Ashes of the Singularity is “the most advanced RTS ever”, says Stardock

By Brenna Hillier

Stardock has revealed Ashes of the Singularity, a new take on sci-fi RTS.

Ashes of the Singularity is described as “not an RTS battle, an RTS war” which sounds pretty exciting.

Built on Oxide Games’ Nitrous Engine, Ashes of the Singularity boasts of thousands of units on screen at a time, each with multiple targeted weapons systems and ballistics models.

Multiple armies will battle it out on maps “an order of magnitude larger than in a traditional RTS”, publisher Stardock said. Players manage their huge masses of troops using “meta-units”, grouping units together to make them work together – after which you can turn your attention elsewhere.

Here’s a bit of a blurb and a features list:

• Massive Scale – Thousands of units fighting in multiple armies across a world
• Strategic Depth – Players fight for control of regions and their resources while maintaining their supply lines
• Innovative Design – Units can be combined together for form meta-units that work together and make their combined special abilities easily accessible to the player
• Feel Nitrous’ power – Experience groundbreaking Nitrous engine visual fidelity for the first time, which redefines the concept of scale in real-time strategy games.
• Become an Ashes of the Singularity Founder today and get access to the friends & family alpha when available – or show your support by becoming an Lifetime Founder, and get a lifetime subscription to all Ashes expansions and DLC for a one-time price.

The wars of the future aren’t fought with a mere few dozen units, but thousands of deadly robotic constructs smashing each other into scrap only to be replaced by a steady stream of fresh war machines from the endlessly churning factories of the post-humans and their sentient AI foe.

The technological singularity has ended life as we know it. Humanity has abandoned its crude organic bodies for the fully networked existence of artificial, augmented consciousness. Yet as the post-humans’ powers grow, their humanity wanes. The lone sentient AI, Haalee, once led humanity to the stars but now finds herself in an existential conflict to determine the fate of the galaxy – and all galaxies.

According to IGN, Ashes of the Singularity has a single-player campaign in addition to multiplayer, and details of league structures, leaderboards, stats and other features are forthcoming.

Multiplayer and connected features will run on Stardock’s cloud-based Project Tachyon, which was led by Adrian Luff, of Battle.net fame.

Keen? You can learn more and even buy in to guarantee early access via the game’s website.