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I know it's already been said, but ground combat is some bullshit. I'm currently playing Cravers and started invading my neighbors around early- to mid-game. The first couple of planets went easily as they hadn't had a chance to build up. Then I hit a 3 planet system and ground to halt. I've spent like the last 20 turns ferrying manpower in and have only now managed to get through their population, preventing them getting more troops. Dropping a never-ending stream of invaders is Craver as gently caress, but this is just lovely gameplay. I typically wait until later when I can build up a dedicated bombardment/invasion fleet, but I figured I'd get a head start since I was playing Cravers. It wasn't worth it. Ground combat is really my main complaint about ES2 so I guess I can live with it. Hopefully Amplitude takes another look at it later. Space combat is kind of bland too, but at least it's not nearly as aggravating.
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May 24, 2017 03:18
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:from my riftborn game thusfar this doesn't seem to be true at all, a riftborn colony on a high-mineral world (like lavas, which they can colonise at the start) can get up and running really fast. machine embodiment is super cheap for your first few pops and being able to colonise the best production worlds without worrying about food is great You spend all that time building more Riftborn instead of buildings though. By contrast, a high-food faction will be building improvements and growing nearly as fast. Even in my Riftborn games, the minor faction systems I designate as flesh-colonies tend to top off faster. They just top off lower. I feel like a lot of people in this topic are vastly underestimating the power of a huge population. You should always be beelining for growth and colonization techs (which let you use that growth). Ignore the military tree until you're literally at war (unless you're Cravers or Vodyani, I guess).
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May 24, 2017 03:31
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I made a new discovery today. Horatio is (are?) absolutely insane late game, and absolutely a "build tall" faction (weirdly), because apparently unused food rolls into production. I was just dicking around the galaxy, being all peaceful and poo poo, and suddenly I realized my capitol now had 1800 production because of it's 1400 food surplus. Instantly. I make a fleet EVERY TURN from a single system, and at this point I'm basically obligated to declare war on everyone and crush them under my unending waves of beauty. ...I've always enjoyed Amplitude's philosophy on balance, where "if everyone's totally broken somehow it'll probably work out".
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May 24, 2017 03:35
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Ramadu posted:did the beta patch fix the horrific slowdown post turn 100? because goddamn thats so frustrating Beta Patch stops AI from abusing the Space Port.
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May 24, 2017 03:39
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Clarste posted:You spend all that time building more Riftborn instead of buildings though. By contrast, a high-food faction will be building improvements and growing nearly as fast. Even in my Riftborn games, the minor faction systems I designate as flesh-colonies tend to top off faster. They just top off lower. riftborn have better bonuses than flesh pops, though, and you're colonising worlds with much better industry/pop than you would with flesh pops. cost of machine embodiment goes up fairly fast so you might take longer to fill out a system but in terms of where the colony is after say 10 turns the riftborn world will be much more productive that said, I've only played the one game with them and I think I got pretty lucky in the number of lava worlds near me
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May 24, 2017 03:41
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Yeah, if you get stuck with Ice worlds you're kind of screwed.
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May 24, 2017 03:43
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orangelex44 posted:I made a new discovery today. Horatio is (are?) absolutely insane late game, and absolutely a "build tall" faction (weirdly), because apparently unused food rolls into production. I was just dicking around the galaxy, being all peaceful and poo poo, and suddenly I realized my capitol now had 1800 production because of it's 1400 food surplus. Instantly. I make a fleet EVERY TURN from a single system, and at this point I'm basically obligated to declare war on everyone and crush them under my unending waves of beauty. This is the effect of a particular building at the end of the society tree.
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May 24, 2017 03:45
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Safety Factor posted:I know it's already been said, but ground combat is some bullshit. I'm currently playing Cravers and started invading my neighbors around early- to mid-game. The first couple of planets went easily as they hadn't had a chance to build up. Then I hit a 3 planet system and ground to halt. I've spent like the last 20 turns ferrying manpower in and have only now managed to get through their population, preventing them getting more troops. Dropping a never-ending stream of invaders is Craver as gently caress, but this is just lovely gameplay. orangelex44 posted:I made a new discovery today. Horatio is (are?) absolutely insane late game, and absolutely a "build tall" faction (weirdly), because apparently unused food rolls into production. I was just dicking around the galaxy, being all peaceful and poo poo, and suddenly I realized my capitol now had 1800 production because of it's 1400 food surplus. Instantly. I make a fleet EVERY TURN from a single system, and at this point I'm basically obligated to declare war on everyone and crush them under my unending waves of beauty.
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May 24, 2017 03:48
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Compared to my UE game, the time taken to fill out a system feels similar but you're building other system improvements as the UE whereas you still need to build them as the Riftborn.
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May 24, 2017 03:50
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Onean posted:There's early techs for manpower modules. There's also a fairly early tech for a module that increases the siege damage you do, and it stacks both on a ship and across a fleet. You can have more than one of each class of ship. Building a ground combat focused fleet using the small class ships is perfectly possible early game. To be honest, you don't even need those as Cravers? Just aim for the fleet size increasing techs, which also increase the number of soldiers you can field in a ground battle. Once you figure in the Craver bonuses to soldier poer, you should be able to conquer worlds in a single Blitz. The trick is to stay ahead of the curve. The manpower deployment limit is really the main thing slowing down ground battles, because it's almost impossible to have a decisive battle when both sides are always so evenly matched. It wasn't like this in Early Access. Clarste fucked around with this message at 04:00 on May 24, 2017 |
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May 24, 2017 03:56
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Onean posted:There's early techs for manpower modules. There's also a fairly early tech for a module that increases the siege damage you do, and it stacks both on a ship and across a fleet. You can have more than one of each class of ship. Building a ground combat focused fleet using the small class ships is perfectly possible early game.
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May 24, 2017 03:59
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Clarste posted:The manpower deployment limit is really the main thing slowing down ground battles, because it's almost impossible to have a decisive battle when both sides are always so evenly matched. It wasn't like this in Early Access. This is what really annoyed me - I can dump 4k+ manpower on a planet in one go, but I can only field 700 of it per turn or something like that. If I have an overwhelming advantage let me use it! What is the point of all these bonus manpower ship modules if the base ships already carry more people than you can use in a drop? I'm sure I'm missing some key techs in that area, I haven't just sat down and read the tech tree, which seems like a good idea in this game, 'cause there's an awful lot of powerful/useful stuff scattered all over the place. I still can't get the ship fights I want, either. I'm 1 on 1 against a Serious UE in a binary system with a chokepoint and we're at war - he still won't send poo poo at me. I caught his fleet once, and even though he had a ship size and command point advantage he retreated it  I just want to watch my ships shove missiles down their throats, is this the true measure of the game's difficulty? He's obviously teching up faster than I am, given the hull and command point difference, and some of the challenges he's getting before I do - so what's the drat problem? Is the AI just tuned to be SUPER risk averse?Edit: Yep, looks like there's some techs in the military tree that have +200 troop deployment or similar rolled into them. Still doesn't seem like enough of those considering the numbers you can cram in a ship though Rocketpriest fucked around with this message at 05:21 on May 24, 2017 |
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May 24, 2017 04:42
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Ramadu posted:did the beta patch fix the horrific slowdown post turn 100? because goddamn thats so frustrating Trip report: no. It's telling of how good the game is that I'm playing despite it.
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May 24, 2017 05:12
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I feel like I'm doing something wrong, no matter what faction I play. On a normal speed game as Vodyani, I was falling way behind the AI in score even by turn 80, and not really making that much dust. I was making around 800 essence a turn, but I could barely seem to manage to beat down my neighbor even with several arks. I started a new game as Riftborn on fast instead, and by turn 30 I'm not even making 100 dust with 3 colonies, maybe 10 or so Riftborn between them, and I have almost no military. I'm so busy trying to actually build up the planets, and focusing on just building pop doesn't seem effective because they take 4-5 turns each. Am I getting the wrong tech? Should I be focusing more on getting more colonies? I'm always afraid to spread out because of the dust upkeep costs and the fact that I can only have 6 colonies before I hit over-colonization. Another minor annoying thing I saw during my Vodyani game was the AI constantly retreating. I had an ark in two enemy colonies next to each other, and every time I beat up the ships in one of them, they'd retreat at half health to the other and somehow be at full health by the time they arrived, over and over. I was fighting Riftborn which are pretty slow, but surely they aren't healing the entire time they're in a starlane? How the hell do I get rid of these ships if they're just going to keep running away?
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May 24, 2017 05:17
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Are you building trade companies and upgrading your system levels?
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May 24, 2017 05:23
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Sailor Dave posted:Am I getting the wrong tech? Should I be focusing more on getting more colonies? I'm always afraid to spread out because of the dust upkeep costs and the fact that I can only have 6 colonies before I hit over-colonization. Colonies are super important. You want to be pushing those out as quickly as your FIDSI income allows you. There are techs that let you colonize more systems without penalties, and getting to 8 or 10 is pretty easy. As for retreating, it is annoying. I didn't find a good option until tier 5 military tech where one of them gives you the Full Reserves battle tactic that gives you free action points, letting you attack more than once a round. Another option is a bit fiddly since it requires you having faster ships and the enemy not able to reach the next system in one move. If you can beat a retreating fleet to the system they're running to, guarding the system will force them to stop, giving you another chance to wipe them out.
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May 24, 2017 05:34
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IAmTheRad posted:Beta Patch stops AI from abusing the Space Port. Is that what was causing the insane slowdown? I watched a whole episode of a tv show and only did like 9 turns
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May 24, 2017 05:44
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Ramadu posted:Is that what was causing the insane slowdown? I watched a whole episode of a tv show and only did like 9 turns I saw a screenshot of the AI, and during their turn there was about 5 ships going to and from every single AI colony to every other one.
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May 24, 2017 06:07
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can i play this game in a relatively pacifist fashion, i hated ES1's combat poo poo
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May 24, 2017 06:33
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Sailor Dave posted:I started a new game as Riftborn on fast instead, and by turn 30 I'm not even making 100 dust with 3 colonies, maybe 10 or so Riftborn between them, and I have almost no military. I'm so busy trying to actually build up the planets I think this is where you're going wrong for Riftborn specifically. Other races might want to build improvements but a lot of the time RB actually want to just generate pop. Look at some of the starting buildings -- Drone networks are basically an autobuild on every other race but RB don't do anything at all with the food. You're getting 5 industry for 80 invested, but another pop would ALSO gets you 5 Dust and Science for 250, plus the value of working the planet more. That's a way better value. Public-private partnerships give 10 science and other races might get another 20 for fertile / temperate planets but fertile planets are gross so there's another bonus you probably miss out on. Transport network sounds good but it's only a lil' better than drone networks unless you have multiple planets with strategics or have pretty full planets already. You usually get Xeno-Industrial Complex early because it comes with the tech for mining Titanium, but it's in the same boat as public-private partnerships. +10 industry, great. +20 more for Temperate + Fertile, who cares. Infinite supermarkets you probably want. Lol if you research the food tech. So out of all the level 1 tech buildings, the only one you want is the one that gives you happiness. If you happen to have temperate worlds around PPP and XIC might be worth it? But not until you're spread out a little and you're going to have to research how to colonize them anyway, which might just be a waste of time. NmareBfly fucked around with this message at 06:42 on May 24, 2017 |
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May 24, 2017 06:36
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Well, Unfallen Vines are still invisible for me as of the 1.05 beta patch, and clicking on the diplomacy TAB still causes a hangup, but I found out I can engage diplomacy without any errors at all by clicking on the political icon of another empire on the map, directly. Requires me to see their home planet, but hey, it works. Which means the hangup must be specific to displaying all the icons of the leaders in the galactic council or whatever. I'm fuzzy on Cravers. When a planet is "Depleted" does that mean that it's producing less FIDS for everyone or is it just back down to what normal levels would be for everyone? 'cause I'm pretty sure I ate the crap out of my home system a while ago and its still one of my best producers. Though I guess the slave poplulations are being worked overtime to make up for it...
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May 24, 2017 08:48
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Legs Benedict posted:can i play this game in a relatively pacifist fashion, i hated ES1's combat poo poo Unfallen vs AI. With enough money to sweeten the deal, almost everyone will peace out, giving you a lot of benefits with the right laws. It is also surprisingly more tense than I expected because I'm greedily exploring the galaxy trying to find and assimilate all the choice minor factions before the AI can. Though I'm a bit annoyed that a minor can be allied to you one turn and the next turn assimilated by someone else without prior warning.
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May 24, 2017 09:01
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Hell, you can even play the Cravers as nice guys... IF you have Pacifists in power. Tough to do, but an option!
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May 24, 2017 09:04
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 Trade companies are a little bit out of hand.
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May 24, 2017 09:21
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I just played a super-dense 12 person game with the Cravers. Or as I call it, the Feeding Frenzy. I was intentionally keeping people alive so I could keep the bonuses for staying at war with them, and by the end I was getting +700 production in all my billion colonies from Super Swarms. Also like +350 happiness. Also I never built a colony ship. Anyway, the moral of the story is that you shouldn't feel limited by the happiness penalties from exceeding your system limit. I would arue that you you're at or below the limit then you're doing something horribly wrong. Happiness bonuses exist to cancel out the penalties.
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May 24, 2017 09:26
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Clarste posted:To be honest, you don't even need those as Cravers? Just aim for the fleet size increasing techs, which also increase the number of soldiers you can field in a ground battle. Once you figure in the Craver bonuses to soldier poer, you should be able to conquer worlds in a single Blitz. The trick is to stay ahead of the curve.
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May 24, 2017 10:23
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That is how you do it, but it takes time and I'm impatient. If you have enough of an advantage in terms of deployment limits or troop upgrades, you can just invade immediately and even with Conscription they won't be able to defend two turns in a row. When I wrote that I assumed Cravers had a larger deployment limit (in addition to their bigger fleets), but apparently I misremembered. They have a tiny 10% bonus to troop strength which is.. eh? On the other hand, because of the way they need to leverage an early advantage they're the only faction I don't feel bad about prioritizing the military tree with. Edit: For what it's worth, get tanks ASAP and abuse Chain Gang for the extra manpower to switch over.
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May 24, 2017 10:39
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Cravers already get 2 gun slots on the exploration hull so really not that much of a need to grab the ship tech too early. If you luck out and get the expedition gun module which is 12 dps (like I did in my current game) you have pretty much already defeated your first neighbor.
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May 24, 2017 13:11
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Clarste posted:That is how you do it, but it takes time and I'm impatient. If you have enough of an advantage in terms of deployment limits or troop upgrades, you can just invade immediately and even with Conscription they won't be able to defend two turns in a row. When I wrote that I assumed Cravers had a larger deployment limit (in addition to their bigger fleets), but apparently I misremembered. They have a tiny 10% bonus to troop strength which is.. eh? On the other hand, because of the way they need to leverage an early advantage they're the only faction I don't feel bad about prioritizing the military tree with. There seems to be very little talk of goons outfitting support ships with Titanium Slugs. If you park like 2 of those around a planet, a small ship will clear like 75 troops off the planet per turn. I invade against a token conscription force after shelling them into Hades, using a support ship with a troop carrier. Specialize your ships, people.
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May 24, 2017 14:10
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Even in Endless Space 1, where you can feasibly make one all-purpose kinetic/beam/missile combat ship that will fairly consistently win battles if you just send out a whole bunch of them, conquering planets in a sane timeframe is another matter entirely and requires sending out specialized invasion and/or bombardment ships. It's fine if you don't like micromanaging the ship designer, but you do need to at least glance at it occasionally over the course of a game. Trying to brute-force everything with one or two bog-standard ship layouts is like trying to win a game of Endless Legend using only your starting infantry unit with no trinkets or equipment upgrades. Every Endless game has required (or at least Strongly Encouraged) abit of tinkering and forethought with regards to your units' armaments and specialized roles.
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May 24, 2017 14:55
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Angry Diplomat posted:Even in Endless Space 1, where you can feasibly make one all-purpose kinetic/beam/missile combat ship that will fairly consistently win battles if you just send out a whole bunch of them, conquering planets in a sane timeframe is another matter entirely and requires sending out specialized invasion and/or bombardment ships. This. What Endless games (space specifically) lack in direct control of combat, they make up for with deep unit customization. It encourages you to play the big game, planning your forces and equipping them to deal with situations as they arise. It isn't like Civ where you hit a new level of unit tech and just do everything with that unit until it's obsolete.
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May 24, 2017 15:40
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The Craver questline reward is impressively lame. You get your choice of: -Defeat an NPC fleet -> gain the ability to ignore forced truces for free. -Control 74 planets (about half the loving galaxy) -> Gain 2 Influence for every CP of ships you destroy. I miss the Endless Legend questlines, which were twice as long and often totally undoable, but gave suitably massive rewards.
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May 24, 2017 16:54
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Avasculous posted:The Craver questline reward is impressively lame. I agree that the faction questions are kind of lame so far. Surprisingly short, really. Endless Legend's were much better. The Craver's questline is all about rediscovering the Virtual Endless and either rejecting them or embracing them as their rules again. Results should be a bit more interesting than +2 Influence per destroyed command point. 
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May 24, 2017 17:40
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Angry Diplomat posted:Even in Endless Space 1, where you can feasibly make one all-purpose kinetic/beam/missile combat ship that will fairly consistently win battles if you just send out a whole bunch of them, conquering planets in a sane timeframe is another matter entirely and requires sending out specialized invasion and/or bombardment ships. In my game as Sophons I just put a +manpower module on a tank ship never had any problems with invasions. Maybe you forgot to upgrade troops in military screen?
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May 24, 2017 17:52
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1.05 is out on steam, patchnotes are there too. i don't see anything directly about the slow down, but a few things that could help
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May 24, 2017 18:05
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Could be the Abusive AI migration helps with the insane slowdown.
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May 24, 2017 18:08
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Safety Factor posted:Huh, when I got that quest as Cravers it was only 16 planets. What size galaxy are you playing in? I was on Large so maybe it scales. Oh, no it must scale to turn. I think I was playing on Medium, but I had a bug or something that stopped me from completing Step 1 (Intercept the ship) for 100+ turns until I quit and logged back in. So if you do it in a timely fashion, that's a lot more reasonable of an objective- but the reward is still pretty lame and irrelevant to the Craver lore. Destroying planets is incredibly pointless, for anyone curious. You need an endgame Military tech to get a Ship Module that can only go on a large ship with no other weapon modules. It takes a huge amount of production to build (like, comparable to the Obelisk), and then that defenseless ship has to hover in an enemy system for 5 turns before it can blow up one of that system's planets. Unless your ground forces are complete garbage (despite you being at the end of the military tree) or you're really, really lazy about refilling fleet manpower, I can't imagine any scenario where it wouldn't be way faster/easier/more beneficial to just invade and conquer the entire system with the large ship and the fleet you need protecting it. Avasculous fucked around with this message at 18:34 on May 24, 2017 |
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May 24, 2017 18:23
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Speedball posted:Hell, you can even play the Cravers as nice guys... IF you have Pacifists in power. Tough to do, but an option! Here's my thoughts on Unfallen (who do have a "Fire" branch to their quests with some weapon tech). Overall: I like to focus on expansion and assimilation, as Peace Zergling Trees.. Some of the minor faction assimilation traits are obscenely good, like setting the default pop research rate to 5. Between stacking happiness, FIDS peace bonuses and laws, you can get crazy amounts of boosts. Your ships aren't exceptionally good, but they do tend to be pretty tough, with defense slots on everything.
First Tier: I used to build this guy entirely as a system commander but now I diversify him a bit to deal with the initial shortage of heroes (I suppose I could just buy more, but rarely do). Instead I generally open with "Steaming Fertilizer" (+10%/+20% food before consumption unlike Civ) or "Blue Sky Speculator" (+20/+40 flat RP) depending on how my early colonization targets look. Because my planet will quickly fill out or my research skyrocket once I settle a batch of cold planets, I then move onto "Cosmic Castaway (+4/8 exp/turn on fleet, +1/2 vision) or "Enhanced Astronavigation" (1.5/3x free movement speed on fleet, +1/+2 vision range on fleet). The former gets used when Peace isn't likely; the exp boost remains even when my commander gets shuttled back to colony duties. The latter really shines if you're low on minor factions; with triple free movement, you feel as fast traveling to isolated constellations or systems as you do traveling warp lanes, making finding new factions for the peace bonus and minor factions for the assimilation happen in record times. It's entirely useless if you're stuck in your own constellation as it doesn't impact starlane travel. Second Tier: I almost always beeline for Personal Militia (+2/+4 Influence per pop on planets, some trivial defense bonus) though I may pass if I have a bunch of Collapsing Stars (+50 influence systems) nearby or can't make use of any of the Pacifist/Ecologist laws. Of note is the Seeker skill "Startrekking Instruction". It's notable for being a rather early On Senate skill, but kind of poo poo otherwise. Your initial commander is pretty much always going to be leading the party unless something goes horribly wrong, and even if giving the hero ship additional probes is bit trash, +1/+2 movement points on all your fleets is pretty drat good. I tend to finish up with "Common Touch" (+10 influence a system, +2 per hero level) just to boost influence a bit further. Third Tier: The influence focus on the second tier tends to mean my initial commander tends to stick to a fully developed system, leading to me skipping the growth boosters and focusing on on the amazing influence boost of "Rousing Orator" (+4/+8 Influence per person). Fourth Tier: the Unfallen skill "Symbiotic Repair" is almost too good to pass up since the pacifist party will almost always be in power - as a fleet commander, it gives +40% regen - as a senator, it gives +5% regen across the galaxy.
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May 24, 2017 18:37
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Wait, the Unfallen can cleanse the galaxy with fire?
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May 24, 2017 19:13
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Davincie posted:1.05 is out on steam, patchnotes are there too. i don't see anything directly about the slow down, but a few things that could help I finished my game last night with the beta 1.05 patch installed (admittedly after starting the game) and it didn't do anything to the end of game slowdown.
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May 24, 2017 19:22
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