Jamez88 wrote:


Ground Battles & Invasion:

• An invasion system like Master of Orion 3 has. (Adding tech to upgrade your armies.)
  
  

/#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/12509-new-invasion-model-works-same-as-befoe-but-now-looks-cooler If you have the time, this suggest is what I feel would be an improvement to the current system, adding in the idea of technology improving your ground forces, along with other variables.

Awesome direction. When this expansion comes out I can finally recommend this game to my friends who are interested in this genre. I told them that this was a great game back when I was in beta, but that the fleet/battle mechanics were sorely lacking. Hopefully I'll have something to show them when this expansion is released =)

Sounds very nice so far. I'm looking forward for the random events. I would be very nice when they would make one or more races that are a bit less human-like. I personally enjoy it to play non-human races, but when i play a race that look quite familiar to humans, i don't have really the feeling not playing a human race.

It would be also great if they would add new galaxy types or perhaps mutliple galaxies.

Adral wrote:
proposals for these would be...

-hide in asteroid field (if an asteroid field is in system, the defending fleet could hide in the asteroid field to take the attackers unaware)

-come from opposite side of planet (a common technique in science fiction universes, hiding portions of fleet on the other side of a moon or planet)

-splitting the fleet (in an effort to trap who you are attacking, or defending against)

-Various fleet formations (wedge, spread, tight knit, etc)

-position of ships themselves (I think this is really important, I've had plenty of battles where some of my weakest armored ships will get stuck up front and blasted into oblivion when they should have been behind my tanks)

I'm sure there are plenty of other options too.

I love these ideas, however I don't know if the dev team could easily implement them. I was thinking of classic sci-fi battles, where a ship is hiding in the magnetic field of a planet or using a nebular for tactical advantage etc.

Adral wrote:
Secondly, and this builds off of my above concept, would be the idea of having the ability within the ship customization screen to actually choose where weapons are on the ship (and having those weapons actually appear on the ships themselves, though I'm not sure how hard that is logistically) The relevance of this would be that if fleet formations and strategies were implemented, it would be relevant to where you placed various weapons placements. If certain ships only had one missile launcher, it would be quite important where it was placed, because if it was on port when the enemies were on the other side, it wouldn't be able to fire at them.

I guess this would really exhaust the dev team. I don't know if you're talking about a hit-model, which would be an awful amount of coding, but nevertheless I like the idea very much.



One issue that really bothers me is: Why is every galaxy flat? This is supposed to be a space strategy game. I know it is easier for the player to make it look like a board game, but since it is a computer game, one should use all 3 dimensions. that would really make a difference, particularly for the expansion strategy

My concern with a lot of the ideas getting tossed around here is that they often seem very specific. Things like converting enemy ships into privateers, hiding in asteroid belts during battles, controlling the location of weapons on your ships, etc. sound like fun ideas, but they're situation specific. In other words, being able to convert an enemy ship to a false-flag privateer would be a neat moment and might give rise to some interesting strategies, but it wouldn't change the quality of the gameplay overall.



At least in my opinion, and I think this is shared by many people here, the dev team still needs to be thinking about the game on the mechanics level before it starts to worry about instanced features like that. I think the emerging consensus (although correct me if I'm simply painting my opinion onto the forum) is that the battles have two primary flaws:



1. There is very little player interaction, and even less meaningful interaction. Each battle is little more than a cinematic, and by midway through a game you generally end up just hitting the auto feature on almost all of them.



2. The R/P/S system is broken and boring.

Broken - A fleet that loads out completely on one weapon will shred an enemy that doesn't load out completely on the corresponding defense, and can stand no chance against an enemy that does. It's one of the reasons that pirates are so overpowered early on. They show up with 100% of their space dedicated to beam weapons (at least in every game I've played) and tear apart my ships until I build an all-shields fleet that ends up taking zero casualties.

Boring - It's also kind of tedious. There are only two stats that matter on the ship, attack and defense. There's nothing that could give rise to clever strategies or pro/con balancing when you build ships. Each weapon or defense is linearly more powerful than the last, so there's no reason not to just automatically upgrade, and the only decision to make is rock, paper or scissors, which is entirely based on what you think the enemy will show up with. Not to beat a dead horse, but this is by contrast with MOO2 where old techs kept life in them by acquiring new abilities or Civilization where units have different features that make them more or less useful for a given situation. What makes a design system fun is the possibility of emergent strategies, things that you never expected until you tried them. There's no room for that, however, in a linear R/P/S system.



Finally, I would caution against making the game overly-complex in the name of realism or stuffing in more fun ideas. I think Starcraft is the shining example of how simple mechanics give rise to the best games. See also the nightmare that was Master of Orion 3, which seemed like it was just an explosion of every single "wouldn't it be cool if..." idea the designers could come up with. There is a point of diminishing returns on new features. The more complicated you make a game, the more quickly core gameplay gets lost in a sea of buttons and options. People start spending half their time thinking about how to play rather than just playing. Games are, imho, like novels. With the really good ones you forget that it's not real and just get lost in the experience, but the more levels of complexity there are the harder that is to do.

Enjoying Endless Space very much. More than happy to pay for and preorder 2 expansions!



One thing I would like to see in an expansion that doesn't seem to have been mentioned is LARGE WEAPONS. Rather than have to tap in 50+ lasers on huge ship design it would be much nicer to add some large weapons that would only fit onto big ships.



Some suggestions would be:



A larger laser with a continuous beam that could scissor down to cut enemy ships in half and strike through to hit others behind.

A mass driver that could hurl a small asteroid at enemy ships which if destroyed by defences would fragment into multiple projectiles causing spash damage.

A large plasma torpedo with a proximity trigger so that if it is avoided it would detonate close to an enemy ship causing splash damage that drains shields.



I would also like to see some more weapon balancing. When most battles are decided in the long or medium range phase the bonus to kinetic weapons at short range never comes into it's own. Also why are laser animations so slow? They should be faster than kinetic weapons and hit enemy ships first.

Battle expansion pack? Yes please, but before you do it, read my thoughts about improving battles

/#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/12548-battle-system-improvements

The additions proposed in this list look good.

I would especially like to see the visual implementations of weapons and utilities on ships as well as the visual of mass economy/industry/research + unique planet traits and buildings on the planets, especially planets like barren or dessert where such things would be logically obvious additions to an otherwise "barren" surface.

It would also be nice to see tactic space battles in the singleplayer beyond the card game type mechanic going on right now but I'm not going to get my hopes up for that one.

I would like to see some use of spy tactics and treachery in the game, like espionage(in the form of spying on fleets and planets/stealing resources/stealing research/stealing national artifacts)and sabatage(of planets/buildings/fleets/economy/trade routes/populations[tostirunrestorkilloffpopulation]) or even using pirates to raid trade routes and settlements for resources or slaves(a bit of population to boost the population on your own planets or boost the economy/trade).

With this in mind, I would also propose a counter to spy/pirates in the form of diplomatic pressure where this sort of thing is frowned upon by civilizations that discover your grubby treachery and also the developement of a civilization wide security force the is not represented by the military fleets you create.

There could be connected hero traits to sponsor either treachery or counter treachery.

Also, maybe at some point this could lead to sponsoring crime on one's planets to conduct treachery independently to have a positive/negative effect on a planet/system (e.g. build crimelord stronghold: gives +dust,-planetary happiness).

Ground combat as stated in the post.

Hi guys!

I want to open by saying: I love Endless Space, I love that you guys listen to player feedback. I do have concerns about the long term plans / financial solvency of Games2Gether and I hope you guys are working on either a new game, some paid DLC, or a real, full expansion pack.



Addressing the topic:

I play to win and the way to win is to control the most systems but the game would be more variable and accessible if the technology, culture, or diplomatic routes were more viable. The times when I win short of domination type victory, I have already won by merit of hugeness and I just CHOOSE to get a tech victory.



I'm afraid that planetary defenses are going to prolong games that have already been lost but planet to planet offense maybe fun to see -- you fire ballistics in the direction of the opposing fleet and it takes turns and turns for the missiles to get there.

well, I think we just need new Tech-tree for each faction, I'm very interesting in tech-tree like Galatic Cilvilization 2 or such as Sins of solar empire. coz I think in this game, it's too boring to start with the same technology for all faction !! each one should have their way in technology, at least slightly different from each other !!

I really like the way the new expansion pack is looking. "Echos of the Endless" will probably bring something which this game currently has in short supply: Lore.



I like my lore.... provided it favors my side.

Devs said that the new add-on will be around "ambience" and "feel". First look seems promising. Hope there is plenty new screens with that awesome artwork.

Nomas wrote:
Devs said that the new add-on will be around "ambience" and "feel". First look seems promising. Hope there is plenty new screens with that awesome artwork.

They already posted one on the Dev-Blog/FB-Site!

I ve seen it and its really nice one. Now crossing fingers to make diplomacy screens for each race ala Civ series or Master of Orion

If it isn't said all ready, but a ship that sends out interceptors/bombers class

I've had Endless Space for a few days, and I love it.



That being said, I'd like to do more far future space opera stuff like:



-Espionage: I want to be able to collect information on enemy build orders, current ship models, fleet dispositions, and the like. I'd also like to be able to frame other factions, usurp enemy systems and ships, steal tech and resources, and set off local disasters like Dust-based nanomachine outbreaks that eat their population. Basically the Alpha Centauri Probe Team system, but with the option to juice it up with Endless Space heroes. Maybe also a way to make enemy factions more happy so you can get them to make trades.



-Super Weapons (Active and Passive): I'd like Deathstar-type weapons as well as hidden planet lasers, maybe only activated by Heroes. "It's a trap!"



-Space Tactics: I'd like big-scale things like Warp Interdiction Fields that slow down incoming ships or buildings/ship modules to cloak systems. Basically anything sci-fi and crazy that appears in Star Trek.



-Random events for systems: Maybe space whales decided to use your system to breed and you can't get ships out of the hangar. Maybe a new system appears suddenly. Maybe a machine intelligence steals a ship.



-Rare, but Exotic Systems: Dyson spheres, dudes! Ringworlds! Cybertron! Rings of ruined Orbitals!



-Pronounced graphics for Anomalies and other features: I'd just like the planets to look more like their features.



-Future markets: An economy mini-game where you buy, sell or horde Eden Incense and the like so that you can wrangle the harder resources in a non-war/diplomacy way.



I was playing this in 1985 on an Apple IIE, so I know it's a trivial programming issue and it could be so fun.



-Exotic Tech: Maybe you find an Endless ruin that clones people/Heroes at a cost for Dust or reverse engineer a found Endless craft for some expensive and crazy tech that you put on your ships (with new graphics too!). Think of the Shadow and Vorlon tech on the Earth and Whitestar fleets at the end of Babylon 5 where they were the same ships, but outfitted with super-alien tech.



Maybe it's a separate tech tree that you can't research, only taken from your enemies and from investigating Ruins with Heroes. Maybe it costs Dust to maintain each turn.



Space monsters and better pirates.: Can a brother get a Zerg uprising or a Crystal Entity? Fallen Endless? Neglected hero turned Horatio copycat? Evil Pirate Heroes? Pirate faction that's only for the AI?



Better Battles: I need the option to spread out fire, focus it, sacrifice weaker ships or protect weak ships with stronger ones, and generally fight that battle in grand fashion.



Preset Orders would also go a long way to making me feel better about battles that go Auto.



PBEM mode: I'm an old gamer, so I need flexible MP options.

Got the game recently, glad I did, awesome so far. I like everything on the OP, but I would like to put super emphasis on espionage, that would add a whole new element to the game. Having pirate bases would be cool too, maybe make it so I can contact them and pay them to harass another faction, or pay them to leave me alone or something. I also really like the idea of super weapons that you can only put on dreadnoughts.

i wrote up something about an idea for a paid expension pack:





/#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/12587-depth-of-the-abyss-paid-expension-pack

Content I would like to see is



More traits in custom factions



Rebalancing of the points costs of traits (following my post)



/#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11381-opinion-requested-on-faction-traits



Balancing the standard races



Improving the AI



Fixing bugs



More controls to build recently researched improvements on all worlds for large empires



Each tier of ship has multiple versions (e.g. Weapon module, Defensive, Support, Health Versions)



Making ship Health more useful (atm is sucks) defence is vastly superior (no damage > some damage/death)



Some Mothership class (e.g. above dreadnought) that you can only have 1/empire



Custom races have an option to set the maximum number of points you pick traits from with Multi Player options to set the maximum allowed to be played by players.