Ashes Founders Topics: June 2015

Random-ish maps

We plan to open up the Ashes map editor to Founders. We don't plan to make it available for regular Ashes players (Except maybe as DLC).  You guys will get it though starting next month.

We are going to be looking for founders to create and share maps so that we can try out endless types of maps with each other to see which ones are fun and which ones aren't.  As we've done with some of our other games, some of the more prolific content creators may be offered contracts to create premium content later (little known fact but I contracted out to the GalCiv community to make the GalCiv II campaigns as well as implementing the Sorcerer King quests).  

We hope to have so many possible maps in the library that people will be able to select a "random" map and essentially get one they've never seen.  Check out how tiny Ashes maps are on disk.

Glad to hear about the editor and having player made maps in some sort of large pool.  This will be awesome for replayability! I've been messing around with the editor and trying to get the hang of it the past few days and it seems pretty interesting

Faction names and marketing

So marketing doesn't like the name "The Substrate" for the factions. They're not in love with "Post-Humans" either.  In Sins of a Solar Empire and Starcraft people get very attached to their particular faction so we want to make sure they have names that players like (Terran, Protoss, Zerg, Advent, TEC, Vasari, etc.).  Feel free to make suggestions in this thread. If we use your idea, we'll credit you in the credits.

Also, we do want the Substrate's full formalized name to have Substrate in it.  

I would like to throw out a couple of names for the "Post-Humans" of the top of my head.  I just thought of the Severin Order (Severin meaning strict/serious as I would assume the humans of such a dire future would have a rather strict government.)   As far as the Substrate, maybe the  Substrate Evolution Complex "S.E.C" as I read on Substrate and it has to do with bonding to form a new product.  I will update if anything springs to mind.  For both names I think a little more backstory/lore about the two races would help in forming good names.

Basic Lore talk  

Ashes takes place in the year 2178.  The beginning of the game has various Post-Humans and Substrate AIs seeking uninhabitable planets to convert into Computronium.

Not much to say, however I think that maybe 2178 is a bit too soon?  I don't know but I just don't see us having anywhere near this kind of galactic reach within 150 years

Computronium

We hate the word.  We need a different name.  We'll give credit to whoever comes up with a name we like better. 

 Erbium.  There are a few reasons in choosing this name due to Nuclear Fusion which I think would make it an interesting resource to fight over if it makes Fusion energy possible in the future.

Mouse Controls

So we do want to make the middle mouse button be able to move the map around (instead of the right button) but we also do want people to be able to manipulate the camera angle with it as well which can be a bit awkward.

I vote that space be bound to camera angle ala supcom unless there is another big use for the space bar.  To be honest I don't feel that having the camera angle manipulation hotkey on the mouse is necessary in a game that focus's on battles that take place on the surface of a planet.

Update Schedule

We have an update ready to go with some balance improvements and perf improvements. Just waiting to get it up on Steam. No ETA yet. It may also have some changes to the unit sizes to deal with unit speed on the map.

We will have a major July update (think of the build you have as a Pre-Alpha with the July build being actual Alpha 1).  It will have  a much better UI and full blown AI in it.

Good to hear!

Campaign talk

So right now the campaign intent is to have a 10 part series of missions that walks the player through the concept of the Singularity and the overall background.

Book

We are planning to release a prequel book this Fall called "Dawn of the Singularity" that takes place in the near future.  If it is well received, we have 2 more in the series we want to make.  It's been written by David Simpson (author of the Post-Human series).

Sweet!

Battle Group behavior changes

Battle groups will be getting a change in the near future where you will no longer have to have T1s hooked to T2s.  They will beocme, from a user perspective, non-hierachal (you can still make them so by selecting units and right-clicking on a unit to become children of that unit).  But you will be able to have a bunch of T1s and turn them into a single combat unit that will work as a single unit ala Kohan.

I like this, however a suggestion for units I have is to not have building build "squads" of units at a time.  I really would prefer if every unit was built one at a time and then you decide how many you want to group together whether it be 3 (like it is currently for some t1 units), 50, 100, 1000, etc.

Zoom out debate

We constantly debate what level of zoom out to support.  As you know, we don't intend to replace units on screen with spams of icons.  This will continue to be a contentious issue and we have drawn no line in the sand beyond "no screen full of little icons".

Once again, I believe that full zoom out support with some icons is something we should have.  I'm not saying give every unit an individual icon but not having any icons makes it almost impossible to tell what is going on when you zoom all the way out.  I think that maybe every battle group should get an icon (or maybe even a couple of icons) that tell you at a glance how strong that force is, how much of the force is t1/t2/t3, how much is air/ground etc.  In addition when you zoom far enough out I think that an opaque overlay over the general ground your units cover (as well as your opponents granted you have LOS) would be good to see where the battle lines are drawn.  Finally I believe that all buildings should also have icons. (maybe make it so if you have more than 1 type of building in one location it just shows one icon when you zoom out with a number inside to represent how many of that building are in the general vicinity. This would let you quickly see how strong a base is without cluttering the UI.

Empire Tree

The empire tree will be getting a major overhaul between now and Alpha 1. It will play a lot closer to Sins of a Solar Empire.  We also have a lot of work for the mini map in mind but it remains to be seen if that will make Alpha 1 or not.

Once again good to hear

The leagues

The current *plan* is that once we have Alpha 1 we will probably issue 3 keys to each founder to give to friends.  Those keys won't entitle them to a "final" version of the game but will let them play the game multiplayer and participate here as your guest. Who you give them to will be at your discretion.  

This is awesome as I have a few friend who are on the fence about Ashes as they have been burned on EA before.  Being able to let them try the game will probably make them buy in!

The roadmap (CONFIDENTIAL)

This is NOT to be repeated anywhere.

2016: Ashes of the Singularity

2017: Ashes of the Singularity: Tides of War (adds naval combat)

2018: Ashes of the Singularity: Xenocide (you'll be fighting over inhabited planets too)

2019: Ashes of the Singularity: Nemesis (introduces the third faction)

In addition, we expect to release DLC every 60 days.  So those of you who bought the lifetime edition will be in for a real treat.  Each DLC will be around $4.99 to $9.99 each and the expansions will be between $30 to $40.  They come with your lifetime edition automatically.

Anyway, as you can imagine, we have a long-term plan for this game.  While the requirements for Ashes in 2015 are high, by next year or the year after, mainstream PC players should be able to participate easily. 

The hype is real

 Open Floor

Any other thoughts or opinions you want to share with the community please do so.  

Keep up the great work/communication

Sarge

Holy moly, how do I thumbs up this post! Very exciting! FYI as I am a nerd I will be buying those books.

Playing off the fact that the Substrate are the progeny of the Strong AI:

Substrate Descendency (or Ascendancy)

Substrate Progeny

As for Computronium, you'll probably want a computation-related term folks can relate to:

Matrixium

Algorithium

Optimizium

Entropium (as in Entropy)

Neumannium (as in Von Neumann, the name behind modern computer architecture)

The -ium suffix is usually applied to elemental metals, not necessarily structured and arranged molecules, but it's probably what most people will find familiar.

 

 

 

 

I am blown away by this level of communication- I hope you guys realize that you are, as far as I know, the only developer to ever implement this type of high-bandwidth communications with players. I strongly suspect it will ultimately work out very well because you can make smarter decisions based on input directly from players.

 

Computronium

I would replace "Computronium" with Minds, or Brains, rather than a cheesy name for a new compound/substance. If you want to talk about a mass noun, it would make more sense to have an Intelligence, indicating that these advanced societies have figured out how to very precisely quantify amounts of intelligence. Instead of quantity X of Computronium, you would just have X Minds.

Essentially then "Mind" is some arbitrary and unspecified amount of Computronium that the side allocates to a particular intelligence. Possibly a fluctuating amount. Instead of having an indefinite quantity of "perfect compute material," you have a measurement of intelligence/compute power of unspecified size, with "1 Mind" as a unit of measurement.

 

Each Mind on a VP should represent an absolutely prodigious amount of data storage and compute power; the kind of compute power that can simulate entire planets faster than real time, simulating particle physics and even other brains' activity to predict what other intelligences will think and do.

By making thousands of predictive simulations using known information and the laws of physics, these Minds would produce multiple sigma-levels of certainty. With a battery of thousands, or millions of simulations, and making probabilistic guesses about the future based on the results, it is possible to make highly detailed and reliable predictions about the future.

The ability to make such predictions necessarily entails the ability to manipulate the future to a mind-boggling extent, by deliberately acting to cause a Rube Goldberg type lengthy chain of causation. Such mighty intelligences would even be able to exploit chaotic systems, like the Butterfly Effect, and deliberately perform small, unnoticeable actions resulting in huge, seemingly unconnected results, possibly in different locations. A human brain would be a very simple machine to them, and easily amenable to being completely predicted based on all possible inputs, along with deliberately exposing the person to specific stimuli to produce any desired behavior.

The complicating bit in Ashes is that the other side also has immensely powerful Minds who are also using similarly unimaginable methods to manipulate the future, but with different goals. And without enough compute power to predict the opponent, their actions seem independent and autonomous.

The lore of this system would be that one side wins when they are capable of a Laplace's Demon type simulation of the world, including the enemy. When one side has a compute power advantage sufficient to completely and accurately predict the other side's actions, resistance is no longer possible because all thought and hostile action will be perfectly predicted and perfectly countered.

Each Mind you have is assumed to be constantly operating, generating and exploiting computational power. The side with more compute power begins to pull ahead in creating a dominating simulation that fully predicts the opponent.

 

Faction Names 

I think it might be a good idea to have some irreconcilable philosophical difference between the factions and construct the faction's lore/identity around that fact. One possibility is that one side wants to convert the entire universe into ideal compute material, or transmute all the matter in the universe into Minds, and the other side does not.

However, it appears both sides are composed of Minds. So the logical candidate for irreconcilable philosophical difference is what to do with the world-sim. If both sides are trying to convert the entire universe into ideal compute material, there must be some disagreement about the purpose.

Perhaps the post-humans want to create a physical simulation; essentially another Big Bang inside a simulation running on the entire Universe. And perhaps the other side wants to create a single, monolithic intelligence rather than waste all that power simulating a "fictional" universe (or would it be fiction?).

These kinds of differences, I think, give a much clearer basis to come up with faction identities and things like names. They also have the potential to be more interesting than just describing them merely as what they are, like Humans vs Machines.

 

Book & DLC

This is pretty neat. It's good to see you have big plans for Ashes into the future.

 

Zoom Out

This comes up in literally every strategy game that does not feature strategic zoom. In my opinion extremely distant zoom levels are a game-changing quality of life feature for RTS players, and there are few strategy games that would not benefit greatly from its implementation.

I absolutely agree with the absolute prohibition on a "sea of icons." However the solution for this is to have icons for groups. Not to just BAN zoom. Forcing a low zoom level limits players' situational awareness, which is considerably more important than even the ability to give precise orders from distant zoom levels. In my opinion, lack of strategic zoom is actually worse than a sea of icons. A sea of icons at least tells you that there are lots of units there; inability to zoom out requires players remember this fact when the camera is elsewhere, rather than display it on the screen.

Group icons are eventually going to happen in RTS games. It's inevitable. Hex and counter wargames have always used representations of groups rather than many individuals. The actual military uses icons to represent groups, for obvious reasons.

I know that the highly detailed models for units has led to a focus on having players view and interact with those models. But players can still do that by zooming in on a group. The strategic zoom and the low-level zoom do very different functions. Strategic zoom is for speed and convenience of a big-picture assessment, such as to identify important areas of the map on which to direct the player's attention at the time. And players zoom in to view the detailed situation in a location of interest.

 

Random Maps

Massive numbers of third-party maps and a built-in library to browse or select randomly is a killer feature. I do think that maps need to be larger and contain more strategically interesting features in order for this to really make sense.

Even the largest currently available map is too small to have thousands of interestingly different maps. And even if maps were larger and technically different, I strongly suspect that given the current map features and rules of the game, a huge proportion of those maps will not really play that differently at the end of the day.

If I am reading the lore correctly, the philosophical difference is between Post-Humans and Haalee. Post-Humans want to transmute to Computronium on all possible planets, even at the expense of existing inhabitants, which is rather rude. Ever-benevolent Haalee sees this destructiveness as a threat to everyone, Post-Humans, indigenous beings, and herself, and convinces (or demands?) the Substrate to slow them down until she can figure out how to start expanding beyond the galaxy. So, while you play as the Substrate, you are doing so as an ally (or subject?) of Haalee, whose plan is more logical, calculated, and benevolent than the one being pursued by the Post-Humans.

Different topic:

I'm not sure how I got this into my head, but based upon some things I've seen I came to the conclusion that the game at release will support at most 4 players on a map, some AI, some human (not to be confused with "some Substrate, some Post-Human"). Is this true, or did I make an incorrect inference somewhere along the line?

 

Random-ish maps
I've never been much of a "content creator" but I'll look forward to trying my hand at making some maps.

Faction names and marketing
I quite like Post-Humans.. although "Substrate" definitely isn't my favorite.  However, I think we need to know a little bit more about both factions, (substrate in particular) before I'm going to try my hand at dubbing a name for them.

Computronium
Here's my take:  Don't go with a silly "ium" like Avatar did with their "unobtanium".  It almost always (read: always) sounds silly.  Given the effects "computronium" is having on the humans, why not go with a catchy, more narcotic sounding name.  Something like Meld, Synth, or Clarity.

Mouse Controls
Why not having something like SHIFT or SPACE be used for manipulating the camera angle/direction?

Update Schedule
Looking forward to the July update!  Can't wait to see the new AI

Campaign talk
Do we get a campaign for both factions?  Or is it gonna be a Post-Humans only "tutorial" campaign?

Book
Interesting, I look forward to hearing more about it.

Battle Group behavior changes
Aha.  This will be nice, that way we can make T1 meta units without having to depend on T2 and T3s.  Does this mean we'll be able to make meta units of T3 capital ships?  Hahaha

Zoom out debate
There's a really big problem with this debate that I haven't seen a great way of getting around.  Let's be honest, the maps look great, the units look good, etc.  It'd be a shame to zoom out and have them turn into icons.  BUT the mini-map isn't the fastest way to get around (necessarily).  Everyone instinctively is going to try and zoom out as far as they can to see as much as they can, as it's strategically important.  However if you let us zoom out too far then all of our little T1 units look like ants and are impossible to distinguish (especially when you guys have made the Post-Human units look so similar)

Empire Tree
The Minimap definitely needs some work but it's fine for that to be on the backburner

The leagues
Awesome.  This will make it much more interesting and fun to test. 

---

The roadmap (CONFIDENTIAL)

This is NOT to be repeated anywhere.

2016: Ashes of the Singularity

2017: Ashes of the Singularity: Tides of War (adds naval combat)

2018: Ashes of the Singularity: Xenocide (you'll be fighting over inhabited planets too)

2019: Ashes of the Singularity: Nemesis (introduces the third faction)

In addition, we expect to release DLC every 60 days.  So those of you who bought the lifetime edition will be in for a real treat.  Each DLC will be around $4.99 to $9.99 each and the expansions will be between $30 to $40.  They come with your lifetime edition automatically.

Anyway, as you can imagine, we have a long-term plan for this game.  While the requirements for Ashes in 2015 are high, by next year or the year after, mainstream PC players should be able to participate easily.

---

 

Oh boy!  Glad I took the plunge into the Lifetime bundle.  Question:  Are we allowed to, say, strongly recommend to our friends that they consider getting the lifetime Founder option after having seen this news?  As long as we keep why a secret?  Also, how many different types of units are you planning on bringing into the fold through DLC?  Or is that going to be a secret?  The reason I'm asking is because DLC units could easily be seen as a P2W concept.

Needless to say, I'm excited!

Random Maps

Sounds good. I wouldn't mind trying to re-create some TA classics.

Battle Group Behavior Changes

Looking forward to this. Early game you couldn't have any groups before reaching T2.

Update Schedule

Can't wait for a real AI. right now it is too easy on the medium map and I would swear it cheats on the large map considering the huge numbers it sends at me without building any extractors.

Faction Names

As was said before in this thread I think we may need to know more about the factions before we can give proper suggestions for their names. I'll throw out a new name anyway though, The Substrate Legion.

Update Schedule

I hope you are making the units much smaller and not larger. Groups have a hard enough time fitting through gaps on the maps.

Zoom Out Debate

I know we like to pretend that SupCom 2 never happened, but you can always have an icon that shows the number of units in that group and you click the icon to select the group. This keeps the icon count low while making it easy to select groups. Engineers and other special units should have their own icons. I've had a hard time finding my engineers in this game since there are no icons and if they are on top of a building they can be hard to see.

DLC

Be careful with this. If you introduce units via DLC you run the risk of being called P2W. If you restrict multiplayer games by who owns what DLC then you'll split your multiplayer community which is good for no one. Units / Factions should only be via expansions. Considering that this is on steam you can sell DLC maps, but the community will always be able to put out more maps of the same quality for free. This leaves you with making single player missions, special challenges (survive as long as you can with a leader-board for example), Co-Op missions (if there is going to be any kind of Co-Op), and other such things.

 

Thanks for keeping us up to date and keep up the good work.

Bumping up to lifetime founder now...

 

... and done.

Awesome job!

This is exactly what i hoped for in Ashes, lots and lots of replayability.

Yeah i will admit i was not expecting almost full transparency.

 

Overall great stuff indeed!

BTW, Computronium is a real thing.  That's why we picked it. We just don't like the name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computronium 

Re: the zoom issue.  At the end of the day, you are making a real time strategy game. I understand the aesthetic reasons behind not wanting to zoom out into a sea of icons, but the best strategy games give the player as much information as possible as efficiently as possible.  In games without strategic zoom, color coded mini maps are  how the player keeps an eye on the big picture - and when you play such a title "seriously" staying on top of a strategically complex situation involves keeping your eyes on that tiny little portion of the screen space 80 percent of the time or more.

This is not an exaggeration or hyperbole.  Using a minimap means watching that little box nearly constantly and devoting as little attention as possible to everything else going on in the game space, all so you can respond as soon as a little red dot appears somewhere before you take losses of some sort.  So do you want your playears getting 80% of their information about the game state from 10% or less of their screen real-estate?  It's a valid design choice for plenty of games, so it isn't a rhetorical question Even though my phrasing sounds negative.  If you choose to go with the minimap route over strategic zoom, know that many players will not have the leisure to gawk at the beautiful visuals you guys are already bringing to the table.

The real debate is over how you choose to present relevant and important information to the player, and is that possible without sacrificing aesthetic design?  It is good that aesthetics have a place in the AOTS design philosophy because not enough strategy games are truly aesthetically polished or pleasing.

My recommendation having played the alpha for ~7 hours:  Full strategic zoom is the way to go.  Your game is already beautiful and when it is finished it will undoubtedly be one of the most visually stunning and technologically impressive rts titles ever made.  You don't want your players spending any significant percentage of their time staring at a small portion of their screen to avoid being caught unaware.  Furthermore, mini maps are more appropriate for small-scale strategy.  Your game is aiming to push the technological envelope with thousands of units and huge battles.  Full strategic zoom is the best way to accommodate this goal.

However: Icons are obviously undesirable from an aesthetic perspective, but strategic zoom becomes pointless when the player is too zoomed out to see what's happening on the battlefield.  There may be innovative ways to relay relevant information to a fully zoomed player without using icons.  Icons may be efficient but they are ugly.  You guys are the devs and I will refrain from going on a huge tangent about ways this could be done, but if a dev likes where I'm going with this and wants more thoughts or suggestions on the topic I would be happy to go further.

I don't see why this is a problem. More than that, seeing an epic army marching with its powerful weapons of war shrunk to ants from sheer perspective is pretty awesome.

 

Completely untrue. Strategic zoom is not meant to view the details of the battlefield. Strategic zoom lets you quickly and intuitively perceive and navigate around a very large map. In this respect, strategic zoom fulfills the function of the minimap, only making use of much more screen real estate to be more effective than the minimap.

You are absolutely right that without strategic zoom the minimap is where most of the player's attention will be directed most of the time for practical reasons. Strategic zoom is just a very large, very fast, and very powerful minimap.

 

This is also not necessarily true. I for one actually like well-made icons. The "sea of icons" is easy to improve upon by having one icon for a group of units rather than a separate icon for every individual unit.

Players would view group icons on the strategic map, and from the perspective of strategic zoom they would have enough information to effectively decide where to focus in for more details. Such as an area where one of their groups is actively engaged with an enemy group. Or where an enemy group has appeared on sensors.

It isn't necessary to convey as much fine detail from the strategic level as would be available when zoomed in. In fact it would be very convenient to intentionally hide unnecessary detail from the strategic zoom level.

LingWhisperer, sorry but you are not saying anything new here. The devs fully understand this perspective, probably agree with most of it, and are continually brainstorming ideas for addressing it. IMHO we should wait patiently to see what they come up with.

Yeah i mean until the next release or patch there isnt much more to do rather than keep discussing the same things over and over again.

 

 

I like sitting on my ass whats so wrong with that , but yeah i agree issue here is there has been so much feedback going in all directions i think they need some time to gather what was said already and resume the most important aspects into the next patch.

There are also many quotable places on these forums that prove me right, for example when they said they invented strategic zoom.

 

QFT

 

To be honest your DLC ideas have me concerned. Games in the Total War series have recently started doing a lot of DLC and it is really starting to piss off the community and causing quite a back lash against the developers (backlash may have been aggravated by the buginess of the recent games on initial release). I might suggest that if you want to stick to this schedule then every other DLC should be free (map editor as an early free DLC would no doubt be well received). Gamers and the gaming media love this (good free press) and it gets people to try the game again, something you should be interested in as you are planning your expansions over many years.

Some Paradox games are supported for years and have a lot of DLC and it seems to work for them to some extent at least as they have a very loyal/keen core fan base. But at the same time it puts some people off as they feel they have to spend a lot of money to get the best experience, and really everyone wants the best/full experience.

This sort of thing can effect a companies reputation for years to come so I really hope you think it through.

Depending on how sales go you might want to consider expansions every 9months or so. 3 years is a long time to hold a gamers attention. I know Sins of a Solar Empire had quite a few expansions over an extended period so I guess you will have all the sales numbers and will perhaps base things off that. If Ashes is as successful as Sins then perhaps your plan is a-ok

 

Everything else in the post is welcome news though Keep up the good work!

DLC depends tremendously on the quality of the original product.

A very solid basic game product makes players, generally speaking, more accepting of paid DLC to add onto the game. Assuming of course the DLC doesn't break or damage the game (pay to win, balance, design, etc.)

A weak basic game will make players VERY mad if you try to sell DLC. Rome 2, Destiny, and so on. It smacks of deliberately underperforming to extract more money, and seems scammy, even if it was in good faith.

@Frogboy, no opting out on the multiplayer keys, friends are waiting for those... lol

 

I was unaware that "adding something new" was a prerequisite to participating in the conversation.  I am an experienced competitive RTS player, and was providing the perspective of a guy with 2500 career games of Starcraft 2.  I added my thoughts considering my analysis of the game and its perceived design goals.  A lot of people don't realize that competitive RTS players in titles with minimaps spend 90% of their time staring at the minimap and their resource readout and are barely looking at what is happening on the screen...  but that is how you *have* to play when multitasking through multi-prong aggression.  In a title with strategic zoom, where large-scale engagements on multiple fronts is the norm, it is simply easier and more aesthetically pleasing to view and control all of the battles simultaneously by zooming out.

The post by Frogboy indicates that strategic zoom and usage of icons to relay information to the player is still being debated and is not a closed topic.  "Sorry", but I will allow posts by the developers to guide my responses and feedback on threads and not you.

 

 

The usefulness of a strategic zoom is partially through the quantity of information it provides to the player, and also how it enables the player to issue commands in the same screenspace that is providing big-picture information.  Yes, you can have strategic zoom with less icons, like for battlegroups only, but then you are providing less information to the player - this should not be seen as an ideal solution.  In terms of viewing the entire battlefield and manipulating the camera, a minimap solution can be shown to be objectively more efficient for that specific purpose.  One click on the minimap, in fact, repositions the battle camera with a high degree of precision.  It is so efficient, in fact, that advanced competitive RTS players never scroll their camera with arrow keys or pointer-to-margin methods.  It is all mouse-clicks on the minimap, double-tapping control groups, or hotkeys for saving/recalling camera locations and center-on-hq.  The strengths of strategic zoom is not in speed and efficiency, the strength is in consolidating intel-screen space with command-screen space - a strategic zoom mechanic that provides less information is not playing to the strengths of strategic zoom as an interface motif.

  My statements regarding the icons is nodding to the fact that the AOTS devs want to avoid leaning on that genre convention.  Frogboy's post is pretty clear about not wanting to use icons and I respect that design tendency - but then we face the challenge of presenting relevant information to the player in some other way unless we use a minimap solution, and a minimap solution isn't necessarily the right way to go for a game that is focusing on huge scale.

  Again, I stated at the end of my post that I have a few ideas for ways to do this, but in game development ideas are never in short supply.  If requested, I'll share those, otherwise I offered my specific perspective on that particular issue - as it is such a central and vital issue to the user experience in an RTS.

Well sorry to have stirred you up. When people post repeat content it usually means they are not up to speed on what has already been discussed on the forums...ad nauseam. Your credentials definitely add weight to what has already been said elsewhere by others. Perhaps the devs will see it that way too and take your concerns under stronger consideration.

I agree with Ling, and I am glad he spent the time to more thoroughly explain why full strategic zoom is something that should be in the game (imo.)  I believe that the detail he put into his post definitely makes it a worthy addition to the discussion.

 

 

Random-ish maps

I will definitely be involved in making some mas in the future. 

Faction names and marketing

If we look over human history we have a tendency to give new species and discoveries a latin based name. So with that said, I am going to play around with Latin based names. 

Combined Name: Sagax -- In Latin it is one of the translations for intelligent and also means acute and keen. Even though it is an odd name for a race of AI it is fitting since we would most likely be the ones to name them initially. Of course this would also rely on the AI keeping the name moving into the future.

Faction 1: Praelon/Praelion -- Would be the more brutal race.

Faction 2:Selentus/Salentus -- Would be the more refined race

Computronium

Aurium/Aesium

Mouse Controls

I am okay with using the middle mouse button for camera movement, but I'm not too sure how everyone else feels.

Update Schedule

I will be looking forward to this. Should be interesting to see the difference in pre-alpha and the alpha 1.

Campaign talk

When it comes to the campaign in RTS games I can see it being a great experience, or a complete waste of space. I have never found a campaign that I found "alright." I say this because I would like to see a campaign for AotS to be more than a tutorial for learning the game. I would love to see a campaign playable from both factions and have a fairly rich storyline. I would like to see campaign length hist 8 hours minimum. That's just my thoughts though.

Book

Keep us updated on the release and I will be buying it for sure. Will also spread the word.

Battle Group behavior changes

I like this change. I would also like to see multiple T3 units in a single battle group as well. 

Zoom out debate

I feel the zoom is very close to where it needs to be right now. You can zoom out far enough to get a great view of the battlefield while staying in the action. I agree that this game DOES NOT need a tactical zoom. 

The leagues

I love this idea since I have some friends who are interested in the game, but not willing to fork over the cash right now. This will help spread the word about the game and give others a risk free opportunity to play it.

The roadmap (CONFIDENTIAL)

So, is it too late to upgrade to the lifetime edition. Holy Shit...

With the current road map showing a major expansion every year will the team be able to release the DLC that close together? On the topic of DLC, are we looking at purely cosmetic DLC or something a little more?

Open Floor

I have to ask about the likelyhood of adding Steam Workshop support? In my opinion it adds a ton of replayability to a game, and helps it stay in the forefront for years to come.

No kidding, I'm kinda wondering if those who don't get Founder lifetime are going to end up shelling out hundreds extra!

My plan has been to upgrade once I'm sure this is a game I'll be playing and pushing my friends to play. The ability to upgrade ends once the game goes Early Access, so it will be prudent for me to keep an eye out for clues when this will happen. In the "Who should become a founder" post Frogboy indicates Q4 or later. In a reply to that post by Island Dog (#9), "late summer" is mentioned. So I'm thinking as it stands right now late August is a safe bet to plan for the lifetime upgrade.

• Random-ish maps

It's great to give the Founders a map editor to help creating some thousands good maps, but what about a map generator, will we be getting that too? can we ble to create scripted maps? like single player mission maps? player driven Stories?.

• Faction names and marketing

So (human genetic engineering) (HGE) will be "Post-Humans"
And
"The Substrate" programmable matter (SPM) Or What about just call it "Substrate nans" or only Nans

"The Substrate" is a really complicated name.

 

• Basic Lore talk

Ashes takes place in the year 2178.  The beginning of the game has various Post-Humans and Substrate AIs seeking uninhabitable planets to convert into Computronium.

• Computronium

This is a really long name. What about Just call it Tronium

• Campaign talk

So the campaign  is going to have a 10 part series of missions? i think me and many players will love to have bigger Campaign.

• Battle Group behavior changes

Really nice what you guys are doing, But when we will have the Custom Meta Units?

• Zoom out debate

Guys please look at the B-Roll Footage - GDC 2015, Pre-Alpha Gameplay. i think the level of zoom out that you show us in that Video is the perfect one. look around (00.27) and (01.21) or (02.04) or (02.30) and (02.49).

please try to support that kind of Zoom.

•  Open Floor

How are you guys going to do with Multiplayer if not everyone payed for the Third Faction?

And for the DLC's... new Units? Weapons add-on? again how will you manage the customers who did not pay for the DLC's in Multiplayer?

and last, make and keep making single player Campaigns, i will love to see the original story expanding.