While I love the very clean UI, and the analytical/schematic look of everything, almost as if we're not watching a galaxy, but an actual intergalactic governor's control console, it does mean everything is a bit too sterile.

Making the actual galaxy and planet maps a bit more vibrant by actually showing trade routes, planet traits, anomalies, population levels, important improvements,... would already be a huge improvement, without necessarily giving in too much on the sleek UI.



As to make the galaxy itself a bit more lively, small neutral factions - to represent primitive and far younger civilisations - are certainly a very good idea. Depending on how you deal with them, i.e. wiping them out or assimilating them could even have some bonuses or maluses.

Thanks for all your answers and suggestions guys ! I hope that the devs are watching this thread and will take the time next week to leave a comment about our concerns.

Concerning independent factions, in my other game, I started exploring an untouched section of the galaxy. The map was split in two with me and two other AIs on one side, and the other AI on the other all alone. He hadn't expanded to encompass the whole half of that galaxy, but when I went in to explore, I found some of the systems were already occupied by pirate factions. Fascinating.

I voted no. I would like to see some sort of visual representation of trade routes. with freighters traveling between starts. It could be set up to make raiding an opponents trade routes an option somehow. I'm not sure on the lore of the stellar lanes or whatever they are, but maybe a special "raider drive" that lets you intercept ships between planets.



Also, and this is just a nit picky science thing, I was playing a 8-armed spiral last night and I noticed that the background galaxies are green. They should be red. Because they are moving away at incredible rates, their light is redshifted. If they were moving closer they would be blue. there is no greenshift. Maybe they are meant to be stars? but that doesn't make any sense when looking at something on a galactic scale, you wouldn't be able to look beyond your galaxy and see individual stars. you would see other galaxies. and unless the universe of endless space has very different laws than our own, those galaxies should be red! Ok, done now, smarter people can feel free to tell me how wrong I am.

Belhoriann wrote:
A simple question, but a lot of parameters can influence the answer.



Play Distant Worlds and you'll see what I mean by "living" galaxy. You have civilian ships, trading ships, private ships everywhere, yet the empire is still manageable. You have random events, like ancient ships and star bases discovery, you have space monster, pirate bases, black holes...



For me Endless Space has really beautiful galaxies, but they are empty. So I pick the "no" answer and here are my suggestions :



In the galaxy view and in general :



Yes! Like in Armada 2526. - Replace the known stars by a simple representation of the solar systems, with the planets orbiting the star. I think it could add to the sensation of discovery (instead of simple red and white dots) and scale of the galaxy. Also, I love to see orbiting rings, don't you ?



Yes! More games need to do this. Tiny simple easy to draw and program sprites can add so much. - Add some tiny ships traveling from the home system to the other colonies to represent the trade routes.



Yes! More rare stuff, wolf rayer stars, quazars, trinary systems. - Add some space anomalies, like black holes, supernovae... Random events and independante factions are needed too.



In the system view :



Yes! - Add more visual activities at the surface of very populated planets. Currently there are 2 or 3 ships and some lights, this is great, but not enough. Also it could be cool to have visual influence from the different improvements built on the planets.



Yes! - Add a solar system representation, with orbit rings (yes again). Or at least you could put the sun at the left of the planets representations to give a sense of scale.







Please, let a comment to justify your choice

Agreeing like a fool. Having visual (non-gameplay important, just visual) real-time elements in a turn based game is the best way to make the world come alive, no doubt.

It goes from animations on the worldmap in Civilization, to caravans moving along roads in Total War, to swooshing traders and such in 4x space games.



As for the suggestion about the orbit system view.

Imagine the diplomacy screen, replace the leaders with the planets slowly orbiting the central star. Use those awesome "merging-to-sphere" particle effects when you mouseover one of the planets. Would look amazing.

I agree with "livening" of the galaxy view - more animations etc., but also make it optional (graphics setting for animations, settings in galaxy creation for random events/black holes/pirate bases etc.)

Definitely needs more liveliness. Lots of good suggestions in this thread so far. The most significant ones are in my opinion :



- Planets reflecting their state of development in the system view.

- Traders, utility ships, civilians, etc floating around in the system view.

- A much bigger event for encountering another species; currently it feels like you just get a memo about it written by an underpaid intern. Surely it must be a bigger deal than this. Also, you should be able to react to it in various ways.

- Various events giving each planet and/or system a distinct character. For example, having one system be full of bankers who make lots of money but dislike actually building anything useful meaning you get an income bonus and production penalty

- Non-system places to find. Could be old Endless bases, derelict ships, large asteroid fields, etc

Baleur wrote:
Agreeing like a fool. Having visual (non-gameplay important, just visual) real-time elements in a turn based game is the best way to make the world come alive, no doubt.

It goes from animations on the worldmap in Civilization, to caravans moving along roads in Total War, to swooshing traders and such in 4x space games.



As for the suggestion about the orbit system view.

Imagine the diplomacy screen, replace the leaders with the planets slowly orbiting the central star. Use those awesome "merging-to-sphere" particle effects when you mouseover one of the planets. Would look amazing.

That's it! And also what most of people here had been said. So, I voted no. I liked very much how it feels right now, but I think it would feel even better with some more "life" on it. I liked very much random events when I played, for example, MOO2, I remember those about one of your planets had a cataclysm and you had to rebuild it, your scientists detect one of your suns were dying and had to resolve the problem.. a more dramatic and epic situation would be very nice that one of your stars begins to enter supernova and you have to use your science resources to "save" it before it explodes and wipe out your solar system

I'm going to vote a tentative "no". I really, really like the streamlined UI, so anything that clutters it up needs to be carefully weighed. Random events are fun, but they can also be unbalancing, so I prefer the kinds of things you found in MOO II (a lot of which was "flavor text news") over the empire crushing events that Sword of the Stars can throw at you.

More events.

More random events.

More events.

Did I ask for more events?

Nico wrote:
Definitely needs more liveliness. Lots of good suggestions in this thread so far. The most significant ones are in my opinion :



- Planets reflecting their state of development in the system view.

- Traders, utility ships, civilians, etc floating around in the system view.

- A much bigger event for encountering another species; currently it feels like you just get a memo about it written by an underpaid intern. Surely it must be a bigger deal than this. Also, you should be able to react to it in various ways.

- Various events giving each planet and/or system a distinct character. For example, having one system be full of bankers who make lots of money but dislike actually building anything useful meaning you get an income bonus and production penalty

- Non-system places to find. Could be old Endless bases, derelict ships, large asteroid fields, etc

This. Also I would like to see pirate bases.

Whilst it's cool that the game has a sort of tactical map-like feel to it, as if you're an emperor viewing a star map of the galaxy, one thing I really missed compared to other space sims like Sins of a Solar Empire was all the little details that made the game feel more immersive and active.



However, I realise that Endless Space is turn-based and this makes things like the constant movement of civilian ships a little unusual when the movement of ships normally occurs in little jumps.

Maybe some kind of ambient special effect; little generic-looking ships coming and going from or moving within colonised systems, or some kind of traffic animation on the surface of the planets.



Alternatively, maybe the icon for a fleet could be changed to depict a number of idely animating ships specific to that race, just to make it seem a little more realistic.



Or, you could go all the way in the opposite direction and make the map appear even more like an artificial star map, to immerse the player in that si

Addition of visual queue on star system view to show how developed they are. More info on Moons would be nice.

Yeah, the lack of life is maybe not a gamebreaking problem, but it would make the game so much more lovely.

Just to get the feeling, that you are really having an influence on the lifes of the creatures you command, the points that the thread opener named would be awesome if implemented in the game.

we definitly need trading ships when we open borders...

I couldnt agree more. I would also like cut scences explaning and/showing the tech advances instead of just reading the box. Shouldn't there be a "idle" flag for systems that some how you have over looked and are producing nothing?

Belhoriann wrote:
A simple question, but a lot of parameters can influence the answer.



Play Distant Worlds and you'll see what I mean by "living" galaxy. You have civilian ships, trading ships, private ships everywhere, yet the empire is still manageable. You have random events, like ancient ships and star bases discovery, you have space monster, pirate bases, black holes...



For me Endless Space has really beautiful galaxies, but they are empty. So I pick the "no" answer and here are my suggestions :



In the galaxy view and in general :



- Replace the known stars by a simple representation of the solar systems, with the planets orbiting the star. I think it could add to the sensation of discovery (instead of simple red and white dots) and scale of the galaxy. Also, I love to see orbiting rings, don't you ?



- Add some tiny ships traveling from the home system to the other colonies to represent the trade routes.



- Add some space anomalies, like black holes, supernovae... Random events and independante factions are needed too.



In the system view :



- Add more visual activities at the surface of very populated planets. Currently there are 2 or 3 ships and some lights, this is great, but not enough. Also it could be cool to have visual influence from the different improvements built on the planets.



- Add a solar system representation, with orbit rings (yes again). Or at least you could put the sun at the left of the planets representations to give a sense of scale.







Please, let a comment to justify your choice

I couldnt agree more. I would also like cut scences explaning and/showing the tech advances instead of just reading the box. Shouldn't there be a "idle" flag for systems that some how you have over looked and are producing nothing?

The game would definitely benefit from pirate bases, independant non-expansionary civilizations and more variety in general, it is the spice of life after all.

The idea of a more 'living' galaxy is definitely a great one.



I am particularly fond of the idea of random events such as black holes, super-nova and similar events. Though considering each turn is only 1 year I wouldn't think they would be very common, plus the 'age' of the galaxy should likely effect the frequency and type of events. Having the advanced option of disabling certain events would be nice too, especially with multiplayer games.



Gradually increasing misc details of planets/etc to reflect progress would be cool, but might increase the performance impact and so might be triggered at a certain graphics level, or at least give the option of various levels of this sort of detail.



Also, the very first thing I did when I started a game and saw the galaxy was attempt to rotate and spin the view and was disappointed when i was stuck at one angle.

I feel like the Galaxy is semi-alive right now. Like I get the feeling it is a big place but I am utterly alone in it. So for right now, I blame it on AI - they refuse to acknowledge my existence and there is no real diplomacy short of HATRED