A few topics I wanted to address based on forum feedback.

Re lore: This is something that matters a lot to us. Hopefully some of you check out Dawn of the Singularity. It is really really good. http://amzn.to/1OQkvpZ

David Simpson, who is arguably the master of the singularity genre with his Post-Human series spent 2 years on this. It's where Mac and Haalee and everyone else came from.

Re Deluxe campaign: This will internally be done before the end of this Month and release early next month. The voice overs and the new dialog system is now done. It does make it a lot better and having more missions and cut scenes to flesh things out further helps too.

Campaign 2, which won't come out until the end of the Summer, will shed a lot more light on the Substrate's motivations.

Right now, there's only like a hundred Post-Humans. There's still billions of regular old humans on Earth and the Substrate's position is basically that the there won't be enough "sentience" to escape the Milky Way if it's spread across billions of humans rather than a handful (or ideally single, super-intelligence). Haalee's well on the way to figuring out how to leave the galaxy, she's worrying about how to leave our local group (a set of galaxies that are gravitationally bound while every other cluster is expanding away form each other).

Example dialog: http://draginol.stardock.net/files/Flowers.mp3

Re balance, SupCom, and progression

The key feature, imo, that Ashes needs to pick up is progression. That is a feature SupCom added that was not really in TA. For example, we should allow Quantum Relays to be upgradeable to Super Quantum Relays that do 4X (and cost 4X). Same on defenses.

Re the long long future

I don't think the answer to Ashes is to have "tons" of units. Right now, Ashes has about 15 units per faction. I think it will end up being around 25 units (not counting future naval).

Some of this will be when future version of Ashes have diplomacy and trade features (ala Sins: Rebellion) as well as more specialized units (e.g. transports, spies, etc.).

However, I expect many of the units you have now to go away as time goes on. They will still exist in the campaigns and scenarios of course. But this is a war and each side will be upgrading their armies.

Anyway, that's all for now.