This is all great news! Can't wait!

Sinnaj63 wrote:
...



And I thought you were going to say something constructive...

Quote for the day :

"Spend as little as possible of your brain power and your precious time constructing replies to those who don't have respect towards other people's opinion and unreasonably keep imposing what they think are right to other people despite other people telling them to mind their own business"

xfstef wrote:
Well no. They shouldn't leave multiplayer to die. Just because something is hard that doesn't mean that we should give up. I like to think that Amplitude love challenges.



So the next argument would be to allow multiple game modes in order to address both online and offline play. While this would seem like the best option to make everyone happy please consider that it would add a tremendous stress on the overall design of the game so that it remains fun and attractive in both circumstances, without breaking the core mechanics. This would also mean that the game would most likely feel like a completely different beast in online mode than it does offline which would make things unintuitive and frustrating to players.



I just hope people get the best management experience while still playing a game that is fun in multiplayer and doesn't bore you to death while waiting for your opponents turn.

It always was the case that you either had 3+ hours free to kill or you planned to play the session over a few days and also the game was organized prior; well, in most of my cases anyway.



Not everyone has 5-6hrs to kill playing the Eldrich Horror board game with friends, but I do every Thursday in which I play card, board and tabletop games for 4-6 hours. Although that is a social gathering between friends compared to meeting some guys online then trying to commit to a 4x game for a long time.



Either way, why would anyone let the multiplayer die, the way I see it, it works best when you are organizing games beforehand because face it, people work; not everyone has tons of free time to kick back and match-make with similar peons. There is other games to cater for the 10-30 min period; but while I enjoy that, I prefer being in for the long haul where the game stretches into multiple hours.

Digitalhawk96 wrote:
Well i hope we can at least have a system where we have "Forgeworlds" in one system and "Agriworlds" in another system and create a link between such systems; one system creating excess food and shipping it to the other system and in return receiving industry as payment, in short, a localized trade network; even if its within one solar system or between systems. Of course they would benefit immensely connected but also suffer immensely if disconnected.



In fact I could make this sound better, would we be able to create local trade networks that ship food and industry to different systems to shift our surpluses of food and industry around?

I sense a Warhammer 40K fan.



I am not sure about industry being internally traded, as it's more reliant on machinery and manpower that wouldn't be moving around, unless it's a mineral / raw materials rich planet. That said, I do like the idea of having "bread basket" planets. In fact, I think food rich planets should be rare, making the planets that are rich in food become of high strategic value for empires, feeding many planets that would otherwise have minimal or even deficient food production.



It would also add an interesting strategic element, whereby an empire could target another empire's bread basket with invasions or even strategic bombing in order to starve them. This sort of dynamic is rare to non-existent in 4x games, which is a shame. I would love a mechanic that would allow you to unravel an empire through surgical strikes at key planets.

On another note, I am very happy the pacifist/trader/political playstyle will be getting some love and making it a little more interactive/proactive. The trading companies idea sounds great and I hope it will function and feel good as well as it sounds; while I am sad we will lose the old lovely looking ES1 tech tree, I am still rather intrigued with seeing a mash up of EL and ES1 ideas to create the ES2 one.

Sinnaj63 wrote:
I'm pretty sure it's just that food is generally produced and consumed locally.

Well i hope we can at least have a system where we have "Forgeworlds" in one system and "Agriworlds" in another system and create a link between such systems; one system creating excess food and shipping it to the other system and in return receiving industry as payment, in short, a localized trade network; even if its within one solar system or between systems. Of course they would benefit immensely connected but also suffer immensely if disconnected.



In fact I could make this sound better, would we be able to create local trade networks that ship food and industry to different systems to shift our surpluses of food and industry around?

Hey guys!



Good to see that Empire Management interests so many of you! Thanks for sharing your ideas and feedback, it's always much appreciated. I understand that with a feature as core to the Endless Space experience as the planet management, people might get passionate about their vision of the game, but I'd like you guys to remember to be courteous to one another, regardless of opinion.



Now to answer your posts:

These would be "political regions" and be upgradable individually, similar to how the boroughs are created in EL, boosting the planet's output.

The "political geometry" then would be comprised of 32 regions, regardless of planet size: 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons.



Each territory would have a distinct terrain. Rather, 5 of the triangles on each territory will have one single bonus - so each territory have equal properties and are equally desirable to be built upon.



Planet sizes would influence production values with a % modifier for FIDSI and militia replenishment, rebellion time which would apply to the final planet production.



This fits nicely with the 'system level up' mechanic. An outpost can have up to 4 territories occupied: the outpost foundation and 3 'boroughs'. This leaves 28 territories, and every time a policy is enacted, 4 additional expansions are possible, except the last upgrade, when the whole planet becomes "improvable" (is that a word?).

This does not limit specific regions from being enhanced; rather, it is a cap on max number of enhanced regions.



.......



Or have other orbit-to-surface weapons with varying radiuses around the ship tile

Even have a massive scorcher beam which attacks only the tile directly below but does massive damage

And more (which I can't think up right now).

(I cut the quote for the sake of gaining space )



First of all, we’re glad that you loved the borough system of Endless Legend, to the point of wanting it in Endless Space 2. While the idea is interesting, it reminds me of GalCiv’s planet management; it’s not a direction we want to follow.

In the early stages, we analyzed some leads to limit the number of improvements based on population and planet size. We also thought about a grid system to play on synergy…

In the end we preferred to stay close to what we have in Endless Space because:

[LIST=1]

We’re building a sequel. We want players to find their marks and be able to know the basics of the game. Even if we’re innovating and changing some game systems, we want to follow the legacy of what we did.

The empire scale is not comparable to Endless Legend or GalCiv III. If we look at Endless Space empires, in end game, the player can control over 20 systems, with an average of 3 planets; which represents 60 planets. If each planets is subdivided into 32 tiles, it’s going to be a nightmare to manage and track. Dedicated players could indeed spend enough time, but we really want to focus on a more macro level regarding system management.

For the ground battle, your proposal is interesting but there again, it feels a bit to micro compared to what we expect. We cooked a system that we believe will be interesting and bring important decisions, but we’ll expand on that later.

[/LIST]

I also do like the new tech tree links, but I'm still really no big fan of eras. With links, in addition to the ones already existing between techs as part of the basic tree structure, I feel like it really wouldn't add much.

Everything is great but shame that beautiful technology tree from ES1 is lost forever. Era's style is good and nice, but I really love old tree.

Also, I hope that the tech tree in ES2 will be just as large, complex, and interesting as the original Endless Space's tech tree. Wasn't a fan of the Endless Legend tech tree... it felt like it was smaller and didn't have as much depth, as opposed to the Endless Space tech tree, which was full of depth.

We prefer to use an era structure compared to the web shape of Endless Space tech tree because:

• Structuring the game helps tell a story and control the game pace / progress; imposing constraints lets us create tense and interesting choices for the players.
• We like the idea of permanent increase cost we introduced in Endless Legend; and how it reinforces the feeling of choosing your path through the tech tree in opposition to the “collect them all” of Endless Space tech tree (which had its merits).
• Regarding the link, we want them to be able to create specific relationships between some technologies but we don’t want a tech tree full of them. They are tools for a better balancing, and that will allow to reinforce some choices.
  
  

"Food

Used to compute population growth, it’s localized to a specific system."



"Industry

Consumed to build ships and all the improvements, it’s localized to a system."



What is a specific system ? Does it mean that there are systems wich don´t support food or does it mean that i can other things with food like it move to other systms ?

I'm pretty sure it's just that food is generally produced and consumed locally.

Yep that’s it

Trading just looks a bit fiddly to me.Why not just have the Civ5 system which added a lot of strategy to the map.External and internal growth options along with possible piracy.In Endless games it all seems too abstract.

I assume trade routes can be cut via blockading hubs, but will we be able to raid trade routes?

We plan to have piracy; we choose to go in this direction to create a more proactive gameplay for pacifist players, and have their own territory conquest through the placement of companies and branches. Moreover, by binding the trade routes to a defined space, it creates strong ties between empires; reinforcing this idea of pacifist gameplay.

I like the look of the trade system. Are the companies going to be named?

Companies will be named by default, and players will be allowed to rename them.

Will companies be in any way involved in elections (like lobbying or supporting a party)? In addition, is there something a player can do to sabotage companies of other empires (like espionage)?Will companies be in any way involved in elections (like lobbying or supporting a party)? In addition, is there something a player can do to sabotage companies of other empires (like espionage)?

We didn’t specify that but it’s interesting leads to explore!

Are you sticking with the Hero skill system from ESI where the heroes could have a governor skill and a fleet skill which would mean one of them would be wasted (for example an administrator/pilot governor would never use the pilot stuff).

We’ll detail the hero system in a next GDD but in short we’re closer to Endless Legend’s system than Endless Space’s.

Are you sticking with the random events from ESI? Some of them were brutal.

We’ll come back to that later as well, but we’re inspired both by the Endless Space event system and Endless Legend’s quests.

As i was rereading this post, It made me think that the galaxy size, or more correctly the amount of systems in each galaxy would be less then in ES? I feel like with the new methods of conversion on planets as well as the new method of creating a colony will increase the amount of time require to expand, as well as the overall game which is fine. I just fear that some games will take tooo long, as a person who loves playing competitive as well as casual ES multiplayer, I would not be able to play a game that last more than 4-5 hours. Having said that, I know amplitude is real good at making multiple map settings to accommodate these needs, I just thought it should be left in mind.



Before people say to put it on fast pace, I feel that fast pace is broken in the sense that it does not take into consideration certain things like ship movement and how long it takes someone to get somewhere compared to the bonuses provided in fast pace. For me Normal has always been the best pace

Well, there is an awfully low number of players chiming in this thread, I think none of us can speak for the majority, but we are stating our preferences.



(I would love to have a more direct way to gauge player interest with high numbers. I have some contact with statistics, and anything startign from a ~100 sample size starts to be meaningful, though with a large margin of error, and it shrinks a great deal until 1000 samples, and there are diminishing returns up to 5000, then it's mostly noise. but I don't want to make it the topic of my post)



I happen to be one which enjoys the battle theatre in EL, and it a nice hex coordinate system. While I don't play every battle - auto-resolve is a bless sometimes - I like to engage personaly in many important battles. If anything, I think the battle theatre is too small on EL, not giving us enough places to go, limiting strategy a lot.



The natural adaptation of a hex coordinate system to a sphere is a buckyball. While you say 'it's a lot of work', I look at it as having much of the groundwork being threaded already, in that EL has already a lot of different types of terrain, a map generation system which puts in not only resources, but also terrain hazards and barriers. It certainly wouldn't be just a plug-and-play matter, but it a terrain (teehee) well-treaded by Amplitude.



EL is already a planet map generation style, where is wraps west-east. It necessitates eating some hexes and replacing exactly 12 of them with pentagons to wrap it spherically. Geometrically, buckyballs are the simplest and most elegant way to go to add tiles on the planets.



If it's not going to bring back that familiar hextile experience from EL, I would like to honestly ask my fellow players proposal which go beyond a bullet point for 'expanded ground battle/invasion mechanics'.



And all of my YES to play-by-email.

Romeo wrote:
Before I go further, I just want to say I agree with your point ultimately, I have no desire they requested either.



That said, as you yourself said, multiplayer for this genre is already dying: So why bother catering to it? Focus on those who continue to prop it up: The singleplayer community. Most of us don't care if a turn takes twenty seconds or twenty minutes, because it's catered exclusively around the player. Age of Wonders III turns in to a total slog towards late game, and many people online said it was breaking up multiplayer flow. But rather than affect the single player at all, they just gave the option to play asynchronously across email.

Well no. They shouldn't leave multiplayer to die. Just because something is hard that doesn't mean that we should give up. I like to think that Amplitude love challenges.



So the next argument would be to allow multiple game modes in order to address both online and offline play. While this would seem like the best option to make everyone happy please consider that it would add a tremendous stress on the overall design of the game so that it remains fun and attractive in both circumstances, without breaking the core mechanics. This would also mean that the game would most likely feel like a completely different beast in online mode than it does offline which would make things unintuitive and frustrating to players.



I just hope people get the best management experience while still playing a game that is fun in multiplayer and doesn't bore you to death while waiting for your opponents turn.

xfstef wrote:
Ok man. We can all see your point but you can't see ours. It's too damn much work for this "feature". TBS and especially RTS games are already losing lots of ground when it comes to multiplayer popularity. Let's be honest here. Since the mobas came out they've completely took over the market and only shooters have managed to remain relevant. If Amplitude would add this as a core game mechanic the result would be a bulky and slow gameplay experience aimed at absolute micromanagement fans which will make it unappealing towards newer (more casual) players. Making player turns last longer than a couple of minutes would kill the multiplayer experience for even the most hardcore fans.



Maybe you could implement the regions but only be allowed to micromanage them up to a certain point in the evolution of the planet. Essentially capping the amount of work that each planet requires as the total amount of planets steadily increases.



Regarding tactical invasion and management of the hexes I can only say that I personally would hate it. This is a 4X game and not a tactical strategy game. I cannot even imagine how it would work since I'm sure you'd need to cap the movement speeds of units so that both players can have a say in the outcome, essentially dragging each invasion out over dozens of turns, which was already happening in ES but at least there was no (or almost no) micromanagement involved and the invasion took place for all the planets of a system simultaneously. Which would make sense given how the game explains movement between systems and star clusters.



Like I first mentioned. I'm not saying your ideas are not viable but they are just too detailed and complicated and a game designer knows that he has to keep it simple else feature creep will either kill the development itself or the gameplay experience. Feature creep is definitely NOT what ES2 should be suffering from and I base my opinion on the market reaction to ES. It was fresh and exciting and I congratulate Amplitude on their success but they need to look hard at that game and come up with improvements to it, rather than implement a couple extra core game mechanics in this one.

Before I go further, I just want to say I agree with your point ultimately, I have no desire they requested either.



That said, as you yourself said, multiplayer for this genre is already dying: So why bother catering to it? Focus on those who continue to prop it up: The singleplayer community. Most of us don't care if a turn takes twenty seconds or twenty minutes, because it's catered exclusively around the player. Age of Wonders III turns in to a total slog towards late game, and many people online said it was breaking up multiplayer flow. But rather than affect the single player at all, they just gave the option to play asynchronously across email.

The last GDD has been posted recently, but I'm sure you still want more right? So to keep the momentum going, here's a new one!



Economy basics

The FIDSI

As in the previous game, the core of the economy will be FIDSI. For each Resource, we try to focus on different ways to obtain it, even if Food, Industry, Science and Dust will always be on Planets.

Food

Used to compute population growth, it’s localized to a specific system.

Mainly produced by:

• Planets
• Improvements
  
  

Can also be produced by:

• Population
• Trade
  
  

Industry

Consumed to build ships and all the improvements, it’s localized to a system.

Mainly produced by:

• Planets
• Population
  
  

Can also be produced by:

• Improvements
• Trade
  
  

Dust

Produced within systems, it’s then stocked on Empire, and managed at a global scale. It’s used to buy different elements, and pay the maintenance of Ships and Improvements.

Mainly produced by:

• Trade
• Population
  
  

Can also be produced by:

• Improvements
• Diplomacy
• Planet
  
  

Science

Produced within systems, it’s then stocked on Empire and managed at a global scale. It’s consumed to unlock new technologies.

Mainly produced by:

• Diplomacy
• Improvements
  
  

Can also be produced by:

• Trade
• Planets
  
  

Influence

Produced within systems, it’s then stocked on Empire, and managed at a global scale. It’s used for passing laws, interacting with the government and Diplomacy.

Mainly produced by:

• Diplomacy
• Improvements
  
  

Can also be produced by:

• Population (Happiness)
  
  

Resources

As in Endless Legend, Resources are going to be stocking up with turns and can then be consumed.



Strategic Resources

We want to dedicate the Strategic Resources to the military aspect of the game: buildings and Ship construction.



Luxury Resources

We want to strongly link the use of luxury to Population and the wealth of the empire. The system we suggest is inspired both by the Empire Plan (defining a specialization) and the boroughs (expanding your city) of Endless Legend.

Luxury resources allow you to develop a new social policy which can then be applied on a system. Doing so level up your system, which means:

• Your maximum population cap is increased
• The bonus of the policy is given to your system for the rest of the game
  
  

A system can level up 4 times during the game; and a policy can be applied only once on each system.

The bonus the policy provides is directly linked to the luxury used to create it. At the beginning of the game, the policy only uses 1 luxury resource, and with each era, the number of luxuries that can be combined for a policy increases. However, only one policy per era can be created!







Empire territory

Colonization Process

In order to expand their empire, the player needs to go through the process of developing outposts. First, on their colony, the players build a colony ship that will not contain any specific populations, and with those they will settle on neutral planets. An outpost can be built in the same system as an outpost from another empire while there are available planets.



Once settled, the outpost is going to provide resources to the empire: Science, Dust, Influence, Luxury & Strategic resources. However, the outpost cannot be developed by building improvements.

In order to grow the outpost, the player needs to use the propaganda to attract population from surrounding systems. Once the outpost reaches a certain level of development, the player needs to apply a policy on the system to turn it into a colony.



If there are several players with an outpost on the same system, the first applying the policy wins the system, stealing the outpost from the other players. A player can slow the growth of an opponent’s outpost by using fleets, or by overlapping the system within their Empire’s borders.



Building empire borders

• The influence is generated by star systems and represents cultural development. It’s going to expand passively over the course of the game.
• The influence also defines the territory of an empire: what’s within it is under the empire’s control. More or less.
• The influence is generated by the colonies of an empire. An outpost doesn’t produce influence. It’s materialized by a circle with a radius calculated from the output of Empire Point. The radius is a number of parsecs, starting from the center of the colony.
  
  

Each turn, we add the results to a stock used to compute the influence’s radius.



Influence is territory

The influence zone is defining the territory of an empire, and thus affects the different elements within depending on the relationship between their owner and the empire.

The territory can have additional properties depending on:

• Overall, through Laws and Technologies
• Toward specific empires, based on their relationship or active treaties
  
  

An element is considered within an influence area when its center is.



Influence affects an enemy node

A node owned by an opponent within the empire’s influence suffers from:

• Economic penalties: loss of Dust and Science and slowing down outpost development;
• Defense penalties: the system’s population provides less defensive power than usual;
• Information leak: the owner of the influent system can access to data that is usually private
  
  

Moreover, a conversion countdown is triggered: each turn the difference between the influence generated by the influent system and the influenced system is added to a gauge.

• When the gauge reaches a certain positive threshold, the system is converted;
• When the gauge reaches a certain negative threshold, the system is saved from conversion;
  
  

The threshold is defined by the system’s development. The conversion progress of a system is apparent both in system label and in system view.







Technology Tree

The technology tree is going to help the empire progress through the game, enhancing the available gameplay but also unlocking new ones.

We want to give the player freedom on how they approach available technologies. Moreover, we added a link system between some of the technologies in order to create a puzzle gameplay, reflecting the scientific thoughts and process.



Era

• The technology tree is divided into Eras containing a certain number of technologies.
• In order to unlock an Era, the player has to unlock a certain number of technologies of the previous Eras. Once an Era is unlocked, all its technologies become available (if they fulfil their own prerequisites). Moreover, the Era can provide a set of bonus / improvements at the time it unlocks.
• The Era progress can be used to modulate other game elements such as Minor Faction activities, or default experiences…
  
  

Technologies

Each technology is displayed within a form which refers to its category. In addition, the technology has the following properties:

• An Era: the technology is assigned to an Era, defining its accessibility.
• A cost: depending on the number of technologies already unlocked and the era in which the technology is
• A content: a technology can provide different elements:
  
  
  • Empire bonus
  • Constructible (hull, improvements)
  • New gameplay (Market, Diplomatic interactions…)
    
    
  
  
  
• A list of links with other technologies:
  
  
  • Reduction cost: the cost of a technology is reduced when the other is researched;
  • Extra unlock: this link has to be paid for with resources by the player and will provide an extra unlock for both technologies when they are both researched;
  • Era progress: the link generates progress when both technologies are researched;
  • Exclusion: only one of the technologies can be unlocked;
  • Dependency: one of the technologies requires unlocking the other.
    
    
• A set of prerequisites:
  
  
  • Exclusion: the technology cannot be unlocked if another has been unlocked
  • Dependency: the technology needs a technology to be unlocked
    
    
  
  
  

Trade system

We want the player to have an active gameplay around trade routes, and to be able to invest time and energy as a player can do when going to war. Still, we want to avoid micromanagement.



For that, we’re going to place him as the manager of trade companies, who has to build their network. By doing this, we push the player to focus on working on the big picture instead of doing micromanagement.



The trade companies

The player unlocks trading companies over the course of the game; one by one. The first one is unlocked by researching the technology allowing trades.

Then, extra companies (up to X; X = 3 / 5) can be unlocked when enough income from trade has been accumulated to reach specific thresholds. The threshold to reach is based on the number of companies the player already unlocked. The progress needed to unlock the next company is tracked thanks to a gauge that is displayed in the trade screen.



When a company is unlocked, the player has to place its headquarters on a colonized system in order to activate it. The first company has its headquarters on the player’s home system.

For the others companies, their headquarters have to be placed on any available system.

An available system is:

• A system which isn’t a home system
• A system without other headquarters / branches
  
  

Once a company is unlocked and active (headquarter placed), the player can develop its power by:

• Assigning ships to it.
• Signing trade agreements with other empires
  
  

The power is going to directly affect the income generated by the different trade routes as well as the range of exploitation. In order to increment the number of trade routes, the player has to apply laws, or unlock specific technologies.



The number of available trade routes is the same for all companies of an empire and can be increased by:

• Voting laws
• Unlocking research
  
  

In addition to that, the player can invest to place new branches for its company; this means that the player can extend the company’s network and thus build longer trade routes (explained below in the computing trade route part).

As with headquarters, branches have to be placed on available systems in order to be activated.



Trade routes

The idea behind the company is to build a network; and this network is represented by trade routes.

Trade routes are computed every turn in order to generate the biggest income possible. A route is always attached to a company.



A trade route computes two incomes:

• One for the systems it crosses
  
  

This income is directly applied to the system and is based on the Trade Value of the system. It generates Food and Industry.

• One for the company that owns the route
  
  

This is a percentage of the sum of the Trade Value of all systems linked by the route. In addition to that, each route from another empire crossing a branch or the headquarters generates some Dust as well. Moreover, the crossed system provides luxury in addition to the Dust income.







VIP HIGHLIGHTS



FIDSI and Influence

• I like that each FIDSI has different "primary" sources. In EL it felt like "harvesting" from population and improvements was the biggest source of everything.

• Generating Influence from improvements seems like a strange match. Things like keeping your population happy, military prowess (fighting and winning battles vs, simply building a fleet) and quest fulfillment seem like better choices.

Influence is deeply modulated by happiness; and you’ll have ways of generating influence from battles, quests… We still want to provide the idea of building Improvements that increase your influence thanks to “manipulation”, or that represent the glory of your empire.

• I take it that the positive income of influence from a system is taken for calculating the radial increase of influence and that borders cannot shrink, but that maybe overtaken colonies have to start anew in generating influence for their new masters?

Yep an overtaken colony will first have its previous influence decreased, and then the new owner will have to generate the territory from scratch. Thus, it allows the previous owner to take back the system without losing too much territory if he’s fast enough. The border can also shrink if a system has a negative influence outcome , for instance because of a rebellion on t

xfstef wrote:
Ok man. We can all see your point but you can't see ours. It's too damn much work for this "feature". TBS and especially RTS games are already losing lots of ground when it comes to multiplayer popularity. Let's be honest here. Since the mobas came out they've completely took over the market and only shooters have managed to remain relevant. If Amplitude would add this as a core game mechanic the result would be a bulky and slow gameplay experience aimed at absolute micromanagement fans which will make it unappealing towards newer (more casual) players. Making player turns last longer than a couple of minutes would kill the multiplayer experience for even the most hardcore fans.



Maybe you could implement the regions but only be allowed to micromanage them up to a certain point in the evolution of the planet. Essentially capping the amount of work that each planet requires as the total amount of planets steadily increases.



Regarding tactical invasion and management of the hexes I can only say that I personally would hate it. This is a 4X game and not a tactical strategy game. I cannot even imagine how it would work since I'm sure you'd need to cap the movement speeds of units so that both players can have a say in the outcome, essentially dragging each invasion out over dozens of turns, which was already happening in ES but at least there was no (or almost no) micromanagement involved and the invasion took place for all the planets of a system simultaneously. Which would make sense given how the game explains movement between systems and star clusters.



Like I first mentioned. I'm not saying your ideas are not viable but they are just too detailed and complicated and a game designer knows that he has to keep it simple else feature creep will either kill the development itself or the gameplay experience. Feature creep is definitely NOT what ES2 should be suffering from and I base my opinion on the market reaction to ES. It was fresh and exciting and I congratulate Amplitude on their success but they need to look hard at that game and come up with improvements to it, rather than implement a couple extra core game mechanics in this one.

While I do agree that I Brazilian_Joe's concept of regional planet managment is almost certainly not going to be implemented due to too much work for to little appeal while I'm also of the opionion that there should be some kind of advanced groun combat/invasion system(Preferably with Big Awesome battles like the space ones and also big space to ground artillery strikes), I also totally agree that this would actually bog up the multiplayer too much. In my experience, Endless Space, which I already spent hours on in singleplayer, was multiple times more fun in multiplayer with other people while being able to talk through steam voice chat/teamspeak. Now the game already works kinda meh in multiplayer, and clearly is focused on singleplayer, and I feel like Endless Space 2 should probably work better in Multiplayer both kinda mechanically(Or at elast not bog it down more) and of course technically.

Brazilian_Joe wrote:
If it is desired to use the buckyball concept with more tiles for larger planets, to have larger ground combat theaters, it is very doable geometry-wise.



It is possible to generate 'higher order" (this is totally non-technical) buckyballs by using multiple rows of hexagons.



The degenerate example is the dodecahedron, where only the 12 pentagons survive, and they have 0 hexagons in-between.

Then there is the 'footbal' basic buckyball, with one row of heexagons separating the 12 pentagons.

It can have 2,3, N rows of hexagons and still retain a roughly spherical shape. A buckyball always, only has 12 pentagons though.



Of course this would be additional coding, but the geometry is well understood.



I didn't extend as far as the strategy of taking over buildings, but that would be an interesting twist to the ground combat rules, with players being given the option to either bomb or try to preserve the building for the aftermath.



It would be nice to have system invasions occur planet-by-planet as well, to give more opportunity to counter.



Some planets could have 'interplanetary artillery' where one planet could shoot the other to help drive away enemy invaders.



Conversely, on advanced tech leves the invaders themselves would be able to deploy such technology in a mobilized fashion, to improve its odds in the invasion attrition.

Ok man. We can all see your point but you can't see ours. It's too damn much work for this "feature". TBS and especially RTS games are already losing lots of ground when it comes to multiplayer popularity. Let's be honest here. Since the mobas came out they've completely took over the market and only shooters have managed to remain relevant. If Amplitude would add this as a core game mechanic the result would be a bulky and slow gameplay experience aimed at absolute micromanagement fans which will make it unappealing towards newer (more casual) players. Making player turns last longer than a couple of minutes would kill the multiplayer experience for even the most hardcore fans.



Maybe you could implement the regions but only be allowed to micromanage them up to a certain point in the evolution of the planet. Essentially capping the amount of work that each planet requires as the total amount of planets steadily increases.



Regarding tactical invasion and management of the hexes I can only say that I personally would hate it. This is a 4X game and not a tactical strategy game. I cannot even imagine how it would work since I'm sure you'd need to cap the movement speeds of units so that both players can have a say in the outcome, essentially dragging each invasion out over dozens of turns, which was already happening in ES but at least there was no (or almost no) micromanagement involved and the invasion took place for all the planets of a system simultaneously. Which would make sense given how the game explains movement between systems and star clusters.



Like I first mentioned. I'm not saying your ideas are not viable but they are just too detailed and complicated and a game designer knows that he has to keep it simple else feature creep will either kill the development itself or the gameplay experience. Feature creep is definitely NOT what ES2 should be suffering from and I base my opinion on the market reaction to ES. It was fresh and exciting and I congratulate Amplitude on their success but they need to look hard at that game and come up with improvements to it, rather than implement a couple extra core game mechanics in this one.

If it is desired to use the buckyball concept with more tiles for larger planets, to have larger ground combat theaters, it is very doable geometry-wise.



It is possible to generate 'higher order" (this is totally non-technical) buckyballs by using multiple rows of hexagons.



The degenerate example is the dodecahedron, where only the 12 pentagons survive, and they have 0 hexagons in-between.

Then there is the 'footbal' basic buckyball, with one row of heexagons separating the 12 pentagons.

It can have 2,3, N rows of hexagons and still retain a roughly spherical shape. A buckyball always, only has 12 pentagons though.



Of course this would be additional coding, but the geometry is well understood.



I didn't extend as far as the strategy of taking over buildings, but that would be an interesting twist to the ground combat rules, with players being given the option to either bomb or try to preserve the building for the aftermath.



It would be nice to have system invasions occur planet-by-planet as well, to give more opportunity to counter.



Some planets could have 'interplanetary artillery' where one planet could shoot the other to help drive away enemy invaders.



Conversely, on advanced tech leves the invaders themselves would be able to deploy such technology in a mobilized fashion, to improve its odds in the invasion attrition.

Brazilian_Joe wrote:
"But then what's the point?" - I'll explain by example: Amplitude games have an 'auto-resolve' button for battles. Then what's the point in fudging with hexes and turns and moving units around and battle phases? It's a layer of strategy for the players who want to go into that level of detail. It's there, it enriches the experience, it's also good that it can be skipped, for when there is a large empire, the player may just let it auto-resolve. But whenever there is a tough condition, where the player just does not trust the 'good enough' the AI does, it steps in and hand picks stuff. Also on early game, where every bit of FIDSI counts to muster an early game momentum.

To give the player the choice to micro, it's one of things in a strategy game to give the player things to do.

Also to create a predictable theatre of operations for the planetary invasions, which is one of the most requested features lacking from the previous game.

A big reasons battles exist manually is because they have a big appeal for being awesome space battles. Though I really think a system like that would make sense for invasions. In that case, planets should definetly have a different amount of tiles based on size and combat should be based around players having to fight with troops based on defense/defense improvements and population for the defender and the troops he brought for the attacker. Combat could be based around capturing industral/agricultural centers and destroying enemy troops, which would work together if there was a supply mechanic that required troops to be supplied from said centers.

"But then what's the point?" - I'll explain by example: Amplitude games have an 'auto-resolve' button for battles. Then what's the point in fudging with hexes and turns and moving units around and battle phases? It's a layer of strategy for the players who want to go into that level of detail. It's there, it enriches the experience, it's also good that it can be skipped, for when there is a large empire, the player may just let it auto-resolve. But whenever there is a tough condition, where the player just does not trust the 'good enough' the AI does, it steps in and hand picks stuff. Also on early game, where every bit of FIDSI counts to muster an early game momentum.

To give the player the choice to micro, it's one of things in a strategy game to give the player things to do.

Also to create a predictable theatre of operations for the planetary invasions, which is one of the most requested features lacking from the previous game.





On culture:



Sins Of a Solar Empire had an interesting culture mechanics where a 'culture building' would produce a certain cultural output. Once the planet becomes saturated with culture, the culture starts spreading through the 'phase lanes' (connections between systems in ES2 case). The lane itself would be the gaugue to measure how close the culture was to start affecting another system. If two adjacent systems from different factions are producing each their own culture, a 'culture attrition' takes place and only the difference of the strongest culture pushes forward. Cultural propagation would become weaker after each jump point, but having a large territory with lots of culture centers would make the player strong.



Fighting on a planet under your own culture influence - regardless of political ownership - granted combat bonuses.

Brazilian_Joe wrote:
32 tiles are the basic form - 'canonical' if there is any buckyball which can be called that - of the buckyball.



I proposed keeping it fixed at 32 because it makes sense depending on how you look at it.



First, it's simpler to implement. While it's possible to generate buckyballs with more tiles, there is added complexity to coding it this way, and it's unlikely we will occupy even a third of them in the capital, unless the player really pushes it to the edge.



I propose the planet size change to be a simple multiplier like e.g.: Tiny = 60% output, small = 80% output, normal = 100% output, large = 120% output, huge = 140% output.



Being a fixed 32 tiles also gives the added benefit of having a more predictable field on which to develop, and that simplifies decision-making because the player will just know the framework, and only has to care about terrain pluses and minuses to select where to build.



Again, it is not too much to manage because

1) It's not larger than one EL region

2) There would be a governor using simple math to automatically pick a tile, if the player does not want to bother; which keeps the 'new turn' action at the same complexity level as before.





The proposal opens up the option of fine-tuning system output by hand-placing certain buildings on top of certain tiles.

And gives stable, predictable operation theaters for:

planet development;

planet invasion - when the 32 tiles are broken up into 180 triangles.

Exactly, it's like regions to manage. A lot of them, in addition to the system already having to be managed and all the other things, and also, it's lots and lots of regions. Of course you can just use the governor, but then what's the point? The Specific developments on planets are already always managed by a governor, which is why we don't see them right now. And if it worked with modifiers, that would mean population would work sketchily.

Varadhon wrote:
This is rather tautological reasoning. The problem here is in part that the concept of borders fundamentally hasn't changed since ES. It's not mechanically much different from the borders concept introduced way back with Civilization III. Since culture and borders are wholly conflated in these games, I can see how you'd say that it "makes sense that you would gain control of everything within your border."



The problem here lies with the fact that culture and political boundaries are essentially indistinguishable. This is an abstraction whose time has long since passed. Amplitude are more than creative enough to come up with unique border and cultural influence systems that don't rehash old, highly artificial mechanics. I certainly recognize the game functions that the culture mechanic is trying to achieve: (1) provide a means for delineating ownership of territory, and (b) create additional ways for territory to peaceably change hands, which (c) leads to the satisfaction of victory conditions without engaging in military conquest.



Culture should be a mechanic separate and apart (though perhaps related to) political boundaries. Cultural influence ought to be the result, not just of buildings on planets, but also of trade ties (the new trade companies mechanic offers interesting possibilities here), length of diplomatic contact, proximity, similarity in government and basic faction biases. Fundamentally, to me, it seems like culture should have its own non-military path to victory, that doesn't involve the rather bizarre notion of "culture flipping." Extreme cultural production ought to ultimately pacify those affected by it. It could easily be the fulcrum for a diplomatic victory through the creation of a galaxy-wide alliance.



By the same token, there's no reason to make political boundaries dependent on cultural influence. There ought to be a more interesting means for staking out a claim on a system through pure exploration and military presence.[/QUOTE]



The way it worked in Endless Space 1 though, borders weren't really as much cultural influence as they were the area of empty space that was under your governments adminstration, which could be expanded more with measures like more satelites, but at the end, depended on the level of development of the system.

That was a beautiful post! Game is looking great!

Sinnaj63 wrote:
I mean it makes sense that you would gain control of everything within your border more or less and I think it goes without saying that taking over their systems pisses your neighbors off.

This is rather tautological reasoning. The problem here is in part that the concept of borders fundamentally hasn't changed since ES. It's not mechanically much different from the borders concept introduced way back with Civilization III. Since culture and borders are wholly conflated in these games, I can see how you'd say that it "makes sense that you would gain control of everything within your border."



The problem here lies with the fact that culture and political boundaries are essentially indistinguishable. This is an abstraction whose time has long since passed. Amplitude are more than creative enough to come up with unique border and cultural influence systems that don't rehash old, highly artificial mechanics. I certainly recognize the game functions that the culture mechanic is trying to achieve: (1) provide a means for delineating ownership of territory, and (b) create additional ways for territory to peaceably change hands, which (c) leads to the satisfaction of victory conditions without engaging in military conquest.



Culture should be a mechanic separate and apart (though perhaps related to) political boundaries. Cultural influence ought to be the result, not just of buildings on planets, but also of trade ties (the new trade companies mechanic offers interesting possibilities here), length of diplomatic contact, proximity, similarity in government and basic faction biases. Fundamentally, to me, it seems like culture should have its own non-military path to victory, that doesn't involve the rather bizarre notion of "culture flipping." Extreme cultural production ought to ultimately pacify those affected by it. It could easily be the fulcrum for a diplomatic victory through the creation of a galaxy-wide alliance.



By the same token, there's no reason to make political boundaries dependent on cultural influence. There ought to be a more interesting means for staking out a claim on a system through pure exploration and military presence.