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[Majestic7]

Endless Space 2 is now out on Early Access.

It seems the game combines Endless Space and Endless Legend. For example, heroes fly around in distinct hero ships that can be upgraded with "equipment". Populated systems produce influence which can be used for political things. There is distinct population on planets and they belong to different political factions. Depending on your political system, this might affect elections or do other things like cause a military coup. There are minor civilizations you can bash or deal with. Ground combat is in and it seems to be a rock-paper-scissors.

[NullForceOmega]

I really enjoyed the other Endless games, so I'm very excited to see what they've put together for this one.  Some of the preview and gameplay vids on steam were very interesting.

[forsaken1111]

Just an FYI, there is currently a 100 turn limit on the early access games. They have said this limit will be removed next week with an update.

There are currently 4 races in the game. Sophon, Craver, Vodyani, and Lumeris.

Sophon behave the closest to what I'd consider 'normal' for a 4x. You colonize with ships, you research, you trade, etc. They're very good with tech and have an interesting ability where they gain a bonus to research inversely proportional to the number of other empires who have completed the technology. For example if nobody else has researched Tech1, they get a 50% bonus to all research applied to it. That bonus goes down as more others discover it.

Craver are locust swarms. They slowly overharvest their own planets until they are depleted of resources and the output drops significantly. They also EAT other races on the same worlds, so you eventually end up with only Craver population. They can never do any sort of diplomacy, only warfare as far as I know.

Vodyani are religious nuts who worship the Endless (background game lore). They're glowing energy beings in suits shaped like amazon space babes for some reason. They convert dust into 'essence', or harvest native populations (non Vodyani) for essence. That essence is used to build new Vodyani population (they do grow passively, but its slooow) or to build their big ark ships. They do not 'colonize' planets, they 'anchor' a massive ark ship in a system and exploit the worlds and natives that way.

The Lumeris are mercantile beings all about trade. They don't colonize, they spend money to buy an outpost which grows into a colony. No need for colony ships. Otherwise they're pretty similar to 'normal'. They get lots of income bonuses and use money instead of political power to influence minor civilizations.


The game has several new systems. For one, your empire is made up of political parties like pacifists and militarists and industrialists. The laws you can pass depend on which party is in power. You can influence this to a degree by controlling what is built. Population are swayed to one party or another depending on the situation and available facilities.

Planets can have populations of multiple races now as well, and some empires like the Lumeris get big bonuses for foreign populations.

[Levi]

Probably people don't care, but its worth mentioning that the Dev never bothered to fix the multiplayer desync bugs in the first Endless Space.  So if you are planning to play it multiplayer, its worth thinking twice or at least waiting for other people to confirm its stable.

[IronyOwl]

I don't imagine my willpower will last long on this one. Endless Legend II In Space is a pretty easy sale for me.

Vodyani are religious nuts who worship the Endless (background game lore). They're glowing energy beings in suits shaped like amazon space babes for some reason.

The trailer speaks of a "him" traitor prophet, so presumably they're adding a male faction following the Concrete Endless. Which, if I'm to be honest, is kind of the dividing line for me between "oh yeah, the Broken from Endless Legend, with I guess inverted Cult fanaticism?" and "mwahahaha, true heirs to the Endless indeed."

But anyway, gender may have been an easy way to differentiate them while continuing to imply they're the same species, and that the rift between them, as with the Endless, was a deeply internal divide. Also, as I recall the Sisters of Mercy were a really popular Endless Legend faction for some reason? I think I saw that mentioned somewhere, anyway. Might be loosely related to trying for that.

Probably people don't care, but its worth mentioning that the Dev never bothered to fix the multiplayer desync bugs in the first Endless Space.  So if you are planning to play it multiplayer, its worth thinking twice or at least waiting for other people to confirm its stable.

Endless Legend was fine though, right? Unless they went back to an older, still-buggy engine for space things, this probably shouldn't be relevant.

That said, I'm willing to give them kind of a pass for a lot of stuff in Endless Space 1, so I might not be the most critical eye here.

[Levi]

Probably people don't care, but its worth mentioning that the Dev never bothered to fix the multiplayer desync bugs in the first Endless Space.  So if you are planning to play it multiplayer, its worth thinking twice or at least waiting for other people to confirm its stable.

Endless Legend was fine though, right? Unless they went back to an older, still-buggy engine for space things, this probably shouldn't be relevant.

I dunno, didn't buy it because I was annoyed about endless space.     Kinda felt if they weren't willing to fix game-breaking bugs in their first game, I wasn't going to risk playing their next game.

[Aklyon]

I'll ptw, ES was ok.

[Nelia Hawk]

the question is : how is space combat in es2?

[forsaken1111]

the question is : how is space combat in es2?

Its... well there are still 'phases' but you only pick one plan now. You basically pick which range (long, medium, close) you wish to try to engage at, and the other side does the same. What range you end up at I believe depends on your engine capabilities so a fast enemy can dictate the engagement range.

The weapons all have a preferred range now, some have a spread of ranges. One might be optimal at medium range but okay at long, while others might ONLY work at close range.

As far as I have seen, defenses are either kinetic (aka armor) or energy (aka shields). I haven't gotten much into the 2nd 'era' of tech though, and the early access build has nothing available after the third era (out of... 5? 6?)

The battles play out in 3d like before with a cinematic camera or free camera. You can show or hide ship's stats being displayed. They don't maneuver much, just kinda fly by and fire like hell at each other. Apparently there will be carriers and fighters in the future but they're not in yet.

[IronyOwl]

Unless they went back to an older, still-buggy engine for space things, this probably shouldn't be relevant.

So naturally, it refuses to run at all.

Apparently there's a pretty wide range of early crash type bugs. They have a lot of suggested fixes, but none of them worked for me. They also claim to be working on them, so hopefully this is a temporary condition, but until then I am sad.

[Sirus]

PTW, very much hoping that more of the original factions come back. The new ones seem interesting but I want my Imperium of Man and Space Amoebas back

[Culise]

Report is that these are indeed just the first four races of several.  Given that the website has three locked slots and a "community-created faction" slot, I'd bet on Imperium of Man for sure, Amoeba likely, and the third one of several possibilities.  Apparently our Bushido Birds are a Minor Race, and the Epistis sound like corrupted Automatons, but they might have a major race as well. 

Also, it rather amused me on the two screenshots I saw that both of our new races are basically different flavors of space babes, with extra cleavage (Vodyani get extra points for not only managing space-suit cleavage, but also making me think of something very different with their name - maybe those featureless masks are actually hiding a race of frog-faced old men).  It really does make me miss my space amoebae, too, but I can live with having Sophons already confirmed.

EDIT: Links added to the minor races, and another thing I noticed about them added. 

[Teneb]

Also, it rather amused me on the two screenshots I saw that both of our new races are basically different flavors of space babes, with extra cleavage (Vodyani get extra points for not only managing space-suit cleavage, but also making me think of something very different with their name - maybe those featureless masks are actually hiding a race of frog-faced old men).  It really does make me miss my space amoebae, too, but I can live with having Sophons already confirmed.

Nah, the Lumeris got both genders. In the Deluxe Edition feature thing on the steam store page there is even a picture of a male one.

[BurnedToast]

Probably people don't care, but its worth mentioning that the Dev never bothered to fix the multiplayer desync bugs in the first Endless Space.  So if you are planning to play it multiplayer, its worth thinking twice or at least waiting for other people to confirm its stable.

Also worth mentioning is that the final patch for the expansion for endless space changed the way combat worked, and left it almost unbelievably poorly balanced to the point of being essentially broken. I know people like to blow balance issues out of proportion, but it's really just almost comically bad and it ruins the combat aspect of the game (not that it was amazing anyway) as well as the whole ship/fleet design aspect.

The worst part is that it wouldn't even require that much effort to fix it, just a couple of hours changing a few numbers to be less aggressively stupid... but for some reason they didn't even bother to do that.

[Majestic7]

I played the game a bit as Sophonts and I'm a bit baffled. Basically, all the other three factions are very aggressive and will attack you. Considering that the space combat is the weakest part of the game, this is a curious design choice. Shouldn't the space merchants try to deal and intrigue with you instead of invading? Weird choices. The game seems to lack the...blandness of ES though. It is hard for me to put my finger on it, but there is more of a unique feeling now. Looking forward to the finished product. I think the amount of events helps, although the same events kept repeating a lot.