DLC 3 and 4, from the Suggestions thread...

[zolobolo]

Are you guys waiting for Publisher support for the DLCs)?

Maybe might be worth considering packaging all the DLC ideas into one big expansion (with 3 races and the one or two new game mechanics listed) and raise a Kickstarter project for that (I dont know if they actualyl use KS for video game expansions - they do for board games for sure)

[nweismuller]

So, I have to ask, why does the culture system require the character system? It's not immediately obvious that institutional features would need 'hero characters', so I'm wondering what's planned about the implementation that forces the dependency. (For all I know, it could be an excellent reason, but it's not one that immediately comes to mind.)

[zolobolo]

And here's a Fiirkaz ship concept for fun:

fiirkaz.png

What if you would integrate some of these ships (that are finished) as percs as a kind of teaser is spice up the merc pool?

[Arioch]

So, I have to ask, why does the culture system require the character system? It's not immediately obvious that institutional features would need 'hero characters', so I'm wondering what's planned about the implementation that forces the dependency. (For all I know, it could be an excellent reason, but it's not one that immediately comes to mind.)

Well, maybe "requirement" is too strong a term, but I would like to integrate hero characters into the political system. I think that both a character system and a political/cultural system are probably too ambitious for a single DLC, and I think it will probably make more sense to implement a character system with fleet commanders and then add planet governors with the political system, rather than trying to do it the other way around. These are all just ideas at this point.

My general concept for making hero characters more than just passive bonuses that you assign and then forget about for the rest of the game is to give them active abilities for the player to use. The emphasis in SiS is on tactical play over strategic management, so I think hero characters need to do something. For ship commanders, this is relatively straightforward (adding new buttons to push in tactical combat), but for colony governor type characters it perhaps means giving them missions to do (diplomacy, espionage, intelligence gathering, trading, politics, science analysis, etc.).

Endless Space 2 has a system with political parties in which the hero characters are leaders of the different parties. I think that's an interesting idea, though they didn't really do very much with it. Hero characters having differing ideologies that play into choosing cultural paths for the faction could be interesting.

And here's a Fiirkaz ship concept for fun:

fiirkaz.png

What if you would integrate some of these ships (that are finished) as percs as a kind of teaser is spice up the merc pool?

We can and sometimes do add in finished assets when they are available (as we did with the Tinkers native population prior to DLC1), but that's a rare circumstance. What I've shown you are concept sketches, not finished assets.

[zolobolo]

We can and sometimes do add in finished assets when they are available (as we did with the Tinkers native population prior to DLC1), but that's a rare circumstance. What I've shown you are concept sketches, not finished assets.

Ok no worries - if there are no finished assets there is really no sense in prioratizing those over an upcoming DLC

Wasn't even thinking on Tinker native pops in the base game but good analogy

[zolobolo]

Are you also working on DLCs 3 and 4 parallel to 2 so there might be a shorter time between 2 and 3 then 1 and 2?

The Fiirkaz ship concept looks awesome was thining maybe you guys are toiling also over the later DLC in parallel

[Arioch]

Are you also working on DLCs 3 and 4 parallel to 2 so there might be a shorter time between 2 and 3 then 1 and 2?

The Fiirkaz ship concept looks awesome was thining maybe you guys are toiling also over the later DLC in parallel

No, not really. We talk about ideas for future features and where we should go with future updates, and I sketch out concepts and write up ideas for new factions and systems, but there's no in-game work being done on post-DLC2 content at present.

[zolobolo]

The spy system is very abitious - most 4X only try their hand in this at the very end and are usually not successful
I have just recently revisited Master Of Orion 4 to see if there is any merit in it (it is difficult to pick up after SiS as there is no undo,deslection of civiliation ships, autobuild, and everything is very restricted by the starlanes) but the spying system there should - on paper - work

There, spies are trained for money and time and are allocated within a single UI
Each spy gets a unique designation and profile picture that is specific to a race - high quality pictures at that
Since everything is located on a single UI the system does not take up much space and the spies can do some usefull actions such as stealing map exploration, tech, money
They can even be captured and ransomed back though this does not seem to be working

So why does the system still seem to be failing? Well I think this is due to the lack of interation with the core elements of the game. Players spend most of their time on the galactic map but the spies are not marked there and have no physical presence there

My golden example for spy (and food) system is 7 Kingdoms: There, each spy is just like any other pon on the map, and can fulfill any activity that pops can. They can become workers allowing for sabotage, soldiers allowing to bribe generals and take over forts and they can even become king allowing the player to annex another kingdom oly via that spy - they key is integration here

I dont think this exact approach would work for space 4x as
1. The various factions are different races here and it does not help immersion if the characters (or heros) are a differetn race then the one tha player is playing or fighting against - it washes away the uniquness of hte factions - a mjoy issue with Endless Space 2 in my opinion
2. The main units of space 4X are ships and not soldiers which cotnain hunderds if not thousands of crew so do not provide good opportinity for spies to be managed on this level

In case of MoO4 I think all that would have been needed is to show the spies travelling from planet to planet and be visible on the galaxy map on which planet they are located. Add to that that attacks on that planet could affect them and the system might have worked

In case of SiS this would be my first thought on a spy system:
1. New infrastructure improvement: "Intelligence District"
2. Each improvement provides a counter intelligence bonus protecting the planet somewhat and allows training of agents (each agent should cost more then a tank and require a minimum amount of upkeep)
3. Agents are not given names or IDs they are just like pops tanks or milita units in every aspect - no profile pic needed as there is likely not enough resource for that anyway but art would be needed to depict agents of the corresponding faction
4. Agent units have special attribute "Stealthy" that prevetns them from participating in battles of any kind and prevents them from being visible to other factions
5. Agents can be deployed the same way pops are moved around: by selecting agents and movign them to another planet, they can hovewer be moved to enemy planets
6. During relocation they use transprots from the pool jsut like any other pops (integration into existing system) but these transports are not visible to other factions and cannot be blocked (they are on infiltration mission)
7. Agents located on own planet outomatically conduct counter-espionage but when they are located on enemy planets they can be issued orders the same way pops are enslaved or salves are put ot forced labor: by buttons on the left hand side
8. Agents on enemy planets can be ordered to incite revolt, steal funds, tech or sabotage a random improvement (including Planetary Defenses but not starbases as that woudl be anoying) - during such actions, the agent is spent so there is no issue around micro-managing many agents with abilities on cooldown. Why would a player not spend all agents on enemy planets then?:
9. The more pops on a planet and the more agents a faction has on that planet the stronger the action effect could be or the more actions would become available - thus it can make sense to pile up agents on planets and reserve them for targeted offensives and not spending them constantly for minor affect. This would massively reduce micro MGMT
10. Agents are always spent during missions, but if the mission fails, there should be a chance that the owner of the agetns is communicated to the other faction increasing their dislike
11. The number of agents on each planet need to be listed on a pop menu so it is quickly visible where they are
12. Ideally there would be some tech tie-ins as well to increase agent success rate or giving them furhter attributes

This would mean that the Agent system has absolutely no dedicated UI elements to it in general.
It relies on an infra improvement, production, trade pool and are managed the same way normal pops are = full integration

Now if there is a new faction that has spying as its core the benefit there are a numbe of options with the above system:
1. Agents have unique attribute that allows them to participate in combat, be immune to combardment, be better at detencting enemy agents etc..
2. Agents could conduct actions on enemy planets that is not available for other factions such as: Deep infiltration: Take over the entire planet without combat or revolt (high risk of failure and the enemy faction willl be very upset). This would allow them to cpature refugee colonies as well and Marauder worlds without a fight
3. When annexed the annexing faction souhl be able to trin these agents as well
4. Their agent should have higher upkeep as normal so they dont outright invladiate the base agent type of the annexing nation (both are viable)

Syphon off resources only makes sense if its not obvious who has done it and since only larger habited worlds are meaningful targets the player would not be harasse by the AIs on tiny insignifficant worlds: the agent minigame would be clear and straight-forward to manage: build up presence and then strike when the time is right.

[Arioch]

Well I think this is due to the lack of interation with the core elements of the game.

I think you just described MOO4 in a nutshell. It doesn't feel like the designer really understood what made the original fun.

[zolobolo]

I havent played any of the previous MoO titles so cannot compare to the "classics"

The starting point for me was Enemy Unknown which might not seems like a 4X at first but mechanically it is very similar and has set the bar too high for most 4X games for me

I will probably revisit Stellaris and Endless Space 2 again soon to see if they have fixed these but very unlikely: now that I think of it they have all adapted the hyperlane travel concept: Stellaris didn't start out with that option only but has permanently restricted itself as well it seems + the UI there is just the worst I have seen in any 4X

This system is just perfect for making the player bore themselves to tears as it restricts movement and thereby contact and conflict immensely
The system could work if someone would adapt a similar design as used for Freespace (its a space shooter but the Hyperlanes are done well nonetheless in the briefings): the web and potential travel routes need to be much more complex so that there are no obvious segments to the Galaxy or approach lanes that can be easily cut off

[Arioch]

The starlane mechanic was really restrictive in Endless Space 1 (you were essentially blind to anything outside your territory), but it works a lot better in Endless Space 2.

[Dragar]

Endless Space 2 is full of good ideas.

[zolobolo]

I am quite angry at ES2 - so many obvious mistakes in my opinion it was just painful to interact with:
1. The wireframe fleet representation looks like Battlezone the arcade game and should be declared as a crime against software UI design (talk about a waste of 3D models and DEV assets - snapping a 2D pic of the finished 3D models would have been way better and less effort) + the unit icons are too tiny to read and contrary to the bare-bones unit representation here the colors are too strong and blink out the models... they also dont change with faction color
2. Hero ships exist and are identical across all factions - way to kill faction immersion
3. Heroes are not unique (even though there is enough of them) and cannot be restricted to faction played
4. Galaxy map color scheme is washed out - for a space game this is just baffling
5. No direct control for space battles - why even waste rescues to develop it then... It is literally cinematics not part of any game play loop...
6. No direct control on land battles - which is fine most game don't have it but then it has the despicable wireframe models again There are 2 head DEV teams (other then SiS) that have tactical battles which work great
7. Planetary invasion is a mess - they have reworked it a couple of years back: we were bombarding them with proposals on how this could be interesting and it got better a bit last time I saw it but the entire concept around reserve and reinforcements is just so tedious and boding that I am just at a loss of how none had pushed for a better concept
8. The Ship designer is literally fighting the player and trying to prevent them from interacting with their ships - this combined with the galaxy view and it seems the game doesn't want the player to look at ships in a space 4X
9. Tech "tree" is practically unreadable and is the worst possible design to organize tech progression into

It especially annoying as Endless Legend was one of my favorites and Humankind looks and plays really well - so many smart decisions in both

For ES2 I am hard pushed to say anything that was new and working well: maybe the anomaly/probe system?

[Dragar]

I do not mind the lack of direct interaction in battles. The idea is that ship design and flotilla layout is how you interact. I actually like this a lot for streamlining large battles.

In practice, fleet design and flotilla layout is often immaterial, particularly since the AI puts up a fight. But beyond that, there's poorly balanced options for how to equip ships, and an opaque targeting system that makes it hard to understand how ship placement will matter.

[zolobolo]

Exactly

Look at it like this: What if the fleets would have had per-battle placement like in Gratuitous Space Battles?
- No battle-cards system that is poorly understood and boring art/takes up a huge amount of space
- The end result becomes much more varied

Add to that a couple of in-battle orders you can issue like: retreat, close in or harass and that is it

With their system the player can use the same 2 tactical cards for the entire game and skip the vids =fun ????

I remember a reasoning from a DEV that the a star emperor does not concern itself with commanding ships: putting perceived reality ahead of fun factor is usually a winning formula for games of any kind This is why we have so many games where we need to create a balanced budget and wash our hands in-game before eating 4 items a day