Endless Space

[Raaritsgozilla]

I'm considering buying this for an early present to myself. What do people have to say about it? I have asked at some other places I frequent, and most reviews are good. It seems that this will be what I wanted X3 to be, almost a prettier and slightly easier Aurora.

Some more reviews before I decide please

[jnx]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/foru...-has-gone-Beta

This and X3 have absolutely nothing in common. Well, except space. You must be very misinformed of one or the other.

[soldant]

Well, one of them is a 4X game with a slick interface though slightly oversimplified combat... while the other is an Elite-style game that sports an interface featured in the original which is needlessly difficult to grapple with and makes even the simplest task challenging.

No but seriously if you've quoted Aurora you probably have some idea what Endless Space is but like Jnx I see no connection to X3, there's no flying around in ships trying to figure out how to use an overly complicated interface. That said it's not particularly deep in terms of mechanics; there's no real-time tactical combat for example, nor is there endless customisation of absolutely everything. It's very much focused on empire management, sort of like MOO2 except with simplified combat turned on.

[Velko]

I'm considering buying this for an early present to myself. What do people have to say about it? I have asked at some other places I frequent, and most reviews are good. It seems that this will be what I wanted X3 to be, almost a prettier and slightly easier Aurora.

Some more reviews before I decide please

No this isn't X3, this is 4X...

Anyhoo I like it a lot (but you knew that already, didn't you? needed another opinion? my opinion isn't enough for you? :hitler:)

[Raaritsgozilla]

Velko I believe anything you say. I just need external pressure and reassurance.

[Drinking with Skeletons]

My biggest complaint about Endless Space is the wonky diplomacy. This is mostly a problem because one of the races, the Amoeba, are almost completely dependent upon it in order to get their bonuses.

Past that, I've never been clear on what distinguishes racially unique techs from their standard counterparts.

I could probably nitpick it more, but it is, to me, still the best space-based 4X since Master of Orion 2. Highly recommended.

[WestermannsLeksikon]

Just wanted to bump this as the game is now out - I'd love an excuse to buy it (in the form of rave reviews here)! If you're playing it, I'd like to know what your experience is like - are you playing for long stretches, like a Civ? Is it something you could do while you listen to a podcast (eg)? Is it... is it awesome?

[jnx]

I'm pretty sure there's been enough discussion of this here already. Go look the thread I linked in my first post and I'm sure you'll make your decision.

[FriendlyFire]

I've personally only played a single game over the course of the weekend and I'm no Civ expert, so take my feedback with a grain of salt.

Generally, the game feels good, but it's rather slow to get going. There are some slightly odd decisions, the biggest of which is probably "expansion disapproval", which is basically a malus that accumulates as you get more systems. It's in many ways counterintuitive and annoying since it tanks your entire approval rating (which modulates every other production stats) and I've not found good ways of countering it (there are techs to diminish its effect, but they're expensive as hell).

The ship designer is more simple than SOTS or Gal Civ's, but the ships are much prettier and sleeker. Combat is very much just a pretty face on top of dice rolls, but the "card" system is actually fairly interesting and lets you give general guidelines to your fleet for each of three "phases" of combat. I sometimes felt that combat was confusing, since you didn't always see ships blow up (so you need to keep track of how many ships you/the enemy has by looking at the counters), but it's very pretty and cinematic and looking at your huge fleet wipe out the enemy's is just awesome. Dealing the good card and countering the enemy's choice also feels incredibly satisfying.

The science stuff is nicely designed. There's a clear tech tree with nice tooltips and queuing. Unlocked techs are clearly listed for each new research.

The races are genuinely interesting. I've personally only tried the Sophons, but some of the others are fun. You do have your generic human factions, but then you also have the diplomacy-heavy Amoeba, the destructive Cravers who consume systems one after the other (and can never be at peace!), the AI Sowers whose only goal is to terraform worlds for the Endless, and last but not least Horatio, a faction founded by a deranged trillionaire who wants to colonize the entire universe with his clones.

However, the highlight has to be the UI. It's ridiculously sleek, simple, and plain gorgeous. It's honestly probably the best UI I've seen for a 4X game. It's miles (miles!) beyond SOTS's clunky, ugly interface, and I'd say it's even better than Civ's. Everything can be done with the mouse if you wish, there are a lot of nice little touches like easy to use queues, drag and drop, lots of tooltips, etc. It's going to make you long for good UIs in just about any game after that.

Overall, I think it's worth the admission fee, and mods should further make this game enjoyable (for example, by removing this expansion disapproval factor if you don't like it).

[DevinSmoth]

I would love to see this game add Steam Workshop... that would set them worlds above many of the other 4X options out there.

[cowthief skank]

However, the highlight has to be the UI. It's ridiculously sleek, simple, and plain gorgeous. It's honestly probably the best UI I've seen for a 4X game. It's miles (miles!) beyond SOTS's clunky, ugly interface, and I'd say it's even better than Civ's. Everything can be done with the mouse if you wish, there are a lot of nice little touches like easy to use queues, drag and drop, lots of tooltips, etc. It's going to make you long for good UIs in just about any game after that.

Best thing about the interface is the right-click back. No need to click back or exit, no need to press escape, it's all on the mouse.

Rest of your post is pretty spot on, though I would say from my experience that the combat is actually pretty strategic - it is all about designing and building the right ships. You have to consider defence against the various weapon types, which weapons your enemies have, which defences they have, so your Mega Cruiser may dick all over the Cravers' fleet, but against the Sophons it may stand little chance, which can encourage you to vary your fleet compositions. By the time you get into the battles themselves, they are already essentially decided by what you did on the strategic side. I found the cards to make very little difference, and if I am honest I felt they were the game's weakest feature.

The heroes are a nice touch though. You get a (small) handful of heroes available. Some of them boost planetary stats, some combat stats. All level up from experience, and can become quite handy in the late game.

[Ravelle]

I am 70 turns in and defended my system a couple of times but how do I explore and invade other systems?

[cowthief skank]

I am 70 turns in and defended my system a couple of times but how do I explore and invade other systems?

Explore: build scout ships, like the one you start with. Watch they don't get killed by pirates or other empires (if you stray into their territory).

Invade: build a big fleet and park it in an enemy system. Somewhere will be a button for you to begin the invasion. Wait til the invasion is complete and lord it over your new system. Some ships are better than others at invading, depending on which modules are installed on them in the design phase.

If by invade, you meant expand: build one or two colony ships (Procreators, I think they are called?) and move to a tasty-looking system. Colonise it with the button which appears. Make sure there are no pirates there, or your ship will die.

[Ravelle]

Explore: build scout ships, like the one you start with. Watch they don't get killed by pirates or other empires (if you stray into their territory).

Invade: build a big fleet and park it in an enemy system. Somewhere will be a button for you to begin the invasion. Wait til the invasion is complete and lord it over your new system. Some ships are better than others at invading, depending on which modules are installed on them in the design phase.

If by invade, you meant expand: build one or two colony ships (Procreators, I think they are called?) and move to a tasty-looking system. Colonise it with the button which appears. Make sure there are no pirates there, or your ship will die.

I didn't get to see any other systems at first butjust mine so I had nothing to select, then out of nowhere every system was visible. I'm not sure what I did.

I also noticed that the game has some nasty bug which gives me a nullreferenceexception error when I select a ship in the fleet management screen and then my game froze.
This happened only with the Hisho so far.

[FriendlyFire]

Best thing about the interface is the right-click back. No need to click back or exit, no need to press escape, it's all on the mouse.

Rest of your post is pretty spot on, though I would say from my experience that the combat is actually pretty strategic - it is all about designing and building the right ships. You have to consider defence against the various weapon types, which weapons your enemies have, which defences they have, so your Mega Cruiser may dick all over the Cravers' fleet, but against the Sophons it may stand little chance, which can encourage you to vary your fleet compositions. By the time you get into the battles themselves, they are already essentially decided by what you did on the strategic side. I found the cards to make very little difference, and if I am honest I felt they were the game's weakest feature.

The heroes are a nice touch though. You get a (small) handful of heroes available. Some of them boost planetary stats, some combat stats. All level up from experience, and can become quite handy in the late game.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention right click. Such a lovely little touch.

As for combat, as I said my experience is very partial. I've played one game thus far and only encountered minimal combat with pirates in it. The few times that I did, choosing the good card seemed to make a difference, though that might just have been happenstance. In any case, I guess it's a more active system than just throwing your ships at the enemy and praying for the best. Even if it doesn't have that much impact, it still feels like it does, keeping you involved into the action. I still wish combat were more fleshed out (I'd dream about SOTS-like realtime combat), but it's fine as it is and not as worrying as I thought it'd be before buying the game.

Heroes are a nice touch, but I feel they're too powerful and required. As it was, I really needed to have heroes in certain systems to keep them up and mainly invested in propaganda bonuses to keep approval high. Without them, many of my systems would go below 30% approval and start getting useless. I realize now that the game doesn't seem to want you to expand very fast (which is contrary to just about any other 4X I've played, hence my initial confusion), but even then, heroes seem a bit like a joker that can do ridiculous miracles (happiness going from 30% to 90%, for instance).

[Timofee]

As for combat, as I said my experience is very partial. I've played one game thus far and only encountered minimal combat with pirates in it. The few times that I did, choosing the good card seemed to make a difference, though that might just have been happenstance. In any case, I guess it's a more active system than just throwing your ships at the enemy and praying for the best. Even if it doesn't have that much impact, it still feels like it does, keeping you involved into the action. I still wish combat were more fleshed out (I'd dream about SOTS-like realtime combat), but it's fine as it is and not as worrying as I thought it'd be before buying the game.

Heroes are a nice touch, but I feel they're too powerful and required. As it was, I really needed to have heroes in certain systems to keep them up and mainly invested in propaganda bonuses to keep approval high. Without them, many of my systems would go below 30% approval and start getting useless. I realize now that the game doesn't seem to want you to expand very fast (which is contrary to just about any other 4X I've played, hence my initial confusion), but even then, heroes seem a bit like a joker that can do ridiculous miracles (happiness going from 30% to 90%, for instance).

I'm in two minds about the combat now. On the one hand I like its simplicity but on the other I feel that by fleshing it out, it would have the potential to liven up the end game which suffers from the tedious issue of: you know you've won but you need to keep ploughing on if you want to see the victory screen. (Also: get stuffed spell check, ploughing totally is a word)

As for Heroes I'm not sure whether you get less if you play smaller maps, for instance on Huge to start you can have 3 and as very quickly you'll be owning at least 20 or so systems I really appreciate how powerful they are. I guess if you get the same amount on small or tiny etc then they become materially stronger, perhaps tipping them to being over powerful.

I also really like some of the Hero dust cards - illusions is awesome when coming up against an enemy who you know is going to penetrate your defenses.

[Ravelle]

Can someone explain what is up with the movement of fleets? I can send a scout ship to a system, it shows a dotted line but it won't move my fleets to the destinations after that.

[mnemnoch]

Ships have different # of movements based on race and tech. There is a manual ship movement button at the left side of end of turn button. I remember in beta that there is a bug in which you cant move your ship no matter what you do. People said that opening and closing the steam overlay seems to fix this or worse case is to save your game and restart ES.

[Ravelle]

That manual thingy only shows up once in a blue moon, but what ever I do my ships won't move an inch, can't even defend my planets this way.

[duff]

Tapping shift works for me. I'm amazed this bug is in the release version.