The current state of large-scale RTS?

[AdmiralZeech]

Hiya, just curious. Has there been any development progress in PA:Titans or Ashes? I heard they were initially quite disappointing, have they been improved?

Or is FAF still the best massive scale RTS?

[Viba]

What is PA? We don't talk about that here.

[RealityCheck]

Ashes Of Singularity is interesting, because Stardock intends to do continuous development with it. It has a different gameplay than FA, however Stardock CEO hinted that if they succeed with their development and business model, some day it may be possible to recreate SupCom as a mod in their engine. Their engine is modern, 64 bit, and multithreaded. Who knows, may be this is where the future of SupCom lies.

[Sprouto]

Planetary Annihilation is pretty much done (read: dead) with little traffic on the forums and the barest hint of any activity from the development side.

As for Ashes, in it's current form, even with it's advanced technology, it's barely a shadow of what Supreme Commander was capable of out of the box. A great many of the underlying design principals that give FA it's longevity are sorely missing. The jury will be out for quite some time on this one.

[Morax]

Ashes Of Singularity is interesting, because Stardock intends to do continuous development with it. It has a different gameplay than FA, however Stardock CEO hinted that if they succeed with their development and business model, some day it may be possible to recreate SupCom as a mod in their engine. Their engine is modern, 64 bit, and multithreaded. Who knows, may be this is where the future of SupCom lies.

Source, please.

[RealityCheck]

Source, please.

This is where he talks about continuous model and moddability: http://forums.ashesofthesingularity.com/474441

To have a game like Ashes succeed you need the engine (Which we have) plus the capital (which we have) but we also have to have a good community. So far, it’s pretty good. It’s a delicate balance at times. I get pretty annoyed with SupCom super fans who literally want Ashes to be SupCom 3. But overall, it’s gone well.

Modding will become a big deal over time as we find ways to let people create their own units and maps and UI improvements to the game. The AI is already very moddable (I’ve made it my business to wreck it many times…for science).

One of the key things about being an independent developer that self-funds is that you can keep people on a given project. The GalCiv III project continues development as if it were never released. Ashes will be the same way.

This is where he makes the said hint: http://forums.ashesofthesingularity.com/477022

As much as I like Supreme Commander (more specifically, FAF) I have played it out. I am not as big of a fan as some of its die-hards that insist on review bombing Ashes (which hasn’t improved my opinion of some elements of that community, come on guys, Ashes’ success will eventually let you bring your entire game to it). For me, Supreme Commander is hopelessly over-engineered for a new player and as anyone who watches Gyle’s streams (which I do) knows that nearly every game ends in Nuke duels or Experimentals. That’s only fun (for me) so many times. Ashes, btw, would have the exact same problems if development for it stopped.

Both articles are interesting in their entirety, especially where he talks about the funding model of Supreme Commander:

Supreme Commander 1 was developed by Gas Powered Games. It was published by THQ. Back in those days, that was the business model. The publisher would front tens of millions of dollars and the studio would make thee game for a royalty (that was never fully recouped from the advances). The problem with that system is that sooner or later, it killed the game studio.
...
...games owned by the ones funding it mean that the game can evolve forever. For those of you who are Supreme Commander fans, you know that if GPG still owned it and was still independent that we’d be on SupCom 4 by now. Just kills my heart just thinking about that.

[rxnnxs]

Thanks you tatsu for trying to point them into the right direction.
but the blind won't see..
i read some things from you in the ashes forums and they do not get it at all.
i just wrote some things there too and all i got were **** answers.
i just asked why all units have to hover, and, well, they are afraid to say why.. because they cant...
more of it here:
viewtopic.php?f=39&t=9537&start=80

[Zoram]

Thanks you tatsu for trying to point them into the right direction.
but the blind won't see..
i read some things from you in the ashes forums and they do not get it at all.
i just wrote some things there too and all i got were **** answers.
i just asked why all units have to hover, and, well, they are afraid to say why.. because they cant...
more of it here:
viewtopic.php?f=39&t=9537&start=80

I don't like ashes either ( see my first impressions on ashes topic), but that said and having read Tatsu s posts on the forum, even the most level headed, open minded Dev would have to exert the highest level of self discipline to refrain from to telling him to go f*** himself. You just don't go insulting Volkswagen because they don't build Mercedes cars.

Give your input, they don't want it ? Leave a bad review and move on.

But that s why I don't like the crowdsourcing business model, creates all sort of creepy weird relationships between makers and "founders".

[rxnnxs]

jep, you are right!
oh, and i can not rate the game, i did not buy it.
i take the time and wait..
many were cured after the great uber thing called planetary annihilation.
i warned there too and knew what would happen.
many are cured now.
i am curious what comes next, after this kickstart hype.
pay for nothing?

[Morax]

Part of me wants to 100%-believe buying Ahses of the Singularity will promote this, but in order to do so I think it would take some large amount of $ € £ $ € £ $ € £ $ € £ $ € £ to purchase some property. That, or visionik could get working with them on this as well?