Gameplay
Repeat Queue mode for factories
New Resource Mechanic:
All regions now generate resources as soon as they are captured, but building extractors generates more resources
New Tech Tree
Available when the Seed is selected
Techs can be continuously upgraded for an exponential cost
Metal Storage, Radioactive Storage, Logistics, Radar Range, Weapon Damage, and Unit Max HP function so far (others WIP)
Global Ability Prototype: Scan
Uses radioactives to reveal an area of the map temporarily
re-enable Reinforcements ordering directly from units
change the VP accumulation - now the game grants VPs to the player with the most Turinium Generators (and only the lead player - if there is a tie for first, nobody gets points this tick)
Issue move command to aircraft when r-clicking a capture node
Balance
Archer has slightly fewer HP
Drive Inhibitor now has double radius
Increased vision of pan slightly.
speed up medic a tiny bit so that he can heal while moving better
Armor changes! Only buildings, T3s, Brute, and Zeus are armored. Only Sentinel Turrets and Nemesis weapons are armor-piercing.
Apollo Flak Cannon now targets drones (after air)
Archer missiles no longer target air or drones
Prometheus Heavy Autocannon now targets drones/air last
T1 HP balance changed to reflect that there are 3 of them (so they have 40 HP a piece typically)
Updated the weapons to have more distinction between the primary weapon of a unit and the defensive such that the primary weapon tends to have better range than the secondary. Hence, if a unit closes in on that unit, its defensive stuff will start going off (all tested)
Archer rockets go off less often but are more powerful, prefer to target T2s instead of T1s.
Smarties will target air now as a low priority. However, their range has been reduced.
The Hercules primary weapon now fires only occasionally but does massive damage. Primarily focuses on T3s.
Artemis weapon range reduced to ensure that it is less than the Cronus's Cenatur missile array.
Chronus targets buildings as first priority.
General balance, relative to each other, of all weapons
The Fury will now attack ground units if no air units are available.
The Hades Nova bomb has been rebalanced to have less splash damage and prefers to target buildings. Will no longer target T1s.
General balancing of secondary and tertiary weapons on units to make them less potent than their primary weapons (before they were all very powerful with relatively little distinction).
Unit HP massively reduced (but relative to each other). T3s go from 18000 to 600, 9000, 7000. This also fixes text clipping issues.
decreased movement speed of Artemis
Decreased Artemis barrage count slightly
Nexus armor increased
Scout costs more metal to build
Nova bomb damage increased
Heal ray nerfed
Removed heal projector and protection from Hyperion
Gave Heal projector and Protection field to Prometheus
Balance updates to make the Prometheus the anti-T3 and the Hyperon the area dominator
Map Fixes/Balance
removed some maps that weren't up to standards; Drake, Keplar, Xendar
Aven - VP balance, minor terrain tweaks, first cosmetic pass
Deneb - minor balance/geography, cosmetic pass
Kralon - resource balance, geo tweaks, cosmetic pass
Proxima - geo tweaks, resource balance, rough cosmetic pass
Scorpio - Geo tweaks for pathing, resource balance, region balance, cosmetic pass
Cerius - minor changes to fix region connections, reduced metal. This is now a slow map
Seton - minor geo/region tweaks, resource balance, cosmetic pass
AI
AI more likely to build defenses at vp location
tweak to formation behavior at narrow pases
ai use less radioactives in early game
Fury will maneuver to use its cannons much more often
added bonus, it'll be able to lock on with its missiles more too
extra added bonus, the Hades should also be able hit targets more often
Capture order uses passive stance so that units ordered to capture will stay on target
Adjustments so units stay in firing range more effectively
Art & Graphics
improved particle lighting
new model for Medic T1
Adjusted camera angle
Particles now volumetric
Slight unit size increase
Nexus "tower" rotates to face enemies
UI
new cursor style to match the rest of the HUD
Flashing tech button when player can afford a new tech
First pass at "News of the Day" window in corner of main menu
Weapon ranges and order lines now show only for selected items, unless nothing is selected
New player ‘power’ list showing player’s strength and Victory Point ranking
Minimap/Strategic map improvements
combat flashes on map (and so do cutoff regions)
icons simplified for legibility (temp art)
Engineers now visible as icons
make camera view frustrum have an edge
tweak colors of maxi map a little
minor internal bug fixes
Control groups now displayed as icons
After Action Report stats screens
Naming Changes:
Seed now “Nexus”
Updated Naming convention: T3s are given the names of Greek titans, T2s have the names of Greek gods (typically).
Centaur renamed to Cronus.
Hercules renamed back to Hyperion
Energizer renamed to Medic
Building tooltips improved
Steam Avatar added to Profile button on Main Menu
Unit Panel now shows the aggregate health of all selected units
Sound
updated speech notifications
Rebalanced weapon sound volume, propagation, and priority to match the ‘tier’ of weapon
general volume adjustments
Updating Apollo Flak and Autocannon
New UI button click and mouseover
adding Creep1Missile, new ArtemisMissileBarrage, T3CentaurMissile, and Death Blossom first pass
Drag select and Attack move audio hookups
updating Centaur weapons
updating select sounds for units
updated T1 Light Plasma Laser
updated Thantos Rail and Senitinal Rail Cannon
updated radius of destruction sounds
Many more...
Lots of crash fixes
stability fix for loss of focus issue
crash rix related to choosing the random map option
crash fix for death of factory while searching for a place to build.
crash fix when destroying unit constructing something that is destroyed on the frame before and messages are in flight
Misc
When a player is kicked from a lobby that lobby no longer shows up in searches.
Lobby message channel bridge no longer requires NAT traversal. This makes joining a lobby much faster.
Bug fixes
fixed broken & mislabeled hotkeys
we THINK we fixed the instabuild / resources at -1 issue
Prevent Drones from showing up in empire tree
Disabled CreateMetaUnit button when only 1 unit selected
bug fix: deathblossom was firing with targets out of range
Making autosaves a bit faster
Upper bound on camera frame time
Disallowing starting games without any opponent in both skirmish and custom multiplayer
Prevent player from assigning enemy units to hot keys. (Theoretically not bad, but it would let the player warp to the unit's location when it's in the fog)
More protections against malformed units in empire tree
Correctly handle case where the connection to Steam is lost while in a lobby
BugFix for benchmark not reading current graphics settings if edited
Client has flickering resource counts in MP match.
multiple visual bug fixes on Research Matrix
multiple visual bug fixes on Metal Extractor
multiple visual bug fixes on Logistics Array
multiple visual bug fixes on Radioactives Extractor
multiple visual bug fixes on Power Relay
multiple visual bug fixes on Turinium Generator
old power resource removed from all building tooltips
“?” in chat no longer brings up console
Fix for canceling construction orders confusing engineers
fix air units slowing over impassable terrain
Do not allow the leave lobby prompt to stay up while the game is starting. This is not an ok time to back out of the lobby.
fix for glowy particles not glowing
remove Scan ability from centaur
Aven - map fix generator in unreachable basin area
Love it, can't wait! Been looking forward to those global abilities!
Nice! hope to get the new build soon so i can test it.
Cool, but cannot see a mention of the bug that allows you to instantly produce units in a game.... Seems to occur very often now and really affects gameplay badly, with regards to play testing the game....
I posted in the Bug's section a few weeks ago about the issue....
That particular bug is why this hasn't been released yet. It's a showstopper for 0.55.
It's got to be said that as bugs go, it's one of the best ever. I had a 4000 unit army the other day. It was acololyptically entertaining!
Any update on when we might see 0.55?
If you are still working on the auto-build "feature" =D...do you have any tasks you'd like us to do in testing to assist in that specific regard?
Yeah, happy to help in any way I can!
Bet that looked epic!!!
It looked like the benchmark and played like a dream! If you can get the bug, exploit it to the max! I still can't believe the strength of the engine. The game barely showed any sort of stress.
Often the most challenging part of fixing a bug like this is isolating exactly when/why it happens. The hard part is that for bugs that happen 5-10min or more into a game there is a LOT going on (especially in Ashes). For starters, if you hit this bug take a screenshot so we can get an idea of what state your game was in (were you capped on logistics? just run out of metal? etc.). Then, if you can try things to narrow it down to specific actions that can get a 100% reproducible case, we've really struck gold.
Right now, while we still haven't hit the root cause we've put in some safety checks that should prevent it from happening. We're in the process of testing.
I did try pretty hard to break it lastnight over 10 games. Now I'm jumping out 20 minutes in if I haven't been able to get it to happen.
For comparison with others testing this bug out. I have been starting up the 6 player map, with 3 AI on team 1 with me, and 2 AI on team 2. I've tried Easy and Insane AI's but haven't had any luck on getting the bug to pop-up when I'm specifically trying for it.
My last trial I put out 10 factories with 10 engineers on each one and it never stalled after 20 minutes of constant units crawling out. A mix of each type and even combinations.
Looking back, the one thing I can positively think of right now that I need to pay attention to, is that I'm more alert about the need for metal and logistics, so I wasn't reaching beyond my capabilities at any point. Maybe tonight I'll max out both logistics and metal, and then add a few factories and then get logistics under control to see if that is helping the bug take root?
Are we still talking about the instant build bug? If it is, and the devs haven't been able to reproduce it with any frequency. Then maybe I can help as well.
I have managed to trigger this bug in under 1 minute in game time and reliably as well.
steps I have taken to reproduce this:
I used map Deneb default settings in custom game vs ai.
1. build more engineers
2. set engineers to build logistics arrays to drain metal. this causes something of a large negative value.
3. when reserves are all out, hit ESC key. having buildings or engineers selected does not seem to have any difference.
this causes the bug to trigger and get instant build. If you devs want me to do a save game of this and upload it I can if it will help in getting it squashed.
Krasmoth,
Those are good initial steps. Can you say how many engineers you build? can you post a screenshot of the game just before you hit ESC? If you follow these steps, how often does the bug occur? 100% of the time? 2/3? etc.
Thanks!
I recorded a video of the bug, posted in the bugs forum, will post here later...
hi,
about 3 engineers is enough but sometimes build 2+ extra, have 2 screenshots, right before I hit escape and after. I am not sure how to exactly upload pictures to the forum so if you still want them, would a link to dropbox be ok? if so will edit this post with a link to dropbox. Correction on step 3 seems like there is a difference with having building or engineer selected if they are building something. When following these steps.
as for how often this occur every single time so around 98.99% due to finding out having to have something building selected before hitting ESC. otherwise 100% since hasn't failed me yet.
Yep, that sounds about right!
Yep, I've repeated this too now:
1. Start by build 3 additional Engineers.
2. Set the 3 engineers to create Logistics Centers.
3. As the Metal resource drops below 0, hit the ESC key (this calls up the Pause menu).
4. Resume the game and order the Engineers to stop building the Logistics Centers. The Logistic Centres should just instantly complete.
5. Order an Engineer to build a Factory. it should also appear instantly.
6. SPAM!
Well done Krasmoth!
By the way, I am a Founder, but my status hasn't been recognised because of using Paypal or something? Uhhh... :-/
Yep, works like a charm! Well done. Hopefully that means they can now debug it fast and push 0.55
Jumping in multiple games now to test this out.
Kudo's!
Moved this to the other forum post...
Great info! Based on this we were able to repro it internally on the build you have, and verify it no longer repros after our internal fixes.
Thanks!!!
That is awesome to hear, glad that we where able to help out. Hopefully we will see 0.55 really soon
This is great! In the future just let us know what bugs you want us to try and group up on and we'll come together to knock them out!
Fantastic! Can't wait for the latest build
Awesome! now give us the latest build asap please...i need to get my concept ideas up to show it to you guys but i need 0.55
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