When it comes to combat, Endless space still has a bit of tweaking that needs to be done. If there's one thing I don't like that much about the combat modules right now, its the lack of variation in the 'trees' of the six different aggressive and defensive modules.



In order to explain what I mean, Ill give you a little tale.



In game, I love the Hissho. I think they look cool, the style of gameplay they're meant for matches my own, and they were my first race I played.

Now, the Hissho have a unique upgrade that is about halfway up the military tech tree, which allows you to equip a missile module that does between 300-1000 damage. Its less accurate than the modules higher up than it, more expensive too, but has the potential to do significantly more damage per missile.



So my question is this; why are there not more modules like this missile?

At the moment as soon as you unlock a new weapon or armour, you automatically equip it due to it being better in every way. How about having a variation of different weapons and shields that still fall into the six categories of Kinetic, Laser, Missile, Deflect, Absorb and Flak?



Maybe have a beam laser that has 100% accuracy but much lower damage? What about cluster missiles which exist purely to try and overwhelm flak? In return to that, a flak module that is less efficient against individual missiles but can stop multiple warheads? Or deflection armour that may not protect the ship quite so well, but can bounce blows back at the attacker?

Absorbing shields which can heal the ship for the damage they absorb? A deflection mod that can protect against all three weapon types but with far less efficiency? The Rail gun module actually being a rail gun? (High damage, very low accuracy, can't be deflected).



This would mean a whole lot of balancing would need to be done, but in the end it would make combat so much more varied and intense.

In my opinion at least.



If you agree, feel free to add your thoughts on this.

If you don’t agree… Well… Feel free to add your thoughts on this.

I agree with the suggestion but it has been made several times already, though you likely have some new ideas there. I feel the game definitely needs some variation in terms of weapons. As far as I can tell there is however no dedicated thread linked in the summary list.

I find the rock-paper-scissors way the combat works to be very annoying. There's no real point in having a standing fleet, since the enemy will just counter your current fleet, and you will counter that, and so on.



How to make it better without changing the great combat-card mechanics that are currently in place(allows for excellent multiplayer-combat, since it's fast but has a meaning)?



If only I knew.