Heh, I read this on the GalCiv III forum and for a second I thought "What? Long range artillery in space?"

That said, this isn't Supreme Commander.  It's a different game. Hopefully you'll like it.  In the mean time, I recommend picking up Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance if you don't already have it.

Thanks!

We like Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation.  However, Ashes is its own game. It isn't a remake.  Moreover, realistically, FA had years and years of improvements and balance to it.  

I was part of the original Supreme Commander beta. It was a very very different beast from what you have today.

As people play Ashes, they'll provide feedback and suggestions which will influence the overall direction.  But feedback that boils down to "please remake FA" isn't going to get very far any more than the people who wish GalCiv was a clone of Master of Orion.

What i can say is that this:

Will never ever ever happen.  

I have very nice memories of the SupCom beta, will there be a multiplayer agent with ladders etc?

Yeah I love it too, but my first feeling is "lets go into the options and switch on always render strategic icons, those units are hard to read".

No matter how a unit looks icons are always better to read. That is another issue I have with the no icons stuff. I play with icons even on the lowest zoom levels. Icons are so much better than 3d units anyway. Really if you say thousands of icons are bad then why do you say thousands of highly complex hard to read 3d models are any better?

Also @frogboy, the real question is how will that kind of screen look like in Ashes? That screen from FA gives the player a lot of information what is going on. The real question is: How do you plan to give the player this information? As it stands all I can imagine is "the player will have to zoom in and scroll around" or "the player will have to look at a tiny minimap with plain color dots and then zoom around".

Sounds bad. You seem to be pretty set on that you have some solution. I just can't see what solution that is.

Looks like AotS devs don't really understand situation they found themselves in. Forged Alliance with all the mods required for a good match have serious problems with running on modern systems. To be precise, I've personally confirmed on 5 PCs that it runs only for 40-65 minutes, then crashes, rendering even relatively small matches unplayable. So Supreme Commander is effectively dead, and any developer team that announces similar RTS these days have to bear the cross of being its heir in exchange for getting a focused attention of a pretty massive playerbase. Said playerbase have a pretty high quality bar and no working game to meet it, so if devs manage to bring us a Supreme Commander clone, they'll get all the profit. They don't even need to do anything really new gameplay-wise, but God forbid them to not live up to expectations. Ultimate fate of Planetary Annihilation awaits any RTS game that is at least visually similar to SupCom, but not delivers all the features from it - tsunami of negative reviews will wash away any kind of business potential.

That is a somewhat weird argument. You can say that about any feature. If you take out one feature and still use the same resources for the game you will have some extra resources free to spent on the other features. 

"Better physics", certainly are not standing against "zoom" in a gameplay or technical way per se. They certainly can be in a game together at once. Yes resources of developing a game are always limited, though that's not really a very specific argument.

Though some of the points are also odd, because I have a hard time imaging what could be made better about them in FA:

- better terrain, los or physics are all things that don't really directly interact with having a zoom our not. Having a zoom costs development resources you cant spent on those features. Having a zoom also means players will not "profit" as much from those things as they don't look as closely at things all the time, so it reduces the value of having better terrain, los or physics and thus means you are less likely to be willing to spent your limited dev resources on them. But in general if you introduce these things and have them have major effects on gameplay then they would been interesting to have for sure. Just limited dev resources stopped that. And tbh if I had to chose between these things and the zoom I'd take the zoom every time. So the it was the right choice to spent the dev resources on the zoom and not on super awesome physics.

- reclaiming was pretty damn good and worked very well. The only one thing that I really disliked was how when you were zoomed out high the level of detail would go and make wreckages invisible. Wreckages had no icons so it became totally invisible and you had to remember where it was or zoom in and search. Sadly I never found any hack to get rid of the level of detail, by now computers should be fast enough not to care all that much. Basically the one issue I had with wreckages in FA is the thing you want really bad for ashes: no icons at all

- more precise handling of the economy... no idea what you are thinking about. I never felt anything was missing.

So please feel free to explain what exactly you meant. I am curious to read what you and the minds behind FA are thinking of exactly. Really curious actually.

Nobody is questioning that I think.

However I feel the "zoom free"-way to play a game is the Starcraft way to play a game, which is basically a small scale kind of game where you dance around single units.

Now I have played 2k+ hours of SupCom:FA in the past reaching top 10 for years. I also played 1k hours of Starcraft2, reaching masters league. So I do like to play both kinds of RTS, zoom and no zoom.

From all I understand so far you seem to combine the two by allowing the player to merge a thousand units into a single meta unit and then tell that meta unit to go somewhere and only track that meta unit in a starcraft-kind of way on a minimap. 

If this will work heavily depends on the exact implementation of meta units I guess? I guess if your meta unit AI really is THAT good then this can work. But I never have seen such a good AI in an RTS before. Like so far unit AI in RTS basically always equals "really super stupid annoying thing that hopefully will understand that I want my unit to go to the location". Now you say you have some form of AI that goes and handles the management of units correctly with a much more complex problem set of managing a whole set of 1k units to work together correctly. Curious. Really curious. You seem to be pretty set on that it works at least

I think most players just want the developers to be open to changing things up and not so much "forcing" them to make a supreme commander clone being open to changing things if the players feel its needed after "we actually play the game" then nobody has an issue but saying things like "We won't , "It will not happen" etc isn't the right way in my opinion

Lets play the game see where its at then decide if other things work or need to be added look forward to the testing

Its good to know ive got so much respect from the devs on here, your basically quoting me.  May i remind you of the little badge on the left and that all the people with little badges on the left haven't just contributed time to helping you test your product before release but also money to help with its development.  I actually hate star-craft the limited fixed close in point of view just seems like its taking games backwards and not forwards and yes i cant play sup com:FA due to the lag / slow down and pretty much all i play now is sins of a solar empire until it too also slows down late game.  I'm not supreme ranked master silver commander of the universe of any games on any ranked ladders, im just your average person that balances life with game life perhaps a little more sensibly than the average gamer or my youth but i would still like to feel that my comments are at least heard / read with the same credibility as the next person.  You cant just write off sup com and its fans just becuase you don't want strategic zoom when pretty much every picture you have released so far to the public might as well have a giant spider bot in the middle and people would think its supcom:fa.  Shock.. now you've got sup com:fa fans here.

Ultimately you have a plan for the game and limited development time i imagine its all planned out for the next 3 years regardless of anyone on here but surely the whole point of this forum is just for us to sling ideas and for feedback when in game even if you choose to listen to it or not, not for us to feel like because we played supcom:fa instead of star-craft that we might as well just walk out the door.

Its not really an agenda, its simply a great feature which i enjoyed from many games i think we are just confused about how its going to be possible to navigate maps which are supposed to take units hours to cross without something as convenient as strat zoom, sup com, sins, even civ 5 allows a little bit of movement outwards, and im sure you know of many more that utilize the feature, so its not like the many who have suggested it are all demanding a specific sup com clone.  

No one has played it yet so we couldn't possibly give you feedback so i don't expect you to take anyone seriously at all, its simply a bunch of passionate fans throwing about ideas, you don't have to do anything.  

Strategic zoom isn't the be all and end all, we get a mini map.. maybe that will be enough to navigate, in a few weeks we get to play it and see how it plays then and only then will we be able to make an informed opinion on the whole zoom or no zoom subject from our point of view.

@tat, the issue I have with your argument is that Ashes isn't a spiritual successor to TA or Supreme Commander.  

Anyone hoping Ashes to be "TA for the modern age" is likely to be disappointed.  Heck, we don't even have robots (in the sense of having things walking around or even tanks driving on the ground). 

What we're looking to do is make our game our way and get feedback from the players on ways we can make it as fun as possible.  We're not looking to make a Starcraft/TA/SupCom game for the latest gen.  It's it's own thing with our own ideas based on decades of experience in developing and playing  these games.

And by that I am referring to the original post:

Of which, Ashes will have none of the things listed above.  That game was already made quite well: Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance.  I like that game. It's just not this game.

For one thing, Ashes 1.0 will be much simpler game.  SupCom + SupCom: FA cost $29 million to make.  That's almost 10X our budget (32X the budget of the original Sins of a Solar Empire).  So we are focusing on our advantages:

1. We have an amazing, next-generation engine. The world's first and still only asynchronous OSR 3D engine.
2. Which translates to: We can have lots of high fidelity "stuff" on screen at once.
3. The gameplay engine is also a multi-core asynchronous engine
4. Which translates to the unit AI being able to do a lot of "Stuff" 
5. We can procedural generate our maps 
6. Which translates to potentially having infinite maps to choose from giving 4X like exploration on the map

So our design works with our strengths.  Our weakness is content.  We can't budget tons of units or environments right off the bat (like ocean). 

What we do also have is experience.  The team that is making this has made a lot of major games as the lead developers and/or producers/designers (Civilization V, Civilization IV, Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, Demigod, Starcraft: Retribution, etc.).  

And of course, the team that invented strategic zoom in the first place.

Sleeping is for sissies.

We did Sins for less than $1 million.  GalCiv III was about $3 million also, a bit less than Ashes.

I will wait to play the game but pretty much have 0 hope and can see this being another failure even with new engine purely because of the attitude of making a game "to not be supreme commander" like your too proud to say hey we took stuff from supreme commander why because its great and its what our players wanted the people paying for your game are the ones asking for stuff similar to supreme commander and you seem to say like we don't care what happens with the game i mean the people asking for this stuff are founders we are directly funding and paying you to make a game we want 

When people saw the previews of this game they didn't say wow this game looks great i might get it they said "wow this game looks like supreme commander maybe it will be the same or very similar that would be amazing been waiting for a game like that for so long now" whether you accept that or not i don't care that's what people thought that's why most came here and also most funded your game and became founders i didn't become a founder to support a game who refuses to take any input if it relates to supreme commander and to sit back and be told yeah were making sure our games not like supreme commander cause were too proud to be labeled SC FA successor 

Your not listening to that at all your saying hey our games how we want to make it not how you guys would like it and we will do everything to ensure its nothing like the game you all want to play and that was so successful 

So how can anyone have any hope in this game at all after comments like "Of which ashes will have none of the things listed above" you already just closed any option of changing things depending on the feedback you get from players after they play the game

My question to you is what are you gonna do if people play this game and say hey frog it needs shields it needs artillery we really need a zoom out option are you gonna sit their and say hey well sorry im too stubborn to implement those things because i don't want my game to be anything like supreme commander ? because if that's your approach you will fail exactly like multiple other games have including PA , Sup com 2 they all failed because they refused to listen to what people really wanted and stuck with its my game and ill develop it how i want

It's a sad day for SC fans it really is

Edit

I watched the latest video you uploaded to the vault and i don't really know what to say your taking some ideas from ta/sup com e.g metals / power / engineers / t1-3 even the ui is similar and i know you said it will change and even in the video you have a zoom out option already and i find the reasoning you gave in the video quite poor are you building a game for people who have never played an rts or for people who have played rts before ?

Your example you gave was the terrain heights and differences and if units were at bottom of a cliff and you zoomed out on the map you wouldn't understand why they can't attack and why your units are getting destroyed ? is that even a serious question

If your playing the game zoomed out or not your expect to learn and understand how the game plays and how to be effective the only thing your doing by limiting zoom so people can see the different heights in terrain is catering for fools nothing more

Heres how it would play out if i was a total noob - I send units in their at bottom of cliff im zoomed out and my units are getting demolished i have no idea why obviously i zoom in to see why i see there's units at top shooting down and my units trying to fire but can't shoot up the cliff oh ok he has a height advantage ill have to factor that in when i pick my battles next time problem solved lesson learned

If i was familiar with rts ok i wonder if this game has real physics and strategy like they claimed sends units to bottom off cliff units can't shoot up the cliff and the guys at the top are raining down hell on my units and getting completely annihilated ok yep their is real physics ill use that to my advantage when defending etc 

TL:DR Zooming has 0 effect on the work you have put into terrain detail and physics of units 

TA/SC had the following and so does your game

Metal

Power

Engineers

Tiers 1 - 3

The engineers even build the same as TA / SC with different particle effects

You can assign more than 1 engineer to speed up building process another feature of TA/SC

Whether you agree or not so far the game is built like TA/SC and is playing similar including in the video showing the zoom feature already working i really hope you can stop focusing on making a game thats won't be called a TA/SC clone or worrying that people will claim it to be a successor and focus on the good work your doing by taking proven ideas from other games and building on them and adding to them instead of making the drastic mistake other devs have done and trying to focus on being different from other games 

Also you mention when people get a hold of the alpha your worried about people saying its not like SC or they give feedback basically wanting a clone of SC if your playerbase gives you feedback for example saying we want shields what logical reason can you possibly have to not add them in if people want them implemented apart from saying SC had them and its not a SC clone ?

The #1 issue developers have is they never really listen to players they like to think they do they even might believe they do but they never really really pay attention to what were saying that's exactly why PA failed and other games similar , look at starcraft for example they had a proven good game starcraft 1 and then they built on into starcraft 2 with added features and improvments

Now i know AOTS is not SC however nobody has really made a game that improved on SC you have a chance to make your own game AOTS with better features and taking great ideas from a game most devs failed to clone or attempt to remake correctly 

Hopefully a bit of this sinks in or makes you at least consider / think of a different approach i don't want you to feel as if were demanding this or that or that we dont appreciate your ideas etc i think its in yours and your player bases best interest to not hesistate on any good ideas simply because they are used in another game or ur too focused on making your game different so its not labeled the SC successor infact if it was labeled that you should feel honored that you have managed to claim the throne from SC:FA and doing so by building a game most players have craved for a long long time

@Frogboy Your awesome man, i cannot believe how your not going crazy with all the negative comments for AOTS, I just want to say that the game your building with Stardock/Oxide is gonna be the first of its kind and i do support your ideas the the way you want the game to go.

I am gonna play the Alpha build and many will and support you guys to make it 10/10 over the coming months/years.

Congrats on GAlCiv III you guys made an awesome game, got very highly positive reviews, people love it.
I am not into turn based RTS games but i am in for a good Real time RTS game like AOTS.

Again keep this great job and i just noticed you are spending a lot more time on us and AOTS. just do what you want to do and give us this game so we can help you by supporting it in any way possible.

P.S ( still waiting for a announcement of sins of a solar empire 2 game )