Hey,

so this one is a bit more on the theoretical side, but I want to share my thoughts here:

When playing ES2, I can feel several "phases" happening to me. Phases that differ in mental focus, in cognitive attention. 

I realized, that the more I play the more I feel some kind of fatigue. While I still carry along the motivation to do the next turn, to finish that building X, to send that fleet Y or to research Z to execute my plan A or see the outcome of a certain approach of attack or defense etc. I also feel a form of stress. 

At first I thought this is a natural process, when playing a game for longer, but then I realized that I do not change mood when playing Civilization 6. In Civ6 I feel relaxed and calm till the late-game, but in ES2 I feel (exxagerating here a bit!) exhausted, stressed, fatigued.

I think this has to do with the fact that my thought process is anticipating information that the GUI is only giving me in short succession, where the eyes have to focus areas that are still in build up. Adding to his is the general motion of "wiping" in and out, of those fly-out boxes that creates a permanent dynamic noise, that interrupts the otherwise static mood of the game.

I do not know if this makes much sense to anyone, but it's what I feel. No other TBS 4x game gives me this kind of "cognitive fatigue" when playing for 100 turns.

So maybe adding to the animation options "Normal - Fast - Faster - INSTANT" could be something. 

Then again, maybe I am just weird :)

Cheers

I actually feel very opposite. I rarely play this game because of work but if I play then it lasts looooong and usually till the very end. And I find this whole world extremely relaxing and like its slow pacing. I remember moments where I was just watching planets rotate lol. Or those dozens of minutes I spent just to give a newly obtained system a proper lore friendly name. Mb those little things help me to stay focused, those tiny moments of relaxation that remind me why I like this game in the first place.

Familiarity helps to relax the brain. ES2 not only a space game a fantasy game as well. It's much easier to understand a fish, wheat or an iron tile but you have re-remember everything when it's a "space fish" or so on. There are much more things to consider in a single turn in ES2 too. Sometimes it becomes a semi RTS game because of the amount of clicking you have to do in a turn. If only ES2 did have more -basic- hotkeys it would be much more easy to navigate. E.g. population screen. I suggest trying to close auto-pop for a few announcements and watching battles gives a good moment of pause. 

For me it was just really about that news/notification system on the right hand side.

I found it very helpful to turn off auto popup of the notifications. You just get the non-intrusive symbols on the right and can work through them at your own pace.