The first couple of times I played, I did things like cancel my first build order when it was nearly complete, and got my colony ship (which for some reason I hadn't realised was a colony ship) destroyed by pirates. This annoyed me so I started again.



My first full game:

I switched off the tutorial since I'd already read the same messages in my first two games and they were annoying me. This might mean I missed out on some stuff. Is there a 'help' button that could give you the tips for an individual screen whenever you want?

I got off to a good start and expanded as far as possible. (Unlike Civ 4, where you get mounting empire management costs for having a lot of cities / planets, there seems to be no disadvantage to rapid expansion, which must make things hard for someone with a poor start location.)

The initial pace of the game was pretty slow - I hardly got anything done in the first 50 turns.

As time went by, I made a peace treaty with my immediate neighbor, fought various pirates, and focused on technologies that allowed me to colonize a wider variety of planets. I got a message notifying me that one of the three alien races had been wiped out; I never met them. I tried to trade technologies but the other races seemed only to offer me very poor deals. I couldn't help noticing they were more advanced than me, so I started making those buildings that give +40 science.

After the galaxy was largely full, I moved on to researching weapons and building a fleet in time to have my closest neighbor declare war on me. He had better tech than me, but only three systems. I managed to defeat most of his fleets, but it took me a while to work out how to invade his worlds. Even then I didn't understand how to tell how long it would take or even if it was even possible for a given fleet to take a given system. It wasn't clear what the invasion power of a fleet was, how much difference invasion modules make, and what heroes can do to help, if anything.

It wasn't until much later I realized that if I zoomed in closer a bar would appear showing how much progress I had made, and if I monitored it from turn to turn I could get a feel for when I would be successful. Also, when I did successfully invade, it wasn't announced anywhere.

At the same time I was fighting that war, my other, more distant neighbors declared war on me. I decided to ignore them since they only had one world that I could see, and they weren't being very aggressive. I even tried to make peace with them. On the diplomacy screen, there was a score number. Their score was about three times what mine was. I considered quitting, but then I hovered my mouse over it and it said that was my just 'Diplomatic status with this empire', whatever that is. (And why would I have a diplomatic status with my own empire?)

I managed to conquer my other neighbor; now it was just a question of mopping up. I only took a vague interest in the details of running my empire, as I was clearly going to win either way.

Yet, surprisingly, my other opponent, with his tiny empire, was able to field more ships than me, and they were more technologically advanced too. I had only two advantages - high level captains, and better strategy. For a while I suspected him of cheating. It seemed unfair that in the very first game at the default Normal difficulty, the AI would get bonuses. Either that, or I was doing something wrong.

I went on the offensive in the hope he'd withdraw his ships to defend his territory, and found that when I moved to one of his worlds, a whole bunch of new navigation channels opened up, leading to stars I'd never noticed before. He wasn't cheating; his empire was just bigger than I'd realized.

As we fought on, I started to make some gains. After a while, the game told me I had control of half the galaxy. This was quite a shock as a few turns previously I would have guessed I controlled 90%; I had been fighting an enemy with a bigger empire than me all along.

'Small' galaxies are kinda... big.

The war went on for a century or so; he had some really powerful ships but he often put them in fleets that were just the right size for my captains with full fleets to defeat, and he left some of his planets undefended for long enough that I could take them.

Then, abruptly, the game ended. Apparently one of the worlds I'd been orbiting was the enemy capital, and when that fell I had won a supremacy victory. I would have liked some warning: "Hold this captured system for four years to win Supremacy."

I would also have liked one of those graphs that shows population, technology and military power over time. I'd be interested to know how much of an underdog I was. Reloading a save from turn 100 and quitting told me that my score really was less than half that of the leading AI.

I enjoyed the game; according to Steam it took me 11 hours. Which is a long time for a small galaxy. If I play again I'll probably play Tiny galaxy with accelerated time.





(Continued in next post due to character limit.)

I've heard Endless Space compared to the Master of Orion games, but with its missile / laser / kinetic weapons & shields, it's a lot more similar to Galactic Civilizations 2. I prefer the space battles and planet development in Endless Space, though GalCiv2 has better diplomacy (or at least, more interesting and flavorful diplomacy. The balance wasn't great there; if you had high Diplomacy skill the AI was far too easy to manipulate.)



Anyway, since it's still alpha, here's a list of places where I think there's room for improvement, mainly in terms of interface.



Research screen:

I found this confusing. There are so many choices and I had no idea how to find the ones I wanted, or even if they existed. I was losing a lot of battles to an enemy whose fleets were three times the maximum size of mine. I guessed there was a logistics technology that made it possible to increases command points, but I didn't know where to look for it or what it would be called. I had a similar experience trying to find a way to make my people better at invasions. I spent some time hovering my mouse over random technologies without much success. (It was a long time before I even realized you could find out about the bonuses given by the technologies by hovering over the icons inside them.)

It's the kind of thing that probably becomes easy when you've play the game multiple times but is off-putting to new players, reviewers, etc.

I'm afraid I don't have any brilliant ideas for how to make it better - possibly an alternative view that lists technologies based on function?



Planet / System view screen:

The improvement icons didn't mean much to me, so I had to go over them all, hovering the mouse to find out what they were. I can't help thinking it would be a lot easier to make decisions if I could have a text list of all the things I could build on that planet, sorted by how long they'd take to complete:

Survey Eta II Moon 1 Turn

Colonize Eta III 3 Turns

Colonial Rights 5 Turns

There is a weird bit of description in some of the tool-tips: "-2 (coin picture) on improvement". That appears to be a maintenance cost but it's a confusing way to say it. I'm not keen on upkeep costs for buildings - I thought Civ 4 was right to get rid of them. I like choosing which improvement is the best one to build next, not having to calculate which ones are worth owning in the first place. But the costs didn't seem too crippling in play so it's probably OK.

You should have more control over the build queue - if you cancel something, it should secretly remain in partially completed form so you can resume production later on. Clicking on a build in progress is very easy to do by mistake or when you don't know it cancels.

I didn't really understand the function of food. Does it get imported / exported? Why was my populations growth so slow on certain worlds?

Presumably in the late game some of my citizens were conquered aliens; it would be nice to replace the little population unit icons with pictures of the species in question.



Ship design screen:

I never worked out how to upgrade an existing ship. I never really tried, instead sending my obsolescent vessels into enemy territory in the hope that they'd capture enemy worlds quicker.

It took me a LONG time to notice that there was a scrollbar on the support modules section. I was wondering why I hadn't managed to research any engine upgrades yet; it turned out I had but hadn't found where to add them from.

Sometimes I had 8 tons of weight capacity left, but couldn't add an 8 ton item. Is that due to hidden fractional weights or something?



Diplomacy screen:

I don't feel able to judge the diplomacy from a single game which mostly consisted of war to the death. The interface was good enough.

I like it in games like this when, rather than me having to guess at what might be acceptable, the AI makes counter-offers. "No, but I would accept that tech trade if you threw in this much money..."



Heroes:

I generally enjoyed the heroes, though the rate at which they were made available was odd. You have no heroes... Now you suddenly have three... Now you have access to another three, but you can't use them because you don't have the technology. Maybe there should be more hero-recruiting technologies available earlier on?

I wanted a way to make my heroes better at capturing planets, but I didn't know what that would be called. The 'ground pounder' abilities sounded like they might do that but I never knew if it was helping.

Some of the hero upgrades referred to dust cost for using hero abilities. At no point was I aware of any hero abilities that cost dust.

Sometimes I couldn't put a hero on a ship and I didn't know why.



Galaxy view:

My preferred zoomed out view didn't show enough detail - ship icons and planet data faded out for no obvious reason (I was playing in 1680 by 1050 if that matters.) I also didn't understand until nearly the end of the game what shape the galaxy was.

If there isn't a button that switches control between fleets that haven't used all their movement points up, there should be.

Sometimes I couldn't put a ship in a fleet and I don't know why.

Is it possible to set a fleet as a target for a fleet and catch them in space? I found I could generally avoid unwinnable battles just by making sure my fleets didn't end their turn at a system.

It would be useful to announce in the notifications area if you have any planets that aren't producing anything, and maybe even if you have ships in your hangars that you might have forgotten about.



Battle tactics:

In the end, I liked the 'cards'. It started off as a simple guessing game but as more tactics became available I could choose them based on the enemy ships. Over-rely on lasers, will you? Taste my magnetic fields, alien scum! Could we have 'retreat' as an option? It's not much fun when you're controlling a colony ship in battle with pirates.

In the battles I fought, there seemed very little point in bringing along small ships. They always got destroyed almost immediately when the big cruisers were fighting. Maybe you could have the combat AI focus more of their attacks on the bigger targets?

After the early game, most battles were settled at medium range. Does that mean kinetic weapons aren't worth getting?

It's a bit silly how you can repair your ships in battle faster than you can repair them out of battle.



Turn-based compromises:

I like turn-based games because they move at my pace. If I want to stop and think, I can. When I'm ready, the game advances immediately to the next decision. Fleet battles were not like that - I had to make decisions in a hurry. If I don't know what I'm going to do, I don't really have time to read what all my options are before the fighting starts. And if I do know what I'm going to do, I have to wait around before anything happens.

There's no mechanical need for that in a single-player turn-based game. It's either to make things smoother for multi-player, or it's to allow the graphical space battles to show themselves off, neither of which are as important to me as being in control of the pace.

I had similar problems with the odd delay on the pre-battle screen. Also, sometimes a completely non-interactive battle window would pop up, making me wait but giving me no option for a manual battle.



(There's a lot of nit-picks there, so let me reiterate: I enjoyed the game. Also, I had no crashes, which is pretty impressive for an alpha.)

I enjoyed that story. Thanks.

Great story & feedback -- thanks for that. The galaxy size comment is interesting, because that is one thing we're hearing a lot about. In particular, some players think the 'Huge' is too small!



I'd be curious to hear your reactions when you play on Tiny (but be careful - that will be a fast game

Slowhands wrote:
Great story & feedback -- thanks for that. The galaxy size comment is interesting, because that is one thing we're hearing a lot about. In particular, some players think the 'Huge' is too small!



I'd be curious to hear your reactions when you play on Tiny (but be careful - that will be a fast game

Bigger is always better, in my opinion.



Very good read, Downie, hope the devs find time to read your posts.

I do want huge to be bigger even though I probably won't play it I want to have the option to do a gigantic game. I think thats just because some other games like Sins of a Solar empire can be absurd in the size.



Epic post though Downie. I enjoyed reading it. I'll reply to the battle comments because those are the ones I agreed with the most. I really want a retreat card too I've seen request appear many times. I see how it could get annoying in a game though when the opponent just spams retreat over and over. Maybe have it so retreat has a really big penalty. Something like if enemy fleet strength is greater than yours 50% of your ships escape and 50% die to make it so no one wants to play it unless its an emergency?



Second can we get the ability to "dock" ships at hangers to repair them faster, or maybe an upgrade at a planet that increases repair speed.



Third, I'll talk about the UI a bit, It's beautiful I love it but there are a few things that have to be tweaked. Namely is there a way to undo a science research choice? I had to reload the game once because I accidentally clicked and queued up like 6 trade tech things that would have taken me like 40 turns to research.



Fourth, again about research. I love the search button, it is genius. However can you broaden the key words that it searches for so that we can search for something like "happiness" or whatever the level of contentment is called and it will give us a list of techs that help improve it?



Overall epic alpha I hope we see more in depth posts like Downie.

I would like to comment on the galaxy size.



Most games would feel better if planets/systems were more scarce, so that you really have to get the most out of each system.

Many times when I am playing these types of games I get management fatigue, system number 10 wants attention, and well.. I just can't be bothered to really put work into it anymore.

A lot of games 'fix' this by giving automation options, but personally I feel that's just treating the symptom of too many damn things to manage.



But then people will argue that the 'map' will be too small, so yeah to counter that, create more space between the systems.

Or liven up the map with other items besides systems, so fleet have places of interest to go to.





Endless Space in general:



I think the economic part is really well done, the system works quite well and suits the game.

The tech tree I find a mixed bag, exploration / science I think are really nice.

Combat/trade I find rather boring personally.

Combat tree is for 90% skills related to the three weapon types and their counters, I kinda miss other items of interest in there.

This might be because of me, because the 'military' buildings in this game make no sense at all to me. Some seem to prolongue invasion times, but I never found the need ever to build such a thing. I have no clue why I would want any of these buildings..

Economy tree: I think this is mostly irrelevant since the 'optimal' way to go about economy is to set the tax closest to 0% and then make your income with Industry->Dust.



Combat system is nice.

But I find it a bit too hands off for my liking.

I think it would be greatly improved if you could tell in the interface which ships your fleet should primary.

A suggestion to make it work, would be a list of all enemy ships that you can drag around, topmost ship will feel the love.

By using a pre-generated list the game will always have a target to shoot at until the last ship is down.

There also seems to be a great room for improvement when it comes to support modules, pure support ships could be interesting.

Right now I feel there doesn't seem to be enough incentive/reason to make a mixed fleet composed of different ships.





I also cannot leave without saying that I really like the UI, it's bascially the reason I bought the game, I saw it on youtube and wast just intrigued.

In some way the style really reminded me of Alpha Centauri.



Keep up the good work

illapa wrote:
I do want huge to be bigger even though I probably won't play it I want to have the option to do a gigantic game. I think thats just because some other games like Sins of a Solar empire can be absurd in the size.



Epic post though Downie. I enjoyed reading it. I'll reply to the battle comments because those are the ones I agreed with the most. I really want a retreat card too I've seen request appear many times. I see how it could get annoying in a game though when the opponent just spams retreat over and over. Maybe have it so retreat has a really big penalty. Something like if enemy fleet strength is greater than yours 50% of your ships escape and 50% die to make it so no one wants to play it unless its an emergency?



Second can we get the ability to "dock" ships at hangers to repair them faster, or maybe an upgrade at a planet that increases repair speed.



Third, I'll talk about the UI a bit, It's beautiful I love it but there are a few things that have to be tweaked. Namely is there a way to undo a science research choice? I had to reload the game once because I accidentally clicked and queued up like 6 trade tech things that would have taken me like 40 turns to research.



Fourth, again about research. I love the search button, it is genius. However can you broaden the key words that it searches for so that we can search for something like "happiness" or whatever the level of contentment is called and it will give us a list of techs that help improve it?



Overall epic alpha I hope we see more in depth posts like Downie.

Oh dear, I've been playing Sins of a Solar Empire a bit recently on the Huge scale systems, and I found those to only be "expansive enough" for the likes of me. Then again, I was eventually forced to set everything onto "fastest" speed, so maybe I'm just in the wrong.



I forgot to talk about the lack of retreat (though seeing as I'm not in the alpha yet, I don't think my words should carry much, if any, weight). I think there absolutely should be a retreat option, but I think it should always be available. I rather dislike your idea of losing ships just to retreat, though. If I were to do a system, it would be a card that starts sending your ships to a "safe" outer area. You sacrifice all of your combat turns to attempt an escape and you can't undo the retreat (thus it would need some kind of warning before use). Instead of losing ships upon retreating, just make some kind of equation that takes into account the number of enemy ships, the number of friendly ships, and the distance between the fleets to determine whether a retreat is successful in the first place. Losing ships because of being outnumbered in a battle can be a bit too punishing to already weakened players and retreat would just expedite a game's end (though you can argue that such is fair in galactic warfare).



@Riithi I actually get quite the kick out of massive scale micromanagement of even planets, but I can certainly understand your point. I disagree with your opinion, but I can certainly respect that it probably represents a much larger majority than my own.

It's interesting to read this as I am pretty new to these types of games. I have and played Sins and GalCiv2 but I always feel daunted and not to mention I have poor attention span. I need to stick with things! I hope to play those and this and get plenty of enjoyment by myself and with friends.