Me and my friends absolutely love Endless Space 2, however, the game is not without its faults. I'm not talking about the combat or the AI, but purely the starting systems and nearby systems for players. I say players, because the AI just doesn't care what systems they start on, they cheat on higher difficulties anyways. What I mean is that, I can't count how many times I've had to restart games because me or my friends got shafted by RNG and started with horrible starting systems (ex. 3 to 4 planets, many of which being toxic or requiring tier 3 or 4 science techs to settle). Sometimes we just deal with it, and hope we get a decent system to replace our home system, but again, RNG shafts us. One of my friends has a unintentional habit of finding single gas giant systems and toxic systems.


I have been looking at the Steam workshop to see if there were any mods that standardized or made starts better, but the best we can get are mods that increase the amount of planets on systems. My suggestion is simple, impliment a standardized start option. Maybe 2 habitable planets at the start, 4 planets on your home system, all being good for your faction (ex. Riftborn would start with an Ash or Savannah along with their home planet). Along with a guarantee that a couple of the nearby systems being beneficial to you. 




tl;dr: Please impliment an option for standardized starts. Decent starting systems along with guaranteed usable systems nearby.