Ashes of the Singularity

no they've legally obliged themselves to 3 extensions and 16 DLCs minimum with their lifetime pack sale. http://www.ashesofthesingularity.com/store

so that much we can be sure of, if they don't oblige we basically have all the elements on our side in a court case.

sales will however determine if they release more than those, yes.

I've had access to the demo (pre-pre-alpha) since it was live because of my lifetime pack purchase.

I'm already in regret, it's only after I bought it that the devs started announcing stuff such as

4Players max, singleplayer focus, no nukes and t3 arty, naval only in second extension, third race in first. hover can't go above water, no strat icons, no zoom out, always starts out entirely fog of war no, "explored" mode.

they only started giving way on some of these points recently : in a future DLC, units that CAN hover over water but can't climb plateaus, yes to zooming out, yes to experimentals, and it seems "explored" terrain at start may yet be an option ..stuff like that.

so far we only have one version since the start of the demo. and the next patch a month down the line will only bring dx12 support. making it the first dx12 game and the one and only dx12 benchmarking tool for the time it remains the first.

my gameplay thus far has left me disappointed. it's not the things that are missing that I can't imagine (seriously by now who even dares to challenge my imagination??!)
it's the things that are set in stone, either by design choice or too deeply set in the engine.

the ALL-Hover ALL-the-time dogma, the fact that the simulated projectile is in there only by name and never does a shot miss, the fact that when you zoom in things go out of focus (evidently almost everything in this engine is drawn with a shader probably the only 3D wireframe model in the entire game is the map, and even that is perhaps also drawn with a shader. Not a bad thing, mind you, yay progress and all that, but if you're gonna do that at least provide substantial amounts of detail so that you can have fun with cinematic shots)

yeah the units lack an incredible amount of detail and the devs have stated they are the finals. they also lack a whole lot of umph, scale really could be a ton more grand.

what else? yeah once again the terrain doesn't have as much verticallity as FA and with units on water as a whole out of the picture the only time terrain will ever be strategically used in this game is either when you have the range to shoot over and across a mountain range or lake or when you're on a plateau and have the height advantage, that's it.

Another design choice I hate is the random hovering about which is intended to deter from microing because they'll do that regardless and take very long to react. the whole 'long to react' thing i'm not against but the random hovering does exactly the opposite of it's intended purpose : if you clickspam, you get better results.

also it means units will clumsily hover into troops when they were supposed to be standing still and get themselves killed by starting a fight without your explicit order. (creeps react as one when you wander within any one of the squadron's range and will pursue to the death).

Lastly is the addition of not one, not two, not three, but four resources compared to the genre it's aiming for (by it's own admition) (many other such as homeworld were also cited)

first off let's start with the dumbest of all : victory points.

so yeah apparently capturing territory is not important in RTSes ..... what? yeah no, don't ask....

anyways that's how they justify it, apparently mass and energy outside of your base is a waste of freaking time, lemme just rush t3 with my four starter mexes and i'll kill you with my exp, oh you already have exps and I'm still t1...

but yeah capturing terrain needed to be made important /s : D

so they added victory points that (drumroll) win you the game through a simple cap -> generate points, system.

it basically guarantees that you can cower all game long and win because let's listen to the noobs, they know what's right, that they don't stick around for more than 10h of playing the game is irrelevant. /s

next insightful resource addition : Wait, time out, wait ! you know what sells? Starcraft! yeah! let's take it's most chore-like feature then! Unit Cap yaaaaaaaaay!

seriously can anyone give me a convincing argument that unit cap structures have any depth or strategic value and isn't just a massive chore?

the fun thing about this resource is that it leads me to the next because it wouldn't be funny if you could get yourself some more unit cap for anything other than 85+% of your economy in a game that boasts "massive armies, the size never before seen in any other game", now would it? (ok, that can be rebalanced, but you'll see what the underlying problem I'm getting at is...)

unit cap buildings require energy (to be able to build it at all) energy isn't really something you spam in this game, I see power plants as the third resource they added because it's a late-game thing you don't immediately unlock and you build small amounts of it.

So here's the thing : unit cap building consume energy yes, but power plants consume reactives (one of the two base resources, the ones I see as the equivalent to metal and energy. Difference being, you have to build reactives on spots, as well as metal).

one consumes another which in turn consumes another see how convoluted this mess is JUST to be able to build more units???

lastly, the fourth addition, this time something we're familiar with (but not necessarily for good reasons) research points. we don't yet know if it will be continuous generation per building or simply a static research building count.

either way I found supcom 2's addition of a tech tree with research points and all to be a major downgrade from it's older sibling. The player count on both games today is testimony to the crowd's opinion on that, I think. It's basically the only thing they changed apart from no more flow-based economy.

SPEAKING OF WHICH : no I'm kidding, it's not that bad and this one, I'm sure, they'll have removed as it's too blatant a glaring issue for anyone not to possibly realize the backtrack on the design choice there is an absolute necessity.


So as to deter running your eco into the ground too hard when you're a noob : AOTS has chosen to keep you from building when you are at 0 economy of any of the required resources.


let that sink in for a bit, hopefully, like I, most of you imediately have a eureka moment as I did, as you realize the backwards design there.

yes this ONLY applies to 0. not falling. 0

and that's the problem, the entire thing is one big loophole, you can queue whatever the hell you want, a billion t3, a huge city like base, all the resources on the map. whatever you want. So long as you're within the time lapse (and it's quite generous) during which your economy is falling to zero.

hence the noob learns nothing and the pro fulminates.

fantastic.

In the end : mixed feelings. Its still gonna be great but not something i'd write home about and that's a darn shame cuz the potential is more than clearly there.

I encourage you all to participate on all of these debates here : http://forums.ashesofthesingularity.com/forum/1107

Edit: @tatsujb (cut.)

Unfortunately I am beginning to become quite concerned with the future of this game as well. The amount of units per faction is really getting me, although not sure if I should say what the number is.

Well, you can't render without a shader, in any of the today's graphic APIs. Even if you don't specify a shader, the pipeline will use implicitly a default shader for you. What you - probably - mean is missing texture resolution, this is when you zoom in close the textures get blurry.

And by the way: Calm down. It's just a game.

You can't expect people who have a passion to be calm.

Besides, that kinda demeans everyone who plays games does it not?

That would be like saying, it's only music, it's only art, it's only cooking.

Might not mean much to you, but it does to many of us.

I'd just say I think it highlights just how difficult it is for developers these days and highlights just how good uber have done with PA ....

20 units per faction from what i heard ... as a visitor who just merely testet the game localy i don't think i am bound to the NDA in any way ... there wasn't any vocal agreement to that ...

Well I'm assuming that is mobile? Doesn't sound so bad, I mean TA and sup com both had very large unit sets compared to most games... 20 units that have great interplay between them would be fine (and is likely an early target for the dlc expansions).

Essentially I think they're doing what a lot of smaller studios are (e.g. elite dangerous), building a basic core game and offering up additional content in small blocks to spread out the income, and maintain funding.

Whilst it sounds a bit 'ea' like, I'm personally sympathetic as these companies who are self publishing have to keep an income to survive and pay their team. It was awful when uber were forced to down size so much with the failure of HR, however they were not able to follow this route due to their kickstarter obligations...

so from what i saw and remember
you had 15 structures
3 aircraft
3 titans ( large battleshiphovercraft)
and i think 8 or 9 hovercraftunits
+ 1 engineer
at minimum

.

I wasn't trying to be an *** or anything just wanted to point it out to spare you potential trouble in the future. Had no intention of having you purposefully incriminated nor would I be interested in doing so.

Edit:
Would have been nice if you were a bit more polite about the issue but done anyway.

No, I'm not sure if this is passion for games.

Look, I'm really passionate about food and cooking. But when I'm going out - no matter if this is a restaurant or to friends - to have some good food, there is one thing I will never do and that is walking into the chef's kitchen and tell him how to do it right. First of, because I will trust him that he has a grand vision and a plan to make it right, secondly because there is always something new to learn - new tastes, new methods and new tricks - cooking is an endless adventure of learning to do things better. If you always insist of doing it "your way" the chances are great that you will miss the biggest part of it. On the other hand if the chef comes along and asks me about a thing, I'm happy to talk for hours.
After having the result I will give a honest feedback though, and I - trust me - can debate endlessly about who makes the best Pana Cotta in town. (I'm not with the classical one - I like the more progressive style, recently someone added just a trace coconut milk it does wonders.)

But why I'm telling you this? Because like there are many ways to make a good Som Tan, there are many ways to make a good RTS - the ingredients will vary and different varieties will cater different people, after all taste and fun is a subjective thing, but b*tching about how things are done just because it isn't done the way you like it (aka the only true way) is just disrespectful against the people doing it.
I'm not saying that you should not criticize game mechanics during development, at least there are more Som Tans out there than there are RTSes on the market - but I would like to see a bit more respect when doing so.

I think as a general rule, "be respectful when speaking to anyone about anything, unless you have an exceedingly good reason not to be" works well.

I totally agree with you bud, I really wish there was some way we could get Hr back on track, maybe we could launch a kickstarter to fund a new Hr kickstarter lol....

Any wayz back on topic, have played ashes and although I do like it, it didn't hook in me like Pa Sup com or Ta did.

Don't think anything will touch PA for some time.

I read this and I see myself falling clearly..... very clearly in the second category.

bitching to the chef before the food has even arrived would be actively campaigning to close a game before it's even out by signing petitions and moving a whole internet crowd. allthewhile making damning reviews on steam and inciting my followers to do the same.

I have done nothing of the sort. I've even recommended people pre-order it after having tried it's demo. I genuinely want the game to succeed. I've made a pretty good post about this on their own forum.

I feel I've left nothing but intelligent and helpful opinion as well as constructive criticism just as I do on their forum.

As you left your original post after mine I'm left to assume I provoked this reaction. In case that is the case I feel that is more than unfair.

I could indeed shut up and do nothing but I find I've had a positive affect on video games through forums in the past. Sometimes devs do indeed look to their forumites for better judgment. PA benefited from me for it's unified camera and several mod integrations (I'd love to say strat icon do-over as well but I have no proof that they wouldn't have done it anyways).

It's easy to assume I only want FA cloning, but that is far from the truth. I only find myself often defending a feature that also happened to be in FA because it just so happens the alternative being chosen in it's stead (and it really is a question of there being a certain possibility of that better option otherwise I'd drop it) is in every way a downgrade for the end result (let's just put it that way. A game sells better if it's more fun thus more appreciated. So by extention, I'm also fighting for the devs and their success.)

God knows I never have wanted to hinder progress or novelty. Heck SimPro RTSes aren't exactly standart. I wouldn't have been as hyped as I was for PA if I didn't want the next evolution to be taken : to add planetary as well as interplanetary to the recipe. I've mentioned it before but this was something I'd only dreamed of even before seeing the KS trailer.

And with my lengthy experience with RTSes in general as well as a creative imagination and a lot of energy, I feel I have something to bring to the table and If I'm bringing it for free, I can't think of a single reason why it should be silenced.

alright. all's good. you probably weren't realizing the possible consequence of your post for me. I felt you were coming at me intentionally which is why I felt the need to be in a defensive stance.

AoS going on steam today. Anyone have new information?

seems boring

Looks better then I expected. Personally.

Although the guy playing doesn't macro very well.

So I've noticed a couple likes landing on my earlier post.

I want you all to scratch most of what I wrote and take this new post into account since a lot has changed since then:

1. Explored terrain is now one of the match setup options as well as "no creeps" and "prebuilt extractors in all regions"
2. Victory Points (VP) amount can now be configured (no infinite, sorry)
3. down to five resources :
   1. Metal
   2. Reactives
   3. Unitcap
   4. Reasearch points
   5. VP
4. no more Unit Cap building but you must use research points to research 100 extra unit cap (you do this from anywhere it's in the actions menu) (so yeah other resources are no longer tied into this only one resource).
5. you must build research buildings to get research points
6. you can set any rally point you want if playing on explored
7. you can plan/build anything without cap (you are no longer blocked from placing blueprints or constructing units when resources are at 0).
8. VP will be able to be turned off but not on ladder matches
9. they added spacebar to see the full map and they want the full map to be "a little bit interactive" so some headway on strategic zoom
10. perhaps units may be getting additional detail
11. terrain maybe as well

more updates from me to come.

I'm undecided about this game as of now.

all they'd have to do to have me in the bag is add strat zoom but they haven't changed opinion on that so far.

I think I might try this one out. It looks pretty fun I guess.