This is kinda cool, although for myself I kinda don't feel like some of these are even really necessary. Personally. But to be fair I don't even like the orbital abilities, but that's a different topic altogether.

1. Naval and Oceans [5t]

This would be really weird with t he games current frigates/cruisers/dreadnoughts. Unless they are going to be named like APC/MBT/SPG or something truly weird. lol.

2. Third faction [8t]

Yep, this is what I voted for. I wanna see what those pesky Martians have cooked up. Although I have a strong suspicion it'll basically be a Cybran-like faction. As the PHC are essentially the UEF and the Substrate are the Aeon. I'd love to be proven wrong however!

3. More robust modding [6t]

Always good.

4. Replace some existing units with non-hover [3t]

I feel like this is a part of the games charm. Never had an RTS with hover armies before, likely won't have one ever again. It's unique! I'd vote against it if I could!

5. Metagame [4t]

Like conquer the galaxy kinda deal? Ehh, risk style maps of this in the past have always felt really tacked on to me, and the campaign for Planetary Annihilation didn't feel much better. Never played a clan wars style of this myself, but aren't they just skirmish battles anyway. Not my kinda thing.

6. Fortifcations [3t]

I could see the reworking of the current defences into something a little less, turrets in a field kind a thing, but aren't the defences in this game already a little too strong? I just... I dunno.

7. Transport units [2t]

Personally I'd hope for such units as to replace the orbital insertions altogether, but hey ho. Cool enough so long as the transports aren't tanky gods who ignore most AA.

8. More start-up options [2t]

Always good. Could be great if we could get some kind of scenario editor for people to make custom campaigns and such.

9. Visual pass to make look better [1t]

I really need to get a better PC.

10. Lower hardware requirements [3t]

It would be nice, you can play starcraft 2 on a toaster these days and lower settings are good for players who want more performance out of the game rather then visuals. Good for massive, if low res, battles.

Regarding modding support, i recall reading a post from Draginol, where he says the modding tools should turn Ashes into Nitrous based platform for creating your own strategy games - even space based for example if you wish.

I wonder why this is not made into actual product, one you would pay for, StarDock´s own RTS Creator. Pretty much what Sins modding tools were, letting you to import your own models, create your own units with their properties, made your own tech structure/ building tree.... add some run of the mill pre-made abilities (stuff like cloaking, teleporting, assimilating, spawning etc... - usual generic sci-fi/fantasy stuff), you could add to "your" unit, regardless of its type, be it tank, plane or space-ship.

The main difference against Sins modding tools would be the AI wont be hard-coded or whatever the issue is, when you have to fill entire unit roster in Sins with your own stuff in order to not break the AI. In other words, it would be less limiting in certain aspects than Sins modding tools, but still keep its Editor-like quality to be accessible to people, who are not programmers.

Personally, i would pay for that, proper tool to make simple RTS of my own, for my own pleasure. Since there are clearly many people in the modding community, i would hazard a guess, such software may hold certain allure to them too. Maybe even more so, than any other addition to Ashes.

None of this.

In the last months you made a lot of changes in the units and it shows you support the game and that's great.

I guess it has improved multiplayer, but I do not play multiplayer in RTS, I only play campaigns.

And ... I'm sure nobody ever re-assessed the campaigns with all the changes. Even Imminent Crisis is very inconsistent in the difficulty.

Seriously, has anyone tried Falnass with 2.5 ? It is just unplayable.

So, to answer the question, what I want is someone to replay and re-assess all the campaign maps with all the changes.

In the current state, there is no way I could advise the game to anyone.

Did you try Falnass with 2.5 ?

I also manage both 1st campaigns a while ago. Not the 3rd one. The difficulty was also terribly unbalanced right away for me.

Btw I played and finished: all C&C games, all Warcraft games, all Starcraft games and a bunch of others. So I have some experience and judgement on RTS campaigns.

No, I haven't gone back to that specific one, and I'm not saying that the campaign is flawless and should never be fixed again. What I'm saying is that an ongoing dev team of three people needs to be able to focus their efforts. 2.4 already buggered up campaign balance because they added stuff in. 2.5 added more stuff in, just as 2.6, 2.7 and every other update will. If they keep going back to correct the campaign each time, we're not going to get any updates. The campaign can be played and beaten - maybe not easily, maybe not in a logical progression, but it can be beaten. Until the next "big" update comes out, they shouldn't be wasting their limited resources retouching the campaign. Maybe once a Navy gets added, or a third race, or something else huge, they can go back and do a rebalance - including the campaigns.

There's a reason they asked people to vote for what to do next, they can't do everything at once. And I've also played literally every one of the campaigns you listed. All of those were released with colossal budgets, and none of them added new units that needed to be adjusted from the campaigns after release. So they're kinda pointless comparisons.

I agree with Igncom on the campaign issues. It is a real mess and a clean sense of progression with the PHC has been destroyed. 

I didn't vote but I actually hope we get the air transports and the visual pass first (from the things in the list). Air transports should really spice up the game and that fresh addition will help hold us over till the larger expansions.

Visual because it is meant to be bringing unit wrecks/husks and that is a year late at this point and I really want it in. A fresh coat of paint is no bad thing in an 18 month old game too, and the work on this is meant be close to finished so no point in delaying it.

Bug fixing and some control improvements would be nice asap, gets frustrating at times. Fixing the map editor and adding steam workshops to share maps would also be strongly appreciated. The AI needs a lot of work too.

It can still make sense to me. I will agree that going forward, I'd make sure the ability to hover is considered a huge strategic asset, and keep everything on the ground. But even at the moment, Navy can be made important for the same reason it's important in Supreme Commander: Bombardment. Navy ships tend to have boatloads (Pun 100% intented) of firepower, fired at ridiculous range, and can take huge amounts of damage. In a 1:1 fight, ships can/should handily obliterate any comparible land unit. Plus, perhaps they could add the "Amphibious" trait to certain units, meaning they can hover on the ground, but not over water. Of course, tying in to all of this is one fairly big elephant in the room: The armies. If I make an army with 90% Amphibious units and a couple that aren't Amphibious, will the entire army lose out on the ability to use water as a shortcut?

I agree with you about the third race, but in the opposite way: I think they should do a third race and sell it. The revenue has to keep coming some how, that'd be an awesome way to get it.

Oh, make no mistake: I agree. I'm just saying Navy could still have its niche carved out, certainly. Water could be used to provide "sneak-around" territory for amphibious units, could be used to provide mobile fire support from the sea.

Besides that, nothing to say the game couldn't add more "non-hovering" units, or bias the third race to be completely non-hovering.

From where Ashes is now, it would take quite a bit of rework to remove hovering from most of the units, just for the sake of adding in navies. The PHC Agamemnon hits the bombardment itch without needing a boat.

Yeah, I realize I phrased that in the worst way possible: What I mean is that they could add in Amphibious as an exception to how units work, with the "normal" hover being insufficient to let them travel over water. If it's anti-grav tech, it could make sense (After all, hovering a few feet above the "ground" would still put them very far underwater).

To be completely honest, that could actually make sense. We know only a handful of details about the third race:

• We know they're alien.
• They seem to be vaguely parasitic.
• They can hide themselves within planets.

All three of those points would fit within the definition of an insectoid race easy-peasy.

I said it in the other thread and I'll say it here: Ethereal Parasitic AIs.

Have them parasitically linked in to Turinium, and once they become linked, have them start hunting any life form also associated with that Turinium (Substrate or PHC). Once they do kill the other life form linked to it, have them take on its visage in a cruel mockery of what once was. Have them literally phase in their units from underground like ghosts, only partly real, and attack by trying to break the connection between PHC/Substrate and their units.

 So...I am not really understanding the appeal of Naval units.  Why are they even necessary?  What could they add to the game that is not already there?  About the only 2 naval types units that might be useful are submarines and aircraft carriers.  Other than that we already have all the functionality of boats.

I can understand if people want the challenge of setting up maps where you have to cross a lake or something to get to the enemy, but you can do that type of thing already with elevation.

Naval could be a way of creating a new or different dynamic of battle compared to the swarmy/zergy style of battle we face on land.

Not that i'm in full support of it, but at least there is an interesting reason to have something like naval.

Doesn't even have to be strictly ships as we know it, what with our land hover ships for our tanks and so forth. The 'sea' could be like thick swells of gasses or even lava that require specialized hover units to cross, or aircraft. With units that focus more on long range bombardment with specialized amphibious tanks for more close range engagements.

Frigates could be amphibious in this way, with maybe a cruiser or two also being capable of traversing this new terrain but otherwise more special gas or lava ships would be required in place of most cruisers and dreadnoughts on land.

Which could be fun, so long as the ground-sea operations are actually exploited. Something that was sorely lacking in games like supcom is the ability to actually fight from land to sea, and sea to land even if the battle is asymmetrical. Naval dominance often made the shores impossible to hold when surely it should never have been with the right equipment and weapons. Artillery that can fire at submersibles, heavy tanks that can trade shots with destroyers and so forth. No need to make them THAT separate.