Very good summary in my eyes, especially the space battle part. In my opinion a rework here would be much more important than new content - hell I would even pay for a working combat system right now!

Nice post, I agree with most points. A few remarks to some:

4) Ground Battle deployment limit doesn't change the amount of troops sent. At least not in the number displayed before combat. After combat it looks like it is taken into account.

     Bombardment damage should scale with tech and there should be a "regular invasion" option that doesn't give any bonuses and negative effects.

I did not notice the deployment limit not changing? I think it does. Also, since ground deplyoment bonuses give the option to both increase health (guerilla) and damage (blitz),  Ithink a "regular invasion" would be extremely situational and is not needed.

5) Vaulter portals have a default upkeep costs of 16. Maybe this should start at 4 and then scale up with each additional functionality discovered? Just an idea.

I do like that there is some incentive to not just have them in every system via the higher upkeep.

6) Increase in food consumption is great. Food improvements finally are something you need. But maybe negative food production of 0 to -10 or 0 to -7 should reduce food but not be enough to reduce population? So you don't end up swinging between population increase and decrease when on the edge?

They reversed this as of the patch this morning. I have no idea why! Increased food consumption was indeed a very good change.

12) What is a systems trade value? You get a lot of improvements or hero skills that can increase this trade value but nowhere in the game are you able to learn what is a systems trade value and what will you get if you increase it.

Trade system value determines the dust generated by trade routes passsing through the system, and is shown in the trading screen (zoom out + space). It is a bit opaque though.

13) On the Empire Summary screen it would be great to see maximum possible population for that system not just current population.

Yes, so much this! Simple change, huge QOL improvement when shipping population.

You brought up a lot of great points, and I see myself agreeing with just about all. Also it's sad that just as you posted it they reversed the food consumption. I was also someone who liked it cause for once getting food buildings beyond just faster pop was a solid strategy.

There's two points I really wanna highlight though.

13) On the Empire Summary screen it would be great to see maximum possible population for that system not just current population.

14) Starport GUI needs a lot of work. A complete rewrite. When I am sending population I don't care what is the FIDSI production, resources or queue. I need to see what planets there are an what population is on those planets. Not to mention an information how much population can move there.

This is so wanted! After playing Vaulters and making use of pop moving more thanks to portals, I quickly noticed how unconvenient it is to micro, knowing which systems are full and can move pop to just how the starport GUI doesn't give the information I really want for pop.

Furthermore I wanna add that the empire management screen doesn't allow you directly access to the starport interface to move pop. This makes it quite a hassle where you go into the empire management, look around on systems that could use pop and which can send, go out or double click, then do the starport from the normal system management screen.

That's fine when you do it once, but when you wanna move several pop in different systems to different systems as well, it becomes a hassle. I'd like if the starport was also featured in the empire screen with all the systems listed.

YertyL wrote:

Trade system value determines the dust generated by trade routes passsing through the system, and is shown in the trading screen (zoom out + space). It is a bit opaque though.

You are referring to this one?

This should be also on the System Management Scan.

But still even if you have this information. You have no idea what to od with it afterwards.

Yes I know that those values are for trade companies but the game in no way tells you what it translates into. 

Or that you should only invest in improving those values if you have trade routes running trough that system.

Or how exactly trade companies calculate their total output based on those values.

Further more you get food and industry on a system that has passing trade routes.

But the trade value bonuses don't affect food and industry from trade.

I'd like to add another point concerning this:

14) Starport GUI needs a lot of work. A complete rewrite. When I am sending population I don't care what is the FIDSI production, resources or queue. I need to see what planets there are an what population is on those planets. Not to mention an information how much population can move there.

and what Numinumi said:

After playing Vaulters and making use of pop moving more thanks to portals, I quickly noticed how unconvenient it is to micro, knowing which systems are full and can move pop to just how the starport GUI doesn't give the information I really want for pop.

Please add the number of turns required to reach that system, taking into consideration the presence of portals and the speed of civil ships (remember the movement increases with tech eras reached). This way one is not required to zoom out of starport menu, memorize the system names of source and destination and reenter the starport menu.

I would very much appreciate such a QOL improvement for all major factions.

Excellent summary of where things stand across a number of aspects. Couple follow up thoughts:

Trade Routes
I find it ridiculous that the clarity of mechanics having to do with trade routes continues to be so opaque. The information that is provided is nearly useless as it is, but then it's not even presented in the parts of the UI where you would actually want that information.  The result is that's it's almost entirely useless.

Also the nerfs to trade route income feels too much. I don't see much point in building trade routes or investing in raising trade route levels when I can use the money to rushbuild +dust and other developments instead.

The game is slowly getting better.  But there are still so many weak aspects of the UI still.  Stellaris does a vastly better job IMHO. Tactical Combat remains underwhelming in the extreme, although the strategic AI feels like it's getting better.  The workings of the diplomacy system and faction system, like the trade system remains quit opaque for the player. It's not a complicated game, but the lack of detail or clarity around many aspects of it make it feel far more bewildering than it should. This is after 100+ hours of gameplay too.

Great summary i think we all want longer space battles. I made idea about it but not many votes up :(

Addressing 13 and 14 from OP. There is actually a significant amount of this functionality in the Empire Summary screen already. If you hover over the population box in each system's row in the Empire Summary screen you get basically no information, but if you click that box, a whole bunch of info appears at the bottom of the screen. This inculdes number of population slots on each planet, what population type is occupying each slot, each planet's FIDSI output, and each planet's traits. Also, the color of text for each planet's name tells you if the planet is already colonized (blue), if it is colonizable (white), or if it is not colonizable (gray). Additionally, from those info boxes at the bottom, you can drag population units from those planets around and even drag them to a different system. One improvement to that was mentioned and that is displaying how many turns it would take to transfer that population unit.

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/ideas/1576-longer-space-battles

There its nothing big just one of your point posted as an idea. I wanted to check if people would like it in general

DrAxemann wrote:

Addressing 13 and 14 from OP. There is actually a significant amount of this functionality in the Empire Summary screen already. If you hover over the population box in each system's row in the Empire Summary screen you get basically no information, but if you click that box, a whole bunch of info appears at the bottom of the screen. This inculdes number of population slots on each planet, what population type is occupying each slot, each planet's FIDSI output, and each planet's traits. Also, the color of text for each planet's name tells you if the planet is already colonized (blue), if it is colonizable (white), or if it is not colonizable (gray). Additionally, from those info boxes at the bottom, you can drag population units from those planets around and even drag them to a different system. One improvement to that was mentioned and that is displaying how many turns it would take to transfer that population unit.

Yes the Empire Summary can give you details once you click on the Status, Population and you can even set production queue from here.

But none of those provide maximum population size so that you can see how many free space is still in that system.

You can count it manually by clicking on population and counting free squares but that is not what I would expect as a good solution.

As for spaceport view that you access from the planet view there is no justification for it.

It is a dedicated view just for the starport so it should be focussed on population management.

Currently it is just a poor copy / paste from the Empire Summary view that doesn't provide what is needed.