I had Endless Space on my Steam Wishlist, so it came as a pleasant surprise to see the free Steam weekend. I played a few hours of it, liked what I saw, and bought the game (not sure how to show that on my forum account). As a player who played Master of Orion 2 for many years, I have been waiting for a game to take over from it. I see some of that in Endless Space, and I am pretty impressed by the combat and the original races. However, I also have some criticism that I hope will improve the game.



* Combat: I don't know if the game already takes difficulty into effect, but on "easy" mode I found it difficult to make choices in the combat screen in time. As I gained some familiarity with the game, it became easier, but I still find the time given to be a little short. I would appreciate a few more seconds of time in the opening phase, or perhaps the option to pause the game and read my choices on "newbie" or "easy" mode.



* Combat: My first few battles were between myself (the united empire) and pirates. For the first two or three battles, I had literally no idea whose ships were whose. Only after fighting a third race, whose ships were wildly different than mine, did I realize that the golden ships were mine. It would be nice if there were a clear way to tell this! For example, if I could press the icon of one of my ships during the combat scenes and have the camera center on that ship, or if ships had an imperial icon painted on the sides, or if a large, colourful side profile of one of my ships was shown at the side of the screen. The small profile given in the game is not very visible - it took a long time to realize that they were different for different races.



* Combat: the auto-camera makes for dramatic viewing, but is not always clear. I often found myself wishing I could set the camera to follow one of my ships.



* Combat: Please do SOMETHING to make invasions more visible! Several times in my first game I was invaded by the enemy. I noticed it, but never heard anything about it again. Later, I looked over and found the system was owned by my enemy. I really miss the fighting screens of Master of Orion - they both showed me how good my technology was and gave me a firm indication of how desperate my plight was! I finally figured out to watch the circle around the planet, but it really wasn't very exciting. Something that would show up on the map and get your attention would really help. Maybe some sort of indicator flashing on the screen letting you know one or more planets were being assaulted? It is equally annoying to be invading an enemy system, since I have to keep checking on that system to see if my invasion has been successful yet - there's no popup saying that I won or anything. Also, is it an automatic victory? I never seemed to lose men or run out of power during an invasion.



* Events: Random events were interesting. I'd like to see an option to make them more or less common in the game menu.



* Events: The "helpful, selfish" options were, frankly, unclear. The descriptive text that popped up when I clicked on one were much clearer and much more engaging. I would rather the buttons were a little bigger and said the option than the current three choices.



* Events: I'm not sure why you get the effects of a choice on the following turn. I'm sure it makes sense, but right now it just feels awkward.



* Events: When you get the effects of a choice-event on the following turn, you see the effects of your choice, but not what your choice was. I would like it if the game repeated the event text (as it does now), then wrote the text of your choice, followed by the effect of that choice (as it does now).



* Technology: I found the tech tree to be an interesting way of doing things, but not always very clear to a new player. It would be much clearer if there were a picture underneath the tree - something to remind players that the upper technologies are military, the left-most ones economic and diplomatic, etc. After a while, I learned this, but it made the game a little harder for a new player - and a lot of new players will simply give up rather than deal with a learning curve.



* Technology: As a new player, I found the technologies to be rather difficult to interpret. The colors and shapes on the technologies were not intuitive, so it took me a long time to realize that technologies with a purple corner were ones that affected morale, for example. I would find it MUCH easier to remember if they used the same icon as the stat.



* Technology: As a new player, I found it difficult to strategize my technologies. A great tool I would appreciate would be the option to choose a game effect (e.g. morale, dust, research) and have the game highlight technologies that improve this trait.



* Technology: Another feature that would help would be to show how many turns each technology would take somewhere on this screen. I know you can click on a technology and it will tell you that, but it would be nice to see at a glance that, oh, yes, you can get that technology over there in 1 turn.



* Technology: In my first game, several times when I discovered a technology that unlocked a new resource, a message would appear saying that doing so had unlocked new possibilities in my colonies. I would then spend a few minutes looking through my colonies, especially those that had that resource, looking for them. Only much later did I realize that this message actually lists the new possibilities - they are the technologies that you've already discovered that require that resource. Please don't have this message pop up if you don't have any such technologies! It is confusing to a new player and meaningless to an experienced one.



* Trade: Several times, AI empires offered to buy or sell resources from me. It would have been REALLY useful if I had known how many of those resources I had already! I could tell if I had at least one, but I didn't want to just trade away my only resource if that's all I had. Yes, other screens tell me that, but having it right there in the trade screen would be even better.



* Map: I don't understand why my borders disappear when I zoom out a lot. I ended up never zooming out all the way, because it crippled my ability to tell anything. Gone were the borders, gone were star routes, gone were fleets and planets. What's the point of that scale? Please bring back the borders, at least!



* Travel: In my first game, I could not figure out why my fleets couldn't travel down one star path that was wavy...eventually got the right technology and suddenly met a new neighbour. It would have saved some frustration had the game told me that I needed a higher tech to do it when I tried clicking on the planet.



* Travel: Many, MANY times, I have gotten frustrated by clicking on a fleet, right-clicking on a star system, and having it completely ignore me. I'm not sure why this happens, but it does - a lot. EDIT: From reading the forums, it appears I am trying to travel through zones of control when I have a Cold War status (or trying to use unstable wormholes?). Please tell the player this.



* Heroes: I didn't realize at first that I could only have three heroes. It would be nice if the message telling me this also told me the next technology that would increase the size of my college.



* Diplomacy: I was a bit disappointed to discover that the alien races I met felt very similar to each other. I would have liked more differentiation, especially during contact with them. Even something as minor as font choice would go a long way to making them feel a bit different, but having different text for each species would be nice! Random events based on each species being discovered by you would also be very cool: imagine getting events with a corporation smuggling resources, spying, hiring local mercs, etc. if you were next to the United Empire!



* Diplomacy: In my second game, I got seemingly trapped in an eternal war. My ally was invaded by the third race in our little galaxy, then agreed to a cold war with them, which I also agreed to. Next turn, the third race declared war on me, so my allies joined the war. This was followed by a Cold War, invasion the next turn, rinse and repeat - so far, five times in a row.



* Diplomacy: It is bizarre to get notified that my allies have agreed to join my war before I have gotten a notifier that says that I am at war, which I get before the notification that an enemy race has declared war on me. Should I not be clicking on popups from the top down? It's weird, to say the least.



* Diplomacy: I love the concept of "cold war," and the rules behind it - but when I heard the name, I was envisioning something a little more robust, like allowing proxy wars, sending funds to enemies of my enemies, etc. It would be nice to see this in the game, although I could imagine it being more than a little hard to code properly for the AI.



* Story: In general, I liked the hints of a story that I saw in the game - the two factions of the Endless, their struggle that somehow left their artifacts behind, the dust that powers people that might be semi-sentient - but I soon realized that it was mostly just window dressing of random events, with no real plot to it. I loved the Antares plotline of Master of Orion 2, and thought the plotline of MOO3 was a good idea (but badly executed). I'd love to have more of a plot going through the game - one that you could ignore, but also one you could explore if you wanted to.



All in all, there's enough in Endless Space to say that I got value for my money, but right now, it's not quite as enjoyable as Master of Orion 2 was. That being said, Endless Space is still in its infancy, and the suggestions that users could influence its future on the Steam store page is a very enticing one to me. Hopefully, this is just the beginning!

Aaand I completely missed the sticky "no suggestions in the design forum."



Sorry, I'm new and made a bad assumption. If a mod could kindly move this thread to the appropriate forum, I'd appreciate it.

Dilettante wrote:
I played a few hours of it, liked what I saw, and bought the game (not sure how to show that on my forum account).

Hello Dillettante, and welcome!

Here is the answer you're looking for to get your G2G points:

http://www.amplitude-studios.com/FAQ#5

You make a number of good points, especially in terms of clarity and UI. A few other things I spotted that I might be able to answer / help with:

Dilettante wrote:


* Events: Random events were interesting. I'd like to see an option to make them more or less common in the game menu.

You can set a lot of options in regards to event before you start a game. There's two sets of advanced settings - one for the universe/map and one set for victory conditions, pirates and events. Have a look there and you'll be able to tailor your game much more to your liking.

Dilettante wrote:
Technology: I found the tech tree to be an interesting way of doing things, but not always very clear to a new player. It would be much clearer if there were a picture underneath the tree - something to remind players that the upper technologies are military, the left-most ones economic and diplomatic, etc. After a while, I learned this, but it made the game a little harder for a new player - and a lot of new players will simply give up rather than deal with a learning curve.

I agree that clarification would be useful. There are icons and you do get used to it - but a more clear description or tool-tip explaining what each direction's focus is would be helpful. Personally, I preferred the technology trees in most other 4x games. I still think it would be nice to be able to see the whole tree, but at the same time we need a list with ONLY the currently available options (like Civ V, Moo2, etc.) with a link to the full tech tree for those who wish to see what things will get unlocked further down the line. Of course this would prevent queuing things with pre-requisites to the game needs to 'bank' left-over research points and apply them the turn after.

Dilettante wrote:
* Technology: As a new player, I found the technologies to be rather difficult to interpret. The colors and shapes on the technologies were not intuitive, so it took me a long time to realize that technologies with a purple corner were ones that affected morale, for example. I would find it MUCH easier to remember if they used the same icon as the stat.

I half agree with this. The triangles with colours in the corner of the icons are great and work very well once you know what colour represents what, and they're very subtle. The actual tech icons themselves however as quirky as the designs might be are close to useless. I have played a lot of hours and I can't recognise any of the technologies purely by their technology icons. Buildings are okish (still not great imo) but the Tech icons often bear zero resemblance to what the technology is about.

Dilettante wrote:
* Technology: As a new player, I found it difficult to strategize my technologies. A great tool I would appreciate would be the option to choose a game effect (e.g. morale, dust, research) and have the game highlight technologies that improve this trait.

Or, much like Civ V have a set of advisors, which each give you advice on technology and building options. Some examples are Military, Economy, Science and Industrial advisors - each which might recommend something different.

Dilettante wrote:
Technology: Another feature that would help would be to show how many turns each technology would take somewhere on this screen. I know you can click on a technology and it will tell you that, but it would be nice to see at a glance that, oh, yes, you can get that technology over there in 1 turn.

This already exists. You don't have to click on a technology. Please note you can zoom in and out on the tech tree.

Dilettante wrote:
Trade: Several times, AI empires offered to buy or sell resources from me. It would have been REALLY useful if I had known how many of those resources I had already! I could tell if I had at least one, but I didn't want to just trade away my only resource if that's all I had. Yes, other screens tell me that, but having it right there in the trade screen would be even better.

Agreed - I've said this a few time but it needs to say "You have this resource in abundance (7)" or something alike. Just add the variable to the string and job done.

Dilettante wrote:
Travel: In my first game, I could not figure out why my fleets couldn't travel down one star path that was wavy...eventually got the right technology and suddenly met a new neighbour. It would have saved some frustration had the game told me that I needed a higher tech to do it when I tried clicking on the planet.

This. It's a design decision to have so many wormholes - I really wish that they were more rare (like Moo2) and more 'visible' on the map and in your star system. It should also be clearly labelled as un-passable until you have the right technology. Perhaps not even show the wavy lines - only show the fact there is a wormhole but not where it leads - until it is explored. And until it can be explored, clearly indicate that the right technology has not yet been researched. That would help a lot.

Dilettante wrote:
Travel: Many, MANY times, I have gotten frustrated by clicking on a fleet, right-clicking on a star system, and having it completely ignore me. I'm not sure why this happens, but it does - a lot. EDIT: From reading the forums, it appears I am trying to travel through zones of control when I have a Cold War status (or trying to use unstable wormholes?). Please tell the player this.

So much yes. The game needs to inform the player why travel isn't possible, not just outright reject the command.

Thanks, SpaceVC! I should have tried that - it seems so obvious in retrospect. Didn't realize it was a link, though.

EvilTactician wrote:
I still think it would be nice to be able to see the whole tree, but at the same time we need a list with ONLY the currently available options (like Civ V, Moo2, etc.) with a link to the full tech tree for those who wish to see what things will get unlocked further down the line. Of course this would prevent queuing things with pre-requisites to the game needs to 'bank' left-over research points and apply them the turn after.

That would work for me - by reducing the amount of chaff, it would let me focus on the next couple of ideas. Obviously, for strategic planning you'd want to see the whole tree, but for a new player, simple is good.

I half agree with this. The triangles with colours in the corner of the icons are great and work very well once you know what colour represents what, and they're very subtle. The actual tech icons themselves however as quirky as the designs might be are close to useless. I have played a lot of hours and I can't recognise any of the technologies purely by their technology icons. Buildings are okish (still not great imo) but the Tech icons often bear zero resemblance to what the technology is about.

What I meant wasn't the icon of the technology, but the icon of the effect. For example, the pink fist is used for morale, and a technology or building that increased morale ought to have a pink fist on it, instead of a pink triangle. It's just one more thing to learn about the game.

Or, much like Civ V have a set of advisors, which each give you advice on technology and building options. Some examples are Military, Economy, Science and Industrial advisors - each which might recommend something different.

That would be nice - letting you know that you've been ignoring a technology, or that your rivals are leaping ahead in one area, would be helpful in addition to knowing what tech is good for what.

So much yes. The game needs to inform the player why travel isn't possible, not just outright reject the command.

Today I figured out a new one - if my fleet is set to explore or defend, I have to unclick the job before the fleet will move.



Another issue that could use some help: this sounds stupid, but I often forget to tell a newly colonized planet to produce anything. I quit one game when I realized I hadn't told my main planet to do so for the first 10 turns of the game...oops! Having some kind of warning icon telling you that you have wasted production would be nice, or turning these planets over to a governor if the player doesn't pick anything.

One bug I saw today: I played with four empires, and two of them ended up being the Automatons. This got confusing very quickly, as the only difference between them was the colour. I was constantly confused by which Automaton empire I was interacting with. If it's working as designed to allow an empire to be chosen twice as an opponent, then please change their names. Maybe follow the pattern of the Endless by giving them rival civilizations, (the Virtual Endless and Concrete Endless)?



In terms of game balance, it may be because I am playing on easy (as I get used to game mechanics), but I find it is a no-brainer to ignore most weapons and defences and focus entirely on missiles. If my fleet is evenly matched against an opponent, I will win without taking serious damage if they do not similarly prioritize missiles, and take serious damage if they do. I have only had one battle so far reach melee range without one side retreating or being destroyed.