Endless Space - New 4X Empire Building Game

[Shaikar]

I'm pretty disappointed in the game. I got a fun weekend out of it but after getting to grips with the details it's very hard to ignore the flaws - there are too many niggly annoyances.

There is lots of room for extra depth, eg invasions, sorting out the economy, a better combat system (better ship size "flow", allowing card selection in auto-resolve etc), better AI and re-introducing spying so those heroes are useful for something. There's also a lot of bugs/issues that could do with addressing, like empty hull fleets as epic speedbumps, fixing "intercept", mutiple combats at once meaning you can only control one manually because the rest time out mid fight etc...

So it's good that Amplitude claim to have lots of iteration in mind, as the game needs it so there is still hope it might be a slow burner.

[Tarminic]

Their latest poll is voting on the which player-made faction to add, and it looks like the winner is a faction that colonizes Gas Giants and asteroids instead of typical planets. It seems like based on that alone they have a lot of plans for the game that haven't been realized just yet.

[Cool09]

I watched a "lets play: endless space" video on youtube and fell in love with the sleek interface and apparently solid mechanics.

Purchased and played for a wile, around turn 50 with the warlike avian guys. Already I'm wanting more depth. Its incredibly clunky to move around many small fleets. Attacking the enemy was basically just a matter of parking my fleet on his base, and clicking end turn over and over while autoresolving the 99-1 balance fights that came my way.

I was so bored by the time I took the system that I just quit. I'll try again on the hardest difficulty.

[Adam C]

i cant see why they cant change/mod and allow bigger fleets id rather have 100 ship fleets then 100 15 ship fleets, i hope its possible.

really want to play endless space right now too but quite a few things irritate me to play another game. im constantly watching amplified's website to search for update information.

[Straight Hustlin]

Personally I find playing with the hisso (angry birds) and the Cravers (angry bugs) takes alot of the fun out of the game because they are pretty damn OP, same with the Amoebas; I prefer to have them as enemies because it adds a good bit of challenge to the game. I've also found that changing the galaxy type to elipsoid or twin eplisoid makes things alot more interesting then spiral arms because you dont start with a whole 2 constellation arm to your self, so you come into contact/conflict a lot earlier, less choke points, and the tech for traveling off of strings & wh's is alot more useful.

I kinda agree that the game is a little lacking in depth, but I'm pretty satisified as its been the best space based 4x that I've played in a while. I would like to see a little more variation in the weapon tech progression. Instead of each tech unlocking a slightly better, slightly heavier, slightly more expensive version of the last, I would like to see some stuff that is maybe the same or even slightly worse in terms of damage, but weighs less. Or some variation between #of shots per volley & damage per shot. Also some more variation between the ship classes would be nice. But these dev's have so far shown they are open to suggestion and are willing to work on making the game better, so I am confident we will see some improvements. Once modding is opened up I'm sure we will start to see some really cool shit.

But as with most 4x games, alot of your enjoyement comes from how you approach it. If your aim is to powergame the fuck out of it, you will steamroll through the AI just like any other. Im currently playing as a slightly customized Sower, continuing their holy mission of making the galaxy into a paradise. Expanding slowly and turning all the planets into terran, jungle or ocean worlds. Its been fun way to kill some time so all in all I am happy with my purchase.

i cant see why they cant change/mod and allow bigger fleets id rather have 100 ship fleets then 100 15 ship fleets, i hope its possible.

really want to play endless space right now too but quite a few things irritate me to play another game. im constantly watching amplified's website to search for update information.

its already possible to a large degree by modding the tech tree xml http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/...Fleet-Capacity

the only two constraints right now are 1, you cant change the starting fleet size, and 2 the value for increase cannot be larger then two digit places so 99 is the most you can increase it per tech.

[Joshua Foiritain]

http://hosted.corelicorp.net/sharedassets17.rar
Updated assets file for version 1.0.5. Overwrite original file in "EndlessSpace_Data", keep a copy of the original.

- Travel outside node lines disabled.
- Fleet command increases per tech are now +10/+15/+20 instead of +2/+3/+4.

Fleet start value is hardcoded at 5, +2 command per unlocked ship class is also hardcoded. Total fleet size comes to 60. (12 dreads or 30 cruisers or 60 others). The AI happily uses the new values.

All of these ships also show up in the real time combat stuff so make sure your computer can handle it or turn down the settings, 60 destroyers lolspamming laser bolts brought my computer to a bit of a crawl and you cant access settings during combat

I tried +20/+30/+40 as well but 105 ships per fleet makes combat lag like a motherfucker and turns a tech advantage into massive rape advantage as the extra ships count for a lot.

Note: The racial "big fleets" trait is now kinda useless outside the early game as its +2 ships which doesnt really do much when your limit is 60 ships Dunno if this can be modified, i didnt look for it because fuck you cravers.

The travelling change works best with maps that are dense, low constellation distance, one large constellation and max star node lines. This will allow for relatively easy travel but still allows several chokepoints to form to make defending somewhat easier to manage.

[Chrien]

http://hosted.corelicorp.net/sharedassets17.rar
I tried +20/+30/+40 as well but 105 ships per fleet makes combat lag like a motherfucker and turns a tech advantage into massive rape advantage as the extra ships count for a lot.

Thats probably why the caps are so low, because of the shiny graphics.

I will give this game props for one thing, its made me reinstall Gal Civ 2 for some proper Space 4x. I will follow this game over the following months to see if they improve it enough to warrant more play time.

[Adam C]

its a shame they didnt optimise the engine for 200 ships battle

[XenosisReaper]

I am pretty bad at this game, can somebody give me a simple "first 50 turns strategy" for Empire or something?

IE: what planets to colonize, what tech to hit up first etc

[Cool09]

I've only played a handful of games, but I have a basic idea how to play.

Basically, early on you want to grow. You want high populations on lots of high FIDS planets. Focus on that while making just enough ships to ward off pirates or other empires. I tend to focus mostly on the expansion research tree first, so your ships go faster, you can traverse wormholes, and you reduce your expansion disapproval.

As for what planets to colonize, the easiest to colonize are terran, ocean, jungle. These have great food bonuses allowing your population to grow quickly, an anomoly or resource that adds some industry is a plus which will help you build those improvements quickly. They also have no happiness penalty. Next down the list is arid and tundra, they have decent FIDS and a couple nice anomolies would easily make up for their -5 happiness. Mainly early on you want food and industry so your systems grow fast. Once your populations are high you can specialize into research, industry, or economy.

Last game I found a system with 2 terran, some tundra, and an ocean planet. By the end of the game that system alone was making almost 1000 research a turn, and it wasn't even population capped yet. You want to grab these awesome systems first and get them going as a powerhouse as early as possible. Once you have 5 or so systems, you'll probably have to be less choosey and grab some crappier systems. Eventually you'll populate EVERY system as you have the technology to cancel out many negative effects, terraform, raise happiness, ect. That takes technology and time though so grab the quick and easy ones first.

[Straight Hustlin]

Also to add to what cool just mentioned, I recommened getting an industrial based hero ASAP, perferably they have both the corporate & administrator abilities but adminsitrator is the real key, I usually do it by turn 3 or 4. Going down the labor line, get Director 1, Then civil engineering, Efficient Schooling, Then Director 2, Crop geneticist 1, Motivational leader, Crop Geneticist 2. This will make your hero give a huge boost to industry & food output of a system. The idea is that you move them around to new systems as you colonize them to give them quick start. I rarely ever use hero's in combat, I find theyre just too powerful as system boosters to pass up having them fuck around with fleets.

[metacannibal]

Bought few days ago, have to say it seems ALOT better than the initial reviews.

Maybe it is because the game is matured but to me in its current state, this game beats star drive hands down.

[Jalif]

I have this game, time to reinstall it since it seems it changed loads.

BTW: Did the change up the combat mechanics? I remember fleet being so massive it took minutes just to click predict battle.

[RazoR]

this game beats star drive hands down.

lolwat

[FatFreddy]

begun, the 4x wars have

personally, I can to this day, among many other things from the game, still recite the first lines of the MoO2 outro and ofc galactic news fucking network

[Overspark]

Yes, this game has indeed matured a lot, to the point where it's now very enjoyable. I've been playing it quite a bit the past weeks.

The universe has become more interesting due to loads of random events and exploration bonuses. Pre-selecting battle cards means automatic combat is now a very viable option, and entering manual combat with a plan is better too. Multiple battles in a turn works properly now. The AI has improved and doesn't just spam fleets everywhere anymore. And governor AI is good enough to use it on lots of planets.

Most changes are fairly small, but together they elevated the game from not quite there yet to definitely worth playing.

[Paradox]

Is the tech tree still boring and uninspired?

[Overspark]

Tech tree is still pretty much the same, so if you thought it was boring and uninspiring it still is.

[Rhaegor Stormborn]

What games have "inspired" tech trees?

[Paradox]

Endless Space's tech tree is full of bland, generic scifi things like railguns, lasers, ceramic armour, terraforming.

A game like SotS has strange and innovative techs like FTL Broadband, Bursters, beamers, battle riders, assault shuttles and other bizarre techs.

I find SotS to have a much more interesting tree than Endless Space. It's not a deal breaker but I wanted to know if they'd made it any less bland.