Endless Space is a new tbs 4x space game with beautiful graphics and is currently in alpha. You can get access to the alpha by purchasing it on
steam, plus 500 points towards your Games2Gether account.
Randomly generated galaxies; choose the size, shape, age, ect. Galaxies are full of systems that you move between via "cosmic strings" and I think eventually warp technology. Each system has up to 6 planets that you can colonize provided your race has the proper tolerances. There's a wide verity of planet types, sizes, and modifiers(poor soil, geothermal vents, ect) so you can really specialize a planet's resource output.
The first planet in a system needs to be colonized with a colony ship, then if there's more planets in the system then you can colonize without the need of a ship. Planets have a maximum population and if it has more then 1 current population then you can move the extra pop units to other planets in the same system. Resource production is based on, among other things, population, so by moving people from planet to planet you can fine tune what your system produces. Whether or not you can colonize a planet is based on your civ and their tolerances, you can research new tolerances that can even let you colonize a planet made of LAVA!
As you can see, ES sports a fairly large tech tree. It's all visible from the start, and each tech unlocks one or more results and they all seem pretty useful as opposed to your boring, "+5% damage for all missiles" type techs.
There is 8 playable races:
Standard human race.
Technologically advanced aliens.
Aggressive warrior bird people.
The mandatory virus race.
Perfect clones of a mad man.
Robotic WALL-E race.
Friendly microorganism race.
Rebel scum!
I haven't played with diplomacy yet, and I believe it's still early in development so I don't have much to comment on. But I did find it interesting that the Cravers aren't even allowed to engage in diplomatic relations.
Customizable ship's make me a happy person. Ship classes have a max tonnage, and each module has a max weight. Nothing too ground breaking about that, but the fun comes with combat. Not your standard tbs roll dice to decide the winner. Combat is broken down into 5 phases; Opening, where it shows you ships in glorious 3d warp into the battlefield. Long Range, where missiles reign supreme. Middle, beams are your weapons of choice here. Melee, getting down and gritty with kinetic weapons. Then finally, closing, where it shows the victor. During each of the three combat phases you can choose a card to play, things like buff your kinetic weapons, or deploy robots to repair your ships. Although you don't get direct control over your ships, your choice of when and which cards to play does have a fairly substantial affect on the outcome.
Look at that name for the Horatio hero, I love it!
The heroes mechanic looks interesting and detailed - you get a batch of heroes available to hire (for a one-off and ongoing cost) initially, then a new batch becomes available on what looks like a regular basis. Heroes have levels and experience (yes, they can level up), and statistics which will affect which role they're best suited for (e.g. system administrator or fleet commander). Looks like when they level up you get to pick new abilities for them, from a specified list determined by their classes (each hero has what looks like two classes e.g. "Pilot" and "Administrator").
Games2GetherG2G is a nifty little way of getting people involved in the community and development of Amplitude's games(this being the only one currently). The developers post polls on design decisions(the current two are for ship designs for a medium pirate ship, and the logo for a civ), and your vote is worth as many points as you have. I have 500 points so my votes are worth 500, most points on a vote when it closes wins. You gain points by posting, filling out your profile, referring people, ect. It's
not micro transactions(I don't think you can buy points other then the preorder), it has nothing to do with playing the game, it's basically a way to encourage people to be active and constructive in the community.
Bay12 Q&A with devsMax von Knorring of Amplitude Studios has kindly offered to do a little Q&A with our humble community. This will take the form of two rounds of questions, which I'll be collecting and passing on to them. Feel free to ask absolutely anything about the current state of the game, plans for the future, the team etc. Just try and keep it relevant if at all possible 
I'll be sending them the first round seven days from now (19:00 GMT on the 31st) so let's get those questions coming in!
E: Could people possibly post their questions in bold? It would make it a lot easier on me when the time comes to collect them all
So post your questions in bold, and I'll try to make a list of them all here.
Will you be considering adding a 'quick move' option? ie. A option that makes the ship moving animation disappear, making ships insta travel. Some people don't really like the ship moving animations.
Will you add an auto-explore option to ships?
Will we eventually be able to rename individual planets, systems, and heroes?
Will there be a mac port?
Whats the point of having a 'technologically advance' race, if their technology make them on par with everyone else?
How do you protect/direct your vision of the game against the popular vote committee from g2g?
How do you justify making folks pay for game in development, to help test and direct the game, when more traditionally this role is a paid for testing position and quality assurance position.
Why did you choose the, for the lack of a better word, 'notch model', over crowd sourcing?
What were the influences for the theme and atmosphere of the game?
What were the influence of the mechanics for the game?
How much pirating of the game are you expecting, verse how much you think you're perceiving?
Could we increase the number of ships in the battle viewer just so it looks more impressive than just 5 ships duking it out?
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Topic: Endless Space (Read 123819 times)