Endless Space 2 is also out now - at least the game version being downloaded now is 1.0 :-) Can’t wait!
Fair enough. That point will come down to taste and preference I think. The combat hasn’t really been stellar in any Endless game but I prefer the empire management, lore, and well crafted atmosphere that the Endless games offer. I know Endless Space 1 wasn’t received well in these parts but I loved that game for the empire management aspect. It just really clicked well for me.
It is. I don’t want hands-on tactical combat in my large scale 4X games. It’s fine for Age of Wonders or Total War where it’s the focus of the game, but for me the hands-off nature of Endless Space combat is a pro, not a con.
I find I have more fun avoiding the combat entirely. It’s so shitty.
I am curious what makes it “shitty”? To me it’s just a thing you watch and hope you have built your ships better and/or have better tech than your opponents. I kind of like setting up the tactic for the match and watching the ships go do their thing. It’s not much different than Gratuitious Space Battle in that way, really.
That’s pretty much what makes it shitty. If I wanna watch and hope something, I’ll watch the fucking oscars.
Ah, sure, I can see that. I kind of like I don’t have to “get gud” at the combat, just pay attention to the types of ships my opponent has and build accordingly. But I also like the combat in Stellaris - I just enjoy watching the battles unfold more than having to manually control everything.
I’m with you, Scott. Endless Space 2 combat is a cinematic representation of how my fleet composition and technology is comparing to the enemy.
I can’t really say how this makes combat any more shitty than say, SMAC or any number of other 4X games. It’s just more purdy.
I don’t have to control everything in order to enjoy combat. But I do have to control at least something to enjoy it and feel like I had a part in the outcome. Basically what they’ve given us is the autocombat in a 4X game such as AoW3 but with no option for anything else.
I believe that battles are won and lost in the hull customization/creation. That’s your “control”, at least in my mind.
To me that’s like doing an auto-battle in AoW3 and then saying that your control was what equipment and spells you had on your heroes. No.
Yeah, I also prefer this kind of combat in my 4X games. Makes the game feel more strategic. When I’m given tactical control I find myself reverting to cheese tactics and ignoring the strategic aspects. This, I feel, focuses the design.
It’s really not, because Age of Wonders 3 is a tactical battle game with a strategy wrapper. Endless Space 2 is a strategy game with cinematic battle representation (as opposed to SMAC, which was just one chit walking onto another chit).
The Brian Rubin award for best combat in a space 4X goes to
…
Endless Space 2!
Wait, there was a mistake, we read the wrong envelope…
http://i.imgur.com/gB7YqRn.jpg?1
Sorry.
I wonder how many people bitching about the combat in the Endless games rave about the Dominions series (the closest analog in terms of depth and world-building)?
Amplitude is one of the few developers to still get my Day One money, no questions asked.
Don’t be sorry, that’s genius.
I’d be thrilled with Dominions type battles in Endless Space 2. In fact, I was hoping that they would allow us to set up scripts for our ships and then let us watch it all play out in battle as the Dominions games do. That’s enough control for me and it would be so cool. But nope. It’s basically the Gal Civ battles all over again.
You go, girl!
I played 5 turns or so of the newest version, and so far so good with a small excpetion - one of the tooltips for the Riftborn in species selection at game setup still has %temporarystring% type mouse over details. Strange, but so far everything else has been working. Oh, wait, I had a second strange issue - during one tutorial moment I was asked to “hover over the approval screen for details” and it that UI element was glowing. I hovered … and hovered… and tried to click… nothing would dismiss or move past the tutorial owl guy asking me to hover for more details. I eventually ignored him and set up my first turn stuff (research, send out an explorer, assign my free hero) and ended the turn and he moved on to other topics.
The Riftborn seem really cool so far.
In my experience, Amplitude Games have a fair few bugs like this on release. But reported stuff is fixed. Throw it onto the official forums if you can find the time.