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Much improved performance on both DX11 and DX12!

Much improved performance on both DX11 and DX12!

quick question..haven't tried the update yet but for the plasma storm..its an area ability..if i chose to initiate it during battle..would that storm affect me too? or would i be immune ?

Just some words after a quick try :

This new update brings some very nice improvements and new features.

Performances make a good step forward, graphics and visual effects are shaping nicely, the strategic map is great, and formations seem more reactive and more organized. this is very nice as we often want, at this quite early stage and with each new update, to analyze and build some nice gameplay based on the behaviours of the groups and their complementarity. even if the game is macro oriented for sure, i'm pretty certain and very pleased to think that some micro with the groups compositions, movements and placements can bring different and very interesting effects with time and training.

More of that, splitting the frigates and cruisers factory, seeing the new orbitals and the tactical possibilities they allow, given the questions you asked and the topics you started about the different build orders, stratégies and such are valuable clues about your will to develop a deep combat part. Great.

For now, my humble opinion is that the game takes the right direction. an ergonomic macro for the economy, a quick action, plenty of build orders and many stratégies, fast cheesing, harass, tech course, turtling and else seem viable, which is not the case for all the last RTSs and seems to be the almost exclusive qualities of a certain...Starcraft 2

For sure, we are still far from the finish line and many aspects are to be improved. The radar, the ranges of engagement, the patfinding, and maybe some attention about the orbital abilities. they seem to cost the price, but what about something to prevent obvious spams : cooldowns, or something else? 

But for now, i'm very pleased to see that the game mechanics are getting more and more squared and deep. The fine balance discussions will come once all the races, units and abilities will be implemented.

If nothing new is to come before next year, i wish you a merry Christmas and a happy end of the year.

And keep up the great work

Right now. No. 

Sorry. This part of the game isn't subject to change. I recommend SUpCom:FAF for you.

Cheers!

Benedictis

reply 6

Just some words after a quick try :

 

This new update brings some very nice improvements and new features.

 

Performances make a good step forward, graphics and visual effects are shaping nicely, the strategic map is great, and formations seem more reactive and more organized. this is very nice as we often want, at this quite early stage and with each new update, to analyze and build some nice gameplay based on the behaviours of the groups and their complementarity. even if the game is macro oriented for sure, i'm pretty certain and very pleased to think that some micro with the groups compositions, movements and placements can bring different and very interesting effects with time and training.

More of that, splitting the frigates and cruisers factory, seeing the new orbitals and the tactical possibilities they allow, given the questions you asked and the topics you started about the different build orders, stratégies and such are valuable clues about your will to develop a deep combat part. Great.

 

For now, my humble opinion is that the game takes the right direction. an ergonomic macro for the economy, a quick action, plenty of build orders and many stratégies, fast cheesing, harass, tech course, turtling and else seem viable, which is not the case for all the last RTSs and seems to be the almost exclusive qualities of a certain...Starcraft 2

 

For sure, we are still far from the finish line and many aspects are to be improved. The radar, the ranges of engagement, the patfinding, and maybe some attention about the orbital abilities. they seem to cost the price, but what about something to prevent obvious spams : cooldowns, or something else? 

But for now, i'm very pleased to see that the game mechanics are getting more and more squared and deep. The fine balance discussions will come once all the races, units and abilities will be implemented.

 

If nothing new is to come before next year, i wish you a merry Christmas and a happy end of the year.

And keep up the great work

 

Thanks and I agree with your assessment.  We still have a long way to go to add more sufficient strategic depth imo (and I'm the designer).

The big one, for me, is the investing in economic power versus military power.  Rigbht now, military power = economic power which is simplistic.

We took a baby step with the amplifier. But it's not enough.

+1  i think we will have a wall here 

Sad my game is always crash in dx 12

Frogboy

reply 9

Quoting Benedictis,

reply 6

Just some words after a quick try :

 

This new update brings some very nice improvements and new features.

 

Performances make a good step forward, graphics and visual effects are shaping nicely, the strategic map is great, and formations seem more reactive and more organized. this is very nice as we often want, at this quite early stage and with each new update, to analyze and build some nice gameplay based on the behaviours of the groups and their complementarity. even if the game is macro oriented for sure, i'm pretty certain and very pleased to think that some micro with the groups compositions, movements and placements can bring different and very interesting effects with time and training.

More of that, splitting the frigates and cruisers factory, seeing the new orbitals and the tactical possibilities they allow, given the questions you asked and the topics you started about the different build orders, stratégies and such are valuable clues about your will to develop a deep combat part. Great.

 

For now, my humble opinion is that the game takes the right direction. an ergonomic macro for the economy, a quick action, plenty of build orders and many stratégies, fast cheesing, harass, tech course, turtling and else seem viable, which is not the case for all the last RTSs and seems to be the almost exclusive qualities of a certain...Starcraft 2

 

For sure, we are still far from the finish line and many aspects are to be improved. The radar, the ranges of engagement, the patfinding, and maybe some attention about the orbital abilities. they seem to cost the price, but what about something to prevent obvious spams : cooldowns, or something else? 

But for now, i'm very pleased to see that the game mechanics are getting more and more squared and deep. The fine balance discussions will come once all the races, units and abilities will be implemented.

 

If nothing new is to come before next year, i wish you a merry Christmas and a happy end of the year.

And keep up the great work

 

 

Thanks and I agree with your assessment.  We still have a long way to go to add more sufficient strategic depth imo (and I'm the designer).

The big one, for me, is the investing in economic power versus military power.  Rigbht now, military power = economic power which is simplistic.

We took a baby step with the amplifier. But it's not enough.

Thanks for your answer and this direct quality link with your community. Really appreciate. and i already knew who you were since years^^

By the way i was wrong about the orbital abilities cooldowns, they're here, even if maybe a bit short...

Your statement is indeed very interesting design-wise.

On one hand, having a direct connection between the economic and military systems, with some simple ways to improve it, such as amplifiers allowing a better income, are nice and readable enough for the major part of the players. Then we can, in a second step, invest in buildings and general upgrades like HP upgrades or Firepower upgrades. Lv1, lv2...etc. This kind of system allows quite a "fast" paced tech course so the player can focus almost entirely on the battlefield. This is not a bad thing.

On the other hand, having a real tech tree and maybe the kind of buildings we had in Sins of a solar empire, Civilian research centers and Military research centers, able to "unlock" the different tiers and upgrades in the tech tree (or directly in the buildings) regarding the number of these buildings, could also have a great value. So as you said separate and bring some more depth in the economic and military tech courses. such possibilities, implemented with a great readability of the tech tree and multiple build choices could be awesome.

The relevant question here, from my point of view, is to know if you want a simple and ergonomic macro economy to focus on the combat part, or more in-depth mechanics for the eco and military courses of the game. Maybe including a kind of "limit" in the number of research buildings we can have, through a "slot" system like Sins. it will inevitably bring the question of the pace of the games and the tricky time ratio between base/tech management and combat...but, if perfectly done, readable and ergonomic, it could undoubtedly add a great value to AotS imo.

It's up for discussion  

I'm doing the Mr. Mom thing tonight so no games so far. But I thought I'd run the benchmarks. My hardware: X58 motherboard, 12GB RAM, i7-920 OC'd@3.6Ghz, GTX 980SC, Win10/64.

DX12 Straight Benchmark:

Avg Framerate: v.0.64 - 49.2 / v.0.70 - 52.7

CPU Framerate: v.0.64 - 80.2 / v.0.70 - 89.0

Avg Framerate Normal: v.0.64 - 61.9 / v.0.70 - 60.2

Pct GPU Bound Normal: v.0.64 - 99.8% / v.0.70 - 100.0%

Avg Framerate Medium: v.0.64 - 49.8 / v.0.70 - 53.2

Pct GPU Bound Average: v.0.64 - 100% / v.0.70 - 99.9%

Avg Framerate High: v.0.64 - 40.4 / v.0.70 - 46.5

Pct GPU Bound High: v.0.64 - 99.9% / v.0.70 - 99.9%

DX12 CPU Benchmark:

Avg Framerate: v.0.64 - 78.4 / v.0.70 - 91.1

CPU Framerate: v.0.64 - 77.9 / v.0.70 - 89.8

Avg Framerate Normal: v.0.64 - 88.3 / v.0.70 - 102.5

Pct GPU Bound Normal: v.0.64 - 41.6% / v.0.70 - 46.3

Avg Framerate Medium: v.0.64 - 82.2 / v.0.70 - 93.4

Pct GPU Bound Average: v.0.64 - 44.6% / v.0.70 - 45.5

Avg Framerate High: v.0.64 - 67.7 / v.0.70 - 80.3

Pct GPU Bound High: v.0.64 - 46.5% / v.0.70 - 46.7

I would definitely say, as the benchmarks see it, there were some very good improvements! Well done to the dev team!

However, I had some stability issues. I have had absolutely NONE since I first downloaded and started the game in version 0.63. Of course, that was Win7/64 and I only converted to Win10/64 this week. Regardless, the first time I tried to load the new version, having clicked on "Play" in the Steam Library list, the load hung. At least it took MUCH longer than I'd every seen it take. I used Task Manager to kill it, reloaded, and all was fine. I then ran the Full benchmark with no issues. However, at the end of the first time I ran the CPU benchmark the game just disappeared - crashed with no messages or information on my desktop. I just re-started it from the Steam Library, re-ran it, and all was well.

I wish I had some info as to the latter. But the performance has definitely ticked up! Looking forward to trying out actual gameplay changes when I get a chance!

Its like now in our time, we have more advanced radars and tech but, at the same time we build phantom planes that the radars cannot see. that's your answer. 

Lol. Tatsu being Tatsu again.

Personally, I enjoy the radar system.  It's not as informative as SupCom's, but it makes sense that you shouldn't worry about individual units in a fight spanning hundreds.

The power amplifier is a great step towards improving the economic buildup of Ashes.  And now we have orbital abilities.  (INCURSION OP).

What's the role of orbital abilities right now? I mean, engineer calldowns are super useful, but plasma storm and Incursion just seem like I WIN buttons with Quanta price tags.  One well-placed scout plane and the enemy could be reeling from an attack they either missed or couldn't see coming.  That's very frustrating in a game of this genre.  In addition, Ashes has no artillery counterplay. In SupCom, for example, shields were used to protect PD from units, and artillery was used to crack those shields.  For Tac missiles you had TMD, and for Nukes you had Anti nukes.  Are orbital abilities going to provide some of that destructive power without the necessary counters?  The orbital strike especially sounds OP against Seeds in the late game, without any real counter besides excessive air spam.

Also, INCURSION OP.  I built the orbital calldown structure for that almost immediately at the start and got this amazing stack of t1/t2 units at the three minute mark.  Suddenly I could expand super quickly and outpace the Tough AI without any issues.  Using it late game was also insane, as I could gut the enemy's resource deposits with little to no investment.

Suggestion to make it less OP:  Make it scale based on your army rating or # of research structures (orbital calldowns/quantum relays).  Early game it will become less of a must-have, and late game it will be more useful to call down a small T1 army with lots of T2 mixed in.

What makes me a bit step back on this game, is that too many new rts payers give the rong ideas and seems no one understant the problems this game have.

Tatsu cant be more right ,he like me are ust to complex Rts games.

This is the time we showld say what we know, and thats what he is doing.

All very funny on begin because nothing finish,but iff no one cares fix and catch the ideas from players that know what they are talk, well....

The  intel right now just dont exist.

Sry but i see too many times in many games no one cares what experience players say.

[ 11/12/2015 ]