{"id":12811,"date":"2015-11-10T14:33:50","date_gmt":"2015-11-10T19:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/?p=12811"},"modified":"2015-11-13T03:10:52","modified_gmt":"2015-11-13T08:10:52","slug":"ashes-of-the-singularity-early-access-first-impressions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/2015\/11\/ashes-of-the-singularity-early-access-first-impressions\/","title":{"rendered":"Ashes of the Singularity – Early Access First Impressions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ashes<\/a><\/p>\n

Ashes of the Singularity<\/a> is a new real-time strategy game developed by Oxide Games and Stardock Entertainment, and published by Stardock. The game was released to Steam Early Access on October 22, 2015. The game is a far-future sci-fi RTS that focuses more on macro-scale play of base building and massive armies production. Stardock mentions the game is heavily influenced by Supreme Commander.<\/p>\n

The game also contains small elements that are inspired from Company of Heroes, which is also cited as a source of inspiration. These elements are the concept of taking points on the map to generate resources and key positions that rake up victory points. Also, keeping your network connected is vital or the enemy will be allowed to break your supply lines and cripple your economy by striking at a critical junction.<\/p>\n

However, even if the game uses a capture point system of connected networks, the scale and style of play is still closer to the model of heavy base building and mass unit production. This makes the game more similar to Supreme Commander and the more recent Planetary Annihilation than Company of Heroes. The focus is about waging wars on a large map and not mere skirmishes between small squads of units.<\/p>\n

The game also uses the new Oxide Engine, a 64-bit DX12 game engine which specialises in multi-core threading (Quad+), but the game is still compatible with DX11 and its respective OSes. The game\u2019s specs are pretty high when compared to other games in the genre (requiring a Quad Core and a 2GB GFX card), with the recommended specs being significantly higher.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no release date confirmed and the game is still in heavy development.<\/p>\n

\"Ashes<\/a><\/p>\n

State of the Game<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ashes of the Singularity\u00a0is in an early Pre-Beta Build (Alpha), and many core game features are missing. The game also has stability issues but I experienced no crashes in my playthrough. It should be heavily stated that when I say the game is not feature complete I mean that. Only the skirmish mode is available (both AI and Multiplayer are\u00a0available), only one faction is in, and not all the map types are in. It also feels more can be done with the existing maps. Also, the global abilities are not in yet, which play the role of strategic and tactical manipulation as units don\u2019t have individual abilities for the player to manage.<\/p>\n

Also, my computer barely meets the system specs; I was playing it on DX11. Surprisingly, it still ran smoothly though my framerate was low but I have experienced worst in the past with games that I was way over-spec with. The silver lining I noticed is that the game kept a stable performance despite the number of units that were on the screen. Though the performance did go down, it wasn\u2019t the feast or famine differences I tend to see with other RTS titles.<\/p>\n

List of Features (most not implemented yet):<\/strong><\/p>\n