I really like swarm missiles as a new long-range guaranteed, but lower projectile DMG type weapon, even if it sort of goes directly against the supposed "high risk, high reward" idea you have going for them. Agreed that kinetic weapons should still focus down normal missiles first, otherwise you could easily combine swarm and normal missiles and have an unbeatable long-range tactic for every encounter. Ideally players should prefer normal missiles if possible and have swarm missiles as a fallback strategy if the opponent starts to stack a lot of kinetic modules. 

Hopeful that Railguns will be notably more powerful alternatives to Kinetic weapons, especially if they're going to cost more to build. Short range tactics have needed a buff for a long time and this could be it.

I like the new tech tree, but if you're going to turn old white weapons into era unlocks perhaps they should also be nerfed a bit at the same time in order to still keep strategic resource weapon decision as an important choice? Also like Naskoni said flak efficiency needs to be nerfed hard all across the board (IIRC wasn't it already on your to-do list?), especially white kinetic weapon flak efficiency now that everyone is going to get access to them by default.

SuperMarloWorld wrote:

It looks promising. The tree dont look overcloaded. It even looks more coherent, now that weak vanilla weapons are more easy to get, and replaced with those huge impact weapons. It's actually hyping me a little too much, and it's tickeling. I really hope this is on the game soon !

There is all this paper-stuff-cissor around missiles, that make maybe energy weapons a safer choice. Like kinetics are the high-risk, high reward weapons and energy the low risk, low rewards. But it's very hard to imagine how it will be played without testing all this stuff.

The tree wouldn't be overcrowded even if two (2) more weapons were added to it... I find it mind-boggling that the research tree is SO brittle that adding as little as two new techs requires the dumbing down of HALF of it in order to accomodate them OR having said two (2) techs being tied, completely, to pure RNG. We HAVE to research basic stuff such as manpower capacity, several almost copy-paste techs at that, but we get all the weapons in a tier (!!!) by default? For 0 research - no thought, strategy or choice of any kind necessary. That makes sense?

As for parer-stuff-scissors - "conventional" missles are completely pointless as long as even one enemy ship has flak, which everybody has access to by default. There is no risk as there is no point to go for missles in the first place. If you do take the risk and go for missles, currently even a couple of small ships with flak will counter several carriers with missles by themselves, and one can respec said small ships by the time your fleet arrives at any system that is 2 turns or more away. No exlusivity of any sort also means lack of any choice between rails and slugs either - equip 1-2 slugs for the sake of it and the rest rails for all the apparent advantages. The ability to respec instantaneously basically eliminates said "high risk" completely in my eyes.

I find it mind-boggling how adding those two weapons actually made things worse, not better. Rails seem to be the clear choice over slugs in any case as long as you have 2 slugs on any ship in your fleet - pretty cookie-cutter. Swarms are clearly superior to conventional ones for the same reason, every time, as they cannot be countered even by stacked flak, by the looks of it.

*shrug* For me this is moving the research tree in the worst possible direction - dumbing it down, for no apparent reason as well. Well, at least I bought the game on sale.

The new military quadrant looks pretty decent. We'll see how it shapes up when we get a chance to test it.

Everyone's been trolling me on the Discord! But yes, we WILL give you railguns. Soon(tm)

So, it seems there is a lot of back-and-forth about the use of curiosities vs. tech tree to discover weapons/tactics.  I am relatively new here, but have been playing the Endless series for a while and many other 4X games.

One suggestion I may make is to make the modules/tactics unlockable via curiosities, but to also allow for any given faction to have one or two possible to research.  This could be tied to a military trait, of which any given faction could have maximum of one (maybe two).  For example, all factions share the same tech tree with some unique technologies tied to affinity.  Would it be possible to also have one or two unique military technologies that you could assign as military or science traits?  Each faction could, by default have one (for example: United Empire can research a titanium railgun with extra damage which everyone else can only get by finding the right curiosity, Cravers get Adamantium projectile fighters, etc.) and these could be then added to custom factions as desired.  This would require you to add only one or two military techs which would change depending on the faction's chosen specialty.  

I know this was possible in Endless Legend with the Ardent Mages' spells as unlockable technologies via faction traits.  Maybe a similar fix could work here.

This way, there could be a strategic choice in what modules you know you will get to use, the possibility of discoveries rounding out your arsenal, and no excessive clutter of the tech tree

go to ES2 properties, betas, sign up for the 1.1.15 preview. 

Hey guys, 

how do I install them in the game. I got my steam acc. linked to the games2gether page. Do I have to do anything now?

The Emperor's fleet is waiting.

The Most Holy fleet has been deployed and will arrive over Paris soon. Kynrael is running out of time.

plutar wrote:

It is so quiet in this thread you can almost hear a pin drop...... 

As nice as this new stuff is, I think 99% would be happy if they just fix the ai to build bigger ships faster and upgrade them consistantly. This is the first game for a long while that has got me hooked but I constantly end endless games where the ai is still using starter weps/small ships while I am on mediums with a few of the t1 weps, then they gets a few mediums still low tech while I now have a fully kitted out tier 1. Then its normally safe to skip teir 2 completely as the ai never really catches up apart from fleet capacity. (this is on endless)

The main thing is that as you can kill them so easy it means you build 1 set of ships which never get destroyed so your research and production never get delayed because you have to make more ships.

A energy bombers torpedo..... Mmmmmm fun

Or a railgun fire.

It is so quiet in this thread you can almost hear a pin drop...... 

I'm not trolling, I'm producing high-quality shitposts!

A cryptic image ? When ? Where ? How ? 

Railguns please ?

Frogsquadron has been getting meaner lately...

That's for us to know and for you to wonder, Plutar... ;)