Agreed on what many have said about trade routes. There should be visible traffic between systems. Regarding trade: There should be some kind of summary screen about trade routes, which would also have minimap showing all current routes.



More random events and different anomalies is no brainer. Never can have enough of those.



Minor races would add lots of atmosphere. My personal suggestion would to make them have pre-FTL tech so they couldn't leave their starting system. Never really expanding.

They would make good trade partners and minor allies or simple "vassals" that you could exploit.

I'm not against add new minor empires. I just wondr why they wouldn't like to expand if they can travel in space...

About more visible things in the galaxy or system views... I keep thinking you should see nothing because at this scale you can't see this kind of things.



The only one thing I could agree is the explosion of a sun sometimes. Like 1 time all the 5 games. Suddenly, in galaxy view, enormous explosion (no sound, we are in space), the screen become black and white with more and more white. The galaxy view has pixel, parasites, all is so white with some darker nuance, and during one turn all the players have to play like this

Malus with a lot of things, reduction of FIDS, view, battles have problems because of it...



GREAT

More events and neutral civilitations

Even of the existing events and so on, I find it is the delivery that is lacking most majorly. It's a small system box that seems (hopefully) to be placeholder.



Meeting new races, making milestones through unlocking tech or building, random events and anomalies, going to war and so on needs more personality/emphasising. Some decent sized art at least, although cinematics would be optimal and don't have to involve character animation (if that's a problem), a lot could be done with existing assets (planets, ships, etc), a certain type for each category.

Sleel wrote:
Might?? The gravity shear from one side of the ship to the other would rip a passing ship to shreds and add it to the accretion disc. Black holes toss around stars like frisbees and rip them apart like confetti. Your ship would be nothing to it. Sagitarius A*'s "system" (our galaxy's central black hole) includes several stars orbiting it in a death dance. The boffins recently recorded a flare up from it as it snacked on a star. So yeah, will, destroy you ship. Then there is the radiation.

I was thinking that if a ship entering a system of a stellar mass black hole might be able navigate by skirting the edge of the system considering it just traveled faster then light it could possibly survive navigating a black hole system maybe make so you can only do it after researching certain tech.

Sleel wrote:
Ships under construction don't have debris floating around them in a cloud. And you wouldn't build them in chunks at odd angles to each other, praying that they don't get bumped and ram into each other before being attached. Asteroids you would mine in place. No point paying the cost of pushing a rock of mostly slag to planetary orbit when all you want are the metals, never mind the chance of screwing up you trajectory, dropping it on the planet and starting an extinction cycle. I never noticed how busted ship like they looked till I maxed out my resolution.

I was saying what they looked like to me they could be as for why you would move asteroids into orbit corporations do stupid thing if they can make money doing it.

4x Games in general in 2012 game HAVE to set themselfes apart from games published a decade earlier... in all things. i don't think we should aim for a revolution, but a big step in evolution here. 4x turn based games need to stay complicated, but also need to be more visual and userfriendly then the ones that made this genre what it is today. we need lots of rather small changes, lots and lots of them.



Evolution of what we think of what is a "Living Galaxy" is one of them.

Even cosmetic changes(trade ships travelling, black holes here and there, some action on the surface of colonized planets) would really mean a lot in terms of visual pleasantness. But then again, it's alpha and devs should now concentrate on more important things than eyecandy...

-I think the galaxy view could use some work. I'd love to see a galactic bulge for all applicable galaxy types (Spiral being one, disk another, etc). Make stars more dense in the center of the galaxy, working our way deeper and deeper (maybe with more challenging navigational concerns) until we get to the center...and find a supermassive black hole! Maybe potential benefits or negative results could occur. I want to find interesting new cosmic phenomena, such as nebulae or stars close to going supernova (maybe any colonies or ships anchored to a supernova star have x amount of turns to vacate before being engulfed in the blast).



Going further on the supernovae idea, here's what could be a potential set up.

1. Explorers find rich system, full of resources and (with or without some terraforming) therefore excellent to colonize. However, the star(s) in the system are about to go supernova in x amount of turns (reasonably, it should be over 50 at least). The balance would therefore go on -- these resources could help give the player the opportunity to boost their overall score and either get a head start or catch up with the other races.

2. However, this strategic wonderland will only last for a certain amount of turns until anything left in the system is wiped out. The player can't rely too much on this one system because it isn't sustainable, but must decide on how much to invest for a short-term advantage.

3. The game could maybe implement an 'abandon colony' feature, and the length of turns would depend on how populated/developed the planet is.



-Furthermore, and this is something I hate...zooming out all the way until the entire galaxy is visible...only to see more stars littered in the background (that are obviously not of this galaxy). A galaxy consists of stars...there shouldn't be anything floating around in between galaxies. I think that for a game that obviously did its research on astronomy, such a glaring error is inexcusable.

When zoomed all the way out of the galaxy view, please take away the extraneous 'star' background! It would be absolutely amazing to see further, distant galaxies!



-This is a minor note, but being able to name star systems (not the planets...the stars themselves) would be helpful because so many system names are randomly generated.



-I'd like to see improvements on planets/systems. Did I just build something new on my capital? I'd like to see it, maybe via a satellite/bird's eye view.



-And finally, I feel like an important galaxy type is missing...a barred spiral galaxy! I would really hope to get an alteration and add that (our own galaxy form) in Endless Space.

"This is a minor note, but being able to name star systems (not the planets...the stars themselves) would be helpful because so many system names are randomly generated."



You can?



If you click on the system name when in the system screen, you can change it.

Igncom1 wrote:


You can?



If you click on the system name when in the system screen, you can change it.

Alright! Thanks for catching that. It wasn't something I'd been able to figure out.

Personally I want more events...like one every 10-20 turns are they randomized at the moment? I've seen multiple events happen in a span of very few years then nothing for 200 years....

Actually, this is one of the first things I noticed while playing the game - while the core 'game' side of it is solid, the immersion which makes each new universe unique is slightly lacking. This of course would mostly be tied into the economic section of the game, but I think that individual planets should have a short description which varies depending on:

-random basic geographic/biological description of planet linked to type (these already exist in the game, so it wouldn't be too hard to add more/write descriptions based on existing ones)

-extended description of planet based on random event decisions made (these could be optionally more frequent -the community could even write some for the devs to draw the best fro); thinking along the lines of nationstates style decisions here, but not as much about domestic policy as about dealing with various oddities/situations on planets. This would lead to far too many decisions in large empires, and so the frequency/presence of these events would have to be chosen by the player.

-extended description of planet based on resources found on planet/level and type of infrastructure built



This would perhaps be the easiest way to add more life to the galaxy without editing the graphics/the actual gameplay, as this would purely change planet descriptions. The ability to name colonised planets would also help add more immersion.

Despite the fact that the game is awesome the galaxy does not feel so alive. I agree with most of the comments of the OP. I hope for more events in the Beta as well as mysteries in different star systems, black holes, nebulas while I'm exploring.

Also some lines of flavor text for system would not be bad considering the rich lore that the endless space universe has it would be cool to see it reflected in the planetary systems.

Hi All, first post.

Trying to get caught up to speed on the action in the forum here.





Voted "No" as well.



The alpha is great, don't get me wrong.

I just started playing the game a few days ago and noticed the galaxy is very static.

Thankfully, my hyperactive imagination can fill in a lot of the blank spots.



What irks me a bit is the inability to rotate the camera on the Z-axis in the galaxy view.

It was one of the first camera maneuvers I had attempted...and then, was disappointed.



Granted, there is a whole lot of 'nothing' in space it would be nice to see a larger corpus of material grow out of the Endless Space universe,

like small 'blurbs' about non-FTL species on planets (if they are included at some point), or other flora and fauna present on habitable planets.



Inhabited planets (by non-FTL species) could provide a moral choice for the player to invade, assist or exterminate.

Maybe this choice would affect the players standing with other empires who are more compassionate to less evolved lifeforms?

Or spawn an NPC civilization that you can later trade with or exploit.



For events - Plagues, Pandemics and Disasters would be great.

Possibly different ones affecting the colonies in unique ways - production of food, or if a factory implodes due to the carelessness of a worker etc. correlate with production.



To a lesser extant, "event fluff" could include random happenings in each star system observable by a visible 'news ticker' when the player is in the planet-view.

It would give the star system a little more realism that events are actually occurring in the colony.



During battle, the "theatrical" POV is great, however, the switching between POV's is rather fast and (for me) is a bit disjointed, often showing really lackluster money-shots.

What would be nice is to have the option to switch between the "theatrical" POV and a few selected angles that the player can toggle on their own accord.



I like the idea of certain stars blowing up and wiping out a colonize system, or having rare materials for a limited amount of time.



Also, I have only seen many planets with a moon, one.

Mars has 2, Jupiter 66 and Saturn 62 and that is just in our native solar system, surely it can not be that uncommon to have more than one.

While I wouldn't expect 66 moons in orbit around a planet, a few more would be good to have. Even if only 1 has the potential to be surveyed for artifacts and such.

more events universe and or system specific =3 alost need some random civs (they dont have to do much but other life in the univers other than pirates would be nice )

I think the galaxy is great as it is, but system-view could do with more variation. The art we have is gorgeous, so it's only natural that I'd want to see more of it.



I love how you can see infrastructure being added to populated planets, but I'd like to see more. At a glance, it's impossible to see if a system has 20 structures or none. I'd like to see them represented by stations or additional details on the planet surface.



Also, a few variations on planet textures would be nice. It feels rather silly to have three or more planets with identical continents in a system.

if you want a more living space

1. make it a MMO

2. make it big say 1 million stars

3. have NASA help with what they now of space

4.have it move like in Universe Sandbox or full of aliens (the best thing here would me is this a AI or a player)

aconama22 wrote:
if you want a more living space

1. make it a MMO

2. make it big say 1 million stars

3. have NASA help with what they now of space

4.have it move like in Universe Sandbox or full of aliens (the best thing here would me is this a AI or a player)

I don't even... cool suggestions but wrong century and wrong game I think, that doesn't work and isn't really related to Endless Space at all.

I know that this is still the alpha version, buuuut random events seem a little boring. Would love to see a a little animation in the affected system when a random event occurs. Also, a small detail that would go a long way toward a "living galaxy" could be some small animations, such as small local ships passing from one system to the next, maybe even some space faring fauna.