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[Endless Space] It is a Space 4X! Similar to MoO2! IT IS OUT! It is Worth It.

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Posts

  • kildykildy Registered User regular
    So one piece of advice when playing this: as soon as you have the money, buy all the heroes. Screw their focus, make them governors for the first 100 turns of the game or so. The production bonuses alone are huge. The one for actual governor specced dudes that gives a flat +25 production? That dude right there is deployed to any new colony you start.

  • MachismoMachismo Registered User regular
    This is an alpha presently, right?
    It sounds incredibly stable and complete. I am a little confused. Could someone shed some light?

    steam_sig.png
  • kildykildy Registered User regular
    Some of the features are not in (and usually clearly labeled as such) and it needs a balance pass or three. But the majority of it is quite fully functional with random one off bugs (I had one instance where every game I started had no heroes. Restarting the client caused me to start with 3 available as intended)

  • MoorkusMoorkus Registered User regular
    They have a progress page here that displays how far along they consider stuff to be.

  • BloodsheedBloodsheed Registered User regular
    In 5 hours I have hit 0 crashes and only a handful of bugs, which for an alpha is extremely impressive. The polish level feels more like a full release than Sins did at launch, IMO, though that may be do to some extremely well thought out UI work.

    Xbox Live, Steam, PSN: Eclibull
  • SarksusSarksus ATTACK AND DETHRONE GODRegistered User regular
    Machismo wrote: »
    This is an alpha presently, right?
    It sounds incredibly stable and complete. I am a little confused. Could someone shed some light?

    They are following the definition of an alpha to the letter (feature completeness denotes the beginning of a beta, and the game is not yet feature complete) and they appear to be obsessive perfectionists.

    I bought this game at work and used Steam's new remote install function to have it install on my PC. Gonna give it a shot now!

  • IoloIolo iolo Registered User regular
    Moorkus wrote: »
    They have a progress page here that displays how far along they consider stuff to be.

    Oh my goodness. That is glorious. They gamified their own development, made it pretty and put it up for all to see.

    Dammit, stop making me want this!

    Lt. Iolo's First Day
    Steam profile.
    Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
  • BloodsheedBloodsheed Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    The Empire finally declared war, but not until after I had allied with my brethren and sent a fleet to mop up the Cravers (who it appears got crushed by the pirates in their own constellation after running into the shared one).

    A similar (if slightly smaller) sized civilization's fleets are VERY DIFFERENT from whacking Pirate fleets. My first wave took heavy losses before pushing the Empire defense fleets back through the wormhole, but my allies swept in from the galactic north and we're now taking out all of the Empire's systems past the two long travel lanes (which lead to a single planet chokepoint into the Empire's home territory, which is stacked with heavy Empire fleets that neither my partner nor I can crack). I'm rebuilding my fleets with more advanced battleships and cruisers, but the Empire's ships can still take out 2 of my ships for every one of theirs lost at this point.

    I'm well up over 200 turns without a crash and only a single major bug (couldn't open planets to upgrade, restarting fixed it).

    Bloodsheed on
    Xbox Live, Steam, PSN: Eclibull
  • TheKoolEagleTheKoolEagle Registered User regular
    is multiplayer in yet or not? I couldn't host or join a game it seems

    uNMAGLm.png Mon-Fri 8:30 PM CST - 11:30 PM CST
  • kaortikaorti Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    Ok, I played a hundred turns, but I've got no idea how to build an efficient industrial base as the empire. Any tips?
    is multiplayer in yet or not? I couldn't host or join a game it seems

    It isn't in yet, that's one of the missing features.

    kaorti on
  • SanderJKSanderJK Crocodylus Pontifex Sinterklasicus Madrid, 3000 ADRegistered User regular
    The main missing features are:
    Multiplayer
    3 Factions
    Configurable Factions
    Balance Passes

    I finished an easy game with the SpaceNerds (The research faction). It was basicly a no contest because of the way starting positions were placed. I had nearly half of the map to my own, leading into a chokepoint by the weakest player who was constantly besieged on the other end so never really expanded.

    Things I learned:
    Don't crazy rush for new colonies. Get your population up in a few core systems, the ones you hero boost. The difference in science/production is huge if you keep your colony producing planet at 1-2 below max pop vs trying to push them out. Four high planet, high pop systems carried my entire empire the whole game.
    Don't build anything that says 'trade route' until you have met a friendly neighbour. It does nothing for your internal economy, and friendly neighbours are rare. Even on easy only 1eventually accepted, and that was around turn 110.
    High happiness helps a ton, and over time the gap in your empire will increase. I ended with planets at 100 and a few stragglers at 0.
    Monopolies are incredibly important. You basicly want at least 1 of each strategic resource, and at least 4 of every resource you can somehow manage.

    Steam: SanderJK Origin: SanderJK
  • LykouraghLykouragh Registered User regular
    Game worth getting now, or should I wait until the balance patches?

  • kaortikaorti Registered User regular
    How do you increase empire happiness? I've worked out how to get my industry running, and letting the AI build my ships seems to work, but my happiness always seems to hover around "uhappy."

  • BYToadyBYToady Registered User regular
    Tax rates in the colony management window helps a bit. I try to keep it near neutral income.

    Battletag BYToady#1454
  • IoloIolo iolo Registered User regular
    Holy crap this game is in good shape for being in alpha. I played happily for almost three hours, and then did have a crash. But the game autosaves every turn, so nothing lost.

    Does run my video card pretty hard, though. Hopefully some optimization in beta will smooth that out.

    They could use a feature for cycling through ships or identifying ships with no orders. Combat's a little wonky, and it would be nice to have a feature to attempt retreat.

    Still pretty great. Everything people have said about the amazing UI is true.

    Lt. Iolo's First Day
    Steam profile.
    Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
  • kaortikaorti Registered User regular
    Are there any related techs? I want to be able to pump my tax rate up.

  • AlectharAlecthar Alan Shore We're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered User regular
    kaorti wrote: »
    How do you increase empire happiness? I've worked out how to get my industry running, and letting the AI build my ships seems to work, but my happiness always seems to hover around "uhappy."

    Heroes have some happiness increasing abilities. There's at least one system improvement that improves system happiness. Mainly you need to avoid colonizing "undesirable" planets (deserts, arid, barren, lava, tundra, arctic) as they lower happiness by a certain amount. I assume the amount/affected planet types differ based on your civ, but I'm not sure. Some planets have anomalies that reduce happiness. If you get far enough in the tech tree I believe you can terraform planets into something different, which would reduce/eliminate that issue. There's also tech in that tree that reduces the effects of negative anomalies.

  • harvestharvest By birthright, a stupendous badass.Registered User regular
    I like how the UI in this game is basically a powered up Ascendancy UI. In that game every screen was available on the main screen, and pressing Escape or clicking in one of the 4 corners took you back one level. This works a lot like that, but this one is way more functional in the data displayed on each thing.

    B6yM5w2.gif
  • Salvation122Salvation122 Registered User regular
    captaink wrote: »
    Yeah, I don't know why no one has ever surpassed MooII in the tech tree department. Alpha Centauri, maybe. They get extra points for style.

    MoO2's tech tree was not that great, honestly. There were very clear best choices at nearly every level of every tech.

    Still probably the best I've seen, but it could be improved on.

  • TheOtherHorsemanTheOtherHorseman Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    So, I bought this game about half-way through reading the OP.

    The interface couldn't be slicker if you poured oil on it. The interface itself gives me a visceral enjoyment with a few minor exceptions.

    I'll also say that while it may not be everyone's cup of tea, god damnit I enjoy the combat. I like seeing this big ships plod along and fire broadsides. Sometimes I don't want fighters, sometimes I just want various ships of the line to gracefully and serenely pew at each other before exploding.

    My Hissho had met neighboring Sophons and Horatio. My powerful fleets of Hunter-class warships had devastated the pirates plaguing my home systems. I noted that the Horatio were scouting the neutral worlds just beyond the reach of my colonized arm of the spiral. I noted that we were in a state of cold war, and that they were a suspicious and altogether unlikable lot. My people, being a proud warrior race, decided to test their mettle against a true interstellar adversary for the first time in our proud history.

    The fleet was loaded with the most advanced kinetic weaponry my people had devised, and loaded down with protective plating and heavily reinforced superstructures. We had not been long in space, but our experiences with the raider fleets had told us that we were deadly.

    We encountered the Horatio in a small system with only a few small, undesirable planets. We engaged.

    Analysis of the final transmissions of the Hunter fleet indicated that the Horatio had invested heavily in beam weaponry, a longer-range armament than our own kinetic solutions. The Hunters were sliced to ribbons without inflicting a single casualty. The Horatio probably had at least 10 major tech advantages over us.

    We had our own advantages, of course. Mainly spite and industry. And soon after that, fanatical devotion to large, torpedo-laden fleets that could alpha strike a sun down to a twinkle.

    By the time my fleets plodded their way to the stars of the aliens that had made fools of us, they were even further beyond us. But we had numbers. We had forge-worlds manned by skilled heroes. We had a peerless admiral in command of our greatest fleets. It takes years to burn a system into submission given our tech disparity. We encroached slowly, but steady reinforcements meant we never lose ground.

    The barbarians advance. Space-Rome burns.

    TheOtherHorseman on
  • NotoriusBENNotoriusBEN Registered User regular
    The barbarians advance. Space-Rome burns.

    this along with the preview from quill has made me decide to purchase the game. I've been looking for a decent 4x space game since Sword of the Stars 1.

    a4irovn5uqjp.png
    Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
  • BYToadyBYToady Registered User regular
    If there is one that I haven't seen yet, the game needs an 'advance ships' button that isn't the end turn button.

    Because if you manually move something like a colony ship or an attack fleet to a planet without hitting that end turn button you can colonize or attack that turn. If you just hit end turn you effectively lose a turn.

    Battletag BYToady#1454
  • DyvionDyvion Back in Sunny Florida!!Registered User regular
    I highly recommend you put that on their forums so your concern can be directly addressed. Either nobody gets that turn, or everyone gets it without hassle. That's the joy of their development process. We're a part of it! (Also, I so bought this)

    Steam: No Safety In Life
    PSN: Dyvion -- Eternal: Dyvion+9393 -- Genshin Impact: Dyvion
  • IoloIolo iolo Registered User regular
    How does one link one's Steam purchased game with their forums? (For their development voting thing?)

    Lt. Iolo's First Day
    Steam profile.
    Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
  • mr manmr man Registered User regular
    I really like the UI and visuals, very slick. I like being able to customize my ships though I'm not sure what to make of the combat. A option to retreat would be nice.

  • CasualCasual Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle Flap Flap Flap Registered User regular
    I hope this is like Gal CIv 2, I can't get enough of that game. I love the idea of 4x games in general, I just seem to smash into the learning cliff and die. Gal Civ 2 is the only 4x game I've found with decent depth but is easy to pick up. Either way I bought this so we'll see I guess.

  • AlectharAlecthar Alan Shore We're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    Iolo wrote: »
    How does one link one's Steam purchased game with their forums? (For their development voting thing?)

    Access your profile from the Amplitude or Endless Space website, then at the bottom there should be an option to "redeem G2G code." The code you need is the game key that's in your Steam copy of the game.
    BYToady wrote: »
    If there is one that I haven't seen yet, the game needs an 'advance ships' button that isn't the end turn button.

    Because if you manually move something like a colony ship or an attack fleet to a planet without hitting that end turn button you can colonize or attack that turn. If you just hit end turn you effectively lose a turn.

    Any fleet that has a "queued" movement order can be selected and re-ordered to the same destination, and will move immediately. So if the move to a planet takes 3 turns, and then on the third turn, instead of just ending turn for movement, you select the ship in question and right click on its destination again, it will move and arrive at the planet while you can still give the order to colonize (or attack, as the case may be).

    Unrelated: I'm not sure if it's considered a balance and/or lore issue, but I'd like to be able to turn around midway through my trip to a planet. I can't tell you how many times I've moved the wrong unit, and had to wait 3 or 4 turns to get it back into position. The game could also stand to be clearer on the game map about the fleet(s) you've selected.

    Alecthar on
  • NATIKNATIK DenmarkRegistered User regular
    I bought it, played it a lot since then and it is EXCELLENT, one of the best 4X games i have played in a while and it's still Alpha!

    Only bug I have encountered so far is that combat when going immidiately out of warp will get your fleets stuck in a way that you cannot interact with them, otherwise I haven't found any that was noticeable.

    I love fact that planet types all have good and bad sides, like first off you think "Lava planets should be made into Terran ones ASAP right" but then you notice that they in fact work a lot better as early game industrial worlds than a terran world can do, and later on I find that Jungles become the most awesome all around world ever, better than Terran by far.

    I like that with the moons, anomalies, discoverable strategic resources and unlockable luxury ones you keep finding things on your worlds for a good while into the game, makes it more interesting than just colonizing putting up a build order and basically forgetting the world again (which Space Empires ended up being on anything except space yard worlds).

    The game still needs a lot of tuning and balancing and is apparantly missing a lot of content but it's definitely playable and a lot of fun.

    steam_sig.png
  • BloodsheedBloodsheed Registered User regular
    Someone asked about happiness issues, and as said, the first key is don't colonize undesirable planets until you get something to counter the unhappiness. In the left hand tree there are a bunch of System upgrades that give happiness. The first you'll run into is Infinite Supermarkets, which gives +25, and then Colonial Rights, which, on top of +30 to happiness, gives massive bonuses to Ecstatic systems, and then Information Super-Highways, which give another boost and counter overpopulation problems.

    Population is all important. You really want to hold off on spamming colonization ships until you have a system pumping out food and people at a good clip. Industrial bases/Forge Systems usually depend on finding a good 5-6 planet system with some good industrial providing anomalies/planet types, throwing a good Governor on it and keeping people happy (and growing). Throwing industry improvements on the system also helps if you can spare the Dust (which, once you get to a certain size, is easy: at this point, at ~30% tax rate, I pull in 220+ Dust a turn).

    Xbox Live, Steam, PSN: Eclibull
  • BYToadyBYToady Registered User regular
    Alecthar wrote: »
    Iolo wrote: »
    How does one link one's Steam purchased game with their forums? (For their development voting thing?)

    Access your profile from the Amplitude or Endless Space website, then at the bottom there should be an option to "redeem G2G code." The code you need is the game key that's in your Steam copy of the game.
    BYToady wrote: »
    If there is one that I haven't seen yet, the game needs an 'advance ships' button that isn't the end turn button.

    Because if you manually move something like a colony ship or an attack fleet to a planet without hitting that end turn button you can colonize or attack that turn. If you just hit end turn you effectively lose a turn.

    Any fleet that has a "queued" movement order can be selected and re-ordered to the same destination, and will move immediately. So if the move to a planet takes 3 turns, and then on the third turn, instead of just ending turn for movement, you select the ship in question and right click on its destination again, it will move and arrive at the planet while you can still give the order to colonize (or attack, as the case may be).

    Unrelated: I'm not sure if it's considered a balance and/or lore issue, but I'd like to be able to turn around midway through my trip to a planet. I can't tell you how many times I've moved the wrong unit, and had to wait 3 or 4 turns to get it back into position. The game could also stand to be clearer on the game map about the fleet(s) you've selected.

    I know that about the ship's movement, but when I've got 5 fleets patrolling around for pirates/enemies and several colony ships moving out to expand the empire, it gets tedious keeping track of each ship's movement. I'd just like a button that moves all ships with queued movement that doesn't end my turn, so I can then colonize and attack stuff.

    Battletag BYToady#1454
  • BloodsheedBloodsheed Registered User regular
    BYToady wrote: »
    Alecthar wrote: »
    Iolo wrote: »
    How does one link one's Steam purchased game with their forums? (For their development voting thing?)

    Access your profile from the Amplitude or Endless Space website, then at the bottom there should be an option to "redeem G2G code." The code you need is the game key that's in your Steam copy of the game.
    BYToady wrote: »
    If there is one that I haven't seen yet, the game needs an 'advance ships' button that isn't the end turn button.

    Because if you manually move something like a colony ship or an attack fleet to a planet without hitting that end turn button you can colonize or attack that turn. If you just hit end turn you effectively lose a turn.

    Any fleet that has a "queued" movement order can be selected and re-ordered to the same destination, and will move immediately. So if the move to a planet takes 3 turns, and then on the third turn, instead of just ending turn for movement, you select the ship in question and right click on its destination again, it will move and arrive at the planet while you can still give the order to colonize (or attack, as the case may be).

    Unrelated: I'm not sure if it's considered a balance and/or lore issue, but I'd like to be able to turn around midway through my trip to a planet. I can't tell you how many times I've moved the wrong unit, and had to wait 3 or 4 turns to get it back into position. The game could also stand to be clearer on the game map about the fleet(s) you've selected.

    I know that about the ship's movement, but when I've got 5 fleets patrolling around for pirates/enemies and several colony ships moving out to expand the empire, it gets tedious keeping track of each ship's movement. I'd just like a button that moves all ships with queued movement that doesn't end my turn, so I can then colonize and attack stuff.

    That video earlier mentioned it too, and it's pretty standard in 4X, so I imagine it's already a future feature, but I haven't checked the forums yet to see if it's been brought up.

    Also, while it definitely needs a balance pass (which they agree on, since so far they've only been through their first balance pass and have many many more planned), there are a surprisingly healthy amount of counters already, at least for the war/combat. A Sabotage card played on the long range round absolutely screws over missile boating while a Deflector card neuters heavy gunships. And, as I found, and so did TheOtherHorseman, if you fall behind on military tech you can, eventually, overcome the odds by throwing enough ships (and time) at them.

    I'm very interested to see how this all plays out when multiplayer gets in there, as there seems to be a lot of ways to play outside of the usual "Get Biggest Guns, Shoot Things" tactics.

    Xbox Live, Steam, PSN: Eclibull
  • SanderJKSanderJK Crocodylus Pontifex Sinterklasicus Madrid, 3000 ADRegistered User regular
    edited May 2012
    I fully expect more and smarter warnings, and perhaps a 'guard' option on ships like Civ does.

    My big peeve right now is starting positions I guess. I just had a game more or less ruined because one AI was totally isolated in candyland where the others each got in early wars. I quit the game when his score was about 2.5 mine (I was #2).

    SanderJK on
    Steam: SanderJK Origin: SanderJK
  • AlectharAlecthar Alan Shore We're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered User regular
    Okay, minor annoyance. The tonnage calculator on the ship can't seem to do math correctly. It keeps stopping me from fulling utilizing the space on it because it thinks there's a stray fraction of a ton in there, but I'm sure there isn't, unless they aren't labeling things as clearly as they should in the tooltips. I also wish the tonnage tooltip gave you a more detailed numerical breakdown of exactly how you got to the figure there.

  • CorehealerCorehealer The Apothecary The softer edge of the universe.Registered User regular
    Just grabbed the game and got on their forums to vote on the logo and pirate ship designs. I thought this message in their forum registration verification no reply e-mail was cool:
    This is an automatically generated e-mail from a nice but not very clever AI called “the registration system”.

    Please do not reply to this e-mail or else... your computer will self-destruct (just kidding)... you’ll simply get no answer and your mail will fall into a parallel timespace, wandering forever with all the forgotten mails of the universe. We’re sure you’re not that cruel!

    Looking forward to playing their game.

    488W936.png
  • kaortikaorti Registered User regular
    Bloodsheed wrote: »
    Someone asked about happiness issues, and as said, the first key is don't colonize undesirable planets until you get something to counter the unhappiness. In the left hand tree there are a bunch of System upgrades that give happiness. The first you'll run into is Infinite Supermarkets, which gives +25, and then Colonial Rights, which, on top of +30 to happiness, gives massive bonuses to Ecstatic systems, and then Information Super-Highways, which give another boost and counter overpopulation problems.

    Population is all important. You really want to hold off on spamming colonization ships until you have a system pumping out food and people at a good clip. Industrial bases/Forge Systems usually depend on finding a good 5-6 planet system with some good industrial providing anomalies/planet types, throwing a good Governor on it and keeping people happy (and growing). Throwing industry improvements on the system also helps if you can spare the Dust (which, once you get to a certain size, is easy: at this point, at ~30% tax rate, I pull in 220+ Dust a turn).

    I found those techs late last night. Built them everywhere, and now I'm running a 65% tax rate and my people are content. I'm pulling down more than a thousand dust a turn and climbing. It's crazy. I'm straight-up buying dreadnoughts.

  • NATIKNATIK DenmarkRegistered User regular
    Alecthar wrote: »
    Okay, minor annoyance. The tonnage calculator on the ship can't seem to do math correctly. It keeps stopping me from fulling utilizing the space on it because it thinks there's a stray fraction of a ton in there, but I'm sure there isn't, unless they aren't labeling things as clearly as they should in the tooltips. I also wish the tonnage tooltip gave you a more detailed numerical breakdown of exactly how you got to the figure there.

    I think it's because it only gives you the first digit after the decimal, but there might be fractions smaller than that, noticed it myself and that is what I think is causing it.

    I think they should just remove any fraction involved in tonnage calculation that is smaller than 0,1, it only serves to frustrate people otherwise.

    steam_sig.png
  • AlectharAlecthar Alan Shore We're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered User regular
    kaorti wrote: »
    Bloodsheed wrote: »
    Someone asked about happiness issues, and as said, the first key is don't colonize undesirable planets until you get something to counter the unhappiness. In the left hand tree there are a bunch of System upgrades that give happiness. The first you'll run into is Infinite Supermarkets, which gives +25, and then Colonial Rights, which, on top of +30 to happiness, gives massive bonuses to Ecstatic systems, and then Information Super-Highways, which give another boost and counter overpopulation problems.

    Population is all important. You really want to hold off on spamming colonization ships until you have a system pumping out food and people at a good clip. Industrial bases/Forge Systems usually depend on finding a good 5-6 planet system with some good industrial providing anomalies/planet types, throwing a good Governor on it and keeping people happy (and growing). Throwing industry improvements on the system also helps if you can spare the Dust (which, once you get to a certain size, is easy: at this point, at ~30% tax rate, I pull in 220+ Dust a turn).

    I found those techs late last night. Built them everywhere, and now I'm running a 65% tax rate and my people are content. I'm pulling down more than a thousand dust a turn and climbing. It's crazy. I'm straight-up buying dreadnoughts.

    Keep in mind that you get bonuses to production in systems that are happier than just content.

  • Drunken BastardDrunken Bastard Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    God, i read this thread, pre-ordered...and started to play the Alpha (more like a polished beta). That was at 9 am, now its 9:30 PM....i had a quick snack but thats it.
    This game will kill me.

    Some minor gripes like Factions should be unique, and the lack of a bigger ship than the dreadnought, but eh...it all can change.

    One question though...I saw AIs having 13 point fleets, what do you need to do to get that? I didn't find any tech that looked like it.

    Drunken Bastard on
  • johnwingjohnwing Registered User regular
    Is there a comprehensive guide that I can read about this game? I just bought it because it seems just the game I would like, especially the simplified combat.

  • kaortikaorti Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    30 more turns, a few more happiness upgrades, and I'm pulling down almost 7k dust a turn. I don't need production - I can buy whatever I need. My good systems are still ecstatic too!


    edit: aaaaand one more turn and I win.

    I think there is some real depth in this game. The combat system becomes much more interesting once you start researching new cards, and the way that you can upgrade your movement capabilities will allow for some fun strategic maneuvers. They just need to fix the problem where you can fly right past enemy systems, ignoring the fleets on them.

    edit the second: I still haven't really got the hang of the ship design though. I'm still just giving each ship a weapon and a defense, staking them as high as I can, and refitting when the AI counters. Any tips? Also, how do I get information about what modules my opponent is using? It would make it easier to adapt my ship designs if I wasn't relying on visual cues from the battles.

    kaorti on
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