Ashes Founders: Substrate Preview

Awesome! so let me ask you. did the reaper lost its energy that fast after shooting a few hits?

Reaper consumes its energy in 2 shots.

But it regains 1 energy per secod. So it would be able to shoot again in 25 seconds if totally dry.  In friendly territory, it would be half that.

So as i can see there is no way for a 1 group of reaper to take a region at all, while in PHC can..

Brute and Archer i am 80% sure that they can handle a region by their own without help

Don't you think its a bit unfair for the Substrate?

1 Reaper and 1 Capacitor could do it.

I am sorry i think i wrote it wrong
1 Brute will take a region --->> 1 reaper alone cannot
or
1 archer can take a region while --->> 1 reaper cannot

reapers need capacitor to get a region.. so in the end you need to build 2 to get a region, more time spent by building and taking regions compared to PHC.

What about a Martyr? will 1 Martyr can take a region alone? it does not use Energy, but does it do enough damage?

do you get what i am trying to say? i cannot really know till I play with the Substrate, but as I can see it, you need spend more time and metal by building T1 Substrate units than PHC T1 Units, PHC will get faster Regions early on. I'm I correct?

Looking really good.  It seems much easier to pick out different Substrate units at a glance right now.  (although maybe a slightly different style of hover pads would be nice, that one piece is verry similar to PHC atm)   I don't know how I haven't personally played this map yet but the terrain and scaling for plateaus and such look really good.  The engineers seem big as they are (are they even bigger than PHC?),  I know I've said this before about the PHC engineers and you said that you wanted to keep the relatively large size for gameplay reasons which is fine by me but I still figured I'd give my feedback on these new substrate ones.  

I'm going to watch the video a couple of times before providing any feedback on anything else but overall looking really good!

Fun! The mechanics are definitely different, but just have to wait until beta to see if they actually play different. The difference in artillery may be the key.

Cool! Perhaps for demonstration videos you can drop the AI down a touch in difficulty, just for ease of demonstration of course . Though I half suspect it was on purpose so you can keep the hype going for the T3 and orbital abilities going longer

Bit of feedback:

- Possibly not a popular voice but I would make the T1 a little bigger.

1) It doesn't matter how unique the shapes are if they are so small that when you zoom out they are just a fuzzy dot

2) They are great models and you can't see'em if they are too small, which is a shame

3) I think there is room to increase them a reasonable amount and still be in no danger of confusing T1 and T2. I'd try 10-20% increase in size and see if you can keep going up a bit more from there.

- Hit box on a lot of the units is too big, most noticeable when those red beams hit the Hyperion, a fair gap between where the lasers ended and the T3 began.

- Those artillery are ace, literally raining fire down ha

- You saw it too, with one of the enemy dreadnoughts just doing nothing for a while.

- Does the Hyperion need a buff? Maybe more rapid fire rate? Or perhaps the new abilities which can be unlocked will do the job. It just doesn't seem that great against T1 and T2

Cool stuff, 28th is too far off.

Yes Tic i think the rest unit techs T2 and T3 have a good balance size, but indeed T1 will be like already is a bit hard see the good design they have .

 Also the slow motion speed on units and NOT ON BUILDS totaly kills all the fun on the game.

Special T1 units at least showld have diferent and fast speed, iff we mostly play with units diferent and fast speed on t1 will bring new tatic options to confuse the enemy.

In the current build. 1 phc unit can't take a region. The neutrals were buffed.

Most of the Hyperion weapons can't hit buildings. Might change that.

If it is a pure anti-unit T3 I think that is okay, it just has to be very good at it.

I think you also asked in the video if people had alternative names for Dreadnoughts. It's not a bad name as it stands. Battleship could be used but you could also save that for the Navy and/or T2.5 (I reckon there is potential for a unit size between T2 and T3...or perhaps a set of 3 smaller and less powerful but quicker T3 units).

Titan could also be used but it would also be a decent fit for future T4, or again for the navy.

From T1 to T2 you've gone Frigate to Cruiser when some games might have destroyer in-between, but I don't think it matters. Destroyer can be used for Navy.

If you wanted to save the Dreadnought name for something later you could use Battle Cruiser. hmmm. Star Ship and its like would obviously be off the table. Ground/Land Ship don't work, but Planetary Cruiser/Battleship could work.

Pretty much as it stand seems OK though tbh.

 p.s. I like the name Battle Cruiser for a unit though, even if it is later in the navy. Just a cool name to my ear

 I was watching the video now, arrive from work.

First I must say I was waiting a long time to see a Substrat,have liked from the first moment I saw the fabulous design in Vault.

But in the game some times its diferent, but this time is bether then i thought.

1- engineers just perfect, great size ,they are big but because of the fantastic design works 5 stars not move.

2-Units T1 very good hope to see a little more variety but I liked it.

3- The capacitator ... great tatic option to the field, needs a little more work but i like how it works bether then medic.

4- I'll be honest liked all the T1 and T2 units they are few but good, bases and defenses great job, but did not like the experimental units,  at the beginning when I saw the vault even thought it would be a transporter or air units, but  to ground units was expect something diferent.

5- I dont know how you can play with zoom so close and pan the view, i think you loose  to mush time like that  but all depends the taste of player nothing against that.

6- I have no doubt that this faction will be more play than the original but overall good job, because it will certainly be a challenge in the coming months working these two  great factions.

In terms best T3 units dreadnoughts win by far ,they are are awsome and just hear the shoot sounds its really something.

7- In technical terms we are achieving a new level in DX 12, have without breaking fps in the game units that think like ashes units think its new step.

Just a note who is the artist unit design?

When AOTS team will show us what you all do .

I mean show everybody from there , and what each one off you do by a special video i think that will be good .

I think all will like that or stream something on twitch with AOTS team and founders on a game or just to talk.

I didn't think we saw any T3 in the video? All T1 and T2 I thought.

I didn't get to the T3s.  I lost before then.

Will try to do another where that doesn't happen.

That would be great! The units look so good and you confirmed in your video what I saw from your first screenshots... the graphics are better, the textures sharper and way more detailed... amazing.

Cannot wait to see some T3 units in the next video.

About the energy, is there a structure that can recharge units or the capacitor or do we just have to wait... like described in a previous post.. 25 seconds if fully depleted but in friendly territory they recharge twice as fast?

I'm sure this is, at worst, a tweak of CSV files, but it seemed to me that the capacitors acted a little bit like meat shields for the other T1 units. Sure they have higher health and shields, but without capacitors the other units are sitting ducks, which would handicap the whole army. So it would seem to me that capacitors need to be protected, not protectors.

On the flip side, going against the Substrate means that enemy units should perhaps prioritize attacking the capacitors. Not sure if that already happens, or if there is already army logic in place to consider this tactic. Obviously I expect this is not something you'll want your users to have to micromanage.

Yeah, I thought I saw one leading an army which you probably don't want.

There will be times to target it and other times to target the army units. Hard to set a special default as in different situations one will be right and the other wrong.

"Leading" is a loaded word here. If it leads an army in the sense that it is up in front, probably not the best idea. But it's okay for it to be the army leader, as long as it sits in the back of the formation.

This might be nuts, but here is an idea. If during the course of a fight you are doing next to nothing because of an abundance of capacitors, it would make sense to target the capacitors. However if the capacitor is having trouble keeping up, then targeting the other units would be warranted. If there is enough horsepower with multiple cores for capacitors to choose which units it wants to support, as Brad boasted during this video, certainly there is enough horsepower for units to choose targets intelligently depending upon what is happening throughout the course of the battle. To be fair, it's certainly possible that the units are already doing that, only my mind isn't keen enough to have noticed.

I meant it was at the front of the meta-unit.

I don't know what this means: " If during the course of a fight you are doing next to nothing because of an abundance of capacitors, it would make sense to target the capacitors." That sounds like the capacitors are buffing shields so you are doing next to no damage. But capacitors don't do that, they refill energy for weapons.

"However if the capacitor is having trouble keeping up, then targeting the other units would be warranted" so in this situation I would actually target the capacitor so that it could no longer supply the already struggling to get enough energy units. Then you can mop up the rest of the units.

"If there is enough horsepower with multiple cores for capacitors to choose which units it wants to support, as Brad boasted during this video, certainly there is enough horsepower for units to choose targets intelligently depending upon what is happening throughout the course of the battle." True, that is could be done to much of the game and have the human do very little. Hard to find the line.

Also forgot to say, did you see the bug with the engineer? Where its conjoined streams grew and then broke off and drifted across the landscape? It was a bug another Dev wanted a screen shot of a few weeks back. So if he hasn't seen it then there is a good example of it starting at the 18.00 mark.

LOL awesome! Didn't even notice that.