I'm in the same boat as those who posted above. I basically have lost all interest in this game due to unit control issues, and substrate economy hack.

economy management is what makes this game interesting.. taking it away from substrate(an already streamlined race for no micro or thought) makes the game boring. substrate should get a discount on storage upgrade, or have a higher starting storage. not unlimited.

this also ties in with building strategy. before substrate existed, phc had a similar building/unit layout. I.e, one factory for basically everything. Now they divided up the phc units between more buildings, making building micro a thing. When substrate came around, they had the same simplistic "beta phc" building arrangement. again streamlined for no micro..

So, it's not the game for me, in this state. The philosophy that you can balance micro and non-micro is silly imo, change the way they operate for sure but to me the game is going nowhere with this weird ideal they're going for.

UNIT CONTROL... really bad, and why cant i target the ground with my siege unit? So hard to destroy enemy defense when every 0.5 seconds you are trying to re issue commands to your units. Either unit moves forward when you try attack, or wont attack, all so very frustrating.

Lots of potential in this game, however I wont be playing it until these things are changed. Which is no problem its their game and they can do what they wish, there will most likely be lots of people who will like the game.. For sure.

hi brad,

I am still conviced that build time nerf and price increase is not enough for the Artillery.

• The problem is that the turret has this high range and does a lot of damage with aoe. Thus it kills almost all t2  units before they arrive at the base of the opponent.... it outranged everything
• In my opinion you have not tackled the problem up to now; maybe because you like Artilleries. nevertheless please solve this problem
• I don´t want to wait for a balance until you have released your anti radar contact unit... if you introduce a building or a uniit you should consider the balance... 
• cargeiver vs medic -> too expensive, too much logistic, too less healing
• price is four times as high as the medic
• caregiver can heal each unit by 2 hp but can heal several unit
• medic can heal one unit by about 36 hp.
• medic 1 logistic; caregiver 30 logistic
• sky ender too weak; too less damage
• mauler resource nerf??? it has been more expensive than the athena before...
• drone swam is too epsive please set it back to 125 quanta..
• the tech wall for the eridicator is strage and bad decison, however for the recharger its even worse....
• The recharger was in ashes not as good as repair bay, but now behind this expensive build really bad decision.
• the mauler still dosen´t attack the chronos  dreadnought with his primary weapon https://youtu.be/NoNYNCTOt3Y
• get rid of the group formation as long, they fight in group worse than without
• overmind ridiculous bad unit... maybe invulnerable drones could improve it...

I agree the arty needs some nerfs, either range, AOE damage, accuracy, rate of fire, etc. even if it was only more expensive it would still be so effective, u don't need many to destroy an attacking army before they can get in range.. so if it kept its strength than it should become A LOT more expensive, like 5-6 times more..

I agree the caregiver needs a buff, units die so quickly, that the medic is actually A LOT more effective, it doesn't help if u are repairing the entire army for so little damage that they are dying anyway, compared to the medic that can keep all the essential units alive. and for considerably lower cost/log

I like that the sky ender can attack radar contacts and has greater range, but also agree it needs more damage

The drone swarm too expensive? Sorry this is where I disagree, for one u need to consider the majority of players (who are not the top ranked) when I first started playing the drone swarm killed me almost every time. if u don't have AA as PHC u are dead. which means an Apollo. an Apollo is overly expensive just to counter a POSSIBLE drone swarm, and then where will the drone swarm lay? also the drone swarm lasts for >1 min, so If u DO NOT kill it with AA, it can easily destroy a lot of ur base. so no AA, and the enemy uses drone swarm = crippled. compared to the plasma storm? that lasts 15 sec, is dodgeable (with good micro that I could even do when I started playing) if anything I think the drone swarm should become a more consistent power, currently it dies too easily to AA, and does too much damage if u don't have AA.

I like the tech wall on the recharger, but then I think the recharger needs a buff (the tech wall is to prevent early turtling being too strong) whereas the tech wall + buff means the recharger has a use in later games as well..

I only use groups now when I want bonuses from the dread, or to stop people from sniping HVTs in my army.. like Apollos.. or my cruisers amongst my SS spam mongol horde.. otherwise units operate more effectively outside of any army..

I find the retributor less effective than the overmind, since atleast the overmind has that shield buff thing, even if it doesn't do damage...

and maybe it works vs you this good, in fact your are new in this game; thus you have to practice more.... 

have you ever played vs a phc, which used emp against you? 50 quanta and your whole army is nearly dead... 

and yes you are right, substrate has only one usable dreadnought the savager... the others are just bad...

and now we are back to the fundamental problem... stardocks dont tackle the real problems... instead of making the current units usable, they working on new units... 

the same problem I worte a post some month ago, " why does stardocks work at a add on (escalation), if they are not able to fix bugs and balance of the base game..."

most companies do what stardock is doing, the real money comes from the MAJORITY OF PLAYERS, who are the SP players (remember >95%), so balance doesn't mean as much to them. new content means more and thus "why does stardocks work at a add on" because it makes sense my young Padawan.. even if u don't like it...

hahahahaha ok so ur definition of balance is git gud? hahaha

the problem then isn't with the drone swarm being too expensive for u, its with the EMP being too cheap..

later in the game the drone swarm becomes next to useless (since we now all have AA) so imagine u complain about the drone swarm being too weak, I can say git gud as well? u want the swarm cheaper? ah man git gud and build more quantra... such a lazy response saying "thus you have to practice more" u and ekko chat a lot?

u cant counter arty? git gud...

yeah because you are a newbie in this game and ekko has not been a good player ,too. As I played against him the last time. 

its nothing mean or I want to be mean your just new in the game and you have very less experience.

You can blame me for that... but it don´t compensate you lack of experience

firstly ur showing me a match from vanilla?

we are discussing ESCALATION. next i NEVER said im NOT a newbie... but since u seem to think thats what i was arguing about, let me fill u in on where i stand prestige rank 19, 57 dread kills in 30 hrs of ranked play... and 140 hrs game time across both games.. meaning i have the highest ranked dread kills to game time.. so while there are players in the ladder that have more wins than me, they are all generally due to rushing.. so maybe i know something about the long game since i havent lost a single long match.. which means i might actually understand something about the mechanics of the game.. add to this that every balance issue i have mentioned has eventually been altered.. (and because im sick of people using "u MUST be wrong since u are new"... i have over 5600 hrs of strategy games(check steam) in the last 6 years, and ive been playing strategy games for the last 25 years, so do the math) now that we are done comparing sizes..

back to the actual issue at hand... its lazy to say "u are wrong since u are a newb" i said drones are inconsistent, giving a blanket balance change like cost reduction just pushes the balance issue too far in the one direction. whereas the drone swarm needs more work to make it balanced. read what i said, dont just brush it off because u are the "master" ashes player..

i actually watched more of the video now, if anything u prove the over effectiveness of the drone swarm when there is no AA...

double post

I tested the opt in patch the athena is still too strong... it wins with about 240 hp vs the mauler, however the cost are much less.

particularly there is a probelm with the medic, due to the more hp hera and athena benefit form medic much more than before...

Update released today.

will you ever take away substrate infinite resource hack?

Was about to ask on this, will try what you say.

Edit - didn't work for me.

really nice!!! you released it without 

• Harbinger shields increased from 600 to 4000 (designed to be an incredibly resilient air unit)

at least it was released! im sure more balance will follow.. so no worries

It is a bit more than just copying the maps:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/507490/discussions/0/152392786911696919/

(worked for me)

I said DLC maps not scenarios, Tag Utter's solution does work for scenarios though.

Ah true, my bad.