Endless Space - Spiritual MOO Successor?

[Stuie]

Why isn't there a thread for this on poly? I picked up this game which is supposedly an "Alpha" build and was pleasantly surprised to find what seems more like a mid to late Beta. The combat is kind of odd - mostly cinematics with one player defined action for each of three rounds, but the colonization/development part of the game is pretty robust and reminds me of what MOO3 should have been.

http://endless-space.amplitude-studios.com/

[Wiglaf]

It's good conceptually if a little generic and completely devoid of visual sex appeal/atmosphere/backstory/pizzaz/ spice. As for innovations, I do like that by default there is a 'cold war' between all nations, so it's ok to attack ships but not territory until you work out something permanent. The rock/paper/scissors battles themselves look fairly cool, I like the card system, and fleet management (complete with heroes) is easy. The soundtrack is chill and the interface is slick so it's like playing an updated Master of Orion when you're stoned.

The AI just sucks at fleet management though. It's not Civ 5 bad, in that it doesn't strike me as totally and fundamentally broken, but the AI is too hesitant to merge fleets and launch assaults on even defenseless systems when it easily could do so. It's like in Civ 4 if the enemy had a stack of 20 units and all your cities are undefended, and the AI just stood there and waited for you to make the first move. It is unbelievable to me that such a passive AI got through testing.

+ The AI tends to keep the same armor and weapon type for all its ships, which makes it really easy to build fleets to counter and obliterate them. Also, during combat the AI will play cards that can't possibly help it (like it will play a card that enhances its ships' missile damage when its ships cannot even shoot missiles). The AI also will build improvements that cannot help its systems...very often, resulting in wasted money/time/etc.

Hopefully they fix this. It looks like it wouldn't be that hard honestly. Until then I would only play this in MP.

[Spaced Cowboy]

I've been playing this as well, but you are spot on about the AI. It also does lack some personality as well as a civ-o-pedia.

[Wiglaf]

Apparently they went from "alpha" to release in like two months. They probably got swept away by the buzz and wanted to capitalize on the publicity rather than fix the AI.

[Proteus_MST]

I cannot agree with the assumption about AI ship design. I finished a game (custom human faction) in which I had several wars against both, the united human empire, as well as against a Sophon-Sower Alliance.
After all I can say from my ship to ship battles (humans lacked weapon/armor 2-3 generations behind, sophons just 1-2) is, that the ships battled against showed a wide variety within the same race ... some would carry only Anti-Beam-Weapon armor, other ships had armor against one or both of the other weapon types. There was also a variety with regards to weapon types ... a few would carry kinetic weapons, but most of them either a mix of beam and missiles, or specialization in one of them.
So it seemd to me that, if they had the necessary technological sophistication, they definitely varied their design approaches.
(I am talking about the release version btw. don´t know if this was already the case in Beta, as I didn´t have any longer games before release)


As for the game itself:
What I like is the great variety of star systems (with each of them usually differring in its composition of planets and specials/resources)
and the fact that, while you still have individual planets, most of the building takes place per system. Coupled with the fact that even large empires usually don´t have too many systems (compared to other 4x games) this decreases the danger of the individual systems becoming one faceless system among many.
As for the combat system I am a bit divided ... on the one hand the combat isn´t too immersive (well, I am the type who likes strategic battles) on the other hand it gets the job done fast (with still involving the player to the crtain degree into the battle) giving the player more time for the grand strategy in the game.

All in all I for my part wouldn´t equate it to MoO 2 ... but it definitely is a 4X game worth playing

[vmxa1]

I had lost track of this one and I just happened to update my Steam and saw the promo. Think I will get it and give it a spin as soon as I can put down Diablo3, which should be this week. Seems like only 2 weeks ago it was still far from ready, but that is how they do it now. Just hotfix and patch frequently with the Steam/Battlenet type model.

Not expecting great things, just some entertainment and my space TBS fix that I did not get from SoTs II. Looked at a LP and it seems to have some hope.

[Wiglaf]

I guess I am noticing some AI fleet variation. Still a ton of tactical problems with the AI though. I mean, how hard is this card system to get right? It can't be that hard.And the AI absolutely cannot manage colonies. At all. It spends tons of $ on irrelevant improvements that cannot even help its systems.

From the developer:

The alpha/beta was a good success, but the game is not profitable and we have to survive as a company to continue making great games and adding new content to Endless Space. Of course we are not releasing because we have ran out of money, but I think the game has reached more than sufficient a quality (compared to the market benchmarks). And again, this is just a step, the game will continue to evolve.

Sure sounds like they released it because they ran out of money.

[Wiglaf]

I also love that there is a faction so retarded it cannot understand the concept of a peace treaty.