Hi,



I just like to get everybody's opinion on their most and/or least useful hero classes and abilities. Please, give some info as to when and/or why they are most/least useful.



For a comprehensive list of hero classes and abilities go to Endless Space Wiki.

For me, in every gameplay, I always have a hero with administration trait: It helps when placing them in new colonies to boost their population. When I play Horatio, i clone 3 of these guys for quick colony expansion. The Ministry of Propaganda ability is my favorite so I can keep colonizing mulitple planets on a system until their industry are able to produce the planet upgrades in less turns.



For combat, I prefer to keep a pilot. If it's also a commander, perfect. I like to lean on the defensive side.



My least used class is the Corporate. I don't usually trade and even when I dont, it's only a few dust per route.

I think Director 1, 2, and 3 are the most useful for their increase in food and industry production. I think the least useful is just about everything in the Corporate group since trade is wonky at the moment.

repbunny wrote:
For me, in every gameplay, I always have a hero with administration trait: It helps when placing them in new colonies to boost their population. When I play Horatio, i clone 3 of these guys for quick colony expansion. The Ministry of Propaganda ability is my favorite so I can keep colonizing mulitple planets on a system until their industry are able to produce the planet upgrades in less turns.



For combat, I prefer to keep a pilot. If it's also a commander, perfect. I like to lean on the defensive side.



My least used class is the Corporate. I don't usually trade and even when I dont, it's only a few dust per route.

I totally agree with this. The corporate is useles unless we do not have better diplomancy and therefore better abillyties to trade.

I preffer an administrator for my colonies and pilots for my fleets.

I got two types of heros

Industry supporters:

Director&Negotiator is must



Fighter

Assailant&Defender here



I do not use/need: Dust Wielder&Corporate&almost all Adventurer tree. There is too many food advantages in Engineer tree. Food is important, but there is not big problem for systems to make it by themself. Especially if You taking Director anyway.

Does this game use different terms when it is released in different countries or are people just making up names?



Generally:

Best: Veteran 2 and Cyberskilled, but that much is obvious.



Worst: Dust Wielder

You never get it except as a prereq for something you actually want. Even if you fight every turn, this is the tiniest of drops in your bucket added to income.



Anyway, by class:

Administrator:

Best:

Flat Production Increase

Flat Food Increase

20% industry increase.



Worst:

Black Market

Their defense skill



You wont use either of these, ever.



Adventurer:

Best:

Battle Tactic: Illusion. Easily the best action card in the game. The others should be so good.

Everything that comes from Master Hacker. Efficient Solid abilities.

Battle Tactic: Beam Surge would get a mention here, but I will get into it needs...



Worst:

Inside Informant and Insight: The two worst abilities in the game. At level 20 they would represent a +16 increase in your income for 2 skill points, for whichever given one you took. Only remotely viable if you also get Beam Surge, one of the better Battle Actions in the game.



Corporate:

Best: Industry-Academic Partnership



Mid: Security Specialist



Worst: Everything else. Trade is trash and I can't imagine anyone wanting to improve it except to give themselves a challenge. Even with the 1000+% trade boost that Corporate can give, it only pushes Trade up to usable, barely.



Commander:

Best: Complicated, it determines how you fight.

I personally recommend Tactics 1 and 2.

Emergency Shelter can be pretty good, but I fear in actual fights it would be too obvious a choice.



Worst:

Commander-in-Chief

You don't need that Exp bonus and it is taking away from very important and very limited skill points. Honestly, I am not even sure it would reduce the time it took you to get level 18 usable skill points (level 20) compared to normal (level 18).



Pilot:

Everything they get is just sorta generally good.

Any ability that makes the hero produce more food. As an admin/corp they're already causing a huge food boost, and by the time they have enough exp to get the food bonus, the system is at max population. I get the level up notification and go "MOAR PRODUCTION" and find that I've already grabbed the +Wit bonuses, the two +Production bonuses, the happiness bonus, and I go "ugh" and get the "+1 to all stats" bonus for that 2% extra FIDS.



Worse than even that is the "-50% overpopulation unhappiness" bonus. It's worth an AMAZING 1% approval. Tops. It doesn't even compare to the +25 system approval bonus.

Overall, I find security specialist useless in the current version of the game; same goes for forsight. If someone can explain why they are worth 1 ability point a piece, it'd be much appreciated.

Ketobor wrote:
... Best: Veteran 2 and Cyberskilled, but that much is obvious...

Yep, Veteran 1,2,3,4 is pretty useful, especially if don't have any other decent abilities to add to your hero. Once you get to vet4, cyberskilled is obvious Also, Hyper-driven, which is unlocked by cyberskilled.

Ketobor wrote:
...Worst: Dust Wielder

You never get it except as a prereq for something you actually want. Even if you fight every turn, this is the tiniest of drops in your bucket added to income. ...

Dust Wielder 1 unlocks "Fearless Foe" for commander, and "Industry-Academic Partnership". Second level of dust wielder seems pointless.

Ketobor wrote:
... Battle Tactic: Illusion...

I find that "illusion" is one of the best battle tactics, and fun to use.

repbunny wrote:
... always have a hero with administration trait...

craigbic wrote:
... Director 1, 2, and 3 are the most useful for their increase in food and industry production...

A must for hero that is stuck planet-side. Also, I find that Crop Geneticist 1 is very useful. On the other hand, Crop Geneticist 2 seems useless because I would rather build food improvements that can be scrapped when the system is full instead of wasting an ability point.

Draco18s wrote:
... get the "+1 to all stats" bonus for that 2% extra FIDS...

Agreed. Veteran 1,2,3,4 is useful and allows you to stick a combat hero on a planet during "peace" time. This is why I like hyperdriven, because you can move your hero back and forth where he/she is needed.

My favorite classes are pilot and Agricultural/Industry.



Pilot is my favorite combat class, for when you get to tinkering and lethal modder and what not, there is no better fleet out there. I've had old, old outdated vessels stand against new, scary tech of all sorts because of their stalwart commander and their Macgyvering of my ships. Out of it, I'd say all that comes after tinkerer is the best choice for them (And engine tinkering rocks, because for a huge empire, you need fast response).



Agricultural/Industry is great for its approval and industry bonus. If you are at war or just building up a sector, there is no other. For those, my favorite has to be the director series and the approval bonuses.





Now why didn't I choose the others?



Well Corporate is really nice, it is, but I find that the other races tend to hate me very fast until I am so large they are asking for peace out of fear more so than any other desire (even as the UE I find it hard to keep allies once they see my size or note my military. There really is no pleasing them, either it's too big or too small).



Commander, I feel, doesn't have really great traits. I end up just choosing the abilities like Dust Warheads and Ultimate Defense, because I have nothing else I want to take on them



Adventurer is great and I I love the master hacker ability (it really helps with recon). I have no real qualms with this one, actually. I just prefer pilot for its combat applications (Since I'm stuck in war a lot, whether or not I want it).

Ketobor wrote:
Best: Veteran 2 and Cyberskilled, but that much is obvious.

Very informative. You have obviously spent a lot of time going through the ability trees. Is there a resource you know of which lists all the abilities for the different classes? If not, would you be interested in creating one? Just about everything else is documented somewhere, but not this.

davea wrote:
Very informative. You have obviously spent a lot of time going through the ability trees. Is there a resource you know of which lists all the abilities for the different classes? If not, would you be interested in creating one? Just about everything else is documented somewhere, but not this.

I meant 4, for what its worth (as Vet 1-3 are identical).



The wiki has had them all listed for awhile now.

http://endlessspace.wikia.com/wiki/Abilities



Edited to include Battle Action: Illusion. To the best of my knowledge it is complete right now.

Also, wow. There are FOUR abilities to get more food in a system. One of which is meh. +50% food on Blockaded Star System. The other three are worth (minimum) +60 food.



Nothing, nothing is that good if you want to raise a particular, single, ability. Production? +30 production (measuring only abilities; +25 +20%). System defense? +10 (there's a single building that gives you +100!). Getting that 60 food by using system improvements and planetary income is expensive (I've found that if I want to increase food (and am not playing Horatio) there's very few structures that are beneficial; one of which only works on very specific planets, and none of those bonuses are very large (1/pop, or less).



Only trade route bonuses go higher. Roughly +400% (assuming a 20 wit, which you should pretty much get on a corp/admin; I tend to have 19s easy without Veteran). System improvements can't even touch this.