Beta 9.6 "Friends Forever" Prerelease

Time for another quick release! I've been having fun with Player 2, and both myself and other players have been noticing some things that could be better which were already piling up in my notes for Beta 10. But I've already finished streaming some P2 runs and plan to do more starting next week, so while all this AI stuff is still fresh in my mind, and so that further streams can take advantage of improvements, I decided to spend this week working on that front. Thus we get this "Friends Forever" release :D

Beta 9.6 includes both behavior improvements and some fixes. I also increased the frequency of Player 2's dialogue, since I noticed while streaming that it's lower than it probably should be based on normal run length (I originally set the numbers based on longest runs to avoid it getting repetitive, and to keep it very fresh across many such runs, but honestly very few people do a lot of really long runs, so that just meant most people weren't able to see a lot of the dialogue!).

I don't think anything's broken, but if you're playing it and see issues compared to Beta 9.5, let me know and I'll fix them ASAP. Otherwise this is the same release that will go out to everyone next week.

The changelog has the details:

• NEW: [Player 2 mode] Added dedicated "Player 2" section to scoresheet with 15 new entries
• NEW: [Player 2 mode] Player 2 better understands the tactical use of launchers when conditions permit it
• NEW: [Player 2 mode] Player 2 can now swap parts from ground into a full inventory to improve type and quality of spares
• NEW: [Player 2 mode] Player 2 much less likely to stack utilities that won't benefit from it
• NEW: [Player 2 mode] Player 2 tendency to use heat sinks as armor toned down
• NEW: [Player 2 mode] Player 2 part loss also contributes to alert level reduction, as per the Cogmind mechanic
• NEW: [Player 2 mode] 2 more dialogue situations (total = 83)
• NEW: [Player 2 mode] More dialogue lines (total = 660)
• NEW: AI-controlled bots with a large energy-based volley may proactively deactivate one or more weapons if it will enable them to fire immediately
• MOD: [Player 2 mode] Player 2 no longer considers wasting turns on smaller integrity upgrades when rebuilding from salvage
• MOD: [Player 2 mode] Increased frequency of Player 2 dialogue
• FIX: AS-neutralizer No. 17b applied effect across entire map rather than limiting to specified range [Valguris]
• FIX: Scoresheet "Unauthorized Hacks" tally higher than intended [Valguris]
• FIX: Part info comparisons with a part using a manual tag misaligned the values by one row [Pimski]
• FIX: Scoresheet history log message for bump-rewiring detected and displayed incorrectly
• FIX: autoActivateTreadsOnAttack option caused inactive treads to appear active on automatically switching back to core propulsion on a move after attacking
• FIX: [Player 2 mode] Potential load issue under certain conditions

Saves are not compatible with Beta 9.5!

See 9.6 

As you can see, Player 2 got smarter and can deactivate some weapons if they only have enough energy to fire some of their volley, rather than waiting until they accumulate the full amount!

That change actually extends to all AIs, although clearly it matters most to Player 2 since other bots will generally die pretty quickly by comparison, anyway.

With the new scoresheet section you can now tell just who between you and Player 2 is taking the most core damage, doing the most damage, or destroying the most hostiles :)

Get 9.6

On Steam, Beta 9.6 is located on the beta branch "patron_release" accessible with the code "kyzratipatron", or if you don't have Steam and would like to try the DRM-free version, send me an email at gridsagegames@gmail.com.

Again, Beta 9.6 saves are not compatible with previous releases, so consider first finishing up any in-progress run, or keeping a separate copy of your save while you play this one in the meantime. As you'll likely you'll want to try the new Player 2 mode rather than just the regular 9.6, in order to do that (because it's still a timed event, after all!), you'll need to force it to activate. Use the command line argument: "-forceMode:AFD2020" (or "-forceMode:Player2"). (Within Steam this is handled by going to Cogmind > Properties > Set Launch Options.) 

Wizards Note

For the wizards out there, note that a new command was added to the main list for giving Player 2 more slots. I needed this for faster testing of some of their new behaviors.