Hello, new poster owned the game for a month or so and I like the game enough to be compelled to post.



Overall I'd like to say that Endless Space is an excellent game from a technical perspective. It is an elegantly designed and implemented game that works well on several levels. There are several aspects that could be better but overall I have 3 suggestions that would help the sp side of the game be more enjoyable.



1. fast forward battles.



Sometimes I want my explorer vessel in the early game that I sent to far afield to just retreat. It's just one lowly ship with a ~30 rating, it's not gonna single handedly defeat that fleet of pirates/enemy ai it stumbled onto. But in order to spare my little ship so I can keep exploring the galaxy I have to manually play the battle, pick the retreat option, and sit there for like 2 minutes listening to the music while my retreat plays out. Now granted the retreat plays out in glorious cgi, but it is boring after it happens the first 50 times. I wind up just saying screw it let my little guy die its too annoying to watch the retreat animation.



Ditto for battles against vastly weaker foes, I find that manually battling weak foes and choosing "repair" every round is faster to heal my fleet than any other way I've found to heal my ships (which is a design flaw imo but that's another topic). In those battles, I just want it to be over, as that fleet of 2,000 isn't gonna defeat my fleet of 15,000 no matter what I do wrong.



So just let me fast forward through battles in sp, pretty please?



2. Enemy ai with personality.



Right now, you get a message like "a war has been declared, and you are involved!" when an enemy ai declares war on you, or vice versa. Why can't this include a bit more flavor? "The sophon ambassador has informed you that your empires are now at war and will revel in the destruction of your home planet" or whatever. I'm no writer but give me a *reason* to want to brutally crush my enemies, please, I'm beggin you lol.



Or when peace is offered, its just "deal offered, cease fire, and maybe they want to throw something in". How about "The sophon ambassador has presented himself to grovel at your feet for mercy, etc"? Again I'm no writer but give me a reason to spare them... or to even care really, one way or the other. It can just be a message that pops up with text I don't need a cgi cutscene here that's gonna cost thousands of dollars.



The "good" races like the Amoebas could be more regretful of declaring war and grovel harder for peace, where the "evil" races like cravers could be more belligerent both in peace and cease fire negotiations.



3. Give my own faction more personality.



There are a couple of game events here and there that notify you of your progress. Stuff like "you now control 1/2 of the galaxy" or whatever. Why can't these messages be increase in frequency and improved?



"you now control 1/2 the galaxy, our minister of defense is please we have crushed all foes in this portion of the galaxy and is chomping at the bit to invade [insertainamehere] to expand our power!" or something like that. As you unlock key science traits let my "science adviser" give me a pat on the back for being such a wise ruler. If I crush an enemy faction my people should rejoice (if playing an "evil" race) or be remorseful (if playing a "good" race) or *something*.



Again just text messages here would be sufficient, the way alerts are handled each round you can just skip em so easily that people who don't want to see the messages can easily bypass them.



Overall This is a great 4x game that I dig and a big thumbs up to the devs for making it.



Thanks!

sly_1 wrote:
Ditto for battles against vastly weaker foes, I find that manually battling weak foes and choosing "repair" every round is faster to heal my fleet than any other way I've found to heal my ships (which is a design flaw imo but that's another topic). In those battles, I just want it to be over, as that fleet of 2,000 isn't gonna defeat my fleet of 15,000 no matter what I do wrong.



So just let me fast forward through battles in sp, pretty please?

This is something that won't be an issue when they add the card selection for auto-battles. Fast forwarding the glorious CGI is almost disrespectful to the graphics of the game.

sly_1 wrote:
2. Enemy ai with personality.



Right now, you get a message like "a war has been declared, and you are involved!" when an enemy ai declares war on you, or vice versa. Why can't this include a bit more flavor? "The sophon ambassador has informed you that your empires are now at war and will revel in the destruction of your home planet" or whatever. I'm no writer but give me a *reason* to want to brutally crush my enemies, please, I'm beggin you lol.



Or when peace is offered, its just "deal offered, cease fire, and maybe they want to throw something in". How about "The sophon ambassador has presented himself to grovel at your feet for mercy, etc"? Again I'm no writer but give me a reason to spare them... or to even care really, one way or the other. It can just be a message that pops up with text I don't need a cgi cutscene here that's gonna cost thousands of dollars.



The "good" races like the Amoebas could be more regretful of declaring war and grovel harder for peace, where the "evil" races like cravers could be more belligerent both in peace and cease fire negotiations.

Personally I find the idea of mentioning ambassadors to be even less appealing than the current system. I would definitely enjoy if the responses were actually dialog, like Sins of a Solar Empire or even something like Civilization. (Voice acting not required)

sly_1 wrote:
3. Give my own faction more personality.



There are a couple of game events here and there that notify you of your progress. Stuff like "you now control 1/2 of the galaxy" or whatever. Why can't these messages be increase in frequency and improved?



"you now control 1/2 the galaxy, our minister of defense is please we have crushed all foes in this portion of the galaxy and is chomping at the bit to invade [insertainamehere] to expand our power!" or something like that. As you unlock key science traits let my "science adviser" give me a pat on the back for being such a wise ruler. If I crush an enemy faction my people should rejoice (if playing an "evil" race) or be remorseful (if playing a "good" race) or *something*.



Again just text messages here would be sufficient, the way alerts are handled each round you can just skip em so easily that people who don't want to see the messages can easily bypass them.

Like before, I personally don't like third-person messages like "Our adviser is deeply pleased." It almost seems more of a drag than the faceless text. I also don't see a need to add a "Glory to the Cravers!" text at the end of a notification. It would seem more like a cheesy tack-on than a part of the experience. And really, those notifications aren't there to be a deeply immersive part of the experience. They're there to notify you, which they do. I can get behind adding more personality to the factions, I just don't think this is the best way to do it.