Endless space
WhiteWeasel
Join Date: 2012-11-25 Member: 173197Members
Join Date: 2012-11-25 Member: 173197Members
4X game (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate).
Gamespot video review: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKX2gm9Y6oU
Game site here: http://www.amplitude-studios.com/
Endless space is about exploring the galaxy, finding good systems and colonizing them. Building improvements to give your systems better;
Food (how fast your pop goes up)
Industry (how quickly you build ships/improvements)
Dust (Money)
Science (more sci means you can research more advanced tech)
And meeting other empires and though war or diplomacy to become the strongest faction.
The video gives a decent summery of the game.
Also anything you could possibly click on has a tool tip that tells you what it does, so I found it user friendly.
Here is a more detailed video of the battle system: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwLbal5cdbw (Which people either love or hate).
Also note in the battles the %tiles are additive
The 3 phases of battle go like this for weapon accuracy:
Long range: Missiles 90% Beams 50% Kinetics 20%
Medium range: Missiles 70% Beams 90% Kinetics 40%
Melee range: Missiles 40% Beams 70% Kinetics 90%
And you have various cards to play that buff your ships, debuffs the enemy, and possibly cancel his card. And blocking a card will yield larger effect to the one that countered it.
[Edit] This game has had three free add-ons at the time of this post:
Rise of the automatons:
Added the Automatons faction with a specific gameplay affinity and properties for specific buildings, according to Panzer, the winner of the faction contest.
Automatons Affinity:
1. At the end of the turn, if there is an overproduction, it's stacked instead of being reported.
2. At the beginning of a turn, an interest is applied to the stacked industry, allowing it to increase a bit.
3. The stacked industry is capped at 5 * system's industry.
4. If the overproduction cannot be stacked, it's conserved for the next turn like the current mechanism.
5. When the automatons build improvements & ships, the industry is used in the following order:
a. system's industry
b. overproduction
c. stacked industry
6. When a system from the Automatons is invaded, the stacked industry is destroyed, reset to 0 even if the invader is an Automaton.
Echos of the endless:
QUOTE Added exploration rewards: small random bonuses for the first player to explore a system.
Some exploration events are now interactive.
Added natural and endless wonders. The endless wonders can be restored.
Added more life to the galaxy with the random addition of comets, black holes, pulsars, ...
Added 4 heroes of new factions (Sheredyn and minor factions).
Added 5 new musics.
Polaris:
QUOTE We have implemented a bit more than 80 achievements so far, including the ones created and voted by the community through the two first Games2Gether Steam Achievement votes!
Steam Cloud provides easy and transparent remote file storage for your Endless Space's saves. This will allow you to keep on playing your game, from one computer to another, as long as you are logged into your Steam account.
In ES there are 9 different stock factions with a unique appearance and countless custom ones to be played:
Evil factions:
United Empire: unlike most sci-fi games the base human race of the game is evil. The U.E. is a imperialistic empire that that wins though Economic / Military and gets an industry bonus at high taxes.
Cravers: Are a race of insectoid life forms that no concept of peace or sustainability, and therefor must continually expand or they will consume them selves to death. Their planets get a bonus to FIDS when recently colonized then normal for awhile then have a depleted status, forcing expansion.
Hissho: Avian klingons if you will. Their weapons deal 36% more damage and 15% more likely to hit (additively) making them good warmongers. However they do have a malice to science making them more easy to out tech (and gun).
Neutral factions:
Horatio: His entire race is nothing but a clone of himself and his goal is to beautifie the stars by filling them with horatios. The biggest narcissist you will EVER see. They have special food/influence bonuses and the ability to clone heros.
Sowers: Wall-E comes to mind. They are robots that have been created by the endless to "prepare" for their eventual return. They can colonize planets before getting the tech for them, with a reduced FIDS until it is researched
Good factions:
Pilgrims: A splinter cell of the UE, they are the faction showed in the beginning of the video. They have the ability to create a "fleet errant" that can take all (but one) of the populace and improvements and migrate them to another more suitable planet.
Amoeba: A very open race that specializes in diplomacy: "Though the Amoeba do not feel that their nature is to dominate and conquer, they can be viewed as warriors whose weapons are diplomacy and trade." They start with the whole galaxy mapped out, get approval (happiness) and damage bonuses for being at peace/allied with other factions.
Sophons: The science race. They are not as strong as other races but make up for it by being able to research more advanced tech (and guns) before anyone else. They get a bonus to science with low taxes.
Automatons: A fan-made faction that won a contest. They are robots who were the leftovers of their masters who since died of ecological damage to the planet. They have the ability to stack industry.
Games2gether: This is a good example of interaction of the devs.
Simply when your a member of the forums you acquire G2G points by posting and putting in a unique code if you have a copy of the game. This allows all the forum members to vote on the features that will be implemented into the game. Also the devs will more often than most consult their members about additions of the game before adding anything to see what the fans come up with.
WTF happened!? why is the editing so screwed up?
Gamespot video review: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKX2gm9Y6oU
Game site here: http://www.amplitude-studios.com/
Endless space is about exploring the galaxy, finding good systems and colonizing them. Building improvements to give your systems better;
Food (how fast your pop goes up)
Industry (how quickly you build ships/improvements)
Dust (Money)
Science (more sci means you can research more advanced tech)
And meeting other empires and though war or diplomacy to become the strongest faction.
The video gives a decent summery of the game.
Also anything you could possibly click on has a tool tip that tells you what it does, so I found it user friendly.
Here is a more detailed video of the battle system: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwLbal5cdbw (Which people either love or hate).
Also note in the battles the %tiles are additive
The 3 phases of battle go like this for weapon accuracy:
Long range: Missiles 90% Beams 50% Kinetics 20%
Medium range: Missiles 70% Beams 90% Kinetics 40%
Melee range: Missiles 40% Beams 70% Kinetics 90%
And you have various cards to play that buff your ships, debuffs the enemy, and possibly cancel his card. And blocking a card will yield larger effect to the one that countered it.
[Edit] This game has had three free add-ons at the time of this post:
Rise of the automatons:
Added the Automatons faction with a specific gameplay affinity and properties for specific buildings, according to Panzer, the winner of the faction contest.
Automatons Affinity:
1. At the end of the turn, if there is an overproduction, it's stacked instead of being reported.
2. At the beginning of a turn, an interest is applied to the stacked industry, allowing it to increase a bit.
3. The stacked industry is capped at 5 * system's industry.
4. If the overproduction cannot be stacked, it's conserved for the next turn like the current mechanism.
5. When the automatons build improvements & ships, the industry is used in the following order:
a. system's industry
b. overproduction
c. stacked industry
6. When a system from the Automatons is invaded, the stacked industry is destroyed, reset to 0 even if the invader is an Automaton.
Echos of the endless:
QUOTE Added exploration rewards: small random bonuses for the first player to explore a system.
Some exploration events are now interactive.
Added natural and endless wonders. The endless wonders can be restored.
Added more life to the galaxy with the random addition of comets, black holes, pulsars, ...
Added 4 heroes of new factions (Sheredyn and minor factions).
Added 5 new musics.
Polaris:
QUOTE We have implemented a bit more than 80 achievements so far, including the ones created and voted by the community through the two first Games2Gether Steam Achievement votes!
Steam Cloud provides easy and transparent remote file storage for your Endless Space's saves. This will allow you to keep on playing your game, from one computer to another, as long as you are logged into your Steam account.
In ES there are 9 different stock factions with a unique appearance and countless custom ones to be played:
Evil factions:
United Empire: unlike most sci-fi games the base human race of the game is evil. The U.E. is a imperialistic empire that that wins though Economic / Military and gets an industry bonus at high taxes.
Cravers: Are a race of insectoid life forms that no concept of peace or sustainability, and therefor must continually expand or they will consume them selves to death. Their planets get a bonus to FIDS when recently colonized then normal for awhile then have a depleted status, forcing expansion.
Hissho: Avian klingons if you will. Their weapons deal 36% more damage and 15% more likely to hit (additively) making them good warmongers. However they do have a malice to science making them more easy to out tech (and gun).
Neutral factions:
Horatio: His entire race is nothing but a clone of himself and his goal is to beautifie the stars by filling them with horatios. The biggest narcissist you will EVER see. They have special food/influence bonuses and the ability to clone heros.
Sowers: Wall-E comes to mind. They are robots that have been created by the endless to "prepare" for their eventual return. They can colonize planets before getting the tech for them, with a reduced FIDS until it is researched
Good factions:
Pilgrims: A splinter cell of the UE, they are the faction showed in the beginning of the video. They have the ability to create a "fleet errant" that can take all (but one) of the populace and improvements and migrate them to another more suitable planet.
Amoeba: A very open race that specializes in diplomacy: "Though the Amoeba do not feel that their nature is to dominate and conquer, they can be viewed as warriors whose weapons are diplomacy and trade." They start with the whole galaxy mapped out, get approval (happiness) and damage bonuses for being at peace/allied with other factions.
Sophons: The science race. They are not as strong as other races but make up for it by being able to research more advanced tech (and guns) before anyone else. They get a bonus to science with low taxes.
Automatons: A fan-made faction that won a contest. They are robots who were the leftovers of their masters who since died of ecological damage to the planet. They have the ability to stack industry.
Games2gether: This is a good example of interaction of the devs.
Simply when your a member of the forums you acquire G2G points by posting and putting in a unique code if you have a copy of the game. This allows all the forum members to vote on the features that will be implemented into the game. Also the devs will more often than most consult their members about additions of the game before adding anything to see what the fans come up with.
WTF happened!? why is the editing so screwed up?
Comments
My only major complaint is that this game is a real time consumer, especially playing on larger galaxies. However that's pretty common for this genre.
Other than that the game is really good, especially that the devs are very social, <i>arguably</i> maybe more so than here. And I forgot to mention the 3 <b>free</b> add-ons they released and is working on the 3rd.
I love these types of games. I've bought it, it's in my steam list, but it's exam season so I haven't booted it up yet :)
I was addicted to space empires 5 for a couple months using Captain Kwoks mod. It was awesome.
Is there any sort of modding scene for endless space? I don't expect anything to be quite that far along, but if there are some good mods anyone could recommend I'd be interested to hear about it.
The latter of the two.
<!--quoteo(post=2044636:date=Dec 12 2012, 04:12 PM:name=Swiftspear)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Swiftspear @ Dec 12 2012, 04:12 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2044636"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Is there any sort of modding scene for endless space? I don't expect anything to be quite that far along, but if there are some good mods anyone could recommend I'd be interested to hear about it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
YES. ES openly supports modding, however with all the recent add-ons I'm not sure if all of them are sill working/up to date.
A few Mods that I know that are up to date:
Imperium Aeterna
Exotic Planets
Terraforming Mod
Sandbox Mod
At first it seemed really deep, expansive, and complex but that was mainly because the tutorial system was such garbage. Once I played about 2 games I realized it was fairly basic and simple. It kind of put me off space 4x games in general.
At first it seemed really deep, expansive, and complex but that was mainly because the tutorial system was such garbage. Once I played about 2 games I realized it was fairly basic and simple. It kind of put me off space 4x games in general.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well ES is one of those games, while good, it isn't going to appeal to everyone. And I cannot compare to sins since I've never played it.
At first it seemed really deep, expansive, and complex but that was mainly because the tutorial system was such garbage. Once I played about 2 games I realized it was fairly basic and simple. It kind of put me off space 4x games in general.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
SoaSE isn't a traditional 4X. It's much shallower and contained than most 4X games are. It's more of a glorified RTS. At the best of times these games tend to be dense to learn though. It's usually better to rush through the tutorial, and then just start playing until you identify some large mistake you did, then scuttle your flawed empire and start new without that mistake (or find a youtube video that shows off the basics).
I love this genre, both space based and land based 4X, but it's definitely niche and not for everyone.
Ugh... I regret playing SEV as much as I did. The engine is soo poorly written... out of the box I was getting 5fps on the main system view. After a couple hours tinkering including running in windowed mode I got it up to a playable 20-25fps. Then there's the part where you press end turn and it computes the AI turns... At the start of the game it's really snappy, takes just a few seconds but after a few hundred turns it was taking 15-20 minuies on my i7 2600.
Balance mod is absolutely mandatory because the default game is an abortion. What I like about the balance mod is it attempts to re-design the tech tree and units to be a balanced version of the default game. Unfortunately there are still some huge balance problems: kiting with plasma missiles, overwhelming point defence with plasma missiles, outraging with plasma missiles... to name a few. And my mid game always seemed to boil down to turtling until I could get stellar manipulation tech high enough to explode and rebuild all the uncolonisable worlds in my territory, at which point I would leapfrog the AIs tech/mineral production and take over the galaxy...
But there were several things that kept me going back:
using all player created the ship models from eve, homeworld, star trek, star wars etc.
the variety of units: mines, satellites, star bases, weapon platforms, fighters, drones and then the 7 different sized hulls for ships. Lots of options!
I did play SoaSE years ago and yeah, it's a RTS not a 4x. Also played Sword of the Stars which was a 4x and had some interesting tech options but was horribly let down by its economy (was very linear).
One space 4x I was surprised by was Armada 2526 with the Supernova expansion. Reviews canned it but I found it to be pretty fun. It's turn based with real time 3d combat. The races are interesting, the tech tree presents some interesting options and the galaxy map has some good variation (different system types, special planetary features and dust clouds which you navigate around). SW Rebellion is one of my all time favourite games and A2526S reminds me of it in some ways. If you're interested, check out my <a href="http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQRUd7n1LSOvPssQ_lTjwF4U-XVbnYXHo" target="_blank">Let's Play</a>, I explain a lot about the game in the first ep. It is my first LP and I mainly did it because I wanted to get some practice in before doing a Dwarf Fortress LP.
I also found that lasers were simply the best of the 3 damage types, and that kinetics were 100% useless as ships never lasted long enough to get to close range. This may be related to the above paragraph though, in that I couldn't figure out how to build effective ships that countered the main AI I was fighting against.
What went wrong?
What equipment you using?
Who were you fighting?
What was the MP of your ships and the AIs'?
I know the battles fairly well, if you still play I can help you.
What equipment you using?
Who were you fighting?
What was the MP of your ships and the AIs'?
I know the battles fairly well, if you still play I can help you.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't know, as I explained in previous message, the post battle screen didn't really make much sense to me so I didn't know what was wrong with the fleets. Equiptment was the biggest lasers and not much else. I was expecting to understand the feedback to tailor my fleets against theirs. Automatons. Non hero based fleets of mine were around 40k and so was the AIs. A fleet with a hero in went up to abnout 70k but still took losses. I think the AI was mainly using lasers like myself.
It's somewhat immaterial as I didn't buy the game so I only played for the free weekend.
It's somewhat immaterial as I didn't buy the game so I only played for the free weekend.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
During the battle there are scroll bars below the card display/fleet health showing all the ships of both sides like this:
[attachment=36180:Es_battle___Copy.jpg]
So you can compare your and opponents loadout and adjust accordingly. In this case the AI's were going beams/flak so my ships have shields w/beams and are very armor heavy for the stuff I'm not protected against, (so they can live long enough to be retrofitted, not a stand in).
Either the opponent was using a weapon your vulnerable against, they were the hissho (36% more DMG), or that they have a higher tier of weapon (Damage increase from one tier to the next is huge; 50% or more).
It also sound like you were going glass cannon, if you were, not a good idea in ES.
My strategy is to outlast the opponent and go defense heavy with lots of (that apply) deflector/shields/and or flak with lots of armor.
Any more questions about battle? look here: <a href="http://endlessspace.wikia.com/wiki/Combat#Weapons_and_Defenses" target="_blank">http://endlessspace.wikia.com/wiki/Combat#...ns_and_Defenses</a>