Endless Space: For scratching that MOO itch

[Josh]

If you love the old 4X games, Endless Space just sort of pops up out of nowhere. Kind of like how Gal Civ emerged from the fallout of the MOO3 debacle, Endless Space has caught on among those who felt screwed over by the clusterfuck that was the SotS II release.

What to say about it? You do all the exploring, expanding, exterminating and so on just like in any other 4X game. The interface is nice and clean, the music is nice and atmospheric. The graphics aren't going to blow you away- this is a 4X game. But they're clean and crisp and generally work well with the UI (one minor complaint about seeing your worlds against a starry background.)

Combat is... different. I'm still mulling over how much I care for it, and I think a lot of that will depend on the finished product. As it stands, your ships come in and are matched up against the enemy fleet. You have three phases, and for each phase you select a tactics card. Now, the card might nullify your enemy's card, it might be nullified by it, or they might just match up even. You can change cards for the next phases before they kick off, if for example you notice your precious dreadnoughts are getting their shit hammered and decide that you really need to throw down some repair in the next phase. In any event, during each phase the ships fire in grand cinematic style, sort of emulating the battle scenes of BSG with lots of cuts and off-angles as the ships toss massive amounts of ordinance at each other.

My main issue there is that as it stands the cinematics do tend to get repetitive in a hurry, which means if you insist on managing each battle a war can get somewhat tedious.

However! All of this is subject to change because the game just rolled over from paid alpha to paid beta. Yeah, it was stable and very enjoyable in alpha state, and they're still adding, polishing, tweaking, and bugfixing.

Now, onto the backstory: the story itself is pretty standard science fiction boilerplate. Ancient race wandered about, doing ancient race shit, then said 'Fuck it' and buggered off to the next dimension or whatever. Said race was called 'The Endless', hence the title of the game.

Now, some of the specific races are pretty damned cool. They are as follows:
(Some of these descriptions may not be entirely fluffy)
United Empire: Evil human empire that makes lots of money, ironically tends to work best when you get all the good liberating friendly techs to make your population happy. Make lots of money.

Hissho: SPACE FUCKING DINOSAUR-BIRDS. The game description is that they're avian, but avian in the sense that dinosaurs were somewhat avian. They're your standard kill shit militaristic types.

Cravers: Reavers. They burn out worlds but get huge production bonuses in the process. They use these production bonuses to spread like a plague.

Horatio: One dude. Named Horatio. Formerly a subject of the UE, he was insanely rich and insanely insane. He found Endless tech on a forgotten moon and used it to alter himself to his image of perfection. Having done so, he decided that the galaxy was best off if it was populated by Horatio. So he cloned himself endlessly and created a whole race of Horatio. Bonuses, obviously, to reproductive rates. And they can clone their heroes, which is a huge edge.

Amoebas: Fucking giant sentient amoebas. Not as big as the ones who tried to eat the Enterprise. Mostly diplomatic. Very old and stuff.

Pilgrims: Goody-goodies who ran away from the UE. Found religion and sell flowers at starports. Want to find the Endless and probably pester them incessantly. Haven't really looked at their bonuses yet, I think they're diplomatic too.

Sowers: Terraforming bots left behind by the Endless. Tasked to terraform a world to Endless spec, they did so, then sat around playing robot poker for a while as they waited for the Endless to come move in. Eventually when the Endless didn't show up, they decided to move on and fix the next world. And the next one. And the next one. Tend not to care if the world they're 'fixing' is occupied and whether or not the occupants want it fixed. They start out with a speed nerf and lower 'food' production, but they can colonize any world, which nobody else can do at start. Fucking cool shit.

[Stofsk]

I missed out on buying it when it was like $20 for paid alpha. Now it's $27. :C

A friend of mine has been playing it and he feels it's really good. I asked him about SotS II and he said that shitty game STILL doesn't work. It's been patched a ridiculous number of times too. It looks like it's been a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

[Josh]

SotS II is a funny, funny case. Everyone who knows a bit about Kereberos expected the game to come out buggy as fuck and be borderline unplayable, especially in multiplayer.

However, what came out was totally fucked, as in it wouldn't even run on a lot of systems. Regular crashes to desktop, like a third of the features weren't even installed, etc.

There's been speculation that they had some fuckup that wiped their latest code, or somebody fucked them over, or they're just spectacularly incompetent and lied to cover it up. No idea, but even as it gets closer to completion I don't think that it'll really live up to its original. The beauty and virtue of SotS (after it'd been batched and expanded) was that in most things it was so very simple. Colonize worlds, adjust the sliders, and forget about 'em. Build ships. Blow shit up. SotS II gets fancy with mission systems and other abstraction-killers that neither add 'realism' or enhance the experience. Damn shame, too.

As for Endless Space, it's a well-done piece of evolutionary work. Nothing too new or bold other than the combat system. The one thing missing and it's something that's missing in most of the modern 4X games is the good old school diplomacy feel. Nowadays, the games give you minimal notification whenever something is going on with your neighboring empires, and it kills that personal feel. Going back to MOO2, it was downright insulting when an ambassador from your neighboring empire would call you up with a 'You suck' message, complete with the hologram of the ambassador waving at you. Alpha Centauri was the best for that, I used to amusingly insulted whenever Previn Lal or Miriam would start preaching condemnations of my behavior.

What Endless did very well are the races. They each have a very unique flavor and playstyle. Oh, and I forgot a race, damn it.

Sophons: Eggheads. Your standard science geek race.

[SirNitram]

*Unearths*

For those who want in on this, it's now 15$ on Steam. And it includes a free DLC featuring a new race.. The Automatons.

[rhoenix]

I've been on a strategy kick for a while, even to the point of dusting off MoO2 for a while.

Game = snagged. Between this and Fallen Enchantress, I think my strategy cravings will be sated for a while.

[Hotfoot]

The combat just looks unbearable. I just can't get past that.

[Batman]

Yikes. Those ship designs make Freespace look good.

[Hotfoot]

Yeah, I didn't really have a problem with the ship designs, but now I have to ask Bats, what do you consider to be a good ship design?

[Batman]

One that isn't butt ugly (of course, this is in no small part a matter of personal taste, so your mileage may vary). The WC1/2/Armada fighter designs were, allowing for the limits of then available technology. Some of the Privateer and especially Privateer Remake fighters were, like the Centurion and the Talon, even the Galaxy didn't look half bad.
Capital ships-again, within the limits of available technology, both the Concordia and the Tiger's Claw looked good, as did many of the ships from Imperium Galactica. And, for both categories, a lot of the Star Wars/Star Trek ships.
Note that I'm talking purely about visuals. Wether or not any of these designs are sensible is something I'll worry about in textual SciFi where I don't actually have to look at the ships.

[rhoenix]

One that isn't butt ugly (of course, this is in no small part a matter of personal taste, so your mileage may vary). The WC1/2/Armada fighter designs were, allowing for the limits of then available technology. Some of the Privateer and especially Privateer Remake fighters were, like the Centurion and the Talon, even the Galaxy didn't look half bad.
Capital ships-again, within the limits of available technology, both the Concordia and the Tiger's Claw looked good, as did many of the ships from Imperium Galactica. And, for both categories, a lot of the Star Wars/Star Trek ships.
Note that I'm talking purely about visuals. Wether or not any of these designs are sensible is something I'll worry about in textual SciFi where I don't actually have to look at the ships.

Ok, those are examples, but not criteria. What criteria do you use to determine how good looking a ship is? How do you personally determine that?

[Josh]

Combat ended up being my hangup with it, along with the relative lack of colorful diplomacy. It's a beautiful game, great soundtrack, nice interface, but I missed the old school of 4X diplomacy, games like MoO2, Gal Civ 2 or the king of them all, Alpha Centauri. Those were games where diplomatic dealings felt as though they had personality and meaning, rather than bland exchanges based on profit-loss ratios. When the Believers came after you for your soulless science, you wanted to kick their teeth in.

I still have it on drive and I'm going to wait a while as they keep building and see what comes up. It's an 'almost there' kind of game, really.

[Josh]

Also, Horatio ships are beautiful.

[Batman]

Ok, those are examples, but not criteria. What criteria do you use to determine how good looking a ship is? How do you personally determine that?

You do know this isn't really anything that happens all on the conscious level, right? I don't go 'this is ugly because of a, b, c and d', the ship just looks ugly to me. But some criteria I can tell you are a likely turndown are
1)fighters
-hopelessly unaerodynamic shapes. Yeah, moderately irrelevant in a spacefighter, but as I said, I'm talking looks, not sense.
-symmetry. Sorry, when the left half of the bird is shaped noticeably differently than the right, that's a no go.
-silly colours. Vehicles of war are not orange or yellow, leave alone pale blue or pink. They're dark blue, black, grey, or dark green. Other colours and combinations may be acceptable on occasion (this goes for both fighters and capital ships-pretty much every B5 capital ship violates those but they managed to get it right somehow)
2)capital ships
-again, symmetry, though to a smaller degree.
-again, colour.
-protrusions from the main hull that don't seem to serve any discernable purpose.

[rhoenix]

Combat ended up being my hangup with it, along with the relative lack of colorful diplomacy. It's a beautiful game, great soundtrack, nice interface, but I missed the old school of 4X diplomacy, games like MoO2, Gal Civ 2 or the king of them all, Alpha Centauri. Those were games where diplomatic dealings felt as though they had personality and meaning, rather than bland exchanges based on profit-loss ratios. When the Believers came after you for your soulless science, you wanted to kick their teeth in.

I still have it on drive and I'm going to wait a while as they keep building and see what comes up. It's an 'almost there' kind of game, really.

That's... sadly the impression I'm getting of the game myself. It's has nice graphics and music, but it feels... bland to play. In the end, it gives me the impression of having more style than substance, which annoys me, since it has the potential to be good. Bah.

[Stofsk]

Are you guys sure that nostalgia isn't colouring your impressions? I remember SMAC, MoO2 and GalCiv 2, and engaging diplomacy wasn't anywhere near those games. SMAC and Galciv 2 had personality, but that was it. It was still just a 'Here's one of my tech for one of yours' mechanic, and little else. Even SMAC's factional divergence mechanic is pretty primitive. The believers will *always* get in your face if you don't run fundamentalism, the morganites will *always* get in your face if you don't run free market economy, Diedre will hate you if you don't run green economy and Chang will hate you if you don't run a police state etc.

There hasn't been a truly awesome diplomacy model in any of these games, no matter how much we wish there were.

[Josh]

Are you guys sure that nostalgia isn't colouring your impressions? I remember SMAC, MoO2 and GalCiv 2, and engaging diplomacy wasn't anywhere near those games. SMAC and Galciv 2 had personality, but that was it. It was still just a 'Here's one of my tech for one of yours' mechanic, and little else. Even SMAC's factional divergence mechanic is pretty primitive. The believers will *always* get in your face if you don't run fundamentalism, the morganites will *always* get in your face if you don't run free market economy, Diedre will hate you if you don't run green economy and Chang will hate you if you don't run a police state etc.

There hasn't been a truly awesome diplomacy model in any of these games, no matter how much we wish there were.

Oh I know the underlying engine was shit, but I could overlook that if there was at least personality behind it. I don't know of a game that had really sophisticated diplomatic modeling, but I do know that after SMAC I just couldn't get into the Civ follow-ons because there was nobody calling me up to tell me my free market was killing Planet or how my Democracy was causing rampant social disorder among the drones. MoO might have had an utterly imbecilic method by which it'd determine hey, we're no longer allies, hey, we're at war, but at least I had a Silicoid shaking a rocky protuberance at me when they called up and said "To war!"

Endless Space unfortunately has the same tit for tat engine (with unreasonable barriers to prevent gaming the system) while having no personality in exchange.

[White Haven]

Just to interject, it's 15 dollars on Steam right now. I don't know about you lot, but my 'this had better be good' threshold for games of that price range is a good deal lower.

[Hotfoot]

And the cranky bastard portfolio wins out again! Free weekend on Steam this weekend, I might get some play time in between Planetside 2 and LARPing.