Ascendancy 1.0 Impressions

[Stofficus]

Hey all, long-time fan of your work, and 1.0 is bloody impressive so I figured I'd make myself somewhat useful and give a rundown of some early impressions and thoughts now 2 partial campaigns in.

I am going to break this down into rough categories for readability's sake:

1) Faction diversity. The facts all function different in satisfying ways, even the Pentastar Alignment and IR; while the ISD remains their iconic backbone, they don't hurt for diverse options. Furthermore, the AI seems to actually take advantage of them, and their fleets reflect their strengths. Hand fleets are full of corvettes and frigates (one hoard of karieks did about 2500 damage a tick to one of my SSDs, not a pleasant experience), the NR leverages their very durable capital ships well, the IR has a mighty hoard of ISDs and VSDs, and the PA unleashes the swarm in a most satisfying manner. Convincing the finicky Sins AI to do that is a major accomplishment in my opinion.

2) Visuals. Sweet mother of cthulhu, you guys have blown every other Sins mod out of the water, in my opinion, and have vastly outdone yourselves from the already very impressive work you did in EaW. The ships and effects are gorgeous, though the Allegiance seems to have some shadow issues; it appears as if in total shadow unless it is in a position where a shadow is cast upon it, such as a ship above it, in which case it appears normally. I recall Corey mentioning something about the Allegiance in one of his Let's Plays, so this may already be known.

3) Economy. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the economic side of things in Ascendancy. I dig the idea that tibanna/duranium are mostly for teching and planet upgrades, with ships being more credit dependent, thus building a fleet and development aren't mutually exclusive, but the actual scaling seems a bit off. What I mean by that is the start of the game is very slow; building up your economy is very gradual, but will start to snowball to a point where I can unleash enormous fleets and replace most losses with relative ease - time and distance to shipyards matters more than actual cost, though the logistics side of thing is certainly interesting. The current set of systems works perfectly fine, but the early game and mid-late game have completely different speeds and intensities to them. I'd like to hear what some of the objectives are/were on the economic side of things, as aside from a few general faction traits, I don't recall there being much discussion of that in the past.

4) Balancing. Combat seems in a pretty good place, though the AI propensity to zergmob can make some fights more a matter of attrition, particularly against Hand corvette swarms. I am pleased that victory is dependent upon more than who has the most capital ships/titans like in base Sins, but with your EaW pedigree that comes as no particular surprise. There may be a few tweaks needed, however, as in both of my partial games thus far (lost both times, also a good sign - can't remember the last time I lost in Sins against the AI) the Hand has outperformed other AI factions, though I will experiment with some larger games to try and get a better sense for how overall faction performance may be.

5) What's Missing? Not counting the additional factions you lot keep teasing (or openly discussing, as the case may be), there are a handful of areas which I think could do with a few more options, such as logistics buildings. Currently, once you have enough labs, the only thing to build in orbit is trade depots and shipyards, and while base sins certainly didn't offer much more than that beyond refinieries (which would be total overkill with Ascendancy's economic model), I do think more options would help encourage specialization and alternate playstyles. Perhaps something like an intelligence center for the Hand to grant limited sight to adjacent planets, or an orbital prison complex for the IR which improves allegiance and ship production rates?

All in all, I look forwards to experimenting some more and seeing what you all come up with next.

[tlmiller]

I know Corey has mentioned that he wants to change how the economy works in order to make it harder to get such a huge reserve that you can just throw fleets at your oppononent as if they were worthless.  I won't butcher his thoughts in trying to explain them, but he has specifically said he wants to do something about #3.

[Corey]

The ships and effects are gorgeous, though the Allegiance seems to have some shadow issues; it appears as if in total shadow unless it is in a position where a shadow is cast upon it, such as a ship above it, in which case it appears normally. I recall Corey mentioning something about the Allegiance in one of his Let's Plays, so this may already be known.

Yeah, there's some issues with the tangent map we think (how Sins does shadows). The Allegiance is one of the ships on our shortlist to update for 1.1, mostly because of that, partially to upgrade the skin a little.

3) Economy. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the economic side of things in Ascendancy. I dig the idea that tibanna/duranium are mostly for teching and planet upgrades, with ships being more credit dependent, thus building a fleet and development aren't mutually exclusive, but the actual scaling seems a bit off. What I mean by that is the start of the game is very slow; building up your economy is very gradual, but will start to snowball to a point where I can unleash enormous fleets and replace most losses with relative ease - time and distance to shipyards matters more than actual cost, though the logistics side of thing is certainly interesting. The current set of systems works perfectly fine, but the early game and mid-late game have completely different speeds and intensities to them. I'd like to hear what some of the objectives are/were on the economic side of things, as aside from a few general faction traits, I don't recall there being much discussion of that in the past.

Aside from renaming the resources and trying to emphasize different income sources for each faction, the economy hasn't been something we've worked with too in depth, though your assessment is pretty similar to what ours currently is as far as pacing goes. We've got a few changes to income rates in the full 1.0 release (which may or may not end up helping, it's hard to say without more people playing it) but it's something we'll be working a lot more on in 1.1. There's one pretty significant change in particular I'm going to be implementing dealing with supply/upkeep as pretty much the first thing once we start 1.1 which should help improve stuff, so it should be announced relatively soon. We definitely want to get to a point where late-game ships and fleets aren't just fodder you can throw away and build with disregard for build costs and other economic factors, which should help with not only making economic choices matter, but also reducing the late-game fatigue and resulting "fuck it, sending everything in and then we quit" which can happen in Sins, and even (hopefully) system performance.

Currently, once you have enough labs, the only thing to build in orbit is trade depots and shipyards, and while base sins certainly didn't offer much more than that beyond refinieries (which would be total overkill with Ascendancy's economic model), I do think more options would help encourage specialization and alternate playstyles. Perhaps something like an intelligence center for the Hand to grant limited sight to adjacent planets, or an orbital prison complex for the IR which improves allegiance and ship production rates?

This is something we want to explore in a few different ways, however the difficulty is doing it in a way that doesn't completely negate the AI's ability to be effective.

[JollySam]

Some of the capital ships (like the Imperial Star Destroyers I and II) seem to have better texture work than others (the Allegiance, the Executor). Are there any plans to rework some of these before the final release? The models are fine, its just the textures that seems a little weird.

[Corey]

Every release has redone models/textures in it.