uriak wrote:

Lost a big post, then redid it. This is the spirit !

Yes, indeed many observations could be obsolete by the time the update 2 rolls in. Still a good share of my concerns was about the global direction rather than incomplete features, though they did feature in my opening post as well. 

I'm still feeling like doing a new suggestion dump, though. It will be updated/amended once we know about what's in store for us !

Predictability vs alea :

this one goes right through the ongoing debate between single and multi player. In essence, when playing fall from heaven, a factor that really enticed me to start new games over and over was how the mod created a setup to both try new strategies with the factions and witness as my campaign would run amock. This was because of the presence of many game altering « neutral » elements, that went beyond the expected interaction between my factions and the AI.

Barbarians were not only a huge threat early, they kept getting stronger, founding, or capturing cities that would become as difficult to take or raze as genuine faction's, up to a point in middle game. 

Neutral creatures would create dangerous zones that would be a huge hazard both for scouting, building cities or improvement. Once again, only by dedicating solid midgame units these areas could cleansed. At the same time, a range of units could allow to capture and use some powerful elite neutral creatures, if one really wanted to dedicate resources to this

By the time religion and good/evil councils are founded, this tended to create larger alliances of factions in the game. Depending of the player or Ai action, angels or demons could be introduced as new powerful faction with their own agenda and specific rules.

Finally, events caused by factions or the game could be altering cities and terrain, the demonic invasion being the big wrench in the cogs of a campaign... if there were enough evil factions. 

Now this is gonna be a kind of wedge between people who prefer their game fair and square and those who like this kind of « unfair » mechanics that really can drive a campaign into unexpected directions. This means, plans being foiled or delayed, opportunities to seize and yes, many lost games.

The catch is any kind of disrupting feature may be tied to check box or even a slider to let whoever hosts a game remove anything that may create an uneven field if what they want is a competitive experience.

Now what could this means in ES2 ? I think there are quite a few features ready to be expanded into this kind of emergent experience.

Minor factions just ask to be built into. Let them become more significant both as foes and friend, and build relationship in a more delayed manner. (cap influence gifts, required several quests or protect them against others). Their reaction would be along a range. From outward sending fleets to your systems, defending their space, tolerating your presence, budding commercial relaitionship, start of population immigration to finally full control.

« Dark sectors » could be places with other kind of neutral threats than minor factions. Things like the harmony quest gives a clue. Make those zones dangerous to navigate but yield some reward for those up to the challenge (beside obtaining new space for them)

The rôle of religion and moral/alignment could stem from politics with factions affinity/gripes coming from similar or opposite population politics AND laws. 

Finally galactic level events (in the same sens as stellaris' ) can shake things up when heading into the late game phase. At the lesser scale, system altering events can force player to scramble and adapt. There is plenty to draw from, from supernovae, to endless temples reactivating or any kind of device failing etc.

Combat : 

This is another thing that has been endlessly commented and begged for in the forums. While the updates are certainly changing things for the better, I still think some core elements will be an issue, as far as I can foresee. This is because, while the template system allows for an array of possibilities, the usages of the fleets are limited. You use your ships for exploring, colonization/capture, siege/invasion and fight, This last part is the one that lacks variety imho. Since when fighting you have the same rules for both fleets the outcome could be either having a single optimal fleet composition (with one ruling weapon : bad, or a variety thereof, better), or with significant module/hulls bonus for factions, a different optimal fleet for each one. Of course the best outcome would be to have different templates used to counter the threats coming from varied factions... but this means a tight balance between battle tactics, weapon and defense modules to happen. 

Now let's suppose the battle is not even between the fleets, because of the context. An warping in attacking fleet may need more time to fire at long range because they have yet to get a good target acquisition. A defense fleet orbiting a friendly system may have help from the sensors array and static defense grid of their world. A fleet given an harass order may fire some volleys before warping out and avoid most of the heat. In these scenario, different optimal templates would emerge and these wouldn't be based on a hunch but mostly on expected scenario of fleet usage. 

If you factor some elements not yet used in battle, such as morale (could affect weapon efficiency at close range, or likeliness a ship tries to warp out before exploding) or maybe evasion or speed of approach tied to engines, even possibly stealth as I suggested a while ago... and faction specific doctrines this would entice to use a wide array of fleet composition. 

Faction specificity :

This one has been often discussed before but it bears repeating : most of the faction traits are a bit passive in nature (population output) or allow for blunt actions without much immersion factor.

Cravers : their overexploitation mechanic could be put into the player hands (claws). Let's imagine for instance that they have « core/hive » worlds and « quarry » worlds. The main worlds are similar to other faction systems and are the dystopian forge where the craver warmachine is created, whereas the outer worlds are exploited and send most ot their output to the hives and see little to no population gain (or in case on non cravers, worse...)  This would make a craver invasion a bit more dramatic in scope.

In combat, expect high morale and fleets tailored to full on assault on defended system, without much concern for their own survivability (both ships and crews... will be recycled after all).

UE : the emperor may haste projects but the powerful propaganda machine will be helpful to boost varied aspect of system life... perhaps pushing the population to overdo itself and pay a price later... depending on influence balance, you won't be able to boost everything at once and may miss it in case of other events. 

The EU fleet is mostly classic but plentiful though rigid (costlier prototype ?). They could have the same focus on solid hulls as in ES1, and with influence boost their morale to defend the motherland... mothersystem. 

Vodyani : not thought much about them because they already have the most distinctive system mechanic. Now their relationship with other factions must be complicated (still better than craver's) but religion could be a way to attract lesser beings. 

Fight wise, influence could use to flag some specific opponents as heretics, but due to the few numbers, they will tend to have survivability in mind. Of they would defend Ark with zeal...

Sophons : these dude and dudettes are all about doing stuff for shit and giggles. Blue Skies is fun but perhaps achieving a tech in a higher era could boost their happiness until they reach the proper level. Events choices and system upgrades should propose riskier paths to the player, because why not ? Science won't advance on it's own. 

They are not too keen to fight, morale wise. Unless they have bigger and more up to date weapons (up to date, you mean tomorrow's) Of course prototypes and upgrading ships are a premium for them. And if they meet a more advanced fleet, that ought to hurt their morale a bit...

Lumeris : being a fishy player would require quite a few layers and system not yet present in the game to accordingly feature their lubricating anything with the good dust amount. Buying up outposts is not enough... let's showcase their ability to use other people, far sooner than regular corporation exchange. Their relationship with the more advanced minor factions could be a strong point, and scraping science, dust and influence by brokering with others ought to be a must.

They don't like to fight without a profit and make a big use of mercenary. Their debatable morale could be heightened with the help of bounties. But they are mostly quite adept at escaping and sometimes brokering their way out. Of course beforehand they could get more intel on what they be opposed with... and slow down and hampers enemy maneuvers. Everything has its price.

Unfallen : we don't know much yet. Diplomats and plants, yadda yadda, let's wait and see.

Of course combat wise, they ought to be utterly defensive and able to repair fleets faster and harder. Attacking fleets in neutral or hostile space is not really their way of doing things...

Okay that's a lot to swallow and things are bound to evolve with the incoming updates. Still a bit of brainstorming doesn't hurt, doest-it ?

Agreed. Randomization - within limits - makes for an interesting singleplayer, and a frustrating multiplayer.

This is getting quite out of topic, to be honest. I haven't seen anything advocating rubberbanding or introducing meaningless choice expressed here. That said, I'm afraid that the elements that may give the game longevity on the multiplayer side are not the same as those that could give it long appeal on the single player scene. You are entitled to defend it, but it is my understanding fine tuning is not what is currently at stake, nor that 4X main appeal is their competitive side. This topics is born from my own feeling that the game would not hold interest for me without some improvements I'm advocating.

@Kweel_Nakashyn : I agree with your points. Avoinding gross overpowered element is never bad but allow less than optimal paths availables creates an array of possibilities. 

Let's go back on topic :

Really? Where have you been hearing this vile calumny?! 

OK - The original Endless Space, by SlowHands' own admission, could have done a better job of getting its backstory across. This is something that, in my humble opinion, worked out pretty well for Endless Legend though - and RPS agrees. We intend for Endless Space 2 to be more in line with Endless Legend in terms of the lore.

Well it is something I've seen written a few times when people comment about the endless serie. Especially about EL, since some people do feel a disconnect between what is the main critical reception of the game and their own observation. I do share some of those concerns, let me explain it more below.

I could divide the immersion issue into two broad categories : setting immersion and faction immersion. The first is about the believability of cross faction elements, and isn't really about player decisions or player agentivity. The second is opposite, and deals with the choices offered to the players. This is why I'm confident dealing with the first part is more a question of authoring and tweaking elements that don't deeply impact the balance, whereas the second part is more tricky. 

What is the issue with the setting ? One thing I've noticed about EL, is I had a real hard time feeling what I've had under my eyes wasn't too much of an abstraction. There were obviously deserts/forests/plains like any land based 4x but still I've felt a disconnect I didn't have in other games; The reasons were multiple : the art style which was pleasing, but combined with the UI leaned toward the simulation side, but more importantly the terrain effect. I've been used when playing fall from heaven (Civ 4) that any tile besides it's starting (and future) output yielded important fighting and travelling modificators. And that techs and factions were highly linked to terrain, thus fitting some - possibly cliché - atmosphere. I've often tried the Wild Walkers but never felt their "nature connexion" as well as elfes in the FFH. But they had forest fighting bonus and production bonus ! Well, still forest tile didn't have the same impact than in civ, where they would impat huge movement and attack penalties and FFH's elves had a nice array of specific units/improvements/rules regarding the forests. This resulted both when playing or facing them into a sizeable experience of a region centered around wilderness, powerful defensive units and neutral creatures that was quite different from the areas of more industrius factions filled with farms/cottages/mines. In the same way, this mod featured faction which had quite unique environment preference and options, from jungle lizardmen, steppe/artic barbarians/cults, desert dwellers or even deamons that turned the terrain into wastelands. 

Now, when playing ES2, my pet peeve is that main unit is the system, but they feel very abstract. They feature a cluster of planet of varying type, fitting with reality, so you can't really have the whole geographical continuity featured in land based 4x (with distinct but coherent climate zones) But our interactions with those planets are quite limited : we colonize them, see more pop and give them a possible exploitation type. Later on we can modify type and anomalies but still, the lion share of industry and military elements are system based. 

What could help is making us feel a bit more about these planets. There are 6 families of planets to pick from : temperate, humid, dry, hot, cold and giant. When finding one of them and deciding to settle, it's mostly a question of raw fidsi advantage, and possible happiness/anomaly bonus/penalty. 

My suggestion is to tie planet types with a cohesive set of elements : first anomalies ought to be tied to type (with some outliers allowed) giving both predictability and coherence to them. Scifi stuff like kessler syndrom, ruins, solar array can belong anywhere. But life forms, blizzard, etc and maybe some strategic or luxury ressources could be distributed with higher chance on some time. It's maybe already the case but then it's not really perceptible. Techs and planetary improvement are important too. there are some system upgrades that give more yiels on some planet types. I think some of the early upgrade are too specific for "broad" required techs as they are, but the idea itself is good. Ideally, picking some colonization technology and then others could be part of a comprehensive path taken by a player to make the most of a "family" of planets. 

Laws and social engineering can play a part too. When considering the planets colonized by our nation, there is a wide array of societies "hidden" behind the abstraction, from the eden like utopias on temperate/atolls planets to the cramped industrial installations making work possible on the most hostile ones. In the end, if technology allows to settle anywhere, it ought not to be end objective in all cases : choosing to have a civilization mostly thriving in the most liveable place (maybe with a religious/ecologist inclination) or trying to make the most of barren/lave/artic bases for a technocracy/robotic/dictatorship path instead could be viable but distinct alternative. I do mention this because the often critiqued tech tree has removed the element of choosing long term paths for the player. 

Another setting element that puzzles me is influence. Out of the 5 FIDSI, 3 are used on the go, food, science and industry. Dust is consumed by various upkeep but is stored and then used in bulk. Influence is the same. But that gives me the feeling of influence as "not dust but dust" system. It's more tied to system improvements than planet output, but still, it's something you get enough of then spend in bulk. I'm not sure what is supposed to represent. Politcal/commercial clout ? Propaganda ? Cultural domination ? Anyway, the way it's currently used doesn't really works toward conveying the subtle diplomacy or whatever at work. What I suggest is giving us way to spend influence with more continuous effect or even introducing notions of "influence upkeep". You want to make your people/friends to something for you in the long run ? Spend influence continuously and have to considering putting a stop to your laws/schemes when you can't afford them anymore.

I'll post later about the faction specific elements

SirBagel wrote:

Speaking of hand-crafted start locations, why not use something like the Civ series' start biases? It was a default game option that changed the weights that determined what type of tiles and luxuries spawned near a selected country's starting location. These tiles and resources usually facilitated that particular country's playstyle and strengths, hence giving some unique flavor in an otherwise procedurally-generated world. In Endless Space, this might translate to more Veldt/Cold planets near Sophons, Temperate and Hot planets for Raians, and more specialized curiosities and certain luxuries. 

That's a good thing to propose to devs and make an idea.

Got my +1 here, as long as this is an option, cause I understand some players (even myself in some galaxy settings) prefer playing without it.

uriak wrote:

  

My suggestion is to tie planet types with a cohesive set of elements : first anomalies ought to be tied to type (with some outliers allowed) giving both predictability and coherence to them. Scifi stuff like kessler syndrom, ruins, solar array can belong anywhere. But life forms, blizzard, etc and maybe some strategic or luxury ressources could be distributed with higher chance on some time. It's maybe already the case but then it's not really perceptible. 

Many poss about this. In this specific case, if you look around forums (don't remember which thread) devs said it will be fixed before release, and iirc in next update.

 Another setting element that puzzles me is influence. Out of the 5 FIDSI, 3 are used on the go, food, science and industry. Dust is consumed by various upkeep but is stored and then used in bulk. Influence is the same. But that gives me the feeling of influence as "not dust but dust" system. It's more tied to system improvements than planet output, but still, it's something you get enough of then spend in bulk. I'm not sure what is supposed to represent. Politcal/commercial clout ? Propaganda ? Cultural domination ? Anyway, the way it's currently used doesn't really works toward conveying the subtle diplomacy or whatever at work. What I suggest is giving us way to spend influence with more continuous effect or even introducing notions of "influence upkeep". You want to make your people/friends to something for you in the long run ? Spend influence continuously and have to considering putting a stop to your laws/schemes when you can't afford them anymore.

Not sure about that, but it seems to me that Amplitude did it to avoid "technology whoring" and other abuses of diplomacy that appeared in previous 4X. This someway limits what you can do, and you have to think who to propose a treaty, who declare war, and when, not only taking consideration in strategy, but also in this limitation that creates a cost to diplomacy. IMO this is a good improvement (look how CivBERT did something VERY similar).

I understand this may be a bit strange in a lore way, as nothing close to this has a physical form in real life, but take this as an abstract representation of a sum of factors that influence diplomacy: costs of sending embassies, reputations, propaganda, etc...

lo_fabre wrote:

I understand this may be a bit strange in a lore way, as nothing close to this has a physical form in real life, but take this as an abstract representation of a sum of factors that influence diplomacy: costs of sending embassies, reputations, propaganda, etc...

I wouldn't say that.
The irl world is changing a lot lately. If you consider what did Belgium, UK, USA or Russia (to name a few) lately, an inf attrition mecanism is a good system to represent the limited diplomatic possibilities of a country.

You can hear about country X enforcing their views on the international scene, but soon other country's opinions would just ally against them.

I still think half of inf could be given to the target of a faction, if the faction is enforced a view.

Like if a faction declare war on another one, soon all diplomatics relay of the target faction would awake and go red alert.

(@uriak: it's too late to reply too you ;))

lo_fabre wrote:

I understand this may be a bit strange in a lore way, as nothing close to this has a physical form in real life, but take this as an abstract representation of a sum of factors that influence diplomacy: costs of sending embassies, reputations, propaganda, etc...

In my opinion, the Influence system's biggest flaw is how it behaves just like Dust. Almost every application of Influence requires exorbitant amounts while having no spending limit, so stockpiling Influence for sudden and massive actions is the obvious way to go. In regards to ''realism'', it seems inconsistent, since people react ''non-linearly'' to suggestion; propaganda has, generally speaking, diminishing returns (looking at you, minor factions).

On the other hand, it's like Influence could be handled like Science. Sure, making it non-stockpilable could make it more interesting, but it would also mess up the current Influence spending scheme and I'm not particularly keen to overhauling it mechanics wise. The numbers may be broken but the overall dynamic is fine.

Maybe Influence should have a maximum capacity? Were Influence costs reduced, especially for actions with very high costs, one could imagine handling Influence a bit like Manpower. Influence-producing building could instead raise the max bar (or do both) so races like the UE would be capable of massive propaganda campaigns on multiples fronts while Influence-poor empires could still perform a small diplomatic or political action ever 2 or 3 turns.

I also think political actions should be available at any time, not just during elections. Most of them should also have spread out effect (Increases X ideology for Y turns) similar to random events. This increases player agency, and could also be an interesting opportunity to create more diverse actions. Why not make marketing campaigns aimed only at your starting population or only to the population of high-level systems?

uriak wrote: 

You can pick laws that do have for most of them a negative aspect, but it doesn't convey the same feeling than picking political/economical/social stances in say civ (4) or even alpha centauri. 

To be fair, I always thought that SMAC (not the thing the made with CivBE) had the best political system ever made in 4X, but this is a personal liking. I enjoyed this social engineering with its political/economic/values/future policies system, having each its pros and cons.

When I read first GGD I thought ES2 will have potential to do something at same or even better lvl, but actually I feel this system underused and very far from its potential.

Also it has some problems, to put one example: https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forum/66-game-design/thread/21999-problem-when-unlocking-too-much-political-parties. You can find more aroud thesse forums.

Of course the whole political arena is touted as a more realistic system and influence itself avoids abuse, but well, the whole process leaves the player kinda passive.  I don't feel like I'm actually lauching propaganda projects... and I think it's something that would be nice to have EU specific, or at least the magnitude of it (I'm not advocating for too much single faction mechanic, but at least that some factions can go beyond the others when doing certain things.) 

Same feeling here. I have hope Amplitude will address this, cause as said before I see lots of potential in this system. About how to addressing, there are interesting ideas: https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/ideas/134-multi-party-laws, but I think the key is making your decisions in the political arena have more impact in game, and also have some repercussions if you're continuously acting against your pop political preferences. Actually this seems a bit passive: I do ships, then my pop goes military. Lots of people said that this should work the opposite: pacifists pop should get angry when you build ships, while militarists should get happy. Of course you should have a way to influence your pop opinions, like what you say about UE: what emperor says is tru (or at least you can steam this with propaganda).

I'm sorry actually saying this, because normally I enjoy a lot Amplitude games, and have high expectations, but may be this high expectations are also the reason I feel this game potential under-exploited.

I'm not gonna dwelve more into faction and combat specific (too late) but yes it's entirely possible that a good share of my concern may be addressed in the next update. In the meantime I still felt like posting because as far as I'm concerned, ES2 has quickly fallen out of focus, at least in playtime, and I've already gone through this phase with EL, loving my first contact in EA, then getting "stuck" out of appreciating the released product. At the very least it's part of my "duties" in EA to write about it  And there are some recurrent elements in the serie that don't really appeal to me, and those I really want to talk about.

Never seen Amplitude offended by people explaining their worries. Just once closing ans incendiary thread, and that was far from your case, but still it remains to them.

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:
 I wouldn't say that.
The irl world is changing a lot lately. If you consider what did Belgium, UK, USA or Russia (to name a few) lately, an inf attrition mecanism is a good system to represent the limited diplomatic possibilities of a country.

You can hear about country X enforcing their views on the international scene, but soon other country's opinions would just ally against them.

I still think half of inf could be given to the target of a faction, if the faction is enforced a view.

Like if a faction declare war on another one, soon all diplomatics relay of the target faction would awake and go red alert.

Interesting point of view. Still this is not a quantifiable thing, but gives more sense to influence as resource.

To be honest never had a problem with this, as I saw it interesting in gameplay terms from start, and never bothered about it having lore sense or not since now. 

Trentius wrote:

In my opinion, the Influence system's biggest flaw is how it behaves just like Dust. Almost every application of Influence requires exorbitant amounts while having no spending limit, so stockpiling Influence for sudden and massive actions is the obvious way to go. In regards to ''realism'', it seems inconsistent, since people react ''non-linearly'' to suggestion; propaganda has, generally speaking, diminishing returns (looking at you, minor factions).

On the other hand, it's like Influence could be handled like Science. Sure, making it non-stockpilable could make it more interesting, but it would also mess up the current Influence spending scheme and I'm not particularly keen to overhauling it mechanics wise. The numbers may be broken but the overall dynamic is fine.

Not sure about that. As I see this as good idea, I'm doing same as everybody here. Changing it this way may change the game diplomatic and political scene in unexpected ways. As it actually have its flaws as everything, I think this is better to not change this.

Maybe Influence should have a maximum capacity? Were Influence costs reduced, especially for actions with very high costs, one could imagine handling Influence a bit like Manpower. Influence-producing building could instead raise the max bar (or do both) so races like the UE would be capable of massive propaganda campaigns on multiples fronts while Influence-poor empires could still perform a small diplomatic or political action ever 2 or 3 turns.

You're evil. This is a good one!

This will make things more interesting, as you can pool influence indefinitely, and will force you to use it more frequently, or otherwise this will be wasted.

Also will imply more specific timing of your diplomatic options to play with this influence pool.

I also think political actions should be available at any time, not just during elections. Most of them should also have spread out effect (Increases X ideology for Y turns) similar to random events. This increases player agency, and could also be an interesting opportunity to create more diverse actions. Why not make marketing campaigns aimed only at your starting population or only to the population of high-level systems?

Again a good one. Had same feeling. You should be able to spread propaganda to change your senate political composition to the parties that are more interesting to you, but of course at a cost and with repercussions. Something like having always available the cheating options.

If you make an idea about this and the previous one, remember me to get my vote. 

just gotta say that something like this  would be awesome: 

( Quote from TheTakenKing )

"Meanwhile, the Cravers (and every other faction in this scenario) would get unique bonuses for being at high approval. A Happy/Ecstatic Cravers empire could get a bonus to invasion strength, faster Craver immigration to newly-conquered worlds, and higher FIDS from Craver populations. "

now i am, not necessarily thinking that these mentioned bonuses are best or that every faction should have equally good and attractive bonuses from happines , but these kind of unique bonuses which result directly from your ability to play well, are awesome , combined with already present fixed ones that you get by simply plaing X faction.

Does not even need to come from high happines, there could be an entire new tab or mechanic to get your " i play good therefore i get these unique bonuses for my faction". 

there could even be more than 1 bonus for your faction if you for example have high happines , so you could choose which one you want to pursue 

Lost a big post, then redid it. This is the spirit !

Yes, indeed many observations could be obsolete by the time the update 2 rolls in. Still a good share of my concerns was about the global direction rather than incomplete features, though they did feature in my opening post as well. 

I'm still feeling like doing a new suggestion dump, though. It will be updated/amended once we know about what's in store for us !

Predictability vs alea :

this one goes right through the ongoing debate between single and multi player. In essence, when playing fall from heaven, a factor that really enticed me to start new games over and over was how the mod created a setup to both try new strategies with the factions and witness as my campaign would run amock. This was because of the presence of many game altering « neutral » elements, that went beyond the expected interaction between my factions and the AI.

Barbarians were not only a huge threat early, they kept getting stronger, founding, or capturing cities that would become as difficult to take or raze as genuine faction's, up to a point in middle game. 

Neutral creatures would create dangerous zones that would be a huge hazard both for scouting, building cities or improvement. Once again, only by dedicating solid midgame units these areas could cleansed. At the same time, a range of units could allow to capture and use some powerful elite neutral creatures, if one really wanted to dedicate resources to this

By the time religion and good/evil councils are founded, this tended to create larger alliances of factions in the game. Depending of the player or Ai action, angels or demons could be introduced as new powerful faction with their own agenda and specific rules.

Finally, events caused by factions or the game could be altering cities and terrain, the demonic invasion being the big wrench in the cogs of a campaign... if there were enough evil factions. 

Now this is gonna be a kind of wedge between people who prefer their game fair and square and those who like this kind of « unfair » mechanics that really can drive a campaign into unexpected directions. This means, plans being foiled or delayed, opportunities to seize and yes, many lost games.

The catch is any kind of disrupting feature may be tied to check box or even a slider to let whoever hosts a game remove anything that may create an uneven field if what they want is a competitive experience.

Now what could this means in ES2 ? I think there are quite a few features ready to be expanded into this kind of emergent experience.

Minor factions just ask to be built into. Let them become more significant both as foes and friend, and build relationship in a more delayed manner. (cap influence gifts, required several quests or protect them against others). Their reaction would be along a range. From outward sending fleets to your systems, defending their space, tolerating your presence, budding commercial relaitionship, start of population immigration to finally full control.

« Dark sectors » could be places with other kind of neutral threats than minor factions. Things like the harmony quest gives a clue. Make those zones dangerous to navigate but yield some reward for those up to the challenge (beside obtaining new space for them)

The rôle of religion and moral/alignment could stem from politics with factions affinity/gripes coming from similar or opposite population politics AND laws. 

Finally galactic level events (in the same sens as stellaris' ) can shake things up when heading into the late game phase. At the lesser scale, system altering events can force player to scramble and adapt. There is plenty to draw from, from supernovae, to endless temples reactivating or any kind of device failing etc.

Combat : 

This is another thing that has been endlessly commented and begged for in the forums. While the updates are certainly changing things for the better, I still think some core elements will be an issue, as far as I can foresee. This is because, while the template system allows for an array of possibilities, the usages of the fleets are limited. You use your ships for exploring, colonization/capture, siege/invasion and fight, This last part is the one that lacks variety imho. Since when fighting you have the same rules for both fleets the outcome could be either having a single optimal fleet composition (with one ruling weapon : bad, or a variety thereof, better), or with significant module/hulls bonus for factions, a different optimal fleet for each one. Of course the best outcome would be to have different templates used to counter the threats coming from varied factions... but this means a tight balance between battle tactics, weapon and defense modules to happen. 

Now let's suppose the battle is not even between the fleets, because of the context. An warping in attacking fleet may need more time to fire at long range because they have yet to get a good target acquisition. A defense fleet orbiting a friendly system may have help from the sensors array and static defense grid of their world. A fleet given an harass order may fire some volleys before warping out and avoid most of the heat. In these scenario, different optimal templates would emerge and these wouldn't be based on a hunch but mostly on expected scenario of fleet usage. 

If you factor some elements not yet used in battle, such as morale (could affect weapon efficiency at close range, or likeliness a ship tries to warp out before exploding) or maybe evasion or speed of approach tied to engines, even possibly stealth as I suggested a while ago... and faction specific doctrines this would entice to use a wide array of fleet composition. 

Faction specificity :

This one has been often discussed before but it bears repeating : most of the faction traits are a bit passive in nature (population output) or allow for blunt actions without much immersion factor.

Cravers : their overexploitation mechanic could be put into the player hands (claws). Let's imagine for instance that they have « core/hive » worlds and « quarry » worlds. The main worlds are similar to other faction systems and are the dystopian forge where the craver warmachine is created, whereas the outer worlds are exploited and send most ot their output to the hives and see little to no population gain (or in case on non cravers, worse...)  This would make a craver invasion a bit more dramatic in scope.

In combat, expect high morale and fleets tailored to full on assault on defended system, without much concern for their own survivability (both ships and crews... will be recycled after all).

UE : the emperor may haste projects but the powerful propaganda machine will be helpful to boost varied aspect of system life... perhaps pushing the population to overdo itself and pay a price later... depending on influence balance, you won't be able to boost everything at once and may miss it in case of other events. 

The EU fleet is mostly classic but plentiful though rigid (costlier prototype ?). They could have the same focus on solid hulls as in ES1, and with influence boost their morale to defend the motherland... mothersystem. 

Vodyani : not thought much about them because they already have the most distinctive system mechanic. Now their relationship with other factions must be complicated (still better than craver's) but religion could be a way to attract lesser beings. 

Fight wise, influence could use to flag some specific opponents as heretics, but due to the few numbers, they will tend to have survivability in mind. Of they would defend Ark with zeal...

Sophons : these dude and dudettes are all about doing stuff for shit and giggles. Blue Skies is fun but perhaps achieving a tech in a higher era could boost their happiness until they reach the proper level. Events choices and system upgrades should propose riskier paths to the player, because why not ? Science won't advance on it's own. 

They are not too keen to fight, morale wise. Unless they have bigger and more up to date weapons (up to date, you mean tomorrow's) Of course prototypes and upgrading ships are a premium for them. And if they meet a more advanced fleet, that ought to hurt their morale a bit...

Lumeris : being a fishy player would require quite a few layers and system not yet present in the game to accordingly feature their lubricating anything with the good dust amount. Buying up outposts is not enough... let's showcase their ability to use other people, far sooner than regular corporation exchange. Their relationship with the more advanced minor factions could be a strong point, and scraping science, dust and influence by brokering with others ought to be a must.

They don't like to fight without a profit and make a big use of mercenary. Their debatable morale could be heightened with the help of bounties. But they are mostly quite adept at escaping and sometimes brokering their way out. Of course beforehand they could get more intel on what they be opposed with... and slow down and hampers enemy maneuvers. Everything has its price.

Unfallen : we don't know much yet. Diplomats and plants, yadda yadda, let's wait and see.

Of course combat wise, they ought to be utterly defensive and able to repair fleets faster and harder. Attacking fleets in neutral or hostile space is not really their way of doing things...

Okay that's a lot to swallow and things are bound to evolve with the incoming updates. Still a bit of brainstorming doesn't hurt, doest-it ?

Randomisation and way to react about it. Bad randomization would be "you earn this, or planet X is destroyed, or party Y goes up" ;) In cause of dark sectors minor factions attitude, one can choose to invest resources to secure things, or just buckle up and ignore element that could be a hindrance to others factions too. 

I felt like going on about what is for a bit of restrictive design in the way the systems work, but many things could change in the update, especially the science production balance. Currently, as the cost of each tech ramps up (less that at launch but still) whereas the upgrades they unlock have a fixed prize that means that as you crawl up into a technology era, you're likely to be able to build new things faster and faster, till you hit a point where there is nothing or pointless stuff to add in a system. This is bad because even with very few systems there is nothing that differenciate them much in the way you develop them, and you could end up producing raw science/industry/dust or ships to do something about them. It's fine if this was the objective to create a secondary settlement producting resources for your main ones, but the whole things seems geared for managing big empires, once again maybe lacking some "soul". 

At first glance they may be 5 different ways to make players create very different kinds of systems

"incitations"

- making upkeep so outrageous that frivolous uprades are out of the equations

- adding so many things to builds or so long to build that you can't actually end up in a "adding all in a system" situation besides maybe your homeworld

- making upgrades very combo friendly to the point it's best to specialize early rather than build a bit of everything

"restrictions"

- making some upgrade exclusionary (not as in unique to the empire, but not mutually buildable)

- linking some upgrades to planets types (and not only add a bonus) like giant planet extrator thingies on lava, holy molly holiest temple things in forest worlds etc) 

The latter two are way more abritrary but have the benefit of easier balancing. The former three require careful examination of possible impact on the game economy. 

Sure thing, this sounds like stuff you wouldn't want to do everywhere AND make sure you can support. 

I'd really like too some sophon stuff that are basically prone to create bad events from time to time ("oopsie") in exchange for "too good to be true" advantages.

One thing about food is how since the outpost mechanic has been added, it doesn't seem to be a resource only constrained to one system but transferrable. Opens up for quite specialized colonies. 

There are still my suggestion of refinery/military/commercial outposts with their own upkeeps.

I dunno if anybody agrees or not about my fighting analysis, though. We are waiting for update 2 - must confess I've not watched the stream, I dunno if there is digest of incoming things somewhere.

Well my take was mostly that fleet specialization without different kind of objectives could easily slip into "most efficient build" or "random guesses and counters" territory. 

Eh, I live near Paris so I could have been there, but I'm not a drinker so... :p

It's mostly that I didn't know about it till too late. 

So I've read the update2 digest, gonna give the beta a spin soon. I'm wondering about something : the middle game seems interesting, it's the early I've got a hard time liking, maybe ? I like my empires small and manageable ;)