Ashes of the Singularity II News

[p]In Ashes of the Singularity, we had a bit of a hybrid system for unlocking orbital abilities, units and buildings. Mostly, if you built the right building, you unlocked a corresponding unit or orbital ability.[/p][p]On the other hand, if you wanted to upgrade your abilities, like armor quality or logistics or weapon power and such, you had to increment the corresponding level which you did via Quanta which you generated from Quantum Relays.[/p][p]So here we are again, Ashes of the Singularity II. One of the biggest design philosophies from the first game is to slow down the APM requirements in order to add more strategic depth to the game. Which brings back the question of when to have something made available through the tech tree vs. when to have things unlocked by buildings:[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]\[An early look at a possible research screen, testing out different tech categories and progression][/p][p][/p][p]Now the current thinking is that your placed buildings should unlock other (more advanced) buildings. Technology would unlock additional units, upgrades, and orbitals. This way, we can still gate access to some buildings, particularly advanced buildings. If a building requires a resource like Radioactives (officially called Elerite by the USA/Chinese/NATO/Russia consortium after much argument), we only unlock it once you have built at least one Elerite Refinery.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]RTS games, whether it be StarCraft, Supreme Commander, Tempest Rising (check that game out), or, of course, Sins of a Solar Empire, take different approaches. What’s your view on the balance of tech trees vs. building unlocks? Let us know in the comments.[/p]

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[p]When designing a real-time strategy game, most people think first about the units: the soldiers, tanks, aircraft, and other powerful pieces that players use to dominate the battlefield. But as the art director on Ashes of the Singularity II, I know that the real star of the screen is the environment itself. The terrain is what players spend the majority of their time looking at. It’s not just a backdrop - it’s the stage where every battle is fought, every strategy unfolds, and every story emerges.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]From the beginning of development, we knew that the terrain in Ashes of the Singularity II couldn’t just be a functional improvement over the first game from ten years ago; it had to be visually striking with much higher texture density, responsive to the units and their weapon fire, and overall narratively supportive. Our environments need to balance two competing goals: they must look beautiful and immersive, but they also need to clearly communicate gameplay information. That means troops must remain visible against the backdrop, paths and choke points must be readable at a glance, and key features like cliffs, valleys, and roads must stand out even when viewing from a distance. At the same time, when the player zooms in close, we want the world to feel alive with dust kicked up by tanks and explosions scorching the terrain.[/p][p][/p][h3]The Terrain as a Stage[/h3][p]Internally, we recognize that the battlefield is literally referred to as the “theater of war”. If the environment is the set, the armies are the actors, and the player is the director, we want to ensure every battle is epic every time they play Ashes of the Singularity II. Just like a stage in theater, the environment doesn’t dictate the exact story, but it provides the structure that makes storytelling possible. A wide-open plain suggests a clash of massive armies charging across open ground. A canyon with narrow choke points hints at ambushes and desperate defenses. A cliff overlooking a valley gives the feeling of commanding high ground.[/p][p]To achieve this, our environments are built with multiple levels of terrain: canyons, ridges, cliffs, and plateaus. These aren’t just visual flourishes; they’re functional spaces that shape gameplay. Troops can climb or descend between levels, and natural barriers create unique strategic opportunities. Because these maps are procedurally generated, no two battlefields are the same. Each new map is a fresh stage, waiting for the player to write their own story of conquest.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]The Challenge of Procedural Beauty[/h3][p]Procedural generation gives us infinite variety, but it also creates an artistic challenge: how do we make sure these endless maps are still cohesive and beautiful? Ashes of the Singularity II will have hand-crafted levels which can be polished to perfection by an artist, but procedural maps are unpredictable! A cliff might appear next to a forest or a river might cut through a desert plain. Our job is to make sure that no matter what the algorithm creates, the terrain feels intentional and visually appealing.[/p][p]To solve this, we built tooling to help ensure that different terrain types blend naturally with each other. Roads weave subtly through the environment helping units move efficiently and also giving the player’s eye natural lines to follow across the map. These subtle touches help hold the environment together as a believable world, even when the layout is random.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]Reading the World at Every Scale[/h3][p]In an RTS, the camera is always moving, and Ashes of the Singularity II is no exception. This means the environment has to read well at every scale from tight close-ups of individual units to wide, atmospheric views of entire armies smashing together. Up close, we want players to notice the details in terrain textures and the scorch marks left by battle. Zoomed out, those details shouldn’t clutter the view or obscure units. Instead, larger areas of color and contrasting elements take over, making sure armies remain visible and terrain features are easy to interpret.[/p][p]This is where art direction becomes vital. We lean heavily on color and shape language to separate troops from the environmental stage while still feeling like they belong there. Neutral tones in the terrain allow units to pop against them, and buildings are designed with bold materials and silhouettes that remain recognizable at a distance. We think of it almost like lighting a stage: the set needs to look good, but the actors must always remain visible.[/p][p][/p][h3]A Living Environment[/h3][p]Static environmental beauty just isn’t going to cut it in today’s dynamic gaming environment, so we’ve been working hard to make sure the environment in our game reacts dynamically to the chaos of battle. When troops cruise along the terrain, it responds! Vehicles kick up dust, leave tracks, and crush vegetation. When weapons fire, the ground scorches, trees splinter, and craters are carved into the earth. Is the land covered in Turinium or restored to its natural state? These types of reactions make the world feel more alive and reinforce the player’s sense that their armies are shaping an interactive battlefield. By the end of a match, the environment tells a story of the fight whether it’s converting the landscape into Turinium or reclaiming it back from Turinium infection (There’s also a different kind of story told from the burned-out husks of forests, roads trampled by countless soldiers, and explosion craters freckling the terrain).[/p][p][/p][h3]The Environment as the Storyteller[/h3][p]Ultimately, our philosophy is that the terrain isn’t just a neutral backdrop - it’s a collaborator in storytelling. It provides context for every decision the player makes, shapes the flow of battles, and records the consequences of war. When a player looks back at an Ashes of the Singularity II battlefield after a long campaign, they should see not just a map, but a story written in dust, fire, and stone.[/p][p]In Ashes of the Singularity II, the armies may be the actors, but the environment is the stage that gives their performance meaning. It grounds the fantasy of world domination in a believable, reactive space, and ensures that every battle feels epic, cohesive, and unforgettable.[/p][p][/p][p][/p]

[p]In the original Ashes of the Singularity, we noted some key pain points when it came to producing units and managing armies in the late game. One of the first frustrations was the need to micromanage numerous production buildings during large-scale conflicts as the game progressed. You could dogpile engineers onto a single production building to make it construct faster, but if you were trying to field various cruisers, frigates, etc., you still would need to manage several different buildings to try and keep your production queues optimized to your income.[/p][p]Added to that, if your production buildings were far behind your frontlines, new units would take a bit of time to reach their rally points. On smaller maps, this was less of an issue, but on the really large maps, you’d start to feel it. Some unique units in Ashes of the Singularity could teleport reinforcements to frontline armies, but micromanaging these unique support units added some unit micromanagement to try and save building micromanagement.[/p][p]Wanting to make ‘playing on sprawling huge maps’ more enjoyable, we decided to reconsider both how reinforcements are handled and how new unit production is handled.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p](Constructing a new Vehicle Yard at the North edge of my territory, near Army 1, to move my production frontline)[/p][p][/p][p]In Ashes 2, your production buildings coordinate recruitment and supply chain across the entire map. Similar to a few other RTSs, if you construct multiple of the same production building, it speeds up the production. Rather than recruiting individual engineers and assigning them to expedite work at a building, you can just construct another production building.[/p][p]The units still spawn from a specific production building, however, and their spawn point really matters. The production buildings are ‘smart’, and they know when they’re producing a unit to reinforce an existing army, or create a new army.[/p][p]If you’re trying to reinforce an army on the frontline, the newly-recruited units will spawn at whatever production building is closest to that army.[/p][p]If you’re trying to create a new army, the units will spawn at whatever building is closest to the army’s initial rally point.[/p][p]These choices impact gameplay in a few central areas. When you conquer new regions, for example, you can leapfrog your ability to reinforce your armies by constructing new production buildings in regions closer to those armies. This becomes a key mechanic on larger maps, because maps can get so large, it can take many minutes for new units to cross several regions and join with your main armies. Managing your ‘production frontline’ becomes an important aspect, but because constructing a new production building isn’t an action you do THAT frequently, it winds up being an important decision, but not one that requires constant attention. You also aren’t ‘losing’ on any investment you’ve made in earlier production facilities back in your home region, as those still help your ‘frontline’ production facilities recruit faster.[/p][p]Added to this are some of the region mechanics that we’ve preserved from the original Ashes of the Singularity. Regions are connected back to your ‘home’ region via connection lines. If a region becomes orphaned or isolated, it loses power. Unpowered regions can’t generate resources or use their production buildings. If a hostile army is relying on a key region to reinforce its frontline forces, you can either assault that region directly or outmaneuver and capture connecting regions to de-power the production buildings. On a large map, this can mean delaying reinforcements by several minutes, which may be enough time to outproduce your opponent. Skirmishing, or raiding, becomes a viable tactic, as just buying time with a small army can be a force multiplier for your main army elsewhere.[/p][p][/p][p](The expansion has left my new Vehicle Yard, near Army 1, vulnerable to isolation. A raid on the region just to the South would cut off its power.[/p][p][/p][p]The changes to unit production help illustrate some of our larger gameplay goals with Ashes of the Singularity 2. The scale of conflict quickly grows beyond ‘small’, and we want to make sure players are focused on important strategic decisions, and not getting constantly taxed by small micromanagement details. A typical midgame battle might result in nearly a hundred casualties, and replacing that huge volume of units needs to be streamlined, so you can focus on the bigger, more interesting decisions. Where will I construct my forward production buildings? Where should I place defenses to prevent raids? Should I build slower, heavier units and roll straight into the enemy base, or faster, lighter units to outmaneuver them? What is my opponent recruiting, and how can I adapt to counter them?[/p][p]We hope this Dev Journal has helped provide some insight into how the gameplay of Ashes of the Singularity 2 is evolving around its grand scale, and how mechanics are changing to make playing at that scale awesome. We’ll have some more dev journals in the next few weeks as we explore additional mechanics and continue our dive into gameplay.[/p]

[h2]Making the map a character[/h2][p]When you think about RTS games, what do you spend most of the time looking at? More than your base, more than your armies - it is the terrain itself. It sets the scale of the conflict, shapes how battles unfold, and creates the sense of immersion that keeps players engaged. For Ashes of the Singularity II, we wanted to push this further by creating maps that are larger, more detailed, and more responsive.[/p][p]Our work on Ara: History Untold taught us a lot about how to create immersive, natural-looking environments. One of Ara: History Untold’s core pillars was to build a “living world” that grew and evolved with the player’s actions. With Ashes 2, we took those lessons but shifted our philosophy entirely. Instead of a living world, Ashes of the Singularity II is focused on a “destructive world.” The environments here are not meant to flourish - they are meant to react to the chaotic forces unleashed during war. A Hyperion crashing into a forest could ignite nearby trees. Artillery shells might leave craters in the ground. When a structure is destroyed, its absence leaves a scar on the terrain that lasts for the rest of the match. The terrain itself becomes part of the story, a record of the destruction left behind as the battle rages on.[/p][p][/p][h2]Player-generated maps for greater replayability[/h2][p]In the first Ashes of the Singularity, our maps were ambitious for their time, built to support massive battles, but limited in variety. Skirmish mode offered a set of pre-made maps, but there was no way to generate maps procedurally (although there was a map editor that allowed players to manually create maps). With Ashes of the Singularity II, we wanted to go further by giving players the ability to generate completely random maps. Every time you start a match, you will be dropped into a new world. This opens the door to endless replayability and gives players the control to shape the kind of battlefield they want to fight over.[/p][p]Our procedural world generation system has been greatly updated to incorporate advanced texture synthesis and projection techniques to create sharper, more realistic surfaces. Height density has been increased significantly, which gives the terrain more slopes, ridges, cliffs, and plateaus. These features are not just visual dressing. They break up the battlefield, creating natural obstacles and points of interest that make each match feel unique. Positioning matters in subtle but meaningful ways, with terrain shaping the flow of combat without overwhelming the core gameplay.[/p][p][/p][h2]Strategic, not tactical, map sizes[/h2][p]Battles are not the only large things in Ashes of the Singularity II. [/p][p]The scale of the world is another defining feature. A “small” map is larger than what many other RTS games would consider a “large” one. The scale of the world and procedural generation make exploration more engaging. Moving across the map is not just about reaching your opponent; it is about uncovering the shape of the world itself. Each match encourages players to scout, adapt, and expand in new ways, making exploration an essential part of the experience. [/p][p]In Ara: History Untold, the challenge was to represent an entire planet with multiple biomes, which limited how detailed each one could be. In Ashes of the Singularity II, the map sizes have remained largely the same, but instead of creating a whole world, the map represents a single biome, which allows us to make it more detailed, atmospheric, and believable. We aim to make the environment feel authentic, and that makes the battles fought across it even more engaging. [/p][p][/p][h2]Realism matters[/h2][p]For us, it was never enough to simply make the maps look better. They needed to feel authentic, to enhance gameplay, and to reinforce the scale and intensity of massive RTS combat. By combining large procedural maps, varied terrain, focused biomes, and a philosophy built around destructive worlds, we have created terrain that does more than set the stage. It makes large-scale battles a true spectacle that is both engaging and immersive.[/p][p][/p][p](Screenshot of Work In Progress procedurally generated Siberia)[/p]