New giant build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#3.200_Variable_Planet_Gravity_Well_Scales_And_QoL
(This changes a ton and may have bugs. If you run into an intractable one, you can always go into betas and choose most_recent_stable to go one build back. This is how I sleep at night after making some major changes.)
Okay! First up, this build might fix the multiplayer ghosts issue. Fingers crossed. But I made a lot of changes and simplified that to get that good and dead.
Secondly, for anyone who uses mods or has expansions installed, you can now see what is mod or expansion content all over the place. I'm talking fields in the lobby, items in dropdowns, and even quickstarts. The works. Mods can also now include quickstarts for the first time, too! Overall the idea is to help it become clear where things come from. Sometimes even I forget how much was packed into DLC1 (TSR), which really gets a lot less love than DLC2 (ZO). To make all this work, I had to re-code and extend a surprising amount of UI code, but all the bugs seem fixed now, knock on wood.
This build also introduces variable-sized gravity wells. The first AI War had larger gravity wells, but only one size. This game has always been more intimate in battlefield size (and/or more cutthroat, depending on how you look at it), but again there was no choice. Now there's a choice! And in fact, there are various "schemas" for various types of planets that helps you randomize in various interesting ways. The new defaults are to have some variable planet sizes, but nothing too extreme most of the time.
There are a number of bugfixes in this one, although the list of things that are on my short-term todo list grew a lot while I was implementing those two giant features above. So more soon on that front.
More soon in general.
Enjoy!