AI War: Fleet Command

AI War is a game that almost passed me by. A 2d space based RTS that sailed past stealthily cloaked and headed for the nearest warp gate 'outta here'. Luckily my Impulse client explore page slyly winked a small ad for the game and like a distress beacon it caught my passing attention.


The game presents itself in 2d, all craft and structures are flat sprites. The backgrounds are rendered 3d planets and starscapes, but are purely for flavour - they do not affect the flow of the game. The scope and scale of the game however is big, you have large planetary systems as your main conflicted play area, interconnected via warp gates into a web weaving and winding itself into a chaotic galactic tapestry. The game setup allows you to randomly seed the generated Universe and select the number of planetary systems available. The connections between systems are "spun" in a chaotic fashion, and they can lead to isolated systems, ideal for defense, or well linked "junction" systems giving you many paths to travel and explore. Zoom is your friend, and as you plan your movements and offensives you will rarely notice the 2d sprites, because your broad strokes of battle will usually be made on the max zoomed iconic representations anyway. The sheer number of units that can be deployed is astounding, 10,000+ is not uncommon. The game was inspired by the similar large scale conflict and zoomed out operational approach that Supreme Commander adopted.

What is not obvious upon your first play with the tutorial levels is the nature of the more strategic scale of operations you will play out. It is your goal to scout and explore a path through the systems to locate specific advantageous enemy structures and either destroy them or capture them. This almost surgical precision applied to your offense is your greatest strength, because if you advance aggressively through the Universe conquering all you meet, you will quickly meet your demise, because with each takeover the AI's aggression turns up a notch. With every conquest, you're essentially stoking the AI into a frenzy and into more advanced tactics to employ against you. A more carefully planned and well considered approach is needed to balance the AI aggression as you make your way forward. Destroying its data centers deny the AI valuable computational resources and thus reduces the AI's aggression level. Capturing Advanced Research facilities will open up to you some of the more specially developed equipment that the AI can use against you, equalising the odds when it comes to tech vs tech conflicts. Another key tactic to employ is to secure your travel lanes, by blockading warp gates and holding the AI enemy at bay whilst you planet hop your way around the most economic and efficient path.

So, in essence, you are:

1. scouting and pathfinding
2. exploring and searching out key targets
3. plugging and unplugging warp gates
4. capturing planet systems to install resource gathering equipment
5. eeking out scientific knowledge from new planetary systems
6. managing your manufacturing and fleet content so that when you find the AI core base you can annihilate it!

The unique draw of this game is that you're plunged into a randomly seeded Universe, where the AI can be scaled in difficulty and tweaked with various play styles into very different opponents. As the name suggests the AI plays a very important role in the games appeal, and as such it can be tailored to your needs, and pacing. The developer has provided a very detailed explanation of the unique features of the AI, from its swarm intelligence to its completely emergent sub-commander logic, and a layer of fuzzy logic applied over it, so that its not always predictable and precise. Another feature is that the game supports up to 8 players working cooperatively against the AI, so gather your disparate fleets to survive, live long and prosper (the AI also scales depending upon the number of players involved in the conflict). Sadly, the game doesn't support player versus player combat, with the main focus of the game pitting the strategic and tactical capabilities of the human player against this finely crafted AI.



There are a large variety of hardware on offer and many of the techs will open up new tactical possibilities, with free downloadable content being available in the form of new community requested features and ships. Some examples of the equipment you can utilise (in addition to the usual range of fighters, bombers and starships) are: defense turrets, mines and mine repairers, tractor beam turrets, laser turrets, long range sniper turrets, missile turrets, force field shields, de-cloaking devices, detectors of incoming ships through warp gates, to name a few, and I've really only scratched the surface in terms of the unit specialisations. I am assured that as you play the game, increasing AI difficulty levels and AI play styles, you will find new uses for existing equipment and you will discover new equipment and new tactical ways to deploy them.

I would recommend watching the video guides presented by the developer to get a feel for how to get started with the game, and to see an explanation of the "bigger picture" strategic game.

Since you specify the parameters of the Universe you play in, there are a lot of replay opportunities and the degrees of AI difficulty and play style will also further add to that, so you're getting a lot of indie-fuelled strategic play for your $20. But you are also encouraged to become part of the AI War community, and participate in its future evolution and development. With DLC already being rolled out regularly, and a planned expansion in the works, you too could be a part of its emergence.

Whilst playing the game, I'm reminded of other games, Supreme Commander, Sins of a Solar Empire, Stars!, but also see glimpses of Battlestar Galactica's desperate plight of jumping through a Universe full of Cylons and having to "box clever" to stem the tide of the AI toasters and jump your way through secured corridors of space, picking up what little resources you can... but then I do have a vivid imagination for those sort of things.

JUMP!