Ashes Founders VIP build

Cool!

Will definitely check this out and give feedback. Do you want the feedback in this thread?

Hmm, though playing it will kinda kill enjoying it polished for the first time...oh, too late, downloading now

naaaice downloading it now

Good news, we love to help you guys in anyway possible, i will be back home in a few hours, will download it, test it and will give my feedback about it.

I am so excited for this campaign.. there goes sleep tonight

Edit: (first of many edits I'm sure as I play through the campaign)  The initial loading screen when you launch the game and it is "initializing turinium cores" is awesome!!

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Edit 2: The tutorial!

• Running through the tutorial right now, I noticed that the call down button is surrounded by yellow but unable to be selected when the tutorial starts.  I recommend greying this out until players get their orbitals given to them in order to ease players in who might try to click it and get frustrated because there is no feedback as to why it doesn't do anything.
• Alt-tabbing bugs out the range indicators to where they stay on constantly (although they do flicker sometimes).  Pressing alt once back in game fixes this issue. Maybe bind the range indicators to only right alt as I know many of us love our alt-tab although then ctrl-alt-delete still would have the issue.
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• The edges of the map flicker black/purple really fast and it is rather annoying.  This could be an existing issue but I didn't notice it before now.
• I never messed with changing game speed before, but fast/faster seems like a much better pace compared to normal from a multiplayer stand-point
• I'm getting some flicker on units especially when they are moving, not quite sure if it is the LOD changing or shadows or a problem with my GPU (980ti) but figured I'd mention it.
• When you make an army and it shows your units/how many units in the army next to the portrait of the leader it is a good step (may have missed this before but I never noticed it)  I would still like to see this info somehow when I have units selected that aren't in an army.
• When you form an army you aren't explicitly told that you can only have one dread per army. Even though I've played ashes for some time, I still forget this from time to time and I think it deserves to be included in the tutorial.
• Having  something that mentions you can tab between the construction windows with an army selected would be helpful as it isn't too self evident. (I like this feature alot btw)  I also like having the hotkeys that show on the currently selected tab.  Can we get these little reminders on the actions tab as well (move/patrol/attack move/ etc.)  Whenever I pick up a new game/rts I always appreciate the ability to have those reminders there and I'm sure I'm not alone.
• I still feel as though I'm missing the biggest boon to being able to control large amounts of units which is the ctrl-z select all similiar command, the select all combat units command, and the select all combat units on screen.
• Anyways thats what I came up with for the tutorial. I'll update again after the campaign missions and such. 

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Edit 3: First Mission (Kepler)

• I can't remember the name of the mission Kepler (farthest planet to the left.  is it the plan to let the mission be played in any order we want or will it eventually be sequential only as they tell a consecutive story?)  You are controlling a scout vehicle at the start and the voice says that your radar is picking up enemy units and that they are marked by red.  This is true if you look into the fog of war however your army color is also red.  This can be confusing as looking at the mini map YOU are the red thing but the voice is referring to just looking at the fog of war manually by scrolling.
• When you are asked to use the radar to see enemies and use your rocket unit to target them it makes it seem as if you can manually select radar targets.  As cool as the radar is this made me realize I would like to be able to see small blips that can be targeted as units in order to select which blip to fire at ala SupCom.  
• Overall, I'm impressed by the voice acting and even the rough cut-scenes were cool but the mission was FAR too short.  I would have like to see 4-5 instances of fighting the enemy using radar and your single Artemis before reaching the Nexus.  That idea was really fun but wasn't used enough. 
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• The small in-game cutscene with the bombers was kinda rough.  This is mainly due to how jerky and un-aircraft-like the planes currently fly.  They don't whiz past and drop bombs before making a wide bank for a second run when they attack targets.  They drop bombs and immediately make a sharp turn to drop another round which looks pretty bad.  I've noticed this for a while in game as well but was hoping it was just a polish issue.  As we draw closer to release I feel that this is one of the few glaring "ugly" points when it comes to unit animation/movement.  I hate to bring up TA/SupCom but not many games do Arial combat to any real extent.  I would suggest looking at how they both handle fighters/bombers when it comes to acceleration/speed/bombing runs/maneuvers.  If the bombers made a wider return run it might also make them less OP as it would take longer for each run and leave them exposed to AA for a longer duration between runs.

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Edit 4: Second Mission (Cygnus)

• The edges of my map aren't bugging out like they were in the tutorial ( it may be an isolated issue with certain maps)
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• The economy income/outgoing is slightly confusing at the moment.  When you start the mission with just the nexus it shows +2 metal overall and +2 metal on the nexus. This seems correct. Then you build two extractors which each say they are providing +2 metal when clicked on.  Then your total should be 2 (nexus)+2 (extractor 1)+2(extractor 2) but it is only +4 total.  It shows +4 overall and +4 when you click on the nexus (this makes sense to me but I don't think new players will realize that this is the node total and not just the amount that the nexus produces)
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• I've been using the r-click drag to pan around quite a bit recently compared to only using zoom to move.  With the level of zoom we can achieve is it really necessary for the camera to jerk around when panning over a crevice or mountain.  I understand why this is a feature but it doesn't seem necessary right now and is kind of distracting. (maybe a toggleable option?)
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• wierds me out a bit still that the factory shows only 1 unit being produced visually ie:brute but then 6 pop into being as soon as it finishes.  Not a big deal but I'm trying to be thorough and mention anything I notice even if its not new.  We are close to release so I'm trying to give as much info as possible.
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• Too short again.  I think the first mission + second mission together would be a okay length.  They both have to do with destroying a nexus and as they are both pretty much another tutorial I think they would work well as one. (maybe make the actual tutorial the first mission) I'm going to keep going through the missions and giving feedback but I hope that not too many of the missions are basically tutorials.  As a veteran player I would like some challenging missions as well.  The tutorial is there for a reason and I don't think it needs to be run completely through again in the campaign.
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• I think it's a bug now, I have captured all regions which each say +2 metal and built 6 extractors which each say +2 as well (it was always +1 but I thought it might have changed)  I now have +10 total being shown metal.  It should be according to the tool-tips  +2 for nexus +2 per other region  x 3 regions + 2 per extractor x 6 extractors = +20.  
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• The animation for the center of the nexus turning is not very smooth and kinda jumpy.

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Quick Side-note: have you considered making engineers construct-able from other factories (maybe an armory as it is a bigger investment)  I didn't really think about it until now but one of the most annoying things on larger maps (which should keep getting bigger as time goes on it seems) is only being able to construct engineers from the nexus or spend quanta to call them down.  This hampers the ability to establish FOBs which is essential to control larger maps.  

Another possibility would be the ability to construct "lite" nexus buildings around the map similiar to CC/lair/nexus in Starcraft.  Their main purpose would be to give some small area defense and the ability to construct engineers.  I know that it is pretty late in the game for this kind of change but I think it will grow as an issue as the maps get even bigger.  They could also be upgrades to amplifiers.

Possibly even the ability to establish multiple fully fledged nexus's would be good.  This would allow for some interesting plays where you quickly establish an expansion that you opponent possibly doesn't know about which would allow you to hide buildings. (if there is an option to disable the game automatically updating who owns nodes until you scout them yourself)  Right now you really need to heavily defend you nexus at all times similiar to the commander in TA/SupCom but without the utility of being able to move around. Personally this takes away alot of choice in how you can play as you opponent knows where you spawn (via the nodes showing as yours in the map) and knows that you have to make that your main base as if you lose that territory you lose the game.

So far I played the tutorial and the first mission of the campaign (Kepler).

• General suggestions/ideas/...:
• I suppose this is planned already for the release version, but I really like having (the choice of) subtitles in movies and cutscenes. English is not my native language, and I'm sometimes having a hard time understanding it when there are music or noises in the background.
• The way the game "focuses" on the small window with the messages during tutorial and missions got me a bit annoyed. Maybe it's only a question of getting used to it, but the way it steals focus and makes it impossible to interact with the main screen feels weird.
• Tutorial
• When the player gets to try out the Orbitals it would be nice to have something to really see the effects, e.g. a huge enemy force or some heavily fortified area.
• Maybe show the capabilities (and weaknesses) of the different cruisers. Not that important, but it would help new players getting an impression of their respective uses, and might be quite entertaining to watch.
• Kepler
• Sargeras77 mentioned everything I noticed and then some...
• [Edit]At one point Haalee AI gave the advice that one can make units form an army, but at that point the scout is still the only unit controlled by the player. The message is probably supposed to pop up when one encounters the Artemis.

Very very nice beta release.

I did not imagine some much stuff could appear this fast.

I find the tutorial very well done, hopefully more tutorial missions will come in.

congrats, it's very promising for final release.

Just a note. If you are joining us in the Fans vs. Dev events on Friday, make sure you opt out of the VIP build first.

Just played the 3rd mission, Deneb and it was a bit of a disaster I would say, small and large feedback:

- The main problem is that the enemy force just sat there in the top left corner the whole game. I get the impression they are meant to be moving from node to node towards you, and you can hit them as they go past from the elevated positions recommended to you. Instead I had to do a LOT of node capturing moving along the line towards them (shouldn't have bothered capturing them really but i was expecting it to play differently). I put the game to fastest but it took a long time to get around and I had a huge force by the end so just flattened them head on without a scratch.

- After killing the Brain Whale and all other forces the box for defending against the Brain Whale remains un-ticked and the mission will not end.

Other problems:

- Typo on mission text on galactic map screen, Spinters instead of Splinters

- When it first zooms to the Brain Whale...there is no Brain Whale there. Only came out of the black enough to see when I attacked. The revealed space was too low in relation to where the T3 is.

- I capped the metal deposits before I built the factory and as factory is at the top of the list it did not tick that I had capped the metal. Got that tick later after capping others.

- It wouldn't let me capture the blue node (I suspect I am not meant to be up that far really but had no choice).

- Engineers! This is a big one. I selected two engineers to build a Quantum Relay expecting one to not help but it did! Woo! So for the next one I grabbed 4 engineers to build it. I clicked near the original two but they ran in the other direction before returning with the other two. Ah huh, so they are working like armies currently (annoyingly) do. Still, it is better than nothing. But I had not realised they really had created an army without me telling them to. So i selected one to send it off to the west but they all went. Ok, so I disbanded the army (though I had not created it) and selected one again. This time two went. Though I tried I couldn't get them to separate. So, right, off you two go. When they get to the radioactives I select one and queue two extractors up. When I come back to them they are sitting there with the extractors still waiting to be built. It turns out you have to give the order to both or the correct one for them to do anything. Select the wrong one and nada. 

- Once or twice drawing a box around units did not successfully select them.

A few suggestions

- I think the "capture some nodes" objective should be more specific. "Capture a minimum of 8 nodes" or something.

- Would be nice if all in-game communications were voiced.

- When the initial force he sends against the Brain Whale gets destroyed Mac said something like "...that was a bit embarrassing..." or something like that. It came off really badly to me and took away gravitas from the situation. His main fellow founder is gone, these new forces have come in that he does not recognise and then you have a huge unknown military unit, the Brain Whale appear. The situation would be scary and the guy should be seriously concerned. The dialogue could be used to ramp things up a notch written more effectively.

In the first mission I think it is when you are controlling the scout and get given an artillery unit to shoot at the red in the radar. When it gave it to me and was explaining i should go forward and use it to hit the red bits it had already targeted the red and was firing off and I hadn't done a thing. There was no sense of creeping forward a bit with it, finding the red patch and then bringing the artillery in to play. 

I have only done the first few parts of the Tutorial so I don't know if there is a lot of overlap but I really hope not. The campaign is building up slowly and I doubt people want to play too much of a 2nd tutorial. In the tutorial it would be nice if you could click next through each part of the text to speed things up a bit if the user is familar with RTS games or reads faster.

Edit: Mission was played using DX12 if that makes a difference to the bugs encounted.

Will definitely be checking this out! 

The third mission worked flawlessly for me, and I actually did like the humour of the 'well, that was embarrassing'.

But another thing that I have been noticing for a while now (not specific to this version): There still seems to be a problem with armies. Sometimes when the main unit died while the army was selected, the buttons for forming and disbanding the army would be greyed out, and some of the units would just sit there and do nothing, while others would follow orders. Also, they stayed selected when clicking on another army, but wouldn't follow orders.

And another thing: the behaviour of the reinforcements when an army gets disbanded. They just sit wherever they were when this happened, and have to be hunted down and collected. The production of those reinforcements seems to continue as well, the newly produced units sitting on top of the factories, all but invisible. They should either move the the factories' waypoints, or their production should be cancelled.

If this thread was the wrong place to bring this up I can start a new topic about army mechanics.

Well I am glad it worked well for you but it needs to work well all the time hence my feedback. I guessed it was trying to be humorous but apart from the reasons I gave above it also made the guy look dumb. He sent a tiny squad against a huge thing and expected to win? These post-humans are meant to be incredibly powerful with intelligence far beyond a normal human...it kinda just made the lore worthless. 

You could leave the mechanics of the mission the same but have the small force sent to probe forward to investigate the scale of the threat. Much more believable than sending it to deal with the threat. There should be a sense of awe at the power of the Dreadnought, they are the most powerful units in the game.

Reading again what I wrote I realise that it sounds dismissive of your feedback and I apologise for that. My intention was rather to let the devs know that the problems you describe are not a 100% reproducible...

I thought the AI sending this small force against the brain whale was fitting in the sense it(?) had no idea what it was up against, and seeing the small force wiped out in a matter of seconds made Haalee realise that it severely underestimated the enemy, thus it's dry remark - which also establishes that the AIs in the game's universe are neither infallible nor lacking humour. Maybe it might make more sense if the army included one or two cruisers, two Apollos or one Zeus for example.

Did anyone finish the fourth mission? So far I either got overrun, or the game crashed on me. I'll try it again later with lower graphics settings and the DX11 version.

It's OK man and your point is very valid.

I just did the 4th mission. I won it first time but...not sure I really did.

- At the beginning I capped the metal and built a factory before taking the T. generator. As I did not do it in the order on the list it had indicators to build on the metal throughout the game even though I had.

- This mission was quite a tight one so the inability to click through the mid-mission messages or to play the game while the messages came up was a bit frustrating.

Right, this was a genuinely fun mission so good stuff! 

Why did I think I may not have won? Because they were storming up the middle by the end (should have fortified better around the Nexus itself) and they were attacking my Nexus but the Turinium was nearly full and the bar had gone red and was flashing as was so close. And then I won with the victory screen saying no survivng Nexus or something. I wasn't sure if it was because i got sufficient Tutinium points or if my Nexus had died and through some bug it thought that that was a good thing.

So I reloaded an auto save (for the 2nd time actually as the game had crashed at one point, using DX11 this time) and grabbed all my engineers to throw down a drone bay infront of my Nexus. I only needed to stall the enemy an added 30 seconds to make sure I had got all the Turinium required and that it wasn't a bug the first time. So they were happily building it and the enemy hadn't got there yet, but no slower than last time, yet I suddenly won with the same victory screen (same as MP/Skirmish one). This time the Turinium bar was still yellow and not as full as last time so I really shouldn't have won at that point on this 2nd look at it, so definitely potential for bugginess even if it actually worked as expected the first time.

Anyway, was a fun mission for me.

Played some more today, and I noticed it's been bumped to 0.99something. It didn't crash, and I finished the fourth mission without problems. Difficulty ramps up there, but it is manageable. Are you planning on having difficulty settings for the campaign? If not, you should make this mission a bit easier, or you might get a lot of frustrated customers - I don't think I would have beaten it without my previous experiences in skirmishes and MP, and I'd assume many will play the campaign first.

I also played the aptly named mission 'Turinium Madness', and really enjoyed it. If you know what you're doing it is extremely short, though.

Looking forward to the release, and to hear/read/see what the wider public will make of the game.