Great idea to be honest. 

As far as i can see, you want ashes to be like "simplified" versions of escalation. Thats perfectly fine with me. 

That table is kinda in need of formating, cant see the 3 column (next one after the escalation column).

So if I bought a game prior (half year before) to its release am i considered a early adopter?

Tell me that im dreaming... Better yet dont... thats a dream i want to stay in 

So is this going to be akin Act of Aggression, which nowadays is playable in 2 versions - original and reboot? If yes, are u sure this is a good idea? What if i am hypothetically in the TA camp, so not so high on strategic zoom and more complex economy, but i would looove those additional units, which come with Escalation, to have in my base game?

BTW, to me Ashes does not feel like having more content on release than Sins had in 2008. Sins felt far more nuanced from the beginning.

Hey, more units, more defenses, more gameplay and more races down the road? Won't get any whining from this guy.

Ashes isn't mod friendly, has an over-simplified research system, doesn't have any depth to unit balance, has no sea units, no transport units, no non-hover land units, no manual ability control.

TA was an immensely deeper game, with naval, transport units, actual use for low tier units beyond consuming extra metal.  There is zero comparison between Sins and Ashes, Sins actually has research trees, varied weapon and armor types, mitigating shields, an ability system so complex you can make 300 file long random event chains.  Even Sins 1.0 was far superior to Ashes.

I'm sorry, but Ashes is an amazing engine and a mediocre game, it's by far the worst RTS I own when it comes to the usefulness of low tier units, they'd disappear if you added a resource exchange method.

I played Sins for hundreds of hours, I modded Sins for thousands of hours.  If Ashes doesn't improve massively, I'll never reach triple digits on play time.

TA had no manual unit control and the locomotio of a unit is a cosmetic thing. The units had no shields, no armor concept, etc.

Just because you prefer game X over game Y doesn't change objective truths.  One could just as easily argue that Ashes, in having quanta and orbital abilities is thus a "Deeper" game than TA.

TA is my favorite game and I liked it because it was a relatively straight forward game to play that still had a lot of depth.

Re Sins, I'm not sure what your point even is here.  Sins is a much deeper game than Ashes. But it had a lot less content at 1.0.  I would agree that Sins 1.0 was a far more successful game because we found our niche immediately.  Ashes 1.0, by contrast, played it too safe: It's a relatively simple game in a market with lots of games that are relatively simple.

Going forward, Ashes (base game) will need to evolve itself so that it is a fun, inexpensive, but modern RTS while Escalation will evolve to be a much deeper but niche full priced title.

Incidentally, Ashes has varied weapons and armor types, mitigating shields and supports very complex abilities as well.   I prefer Ashes 1.0 to Sins 1.0 but Sins was/is a more successful release.

Commanders did have manual control abilities in the original TA(D-Gun and cloaking?), and the locomotion of a unit is not a cosmetic thing when it creates the dynamic balance between weak, but fast units, and powerful, but slow moving weapons fire.  It was also released in the 90's for computers with a tiny fraction of our modern processing power and was by necessity simplistic by modern standards.

The only dynamic between fast and slow units in Ashes is how long they take to travel.  It has zero bearing on whether they will instantly die, often before they engage in combat.  Combat is largely static, with the control group system negating even what little mobility they have and locking them down in formation.  As the game progresses, even T2 units become so much chaff, as orbitals and artillery blow them away en mass.

While the Quanta abilities are a nice addition, the system is over-simplified.  TA has tactical missile launchers, defenses to counter them, etcetera.  Quanta has a jammer structure which completely prevents the use of anything in it's radius, a binary can/can't state of existence that doesn't allow for any counter but conventional firepower.

Sins 1.0 released with three factions as well as pirates, abilities for I believe each of the 10 frigates in a faction, ignoring civilian frigates and fighters, in depth research trees for civilian and military, which unlocked ships, structures and abilities, as well as doing stat upgrades, random planet bonuses, and 5 leveling capital ships each with 4 level restricted improving abilities to select from.  Ashes, currently, has two factions, no random goodies of any kind in maps to discover, and 16 units per faction total, including the engineer.  I'm not seeing more content now, let alone at release.

Then how about a modding walkthrough that isn't "how to make a map" so people who are interested in turning it into a better game themselves, can see such magically non-obvious in the base game features that no one is aware of and has no idea how to play with.  Seriously, we were told it was going to be this mod friendly paradise, and between looking through the files and what little information has come out, I haven't seen it and it doesn't look like anyone else has or someone would at least be discussing making SupCom3 with it.

I actually like the game where it is.  It's really not bad, it's just not good, small maps are relatively fun.  It's not improving though, which is what really distresses me.  Bigger maps don't help when the game design already doesn't scale with the engine as it is now.  It just doesn't have any serious depth to what you can do.  You can spam generators to bludgeon armies to death with orbitals, and you can send your slow moving dreads around with their soon to be dead escorts to bludgeon defenses to death until they get smacked with an orbital strike and killed by bombers when their air defense is all dead.  The end game on a big map is... bluh?  If you're fixing this in escalation, then we might be going somewhere.  Otherwise it's just a really pretty, really boring slugfest.

I presume that would be his point.

Seriously, dont you think that producing Ashes in its current form was sort of weird decision? You sold several hundreds of thousands of Sins copies, so it was fairly successful game, right? Now you had shiny new engine and were about to produce a new RTS, which for whatever reason was not going to be Sins 2 (probably Ironclad related decision, but whatever).... you could still have made a game equally deep as Sins, pretty much its clone, just set in different setting of your choosing, be it the sci-fi ground one ala Ashes, medieval with castles instead of planets, WW2, fantasy, whatever you wish...  that niche target audience, who adored Sins, would be pretty sure bet to give it a try, cause you know, there is not really another recent game like Sins out there...

yet you decided to play it safe and create simple game of Ashes - in situation, where as you say by yourself there is already a market with similar games (last year Act of Aggression, Grey Goo, this year 8-bit armies, Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak...). So - why?

Yeah, I've been kind of surprised by how little has been done with modding considering how much fanfare it seemed to be getting in the run-up to release.  When I finally decided to stop waiting on a fix for the end-game nuke problem that you highlighted, I was surprised that I had to figure out how to mod them out myself because nobody had even gotten 'that' far (incidentally, large games are, in my opinion, a little more satisfying without them though not having them really brings the army pathing issues and limited unit diversity into focus).  And even then, apparently, I can't use these mods in a co-op game with friends that I might want to try playing this game with so... that's unfortunate.

Anyway, I don't want to dogpile much further than that (though once again, I agree with roughly everything in that post) - I'm sure Stardock is, at least, aware of some of the biggest complaints at this point.  I think the upcoming mobile nullifiers are missing the mark a bit as far as fixing the nuke issue goes but hopefully, the rest of the Escalation package fills in some of the gaps.

In general, I like the idea of adding complexity, sophistication, and more strategy. 

However, I have some misgivings about this post and what it might imply. 

1) Calling your hot new product "inexpensive but modern" (translate as "cheap but reasonably functional") is not a terrific idea when you are expecting people to invest in a new version, less than a year after the original was released. This description of the game would hardly be a resounding endorsement if it was included in a game review. Almost sounds like you are rubbishing your own title, which was supposed to be the hottest new thing in RTS. I can only speak for myself, but I wasn't happy to read this sentiment. As someone who invested in the game with some high hopes, it sort of pissed me off. Not sure where you were going with that statement, or what you intended to say. My interpretation is probably NOT what you intended.

2) I'd be curious to know what is in store in terms of splitting of development resources. i saw somewhere that Ashes can support 3 full time devs at this point (based on current sales figures). So what happens after you split the titles? How many people will be devoted to each?

3) I see very little slated for the future of the base ashes game. Just two items for base game. What else is on the base game horizon? You seem to indicate that the base of ashes will be developed "for years to come." And it will go in a different direction than escalation? But there is no evidence of that in your chart? Will Ashes actually go in it's own direction, or will it simply be refined and stabilized as a basic product in its current form (more or less)?

4) If pretty much everything in the base is also in escalation, then why would someone actually want to play the base? Unless they jsut want a cheap demo (which might not be the ideal thing for a prospective new player to see? Wouldn't you rather them se the best-in-class version?) What am I missing?

5) Will escalation still be an RTS? Will it stay an RTS?

6) Will escalation have a ladder? Will it keep its ladder? I want to know this as someone who pre-ordered. Only seems fair to let players know intentions.  

7) I am happy to see no "diplomacy" in this list. It was mentioned somewhere else. That seemed like a mistake. 

8) I am disappointed to see no mention of improved UI (ex. troop selection controls). 

9) I am also disappointed to see no mention of other ideas that have received resounding endorsements on the forums (ex. weather). It doesn't seem like weather would take too much effort to implement in contrast to some other planned features. And weather would definitely be something that would help to make the game unique. Perhaps Ashes should be looking for more low-hanging fruit like this? 

10) Did this post really tell us anything new? We already knew Escalation would be a separate game. And the relevant feature lists have been posted for quite a while on Steam. Is there really new information here? (Aside from the fact some some players would receive DLC??? Was this just thinly veiled acknowledgement of slightly overpriced original product???)  What else was new in this post? What am I missing?

PS. I took a look at the new video. Looking good visually.

I've frankly never played supreme commander, and don't know why they are making such a big deal out of strategic zoom. Looks OK in video. But not sure I see how it really matters yet. I mean, if this is a primary justification for splitting the games (seems like it), then is it really a key part of the game? I'll be sad and aggravated if the strategic zoom thing ends up being much ado about nothing.

In Supreme Commander, strategic zoom was navigation and a full screen minimap rolled into one, same with Sins of a Solar Empire.  Both are excellent games well beyond their peers, the zoom feature just being one of the things where they were ahead of their time.

It sounds like you should really pick up at least Forged Alliance, sounds like you'd enjoy it.

Followup to previous post...

In fairness, it does appear that some of my issues (#8 and #9, and to some degree #3) were addressed by Draginol in this thread:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/228880/discussions/1/350544272219647451/

Upgradable defenses... If I recall correctly, the only upgradable defenses in supcom were shield generators (for 2 of the 3 vanilla races, I can't recall if seraphim shields were upgradable). And frankly, upgrades don't neccessarily make a game complex. I would argur that between a game with 3 different defenses and a game with one defense which has 5 squential upgrades (i.e. maintaining the general characteristic), the latter one is less complex.

I wouldn't say supcom ahd unlimited progression, but the limit was pretty damn high, which was amazing to me. And made it a lot less simple, you are right in that.

What I actually came here to post about: Strategic zoom.

Strategic zoom does not add complexity. When I first saw it in SupCom I started to love it. StratZoom is a tool to help you manage complexity, like a minimap helps you managing the complexity of a large playing field. If your game has a playing field that is only 3 screens wide and high, strategic zoom doesn't make it complex. It makes what is on the map easier to handle if properly supplemented with unit representation (icons when you zoom out).

Quite frankly, the only reason I can imagine speaking against strat zoom is how fast you can execute actions with it. Having played Starcraft 2 I would guess that I can be slightly faster in that framework with aminimap, than I would with StratZoom. But apart from that, I think StratZoom is a super elegant system almost any RTS can benefit from. No matter how simple or complex.

The existance of a feature doesn't make a game deeper. It makes it more complex.

Complexity is the amount of stuff you can learn (i.e. are not obscured too much) about game mechanics. The amount of upgrades, armor types, unit types, relations between upgrades (trees have many relations for example), is weather conditions, formations, etc.pp.

Depth I would measure by how many different situations you can expect to run into. A situation I would consider distinct from another if I have to act differently in the one as opposed to the other. Balance is vital here and makes the difference between a game being not only complex but also deep.

An example: Let's assume your game has 3 different units, than there are 7 different combinations of units (ignoring numbers per unit, which will ofc increase this number a lot). If one of these combinations just outright crushes all the others, you have a game which has a complexity of 7 unit combinations, you could be facing, but a depth of 1 situation, since the crushing combination is the thing you are doing regardless of what your enemy throws at you.

edit; I should possibly also add, that I am not intending to be nitpicky over the words complex and deep here. My point is, that it is for a designer to see the complexity going into a game, but to the player, the depth coming out of the game is the relevant quantity. I use the two words to describe two very different things here.

Interesting discussion - I can see why Stardock wants to leave the base game for the people that want a quick playing RTS game without other stuff to learn.  I could understand from a marketing point of view that you would want to address both audiences.  So having a post to review the reasons for the split direction of the development from the base game to Escalation makes perfect good sense and practical to promote this new game direction.  We want you guys to make money but would like to see the game become more in depth and have more units and more complexity.  Obviously there is a market for the quick to play 1-2 hour RTS game and if there is enough people that only want that why not support them so that ground breaking effort to create the Nitrous game engine will be profitable and serve both communities.

However I rather have a more in depth game like you are envisioning for Escalation.  But realistically the marketplace for any in depth complex strategy game is a small niche market place in a world where MMOPG, E-Sports, and more conventional RTS games dominate.  SO it would seem prudent not to ignore the other market for the game while seeking to make it more complex for those of us that want more than the game currently offers.

As a founder I applaud this post and the discussion that Draginol has started to explain the reasons for the future direction of the game.  Whether the base game includes strategic zoom or tech trees to me is really a marketing and PR thing and serves a customer base that is not directed at me and I am happy to leave it to Stardock's discretion as to what should or should not be included for those that want Ashes to become more "Total Annihilation" like.

This looks really interesting. I've been enjoying the campaign and I may try the multiplayer if I ever get time. You guys seem to be doing a pretty good job building Ashes. Keep up the good work! Escalation seems like a really solid expansion.

wy the Multiplayer Scenarios will be so late?

Its a very powerfull tool that can grab mush more players to the multiplayer and I think it should be a priority with the launch of escalation.