First of all I'd like to say that the game is really fun to play and has great potential but ..



there are some problems / design solutions that are ( in my opinion ) not the best ones and / or generating imbalance and frustration. It looks like some of them might be resolved in the upcoming expansion but I don't know if all of them



( All remarks concern multiplayer with other players )



Unbalanced / Unfair start

Better / worse systems pretty much determine your chances of winning / losing the game. Plus if someone gets corporate + administrator hero ( and admiral + pilot for fleet ) and you don't you have pretty much lost already. And it's very, very hard to catch up to someone who has 350 - 500 points advantage. You have to convince everyone else to aggressively counter them or they'll win.



Don't get me wrong, it's great that you can get different systems. But I would like to still have a fighting chance even with bad systems at start.



Regarding heroes - maybe they should be available from - let's say 25th turn or you have to "earn" them, ex. building planetary developments + colonizing planets gives you chances for administrator, fighting gives you chances for pilot and so on.



Cravers

I get that they are the Angry guys that like to kill everything and everyone but it would be so much more fun if you could give them something ( like tech + dust ... ). It could motivate them to attack someone else

+ in our games they get wiped pretty quick and there is no way to help them



Diplomacy

Why we cannot demand technology for cease fire ? And there should be some more deals - make peace / declare war with someone ...



Fighting

It's pretty weak right now - although the idea with cards is quite refreshing.

You cannot choose targets so you have no way to focus your fire on more dangerous ships.

There is really no choice in weapons - there are just more powerful versions of the previous ones. And that means that if someone has better technology than you - you are screwed. Comparing this to SotS ( Sword of the Stars ) where you could always choose different kinds of weapons / ship designs - and even if someone had superior technology you could do something, take heavy losses but still kill something. Here you will barely scratch their armor ( and I'm not talking about a situation where you have weapons and armor tier 1 and they have tier 5 ).

Even if you try to build "last resort / defense" ships with all weapons / armor you have no chances if your opponent has better weapons / armor. If they've better tech than you you can only watch as you loose your systems one by one.

Plus high tech beams + def. on all types counters almost anything.

No way to choose which fleet will be attacked / defending.

Your systems don't heal your ships ( I mean .. almost ), but attacking poor scout and choosing heal - does ...



Planetary Invasion

No way to choose if you want to capture or just simply destroy target system.

Defending player has couple of ways to make you pay dearly for your invasion that shouldn't be possible ( if they know they'll lose that system anyway ):

a) sell every system improvement turn before you capture that system - maybe selling ( destroying ) improvements should also require some time ?

b) colonize every unhospitable / bad planet so you get a system with very low morale - since you cannot abandon planets .. especially painful if you are invading a Sower system in early game



AI

AI behaves in strange ways .. sometimes it won't defend it's own systems but prefers to attack you. And every time you load the game it seems to generate a New Great Plan for Galactic Domination, forgetting what it was doing before save ...



Ship Designs

Why we have only 10 slots for ships ?



Overall it's a fun game but from my experience in multiplayer, winner of the game ( even a long one ) is chosen before the 50th turn.

Zonk wrote:
First of all I'd like to say that the game is really fun to play and has great potential but ..



there are some problems / design solutions that are ( in my opinion ) not the best ones and / or generating imbalance and frustration. It looks like some of them might be resolved in the upcoming expansion but I don't know if all of them



( All remarks concern multiplayer with other players )



Unbalanced / Unfair start

Better / worse systems pretty much determine your chances of winning / losing the game. Plus if someone gets corporate + administrator hero ( and admiral + pilot for fleet ) and you don't you have pretty much lost already. And it's very, very hard to catch up to someone who has 350 - 500 points advantage. You have to convince everyone else to aggressively counter them or they'll win.



Don't get me wrong, it's great that you can get different systems. But I would like to still have a fighting chance even with bad systems at start.



Regarding heroes - maybe they should be available from - let's say 25th turn or you have to "earn" them, ex. building planetary developments + colonizing planets gives you chances for administrator, fighting gives you chances for pilot and so on.



Cravers

I get that they are the Angry guys that like to kill everything and everyone but it would be so much more fun if you could give them something ( like tech + dust ... ). It could motivate them to attack someone else

+ in our games they get wiped pretty quick and there is no way to help them



Diplomacy

Why we cannot demand technology for cease fire ? And there should be some more deals - make peace / declare war with someone ...



Fighting

It's pretty weak right now - although the idea with cards is quite refreshing.

You cannot choose targets so you have no way to focus your fire on more dangerous ships.

There is really no choice in weapons - there are just more powerful versions of the previous ones. And that means that if someone has better technology than you - you are screwed. Comparing this to SotS ( Sword of the Stars ) where you could always choose different kinds of weapons / ship designs - and even if someone had superior technology you could do something, take heavy losses but still kill something. Here you will barely scratch their armor ( and I'm not talking about a situation where you have weapons and armor tier 1 and they have tier 5 ).

Even if you try to build "last resort / defense" ships with all weapons / armor you have no chances if your opponent has better weapons / armor. If they've better tech than you you can only watch as you loose your systems one by one.

Plus high tech beams + def. on all types counters almost anything.

No way to choose which fleet will be attacked / defending.

Your systems don't heal your ships ( I mean .. almost ), but attacking poor scout and choosing heal - does ...



Planetary Invasion

No way to choose if you want to capture or just simply destroy target system.

Defending player has couple of ways to make you pay dearly for your invasion that shouldn't be possible ( if they know they'll lose that system anyway ):

a) sell every system improvement turn before you capture that system - maybe selling ( destroying ) improvements should also require some time ?

b) colonize every unhospitable / bad planet so you get a system with very low morale - since you cannot abandon planets .. especially painful if you are invading a Sower system in early game



AI

AI behaves in strange ways .. sometimes it won't defend it's own systems but prefers to attack you. And every time you load the game it seems to generate a New Great Plan for Galactic Domination, forgetting what it was doing before save ...



Ship Designs

Why we have only 10 slots for ships ?



Overall it's a fun game but from my experience in multiplayer, winner of the game ( even a long one ) is chosen before the 50th turn.

Expansion pack coming soon

I know And I really look forward to it and that most of that gets fixed / changed.

The "Unbalanced / Unfair start" is a great problem, in particular in small and tiny maps.



In my last game (small, 4 arms spiral) I resigned after the exploration of my neighbour's arm:

the central core was a crap (a lot of gas giant, asteroids and some artics and deserts, with a lot of negative anomalies);

my spiral arm had 6 systems, my core wasn't bad (jungle, desert, asteroid, gas), but I found only 1 other T1 planet and 2 T2.



Then I went on the Sophon's arm: he had 8 systems, with a total of 2 Jungle, 2 Ocean, 3 Terran and a lot of T2 planets (al least 1 per system)...

It would be difficult against an IA, against a human is suicide.



Happen also to me in another game: started with two super system, one with 2 Ocean + 2 Tundra + 1 Gas and the other with 3 jungle and 2 barren...my friends have surrendered after 80 turns, I had more power than all the Others combined.



This problem seems to be inversely proportional to the size of the map.



Don't get me wrong, I LOVE this game, in particular in MP, but sometime is a little frustrating.

If you read the design document open to all you will see that the expansion looks to balance this out. T2 planets will be more viable.

/#/endless-space/forum/29-archives/thread/13129-exp-balancing

Zonk wrote:
Overall it's a fun game but from my experience in multiplayer, winner of the game ( even a long one ) is chosen before the 50th turn.

I believe this is an inherent trait in most turn-based games such as Civ4, Galactic Civ, and other games like these.



The only way to avoid this is to constantly mug the guy in the lead.

Depends how you play the game. Most ladder games where either quickly over (20-30 turns then gg) or long close ass games and incredible fun. The key is to get teams of equal skill level players to oppose each other. This example is from civ4 beyond the sword team ladder. Mostly Renaissance teamers with 2 city elimination rules. (2 cities dead and player is dead.)

Paheej wrote:
I believe this is an inherent trait in most turn-based games such as Civ4, Galactic Civ, and other games like these.



The only way to avoid this is to constantly mug the guy in the lead.

Yes and no. Of course if you start your MP game alone on an island, then you have pretty good chances of winning



But other than that you cannot fight on all fronts - even if you are the leading nation. Here it's too many times all or nothing - you will either destroy some ships or barely scratch them and loose your whole fleet. And your tactical options ( like flanking, sneak attack, cloaking your fleet and hitting some valuable systems, no guerrilla warfare, using bio-weapons to cripple your opponents systems, or even diplomatic options - like bribing someone to attack them ) are fairly limited.



And like I said before, I've read that the expansion is coming soon and I hope it will change some of those things.

many people here are saying that the expansion will fix many of the OP stated things.



You are maybe forgeting that the Expansion is not for free and some people which ever reason they have mabye dont want to spend the money for the expansion.

The Vanilla deserves also the same attention plus players which are satisfied with the vanilla are more lilely to buy the expansion.

.. also a good point about payed expansion.



I also remembered two more slightly annoying things:



Trading Techs ( but this has been pointed out by others )



It's ok that you can trade techs but not like now. You don't need any spies, you know exactly what your opponent has and what he's developing. Only solution to that is not to have peace - but then you have no trade :/

Maybe it should be more like Civ V style - research agreements or some special mission ships that you can send your scientists to give tech / receive boost to technology.



Manual Battle Trick

When you are fighting in manual you can easily check how your ships performed in current combat phase and adjust your next card accordingly ( ex. choose repair if you have slightly dmg. ships or all out attack if you are winning or retreat. ). The only thing you have to do is hover over each ship right after cards are played .. you can see their status ( hp ) at the end of the phase even though bars representing their health are green ( ex. ). I don't think this is intended behavior