Hello i bought Ashes Escalation this week because of the sale. In general i quite like the game once you get into it; however i have some issues with it:
1) Graphics:
Disclaimer: GPU: GTX 1060 6GB, 8GB ram, cpui5-4590, most graphics settings on ultra except AA which is turned off; avg 40 FPS.
The amount of units this game can handle without fps issues is quite impressive my main complaints are towards the artistic direction, not the technical aspects of the engine.
1.1) There are too many effects besides weapons fire, e.g. the substrate healing cruiser (caregiver), has a big glowing light underneath which is really distracting especially if you play on ice maps. The regenerator building has a big purple/red pulse, again really distracting.
==> effects should correlate in visibility to their gameplay impact, i.e. big weapons fire, devastating orbital abilities should be comparability a lot more visible than some small support cruisers engine. In general i would scale a lot of the passive lights down a lot, especially the glows underneath cruisers.
1.2) Many weapon effects lack impact, instead a lot of weapons fire is light projectile spam. this is related to the fact that most weapons are energy based. i would like to see more projectile weapons where you can see the impact, i.e. dust clouds on the muzzle and on impact. I also never got the impression that weapon lethality scales well with visibility (except for the juggernauts). In general weapon effects are very visible between the weapon and the target but i never saw effects on the gun/target itself, e.g. a weapon charging up (starts to glow), discharges it's projectile (flash) and shows some impact on the target (flash, smoke clouds, whatever is fitting for that weapon).
1.3) related to to 1.2) the sound effects are somewhat lacking when it comes to weapons fire, there is no charge up, no impact, it is mostly pew pew (like is star wars)
1.4) Map cliffs could use more detail both in geometry and texture quality. currently the cliffs look like terrain generated from height maps where the texture is usually stretched out, i.e. the ratio of the area of the terrain geometry to texture size is greater on cliffs than on flat terrain.
Related to map graphics the trees don't look very good: they stick out too much on the terrain and are not detailed enough for their visibility, personally i was always more of a fan of "texture" trees such as in Age of Wonders 3 or Civ5 than trees with bad geometry such as in Ashes or Total War (campaign map trees). The former just fit in the terrain a lot more smoothly imho.
2 Gameplay:
2.1) My main issue is that you have no real base, due to the orbital ability that inserts point capturing units i usually build an orbital blocker, 2 anti air towers and a support building (recharger or drone repair) next to every resource node. so i spread a lot of buildings across the map (add quanta generators and refineries to the mix) just so i don't have to deal with harassment.
On the other side my main base is just a bunch of production buildings.
In comparison to supreme commander there are buildings that synergize with proximity, e.g. generators next to production buildings. Imho base building could use a lot more depth, e.g. instead of quanta upgrades for the phc that increase the resource stockpile you could add silos that would also support nearby production buildings.
Then there are the tech buildings. Do they actually do something besides unlocking abilities/units? i usually build one of each kind and that is it. Again this could be an opportunity for some base building mechanics, e.g. each armoury could slowly work towards hitpoint upgrades and the more you have the faster it goes (each would consume a certain amount of quanta/sec and you can turn them off if you need more quanta). such a mechanic could replace the current upgrade mechanic which lacks depth (a simple click for a global upgrade). Again you could introduce some minor synergies, e.g. quanta generators in the vicinity could provide a slight boost to foster base building.
2.2) Resource Nodes: In general i like the sector mechanic, however you don't really see where a sector ends and the other starts which is important for refineries. Personally i would like to see less but bigger sectors with more resources, so each has an bigger impact. Coming back to base building i woud like to see some buildings that connect sectors instead of the passive connectors. this would foster consolidation of each resource node within your grid instead of racing to every node.
2.3) Economy: while the resource nodes are inspired by company of heroes one game mechanic is not: upkeep. In CoH each unit would have some upkeep, to combat snowballing, e.g. a player with a big army could have less income than a player with a few units and less territory. In ashes i often get the impression that the winning player has all cards on his/her side, more units and more income. The last half of the game feels too often like steamrolling the enemy where the outcome is certain. In CoH there was always the chance of comebacks.
What i do like is the asymmetry in resource generation of the factions, although refinery spam feels a bit more mindless the options of the substrate. In Supreme Commander you would get an income bonus if you build silos besides resource extractors, which naturally limited the boost you could get from any resource node.
2.4) Depth: In general i feel the game is a bit too flat when it come to units. it is not that there are not enough unit types but that you can unlock them very easily, there is no long term progression or research tree or something equivalent that spaces unit progression out a bit.
Again, i really like the game, so for a list of gripes this post is quite short
Addendum:
The harvesters of the Substrate faction are real fps killers. I have 40-50 fps in high zoom (not the abstract map) and a medium army. however zooming onto an amplifier with 20+ harvesters drops my fps to 18-20.
Thanks for the detailed feedback! You're quite articulate and I agree with a lot of the points.
some more gameplay observations:
1) the ai (on normal) seems to always send out small to medium armies, the frequency just increases in the later stages of the game when the economy gets better. it never seems to amass a considerate force, e.g. i never saw an army with 7+ dreadnoughts. this makes braking the enemy army rather easy as it does not use force concentration.
2) the ai does not really use fliers to it's advantage, e.g. i always have some reserve bombers to snipe enemy dreadnoughts. the ai always suicides it's fliers into my AA turrets. enemy fliers are more of an annoyance rather than a serious threat they could be (masses strategic bombers)
3) turrets are too powerful offensive wise, but too weak defensive wise. e.g. obliterator turrets eat enemy dreadnoughts in seconds, but die really fast. i would prefer if turrets where much more defensive, but not as strong dps wise.
4) related to 3) the ai (again on normal) does not really build strong-points. it has a lot of turrets all over the map to defend resource nodes, but does not really fortify choke points (like a player would)
5) is there a point to frigates in the mid game other then a minerals sink? the anti-frigate turrets and cruisers seem to eat endless frigates without issues. another problem with massing frigates is the force selection limit (255 units max afaik).
6) similarly in the endgame there seems little point to cruisers, besides some AA and anti-orbital. whenever i attack they die like flies and i am left with my dreadnoughts, which means in a longer push i end up with 15+ dreadnoughts and no cruisers. maybe there should be an upgrade that gives frigates evasion against big weapons and some cruisers should be a bit more tanky and only cost minerals (to have a mineral sink)
is it really intended that you can basically build endless harvesters?
my go to strategy is to build an aviary next to every resource node (not necessary metal) and queue up unlimited harvesters:
pic 1
i basically build tall, less territory to defend, more income, use of heavily fortified positions. i am way ahead in resources in comparison to a challenging ai.
pic 2
(2vs2vs2)
I believe, per some of the Discord discussions, that 255 harvesters is the limit before you get no further returns from it.
The main problem with harvesters is that they are expensive and time consuming to produce. Early game they tend to be more expensive than they are worth as they not only tank your resources, they tie up your aviary or nexus from producing offensive units or engineers respectively. And late game, you usually have enough resources that they don't really matter. They have a sweet spot somewhere mid game to balance out your radioactive income.
Because, ideally, you want to have zero spare resources and zero income. You want your income to match your expenditures in order to maximize production. The AI is predictable and pretty dumb even at the hardest levels (for instance, the AI doesn't know how to boost production with workers and has no air strategy at all). Against human opponents, those people who are economy masters will obliterate you.
For what it's worth, I also find Orbitals really annoying, but there's an option to turn them down (Disables activated abilities) or off completely (Disables everything, including upgrades). Now, this will negatively impact Substrate players slightly (As they become unable to reinforce away from the base), but it solves the "orbital spam" instantly.
Enjoy the game!
yeah i put the orbital use to limited. i also think that in the long run investing into quanta upgrades has better returns than nuking half a screen worth of cruisers every now and then. i am usually far ahead in quanta investments even if the ai has similar levels of quanta harvested. i don't mind the quanta nukes that much but i rally hate the quanta insertions of the small squads (which still exists with limited orbitals).
@Xaosinc
i don't know if i agree with the harvesters. i played a 2vs2 game (with ai) and i had triple the income than my substrate partner, while having similar map control. harvesters are not that important for metal as there is no good sink for it, but radioactives are usually worth it if you play a longer game. i can see your point in player vs player as those games are usually much closer. also any good player would target those harvesters with AA fliers. currently the substrate ai is much weaker because it does not build harvesters in contrast to the phc ai which does build refineries.
my main issue with harvesters is the fps issue. if you have 20+ (or 70 as in my screenshot above) my fps more than half if i zoom in. it also makes it very hard to see anything under the harvester cloud.
in theory i actually like that you can boost the resource output in regions, so you can play tall and player with lot's of map controls does not necessarily have more income, i just find the solution a bit awkward. maybe the harvesters could fly into the generator/amplifier and merge with it, so you don't have this fps eating harvester cloud over every radioactive node.
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