I've successfully identified a major issue related to movement speed and army control

Are you saying the rest of us have been offering lower quality feedback thus far?

The speed penalty in combat was in one of the patch notes. I believe it reduces speed to 25% of max. One reason was to avoid situations where armies would move right through each other with few casualties, which really made area control and front-line combat frustrating.

To add to the negative impacts, it also makes retreat not much better than just letting your units wipe.

I think once the global abilities get in the game, it might make sense to reduce the speed penalty. GA's will aid in area control and front-line combat, and the severe speed penalty won't be as important.

Except the AI goes shooting right past you and you can never catch up and he guts your back end.  Very annoying. Also easy to exploit in multi.  Engage with one group and hold back other; once OPFOR is locked down, go zipping by

Well that sounds like a good tactic. I doubt it works. You can lock down the group, but if a unit in your zipping force gets hit, now that zipping force is also locked down.

 

I like the idea of having some kind of zone of control effect. Maybe we need a gunship unit with a huge dps but limited supply to help a group to disengage and retreat. Once they have depleted their suplly they'd have to return to a pad with a slow resuply rate. 

 

I think its an AOE range and direct hits, if you are near an enemy and you loose movement speed, without the need to be attacking o the attacking you.

It happens a lot to me.

You are not an early access purchaser on Steam, so no.  As I said: "Since the release of Ashes into Early Access, I figured there would be an influx of lower-quality feedback."  This is a well documented phenomenon - many people who purchase discounted early access titles on Steam are often not interested into contributing to development processes, they want to play a new game as soon as possible.  They also frequently complain when the Early Access title is predictably not finished to their expectations.

If battlegroups blitzing straight past enemy armies is a significant enough issue, there are plenty of other ways to balance the game so that it is a suicidal idea.  In many RTSes, pathing straight through an enemy army into their territory and ignoring the threat results in wasting all of your units.  If slowing everything down in a battlegroup to 25% of the speed of the slowest unit in that group is an attempt at fixing this issue, I seriously hope this is a band-aid fix and not being seriously considered as a viable solution.

I actually had already said this - read point #3 in the list of negative impacts.  This mechanic renders retreating, or practically any other attempt at directly influencing a fight's outcome, effectively pointless.  Your options become "Watch the fight" or "Ignore the fight".

I'm afraid Ashes of the Singularity might release looking more like a very fancy version of Gratuitous Space Battles, with player decisions only mattering in setting up fights.  While I can understand if this ends up being the direction for the game, it would need to be pretty emphatically communicated that this isn't going to be as "Active" an experience as other examples of the RTS genre or a lot of potential buyers will likely be disappointed.

I'd also like to add, that overall, as a mechanic this is completely opaque and that makes it even more frustrating to the player.

With no icon, visual indicator, or other feedback that this behavior is 1. Intentional and 2. Occurring at this moment, for the average player it just feels like "None of these units are following my orders - my fastest units are moving like snails for no reason!" and breeds frustration.  Many players could attribute this behavior to being a result of buggy and unpolished gameplay in an Early Access title, but if this behavior remains post-release I am willing to bet my Founder's status that it will be poorly received.  It is frustrating to issue commands in an RTS and have them ignored with no feedback from the game - at least having a "Suppression" status indicator like in Dawn of War II/COH would go a long way toward improving the mechanic.

In fact, it's not necessarily a terrible mechanic - it could be vastly improved thusly:

1.  Define "Suppression" as a unit state/debuff - resulting in 25% movespeed.  Clearly indicate to players when units are affected by this status.

2.  Only allow specific affected units to be suppressed - do not apply status to an entire battlegroup.  This may require more advanced and fleshed-out battlegroup AI, which currently seems to be severely lacking.  If you don't get what I mean by that, put two units of t1 Brutes in a group with a balanced mixture of other units and pay attention to what happens to them.

3.  Make the "Suppression" debuff be applied by specific units, attacks, or abilities only.

Voila - problem solved and tactical/strategic depth effectively added to the game.

Long, my first sentence was a little tongue-in-cheek, which doesn't come across too well in writing, so please disregard. Also I missed your mention of retreat. Sorry, and I agree.

Cordially speaking, to some degree you just did this. While you are offering feedback which will hopefully help the devs, you are also setting up your mindset that Ashes may not meet your expectations at release. You seem to be willing to wait and see, but you are doubtful. I guess it is human nature, even for those offering focused feedback.

I really don't like the slow down mechanic. I don't know the programming challengers/processing costs but in theory wouldn't a simple solution be to make units shot in the back take a lot more damage. So if you run past/through an enemy then you pay a heavy price. It would also add depth to general war too: Engage the enemy force front on then hit them from behind with another one. Positioning and tactics suddenly become much more interesting. This way you make the fighting deeper but you still avoid fiddly micro/special ability activating that you have in Starcraft type games. It is also the kind of thing a player can get better at with practise and providing a sense of achievement; something that is important to retain long term interest in a game. It would allow the game to avoid the potential "Gratuitous Space Battles game play" problem.

Thinking about it the Total War games have had flanking/rear attack benefits etc. with their battles pretty much since the beginning and their unit groups aren't a million miles from that of the battle groups in this game so it should be possible. Sounds good to me anyway. You would have to add the ability to rotate armies but that should be in there anyway to be honest. It would make massive battles across vast plains so cool. Or when we have radar blockers bringing out a second army out from behind the enemy...getting excited now, about a feature not in the game ha.

 

Edit. I should also add that it is a transparent mechanic using well known principles and simple mechanics. I.E Everyone knows and understands flanking so it would not confuse anyone (important in game design right?). The current system is frustrating and not transparent so...not so good

I'm not sure I follow - at no point did I complain about an unfinished game being unfinished.  I evaluated mechanics, explained how they affected me as a player, and explored the ramifications of them remaining in the final version of the title.

At no point did I buy an unfinished game and complain about it being unfinished, in an unproductive and unhelpful way.  However, if mechanics like this remain through release, and Ashes remains a game where you build an army and simply watch it fight with no way of exerting meaningful control, I will absolutely be disappointed at that point - and I do not think I am wrong in suggesting that I won't be the only one.  Without letting the player actually control their own armies and directly influence fights the game becomes something else - something with depth more befitting of a one-off indie-game price tag than a full priced triple-A release and development cycle.  See GSB.

In any case, I'm not sure where you get off being so confrontational and critical of other posters on this forum.  Every single post I've contributed to this site, you've been there to try to poke holes and criticize my feedback.

It's not appreciated, and I'm going to go crawl back into my hole and let you go back to forum-warrioring other people.

I was being cordial. I even said it. Sorry about the miscommunication. And Tatsubj is the only person who I do that with, and rightly so because some of his feedback is very venomous and counterproductive.

Also, it seems you missed that I actually agreed with you. Your feedback was good, and I'm glad you posted it. I'll even give you a +1 as a gesture of goodwill.

This is an intentional dynamic within the game.  I like the way it works now, personally.  It was ridiculous before they made this change with units flying all around and never engaging in pitched battles.

These are massive floating battleships.  Once you fully commit them to a battle the assets are committed.  You can still interact with your units by issuing specific move orders, firing orders, etc.  I find the units to be very responsive to these kinds of orders.  If you want to flank the group you're attacking, then you need to have two forces descend on the group you're attacking from different directions.  Thus, what you describe is more an issue of tactics, not a "major issue" or "bug" of some kind within the game.

I'm with eviator on the "lower quality feedback" bit in your original post.  Think a little more about how what you type is going to come off to other readers.  There are a lot founders on here who have been providing high quality input from the very beginning.  Mistakes like that only hurt you by leading other posters to write off your comments at the first sentence.

 

How about we keep giving feedback in general and not try to gauge the quality of it as that's really up to the team

 

All I know is that the AI has done it to me many times.  My units can't catch up, or fire on the fast movers, and the fast movers zip by and gut my inner area.  The only way to solve it is to bring in new units from way back to engage and kill.  Your front line troops are locked down and simply do not move (OK, 25% but it is painful and they never catch up).

 

Also, this is not a capital ship issue (although they do that too).  T1 can go zipping by too.  The AI just ignores your units, does not fire, and some make it right past a mass of your units.  Your units, on the other hand, can not counter or respond because they are locked down.  It is not a grouping issue per se either.  A bunch on ungrouped T1/T2 units can have the same thing happen to them and selecting one, which is not under fire, still results in 25% speed debuff.

It is broken and not a good mechanic IMHO

I honestly have reported that unit responses when stuff is in combat is bad, and in the steam forums i did say that they should improve this first rather than speeding up the game.(if this was the argument about invalid feedback)

But still i admit i enjoy this new movement speed, and i would like it to stay or have this kind of speed incorporated in the +/- butons.

And yes ive noticed a considerable slow down when units are in combat, to the point that attack moving and right clicking is not very responsive.

Lets say you want to kite with a missile unit and you keep moving back and attack moving or right clicking you will see the massive slowdown.

I know it might be confusing for a dev to come here and try to understand what i mean about unit responses, i mean the time it takes for a unit to react to a command and move at maximum speed from point A to point B either in combat or out of combat

1- Out of combat i dont think theres much issues so far even though i do notice some delay but it might be performance related.

2- In combat this is very annoying, to see units prefer to hover slowly rather than move at full speed, i sometimes break the battlegroup´s and use 100% single unit groups but it doesnt help, units still try to main some form of distance/formation and hover very slowly.

 

 

i thought movement and unit response was the most obvious bug of all lol.

The devs probably understand what you mean by unit response -- they have been very focused on this aspect of the game in the past.  They are also obsessed with the speed that various units traverse the landscape.  

Personally, I like the current "weight" (for lack of a better term) and speed of the AoS units.  It's different from anything I've experienced before, and I think it helps impart the real scale of the units you control and size of the battlefields (i.e., entire planets).  

My impression from dev comments over time is that the existing unit speed and "weight" is intentional.  AoS is not meant to play like other RTSs that have vehicles zipping about the landscape at mach 15 and players micromanaging every aspect of individual battles.  Thus, I think AoS pushes concepts like micro-managed "kiting" aside in favor of focusing on higher level strategy and improved AI.  Plus, let's face it, you are maneuvering gigantic hovering battleships across planets -- it's going to take a little time to redirect all that mass somewhere.  

I find the concept of slowing down a bit in battle realistic in other ways too.  Slowing down increases weapons accuracy, helps maintain formations, etc.  I could see, maybe, enabling smaller units to move a bit faster during battle since speed will always be their best "defense" so to speak.  I feel like smaller units already move faster overall, but I'll have to pay more attention during battles this evening.

I find AoS's approach to unit "weight" refreshing, because it frees me up to focus less on individual battle click-fests, and more on my overall tactical deployments and strategies; with the knowledge, of course, that once I commit my forces to battle, they may not be able to retreat.

Regarding enemy units zipping past you -- AoS (and the dynamics above) encourages players to move away from the "one giant unit blob" tactic so prevalent in other games.  You need to distribute your forces (and manufacturing capabilities) wisely across the map, so that if enemy units get past your leading force (or approach from another direction entirely), your flank and critical infrastructure is not exposed.  

This, again, is more true to reality, where land forces deployed to one part of a planet (remember the scale we are playing at on these maps, folks) cannot instantaneously traverse to the other side of the planet to respond to an unforeseen assault.  Air units can certainly cover ground a bit faster, but they are likely to be relatively weak against land-based threats.

 

Tactics are specifically related to the disposition, movement, and utilization of forces in a battle in order to influence the outcome of that battle - strategy, on the other hand, is the "Large scale" version of a tactic.  Tactics are how you win the fight - strategy is how you win the war.  It's pretty normal to confuse these two terms, because we've dubbed wargames beyond individual scale "Strategy" games as a genre.  However, "Strategy games" actually encompass a variety of very different types of games, some of which you would probably be better off as describing as "Real Time Tactics" titles.  A good example of a Real Time Tactics game would be Dawn of War II.

But even games that heavily de-emphasize tactics still include tactics - because strategic decisions are "Higher level" decisions and are less numerous, and the ramifications of a strategic choice are heavily influenced by tactical level decision-making.  An example of a strategic decision would be what kind of unit you have.  An example of a tactical decision is how to utilize that unit.  Hence, a strategy involving many high-range units that do very poorly in close-combat is simply going to be bad if your tactical options are restricted to close-combat scenarios.

 I do not see your argument being very strongly supported by any of the experiences I've had in multiplayer gameplay.  You are actively punished for splitting your forces - unless you decide to abuse the movement mechanics by making a small squad with one artillery unit and a couple hermes, which can ping a huge army a couple times to render it completely immobile.

At any moment you do try to split your forces, the player who didn't split their forces will crush both of your armies.  This is because you cannot utilize mobility and positioning - infact you have almost no tactical options at all.  In a game with very homogenous unit types, forcing everything to move very slowly at the same speed worsens the issue of tactical diversity to a nearly arbitrary extent.  At that point, it's about whose blob is the biggest - because you can't retreat, you can't "flank" anything with maps consisting of restricted paths between small chunks of land, and the units that are only useful at close range will get glued to the ground and destroyed by artillery before they ever have a chance to fire a shot.

The most effective army composition in Ashes of the Singularity is a hermes, a zeus, and as many Artemis as you can build.  Any other units you add to that army are only useful for the passive bonuses that they provide to the battlegroup - so a couple Apollo for fire rate, and a couple Nemesis for extra damage, will only be useful in allowing the Artemis to destroy everything before it gets close.

If this is ever to change, faster and higher-damage units with shorter range must be able to break suppression and close the gap.  Unit speeds must actually matter in a confrontation.

If you doubt me then you are free to join me in multiplayer to test the balance, but I've already done that quite a bit and these have been my findings.

Lol -- I often use tactics/strategy interchangeably when I'm in a rush.  I think the current approach in AoS shifts the focus from micro-managing lower level "tactics" (e.g., rapid click "kiting") to higher level tactical decisions and overall strategy.  I like this approach.

Your other comments relate more to map design and unit balance than to unit speed and responsiveness.

I also said in my original post that I could see increasing the speed of smaller units during battles, which gets to your "closing the gap" point. 

Unit speed is an extremely integral aspect of unit balance and function.  In fact, mobility is one of the single most important defining characteristics of a unit in any RTS, especially when it is played competitively.  In some cases, a single unit type being made 5-10% faster can completely change the balance between two asymmetrical races - even when the unit literally doesn't even do any damage.  I'm referring to a change made several years ago in Starcraft 2, when Zerg Overlords - unarmed, flying sacks of meat - were buffed to move slightly faster.  It completely changed the Zerg vs Terran match-up, by significantly reducing the number of aggressive builds a Terran could initiate before being scouted by the Zerg player's first Overlord.

So I am, in fact, addressing balance by addressing movement speed of units.  In the past two decades I've played RTSes competitively and casually, I've yet to identify a case where a unit's movement speed wasn't one of the largest indicators of what that unit was good at and bad at - and I've actually seen plenty of cases where high movement speed was a more valuable attribute than killing power or raw durability.

But now I'm confused by what you're saying - in the first post of this thread, I identify the current issue with movement speed and why it's bad.  So are you saying that combat slowing an entire battlegroup's movement speed down to 25% of the base speed of the slowest unit is good - " I like this approach."  Or are you saying it's bad? " I could see increasing the speed of smaller units during battles"

Because with this mechanic as it stands, no matter how fast you make any individual unit, this mechanic will render its speed meaningless the moment its battlegroup initiates a fight.  You can't have this battlegroup-wide suppression mechanic and also have smaller units moving faster - because the smaller units will never move faster than 1/4th the base speed of the slowest unit in a battlegroup, unless this mechanic is altered significantly.

i avoid battlegroups just because of this mechanic but it seems to have a AOE effect even on ungrouped units

 

Also, the AI does not seem effected by it; I have had units that I fired on just keep going by at high speed while my units sit there are a crawl --25% slow down plus terrain blocking is even worse.

OK -- you're jumping all over the place Lingy, and no need to break out the bold big guy.  My points are clear, but I will break them down for you further:

• I think slowing units down as they head into battle makes a lot of sense.  I started playing this game before you and saw what things were like before.  I do not want the devs to devolve the game in the way you are advocating, so I'm being just as vocal about my views as you.
• I'm strongly against trashing the meta-group + battle slow down dynamic to make AoS play more like SupCom, Starcraft, etc.; which reward hyperactive clicking and tactics like kiting with individual units and groups of units at high speed.  I can go play those games if I want to deal with all that BS. 
• I have also noticed the arty balance issue that you are upset about. 
• One approach to address the issue would be to increase the in-battle speed for certain units through some dynamic.  For example, maybe you make a speed boost upgrade for certain units researchable so they can close distance faster during an engagement.  I think it would be cool to see units "surge" out to close distance with arty -- something akin to a cavalry charge almost.  Maybe strap rockets onto a Zeus or something.
• The Devs. could do something like this pretty easily, so I'm not why you are breaking out the bolded text up there and ranting about "significant alterations" to the entire mechanic.  
• The simpler approach to your complaint is weakening arty, which has nothing to do with speed.
• Another tactic I've found useful against arty is to build bombers, which make arty into popcorn as the bombs land.
• People are also upset about enemies zipping past their front lines in the middle of battles.  This may be a real issue that needs to be resolved, but, again, I do not think you resolve it by eliminating the battle speed modifier.  Asking for the battle slow down rate to be applied equally is very different than arguing an entire dynamic should be scrapped.
• The Devs have also spoken out clearly and continuously about this game not being about unit blobs.  Blobs may work for certain players in multi right now, but my assumption is that new dynamics will keep chipping away at their utility.  For example, the devs intend to introduce teleporting and other dynamics into the game.  These dynamics will start forcing players to defend their supply lines even more than they currently do, and move players away from the unit blob approach.  I expect the implementation of super weapons will further limit the utility of unit blobs.  Bigger and more open maps will also reduce the utility of unit blobs over time. 

Back to the topic at hand, the battle slowdown "mechanic" has been in the game for a while.  They may tweak it and hone it a bit, but they are unlikely to toss it out.  I hope they don't.

Lol -- this seriously made my late, boring evening at the firm tonight, Tats.  Much more spirited than a lot of these contracts -- I actually think I felt the vein in your forehead explode right there.  

No, I'm obviously not saying they should solidify the entire game in an Alpha state.  I don't know where you get some of this stuff, but I do know that I want some of whatever you're having.  

I AM saying that I like the battle slow-down mechanic for the reasons I've outlined.  I also do not think they will get rid of it completely, unless they find a viable and superior alternative to accomplish their goals.  One of those goals is massive pitched battles between hundreds or thousands of units slugging it out with each other.  The slow-down mechanic accomplishes this pretty well for them.

I did not come into this game with preconceived notions of what it should/should not be or to push any particular agenda.  Frankly, I'm enjoying the ride and the chance to provide some input here and there -- even if they are not always the most popular . 

In the 0.62 build, coming into attack range brings speed down to 20%.  IN 0.63 we're going to try 33%.

During the alpha, it was a common tactic to just run right through the enemy. NOT fun.

Interesting exploit.  Perhaps the devs can do something to prevent this.

Cool -- it will be interesting to see how this impacts the game's feel.