znork wrote:
explpore

Okay. Now, how do I put petrol into my space ship, come to think of it where is my space ship?



I will slog away at it until the penny drops.

First impressions solely on the UI: It looks like a dream, never seen a UI so beautifully put together, so crisp and futuristic.

So here is a little update, after playing the last two days.



1. Status: I am now in turn 170 of a small galaxy map with four players. Currently I am at war with the dominant species of the galaxy.

2. What happened: I started out in a small corner of the galaxy that was basically shut off due to the only entrance to my sector via a wormhole connection. First I thought this is a stupid bug. But then I appreciated that I can develop my sector before researching warp drives and going in the enemy sector.

3. Gameplay: I really like the gameplay. The mix of exploring, combat, reseaching and ship design is making a lot of sense and fun!

4. Research: This is the first time I am really paying GOOD attention to the research tree. As I said I come from GalCiv and in GalCiv the research was kind of non-rewarding (like level grinding). Endless Space is completely different. I am really analyzing my empires shortfalls and start looking in the tech tree which next technology is needed. Than I research it (and it doesn't take Aeons) and I finally get something useful. Its great. SUPER implementation.

5. Combat: The combat is perfect. Small battles with a big advantage on one side I just auto resolve. But the more critical ones I do manually and I really watch the whole thing. You may ask why ? Well, actually you can SEE your shortfalls. I could at a certain point in time SEE that the enemy was diverting my precious missiles (which were super in the beginning of the game) and than knocked me off with his melee weapons (despite my firepower advantage). So I really started looking in the tech tree, to figure out a combination of how to change this.... (and went for shields).

6. Balance: I think the game is already nicely balanced. There may be some fine-tuning necessary, but sofar I cannot see any BIG issue.

7. Bugs: Encountered only one bug, when a battle resolution dialog was blocked do to the END Turn Waiting screen (could´t hit Auto or Manual). After the timer expired the game went on normally.

8. Visuals: Its just perfect!!!



So, a BIG THANK YOU to the developers. Can´t wait to see more of this!!



Michael

I too am enjoying this quite a bit so far. I've been playing 4x games for a long time and this one seems to fit nicely into it's own combination of several of the others. I've recently been playing Distant Worlds and this one takes a couple of welcome steps back from complexity while adding some nice touches like Leaders.



I'm still on the rails about the combat so far...I'm only 20 turns into the game and only been in 3 battles with the same pirate which have all ended in a draw. I wonder what it'll look like when there are more than 3 options in combat, and more than one ship. This leads to my 2 small complaints so far:



1) The drag and drop functionality for making/rearranging fleets would be nice sooner than later (same with production queues), and:



2) A Scout ship shouldn't take 6+ turns to repair from 50% to 100%.



I'm sure both of those issues will get worked out though.



So I'd have to say overall, this is a great effort. Flawless install from Steam, great looks, more than solid conceptually and in execution ('cept for that small Drag n Drop thing). I have high hopes for the game, and look forward to some nice "time dilation" play tonight well past the current 20 turns :-)



Bravo Gents!

Hello all. Hadn't heard of it until I saw the pre-order pop up on Steam. I love 4x so I went ahead and bought it to try the alpha. I was so disappointed by the recent Sword of the Stars release that this Alpha has already filled a hole. The research, battles and ship design system remind me of Galactic Civilizations. Really it's almost surprising that this isn't a final release. Everything is very stable.

@Maxsimal: Is this ironic or do you really think so ....



@Stilgar84: Thx for the help. I will try this immediately and I already like the concept (makes researching diplomacy much more realistic).



Michael

Slar wrote:


2nd,

this is a bit harder to explain. once you researched something and are about to construct it, you can hover your mouse over the item and get a description of what you are building for ex: +2 food etc.

I suggest being able to do that on the research screen, because i have to be honest. Without a wiki I am not sure what all the items do. I know that some are obvious like the ability to colonize tundra worlds, but others not so obvious like the difference in the type of slugs (in the weapon branch). lol.

I totally agree. This was my first thought as well. The tech tree is awesome in it's scope and depth, but also very intimidating, particularly because I have no way to know what these technologies are actually going to do for me. A hover-over/clickable explanation of the unlocked items would be a perfect solution (short of a full "civilopedia" style interactive in-game documentation system).

Meridos42 wrote:


5. Diplomacy: Met one other AI player and tried to look for a deal, but no options showed up (have to figure out if that is related to the cold war status or what...)

You need to do some research on the left branch to unlock different kind of treaty (like peace...)

First impression reports like this are quite useful

Don't mention it!



Ah and to avoid frustrations... make sure you don't select a too high difficulty level for your first playthroughs... Till you have learned the ropes, so to speak.

Joote wrote:
Now that's more like it, I am getting somewhere. I wish they had wrote something like this on the first page of the manual. Thank you very much.

Sharidann wrote:
You got a ship full of gas!



Basically, you have your first system. 1 ship icon in orbit. click on the icon, you will see you have 2 fleets, Alpha and Beta. One is a Scout vessel, the other a colony ship. Send the scout vessel towards nearby stars to explore and once you find a suitable star with colonizable planets send the colony ship on its way. (select ship, right click on destination star and voila).

Meanwhile, check the research menu and begin to work on the tech tree, and select the system menu to ensure you choose a specialization for your planet as well as improvements for your system.



And pray pirates don't get ugly on JOO!

Now that's more like it, I am getting somewhere. I wish they had wrote something like this on the first page of the manual. Thank you very much.

Well everything's is going great so far. Downloaded fast and without problems.



WOW --- ok just had to say it : ) I'm playing on Fantastic and it's a good name for it !!! amazing graphics, love being able to watch the planet turn and then noticed that it had a moon too. So Cool



yes there is a lot of information to learn & absorb but it just takes a little time. My biggest problem is finding some thing I'm looking for, so just do a lot of looking around for stuff. The tutorial makes for a good reference. Use it for what you need at the moment and not try to learn everything all at once.



I've played just over an hour and see no problems yet. I'm looking forward to spending more time with it & exploring the game more

You got a ship full of gas!



Basically, you have your first system. 1 ship icon in orbit. click on the icon, you will see you have 2 fleets, Alpha and Beta. One is a Scout vessel, the other a colony ship. Send the scout vessel towards nearby stars to explore and once you find a suitable star with colonizable planets send the colony ship on its way. (select ship, right click on destination star and voila).

Meanwhile, check the research menu and begin to work on the tech tree, and select the system menu to ensure you choose a specialization for your planet as well as improvements for your system.



And pray pirates don't get ugly on JOO!

Joote wrote:
Okay. Now, how do I put petrol into my space ship, come to think of it where is my space ship?



I will slog away at it until the penny drops.

Hi Folks,



I guess you (the players and the developers :-)) are looking for some first impression report; so here it is :-)



First: I am an old GalCiv, SotS, Space Empire player so please forgive me if I start comparing :-)



I downloaded the game around an hour ago and just make a quick brake for the report (so far I progressed only to turn 14 of the game, but it took me a while to check out the UI).



1. Installation/Download/Performance: Game installed without a problem. I am playing the game in my Parallels Desktop Virtual Machine on my Mid-2011 iMac. No performance issues at all: Resolution is at 2460*1440, Details on"Beautiful" (that is the second highest setting). I experienced NO crashes or bugs during my first hour (which is quite an experience for an Alpha after the recent SotS II Final exercise).

2. User Interface is pretty organized and smooth. It is like a mixture of SotS and Master of Orion 3. I had no problem understanding the logic of the menus. Only point of criticism (if any). The Menus looked very small on my resolution (maybe there is an option to scale those upwards, I did not check), but that is maybe just the old eyes of an old guy.

3. Gameplay: First I explored the different options in Research, Academy (thats for Heroes), Fleet, Planets, etc. I briefly scanned the tech tree and choose an Warfare tech to explore.

I started out with my home system and went to colonize the next available star system. That worked exactly as expected (sent you ships and colonize). After loosing my colonization ship in this process I went on with my Scout to check out the neighborhood. The scout got into trouble with a pirate and I had my first battle. He survived :-) and got some experience. I noticed that the HP started recovering after I went on exploring with the scout. In summary: Gameplay is as solid as you would expect from a cool turn based 4x game. Events pop up, etc... Its rock solid.

4. Combat: Never saw this kind of combat implementation in such a game. I am not a real time fan, so I think this battle card combat might be the solution for me, but I still have to play around with it to fully understand the system.

5. Diplomacy: Met one other AI player and tried to look for a deal, but no options showed up (have to figure out if that is related to the cold war status or what...)



Again in summary: Rock stable core engine for an ALPHA. Way to early for me to say something about the long term fun factor, but I like the core functionalities and I like the (at least for me) new touch of heroes with EXP, etc.. I did not play around with ship design yet :-)



So, here you have my 2 cents....



More to follow soon...





Michael

explpore

I have the manual printed off, which tells me roughly the same things that are in games tutorial, but it still keeps flying over my head.

It's not the knowing where and what everything is, but more, what the heck it is that I am suppose to be doing. :rolleyes:

znork wrote:
Yes but you have played more games then most No question is to stupid to ask. If you need help to turn on the computer, this the place to ask

Actually... I worked in a user help desk, once. Some person that will not be mentioned any further phoned in: "Hey, the monitor seems to be out of order!". Gone there, rattled a bit on the monitor cable for effect, "no signal" on the screen, bent down, switched the PC on...

If you aren't used to 4X games in general I can see how you can feel like everything is thrown at you all at once. The good news is thematically the objectives across this genre of game is universal. Probably the easiest way to treat the tutorial is as a quick reference guide on what everything means. In order to figure out what is really going on I encourage you to just start playing and experimenting with the controls. The AI may smash you a few times before you figure out what is going on, but that is half the fun!

Yes but you have played more games then most No question is to stupid to ask. If you need help to turn on the computer, this the place to ask

download the manual from Steam... http://cdn.steampowered.com/Manuals/208140/Endless%20Space%20User%20Manual%20Alpha.pdf?t=1336004252



Or ask questions here. I found the game controls really intuitive.