So, a few disclaimers: I've only played one game to completion so far, as the Vodyani. All of my games have been at normal difficulty with no changed settings. I've made several attempts at Vodyani but gotten wrecked for various reasons, and my most recent game is Lumeris but that hasn't gone to T125 yet.

Also, the computer that I play ES2 on doesn't have internet access right now and so I can't comment on the optional beta patch that has recently been released.

First off: ship combat and invasions with the Vodyani arks don't make too much sense right now. Enemy ships totally bypass my fleets - which are set to defend the system - to attack my Arks in space combat or ground invasions, which defeats the purpose of using defensive fleets in the first place. From what I've read in other threads it seems that ships automatically attack the most powerful 'fleet' in a system, which is unfortunately usually my Arks. This is a weakness for the Vodyani and I think that it should be changed, at least for them. Also, you shouldn't be able to do a ground invasion without first defeating the fleet defending the system - or, at least, your invasion should suffer serious penalties. Why would my defensive fleet just sit back and let their Ark get attacked and destroyed by invading enemies?

Proposal for change: first, that Vodyani arks should always be 'on the bottom' of fleet priority attack lists, unless for some reason the Vodyani player chooses to set them higher (tanking with them, for example). This way you have to defeat any defending fleets before attacking the Ark. Second, you shouldn't be able to do a ground invasion if there are defending fleets in a system - or you should be able to do so, but suffer serious penalties.

Faction Quests: I have experienced particular difficulty in completing the Vodyani faction quests. It's probably a consequence of my playstyle, but even when I produce fleets to go after the quest pirates very early in the game, it usually takes a long time to hunt them down and defeat them. Minor faction raiders also get in the way, attacking my fleets and slowing down the process of finishing the quest. I propose that the Vodyani quest fleets seek out your home system and fight you there, rather than wander the starlanes randomly. Alternatively, just make them wait in the system they are spawned in. I'm not necessarily for putting kid gloves on everything, but this quest is really annoying and frequently takes a long time for me to complete, and being stuck in your faction quest is bad for gameplay and immersion. The second part, though, is the real killer: assimilating a minor faction hasn't been hard for me, but damn that five ruins option. With several Wheels out and exploring the galaxy it took me until around T100 to complete the quest, primarily because AI players would swoop in on systems with Ruin curiosities and prioritize exploring them, which is SUPER ANNOYING, and because I got unlucky and failed to find anything in two different ruin curiosities (failing to find anything when exploring a ruin curiosity does not add to the quest counter). I had to travel across 2/3 of the galaxy to find enough freaking ruins to get to 5. This ties in with another observation: you shouldn't know the results of a curiosity that another empire explored. You should have to discover it for yourself. So I propose that curiosities require exploration for each empire, though perhaps only the first empire to expore a given curiosity receives the loot for it (or receives a better result for loot).

My only other gameplay mechanic observation is that the Lumeris seem to expand too quickly and easily. The Dust cost for new Outposts doesn't rise as fast as it should seem to, and the approval penalty for expansion is very low. I had in (I think) less than 50 turns expanded to seven systems, was producing enough Dust to keep up a rate of more than one new Outpost every 10 turns, and didn't see any real approval penalties - even when expanding onto planets with bad anomalies, which should be an important factor in expansion. I also didn't need to defend my outposts or keep them concentrated - the only fleet I built was used to blow up some other empire's quest fleet on a system I wanted to colonize. That yellow-tinged fleet was the only thing that stopped me from expanding, even when I was near Vodyani and Lumeris empires - and otherwise aggressive Minor Factions - that had enough ships to destroy every new Outpost I built. Compare that to Vodyani expansion, which requires air superiority over a target planet, enough ships with harvesting modules to gain Essence at a decent rate, and has a substantial increase in Essence cost for both new Arks and new population. (I think the Vodyani expansion is more balanced by far than Lumeris expansion, and seems hard, but fine, right now.)

Now, a few notes and observations:

Anomalies seem to have kept the same descriptions as in Endless Space, but some of them have had their mechanical effects changed. Metallic Waters now gives an approval malus rather than bonus, Aurora (or whatever the name is) is now a science bonus and approval malus (if I'm remembering correctly, this is the reverse of what it was in ES and the description hasn't changed), etc etc. It's minor, but it would be good to see the descriptions changed to fit new mechanical effects. (that being said, I'd love to see some of those anomalies that used to be straight bonuses and are now mixed to be changed back to what they were. Make the galaxy great again!)

The ship/module system is great. I love how each type of ship has its own focus, and how you need to have each ship type to get the most synergy out of your fleet composition. Still, sometimes modules are considered 'better' than others, even if they are the same tier. Torpedoes (optimal at long range) have a lower attack/defense value than lasers (decent at long, optimal at midrange), which just makes it worse to use the former. I haven't seen much of an effect on module composition, ship type and combat strategy either - usually the fleet with a higher combat value wins. Also, paradoxically, when my high-powered torpedo frigate and pimped out short ranged small attack vessel are combating swarms of short-ranged small enemy vessels, I do worse setting my fleet to long range than when I set it to short range, despite long range favoring both my medium-sized ship class and its far more powerful armaments. I don't quite understand the combat maths yet and would like to know why it works that way, if anybody's figured it out yet.

Politics matter! But it seems that (at least, with Vodyani) militarists gain in power at the expense of everyone else as the game continues, merely by dint of there being other empires. That isn't to say there isn't diversity - the political evolution of my Vodyani empire went from 100% Religious to ~60% Militarist/40% Religious, to 40% scientist, 30% religious/30% militarist, to 50% militarist, 30% religious, 20% scientific at the end of the game. It was great watching the parties evolve and gaining new heroes to lead each party, feeling the tumultous nature of democratic elections (I switched to Democracy about 2/3 of the way through the game), and having to revise my strategy every time my favored party was kicked out of power.

The Minor Faction assimilation system (and diplomacy with them in general) feels clunky. It's either 'they are at war with you' or 'assimilated, now a new colony for your empire'. I know it's early access, but it would be good to have some intermediary stage where they are allies, allowing your ships passage through and anchorage in their territory and vice versa, allowing their population to expand in your empire, but without granting you total control. Sort of similar to Civ5's City-States. And I wonder what is planned for MF features later in this game. Race-specific technologies, ship modules or types, laws, and empire improvements would be cool, more so than just the bonus they give you upon assimilation and their population yield/political party.

The Vodyani assimilation technique is... somewhat dark, but also feels very appropriate. When they conquer a MF system the planets are wiped clean of population and infrastructure and are 'assimilated', thus granting you the assimilation bonus. It's sort of like the Borg that way, but nothing else is left of them. Similarly, when an empire system is conquered by the Vodyani, the territory remains part of that empire but the planets are denuded of life, at least until you plop a new Ark over the ruins. Nothing else happens though - no harvest of Essence, which is what I would expect to see. Is that a planned feature for later? Because it seems like they should function as the Cultists here by automatically razing the colony but gaining some benefit from it.

Dust is too easy to acquire and kind of hard to use unless you get the 'purchase with Dust' tech. Eventually I was able to find a balance between upgrading old fleets (including Hero ships and Arks, which were very expensive), repairing ships (which for some reason don't automatically repair when in drydock? That seems odd to me, but perhaps there's a reason), and running deficits to convert Dust to Essence.

In a related note, I was never able to use enough Influence after about midway through the game. The best and biggest uses were for changing laws after an election and for mass-recruitment for Empire Manpower. But I would still have thousands left in the bank, unusable. Has this been a problem for anyone else?

It would be nice to be able to rename corporations. Perhaps each faction can also have its own starting names for corporations? They don't seem to be inter-empire entities that spring up unaligned and then decided favor any specific faction (which would justify the generic name system), they seem more like government-sponsored entities that eventually gain more independence. (Plus, I want to build and expand REVOCS corporation across the galaxy as Vodyani, it feels appropriate).

Anyways, this post has gotten far larger than I originally anticipated. Hopefully the feedback is useful to you.

TheTakenKing wrote:

So, a few disclaimers: I've only played one game to completion so far, as the Vodyani. All of my games have been at normal difficulty with no changed settings. I've made several attempts at Vodyani but gotten wrecked for various reasons, and my most recent game is Lumeris but that hasn't gone to T125 yet.

Also, the computer that I play ES2 on doesn't have internet access right now and so I can't comment on the optional beta patch that has recently been released.

First off: ship combat and invasions with the Vodyani arks don't make too much sense right now. Enemy ships totally bypass my fleets - which are set to defend the system - to attack my Arks in space combat or ground invasions, which defeats the purpose of using defensive fleets in the first place. From what I've read in other threads it seems that ships automatically attack the most powerful 'fleet' in a system, which is unfortunately usually my Arks. This is a weakness for the Vodyani and I think that it should be changed, at least for them. Also, you shouldn't be able to do a ground invasion without first defeating the fleet defending the system - or, at least, your invasion should suffer serious penalties. Why would my defensive fleet just sit back and let their Ark get attacked and destroyed by invading enemies?

Proposal for change: first, that Vodyani arks should always be 'on the bottom' of fleet priority attack lists, unless for some reason the Vodyani player chooses to set them higher (tanking with them, for example). This way you have to defeat any defending fleets before attacking the Ark. Second, you shouldn't be able to do a ground invasion if there are defending fleets in a system - or you should be able to do so, but suffer serious penalties.

Faction Quests: I have experienced particular difficulty in completing the Vodyani faction quests. It's probably a consequence of my playstyle, but even when I produce fleets to go after the quest pirates very early in the game, it usually takes a long time to hunt them down and defeat them. Minor faction raiders also get in the way, attacking my fleets and slowing down the process of finishing the quest. I propose that the Vodyani quest fleets seek out your home system and fight you there, rather than wander the starlanes randomly. Alternatively, just make them wait in the system they are spawned in. I'm not necessarily for putting kid gloves on everything, but this quest is really annoying and frequently takes a long time for me to complete, and being stuck in your faction quest is bad for gameplay and immersion. The second part, though, is the real killer: assimilating a minor faction hasn't been hard for me, but damn that five ruins option. With several Wheels out and exploring the galaxy it took me until around T100 to complete the quest, primarily because AI players would swoop in on systems with Ruin curiosities and prioritize exploring them, which is SUPER ANNOYING, and because I got unlucky and failed to find anything in two different ruin curiosities (failing to find anything when exploring a ruin curiosity does not add to the quest counter). I had to travel across 2/3 of the galaxy to find enough freaking ruins to get to 5. This ties in with another observation: you shouldn't know the results of a curiosity that another empire explored. You should have to discover it for yourself. So I propose that curiosities require exploration for each empire, though perhaps only the first empire to expore a given curiosity receives the loot for it (or receives a better result for loot).

My only other gameplay mechanic observation is that the Lumeris seem to expand too quickly and easily. The Dust cost for new Outposts doesn't rise as fast as it should seem to, and the approval penalty for expansion is very low. I had in (I think) less than 50 turns expanded to seven systems, was producing enough Dust to keep up a rate of more than one new Outpost every 10 turns, and didn't see any real approval penalties - even when expanding onto planets with bad anomalies, which should be an important factor in expansion. I also didn't need to defend my outposts or keep them concentrated - the only fleet I built was used to blow up some other empire's quest fleet on a system I wanted to colonize. That yellow-tinged fleet was the only thing that stopped me from expanding, even when I was near Vodyani and Lumeris empires - and otherwise aggressive Minor Factions - that had enough ships to destroy every new Outpost I built. Compare that to Vodyani expansion, which requires air superiority over a target planet, enough ships with harvesting modules to gain Essence at a decent rate, and has a substantial increase in Essence cost for both new Arks and new population. (I think the Vodyani expansion is more balanced by far than Lumeris expansion, and seems hard, but fine, right now.)

Now, a few notes and observations:

Anomalies seem to have kept the same descriptions as in Endless Space, but some of them have had their mechanical effects changed. Metallic Waters now gives an approval malus rather than bonus, Aurora (or whatever the name is) is now a science bonus and approval malus (if I'm remembering correctly, this is the reverse of what it was in ES and the description hasn't changed), etc etc. It's minor, but it would be good to see the descriptions changed to fit new mechanical effects. (that being said, I'd love to see some of those anomalies that used to be straight bonuses and are now mixed to be changed back to what they were. Make the galaxy great again!)

The ship/module system is great. I love how each type of ship has its own focus, and how you need to have each ship type to get the most synergy out of your fleet composition. Still, sometimes modules are considered 'better' than others, even if they are the same tier. Torpedoes (optimal at long range) have a lower attack/defense value than lasers (decent at long, optimal at midrange), which just makes it worse to use the former. I haven't seen much of an effect on module composition, ship type and combat strategy either - usually the fleet with a higher combat value wins. Also, paradoxically, when my high-powered torpedo frigate and pimped out short ranged small attack vessel are combating swarms of short-ranged small enemy vessels, I do worse setting my fleet to long range than when I set it to short range, despite long range favoring both my medium-sized ship class and its far more powerful armaments. I don't quite understand the combat maths yet and would like to know why it works that way, if anybody's figured it out yet.

Politics matter! But it seems that (at least, with Vodyani) militarists gain in power at the expense of everyone else as the game continues, merely by dint of there being other empires. That isn't to say there isn't diversity - the political evolution of my Vodyani empire went from 100% Religious to ~60% Militarist/40% Religious, to 40% scientist, 30% religious/30% militarist, to 50% militarist, 30% religious, 20% scientific at the end of the game. It was great watching the parties evolve and gaining new heroes to lead each party, feeling the tumultous nature of democratic elections (I switched to Democracy about 2/3 of the way through the game), and having to revise my strategy every time my favored party was kicked out of power.

The Minor Faction assimilation system (and diplomacy with them in general) feels clunky. It's either 'they are at war with you' or 'assimilated, now a new colony for your empire'. I know it's early access, but it would be good to have some intermediary stage where they are allies, allowing your ships passage through and anchorage in their territory and vice versa, allowing their population to expand in your empire, but without granting you total control. Sort of similar to Civ5's City-States. And I wonder what is planned for MF features later in this game. Race-specific technologies, ship modules or types, laws, and empire improvements would be cool, more so than just the bonus they give you upon assimilation and their population yield/political party.

The Vodyani assimilation technique is... somewhat dark, but also feels very appropriate. When they conquer a MF system the planets are wiped clean of population and infrastructure and are 'assimilated', thus granting you the assimilation bonus. It's sort of like the Borg that way, but nothing else is left of them. Similarly, when an empire system is conquered by the Vodyani, the territory remains part of that empire but the planets are denuded of life, at least until you plop a new Ark over the ruins. Nothing else happens though - no harvest of Essence, which is what I would expect to see. Is that a planned feature for later? Because it seems like they should function as the Cultists here by automatically razing the colony but gaining some benefit from it.

Dust is too easy to acquire and kind of hard to use unless you get the 'purchase with Dust' tech. Eventually I was able to find a balance between upgrading old fleets (including Hero ships and Arks, which were very expensive), repairing ships (which for some reason don't automatically repair when in drydock? That seems odd to me, but perhaps there's a reason), and running deficits to convert Dust to Essence.

In a related note, I was never able to use enough Influence after about midway through the game. The best and biggest uses were for changing laws after an election and for mass-recruitment for Empire Manpower. But I would still have thousands left in the bank, unusable. Has this been a problem for anyone else?

It would be nice to be able to rename corporations. Perhaps each faction can also have its own starting names for corporations? They don't seem to be inter-empire entities that spring up unaligned and then decided favor any specific faction (which would justify the generic name system), they seem more like government-sponsored entities that eventually gain more independence. (Plus, I want to build and expand REVOCS corporation across the galaxy as Vodyani, it feels appropriate).

Anyways, this post has gotten far larger than I originally anticipated. Hopefully the feedback is useful to you.

OK, so a few small details: The Vodyani are definitely an outlier compared to the other three thus far, so many things that apply to them likely won't apply fairly to the others.

Dust is easy to acquire early on, but for the Vodyani it can actually be fairly easy to lose Dust on systems in order to help generate population. Cravers will also have a bit of difficulty with harder opponents, due to their exploitation issues and both the Vodyani and Cravers will struggle to use Dust with large fleets (Due to upkeep costs, repair costs and update costs). One other tip, ALWAYS get the "Purchase with Dust" tech, it's one of those game-changers that will be absolutely necessary later on.

Yes, Influence is currently stupidly easy to amass, and has basically no purpose once amassed.

In theory, even after they are assimilated, Minor Factions are allies. The default population for them will continue to grow within and without your empire. But yes, allowing them to remain somewhat independent would be cool, though for gameplay, offers no particular benefit compared to being able to directly control them.

Currently, Militarist will always end up being the dominant party late game, through the simple fact that building even a token amount of ships gains them significant support. The system definitely needs some tweaks there.

The Lumeris seem to grow the fastest when in the AIs hands only, as it seems the AI doesn't have to deal with the oddities of the other three (Vodyani abduction and system moving, Craver rapid-expansion and war, Sophon science-guessing and system selection). In a players hands, they're distinctly average.

Yes, after just one Vodyani playthru I think they can totally overproduce anything you focus on, (or eventually all basic resources). Probably even out-science the Sophons if you focus on acquiring and using the bleu-mold caps. Them serious-Sophon's I had trouble keeping their Dust production in the plus, with a Vodyani game I was making 1.2K Dust per turn at around turn 100. :D

I think its the Ark-modules, combined with their superior population system, which also, I suppose, makes them the perfect nemesis for them planet-eating-Cravers-population. :P Hilarious and awesome gameplay with this race, though I must admit I played them in a Vodyani-only universe, so I could take full advantage of destroying/invading their base-ships and seizing them for my own use.

What I learned sofar:

turn 1 - update your Ark design by adding a third resources module, the default two are Dust and Science I think, so I added the Production one for early game, and switched that one for the Influence bonus after gaining sufficient production power.

- upgrade your Starter-Ark asap!

- get multiple colonies per system: if your starter-system doesnt give u 2 available planets very soon, then just move your Ark to a system has already has to 2 planets available, or 1 or 2 extra within reach of Era 1 research project. With Vodyani, can have max 3 populus, but that means 3 populus on every unlocked planet. No additional colony production cost is required, just research the planet-type and whambam, 3 becomes 6, or 9, 12 :P (the level 2 colony upgrade brings the max to 5)

So play it well and pretty soon you have excess store of Dust and Influence, what to do with it?

- keep Arks updated with latest weaponry and armor; since they are always first attacked when enemies enter the system. This easily burn 500 to 700 per Ark per upgrade.

- upgrade units, even though producing new unit is cheaper, upgrading them by use of Dust means they retain their gained XP, giving a certain HP gain per level.

- excess Influence You can spent on Diplomacy with Minor Races if you wish to favor the Pacifist Party over the Militarists. Beyond this Ive found no use for excess Influence, but the increase in Zone of Control totally makes up for it. Fairly soon one well-placed base will cover the whole one of the two colliding galaxies. :)

WackyGunner wrote:

So play it well and pretty soon you have excess store of Dust and Influence, what to do with it?

- keep Arks updated with latest weaponry and armor; since they are always first attacked when enemies enter the system. This easily burn 500 to 700 per Ark per upgrade.

- upgrade units, even though producing new unit is cheaper, upgrading them by use of Dust means they retain their gained XP, giving a certain HP gain per level.

- excess Influence You can spent on Diplomacy with Minor Races if you wish to favor the Pacifist Party over the Militarists. Beyond this Ive found no use for excess Influence, but the increase in Zone of Control totally makes up for it. Fairly soon one well-placed base will cover the whole one of the two colliding galaxies. :)

Another good use for Dust is to upgrade the relatively fragile fleet Heroes with increased regeneration and defense, because they cost a small fortune to keep healed (Generally between 500 and 1500 Dust).

Romeo wrote:

Another good use for Dust is to upgrade the relatively fragile fleet Heroes with increased regeneration and defense, because they cost a small fortune to keep healed (Generally between 500 and 1500 Dust).

I didn't pay attention to this fact at my first proper playthrough. That was a costly mistake and is important to watch out for!

As for influence, I am still not sure what to make of it. You can get such an insane amount with heroes but I guess more options to use it will be implemented soon.

Vodyani were a bit tricky to get into but are actually quite fun after you know how to exploit them.