I have 3 points:



1. I know that this is a little down the road, but I was thinking that it would be cool to have map settings by which you could create a map that was perfectly mirrored to make a multiplayer game more even. It wouldn't even have to be perfectly mirrored, just make it so that we have the option to have each constellation have equal total resources and FIDS.



2. I would also like to be able to choose the number of constellations directly rather than have to choose a galaxy with a number on it and then set constellations to unique/few/many.



3. I would like to see home system composition part of an empires stats, or to at least make it so that your home system is a decent one. In about 1/3 to 1/2 of the games I have played so far, my home system consists only of my homeworld, and that makes me want to ragequit even though it is not too big of a deal. If we can just put in something so that the home system is above average, I think that would be good in general and especially in multiplayer where you do not want people ragequiting.



Edit: It would probably be a good idea to give home systems a few standard compositions so that players feel that they have an equal start, even if it ultimately does not make that much of a difference.

I second all of these above. I use "many planets", "bigger planets", lots of stars, few constellations, few star-lanes & few wormholes on my games, and sometimes I end up with my home system just having 2-3 planets (and the other ones are either tiny or something far down on the research tree like gas giants or asteroids). The problem is, if your home system is low on food output, that will effectively slow down your progress by an immense amount. I usually play Horatio when I want to play SimGalaxy, and one of the games I ended up having 2 terran and 3 jungle planets on my homesystem, aside from my homeplanet, and it was capable of dishing out a colonizer every turn at the 20th turn I believe. This is not the case if you start with just 1-2 planets.

Mod the galaxy generator?

That would be the measure of last resort! I think they will give us the option of having balanced starts because it is really annoying.

Selectable, loadable and modable maps would be terrific, as well as the 'balanced map' option. I think both could be quite fun. This would even work for play by email (should it be implemented), as well as all other multiplayer type maps.

This thread is the origin of discussions about symmetric galaxies for balanced multiplayer matches.

Other threads about this have been archived:

/#/endless-space/forum/29-archives/thread/13851-balanced-map-type



Feel free to post here about this topic here and inform yourself about the variations the threads listed above have already discussed, but don't open new suggestion threads for anything alike.

Thank you, Nosferatiel. =) I suppose I was searching for the wrong thing. Moving on to the topic at hand, though, I think it would be prudent to say that, while this topic is a little over a month old, the game is now released! I personally see no reason not to include a 'Mirror Matchup' starting map option, perhaps as a checkbox, in the setup of a game. This would provide an excellent testing environment for custom races, as well as introduce a way to play the game where a players ability to make effective decisions is truly tested, rather than his raw luck. =)



I'd very much love for this to be implemented before modding it in is necessary (although I have no idea how difficult that would be... is Galaxy generation even going to be available to modders?) so discussion of the topic would serve as a useful method of getting this in the public eye. Thanks!