Looking great Corey. Following you guys on moddb for both modds..

Disclaimer: As the mod is still in early pre-alpha stage, all specific numbers are merely placeholders to test overall systems and not necessarily reflective of final plans or actual values

...Sins of a Research Department...
In the previous updates we've stressed two of the most important things we're hoping to accomplish in developing Ascendancy, being an attempt to make each faction feel unique, and giving the player the chance to make meaningful choices. This update is about another aspect of the mod in which we're trying to build on these ideas, the tech trees. The tech trees in Ascendancy will include a few pretty significant departures from the Sins trees in that not every tech is always going to be desirable and there's a bigger emphasis on the techs highlighting some of the philosophies which were prevalent in the playable factions, although there will be some areas where it will be the same. As you'd expect, one of the major components of the tech tree is unlocking new ship types. The only major difference between Sins and Ascendancy here is that you will not start with every capital ship unlocked in Ascendancy. Several of the core economic techs will be pretty familiar as well; research tech X to increase production of resource Y, etc. These techs are staying as is basically because they're important to letting the game scale up as time goes on, although they won't be quite as strong, since it's pretty common in Sins to easily get to the point where even a player who's losing by a large margin has no reason to worry about their economy, and that kind of ruins the point of a 4X game.

The other technologies in Sins, especially the military-related ones, are essentially being scrapped and replaced with what we feel to be more interesting options. A lot of the techs in Sins are slightly tweaked versions of the same flat bonuses between all the factions, with a little bit of shuffling. Ultimately they're meaningless unless you have an advantage over your enemy, because if everyone has a 10% damage boost and a 10% defense boost, you're right at square one and nothing has changed. There will be some flat bonus techs of that sort available, however what they do will be a lot more dependent on factions and situations; one example would be a tech which just flatly increases the firing rate of Hapan Battledragons and Nova Cruisers based on the technology shared by the NR, or a flat speed boost to the EotH units based on their focus on mobility.

Most techs in Ascendancy, however, do not fit within this system. Instead they are meant to allow the player to customize how they play a faction and emphasize certain aspects of it, if they so choose. These are techs which you will not want to buy every game. Some examples of this kind of tech are the Imperial Strength in Numbers and Forced Production research subjects. These are part of a branch for the Empire which highlights the "expendable" way in which many Imperial leaders treated their forces. (Values are Tier 1/Tier 2/Tier 3)

Strength in Numbers: Fleet upkeep costs decrease by 5/10/15 at the expense of 3/6/9% hull regen.
Forced Production: Ship build times decrease by 5/10/15%at the expense of 3/6/9% total HP.

...Trimming Branches...
These two techs are present in the same branch as the tech to unlock the Final Hour (ramming) ability for the ISD. As you can probably imagine, this will often mean some techs will have bonuses conflicting with each other. Ultimately, it's up to the player to decide which aspects and playstyle they want to emphasize within a faction, somewhat similar to a Company of Heroes-style discipline tree while maintaining a lot of the core aspects of a traditional tech tree. A downside to this is that the AI will not necessarily be able to interact with the system that well, however this doesn't put them at a significant disadvantage so much as put them in a constant middle ground within the faction, which isn't too terrible.

As with everything, this is all very much a work in progress, so we're going to refrain from posting any full tech trees until we're closer to finished, however hopefully this gives you an idea of the kind of system we're going for, both with emphasizing faction identity and in trying to create what we hope will be an engaging gameplay experience.

...Help us, Your Name Here. You're Our Only Hope...
We know there are some diehard fans of every faction within our community (especially the Imperials on our forums) so more than ever we'd like to ask for the community's help in suggesting possible techs and developing the identities for the Remnant, New Republic and Empire of the Hand. So, if you have any ideas please feel free to post them on our forums. We have a specific thread for it on our forums. If you don't have an account, guests are still able to post; just please post under a consistent nickname or it can get confusing.

More information and media:

www.thrawnsrevenge.com/forums

http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-wars-ascendancy

Fighters have always been a vital part of space warfare in Star Wars, from destroying the Death Star at Yavin, to single-handedly flying into the command bridge of the Executor and making it take a wrong turn into the other Death Star, to launching Shadow Bombs against the Vong. How we intend to handle fighters has also been one of the most common questions, so we're going to address part of that today.

...Fighter Logistics...

In combat, fighters are going to be a bit more versatile than they are in base Sins, while also being a lot more vulnerable. Essentially, every ship in the mod will have some way to deal with fighters and bombers, but fighters and bombers will also be capable of making much more of an impact on their own. Although they're especially vulnerable to the CR90, Lancer and Asdroni, these ships don't spell extinction for them in the same way the Garda Flak Frigate did for fighters in Sins. We're still working on exact combat balancing however, so right now the more interesting (we feel) and better fleshed-out aspect of fighters is the supply system.

 It's important for us to be able to represent in some way the canonical roles and abilities for ships, including fighter complement, without negatively impacting game performance Each ship, instead of having antimatter, now has a value representing the total number of fighters which they could hold, canonically. They are also gated by a second number determining how many squadrons a ship can sustain on the field at one time. Dedicated carriers will be able to sustain more fighters on the field at once. So, for example, the Imperial I can canonically hold in the neighbourhood of 72 fighters. It can maintain 2 of those squadrons on the field at any time. Every time it launches a squadron, 12 of its fighters are subtracted from the total.

The ISDI's unit card, displaying the squadron system.

For performance purposes, however, we're likely to combine the stats of a few fighters in each squadron into one fighter, so we will likely have a squadron of four representing all 12, for example. There are also some very powerful fighters which will be gated by taking up more of your fighter supply than others, for example the Imperial TIE Defender and New Republic K-Wing. The other important part of this system is that the fighter values, once used, do not passively regenerate. You will not be able to hang carriers back, and infinitely spam fighters. This means you have to use your available squadrons more carefully, plan your campaigns more thoroughly. It also makes ships with larger hangars more important strategically because they can be deployed for longer missions away from your own bases, even if tactically they tactically aren't at a huge advantage.  The Remnant will also have a researchable tech which can increase their hangar sizes, allowing them to have extra squadrons available.

...Supply Lines...

You're probably asking, "if my ships don't replenish their own fighters, how do I get them back?" This is part of a larger system which will be explained in its own update. However, the basic principles of this system as it applies to fighters are that you need to rely on resupply/repair stations at your own planets, so you'll often need to rotate fleets between battles after you've established yourself on a new world, and we have dedicated fleet tenders which can (more slowly than the stations) replenish your number of available fighters. These are the Altor for the Remnant, the Hajen for the New Republic, and the Alaria for the Empire of the Hand.

...Mod Progress...

Typically we don't give anything even vaguely resembling a release date or timeline, because there's every chance that whatever we say will be completely wrong. However, it's looking increasingly likely that we'll be able to get something out by the end of the summer. At the very least we should be able to have the first alphas started on the Remnant within a few weeks. I'll say right now that if we feel like the mod needs more time, we won't hesitate to delay it, but I'll be dedicating as much of my free time as possible to it. We're still taking applications for beta and alpha testers, so use the link below to get to the thread for that. We've also started working more on the wiki, which we'll be using instead of a manual. If you see something that's not on it, feel free to fill it in; that's what it's for. Also, we're still taking any ideas, suggestions or feedback for the mod. Especially tech and ability-related, so if you have anything you want to see, we encourage you to post it on the forums or ModDB, or even the Facebook or Steam groups. We check all of them regularly.

Finally, there's something we've been planning off and on for years and leaving some small hints/references for in news posts since the announcement. Recently we've gotten a bit less subtle. Shouldn't be too hard to figure out.

...Further Information...
FAQ Thread - Progress Thread - Tester Signup - Mod Wiki

...Follow the mod...
Forums - Facebook - Steam Group - Youtube

Very cool thanks for the work here!

...Migration...

There are two primary variables related to planet population: max population, and population growth rate. In Sins, this was all very standardized and not especially interactive. Each planet was sort of left to its own devices and either ended up with a high population or didn't, depending on tech. In Ascendancy, we're looking to give a bit more depth to planetary population. Each planet type has a different value for these levels. Some types, including the Ecumenopolis (ie Coruscant) and Temperate (ie Corellia) types have both high max population caps and growth rates. Others like Volcanic and Ice have both low caps and low growth rates. However, there are several types which have the capacity to support large populations, but require assistance to get there quickly, most prominently the Arboreal and Desert planets. 

In order to promote more interactivity here, we have given your dropships (The Sentinel, Gallofree and Consen) a set of new abilities to help transfer your populations as you see fit. The first ability (Migration: Load) is cast on the planet you want to take the migrants from, which increases your dropships' supply. The second ability (Migration: Unload) then drops this population off on the destination planet. Each dropship starts being able to use the Unload ability once after being constructed before having to load up again. We're also toying with the idea of a new logistic structure which increases population capacity or growth rate on the planets, but that's less fleshed out.



...Fleet Commanders...

Once of the most common questions we're asked is if we're going to include heroes in the mod, and the answer to that is technically no, but also sort of yes. In the Flagship victory mode, your flagship will be a prominent ship from that faction; Ackbar in Home One, Thrawn in Chimaera, Kres'ten'tarthi in Battlehammer, Ivpikkis in the Shriwirr (or Keermak in the Errinung'ka, we haven't decided), Tenenial Djo in the Star Home, and Tsa- *Muffled noises.*

While regular heroes are possible to do in other game modes, we don't quite want to go that direction in Ascendancy. We have, however, added new types of supportive capital ships: fleet commander flagships. In combat, these flagships are essentially identical to their non-flagship varieties, though with slightly better defenses in order to ensure they don't always end up being focused too soon. Their main role is to be buff carriers. Each one has a set of four abilities, which, while varying slightly by faction, fall within similar categories and scale very well with levels: (numbers aren't real, just to give an idea)

Assault Command: Increases damage output of frigates and capital ships by 2/4/8/16%
Defense Command: Increases damage output of defensive structures by 2/4/8/16%
Fighter Command: Increases damage output of fighters by 2/4/8/16%
Supreme Commander/Grand Admiral: Requires level 8, effects vary by faction.

You cannot have two Commanders using Assault Command at the same time on the same fleet, and the flagship variants take roughly 1.5-2x as much supply as their regular versions, so while it's good to build a few to lead your fleets, they are certainly not meant to be mass-produced. Currently each faction gets three versions, based on three of their primary capital ships with one or two exceptions. The goal of this is to reward players for training their admirals with raids and different engagements, and to encourage maximizing your DPS by maintaining more than one main fleet in scenarios where that's feasible.

Once again, keep in mind everything we talk about in these dev diaries isn't set in stone and is still always being altered. If you have a suggestion or critique about this mechanic, feel free to leave a comment or post it in the Migration Discussion topic on our forums. We also have a topic for discussing fleet commanders. This is all still in alpha stage so there's a lot of ideation and testing going on on things that may ultimately not be kept if they're determined to not work, so feel free to suggest any changes or additions.

Follow Ascendancy
Forums - Facebook - Steam Group - Youtube - Mod DB

...Development...

Over the last few months, we've been been pushing out each of the three main factions to our testers in their own alpha builds, and this week the third and final alpha was given to the alpha testers. In light of this development milestone, we're writing Dev Diary #12 to address some of the most common questions about what you can expect in the first version of Ascendancy, as well as what's coming beyond that.

Anyone who's followed our Empire at War mod, Imperial Civil War, knows we're pretty fond of incremental releases and they are something we're going to be continuing with Ascendancy. This allows us to release earlier to get feedback and broader experience with different systems to see how they function before we pile too much on top of them. It also helps us set attainable short-term goals and stop from falling into "development hell." So, here's a quick preview of everything that will be in the first release.

 

...Ascendancy: 1.0 and Beyond...

The main thing that 1.0 will include is all three of the main playable factions, fully functional and with all of their units. They'll also include complete tech trees and unit abilities. However, as in ICW, there's several models and skins we're not quite happy with, so every subsequent release will feature visual updates of various units where we feel it's necessary, and maybe a one or two new toys if they need them. Tech trees will also be expanded and contracted based on feedback; there are a few areas we want to explore with the Remnant in particular which won't be attempted until afterwards. 

The majority of what's been announced already will also be in the first release; migration, degrading systems based on damage, fleet commanders and the like will all be included in the first release. The only major absence of something we've already announced will be, unfortunately, minor factions. After several internal discussions, we've decided to handle them a different way. Ultimately we feel like people will enjoy the new way a lot more, but it does mean we have to delay them. Hapan and Ssi-Ruuvi fleets will still be present as militia, however they will not yet be present as independent galactic powers. This will be the focus of the second version, so we'll address what we're doing with them more fully after the first release. The worst-kept-secret fourth major faction will also be addressed at that point as well, which we're pretty excited for. We've posted a bit about them in the Admiral's Lounge on our forums (accessible to people with 25 posts or more) and everyone thinks their ships rock. In addition to the faction changes and additions, there's a bunch of gameplay changes we want to make going forward, especially on the economic side to expand the non-military aspects of the game.

 

...The To-Do List...

Everything's been  coming together pretty nicely in the last few weeks but there's still quite a bit left to do. There are still a handful of ships and structures that need to be finished, however we're at the point where the main focus is finishing up tech trees and abilities, which overall are about halfway done. After that, the main thing is to get voice overs put in, finish off some planet textures, and the tedious task of making several hundred icons for abilities and techs. The more diverse the voiceover cast, the better, so if you think you have the proper audio equipment and voice for it, send an email to ThrawnsRevenge@gmail.com . The main stumbling block at the moment is music, which we don't quite know how we're going to handle. So, on the off chance you're a composer who's interested in recording some Star Wars style music for the mod, send an email to the same place.

 

Follow Ascendancy
Forums - Facebook - Steam Group - Youtube - Mod DB