Turtle and radiation

Too fast and too furious

from AshesoftheSingularity Forums

Hi All

I bought Ashes a few days ago after lots of reading of the essays and reviews

Firstly I love the concept and the general design of the game. In fact I like it a lot

I fully accept I am a noob at this right now however I am getting really frustrated really quickly

Worked up to easy and as someone said in a previous quote I am getting my butt handed to me in about 10 minutes

As soon as I get the radiation -Bang they hit me hard before I can even get a hold on this first tiny area.

The start point should at least allow a bit of set up of your base.

Get a few defenses going build some resource and expand out

I love RTS games going back decades so I really hope at launch it is addressed.

Truth is I'm not always great at them. For that reason I need the learning curve to be immersive not leaving me feeling like i gone 10 rounds in 10 minutes

I had hoped for a chess type build up in the early stages feeling out the terrain and opposition  then piling on the explosive juggling of hundreds of units in a crescendo of action, advances and retreats. 

So far it seems that any level above beginner you are just going to get hit dead hard by fast building AI.

In fact I thought I was playing space invaders not a strategy game with four core kamikaze AI.

Which means its just another fast clickers game

 

At this point although early doors I think it will turn a lot of people off after a few games.

Please please make this the game I hoped it would be and give us an introduction to the game that will make me cry tears of joy rather than frustration.

Please don't take this as negative as I want this to be my go to RTS for many years to come

Thanks for your efforts

 

 

 

22,824 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Sounds like easy is too hard for new players. Or perhaps the gap is too wide between beginner and easy. A while back there were folks saying "normal" should be a challenge for average players, and most found it too hard. These days there are posts saying normal is too easy for average players. I think at some point they are just going to have to set the difficulty levels and let the users figure out how to push their skills to progress up the difficulty chain.

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting eviator, reply 1

I think at some point they are just going to have to set the difficulty levels and let the users figure out how to push their skills to progress up the difficulty chain.
End of eviator's quote

Pretty much this. Experienced RTS players from other games will have no trouble facing off vs. Normal AI once they understand how Ashes works. For players newer to the RTS genre, Beginner and Easy are there already even if it may take some time to develop latent skills. Once replays are in, it will also help accelerate progress - you can watch higher level players and what they do and you can have your replay critiqued to get feedback on how to improve your game. Stick with it - it's totally worth it!

Reply #4 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

IMO the main problema is ashes has a very unintuitive learning curve and when you first start playing the game you'll underperform heavily.

 

I had to play quite a few matches before realizing how the very beggining is meant to be played. Not taking at least a single node with your engineer at the game start is like starting and Age of Empires math with a single worker and no food reserves.

Reply #5 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

So I changed to knife fight map and got my first win on easy level after a touch and go start when he turned up with some decent fire power

I noticed his economy figure was double mine after about a minute which is interesting.

I don't think he should grow quite so quickly at this level.

If the AI still had the same strategy with slower growth - so slightly less early fire power I think it would work well.

In fact in the game I just played if he had held back a little it would have meant more of a sustained battle throughout the game.

 

Once I got my first Dred out he kept coming but I was able to soak it up better. This allowed me to build more planes, Dreds and repair shipS

Another point is that the game played was more about who controlled the radiation.

 

Gotta say though i'm loving this game. Really well done Devs

Reply #6 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Knife Fight is a very small map. I would recommend focusing on Frigates, Cruisers with a bit of air support. You should win before your economy has established to the point where you can support the production of a Dread Launch and Dreadnought.

 

One of the easiest ways to start the match is to start building an engineer, and send your start engineer to a nearby node to capture (I go with radioactive so I can start building quanta generators ASAP). Have the engineer construct a factory while it captures the node. Your opponent is capturing a node in this manner in the first minute, after which the creeps will start to spawn.

You start with 100 Quanta, this can be spent immediately on a Weapon upgrade, or saved for logistics or incursion etc depending on how you want to proceed from there.

Reply #7 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

The main problem in learning this game is the lack of good tooltips regarding buildings. That makes it very hard for players trying to figure out what.the tech buildings.do. 

If you have exp with rts genre, normal ai is beatable from the first two games. Challenging and beyond AI require a better understanding of the tech tree.

I can beat easily a tough AI after 24 h of gameplay, but at the begining a challenging AI would murder me.

Have patience and play some mp games. I for example am amazed by the amount of.quantum generators the substrate can rush at the begining of.the game. Something may be broken.there

 

 

Reply #8 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting Neinhalt_Sieger, reply 7

I for example am amazed by the amount of.quantum generators the substrate can rush at the begining of.the game. Something may be broken.there
End of Neinhalt_Sieger's quote

Do you mean the substrate faction or the Tough AI that you are facing?

 

AI levels above Normal have cheat factors to resources, build speed etc to make them more difficult, so they will be able to expand much faster than you.

Reply #9 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

In mp by the time i rush two zeus the substrate player has at least one quantum and defenders in place. With Phc it takes forever to build one quanta generator.

Reply #10 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Substrate take 80 seconds to build the Quantum Archive compared to 90 seconds for PHC.

Quantum Archives also do not have pre-requisites, so can start being built as soon as you have radioactives, before the assembly is complete.