate, and a lot of my ability to get back to work and not crumble under the weight of anxiety and expectations for this game were thanks to Kara’s support and presence. The reality of her life as a doctor and surgeon also helps to kind of put my own work into perspective, sometimes, in the best way.

However this turns out financially, and despite my anxieties about my future as a game developer, I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve all created together, and I feel surrounded by all the right people both at work and outside of work. This has been the hardest three year period of my life, but the end result has all been worth it.

Thanks to everyone, and I hope you enjoy the game — both what it is now, and what’s to come.

Very Best,
Chris

FAQ For Backers As AI War 2 Leaves Early Access
about 5 years ago – Fri, Oct 18, 2019 at 11:30:53 PM

Chris here! AI War 2 is going to be leaving Early Access on this coming Tuesday, the 22nd. I'm going to touch on some common questions that people will have, and outline the roadmap from here forward.

Should I Already Have My Steam Key?

Yes indeed, long ago! All of you should have had it at least two years ago. But if you never downloaded it, you can get it from aiwar2.backerkit.com.

Please note that any Steam key you downloaded was not "just an alpha key" or something like that. Those keys are the real deal, the final version, giving you all the future updates to the base game, including 1.0 and beyond.

This Is Single-Player Only?

Yes, temporarily. We only ever marketed the game to non-kickstarter folks as a single-player experience, because adding that in is a pretty big job and the project was already two years over deadline. We basically chose to prioritize having a really solid and polish single-player experience first, THEN go in and add multiplayer as a "nice surprise" for non-kickstarter folks (and obviously as to meet a promise we made during the kickstarter).

This isn't something that delayed multiplayer at all (it takes how long it takes), but it DID get you a polished singleplayer version of the game far sooner. Our options were to delay both, have both sooner but not very polished, or to delay multiplayer but have solo as polished and soon as possible. We chose the latter option, for hopefully obvious reasons.

Estimated release for the multiplayer component being FINAL is sometime in Q1 or Q2 of 2020, but we'll probably go into a beta for it in the next month or so. I expect it to be very broken for a while, and it will be clearly marked as beta, but it won't harm the single-player experience while we're working on that.

Want a bunch of technical details and so forth on what we're planning with multiplayer? This post has you covered.

Is This Just A Reskin Of The First Game?

Definitely not! Though if you recall a certain point in development, a year and a half or so ago, that would have been an accurate description of the game at that time.

The short history (of the full release notes) is that:

Originally the sequel felt TOO different from AI War 2, as well as not all that fun in general.
So we did something we called "The Pivot," which took us back in the direction of the first game and made things feel more familiar.
But then things felt TOO familiar, and a lot of the old-style problems from the first game started creeping back in.
After a while, things got better and we went to Early Access... but it still was lackluster. People weren't really engaging with the game as much as I would have expected, and I shared the feeling.
After a LOT of time, I came up with the idea for a new Fleets system, which took a few months to initially implement and then another half year to polish to where it satisfied all the goals that many different people had for the sequel.

Beyond that, we also have a TON of new factions, which make the game play really differently if you turn those on. And the AI is smarter in general, too.

There is a "For Returning Players" section in the in-game wiki (under "How To Play" on the main menu) that will get you up to speed quickly if you were a big fan of the first game.

Suffice it to say, sometime in the last few months we finally hit the point where lots of people started commenting that we had outdone the first game, and that they prefer the new one and can't go back, etc. That was one of the big triggers for me to finally relax into feeling like 1.0 was a feasible thing.

What Happened To Arks?

This could be an entire post on its own, so rather than filling up the space here, I'll just link you to a post that has a history of Arks and what they were and why turned into what they are now. It's actually a really interesting topic, and there's room for us to do more things with Arks in the future than we ever could have with the original design we started with.

What Happened To Mercenaries?

They're still there, but they're now called Outguard. At the moment they still are groups that you hire, like mercenaries always have been, but I want to reinvent this post-1.0 to be something that more people are likely to use. Here's the design for how those will work, why the name change, and why the planned changes. They aren't BAD as they are now, but they also just aren't a central part of the game like I'd hoped they could be.

Backer Reward Question: This actually plays into a number of backer rewards, where players were going to get to design some mercenary outfits. Now they'll be designing Outguard groups. This is something that will wait until after the rework, and it's something that we'll be able to do more with thanks to other planned mechanics. It's one of those things where folks will wind up getting a bit more than they were promised, but just a bit later (actually that accurately sums up the entire game itself, to be frank).

What About The Stretch Goal Features?

Referring to:

Interplanetary Weapons
Playable Spire
The Nemesis

These are three major new features, and we had always (I think?) said that these would be post-launch features in order to not delay the core game for them. So that's still the plan. These features will be coming in Q1 or Q2 of 2020.

First Paid DLC Expansion Plans

Please hold your pitchforks for a moment! All the kickstarter backers are going to get the first paid DLC expansion for free.

It will be launching in Q1 or Q2 of 2020, and will feature the stretch goals plus probably some other stuff. This will be absolutely free for anyone who backed this via crowdfunding, but it will be a paid product for everyone else.

Why Free To Backers?

Because we promised those features to you. Doesn't get any simpler than that.

Why Paid For Everyone Else?

This sequel is already huge, by any metric you want to use. Content-wise it's about the size of the original game plus its first two expansions, but honestly that does a big disservice to the sequel in terms of really looking at the scope of what is new and replay value, etc. This is one of the largest projects we've ever done, and certainly the largest single initial launch product ever.

For instance, we had never planned on just how much was added to the main game outside of what we ever promised (Nanocaust, Dark Spire, Marauders, Macrophage, and basically everything Badger did -- all huge and really notable in its ability to just completely change the game). Things like that (and Astro Trains, and all sorts of smaller capturables, and Arks that are unique, etc) all really add up fast to making this game just monstrously huge already.

With that in mind, and with my general anxiety over funds that are very much insufficient for me to keep doing this in the long run, a paid expansion just plain makes sense. Can't break any promises to backers, but since we already over-delivered on the core game experience it should be a no-brainer sort of thing for non-backers to find the expansion to be an attractive and fair (and optional) add-on.

What Was That About Finances?

The TLDR is that I'm in good enough shape to finish the many various kickstarter promises, but beyond that I'm anxious I might be pushed out of the industry. This isn't an idle fear: I've had one cash-flow-positive month out of the last... three or four years, I can't remember exactly. That one happened to be a VERY positive month, but the fact remains that I've racked up a lot of debt and exhausted all my personal funds, as well as having to lay off all the staff except for myself. And it still isn't enough.

This isn't meant to be something that causes you any anxiety, because one way or another you'll be getting what you were promised by the end of Q2 next year in terms of the extra stuff beyond the base game. But it seemed prudent to use that extra time and work to try to raise more funds, and leaving Early Access is also a way to signal to people that they can buy the base game with confidence (they can, at this point; it's not an EA product in style anymore, remotely).

My concern is a bit longer-term-looking: I'd really like to be able to work on paid expansions paired with free updates for this game for another few years at least, along the lines of what was done with AI War Classic and its six expansions over 2009-2014. At the moment, the financial trend hasn't really been supportive of that.

Honestly it looks like things will turn around, given how wishlisting is going with AI War 2 and how people are reacting to it via reviews, but I'm trying to be as careful as possible.

Originally this project was supposed to take only one year and I wasn't supposed to be working on it for more than about 6 months myself. All the crowdfunding money went to other staff, and I wound up being on this for a total of around 2.5 years instead. Out of pocket (and adding on debt) this cost me around $200k to $300k (depends on how you allocate certain expenses that were R&D in nature) on top of the crowdfunding money. So I'm way in the hole, and essentially have been working for free for several years now.

It's possible that this will now suddenly majorly pay off for me, since I made the choice to delay the game until it was legitimately good rather than rushing it out the door. It certainly wouldn't have paid off if I just pushed out whatever junky version or broke a bunch of promises. So we'll see. But I'm also trying to hedge, so if things go sideways over the next few months I don't wind up in yet more debt on top of what's already there.

It's not really something you need to worry about as a backer, because it doesn't affect the product you're getting in any way, but I figured it was worth sharing that so you'd know where I'm at. Sometimes people suggest awesome ideas for expansion content and I'm just kind of like... "yeah... I mean, my fingers are super crossed..."

What About The Other Custom Arks?

Changing gears. Whew.

The game currently has... I dunno... I think 5 Arks? That sounds right. I think there were 11 commissioned in all. Blue completed the graphics for most all of them, but most of them were not integrated yet.

Why not? Well, we stopped having Arks be just a basic "Arks are all the same but just different visuals" style to them. So as we add more features to the engine, and more functions that ships can perform, we're going to be making some new ships that take advantage of those new features in the first DLC expansion (again: free for you backers).

The idea is very similar to what we always did with the first game over the years, where we added in new mechanics to the core engine, and then there was expansion-specific content that actually used it. This has advantages for this game in particular in that if someone wants to make a mod with their own content, they'll never have to worry about if someone has X Y or Z expansion installed and thus if their mod will work. All mods would Just Work with whatever combo of expansions people have.

Backer Reward Question: Anyway, as you might be guessing, some of the new ships for that first expansion that would use the new mechanics would be those remaining Arks. We'll work with those backers in question to get those in over the next half year or so.

How About Player-Triggered Taunts?

This was a backer reward, and we don't have very many of them to integrate. We haven't set up this feature yet, but it will be something that gets added as free post-release content.

How About Those Desktop Backgrounds?

I just sent those out to everybody last week, but you can also download them from aiwar2.backerkit.com if you missed the email.

How About Merc Rewards?

For the bronze, silver, and gold merc rewards, we'll be working on those with those backers -- under the name outguard, and after those mechanics are revised -- with probably at least some of that content heading to the first DLC expansion (free for all backers as noted above).

How About Flagship Designer Rewards?

The game has evolved a lot since this reward was designed, and I'm not really sure where to slot these now. We'll figure out something cool that fits with the spirit of what this reward was. These could either be outguard flagships, potentially, or they could be new Lone Wolf style fleet leaders that people can capture. I'm open to either. Probably at least some of that content will be heading to the first DLC expansion (free for all backers as noted above).

How About Derelict Fortress Rewards?

These again could go one of several ways. They could be combat factories or some other form of battlestation or citadel -- that would be the most logical. Or they could be singular large things that you can capture (probably via hacking), like the ion cannons work. I'm open to either. Probably at least some of that content will be heading to the first DLC expansion (free for all backers as noted above).

How About Loremaster Rewards?

This affects one backer, and I'll work with him on that -- it will probably be just a post-launch piece of content that drops and is available for everyone.

Other Rewards?

I think I've addressed everything that anybody actually backed for, other than things like "hours of dedicated modding support," which is pretty much just a case of "email me or PM me or message me on kickstarter and we'll set you up."

Other Storefronts?

Other than Steam and Humble? I'll... cough... have some news on that soon, but I can't share details yet. It should be happy-making for you.

Big Picture, How Are Things Right Now?

I think it's important to end on this note, since I went into a few bits that could definitely sound scary. (They scare me, anyway.)

Right now we're sitting at about 55k wishlistings of the game on Steam, which is a good number heading out of EA.
Sales during EA were very strong at first, but then very quickly tapered off. A lot of this had to do with the fact that I took a three-month sabbatical from work because of emotional distress and rebuilding my life after unexpected divorce.
Sales of our back catalog games have been going down and down as Steam gets more crowded, and our first half of 2019 sales of everything PLUS AI War 2 were lower than our first half of 2018 sales of just other stuff minus AI War 2. That's bad, and that's mainly a market thing. Our back catalog sales dropped by 50% year over year after being really strong for most of a decade.
That said, being in Early Access is a major handicap since a lot of people have been so burned by devs who abandon EA projects for various reasons, so that was yet another reason to get things fixed up and get properly out of EA.
In general our engagement with players is rising rather sharply, as evidenced by player counts, play time in the game, activity on the Steam forums, and so on. Also a slew of new positive reviews. People are connecting with a game in a positive way that they simply didn't even six months ago, so we've done our job well. That will hopefully translate to sales.
There's a growing list of volunteers who are helping out on various things in addition to Badger and Puffin now, and quite frequently they're adding cool things I never would have had time for or thought of. I'm incredibly grateful for the interest people take, and to be able to make it so that those benefits go to everyone versus those just being a collection of unofficial mods you have to find somewhere.
As noted, I have the funds to finish the first expansion and all the various things that are promised to the kickstarter backers, regardless of what happens with the sales of the game itself. The question isn't what you'll get, it's a matter of what state I'll be in after it's all done, and if I get to stay and do more expansions or what.
Steam user reviews are still hovering around 90%, with an increasing trend toward positive in the last month in particular as a lot of quality of life improvements have really made the game feel new-again for those of us who have been staring at it for thousands of hours.
We've done a metric ton on the game over the last three years, it's just insane and something I'm really proud of no matter what else happens.

Things are trending generally upwards, and it will just depend on how the next few weeks and months go as to what happens to my career in the long term.

I'll be okay either way, but I'd really like to stay independent and making these sorts of games... and also on the side make some games that my kids can enjoy, possibly under a different company name so as to not confuse people. Balancing out the hardcore strategy stuff for adults with some lighter fare for kids would be a really pleasing way to spend my work life and not bombard you guys with DLC like certain companies do.

We'll see what happens. I'm nervous, but feel like things are in as good a shape as they possibly can be. If this winds up being the swan song of my career, that's certainly a very poetic and honorable way to go out, so I won't have any regrets on that. One way or another it will all be good for me personally, and for the game itself it's so much better already than I'd ever dreamed it would be.

Thanks for listening, and apologies for the ramble at the end.

Best,

Chris Park

September AAR by zeusalmighty: Bubble Bloodbath (aka “Controlled Chaos”)
about 5 years ago – Thu, Oct 17, 2019 at 09:47:07 PM

Chris here! This post is mostly not written by me, but rather by longtime community member zeusalmighty. He did an awesome After Action Report of one of his playthroughs of the game about a month ago, complete with screenshots, and I've been meaning to share this for a while.

The game has actually come even further since his original AAR was posted -- wow it's been a busy and exciting period -- but this is still a great representation of where the game is at now.

I'll have some more posts very soon about the fact that the game is actually leaving Early Access on this coming Tuesday the 22nd, but I wanted to go ahead and get this one up now.

Now I'm going to turn it over to zeus (reprinted with permission):

AAR: Bubble Bloodbath (aka “Controlled Chaos”) Overall Impression

This was by a large margin the most exciting campaign I have played to date. From start to finish, this campaign sucked me in the way that classic did once I got over the learning curve--I lost track of time by my sheer enjoyment.

So what made this campaign special?

This campaign had distinct phases which required their own tactics to support my overall goal of triggering a massive civil war and survive the inevitable destruction of the awaken dark spire.

This turned out to be even cooler in practice than in theory.

TLDR

Raid Starter flagship; 3 AI (Golemite, Swarmer, Fortress Baron); Nanocaust; Dyson; Dark Spire

My overall plan is to raid/expand to keep AIP as low as possible throughout the game, until I reach a tipping point and can take the AI headon. I will liberate the Dyson Sphere and hack them several times to buff them up and will eventually be powerful enough to release the nanocaust into the galaxy and force them into submission. They will become powerful allies but the AI’s collective response is mighty. Lots of ground will be contested and re-conquested by all sides.

With the death of the first AI, I’m no longer positioned to crush the other two. Perfect time to trigger the civil war, in other words. CHAOS unleashed! This releases the avalanche of dark spire, epic battles at both remaining AI HWs but the AIs are tenacious themselves. But they cannot stand the series of vengeance strikes I unleash--the AI’s are routed from the HW but are trapped between my massive fleets and the dark Spire. They are crushed and victory is mine!

Galaxy Settings

Maxed out AIP Reducers Prolific Capturables

Tweaked health/damage modifiers but don’t precisely remember. The strike craft proportionally dominated though.

Mark 1 stats:

(frigate)Raid Starship: 15K Hull / 45 Shields; 2,000 damage (strike craft) Turbo stingray: 1,800 Hull/Shields; 180 damage (pike turret): 8,100 Hull / 20K Shields; 416 damage

Grand Strategy Early Game

Phase 1: Raiding for AIP Reducers -- Reconnaissance

Immediately unlock mark III raid tech to buff my raid starships--my early game is based entirely on their efficacy of sneaking through enemy worlds to kill AIP reducers and take down Guard posts as needed. I need to take a couple of planets just for the intel (I’ll spend quite a few hacking points for this purpose too throughout the campaign).

I find I’m near two Major Data Centers so capturing these will satisfy my immediate Early game objectives. With them secured, I will sit near or at AIP floor and can feel comfortable in choosing next major objectives.

Phase 2: LeapFrog --Fortifying Defenses

With my raiding strategy, I leapfrog as much as possible to keep AIP low. I may come back for certain planets later, and I make a point of neutering planets in-between the worlds I own. I ignore one planet next to my HW until the last hour of the game; late game there will be some epic team fights here.

I need a few more fleets and interestingly find several of the bomber theme. These will turn out to be instrumental in my overall plan of quickly neutralizing prime targets. One of my most amusing and tactically important decisions was to move my daggers (raider variant) to join my bomber fleet. My pulsar tanks and bombers become *much* more efficacious now--the speed boost on these typically sluggish units is both hilarious and effective. This makes my raiding strategy even more effective, as I can quickly destroy guard posts without even needing to load them back into the transport.

I’m now focused on securing planets with GCS to get very powerful static defenses. RNG favored me with prolific ambush and pike turret GCS that will carry me throughout the late game. This is particularly fortunate given that I buffed strike craft health so much that splash damage wasn’t going to be nearly as viable--high dps focus fire is going to get me through tough situations later.

Phase 3: Raiding for Science -- Distribution Nodes, Astro Trains, and Super Forts

My scouting has already revealed nice destructibles to supplement my science and hacking, so I send my raid starships to raid in the name of science! I have collected a huge amount of science compared to my AIP, which is always nice. This lets me indulge in some candy tech.

There are still quite a few AIP reducers in the galaxy, so I take these out and expand to keep AIP around 70 - 100 AIP for a considerable amount of time.

Phase 4: Let the AIP Hit the Floor -- Securing Major Data Centers

Once I get my 2nd Major data center, I feel pretty comfortable. Now I can be more ambitious about my targets and focus on getting Officers.

SO far: AIP 180

Total AIP Earned: 429; AIP Reduction: 245

With the low AIP and the amount of GCS I have now taken, my planets are pretty self-sufficient and so I use my fleets primarily on the offensive. This concludes my early game--about 5 hours into the game.

Mid Game

Phase 5: Arks and Golems -- Collecting Super Weapons

The pace of midgame is much more aggressive than my early game. I discover the beacons that summon various minor factions, most notably the nanocaust. I leave this alone until I have a few super weapons under my belt. Finding these factions in the game is pretty cool, I like this approach--especially for the nanocaust which can otherwise be a bit too impactful if enabled at the get go.

Phase 6: Bi-Polar Dyson Sphere -- Dyson Hacks

The Dyson Sphere is tucked in its own corner of the galaxy but it’s more accessible than some of my other ambitions. I decide it’s time to rescue this faction and then annoy it with several hacks. It’s time consuming but otherwise a fruitful investment. They Dyson becomes a great rear guard and become quite a formidable force in it’s own right. But I think my hacking had the unintended consequence of making the Dyson Antagonizer much more potent. Much to my surprise I will get wiped out by the antagonized dyson, and so I have learned to make killing the dyson antagonizer an immediate priority when it activates. A fleet wipe is better than a game over.

With the Dyson mostly an ally, I feel pretty strong now. Strong enough that it’s time to summon the Nanocaust. Fortunately the spawn fare enough way to not be an immediate threat, and they are positioned pretty much in-between the 3 AIs which is nice. The AIs now have another target and there’s some cool back and forth.

I’ll lose a planet to the Nanocaust once, but regather my forces and emphasize ambush and pike turret placement around their wormholes. They get obliterated before they have a chance to gather sufficient force on my planets. Eventually they lose interest in me and I can take a few more fleets including some powerful Spire frigates. Marking these guys up pays off huge as their dps gets pretty significant.

I’m now positioning myself for the late game. I get my third major data center secured and now how close positions to two of the AI. The fourth and final major data center is near the last AI; I’ll save this for later as it’s not easily accessible.

Late Game

Phase 7: The Nanocaust Crucible -- Taming the Beast

I make progress to the fourth major data center, capturing an artillery golem nearby. Using this new world as a staging ground, I make a blitz raiding attack to neutralize the planet and finally secure the last major data center.

My ships are heavily marked up now. My Widow Golem gave me my first and only autobombs & nanoswarms which are super effective, even with the strike craft as durable as they are. But more importantly, these units aren’t liable to be turned against me by the nanocaust.

My experiments with dealing with the nanocaust earlier showed me how futile it can be to take them on without overwhelming force and things immune to nanocausation. Super weapons in particular are crucial for my next ambition--Taming the Beast.

This part is almost anti-climatic as I have such firepower that I can set up my own base on its planet. Once I start the hack they get much angrier, but my combination of ambush/pike turrets and super units proves too much for them. They bend the knee and now I have a super powerful ally.

This will have consequences on my AIP quite quickly. The nanocaust basically takes all the planets that I was skipping and so now my AIP skyrockets. But if I’m incurring AIP I might as well expand my empire. I get so much additional science from this that I’m practically teched out, at least in the categories I found desirable. I need a huge economy to support my empire and will max out metal harvesters accordingly. Multiple fleet wipes will and do shut down my income for extended amounts of time, but I’m well situated to eat the costs.

Phase 8: Divide and Conquer -- Kill Swarmer Overlord

It’s time to initiate the endgame, but with 3 AIs spread out on the corners of the galaxy, this won’t be as trivial as it would seem given the strength of my combined fleets.

I choose the Swarmer AI as my first target only because there are no dark spire near it. I have plans for the other two… Muahahaha

I have to bait the warden/hunter fleet away from the Swarmer HW (before praetorians were introduced). I thought I could just A-move at this point but I was wrong. And wow that counterattack was like 1.4K strong. Reload; try this a bit more cautiously. I take my time to kill the Dire Guardposts. The Swarmer Overlord, as strong as it is, fell quickly to my fleets. Two more to go!

Phase 9: Civil War -- Chaos Unleashed!

The Swarmer AI is finally defeated, but the Fortress Baron and Golemite remain, their attention (AIP) now concerning. My battle has brought me near the final communication node and so I decide it’s time to open Pandora’s Box. It turns out it was filled with Chaos, just as I had hoped. This was compounded by the fact that I forgot to change the AIs into different colors. Turns out that mistake had a cool impact on the game--Massive Threat all over the galaxy starts firing on each other completely at random from my perspective.

Triggering the civil war had other major ramifications:

Waves increased in size by a near order of magnitude. Fortunately, these were against each other as well.
Nanocaust/Dyson Sphere steadily lost galaxy-map control without my support
The devastation whetted the Dark Spire’s insatiable bloodlust. The Hunter/Warden Fleet refused to yield.

Grand Finale

Phase 10: Feel my Vengeance (Strikes)! -- Dark Spire Victory Condition

As my fleets slowly made their way to the frontlines (delayed by massive reconquest efforts by all parties), I made my final raids to kill the dark spire wards protecting the AI. RNG placed dark spire wards adjacent to both the remaining AI HWs, and so the setup was ripe to win indirectly. My agile flagship slipped through and started a vengeance strike hack. This particular dark spire ward was already at 2,000% conversion rate and so was the ideal generator to hack. Sure enough, once this got started the Dark Spire flooded the galaxy and finally overwhelmed the immediately adjacent AI. My flagship was completely unperturbed during the hack but nimble enough to dodge what little did go after it.

I did this hack a total of 3 times, and by the third both AI were reduced to their second stage. They both fled after taking colossal damage, but they were effectively trapped between the Dark Spire and my epic fleets.

Sweet Vengeance and Victory!

Victory Screen and Stats

Final Notes

Chris here again! Hopefully you enjoyed that as much as I did. I think it does a great job showing off just how different this sequel is from the first game, as most of this stuff would not remotely have been possible in the first game. It also shows off just how different the game is now compared to two or three years ago when backers were first getting their hands on the game.

The screenshots are already painfully out of date, I must say, as we have wound up making a lot of improvements to the galaxy map in particular. And the overall lighting and color grading and so on of the game as a whole, frankly.

But this is still just such a fun snapshot of the game that it was definitely worth preserving and sharing, in my opinion.

Much more news to come in the next few days!

Space Game Junkie Podcast recording LIVE tonight at 8pm EST.
almost 6 years ago – Tue, Mar 26, 2019 at 11:31:23 PM

Chris here! It's been a few months since I last did the podcast guest thing, and it's nice to be getting back on that horse, so to speak. This is a favorite show of mine to guest on, and they've moved to a new format with live chat and streaming going on during it.

Here's the details:

Chat Room - https://discord.gg/ZvY7dhk
YouTube Stream - https://gaming.youtube.com/spacegamejunkie/live
Twitch Stream - https://www.twitch.tv/spacegamejunkie

If you miss the show, don't worry, you can still watch it later on without issues. The main thing you'd be missing is the ability to put questions in through the chat room, assuming the moderators are going to be passing some of those along. I don't know about you, but I can't read the chat room while also speaking coherently, so I tend to put it out of my sight as much as possible and rely on the hosts to bring up anything that people want me to address.

Version 0.900

Work on that new version is coming along well, but it's HUGE in terms of how much code is being changed and how much it adds for players to find, do, etc. I keep coming up with more things I want to address, too, and Puffin and Badger also keep coming up with really good points.

Because of those shifts, most likely we'll do a 0.850 release first, sometime next week, and only in the beta branch on Steam. It will likely be buggy as heck, and it will definitely be suboptimal in a lot of ways where we're not remotely finished with some new aspect of the GUI or whatever. There are some GUI subscreens that are needed for the full 0.900 experience that there just isn't time to do before next week, but it would be good to be getting testing and feedback for other kinds of bugs in the meantime.

Hopefully then we can spend a few weeks finishing the 0.900 work list, polishing whatever is wrong with the beta versions just from the sheer number of code changes, and so on. Various thing that might interest you in the new version:

Squads are going away, as I know people weren't fond of that.
Hopefully by 0.900, but not right away next week, we'll have some replacement icons for ships.
There's a bunch of new ship variants available right out of the gate.
There is a new concept of Fleets, which is... kind of Stellaris-like in a vague way as I understand it, but also just kind of its own new thing. It will lead to waaaay larger effective ship caps for you, way more varied battle groups and defensive groups, and in general also a lot less micromanagement.
You can read about some of the details here, but those details are at least somewhat out of date, now.
You can read the kind of stream-of-consciousness flow of what's actually changing here, but bear in mind that so many things are half-done that certain things are out without their replacements being in place yet. So please refer to the first document to see what is in general planned, despite the fact that some plans have evolved a bit as implementation has been ongoing.
One TLDR problem that this new update addresses is basically I didn't like how exploration felt in this game. The factions and whatnot are awesome, but the feeling of actual exploration was completely missing from me and it has nothing to do with the amount of content. Throw in more content and it would have just felt more cluttered. Instead it was a matter of how exploration plays out really being suboptimal. So scouting is one thing that is being completely redone, but that's not the only aspect to exploration that needed work.
The other big TLDR problem that this new update addresses was that there were a lot of various things when it comes to managing your empire -- in this sequel and the original -- that either couldn't be done very easily, or at all, because of the UI or general design. You had too much or too little control in various ways, a bunch of stuff that needed to be automated in the first game because it was a pain, and a bunch of interfaces that were painful or text-heavy because of the underlying design. There are actually a substantial number of further improvements in these areas that are being discussed by Puffin and Badger and I that aren't in either of the documents above, but those will most likely come starting after 0.850 next week so that you can comment on those as we go.

This project has been a strange one, because for a goodly while I've really loved the tech that we've built for it, and I've loved the AIs and the factions and a bunch of that sort of thing, but the actual act of playing this game... hasn't really done it for me. I remember having similar feelings about the original game around this same time of year in 2009, as I was pushing on towards a 1.0 in May of that year.

I'm not sure if 1.0 is still feasible for May of this year or not, but one way or the other this is going to take a titanic leap forward in terms of just letting us all get on with it and enjoy ourselves at the appropriate level of strategic thinking, versus being bogged down in minutiae or not having the tools we need to properly exert control over a giant galactic empire.

Did I mention that this will probably up your effective ship caps by like 10x? So for those folks who have been feeling like things felt too small here compared to the original game, I definitely heard and agree with you. The Fleets concept was something Eric proposed over a year ago, and it's bringing in some code bits that Keith put together over two years ago but which have never seen much use since then.

All in all, it's an exciting time, and my enthusiasm for the project has really skyrocketed with the realization that some of those "intractable" problems actually do have solutions that can be resolved -- and in the short term, even! A lot of the most key bits are already halfway implemented.

Thanks, as always, for your support!

Chris

v0.816 Released! "Aggressive Busting and Stacking"
almost 6 years ago – Wed, Mar 06, 2019 at 12:30:09 AM

Release notes here.

This is the last build before the 0.900x phase of the game's development process, and it's a big one!

First off, what's new in this release?

A bunch of changes have been made to balance, as usual.
Several new ship mechanics have been added, such as a new "Bunker Buster" and "Charger" mechanics.
Several new capturable units have been added, such as Zenith Matter Converters, Distribution Nodes, Advanced Factories, and Spire Archives.
The AI has had a variety of upgrades that should make it properly more aggressive in a variety of circumstances where it was previously holding back. Consider yourself warned. ;)
A bunch of bugfixes, including finally the fix for that "game command issued noise" sound effect playing when inappropriate.
A bunch of changes to stacking of AI units to make it work better, and also feel more like a real game feature rather than just a performance optimization (it was always meant to be both).
A huge raft of changes to various minor factions, generally keeping up the arms race that seems to be perpetual with all of them. Smarter, stronger, more interesting, you get the idea.

Next up... what's that about a new phase?

The new phase is called The Arrival of Fleets, which should give you some ideas on what is planned.
The goal with it is to take the game from "that early access feel" to a true 1.0 game.
As part of that, along with the goals of making the game feel more like the first game, we're actually going to be diverging a bit more from the first one in a mechanical sense to converge on it in a "spirit of the beast" sense.
Yes, that is vague.
I want you to see it in practice before I try to explain it too much, because the document I wrote to outline my plans was 12,000 words long. Badger and Puffin and Eric have read it and commented quite a bit, and my hope is that we'll have a version you can actually play within the next week.
THAT said, I haven't actually done a full hours analysis yet, so no promises, but we're going to be working on it as fast as we can.
No you can't read the document yet, but I will have it for you to read as the release changes come out. The document is the result of your cumulative feedback over the last three months, and my musings on it as well as suggestions from a variety of you, and it's enough of a change that I want you to be able to feel it in practice rather than us all armchairing it ad nauseum.
If this absolutely hits the fan and is terrible, then we've only lost a week, but so far the guys I showed it to are really excited about it to their surprise (and mine), so my hope is that after it comes out we go into revision and refinement as part of the new phase, not a rollback. Fingers crossed, eh?
But either way it's just hard to have you read a 12k word document and digest that and try to form a big opinion when it isn't something you're treating like a job. Fifteen minutes of just playing in the new system will be so much more informative for you.

We'll be back soon, but in the meantime you can watch this space in horror/fascination as you see things out of context and partially explained and implemented as we do the release notes. ;)

Problem With The Latest Build?

If you right-click the game in Steam and choose properties, then go to the Betas tab of the window that pops up, you'll see a variety of options. You can always choose most_recent_stable from that build to get what is essentially one-build-back. Or two builds back if the last build had a known problem, etc. Essentially it's a way to keep yourself off the very bleeding edge of updates, if you so desire.

The Usual Reminders

Quick reminder of our new Steam Developer Page. If you follow us there, you'll be notified about any game releases we do.

Also: Would you mind leaving a Steam review for some/any of our games? It doesn't have to be much more detailed than a thumbs up, but if you like a game we made and want more people to find it, that's how you make it happen. Reviews make a material difference, and like most indies, we could really use the support.

Enjoy!