G'day and happy new year everyone! Today I'm revealing some more info about the upcoming DLC and talking some things happening in the community.



**Upcoming DLC**

Hype announcement: Both Substrate and PHC are receiving a new frigate!





The Tormentor is an indirect fire frigate, capable of saturating an area with inaccurate artillery shells with area of effect damage. The Tormentor lacks the accuracy and single target damage of the Destructor Artillery Cruiser, making it intended for use against units rather than structures.





The Atlas is an anti-air and anti-drone frigate, allowing for frigate strategies to be more flexible and resilient against air units and Drone Hives. The Atlas is much less powerful than the Apollo cruiser, but only costing metal and being available from the factory makes the Atlas far more accessible.



Originally the new frigates, scenarios and maps were to be bundled with air transports as a "Mini Expansion" but air transports is a huge engineering undertaking, which would delay it significantly. So instead, we're going to be launching them separately as we will have all this great content ready that we want players to get their hands on. Expect an announcement and release over the next few weeks.



**Escalation Shoutcast**



Recently we posted a shoutcast I did of two top players, Shimbalama and Rbarnson. If you haven't done so already, subscribe to the Stardock YouTube channel as there will be more casts and Ashes content going up on there.



**Custom Launcher**



One of our community members made a custom launcher for Escalation. Change settings, launch and view benchmark results from the launcher without having to open the game.



So that's it for now. Here's to a great 2018!