Depends on the map size.  On the largest maps, no, artillery won't reach the other side. They're just too big.  But on the smaller maps, we'll see.  It depends really on how small we want the smallest maps to be.

I could write a whole article on why we want to avoid the end game nuke vs. ABM thing.  We think we have a solution for this situation.  In TA, there was no limit on how many buildings you can build.  Starcraft has the same issue.  But in Ashes, you have to have power and only the planetary power generators provide that power and they have to be captured.

As a result, someone WILL win.  We also have victory points on some maps that if one player dominates the map, they will ultimately win.

Sounds like my greatest concert about Ashes got suddenly confirmed. From statement above it follows that game will have strict artificial limits to base building just like Sins' tactical/logistics slots, ruling out any viable possibility of turtling. Absence of stalemates also sounds suspicious - stalemate is a pretty normal outcome that happens in real wars very often when no side have power enough to crush its enemy. It's good that I'm not a founder yet, given the risk to spend another $100 for a game that's not intended to match my play style, as with Planetary Annihilation.

i'm with kane on this.

What the dev's are doing to me sounds great but its not my play-style at all. I like to secure an area, fortify it, and then only move back to that area if i am overwhelmed, or flanked etc.

I find games where i have to defend everything, all the time actually stressful. If i was good at it, i'm sure i would enjoy it, but i don't.

FA, and to a lesser degree soase don't reward me for this approach, but they also don't heavily penalize me (i have shields, arty, experimentals and fabs to assist in my defense).

It sounds like this will be a great game, but one for people that are able to take in the entire game all the time, and i cannot see how this will not be an all out rush game, because territory largely determines your income, and once your behind on that, thats it. your fighting an uphill battle. The only way to compensate for this is to have disproportionately strong static defenses available, like KKND did.

Count me on the side of Kane and Bristol as well, me and my friends greatly prefer the traditional TA / Sup Com approach of allowing easier resource management through conversion and reclaimation abilities.  We don't really play competitively its mostly a few of us up against a huge number of AI, and we want to build a huge base and amass an army to invade the fortified enemy.  It's probably why games like Starcraft and Company of Heroes never really meshed with us, it was all about expanding territory and fighting on multiple fronts.  

Hopefully there will at least be cheats or perhaps a sandbox type of mode so we can have our fun.  It's fine if the AI gets affected just as we do, its not like we are trying to steamroll we just want to build the way we want to build without having to eat up the entire map.  I'll be keeping an eye on this as we have been itching for a new RTS to take over Sup Com 2.

The pacing of Ashes is more like Sins of a Solar Empire. It's not about how fast you move. It's about where you put your units.

But at the same time, we're not going to have units that can just do long-range pummeling while the player turtles around it. NO BIG BERTHAs in this game.

I agree that pacing in some games becomes frenetic, but I love Sins and found the pacing to be spot on in each iteration of the game.  There were lots of strategies you could employ to reinforce your defenses.  I also liked Sins implementation of end game super-weapons and super techs.  I felt like they gave you solid boost at a point in the game where things could have dragged on indefinitely. 

Unfortunately, turtlers will always be at a disadvantage compared to someone employing more varied tactics.  There's a reason why soldiers are told to keep moving during combat.  It's because eventually, no matter how well you dig in, someone is going to dislodge you one way or another; either through sheer will power, advanced technology, superior tactics, or a combination thereof.  That's the nature of modern and future warfare.  We simply no longer live in an age of medieval castles and crude siege weaponry and I do not think we ever will given how fast technology advances. 

Also, who really has the time to (or wants to) invest 2 hours in a game just to hit a stalemate?  How is that enjoyable for you or your opponent?  My suggestion is that you study the games you play and learn to vary your tactics a bit.  It will open your world up to any number of more modern games than Supreme Commander and make you a far more effective player.

Looking forward to playing the AoS Alpha!

Thanks Kane.  Good luck with all that.  

I fully agree on the Creeper World 3 recommendation.  It's one of my favorite games.

Awesome game BTW, though it's more of a puzzle than RTS, at least as it gets closer to higher levels. Also it's kind of downside that CW3 is unsuitable for LAN party - multiplayer is impossible due to high gameplay asymmetry, and co-op is missing since puzzle-like levels were designed for singleplayer.

All installations on C drive, no spaces in path, temperature, voltage and other hardware parameters within normal levels, rigs pass all tests with ease. Hardware on the rigs is entirely different, they have no components in common. Tried setting compatibility mode with Vista, XP SP2 & SP3, patching MySpeed in and out, running without Core Maximizer - nothing helps. Mods are: LEM 4.4, Sorian AI 2.1.1, TVg 4.86, Total Mayhem 1.20, BOGIS 5.0, BlackOps Balance & Unleashed 6.0, BlackOps Special Weapons (v4), BlackOps Alternate Reality (v3), BlackOps Naval Rebalance 1.2, BlackOps ACUs 3.2, Experimental Shield Generator 1.2. Game crashes after 40-45 minutes. Disabling separate mods allows it to last longer, up to 90 minutes, but in the end it still crashes. Also FAF version executable shows somewhat more resilience. Old Core 2 Quad and Core 2 Duo rigs were able to stand 2-3 hour matches to the very end on the exactly same SupCom version and mod layout. There are two different 0xc0000005 errors: in xactengine2_9.dll and ForgedAlliance.exe itself. I really have no more ideas how to fix it.

32-bit RAM space overflow was my guess as well, but it's not really the case - in the moment of crash it's usually from 2.2 to 2.8 GB.

Probably some mods in the build are excessive and/or have slightly overlapping hooks. The gameplay-important part is interplay between BlackOps mods, TVg and Total Mayhem. The main reason for testing it in configuration mentioned above is that it's proven to be a working one - while some things in the gameplay were weird, exactly that layout of mods (down to versions) worked without a single crash on a previous generation PCs. Under assumption that hardware, OS and drivers cannot affect the results of ingame script execution by LUA interpreter as long as it stays single-threaded, crash source is localized to engine itself. After all, even removing every single mod don't help to cure that crash completely, while significantly extending lifetime. We don't use FAF, since our core layout of mods is still not available here, and it cannot handle more than one major mod anyway.

Thinking FAF can't handle more than one mod I think that is outdated thinking. Plus it would appear that your install can't handle itself either so?

Have you ever been sucked into a week long set of rounds on Gap of Rohan LOL. Great fun and addictive.