Hi,
after playing Ashes now for a while with a few friends of mine I decided to post the following list I've created while playing (ordered after my own priority). It should be noted that I mostly played Command & Conquer 3 and Battle for Middleearth 2 + Edain Mod before I came to Ashes, so some ideas might be inspired from their game design decisions.
I've also got some ideas for the campaign or a tutorial and for modding features. Those will be included in seperate list below this list.
(EDIT) behind a point means I added it at some later point to the list.
To begin with: Great Game.
Campaign and Tutorial/Documentation:
Modding:
Multiplayer:
Bugs:
For the multiplayer stuff, I have to admit that it's been quite a while since my last ranked play at a time where none of my friends owned this Game.
Also quite nice modding guide there.
Keep up the good work and produce more content for this nice Game. Would be nice to see some or all of these ideas in-game.
AshBuild
Agreed with everything in the mod list, and various points across the main list, but the absolute biggest thing you mentioned to me was your very first point:
Give Teammates control over a region. I understand that allied "links" allow your own chain to remain uninterrupted. But I've had AI allies rush and scoop up Radioactive nodes I've been fighting tooth and nail for, which is frustrating as all hell.
Wow! nice job AshBuild, there was some serious thought put into your post.
If all these ideas were put into the game we would have the best RTS game ever.
Really good list.
I've seen the AI build Juggernauts even on normal difficulty, but they do need time and resources. I assume on the higher difficulty levels the chances of seeing them goes up.
Mods can be used in multiplayer and most basic stats for the units are changeable. It's also possible to make units with custom models.
That's a brilliant list of improvements you have suggested.
I have some comments on particular features addressing your concerns. They may not be 100% what you are after but might make life a little more friendlier while we wait on further improvements.
Hide enemy players terrain from the Mini-Map/Update Mini-Map only when the region is currently visible through a scout or something like this.
I would really like to have this kind of feature or have it as an option available for custom matches as it would make it more unpredictable where battles will appear and how strong the enemy might be, what unit types he builds and all of that stuff.
In the multiplayer game you can set the Terrain to Revealed or Hidden. Revealed shows all the terrain (still requires LOS to see) where Hidden is the traditional C&C black fog which requires scouting to reveal all unseen terrain.
Allow players to see all selected units (for example a UI which shows: 41 medics, 2 dreadnoughts etc. are selected)
You can see this in the unit panel, it's pretty small though. Can't remember if it show's just the army or all selected units :/
Ability for dropped players to re-join a game.
Might be nice if for one player Ashes crashes or the internet connection is interrupted. Happened to me a few times while playing ranked matches.
There is a save game feature for multiplayer. Get the host to quit the match (quickly) then go back into custom match then select Load Save Game instead of creating a new lobby. Set the lobby to public and the original players can join. It's not 100% reliable but its there, and best to use the oldest save file as you new one could save after a player dropped out.
Allow to only select air or ground units.Just try to only select 20 small air units which fly over a huge army of yours. Good luck trying.
F3 selects all Air units on screen.
Does really the entire army has to turn around when retreating??Currently when a large army of mine with a dreadnought has to retreat as the dreadnought took a lot of damage I can rather let the entire army die then order a retreat as ordering a retreat would most likely cost me anyway the dreadnought and half the army.
Disbanding your army will allow for a faster retreat. Though retreating usually results is losses any way as rear(/side?) armour is weaker.
AI juggernautsDoes the AI even know what juggernauts are? I never saw them build even one of them (tested on Beginner, Easy and Challaging). This also occured to me when having build like 3 of them. The match is always over before the AI starts building them if it ever does.
Playing on Painful, the AI certainly will build Juggernauts.
Prevent armies from beeing formed on mouse click.
It really happens a lot when you don't want it to happen, even with engineers!
There is a game option for 'Quick Army Forming', try toggling that.
Don't play the same opening of the campaign 10 times in a row when a player failed 10 times in a row.
Holding down the space bar will skip through the opening dialogue in a mission.
Also, forgot to put in my original post. I think most of what you ask for in modding is already available. You should join the Ashes discord channel and enquire more in the #modding-discussion channel.
Not sure if it works in Skirmish mode, but in the campaign, you can click on an allied generator and click the 'claim region' button that shows up on the bottom left of the toolbar.
Thx for the answer. The unit panel shows only the army and not the selected unit.
In Multiplayer this does only work when the player disconnected from the Game.
Hello,
nice list.
I also wrote a review of the campaign missions with version 2.65:
https://forums.ashesofthesingularity.com/486698/265-campaigns-review-and-some-additional-comments
I mostly agree with your comments.
Actually there are already solutions for few points beside what has already been answered:
9: when the army is formed ('v' key), the units and their numbers are shown in the UI in the lower left, to the right of the mini map + if you build one unit from the army, it will show with a +x.
15: as for Starcraft 2 you can shift + click to spam a building.
21: yesterday I played a mission-map (ie: not skirmish), Mountaintop I think, in normal, and the AI built Juggernauts. But not on another map (not sure which one, not in skirmish as well). Maybe it depends on the map setting as well.
28: you can shift + right click on a building blueprint to remove it from the list and keeping all the rest. Found it by chance.
29: engineers are shown as a brighter dot on the mini map. Yes all those bright dots on the mini map are your engineers
Imarion
Just tried the Oblivion map from DLC.
I was getting crushed on the east.
Valen has a huge army just standing in his base. Does not he know he can move it to help defend our 2 allies ?
It is just like Mac did in one of the campaign missions.
This AI is decidedly too bad. Way too bad.
To 9: Well, this only occurs when an army is formed but I want also to be able to see how many units I've selected if I selected units which are not part any army or if I've selected multiply armies or multiply armies + units which are in no army. With 9 I don't want to see how many units of which type are in my army, but how many I've selected.
To 15: Where did I wrote there about Starcraft? Here is a video showcasing what I meant: https://youtu.be/34eeiZTsUyo?t=10m15s
To 29: You won't be able to see them thought. Think about a situation where an army and a large amount of buildings is on the same position for example when building up defenses at the location and the army is there to defend the engineer.
Thx for answer thought and nice post with the campaign improvements. I'll add your post to the list in order for it to be easier seen.
He's talking about a 'fill' command where you can drag build a whole group of the same buildings. Mostly needed for quanta generators. This has been talked about by the devs and I think is already in the works.
After playing a few more matches against the AI with my friends I'm starting to wonder whether it really is a nice idea with the orbital abilities and air units. It's just annoying against the AI. You capture one region and have to build immedialty an orbital jammer and 6 air defenses for the slightest chance of not losing it immedialty in the moment where your army is moving away to capture a new region.
I'm also wondering why the Game feels like 30fps when someone starts watching over steam (30fps stream).
Our current matches are just played out that way: Build as many air defenses at your base as possible and upgrade them + 1 orbital jammer. Attack and capture a region. Build 1 orbital jammer in that region + 6 air defenses. Move on after about 5-10 minutes (feels like that long) of waiting to the next region. Repeat step 1-5 until you won or lost the Game against the AI.
Our current matches are just played out that way:
Maybe there is a way to go around those problems, like changing AI behaviour. I should also note that as stronger the AI is as bigger gets the problem.
I'm also wondering why there isn't any anti-juggernaut building. This actually means that you could quite the game when multiply juggernauts are attacking you and you don't have any juggernauts left as there isn't really anything you can do against them or there is something I don't know of.
I kind of agree about laying down orbital nullifiers and AA on every relay, it feels a bit like a chore. I think the Substrate AI is more likely to use air and orbitals on your relays. It also appears to be the stronger of the two AIs.
If there's Juggernauts incoming and you don't have any, I'd suggest a Prometheus/Savager, air units or a group of the heavier turrets.
If you are Substrate, build 10 aviaries and spam punishers and dominators, 1:1 ratio. Dreads and even Jugs can't stand up against them. I generally play against Challenging AIs and I don't even build dreads and Jugs anymore. They are too expensive, especially in quanta that I can better spend elsewhere.
t1 fighters do a better job at air defense. Also you can manipulate the dumb AI into not attacking your rear bases by only building 1 ground and 1 AA. The AI will usually not bother with them. It likes to go full frontal assault. Mobile nullifiers are your friend when expanding against an orbital-heavy AI. I have an assembly pumping out just those to add to my armies. I used to play with orbitals limited, but I recently starting using them to get better at orbital situational awareness.
One of the main keys to any RTS game is scouting. Send scout planes out to hover around the middle of the map early game so you can see what the enemy is up to. This will allow you to know where to bulk up defenses and position armies and nullifiers.
I guess playing against an AI which is using Juggernauts when you don't use them is still difficult. I played today against a Challenging AI and had about 6 Dreads (artillery and anti-dread) + a few thousand support units out of artillery, anti-dread, medics and a few others... In the end it turned out that I was forced to build myself Juggernauts, too.
Well... 2 Leonidas vs 2 Nest of the Queen (a third and more dreads were on the way).... didn't went that well... my air units, my main army and my 2 jugs were shot down and a few secs later my base, too. So it might be that you can counter Jugs with Substracte, but I doubt that it is possible with PHC without having Jugs yourself and even then it's not that easy, especially when they got a lot of support themselves. Well... I've got 1.5 Jugs down before the Game was lost. (Unit health was upgraded to lvl 4 like attack damage)
These are cool suggestions but are significant development undertakings. (Why they weren't in the game from the beginning Thanks for suggesting them though.Though, perhaps you're not aware you can select all air units on screen by pressing F3.
Thx for the answer.
Yeah, I wasn't aware of the F3 button. Thought there is still a problem when I want to select all ground units while my air units are flying above my ground units. Currently (as far as I know) it would require me to move all air units to another location and then select the ground units.
Maybe you can add these ideas piece by piece and start with the smaller and easier to implement things.
I also noticed yesterday that some hundreds air units or thousands air units (let's just say a lot...) can cause a significant lag of the Game and the effects of the heavy aircraft causes lag too. Maybe someone from the team can look into this.
Running on an Intel Core i7-6800k with an RX Vega 64 and 32GB RAM (latest drivers installed).
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