AI War Fleet Command

"You are outgunned. You are massively outnumbered. You must win."

- The first words that you see on Arcen Games' A.I. War page.

AI War: Fleet Command is a 4x / Real Time Strategy video game created by Arcen Games.

The story is simple enough: 2 human factions fought a big war against each other, and built AI to help in combat. The AI revolted and nearly annihilated the humans. You (and your friends, if any), as one of the best, and the last, humans commanders preserved, are tasked to drive the 2 AI factions out of the galaxy.

The game proudly says that the AI is specifically designed for challenge, not balance. Thus, the AI does not follow the rules that you, the players, need to follow. How the AI will move against you mainly follows a value: AI Progress, which dictates on what type of ships and how many of them they will use against you. The greater the progress, the stronger they are. There are very few ways to reduce this number, but many ways to increase it. So, the players need to carefully plan their expansion, so that they will have enough resource and technology to beat the AI and not overly aggravate them in the process, which will surely result in their annihilation.

This work provides examples of:

 * AI Is a Crapshoot
 * Apocalypse How: Of the Galactic/Physical Annihilation type with the Nuclear Missile Mark III.
 * Awful Truth: Ever wondered why the AI is so wary of the Spire resurfacing in the galaxy? Why does it turn so batshit aggressive as you progress along the Fallen Spire sidequest? Why it goes bananas when you start building their cities and amassing their fleet? It's not just wariness of the Spire's enormously advanced weaponry and powerful craft. It's because
 * Big Damn Heroes: (ATTENTION: Spoilers for Light of the Spire ahead! More exactly, the Fallen Spire minor faction) So, you're playing the Fallen Spire sidequest.
 * The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard - While the AI doesn't necessarily "cheat", it does play by a different set of rules. Its production facilities are outside the galaxy, so it warps in ships instead of building them. They have bases in every single star system at the start of the game, and because it's a computer, it can react to all fronts at the same time, which means that the only benefit of a two-pronged attack is to split enemy forces. Maybe.
 * Deflector Shields: A wide-area forcefield that blocks attacks. Prior to version 4, there was a second type used to describe individual ship's resistance to attacks, before it was renamed to armor.
 * Earthshattering Kaboom: Happens when you detonate a nuke in a system. Oh, and you don't get to collect resources or research from that location anymore.
 * Exclusive Enemy Equipment: The AI has access to units that you outright can't make, or make in very limited quantities. Needless to say, they are also very, very strong.
 * Expansion Pack: 3 of them, The Zenith Reminant, Children of Neinzul, and Light of the Spire have been released already (each of which adds various features such as planet setups and AI types), and two more unnamed ones are in the works. Each one can be toggled on or off per campaign, and they don't have to be installed in any particular order.
 * Extreme Omnivore: Some ships can swallow other ships. Swallowed ships suffer continuous damage as the ship that ate them 'digests' them. One good example of them is the Zenith Devourer, a gargantuan robot ship that travels the galaxy, eating anything that stands in its way.
 * Harder Than Hard: The AI skill level can be increased to 10. There's an achievement if you defeat them without handicaps.
 * Homing Boulders
 * Immune to Bullets: Some vessels have an immunity to certain attacks (e.g. Bulletproof fighters are immune to shell weapons, Leech starships are immune to missiles, and some are immune to nukes.)
 * Infinite Supplies, but not for somethings not adjacent to a system you control.
 * Instant Win Condition / We Win Because You Didn't: Destroying all Home Command Centers, even if the other player happens to have a much stronger presense. (The AI "Backdoor Hacker" can drop incoming waves just outside your command center.)
 * ISO Standard Human Spaceship
 * My Rules Are Not Your Rules: The AI uses a separate resource system, and warps vessels in rather than building them locally.
 * Nuke Em: Using a nuke practically eliminates all enemy presence in a planet system, short of command stations. It also makes the AI more nervous, increasing its progress. In addition to the Mark I, the Mark II also destroys all adjecent planets, and the Mark III destroys all planets at once.
 * Playable Epilogue: The game still continues after you complete it, with the AI still sending in waves.
 * Precursors: Found in the DLC, The Zenith Reminant, Children of Neinzul, and Light of the Spire. To varying degrees, they are still present and active.
 * Robot War
 * Salt the Earth: The Scorched Earth AI had command centers that will cause a nuclear explosion, destroying all resources and ships within the system. Don't ever play against two of them. Or with one and the other AI is just as dastardly in other ways.
 * Shout Out: In 'The Zenith Remnant' expansion, there is a cheat code that spawns a Zenith Devourer on a planet of your choice. The code? "Invoke Unicron"
 * There's a couple of cheat codes like this. "Pull The Lever" is another well known one.
 * Sidequest: The Fallen Spire side scenario. If you complete it, you can win the game without having to destroy the A Is. Good luck surviving if you undertake it, though, the AIs turn incredibly aggressive if you progress along it.
 * Space Pirates, who prefer raiding randomly for resources (and getting killed) rather than joining up with La Résistance
 * Subsystem Damage
 * Suicidal Overconfidence, although this sometimes pays off if enemies break through the front line of defense.
 * Stealth in Space
 * Teleporters and Transporters: One unit type causes Random Teleportation in enemies.
 * Tractor Beam: Dedicated turrets that hold other ships in place, but they can also be found on other ships.
 * We Have Reserves: The AI definitely has. You can have too if you plan your production well, but not to the extent that the AI has. And some valuable units are irreplaceable.
 * Zerg Rush: The AI attempts to attack your systems by launching large waves. While your starting forces are strong enough to defeat them, they can sometimes take out a command center if you don't have secondary defenses.