Just a heads up...Looks like there may be an Alpha 2 release on Steam today.  I can't find the original link where I saw the dev mention it, but here is a link to the A2 release notes.   Its quite a long list, but to be expected since ES is still in alpha.

http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/showthread.php?446-Playable-Alpha-Release-Notes

Wish I had some time to be playing ES, but all my free time lately has been spent on Warlock...

So what do people think will be better. Legends of pegasus or Endless space?

Originally Posted By fritzkrautenberger (3 MAY 2012 5:31am)

You are perfectly right Martok. It does not say much.

 

It was the worst release of a good franchise I can remember....

You don't remember MOO3? 

Originally Posted By destraex (18 MAY 2012 6:37am)

So what do people think will be better. Legends of pegasus or Endless space?

Difficult to say.  Very little hard info has been released on the former. 

I *suspect* Endless Space will be the deeper (and probably better) game, but LoP looks to have a better combat model, so we'll see. 

Originally Posted By Lee Elmendorf (18 MAY 2012 8:26am)

Originally Posted By fritzkrautenberger (3 MAY 2012 5:31am)

You are perfectly right Martok. It does not say much.

 

It was the worst release of a good franchise I can remember....

 

You don't remember MOO3? 

 

 

If you look back earlier in the thread, you'll see that old wound has already been covered...  

After 100 turns in I can say I really like it.  I am surprise how well I like it after taking a chance like I did with Warlock. Given the price, both are excellent imho and worth the price tag.  ES will only get better as it is very stable alpha and I hope to have more customization in the future.

PE

Originally Posted By Martok (19 MAY 2012 10:25am)

Originally Posted By destraex (18 MAY 2012 6:37am)

So what do people think will be better. Legends of pegasus or Endless space?

Difficult to say.  Very little hard info has been released on the former. 

 

I *suspect* Endless Space will be the deeper (and probably better) game, but LoP looks to have a better combat model, so we'll see. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both look very promising :-) Hopefully we won't be dissapointed

Originally Posted By steve58 (1 JUN 2012 1:05pm)

Endless Space beta release is 6/4.

I'm going to wait for LEgends of Pegasus or gemini wars (which is out in 6 days)

Originally Posted By JaguarUSF (1 JUN 2012 4:51pm)

Originally Posted By steve58 (1 JUN 2012 1:05pm)

Endless Space beta release is 6/4.

 

Nice. I've been enjoying it.

 

 

How would you some it up? I'm not a big space game fan, but if one is really good I sometimes give it a go.

Without having played it I would say:

4x game abstracted card based combat

Strat map: Turn based 

Combat\tactical map: ships approach each other. Each side chooses a card at three pre-determined intervals. Somebody wins according to the rock paper scissors arbitrarily. You have no control over your vessels from what I could see. 

Tactical combat in Enless Space reminds me in a way of the tactical combat in the Legions - Gates of Troy games by Slitherine.

In Legions you didn't control the tactical battles you created an army at the strategic scale then sent it into combat, all you could directly control was how the units initialy deployed and their general formations and battle stances.

In Endless Space you at the strategic level create, form and move fleets. When they enter tactical combat there are three succesive rounds / ranges of combat in each of which you can chose your fleets battle stance through tactics cards (the range and number of which can be increased via research) thus again you aren't directly controling the tactical combat but influencing it. The major factor in winning tactical combats is the size and capability of the opposing fleets (which for your fleet is dependant on your actions and choices at the strategic level) with the card play influencing rather than determining the outcome.

All right, it's a mini-preview then

It's turn-based and 4X, so you explore, expand, exploit, and kick some ass. Or, in my case, get attacked by two AIs and lose.

First off, let me say that the interface is the best I've seen in any strategy game. I'm not exaggerating. The best:

- The base map shows icons for which planets in each system can be colonized, system control, ships, etc. There is also a list of events that pops up in the bottom right, letting you do most actions directly on the notifications (queue new ships, pick hero upgrades)

- The empire management screen is fully sortable by system name, population, whether it's under attack, approval, heroes present, production levels for any of the game's four resources, production time, or number of ships in the hanger

You can even set construction queues and make fleets from ships stored in system hangers right from the empire screen. Awesome

- The large tech tree has a search utility. Yes.

- The military view shows the status of all your fleets

- You can design ships. There's a straightforward attack/defend method to combat (deflect for kinetics, shields for beams, flak for missiles) and other components to add as well.

- You can have three heroes (initially) assigned to fleets or systems. They gain experience and you choose the upgrades.

Other features

- Customize starting galaxy size and races

- Victory conditions include: conquer 75% of the galaxy, research the tech tree, generate a set amount of money, or a diplomatic victory (which I don't understand yet)

- Each system carries a number of planets, most of which you need to research to colonize. Each planet can get an exploitation that provides more food or money or science or production (the four resources). Improvements and income is calculated system-wide rather than planet by planet, which cuts down on micromanagement. Individual planets can have randomized anomalies (like a toxic atmosphere, which decreases approval) and special resources that can be traded to other races. Once you colonize one planet in a system, the rest of the system can be colonzied without a colony ship if you have 2 (or more) population on another planet in the system.

- Fleets carry 5 (initially) ships and can have a hero commander with customizable bonuses through XP

- The research tree is really big and provides a ton of options

- Diplomacy isn't fully developed yet, but it has typical options so far. The AI declares war too quickly now, but I have seen friendly AI request trades.

- Combat is more like Gratuituous Space Battles, in that you don't interact with it directly. There are three phases of battle and during each phase you play one card (offense, defense, sabotage, engineering, others I forget) that provides some bonus or penalty to the enemy and can be negated by another category. I actually like this method and I think it will work well online.

If you have any specific questions, let me know.

Originally Posted By destraex (1 JUN 2012 4:56pm)

I'm going to wait for LEgends of Pegasus or gemini wars (which is out in 6 days)

I like Endless Space more than Gemini Wars.

Thanks James, that does look interesting. The combat stats seems remanisant of Galactic Civilizations, like shields protects vs laser, armor vs ballistc, etc. I take it the lines between the planets are the lanes ships can travel? You were pretty high on Distant Worlds. If you could only play one, which would you choose?

Originally Posted By robc04 (1 JUN 2012 7:47pm)

The combat stats seems remanisant of Galactic Civilizations, like shields protects vs laser, armor vs ballistc, etc.

 It's exactly like it, except three rounds of card play is used to break stalemates between evenly matched opponents

Originally Posted By robc04 (1 JUN 2012 7:47pm)

I take it the lines between the planets are the lanes ships can travel?

 Initially, yes. You can research a tech that allows movement anywhere, but it's still faster to use the lanes.

Originally Posted By robc04 (1 JUN 2012 7:47pm)

You were pretty high on Distant Worlds. If you could only play one, which would you choose?

 Endless Space is easier to use with a fantastic interface. Distant Worlds is clunky but has a huge scale.

I'll probably record some video of it after the beta version comes out Monday.

Jaguar have you played legends of pegasus in your travels?

It is now up on steam and soon to be available for pre-order.

Whats wrong with gemini wars... its not a 4x game... from what I understand its more like Homeworld

Originally Posted By destraex (2 JUN 2012 7:03am)

Jaguar have you played legends of pegasus in your travels?

Have not. Kalpyso usually doesn't hand out preview copies.

Originally Posted By destraex (2 JUN 2012 7:03am)

Whats wrong with gemini wars

The game is over simplified: each planet can have only one military station and only one shipyard and only one research station, and each asteroid field can only have one mining station. Those are all the buildings in the game, except for defensive turrets. You also can't customize ships (outside of researching simple fleet-wide improvements), except for choosing one special ability for battleships that can only be used every 20 minutes or so. These concessions make the game easier to play but reduce tactical flexilbility overall.

The campaign (16 missions long) is very heavily scripted with set starting conditions, set enemy fleets, linear objectives, and lots of pre-determined events. Replay value, then, is quite low, and the game doesn't have skirmish games or multiplayer yet (both are planned for after release).

The interface has many areas that need improvement: few keyboard commands, no idle ship button, no rally points for shipyards, ranged units default to close attacks, selected-ship icons lack basic tool-tip information, you can't click on notifcations to move to where it occurred, you cannot queue research, and queued ships and buildings disappear instead of going on hold when required resources are not available.

I've been in heavy contact with the developer so some of these might be fixed/improved either before release or shortly thereafter.

I'm gonna chime in and agree with just about everything James said, and add that even in it's current state (late Alpha), it's a better, more complete, more solid game than SotS 2 is today.

One minor correction that I discovered through trial and error - that fleet limit is not number of ships, it"s "points".  It's confusing because the hulls your start with are just 1 point.  Larger hulls that you can research are more points, so a fleet may be maxed out with 2 or 3 ships.

And I love the combat system - not just for the way the cards provide a bonus, but the whole mini-game of guessing what card your opponent is going to play, and deciding to counteract it or play a different bonus for yourself.  The one change I would make to the system is not allow any card to be played more than once in a battle.  Some can be overpowering when played two or three times.

Originally Posted By tgb123 (2 JUN 2012 8:40am)

even in it's current state (late Alpha), it's a better, more complete, more solid game than SotS 2 is today. 

Sad but true.

Let me add my one complaint (keep in mind its an alpha): the mid-game can be a bit of a drag, although this may be more due to me not being the best played. I just picked up some strategies from the game forums (I focused on military too much and not enough on system structures, and subsequently got totally dominated by the AI), so hopefully my next game will be more competitive.

I haven't played any one game that long since I wanted to try the different races and didn't want to get burnt out before release.  I am looking forward to playing the "peaceful" humans, since that's usually the faction I play in SF 4X games.  I hope they put some time into diplomacy.

One feature I miss is the option to randomize who your opponents will be.  I like not knowing who I'll run into when I start a game.

Originally Posted By tgb123 (2 JUN 2012 9:22am)

didn't want to get burnt out before release.

That happened with me and Crusader Kings II. I played it so much before the release date that I rarely touch it now

That's one reason I (mostly) avoid getting into betas.  I just reinstalled Unity of Command.  I played it to death during the testing period, but never touched it after it came out.

I would disagree about Swords. After today's patch, the UI is refitted and the game is feature complete. Prior, I had played a 250 turn game with no crashes or slowdowns to speak of. As opposed to ES, the combat relies on ship control, weapons usage, formation and defenses. You actually exercise tactical control instead of simply playing "magic the gathering" in space.

To each their own, but having played both, I would say ES is more polished because there is less to polish. I am simply disappointed with the ridiculous card based rock/paper/scissors approach of ES as the rest seems so slick.

Originally Posted By Mikeck (2 JUN 2012 10:32am)

I am simply disappointed with the ridiculous card based rock/paper/scissors approach of ES as the rest seems so slick.

I'm not. The cards do not determine battle victory: fitting your ships with the right weapons and defenses for what your enemy is using does. For example, pirates in my current game have kinetic weapons and deflect shields, so I am designing my ships with beam weapons (to bypass their deflect) and deflect shields (to absorb their kinetic) and I completely dominate them. The cards only really matter when the sides are evenly matched; in my last battle, I lost 2/3 of the rounds cards-wise and still defeated both enemy ships while losing none. It's the same system used in Galactic Civlizations and it works well here too.