Hello everyone!

Here i will present to you some personal feedback regarding Space battles specifically. My analysis will be divided into 3 sections: Visual, Audio and Immersion. Before that, however, i will start with a brief personal evaluation about the topic in its entirety. With that in mind lets begin.

Space Battle

In terms of gameplay mechanics available for the player, Endless Space 2 offers a combat system unique to the Endless Space franshise that let the player enjoy the glory of battle while giving us enough tools to make our previous decisions impactful and visually noticeable. The Auto camera serves its purpose very well, to the point that it is more enjoyable and useful to use it instead of the free camera mode, an achievement never seen before in my opinion. 

Visual

Analysis: The ships and special effect's aesthetics are amazing, very distinct from each other while maintaining a Endless Space "vibe". It is difficult to create personality on inanimated objects, however we can easily see some cultural or even philosophical traits on their designs. A very easy example are the Craver ships, just by their ship hulls we can say that they are a very industrial and agressive faction, without even knowing their Lore at all.

Suggestions: Altough there are some variations through tech upgrades, the Weapon's/Projectile's visual representations are always the same, no matter the faction we pick. This is not a major complain, however a more unique visual feedback (no stat/effect changes) from each faction would make the game even more immersive. If i could speculate even further we could add unique effects to the weapons themselves, ex: Craver's OPAL Laser guns fire a bunch of small and weaker projectiles (Shotgun like) instead of a single, more powerful shot. Or the Sophons having a Plasma Beam that increases its damage over time, with its beam growing larger and creating small sparks or electricity around the beam itself. This is my brain going wild, dont bother. 

Audio

Analysis: The soundtrack is amazing, it absolutely nails it. The sound effects are very well done, very impactful. Amplitude made a good job increasing the game's immersion with its sound design, very often game developers overlook sound as a very low priority piece of content, damaging the game in its final state. Even in early access we can detect high quality sound design in Endless Space 2, showing how impactful and important sound really is.

Suggestions: Sharing the same issue mentioned previously, diferent faction's weapons share the same sound effects, compromising the immersion factor so well achieved by Amplitude. The solution for that would be as simple as adding different sound effects ( genius isnt it? ), matching with the faction's "style" in question of course.

Immersion 

Suggestions: 

1. Once a ship is destroyed, it obliterates completely in a huge explosion, leaving very small portions of debri that disappear in a few seconds. This take a lot of immersion during the space battles in my opinion, making it less (although slightly) appealing to watch. The solution for that would be simple in theory. The idea would be dividing the ship modules into several pieces (between 4-8) and when a ship is defeated, a percentage between 50 to 100% of the module pieces would be randomly selected to be separated from the ship itself, adding small textures flying around the destroyed hull for logic purposes.

2. This is probably not very wanted by the community but i thought it would be a good addition to the game's immersion, altough this could take too much effort to be implemented. Adding dialogue between allied ships before, between and after the battle. voice lines according to the faction in question, ex: Vodyani shouting religious quotes before the battle, Sophons asking for help between ships, Cravers shouting weapon data logs like "weapon charging 36%" or " hull 42% damage, protect the queen!" something along those lines.

Conclusion 

Thank you for reading my very first post, hope you liked it!
hope to see you again soon and have a good day!