In the original Ashes of the Singularity, we noted some key pain points when it came to producing units and managing armies in the late game. One of the first frustrations was the need to micromanage numerous production buildings during large-scale conflicts as the game progressed. You could dogpile engineers onto a single production building to make it construct faster, but if you were trying to field various cruisers, frigates, etc., you still would need to manage several different buildings to try and keep your production queues optimized to your income.
Added to that, if your production buildings were far behind your frontlines, new units would take a bit of time to reach their rally points. On smaller maps, this was less of an issue, but on the really large maps, you’d start to feel it. Some unique units in Ashes of the Singularity could teleport reinforcements to frontline armies, but micromanaging these unique support units added some unit micromanagement to try and save building micromanagement.
Wanting to make ‘playing on sprawling huge maps’ more enjoyable, we decided to reconsider both how reinforcements are handled and how new unit production is handled.
(Constructing a new Vehicle Yard at the North edge of my territory, near Army 1, to move my production frontline)
In Ashes 2, your production buildings coordinate recruitment and supply chain across the entire map. Similar to a few other RTSs, if you construct multiple of the same production building, it speeds up the production. Rather than recruiting individual engineers and assigning them to expedite work at a building, you can just construct another production building.
The units still spawn from a specific production building, however, and their spawn point really matters. The production buildings are ‘smart’, and they know when they’re producing a unit to reinforce an existing army, or create a new army.
If you’re trying to reinforce an army on the frontline, the newly-recruited units will spawn at whatever production building is closest to that army.
If you’re trying to create a new army, the units will spawn at whatever building is closest to the army’s initial rally point.
These choices impact gameplay in a few central areas. When you conquer new regions, for example, you can leapfrog your ability to reinforce your armies by constructing new production buildings in regions closer to those armies. This becomes a key mechanic on larger maps, because maps can get so large, it can take many minutes for new units to cross several regions and join with your main armies. Managing your ‘production frontline’ becomes an important aspect, but because constructing a new production building isn’t an action you do THAT frequently, it winds up being an important decision, but not one that requires constant attention. You also aren’t ‘losing’ on any investment you’ve made in earlier production facilities back in your home region, as those still help your ‘frontline’ production facilities recruit faster.
Added to this are some of the region mechanics that we’ve preserved from the original Ashes of the Singularity. Regions are connected back to your ‘home’ region via connection lines. If a region becomes orphaned or isolated, it loses power. Unpowered regions can’t generate resources or use their production buildings. If a hostile army is relying on a key region to reinforce its frontline forces, you can either assault that region directly or outmaneuver and capture connecting regions to de-power the production buildings. On a large map, this can mean delaying reinforcements by several minutes, which may be enough time to outproduce your opponent. Skirmishing, or raiding, becomes a viable tactic, as just buying time with a small army can be a force multiplier for your main army elsewhere.
(The expansion has left my new Vehicle Yard, near Army 1, vulnerable to isolation. A raid on the region just to the South would cut off its power.
The changes to unit production help illustrate some of our larger gameplay goals with Ashes of the Singularity 2. The scale of conflict quickly grows beyond ‘small’, and we want to make sure players are focused on important strategic decisions, and not getting constantly taxed by small micromanagement details. A typical midgame battle might result in nearly a hundred casualties, and replacing that huge volume of units needs to be streamlined, so you can focus on the bigger, more interesting decisions. Where will I construct my forward production buildings? Where should I place defenses to prevent raids? Should I build slower, heavier units and roll straight into the enemy base, or faster, lighter units to outmaneuver them? What is my opponent recruiting, and how can I adapt to counter them?
We hope this Dev Journal has helped provide some insight into how the gameplay of Ashes of the Singularity 2 is evolving around its grand scale, and how mechanics are changing to make playing at that scale awesome. We’ll have some more dev journals in the next few weeks as we explore additional mechanics and continue our dive into gameplay.
