Endless Space preview

[Voigtkampf]

I've accepted the fact that the combat is the way it is; pick three strategies and roll with it. Overall, I've been revisiting it a lot these last several days and I'm starting an Endless Space guide now. A lot of material now waiting for the adition.

I am betting heavily that this game will be further improved upon by both developers and fans through their mods. The depth of ES basically guarantees that the game will have a lot of missing features and later additions.

[Voigtkampf]

As for the interface being wonky, I would agree that selecting fleet could be followed by a "pop up" when mousing over them, same for the hangar clicking, but otherwise, as for planet management and the rest of the game, I found the Interface to be simply marvelous. Considering some other 4x games I've been testing recently, this one is the charm.

[Voigtkampf]

Little to no time for MP's, wish I could change that.

[Papewaio]

Bought it last week.

First it is a pretty, nice interface 4x strategy space game. Not a tactical one at all. I think they could have kept the battles even more abstract like Civ and it would work just as well. The cards allow for some tweaking, essentially it reminds be of Star Trek where all you do as a captain is say "shields up", "fire torpedoes". Keeping it abstract is fine for me, at least I understand how the cards interact with my ships designs.

Ship design is fairly straight forward. Just remember to scroll down the list of support modules.

My first real game is as Amobea, kind of a medium level setting with 3 opponents. I thought I had set the setting to easy or something else was broken when I started. The reason being I could see every star system and planet. Turns out to be the racial ability of the little squishy guys.

So I quickly teched up for wormholes and snared a few choke points on the map. Something I've learned is that food is king as it determines population growth, population size is the real dominant factor in output of yet more food, industry, research and dust(half currency half steroid).

It's best to get a good system with plenty of population potential. To first grow the farming planet to near max and then overflow to the planets with lesser food productivity. Biggest mistake I made in my best system was to colonize all the planets quickly. Whilst my second best system it was easy to expand because I grew the population on the farm world and then overflowed. I'm still new to the game but having a surplus of 120 food seems to make the system populate very quickly.

For my ship naming convention I based it on life forms. The game calls a colony ship a propogator for the Amobea, I call my fast colony ship a virus and the double colony ship testes ;).

As for my attack ships I have Tcell & Phage with a repair ships called red cell.

Having fun, plenty to learn and it is really a strategy game only. It would be interesting to see a TW space 4x

[Voigtkampf]

Fancy ship names, Papewaio. Glad you are having fun with the game. Amoeba are incredibly fun but somewhat easy to play with exactly because they see the entire galaxy from the beginning.

You may find some neat tricks and tips in this guide here. It is still work in progress and I should force myself to get it done and over with these days, but there is simply sooo much info on this game...

[Papewaio]

I read this thread and your guide first, then bought the game.

Amobea are good as a starter race. The map I was playing had another Amobea, Avian and Human. The Amobea-pc strain allied with the Avian and invaded the human race. I on the other hand raced to all the main population potential centers and put outposts on them. My biggest threat has been pirates so far. Anyhow after figuring out that Amobea make a 4X title into a 3X title and they drop my favourite X of eXploration I've started again.

New game is the Horatio. Largest galaxy (two colliding) with eight players and the rest of the settings to normal. Again racing for wormholes with a side dish of Redsang since one of the 3 inhabitable planets out of 7 star systems has Redsang... so might as well make the most of that cup of tea.

It would be strange if I find a Horatio-pc player. Given that the Horatio are all a clone of their leader.

[Papewaio]

Are the copies level zero or 1:1 duplicates? I assume the dust cost is expensive. I was happy enough with the food boost.

[Voigtkampf]

Endless Space 1.0.14 patch released.

[Beskar]

I still haven't understood how those influence circles work yet. It is weird seeing NPC's with massive ones when mine seen insignificant, even when we both own the same amount of planets.

[Voigtkampf]

As GC said, there is a huge number of influence increasing improvements/buildings that will help you establish your dominance.

[Papewaio]

But what does the influence actually do?

It stops others setting up outposts in your influence.

Does it cause others to change allegiance over time?

[Voigtkampf]

"It's bloody marvelous."

[Hooahguy]

Ive been thinking of getting this after I saw a few Let's Plays. There was a great sale on it and the expansion Disharmony a few days ago which I missed, but next time its on sale Ill get it. Anyone still playing? Is the expansion worth it? What about mods?

[Hooahguy]

This game is extremely confusing...

But Im slowly understanding it.

[Hooahguy]

So I played about 5 hours so far (really sucks you in), and I do think in a way its kind of like Civ5 in space. I seem to have it mostly figured out.

I just started-and ended- my first war in the game as the United Empire. I crushed their fleets (Pilgrims) with my fleets, but sieges frustrate me a bit. Even with 8 siege-dedicated battleships, some planets would have taken 60+ turns to capture. Kind of annoying if you ask me, but okay. I ended up taking their offer of cease-fire so I can plan again how to better capture their planets. Everything else though is going great. I had an excess of 25,000 dust (before I squandered 90% of it on the war), and halfway through the tech trees (seems pretty bloated to me).

Also the strength indicator seems a bit lopsided. I had a small-ish fleet of 2 combat-oriented battleships and 2 dreadnoughts facing against a fleet of 10 destroyers and 2 dreadnoughts. The numbers showed it as them having around 3100 strength while I was at about 2600. Yet I crushed them, losing nobody. So I agree, I have no clue what makes a balanced fleet.

EDIT: Also, the tonnage limit annoys the hell out of me. I have to basically specialize my ships and fleets, which I cant even do so well anyways because I can only put 12 ships in a fleet and heavier ships count for more. And why does a battleship have as much tonnage capacity as a cruiser? If a cruiser has 200 and a dreadnought has 400, the logical thing is to have the battleships have 300.

[Hooahguy]

See? I wasnt aware of that. The fact that each fleet has a cap of 12 is also very, very annoying.

Also that 12 isnt a simple number, because apparently heavier ships take up more than 1 slot.

[Hooahguy]

Well, I guess I just changed history.

[Hooahguy]

I won my first game! Felt pretty good. I want to try for a conquest victory next, though Im not sure whats the difference between a cruiser and a battleship. Though making the dust is still a challenge.