Horatio is pro-beauty and anti-ugly. Every game that takes itself seriously needs that void to be filled.

I would love to see the Automatons back.

Not only did they have my favourite play-style of all factions, I love their visuals and lore as well.

Digitalhawk96 wrote:
This is also, what, like, my first post in a year I think.

Welcome back, you're arriving right on time to take part in the first G2G votes about Endless Space 2.



http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/content.php?627-G2G-vote-Early-Access-Galaxy-Shapes

Mithrill wrote:
If Vaulters will appear, they MUST have more unique design of spaceships. Something similar to their cities in EL, a stylistic hybrid of hi-tech and ancient(I know, it sounds strange)

I would love to see Vaulter spacecraft with a longship vibe. Maybe their bigger ships could even look kind of draconic.



If there was a Broken Lords equivalent in ES2 then the devs should come up with an interesting backstory for them. Maybe a race of aliens who botched their attempt at virtualisation or something like that.

atejas wrote:
If there was a Broken Lords equivalent in ES2 then the devs should come up with an interesting backstory for them. Maybe a race of aliens who botched their attempt at virtualisation or something like that.

I really hope Broken Lords will be transferred from EL to ES2, atleast as minor faction. I imagine stories about how they discover true nature of dust, and left their bodies becoming something like AI.

Frogsquadron wrote:
Welcome back, you're arriving right on time to take part in the first G2G votes about Endless Space 2.



http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/content.php?627-G2G-vote-Early-Access-Galaxy-Shapes

Ah don't worry, I intend not to miss a single G2G vote, after all I do have a lot of voting power to throw around; and if I ave the time after my work, Ill probably get invested in the ES2's early access phase down the line.

Apologies for this slightly rambling post - but after watching the Endless Day stream and seeing new ES2 wiki I wanted to make some observations. Firstly, it seems that we will be getting 8 playable races on release (judging by the number of faction pages on the wiki) as a number of people had already predicted. Also, along with the previously confirmed Sophons and Cravers it seems reasonably likely that we'll be the seeing the Vaulters (due to their prominence in some of the art shown in the stream, plus their popularity with the dev team), plus two new factions (from the pages on the wiki - the two 'coming soon' factions have different symbols to any of the original ES races - though the square one could just be an updated UE logo).



From the art showing Sophons and Humans working together I'm left wondering whether the Pilgrims have been bundled up into the Sophons faction. The Pilgrims were kind of a blend between the two races in the first game, at least in terms of design and some of their lore. Also it seems likely that the Vaulters have superceded the Pilgrims as the second main human faction, at least in the eyes of Amplitude, so if there were plans to cut any of the human factions (at least for the initial release) it seems probable that it would be Pilgrims that got the chop.



Also, having recently watched the 'amplified reality' trailer again I wonder whether it implies that the ES universe was literally 'reset' (perhaps using some kind of dust-based timeline-altering technology) after a Hissho supremacy/expansion victory (the ship that appears has the Hissho logo and appears to 'glitch' out of existence). What that implies for the Hissho's possible inclusion (or exclusion) in the game I don't know, but I hope they haven't just been erased from the timeline. I personally hope that all the factions will return eventually (even the ones I'm not interested in) as each one will have fans, and it sucks to see your favourite race just disappear.



Anyway - those are just my thoughts on what's been shown thus far - I could well be interpreting the data wrongly though.

I would also personally like broken lords in endless space 2 I think they will be rather interesting to play.

I want fewer humans.



I want fewer BIPEDS as well.



Bipedal aliens in games bothers me. It makes sense in TV and to some extent movies. At the end of the day you need an actor to do CGI or wear a costume, and it's a hell of a lot easier if they're somewhat human looking. Budgets are a thing.



But for games it just bothers me so much how many races wind up as bipeds. I get that animation might be easier with humans, but man As such I would really like at least the sowers or the ameoba to return, but really just more alien looking races in general would be nice.



It's really the only thing I feel MOO3 got right- http://www.moo3.at/game/features/races.php.



I'm especially bummed to be seeing vaulters and potentially lords. This is a chance for something new, so "more humans" is really just bleh. If vaulters are to be the dev's pet race fine, but I'd rather have them be one of the only humans, rather than one of 5.

Eji1700 wrote:
I want fewer humans.



I want fewer BIPEDS as well.



Bipedal aliens in games bothers me. It makes sense in TV and to some extent movies. At the end of the day you need an actor to do CGI or wear a costume, and it's a hell of a lot easier if they're somewhat human looking. Budgets are a thing.



But for games it just bothers me so much how many races wind up as bipeds. I get that animation might be easier with humans, but man As such I would really like at least the sowers or the ameoba to return, but really just more alien looking races in general would be nice.



It's really the only thing I feel MOO3 got right- http://www.moo3.at/game/features/races.php.



I'm especially bummed to be seeing vaulters and potentially lords. This is a chance for something new, so "more humans" is really just bleh. If vaulters are to be the dev's pet race fine, but I'd rather have them be one of the only humans, rather than one of 5.

Ah, but you see, some people disagree, myself being the first among them.



Many of us prefer to play human factions. I'm aware of some extraordinary individuals who do not play anything other than that. I think a decent compromise is to have several human factions but leave most of them to the aliens. And that's exactly what I expect will happen; I think it's unlikely that less than five of the eight vanilla factions end up being aliens. That sounds fair, no?



Oh, and while I agree starfish aliens are more imaginative, they are not necessarily more plausible. So I'm okay with the humanoid type.

You don't need starfish to be more plausible. A majority of life as we know it is not bipedal. Heck some of the most intelligent life on earth isn't bipedal (parrots, octo...pi?, dolphins, etc). Plausible goes out the window in my eyes when your insectoid races looks humanoid (cravers). I get that people have preferences, but seriously I can't imagine that being enough of a motivating factore to justify all character design be that unimaginative.

Eji1700 wrote:
You don't need starfish to be more plausible. A majority of life as we know it is not bipedal. Heck some of the most intelligent life on earth isn't bipedal (parrots, octo...pi?, dolphins, etc). Plausible goes out the window in my eyes when your insectoid races looks humanoid (cravers). I get that people have preferences, but seriously I can't imagine that being enough of a motivating factore to justify all character design be that unimaginative.

Presumably they are insinuating that bipedal races are more capable of interstellar flight. Of all the species on Earth and especially the more intelligent species most of them are incapable of developing tools or technologies oftentimes due to their anatomy or environment. Dolphins for example won't be able to develop such important technologies as the ability to create fire. Parrots will find it pretty much impossible to develop sophisticated tools. Its just that in Earth we have evidence of the humanoid form being the most able and likely to travel among the stars. It is entirely plausible that non humanoid aliens exist out there but they would have a number of difficulties that we have no way of knowing of and that we don't face.

Adventurer_Blitz wrote:
Presumably they are insinuating that bipedal races are more capable of interstellar flight. Of all the species on Earth and especially the more intelligent species most of them are incapable of developing tools or technologies oftentimes due to their anatomy or environment. Dolphins for example won't be able to develop such important technologies as the ability to create fire. Parrots will find it pretty much impossible to develop sophisticated tools. Its just that in Earth we have evidence of the humanoid form being the most able and likely to travel among the stars. It is entirely plausible that non humanoid aliens exist out there but they would have a number of difficulties that we have no way of knowing of and that we don't face.

I have heard that before, and it's extremely logical. I could see there potentially being different body forms, but would still be a long the same lines a humanoid (give or take a few body features).



We won't know until we find any out there though:P

I for one really hope the harmony are back in this one. They were really cool and one of the more unique factions out there. Also, despite there being only so few at the beginning, I do want some Horation Narcissism.... tho not as much as I'd want dem crystal people. And an anomaly, like pacifistic, cult and open minded cravers

It currently looks as though quite a few of the starting factions in ES2 are going to be new. Firstly there's the two unidentified 'coming soon' factions on the wiki. Seeing as they don't have a faction symbol that corresponds to any of the ES1 factions they could either be a new race, or a revised version of one of the originals. Secondly, we now also know that one of the initial eight will be a fan designed race, voted in by the community using G2G (in the same way the Automatons were in ES1). That gives us the following line-up:



1: Sophons (Confirmed and officially revealed)

2: Cravers (Confirmed, to be officially revealed 'soon' - EDIT: Now revealed!)

3, 4: Unidentified 'Coming Soon' Races (Shown on wiki as a blurry image and unknown logo, to be revealed before/in Early Access)

5, 6, 7: Unknown Races (No information at all on these yet - they won't be included in Early Access so may not be revealed until later)

8: Faction Design Contest Winner (Contest hasn't started yet, but it will obviously be a new race)



If the unidentified races are new, that would mean only 5/12 (or fewer) of the original factions will return in the initial version of ES2 (though more could potentially be added later as either free updates or DLC, of course). It'll be interesting to see which way Amplitude go in terms of their choices.



Sources (for those who haven't seen them yet):

http://wiki.endless-space.com/factions

/#/endless-space-2/forum/65-general/thread/18815-minor-faction-dump

Eji1700 wrote:
You don't need starfish to be more plausible. A majority of life as we know it is not bipedal. Heck some of the most intelligent life on earth isn't bipedal (parrots, octo...pi?, dolphins, etc). Plausible goes out the window in my eyes when your insectoid races looks humanoid (cravers). I get that people have preferences, but seriously I can't imagine that being enough of a motivating factore to justify all character design be that unimaginative.

You're forgetting a quite significant detail here: Cravers were uplifted by the Endless as a war tool, and have undergone quite significant genetic manipulation to that end. It is entirely possibly that beforehand, they looked nothing like they do right now.

So, only 8 races? and many of them are tied to the Humans and Endless lores?

What about invaders from other galaxy in form of sentient lightshape that communicates through blinking. Their heated debates could blind people, and they travel in ships made of dust-engineered space dragons.

I mean, whoever gets excluded for launch, I'll miss them. I thought the faction design in ES was its best feature, across the board. It was easily what excited me most during its development and what kept me giddy through a lot of my campaigns. Rich imagination fuel, all of them. And I think that tends to be generally lacking in 4X games, for some unforgivable reason.



If I had to whittle the original twelve down to eight, I'd most willingly let go the Hissho, Sheredyn, Sowers, and Vaulters. That we appear to be necessarily losing at least three more hurts me, but I'm certainly excited to see the new ones.



Most probable, though? It doesn't seem to me like there's anything available to us to start estimating, but I figure Amplitude probably has metrics on which factions were most-played.

Well, we can take wild stabs at guessing the popularity of different factions, or how integral they seem to the lore of the Endless Universe. For example, the Cravers would have been a good guess (if they hadn't been revealed along with the Sophon) because they were popular and they were creations of the Endless.



Still, I'll probably miss whoever is excluded, except maybe the Sheredyn (who had not been developed much as a subfaction of the UE), the Hissho (simply because I did not play them often), and the Automatons (same as the Hissho).



We need Horatio, though. Somebody has to beautify the galaxy, after all.

I would love to see the Broken Lords in ESL 2.



In fact Im thinking im going to make my own version of them to suit a very special Play style.





Like some Broken Lords got so greedy with Dust that they will obtain it by any means like going to another planet occupied by another faction and attack it. Instead of conquering the city, they will just sack the planet and leave the planet with a drastic public order problem.



They can play hyper agressive and expansive. But im still working on the idea. Maybe when Amplitude starts their competition I will submit it