So I brought ES2 today! My first game was with the Lumeris.

So after a few turns of reading all the pop ups, one or two didn't work and I just got the method call, and trying to recall what I had done in ES1, I went exploring my little system, I adore the disjointed systems I think this is a great idea, but soon after surveying two systems, I had all my explorers destroyed by pirates, which continuously spawned and destroyed my meagre efforts to build another fleet and explorer ships, eventually I gave up and just started building colonies.

The tech tree was reasonably intuitive to use, though I'd like an option to click on the node and have the information stay on the screen so I can hover over the information that the tree would offer.

I like the senate and influence system, though, after the third or fourth election, I was unable to influence elections, despite paying for the boost in party, I don't know if this was because I had hit a threshold, but my Quest Line wanted me to have 20% environmentalists in the senate, and no matter what I did, environment tech and boosting the polls, having several environmental governours, it would not change the outcome.

The AI was pretty passive, despite a few demands for gold, which I had in abundance so I was happy to pay, there was no declarations of war, even when I was getting close to victory conditions, or my territory started taking over another's. This may have been because I was incredibly passive or I got lucky with my opponents mentalities, but I was able to wait for the last 20 turns waiting for my victory to tick over.

Speaking of which, I could not find what the victory conditions were, I'd like a little hover tooltip over the victory node or a progression bar towards your victory ie. 100,000 / 700,000 dust for economy.

I also found a few graphical bugs;

   -As I said, the tutorial popups would give me the method call rather than the actual message.

   -In the senate tab, the breakdown of your parliament, when you'd hover over a faction it wouldn't correspond with the correct percentage, ie. hover over the Pacifist slice of the pie, the militarist name and percentage would highlight.

   -I think it was the civilian ships, when you'd send civilians from one planet to the next, the ship design was a blank white square

The score screen at the end never loaded, I had to alt+F4 out of the game because after 10 minutes of leaving it to load didn't result in anything, kinda took the wind out of my sails after winning my first game of ES2.

I adore this game, personally I think it's Amplitude's best so far, and I'm very much looking forward to playing the full release, I hope there will be steam achievements to go along with it all too!

MrBardoth wrote:

So after a few turns of reading all the pop ups, one or two didn't work and I just got the method call, and trying to recall what I had done in ES1, I went exploring my little system, I adore the disjointed systems I think this is a great idea, but soon after surveying two systems, I had all my explorers destroyed by pirates, which continuously spawned and destroyed my meagre efforts to build another fleet and explorer ships, eventually I gave up and just started building colonies.

A tip: Lumeris starts with an Explorer class hero, which is amazing to use with an exploration fleet. Try to your starting hero at your planet to level him up (remember to take fleet related skills!), and when the pirates starts to appear around turn 10, put him into a fleet with some additional weapons modules if you can afford it. Hero ships are way tougher than any ships you can build around that time and should help beef up your fleet considerably.

MrBardoth wrote:

I like the senate and influence system, though, after the third or fourth election, I was unable to influence elections, despite paying for the boost in party, I don't know if this was because I had hit a threshold, but my Quest Line wanted me to have 20% environmentalists in the senate, and no matter what I did, environment tech and boosting the polls, having several environmental governours, it would not change the outcome.

Another tip: Remember to check your population too! Try assimilate Ecologist minor factions, and avoid those minor factions who will turns Ecologist outcomes into support of other factions! You can use the population screen (accessible from the Politics screen) to check their political affinity.