You may think that the RTS genre is all about clicking quicker than your opponent, but in truth there’s a lot more variety than that. StarCraft is a much quicker, reflexive sort of game than the likes of Homeworld, for example.
Though Stardock’s take on the genre Ashes Of The Singularity is still in Early Access on Steam, it’s regularly getting updates and improvements that has led to an overall positive experience from gamers. That doesn’t mean there aren’t requests, though, such as a wider zoom for the game to improve strategic control.
Well, that’s not going to happen.
Brad Wardell, CEO at Stardock, has answered this particular request with a firm negative, stating that “there's an ugly catch to strategic zoom on a land game that many are unaware of”.
“By zooming out and seeing the entire map it completely changes the way games are played,” explains Wardell. “It is a topic we talked about a lot during Demigod (Demigod Beta had strategic zoom). When players zoom out super far, they stop caring about the importance of terrain, local vision, unit balance, relative unit speeds, etc.”
Wardell adds that in Ashes Of The Singularity, tactical elements like terrain and unit types matter. “One Zeus, for instance, can wipe out a swath of crappy tier one units. But one Nemesis can wipe out several Zeus’s while that Nemesis can be taken out by a few crappy tier one units. Put in strategic zoom and that goes away. Along with lots of other things like caring about putting units up on the high ground to give them more firing range and vision.”
So don’t expect to see a strategic zoom coming to Ashes Of The Singularity, then.
Wardell did also add that other features are on their way. These include bigger maps, a map editor (which Founders currently have access to), naval combat and a research tree. That last one won’t actually be added until after the game’s release, however, with Wardell stating that it’s better to give players something “to improve balance rather than nerf something”.
So there’s still plenty to look forward to, if you haven’t already played it.
