Greetings!

I know it’s only been a week since the big update but…we have another big update!

Release date: NOW

• Gameplay

  • Power removed as a resource

  • Battlegroups can now be made out of groups of T1s or groups of T2s.  No strict hierarchy for low level units is required.

  • Units accelerate and move faster

  • Units engaged in battle move at 25% their normal speed.

  • Lots of misc AI improvements

  • Smarties are more powerful

  • Artemis track targets a little closer in

  • Capture time lowered from 30 seconds to 15 seconds

  • Capture distance incrased from 150 to 300

  • Gameplay setup options

    • Neutral Defenders on/off

    • Prebuilt Extractors on/off

    • Full Fog of War on/off

  • Auto-save enabled by default

• Menus & Multiplayer Functionality

  • Singleplayer Setup Screen updated

  • Lobby Browser & Custom lobby updated

  • MP Save/Load game support

  • Private game support

  • Steam icons displayed for players

  • Ability to kick players from lobbies

  • Animated background

  • Lots of misc visual polish

• Misc Art

  • Team colors more prominent on units

  • fixing normals and position of Radioactives extractor

• In-Game UI

  • New health bar style

  • Firing range rings appearance improvement, and limited to one range ring per group/Battlegroup

  • Selected unit’s weapons are now listed & have corresponding tooltips

  • Minimap

    • Visual pass

    • Basins show as impassible, making navigable area more legible

    • Region icons now show region by their most common resource

    • Power lines displayed by team color

    • minimap changed to show radar return color coded by player

  • Fix arrow button consistency in Empire Tree

  • Scroll bar for Empire Tree

  • Cursors for input modes

  • Research tree UI improvements (more big changes to come)

• Sound

  • New notification VO

  • updated ship select sfx

  • unit specific move sound hookup

  • updated for T1 weapons sfx

  • builidng construction sound

  • added/updated some ambient tracks

• Improved crash reporting to help debug community issues

• Lots of crash fixes

• Misc

  • Performance optimizations

  • Better handling of Engineer Stop

  • Tighter leash on units in a destination

  • fix for floating Turinium Generator model

  • F1 now correctly cycle selects the player’s engineers

  • AI opponents now have recognizable names

The founder’s program is going to end within the next 60 days or so as we are starting to run out of serial numbers.    You can join the Founder’s Program here. 

When we go into beta, the Founders are going to get coupons to give to friends to get more Ashes keys to help begin building a multiplayer community.