Much improved performance on both DX11 and DX12!

quick question..haven't tried the update yet but for the plasma storm..its an area ability..if i chose to initiate it during battle..would that storm affect me too? or would i be immune ?

Right now. No. 

Quoting Benedictis,

reply 6

Just some words after a quick try :

 

This new update brings some very nice improvements and new features.

 

Performances make a good step forward, graphics and visual effects are shaping nicely, the strategic map is great, and formations seem more reactive and more organized. this is very nice as we often want, at this quite early stage and with each new update, to analyze and build some nice gameplay based on the behaviours of the groups and their complementarity. even if the game is macro oriented for sure, i'm pretty certain and very pleased to think that some micro with the groups compositions, movements and placements can bring different and very interesting effects with time and training.

More of that, splitting the frigates and cruisers factory, seeing the new orbitals and the tactical possibilities they allow, given the questions you asked and the topics you started about the different build orders, stratégies and such are valuable clues about your will to develop a deep combat part. Great.

 

For now, my humble opinion is that the game takes the right direction. an ergonomic macro for the economy, a quick action, plenty of build orders and many stratégies, fast cheesing, harass, tech course, turtling and else seem viable, which is not the case for all the last RTSs and seems to be the almost exclusive qualities of a certain...Starcraft 2

 

For sure, we are still far from the finish line and many aspects are to be improved. The radar, the ranges of engagement, the patfinding, and maybe some attention about the orbital abilities. they seem to cost the price, but what about something to prevent obvious spams : cooldowns, or something else? 

But for now, i'm very pleased to see that the game mechanics are getting more and more squared and deep. The fine balance discussions will come once all the races, units and abilities will be implemented.

 

If nothing new is to come before next year, i wish you a merry Christmas and a happy end of the year.

And keep up the great work

 

Thanks and I agree with your assessment.  We still have a long way to go to add more sufficient strategic depth imo (and I'm the designer).

The big one, for me, is the investing in economic power versus military power.  Rigbht now, military power = economic power which is simplistic.

We took a baby step with the amplifier. But it's not enough.

Sad my game is always crash in dx 12

I'm doing the Mr. Mom thing tonight so no games so far. But I thought I'd run the benchmarks. My hardware: X58 motherboard, 12GB RAM, i7-920 OC'd@3.6Ghz, GTX 980SC, Win10/64.

DX12 Straight Benchmark:

Avg Framerate: v.0.64 - 49.2 / v.0.70 - 52.7

CPU Framerate: v.0.64 - 80.2 / v.0.70 - 89.0

Avg Framerate Normal: v.0.64 - 61.9 / v.0.70 - 60.2

Pct GPU Bound Normal: v.0.64 - 99.8% / v.0.70 - 100.0%

Avg Framerate Medium: v.0.64 - 49.8 / v.0.70 - 53.2

Pct GPU Bound Average: v.0.64 - 100% / v.0.70 - 99.9%

Avg Framerate High: v.0.64 - 40.4 / v.0.70 - 46.5

Pct GPU Bound High: v.0.64 - 99.9% / v.0.70 - 99.9%

DX12 CPU Benchmark:

Avg Framerate: v.0.64 - 78.4 / v.0.70 - 91.1

CPU Framerate: v.0.64 - 77.9 / v.0.70 - 89.8

Avg Framerate Normal: v.0.64 - 88.3 / v.0.70 - 102.5

Pct GPU Bound Normal: v.0.64 - 41.6% / v.0.70 - 46.3

Avg Framerate Medium: v.0.64 - 82.2 / v.0.70 - 93.4

Pct GPU Bound Average: v.0.64 - 44.6% / v.0.70 - 45.5

Avg Framerate High: v.0.64 - 67.7 / v.0.70 - 80.3

Pct GPU Bound High: v.0.64 - 46.5% / v.0.70 - 46.7

I would definitely say, as the benchmarks see it, there were some very good improvements! Well done to the dev team!

However, I had some stability issues. I have had absolutely NONE since I first downloaded and started the game in version 0.63. Of course, that was Win7/64 and I only converted to Win10/64 this week. Regardless, the first time I tried to load the new version, having clicked on "Play" in the Steam Library list, the load hung. At least it took MUCH longer than I'd every seen it take. I used Task Manager to kill it, reloaded, and all was fine. I then ran the Full benchmark with no issues. However, at the end of the first time I ran the CPU benchmark the game just disappeared - crashed with no messages or information on my desktop. I just re-started it from the Steam Library, re-ran it, and all was well.

I wish I had some info as to the latter. But the performance has definitely ticked up! Looking forward to trying out actual gameplay changes when I get a chance!

Lol. Tatsu being Tatsu again.

Personally, I enjoy the radar system.  It's not as informative as SupCom's, but it makes sense that you shouldn't worry about individual units in a fight spanning hundreds.

The power amplifier is a great step towards improving the economic buildup of Ashes.  And now we have orbital abilities.  (INCURSION OP).

What's the role of orbital abilities right now? I mean, engineer calldowns are super useful, but plasma storm and Incursion just seem like I WIN buttons with Quanta price tags.  One well-placed scout plane and the enemy could be reeling from an attack they either missed or couldn't see coming.  That's very frustrating in a game of this genre.  In addition, Ashes has no artillery counterplay. In SupCom, for example, shields were used to protect PD from units, and artillery was used to crack those shields.  For Tac missiles you had TMD, and for Nukes you had Anti nukes.  Are orbital abilities going to provide some of that destructive power without the necessary counters?  The orbital strike especially sounds OP against Seeds in the late game, without any real counter besides excessive air spam.

Also, INCURSION OP.  I built the orbital calldown structure for that almost immediately at the start and got this amazing stack of t1/t2 units at the three minute mark.  Suddenly I could expand super quickly and outpace the Tough AI without any issues.  Using it late game was also insane, as I could gut the enemy's resource deposits with little to no investment.

Suggestion to make it less OP:  Make it scale based on your army rating or # of research structures (orbital calldowns/quantum relays).  Early game it will become less of a must-have, and late game it will be more useful to call down a small T1 army with lots of T2 mixed in.

From my humble experience, anyone's opinion is good to take for the devs, and "experienced" players don't always possess the truth. i mean, plenty of people here certainly play RTS games since years, if not decades, and don't feel the need to qualify themselves as "experienced" or "competitive" players to voice a subjective opinion, hoping to influence the dev teams. With all due respect, i unfortunately have seen more than one beta test sinking into this kind of discussions, slippery for the devs, and more than one game ending as a boring "rushers nest" or "turtlers nest", because pseudo "true gamers" wanted so.

Stardock and Oxide games certainly already have a precise vision of what they want for their game, and i hope they'll stick to it and avoid these kind of traps with their beta phase.

But we can always put some objective and reasonable arguments.

Indeed, the radar system seems to show some current limits : For example, when we select the building or unit, there is no clear "detection range", so to say a clear circle indicating the maximum detection range when we hold the Alt button. such an indication could be useful to place our units or construct the radar building efficiently.

Indeed, the radar system provides limited informations. Its "Line of Sight" is obstructed by topography, the range is not always very clear for now and the intel gathered, currently represented by the "red zones" are just indicating an enemy presence. For example, they don't provide the kind of intel we have in Forged alliance, with the allmighty radars, and they don't provide as well the kind of informations we have in starcraft 2 with the detection tower. we don't have the number of enemies, we don't have their precise position, the red zone is quite thin..etc.

Indeed, maybe the corresponding visual effects could benefit from a bit of work.

But, is it really a terrible thing that the game provides us with a limited radar building and detection for units to advantage other kind of recon actions? we can deploy Hermes as a ground scout unit, Pan as a scout air unit (it has a good detection/vision range)...is it so terrible that the player has to gather himself the intel? we can deploy scouts on the map, we can build our groups with scout units to gain a bit of detection range, we can send Pans, protected with some Furys, as tiny recon groups to gather a fast intel on farther zones...and finally we have some triggered abilities : Sensor Sweep for the PHC, we'll have the Sensor Drone for the Substrate...to conclude, this is always a very early stage, all the routines, units or abilities are not implemented yet, or are subject to change.

No offense of course, but don't you prefer, as an experienced player, gaining an advantage over your opponent with active actions and having to micro some recon maneuvers?

i didn't think he threw a vague insult ..first comment was about having more Intel.... whats so wrong with that? and i dont think engineer is putting down ideas of people who are not rts experienced players.. there is  casual players who knows about strategy..then players who go the extra mile..play mostly rts so they see how different games and flaws...and the devs have already stated they want input from rts veterans.. their words not the engineers or anyone else.. so when someone comes a long offering that type of input...and it gets shut down by saying go play this...well i personally don't think its right but oh well.

This update is great, thank you for your beatiful game  

I never have issues keeping an eye on what my opponents are doing. I build Pans and I use scans.

The sensor towers are there to tell you where there are concentrations of enemies.  They work as designed and we really like how they're working.

Maybe it is less important for the scouting or defensive abilities, but the offensive ones (storm, incursion...), when ordered on a zone, could let a visual "aoe target" on the ground and trigger a tiny countdown, something between 1 and 2 seconds to allow the opponent a quick emergency reaction before the ability gets active? these kind of alerts or countdowns, specific for each ability, could come along with an audio alert, and maybe a tilting icon on the mini map?

Just a suggestion of course.