Endless Space 4x-All

I've been getting flanked by fleets that don't have to follow the "paths"... they've been crossing to "unconnnected systems". I haven't been able to find that ability in the tech-tree.

Anyone else having issues with saves not appearing in the list? I'm luckiy if 1 of my saves (not including the Auto's) is in the list . No scroll option either .

My latest game is going way better, but it seems my main opponent has started building similar ships to mine. We spend the entire fight blasting away at eachother with minimal damage being applied to either side (Kinetics and alot of deflecting plating). I liked it better when I was doing the damage AND not receiving much

Tekk mostly gets into the basics here, but his next video should get into some more turns. What I like about Tekk's videos is that he explains what he's doing and why in a way I completely understand. Other LP's just kind of hum along with nary a word for why they're doing something.

Question to all you alpha players. is there a place where you can tell the dev your thoughts on this? I'm seeing some valuable feedback for them here which could make this game even better.

Cayne wrote:

Question to all you alpha players. is there a place where you can tell the dev your thoughts on this? I'm seeing some valuable feedback for them here which could make this game even better.

You can go here. Amplitude Studios (the devs) is very collaborative. The have set up something called Games3Gether which allows people who have registered the ability to vote on various things. Plus it provides a nice transparency to their dev process (for instance, right now, they are 90% complete with the art and working on Pirate Concepts and Models). They do seem to be on their forums quite a bit as well.

tboon wrote:
Cayne wrote:

Question to all you alpha players. is there a place where you can tell the dev your thoughts on this? I'm seeing some valuable feedback for them here which could make this game even better.

You can go here. Amplitude Studios (the devs) is very collaborative. The have set up something called Games3Gether which allows people who have registered the ability to vote on various things. Plus it provides a nice transparency to their dev process (for instance, right now, they are 90% complete with the art and working on Pirate Concepts and Models). They do seem to be on their forums quite a bit as well.

Their original trailer actually had about a minute's worth of talking about the process:

Garion, those are both great links, the videos. Thanks for posting them. I like the Games2gether idea in theory, not sure how it's actually playing out in practice. The LP is appreciated as well, I think I'm enabled when my budget allows

Fleet spies had been, with growing trepidation, reporting on the ever-increasing mass of ships collecting at the closest Horatio system of Mira. The race of identical clones had gradually increased the size of their attacks, from a single fleet at a time, to two at a time, and most recently three, sacrificing the first as a screen so that the other two could make their way through the Wormhole to the system of Corvus.

Corvus was the Navy rally point, all newly constructed vessels--as well as recently repaired ships from the yards of Altair—gathered there. They both took-up the second line of defense against the alien threats, and acted as a source of fresh ships to resupply the tip of the spear at Edasir. As the fleet rally point the forces there often outnumbered those at Edasir, but it was still worthwhile to the Horatio to attack Corvus. What its defense gained in ships it lacked in man. One man. Karta Vauclas.

A veteran of countless battles, there was arguably no being in the entire Galaxy more skilled at war. He somehow (just how was something hotly contested among naval personnel on all sides of this three-way war) always found the precise place and purpose his vessels needed to have in order to eke out their full potential. Among the Empire his name was admired—even worshipped. Among his foes, especially the Horatio which had lost the most, the thought of him evoked terror.

This was not to say that he was undefeated. There were battles where the deck was stacked too heavily against him, where the enemy ships were too large, or too well-equipped, or too numerous for even him to have victory.

This may be another such battle. The Horatio had given up their attempt to bypass the Admiral, such attempts had always led to failure, even if temporary success was achieved at Corvus that Icy Wall prevented resupply from home, and more ships—either fresh off the docks, or the most-battle ready reactivated early from their Altarian convalescence—would soon arrive to beat them back. No, despite their terror Horatio had to break the Admiral’s grip on Edasir. They quelled their fear with numbers. Seven full fleets they brought against Vauclas‘s one.

It would be impossible without the new ship designs, finalized only weeks ago. For too long the Buttress Mk 3 had stood alone, used in defense of ever-more advanced enemies. It was a luxury the high-command had had because of the bottleneck that the enemy needed to pass through to attack the Empire proper. A bottleneck guarded by Vauclas. However after a period of more industrious research the Empire had once again turned to weapons and shields, and not a moment too soon.

Since the dawn of the Empire their ships had bristled with kinetic weaponry, rapid-fire cannons which put up sheets of metal most-effective at close-ranged combat. Missiles were added once fighting had broken out with the ranged-favoring Horatio, and while missile use grew and grew over the years, it was always based on the backbone of ballistic weaponry. This was no longer effective. Almost all fights now ended one way or another before the ships had reached the close ranges where slugs were most effective, what’s more, most Horatio ships were festooned with layers upon layers of deflector shielding, stopping nearly all of the firepower the Empire’s ships poured out.

Buttress Mk 4 dropped kinetic weapons entirely, replacing them with new, highly advanced beam weapons that so few enemy ships were designed to defend against. Perhaps more importantly is that similar defenses had been made in beam and our own kinetic defense. The Buttress Mk 4 had nearly tripled the armor against these threats. Lastly, there were the Dreadnoughts. The first of their class, they dwarfed even the formidable Battleships. Both the Horatio and the Hissho had fielded a handful of similarly sized vessels in the past (never more so than in the fast-approaching Horatio armada) but this was the first Empire step along this path. They carried significantly more weaponry than the Buttress, but the larger difference was in their survivability. They were bestowed generously with counter-measures for every form of armament, there durability was enhanced with significant tonnage devoted to armor reinforcement, and they also had identical repair capability as the Altarian service craft. Invincible these Dreadnoughts were built to be, and Invincible they were arrogantly named.

The new ships were exceptional, serving to reverse the growing technical advantage their foes had attained; they had proven that in the small amount of fighting they had seen since their recent deployment. Vauclas sighed, it would not be enough, but even if he could not repel this attack he could cripple it. The clones would pay for their victory dearly, and the Empire would return, led by him or some younger, less-tired Admiral to kick them from this system once more.

Vauclas fought defensively, this post was a war of attrition, this pass guarded the Empire from two hostile species. Vauclas clung to his men’s’ lives greedily, spending them like a miser: grudgingly and for maximum return. They loved him for it; tens of thousands of officers had been plucked from certain death by Vauclas, finding themselves ministrated by the famed Altairian nurses instead of the oblivion they expected.

Once again the Admiral passed out the order to boost power to shields and flak stations. It was time to find out how many fleets these ships could weather. Time blurred for the fleet, a never ending series of waves crashed upon the ships, waves of missiles, sheets of plasma, and a driving rain of bullets. Across battle line his ships weakened, for every nine projectiles their countermeasures stopped a tenth appeared, collapsing bulkheads, piercing armor, killing crew. In those miniscule lulls between the timeless battles the repair drones of the Invincible set upon its allies, doing what fast and crucial repairs could be done while the next wave crested.

Yet another green scaly ship erupted under the power of Imperial guns. Vauclas ordered another rapid bout of repairs before turning to prepare for the next wave of enemy attacks, only to find that there was none. Of the seven fleets which had broken into the Empire’s skies only one remained, paralyzed by fear and making no move to follow their predecessors to their fate. Vauclas looked over his fleet, each of his six ships was intact, although all had damage which should rightfully be seen to during the Altarian convalescence they had all earned. There was nothing to be done for it though. During the struggle two Hissho fleets had snuck through the warp gate to Corvus, which would keep any reinforcements busy. It fell to them to hold the gate for awhile longer.

Does anyone know how ship xp works? I didn't even think ships leveled.

master0 wrote:

Does anyone know how ship xp works? I didn't even think ships leveled.

My level four Buttresses have 2122.4 max hp, my level five one has 2384.2 max hp.

Level == upgrade right? Ships don't gain experience do they?

Also, nice post Yonder. Really good.

Great stuff, Yonder.

tboon wrote:

Level == upgrade right? Ships don't gain experience do they?

Also, nice post Yonder. Really good.

Ships do gain experience just like commanders do. There are some technologies that increase the rate of this gain, and some improvements you gain research and build that make ships built in that system start with a higher amount of experience right off the bat.

Glad you guys liked the post. Things are definitely looking rough right now (even my Invincibles are dropping, though hopefully the Invincible Mk 2 will do better. No tech improvements, but after blunting that Horatio advance I have seen a very similar push from the Hissho. They use lots and lots of guns, and the Invicible's designed against the predominantly beam complement of the Horatio are really being torn up.

The Invincible 2 has a much more even defensive spread. I am currently moving towards the last two fleet size improvements, hopefully that will give me the rest of the edge I need.

Horatio just got the tech to avoid Starlanes and have started moving (small, for now) fleets into my flank. If I can't wipe up the Hissho push and Horatio stragglers quickly and go back on the offensive things could get ugly.

Damnit Yonder stop enabling me!!!!

Cayne wrote:

Damnit Yonder stop enabling me!!!!

Ok! How about this:

So just as I was getting my momentum the game was losing it. The time between my turns was taking longer and longer, and finally the game crashed mid-turn with some sort of heap error.

I'll try again soon, but I'm guessing that this game will become unplayable soon, since closing and loading had not resolved the turn length issues.

Sheesh. It's almost like this game is an alpha or something.

You people are bad, bad, filthy enablers. And I love you for that.

This thread is beginning to give me a queasy feeling, you know down in the pit of my....wallet.

Looks very promising.

God, you filthy filthy enablers.

Update today! Some highlights:

Patch Notes wrote:

Added a new Fleet action: guard. The fleets with guard status will block fleet movements of all opponents in cold war or war.
Added a drag and drop function for the items of the construction queue.
Added a warning message if you don’t have a research in queue when you click on end turn.
Added a warning message if your bank account become negative at the next turn.
Modified the population growth formula.
Modified the hero upkeep formula.
Increased the upkeep value of the system improvements.
Modified the negative anomalies effects in order to increase the interest of “Anomaly Reduction”.
Modified the values of weapon mods. All accuracies have been changed.
Modified the values of defense mods. Weapon X against Defense X has still a chance to deal damage.

Full patch notes here.

tboon wrote:

Update today! Some highlights:

Patch Notes wrote:

Modified the hero upkeep formula.
Increased the upkeep value of the system improvements.

Full patch notes here.

Hmm, in my end game I was completely swimming in cash, apparently that was not just due to me playing as the Empire (very large wealth boosts).

Just spent way too much time on this game today; I'm 250 turns into a 3-day-old save game!

How ridiculous have your system incomes gotten? My home system somehow managed to become the lead supplier of everything: 398 food, 536 industry, 1020 research, and 623 dust per turn. Granted, there are 6 planets with a maxed-out 34 population between them, and a level 14 Leader (specializing in both economic disciplines).

Yonder wrote:

Hmm, in my end game I was completely swimming in cash, apparently that was not just due to me playing as the Empire (very large wealth boosts).

I'm several wars away from my endgame, and I'm already raking in 1000 dust per turn on a 25% tax rate. In fact, all but 2 of my systems have a negative dust value.

Taidaan wrote:

Just spent way too much time on this game today; I'm 250 turns into a 3-day-old save game!

How ridiculous have your system incomes gotten? My home system somehow managed to become the lead supplier of everything: 398 food, 536 industry, 1020 research, and 623 dust per turn. Granted, there are 6 planets with a maxed-out 34 population between them, and a level 14 Leader (specializing in both economic disciplines).

Yonder wrote:

Hmm, in my end game I was completely swimming in cash, apparently that was not just due to me playing as the Empire (very large wealth boosts).

I'm several wars away from my endgame, and I'm already raking in 1000 dust per turn on a 25% tax rate. In fact, all but 2 of my systems have a negative dust value.

I'll try to remember to boot up the game this weekend to get the numbers, in my end game I think that I was making around 200 dust a turn with a tax rate of zero.

Seems like the beta dropped on Steam today. Although I can't find any conformation that it *is* the beta, the version in-game says Beta 0.43.5.

Patch notes here.

I just bought this and suddenly I didn't have a weekend anymore. My only reasons for stopping is I seem to get hit by the "ships won't move when you friggin' tell them to" bug a lot.

I'm sure there's still balancing to be worked out yet. I'm only on turn 27 and somehow I got my Sower homeworld to the point where it can produce ANYTHING in one turn. New ship? Done. Colonize a new planet in this system? Ok. Factory ship? ...well, OK, that'll cost 2 turns, but with another upgrade or so that won't be a problem. This all happened spontaneously when I took the +25 Production bonus on my hero. I didn't think it'd have THAT big of an impact!

Overall, excluding the few things I'm seeing that are clearly bugs (like seeing enemy ships hanging out in hyperspace hust outside a system, unreachable and impossible to tell which direction it's going) this is exactly the game I've been waiting for for a long time. It blends all the things I liked best about Sins and Civ 5 into a frothy nicotine pudding.

Who else is playing? Steam tag is KenboCalrissian, bee-tee-dubs.

KenboCalrissian wrote:

I just bought this and suddenly I didn't have a weekend anymore. My only reasons for stopping is I seem to get hit by the "ships won't move when you friggin' tell them to" bug a lot.

That bug happens to me when I use the Steam Overlay. Typically re-entering the Overlay or mashing shift will fix it. Otherwise, you have to shift-click to convince your minions to move.

After trying out the Sowers and the Hissho (and getting piss-poor home systems on both: 1 lava, 2 barren, and a gas giant), I feel that I can only get a good game going as the Sophons. That research speed is ridiculous; I hit Scientific Victory in about 115 turns, and researching the tech itself took 2 turns. That was also the match where I terraformed every planet of my original 8 systems into either Terran, Jungle, or Ocean (unless it wouldn't allow, like asteroids or gas giants).

KenboCalrissian wrote:

I just bought this and suddenly I didn't have a weekend anymore. My only reasons for stopping is I seem to get hit by the "ships won't move when you friggin' tell them to" bug a lot.

I'm sure there's still balancing to be worked out yet. I'm only on turn 27 and somehow I got my Sower homeworld to the point where it can produce ANYTHING in one turn. New ship? Done. Colonize a new planet in this system? Ok. Factory ship? ...well, OK, that'll cost 2 turns, but with another upgrade or so that won't be a problem. This all happened spontaneously when I took the +25 Production bonus on my hero. I didn't think it'd have THAT big of an impact!

Overall, excluding the few things I'm seeing that are clearly bugs (like seeing enemy ships hanging out in hyperspace hust outside a system, unreachable and impossible to tell which direction it's going) this is exactly the game I've been waiting for for a long time. It blends all the things I liked best about Sins and Civ 5 into a frothy nicotine pudding.

Who else is playing? Steam tag is KenboCalrissian, bee-tee-dubs.

One of the earlier techs and improvements that you should make an early move for is one that gives you something like 30 industry straight up, which in the early game can almost triple a systems productivity and drastically lower the time it takes for early-game development, that may have been what gave you a boost. You may also have a governor who is helping your Capital industry considerably.

Veloxi has a pretty spot-on review here.

Exciting! Cory and I are gonna try some MP at some point this weekend.

I'm in as well. look me up when you gents play.

We had a good game last night - albeit it was all learning. Cory, Todd, Shawn and myself played a 4 arm galaxy with three normal AIs (Pilgrim, Sowers and the reaver/hate's everyone faction (can't recall their name)).

Sadly, there's not much interaction until you either decide to fight each other, or someone goes deep in the diplomacy techs. As the Amoeba, I was able to feed system info to the others, but I am not sure how useful that was.

We all learned a LOT about the game, and I particularly enjoyed dissecting the weapons/defense relationships. Very GalCiv II in that regard.