Placing buildings is fiddly. For quantum relays, I notice the cursor ends up about an inch to the right of the building, making it difficult to place. As far as making placing buildings easy, the latest version of Starcraft seems to have nailed it. That grid not only shows you the valid squares where the building is now, but also which squares nearby are valid or invalid. Starcraft did a fantastic job with this and I suggest trying to do something at least as good.
I have not been able to figure out what my Quantas production rate is. I see it ticking up, but it would be nice to see the production rate like I do with metal and radioactive.
It would be nice to see what level each of my 6 technologies are at, rather than having to guess by how much the next level costs. Knowing at a glance that I have radar level 3, damage level 5, and health level 4 would make it easy for me to decide what to save up for.
The “armies” concept so awesome I want to completely stop using control groups. Perhaps the two concepts could be merged.
I find myself desperately wanting the following buttons/hotkeys.
- Select all military units not in an army
- Select and focus on next army
- Select and focus on previous army.
Being able to select all units not in an army would make it easier to merge my new units with existing armies, and help keep me from losing military units.
My aircraft don’t seem to merge into my armies correctly. Don’t know if this is a bug or something intentional that I am not grasping the rationale for.
It it too easy to lose track of where I have neglected to build metal mines, amplifiers, radioactive mines. If there were buttons to focus on the next region with something available to upgrade I would not neglect them for so long. The "Dawn of War" ctrl-R button was the best implementation I have ever seen of this.
The button for the strategic map moves when I expand it, making it difficult for me to open it up, take a glance, and close it again.
Finally, this game is looking awesome. Real time strategy games have been too few and far between lately, and way to slow to innovate. Each franchise seems to be content with refining the mechanics that provide their unique appeal, rather than trying to push for ways to combine the mechanics that push the genre forward. It looks like Ashes of the Singularity is looking to change that, which is making me excited for RTS games again.
