I never quite understood the entire notion of "a few planets per system".



I mean, the one system we know well has at least 9 (including the asteroid belt... ok, 8 if you discount mercury, living there would be difficult). Why is the maximum 6? Ok, our star system _may_ be exceptional, but everyone always errs on the side that it is, rather than not. Perhaps it's just for gameplay reasons...

flopsies wrote:
I think that there should be new stars and planets, with more random events/encounters. Like a star goes supernova, and you lose all your ships and colonies, but after like 20 turns planets come back that have good stats.

I think it would take a bit longer than that before planets start showing up.

I think that there should be new stars and planets, with more random events/encounters. Like a star goes supernova, and you lose all your ships and colonies, but after like 20 turns planets come back that have good stats.

i'm sorry then.... but what are the 9 entities then?



Eris? Ceres? Any of the Saturn/Jupiter Moons?



edit: yeah, reading previous posts helps.



ohhh, the asteroid belt? ok, I guess that could count.

Calico wrote:
Although i hate to say it, there are only 8 Planets in the Solar System. *buys one of those "When i was your Age, Pluto was still a Planet" T-Shirts*

But he, we got 5 Dwarf Planets now.

Heh... I was quite specific in my post. I said we have at least 9 entities that fit in the colonisable status of Endless Space. I wasn't including Pluto.

I'd love it if there were nebula/plasma storms/other space phenomenons that would encompass an area of the map and any system inside this phenomenon would receive buffs and debuffs to various things. Say a nebula covers several of your systems. The buff could be that science is increased by +1 per population, and the debuff could be ships move slower (although that could also be an advantage if an enemy player is trying to move their fleets through the area.) Have things like this in the game would impact gameplay and make the galaxy more varied and spacey.

Smauler wrote:
Oh, I agree - gas giants and asteroids and lava planets could probably be useless.... but they aren't. And we have in this solar system at least 9 entities that fit in the colonisable status of Endless Space.



That's what we're talking about, the Endless Space universe, in which you can colonise any gas giants, lava worlds, and asteroids. But there are only 6 of them round any star.



I'm not having a big dig here, btw, I guess there must have been design decisions resulting in this... it just seems a little strange, to me.

Although i hate to say it, there are only 8 Planets in the Solar System. *buys one of those "When i was your Age, Pluto was still a Planet" T-Shirts*

But he, we got 5 Dwarf Planets now.

Smauler wrote:
Oh, I agree - gas giants and asteroids and lava planets could probably be useless.... but they aren't. And we have in this solar system at least 9 entities that fit in the colonisable status of Endless Space.



That's what we're talking about, the Endless Space universe, in which you can colonise any gas giants, lava worlds, and asteroids. But there are only 6 of them round any star.



I'm not having a big dig here, btw, I guess there must have been design decisions resulting in this... it just seems a little strange, to me.

Maybe 9 just wouldn't fit on the screen?

lmaoboat wrote:
If anything there's an extremely exaggerated amount of non-useless planets.

Oh, I agree - gas giants and asteroids and lava planets could probably be useless.... but they aren't. And we have in this solar system at least 9 entities that fit in the colonisable status of Endless Space.



That's what we're talking about, the Endless Space universe, in which you can colonise any gas giants, lava worlds, and asteroids. But there are only 6 of them round any star.



I'm not having a big dig here, btw, I guess there must have been design decisions resulting in this... it just seems a little strange, to me.

Smauler wrote:
I never quite understood the entire notion of "a few planets per system".



I mean, the one system we know well has at least 9 (including the asteroid belt... ok, 8 if you discount mercury, living there would be difficult). Why is the maximum 6? Ok, our star system _may_ be exceptional, but everyone always errs on the side that it is, rather than not. Perhaps it's just for gameplay reasons...

If anything there's an extremely exaggerated amount of non-useless planets.

+1 on this. Remember, we're playing the Alpha version.

I'm not sure how much of this is intended game design, and how much is just the alpha's lack of features, but the galaxy feels kind of 1-dimensional in the spacial sense. Systems kind of just feel like points of data, and not actual locations. What I think the game could use are more features that work on a galactic level, such as nebulae, constellations not connected to the main network, and assorted Star Trekesque anomalies-of-the-week. Various nebulae could affect PIDS, ship speed, sensors, defense, warp drive, and so on in the systems they cover. Isolated consolations only reachable by warp drive would make for some nice additional exploration after discovering warp drive, and provide some interesting tactical options. And if you wanted to do something more unusual, you could always just make up some techobabble spacial anomaly to justify it. I think adding more things that work on the galactic level would make exploration much more dynamic than just finding the best systems. Of course, the game might just be intended to be this way, and I'm just missing the point

Wouldn't brown dwarfs, as "stars" that didn't have enough mass to ignite fully, not be able to produce neutronium? Neutron stars would seem to be a more logical candidate to produce that.



Maybe around pulsars, there would be a chance that a ship's electronics would be fried in combat - that's a lot of energy delivered at once, basically a stellar-level EMP. Would be interesting having to factor in the surroundings when looking for a fight with an enemy fleet; duels around pulsars would be iffy situations, where at any moment a good number of ships could be taken out of action/destroyed by a sweep of the pulsar.

Always in favor of nebulae, the fact that these games tend not to use them is mystifying to me. Can't say how interesting neutron stars, pulsars and brown dwarfs would be enough either. Pulsars would be especial interesting if there were a chance that they would fry planets turning them into giant cesspits. Brown dwarfs would of course be coveted sources of neutronmium which could be used as a scale tipping resource since you sure as hell wouldn't want to get hit by it.

I would love to see a scattering of warp drive only systems. It would create a second phase of colonization where entrenched powers have to decide if its worthwhile to divert resources to trying to colonize these systems while preparing for the imminent conflicts. I wonder what it would do to Amplitude's Galaxy generating algorithms? I guess the warp drive only worlds could be added as a second pass so that they don't throw off the system and create the sorts of pocket clusters that were causing problems before the last patch.



Uncolonizeable nebulas might be interesting too. I suspect that they'd serve more as causi belli instead of things to compete over without going to war.

You all make solid points, and I think they will include plenty of things into the game. I'd like to see them constantly update the game with new material that would add to the experience. They have stated they are going for 'replayability' so I'm sure they will be putting in plenty of random events like you all have described. At this point the game is straightforward, but that's the point, it's in Alpha stage so at this point they are working on the core concepts of the game and not the little fun things.



You all make solid points, and I agree with you all, great ideas. Since it's not a highly competitive game from my point of view, I'm totally fine with one game going terribly due to some random event, and then maybe getting an awesome game due to finding an awesome relic (endless dreadnought is a brilliant idea).

Well nebule with stratigic resources for the faction that has a fleet there (Protecting or enforching mining operations) would be cool, and would add a sort of no-mans land that you can't technicly control but are useful, and would give somthing for races to compeate over without going to war.

lmaoboat wrote:
I'm not sure how much of this is intended game design, and how much is just the alpha's lack of features, but the galaxy feels kind of 1-dimensional in the spacial sense. Systems kind of just feel like points of data, and not actual locations. What I think the game could use are more features that work on a galactic level, such as nebulae, constellations not connected to the main network, and assorted Star Trekesque anomalies-of-the-week. Various nebulae could affect PIDS, ship speed, sensors, defense, warp drive, and so on in the systems they cover. Isolated consolations only reachable by warp drive would make for some nice additional exploration after discovering warp drive, and provide some interesting tactical options. And if you wanted to do something more unusual, you could always just make up some techobabble spacial anomaly to justify it. I think adding more things that work on the galactic level would make exploration much more dynamic than just finding the best systems. Of course, the game might just be intended to be this way, and I'm just missing the point

I agree. As fun as the game is, and trust me I'm having a blast with it, it is rather straight forward. Move out, colonize systems, build them up, build your fleets, and conquer everyone else. Or sit and make money, or sit and research, etc. I'm sure it's just because this is the alpha, but seeing some of the things you mention in your post would be pretty cool and make the game a bit more dynamic.

Sormes wrote:
There really should be some more interesting things to find on the map. Maybe just a system with no planets.

Well, that wouldn't quite be that interesting, as, what can you do with a system like that? But some unique things would be interesting. Like the random event where you find an abandoned Endless dreadnought. Well...Let us see this Dread, if not let us take it over and use for ourself. Or things similar to that.

The idea of systems outside of the galaxy or ones that can only be reached by warp travel is pretty cool, actually. I think it would be neat to also have a simulated orbit view in the system view menu. Don't change it the way it is, I love the current screen, but maybe have a small basic, drawn screen that slowly moves the planet (their orbit) and highlights the one you select. When you select a planet, it shows that planet rotating in the screen and if it was a moon, it shows the moon orbiting around it.



Planets with more moons would be cool too.

Maybe it's the fact that the real space is in 3D but of course. It's also a possibility that all the stars seems very dull, compared to the variation of stars in our galaxy. It lacks content, simply something so immense and fantastic where you can spend just 10 minutes in the first round just looking at it. Oh dear.. I almost can't come up with words of how much this game needs to even look like the real deal

There really should be some more interesting things to find on the map. Maybe just a system with no planets.