The curios case of the game that played itself

Aiyen

Stellar

10 800g2g pts

8 years ago

Oct 16, 2016, 11:00:48 AM

It is just the concept of an era system that is not fundamentally flawed... what you put into each era and how you progress is what matters.

I really would love to see a more randomized tech tree... I personally find that increase replayablity more than systems where you can always decide on a "best path" through the tech tree. (I am aware of how it might be detrimental for players who love playing on the hardest difficulty... but I do believe that can still be adjusted through the scaling of AI advantage)

In this game one could perhaps even link the tech tree to the political system.
For example what you can research is determined (somewhat) by what party is in power. Would also make sense, since what you would research as pacifists would probably differ from a militarist government.

But this thread was not just about the tech tree.... even though I agree that a lot of the problems currently lie in the tech tree. But there are still quite a few suggestions that can be made which wont require the devs to start over.

XDAvenger93

Vodyani

XDAvenger93

Vodyani

8 years ago

Oct 15, 2016, 10:08:41 AM

I was playing around with my notes, ordering my thoughts and getting ready to pen a comprehensive critique/sugestion list about the hero system of ES 2. And as I was working through the preliminary write-up, small problems became large flaws, what seemed a minor inconsistency became a symptom of a systemic problem and I soon found myself looking at a page full of disjointed notes about everything and anything that could be clasified as a system of ES 2. This was ... alongside some recent discusions I was part of in the forum a revelatory and frightening experience. Be warned now, this will be a long ass message and I will not hold it against you if you choose not to read it. Well ok maybe a little ... if criticism is ignored due to TL;DR reasons, we are not on the right path around here. With that said let's begin, in a more orderly fashion than my schizophrenic note pages.

Hypothesis: Amplitude have managed an amazing feat with ES 2. They have created the first 4x that essentialy plays itself. While quite obviously an interesting achievment, I doubt it's one worthy of praise from a game design perspective. I hope in the following paragraphs to help illustrate why I arived at this conclusion in an ordered fashion.

Exhibit A: The Technology system. "But wait, I though the era based system is all about flexibility and choosing a different diverging path each time!". You are aparently corect. There is a keyword there. The era system is on the outset more open ended than the traditional tech tree system. It apears open and inviting, and if you came over from EL you could be easily excused for thinking that's the case here as well.

Reality as is often the case has different plans, which become painfully obvious when pay attention to the research system for the first time and notice how many of the techs available are not actualy optional things that add flavour and choice and divergent playstyles, but flat out mandatory technology. From the absolute baseline necesity of a 4x game, explore and expand, each era locks away no less than 4 techs at a minimum (colonization) from the 10 until the next era unlocks. You need fleet size expansions and larger ships to stay competitive in a war and not be wiped out, which means a minimum of 2 more techs locked away. Exploiting strategic resources takes away 2 more techs in eras 1 and 3. The political system is entirely locked behind more techs, trade is the same and so are system improvements that make the luxury resources you mine be worth something.

With all this in mind, you will quickly and with some basic math arive at a horrible realisation. The "choice" and openness of the era system is nonexistant. Somehow it's more railroading than an actual tech tree. You must get the colony techs or else become underdeveloped as an empire. You must at the minimum get advanced ship hulls and fleet size extension or else the first faction you encounter will wipe you from the galaxy. You must take diplomacy and political techs of watch helpless as you can't properly interact with any alien empire outside of war and see your own senate slide out of your control. What choice is there, what flexibility can be found here given how restrictive this is when faced with the actual developing game and how many things it demands you do or you will loose and be wiped?

"well you can go back and get ANY of the techs you skiped real easy, no need to get prerequisites or stuff like in a teach tree". Oh if only that were the case. Meet exponential research cost increase. Or the reason why my 11th era 1 tech costs MORE than my first era 2 tech. It is not only impossible to feasibly go back and research old tech, you are actively punished for it with prohibitive research costs AND a further increase in the cost of modern tech. Your only role when interacting with the tech system right now is to decide which order of getting the mandatory efficient tech is the most efficient for your empire. But that's something you could easily leave to an automated system and the player would not loose anything vital to the experience. The posibility of having a truly unique empire developed to specialize and carve it's own path is non-existant because every empire will get the same techs or they will get booted from the game by turn 50.

It's also a massive tone discrepancy and proof of contradictory design in this game, one of many. In EL the era system was implemented because you were at the end of days on a planet waiting to die. It was above all else not a mechanical decision to implement the era system, but a thematic one, to simulate the impending doom and how there is no time for everything. And this thematic decision was implemented in a mechanicaly satisfactory manner, even if my personal taste does not align with it. But in ES 2? You are at the start of the rise of galactic spanning civilizations, the begining rather than the end of an epoch. The theme and story of the game is about perpetual development and growth, about expanding and mastering space. Yet here we sit in front of a tech system that tells a story of restriction, of time constraints, of something coming that demands a perpetual mad dash towards an unknown end. Why was such a system chosen again?

Exhibit B: The systems you colonize. Tell me, why do we build cities in EL with great care as to where they are placed and how they are expanded as efficiently as possible? Because we want them to be at peak effectiveness, that's right. Same goes for creating anything in a 4x game. Not in this one. There is no strategy to developing your systems, no choice to be had, no reason for the player to ever waste braincells on it. Why? Because all buildings do the exact same thing. A % or flat boost to FIDS. Whopty do. There is no depth or chocie or managment involved here, the only answer is "build everything". So why then must I spend minutes at a time going through my underdeveloped planets to give them new orders when all of this menial task an AI could acomplish easily? Why am I playing this game that seems perfectly capable of playing itself?

Mind you, this was also the case on ES 1 and EL, the city improvements, not the city layout system that compensated for them neatly and brought depth. The difference is that in those games this was a weak system among strong ones, here it is a weak system that further compounds itself with others either worse or just as bad.

Exhibit C: The Senate and political system. I'll admit, I was excited when I first saw it. I was expecting a deep simulation and managment of a political system and the population of an interplanetary empire. What I got was a system that I could do nothing to control or influence until I took specific techs and if I did indeed research those techs I could do almost nothing to game and control the system. And of course, given the problems with the tech system, making more techs mandatory is not a good ideea.

By lack of control I mean: there really is nothing you can do to influence and manage your population and it's political leanings. It all happens automaticaly based on poorly explained factors of gameplay that sometimes are of a limited quantity. The best example beeing the scientist political party who is entirely influenced by things that will run out eventualy and have a tendecy to be few and far between in the mid to late game, while the militarists for example will allways get into power simply because you must build fleets even just for defense.

"but wait, can't you select a tyranny and have full control?" Nope, and frankly selecting tyranny is suicidal. The problem lies not in the senate itself, it lies in the population that you can't directly influence and manage. It is meaningless that you have a tyranny in place when your empire has become filled with everything and everyone except the party curently in power because your control over the senate part of the system results in such massive aproval penalties that your empire becomes non-functional. Not to mention a tyranny right now is the most inferior political system due to the law slots disadvantage. And so you are left at the mercy of a population that at best you can midly influence thorugh vaguely worded resource sinks that most of the time fail to deliver. And your populace that will hapily destroy your every plan and go so far as to enact their own laws and abolish the ones you choose. Not to mention the cripling nature of switching political systems and how even that is hidden behind a tech.

The game tantalizes you with the posibility of control, and just like in the case of the research system it mercilessly punishes you for trying to use it. And this by now is theme among the problems of ES 2: the game pretending to hand you control before punishing you in some way for trying to make use of said control. In research it was through mandatory techs that are not labeled as such directly and through the ever increasing research costs and era system. In planetary managment through physiscaly making you waste time on a menial task of clicking every buton. Here by making the one real control option over the political system be a universaly inferior option to everything else even if you magicaly manage to make it work without having your empire cripled by the arbitrary way in which political parties grow.

And to the person who thought adding political party influence to system improvements: explain to me how this is a meaningfull choice to direct and influence the political leanings of your population when your entire system development system is built around the axion "everything gives +%, build everything to stay competitive and productive". Right now, actively developing your systems in order to keep the pace with the other empires PUNISHES your political gameplay by causing a chaos of political parties to form. And given how you have almost no control over them and their growth, it ruins any meaningfull managment the player could atempt to exert over the system.

Exhibit D: Diplomacy. Hold your horses, I know advanced diplomacy is not yet in the game. I do not want to talk about advanced diplomacy. Only about 2 fundamentals of this system that will plague and ruin it no matter what is to come. The first such fundamental begins in the same place the problems of the political system began: you have 0 control over it without researching specific techs. Read point A again to see why that is a bad thing.

The other problem is one of theme and mechanics that are allready in the game to be examined, more specificaly how amplitude seems perfectly willing to claim to be interested in creating a deep and refined diplomatic system even as they indulge in the greatest sin such a system can have: arbitrary unilateral deals. Deals that to make matters even more amusing, despite their far reaching effects and repercusions, are done entirely outside of the control and scope of the diplomatic system. And again I find it hard to just say "oh let's wait and see how things go" when such a fundamental discrepancy and dissonance between stated goals and in game systems exists right now because it points to a fundamental flaw existing in the foundation of the game.

Furthermore, having the diplomatic system be a "pay for action" type of system is dabling in the sins of EL, where diplomacy was in no way an option unless you invested heavily in influence production, which risks turning many gameplay paths into ones incompatible with actualy taking advantage of the diplomatic system. It also further compounds the issues the research tree allready introduces, that beeing how every race is forced to take the same path and the same techs to be in any way competitive instead of allowing divergent playstyles.

Exhibit E: "... well fine, the research is bonkers and leaves me with practicaly 0 choice in how to grow and develope my empire, the planetary managment could be done by a circus seal, the political system is outside my ability to meanigfully control and manage it and the diplomatic system is both underdeveloped and plagued by the spectre of unilateral deals imposed outside it's control. At least the combat I can fall back on, right?" *cue awkward silence*

Yeah you knew it was coming, I can allready hear the cries "But Endless Space is not ment to have a deep interactive combat! It's a "true" 4x with no combat and pure empire managment!". Yeah. Which is why it's point E on my list. I have dismantled every single aspect of empire managment. If all these systems are plague by fundamental design discrepancy and flaws, then why should I choose to ignore the combat and not critique the bafling way amplitude has chosen to handle it? Especialy since the design philosophy of the combat is the same philosophy that plagues every single other system? This is EA alpha precisely to be critiqued to hell and back for all it's flaws so that they can be improved upon. I despise the self-congratulatory bottom licking attitude of some people here that think we should give the game a free pass because older games have been good and this is early alpha beyond measure, because those people are missing the point of why this place, at least conceptualy, exists. And furthermore, like I did in some buried reply in another thread but I will also do so here, let me adress this phrase and sentiment that ES 2 is a "true 4x" because it's tactical gameplay sucks. You know you are in for some stellar examples of cognition when the basis of the argumentation is a "no true scotsman" fallacy. But beyond that: eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate. Meditate on that last word for a second before you tell me a true 4x has no combat gameplay. Then meditate further that there exists not a single 4X on the market WITHOUT a tactical combat gameplay element in it, not even ES 1 can claim that honor of dubious worth. Right, are we done? had fun sitting in the corner reassesing your flawed logic? Good, rant over, let's actualy start talking about how this combat system makes me think nostalgicaly about the card battles of ES 1.

Conceptualy, building a combat system where the tactical battle itself in it's duration is outside the player's direct control is actualy not new, not inovative and most importantly not flawed. There are iOS and mobile games that use such a design phylosophy to great effect, so no, believe it or not loosing control during the actual battle is not the problem here. What is a problem however is that if you strip control from the player during the actual battle, then he must be given control back over the planning and preparatory aspects of it instead.

And here we arive at the crux of the issue: the pre-battle planning of ES 2 is not only meaningless, it actualy gives you no control over the fight and it goes so far as to contradict the tactical logic of a combat system. Let's go down in depth into every one of those, starting with how it invalidates the tactical logic and ship design. By now I expect everyone is familiar with the weapon range systems, yes? naturaly you would asume that a ship build to engage with close range munitions would be effective rushing the oposition and unloading on them, a perfectly reasonable asumption.

Do me a favour real quick: Galaxy size Tiny, game speed fast, 2 identical factions, constelation unique, difficulty serious. Build a max fleet of combat ships of the first type without changing the design and rush the oponent with them, preferably declaring war to make sure the AI gets a combat fleet ready. Then fight against an identical fleet of his and in the pre planning stages select the sniper/prudent plan of action. I know it s

Updated 8 years ago.

XDAvenger93

Vodyani

XDAvenger93

Vodyani

8 years ago

Oct 16, 2016, 11:57:24 AM

Aiyen perhaps I did not make it clear enough: I'm not of the mind that the entire game is broken and needs to be torn down. While I can understand such radical sentiments, my criticism is not born of them, but rather from what I read in the GDDs and understood to be the design goal of Amplitude. To create a framework and systems that let you be a galactic emperor, managing a civilization from the first steps it takes into the orbit of it's homeworld to a constelation spaning empire. What I identify as a flaw in the foundation of the game is not that these systems are inherently bad and not fiting of the stated goal (minus the science system but I will adress this on it's own), but rather that their curent implementation fails to deliver the stated goals. Yes they are incomplete, but hear me out here: if these were simply incomplete systems that worked as intended and delivered even at a basic level the promises stated in the GDDs, then I would not be having a problem with them. They do not do even that. The barebones experience they deliver is the anti-thesis of making me feel like a galactic emperor, and I fail to see how building upon such a framework will help. At the same time: the framework is not broken beyond any repair, there is simply a disconect between the stated design goal and the individual minor goals which defined the optimization of each system.

The other obvious goal was to make sure all these interconected problems and themes are colected in one place for ease of viewing and to better ilustrate my point of a fundamental disconect between goals and implementation.

To take the science system for example: I never said an era system is inherently bad, but I did say that it's flawed for this project for multiple thematic and mechanical reasons. Even solving the curent issue of vital gameplay elements locked behind tech, the era system will still feel ... well wrong. It fit the story and theme of EL (and I apreciated that quality there even if I did not like it), it does not that of ES. It is arbitrarily restrictive and if it follows the same design principles of EL ... well it won't end well. EL has a replayability problem in the tech tree with tech that you never take and take that you must take for each faction to be efficient, it restricts the posibility of truly customizing and specializing your empire due to the arbitrary 10 techs per era limit and the exponentialy increasing research costs.

I would love however to hear what ideeas for the future of this system you could offer, as posibilities for something interesting. Maybe you see things I can't but you'll have to show me those things before I change my mind about the era system not beeing a good fit for an ES game.

Planetary development: the fact that you tell me there is an automatic system in the works doesn't fill me with much hope. I'd rather hear that they plan to offer a suite of interesting system level development projects to individualize and diferentiate each system beyond the curent general improvements. Is it not the stated design goal to let us manage the future of a civilization? Why then, instead of creating a complex system that let's us do that do they instead keep a system that for the third game now looks to be one of the weakpoints of this series and "solve" the issue by making it so we no longer have to interact with it?

Senate: agreed, they HAVE to get this feature right, stellaris exists after all and that has a very complex political simulation. I don't expect something of that complexity (ES is a 4X Stellaris is a grand strategy), but I do expect a good system. Right now it's not just an issue of unbalanced gains in different categories, it's an isue of control. THe senate is fundamentaly outside the player's control and influence, and the one method that does grant you control curently is a massive cripling risk that more often that not backfires and criples your empire.

Combat: for the record and for the last time I hope: I don't expect a tactical simulation. I like a good managerial aproach where pre battle planning is all you can do. There have been many many sugestions to improve such a system, I made many myself in the apropiate threads but I will copy them here if needed. Curently the problem I see with the combat is that the devs have told us what they intend to do ... and what they intend to do is ... not nearly enough. Pre-baked flotila asignment by the AI. Pre-determined battleplans that you can only unlock more of, not actualy make our own plans. A continued emphasis on the simplistic RPS system of ranges. Look, if they do these and the system turns out fine, I will eat my humble pie and admit i was wrong, but I doubt that will be the case. I can't see how more fancy aditions to a system that fundamentaly lacks player input will solve the problem.

Aiyen

Stellar

Aiyen

Stellar

10 800g2g pts

8 years ago

Oct 16, 2016, 12:52:44 PM

First off let me say sorry if I come of as dismissive of your critisism. I guess it is a mix of writing, as well as me having read a lot of "do this, do that, this is wrong" kinda posts.

I did spend a while to read through the various GDD´s to try to get a better idea about what you are talking about, and in light of that it does make more sense. So thank you for elaborating on that point. I am also worried about a lot of things with this game, I was also worried about a lot of things with ES 1... and while the game did not turn out in every regard as I hoped then it was good enough, and I enjoyed playing it for a long time.

System development:

There is a button for some sort of automation in the system view.. so that is why I expect that button to do something eventually, and in this day and age you cannot make a turn based game without some level of automation in the menial tasks.

I do agree that we need more in this part of the game. However it is very difficult to get away from all the trivial +X +% modifier buildings, since those are the basics that are just needed in a turn based game. However I also think they need to have a good portion of system only and empire only buildings that add real strategic value to the game.

In the combat thread here, I have suggested that battles get a location based modifier that depends on something the player did.

For example it would be a nice to have defensive structures matter, so a smaller defense fleet can hold back a stronger foe.

It would add strategic level decisions that would influence other parts of the game. And it would be simple enough to understand. From what I took from a devs response then they where positive to this idea. So I am hopeful.

But it does not just need to be limited to this. Wonders are always a good way to add unique constructions that help tip the balance in games. And again they are strategic level decisions, which makes sense when you consider the stated "emperor" theme of the game.

Tech:

I can for the life of me not remember what game it was.. but the general idea was that each era was tied to a way to generate energy. And all techs in a given era where then thematically and sort of realistically tied to this type of energy generation. So you always start out with a fission age, followed by fusion... going into ever more advanced physics.

But it also put requirements in the tech you need to unlock before you could unlock the next level of energy. So for example you could not just go and research 10 politics related tech and expect to advance an era.. you had to actually do critical physics related techs to advance. There where still a lot of side techs you could get that would improve your empire in various ways, but they would not bring you closer to the next era.

There also was the option to randomize the tech trees, so that you would not automatically be allowed to see every single "side tech". But instead had to make due with what you got. It worked because everybody got the core techs, but the specializations where random. it added flavor and replayability.

Combat:

I just want to clarify that I did not mean you wanted a tactical simulator! But I know a lot of people want since there is a 3d engine. That is why I used that as an example.

Again I agree on most points. RPS models can be interesting enough, however the current one is not. Like I mentioned above I proposed that we get location based external modifiers to help keep things fresh. It can add a new layer to the game that will help RNG the RPS more. I think that way we would get a model where the players input matter more, since ultimately that is why the current system is not optimal at all.

But again thank you for elaborating on your points, it has helped me understand what you meant! Hope you (and others) also understand something of what I wrote! :D

XDAvenger93

Vodyani

XDAvenger93

Vodyani

8 years ago

Oct 16, 2016, 1:19:55 PM

Aiyen wrote:

Tech:
I can for the life of me not remember what game it was.. but the general idea was that each era was tied to a way to generate energy. And all techs in a given era where then thematically and sort of realistically tied to this type of energy generation. So you always start out with a fission age, followed by fusion... going into ever more advanced physics.
But it also put requirements in the tech you need to unlock before you could unlock the next level of energy. So for example you could not just go and research 10 politics related tech and expect to advance an era.. you had to actually do critical physics related techs to advance. There where still a lot of side techs you could get that would improve your empire in various ways, but they would not bring you closer to the next era.

There also was the option to randomize the tech trees, so that you would not automatically be allowed to see every single "side tech". But instead had to make due with what you got. It worked because everybody got the core techs, but the specializations where random. it added flavor and replayability.

For the life of me the only game that comes to mind when I read this is Sword of the Stars 2. It had indeed different tech levels (let's call them eras) in a tech tree that started with unlocking a basic new level of energy generation. However, the political and economical techs were mostly in their own tree. And it did indeed "hide" the techs you could get, by that I mean that in order to do a research you had to do a feasibility study to determine if you could get that tech. Usualy core tech was easy to get, but more specialized tech depended on multiple factors and was sometimes simply impossible to get by certain factions. It encouraged tech trade/tech conquest alot. Or was it sword of the stars 1 that did it closer to how you describe (I will admit I have not played sword of the stars 1 for a long time now).

My personal ideeas for improving the combat system would involve reducing the importance and prevalance of the RPS system and instead let weapon composition and maneuvers dictate the outcome more, with the following 2 avenues of control opened to the player: asign ships to flotilas (their curent CP system keeps ship count low compared to other 4X games so there is not really a lot of micro involved) and create your own battleplans where you specify ideal composition for each flotila (based on ship size) and a movememnt plan for each flotila, as well as optionaly (but encounraged) targeting parameters). Now I understand this will remove the ability to preview the enemy battleplan: this is something I am ok with, as it would be more satisfying to only have data on the enemy fleet composition to work with in trying to anticipate what they will do, rather than the computer telling me exactly what the enemy can do. Your ideea about location based modifiers is an excelent one, but I don't feel it's doing enough to return some meaningfull measure of control in the player's hands, though it will be an excelent adition to any other plan to fix the curent combat system.

The fundamental problem as I understood the devs right now with the combat is that they build this 3D engine for simulating the fight that is extremely limited in what it can do. Well I'm sory, but I would rather have meaningfull combat managment decisions over flashy but fundamentaly empty graphics any day. If this system is restricting your ability to make a deep and interesting interpretation of managing the fleets of a galactic empire, maybe do not sacrifice your gameplay on the altar of shiny graphics, but sacrifice the shiny graphics on the altar of gameplay, if such a sacrifice must be made. If the compromise escapes, then it is allways a better choice to prioritize gameplay over graphics. Dungeons of the Endless is a god damned pixel game, but is one of the most interesting and refreshing twists on the rogue-light genre I have seen due to it's gameplay. Maybe there is a leason to be learned in amplitude's first game.

Updated 8 years ago.

smith2757

Old

smith2757

Old

12 800g2g pts

8 years ago

Oct 16, 2016, 1:24:44 PM

It's a well thought out post and most of the points I can agree with. My first impression of the game was EL in space and I honestly tried to like EL but just couldn't get into it. Here are my thoughts on the game so far.

Positives: I think the UI is awesome, I like the new races so far (please keep introducing new races, I think that it will set the game apart from the original), I think the game is visually stunning, I enjoy the music. The voice acting for the intros is well executed.

For Science: I don't understand why all weapon technologies are lumped into two techs per era, I think that's a mistake. I think that most of the colonizing techs could be lumped into one technology per era. I don't feel like there are enough choices for a science fiction game. I think that it's not necessarily a tree, but I don't like how all the techs are so generalized. I also don't like how all the civs get the same techs. The Vodyani for example, really don't benefit from any tech that is +per pop. ES had techs that we specialized per race. Again I recognize this is an alpha but like the OP said, if we don't voice our opinion, we have no input on the game.

For Diplomacy: I can live without the diplomacy in the game the way it is set up now. It doesn't seem to have enough value during game play for me to bother with it. You can play every race like the Cravers honestly. I don't like being forced into a truce during a war, however. Who is arbitrarily deciding the war is over for me? It seems to happen as I am mounting a coup de gras on my opponent that suddenly I am forced into a truce.

Combat: I can understand using the system for ES. I don't like the lack of control in the flotilla set up however. There is no need to set up specialized fleets of combat ships as you have no idea how they will be set up in flotillas. Want to have a screening flotilla of support ships to fix your opponent while you use long range weapons on him? No, the long range ships will be mixed in with everything else. You can control combat in EL, why didn't this system make it over to ES2? It's one of the systems I like in EL. I mentioned this in a another post, I don't understand why there are no system defenses that are less expensive than ships to maintain. I don't have the option of castling up in my system, it's ridiculously easy to invade a system even when I have ships defending the system. If I had orbital defense platforms, I could destroy these ships as they tried to invade.

Manpower system: I think this system is pointless and quite silly honestly. On a planetwide scale, it doesn't make any sense that I couldn't find people to mount an invasion force. It doesn't make sense that a single ship can blockade an entire solar system to deplete it's manpower and invade with it's ship compliment and take 5 planets. Even if you are representing manpower number to show a much larger number, why is the starting manpower on my planet only equivalent to 4 combat ships? Manpower in a system should be based on the population. If I have a population of 7 in a system, it should have a lot less manpower capability than a system with 22 population in it. Why isn't there technology to use droids, drones, robots, artificial life or something else to generate manpower? I have been playing Vodyani a lot and after about the first 4-5 ships, I don't have manpower for the rest of the game.

Government system: It's cool in theory, it is interesting how choices impact political parties and those parties can be influenced with resources (although I think it takes WAY too many resources to make it fun). I enjoy the impacts of laws on the empire. Ultimately though, the militarist party always wins out because you can't survive the game without building ships. Plus there is so much overlap on the laws that there is sure to be a law that will accomplish what you need anyway (dust production laws, the others are irrelevant since you need dust to build ships).

Fog of war: Please modify the color of the fog of war so I don't have to zoom in so far to actually see the areas I have explored or haven't explored. There isn't enough contrast between the fog of war texturing and the colors of the background. Or if nothing else, maybe add a toggle to modify said contrast so people have the option to change it? Doesn't seem like it would take much to have a value slider in the video options to change the opacity of the fog of war.

Those are my two cents so far. It's a good start for an alpha I think. If this was a beta I would be concerned.

XDAvenger93

Vodyani

XDAvenger93

Vodyani

8 years ago

Oct 16, 2016, 2:06:40 PM

smith2757 wrote:

Those are my two cents so far. It's a good start for an alpha I think. If this was a beta I would be concerned.

I'll just point out something that was brought to my attention and was part of what sparked this post from me: this EA is supposed to last 6 months. Now ... I'l fully admit, I am not part of the game development world, but I was under the impresion 6 months away from release is not exactly the time to be having an alpha. The time period seems too ... restrictive to permit the potential large reworks of problems an alpha testing period might reveal. 6 months would be closer to what I would consider a long enough beta period, but then again I am an overly cautios and "expect the worse" kind of person. It may not sound that restrictive, but 6 months is not exactly a long period of time when you consider an average AAA development life cycle is 2-3 years. And if this is an alpha 6 months away from release, then when's the beta? The last 2 months?

VIPlo_fabre

Cosmonaut

This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGLYu94U3IU remembers us that "impossible" is only a word.

VIPlo_fabre

Cosmonaut

50 100g2g pts

8 years ago

Oct 16, 2016, 2:19:30 PM

Hi,

After reading all your post, I can only ask: what solutions do you have?

Most of issues you speak of have been largely commented in these forums. You criticise (honestly suppose) in very educated, by at same time offensive manner. as I share some - if not most - of your concerns, when I comment somethign, I try to, at least, offer a solution or an alternative.

Sorry, I din't read all your post searching for your proposed solutions, but in this one I found none.

Same solutions have been proposed for most of your exhibits.

I specially share your opinion of the senate, but I think that fixing things like what experience sophons with pacifism or everyone getting militarist when building a fleet to grant a minimal defensive force, can be solved only by tuning the numeric values underlying this game (values we actually can't see).

I like most of Amplitude ideas, but have to say: they should balance, and in some case rethink techs. Some proposals around this forums:

To fix the build everything: make buildings have specific prerequisites like have X type of planet colonise. Make buildings provide FIDSI from different resources, like one that provides science from trade and another from pop. This way you'll have to decide depending if you got high pop or are good at trade.
To fix science tree: complex. But can be done with proper re-balancing of tech costs, and solving the previous one (as said good proposals all around).
To buildings and political parties. Has been suggested that instead of being the buildings that affect political parties, be the political parties that affect buildings. So if you have a system with industrialist as major party, you'll have bonus to industry buildings, and so on.
Diplomacy is a complex one. Still we can't say. Anyway, I liked the idea of using a resource to limit your options, may be not the best one, don't know, but at least make things like technology whoring very difficult. And I can tell: I've been playing 4X since first Civ in 1991, and tech whoring was a major issue, at the point that some 4X decided to completely forbid tech exchange from diplomacy. At least Amplitude created something that allows us to exchange techs again without this.
err. combat... that's very weak one, but still there are non-offensive post trying to solve it.

If you think TL;DR my post, I'll resume: propose solutions, if possible in short and clear way, and not only blame Amplitude. Of course I agree the game in it's actual state had flaws, but still I maintain what said.

XDAvenger93

Vodyani

XDAvenger93

Vodyani

8 years ago

Oct 16, 2016, 3:11:00 PM

The original post was to highlight a comprehensive list of interconected problems the game curently suffers from that all stem from one primary flaw in how amplitude chose to try and execute their vision: by taking away as much control as possible from the player in order to reduce micro and complexity. As for solutions to these problems, I have discused in the following conversation here and there are in some other topics proposals I made, but I'll sumarise them quickly here as well:

Tech: easiest by far is to drop the thematicaly inconsistent era system that was straight up transplanted here from EL and does not fit ES due to how restrictive it actualy is (even if you solve the problems of vital gameplay elements locked away behind arbitrary and too many pieces of tech). But if an era-like system is to remain, it must suffer massive overhauls from what is curently presented here. Starting with the removal of exponentialy increasing research costs across the board (punishing any deviation from the optimal research path), removal of vital gameplay elements locked behind arbitrary techs that must be researched, adding some form of symbiotic (and not causal) dependacy system connecting certain techs toghether to accelerate progress through them should an empire choose to specialize in that aspect and finaly, preferably, separating the 4 branches of tech we have now into their own sepparate era driven paths that unlock independently as you research more on that subject (so you can be era 1 industry, era 3 science, era 5 military era 2 political), or at the very least removing the faction unique techs (right now only ship schematics) from the general process of unlocking a new era (that is to say the faction schematics are techs that do not contributie to the era progress, to encourage more experimentation while still retaining the core faction techs).

System development: make it more interesting beyond flat % bonuses. Make improvements depend on the class of planet you have acces to, permit system wide special projects (like say contructing a large network of planetary shipyards) that allow systems to specialize their output towards one goal, with the construction of such an improvement locking out others (and again such specialization must come not just as a flat % to some output, but also as other special unique effects, coupled perhaps with maluses to other aspects of the system). Literaly anything to add a small measure of complexity and choice in this system would be good as right now it's a simple click every button affair.

Senate and population: once more, the keyword is control. The ideea of shifting the relationship building->political party around is not bad to add more depth to the system managment, but in terms of solving the problems of the senate it does nothing. The way political parties gain influence and power and spread through the population needs to first be made more transparent to the player and then be open to influence and input from the player. Sadly in the curent state of the game despite digging into population screens, system views and every bit of info the game can offer me, I came to the realization that 1) there is no concrete way to understand how and what something effects the political leaning of the population and 2) there are simply too many basic vital gameplay actions (from exploration to building system improvements to building basic ships) that affect the political system that the notion of influencing and controling it is a practical impossibility. The factors that influence a population need to be drasticaly cut down in order to be made relevant (and preferably contain as few basic gamepaly actions as possible), and more importantly to allow a player meaningfull input over them. Next we could do with methods to control a population's political leaning, such as say, organising promotion campaigns for a certain political party or assassinating the leader of a political party that is causing us trouble (yes that means one of our own heroes, so what? that just makes the choice mean more). Finaly, in order to truly allow control over the population we need the good old genocide/deportation/gulag triad of options to allow us to get rid of ... undesireable elements. Dependant of course on the political system in place (and more of those please. you want the senate and political party system to set your game apart yes? Look to stellaris and take notes. 15! basic goverments 15 advanced ones. ES 2 has 4). I can't take any 4x game seriously if they tell me "oh no, you can't wipe out this population in your empire because we say you can't". Curently the ONLY way to do this is to get a religious senate to pass the racial purity act and then willingly criple your economy to starve the planets with the pops you want gone. I would imagine declaring them impure spawn of the devil and ordering them purged would be an easier option for a tyranical theocracy, but hey what do I know.

Diplomacy: My concern here was with how aparently cavalier amplitude seem to be with forcing unilateral decisions into their diplomatic system and how that is detrimental to the health of any such system. My concerns here would be vastly diminished if stuff like "Force truce" would not be part of the discusion even as a potential feature (ok fine, one max 2 races can have it as a special racial ability, but that's it). Beyond that having an actualy complex and thought out diplomatic AI as oposed to restricting diplomacy based on arbitrary influence costs is a far, FAR better choice for the life-span of the game and it's quality, just look at GalCiv III.

Combat: allready did 2 messages ago (and in many of the combat threads).

As for the "offensive" nature of my comentary: people are so thin skinned today that blunt honesty is now considered offensive? The only thing I could mildly describe as offensive was my rant against the dismisal of criticism for the combat system based on falacious argumentation. And that was very much intended, I am not taking those words back, if anyone actualy resorts to logical falacies and blatant falsehoods to try and defend anything, they do not get any sympathy or courtesy from me because they deserve none.

mezmorki

Amoeba

To boldly go... Or something...

mezmorki

Amoeba

17 400g2g pts

8 years ago

Oct 17, 2016, 2:52:10 PM

Lots of thoughts and information flying around. A heavy read but spot on. XDAvenger93 did a thorough job pointing out the major issues with the games current direction. The more I play the more these issues become apparent. Amplitude's games, I've always felt, have suffered from a bit of a "it plays itself" feeling - and ES2 has it the most.

If I had to say one thing, in response to the overall game and these criticisms, its that there IS a lot going on under the hood in the game - but due to the desire to streamline play and keep it simple, very little of that depth the player has any real agency to affect in an interesting way. The game just sort of happens to you, instead of presenting you with with compelling and viable different directions to follow.

Updated 8 years ago.

Romeo

Literary Transformer

Never shift in to reverse without a backup plan.

Romeo

Literary Transformer

38 900g2g pts

8 years ago

Oct 17, 2016, 5:35:46 PM

Almost all of these fall back on the single greatest issue in the game, which you touched on in Exhibit A: The tech system. Not only is that system stupidly restrictive (And the exponential tech is even further frustrating), but it goes on to affect every other design element in the game. For one, the game is outrageously luck-based at the moment as a result. If I have what I need from the start, then I've won. If I don't, then I've lost. Because ultimately, being railroaded in to certain techs means I have little ability to choose how to react to different choices. The old tech tree didn't have this problem, I'm not sure why we have to shoehorn in the Era system in to Endless Space...

AndreasK

Space Pilgrim

Thunder rolled... it rolled a six!

AndreasK

Space Pilgrim

20 900g2g pts

8 years ago

Oct 17, 2016, 10:40:25 PM

A lot of people, including the devs will have a hard time reading your feedback presented here. Not because it is long or harsh, but because of the formatting and the length of some of the sentences. You really should look it over.

Break down long sentences into smaller ones.
Avoid the long clarifications and comments in parenthesis. Especially the ones in the middle of a sentence. They break the flow!
Add more line breaks where it feels natural. You can add them after you have finished one argument and start the next or when you move from one issue to the next.

I myself, am guilty of some of the same offences when I am writing. But if I want to be understood and heard I try to but in some effort into this part of the process to. Otherwise everything I write was for nothing because its one big brain aneurysm inducing text block no one understands. Not that I always succeed at rectifying this problem ;)

SleekRaptor

Lord

SleekRaptor

Lord

27 900g2g pts

8 years ago

Oct 18, 2016, 12:07:17 AM

I love amplitude, but you made some really excellent points that I agree with. Nearly every system in the game feels out of my control and my only real comfort is that I love the lore of the Endless games, but even that is hurt by the fact that I can't pick and choose the Heros I like best from the market, and have to hope that they eventually show up on my doorstep of their own volition.

Stalker0

Newcomer

Stalker0

Newcomer

14 000g2g pts

8 years ago

Oct 18, 2016, 1:34:47 AM

I also like the argument constructed here.

The only one I'll disagree on is the Senate system. For some of the other subsystems (combat, science) I think a mechanics change may be needed, but for the Senate I think this is a scenario where the controls are in place....they just need to be tuned. For example, the fact that building military improvements gives the militarists an advantage is fine. The fact that you get a bonus to militarists for each ship you build is too much. Also, I think the efforts you spend in guiding an election don't reveal enough payout. But those mechanisms are fine...just their impact needs to be adjusted.

I also agree that the UI for the Senate needs to be adjusted, as understanding why your political parties shape up the way they do is too vague.

Lastly, wanted to note in your post you said no modern 4x game lacks tactical combat. Galactic Civilizations 2 and 3 are examples that contradict your statement. Pure strategic combat, you build the fleets and slam them against each other. Whether that is good or bad is debatable, but still present none the less.