New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#2.806_Correctness_By_Attrition
The title of this one is a bit amusing, because again this refers to two different thing. On the one hand, attrition effects are now more correct in the game when they are interacting with stacks of smaller units, doing commensurate larger damage to them. On the other hand, network results are getting more correct, gradually, as I wear down the bloody errors in a lengthy process of attrition.
Speaking of multiplayer, this build is kind of a big deal for it, because I finally found and fixed a number of rather core issues that were cascading into other areas of the game. The number one thing that I fixed was that sometimes there were "ghost" units that the client thought were still alive, but the host knew was dead. These were sometimes missing the sync process, and persisting on the client indefinitely -- potentially for hours. This was causing a lot of wrong behavior and constant sim divergence and fixing, as you might imagine, for the ships that were reacting to the ghosts.
Similarly, the client could have a wrong idea of which AI subfaction owned certain units, and so the local simulation would give the wrong AI decision-making a go, causing a constant pop over and pop back. Most "rubber band" issues were something like that, where the client and host just couldn't figure each other out.
Lastly, for certain kinds of data sync, I had a sudden idea and put in some extra (configurable) delays into the existing time slicing that these have. With the default settings, this is a network traffic reduction of over 75% (actually closer to 84%, but hey it will vary by machine). The really critical stuff syncs as fast as ever, and so it's very likely that you'd never notice a difference other than things being snappier.
This is quite exciting. Enjoy!