KaneTiberian

I mostly agree with OP post, with a single correction - we don't really need to limit artillery usage that much. There's a known counter to it, already implemented in Supreme Commander, Zero-K and other games - area shields that can block a certain amount of incoming DPS. Shields also offer turtling player a good option to increase forces survivability and that is the vital point of turtling strategies, just as <a id="ctl00_ctl00__Content__Content__RepeaterReplies_ctl01__Lin

[quote who="Wintercross" reply="15" id="3539513"] If you could get e-sports to be interested in several hour long campaigns then that would be great. [/quote] This is not even conceptually possible. E-sports game by design must have positive feedback linkage, i.e. it should be full of game-changing action, first and foremost on the small scale. It is required to be dramatic in order to keep attention, since people outside the game process have no need to

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="3" id="3536464"] But in Ashes, you have to have power and only the planetary power generators provide that power and they have to be captured. [/quote] Sounds like my greatest concert about Ashes got suddenly confirmed. From statement above it follows that game will have strict artificial limits to base building just like Sins' tactical/logistics slots, ruling out any viable possibility of turtling. Absence of stalemates also sounds

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="24" id="3533722"] We don't want to have an endless community battle where people are arguing against "micro" because they want to play the game zoomed all the way out. [/quote] Strategic zoom is not a way to play the game all along, but a most convenient map navigation tool that exists, a more convenient version of minimap. Zoom in-out loop provides visual link between location you're in, entire map and location you're heading to, giv

I'm not yet sure that Ashes is on the right track, assuming that the right track is the 'RTS for the rest of us', whose limit is 10 conscious actions per minute, not 100 or 400. Heavily automated UI is a must, and overall game pace should be slow. Also, most people can do just one task at time, and so even epic scale game should have single focal point at the given moment of time. The key element here is turtling availability - possibility to construct static defenses st

1. Will player in AotS be able to build units they researched in any quantity (except, probably, technical per-player unit limit), as in any other TA-based game? 2. Will long-range weapons, like artillery that reaches other side of the map, or ballistic missiles, be present in AotS? 3. Will AotS defensive structures in appropriate numbers be potentially able to block any type of attack, including long-range weapons like ICBM or artillery, if present, like in SupCom? 4.

I consider an ability to design environment-reactive formation tactics as a critical element for meta-unit success. Without this, meta-units will be like formations in Homeworld, BfME and other games: useful, but not groundbreaking.

I'd think that optimal all-out match duration is 90-180 min. That is a normal duration of SupCom epic-scale battle, counted by internal simulation time. In real world, it was twice that time due to enormous slowdown of a single-threaded engine, but AotS is not going to have that technical problem. Map segmentation principle still seems unclear to me. When your forces move to the segment, is there a restriction on an approach vector so that they cannot strike from behind

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="2" id="3528525"] Because of the sheer volume of units, turning them into icons would be largely useless. [/quote] That's not necessary so. Supreme Commander 2 had an interesting mechanics for such case: its high-altitude overlay displayed close amounts of similar units and control groups as a single icon. Due to imprecise semantics and unpredictable behavior, in SupCom 2 it never played well, but AotS is going to have meta-units, a concept th

I'm thinking about putting my $100 after looking for some time at the direction that development will take. Anyone knows for how long Founder's Lifetime Edition will be available?

[quote who="Wintercross" reply="3" id="3527953"] Please don't. This looks like a large scale RTS that I've been waiting for. I want something where strategic and tactical genius triumphs over twitch reflexes. [/quote] Totaly agreed. As for now, eSports orientation ruined too many RTS games. In fact, vain attempts to feed off Starcraft table brought an entire genre to near-collapse stage in any reasonable sense, including sales. If anyone will ever write the Ten Comma