Upgrading Dreadnoughts - Micro vs Macro etc

Hi all

Some feedback on the upgrade possibilities of the dreadnoughts.

There are two ways to upgrade the dreadnoughts now (beta 1).

1) By upgrading the overall attack, defence and radar level. This is done by investing quantas. This affects all units (not only dreadnoughts)

2) Specific Dreadnought upgrading. When doing combat the dreadnoughts are given some sort of veteran points that the player can turn in to different skills or health-restoring. This needs to be done manualy by first choosing the dreadnought you want to affect and then clicking specific upgrade buttons on each dreadnought when the veteran level is high enough.

Some thoughts on the Specific dreadnought upgrading:

To much micro: My experience regaring the upgrading is that it is a lot of micro. Especially in big battles. I experienced a combat with a lot of units, inluding three dreadnoughts that where clumped together. First off all it was hard to pick the dreadnought that had reached the upgrade level. It even was hard to see wich og the dreadnoughts that the upgrade symbol was attached to. This took the focus away from the combat. I also had other combats other places on the map. I felt I had to switch forth an back all the time to keep up the upgrading scheme.

In addition to this the health restore skill (one of the three skill possibilities) is not good implemented gameplay wise. You will want to wait to just before the health of the dreadnought reaches 0 and then press the health restore button (at least if you want to get the most out of the skill). But the health bar is not updating correct, so many times the dreadnought was lost even if the health bar showed around 3000. The whole thing is taking to much focus and microing.

To much affecting the game: In addition I think the specific dreadnought upgrading does affect the outcome of the battle to much. Especially the health skill is making the battle to unpredictable. In my opinion the upgrading system like it is presented in the game today (with both overall upgrading and the specific dreadnought upgrading) affects the game too much. When you see an enemy army moving towards your place there should be som sort of expectation on what will hit you. Otherwise you take away the strategie possibilities. Should you try to get away or should you move in to battle? You have no idea what will hit you. It can also be irritating if you make a good move and almost finishes the two enemy dreadnoughts with your clever strategy, But in the very last second the two enemy dreadnoughst are fully restored healht since they got the upgrading possibility 3 seconds before you? Totally luck. No skills.

Conclusion and my suggestion:

Some sort og upgrading is ok. And some luck/unluck is also ok. But the managing should be better/easier/less micro, and I also think the upgrades should be downgraded. Maybe it also should be possible to choose away the upgrading possibillities in the game set up menu (so you can choose to not play with these settings).

Keep up the good work folks! This is my favorit game at the time (together with Dirt Rally

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This is going to sound snarky but if selecting a unit and clicking on a skill to upgrade is too much micro, you should not be playing RTS. Ashes is probably the least micro intensive RTS ever created. That said I do completely agree with you that the health bar not updating properly on Dreadnoughts is incredibly frustrating and needs to be fixed before release. You need to be able to know when to pull your dreadnought out of battle with some accuracy in order to preserve them. I also find the skill upgrades lacklustre so far. The health one does seem overpowered somewhat. I was hoping for something more along the lines of capital ship abilities from sins of a solar empire. Dreadnoughts are also fairly easy to focus fire down and move slowly so preserving them to level them up is sometimes futile. I remember (during beta I think) sins of a solar empire implemented a damage reduction that kicks in after a few seconds on capital ships being focus fired for exactly this reason - that they could easily be focused down without this damage reduction and having a chance to level them up was supposed to be a key element in the game. I wouldnt mind seeing that implemented in Ashes either.

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eviator

Join Date 08/2014

+62

Yeah, it's an appropriate amount of micro.

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Quoting Ekko_Tek,

reply 2

Hi Ekko_Tek and thanks for your reply.

Micro or not. My point is that if you have more then 7-8 dreadnoughts at the same time. In two three different battles around the map. Then you will be pretty tied up by upgrading the Dreadnoughts. Instead of actually give move orders and build units. I think this game is at its best when the players need to focus on the big pictures and strategies and not about one single health restore for one single unit.

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This actually seems like a simple UI fix to me. A hotkey to bring up Dreadnoughts to upgrade, with a button to target them and another to center the screen on them. It pulls focus a little bit from the macro conceptually, but not in a terrible way, since it sounds like your major concern is actually being able to select the units to be upgraded. Hitting a couple of quick keybinds and then jumping back to what you were doing doesn't sound like too much hand holding, while eliminating any situation where it feels like you're seeking out the units you need to power up.

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I totally agree with a fix needed for trying to upgrade dreadnoughts mid battle. It is extremely frustrating trying to click on an individual dreadnought when you have more than one in an area, especially when all are in a large meta unit. I have had to give up on multiple occasions as my attention was needed elsewhere or I have actually started clicking on smaller units around the dreadnoughts to try and find the one I want to upgrade. I quite like Ogun's idea of a hotkey to bring up a table of dreadnoughts with available upgrades.

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