Ashes of the Singularity

Here's a bit of feedback I dropped for the devs before I played some MP with Roflness.
http://forums.ashesofthesingularity.com/472600

is there any kind of base building? ANY KIND AT ALL????

Haven't checked it out myself, but from what I've seen. Pretty nil. Not my kind of RTS but I still might give it a try some time. =)

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Same thoughts.

Yeah there is some base building. Defenses are super important against dreadnoughts in the early to mid game.

Tho there isn't anything else per se. Factories, sure, but its mostly about the units

some of me playing online pvp :

sorry my mic decided to spaz out. not much I can do about that for now but I'll double check it before I start a new recording.

The dramatic heigh variation reminds me very much of TA maps

Edit: The only thing that is a little disappointing is the scale / number of units doesn't look any different to Sup Com or TA:Spring. I mean, some of the units are very small I guess, but there's only really two sizes which doesn't get the scale over that well. Also the numbers involved and simulation speed don't look anything revolutionary. Then again I guess it is still in Alpha so very early days, definitely looks interesting, I'll probably give it a go...

Looks quite boring to me. Atleast for now.

Well it's pretty basic, but they have planned out a huge host of expansions and it is only in alpha (i mean PA alpha only had a handful of units).

So I really badly want to bring up info pertaining to expansions, but can't for a few reasons so will have to leave some stuff out that really really gets on my nerves.

Anyway my opinion on the game in general. For now I can't play it much due to poor performance (Can be played but unless framerate is smooth it really gets me "this is the case in any game for me"). For one I am not a fan of how there are only two unit types. Only hover and Air. Would have loved to see tanks, bots and all that other stuff. Also base building feels minimal to me. You don't get the large bases of supcom or the multiple bases of PA on larger maps.

It is Alpha so I won't critique the fx much yet, but as of this point in time they feel subpar to me and I sincerely hope they get their FX department working hard on that area.

I will still be watching the game closely as I am somewhat of an RTS fanatic and have hope that the game can be improved and go somewhere, but at this point in time various aspects of the game feel very limited and not satisfying to me.

And just a random comment. I do not understand how people are calling this the successor to supreme commander, it plays nothing like supreme commander. So keep that in mind if you are looking into the game. The only similar aspects are that it is a scifi RTS on a large scale.

Will likely post more thoughts about the game, but as of now it's getting late so I'll leave that for another time.

EDIT:
So @tashadan I would suggest simply waiting it out to see where the game goes, as of now it could go either way (bad or good).

It's much closer to Sins of a Solar Empire.

What'd you use to record? Was this done on windows or linux? The video has a lot of tiling, especially around movement even in the higher settings. Was this recording pulled from some streaming software because at the moment that's how it looks. I can relate though, tried to record with OBS and the quality turned out just as bleh. Fraps was nice but it requires a lot of rendering time to cut down on the size.

I just wanted to bring it to your attention in case you plan on doing some casts and etc of your own someday. =)

OBS

windows (since AOTS is windows only currently)

the latter causes the former. on linux I know how to correctly record. I got a nice setup with ffmpeg using the terminal alone.

I tried that in windows with cmd but you actually don't get the same tools at all in windows ffmpeg. window's ffmpeg sucks asss if I may.

so short on time for finding a good setup and having completely forgotten what I used back in my windows days, I downloaded OBS and started it up with default settings.

this recording session wasn't really planned. but I'm convinced this is the first 4p AOTS match outside of the stardock studio.

thanks for bringing it up. I'm aware of course. it was just the short amount of time that resulted in this.

I really am lazy about fixing it though since I know I can get it right once they release a linux build and I can record on linux again.

Oh, that's nice! I thought they will concentrate on DX12, which isn't really "portable" to linux.
Did they announce an rough estimate for when a the linux version is planned to be released?

the nitrous engine is intentionally built to be unbound to any platform they have support for both vulkan and dx12. Imo vulkan will eventually evolve into something superior to dx12.

so far they estimate they will have a linux build some months after release 1.0 so don't expect it until 2016

http://www.twitch.tv/stardock/v/21887483

I do not care about the amount of units. There are general design things i dislike. Does not mean the game is bad but just not my thing.
Stuff i dislike:
- looks like there is hardly any micro
- only hover units (no tanks, infantry, kbots whatsoever)
- units move super slow
- teching up on the other hand seems to be pretty fast? I might be wrong here...
- capturing nodes/territory; altough i was a huge fan of Z the capture node thing is this game does not allow hidden bases
- some of the maps i saw until now look quite boring and imbalanced (something that can be easily changed though)
- basebuilding is minimalistic

PS: does it have any type of terrain bonus for highground?

Here's some basic general design things that I've seen people screw up alot:

1. Lots of units all the time.
2. Macro, not micro to an extreme.
3. Better unit compositions lead to better buffs for your dread and it's units from the T2 units.
4. Slow units lead to slower gameplay and more thoughtful movements. If you cant move one army back and forth to defend a wide front, you need to plan ahead to an extreme.

no commentary this time but pristine quality video :

@mered4 and @masterofroflness, @cola_colin you guys play Ashes

it's now at a point where online play can be considered relatively fun. how about doing some online matches?