Endless Space 2 Turns Three

Can't wait! This is great news. :)

Clumsy Dwarves, a studio founded by former NGD staff

I'm sceptical about this part. Aren't they the guys that made ES2 into mess it is now?

The art, lore, and worldbuilding are simply incredible in every way possible 

My first time wining as the Unfallen I was out to make peace will the galaxy and tend to my garden without much battle. But everything changed when the Horatio attacked. They started an Endless war. Every time I thought I'd snuffed out one of my enemies, the next civ was lining up to take a piece of my bark. Peace wasn't an option! The world...might...have ended in Fire that day. 

Thank you for making an amazing game and for all of the games you've made! I'm hoping for more ES2 Factions and am super excited to play Humankind. Happy Release Day!

Just a couple of things that bug me:
- the Academy fleets sieging your systems/your own ships sieging the academy systems when not at war. Please fix this.

- Spear of Isyander fleet needs to be era appropriate. It seems like whoever gets that fleet, rolls their neighbours and there isn't anything anyone can do until late game to counter.

- The Umbral choir is not fun at all to play. EVERYONE can detect my hacks immediately and they always seem to be able to backtrace faster than I can hack. I'm playing the gar-danged hackmasters. Is there a way to make my hacks less traceable? Who knows because there sure isn't anything in the tooltips or online that I can find. As well, despite making cloaking a focus so I wouldn't get found, somehow the other empires just suddenly introduce themselves to me out of nowhere. No clue why.

For a game that I spend more time playing than any others, it's just a shame to me that the UC and Nekalim DLC's don't really feel to have the polish and balance of the first ones. Though I can at least have fun plaing as the Nekalim, and the Academy issues are forgiveable (but please make the spear fleets scaling power relative to how long the game has been going on), I just can't stand to play through as the UC. The mechanics to use them are frustrating, the hacking seems completely random and since it's the UC's entire method of empire building you can't simply ignore the hacking like you can with other empires. I generally have to just turn that DLC off which saddens me.

ES2 is still my favourite 4x game. I'll have to play another game very soon.

I would like to see a new fraction "Harmony" which is strongly tied to stotegical resources, without them their development stops growing, the more and more diverse strategic resources the more bonuses the population has (are pacifists) 

The Vodyani. I have loved 4x games since original MOO but the way the Vodyani played was so different and powerful. Took a few goes to get the hang of it but ultimately the story and mechanics allowed me to conquer, subjugate and consume all in my path. highs and lows. when you concentrate too much on building infastructure only to find a chunky neibour decided ships were a better idea. The race then to slow them down long enough to switch over to to Producing superior war ships to smash them back then enact divine retribution with superior fire power. I didn't mind the academy quests although I'm not sure why they become a roaming faction... I change my settings so I can pursue what I want and have few complaints and far more praise for the game. music, art and the general feel of the game is engrossing and it was worth the wait.

Lets see... I've had two 'recent' games with a few of my friends. First one was a friendly game to help them learn the ropes and basic mechanics. I played as the Umbra... The reactions I got when I was helping a friend manage his system populations in real time during the online game and he realized 'Wait a minute.. How do you know what I'm doing with my buildings and pops?!' HA HA HA

The other game I used a 'slightly' modified Craver faction.....

My favorite faction the Cravers, though I only care to play them against other people. 

I cannot get enough of the art and flavor text in this game or any Endless game for that matter.

CaptainCobbs wrote:

phanemy wrote:
Hope for multiplayer fixe :O

Definitely! I've had problems with needing to frequently restart matches and constant desync, to the point that trying to do anything is impossible due to desync

OMG ME TOO! Its so annoying when i tried to play with my friend because of this.

The first patch is expected to release in the second half of June. 

Is it June 2020 though?

Thank you for your continued support. Many developers will release patches for a few months then go quietly into that good night, never to be heard from again.

Something I absolutely love about Endless Space - and Endless Legend - is that the different factions really are different. Many other strategy games have the "strong units but poor research" faction, the "strong research but weak units" faction, and a few in between. The factions in those games aren't really different, they're the same thing with some numbers tweaked.

In the Endless series, yes, some units / ships are stronger than others, and yes, some factions have more or less research capability, but then, all of a sudden - space vampires. Vodyani don't colonize planets, oh no, they have their special space chapels. It's not just a number tweak here; it's a mechanic completely unique to them. The Umbral Choir? Same deal - to the point where playing the Umbral Choir almost feels like a completely different game, and yet it works seemlessly with everything else. The Sophons? Sure, they are the research monkeys but not all the time. Their mechanic doesn't always apply and it rewards a player who can make saavy trades.

This is a very difficult thing to pull off and Endless Space 2 does a very good job of it.

Then there's the art and the music - oh, the music, if you can squeeze a few new tracks into this update I'd be a really happy guy. Your composer is absolutely top notch. His work is a perfect example of what makes a great game soundtrack; it sets the mood so well (not just in ES2, but in other games as well) that it's difficult to play without - and it is fully capable existing outside of the game as a standalone work. Very few game composers can manage this.

There's only two main issues that I have; I hope both are addressed in some capacity with this update:

1. Unstable multiplayer. I am unable to play with my friend past turn 30 or so; around that mark we get a desync every single turn and no amount of re-loading the game will fix the problem.

2. The AI could use some work. In particular, it doesn't play to the strengths of the Vodyani or Umbral Choir particularly well, and the Cravers aren't aggressive enough. I know - AI in a complex game isn't easy, and what we have now is good, but it could use some improvement.

Also I'm not sure if it's a bug or pure hubris that Horatio asks ME to pay to end a war that HE is badly losing... I hope it's not a bug because that is just so fitting. Don't change that, ever.

Wonderfull news

Oh well, happy thoughts fade away while built up resentment, although unleashed every once in a while on the forums, stays fresh. ^_^

So I'll bring up something that Endless Games showed to me that even I as a 'seasoned RTS veteran' never even thought possible before!

I remember my first desync like it was yesterday! There was a ES1 multiplayer game, which was streamed by someone labeled a popular streamer and I had to get a twitter account to sign up for it and all that. I was so excited to play ES1 in multiplayer, share the experience and all
And I just rolled vanilla Amoeba to keep it friendly and somehow still "kept up" with the custom faction fellas, cause tr8 was gr8 m8!

Well anyway, someone said they think it was desynced so cause stuff did not add up, so we just rehosted and kept going. And that feature really blew my mind. I will refrain from negative comments on it, but overally I think a world would be a better place without it... but that was before I knew.... there was a ...

Second desync coming, that's right, the game was riddled with the stuff, but it was still a fun thing to play you know
Anyway we saved and never finished cause no one reached out to me about it ever again. I caught someone from the group a month later to tell me I ruined it by not coming on time I was not told.

...

So then as you can see how the desync number 789136×10^1337 in ES2 was not even something I noticed and I just did not care anymore. Some people like to blame things on it. But I just go and defeat them anyway. Or die. Or both.
So that was the last desync I can name off the top of my mind and well, I am sure I am gonna get some more to share soon!

I'll never forget the ES2 release patch, where trading companies were actually something that was not detrimental to build and reserach and Lumeris had a valid faction trait because of it.
Those were the dusty days, but you could also build the factional improvements, such as buyout reduction infinitely, and even then the price still scaled to millions of dust, prior to of course reaching 100%, which I do not quite remember anymore. The early access +50% industry ark modules.

And of course the sense of wonder, which remains to this day, cause documenting stuff is hard.

Last but not least the poo poo show revolving around the latest DLC, which did give a poor impression.

But there you are promising a fix.
Thank you for the good news.

Hopefully they will deliver a balance overhaul for Lumeris along with about 100× output increase for trading companies accompanied by a dust inflation off switch.

Slashman wrote:
And I hacked the Academy to make it useless to the AI faction that got it.

That is not always possible. :C

Also the 1 random resource competition is bad design because it is always benefitial to one and meaningless to other, allowing for snowball and weaklings' bullying. Add in the fact this can be done turn 20 on normal? Honestly, I don't even care if AI gets it because it has little brain to put it to a good use, I just don't want to play further if I get it myself, but I don't want to limit myself at the same time. Ofc you can play with self-restrictions but this just s*cks. Also academy as a spreading plague faction is nonsence, lore unfriendly, annoying and counterintuitive. You know, lorewise I hate Awakening even more... Isyander revealing himself that early to a barely post-FTL empire(s) and granting them the power of Demigods in a blink of an eye? xD Yeah...

Shrik3 wrote:

Slashman wrote:

Sublustris wrote:

Clumsy Dwarves, a studio founded by former NGD staff

I'm sceptical about this part. Aren't they the guys that made ES2 into mess it is now?

It's really only a mess for multiplayers right now isn't it? There really isn't anything game breaking in a normal single player game.

The genius idea of giving you an invincible death Fleet at the beginning of the game, perhaps. 

In the last 10 games I've played, that has been an issue once. And I hacked the Academy to make it useless to the AI faction that got it. It just wasn't that big of a deal. I mean if you cannot help yourself but to get it and win the game that way...I dunno. But I surely wasnt always in a position to get it. Maybe there's a further trick to it I'm missing but it really wasn't that big of a deal.

All that said...I just don't understand why balancing it is so hard. Reduce the number of ships by a certain amount until turn 50 or so...then let them have at it. I mean it is a decent bonus on its own...you can add a few ships to the fleet and make it very strong. The fleet itself doesn't need to be a juggernaut all on its own.

trying to play passive cravers was an intersting go lol. (that whas when craver heroes could negate depletion)

horatio been my fave sinse es1. i dont see that changing, especially splicing those juicy cravers