I don't know if or when there will be an Endless Space 3, but I want to throw out kind of a radical idea to help balance the game toward more consistent fairness between major factions in any given game. This is an issue in every 4X game, but that doesn't mean mitigation of the problem is impossible.

Well, first I should describe the problem with a simple example: Sophons game with no/few cold planets nearby, or a Horatio game with Minor Factions on the other side of the galaxy, etc. This doesn't have to be faction specific. In general, you might simply just not have good systems nearby. The galaxy generator is quite good, and this isn't a huge common problem, but it's enough of an issue that in MP, especially, it can feel unfair sometimes.

Well, what if systems were less random? What if systems were hand-crafted to include: the type of star, and the exact planet types and their size. In addition, every major faction would have N number of these systems assigned to them.  So, if I play as the Sophons, I'm guaranteed to get these exact 5 (or 3, or 10, or whatever) systems within a certain number of connections from the Sophon homeworld. This could include some of the minor factions... or if not specific factions, then the guaranteed presence of some number of random minor factions. 

What randomness would remain in the hand-made systems?  I think these things:

- Curiosities / Resources / Anomalies

- Exact location, distance of space lane, number of space lanes attached, which other systems happen to be its neighbors

- The remaining nearby systems would pull from a pool of "general" systems that are not tied to faction

So above I mention a pool of "general" systems.  These could also be hand-made, or would actually be truly random using the current generator. They would still constitute the bulk of systems in the game, and would mostly fill in areas that are in between major factions; but they would never fill the "reserved" spots near the major factions that guarantee specific systems.

This can work the other way, too: if a faction like Riftborn can become too powerful due to so many sterile systems nearby, then the number of guaranteed hand-made systems can be increased, and the ratio of sterile planets can be reduced.  They might still get lucky (or unlucky) from the pool of general systems, but this will be closer to the mid-game since these systems willl be farther away, and thus a bit harder to colonize and hold.

Anyway, just today's random musings and mumblings.

the ESG Competitive Balance Mod deals with some of that.

I can see how you would want this for MP.. but for SP I am not sure this would be better.

Personally, I play SP almost exclusively anyways, I have no time for MP. Having basically completely random systems around you is part of the fun from a SP perspective.

Maybe the only comment I have is that it wouls be nice if some of the early quests were better localized though.. I can agree to this... Nothing worse than a quest that happens so far away from you that there's no way you can make it to a system in 10 turns etc. This seems to happen ALL the time.

As for randomized worlds, it's kind of part of the challenge. Can you still beat the computer when you get a terrible start, and they have colonized 10 systems before you make it to 3? Etc.

You just want Star Control 2 with a shuffleable map.

RabidHobbit wrote:

I only play SP these days, I have not played MP in a few years.  

It's no less annoying in SP to have a home system plus neighboring systems be utterly poor, or so super rich compare to neighbors that it has more effect on the game than the difficulty setting. But of course that's definitely my opinion.

Note hower that I didn't say the worlds were not randomized at all. I agree that randomness in SP is necessary to maintain replayability. The locations of the systems is still shuffled around.  So let's say that the Sophons are guaranteed to get a nearby system called "Pyraxia", you don't know exactly where Pyraxia will be.  Additionally, the systems farther out would still be randomized.

There could be other ways to maintain randomness, also.  It might not be that a faction has 5 guaranteed systems.  It might be that they are guaranteed 5 out of a list of 7 random ones.  So there would always be 2 that don't appear. The idea isn't about removing randomness from overall system generation, it's about tweaking that randomness to not have so much of a negative impact on enjoyment.

Eh... The issue is that a great addition for someone sounds like a net loss to others. Personally, I think the only "systems" that should possess a set layout are the unique ones (Starting Capitals, Auriga, Tor, etc). For everything else, complete randomness I find preferable. You denote making sure you have access to at least one ice planet nearby, but to me, that just sounds like I'll have the same start every time for that faction: Rush the system with the ice planet. Instead, the complete anarchy of galaxy generation means I might have to stay at home and build tall, or try to take over a minor faction, or go to war with a major faction. Stuff like that is innately more fun for me to figure out than having the game guarantee a start for me.

Orbotosh wrote:

You just want Star Control 2 with a shuffleable map.

That's a great analogy. But to add to it, I am not calling for 100% of the map to be set up this way. It could be. Or it could be a very small amount of the map, like 10-20% clustered around player spawns.

I can appreciate the idea of having a little more consistency in starting positions while also appreciating that the galaxy needs to be unpredictable.  Having a slightly narrower delta of randomness in the condition of our starting systems might be a safe bet; this at least gives us the aforementioned option to just build up our home system knowing that we're not completely screwed when our constellation spawns a bunch of three planet wastelands systems or worse.  I'm sure there's some necessary tweaking in there somewhere.