Every War Has at Least Two Sides

Meet the Other Side: The Substrate!
You've had plenty of practice with the Post-Human Coalition, but now it's time to experience the conflict
with the AI faction: The Substrate! With new buildings and units, it's time to revisit the battlefield from the other side.

Not only is the Substrate joining the fray, 
but there are lots of other new additions to the Beta:

NEW Dreadnought Progression System
Power up your Dreadnoughts to crush your enemies

With the new leveling system for your Dreadnoughts, you will be able to cause more
devastation to your opponents by learning new abilities as your units gain experience from battle.
You will be able to choose from abilities that upgrade your weapons, army bonuses, a one-time unit
repair, and more. With so many choices, your opponent won't know what hit them by the time
you come knocking at their door.

NEW Orbital Abilities
Death from above!

Up until now, we have only had a few orbitals to choose from. This newest release
will let you rain terror upon your enemies with the following NEW Orbital Abilities:

NEW Maps
Test your mettle on new battlefields

We strive to provide carefully crafted battlefields
for you to enjoy with others. We have added two more in this Beta - Frozen Wastes (4 player ice map)
and Proving Grounds (1v1 desert map), with more to come as we move toward our official release!

NEW Ranked Multiplayer
Join the ranks of the Metaverse and see where you stand

Want to know where you rank among thousands of Ashes players? Try out our newly refined
multiplayer match-making system and go toe-to-toe with friends or other random challengers!

If you'd like to know more about the changes and additions to the beta, please check out the full change log below!

BETA 1 CHANGELOG:

• Gameplay

• Substrate Faction Available

• 30+ new units and buildings

• Ranked Multiplayer & Matchmaking enabled for initial testing

• Dreadnaught Progression System

• Choose new abilities to unlock for Dreadnought Class units as they gain experience

• Army buffs now come from Dreadnought unlocks, not misc units

• Substrate abilities still WIP

• New Orbital Abilities:

• EMP Pulse - Drops all shields in a localized area by detonating a small hydrogen weapon in the upper atmosphere.

• Amplify - A controlled Amplifier has its output further permanently boosted with a quantum link to your Nexus.

• Orbital Strike - Massive area damage.

• Carving Turret - A horribly powerful carving Turret is temporarily instantiated at any location you can see.

• Overcharge - Temporarily boost a single Power Generator or Amplifier’s output with a short-lived unstable quantum linkage.

• Regenerate - Quickly restores shield integrity in a small area via controlled disruption of the magnetosphere.

• Boost - Permanently increase a Power Generator or Amplifier’s output via careful modulation of quantum pairs. This is a repeatable process.

• Sensor Drone - Teleports a sensor drone in to scan the target location and provide live intelligence until it is destroyed.

• Drone Swarm - Gate an assault drone swarm to any location you can see with medium-range quantum teleportation.

• Kill - Cause incredible damage to a single unit by teleporting a swarm of destructive nanites directly into it’s inner systems.

• Call Avatar - Summons an armed and battle-ready scout craft from orbit.

• Detonate - Enormous destructive force in an area is concentrated with a sprinkling of small antimatter charges from orbit.

• New Nullifier Building to block enemy use of Orbital abilities in a designated area

• New Maps:

• Frozen Wastes: 4-player ice map

• Proving Grounds: 1v1 desert map

• Map Balance:

• More radioactives added to many maps

• Adjustments to Open Range

• Anthys significantly updated

• Minor fixes and adjustments to most maps

• Balance

• Some buildings have prerequisites to being built

• AI personality improvements

• Fury can now has dual pulse laser cannon for light ground attacks

• Misc unit and building balance adjustments

• Art & Graphics

• Terrain

• Polished and improved texture detail to Terran & Desert environments

• Polished Turinium connecting lines to be embedded in terrain

• Adjusted Sun position in Terran Day lighting setup

• Improved texture detail on PHC Seed

• Tweak to PHC rubber material

• VFX

• Improved Dreadnought destruction VFX

• Improved building destruction VFX

• Lingering smoke and fire VFX on damaged PHC Dreadnoughts and T2s (WIP)

• Camera shake added for large explosions

• Unit polish and differentiation

• Light added under engineers

• Lengthened PHC scout

• Added lighting effect to front fuselage of Zeus

• Adjusted other PHC unit sizings and maps

• UI

• Logistics upgrade button added next to logistics display

• Logistics value now flashes red when getting low

• Empire Tree only shows after control groups have been made

• Selected unit window now displays information for Armies

• UI menus now fade in/out

• Added borders to the strategic map window

• Minimap and strategic map region icons changed to be consistent with other resource icons

• Destination and attack UI markers now slightly smaller

• “Resume game” option moved to the top of the pause menu

• Changed in-game menu button to mach HUD style

• Tooltip improvements

• Better formatting for many weapon module tooltips

• Added clear tooltips and keyboard shortcut hints for Idle Factory/Engineer buttons

• Units with Light and Heavy Armor now have it clearly listed in their module display with descriptive tooltips

• Added descriptive tooltips to Construction, Quantum Upgrades, Orbital Abilities, and Form Army buttons

• Sound

• Music changes when victory by Turinium Generators is nearing

• Construction complete sounds for buildings and units

• Destruction sounds increased

• Engine sounds decreased

• Multiplayer lobby sounds balanced

• Misc

• Tons of bandwidth optimizations in multiplayer

• Detailed benchmark data now viewable in leaderboards

• Camera angle and zoom tweaks

• Performance

• AI perf increases

• Misc perf increases

• UI texture compression

• Reducing generated texture size that was unneeded for some assets

• Better auto-detected graphics settings

• Stability

• AI stability fix

• Options are now cached if they require a restart, instead of setting anyways and crashing if the player doesn’t restart

• Empire tree crash fix

• Fixed various multiplayer disconnect bugs

• Fixed crash on player forfeit in MP games

• Fixed crash on entry to MP games with AI players

• Fixed for stability after host migration

• Misc crash fixes

• Bug fixes

• Structure’s terrain base is now removed when the structure is destroyed

• Better message for failing to join a multiplayer lobby because it’s full

• Fix for certain weapons not finding a valid target

• Reskinned a variety of dialogues not using the correct visuals

• Better handling of resources in MP games

• Changed tooltip from “Tech Cost” to “Quanta Cost” for consistency

• Fixed bug where T2s could be ordered from a T1 factory

• Buildings now undo height modifications to terrain on their destruction

• Fixed Dreadnought lost VO playing when a Dreadnought was just removed from the queue

• Fixed bugs around graphics preset settings not being properly set and respected

• Fixed bug with graphics artifacts on snow

• Fix for assert on MP game invite

• Improved load into MP games

• Fix bugs related to missing or incorrectly colored capture bars

• Fixed bug where VP control tracker at top of UI could be out of date/inaccurate

• Player can now capture regions owned by an ally that has been killed

• Fixed texture on drones not showing up

• Relays visible in FoW now show their proper owner

• Turinium control icon no longer looks yellow when uncontrolled

• Don’t allow random map entry to be chosen during start game countdown

• Fixed scroll bar on the load game window

• Fix for incorrect snapping when placing 2x2 buildings