More 4x gaming: Endless Space

[Gusington]

^HAHAHA yeah baby

[LongBlade]

God %@^#*...now I have to go spend more money...and with Port Royale 3 coming out tommorow.

That was totally off my radar. Please tell us how it is.

Cant by it tomorrow now...money tight. I will advise as soon as I grab it. I imagine that if you liked PR 2, you'll like this, if you were one of those"WTF is this?" people with PR2, there will be nothing new.

Ever thought of writing reviews? =)

[steve58]

...so I've said the heck with work/RL for the day and have been playing around with this a bit.  Was just checking the Endless Space forums and saw that there is an alpha user manual that is downloadable.  Not sure if you'll be able to access it if you didn't buy yet, but here is the link:

http://cdn.steampowered.com/Manuals/208140/Endless%20Space%20User%20Manual%20Alpha.pdf?t=1336004252

[Gusington]

^I was just reading through that myself. Pretty deep game.

[Bison]

Those of you who play the alpha/beta, please share with us your thoughts & impressions.  I think this game may make me give up my Steam "virginity" for good, but I want to know I'm not giving it up if it's just going to leave me the next morning!  (Sorry for the tortured metaphor...)

You lost your virginity to Steam with Empire Total War.  Once it's been done, it can never be undone.  I don't think there is a concept of "just the tip" in regard to Steam.

[son_of_montfort]

So... I just spent an hour playing this...

Jarhead was right, this game is way more polished as an alpha than most beta tests. There are still some things that scream alpha and lots that needs tweaking or balancing, but overall this is the most fun I've had playing an alpha since... well... Dwarf Fortress (that is sort of a joke).

The game is sort of an amalgamation of different 4X games. The strategic map is a lot like MOO2, although you don't have all that annoying micromanagement of building improvements on every single planet. Instead, improvements are system wide - a really good model, IMHO - you still get the feeling you can customize or specialize your systems without needing to create giant build lists every time you colonize. The tech tree is fairly normal for a tech tree, but I think it is nicely laid out and pretty. Ship creation is a lot like GalCiv 2 (without the lego blocks) as you decide what levels of missile/beam/kinetic you want and then outfit the ship with a few modifying ship pieces (general stuff, like +20% attack/-20% to ship health). You also have the rock, paper, scissors of missile blocked by flak, beam blocked by shields, kinetic blocked by deflector.

Combat is sort of strange. It is completely hands off, except for choosing certain combat cards that alter your ship's stats or do certain effects. You can research and acquire more combat cards as you go along. Despite how that sounds, it is still pretty interesting. The special effects are nice as well.

The game is suffering from a small lack of feedback and information (particularly about all the resources you can get from different planets). But I think this is part of the alpha stage. I did not have much experience in the way of diplomacy and seeing other races - my starting location was broken off from the rest of the galaxy by a wormhole (you need special tech to go through them).

Once this gets more firmed up, I'll write up an official preview or something (unless someone else beats me to it). I think this one has potential! And yes, even as an alpha this one is better than SotS2.

[undercovergeek]

God %@^#*...now I have to go spend more money...and with Port Royale 3 coming out tommorow.

That was totally off my radar. Please tell us how it is.

Cant by it tomorrow now...money tight. I will advise as soon as I grab it. I imagine that if you liked PR 2, you'll like this, if you were one of those"WTF is this?" people with PR2, there will be nothing new.

Ever thought of writing reviews? =)

i think i maybe first then - 23:26 thursday night here in Blighty and im waiting, although i read somewhere it will be 18:00 UK time tomorrow its released - just enough time to put undercover junior to bed, crack open the teapot and set sail on the high seas!

ill bash at it for 60 mins and come back here with some thoughts if thats ok

[Jarhead0331]

Once it's been done, it can never be undone.

I hear the Japanese have developed a technique to rebuild virginal barriers.

[son_of_montfort]

^ That's true... but not with Steam. It's like Pandora's box... err.... maybe not the best thing to say after your comment... I don't even know Pandora!

[tgb]

I am LOVING this game. Based on an hour playing as the Horatio's(?), who excel in diplomacy and exploration, and are best suited to a Wonder victory. Planet/system development is deep, and the "keyword finder" in the tech tree is one of those "How come no one ever did this before?" features.

Here's how it works. You settle a planet with the luxury resource "Unobtanium", which confers all kinds of bonuses to your faction. But you can't get the bonus until you research "Phony-baloney element mining" (thanks, tool-tips). Going to the tech tree, you input "Phony-baloney element mining" into the finder, and it not only takes you right to the tech, but clicking on it queues up all the prerequisite techs as well (ala Civ). No muss, no fuss.

One more thing. One criticism is that there is no list of colonizable planets. The main screen shows you how many colonizable planets there are in each system, as well as where luxury resources can be found (like strategic resources in Civ V, researching the right tech reveals the locations).

Ships move towards their destination immediately instead of waiting until you hit "next turn". I think that's because ships have a "sensor range" that can reveal surprises. In my current game I keep running into the same "unknown fleet", but can't figure out how to make contact, nor do any other races show up in the diplomacy screen.

Unless there is some tremendous flaw that hasn't cropped up, I would call this the best SF 4X game in a very, very long time.

[Gusington]

^Wow. WOW!

[Kushan]

How does everyone feel about the combat?

[Windigo]

la la la la la.... I can't hear you saying how great this game is.... la la la la la......

[son_of_montfort]

How does everyone feel about the combat?

Now the game takes a while to "ramp up", so my combat experience was light. This is certainly a game where the battle is won before the forces enter the battlefield, in many ways. If you know your opponent is heavy on beams, then you need to focus on shields and make sure to hit them hard in the long-range combat (before beam damage is optimized and missiles are strongest) or mitigate medium range combat (where beams have a bonus) with a good card, then blast them with kinetics in melee combat (kinetics are strongest in melee). Surprisingly, I was very entertained, even though the choices are fairly small. As you improve your tech, you will get more interesting combat cards, so my thought is that it gets more interesting as time goes on. It certainly isn't as satisfying as MoO2's TBS grid, but few games have capture the fun of that style of combat.

[Shelldrake]

Thanks for the impressions fellas. It looks like Steam is going to get some more of my $.  :)