Blackclaws

Join Date 12/2012

Current State of Ashes

I would like to start a discussion about the current state of ashes as I think this is a good point for us players to reevalute where the game stands, which expectations we had that were fulfilled and which we think should still be changed.

I'm actually a founder even though the forum doesn't think I am so I've been watching for quite some time and some things have changed for the better and some haven't changed at all.

I actually come from a SupCom background which I still think holds the crown for big scale rts at this point. Also Ashes promised to be heavily influenced by Supcom but right now I get the feeling that a lot of the SupCom feel is still missing which for me is a big downer. I would have expected this game to not diverge so far from what SupCom gave us.

I understand that the Ashes developers want to create their own type of game which is fine but when it diverges so far from established things that work well that it doesn't feel like the type of game I would like to play anymore (at least not with the mindset of it being anything like Supcom) then I think it has diverged too far (for me at least).

This is sort of similar as to what happened with Planetary Annihilation, a game I was hyped for but which ultimately turned out to be a huge disappointment due to various issues that made it ultimately a big flop.

Economy:

The current state I think is still lacking the essential features that would make the game interesting eco wise and also attractive to players that are interested in a more economic playstile instead of a purely expansive one.

Currently economy consists of claiming zones and building the extractors there. There isn't really much more in the way of influence. It also doesn't matter if you lose zones and reclaim them later because the extractors are cheap to build.

I would suggest to implement a system where it is possible to upgrade existing facilities so that it is actually interesting to defend them aside from the obvious resource advantage. The amplifiers sort of do that but I'm not completely happy with that solution, it doesn't allow you to prioritize one resource for example.

The zones feel really small. I in general do not like the zone system but maybe larger zones would benefit the base building experience.

The absence of energy feels like something is really missing. In Supcom you had to balance the constant drain of this resource so that your buildings would not shut down or your units would not shoot so it was something to definitely look out for.

Linking: I already read that linking is something you don't want to do. I personally think it adds another layer of depth to the economy experience which is a shame to loose.

There is no way to be a defensive players that techs up and builds up a high tech army behind a wall of friendlies and then comes crushing from behind with experimentals in this game.

Research:

Currently you produce research points and apply them all at once to research something. I think a flow economy would benefit the research process where research buildings start researching a technology and multiple buildings can group together.

Tactical Options:

The current state of tactics is limited to building units and sending it to the front. That at least is the feeling I get. Yes there is some unit diversity but not nearly enough to allow for diverse tactics.

I would suggest a multitude of different unit types / buildings to complement the current portfolio:

- Transporters (flying) which allow you to drop units behind enemy lines disrupting their supply and crippling their bases.

- Shield units? Which allow you to put up defensive shields around your units to support a more defensive playstile. Needs probably also counters.

- Offensive buildings like artillery buildings that have longer ranges than units but can't move.

- Stealth units / jam units that hide from radar or create a false radar signal to suggest large enemy forces (see cybran and UEF in Supcom)

- Movable HQ / Commander so that you don't know where the enemy main base is

- Stealth bases that you can set up behind enemy lines

- Specialized bombers which might be more effective against buildings / units / groups

- Tactical missiles? They were a rather nice thing in Supcom as an additional attack form maybe superseeded by orbital abilities.

- Mine fields? Which would allow you to prevent enemies from expanding too rapidly after defeating your forces unless they had special mine removals.

- etc. etc.

Right now I get the feeling that there are not nearly as many ways to win a game as there were in Supcom which is sad.

Unit Handling / Battlefield Overview / Strategic Zoom:

This has been discussed at length in multiple threads but I still think this is a dealbreaker issue. Right now the unit handling and battlefield overview are in a state that is horrible. I can only hope that this will change a lot before final release as right now I don't feel like I'm commanding a war efficiently but rather that I'm struggling to understand what is going on. I never had this feeling in SupCom and I think it mainly comes from the absence of a usable strategic zoom and the absence of multi monitor support where you can have a battlefield birds eye view on a dedicated screen.

Supcom gave me the feeling especially with the multi monitor support that I was sitting in a battlefield command chair with lots of information readily displayed for my attention. This was only further improved upon with various UI mods over the years. I saw that Ashes plans to implement heavy UI changes in the coming versions but I just want to emphasize that I would really like to feel to be in a command chair with the war laid out in front of me with all the information at my disposal as any general would like it.

I understand Ashes wants to be different but please don't try too much or you will strip away the good parts too.

I'm not going to into much more detail on the unit targeting etc. as that seems to already be on the agenda.

I'll update this post with more things that I think about as they come to me.

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tatsujb

Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2415

Hi BC!

Thanks for taking time to write your feedback and thoughts. I really appreciate it.

Let me walk through your points and perhaps others can add their thoughts as well.

Re The Economy

I completely agree with you.

Let me put the issue succinctly: Right now, military expansion IS economic expansion. This is bad. Rush = Boom.

What's ironic about this is when Chris and I argued during SupCom I contended that SupCom was too much Boom = Turtle. By FA they had balanced that out pretty well. But I've taken the game far too much towards Rush = Boom.

I very much disagree that the answer is energy. The only reason SupCom had energy was because TA had energy. And TA had it as their answer to building supply depots. It's not a bad mechanic. If you let someone turtle long enough they can eventually start producing metal via energy converters. But that isn't the answer for us.

The answer for us is that we need to give players tools to choose between economic build up and military buildup and right now, we don't.

Our solution is going to involve bringing some of the features of the Substrate over to the PHC. Now, before anyone objects to us making the two races too similar, they don't play that similar in practice but I do think we're going ot have to bite the bullet, for now, and have their economic systems a bit more similar in order to provide the kind of strategic depth to the game people desire.

So in this case, it means we're going to let people use Quanta to overcharge their power generators to get a lot more resources out of them as well as use quanta to further amplify their power generators to get more sources out of a region. This lets them choose between military build up and tech/eco build up.

Re tactical options

After 1.0, we can look at all kinds of new units to add based on how people play the game. We have our own list of units such as radar jammers, guns ships, units that are more specialized (like a specific anti-building unit).

Thanks again!

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my opinions

1)the size of the map should be double or four, we need a "war" not a battle or fight.

and the game ask the 16GB memory

2)it will be great the game have the "experiment unit"(huge and power unit)--as like the SC

3)pls do more working for optimize for 6 cores CPU or more as well as the HT

4)the game speed should be adjusted

5)it will be great have the map editor

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Ticktoc

Join Date 03/2015

+85

Really looking forward to the Beta as then we can really see how the game is going to play. Players are probably likely to get harsher with the game though if they see things they don't like as it will no longer be alpha and things will be quite finalised at that point (unavoidable). The main thing for me is an improved UI with non buggy unit management and smarter units and meta units so I'm no longer fighting the game as well as the opponent.

Quoting 3vgz,

reply 2

)the size of the map should be double or four, we need a "war" not a battle or fight.

I do think the game is going to shine more on bigger maps so it is a war and not a battle just as you say. It will help emphasize the bigger strategy over the smaller tactics. Hope we get a lot of maps with the finished game and really hope massive maps with 8 players comes in too. We're certainly going to need bigger maps by the time navy gets here. Though I have to say I hope bigger maps doesn't necessarily mean hundreds more nodes. There can be too many at times, especially without area commands to capture them all with one click and drag (please look at PA for this!). Zigzagging all around the place to link nodes up can be a bit much on some of the maps.

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eviator

Join Date 08/2014

+62

I'm specifically avoiding comparisons to SupCom so that I can evaluate this game on its own merits. Looking at the 100,000 foot view, I think the overall design of the game is in a good state. I'm generally happy with the units, the research, the global ability system, the economy, the region system, armies, and victory conditions. It seems to me that all of the base game elements are in (except one) for the release product. Here are things I think need work by release. I know much of this is already on your todo list:

Air

An early game air-to-ground unit is appropriate. We have fighters and AA units, and we need them to fight something other than scouts before the late game bombers. Maybe drones would suffice, I don't know. We may have to wait for the Substrate to see where early air is situated.

We are obviously waiting for the AI to make use of air units. You'll probably want that in for the beta.

Armies

We've got bugs: Units climbing up cliffs, reinforcements following their own orders and not forming up, subordinates not selecting a new leader if the leader dies, and then they lose their orders. These things should be your #1 priority as army mechanics will make or break the release of this game.

I think we need some "stances": If the main unit is hanging back (e.g. Cronus), the subordinate units could either stay close (defensive formation) or push forward (aggressive formation). I would also appreciate a more compact formation during movement, as it often takes a long time for rear units to get into action.

We could really use some advanced hotkeys for bringing units into armies and splitting armies (you'd have to change the selection mechanics because right now if you click any unit in the army you select the whole army, so splitting off a subgroup would be impossible).

Regions

A critical region is a region where, if you lose it, you lose the income from all of the connecting regions beyond it. This game needs more critical regions. It may be a function of map design. In many of the maps if you happen to take a central region from the enemy they don't lose any other regions' income because there are a half dozen other paths for the resources to flow back to the Nexus. The connections should be more sparse. Players will attack those critical regions more, so players will need to defend those regions more. It also encourages building up a forward base, using radar, and scouting. All good things. Right now there are very few regions that are worth the time and resources building up defenses.

Transports

This is the one base game element that I think is missing. Still I haven't convinced myself that it is necessary. Incursion kinda fills this role. It would be way awesome if you could customize your incursion force, but I think that is something that can wait until post-release.

Empire Tree

In the expanded view, you need to either sort the icons so the same units are grouped together, or you need to compact the display by having one icon per unit type and a number indicating the number of units. The reason is that players need to look at their armies in the empire tree to quickly assess their composition. You can't do that now with all the icons jumbled around.

Armies that are selected should be auto-expanded. Auto-contract when you deselect or select something else.

If there is a way to highlight in the empire tree units that are currently visible or in the "closest" region, that would cool. That would help players assess whether they have the needed forces in the area to take care of threats or advance into attack.

Strategic map

When I'm not commanding armies or macroing my economy and production, I want to be looking at the strategic view. Right now I don't want to. It's not just that it's plain, it's that it provides me very little strategic information. I like that it shows me the location of control groups and engineers. I like that it shows me region ownership and status. But it also needs to show me terrain/obstacles, otherwise it's difficult to know which pathways enemies can use to reach me, and vice versa. It needs to show me my units in a more descriptive way (no, not icons). It would need to differentiate tiers of units. It needs to very clearly show the difference between my units and enemy units. It needs to very clearly show the difference between units and buildings. Maybe even show the difference between air and land units. I'd like to see my visual and radar coverage more distinctly. It should give me some visual indication when my units are being attacked. If you have to have a bunch of overlays to show all this information without cluttering it all up, I'd be perfectly happy with that.

Engineers

Allow multiple engineers to build one building. You don't need to worry about diminishing returns, the streaming economy will already take care of building too quickly.

Reduce diminishing returns on engineer assisting. I believe it is currently a 50% penalty for each additional engineer. Make it a 25% penalty for each additional engineer. Again, the streaming economy will take care of building too quickly.

Allow players to tell an engineer(s) to build all of the extractors in a selected area. Don't make us build them one-by-one.

-----

If you can get most/all of the above done by release, squash bugs and crashes, finish off your roadmap, polish the UI, plus adding the Substrate and tweaking PHC based upon what you learned from the Substrate, I think you will have a very solid release game, at least for single player. I have a lot of other gameplay improvement ideas that could be really fun and interesting, but make more sense for patches, DLC, and expansions, so I will leave it for other posts.

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TAG_Utter

Join Date 03/2015

+18

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 1

Hi BC!

Thanks for taking time to write your feedback and thoughts. I really appreciate it.

Let me walk through your points and perhaps others can add their thoughts as well.

Re The Economy

I completely agree with you.

Let me put the issue succinctly: Right now, military expansion IS economic expansion. This is bad. Rush = Boom.

What's ironic about this is when Chris and I argued during SupCom I contended that SupCom was too much Boom = Turtle. By FA they had balanced that out pretty well. But I've taken the game far too much towards Rush = Boom.

I very much disagree that the answer is energy. The only reason SupCom had energy was because TA had energy. And TA had it as their answer to building supply depots. It's not a bad mechanic. If you let someone turtle long enough they can eventually start producing metal via energy converters. But that isn't the answer for us.

The answer for us is that we need to give players tools to choose between economic build up and military buildup and right now, we don't.

Our solution is going to involve bringing some of the features of the Substrate over to the PHC. Now, before anyone objects to us making the two races too similar, they don't play that similar in practice but I do think we're going ot have to bite the bullet, for now, and have their economic systems a bit more similar in order to provide the kind of strategic depth to the game people desire.

So in this case, it means we're going to let people use Quanta to overcharge their power generators to get a lot more resources out of them as well as use quanta to further amplify their power generators to get more sources out of a region. This lets them choose between military build up and tech/eco build up.

Re tactical options

After 1.0, we can look at all kinds of new units to add based on how people play the game. We have our own list of units such as radar jammers, guns ships, units that are more specialized (like a specific anti-building unit).

Thanks again!

What i like about you its that you always turn the light when start be dark...

Ty for that makes me belive..

Just the fact that you are aware the situation on some problems and want to change them in future, so that players can have a good balance between eco units and builds,without totaly put the part the simcity style is good.

But i do belive that ecostyle here its a need the maps are so so big, there is space to all we can think or remenber has a possibility tatic.

Based in all TA style and FA style and Starcraft style you guys can have here all in one game.

I know this game is think more then 8 years but there is so mush hide power here ....its just find and grab it.

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