A Formal Introduction Including Preliminary and Secondary Thoughts

INTRODUCTION
(scroll down if you don't care)

My name is X-Astra.  Actually, it's "ExAstra" but I think that was taken, so I just went with X-Astra.  I'm an Aircraft Mechanic who loves to play RTS and strategy games.  Sins of a Solar Empire has probably been my most cherished RTS that I've ever owned.  Although I didn't get involved with RTS' until one of my friends bought Command and Conquer 3:  Tiberium Wars for the Xbox 360.  I had never heard of the genre before and had only played Turn Based Strategy such as Fire Emblem or Advance Wars before.

I thought C&C3 looked really fun, though complicated and not really "my style".  That said I really loved the Skrin race and my buddy thought I'd be good at RTS.  Later on in our lives when we were at Wal Mart he saw a game called "Sins of a Solar Empire" and decided to pick it up because it was Real Time Strategy.  I laughed at him and said "That box art is horrible and I've never heard of them, I wouldn't waste my money".  He played the game, said it was great, but that it "took too long" because of the massive sizes for the maps.

More time passed and then Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 came out.  My friend and I both got it together and I immediately loved the game.  Admittedly the controls took quite some time to get used to but it was a blast (for me).  Ultimately my bud said it wasn't as fun as the previous Red Alert games had been and we stopped playing.

Eventually, Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion comes out on Steam and I remember it as the game my friend liked playing but said took too long to play.  I convince him and another friend to buy it on steam, and we spend hours on end playing the game.  My RTS-experienced friend starts out the best of us 3, however slowly but surely I wind up becoming the dominating force in our games.  I've spent a lot of time with Rebellion and I love it to pieces.

Now don't get me wrong, I know that I've missed out on lots of the RTS games that came out of its golden days.  I've tried some of the older ones here and there, and I've tried getting into other, newer ones, like Starcraft II.  But ultimately I prefer Sins and Grey Goo's somewhat slower pace to Starcraft II's "HIT ALL THE BUTTONS ALL THE TIME" approach.

I'm not the best RTS player out there, by a long shot.  I know I've missed out on some great titles, but bear with me.  I'm here to not miss out on this future great title, and to help it come to fruition.  I hope to be able to provide a unique and alternate perspective to what you may get from people who would call themselves "Core RTS players".

RTS Games I have experience with:

• Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
• Grey Goo
• Wargame: AirLand Battle
• Wargame: Red Dragon
• Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
• Command and Conquer:  Red Alert 3
• Age of Empires 2
• Age of Empires 3 (and expansions)
• Etherium
• Starcraft II (trial version only)
• Supreme Commander 2
• Planetary Annihilation
• Divinity: Dragon Commander (Only kind of an RTS)
• Carrier Command: Gaea Mission (Only kind of an RTS)

PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS
(keep scrolling down if you're looking for gameplay thoughts only)

So I got the email from Stardock saying "Hey guys new RTS coming" and I was sitting there thinking "man how have I not heard of this?"  I got on board the hype train from the website and said "Oh what the heck" and decided to plug in (read $$buy in$$) for testing.  I knew Stardock was working on something with Oxide that had something to do with Mantle but somehow I'd not heard of the game.  Regardless, the email was well received.

I am very onboard with the idea that humans are still (acting) human and that their AI creation, rather than going the more traditional sci-fi route, is actually just trying to keep people from destroying the galaxy (at least doing it reactively rather than proactively).  I think a more involved back-story could be nice if anyone ever gets around to it.

As for the Vault - it feels really poor, actually.  I know you guys are working on the game and all, don't take this gripe too seriously - but it is located in a weird spot (the store, or on the bottom right corner of the home page) and logs me out seemingly every 5 minutes.  I wound up just downloading every single file in the vault into a folder on my computer so I could access them as I wanted.  Which actually brings me to my next topic:

Post-Humans vs. The Substrate

"Races" are usually very important to me in RTS', and I'm sure they are to everyone.  I need one that I really like in order to really be able to reach into the game.  In Sins of a Solar Empire, it's the Vasari for me.  C&C3: The Skrin.  Starcraft - The Protoss.  Age of Empires III - the Germans.  So far I have to say that the Substrate are what catch my eye.  The concepts for them look sleek and alien.  As a mechanic I have a soft spot for the traditional "Blocky, Hard Lines, Angular" approach to "human" units that most RTS games seem to follow.  However I've never been able to like them as much as the more advanced stuff.  Humans usually feel too plain and normal, and it looks like Ashes is following this philosophy a bit as well.  I did like that the Human Units are at least giant hovering ships with awesome guns.

But are designs and Armor vs. Shields the only things we'll be seeing differently in them?  I know I read that "there is lore" behind the way human units hover, but it isn't explained as of yet.  Do the Substrate units hover too?  We know that they had "freedom of design" due to not including the same type of hovering unit as the humans.  Will they have different types of weapons?  Will there be real and genuine differences to them or will it be superfluous and just lore-candy?  I hope for the former (asymmetrical balance) and not the latter, but we'll see eventually.

Now, for textures.  In the game I noticed the textures are "ok".  The units keep their color, look, and feel all the way down to the closest zoom level.  But they look and feel sort of like tiny clay figurines moving across a magnificent battlefield as opposed to giant vehicles of war.  Could we have higher level-more exceptionally detailed units eventually (perhaps optionally)?  It's not a HUGE deal, the game looks fantastic regardless, it's just something that left me a little wanting.

SECONDARY THOUGHTS
(fancy way of saying gameplay thoughts?)

Keep in mind that some of the things I talk about here I may just be uninformed on.  I may complain about one or two things that are for a reason I either don't know or have a key/"fix" that I'm unaware of.  Don't hesitate to let me know if I've just missed something.  That said, let's start on the bad side, and finish on the good side.

Smaller Gripes:

• Can we get a way to turn off the "Snap back" feature of the camera when you hold shift and change the camera angle (from top down to a more cinematic view)?  Every time I try to change my zoom level after having changed the camera angle I get snapped back to top down and it's super disorienting (not to mention annoying)
• Sound Effects - Let's be honest, the OST is sounding brilliant so far!  But the sound effects are just.. boring.  They almost feel like they don't belong (I hope they don't, I hope they're just placeholders)
• Attack Move - The destination point should definitely be a red icon, not a blue one like the "Go Move" icon.
• Radar Wireframe - It's super confusing and unintuitive to look at.  I think just tightening up the frame a little more and letting it show more detail might help?  I like the idea of the wireframe, it's just that this one looks like it came out of 1995.
• Alt key - Currently it looks like it shows the effective range of all units.  Could we get that changed to "all selected units"?  Sometimes it gets a bit confusing lol (especially when the T1 units act as a group but have individual ranges)
• Ship movement - they look to move very... sharply for what they are.  I'm not sure if it's just because it's still in early phases
• I can't figure out how to "scroll" in the unit sidebar on the left?  If I, say, make like 10 T3 ships, only 5 show up.  And then like 1/4 of the 6th one on the bottom.

Medium level Gripes:

• Energizer Unit - does this guy even do anything?  I've built several to try and get them to repair my units but can't manage to get them to do anything other than sit there.
• Research - As it is right now, research is boring.  I don't understand why I have to research the things I'm researching, for one.  Second, the bonuses of research feel really.. bad.  I mean I get metal storage which is great.  And I get one new land unit.. a sniper cruiser?  That's kinda cool.  But everything else is easily forgettable.  More specialized units would be welcome here, as well as better benefits for researching the metal/reactive multipliers.
• If I select a T2 unit and start to produce units (so they will auto-join the meta unit), I've never seen them come from my forward factories (even if they're not building anything).  Are they set to only come from the seed.. or.. how do these work?
• Missed shots - I've occasionally seen rounds completely miss targets, or go right through the model.  Is this intended, are we going to have missed shots?  If so, is there perhaps a more intuitive way to show it?  I mean I saw a round (from a T3 Hyperion) go right through a Seed, and a T3 ship.  I was more confused than anything. (I'm ok with the game having the ability to "miss")
• Logistics system feels like an arbitrary constraint that is too easy (albeit time consuming) to solve.
• These are giant hovering ships.  Why can't they do an offensive retreat (reverse while firing) instead of turning around to move away?
• N

Higher level Gripes:

• Really Strange meta unit behavior - Occasionally when I select a meta unit and tell them to do something, one of the groups of T1 units will just sit there, like rebels, and never ever listen to anything I tell them, ever again.
• Unbelievable AI pathing - I've seen units "dance" around a spot like they couldn't go through it, only to proceed through it after 2 or 3 seconds.  This is more common when a large group of units is moving but could be as simple as a T3 command ship all on its lonesome.  Given the time it takes the units to move from place to place, any second spent dillydallying can be a severe loss.
• Meta Unit AI - I find it odd, but I can't really tell what my "meta units" are even doing.  So far, to me, they seem to be acting like any other unit.  I haven't seen any of the "new age" things that have been claimed, such as damaged units falling back to be protected by spongier units, or indirect fire units staying at range to engage.  Most of the time the meta units just seem to chase around the closest enemy and try to get as close as possible.
• Aircraft are useless - The scout may not be, but the bombers are absolutely useless.  You expect me to believe that a bomber in this era can drop its payload across an area, where its target is a giant floating land-battleship, and completely miss its target?  On top of that the damage they do doesn't feel that good even if they do hit.  Their AI isn't the greatest either.  I've sent them to attack a target and they dropped their bombs WAY early, missing the target, and then proceeded to fly in silly circles around it for....ever.  Ultimately I find them to be very clunky, very disappointing.  And if the bombers are useless, why build fighters to stop them?  I have literally sent a swarm of like 30+ bombers to attack 3 T1 units.  And all the T1 units survived.  (I find this gripe particularly important as I love aircraft!)
• If I make a T3 capital ship and then select it, ask it to create 4 T2 ships (auto meta unit), and then select the T2 ships it created, and try to fill them with T1 ships, it doesn't work?

Now for the better things:

1. Soundtrack is amazing
2. The maps, visually, are terrific!  I really hope we get a lot of variety (snowy areas, deserts, flowing lava, oceans, combinations, and maybe even weather in the future?
3. I love the IDEA of meta units.
4. I love that the game sounds like it is focusing more on strategy and tactics than split second reactions (more macro less micro)
5. Unit design is fantastic!  I absolutely love the way both units are built on both sides, although I think I prefer the Substrate overall
6. I like the asymmetrical balance of armor vs. shields.  While I've always been an Armor > Shields person (EVE Online, Sins, etc) I may just have to make the switch for this one
7. The lore of the story is really interesting.  Give me moooooooooooooooore
8. The current "small" maps are decently sized.  If they scale anywhere on the level of Sins (9 planets for small, 100+ towards the larger end) I can't wait to see the huge maps!  Bring them on.
9. I've liked the developer interaction with the Pre-Alpha testers that I've seen on the forums so far.  I know making the game is important, but interaction with your customer is, too.
10. Odd one, but, I love the name of the game.  It's catchy, really seems to draw from the game's lore and theme (similar to Sins), and has great abbreviation capabilities (Ashes or AotS, whichever you prefer)
11. Surface to Surface missiles aren't seen that often, and I like how you guys have added them in as the indirect fire units.
12. An army made of thousands of units?  Fighting on multiple fronts?  Gosh I just can't wait.
13. Build times feel great.  Not too quick, but also not dreadfully long (on the T3 side)
14. Unit movement speed is, for the most part, SPOT ON.  Don't listen to everyone saying the game is too slow.  Any fan of Sins will recognize the game's pacing and should be used to it.  A few units could be a bit quicker, perhaps, but OVERALL the pacing is fine.
15. Unit sidebar on the left feels way more useful than it did in Sins of a Solar Empire.
16. T3 Units don't feel like "Super units".  I sent like 4 of them (2 Orions, 1 Prometheus, 1 Hyperion) against a small enemy army led by 1 T3 ship and they were wrecking my little group of T3s.  It was just a little test, and they did clean up a lot of the smaller units, but I'm glad I lost that fight.

Anyway, this post is getting really long, and I'm sure I'm forgetting both gripes, bugs, and great things about the game, but I'll call it here and hope we can all work together to create a great game.