Ashes: August 2015 FAQ » Forum Post by Frogboy

Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2394

One thing I can definitely say is the the founder feedback has been very helpful.

A lot of these things are on the table. I wish you had our current build. It can't be sent soon enough to you guys.

We aren't married to a particular game mechanic. What we are married to are certain broader concepts such as: Infinite turtling / rewarding the player who doesn't expand. Originally, the goal of the logistics array was going to be like the solar panels in TA/SupCom. But they have increasingly been proving to simply not be fun.

Resource management discussion

Right now, a given region has to be captured and then you can build your metal extractors and radioactive harvesters. This is providing to be less...fun than originally envisioned.

In Company of Heroes, capturing the region gave you a specific resource: Logistics, Fuel, Munitions. But we feel this may be an oversimplification (we want players choosing what their engineers are doing).

Anyone have thoughts on this?

General scale challenges

Another thing that is proving "not very fun" is the idea of having units with active special abilities (ones you are expected to manage yourself). This is because on the larger maps, you might have 5 or 6 major battles occuring at once and it gets frantic trying to jump back and forth (and remember what unit capabilities are there). In a game like Starcraft, you usually have 1 stack (the pros will often have only 2 or 3). A novice player in Ashes will likely have 3 or 4 armies minimum.

One idea we're playing around with is having global actions. Things you, the player, can do on the map. Sort of like Company of Heroes where if you have enough munitions, you can call down an air strike or additional special units into an area.

What say you?

Front Line issues

Another challenge is having front lines. Right now, you can have a big army guarding a region and the enemy can walk right through it. Sure, it'll take casualties but they can still basically bypass your army. Now, the obvious solution is to create a zone of control where they siimply can't drive through your units. But that creates quite a nasty path finding challenge along with UI feedback (I tell my army to go to X and they get "stuck" half way because they ran into the front lines).

Any thoughts on this?

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 29

Front Line issues

Another challenge is having front lines. Right now, you can have a big army guarding a region and the enemy can walk right through it. Sure, it'll take casualties but they can still basically bypass your army. Now, the obvious solution is to create a zone of control where they siimply can't drive through your units. But that creates quite a nasty path finding challenge along with UI feedback (I tell my army to go to X and they get "stuck" half way because they ran into the front lines).

Any thoughts on this?

I believe as you balance the units more that problem will solve by itself. Zone of control sounds bad, as you said, because it creates more problems that would be harder to solve.

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 29

One thing I can definitely say is the the founder feedback has been very helpful.

A lot of these things are on the table. I wish you had our current build. It can't be sent soon enough to you guys.

We aren't married to a particular game mechanic. What we are married to are certain broader concepts such as: Infinite turtling / rewarding the player who doesn't expand. Originally, the goal of the logistics array was going to be like the solar panels in TA/SupCom. But they have increasingly been proving to simply not be fun.

Resource management discussion

Right now, a given region has to be captured and then you can build your metal extractors and radioactive harvesters. This is providing to be less...fun than originally envisioned.

In Company of Heroes, capturing the region gave you a specific resource: Logistics, Fuel, Munitions. But we feel this may be an oversimplification (we want players choosing what their engineers are doing).

Anyone have thoughts on this?

General scale challenges

Another thing that is proving "not very fun" is the idea of having units with active special abilities (ones you are expected to manage yourself). This is because on the larger maps, you might have 5 or 6 major battles occuring at once and it gets frantic trying to jump back and forth (and remember what unit capabilities are there). In a game like Starcraft, you usually have 1 stack (the pros will often have only 2 or 3). A novice player in Ashes will likely have 3 or 4 armies minimum.

One idea we're playing around with is having global actions. Things you, the player, can do on the map. Sort of like Company of Heroes where if you have enough munitions, you can call down an air strike or additional special units into an area.

What say you?

Front Line issues

Another challenge is having front lines. Right now, you can have a big army guarding a region and the enemy can walk right through it. Sure, it'll take casualties but they can still basically bypass your army. Now, the obvious solution is to create a zone of control where they siimply can't drive through your units. But that creates quite a nasty path finding challenge along with UI feedback (I tell my army to go to X and they get "stuck" half way because they ran into the front lines).

Any thoughts on this?

My sense is that you'll have plenty of thoughts on these issues given this group . Here are my two cents:

Resource management discussion

Capturing resources through simple regional control could be appealing given the scale envisaged for this game. It also moves AoS away from the traditional micro-play that many RTS games force on players, and frees you up to focus more on overall battle strategies. Engineers would still be important for building structures, etc. Perhaps the happy medium is to get resources for capturing each region while enabling engineers to build structures in those regions that enhance their production of specific resources. You could also require that engineers build some kind of structure within the region to "claim" it for your side. While it was turn-based, I found Endless Legend's approach to regions and resources very refreshing.

Some may disagree, but I've always found engineer micro annoying in general. The less I have to direct them everywhere the better in my book.

It would be interesting if you worked in something akin to "Artifacts" from Sins into certain regions; although this might be beyond scope.

General scale challenges

I wondered how individual unit abilities would work when things got heated on big maps. I could live without unit-by-unit special abilities. AoS bakes some of this in already with the meta-unit concept and buffs depending on the units grouped together anyway.

I like the idea of global actions a lot. I think it meshes better with the overall less micro is better approach, while still giving players a way to skillfully influence the outcome of specific battles. A twist on the global actions concept would be the ability to deploy special weapons or perks to units that enhance their abilities for a time. These actions could be taken globally, but they would give perks to a specific unit or units. Even if five battles are raging, you should be able to keep track of which unit you deployed an uber cannon to on one side of the map, and which unit you enabled to fire more artillery on the other side -- particularly if you can actually see the effects somehow.

Front Line issues

This is an interesting one. What if you used a modified zone of control approach, where units could move through enemy zones of control and basically bypass the "front lines", but suffer significant attack/movement penalties because they are "cut off" from their supply/communications/logistics lines? You could also have one or two units able to ignore these effects to enable guerrilla/harassment tactics -- maybe make air units immune.

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ASADDF

Join Date 02/2008

+50

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 29

Resource management discussion

My opinion here is let the player build metal extractors and radioactive harvesters anywhere in the map without needing to take a region, But if you do take a region and secure that region by building a logistic array in it then you get the buffs that the region will give you.

In company of heroes you always get Logistics, Fuel, Munitions at a very low speed having or not a region. But when you take a region you start getting more resource from that specific region.

As i see it, there is a big problem right now, there is so many rules put in the game, (Need regions to get Power--->>>need power to get Structures--->>>Need Structures to get units. ) not acceptable in an RTS game, or well it makes the game very hard and not fun. Those rules need to be changed.

So if i don't have a region then i cannot play the game lol.
Everyone here know that in an RTS game we need to go and destroy the Enemy in every-way possible, taking regions or not, we need to go out there from my home-base to win the game by destroying the enemy or the other objective that i never liked is taking regions and wait to win points to lets say (1000) and win the game without fighting a war.
Those are 2 different ways of playing an RTS game, i prefer the first one ala C&C.

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 29

General scale challenges

I Think some special Units in AOTS need to have Passive Special Abilities (always on), but to get them you need to do research on them, a unit that have 2 cannons early in game, by researching that unit will get a third cannon and if you further research it then you may get a special Passive abilitie or maybe speed or armor. Things like that.

Frogboy in C&C Generals you have the Overlord, its a China Faction Unit, if you research that unit you get something really interesting. a Total of 5 researches for that unit that you choose, Some of those are ( Propaganda Tower, Gattling Cannon, Battle Bunker. ) what you do is that you choose that unit and decide with research you want to upgrade on that unit slot, you can choose up to 2 upgrades per Overlord from all the upgrades that you researched, Those upgrades are passive, they work alone so wont need to click on any units.

So lets say in AOTS You research different things to add on empty slots on a Prometheus. Lets say there is 6 different research for that T3 Unit, but that unit only have 2 free Slots to put what you researched, that's were you come and decide what of those 6 researched you want to put on those empty slots, you can call it a customized Prometheus at late game, having that option for those custom upgrades on only T3 and Future T4 units while on T1 and T2 units the upgrades are just basic.
Just imagine having 3-T3 Prometheus and each with different upgrades in it, really cool and interesting what the players can do.

I love the global actions idea in the game, that's a yes for sure, but do not make those actions invincible, what i am trying to say is, when you are sending 5 big heavy bombers to a location they have to come from somewhere out of the map, so if the enemy have some anti air defenses and the bombers pass through those defenses then you may loose 3 of those 5 bombers. it makes the game more interesting because you need to know where to send them or you will loose them. My best Example is C&C Generals, i really loved that game so much. it was really fun to play and use those Global Actions, just look into it as an idea.

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 29

Front Line issues

Just keep the Units the same way, i like it. Maybe do more damage from the side and back part of the units? or add some more Defensive Structures, having a big army guarding a region, for me i will take that army and move it to the front while i leave small ones and some defensive structures guarding a location.

Plus we Should have more ways to stop a big army, like Bombers or not sure what the Dev's have in mind. Some new units or structures?

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Frogboy, I totally agree with auto-casting however, we need adjustable parameters for when/how we want our units to use said ability when auto-cast is turned on.

And I agree with these comments:

Quoting ASADDF,

reply 32

I Think some special Units in AOTS need to have Passive Special Abilities (always on), but to get them you need to do research on them, a unit that have 2 cannons early in game, by researching that unit will get a third cannon and if you further research it then you may get a special Passive abilitie or maybe speed or armor. Things like that.

Quoting ASADDF,

reply 32

So lets say in AOTS You research different things to add on empty slots on a Prometheus. Lets say there is 6 different research for that T3 Unit, but that unit only have 2 free Slots to put what you researched, that's were you come and decide what of those 6 researched you want to put on those empty slots, you can call it a customized Prometheus at late game, having that option for those custom upgrades on only T3 and Future T4 units while on T1 and T2 units the upgrades are just basic.
Just imagine having 3-T3 Prometheus and each with different upgrades in it, really cool and interesting what the players can do.

I love the global actions idea in the game, that's a yes for sure, but do not make those actions invincible, what i am trying to say is, when you are sending 5 big heavy bombers to a location they have to come from somewhere out of the map, so if the enemy have some anti air defenses and the bombers pass through those defenses then you may loose 3 of those 5 bombers. it makes the game more interesting because you need to know where to send them or you will loose them. My best Example is C&C Generals, i really loved that game so much. it was really fun to play and use those Global Actions, just look into it as an idea.

Quoting AoWFever,

reply 31

It would be interesting if you worked in something akin to "Artifacts" from Sins into certain regions; although this might be beyond scope.

Quoting AoWFever,

reply 31

I like the idea of global actions a lot. I think it meshes better with the overall less micro is better approach, while still giving players a way to skillfully influence the outcome of specific battles. A twist on the global actions concept would be the ability to deploy special weapons or perks to units that enhance their abilities for a time. These actions could be taken globally, but they would give perks to a specific unit or units. Even if five battles are raging, you should be able to keep track of which unit you deployed an uber cannon to on one side of the map, and which unit you enabled to fire more artillery on the other side -- particularly if you can actually see the effects somehow.

Quoting AoWFever,

reply 31

Front Line issues

This is an interesting one. What if you used a modified zone of control approach, where units could move through enemy zones of control and basically bypass the "front lines", but suffer significant attack/movement penalties because they are "cut off" from their supply/communications/logistics lines? You could also have one or two units able to ignore these effects to enable guerrilla/harassment tactics -- maybe make air units immune.

Quoting ASADDF,

reply 32

Plus we Should have more ways to stop a big army, like Bombers or not sure what the Dev's have in mind. Some new units or structures?

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I'm confused how Turtling is a problem when you have Turinium.
If you're all holed up in your base, the other player/team will be in control of the land and will eventually reach your "victory point limit" or (the same thing but way cooler) be able to afford massive superweapons.
Basically if you hole up, the other team will control the map until they can build the big bad wolf (with Turinium) and blow your little house down.

The game in general is in danger of having too many resources. You might need simplification.
1) Max 2 unlimited resources which depend on generators or extractors. (Supreme Commander this is "power" and metal)

2) The win resource for controlling most of the map for a certain point of time. (Turinium.)

That's all you need. Keep it simple.
At the moment Power is working the same as Turinium the same as logistics and its all getting too complicated because they all do the same thing.

HOWEVER:
If you want to make things interesting, you need to look at resources that do something different to the above functions.

3) Technology: different because it builds nothing. It unlocks things. That said, a prerequisite build order already acts as technology.

4) Region specific bonuses: A resource which only can be used within that region.

When I first read about radioactives, this is what I thought you meant. A local resource which offers bonuses to a specific region, forcing smart players to adapt their tactics based on the region they're trying to take, and based on the region they're launching their assault from.

That would be interesting and innovative.

We atalk about this in the next post:
https://forums.ashesofthesingularity.com/470027/page/1/#3579385

Essentially the problem I see is the game is going to have like 8 resources doing 3 things. Don't do that.

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Frogboy,

Q: What are global abilities?
[/quote]

General scale challenges

1) I think it's fair to say that orbital bombardments, global scans etc. would be much the norm to warefare given the time period we are in! What I don't want to see is drastically OP abilities, like an entire army being smashed by an orbital bombardment. I'd like to see more "debuff" and support global actions. EMP strikes that prevent an army from moving for a few seconds etc.

Have you heard of a strategy game called R.U.S.E? In RUSE you could use abilities that allowed for dummy tank assaults, decoy buildings, radio silence to hide your units, camouflage nets to hide your buildings from artillery, reverse Intel (tanks look like infantry and infantry look like tanks to your enemy) and more. These are the kinds of global abilities I'd like to see, ones that really need some wit to use well. RUSE did use regions like CoH, and these abilities would only affect specific regions.

I do not think active abilities should be in the game. It would make unneeded maintenance on your units. Besides, I see that a meta unit will receive buffs from other units grouped in the meta unit. I think this is all that needs to be done in terms of abilities on a unit level. It seems AoTS is going for a strategic basis on game play, so let's keep it like that, and shy away from the tactical game play of CoH.

Also, RUSE had an interesting take on strategic zoom. Zoomed in you would have 5 tanks, but if you zoomed out far enough, these 5 tanks would grow into 1 large tank you would command around. More tanks would equal a bigger stack, and you would command these just as a general would, ergo, telling large stacks where to go, and not really bothering about the actual combat (that's for your subordinates!). Just some food for thought. I could see this being a great option for the "strategic map" coupled with whatever other ideas you have for it! I think it would be well worth picking up RUSE and playing it for a few days to gain some unique insight if you guys haven't already

Q: Will you let us build stuff even when the amount of a resource is fully depleted?

A: We are still debating this. It’s a really tough call because we are trying to keep people from wrecking themselves by over spending. I think what will happen is that once the UI catches up to make it easy to tell what is sucking up your stuff and turning it off we’ll have more options.

2) Please please please PLEASE allow us to build while stalling. The current mechanic cuts into the flow of things. Also, there is currently no way to quickly cancel an entire factories build que, or to quickly pause many engineer's projects. Imagine this happening across ten's of factories, and many engineers doing many things at the same time. Sometimes I want to start a project right now, and then spend the next 30 seconds pausing/canceling other projects and/or adjusting build capacity. In the current state, I have to first cancel and pause everything, and THEN start my new project. It's just less efficient. If I come up with an idea let me start it right NOW! If I need defenses up ASAP, let me start them NOW! Just punish me on a further stalled eco instead.

Also you have to consider that balancing your economy is a skill. Why not keep it that way

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A) Will any form of reclaim mechanic be added to the game?

How do the passive buffs that a specific unit gives to a meta unit work? So if I have 100 brutes and 1 scout, do all 100 brutes receive what I recall is the range buff from the 1 scout? Or is this is a localized idea? Meaning that only the brutes near the scout receive the range buff?

Thanks

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Quoting shurtugalll,

reply 35

Q: Will you let us build stuff even when the amount of a resource is fully depleted?

A: We are still debating this. It’s a really tough call because we are trying to keep people from wrecking themselves by over spending. I think what will happen is that once the UI catches up to make it easy to tell what is sucking up your stuff and turning it off we’ll have more options.
2) Please please please PLEASE allow us to build while stalling. The current mechanic cuts into the flow of things. Also, there is currently no way to quickly cancel an entire factories build que, or to quickly pause many engineer's projects. Imagine this happening across ten's of factories, and many engineers doing many things at the same time. Sometimes I want to start a project right now, and then spend the next 30 seconds pausing/canceling other projects and/or adjusting build capacity. In the current state, I have to first cancel and pause everything, and THEN start my new project. It's just less efficient. If I come up with an idea let me start it right NOW! If I need defenses up ASAP, let me start them NOW! Just punish me on a further stalled eco instead.

Also you have to consider that balancing your economy is a skill. Why not keep it that way

I agree with all of this -- economy management should be considered a skill -- it is in real life, so why not in AoS too? If a player wrecks himself/herself by overspending that's kind of his/her problem.

This post reminded me of my biggest of very few gripes about Sins -- the way it handled manufacturing. I always felt like Sins suffered from the lack of a central manufacturing screen (like the research screen) or at least a less intrusive global overlay where you could see what all your construction yards were doing at any given time, give orders to yards in various gravity wells, etc.

This resulted in a lot of clicking different planets and zoom in/zoom out whiplash (particularly with multiple galaxies) to queue new units and to create rally points for individual planets and construction yards. Ultimately, I ended up building a lot of shipyards along the way that became unused as I conquered more and more planets, and then I built a few strategically located uber manufacturing planets in each galaxy to pump out the units I needed and assigned it a hot key to avoid all the zooming in/zooming out. I virtually always played the Vasari because their use of jump gates facilitated my centralized manufacturing/war machine approach.

For AoS, I'd love the ability to zoom out and toggle a manufacturing overlay of some kind that shows all of my factories, what all of them are producing, and where the units they create are going; as well as the ability to shift rally points from this screen. It would also be nice to be able to make global and/or factory-specific manufacturing adjustments from this interface to help with econ. management.

I'd never heard of R.U.S.E. before but it looks worth checking out. Thanks for the rec.

+1

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eviator

Join Date 08/2014

+62

Front Line Issues: Front lines work in real war because if you were to try to just go through it, you'd have devastating casualties. You need to make that happen.

It seems to me you could benefit from a kind of "mine field" mechanic, though not permanent in the conventional sense. The main purpose of a mine field isn't actually to blow things up, which of course it does, it is meant to force the enemy to take a different route, or slow them down, WAY down. You have to sweep for mines in order to progress, a process that takes a long time. Now since we're talking centuries in the future, you probably don't have mines in the conventional sense, you have nanobot fields or drone fields. A bot field. You wouldn't have to worry about path finding issues because the units could still make their way through

The bot field could do a variety of things that would make pushing through the bot field dangerous. First, it slows the enemy units way down. Second, it makes them more vulnerable to damage. Third, it decreases their fire rate, power, and/or accuracy. That way if the units try to push through your front line, whether that line is a defensive setup with turrets or a large battle group, you plop down the bot field on or in front of them, and they take heavy casualties. Or you drop it behind them to cut off their retreat. If you don't have any units or structures nearby you can still place down the bot field in front of the enemy just to slow them down to give you time to gather your units.

One problem with the mine field mechanic is that it might encourage turtling. That is why I think you do NOT make bot fields permanent like a structure. You make it a researchable global ability that you place down in an area of effect, it lasts for X seconds, it consumes resources when/while you "cast" it, and/or it has a cooldown. Furthermore, you could consider an anti-bot field global ability that nullifies the effects of bot fields in the specified area of effect. To balance the anti-bot field you may need to make it attainable later in the game, more expensive, and/or longer cooldown.

Another problem is you probably don't allow it to be used offensively, which might be difficult to balance. So you can only place it in regions you control or perhaps a little further.

Bot fields open up a huge array of potential research: cheaper, shorter cooldown, longer duration, more effective, larger area of effect, placeable in 2+ locations simultaneously, more range (if you do want to allow it to be used offensively late game), special effects (e.g. some units shut down for a short period of time, energy drains from the enemy units and goes into your stockpile, some enemy units shoot at each other while in the field, you could really have some creative fun here).

Maybe it's just me, but I think this idea could open up a lot of tactics and strategy to make the game more fun, but not too much complexity to make it hard to understand.

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 29

Resource management discussion

As I mentioned in the "Ashes: Setup options" post, regions work fine in a game like CoH where the game is mainly tactically based and not strategically based. Also, CoH is on a significantly smaller scale.

For strategy games of this type (large scale, resources points around the map etc.), I feel there are three general ways in which to distribute resources:

- Large Zones (CoH 1 and 2) --> use regions to generate resources

- High density clusters (Star Craft 1 and 2, Homeworld 1 and 2) --> Cluster resources in specific areas that absolutely force a player to build a base there. Everything else is essentially "dead space".

- Dotted distribution (Supreme Commander Forged Alliance, Age of Empires to some extent) --> Plot mass points around the map, with certain areas having more of them, ergo making them more important, and thus making them a "region" in their own right.

I feel that forcing hundreds to tens of thousands of units to constantly fight over multiple specific points would make the game less fluid and place the game "on rails" per say. Games will end up following similar paths, and fighting will always be centered in specific regions. If you take an enemy territory, it will be fairly obvious where the next target will be. And so on and so forth. This works with CoH due to the limited unit number and terrain diversity, but these factors just don't apply that much to the scale of AoTS.

I really do enjoy the Sup Com method because it "artificially" creates important regions on the map due to mass clusters, but still has open fluidity. You are not constantly forced to specific points on the map. Coupling this with reclaim creates additional artificial "regions" to fight over. Also, due to mass extractors being dotted in outlying/obscure areas, there is ample opportunity for raiding parties.

So yes I am suggesting to potentially drop the region mechanic. I love the idea of power and logistics working together to prevent turtling, but I think the regions need to go to create more "free" game play. There has to be another way to go about this. Technically, so long as the counters to turtling are resource efficient, the turtler will always be a leg down.

BUT...

I just had this thought while typing this and didn't want to just throw the above out.. I might be under estimating the scale of AoTS. I can see how on a huge map (I multiply the biggest map from FA several times), that regions could actually be a good way to go.. I could see a player re-enacting Sherman's March to the Sea on large map where he managed to squeeze by a sizable force and choke his opponent economically... though I still feel similar mechanics could be employed without regions.

I guess at this point I have to wait to see more of AoTS to see what works better.. sorry for the wall of text =\

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Also, if the region mechanic is here to stay, allow me to suggest this. People have asked about "capping" the region, as in CoH. However, maybe consider something else from "R.U.S.E". In RUSE you build supply depots on predetermined regions, but you did not get supplies instantly. Instead, trucks would depart from the supply depot periodically, and only once they reached your HQ would you get supplies.

Not much needs to be said about how much logistical depth this added multiplayer as trucks could be destroyed en route.

Perhaps in AoTS you could "cap" a region by building a "metal refinery" or something on it. This would then send refinery trucks back to your seed for additional resources. This would function similar to how trade and refinery ships did in Sins of Solar Empire.

However, I think in AoTS you should go a step further. Add the ability to capture these refinery trucks and steal them! Allow meta units to have a toggle such as "do not engage economy based buildings" to avoid destroying them, and have a way to capture trucks. This could add some extra spice to the game given the ability to capture enemy buildings as well (from factories or extractors).

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 29

Front Line issues

4) I would again say this is hard to give a good answer to because of how early into the game we are. But by far I think the biggest culprint is how strong single units are coupled with lack of abilities/firepower to deal with them.

Currently I think this becomes an issue due to unit balance. Single units are relatively "tanky". I've noticed that even if I stack 5-8 units before I leave my seed, it takes those 5-8 quite a bit of time to kill just 1 creep, and a significant amount of time to clear out and capture my starting regions. This seems to be why "running through" seems so easy to do, since just don't die!

- I'm sure AoTS could add side and rear shot penalties. However, if you run through, technically, both sides would more or less have equal flanking opportunities so this is not much of a solution. If turrets work independently (which I think you said they do), this is even more true.

- Either reduce health or increase damage to reduce "tanky" nature of units. It seems that despite a unit consisting of 3 tanks, each tank takes damage individually, and when that unit loses tanks, that unit looses damage output. Is this correct? I ask because a solution to this could be to makes units consistent of 1 tank only, so they die faster, but if they are considered single units as a squad then it is the same thing

But most importantly..

- The numbers game/Unit diversity. Biggest reason of why I'd say this problem can't be perfectly solved this early in development.

You have to keep in mind, that if 500 brutes attack 500 brutes, it's not a 500 v 500 battle. It's only the front lines units firing while the rest mill around doing nothing. This is only changed by "running through", to forcibly engage more units at the same time. In which case, the leading units would slowly get chewed up, and the result would be more or less be an equal exchange by both sides. The only way to change this outcome with homogeneous units is positioning. One side would have to outmaneuver the other so that it somehow attack with a greater concentration of fire power in a certain area (imagine a line of 20 brutes wide attack a column of brutes 10 wide. The 20 unit wide would win since they could bring more damage to bear quicker).

This is the reason why "pro" players in FAF always tech relatively early. Because a t2 unit has more health, more range, and does more damage. Essentially it is more "condensed" firepower, and allowing you to bring more damage to bear at once (since you could only get so many t1 tanks shooting at once).

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So, one way to adjust run bys? Be able to manually set and drag formations, or alter them as you like. Right now meta units always seem to follow certain static formations, so we lose this freedom of positioning.

However, this can best be changed with more unit diversity. Units that offer more passive abilities to allies, units that disrupt the attacking enemy, units that have different damage statistics based on how far their target is etc.

For example, right now I feel archers/artillery is semi irrelevant. Why bother when I can just bulldoze my way through with brutes, heavy tanks, and t3 ships. I only throw in artillery for the buffs it gives to the meta units. If artillery was more powerful, run bys could be softened more. This idea can be expanded on with additional units/abilities.

At this point I think I have to leave my arguments until you guys get the next patch out and I can rethink it all with what you guys add. But I hope it helped pick your brains a bit!

P.S.

I hope this doesn't sound to egocentric, but could a developer reply to this so I know my posts are even being read . Just want to make sure the effort to type this out is not falling on deaf ears

Thanks

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 29

One thing I can definitely say is the the founder feedback has been very helpful.

A lot of these things are on the table. I wish you had our current build. It can't be sent soon enough to you guys.

We aren't married to a particular game mechanic. What we are married to are certain broader concepts such as: Infinite turtling / rewarding the player who doesn't expand. Originally, the goal of the logistics array was going to be like the solar panels in TA/SupCom. But they have increasingly been proving to simply not be fun.

Resource management discussion

Right now, a given region has to be captured and then you can build your metal extractors and radioactive harvesters. This is providing to be less...fun than originally envisioned.

In Company of Heroes, capturing the region gave you a specific resource: Logistics, Fuel, Munitions. But we feel this may be an oversimplification (we want players choosing what their engineers are doing).

Anyone have thoughts on this?

General scale challenges

Another thing that is proving "not very fun" is the idea of having units with active special abilities (ones you are expected to manage yourself). This is because on the larger maps, you might have 5 or 6 major battles occuring at once and it gets frantic trying to jump back and forth (and remember what unit capabilities are there). In a game like Starcraft, you usually have 1 stack (the pros will often have only 2 or 3). A novice player in Ashes will likely have 3 or 4 armies minimum.

One idea we're playing around with is having global actions. Things you, the player, can do on the map. Sort of like Company of Heroes where if you have enough munitions, you can call down an air strike or additional special units into an area.

What say you?

Front Line issues

Another challenge is having front lines. Right now, you can have a big army guarding a region and the enemy can walk right through it. Sure, it'll take casualties but they can still basically bypass your army. Now, the obvious solution is to create a zone of control where they siimply can't drive through your units. But that creates quite a nasty path finding challenge along with UI feedback (I tell my army to go to X and they get "stuck" half way because they ran into the front lines).

Any thoughts on this?

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="29" id="3578939"]

Resource management discussion

the way i see it, this is not as fun as envisioned because it promotes snowball effects. Basically the one who expands better is guaranteed to win.

or worse and that's probably the most likely scenario:

a meta will establish, where both sides just go for the closest regions each, sent out a couple of scouts to prevent losses from raiding parties. therefore the game will start with both sides beaing equal. Now a turtle fest will begin where both sides establish their infrastructures and armies while scouting each other out and trying to counter the enemies meta unit compositions. - you should have a lookt at Etherium, it's basically a very dumbed down and simplified version of AOTS and that is exactly what happens every game: either one side gets crushed from the start or both sides begin to turtle until one side makes a mistake.

so what can we learn from supcom? gaining more resources should at first cost resources! Every expasnion is a longterm trade vs short term advantage, thus players can counter rapid expansion by rushing units. I believe this is the sole reason why no supcom game is ever the same even if two players play against each other for the 200th time. Me and my friend we now played roughly 1000 games together and against each other and it has never been the same. That kind of resource dynamic just establishes a very fluent economy and meta game where the players can decide how fast the game progresses and in which direction. One side can force early skirmishes. or both sides decide to eco up and then throw Huge T3 armies against each other or anything within that spectrum. I think a good game simply shouldn't dictate how the game is ment to progress.

now that being said, I would try instead of creating fixed regions to let players decide themselves how they set themselves up on the map. one could for instance increase the size of buildings, simply making space a limiting factor. even on setons beach spot i find myself running out of building space a lot of times while my unit cap isn't reached at all. Right now you also have the problem that Power seems to be the limiting factor to everything and this causes for a doubled effect when you consider that power limits resource gain and unit caps and buildings AND the size of your penis( sry ) . while resource limitations on the other hand limit the number of units as well. For the player this is not just a redundancy it is a nuisence. I get aggravated a lot of times cause i suddenly run out logstics and i get even more frustrated when i then crash my eco due to trying to catch up on logistics and when i then also realize the enemies penis is bigger than mine, then I just know I'm in for a bad day( ok enough with the jokes =D ) . Like i said in my other post i believe this adds another layer of complexity of a kind that lowers the fun instead of promoting it - because there actually is no real decision to be made here:

try to expand as quickly as possible->Build units till you reach unit cap-> icrease unit cap-> repeat.

This is what the economy offers so far to me - but hell I'm by no means an expert of this game yet =D as a matter of fact i have only ever managed to fully use up my power once due to the scarcity of resources themselves - but this is exactly why power isn't even needed - playing against bots i have like 75% of the map i build all the metal and secondary resource i can and i still can't manage to reach the power cap cause I can't build enough, especially not when i focus and building armies and raising unit cap, so whats the point of power at all? Power would only become relevant if the game would last over 1 and 1/2 hours which in theorie is definitely possible but usually not very desirable.

There is another example from earth 2140 and 2150 ->btw next to Supcom one of the best rts i played. why not the good old classic resource transporter? once you conquer a region (if you really must have the fixed regions) have some form of aerial/ground/both? transporter who delivers the resources to the base instead of the steady income. The transporters are spawned free and frequently and disappear in the base. Thus the damage done to eco is not as devastating should a raid occur( in earth 2140 recourses were often very far away from your main base and an evil spirited rush could entirely shut down your eco cause resource miners cost resources, thus if you are hit in the wrong moment and you have 0 resources you can't rebuild the resource miner and the eco came to a stop )

I also just recalled another problem that may arise but I haven't fully tested out yet:

4 power grant you 10 t1 units, or 1 t3 unit or 4 defensive structures. Now usually defensive structures are very cost efficient because else theres no reason to build them due to the disadvantage of having no mobility. But from what i know those 10 t1 units could probably destroy the 4 defensive structures let alone 1 t3 unit. this of course is disregarding the metal costs but still it's something to keep an eye on.

General scale challenges

I think global ultimate like abilities can certainly enrich the game. But abilities of that kind really mustnt be linked to a gatherable resource. it would only add to the frustration of the already losing party.I'd add abilities of that kind only in a way that they are usable for both parties frequently and equaly. players could choose one special advantage like an air strike or reinforcements and with that follow certain strategies.
reinforcements and air strikes could then be placed globably at certain intervals, allowing for backdooring threads from the reinforcements to disrubt supply lines or a devastating air strike turning a large skirmish towards your favour. But i'd save those ideas till the very end cause they are more of a gimmick and should only add to strategical depth and not be part of the games core.

Front Line issues

pathfinding is very nasty and resource heavy. I wouldn't go with unit collision, this makes pathfinding just go nuts. But in Etherium many units are capable of supression fire meaning once that unit shoots at an enemy unit it gets slowed down significantly. That would be one possibility.But make no mistake, rushing past enemy fortifications is one of the key strategies to break turtles or simply harrass the enemy. So i would either add special units that only have that ability or have special "raiders" who can not be supressed. I think rushing past fortifications should remain a valid strategy.

Something tells me you won't like this idea but I'll say it anyway. Every good strategy game has functioning walls that serve that one purpose. AoE, Earth 2140,supcom,Battle Realms(such a nice game too ) and even in SC II there are very important ways of walling, that are key to not losing instantly. This game plays in the future, don't tell me those two races never developed the concept of a wall =D just put it in there! This will allow good players to rush in before a wall is built and on the other hand allow warry defenders to build walls fast enough to block of rush attacks, once again the players can now decide how the game will develope. Id go with Supcoms concept tho: very cheap/ strong early / increasingly useless mid to lategame.

now the last one i just thought of when i remembert the series Vikings i hope you watched it =D it is epic. While this will screw pathfinding completely and really just fits melee combat style with sword and shield, it would still be somewhat funny. first of all in battle realms when one units attacked another the defender was forced into a fight renderig him unable to just run past him. Formations like in total war =D are also quite funny. there could be special units that block movement and then others that can break through those units. but i doubt this would really fit into the theme of AOTS.

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Hi, new to the forums here but I have read over this entire thread and have a few opinions on the topics at hand.

Regarding Resources, I think not going to complex is a good thing. I played Supcom, and still do FAForever!, and the metal/energy resource aspect is easy to understand and use. However, even in it's simplicity there are a ton of strategies revolving around it. Different combinations/build orders to keep your energy/metal levels in the green. Should I put my early mass and energy into units or focus onto buildings/resources?

I think having generators spread around the map is not a great idea, personally. I understand why they are pushing in this direction, to limit turtling, but I don't think this is the right approach. Why should you remove the possibility of a player to turtle? You are removing a great strategic and military aspect of warfare - all through history we've seen nations turtle and defend hardcore. If a player decides to turtle early on, then they are already shooting themselves in the foot because 1. They are using resources on defense structures to turtle - which means they are not spending it on units and 2. They are losing map control. These things happen automatically without ever having to restrict player's by placing generators around the map - which limits the amount of buildings/units one can have. I think removing this limitation is a much better option.

If I were to face a player who decides to turtle, and I have in many strategy games, they will lose the game. Because, I gain map control - which allows me to expand freely and garner resources to myself. Supremecommander had a great design in this aspect, while player's were free to turtle - they still would be hard pressed because they were giving up mass extractors. But, putting into place a system that doesn't' allow this and actually places limitations on unit/building numbers by how much power you have...I don't necessarily like at all and I feel that it is unneeded. Every Strategy game fan knows that turtling players always lose - and I have great joy in busting open their defenses. It really feels like warfare when you are hammering their defenses with artillery while sending hundreds/thousands of units crashing against their defenses. You are eliminating this entire spectacular spectacle from ever happening which is a shame. Also, from what I have read - the vast majority of the players here do not like this current system at all and actually enjoy turtling sometimes - even if they lose because of it.

Max 4 Human Players: I think this is a regress absolutely, I'm not saying we need 30+ players like PA offers, or even the 12 that Supcom supports, but I think having support for 8 players is a good option. For one, having more players gives a greater sense of strategy and actual warfare and 2. it's just funner. Grey Goo has a hard limit onto 4 players, and honestly after awhile it got Extremely boring playing only 2v2,1v1, or ffa..I have several friends who are interested in this game; and the fact that we all cant be on the same team verse other human players really is shattering. I buy games mainly for the multiplayer focus and so do they. We all play Supcom/SINS and love how vast and how many players we can have in games.

Especially now that you all have done a fantastic job on creating an engine that can support such large maps and number of units - it would be a shame to restrict it to only 4 human players. It would a lot of fun to have a ''Galactic War'' Game type, where two teams of 4 are battling it out over several planets. Have a Planet split up by huge regions and players battling over these regions. You can coordinate with other players on where to attack yet and where to focus your defenses. Lost this planet? Fight for the next one. That right there is warfare and ties into your ''WW2 in space'' concept that I read in here.

Region Based System: I feel that this system has it's good and bad aspects. For Good aspects 1. It does push players to fight over the entire map, and just at a single point; 2. It encourages having many battles at different areas of the map at once and 3. it does give a sense of shifting ''front lines'' when you take or lose territory - similar to Company of Heroes. Bad Aspect 1. It removes some strategy and it forces players to usually fight a certain way, this ties into the resource system somewhat. 2. You cant get more structures or units without capturing zones. I think instead of having generators in these regions that you need to capture, how about removing that and instead replacing it with some sort of capturable defensible structure? Like an HQ hub that you could build walls around with defenses and factories. Without even having the generators in these zones, players area already going to fight over this land just so that they can get resources. That's how any strategy game is, player's are always fighting over map control due to resources. But, in whatever system you make it - I think it basically comes down to that it needs to make ''sense''. Not even gameplay wise, but Lore wise. Why do I have to capture generators to take over a reigion? Why cant I just build these in my base? You would think a highly advanced civilization wouldn't be hindered by that. However, fighting over mass points does make sense. Because different areas of the map have different metal levels.

I love the concept of the game - but the central focus of "hate" towards turtling I think is negatively effecting entire aspects of the game more than one thinks.

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I totally agree on your Multiplayer comment. 4v4 or 8 players would be much more welcomed. I have friends too that would like to play with me... instead of against me.

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eviator

Join Date 08/2014

+62

I'm personally okay with 4 max human players, as long as we can have (eventually) 4v4 vs the AI. If the devs' vision pans out, our systems are going to have trouble running more. Maybe in a few years they can expand as computers get faster, but I don't think it should be a high priority now.

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Ticktoc

Join Date 03/2015

+85

I agree with the above. At the very least you need to allow up to 6 players but it should be 8. The scale of the game would have to be absolutely huge to really justify only 4 players as there already games like PA which support massive maps and unit quantities and still allow many players. And that is with units which have much more complex pathing issues as they are tracked/on the terrain and are on a round sphere. You have mentioned the minimum specs of the game are quite high and that the game scales across CPU cores very well, if that is true I hope to see more than 4.

We'll be able to talk about scale more intelligently once we have the next patch and see how big maps are and how many units really get created.

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Quoting Gr_Ad_Kinz,

reply 41

Hi, new to the forums here but I have read over this entire thread and have a few opinions on the topics at hand.

Regarding Resources, I think not going to complex is a good thing. I played Supcom, and still do FAForever!, and the metal/energy resource aspect is easy to understand and use. However, even in it's simplicity there are a ton of strategies revolving around it. Different combinations/build orders to keep your energy/metal levels in the green. Should I put my early mass and energy into units or focus onto buildings/resources?

I think having generators spread around the map is not a great idea, personally. I understand why they are pushing in this direction, to limit turtling, but I don't think this is the right approach. Why should you remove the possibility of a player to turtle? You are removing a great strategic and military aspect of warfare - all through history we've seen nations turtle and defend hardcore. If a player decides to turtle early on, then they are already shooting themselves in the foot because 1. They are using resources on defense structures to turtle - which means they are not spending it on units and 2. They are losing map control. These things happen automatically without ever having to restrict player's by placing generators around the map - which limits the amount of buildings/units one can have. I think removing this limitation is a much better option.

If I were to face a player who decides to turtle, and I have in many strategy games, they will lose the game. Because, I gain map control - which allows me to expand freely and garner resources to myself. Supremecommander had a great design in this aspect, while player's were free to turtle - they still would be hard pressed because they were giving up mass extractors. But, putting into place a system that doesn't' allow this and actually places limitations on unit/building numbers by how much power you have...I don't necessarily like at all and I feel that it is unneeded. Every Strategy game fan knows that turtling players always lose - and I have great joy in busting open their defenses. It really feels like warfare when you are hammering their defenses with artillery while sending hundreds/thousands of units crashing against their defenses. You are eliminating this entire spectacular spectacle from ever happening which is a shame. Also, from what I have read - the vast majority of the players here do not like this current system at all and actually enjoy turtling sometimes - even if they lose because of it.

Max 4 Human Players: I think this is a regress absolutely, I'm not saying we need 30+ players like PA offers, or even the 12 that Supcom supports, but I think having support for 8 players is a good option. For one, having more players gives a greater sense of strategy and actual warfare and 2. it's just funner. Grey Goo has a hard limit onto 4 players, and honestly after awhile it got Extremely boring playing only 2v2,1v1, or ffa..I have several friends who are interested in this game; and the fact that we all cant be on the same team verse other human players really is shattering. I buy games mainly for the multiplayer focus and so do they. We all play Supcom/SINS and love how vast and how many players we can have in games.

Especially now that you all have done a fantastic job on creating an engine that can support such large maps and number of units - it would be a shame to restrict it to only 4 human players. It would a lot of fun to have a ''Galactic War'' Game type, where two teams of 4 are battling it out over several planets. Have a Planet split up by huge regions and players battling over these regions. You can coordinate with other players on where to attack yet and where to focus your defenses. Lost this planet? Fight for the next one. That right there is warfare and ties into your ''WW2 in space'' concept that I read in here.

Region Based System: I feel that this system has it's good and bad aspects. For Good aspects 1. It does push players to fight over the entire map, and just at a single point; 2. It encourages having many battles at different areas of the map at once and 3. it does give a sense of shifting ''front lines'' when you take or lose territory - similar to Company of Heroes. Bad Aspect 1. It removes some strategy and it forces players to usually fight a certain way, this ties into the resource system somewhat. 2. You cant get more structures or units without capturing zones. I think instead of having generators in these regions that you need to capture, how about removing that and instead replacing it with some sort of capturable defensible structure? Like an HQ hub that you could build walls around with defenses and factories. Without even having the generators in these zones, players area already going to fight over this land just so that they can get resources. That's how any strategy game is, player's are always fighting over map control due to resources. But, in whatever system you make it - I think it basically comes down to that it needs to make ''sense''. Not even gameplay wise, but Lore wise. Why do I have to capture generators to take over a reigion? Why cant I just build these in my base? You would think a highly advanced civilization wouldn't be hindered by that. However, fighting over mass points does make sense. Because different areas of the map have different metal levels.

I love the concept of the game - but the central focus of "hate" towards turtling I think is negatively effecting entire aspects of the game more than one thinks.

I agree that less is more when it comes to resource types, but I'll reserve judgment until we play a build with more resources implemented. I also agree that more than 4 in multiplayer would be nice, but I'm sure the devs have their reasons. It would be interesting to understand those reasons, though.

I think it's unfair to say that "hate" exists towards turtling/turtlers or that AoS's or the developers' "central focus" is such hate.

Frankly, I'm not even sure that everyone is talking about the same thing at this point. When I say "turtler", I am talking about someone whose game strategy involves: (i) limited map expansion and resource control; (ii) a focus on creating massive numbers of base defenses rather than armies with which to do battle; and (iii) waiting for your enemy in multiplayer to expend 60 minutes trying to dislodge you from your base until he/she gives up and drops from the match.

The central focus of AoS, as I understand it, is to bring you intense, strategic, wars raging across huge theaters of conflict unlike anything you or I have played before. You don't really get there by promoting turtling, right? You get there by encouraging people to leave their base and engage enemies all over the map. Thus, nobody "hates" turtling or turtlers -- the play style just doesn't mesh as well with what the vision for AoS seems to be.

Also, and as noted in numerous threads, defensive structures do and will exist. You can use these structures to create defensive perimeters around strategic locations, build them in places to slow the enemy advance or force the enemy in other directions, etc. Thus, some degree of turtling will be possible, although I see it being a strategy that loses the game for you in less than 30 minutes against the AI or a player who chooses to expand and control territory instead.

Anyway, I do not think the message being conveyed is that anyone "hates" turtlers. I think the message is that turtling is not being actively encouraged because it limits the true potential of this game.

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quick thought about the mp being 4v4.. can their be an option to limit the number of units, similar to sins of a solar empire..to accommodate 8 players?

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