I want to focus on the unit part of the game.

It is VERY important for a game like this to have simple units. You must be able to look at armies and instantly being able to see their strength, weaknesses etc. - For that part a different look for different units is useful. Micro destroys the ability to see strength and weaknesses in armies, because suddenly how fast your opponent can click will have a huge outcome of the fight. I dont think this is wanted in a macro game.

- Yes, slow armies and army control and long fights are going to be the essence for Ashes, because this is a grand strategy game, you need time to analyze the situation, and make decisions far in advance. When you lose some spots on the map because you didnt realize how important a fight was, then you shouldnt be able to get units there quickly. Maybe a closer look at games of the total war series is good here. The time the unit needs from A to B has a huge impact, because now it will maybe twice as long for said unit to get to C, if needet there. I think Ashes aims for something like that, just on a bigger scale. (Armies go from A to B etc. etc.)

- This game is inspired by SupCom and soase. It tries not to be one of it. This game writes down its own rules. You cant imagine how much planetary annihilation got destroyed by people who wanted this game to be more like SupCom. From a fun game in the alpha to a desaster in release. This shall not happen to this game.

- i repeat, simplicity is Key. Its not always "more is more" - you need to be able to make quick long term strategies with huge armies, and wanting non-generic upgrades is a huge turnoff. What do you want instead of "+25% dmg"? "Archer now shoots a second missle at every second attack"?
Think big.

Of course sometimes it is a fun experience to take a closer look at details - but having many complex units will add little to this game.
However, i support a bigger pool of capital ships. Since they are the core of most armies, they could get a bigger role - with more support capital ships, armies will have different strategy by having a different combination of capital ships. (For example a capital ship that is actually quiet fast but rather weak for a capital ship, but gives a 30% speed bonus to units around it) - with something like that armies can be customized to fit a specific role, without complicating tech trees or weird t1 / t2 units. Your opponent can scout the capitalships and know what you are focusing on, and since capital ships are huge he doesnt have to guess what upgrades you made and what not, because your capital ships clearly shows him the strength and probably weakness of an army, if he scouts.

Games like chess or Igo take their complexity from their simple form. Nothing is stuck in those games - it gives you a lot more freedom.

I agree with the above posts I played a couple games.

Although the units are slow.  The main problems I am finding grouping units  and controlling them. I notice the units have problem moving through the terrain map does not seem fluid and they getting stuck. I also find units do not respond to orders from time to time.

In addition their is no unit information describing what units do and its research hierarchy before selecting the unit or research.

I also find zooming out does not zoom out so you can see the entire map and have to resort to mini map and select the area to view.

I also notice their seems to be no support for multi monitor support as sometime the game switches from one screen to another and occasionally crashes out. For example  if I choose 1920x1050  I defaults to my centre monitor  when not in full screen mode then  when I am intense battle selecting grouped units it changes to my left hand monitor or crashes out of game. however game works fine when in full 5760x1050

Agree with your points on unit artwork, map design and research. On maps, I'm going to assume that the final version will have more variety of maps that do not have corridors and are flatter. I'm personally fine with the slow speed - it was a bit odd when I first started playing, but on larger maps with multiple engagements I find the slower speed better.

About research, I think one way to solve the current issue of the generic upgrades is to have research upgrades that only target certain units. So one upgrade could increase rocket damage. Maybe another increases beam weapon damage. And maybe another increases damage of defensive structures. This will help make upgrade choice a strategic decision about which type of units to focus on, instead of the current generic upgrades.

About unit simplicity: agree they should be simple, disagree that micro shouldn't have a place, disagree that it makes the game harder to understand. What makes the game hard to understand are non-visual abstract bonuses like +25% damage. An extra attack, blue lasers, longer range, faster speed, forcefields, those are things you see on the battlefield and immediately grasp their tactical importance. StarCraft 2 is a good example, but of course that requires more thought than generic bonuses. 

Immersion: thanks for naming the idea I had in mind, that's exactly it. If there's one SupCom does right it's immersion. It feels like a serious, accurate simulation of an actual battlefield with varied, fascinating units. I spent a lot of time playing it just to play with the units and watching them behave. How the Monkeylord's microwave laser works as soon as it's out of water, letting the unit shoot its underwater torpedoes at the same time... How a T1 unit like the Mantis had superior agility with its 4 legs, could effectively surround and harass, but also support engineers. 

Should have read 1080 not 1050  wasn't wearing glasses lol

Great discussion!

I'll try to respond to other posts when there's time. I'll start with the original:

 Good background.  I'm still stuck in Diamond.

The primary purpose of the Empire tree is to allow players to get an idea of how powerful their control groups remain and whether they are engaged in combat and their general health.  Ideally, we'd like to display what known oppponents are up against them.  It is assumed players will create control groups (Ctrl #) which perhaps we should integrated into the UI more clearly since it's so crucial.

You can't zoom out in any of the other games you mentioned other than StarCraft.  While we are looking at letting players zoom out further, our big concern there is that players will expect units to move faster.  Once we have the heat maps in for friendly units, we'll start experimenting with further zoom outs.

Idle engineers will be in the next udpate. You will be able to order an engineer to support other engineers.  Just not in yet.

There are no plans to add additional units before release. The visuals will change substantially between now and release.  The units behave quite differently from one another.  I think most games, when players first get into them, can have the same challenge.  The Starcraft beta was similar "The Zerg are all just bugs that act the same", SupCom went through the same criticisms and Grey Goo certainly had that criticism.  Each game has its own take on what matters and doesn't matter for unit disinctiveness.

Fair enough.

This is fair.  But since the system is supposed to provide infinite upgrades, there's an obvoius limit.  I think this is a good idea though that we should pursue.

The next batch of maps will be more open. There's one actually called "Open Range" coming out that should give a better view of open maps.

Thanks for the feedback.

The Civilization series is a good example of infinite research yet most techs are unique. When you reach the last tech you just repeat it over and over ("Future research" or something).

I fear infinite upgrades will lead to situations where the teams just spend all their upgrades on damage/health in a neverending race. At some point it's more interesting to reach a cap, and then spend your tech resources in more interesting ways. 

I remember playing some custom Starcraft maps with infinite upgrades, and it was always a chore to keep up with that one opponent who had 15 attack power upgrades.

I think comparing sc2 (a game people loved for its visual distinctiveness) to sup com (a game that some might claim lacked visual distinctiveness) on the same level seems odd to me, when sc2 clearly does better in that regard. It's not just different, more people enjoyed that aspect of the game. I think that by having units look samey (even if they make good gameplay distinctions) just makes it harder for people that aren't hardcore rts players to really get into and enjoy the game.

The main difference is though, that sc2 LOOKED appealing to casuals. It sold MANY copies to many players that weren't hardcore sc fans. It's failure to keep the casual crowd invested in the game was entirely because of poor decisions made by the devs.

I like both ideas.  There could be games where a cap could make things more interesting.  Even games like Sup Com allow a "cap" of sorts since you can play with no experimentals or remove all but Tier 1 units from the game.  Perhaps the upgrade can be a gameplay setting, with infinite as the default.  Then people who want to cap it can do so at 3 or 5 or what have you.

Indeed.

In SupCom, broadly speaking, each tier was designed to replace the previous tier. Part of the fun of the game was that race aspect. Can you get to the tier 3 units faster than your opponent?

This was a bit different than TA where the Flash tank and Samson complemented their tier 2 units.

Ashes is more like TA in this respect.  You are expected to build Brutes and Archers throughout the game.