So this game is fantastic, and this site, Games2gether is fantastic! But I have some questions for ES2

First: Is there a way to tell the difficulty of a race? Like I'm sure the ones that can just buy outposts instead of colony ships is harder than others because of that mechanic. So is there a way to tell that?

Second: In the beginning I was having a hard time selecting ships that were stacked, the colony ship and the scout ship. I could click the scout and move it but not the colony ship, I had to go into a menu and select it. Was I missing something?

Third: What kind of victories are in place in the game already?

TheAtm wrote:

So this game is fantastic, and this site, Games2gether is fantastic! But I have some questions for ES2

First: Is there a way to tell the difficulty of a race? Like I'm sure the ones that can just buy outposts instead of colony ships is harder than others because of that mechanic. So is there a way to tell that?

As I understand it, the intent is for all factions to be balanced.  If one faction is genuinely harder than the rest, it should probably get a buff to support it.

You cite the Lumeris as an example, but I can assure you, they are not more difficult to play because they buy outposts.  You can literally buy any planet you've ever seen, you don't need to build colony ships, nor do you need to protect them.  You just run around, exploring all space, and when you come across a world you like, you buy it, immediately or later at your leisure, if you like.  It's actually very powerful.

Second: In the beginning I was having a hard time selecting ships that were stacked, the colony ship and the scout ship. I could click the scout and move it but not the colony ship, I had to go into a menu and select it. Was I missing something?

When you click on a stack, you should see a window on the bottom.  To the right, you can see the ships in the stack that you've selected, and in the center, you can see all the fleets in the system you're on.  You can click on the fleet you want to select.

Third: What kind of victories are in place in the game already?

Let's see:

• The player with the highest score when time runs out
• Science victory
• Wonder victory
• Supremacy victory (All the capitals)
• Dominance victory (sufficiently large amount of space covered)
• Economic victory (total lifetime dust accumulated)

I think that's all of them.  No Quest victory.

Hi,

Just to add a precision (other responses are spot on), we do consider some races to be more "advanced" than others in the way they play. We usually advise beginners to start with the Sophons, as we feel their abilities make them a bit more straightforward compared to the others.

Thanks for playing,

jhell wrote:

Hi,

Just to add a precision (other responses are spot on), we do consider some races to be more "advanced" than others in the way they play. We usually advise beginners to start with the Sophons, as we feel their abilities make them a bit more straightforward compared to the others.

Thanks for playing,

Hey Jhell do you know if the release update will bring improvements to the AI? :)

I feel Sophons are one the harder factions oO ! When you begin a game you have to deal with pirates with a weak army (and you got punished if you try to build a small protector because he is weak in early as hell), improve a lot your productivity what is everything but easy, and choose techs trough the freakin half part of the tech three when you just discover it. I would say UE, Lumeris and Horatio are good for beginners but maybe i am wrong, indeed. 

I just want to say that on the difficulty levels I have played on, pirates don't seem to be a problem. Let me explain...

There are always roving bands of pirates, but they almost always are between systems, and I have not yet ever had a pirate fleet just park itself on my system and stay there (your mileage may vary). So all you need to do is avoid engagements. Sure it's messy seeing them all over your star lanes, but eventually you tech up and have the industrial base to wipe them out of your constellation. I love the pirates, they're a much greater burden on the AI than the player, IMO. 

SuperMarloWorld wrote:

I feel Sophons are one the harder factions oO ! When you begin a game you have to deal with pirates with a weak army (and you got punished if you try to build a small protector because he is weak in early as hell), improve a lot your productivity what is everything but easy, and choose techs trough the freakin half part of the tech three when you just discover it. I would say UE, Lumeris and Horatio are good for beginners but maybe i am wrong, indeed. 

On Easy though?

I totally agree that it's a problem on Hard and up. But a new player will problem set the difficulty as low as it'll go the first time around.

Yes true. Sophons was still hard for me on first play because of the multitude of choice you can do with tech three. I did feel surrounded by possiblilies x) . Many other players probably never had this problem.

You are right, the tech tree can be overwhelming to new players, we're planning to add a "tech helper" which will suggest techs to mitigate that. The factions you cited are all good choices though :).

Hey Jhell do you know if the release update will bring improvements to the AI? :)

It sure should! We've noticed a few bugs after Update 3 was released and we're doing a pass on the military internally. We also implemented a few diplomatic behaviours in Update 3, the idea is to add more and detect more cases for release (for example the AI doesn't react if you leech it at the moment, we didn't have time to implement it for Update 3 :( ), as well as having AIs form Alliances if they are weaker than another AI or the player.

Jhell, while you're here, can you tell if there will be small patch with bug fixing near time soon? Me and my friend are having MP-session, and past turn 120 we get desyncs every turn or two, which is tiresome. It'd be good to know if we should expect things to improve there in a week  or in the month.

Sadly I don't think we'll be making another patch before release. We're actively hunting down desyncs though and the reports from you guys are definitely helping.

Willing to help (in case you didn't notice :p).

:). But actually I meant a pass on the AI's military side . Mysterarts is handling the gameplay part and I believe he did take a look at your mod in regards to weapons balance... don't quote me on that though :P.

If you're interested in joining the VIPs you should send a message to frogsquadron, he's the gatekeeper and will definitely be able to tell you more !

Yeah, we talked a lot about guns with MysteryArts, and I have a lot of new ideas to display :)
I'm just interested to join VIP for the tools, if any, not for super-secret stuff : is there an unimportant person status ? :p (j/k)

jhell wrote:

You are right, the tech tree can be overwhelming to new players, we're planning to add a "tech helper" which will suggest techs to mitigate that. The factions you cited are all good choices though :).

I think you could display helpers in the tech tree to show which tech is advised to be researched next to achieve a certain goal, like in the civ series. (The helpers could look like coloured circles around/behind some techs)

Goals could be: expansion (movement, colonization, influence), growth (food and industry), military (new ships, weapons and general military tech), wealth (dust, trade and agreements) and research (science).