Super Units in RTS games - do you love them or hate them? Check out the latest dev journal from designer Callum McCole on the topic and let us know your feelings in the comments!

Read the full dev journal here: https://www.stardock.com/games/article/494803/

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation v2.8 Update Improves Visual Clarity and Brings Extensive Balance Updates

We're launching an update today that improves the game's visual quality and balance. By making colors more vibrant and scaling up the size of many units and buildings, we hope to help distinguish and communicate each unit's functionality for new players. We’ve also made additional minor visual tweaks and slightly adjusted the camera angle so it’s less top-down and more tilted.

v2.8 has many balance changes to make dreadnoughts more viable and better equalize the power of each faction's orbital abilities. See the full change log below!











Don't have Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/507490

Owners, the v2.8 update is ready and waiting for you in your Steam client.

v2.8 Change Log 

Gameplay

We’re scaling up the size of many units and buildings to help distinguish and communicate the unit's functionality to those who are new to the title. We’ve also slightly adjusted the camera angle so it’s less top-down and more titled. It’s minor, but helps distinguish unit silhouettes by making things look more 3D.

• Unit and building sizes increased

To compensate for size increases:

• Units are created with more distance between them.
• Unit spacing increased
• Updated Collision boxes and collision avoidance behavior. 

Visuals

We’ve slightly adjusted the camera angle so it’s less top-down and more titled. It’s minor, but helps distinguish unit silhouettes by making things look more 3D.

• Modified camera angle at medium to close zoom levels.
• Increased size of explosions.
• Unit hover pods are no longer affected by player color.
• Improved Terran morning lighting.
• Improved deformable terrain around buildings.
• Improved the colors on buildings.
• Reduced emissives intensity

Balance

This update has many balance changes, in particular aimed at making dreadnaughts more viable and better equalizing the power of each faction's orbital abilities. Balance is overall in a good spot so these are mostly small changes.

Atlas

• Damage increased from 15 to 16

Archer

• Health reduced from 90 to 80

Tormentor

The Tormentor was too lacking in a role and will now be an excellent way of dealing with Archer spam. Previously Substrate could have issues dealing with mass frigates.

• Damage increased from 75 to 80

Reaper

This should see Reaper blobs clump up less to dive after a cruiser and make it less vulnerable to splash damage.

• Targeting priorities changed to engage all targets equally

Drone Hive

Drones will no longer get one-shot by the Atlas frigate as it was too easy to shut down.

• Radioactives cost reduced from 90 to 80
• Drone health increased from 15 to 20

Apollo

• Metal cost from 310 to 350
• Radioactives cost from 46 to 66

Destructor

• Plasma Rain Launcher damage increased from 13 to 14

Caregiver

The Caregiver and Regenerator are receiving a small performance boost to give Substrate more of a chance to withstand Artillery Post bombardment as well as mitigate Plasma Storm and EMP Pulse.

• Regeneration increased from 40 to 45

Avatar

PHC have two engineer spawn abilities, so they naturally will ramp up less by mixing it between both of them. Also a QoL change for the Avatar as it would often engage enemies and move out of build range as a result.

• Leash removed - It will no longer move to engage
• Quanta cost ramp up reduced from 0.25 to 0.20

Dreadnoughts

Typically players cruiser spam into air and juggernauts while skipping dreads. We want to make dreads tougher to have them see more use.

• Retributor, Cronus, Hyperion and Overmind health increased from 14,000 to 15,000
• Savager and Prometheus health increased from 16,000 to 17,500

Eye of Darkness

This change was supposed to be in 2.76 but was accidentally not included. This will make turtling up and rushing the Eye while skipping dreadnought production much riskier.

• Metal cost increased from 22,000 to 24,000
• Radioactives cost increased from 22,000 to 23,000
• Quanta cost increased from 12,000 to 13,000
• Logistics cost increased from 300 to 325
• Build time cost increased from 900 to 1000

Instigator

The Instigator was underperforming and will now be able to clear creeps with its weapon.

• Now has a weak laser
• Acceleration increased from 600 to 800
• Cost reduced from 350/80 to 250/60
• Logistics reduced from 10 to 6
• Build time reduced from 40 to 35

Hades

The Hades Bomber was the only non-fighter that came in a squadron of 3. This created balance problems where Hades flocks would shrug off Air Eliminators but then get deleted by splash such as the Falcon. We are reducing the squadron size to 1 and tweaking it to compensate so that it is more consistent against other anti-air types. Reducing the squadron size will also fix the targeting issue of the Hades sometimes not dropping its bombs.

• Squad size reduced from 3 to 1
• Hades will no longer pass without dropping bombs
• Damage increased from 60 to 75
• Health increased from 625 to 1200
• Metal cost reduced from  270 to 220
• Radioactives cost reduced from 190 to 150
• Logistics cost reduced from 9 to 7
• Build time reduced from 45 to 40

Artillery Post

The Artillery Post was too spammable in certain maps, especially team games.

• Minimum range increased from 200 to 500
• Maximum range reduced from 3000 to 2800

Regenerator

• Regeneration increased from 30 to 35

Carving Turret

PHC had too many Orbital Abilities that could influence cruiser engagements while Substrate only had Drone Swarm. Carving Turret is now only able to engage Dreadnaughts and Juggernauts to even out PHC’s orbital advantage.

• Can no longer target frigates, cruisers and buildings

Drone Swarm

Drone Swarm was shut down too easily by armies that had modest amounts of anti-air.

• Drone health increased from 15 to 30
• Health per second increased from -0.5 to -1 (To retains its 30 second life)

Nanite Assassination

While expensive and limited to only a single target, players may wish to use this ability to snipe a Hera, Engineer or other crucial units like a sieging Artemis.

• Can now target cruisers
• Damage type changed to direct for instant killing.

Plasma Storm

Plasma Storm was too impactful so we have reduced its damage per second and slightly increased its duration so players have more opportunity to escape from it or sustain through with Caregivers and Regenerators.

• Damage reduced from 15 to 10
• Duration increased from 30 to 35

 

Tooltips

• Updated Carving Turret & Nanite Assassination tooltips to reflect changes
• Removed obsolete “Armor piercing” and “Area Damage” tooltips from Artemis and Destructor main weapon.
• Removed obsolete “Targets radar contacts” from 8 weapons. (Everything can now target radar contacts)

 

Bugs

• Fixed Shader corruption bugFixed a hang when starting the Benchmark
  
• Fixed Saboteur targeting issue causing it to stop firing
• Fixed a bug where Nanite Assassination would sometimes miss moving dreadnoughts.

Greetings!

So what's happening the world of Ashes of the Singularity this month? As some of you know, we have the Siege of Centauri beta going on (a tower defense game in the Ashes universe). You can go to its Steam page to see what is happening there. That game is the result of the underlying work we've been doing for Ashes.

So here is a preview of some of the things we're working on:

• v2.79 opt-in is currently available. It has some balance, bug fixes and cosmetic improvements. The main limiter is QA time on our end.
  
• We are working on a stand-alone map editor for Ashes. This will be a simplified version of the modding editor some modders have made. This one will be more bullet proof and allow people to share their maps via Steam Workshop.
  
• New DLC. We've been brainstorming with the community on what they want to see. We're working on some new units and structures.
  
• Balance. The Plasma storm feature is probably going to get changed so slow down units rather than kill them. It's a little frustrating to players and basically makes low level units worthless late game.

There's also been a lot of talk about a sequel. We are gung-ho on doing that but we have a lot of thoughts on what would be required for a full-on sequel and we feel that Ashes of the Singularity itself deserves more love. :)

Lots of exciting things happening with Ashes of the Singularity. With Star Control: Origins released, we've been able to give Ashes some new attention and I wanted to use this post to update you on where we are.



Under the game is the game engine which in Ashes 1.0 was pure Nitrous. These days, we have taken the Nitrous engine and integrated all the cool stuff we've developed over the years (Game engine wise) to create a game-specific engine we call Cider. So right now, we're porting Cider to Linux with Ashes being our first test.

The good news is that we have Ashes kind of sort of working natively on Linux. The bad news is that the performance isn't quite there yet. Vulkan is the graphics platform we're targeting and it's still very young.

We are working on a new game in the Ashes of the Singularity universe that we will be announcing next month. Ashes founders will get it either for free or at a steep discount depending on what type of Founder they are.

So the short version is that we aren't going to be making new expansions for Ashes of the Singularity I. There might be more DLC but the changes we want to make are a little too radical to have as an expansion. My next post will be talking about what we have in mind for the sequel so you guys can opine on it. But if you liked SupCom or TA then you will really like where we want to take the sequel.

Stay tuned!

Hello, Ashes fans! The new v2.76 update is a minor balance patch, but it’s meant to improve strategic diversity. Most of the changes are subtle, but the heavy cruisers are receiving some significant power reductions.


Martyr

The Martyr is underperforming but buffing it required careful consideration to not give Substrate too much early capping power over PHC. The Martyr is receiving a cost reduction to further distinguish it from the reaper and make it more cost-efficient.

• Metal Cost reduced from 90 to 75
  
• Build time reduced from 19 to 16

Archer

Archers suffered from their targeting priorities where they would bypass dreadnoughts to attack cruisers. We are equalizing their targeting priorities for all but frigates and buildings so they attack whatever is closest.

• Cruisers, dreadnoughts and juggernauts now share the same targeting priority

Medic

We are reducing the efficiency of the Medic when healing heavily armored units as they were skewing dreadnought and juggernaut battles too much for their cost.

• Heal ray armor piercing reduced from max to 20%
  
• Healing “Damage” reduced from 67 to 60.
  
• Self healing per second reduced from 4 to 1

Artemis

The Artemis was overperforming against Substrate frigates, as a few of them could negate large armies due to their AOE against clumped up soft targets. The Artemis was overshadowing the Zeus in the late game, we want players to counter frigates by investing in anti-frigate units, rather than doing so with the anti-building seige unit.

• Missile attack AOE reduced from 60 to 30

Athena

The Athena vs Mauler performance was quite similar, but the Athena was noticeably better against heavier targets. We are lowering the damage of the Athena to put it more in line with the Mauler.

• Damage reduced from 235 to 220

Hera

The Hera was too versatile and lacked proper counters, we don’t want the heavy cruisers to make lighter cruisers obsolete. As well as reducing its durability and armor-piercing, we are increasing the damage in exchange for a cooldown increase (nerf) to increase its frigate overkill and thus making them more vulnerable to Reapers & Archers. Lowering the armor-piercing makes the Nemesis more desirable in comparison for attacking dreadnoughts & juggernauts.

• Metal cost increased from 600 to 640
  
• Damage increased from 130 to 170
  
• Cooldown increased from 2.1 to 2.75
  
• Attack range reduced from 1100 to 900
  
• Armor piercing reduced from 40% to 30%
  
• Armor reduced from 60% to 30%
  
• Health reduced from 2500 to 2400

Eradicator

The Eradicator was also too powerful and is getting its durability reduced, alongside a damage reduction to its secondary to make it more vulnerable against frigates. It’s also receiving an increase to its energy regeneration as it was too reliant on Capacitors which could be quite frustrating when it loses the ability to fire.

• Armor reduced from 50% to 30%
  
• Energy regeneration per second increased from 1 to 1.2
  
• Secondary weapon damage reduced from 4 to 1
  
• Secondary weapon cooldown increased from 3.5 to 5
  
• Secondary weapon shots per volley reduced from 15 to 5
  
• Main weapon cooldown increased from 4.8 to 5.2
  
• Attack range reduced from 1100 to 900
  
• Total health/shields reduced from 2600 to 2200

Dreadnoughts

Dreadnoughts are getting a large indirect buff due to the changes to Heras, Eradicators and the Eye of Darkness. However, we’re making a small additional change to the logistics prices to make Dreadnoughts more viable in the late game and have their logistics more accurately reflect their cost.

We've been considering a wider buff to dreadnoughts such as a health increase but that would have a lot of knock-on effects such as difficulty of some campaign missions and Substrate may suffer from their less accessible armor-piercing. We wanted to keep the scope of this update small while all our attention is on Star Control: Origins. We'll be monitoring how dreadnoughts perform post-2.76.

• Hyperion, Chronus, Retributor and Overmind logistics cost reduced from 100 to 90.
  
• Prometheus and Savager metal cost reduced from 6400 to 6000
  
• Overmind Metal cost increased from 3200 to 3600

Eye of Darkness:

The Eye was too dominant and is receiving a cost increase and damage reduction to prevent it from two-shotting dreadnoughts by default. While the Leonidas is also incredibly powerful, it has very strong counters in the way the Eye is less vulnerable to.

• Damage reduced from 7000 to 6500
  
• Metal cost increased from 22000 to 23000
  
• Radioactives cost increased from 8000 to 8500
  
• Quanta cost increased from 1200 to 1275
  
• Build time increased from 900 to 950
  
• Logistics cost increased from 300 to 320

Hades

The Hades was providing too much value for its price as it could annihilate standard frigates in a single pass, particularly Archers, and its armor-piercing overshadowed the Air Marauder for engaging tougher targets.

• Metal cost increased from 250 to 270
  
• Radioactives cost increased from 180 to 190
  
• Armor-piercing removed

Air Harbinger & Strategic Bomber

The heavy air units costed a disproportionately high amount of logistics which we are reducing.

• Logistics cost reduced from 60 to 50

Nano Transport

Nano Transport was so much stronger than the PHC Charon Cruiser as it could be instantly placed anywhere on a tough dreadnought only for a quanta cost. This resulted in too much death blobbing rather than dynamically spreading out forces or having a vulnerable Charon that could be picked off.

• Quanta cost increased from 200 to 300

Thanks to our community for being active with the game and leaving feedback!

Experiential unit design is the realm of making units and other game components feel different from each other. Ashes Designer Callum McCole analyzes some RTS franchises for examples of successful experiential unit design.

https://www.stardock.com/games/article/488933/

Update also includes new Retributor audio, improvements to campaigns, balance, economy and movement speed

For a detailed list of updates, view the changelog at the bottom of this post.

https://youtu.be/Iey15zCvHtI


Substrate Anti-air
Substrate mobile anti-air is now more flexible with new late game options. The Overmind and Nest of the Queen will help clear the skies with their new anti-air drone swarms in place of some of their ground damage.

Economy Changes
We are making some changes to the economy in order to make defensive play styles more viable.

Substrate King of the Hill
King of the Hill is one of our most popular Scenarios, and now it’s playable as Substrate! King of the Hill has also received a number of improvements aimed at balancing the difficulty curve. How long can you hold out for?

Balance Changes
Many balance changes improve strategic diversity and refine unit roles. Anti-air defenses are tougher, and higher Quanta costs on many Orbital Abilities means players have to think about where and when they use these powerful abilities.

Ladder Season 3
Players will have a fresh new chance to climb the leaderboards with the launch of ladder season 3. Also featured is an updated map pool for automatch.

Retributor Weapon Audio
The Retributor has new and improved audio to better reflect the power of this Substrate Dreadnought!


The v2.75 update is ready and waiting for you in your Steam client!

www.ashesofthesingularity.com

v2.75 changelog: https://forums.ashesofthesingularity.com/487903/

Balancing an RTS is a long, iterative process and, inevitably, there will be mistakes along the way.

Ashes designer Callum McCole explores what make balancing an RTS such a challenge, and explains his intentions for some of the changes he's made throughout his time with Ashes.

https://www.stardock.com/games/article/487949/

Excited about the upcoming v2.75 for Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation? Then you'll want to check out April's dev diary for more details:

https://forums.ashesofthesingularity.com/488345/