First off let me say Endless Space 2 is in great shape and already an immensely enjoyable game but if I had to select my biggest annoyance with the game currently it would be freighters and Spaceports and the extra micromanagement it creates.

For those that don't know once you get in your first system development you are allowed to move population units/citizens between your systems via a spaceport.

There are a lot of very good reasons to do this.  e.g. Many/most population types give a bonus if they are placed on certain worlds such as the United Empire which produce extra influence on temperate worlds and Sophon extra science when placed on cold worlds.  Also you may want to move population to get collection bonuses (which are very significant) by moving population to underpopulated planets to increase their numbers and thus increase the chance of gaining the bonuses.  The system encourages you to have one pop of the citizens you like on every system you own there is even buildings which give  a further boost.  There are other reasons to move population as well e.g. danger of attack.

So it's something that if you neglect there will be consequences to your empire.

Now using the spaceport is simple, drag and drop population from planets select a destination and next turn they are converted to freighters and will move there.


Where the problems lay is it's very hard to keep track of how many freighters you have sent and where they are going and what pop type is on them and how long they will take to get there past a certain amount of systems.  4-5 planets is easy to manage, 15+ is not!  It becomes very easy to lose track and also extremely time consuming every turn.  Population that arrive to a full up system are lost, this frequently happens to me.

There needs to be a freighter/spaceport management screen (similar to the systems management one perhaps) that lets you move population to spaceports and a destination.  Lets you know what freighters have been sent where they are going with what population and when they will arrive and preferably will there be room on the destination system when it arrives and It needs to be on preferably on one screen.  looking around the map for freighters you've lost track of and clicking on each individual system to move population and see if it's full takes waayyyy too much time currently!!!

I'm guessing this suggestion might be too late to make the release version now but hopefully a future update.  I make Lets Plays on YouTube for those of you who don't recognize my username  I've covered every update so far and plan on covering ES2 much more on and post release you can check out my latest LP in the video below.

If you support the need for this feature please lend your weight by posting below.

thanks - Macsen.

Agreed! And in that population shipping management screen you should be able to change destination for the civilian ships. Not necessarily be able to control them at the galaxy scan level, and thus horde pop ships, but to be able to redirect away from a system that becomes full. Or at the very very least, have the number of turns until arrival listed in the civilian ship info so you can make plans to have space on a system for a ship's arrival.

I'm hoping once they've actually balanced food output and population growth (population grows way too fast and there is no need to build food buildings) space port migration will be more manageable. Right now I barely use it (unless playing Riftborn) because planets become over populated too soon for the spaceport to ever be useful.

@Ridiculi:  It's always worth using not just with the Riftborn e.g. other races like Horatio are similar even less powerful races you will want to place on an appropriate planet and gain collection bonuses also have pops with the ideologies you want etc.  When I have overpopulation issues I just send the pops I don't want on a long journey or somewhere I do want them and try to replace them with the ones I do want.  Problem is it takes a LOT of micro, the whole system does!

Good suggestion. a +1 here.

Probably a screen close to actual system management will be  a good to have.

You can make an idea of this.

@lo_fabre  Yeah it could be a fourth tab in among/next to the systems management/trade/marketplace that's where I'd stick it.

Thanks Eysteinh, I didn't actually realize an idea section existed I just posted it there pretty much the same post.

Link:  https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/ideas/654-spaceport-management-screen

As a newcomr this is a very real QOL issue/problem. To see that it has not been even partially addressed in ovr two years is extremely dismaying/disheartening.

Just chiming in to agree. It would make pop management a hell of a lot easier.

While we're talking about the Systems Screen, I'd like to add that can we PLEASE get the option to for 'build in all systems', 'search all curiousities', 'remove negative anomalies' and 'search all moons'. When this was implemented in ES1, I was so happy. It's very tiresome, particularly in the later stages of the game to go through all your systems to make the buildings that you want everywhere by going through each individual system.

I finaly took time to make presenteable an idea I got one year ago, about spaceport :

https://www.games2gether.com/amplitude-studios/endless-space-2/ideas/2521-starport-need-biome-biome-biome

Note that it don't make all, spaceport need more ergonomic options, but it's a first step...

@Enchanteur: you can send pop via spaceport from empire summary screen without need of going to your system screen.

I made a video tutorial showing that. It is somwhere in tutorials section.

Dude I'm keeping this image. It's descriptivo of lots of situations.