Ashes v.64 Introduces a New Structure: The Power Amplifier!

Nice changelog!

Thanks, and keep up the good work

You sure about this? I am in the game now and don't see it.

I really want a lot more maps, not playing a whole lot in part to fear of growing bored of them. Hope we get a lot with the Beta.

Thanks for the update though! Will check out the fancy explosions now...:)

Playing now, still working on feedback.

What happened to having a battle group request reinforcements? It works, but the new units aren't automatically added to the battle group, so they go off ahead of the group to the next objective, then die because they are all alone. They used to catch up to the group leader and join the pack, which is how it should work.

Feedback:

- The Control Point UI is obstructive. I'm guessing this is fill-in.

- Unit construction progress bar is a little hard to see.

- Power amplifier is a good idea, offers some early-middle game decisions. If placed on a reactives region it takes 3 minutes to recoup. It needs a build progress bar. Would you consider making it assistable by engineers to extract even more (with diminishing returns)?

- Still hoping for some free early-game quanta so you arent required to build a quantum relay and research logistics ASAP.

- I like the new music, but I prefer the original for the main screen as it sounds more epic.

Good patch, looking forward to the next one!

You don't have the 100 quanta at the start in this patch?

Just some first observations on the new 0.64 build :

My humble opinion is that you made a good step forward. the visual effects are shaping nicely, the groups and formations seems a bit more reactive, and the performances are a bit better on my end. The new map is missing?

Concerning the new health bars :

They are nice. the different colors for friendlies and enemies bring some clarity on the battlefield, when we are at max zoom out. the different sizes and the little "squares" Under the bars allow us to spot the T1, T2 and T3 units more easily, though they are not perfectly readable. a suggestion : could this "tier intel" appear on the circle represented on the left of the bars? with a different "blason" for each tier, just like what we can find in a hack and slash for elite units for example : maybe simple "I", "II" or "III" symbols in the circle, or something more designed, with wings or such? just a suggestion of course.

The energy bars are nice, they appear if the energy is not at 100% if i understood well, nice idea.

Last thing : the size and placement of the bars : both seem comfortable when we are at max zoom out, though seeing them scaling a bit more as we zoom in could advantage the readability. the more we zoom in, the more little they should appear, and overall, they should stick a bit more to the unit, so to say, being displayed closer, if not right on the unit.

What usage has the UI "big square" appearing at the top center of the screen? if i click on it twice, it seems to bring the camera view to the last place of interest, a combat or a resource point? it appears as particularly big, and kinda obstructs the player view.

A last thing for now, which has certainly already been reported : hearing the in-game voice saying "enemy dreadnought detected" when the said dreadnought belongs to an ally is quite disappointing

Just some humble observations and suggestions.

The game keeps growing better, and shows huge potential. keep up the hard work

I've played 1 game of 0.64 and the answer is definitively no. Cannot remember which map. Unless I'm going nuts. I will try again in a few hours.

New power amplifier is not destructible, is that on purpose?  It just gets captured with the node.

Confirmed, no free quanta

Quick feedback

 - There is no free quanta at the start

 - The new open range map is not showing up

 - Improved destruction looks good

That is correct and by design.  You may want to consider which nodes you upgrade.

The power amplifier does not have an icon, at first when I looked to find it, it seems like it was blank, but when I clicked on the square it allowed me to select it so I could build one.  It was sometimes hard to place it on top of the generator.  

Great update -- looking forward to checking it out this weekend!

The engineer keeps building the amplifier even when the structure is done... so all queued orders after building the amplifier are not being executed.

I'll be honest.

I think The Power Amplifier does not make sense the way it is being used.

To understand ! (english not my best but i will try)

Already exists Turinium generator right? 

Now we have The Power Amplifier, which will be put on the Relays, we have engineers or units that capture the relays and we have in 2 seconds an +1 income for metal and then we build a  Power Amplifier that in 2 sec we have another income bonus on the same place ..... both upgrades showld be just 1 but upgradble. 

Ok lets see !!

We have 3 metals in the middle of one relay, captured have + 1 bonus for each but the engineer quickly build another upgrade the Power Amplifier and in another 2 sec we have  another bonus, sorry but it does not make sense and I think it should have it own factory on  that zone or another idea.

It is easy to understand how it works but we should have other option this way seems like we have 2 Turinium generator

What is the reason that we do  not use the nodes with upgrades to prevent this little mess.

The idea is good actualy very good ,but a little confused on the battlefield.... a Turinium generator + The Power Amplifier + relays that have +/-  the same function.

I know this is think to not make any power or metal on every where like a real ecoplayer (Like me) and let fluid battles.

I do not know if you understand me but i enjoy these ideas are good, but showld be in another way it has great potential.

It's time to think in upgrades, in radioactives or in relays or any other ,like it is , is the same as having a T1 Metal and put a T2 Metal in that same place insted upgrade that is way more easy and preety.

This is just a thought because  i like to see you guys use bether that great ideas.

Agreed! And I think it happens every time!

I've seen a variety of situations. I've seen it build forever. I've seen it finish building but not actually giving me the bonus. I've seen it start building but I pull the engineer away and the engineer cannot finish building it. And I've seen it build correctly and work correctly. Good thing this is alpha

few bugs and feedback.

- Units not attacking enemy dreadnought right next to them. (until forced to do so)

- Form up a group and tell them to go somewhere. The lead unit will go to clicked destination, the rest of the army will run the opposite way.

- Control groups aren't staying together. Select all the units and make it army 1. A little later select army one and it only selects half of them. I am not sure if the non-selected one are suddenly remembering an old group but it could be that.

- Some units living on even with major minus HP.

- As mentioned by others the game does not start with any quanta

- units hitting the ground explosions look worse to me. Red sparks duller and flatter. I guess this might be for optimisation reasons. Need a bit more variety i think

- I also feel the building explosions still need work too.

- Some of the music is rather pedestrian now. I liked the music which first came with the game but some of the new stuff, not so much, sorry. It is OK but I think good music can really add to a game. Can I suggest getting some tips from TA? That is what I call blood stirring epic music.

Those top 3 bug are a bit of a killer, adding a lot more unwanted micro and confusion.

Hoping queuing units in a factory under construction and proper engineer supporting of one another come very soon as that will also streamline things a lot.

I kinda think resource amplifiers should be destroyed when you lose the node. It makes the price of losing the node that much higher- resources & time possibly for nothing- while also balanced against the extra resources made and the extra time it takes the enemy to capture it. Makes whether you want them on the front lines or not a more interesting choice.

I like the slight glow added to the controlled zones in the mini-map. Any chance you could make the nodes glow a bit or something like that on the actual play map as sometimes it takes a touch too long to work out if you have lost an area or who controls an area etc., especially difficult when zoomed out a bit.

Looking forward to when the AI use air and when it knows not to focus on generators to the exclusion of all else. That should make them a lot harder and change the game a fair bit.

Cheers.

Man when then AI starts using air, its going to change everything.

Ticktoc if you find a way to reproduce some of the bugs it would really help the devs pin these down. The top 2 are particularly frustrating when they happen, but I don't know that the devs really know about them because they are infrequent.

I had a group of enemy units that became invulnerable.  I was able to kill plenty of units in the area but then for whatever reason the last 20 or so units stopped losing any hp's at all.  There were 4 enemy medics present and I watched as all of the units eventually grew back to full health.  I was pounding them with multiple dreadnoughts and a horde of T2's and T3's.  The enemy units were all T2's and T3's.  I saved the game and was looking to find something to record it but when I reload the game the units just die in about 3 seconds like they should.

I have also encountered a problem when moving large groups of dreadnoughts through narrow areas where the dreadnoughts can be pushed off of cliffs into areas where they shouldn't be able to go and they get stuck there.  I have a saved game showing that but the Jink thing that stardock support recommended to record video doesn't work in game so I am not sure how to get a video of it.

The amplifier takes 4 minutes to build and does not give any benefits till it is complete.  I have tested this repeatedly and it finishes right on time and the engineer goes to the next queued item on its list.  The artists have not made a construction effect for it yet, so it will appear as if it is complete immediately.  This may be what you are seeing (that and the missing health/construction bar that got left off of this build).

I agree that we should not have used the same top piece for a relay as the generator uses.

If there was a Hyperion in the area, this is normal behavior as it has an Invulnerability field that it can autocast as well as passive heal for all units in its army.  If there was no Hyperion in vicinity, then I would like to see a save.

The nodes actually do glow in player color already, but it may be too subtle.

Yeah, a while after I had written it I realised you actually already have the foundation for that in place with the coloured swirling dots graphic. All you need to do is really let that shine/blaze more. It could be a nice effect. 

EDIT:

Just to clarify, when I said,

I am not getting that confused with when an army retreats a bit when forming to allow stragglers into their right place. I mean the units are already in a tight clump and then one (the leader I presume) will head off to the right location and the others will form up and march the other way. They went some distance before i stopped them (by disbanding army). I should have left it and watched where they went, but I had units to blow up so...

If there was a Hyperion in the area, this is normal behavior as it has an Invulnerability field that it can autocast as well as passive heal for all units in its army.  If there was no Hyperion in vicinity, then I would like to see a save.

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No, there were no enemy T3's in the area at all.  I have the save but as I said if I load it then all of the previously invulnerable units are destroyed within a few seconds just as they should be since they are massively outnumbered.  However since you mentioned it, it is possible that when the enemy units were first encountered they may have been accompanied by a hyperion.  So maybe the hyperion used its invulnerability effect before being destroyed and some bug caused it to never expire.  The healing of the units looked to be due to the medics that were already in the group of enemy units.  I actually watched this invulnerability thing for several minutes after I noticed it so the point of the save is several minutes from when it actually started.

I have trouble checking for the health/construction bars. I've just looked to see that the amplifier is at 1000/1000 (I think that was the value) and assuming it was complete.  I'll pay closer attention and see if I'm being impatient. I seem to remember, the first time I noticed it, that I had left an engineer at it for a very long time. But time's relative when playing these kinds of games!

Thanks!

I'm pretty sure the amplifier takes 120 seconds to build. Also, it occurs to me that in cases where it seemed like it took longer, there's a good chance I was at 0 metal and/or reactives, which means it would therefore take longer to build. I will keep an eye out for this going forward.