Looking at MoO there are many more good ideas here then in ES2

I have to say there is also an auto-build function (I didnt remember that) but sicne it starts with producing a clenaup infra on a planet where there is -125 pollution and for a race that does not care about biom as lives on lava world- I would say its not working

I also like that fact that invasion has infantry+tanks and there are planetary shields and porudction can be trasnfered to other planets - all very cool stuff

but:
1. Starlane cripples conflict as the player is always blokced from more complex and interesting diplomatic situations
2. Max player count on the larger map is 8+Player. This and the game has 14!!! factions. This is simply baffling and outside of UI beign designed for 9 factions max I cannot for the life of me why anyone would do this to their own game - its crippling
3. There is also no alliance as far as I could tell and the dimplamcy really just boils down to war
4. Building menu is separate from planet MGMT menu - Both SiS and ES2 have avoided this huge UI design mistake -many many manny clicks

Still: visually this is a much more refined product then ES2

The only thing I would love to see from this game in SiS is the part on infrantry and planetary shields - those are cool though even here it wasnt clear to me how one can use tanks for offense - I dont think it is possible or the game hasnt been developed till the end dont know

ES2 is great imo so I dont agree at all.

BTW there is a mod for Moo4 that allows 14 races to be played and works with the UI.The only slight overlap is the minor races in the diplomacy screen which are poor in the game anyway.I never enable them.

Thanks for the tip - I usually dont try out mods to fix a game but I am curous if it would be more enjoyable with all the races on one map (thanks to the starlane approach I suspect it will not make much difference but maybe)

Do you prefer ES2 over MoO4 and maybe even over SiS
If so whay is that?

I had high hopes for ES2 after Endless Legend but was let down by all the wireframe assets, lack of tactical combat control and the starlane concept

The visuals are arguably a matter of taste but I find the galaxy map horrid altogehter and while I like the system MGMT UI and ship designer, they all seem to try and hide the quality parts of the game from the player (pops icons and especially art are not visible per default, ship designer pushes the camera away and back - doesnt let you properly observe the models as it was ashamed of them ) e.g.: I find that MoO has done a much better job in selecting the color palette for faction, system names and backgrounds and the text are always clearly readable and have a full color to them. There is very little visual noise on the galaxy map itself as well: most of the elements serve a function

Fired up ES2 again and oh my god jsut look at this UI: This is a horrible design:
Just look at the contrast between the background and the various text styles and colors
Look how tiny the model of the ship is and how large the icons, ship type text are... everything is the opoosite to what design best practices are

Compare this to SiS where the ship image is taking up the wast majority of the UI - what type is it? Dont need to write it out you can see it even the weapons that are on the poor ship

I could cut off 75% of this UI without loosing information and the only 3 relevant infos are placed on low-priority positions and are barely visible
The placeholder icon for the non-existent hero takes up x2 the space then all the relevant information on this screen combined