Beta 2 is Now Available
Exciting Explosions, New Maps, and Improved AI!

Ashes of the Singularity Beta 2 has arrived and it just keeps getting better! Like explosions? So do we, that's why we've made them bigger. Looking for a variety of maps? No problem, we've added some new ones! Wishing for an improved AI? We've got you covered! With a new Multiplayer season beginning and a host of other improvements and stability fixes, get yourselves revved up for Ashes of the Singularity's Beta 2!

We have a lot of exciting things available in Beta 2 that we'd like to share with you!
View the full changelog at the bottom of this post, but here are some highlights:

New Multiplayer Season!
One of the best ways to enjoy Ashes of the Singularity is through custom or ranked multiplayer matches! The Dev Team will be re-setting the global leaderboards on Beta release day and starting with a fresh slate. This will be known as "Season 0" and will last until shortly after the final version of Ashes is released. Do you think you have what it takes to beat the Stardockians? Join us on Fridays from 4pm ET - 6pm ET for ranked and custom matches!

New Maps!
We are happy to provide 3 new maps for you to wage war on! Eridon, Pyn, and Cygnus make their debut in Beta 2 - we're sure you'll enjoy exploring the new terrain!

New Visual Effects!
The team has been working on improving the game's visuals, which include (but are not limited to) explosions and other weapon effects. Now all of that exciting war playing out on your screen is even more attention-grabbing and flashier than before. 

New Music!
Some new ambient musical tracks have been added, along with new tracks for your win/loss screens and new main menu and multiplayer menu music! The team has also added additional sound FX throughout the game.

Play Ashes of the Singularity Beta 2 with our team of Stardockians 
from 4pm - 6pm ET this Friday, February 26th!

Changelog:

• HIGHLIGHTS:

• Multi-GPU support... including mixed AMD/Nvidia combinations

• Multiplayer Season 0 begins

• New Visual Effects

• Stability Fixes

• 3 New Maps

• Improved AI

• New music tracks

• Lots of visual improvements, UI tweaks, balance, community requests, and bug fixes
   

• Gameplay

• Improved Substrate faction AI

• AI now uses Orbital Abilities

• Added starting point selection for Skirmish and Multiplayer

• New & improved Benchmark

• Added pause queue option for factories

• Added delete unit/structure button

• Factory queues can be started before the factory is fully constructed

• Units stop faster when ordered directly from the UI

• Additional multiplayer cheat protections

• New Maps

• Eridon

• Pyn

• Cygnus

• Map Balance:

• more radioactives on large maps

• kralon - removed rads from VP regions

• frozen wastes - fixed resource placement (radial symmetry)

• Balance

• Substrate Orbital structure build times adjusted

• cut passive heal bonus for Herc level up in half

• make the Savager attack lower tier units also with its main gun

• adjust Hercules autogun turrets a tiny bit so that it can hit t1s that are directly in front of it

• added energy cost to Prometheus vampire effect

• Substantially increased building HP

• Increased SkyCleaner accuracy from 20% to 60% (keeps its low damage per hit)

• Decreased Apollo accuracy from 70% to 40% (maintains its high damage per hit)

• Avatar shield recharge rate reduced from 5 per second to 2 per second

• Reduced metal cost of Substrate Punisher

• Doubled rate of fire of Archer rockets but reduced damage

• Reduced accuracy of Hermes autocannon but added more shots per volley

• Nemesis HP reduced from 600 to 500

• Controller Plasma bolt damage reduced from 25 to 10

• Hyperion main gun cool down reduced from 6 to 3.2.

• Hyperion main gun damage increased from 25 to 40

• Removed 2 of the 4 Heavy PLasma cannon from the punisher to bring its damage inline with the Hades

• Falcon cost reduced

• Annihilator now has 1000HP

• Annihilator now has light armor

• Drone MRV now has light armor

• Blossom launcher has light armor

• Annihilator cost reduced to 150 metal.

• Mauler max energy reduced

• Martyr shields increased from 80 to 160

• Martyer shield regen incresaed from 0.5 to 1

• Martyr HP increasd from 40 to 50

• Reaper shield regn decreased from 1 to 0.5

• Reaper cannon cooldown reduced from 6 seconds to 3.2 seconds

• kill Drone swarm Drones after 2 minutes to minimize a certain cheeze tactic

• PHC orbitals always require some rads

• reworked mouse input handling in ui w/ regard to scale

• make short range units a little more aggressive at charging to the front

• lots more
  
  

• Art & Graphics

• Improved glare visual effect

• Improve Substrate unit and building materials

• Increased size of Resource Extractors and Amplifiers to improve legibility

• new PHC factory model

• Turinium lines not so bright anymore

• Team color now shows on resource deposits

• VFX

• Hades bombs and and rocket flames more visible from far distance

• VFX on Turinium Generators when a player is nearing critical mass

• Orbital Strike vfx polished

• Boost vfx polished

• Overcharge vfx polished

• Kill beam vfx polished

• Shield Recharge vfx polished

• EMP vfx polished

• Seed Destruction VFX added

• Plasma Storm: Lightning added, reduced cloud clipping, general polish

• Polished Teleport Effect (Incursion, Call Engineer, etc)

• Dreadought destruction vfx polished more

• have some weapon lens flares match the main eapon color a little better

• Amplify, Boost, and Overcharge vfx now last as long as the gameplay effect

• Unit & Structure polish

• Substrate Nexus

• PHC power relay

• Radioactive Extractor maps

• Drone Host

• MRV defensive structure

• Annihilator Cannon

• Sensor Post

• various Orbital Ability structures

• Turinium Generator

• Animated lights on Hercules
  
  

• UI

• Added Borderless Window option

• Added feedback as to your current Quantum Upgrade level

• Lobby Browser

• added prompt to host a lobby if all lobbies are full/in progress

• now shows games in progress (grayed out)

• automatically refreshes every 10s

• Lots of visual polish on icons and opacity

• Improved Victory Screen

• New “orbital cast” cursor

• Improved Dreadnought level up ability icons

• Dead/Surrendered/Disconnected players now marked in HUD

• Drone modules now display in unit/building context area

• Quanta icon in HUD is now more legible

• Team color now represented by the 3 colors that are painted on it’s units

• Made the Metal and Radioactive icons more readable on the MaxiMap

• Tooltip improvements

• Lots of typo fixes

• Added tooltips for AI difficulties

• have dps display factor in accuracy
  
  

• Sound

• 8 additional ambient music tracks added

• 2 new Win/Loss music tracks

• New main menu and multiplayer menu music

• New and improved destruction sounds

• Capture region order now plays a sound confirmation

• New VO notifications for Quantum Upgrades, Dreadnoughts launching,and Dreadnought upgrades

• Sound plays when Ranked match is found

• Added Avatar weapon sound

• 3D sound when a relay is captured

• hooked up ReaperParticle Beam sound

• increased radius of construction sound
  
  

• Performance

• reduce memory needed for notification sounds

• reduced memory needed for minimap images

• reduced UI memory usage

• reduced bandwidth usage
  
  

• Stability

• Fixes our re-entrancy crash for msg registration

• Increasing some buffer sizes that are cutting it close in AshesUnitPanel

• Fixed game re-entry crashes

• Warn users if they are crashing as a result of a bad install

• fixed crash on game start

• Crashes related to starting/stopping building construction
  
  

• Bug fixes

• “Fixing Dan’s Crap” - Nathan

• Multiplayer

• Fixed situation where MP game wouldn’t end when the host Nexus was destroyed

• Fixed server disconnect issues on multiplayer match loading

• Fixing hang on clients in matchmaking if the host player failed to create a lobby

• Disabling auto saves in ranked matches

• Player slot pulldown popup was being forced to be too short in lobby setup wnd

• Winning Team was being reported incorrectly for some matches

• Fixing lobby setup UI not being set up completely when returning to the lobby

• Bandwidth optimization for deep unit construction queues

• Resolved bandwidth spike caused by CreateMetaUnit messages

• Don't allow entering a lobby with a different version of the game by invitation

• Gameplay

• Game speed now properly impacts Turinium points and Quanta

• AI picks level up bonuses for Dreadnoughts

• Fixed capture orders not coming through when an Amplifier was built at the region

• You can't cast boost or overcharge on enemy relays anymore

• fix for metaunit childrn sometimes not going to the correct location

• Fixing minimap icon displayed for a seed that is destroyed and becomes a generator

• fix for substrate seed not rotating and a few tweaks to its weapons now that that is working properly

• Fixing UI formatting issues with lobby browser

• fixed in game chat colors being wrong

• Lobby chat now text wraps

• Graphics

• fix for flickery amplifiers

• Fixing flickering previews for buildings

• Fix for flickering part on Sky Factory in FOW

• Fixed ship model gets stuck on partially constructed adv factory

• Misc

• Fix for missing selection rings on some units/buildings

• Resource panel at top of HUD z-order change so the "tooltip" popup isn't covered up

• Misaligned invite friends entries

• Fixing save game screen not showing map previews for selected entries

• unit and building tooltips no longer have extra ":" at the end

• fixed boost orbital icon

• reworked mouse input handling in ui w/ regard to scale

• If you win against a single opponent that surrendered, will now say that they surrendered in the victory screen

• Auto scrolling to selected map entry in skirmish and lobby setup screens

• changed the Seed icon the be something other than the Substrate symbol