Ashes of the Singularity: Alpha Walkthrough

Introduction

Ashes of the Singularity is a real-time strategy game set in the distant future where humanity has evolved into incredibly powerful beings who now interact with the physical world through drone-like machines called constructs.  Each Post-Human strives to capture entire worlds and convert it into a material called Turinium which gives that being ever more capability to reach further into the galaxy.  Worlds are converted into this material by capturing Turinium generators on a given world.

Most worlds are contested and you must annihilate these opponents by acquiring resources and technology to construct armies of powerful machines.  This document will walk you through the ALPHA version of Ashes of the Singularity

WARNING WARNING WARNING

This is a very early build of the game.  Assuming it even runs on your computer, and it probably won’t, the gameplay is still very early and we are missing a ton of features and content.

REQUIREMENTS

This is important:  Ashes of the Singularity is the first video game to use object space rendering (OSR).  OSR has only become possible in real-time very recently thanks to ever improving hardware capabilities.  OSR is, in essence, the technique used to do CGI in movies.  By contrast, video games usually used deferred rendering.  This is why, no matter how advanced a new game is, you can tell, at a  glance, that it’s still a video game.  By contrast, even early CGI movies from the 1990s don’t look like video games. This has to do with how objects are rendered.

Long story short: Ashes has high hardware requirements.  You MUST update your drivers.  AMD, Nvidia and Intel have been updating their drivers to better support Ashes of the Singularity.  Go check now.

You must have at least:

• 64-bit Windows 7, 8 or 10.
• 4GB of memory (really you should have 8 but we are going to try to support 4).
• 1GB of video memory minimum (you really should have at least 2)
• 4 CORE CPUs.  2 cores won’t cut it.  We need 4.
• Your CPU should be within the last 2 years.  So think Core I5-4xxxx series or better.

We also support DirectX 12 which we highly recommend for best performance.  However, many third-party apps don’t yet support DirectX 12 yet (I have to use DirectX 11 to do Xsplit for instance).

SETTING UP

Main setup screen

BENCHMARK

We recommend trying out the benchmark first before you do anything.  First off, it gives us lots of additional data for testing. Second, it’ll tell you how well your machine will run the game.

SINGLE PLAYER

This option lets you choose a map, choose who to play against and battle it out. 

GALACTIC WAR

This won’t be available until late beta.  The Galactic War is a 3-way battle between the PHC (Post-Human Coalition), PHR (Post-Human Renegades) and The Substrate for control of our section of the Milky Way Galaxy in the year 2178.   You will get a situation map of stars and pick where to strike next, gathering capabilities and resources as you succeed (or losing them if you fail).

MULTIPLAYER

While we are striving to make sure the single-player game is very strong – in fact, people who never play it multiplayer should find Ashes to be one of the best single player strategy game experiences they’ve ever had – the multiplayer part of the game is where things really shine. 

METAVERSE

This is similar to the Galactic War but on a much much grander scale.  Players join one of the 3 factions put their efforts into battling those of other factions.  These games also count as ranked matches as well to avoid splitting the MP community.  A victory gives your faction points. The number of points is affected by how many other people are playing as your faction.  When one faction conquers the galactic map, a new galactic map is created.  We plan to include various bits of free goodies to active participants of this.

RANKED

In this mode, you choose a faction and play.  You are then matched up against someone of a similar skill level. 

CUSTOM GAME

Load it up, invite some friends in or just wait for others to join you and play. 

RANKINGS

This displays the rankings of all players and lots of other stats you might want to know. You can also track your own person accomplishments here as well.

PLAYING THE GAME

You begin the game with a single engineering.  Engineers construct buildings that can:

1. Produce Units or Resources.
2. Defend your regions.
3. Provide global abilities.

UI basics

Engineering panel

CONTROLS

1. Left-Click on an object to select
2. Right-Click to send to a destination
3. Left-Drag to select multiple objects
4. Right-Drag to move the camera
5. Middle mouse to change camera angle and zoom level

ZOOM LEVELS

Zoomed in

Zoomed out. Part of the beta will be helping shape what we display when we zoom out.

Spacebar = Situational Map

WALKTHROUGH

Below is how I play the game. There are many other ways to play it but this should at least help get you started.

1. Build Extractors

With my first engineer, I send him to build extractors on the deposits that are in my home region. I do this because while I get +1 from each deposit, I can effectively double my income quickly.

2. Build Second Engineer

I then click on my Nexus and tell it to construct an Engineer.

I immediately send this engineer to the closest region to capture it.   If I do it fast enough, I can get to a region before its defenders are spawned.

3. Build third engineer

I build a third engineer to construct a factory.

4. Build Scouts

Once the factory is completed, I build the Hermes. This is a scout, light harassment unit that also has radar on it.  I send this out to quickly capture other regions before the creeps (the automated region defenders) get too strong.

To speed things up, I tell my engineer to aid in construction by selecting my engineer and right clicking on my factory. The first engineer increases production by 50%. The second by 25%. The third by 12.5% and so on.

5. Build a capture force

This is my early game “Take lightly defended areas” force.  It consists of 1 hermes, 2 Brutes and 1 archer.  I turn them into a Battle group by selecitng them and hitting Z (or by using the form battle group).  I also hit Ctrl-1 to turn them into a control group for each access (hit 1 to select them).

Then I go around and SHIFT right click on the various power generators.

6. Order one engineer to go around and build up your captured regions

To increase your resources from a region, you want to build extractors on the resources within it.  Take one of your engineers and queue up (hold down the SHIFT key while giving it orders) a bunch of build orders.

Helpful hot keys: T will order it to build metal extractors. R will order it to build radioactive extractors.  You can also use the TAB key to tab between various build options.

7. Build a Research Matrix

With the engineer in your home region, order it to build a research matrix. A research matrix generates tech points which you can use to buy improved tech for your faction. You will want to get this going sooner rather than later because it will take a long time to get enough tech points to start buying things.

8. Build Light Defenses

Hit the F1 key to find an idle engineer.  Instruct it to build some Smarties. This is a light missile array that will protect a region from modest harassment from air or ground.  Beware, smarties don’t do a lot of damage. If you want to really hold a region, use Sentinels or Juggernauts (not in current build).

9. Pay attention to your income and expenses

Your resources pour in every second.  Similarly, as you build things, your resources pour out.  This is unlike most games where you are only allowed to build something once you have enough resources on hand.  Thus, managing your economy is a major part of the game. 

You can tell something to stop building by selecting it and hitting the S key.

10. Make use of the repeat queue

If you are coming from other strategy games, the concept of a repeating build queue may be a challenge to get used to.  Victory in Ashes will often boil down to scouting what types of units your opponent is using and building a counter composition.  Your factories should always be streaming out units 100% of the time. This isn’t a game about reflexes, it’s about running a planetary war.

Select a factory, choose unit composition you want it to provide and then select the repeat queue button. 

The PHC units in Ashes are (currently):

1. Hermes.  Very fast. Provides radar coverage. Very lightly armed.
2. Brute.  Armored unit that gets up close and is good against other units of its class. Strongly counters Archers and Artemis.
3. Archer. Ranged unit that fires less frequent and is good against bigger units.  Strongly counters Zeus.
4. Medic. Repairs nearby units.
5. Zeus. Gets in close and does massive damage to cheap little units. Strongly counters Brute.
6. Artemis. Long-range missile unit. Great for taking out incoming armies of big units.
7. Nemesis. Slow firing, massive damage. Strongly counters Battleships.
8. Apollo. Anti-Air and Anti-Drone unit.
9. Hyperion. Massive battleship. Very good against Cruisers and Frigates (smaller ships).
10. Cronus. Battleship designed for sieges.
11. Prometheus. Anti-Battleship Battleship.
12. Air units (scout, fighter, bomber)

Many players, especially less experienced, will tend to build a bunch of the same unit.  If you scout this you can build a counter to it (for instance, Archers will devastate them).

Next up: Mid game!

Ask questions and I’ll update. Cheers!