Personal Experience:



I've played countless hours (More than my clocked 328 hours) of Endless Space both multi-player and single player, I've played with and against every faction and every difficulty including Endless.



Acknowledgement of game:



I have seen this game change over the past year since release and it has improved greatly in terms of balance in custom affinity points and AI fleet control and composition...but



The Point:



One of the most prominent issues still hasn't been addressed and that is of the imbalance that exists within the hero classes (Admin, pilot etc) some are rather blatantly better than others in most situations and when it comes to multi-player this can almost completely determine the outcome between even skilled players, yes it is possible to win with a poor outlay of heroes and starting system but between evenly skilled players this can't happen.



Existing Thoughts:



I've looked through these forums and seen this issue brought up many times and possible work a rounds:



1) Rebalancing the specific classes with respect to one another - Say for example reduce administrator from +30 population growth to +10 or Increase corporate Science from +10 to +40

- This however just seems like a very long drawn out way around balancing the issue as each trait provides advantages depending on a particular circumstance and at different stages of the game, though this may still be a good idea in order to further balance the classes it still contains an element of luck and this is only attenuating the disadvantage inherent within the core makeup of the heroes (say if you are technology savy peaceful culture and are given 3 pilot and commander heroes or not administrator heroes when your are spawned with negative food anomalies or poor star systems).



2) Choose your hero/es/ines before game commencement through simple selection from the hero game pool

- This is the most logical and fair way of solving this issue as you can plan ahead of time the synergies of the hero's that you want and plan for all circumstances and minimise system draw effects, this was present in Heroes of Might and Magic 3 from what I remember where you could choose 1 starting hero and then have a random pool of heroes in game which clocks over, this gives no players a get go advantage of OP heroes but still makes players try and anticipate and minimise random luck of systems.



3) Draft Pick exchanges - Each player chooses a hero from a pool and passes the heroes on to the next player in a continous cycle till no more are left or all are chosen.

- Makes it less fair but is still an inherently flawed system what if only one admin hero is available and the player picks him/her/it leaving the next with none, also it adds a lot of complexity for no reason



4) Send heroes to academies to learn and swap skills

- Yes this can work but still doesn't offset the balance from the very powerful early game admin heroes who are good turn 1, theres little point in sending a hero to an academy mid - late game to learn admin abilities as at that point these abilities scale off at this stage in the game and the player who had them from the get go can benefit from the abilities and then change to a more powerful arctype, this process rather amusingly depending on how it's implemented can make matters worse



My alternative Idea: (Maybe suggested Before in which case I apologise)



Heroes Can be chosen for a points cost from the hero pool in game which are added to your custom faction points total



- Admin - Corporate: 10 points

- Admin - Adventurer: 7 points

- Pilot - Commander: 10 points



Points at this moment are merely speculative suggestions and should be balanced accordingly



The reason I suggest this idea, despite according to my own belief is inferior to suggestion number 2, is to try and challenge those who believe that heroes don't make much of a difference or that a skilled player can make use of any hero composition, as with this idea those who wish to brave the dice will be rewarded or penalised accordingly, yes luck is still a factor as the player who invests no points in this make still end up with good heroes, but on average this will not be the case.



Players who suggest that hero selection makes no difference and that it is all skill can be awarded if this idea is true whilst also allowing people who don't the chance to compete (If it doesn't matter the player wastes points on this idea causing defeat or helping to that end, or if it does matter then the players who don't invest in this skill will suffer detrimentally as a result hence pleasing both sides of the debate).



I have set up a poll above so that hopefully the creators can see this communities' desire for hero balance and act accordingly if they so wish.



I invite other members of the community to post Mods which allow Hero changing below for others to make use of in the mean time or if the issue is never resolved or deemed not to be worth doing (I very well hope not).



This is also my very first post online on the internet in general outside of facebook so apologies if the format is odd



Happy Playing

Good ideas, apart from 3, that's even less balanced than it is now D



But as I understand it the problem is primarily with the initial 3 heroes in multiplayer. So why not let the game roll 3 random hero class combination and gives every player a hero of that classcombination. for example the game rolls: Admin-Pilot, commander-Corporate and Commander-Adventurer.

Thus all Players would get heroes with these class combinations and while still every game would start different(and the heros do have slightly different starting skills) Players would essencially have equally usefull heroes.

Just a simple suggestion

I like the hero academy.