ASHES: WEEK 7 DEV Status

from AshesoftheSingularity Forums

 

Greetings!

Another week has passed and thus another update.

 

image

NEW UNIT: PHC Athena

The new PHC Athena will be going out shortly.  This won’t be DLC but rather an update to the base game. 

Backstory:

The PHC Athena was designed by Haalee, one of the architects of the PHC.  To build it, she created a new entity called Athena to specialize in militarized constructs. 

As some of you know, the PHC did not originally have armed constructs.  They were a necessity because of claim jumpers – Post-Humans who would take a planet that had been assigned to someone else.  

The Athena AI was decommissioned by Haalee at the demand of members of the PHC council who opposed the idea of an AI (such as Haalee) creating additional AIs and the design shelved.

Strengths and weaknesses

At the start of the war with the Substrate, the PHC lacked any direct counter to the Substrate Mauler or the Substrate Drone Hive.  It is important to understand that the Substrate designed its units knowing who its enemy was and thus started the way with a significant advantage. 

The Athena is the first new PHC unit to be produced since the start of the Ascension Wars.  It is very strong against Cruisers though relatively (very) weak against smaller units due to the relatively slow firing nature of its weapons array.

The Athena should be released later this Spring.

Next week we’ll be discussing the Substrate’s answer to the Artemis.

Reviews

As always, we ask that you review Ashes of the Singularity on Steam. A game’s review score determines its discoverability on Steam. Even if it’s a negative review, better to have reviews written by people who know the game than reviews written by people who spent only a few minutes playing the game.

Balance Update

We expect to release a balance update.  The main changes are that the Drone Hive will cost more metal and have reduced vision (it won’t be able to see far enough to target Archers generally) along with the Call Avatar cost increased from 35 to 50.  The Mauler has also gotten its cost increased somewhat.

Multiplayer: Season 1 standings

imageThis week marks the midway point of the first Season.

  1. DanailLazov (Substrate)
  2. DasUnding (PHC)
  3. Ailes (Substrate)
  4. LoveIsAll (Substrate)
  5. Shutdown (Substrate)

The Substrate dominance of Season 1 along with our own simulations is why we’ve been making the balance changes to Substrate these last couple of updates.

Once observer mode is in, we plan to hold a tournament at the end of the season to determine 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.  With prizes for the top 3.

At the end of the season, the maps in from Season 1 will be made into a DLC available and given to everyone who has the game at that point and made as inexpensive DLC for everyone else. 

Season 2 maps will be a substantially different style than Season 1.

Single Player: Deluxe Campaign

Today the voice overs for the updated campaign are being recorded.  We have some new characters who will be in this campaign to handle the 3 new cut scenes going in that will help flesh out the story further. Moreover, the dialog part of the game no longer takes input focus. The Deluxe campaign will be a free update to the base game. Once the Deluxe campaign is done, we’ll be moving to Episode 2 which we expect to release mid Summer.

 

More to come soon! Stay tuned

62,634 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Oh man, can't wait for the new units! Keep up the great work!

Reply #2 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top


 
Greetings!
Another week has passed and thus another update.
 


 

The PHC Athena was designed by Haalee, one of the architects of the PHC. 

More to come soon! Stay tuned

 

Thats good to know good job.

Is PETREK working on any design at this moment?

He have done a fantastic work.

DeskScapes - Bring your desktop background to life.
Reply #3 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top


At the start of the war with the Substrate, the PHC lacked any direct counter to the Substrate Mauler or the Substrate Drone Hive. It is important to understand that the Substrate designed its units knowing who its enemy was and thus started the way with a significant advantage.

Are using the current state of the game's balance as a launching point for lore? 

If so, I applaud you. 

I have to say, despite my initial reservations, the game is coming along nicely. 

Really my only complaint/concern is that more could be said about the "vision" of where the game is going. I know there is a roadmap, but I'd like to feel more assured that their are ideas brewing and not just more units and more maps.

Regardless, I think I like this games 1v1s almost as much as FAF, so color me impressed. 

Reply #4 from LittleTinyFrogs Forums Top

Quoting mbknox2, reply 3



At the start of the war with the Substrate, the PHC lacked any direct counter to the Substrate Mauler or the Substrate Drone Hive. It is important to understand that the Substrate designed its units knowing who its enemy was and thus started the way with a significant advantage.



Are using the current state of the game's balance as a launching point for lore? 

If so, I applaud you. 

I have to say, despite my initial reservations, the game is coming along nicely. 

Really my only complaint/concern is that more could be said about the "vision" of where the game is going. I know there is a roadmap, but I'd like to feel more assured that their are ideas brewing and not just more units and more maps.

Regardless, I think I like this games 1v1s almost as much as FAF, so color me impressed. 

If you want to check out the game's lore, the book, Dawn of the Singularity, just came out on Kindle today: http://amzn.to/1XvLtuo :)

Reply #5 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I do hope you guys don't over commit to the campaign.

It's not that it couldn't use improvement, but rather that I think I've played a lot of Stardock games, and while you guys set up some great environments and lore, I've not seen anything supporting a story based campaign being one of your strong points.

I'd say it's absolutely worth polishing out the annoying bits of the campaign (intrusive dialog pop ups, irritating camera hijacking), but I worry you won't see much return on the overhauls you're talking about. 

Overall, my only feedback on the campaign would be to focus less on actually telling the story and more on making the individual levels more appealing as re-playable scenarios, which isn't the case now as most of the missions are limited by the tutorial style difficulty curve, and again, by the frequent interruptions to actually playing the game to 'tell the story' (camera and dialog).

If nothing else, having voiced dialog and cinematics should make it easier to tell the story without actually interfering with playing the game as it does now, and I look forward to that. 

Reply #6 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 4

If you want to check out the game's lore, the book, Dawn of the Singularity, just came out on Kindle today: http://amzn.to/1XvLtuo :)

Huh, didn't see it mentioned before that the game is based off that book?

https://www.ashesofthesingularity.com/game/lore

Reply #7 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting BadVoltage, reply 6


Quoting Frogboy,
reply 4


If you want to check out the game's lore, the book, Dawn of the Singularity, just came out on Kindle today: http://amzn.to/1XvLtuo :)



Huh, didn't see it mentioned before that the game is based off that book?

https://www.ashesofthesingularity.com/game/lore

And you haven't seen that mentioned now. Other way around if anything. It's companion content, not the source of the games conception.