Join us at www.ageofascent.com for a 30 min playtest Saturday, 18th October, 2014 at 8pm UTC, 3pm Central US, 4pm East US, 9pm UK
http://player.ageofascent.com/Home/Scores/2014-10-18/
Juipiter and Europa await
If you want to know the bigger picture and where we are heading don’t forget to check out: About Age of Ascent
Thank you all for joining us on this journey!
I really like how the layout and placement of the two ships and the ring contain the map. Now we know where the center is and where to meet up to fight each other. I also liked using those objects as visual cover to break the line of sight and run away from enemies.
I do want to pitch an idea: a rear view camera. Like the ones normally found in racing games so that players can see behind them.
I loved the change of scenery today. Using the ships as cover to break away from someone was extremely helpful and I saw quite a few people using that tactic. The one change that I would like to see is that the cool down time on the turbo is increased as you can use it almost constantly when necessary. Other than that today went smoothly, with no lag or decreases in frame rate.
Woooooooooooooooooow. Tons of fun. Blue team had a pretty hard numbers advantage (especially by the end, I think it was 4v9 or something like that). I had to give up or lost a lot (a lot) of kills because it just got too hot. Counting the positive scoring players on the top part of the scoreboard, key players were Awesome, Jramsey, Airplaneman, Imperial Defenstrator, Glun, Agamemnus, and Ubluntu on the red team vs. myself and Gameangel on the blue team. I was glad to see a good number of friends joined in the fun though.
I’m really liking the containment thing that the ring and two metal plates on the side bring. There was a pretty impressive initial turn out today, and the soup got thick. Like others mentioned, breaking line of sight is kind of awesome. I’m really excited for whatever new mechanics are in store. What’s are some of the immediate goals for the alpha? Controls, weapons, and mouse issues were taken care of, bots seems to be working really well, what’s left? Collision? 
I really want to see the update where everyone flies into the soup in the middle then proceeds to explode in a spectacular suicide pact of awesome.
I really gotta commend the radar mechanics. As soon as those bots dropped in, my map got flooded with red and blue lines, boxes, and letters. Zooming in alleviated the problem, and allowed me to concentrate on my target.
It’s awesome when those bots are dropped in by the way. Really cinematic.
Coming from the other side of the table, I have to disagree. I would have died a lot sooner were the boost not as usable as it was. Multiple people can take down someone quick enough as it is, and changing the booster time would affect that situation most heavily, if not almost exclusively.
I would like to suggest being able to boost indefinitely at will, but locking up your shooting controls while boosting.
However, because that would make it so easy to disengage, score would have to be calculated by damage done instead of kills, I think.
Video coming soon. Forgot to not record my mouse though.
The same applies for me. Without boost I would have died way more than twice. The point about boost is that I could keep my speed above the normal 250m/s except for about a second, as the time it took for my speed to decrease from 500->250 was long enough for the recharge time. Not sure if that was intended or I had some kind of lag going on. This made it so that I could fly around in the middle doing circles taking relatively little damage, so that the repair could keep me alive.
Score matters now, but in the complete game, people will have to die otherwise battles for control of a system could take days on end. Of course boost will likely need to be re-balanced again as soon as more weapons/ships are added.
I want to say that was mostly the fault of red team being a lot more green than the blue team. I didn’t notice any particularly unusual behavior from you, and I drew a few really good beads on you, but I couldn’t stay on target because of the sheer number of people shooting at me every time I did something not evasive.
Must have been a visual lag time then and most likely had to do with my computer.
Well what I mean is I’m pretty sure the booster is working as intended with regards to how quickly you can use it again after boosting. When you really get into it though, that slowdown period is the most powerful and vulnerable time of a boost.
That wasn’t the greatest choice of words but I agree that the time when boost is out is when it is the most powerful and vulnerable. Also, I would have liked to see what the fight in the middle had looked like from an outside perspective. From there it would be much easier to see the effect that boosting creates during a fight.
I’ll review my video and see if I can find anything. There were a number of times where I’d find myself drawn away from the battle and have a good view of the soup as I reengage.
Now let’s pick this apart a little. In the battles of old, soldiers would throw down their arms and flee. And if an army were rendered ineffective either by fear, disorganization, or death, they would be routed, a defeat. Like real life, in a game where you can lose everything with a single death, being able to lose without dying is really important!
When it comes to actually destroying people as opposed to defeating them, that’s where tactics and communication is involved. Surrounding enemies, blocking escape routes, or focus fire are some strategies that achieve these ends.
Video!
Fantastic video, now on the homepage.
More interesting stuff for you guys will be coming shortly - stay posted!
best,
SC