Greetings!
We’re rapidly coming up on the new Founder’s build. Lots and lots of changes coming in.
Here are topics that have been brought up on the forum.
Q: What are you calling the core resource everyone is fighting over?
A: Turinium. We were calling it computronium internally (it’s a real thing) but we didn’t like the sound of it. Turinium sounds better and it’s a good nod to Alan Turing.
Q: Will seeds be upgradeable?
A: Yes. But not in beta 1. Originally, the Seed upgrades were how you unlocked T2 and T3 units but we felt that slowed down the game. We’re going to find another thing to do with them.
Q: I want to be able to defend my regions with outpostgs or something.
A: Ashes has a host of defensive structures ranging from rockets, heavy plasma cannons, drone bays and more. If a region is crucial you can absolutely lock it down.
Q: What is the game mechanic of the logistics array?
A: The ultimate limiter in the game presently is power. Each world you fight for has already had expeditionary drones sent out to it that have placed a series of core taps which are at the heart of a region. Buildings use power.
So what does this have to do with logistics? Because the logistics array provides units but also consumes quite a bit of power. This matters because the player ultimately has to decide between buildings and units. This avoids infinite turtling.
Now, in the founders, you only have tiny and small maps. So it may seem like having such limits are unnecessary. But the next build will introduce medium, large and huge maps that are, well, enormous. Thus, we want some method to prevent infinite turtling because at those sizes, if there isn’t something to limit it, games could be decided by the person who has the most time on their hands. The Turinium generators help prevent that most of the time but the power generators are the ultimate leash on scope.
Another benefit of power is that it allows us to have a lot of interesting map design options. We could have maps with tons of power generators and some with hardly any.
Q: What sorts of things are you looking to add to the economic system?
A: We debate this constantly. Here are a few key points about the economic system as-is:
In addition, we are looking at two more resources:
Both of these were in our pre-production design but we were concerned that this might be a turn off to “mainstream” RTS players. As time has gone on, we have been gravitating towards having the economy more sophisticated and this line of thinking continues even now.
Q: What are global abilities?
A: Now that the AI is in and we’re playing on the really big maps it has had a significant impact on the way we look at the game. We are starting to ease away from having a lot of active unit abilities to ones that essentially targeted player interventions on the map.
When you’re managing a global war where you have several big battles going on simultaneously that may last a few minutes each, giving the player the ability to act on a particular battle from the global UI seems more fun than having to click on a unit and and select a special ability. This doesn’t mean that units won’t have special abilities but we may design them so that the player can set them to autocast ala Sins of a Solar Empire.
Q: How far along do you consider the current UI?
A: It’s still very much a work in progress, especially visually.
Q: How are the Meta units going to work?
A: In the Founder’s build, a T1 can only answer to a T2 which in turn can only answer to a T3. We found this to be too micro-intensive to set up. We have thus been migrating to a system where you select a bunch of units, hit the Form Battle Group button [Z] and it will turn them into a single unit that acts together. You don’t have to worry about having the composition exactly right for it to work.
Q: Will you let us build stuff even when the amount of a resource is fully depleted?
A: We are still debating this. It’s a really tough call because we are trying to keep people from wrecking themselves by over spending. I think what will happen is that once the UI catches up to make it easy to tell what is sucking up your stuff and turning it off we’ll have more options.
Q: Where do things stand on “strategic zoom”?
A: We are still discussing what kind of abstract view of the battlefield we want to do. We can’t iconize units ala Supreme Commander because of the numbers of units. We are playing around with a lot of different ideas. What I can say is that we do plan to have some sort of worldwide view of the game if you zoom out. Someone mentioned World War II in space which is something we are indeed looking at.
Q: Will there be a campaign?
A: Yes.
Q: What about morale?
A: There is no morale. Every unit in the game is you. They are your constructs that act as extensions of you.
Q: Do you see this as an e-sport?
A: No. I think it’ll be pretty popular multiplayer but single player is a big focus for us as well as friends vs. AI. We will have a league and seasons and all that ala Starcraft but when push comes to shove, smart AI and maps that lend themselves to strategic depth are where we’re putting our resources.
Q: What is on Stardock’s wish list for this game?
A: I’d like to see random maps and I’d like to see (especially for single player) additional resources ala Civilization that if owned allow the player to unlock additional technologies. But whether the player base will want that remains to be seen.
Q: How good will the AI be for early access?
A: In our current internal build, no one can beat it on hard or come close to it let alone expert or insane.
What else would you like to know?
1) Does the AI cheat in any way? What about on expert or insane?
2) The AI in Sins never used auto cast abilities well. Will there be a more in depth mechanic to the AI that will know how to maximize abilities to their best effect?
On Expert and Insane they get a handicap bonus (their resource collection is magnfiied). But otherwise, they're playing the same game you are. No free units. No free spawns. No free buildings.
Re ability auto casting. That remains to be seen. Ashes has a pretty big advantage over Sins in the sense that Ashes has a multi-core AI while Sins was single threaded.
For strategic zoom - How about a heat-map style display?
Among other things, this would look a lot like WW2 movies, where you have a Red-Blob and arrows pointing at a Blue-blob with little castle icons...
Awesome, can't wait!
So wait, the AI is already strong enough to beat you consistently without cheats? That is impressive.
1. Are you envisioning "additional resources" to be buffs/abilities that you get as long as you control the area, or buffs/abilities that you need to recapture from time to time MOBA-style? I kinda think both might be cool.
2. In the current alpha you can click a T2 or T3 unit and request additional subordinate units. That is a ridiculously awesome feature. How do you plan for this to work now that battlegroups do not need to consist of T2 or T3 units?
3. Are you envisioning configurable gameplay variables for matches like pacing, starting technology, game speed, etc.?
4. Will more than 4 players per match (human and AI combined) be supported?
5. Will there be game replays?
6. Spectating?
7. This is a little pie in the sky, but Battlefield 4 was able to do it so maybe you could too. It would be awesome if I could stream the strategic view to my iPad, because I do not have a second monitor.
Will you make it so units are all individual instead of the T1 units currently being in squads of 3? I hope so, I don't feel like I am fully in control when moving units in 3 instead of as individuals. Also the factories have one platform for the units they create, not three.
Looking forward to Beta.
that total turtling shouldn't be possible on most maps because of too many ways for the army. But if you make a map like SupCom's 'Seton's Clutch'; Players WANT turtling there. You really should increase the amount of power you gain for a region AND the amount of logistics per logistic slot
Hi!
Will the new founder version support DX 12 and will the graphics still be downgraded? Best regards
This is what we're thinking too.
Great stuff.
0. Right now the AI on normal beats all of us on the bigger maps. Our main advantage is that the AI is multithreaded and we have high hardware requirements. So we can put in 4X style AI into an RTS game. You'll be able to see it for yourself and the AI is still a baby at this point.
1. We're picturing additional resources to be both in terms of regions that give you global effect of some kind if you control them.
2. The reinforce feature is going to eventually use energy to teleport units from the factory to your unit. Any meta unit will be able to do this (Even one full of T1s) as long as you have enough energy. So a battle group of T1s will be able to reinforce in a T3 if they have enough energy to do it (which would require including a lot of energizer units).
3. Yes. We already have a Fast, Faster, and accidentally a 50X speed.
4. Only up to 4 human players but we are looking at have as many AI players as possible.
5. Yes but may not be on release.
6. Yes but may not be ready on release.
7. That is pretty cool. We do plan multimonitor support but iPad would be a post-release thing for sure.
Winter and Barren are in the works as well as different times of day. (these are actually done already).
The Metaverse will be there to set up a galactic-wide Substrate vs. PHC war for the galaxy.
Also individual units show damage.
Yes. DirectX 12 and DirectX 11 (and Mantle) will be supported in the next update.
Latest zoom out on Seton's Legacy (that's what we're currently calling it anyway):
Love it! Glad I became an elite founder. :wipes drool off keyboard:
I Think This is a Problem to have in the game, why to lock us with a Cap on buildings and units? i mean a player need to decide to go units or buildings... If you go with buildings then how are you going to defend yourself? as i remember the game will not have any heavy Defenses and a big Meta unit will clean everything on its way because the Defenses are not good enough to stop a big army. plus whats the deal with the power?
Logistics Array to consume a lot of power, that mean that you are limited to how many you can build, to have to build 1 structure only to have units... i think you guys need to rethink on what use you have for it, just to build units? i gave this example before but what will happen if i rush and destroy the Logistics array structures early in the game?I will keep building units while my enemy cannot and it may be the end of him. so do we the players want to have that? just go for that Structure and destroy it.. because as i know that structure does not have any kind of heavy armor or a lot of HP.
The infinite turtling that your talking about its not bad at all, that why those kind of games are called RTS (real time strategy) you need to think fast and dice a good strategy to win over the map. so it doesn't matter no one think the same way so no one will play the same way as the other player, you gonna have players that are faster in building units, other at expanding and so on. The whole idea of this game is to create the biggest army possible and go and all out war with several big battles going on simultaneously right?
so yes no one want to play a game that it will never end, so that why i think you should give us the freedom to create new strategies using different kind of units and structures to win a game without a limit, doing it offensively of defensively.
everything in the August 2015 FAQ is awesome to know and i am really happy about where the game its going, keep this great work , its just i don't really see the real use for the logistics array at all, or i may not understand it at all. i am sure you guys know what your doing, but so far i don't like it
Frogboy try to help me understand it better on how its gonna really work. Thank you.I will wait for the next big update and try the big maps to see how its gonna work.
We used logistics to great effect in Sins. Infinite turtling is NOT something we want to encourage. Turtling is a valid strategy to a degree (fortifying regions and such).
In our internal build, we've modified the logistics array to provide a lot more logistics so that you won't be building very many. We are also entertaining the idea that controlling regions may directly increase logistics.
Rather than look at the issue of logistics on its own, it might work better to think of the overall objective. Ashes has no limit on the # of units you can have. There is no 500, or 1000 or million unit limit. However, we don't want to see that system turned into two turtles in their bases making games drag on for hours with the other player dominating other things.
I know there are many who disagree. During the Supreme Commander alpha, I was very unhappy that there were initially enough resources that you could basically whole up in your base and force games to take hours for the pother layer to dig you out. There were lots of people who liked that and that's fine. But in THIS game, controlling the map will confer significant advantages over the person with only a small amount of resources.
See, I was trained as an infantry mortarman, and I loved SupCom:FA because I could build powerful forward firebases to support my advance... Currently, that seems to be impossible in Ashes... "Oh, the battles lines are stalled. How cute. Be a shame if I got an artillery base up and started shelling your lines..."
Thanks for answering Frogboy
Yes i love Sins and i hope you guys can convince Ironclad to do a new one,. Turtling may happen in any game if the players decide to do it. i don't encourage it either, but putting a cap for units in a Structure will not stop turtling.As i see it, Logistics in Sins is per Region (planet or asteroids) and its to build structures and not units.
i go back to the same question how will you handle a player who will go strait for the logistics Structure early in the game? rushing it and destroying them in the first minutes? yes you can stop that rush but you will loose really fast that structure. If you do then that important early time to build up your army get slowed a lot, first player to move may kind of expand way faster and it may be a done game.
I prefer not to have that Structure at all, or like i said before make that structure do something else.
You said it yourself, the player who control more regions gets an advantage, so when you get slowed early in the game by the Enemy, 10 minutes later when you get back up of you feet and go out of your seed region you will see you enemy already having 10x more regions than you, and its all because you got stuck with a unit cap because you lost your structures.
Thank you for reading.Will wait for the next build and see how the game will gonna work on bigger maps with some changes to Logistics
BTW i love the Seton's Legacy map, looks really cool for Turtling.
Yeah, I also loved the satisfaction gained by not having a "houses" system. Even if someone had a massive fortress (or I had one) It was always possible to crack the lines with enough force from artillery or superweapons. If you want to encourage people to grow you only really need power OR logistics. Both is just... annoying. Both leads to a place where if you accidentally don't invest enough of your power into logistics you don't have the ability to turn the game around.
Also, turtling can be a lot fun in these kinds of games. Perhaps a good mid-ground would be having an option to turn on "Infinite Logistics" or "Defenses don't cost power" in the match menu when hosting a new multiplayer game or skirmish. By having it as an option at the start you can easily continue to build the game down your path while also providing options for people who DO like to turtle. It would also mean that the only people who would join those kinds of games would be the people who would WANT to turtle/verse a turtle. Breaking a turtles back can be just as satisfying as being the turtle. Some people love the hour long stalemate while each side continues to probe the other looking for that one weak point- that one lapse in judgement that lets you blow their lines to hell and charge on through for the win.
Edit: Also remember- you are trying to encourage the people who loved TA to love ashes. You know what one was massive part of TA? The HUGE variety of defenses- the fact that if you COULD hold the lines you could build an amazing fortress (then have that fortress destroyed by nukes since you didn't have enough anti-nukes). The idea that you could charge an army of several THOUSAND troops at that turtling opponent and destroy their fortress- creating a massive field of carnage and chaos. It almost feels like the power and logisitics system as it currently stands is not only pushing against the TA/Supcom vibes but also is limiting the usefulness of its amazing new Vulkan/Mantle/DX12 next gen 64bit aspariations. One of my least favourite things about Supcom was that in the late game against the AI the entire game would start to move at a crawl (just because of the CPU limitations). Now finally we have a game where that shouldn't happen or it would be reduced and we are stuck with these deceptive systems where we can't build nearly as much as we would like and whole strategies are essentially outlawed by design...
Can you expand on this ?
"The Metaverse will be there to set up a galactic-wide Substrate vs. PHC war for the galaxy."
Does this his mean there's some kind of online persistent map which we can fight for control off as particular fans of a certain side ? If I had to think of an example I believe guild wars 2 was quite famous for pulling this feature off?
i totaly love supreme commander forged Alliance the only thing i hate about ashes of the singularity is the unit limit.
that you keep needing to built building to up the unit limit
ps sorry for the bad english
I'm glad you are going in this direction and happy to hear that the logistics structures will not have to be built constantly like in the initial Alpha. I like the logistics dynamic in Sins -- so much so that I could see dropping logistics structures and making logistics researchable in AoS too. That said, I do not know how much of a research tree you plan to have, so maybe logistics structures are the best way to go. It depends on where your focus lies.
The idea of increasing logistics depending on how much of the map you control is interesting, but it seems a little repetitive since power and other resources are also limiting factors that adjust with the amount of land you control. It also makes less sense to me logically, unless the thought is that the more turinium you have under control the more efficiently/effectively you can control your units or something. If you go this route, then I definitely think you do away with the logistics structures altogether.
The idea of having logistics/power be "options" is interesting -- as long as you can see if the option is on or off before joining a multiplayer game. Maybe that's the solution to a lot of these gripes, as it lets people self-select the kind of game they want to play. If their computer (or another player's) ultimately cannot handle that many units, etc.; then that's on them for going with that option. Come to think of it, something like this would have been a neat dynamic in Sins too. There are a lot of larger games in Sins where I hit the logistics cap before finishing the game. What are the downsides/complications to implementing options like this? Would it "break" the game somehow that I'm not factoring in? Is there concern that people will just play the game their way vs. the way it is intended to be experienced?
Thanks again for so much constant feedback/dialogue. I know it must seem like a chore sometimes since there are many of us and only one or two people there reading/responding to all of the community's musings .
I can see how it's trying to work with regards forcing players to grab land to progress, I'm assuming the idea is both players chase for all available power points. I'm assuming again like sup com there reaches a point when the initial land grab is finished, and as long as we can then build forward fire bases it sounds fine. I loved being able to construct defences as a form of offence in sup com And ta. I liked that after the initial land grabbed players committed to going there chosen strategy direction what ever that choice was.
Again in echoing others I did find the game overly complicated and slow with the current system of power and logistic but it sounds like it's been balanced. I found the lack of general awareness / battlefield perspective annoying but again it sounds like the mini map has been addressed and the addition of a general overview when zoomed out however you deem appropriate should get rid of that feeling of being a bit lost / not knowing what's going on.
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