Hey there



I want to introduce myself before I get too much into this :P

My name is Phil Ward (Wolfmaskman) and I’m a Games Design Student @ Teesside University in the UK. I’m just about to end my 2nd year of study (May 2012) and to go onto my final year. I hope that I can get myself noticed enough in my final year to get a job in industry, until then however I’m working with UDK and Unity to create game concepts and mechanics.



Now that that is out of the way….



First I just wanted to say how impressed I am with the game. I’ve always loved space games and I have played the good and the bad and Endless Space is definitely up there with the good. The visual style is amazing and the gameplay (for the most part) is smooth and intuitive.



As a Games Designer myself, I can see the amount of graft that has gone into this game even though it’s in Alpha and you guys should be proud of yourselves



Now for my ideas

1.

Bottle Necking & Defensive Gameplay

I think that if an enemy fleet is traversing your territory it should have to stop without fail and engage any fleet that it encounters in orbit around a planet. My reasoning for this is that if your fleet is in orbit it would respond to an enemy fleet being there even if it was meaning to move onto your next planet.



This would create an interesting gameplay mechanic of “bottle necking” your defences so that an enemy fleet would have to get past this one defensive point to get into your core systems.

Currently in the game I’m playing there is only one way to get into my core systems of 14 worlds and that’s through a star system, if this system would be in place I could focus the bulk of my defensive forces there and protect my core systems from attack.



On the defensive side I really think systems should be able to build defences other than ships in orbit. It can use the same battle system but defensive platforms, space stations and starbases may be able to defend key systems better.



2.

Little Animations…

Simply put I think it would be cool to see little animation of small cargo ships and civilian transport ships flitting backwards and forwards from your worlds.

The density of these ships streams would be dependent on how rich the resources were or how popular the system was, with all ships eventually going back to your home world. As they say “All Roads lead back to Rome” (or Orion as it is in my case)

Another interesting thing you could do with these streams is make them disperse if there is an enemy ship in that lane, they would take an alternate route for the duration that they were in there. That may also increase the resource output & input of a system that normally wouldn’t be along the trade route for a short time.



3.

Actual Systems

I love the system you have in place now with the planets lined up and the star in the background but I think to make this a truly space themed game it would be awesome if you could look at the system as an Actual Star system with the planets orbiting around its parent star.

In this viewing mode as well you could implement my animation idea further by having ships “warp” in and out of the system and fly towards the planet that they’re interested in for resource or commerce.

That could be one viewing mode and the other is the default line up on the planets.



4.

Deep Space Combat



Essentially if you have a fleet in transit towards another system (along the warp lanes) then you should go into combat in deep space.

This means you can intercept fleets as they're coming in.



5.

Player Controlled Battle Cameras

I really wanna be able to watch a battle how I choose and sometimes I find that I miss ships exploding because the camera shifts. So having a system in place that means I can choose the camera at will would be nice.

Also another thought on that. How about saving battle replays, for watching later. Maybe have a competition each week that shows the most epic battle or something?



My Criticisms

Lack of Visual and Audio Feedback

What lets the game down is that the player has to be observant of everything that’s going on at once, which is quite hard to do when you have a massive empire.



Visual Feedback

Pulsing Warning On System/Lanes

A simple gameplay mechanic that makes a system and its surrounding lanes pulse a colour (normally red) to indicate that there Is an enemy fleet there. The amount of times I’ve only noticed there was an enemy fleet at one of my systems when I’ve been just casually scrolling through looking for things to build is unreal.

Also you could add into the research tree a kind of “Early Warning System” that tells the player that an enemy fleet is inbound if it is 1 or 2 systems away.



Audio Feedback

This point is directly related to the visual feedback. An audio system that tells you when one of your systems has an enemy fleet in it. That would be extremely useful as then you can re-prioritise what that system has, maybe buy a ship to help defend it while you get the main bulk of you force to that planet.



Tutorial

I’ll be honest, I didn’t follow the tutorial or even look at is. Why? Because it was actually quite scary to look at and process. I bought the game to play it not spend my time reading a tutorial.

My suggestion to get around this is either have some tutorial missions that let you play the game as you learn and/or have the tutorials as videos in game (the same way that Deus Ex:HR does its tutorials)

Saying all that though I do have a pretty good handle on how the game plays (mostly).



Tech Tree

I’m not 100% sure what’s wrong with the tech tree but to me it doesn’t feel right. Most of the time I’m just randomly researching things because I don’t really know what they do.

I think the layout of the tech tree could be better, maybe have more specific lanes for certain technologies, for instance those who wanna research laser weapons can do so at a glance.

As I say I’m not 100% sure whats wrong with the tech tree it just doesn’t sit well with me



Verdict

I am well aware that this game is still in Alpha and from what I’ve seen I’m going to go ahead and say that when this is finished it’s going to be an amazing game. There are some things that I would rework and do again but it’s your game not mine :P



Graphics 8/10

Its one of the best looking space strategy games I’ve ever seen (only second to Sins of a Solar Empire) and the planets are gorgeous. I think it’s a shame that you can’t see the planets in real time in their native systems and rotate around them but I love how the game looks.



Gameplay 7/10

The gameplay is solid and fun but it doesn’t really push the boundary. There are some technical things that are promised in the game that could be pretty ground breaking but its still just a turn based strategy space game. One of the better ones don’t get me wrong but it really needs to do more to make a cult impact like “Sins” or “Gal Civ”



Difficulty 8/10

The game is a nice challenge and it curves nicely as you play. I have found however that sometimes the enemy will have amassed a huge fleet and I have no idea how to counter it. But otherwise I think the game has a nice difficulty curve to it.



Replayability 7/10

So far I can see myself coming back to this game again and again. The score would be higher if I could do little things in the game that I would expect from a fully 3D and highly rendered title such as this. What I mean by that is let my look at things my way, the planets, ships, battles and the galaxy. I feel like I should be able to do this but I can’t for some reason. You’ve obviously put a lot of work into making this game look good, so let me see it :P

Also when mods are introduced (I personally am holding out for a Battle Star Galactica & Star Trek Mod) then the replayability will shoot up. People may learn of this game through mods and that will make people want to buy it.

My last suggestion on that is fully embrace the modding community, show newbies who wanna make mods how to do it and veterans the access on how to implement it.



Final Word

This is a great game with massive potential. Don’t miss that boat and people will be playing this game for years to come



Phil

Welcome

thanks nice to be here

Another thing I’d like to suggest is camera control during battles

I really wanna be able to watch a battle how I choose and sometimes I find that I miss ships exploding because the camera shifts. So having a system in place that means I can choose the camera at will would be nice.

Also another thought on that. How about saving battle replays, for watching later. Maybe have a competition each week that shows the most epic battle or something?



One bug that is really starting to get me down is sometimes an enemy fleet will sometimes move towards my fleet during their turn and attack it. when the window comes up for me to choose "automatic" or "manual" i can't choose because its still the AI turn and all my options are inactive



just some thoughts

Phil

wolfmaskman wrote:
I think that if an enemy fleet is traversing your territory it should have to stop without fail and engage any fleet that it encounters in orbit around a planet.

I read a post about being unable to intercept fleets as it is now is a bug, that you are meant to be able to stop any fleet passing through a system.

Can't for the life of me find the post where I read it, though...

Solitas wrote:
I read a post about being unable to intercept fleets as it is now is a bug, that you are meant to be able to stop any fleet passing through a system.

Can't for the life of me find the post where I read it, though...

ah well if its a known thing :P

Had another idea while i was playing:



Deep Space Combat



Essentially if you have a fleet in transit towards another system (along the warp lanes) then you should go into combat in deep space.

This means you can intercept fleets as they're coming in.

As far i can see you focused on little additions.

Just out of curiosity: are you new to the genre?

Aerensiniac wrote:
As far i can see you focused on little additions.

Just out of curiosity: are you new to the genre?

Nope far from it

Been gaming for about 15 years. my favourite types of games are RTS and TBS.

why i'm suggesting little things so far is because i haven't played enough of the game to suggest anything big or radical

One thing i'm not too keen on is the fact that enemy ships can get into my territory without using the warp lanes.

i'm fine with the fact that ships can go from planet to planet without the lanes but i think it should be ONLY within your own territory.

Maybe put it down to a fact your empire projects a field of energy at a certain frequency and only ships with that frequency of drive and traverse it, therefore enemy ships can'y use it...



just a thought