Hello Everyone,



first of all a big thank you for all your feedback, so I just wanted to give you a little heads up on some the stuff that we really like and that we want to track. What does that mean? that these elements fall within our vision for Endless Space, and that we would love to do them... one day. that could mean Alpha... Beta... Post Release, Add on... or even later



There are so many things that we want to do, and so little time, that we need to prioritize, and not rush anything. When we'll do it, if you keep supporting us, we'll do it right.



So on to the first list, we'll keep updating it overtime, telling you when something has been fixed, or definitely postponed.



I commented only on the elements that I know will not be in for release. The ones that are not commented are being looked at.



Thanks to Stephnie who helped me compile that list.



SpaceTroll





No border option

Remscar wrote:
I got a crash randomly when i was playing. It happened when i was trying to un-minimize the game from posting on the forums. (there is no no-border option yet D

Here is the crash folder: (rar'd)

http://puu.sh/sGnZ

Rebind the keys

ethoril wrote:


-In gameplay: ability to rempa keyboard keys would be useful (as the game acts as if the keyboard is qwerty even when it is azerty

UI screen: font, preview the galaxy, sound in the menu, and advanced options

Spookyy wrote:
- UI option screen for stuff like ui-scale, font type/resizing and text coloring (help the colorblind like me) etc. Some tooltip and info text gets really small on a 1080p+ screen. So many 4x games devs think, ok just glue your face on the screeen to read, .png" alt="smiley: " title="" />.



-When selecting galaxy type, would be nice with a preview how it looks.



-Put the "ding" sound (when you move around different game menus) on a separate volume slider, pretty please. Only main volume slider controls it right now.



-Another push for separate advanced graphics options to select exactly what we want to use.

Research queue

LordErrorprone wrote:
I cant find how to remove research from my queue, i was able to do it once by clicking on a technology i already researched but it only worked once. Does anyone know how to do this?

Population’s approval

Nosferatiel wrote:
Some little smiley on each system to show the populaces approval. I have to click on every system or regularly use the empire overview to find out where my people might rebel.

Free camera during battles

erdrik wrote:
Id say the combat camera is a bit wonky, and the combat GUI covers a bit too much to the pretty 'pew pew'.

I had a camera scene where the enemy ship was directly in front of the camera, so I couldn't see my ships firing on it.

All I saw was a wall of hull. I heard guns firing and explosions, but didn't get to see any of the action..

The 'stage indicator' GUI element could probly be smaller so as not to cover the action as well.

Ashbery76 wrote:
Ok I dislike this forced camera view that seems to miss important battle actions by trying to make a movie style battle.I presume the A.I director will improve later in the beta but in my opinion this is going to frustrate people greatly.I recommend the player having the option to choose views in the UI himself as well as the cinematic view to ease annoyance.



The graphics are lovely so let the player choose what to see.

A replay for combats

lravenwing wrote:
While we are on the topic would it also be possible to have an option to play a replay of the battle (and then be able to watch it from different angles and so on)?

No resources at the beginning

Imper1um wrote:
Starting out with absolute 0 resources when the game starts seems...odd. Not only from a gameplay perspective, but also from a "general story" perspective. I wouldn't expect a newly space-faring race to be completely $0 at the beginning.

Auto-scout

Imper1um wrote:
Add "Scout" which basically tells the ship to always automatically travel to the closest unexplored system

Ground Battles

Alderbranch wrote:
...it should be optional though but in a addon campaign it could be forced upon the users for certain scenarios... like the final battle on a coreworld or something. Just to make it epic... not just "planet bombared from space to ice-cream and then thats that" anti-climax

Okim wrote:
...the ground combat may much be the same as space combat in ES with the same 3 actions and some variety in troop types (infantry, tanks, support).

Summing it all - the ground combat must be present, but not too complex and time consuming. We already have auto-resolve for space combats - having the same combat system for ground combat should also have the same auto-resolve option to haste the things up.

Ptibull wrote:
...I think real time ground battles is a complete different game...that said, you could have an option to send troops (just a menu screen, no gameplay) to capture the planet if this is your objective (for resources or population needs?), or just wipe the planet from space if you are not really interested by it, in order to weaken your enemy. Then I think if troops are sent, that should takes time to take control of the planet (several turns) and cost a lot.

When we'll do it we'll do it nicely. So definitely post release.





Boarding Battles

Ruan wrote:
...the thing I as a gamer would like to see the most in a space orientated game that i have yet to see done properly in a game would be boarding battles. The closest that springs to mind would be star wars battlefront 2 (space battles). for me its the most fun part of any space battle. imagine your ship in a dog fight with a much bigger ship a fight you could never win with projectile weaponry alone. your loosing the fight and decide to risk boarding the enemy ship. you get into a fighter class or smaller ship, anything around you really. you manage to safely reach the enemy ship during all the chaos caused from two ships firing upon each other. you enter the hangar, navigating your way through these alien corridors, some with enemy troops in that you have to skirmish with. gun fights in these narrow corridors. where there is danger of flanking troops. after fighting your way past all that, then to finally reach a vital area of he ship plant an explosive devise. Not wanting to risk an enemy discover your device and disarm it. you decide to hold off until it detonates. winning the UN-winnable battle!



You could add boarding ability to the 'skill tree' and depending on how high your level is you may or may not succeed. If your afraid your enemy might attempt to board your ship you could invest in interior security (turrets, more guards) and less on your ships gunnery. think star wars and star gate. I've seen various clips in the films and series when the good guys are on the bad guys ship trying to take it down from the inside as its their ownly option. or in starwars case the rbels desperately trying to hold off the storm troopers in the narrow confinements of a ship.

same as before, very nice and one day we need to see it in Endless Space, but not before release for sure.



Planets & Moons

Brett wrote:
One of the little things that would make me happy about a space colonization game is being able to watch planets and other space bodies to rotate and revolve around the star...and perhaps meteors and comets flinging by and changing trajectories as they get pulled by the planet's gravity...if I can stop what I'm currently doing in the game and just marvel at all the activity and perhaps just purely graphical little ships and fleets going from planet to planet that don't necessarily do anything, I'd be a very content emperor ... Just little minute details that lets you see the bustling activity of an empire in space.

Furfuris wrote:
Another stray idea was making sure planets (and the occasional moon) have disadvantageous aspects to them, as well as advantageous things. A moon that's a bit too close, causing large tidal shifts and storms and such, or a planet that's so old it no longer spins on its axes, making only one side habitable until some technology is researched (possibly halving the productive output of the world). Things like that.

Ships / Fleet



Privateers or disguised vessels

Boygor wrote:
What are the chances of building vessels that deliberately mimic the deign of other races or at least disguise their origin?



I like the idea of attacking someone's colony but shifting the blame to someone else



I don't know how practical this would be but I remember something similar from the Civ games.

Post release. it could be a nice addition to an extension focusing on espionage.





Strikecraft

reynanuy wrote:
As far as I know, there are no strikecraft(fighters, bombers and corvettes) in ES as of now; or at least they haven't been unveiled yet. It would make a nice and awesome surprise to have them there, but something tells me they have been left out; probably for some future expansion if at all.

Definitely in one day, but post release. (not a small feat to get it in)





Custom races used by the AI

VieuxChat wrote:
That reminds me that it's sad that AI can't use the custom races.

I would love to be able to create a race, then save it in whatever format, then share it with others that could play against it.

VieuxChat wrote:
In another discussion one dev said that AI was XML-driven. If it's not hard coded, why AI can't use custom races ?

definitely something to work on, but post release. For the moment we want the AI to work nicely with the current factions, and it is already tricky.



Politics



Senate

Megamaniaco wrote:
I'm not really sure if it is already in the game, but is there a senate? Like, an United Nations of sorts where leaders discuss international politics? Something you might want to consider. Backstabbing would occur like, daily.

sounds like an addon thing, that could be very nice.



Political choice

VieuxChat wrote:
And what about the poilitical choice for your empire like in CIV 4 ? Is it planned ?

Not planned, but it could be interesting to add in the future.

Throne room

Ogrette wrote:
Perfect timing to ask you guys about... drum roll... the Throne room.

Nothing new really, but can often be a pleasure which is directly inspired by early CIV games and which can make up for self-satisfying leveling aspirations.



Everytime a specified rank has been achieved, a new addition is made to your throne room. It can be automatic or manually selected, depending on the architecture you've chosen or that is tied to your specie.

Sligthly nicer would be a secondary bonus coming with the leveling up (for your homeworld, your systems, or whatever)

That is nice, and we have a few ideas on that area, but that would be for much much later





Espionage

maceman wrote:
I know ST said it wouldn't be implemented at this time... but as it's a big part of big strat gaming for me I figured I would get the perspective of its perceived importance to empire building for the amped gaming community.



I can think of a number of examples of good espionage in games which work in very different ways. Obviously this is closer to a Total War scale than a Thief/Metal Gear Solid sneakiness. That being said I see incredible potential for espionage to enrich the endless galaxy.

• Heroes - A Hero is an individual, no? Why not a Hero spymaster? Cloaking a ship in combat is simply a one-off tactic easily countered. Using misdirection and disguising fleet tactics on multiple fronts takes an agile thinker (Ruse anyone?).
• Diplomats - Awareness of troop/fleet movements, strengths and tech (fog of war), Hero locations and abilities (for a surgical strike, Ha!)
• Industrial espionage - stealing tech, sabotaging development and preventing said bad thingys
• Conspiracy discovery/instigation - "X is preparing to murder your (governor, admiral, wife...), how should we deal with him?" (moral dilemmas)
• Incite rebellion - rabble rousing is always a good way to force a war-monger back home
• Counter Terrorism - (Just so I can have a Hero Jack Bauer)
• 'Planting' agents - after 4 seasons of BSG how can we NOT consider planting moles? 7 Kingdoms style
• Assassination - TW Shogun Geishas. loved their work. (need I mention Grace Park?)
• Combat uses - lowering shields, power grid failures, tractor beam overrides, assassin/bounty hunter
• Diplomats - bribery of officials, government secrets, creating conflict of interest, blah blah
  
  

These effects don't have to be from individuals but could be caused by special ships, robot droids, computer viruses, etc etc. The tool is not so important as the result

We want one day to be able to do it right, definitely and add on thing.



Losing a planet

Shazbot wrote:
I have a couple of ideas here. The first idea is this: perhaps losing a planet would trigger an empire-wide bonus to defense or production (or maybe players would get a choice). The second idea is that planets' power scale better to late game. In many 4X games, ultimate ships/units simply decimate planets/cities. Players should at least have the option of building up planet defenses to make a dent in attacking fleets.

Psychological effect of war or loss of a planet

reynanuy wrote:
Loosing a planet should trigger an economic and social meltdown proportionally to the importance of the planet across the empire. A morale loss is to be expected, but also negative bonuses to research, industry and trade empire wide should take place. On the other hand depending on the aggressor tactics(use of WMDs for example) and it's galactic history(bullies or prey fighting back?), it should also decrease the invaders "stature" among other species(no one likes a bully but other bullies). What Nosferatiel proposes are more like decisions you could take, if faced against such scenario. I think they are great, but as a gameplay mechanic, they should be governed by some resource; so each one has a greater cost/benefice ration and such benefice has some random factor to it.

Hero upkeep and balance

Archangel85 wrote:
Simply make it so that Hero Upkeep is determined by his skills rather than his level. Would also be another tool to balance the skills against each other.

Cloning Horatios

Sharidann wrote:
Cloning of heroes for Horatios is VERY powerful, and they come at the level to which they are cloned, making it costly, ok, but also bloody impressive.

Weapons effectiveness

Okim wrote:
Weapons should have info on their effectiveness in each combat phase. And if they already have this - we should see this info in design screen.

As i wrote sometime ago - design screen should show how effective your ship is in different phases.

Planetary improvements

Okim wrote:
Planetary improvement can use the already existing 'city glows + traffic' system we can see on a planet GUI screen. You can put some smoggy areas with red glow for infrastructure exploitation, some large green areas (glow) for agricultural, more ships and concentrated lights (spaceports) for dust exploitation, blue lights for research.

It would be great to see some anomalies and even resources on a planet screen. For instance - those that are directly connected to weather, geological and other perceivable effects. As for system improvements... well, representation of some of them would be interesting, but i really have no idea how to represent a system-wide research lab thingy.

SABA wrote:
I did like in Civ IV, when you built a wonder, a pop up animation of the wonder being constructed & completed was show when it was finished.

New suggestions tracked:



11/05/2012



Alert messages

gunnergoz wrote:
I think the game would much benefit from an alert message when the following happens:

1. A friendly fleet arrives at its destination - this would help alert me that my colony ship has finally arrived at that distant system I forgot I sent it to umpeen turns ago.

2. An enemy fleet is blockading one of my systems - especially when playing with pirates (which can be hard to see if you play zoomed out as much as I do) since I often accidentally launch a colony into orbit and it gets gobbled right up by that darn pirate that was sitting there, but that I did not notice until too late.

3. My gold balance is going into the negative - sometimes I don't notice for several turns before it starts to dip into my reserve funds.

Victory conditions

jetkar wrote:
Victory Conditions - Domination, Annihilation, Complete a Campaign and etc

Yes, for annihilation.





Post battle notification

jetkar wrote:
Notification of battle to commence in designated system(s)

Clearer research types

qberticus wrote:
It would be better if all the different types of items gained through research could be differentiated in some way. Right now most of the images are a light blue with revealed resources being the only other type of image color.

We'll work on a visual feedback.





Distance indicator

Kruos wrote:
So, concerning the UI of the galaxy map, I think some kind of distance indicator should be very useful to evaluate space travel.

> Maybe just a tooltip pop when a fleet is selected and the cursor pass on a star?

We'll track that.





Continue to play at the end

ethoril wrote:
There is a wonderful feature in civilization: "just one more turn"

Pirates

remorr wrote:
Currently we have pirates randomly spawning around the galaxy and being just an annoyance. Some people suggest SotSE system with some pirate capital. Yes it worked, but it always seemed strange to me.

So I suggest to keep the current system, but make few tweaks.

1. Make pirate 'heroes', with their stats and skills.

2. Let them rob trade routes (what the main pirate thing is supposed to be).

3. Make them smart enough to not attack 10 times stronger fleets.

And we are coming to the Letter of Marque.

If pirate agrees on that you get free scout, saboteur and -1 source of annoyance, while he gets place to fix his ships and get more of them [andaplacetoretirewithallthatdust].

We'll work on improving their interactions.





First contact effect

BobbyDylan wrote:
I'd love if a random event (Althout maybe that's wrong, maybe random effect is better) to be caused by first contact with the first alien race.

We'll work on a notification, not an animation.





Planetary effect

Sparks wrote:
Visual representation of planet exploits on the surface.

Visual representation of planet colonization eg cities and infrastructure.

Ship liveries to distinguish between fleets eg colour coded ships based on empire scheme. Sometimes it's disorientating in manual battle sequences with two identical races and hugely varying camera angles.

Visual indication of whether ship/planet has hero attached. Symbol on the empire screen perhaps, some indication without having to tunnel down a level of menu.

We'll boost the anomalies and population effects overtime.





More heroes

jetkar wrote:
More Heros - More variety of Heros

Post release?





Hero cloning

Nycidian wrote:
[HR][/HR]Instead of cloning into the academy a Clone would be installed via a new option next to the assign button called clone. This button instead of copying the hero would create a Clone in that fleet or system.

• Making a Clone would follow the same cost as it is currently.
• Clones being copies and not the original would not be able to gain experience.
• If a battle is lost or a colony is conquered the Clone would be lost and would need to be purchased again.
• Clone's bonuses would be halved.
• Clones would not be able to use abilities that cost Dust.
  
  

[HR][/HR][/QUOTE]

Needs some tweaking and improvement.





Salvaging

Nycidian wrote:
I suggest adding a mechanic to the game for salvaging technology from space battles.

It's not a technology but an ability.





Boarding and cloaking

jetkar wrote:


Boarding - Tech to board and take control enemy ships

Cloaking - Tech to able to cloak ship

Could be post release?





Trade ship

jetkar wrote:
Trade Ships - Tech to trade commodities and transport goods / passangers

For population only.





Prioritising targets

Dingmatt wrote:
Can I suggest that some form of target prioritisation is introduced so that we the player can get our fleets to focus fire on ship designs we deem more threatening, I say ship design as we all know that just because its bigger doesn't mean its better.

Tracking.





Ship spinning

PlasticMenace wrote:
I don't know if this is happening or what but would it be possible to have a 3D ship manipulation whilst designing new ships? I do like the idea of getting to see all of the ships in detail, always fun to see the artistic bits and bobs

Tracking.





Build queue

jetkar wrote:
I noticed while playing with the planetary build que you are not able to re-arrange the order with deleting them. It would be ieal if you could select the item by sliding up or down Shown by up & down arrows) to change the priority. This could also be added to ship build ques too.

Yes, you've all been asking for that - definitely tracking that.





Fleet Mouse over

mabelair wrote:
I would find it useful to see when mousing over a fleet a bit more detail other than just what fleets are there, but also what ships they contain. I've attached an image to demonstrate what I mean. Note in the image that the mouse is over the fleet in Xanados (doesn't capture my cursor, sorry), and I've mocked up in Paint what it could look like.

Tracking.





Retreat

DJIllusion wrote:
But could we have a 'Retreat / Emergency' retreat card. If they take you by surprise then you want to get out of there not just sit and get blown up..

We actually had to remove it for the Alpha. But it's there.







Survey enhancement

SolearisSK wrote:
[Suggestion-UI,SystemScreen]:

I would appreciate a marker that would indicate whether a planet's moon was surveyed or not. I found myself late in game checking planet screens just for this.

Yes, for moons.





Digital art book

Ren_Shredder wrote:
Hi forum!

Like most of you I have voted on one or two designs that didn't make it in the past. This made me think that it would be really sad if all the great designs that won't make it into the final game just got lost in the process, and how awesome a digital artbook with all the designs that made it to voting, even if they didn't get chosen, would be. And of course with a buttload of designs that didn't make it into voting at all.

Could be another bonus for preorders, or for everyone who buys the special edition.

What do you think? Would you love to get something like that as well? And if so, what would be your ideas for the design of the artbook?

Sure, why not?





Changing faction colors

chuckrman wrote:
The colors on the pallette are close enough in some cases that I have trouble seeing the difference particularly when ships are moving in and out of systems and are slightly faded. It would be nice set the colors directly.

Tracking.



Colorblind option

[QUOTEusername='Marlboro_[SVK];8472']Hi,

I am Colorblind.

Please, can u do something for us colorblind people, that can not see difference between red and green and other colors. I have really problems to rocognise with what race do I have to deal, when only one difference is the color of their planets. It would be cool, when the races had in their color bars literally banners with their race names. The only game on market with help for colorbind people was Civilizaion.

So I ask, Is it possible for You to do something for us?[/QUOTE]

Tracking.