Hello again

This is the feedback based on EA 1.3

After playing quite a bunch of games now I can say that the research tree just feels completely out of sync with game pace, especially if you play aggressively Craver-style.

But even if you if you are not warmongering, it has same issues.

1) Research eras belong in their rightful place... Endless Legend series, not Endless Space

Guys you know the first development rule, right? 

"If it ain't broken, don't fix it"

The decision to drop the responsive and fluid research web from Endless Space 1 and replace it with limited Eras from Endless Legend is probably the worst design decision ever made for the series.

The ES1 web was extremely responsive to the needs of player, you could make paths as much as you liked, you could beeline or take detours back and forth and in general always find some answers to the ever-changing situations you were in.

You could push early development, go into naval power, get some techs for ground invasions, run along for some luxuries, back to naval power and so on and on. 

The process was fluid, it required constant decision-making on the fly, and in general made game more interactive.

With the limited picks you have to get from Eras, none of these elements are present.

On top of it, you locked the most basic and crucial system development elements into so late eras, they are basically worthless and pointless by the time you can get them.

You require to spend a research era point for *each* planet colonization type, 4 of each in every era, that is basically deleting 4 points out of 10 and leaving only 6 for player to decide what to pick.

You do realize, that it is literally impossible to pass colonizations techs if you have those planet types around (and there are always different types of planets around, even in Tiny galaxy) , since skipping a whole productive planet is insane loss of income, none of the other techs can make up for?

So in these 6 picks you leave to player are Food/Science/Production/Dust/Influence buildings, usually 2-3 of each type.

That forces player to make a sacrificial choice to completely ignore at least 2 directions and stick with 2-3 other.

To make it even worse, you tie all food/ecological building into Happiness, which is a MUST have, otherwise the player's system will go into cardiac arrest, either from his colonization or from his captured war efforts. Which effectively locks up 1 more choice.

So in the end, you leave player a choice to develop only 2 points of research how to develop his systems. Two. Out of "ten".

This is extremely poor and limited system, which does not make player make any meaningful choices. All it leaves is a sense frustration as you have to completely ignore all dust-generation techs and push Happiness.

In general it is completely impossible and meaningless to pick any special weapons techs, since they take valuable research era slots and not giving anything in return. A 10% increase in modules power is totally not worth it compared to missing entire research line of production buildings, for instance.

2) Planetary exploitations were free cheap help for early game... now they come ways too late into play

The whole point of these weak and cheap early exploitations was to help player fix his development problems.

In general it was all about food while the systems are setting up, and then switch to production/dust/science accordingly to how the system was going to be specialized.

You have put food exploitation into Era2, behind a 1700+ cost technology.

You must understand, that the very first technologies any player have to do in era2 is upgraded ship hulls + fleet size, to keep up with naval competition, right? Especially against a hard/endless AI or human players.

That means that you have the courtesy to research planetary food exploitation only after researching  2-3 techs deep in Era2.

Which is quite deep into midgame already. By this time, with governors and whatnot, most of the systems the player had initially  settled are FULL on population.  Same for capturing systems from AI - they are all overpopulated already.

Which makes entire point of having food exploitation meaningless.

The only scenario to use this tech now is to keep building *something* for ecologists, to get that goddamn ecology Hero pop up in Academy finally.

Which also concern all of the food/farming buildings - they are so late in tech tree and so expensive, that they are not needed by that time.

And as additional pun, there is ecology farm building which only works on "Happy/Ecstatic", although most players are going for Ecology to get the equalizer law to put systems on "Content" to stop their pops from going into cardiac arrest from expansion.

Same goes for Industrial exploitation. It is in era2, waiting in line after ships and food. By the time players get it, they have probably already built the next level base with +50 production. A more or less productive system with just some terran/tundra and a tropical planet, with level 10 governor is pushing about 400 production. The extra 20 production from this exploitation, which could have really helped in early game (when it was like 5-6 pops on planet), now looks like a joke to even spend a research point on.

To top the cake, since you have took away free production conversions, usually by that time there is literally nothing to build anyway.

Why not? Remember what I said about limited research choices? That's correct, since player has only 6 realistic picks each era besides 4 colonization techs, there are not much buildings at all.

Most of the time you just pack the production queue with those several buildings you researched and then it's done, the system has nothing to do. To make it produce anything, you need to spend research points again on conversions, which are never a pick because you just unlocked era3 and have to research ships again. The circle continues.

3) Production conversions belong in their rightful place... from start of the game in our production queue

You put the very basic and most needed mechanic so deep into research tree it is practically comical.

How did you make the decision to put conversion of production into science into research Era3? Which is effectively lategame already?

There is literally nothing left to research by the time you get there.

In Endless Space 1 it was a clear tactic to set up your systems from the start depending on planets they had spawned - production systems, dust systems, science systems.

Early production exploitation helped to overcome simple nuances like - when the planet is obviously meant for science, trying to produce anything on it was horrible slow, and never made sense, the best use was to slap production -> science conversion, and come back to it only when you researched a new science building.

As it is right now, the systems are idle most of the time while the player must chew through colonization techs, then ship techs, and only then, if he decides to FORFEIT some crucial buildings like influence/pop or dust/pop, he can afford to research conversions.

4) A special word about weapon techs

For the love of God, put into description of weapon techs what kind of weapons and modules they actually unlock. 

It feels lame researching that tier1 titanium tech only to find out all it gives is lasers and shields, when I do not fit any of those.

In general, I find it very disheartening that these design decisions even made it into the game.

And since they are in this EA already, there is very little chance for any logical rework.

All in all, the direction to make "Endless Legend in space" instead of proper sequel of your first awesome game guys is truly disappointing.

These are good points, I mused about the same things here, the current technology system is one that let us feel like hitting roadblocks from the very start of the game.

I personnaly don't like much the era system, but it may be salveageable. A tech tree or pool can be sucessful or broken depending of the numbers (and other tweaks). The main issue with the current design is how basic things are seemingly locked away in hard to reach eras. This is not the only system that feels like this, take hero skill points, it's basically the same : pick most of stuff in a tier before getting things in a new tier. 

ES1 tech tree felt a tad too interdependant to my taste, limiting us in another fashion. We won't kid ourselves, conflict is a big part of these games and in case of the ES serie, there isn't many way to go to war : you need hulls, strategic resources, command points, and weapon techs. That leaves very few space for creativity here... (especially when level 2 hulls already use 4 cp AND use titanium/hyperium...) I don't have much hope about this, but it will be a burden on the science system in any case.

As you said in your point 2, we lack very useful tools that only happen to be unlocked by era II. But at this stage you will require indeed some other important techs and each one get costlier. 

There is one thing I don't mind : nor the ability, nor the need to build everything in every system. The development phase in ES1 was a bit too straightforward to my taste. But here you're basically encouraged to start cramming ships very early in the game. the food exploitation especially does come too late, due to the rare planets slots being filled already. 

As for point 3 : I agree too. I wouldn't mind it to come late, if we didn't run out of interesting stuff to build in our systems so quickly. Apart from the very start of the Sophon play, I've felt the technology lagging behind my expansion/industry. 

Point 4 could be solved by a new tech UI, with 2 need features : having more than 2 unlocks for each tech, and letting us see in a "endlesspedia" screen, the details of a technology. This would allow you to add meta science info, like possible "links" between different techs. 

My general take on this science design is we aren't given the choice to make tradeoffs in efficiency, but rather skipping entire functions of the game. 

You can't have minimal exchange with other factions, it's negotiation tech or nothing (era II)

You can't badly use your excess industry.

You can't use at all luxuries before system upgrades tech

You can't use a planet at all before its tech, not even outposts for industry/military/science/influence purpose

You almost can't invade at all (even smallish systems) without invasion modules (era II)

You can't change your governement at all before era II (and only 2 laws available)

Trade before era II ? forget it.

etc

I missed in ES1 the feeling of getting new "toys" and abilities the further I went into the tree, as in units doing new things, for instance,  this and the lack of serious tradeoff in improvement, made the progression in a game kinda unexciting for me. So I don't mind a new approch that gives real new possibilities the further you are into the tech tree - as opposed of only more system with biffer outputs and harder hitting units, but as ES2 stands right now, we are grasping for stuff to do in the early game, often the most intersting phase of any 4X. 

1) Research eras belong in their rightful place... Endless Legend series, not Endless Space

The process was fluid, it required constant decision-making on the fly, and in general made game more interactive.

No; the process are complex and confusing. The player must read all the fucking tree for know what research.
On the other hand... i dont like the new tree, too. Is confusing and have things without sense, that is true. A tree research must be simple and easy of read and understand, not complex and full of decisions because that is heavy for the brain of players.

2) Planetary exploitations were free cheap help for early game... now they come ways too late into play

3) Production conversions belong in their rightful place... from start of the game in our production queue

4) A special word about weapon techs

I agree. This have sense.

minurominerwin wrote:

No; the process are complex and confusing. The player must read all the fucking tree for know what research.
On the other hand... i dont like the new tree, too. Is confusing and have things without sense, that is true. A tree research must be simple and easy of read and understand, not complex and full of decisions because that is heavy for the brain of players.

But being full of complex decisions is the core idea of strategy games!

I agree completely that every game needs a clear user interface as well as simple access to information. Similarly, the direct consequences of any decisions you make should be simple to understand (in the short term). But the things that makes this game a game is how you plan for the later turns, how you take advantage of circumstances and how you choose an appropriate strategy to face the challenges you face.

You don't have to read the entire tech tree to play either, as long as you make good choices based on what you know and need right now. A well-designed tree will make it obvious what kind of bonuses await you up the branches just by looking at what lays at its roots. Certainly ES1's tech tree was a bit flawed in that sense, but the current one does no better, as it's really hard to see why one technology is in a certain field and not another. If there were a linear progression in the current technologies, it'd be a massive mess, not to mention how it hides info like what kind of weapons are unlocked by a tech. That's unnecessary guesswork and the main factor responsible for confusion or decision paralysis.