I think that free travel should be retained, but all movement options should have strong and weak points. Similar to how the Sword of the Stars series did movement. EG:



HIVER GATES

They invade colonies and other systems without the use of FTL drives. Instead, they use a "gate" network that can teleport ships instantly. However, there are constraints of the network: It has a capacity limit of how many ships it can handle, and it has to be set up at a world in order to offer instant travel. By eschewing FTL drives, Hiver vessels pack far more weapons and armor than that of other races.



LIIR STUTTERWARP

The Fish use drives that cause their ships to make millions of tiny teleportations. The speed at which Stutterwarp can be implemented is dictated by proximity to gravity wells like planets and stars: The closer a Liir vessel is to a star, the slower it travels. However, Stutterwarp allows for very flexible movement, and potentially can allow to evade incoming fire by "phasing" out of the way if correctly timed. Further, Liir vessels become extremely fast when they enter open space, due to the lack of gravity. As such, open space grants them great advantage in combat, and allows for quick traversal between star systems. Due to the reliance on Stutterwarp, Liir vessels are in great danger when exposed to gravitic weapons.



HUMAN STARLANES

By using a device to manipulate wormholes, Humans can travel very quickly between systems. Starlanes do not have capacity limits, but they do have an important restriction: The destinations that any Starlane offers is fixed. Extreme speed at the cost of flexibility.



RATS (I don't remember the name of this race.)

Similar to how humans travel, but with one great difference: Instead of using existing Starlanes, they instead create lanes by force. This allows them to create travel corridors as they wish, allowing for tremendous flexibility. However, these starlanes are temporary at best, and will quickly erode if not reinforced often. Further, it takes time to "drill" a starlane corridor, which makes it very obvious when the Rats are coming.





Ect. The strong point of the SOTS series is travel, and I very much hope that Amplitude nicks the concept for use in Endless Space 2.

The Zuul btw.



Also, the Morrigi and the Loa have interesting star drives.



The Morrigi have a warp drive that allows them to travel faster the more ships are in a fleet.



And the Loa use warp cannons to shoot nanite blobs at other solar systems, these blobs then form a fleet at the destination.

Hm. I was recently thinking about Stars! and the mass-drivers that can throw resource packets at other worlds. If combined with the concept of the Loa, perhaps whole worlds could be absorbed by a nanite-entity, allowing for the entirety of an planet to be broken down and reassembled elsewhere...



My kingdom for a remake of Stars!

Based on the Gamescom vid here are some questions/speculations:



1. Advanced politics. Escpecially internal politics. Perhaps black-ops (assassionation,blackmailing,bribes,scandals) to manipulate politics without the population's knowledge?



2. Will each minor faction in your empire represent as a new party? If so, will minor faction parties grant unique traits if they become the major party? Perhaps ship designs unique to that faction?



3. Will there be political parties other than Labor, Wit, and Military? Perhaps a party that focuses on specific branch of research.



4. What happens if you try to ignore the populations' demands? Simple decrease in Approval or more advanced disadvantages? Perhaps rioting systems actually declare independence if they had enough of your s**t?



5. Quests. Will you be able to obtain them by finding Endless ruins and interacting with minor factions? What will the reward be? Unique techs only obtainable through quests?



6. Probes seemed to move ignoring paths. Can you launch other things, such as interstellar missiles? Would be cool to bombard the enemy from the other side of the galaxy.

prixt wrote:
Based on the Gamescom vid here are some questions/speculations:



1. Advanced politics. Escpecially internal politics. Perhaps black-ops (assassionation,blackmailing,bribes,scandals) to manipulate politics without the population's knowledge?



2. Will each minor faction in your empire represent as a new party? If so, will minor faction parties grant unique traits if they become the major party? Perhaps ship designs unique to that faction?



3. Will there be political parties other than Labor, Wit, and Military? Perhaps a party that focuses on specific branch of research.



4. What happens if you try to ignore the populations' demands? Simple decrease in Approval or more advanced disadvantages? Perhaps rioting systems actually declare independence if they had enough of your s**t?



5. Quests. Will you be able to obtain them by finding Endless ruins and interacting with minor factions? What will the reward be? Unique techs only obtainable through quests?



6. Probes seemed to move ignoring paths. Can you launch other things, such as interstellar missiles? Would be cool to bombard the enemy from the other side of the galaxy.

1. So far we only have elections. It remains to be seen how much of the infiltration mechanic from the upcoming EL expansion they port over

2. Unsure. It can also be that there will be one party for each political direction if there is enough population for it, the race being determined by which race in your empire supports it most. But each minor race having special laws that can be passed if they are in power would be interesting.

3. There are 8 I think. Military, Science, Pacifism, etc. The more votes a direction becomes the more laws from its branch you can pass. So even if your scientists have 80% of the votes and the militarists the otehr 20%, you likely can still pass the basic military laws.

4. I hope it is rioting and in the worst case civil war.

5. Hopefully yes

6. I don't think bombarding other planets from far away, even though its realistic would make a good gameplay element.

EvilDM wrote:


6. I don't think bombarding other planets from far away, even though its realistic would make a good gameplay element.

Depends on a few factors.



As in SOTS Sol Force could occasionally build Node Missiles to bombard planet with.



Basically big nukes with FTL drives, that while not game changing, could still add up against an unprepared colony.

Starbases would be great!

I really hope that they will change combat to something MoO II like (or even Sword of the Stars 1). The combat in ES1 was rather bland and unbalanced by design.

I hope, I really hope they don't have the 'massive fleets' deal. Gets tedious fast.

EvilDM wrote:
I really hope that they will change combat to something MoO II like (or even Sword of the Stars 1). The combat in ES1 was rather bland and unbalanced by design.

Don't count on it. I'm expecting a hybrid between ES and EL. Both MoO TBT and SotS1 RTT are something that they have always wanted to stay away from.

Nasarog wrote:
Don't count on it. I'm expecting a hybrid between ES and EL. Both MoO TBT and SotS1 RTT are something that they have always wanted to stay away from.

Well, I'm throwing in my vote for tactical combat and hotseat.

Idaho wrote:
I hope, I really hope they don't have the 'massive fleets' deal. Gets tedious fast.

I would be in favor of what Total War: Rome 2 did. You could only have a limited number of armies, that have to be led by a commander.



In the context of ES, you would only be able to build a limited number of fleets (the limit might increase the larger your empire is), that have to be led by an admiral.

I find the idea of fleets just going all over the place without a commander to be a bit ridiculous. And in such a way, it makes hero management and skills even more relevant.

ES2 reveal page mentions minor factions so that's great. I've always wanted a space game with minor factions - species that have not achieved interstellar spaceflight but are still enough of a force to be reckoned when colonizing a planet. I really hope they develop the minor faction mechanic, allowing us different ways of dealing with the natives: conquest, extermination, enslavement, uplifting, cooperation, integration, assimilation and etc.



Imagine:

- you're a spacefaring faction and discover a planet

- it already has a minor civilization on it, you must make choices

- a) exterminate and settle your own people, this would require to spend ground troops and maybe damage planet quality

- b) enslave, this would raise productivity but lower approval, risks of rebellions that may damage infrastructure and etc

- c) fulfill a quest or something so that the natives accept to be integrated in your empire. This should give you more FIDS bonuses but also maybe some unique bonus - the natives may not be able to build their own spaceships but maybe they're great at urban combat so now you can build superior troops for invasions

I really hope they will follow the Endless Space 1 battle system more than Endless Legend. EL is really slow in battles, and the choice in battles are not really important. ES don't have really nice tactics, but the fights were faster, and much more funny to watch (battle space were nice).



I wish online game will be more stable than ES1 was too ^^



Can't wait for this game.

magnuskn wrote:
Well, I'm throwing in my vote for tactical combat and hotseat.

Tactical Battles kills the game in many ways.



- Singleplayer suffers from AI that can't tackle the human exploiting it in tactical combat.

- Multiplayer suffers from battles that last forever.

- The game in general suffers from making the players attention less about strategy and more about tactics. This would also have to influence game design decissions to the worse in my opinion.





So please, not too much human controlled tactical battles focus. Focus on deep and engaging strategical gameplay!

I hope that spaceships are more customization and visible on the map.



Also I hope there are multiple galaxies in a single game!

I would also like to see more tactical combat. WAY more tactical (it slows the game down quite much, but it is worth it IMHO). In Endless Space the fleet size is very limited so the combat length would be sane.



Starbases, yes please!

The game shares a lot of ideas with the board game Eclipse, which also has starbases. The difference between the two lies in the fact that in Eclipse you have a very low cap on the number of ships, which forces you to consider placement and how you want to invest your resources.



In Endless Space you could just churn spaceships, and so starbases too, which would make it difficult to balance them in a significant way.



While I enjoy building up the "Arsenal of democracy" when going on the war path, I think there is some room for improvement as wars soon stray from the "who has the best approach or is the best prepared" and right into "who has the highest production cap" territory. That usually coincides with the moment where the game starts requiring a lot of micro-management, which is in my opinion detrimental to the flow (and enjoyment) of the game.



Can't wait to learn more next week!

More diplomacy - Always more diplomacy.

I hope that it will introduce the starbase to protect planets, like in Imperium Galactica II.