NOTE: Guide is currently pending a revision for the Polaris update. I might postpone it even further, however.



One of the most distinguishing features of Endless Space is the beautiful and practical UI. Everything is neatly organized and sharply presented. However, there are some features of the UI that are not immediately accessible to every player. A little exploring will improve your familiarity, but some players will just never think to click this button or that picture. Thus, I decided it would be useful to create a guide to the user interface.



Some General Tips:

Hover over everything. If it's a number, it will probably show you the factors it aggregates. If it's an icon, it will probably give you more details about the object it represents.

Right Clicking anywhere on a screen will activate the "close" button in the corner, taking you back up a layer through the UI. The Escape key will function in the same way. The exception is the Galaxy Map, where escape opens the game menu and Right Click is used for fleet movement.

Several UI elements allow multiple selections. Control + Left-Click allows you to add or remove items from the selected list. Left-Click selects a signal item.

Steph'nie's post regarding keyboard shortcuts



New Game Screen:

Clicking your larger portrait also opens the race selection window. In the race selection window, Left-Click in empty space forces the scrolling text to load instantly.

The lock icon is clickable to toggle.



The Galaxy Overview:

The mouse wheel zooms in and out.

Left-Click a system to open the System View.

Left-Click a fleet (both friendly and enemy) to select it and any other fleets in the same location. This opens the fleet pane.

With a fleet selected, Right-Click to assign a destination. Shift + Right-Click allows you to queue movement orders. Control + Right-Click allows you to force a straight-line move (requires a tech unlock).

Hover over a traveling fleet to check if there are multiple fleets in one stack.

If you are playing the Automatons, stacked industry is displayed below a system's name at close zoom levels (it will disappear as you zoom out).







The System View:

Click the system's name in the top right pane to rename it.

Click the hero's portrait to open the inspect popup for that hero.

The "CHANGE" button allows you to select a hero for that system.

Click a planet to open the Planet View.

Hover over any of the text below a planet to see a breakdown of the effects.

The population icons surrounding a planet can be dragged to other colonized planets to move population between planets in the system.

Moons have an aura surrounding them depending on their state (faint or none for unexplored, blue for explored but empty, brown for explored with a discovered temple).







The Planet View:

The 3d planet image actually changes to display features of the planet (you might see an oasis on a desert planet if it has Garden of Eden, for example).

Click some of the planet development icons to add them to the system's queue.



The Empire Overview:

The tax rate slider is adjustable.

Click any of the headers on the table to sort the table by that attribute.

Click a system name to open the System View on that system.

Click the population bar for a given system to open a pane that shows that system's population in detail. You can move population between planets.

Click the hero portrait for a given system to select a hero to assign to that system.

Click the item that a system is producing to open the full production queue for that system. You can modify it within those panes.

Click the hangar to open the system's hangar and interact with the ships there. You can also view a system's current improvements and interact with them.

If you are playing automatons, stacked industry is displayed under the industry number for a system.







The Research Overview:

The mouse wheel zooms in and out. Each closer zoom displays more information.

Click one of the four isolated icons in the centre to move to middle zoom focused on that particular tech tree.

Clicking a tech you do not have a prerequisite for will queue up the prerequisite then the selected tech.

Shift + Left-Click queues up tech manually. Shift + Left-Click can also remove a technology (and any techs in the queue relying on it as a prerequisite) from the queue. Left-Click a single tech to empty the queue and add that tech instead.

The keyword search will search through tech names and individual unlockables' names. It will not search through tech descriptions or unlockables' descriptions.



The Military Overview:

Click the hero portraits to select a hero for that fleet.

You can select multiple fleets with Control + Left-Click.

With a single fleet selected, you can select individual ships in the fleet summary below with Control + Left-Click. This allows you to create smaller fleets or refit individual ships rather than the whole fleet.

With any number of ships selected, you can drag and drop ships into another fleet in the same system to move them between fleets. (Thanks Tiriondil!)

With a ship selected (either a from a fleet or a ship design) the pane on the right provides details of that ship. The engine tooltip does not include fleet-wide bonuses provided by your engine modules. You can click the 3d portrait of the ship to watch it rotate. The closer to the centre of the ship, the more slowly it rotates.

With a ship design selected, you can find a 'modify' button in the corner to alter that ship design.

The Ship Designer:

The support modules list scrolls down.

You can click the 3d portrait of the ship to watch it rotate. The closer to the centre of the ship, the more slowly it rotates.

The engine tooltip attached to the ship does not include fleet-wide bonuses provided by your engine modules.

If you are creating a new ship, the name box is active. You can click it any time to modify the name of your design. The name box is not active if you are modifying an existing ship.

The Diplomacy Window:

Click a race's portrait to move it to the centre pedestal. You are now viewing the window through that race's perspective rather than your own. Here you can also open diplomacy options with that race.



The Diplomatic Negotiations Window:

If a diplomatic term displays a number, you can click that number to modify the quantity directly. There is a quirk [asofversion1.0.16] in this feature, requiring you to either hit enter or use one of the add/decrease buttons to 'lock' the quantity you have typed in. The add/decrease buttons scale in magnitude as the number increases (for example, from 10 to 20, each click adds two units instead of one).



The Academy View:

Click a hero card to select that hero.

Click the greyed out row of hero cards to swap it with the current row.



Checking your Victory Progress:

Score - Hover over the galaxy button in the top menu-bar.

Economic - Hover over the empire button in the top menu-bar (may not display until you have progress greater than 1%)

Wonder - Hover over the empire button in the top menu-bar (may not display until you have built at least one wonder)

Science - Hover over the research button in the top menu-bar (may not display until you begin researching the endgame tech)

Supremacy - Hover over the military button in the top menu-bar

Expansion - Hover over the military button in the top menu-bar

Diplomatic - Hover over the diplomacy button in the top menu-bar (may not be displayed until you have progress greater than 1%)



Thanks for reading. Remember to explore everything, from the planets to the UI.







Version 1.0.16 -> Version 1.0.25 Updates:

The guide is now approaching character limit! Some trimming occurred.

Added references to the Automaton's stacked industry and to the trade route summary.





Authors' notes:

I've aimed the guide's scope as: completely documenting anything clickable that is not presented as a button or scroll menu, partially documenting hover tool tips where they are not obviously icons or statistic numbers, completely documenting oddities associated with the UI. If I have missed anything within the scope of the guide, please do reply with additions.

Great post, FreeMarket, thanks

How is this different from the in-game tutorial?

That is a fair point, davea. Quite a bit of this information is also available in the manual. I would justify my effort based on the following points:



Sometimes it's valuable to aggregate specific information in a concentrated form. If a specific UI question turns up, sometimes a player wants to go to a more focused resource rather than wade through a manual.

I've tried to document a few oddities along with the basics. For example, the bug in the ship designer or the strange click function in the system improvements pane.

Some players can use a refresher now and then. For example, a beta player may not have noticed the publication of an updated tutorial or manual. There are a few instances where functionality has actually changed since beta versions.

I still occasionally notice an obvious, "Oh, that's how that works! It would have took me ages to figure that out," every now and then. Hopefully this guide can help some players.



I will admit the format could be a little too exhaustive for some reader's interest. Would you suggest I reduce the scope of the guide, or perhaps post a "Too long, didn't read" at the end with just oddities?

As the UI gets updated, your guide will be hard to maintain. I suggest a different thread on just "oddities", or perhaps adding that to the existing thread "things I learned the hard way".