I'm sorry but i do have to rant about this expansion (than i will give my 2 cent to this, but first thing first).



It sounds too much like Civ 5-G&K, it seams to be adding things that shoulded be (not all but most of all) in the vanilla game but that didn't get in it because of.. dunno, lack of time ? So it kinda suck that we will need to pay for it.



Expecially when SpaceTroll specified that things in the G2G vote system will be add as "free update" (but right now there is Razing System in G2G and i see Razing System as addition in the future pack.. so.. it sounds a bit wierd.).



But, whatever, i'll stop ranting. Let's get in the "2cent" part.

SpaceTroll wrote:
would you mind elaborating a bit more?

I believe he meant that if you attack another player fleet, he doesn't get to pick his cards.



While as addition in the expansion (or through update if possible) i would like to see :



- Steam workshop (you should really consider it, expecially when you will have to release the expansion in steam.. it would be a great add)

- Allowing modders to add\change 3D models in order to make better mods.

- Adding in the new "combat system" things like carrier + fighters

- Adding a "different game mode" where combats are more dynamic.

--For instance there could be added the chance to stay distant from enemy fleet in order to maximize your "missile fleet" and by adding some sort of malus for weapons (even if i'm pretty sure that there is already a similar system within the game) based with distance + the possibility of shooting only laser \ only kinetics \ only missile instead of all together in order to maximize the accuracy and the impact of the selected weapon. So you might choose to stay away from the enemy fleet and shoot a lot of missile, while in medium range you could fire lasers and on the short distance kinetics (if you want).

Shooting only missile from greater distance might add some evasive manouvre to them, allowing more chance to avoid enemy flak.

Shooting only laser from medium distance might add extra fire power, since you can focus all the energy to them.

Shooting only kinetics from short distance might add extra accuracy, since the enemy is closer and the crew can aim better.



i realize that it could be hard to add, but it would be probably "more realistic"



- Adding different "flight style" for different kind of ships.

-- for instance is hard to imagine smaller ships staying together with dreadnaught class ships. 1cp\2cp ships should go in dogfight with enemy ships, it doesn't sound right that they stay far away with the big dreaddy. So, even by keeping the actual "card system" it will add some.. at least visual, dynamism to the fight, instead of X ships for each side shooting from thousands of miles away.. all going in parallel but opposit direction. It sounds.. too unusual as fighting scheme.

-- and on a different note it could helps modder in making more realistic mods. For instance in Battlestar galactica there is the big dreadnaught (the Galactica) that stay away and offer suppresion fire, than there is a storm of fighter that go dogfighting. In Star Trek you have ships like the Defiant wich attacks like "fighter bomber" while other classes like ne Galaxy that attack in a "figure of 8" scheme in order to allow all the weapons to shoot (since that class have phasers all over the ship and some torpedoes in the back).



that's it.



edit: also the things told by jumbik seems pretty cool.

i am loving pretty much everything in the OP



very much wanting starbases dedicated to protecting systems that will be very usefull if you dont have the fleet numbers to protect all of your systems in your back yard or enhance protection of front line systems from endless fleet spam.

would also like to see additional planet types and possably planets can evolve into unique planets when specific conditions are met i/e when a planet has hit a certain population and has also rose above a certain dust income the planet gets turned into an urban planet where the entire planet gets turned into one gigantic city ala curosant from starwars and is granted additional population slots and a bonus to dust income.



I also like the idea of specific artifacts that grant unique modules that can be equiped to ships as well as some more divesity



speaking of diversity maybe some more unique techs between the different races and possabuility to discover unique techs from artifacts or random events that can have varius effects to different things from system wide to empire wide effects or even granting a unique hull or something as long as the artifact remains in your posetion, giving more things to fight over and discover.



PS: up fleet sizes a bit PLEASE

Jumbik wrote:


- New races/factions:



Granites - Lithovore ... completely new game mechanic, do not need food so there must be something else to compensate.

Morlons - Telepathic ... again completely new mechanic, taking over systems and diplomatic relationship would be different.

non-playable - Furlies ... small teddy bears with undergroud cities :]

Are the Morlons the slightly less gifted relatives of the Vorlons? Are the Furlies somewhat more hygienically inclined Ewoks?



I like the Lithovores.

everything on the first post is exactly wut i want...also it would be cool if u can change ur civs "social/ government" settings like in alpha centauri... each social/ government option has a tech that is needed to be reserched before it can be applied to ur empire, and depending on how big the empire is, and how radical the change, there would be unrest (like huge civ takes 10 turns of massive unrest if switching from a "democratic/liberal" to "despot/xenophobic")....also, make sure one of the social/government options ( the "xenophobic" one) forces the game to only generate your races heros... i think it would add alot of depth for the game and i would be more then happy to add some more ideas regarding that if anyone (devs) wants. If so let me no!

Why no ground battles???

It's a little concerning that the expansion pack is so particularly focused. You surely don't intend on releasing a number of number of expansion packs each covering the different aspects of ES? I suppose there is another option and that there won't be an expansion pack released for each aspect, which again, makes the whole practice a concern. You can talk about free stuff til the cows come home, but money is what is going to allow big upgrades and the odds of a patch coming close to the content of an expansion pack are extremely low I'd have thought. Ultimately, though, in an era where PC gamers are being thoroughly scammed with DLC on most games, it's a welcome sight to see ES taking this old-school and working on an expansion pack(s) instead.



Upon reading your list the first thing that struck me as missing was the 'Battle Actions in Auto' feature which is currently an option in the G2G vote at the moment. It's not winning either, which is baffling, mind-boggling and more than a little worrying as the game is pretty much unplayable without it on anything but a small map... but I digress. I presume that this feature is going to be either included for ES generally at some point or will be in the pack?



Most of the list looks pretty awesome but can you please add radio chatter during sieges, boarding actions or even in space battles? The music score is quite good and the weapons make okay sounds but being able to hear your troops assault an enemy position, target an enemy vessel or abandon ship would be amazing if done well.

I would suggest:

- minor races

- unique race technologies

- artifacts, that provide unique (to them) techs

Veneke wrote:
Upon reading your list the first thing that struck me as missing was the 'Battle Actions in Auto' feature which is currently an option in the G2G vote at the moment. It's not winning either, which is baffling, mind-boggling and more than a little worrying as the game is pretty much unplayable without it on anything but a small map.

What?



If you want to retreat then do the actual battle, otherwise all the auto-battle does differently is not use cards (Apparently the AI does in multiplayer) so unless you just don't do manual battles there is no way this is an unplayable feature.

Firstly, I need to mention that I read only the first five pages of the discussion, not the whole of it. If any of my ideas have already been expressed, I apologize for the double post.



Oh, yeah, ground combat seems like a must for me. We do need a more complete invasion system. I also love the idea of space stations helping for invasion defense.



Moreover, it would be perfect if a better "occupied populations management" was added, as described in the discussion here:



/#/endless-space/forum/29-archives/thread/13719-suggestion-requirement-to-deal-with-alien-populations-in-conquered-systems



Additionaly, I think the game would benefit from added icons/graphics that would instill some personality during gameplay. Like, instead of having a black figure leading a fleet that is not under a hero's command, we would have in its place the portrait of a "generic" admiral, complete with a name. Said character wouldn't need to provide any bonuses like heroes do, but simply be there, in order to add more "life" to the fleet. Same would go for planet governors. Oh, and contrary to heroes, they would always be of the same race/faction that is currently played. Similarly, I love the idea of the planet's graphics changing according to what's been built on it.



With the same goal in mind, some tech and improvement names could be different according to race. For example, I feel somewhat bothered with public-private partnership while playing, say, the Cravers or the Sowers.



Otherwise, I think the ideas expressed in the OP and following posts, especially the part about espionnage. IMO, it is a must for any grand strategy game, and it would work especially well for ES in the sense that it would effectively counterbalance the game's tendency to the "retrofit race" (I beat you, then you come back with a new ship design and beat me, then I do the same...). A must-have would be also what an earlier poster mentionned about making the UI more logical. Improvements that don't systematically shoot at the bottom of the building line, and other stuff of the kind would be very welcome

Igncom1 wrote:
What?



If you want to retreat then do the actual battle, otherwise all the auto-battle does differently is not use cards (Apparently the AI does in multiplayer) so unless you just don't do manual battles there is no way this is an unplayable feature.

My point was that on large maps (or during the late game) the vast majority of your battles are played out automatically unless the game just happens to stagger their arrival so you can click manual on each one. Automatically resolved battles consistently return poorer results, often significantly so, than manual ones. You can lose a huge number of fleets a turn as things stand because the AI is unable to pick the right cards, doesn't pick them altogether or whatever.



In my last game over the course of 3 turns I lost more than half my fleet simply because the AI auto-resolve feature played out a number of battles which would ordinarily would have been won with little damage. Fleet composition/weapons loud-outs etc hadn't changed on either side. Believe me, I checked - that was my first thought.



As far as I'm aware the only difference between auto-resolve and manual should be the cards so unless there are hidden modifiers it would seem that the inability to auto-resolve without card selection is a far bigger issue than a new place to view trade routes.



Oh, and it should probably be pointed out that even as is it's not possible to retreat outside of manual combat which isn't always an option due to the timer delay battle system.

not sure if this has been said already but i really like the idea of adding more types of weapons to flesh out the space battles

or maybe adding variations of weapons like degrade armor/weapons or more damage less penetration

that would really give reason to have multiple versions of ship designs and allow more tactics in the game

It looks awesome! I suggest ground battles and some improvements in space battles... and also, I do not know if it's just me, but I found it difficult to maintain a balanced economy, and it forced me to use trainers in order to fix the economy of my empire (don't worry, I will not use trainers in multiplayer.'ll use them only when needed in single player). I just think that, if possible, at least on the easier difficulties, the income could be higher, or the expenses could be lower.



But anyway, you did a great game! I really liked it!



Edit: Honestly, I think all the elements in this list should be included in the expansion pack.

For these inclusions -

- Heroes exploring artifacts unlock technologies on the tech tree

- Finding artifacts on moons or planets could be equipped on ships or heroes

- Huge ships

- Options to make planets more unique by building special unique buildings. special building appear on planets / system

- More different weapons types, more hybrids and new types



Perhaps you could add mini events?

I've started a thread up a while ago (Alpha development stage) about more in depth events - /#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/12521-suggestion-escalating-events

Perhaps that could be added in to give some more spice to the game. The expansion looks really good, I hope some of the ideas in this thread also make it into the expansion!!!



Thanks again for such an awesome game! xD

If there were ever a place to shamelessly suggest for ES



/#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/12509-new-invasion-model-works-same-as-befoe-but-now-looks-cooler



/#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/12800-orbital-entrenchment-upgrades.

Either making Hybrid heroes actually useful or ditching them entirely.

I would like to see some things to reduce the micro-management like production queuing. At a particular technology level I always know what I am going to build on a planet. Why cant I just copy it into a queue then put it on a new planet with one click? Or how about one click to put a production queue on a new planet?



I would also like to have battle card queuing. Late in the game there are too many battles for me to fight and the AI in auto-resolve rarely uses the cards the way I would like. So how about allow me to just queue my battle cards and then click resolve?

ElectricArtisan wrote:
not sure if this has been said already but i really like the idea of adding more types of weapons to flesh out the space battles

or maybe adding variations of weapons like degrade armor/weapons or more damage less penetration

that would really give reason to have multiple versions of ship designs and allow more tactics in the game

Personally I find the battle the part of the game I want changed the least compared to diplomacy, espionage and variability - by which I mean having more things to think about in the game management generally. The combat is fine for what it is. I hate that every 4x game that comes out these days is focused almost exclusively on war and fighting. An expansion pack that makes that part of the game even more detailed is not something I would be very enthusiastic about. There is so much else that needs addressing first.

I agree with people asking for multiple moons! And I would love to be able to name/rename individual moons and planets... as well as these space stations everyone's talking about... and ships and heroes too.

Happy to pay for expansion pack as described. I really like the game's streamlined system management where all planets contribute as one to the system. I did not like this aspect of the MOO2 design. Great design design in ES. The card system in combat is nice too.

Mines would be good to add to this list.



Squads e.g. have sections of your fleet use different tatics cards



Another thing to consider asking is how much people would pay and establish mini, standard and big expansion packs. Personally I would pay for the game again for more complex programming changes. e.g. user controllable 3D battles. Ask how much it is worth, rather then following the standard games industry route, and see if enough people would commit e.g. kickstarter (www.kickstarter.com) for your packs :-)