Dear all,

A few weeks ago, SpaceTroll announced the first elements of our update plan of Endless Space for the coming months. He mentioned many improvements to come, and there were also some cries of anguish that these evolutions would require a fee. We have spent some time determining the cost of each feature, evolution or improvement. We have also grouped these elements together, to deliver them as packs. This allows us to have more consistent versions (for QA, localization), while atomic deliveries make it difficult to start big features.

When Endless Space was released, I announced that it was just a step in the development of the game, and we will keep our promises. The update plan will start with 3 free add-ons, following the improvement list found on the forum. These 3 free add-ons will be released until December of this year, the first one due end of September. Of course, we will continue to be agile during the development of these add-ons, asking your feedback and putting them to vote. Some of the features will get into the game anyway, because they are more annoying bugs that everyone is experiencing.

Following these 3 free add-ons, we will start working on an Expansion Pack, which will focus on bringing a new dimension to battles. if we want to be ambitious on the delivered content, and keep expanding the game, we will need to generate some revenues from expansion packs. These revenues will allow us to invest in the content creation as well as making sure our team is focused on making the best possible game. Amplitude is a young company, and we must make sure we will survive to deliver other kick a** games in the future!

You will find below the description for the content of Free Add-On 1, which is pretty much solid as we need to finalize everything. The current and upcoming G2G votes will define Free Add-On 2’s content, which content will be set end of October. Then you will vote for the content of Add-On 3.


Free Add-On 1 content:

Features / Improvements:
- The Automatons Custom Faction
- Custom Faction Affinity, so you can differentiate the visual affinity (look and ships) from the gameplay affinity
- Diplomacy Improvement on alliances, to be aware of allies decisions
- Trade Routes Sum-up : special panel to summarize and sort your active trade routes
- AI : improved tax rate management
- Hero management improvement: navigation, selection, leveling and undo
- Empire Wide factors more readable in a special panel
- Multiplayer version consistency check

Balancing:
- Economic victory possible in Endless Victory (difficulty tuning)
- Academy, hero balancing, for more balanced game starts
- Bushido trait (Hissho) balancing
- Industry cost balancing for repair and tonnage modules

Modding:
- Ability to mod ship meshes and textures (that is a big one)

Cheers to all!


Mathieu Girard
CEO
AMPLITUDE Studios