Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Helion
Apr 28, 2008
You walk up and click and they tell you what luxury they want. I don't think you need the tech.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

Right clicking on them should bring up a window similar to the one that has Language Square. Bribing an Urkan requires a ton of a particular luxury rather than dust.

Soonmot
Dec 19, 2002

Entrapta fucking loves robots




Grimey Drawer
I bought EL on the steam sale and grabbed the all the faction dlc. Is there a good newbie tips post in the thread?

The Human Crouton
Sep 20, 2002

Soonmot posted:

I bought EL on the steam sale and grabbed the all the faction dlc. Is there a good newbie tips post in the thread?

Watch this guy's stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOFhs-wsNEo

Lucas Archer
Dec 1, 2007
Falling...
With the free weekend I知 trying both Endless Legend and Endless Space 2. EL is extremely my jam, especially with the different, crazy factions. I知 getting the hang of it and am having fun, even though I really suck at these types of games.

ES2, I知 bouncing off of hard. I知 completely overwhelmed. Any general tips? There is no before I play page for that one.

Clarste
Apr 15, 2013

Just how many mistakes have you suffered on the way here?

An uncountable number, to be sure.

Lucas Archer posted:

ES2, I知 bouncing off of hard. I知 completely overwhelmed. Any general tips? There is no before I play page for that one.

ES2 is a game about expanding as much as possible, making numbers go up, and winning through superior economy. If you like interesting tactical battles, look elsewhere since the winner is whoever has the most ships and/or best tech. That said, I find it pretty relaxing in its simplicity, so I play it a lot.

My general research tips, which may not be applicable to normal people, are to start out by researching all the tier 1 techs of every tech tree except military, then get two more techs from economy to unlock the basic colony upgrades from luxuries. Basically this gives you a bunch of early buildings that provide flat Food/Industry/Science boosts. Then I focus on science/exploration, because being able to colonize more planets faster and further away (with both colony techs and warp lane upgrades like wormholes) gives you a huge advantage early on that will snowball into lategame advantage. Don't worry about the expansion happiness penalty too much, although consider stopping to research happiness upgrades if it starts looking bad (that's in the government/food tree on the left). Colonize every system you can that has at least 3 planets, more is always better. Even 2 planets or less is okay if you have enough happiness bonuses. The idea is to get as many worlds as you can, and therefore as many flat bonuses from early buildings/luxuries, as soon as possible. There's no such thing as building tall in these games, tbh.

I never research any military techs at all until someone declares war on me, because I like to live fast and dangerous and I usually only play on Hard because it's relaxing. Generally speaking though, it takes a while to for the AI to siege a planet so even if you're defenseless you can safely build up a high tech doomfleet with tier 2 hulls and hyperium lasers after the war's started. Research the hulls first, start bulding the ships, and then switch research to military so you can upgrade them when they're done. And a few of those fleets, with max fleet size upgrades, will often be enough to carry you through the endgame.

In terms of government, just stick with whatever your faction prefers and you usually can't go wrong. Toys For Boys is an excellent early-to-mid game law because the Happiness bonus to industry pretty much just cancels out the penalty. Other than that, set whatever production and happiness laws are available for your government's party.

Clarste fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Jan 27, 2019

HundredBears
Feb 14, 2012

Lucas Archer posted:

ES2, I知 bouncing off of hard. I知 completely overwhelmed. Any general tips? There is no before I play page for that one.

A good first 30 turns will set you up to cruise to victory on any difficulty. Most of the tips that follow are about playing those turns with the more standard factions: Riftborn, Unfallen and Vodyani all call for significant variations. Also, don't play Horatio if you're having trouble, they're terrible.

The early-game resources are industry and science, prioritize them when choosing which improvements to research and build.
The main exception to the above is when colonizing: high food yield is essential to turning an outpost into a colony quickly, and planets with high food tend to also be the most desirable for other reasons as well.
Speaking of turning outposts into colonies, you should always spend dust at each of your first several outposts to double the speed at which they generate food. Settling your second wave of colonies one turn before your first outpost turns into a colony will let you save dust, since the cost of doing so depends on the number of colonies you currently have. This second wave should typically consist of two colonies, one drawing from your home system for food and the other from your new colony.
Consider exploring with your starting hero, then reassigning them to your home system as a governor as soon as the reassignment cooldown is done. This will earn them a good bit of xp (exploring anomalies and being the first fleet from your faction to discover a system are both worth a moderate amount), help you find a good system to colonize faster and not cost much besides the dust to refit their ship with engines and probe modules (feel free to drop weapons and armor to save money). Most heroes don't do much as governors before they get their first skill points.
The two key early improvements are Xeno-Industrial Infrastructure (industry) and Public-Private Partnerships (science). For each planet you have colonized in a system, they'll give you +10 of their resource, plus an additional +10 if the planet is temperate and further +10 if it's fertile. The build order of "X-II, colonize any planet in the system that costs 160 industry, PPP" is strong in most newly-colonized systems.
Skip every tech that you can get away with skipping, since every technology increases the cost of all technologies that you research after it. In the first ring, this usually means one of the military techs, the tech that lets you colonize Mediterranean worlds, and sometimes the +food improvement tech in the left quadrant. In the second ring, 2-3 techs is the number to research in each quadrant, with the specific ones varying a bit from game to game. The bottom quadrant is especially tricky, since you have have to balance unlocking planet types to colonize with the bonuses that the techs themselves give. Sometimes going for all four may be the best option.
You can spend dust by building empty hulls and then retrofitting them to hold the modules that you need. This trick is especially good for getting your second wave of colony ships out in time, but also sometimes lets you skip the tech that unlocks rush-buying (which tends to cost at least twice as much dust per industry as retrofitting).
Selling resources on the market can speed up your early game quite a bit. The second-ring tech that unlocks the market is often one of my first few second-ring techs.

Clarste posted:

Toys For Boys is an excellent early-to-mid game law because the Happiness bonus to industry pretty much just cancels out the penalty. Other than that, set whatever production and happiness laws are available for your government's party.

Industry is the only FIDSI that doesn't get a bonus from approval. System approval gives food and influence while empire approval gives dust and science. Toys for Boys is sometimes still good (the Cravers especially want science and can afford both the industry hit and the law slot), but most factions have better things to do with the slot at least until they get another slot from the left quadrant.

Blisster
Mar 10, 2010

What you are listening to are musicians performing psychedelic music under the influence of a mind altering chemical called...
I can't believe the support that Endless Legend has received over the years. I kind of bounced off of ES2 after a couple playthroughs but I have over 300 hours in EL and still play it regularly. The Mycara look sweet though.

Unfortunately I can't get the expansion since I used my gaming budget this month for At The Gates.

Helion
Apr 28, 2008
First off, I apologize for being a great big baby and whining about the Umbral Choir. I get them now and am having a great time.

Second, I just realized something. You know how you can deploy ships from your sanctuaries? And you basically beam manpower there and turn it into population?

Well that manpower beaming ALSO GOES FOR INVASIONS.

So when you invade, say, a homeworld that has your sanctuary there, you are reinforcing your invading armies with something like the full weight of your empire wide manpower.

They're pouring out from the shadow gates.

So you can freeze enemy ship movement throughout their empire, then go for the kill with a hidden fleet spawned from your hidden sanctuary, reinforced by millions of supposedly benevolent void demons charging out of the gates.

I know because I just did it. Boom, headshot!

Eschatos
Apr 10, 2013


pictured: Big Cum's Most Monstrous Ambassador
Why does Horatio suck? Yeah the extra ship cost is lame but seems like splicing would more than make up for it in the long term.

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

Eschatos posted:

Why does Horatio suck? Yeah the extra ship cost is lame but seems like splicing would more than make up for it in the long term.

splicing and the fact that they start as Ecologists means they can settle all over the place at the start, you can have a population explosion early on which is great. I don't have a problem with Horatio. It cuts into their food supply if you splice too much too early but hey.

Serephina
Nov 8, 2005

恐竜戦隊
ジュウレンジャー

5 tips for new players: an 11 minute video with no indications of what/when the tips are. Please watch the entire thing start to finish, and Like!

The Human Crouton
Sep 20, 2002

Serephina posted:

5 tips for new players: an 11 minute video with no indications of what/when the tips are. Please watch the entire thing start to finish, and Like!

I'm recommending it because it is good, as is the rest of his EL content. If you'd bothered to actually watch it or look at this channel, you will also find a video that I consider to be the best explanation of the battle system that I've seen online.

What an asinine thing for you to get snooty about.

The Human Crouton fucked around with this message at 12:46 on Jan 28, 2019

mitochondritom
Oct 3, 2010

Yea an 11 minute tutorial video to explain the battle system and some tips isn't too big a deal. Especially when a game of Endless Space 2 takes about 3 hours or something.

Serephina
Nov 8, 2005

恐竜戦隊
ジュウレンジャー
Tip1: split your starting army to scout before planting your initial settler on turn1 etc placed as a slide before each point is a minimal cost and makes the video much easier to parse/browse through. Different media have different strengths and videos are nice for their moving pictures, but if your video is mostly talking then you're just wasting time instead of writing things down where they can be read, or skimmed/indexed/and re-read much more rapidly than speech. Maybe in the dark days of the internet videos had to be eloquent and information could be found via search engines directly, but nowadays seemingly everything is a video streached to ten+ minutes in order to get that sweet sweet youtube monetization apparently?

Basically I wanted to skim his video in case there was some mind-blowing simple thing I'd missed (such as Retrofitting is cheaper than buy-out, so buy cheap template units and retrofit them into battle readiness). Quickly skimming his video I have no goddamn idea what the titular 5 points are, and can't tell when he's transitioning from one topic to another.

So yea, angry at the click-bait-y title with no followthrough

Serephina fucked around with this message at 12:49 on Jan 28, 2019

HundredBears
Feb 14, 2012

Eschatos posted:

Why does Horatio suck? Yeah the extra ship cost is lame but seems like splicing would more than make up for it in the long term.

The general rule in 4X games is that early bonuses are better than late ones. Your economy grows exponentially, so even a small advantage at turn 1 becomes a large advantage by turn 60. Horatio not only lack early game advantages, they have early game drawbacks. Starting on a planet that's neither temperate nor fertile is a bigger hit than the ship cost, in all honesty. In addition, splicing is a weak power. By the time you've spliced enough population to get a bonus equal to the Sophons' +25-50% science multiplier, the Cravers' ludicrous +150% FIDS per pop and so forth, the other factions have gained a huge lead. This is exacerbated by the population cost of splicing, which remains non-trivial into the mid-game. Very early in the game, they're faced with the painful choice of whether to splice their starting minor as soon as it hits two pop (costing 600 food worth of pop at a time when that's a substantial setback) or wait and have to deal with having more weaker, non-Horatio population.

Horatio have a variety of non-obvious drawbacks as well. Their quest is very slow to get started (unlike the United Empire, they aren't getting the bonus hero any time near turn 20). Their ships tend to have fewer module slots than those of other factions and be biased away from weapons, often the most important slot type. The ecologist mandatory law mostly helps when things are going poorly and even then not by much: the good factions rarely have trouble researching the tech to unlock the less hospitable planets by the time it's worth spending 320+ industry or a colony ship on them. Even after a much-needed buff, dictatorship tends to be the weakest government.

Squiggle
Sep 29, 2002

I don't think she likes the special sauce, Rick.


Serephina posted:

So yea, angry at the click-bait-y title with no followthrough

The entire thing is followthrough, you're just impatient.

Squiggle fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Jan 28, 2019

AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

Eh, Serephina kinda has a point - so many things that could be written down in a wiki or even the description of the video are instead embedded somewhere in a longwinded video that is capped off with a "Please like, subscribe, and donate!". I find watching videos to learn something really hard - I would rather have referenceable written documentation than a video, 19 times out of 20. crt+f is your friend and you cannot do that with a video.

edit: Oftentimes a screenshot can be more helpful than a video when you can add overlays to the image and the image is static, rather than a video where the presenter often does not linger long enough and/or does not stress the important bits well enough.

I dunno, maybe I've just been burned by trying to watch the wrong videos.

AAAAA! Real Muenster fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Jan 28, 2019

Tree Bucket
Apr 1, 2016

R.I.P.idura leucophrys

HundredBears posted:

The general rule in 4X games is that early bonuses are better than late ones. Your economy grows exponentially, so even a small advantage at turn 1 becomes a large advantage by turn 60. Horatio not only lack early game advantages, they have early game drawbacks. Starting on a planet that's neither temperate nor fertile is a bigger hit than the ship cost, in all honesty. In addition, splicing is a weak power. By the time you've spliced enough population to get a bonus equal to the Sophons' +25-50% science multiplier, the Cravers' ludicrous +150% FIDS per pop and so forth, the other factions have gained a huge lead. This is exacerbated by the population cost of splicing, which remains non-trivial into the mid-game. Very early in the game, they're faced with the painful choice of whether to splice their starting minor as soon as it hits two pop (costing 600 food worth of pop at a time when that's a substantial setback) or wait and have to deal with having more weaker, non-Horatio population.

Horatio have a variety of non-obvious drawbacks as well. Their quest is very slow to get started (unlike the United Empire, they aren't getting the bonus hero any time near turn 20). Their ships tend to have fewer module slots than those of other factions and be biased away from weapons, often the most important slot type. The ecologist mandatory law mostly helps when things are going poorly and even then not by much: the good factions rarely have trouble researching the tech to unlock the less hospitable planets by the time it's worth spending 320+ industry or a colony ship on them. Even after a much-needed buff, dictatorship tends to be the weakest government.

They are fun and interesting to play, at least (that said, I'm a dreadful player).
For maximum Horatio-ness, you can set all the AI empires to also be Horatio, then fight until only the true Horatio remains. Horatio.

The Human Crouton
Sep 20, 2002

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

Eh, Serephina kinda has a point - so many things that could be written down in a wiki or even the description of the video are instead embedded somewhere in a longwinded video that is capped off with a "Please like, subscribe, and donate!". I find watching videos to learn something really hard - I would rather have referenceable written documentation than a video, 19 times out of 20. crt+f is your friend and you cannot do that with a video.

edit: Oftentimes a screenshot can be more helpful than a video when you can add overlays to the image and the image is static, rather than a video where the presenter often does not linger long enough and/or does not stress the important bits well enough.

I dunno, maybe I've just been burned by trying to watch the wrong videos.

I also prefer things to be written down. The problem is that a nice, bulleted list for EL does not exist as far as I've been able to tell. This was the source I used to learn the game, and it works. Youtube videos are just the times we live in now. It's either gain this information inefficiently or don't gain it at all.

So my suggestion stands. If you are a beginner, watch that video. If you want to learn how to use the battle system, search that guy's channel for his combat videos.

HundredBears
Feb 14, 2012

Tree Bucket posted:

They are fun and interesting to play, at least (that said, I'm a dreadful player).
For maximum Horatio-ness, you can set all the AI empires to also be Horatio, then fight until only the true Horatio remains. Horatio.

He does have a fun aesthetic, to be sure. My very first game of ES2 was as Horatio, it's just a shame that they're a victim of Amplitude's approach to game balance.

Eschatos
Apr 10, 2013


pictured: Big Cum's Most Monstrous Ambassador
So what's the trick to maintaining enough happiness for a huge empire? I'm guessing that the options are to force religious to win every election to keep Saints and Sinners up, or just have every system development tier go with whatever luxuries you happen to have a huge stockpile of so you can upgrade most of your systems to level four and increase your system cap to keep up. I'm trying to focus growing minor populations that give happiness on splicing, but that's going extremely slowly.

The Unlife Aquatic
Jun 17, 2009

Here in my car
I feel safest of all
I can lock all my doors
It's the only way to live
In cars

Eschatos posted:

So what's the trick to maintaining enough happiness for a huge empire? I'm guessing that the options are to force religious to win every election to keep Saints and Sinners up, or just have every system development tier go with whatever luxuries you happen to have a huge stockpile of so you can upgrade most of your systems to level four and increase your system cap to keep up. I'm trying to focus growing minor populations that give happiness on splicing, but that's going extremely slowly.

Federation is the government if you wanna go wide. Every hero you recruit adds to your system cap, and system levels are cheaper. If you're Craver then yes, you really want S&S. Eden Incense is a lifesaver.

Amethyst
Mar 28, 2004

I CANNOT HELP BUT MAKE THE DCSS THREAD A FETID SWAMP OF UNFUN POSTING
plz notice me trunk-senpai
The manual and wiki for es2 are woefully inadequate and the worst part of the game for sure. It's insulting that they expect the community to do that essential work

Rhjamiz
Oct 28, 2007

If you're Pacifist and have a ton of peace treaties and a big alliance you can go pretty wide while still maintaining 100% Happiness empire-wide. That's how my Lumeris playthroughs usually go anyway

Admiral Funk
Oct 1, 2012

Please send them a very large crate marked "SCIENCE. PROBABLY DANGEROUS. BUT VERY SCIENTIFIC. YES."
I couldn't find any documentation for what bonuses the Mykara get for integrating other factions so I bit the bullet and made a list my self.

Allayi: Perfect winter prediction
Reduced cost of hostile diplo in winter and of friendly diplo in summer

Ardent Mages: +1 influence per pop in city
+5 influence on main city
+15 approval

Broken Lords: +1 Dust on tile with dust
+1% health regen per pacified village

Cultists: +75 fortification on main city
+50 xp when recruiting

Draken: Free assimilation of minor factions
+2 influence per pacified village

Forgotten: +10 Security on city
+2 infiltration points per turn on infiltrators
+50% dust from pillage

Kapaku: +10% damage on volcanic tiles
Predict dust eclipses

Morgawr: Free Embark/Disembark
+1 industry and science on water

Mykara: Nothing

Necrophages: +5% hp regen
25% military upkeep reduction

Roving Clans: 50% cost reduction on trade and research agreements
+10% trade income

Vaulters(and Mezari)i: +1 Science on tile with science
Immunity to certain winter effects on city

Wild Walkers: +1 industry on forests
+20% defence on forests

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

drat, those are good. Nice effortpost.

Breakfast All Day
Oct 21, 2004

I bought Endless Space 2 on a whim while sick and played through a game. I played ES1 and can't remember a thing about it, and played EL twice and enjoyed it but it left no lasting impressions.

Surprisingly, I really enjoyed my first game of ES2 despite in every detail sort of missing some nuance from Stellaris. The thing that killed Stellaris for me, and always ruins just about every Paradox game, is the chaotic instability. At any moment in a Paradox game, either an inexplicable AI bug causing it to suicide its whole army or ridiculously unbalanced combat can end a game. If you have lots of time for games, that can be fun and sandboxy, but if you don't, putting 20+ hours into a game only to have it explode just doesn't work. Turned based games are also more relaxing to me than the sort of micro you can end up having to do in Paradox games.

I got the sense from ES2 that it doesn't suffer from those issues as much, and that the AI, while dumb, at least won't implode and is Civ V ish levels of "at least I can meaningfully finish the game". It felt reasonably balanced for competent but casual players. The only real bare spot I noticed was quests drying up midgame.

Before I pour time into playing a longer game, I wanted to find out from the thread if that's true. Also, is multiplayer co-op reasonably fun and stable also (again with Civ as a benchmark)?

Truga
May 4, 2014
Lipstick Apathy
Unfortunately I played ES1 and EL, multiplayer co-op would mean you break the game because the AI is dumb enough that a single player can win against the whole map with some effort put in.

It is still a very chill experience if you're not trying to just win and want to make some numbers go up first, though. Probably the only reason I'm playing more stellaris than endless games is because the realtime flow of the game feels better in multiplayer. Also, someone starting a manual combat can make the turn take forever. In ES2 that's not as big a deal since it's just cards anyway, but in EL some factions kinda rely on it so..

Avasculous
Aug 30, 2008

Truga posted:

Also, someone starting a manual combat can make the turn take forever. In ES2 that's not as big a deal since it's just cards anyway, but in EL some factions kinda rely on it so..

It's easy to miss in setup IIRC, but there's an accelerated combat animations option that makes something like a 5x difference and is absolutely mandatory for MP EL.

We had goon MP EL sessions that were a lot of fun in the past and with the right settings, we could play a complete game in ~3 hours. It's also the easiest way to actually learn the EL games since people are happy to answer questions and not try to annihilate new players 20 turns in.

I haven't tried the new expansion yet, but it sounds fun. Do people have any interest in getting MP going again?

Eschatos
Apr 10, 2013


pictured: Big Cum's Most Monstrous Ambassador
I'd enjoy that, have nothing but a single coop game of ES2 under my belt though.

Tulip
Jun 3, 2008

yeah thats pretty good


I'm about halfway into one game as Umbral Choir. Not liking them.

Biggest problem is that hacking feels really unreliable. On top of being a slow expansion mechanism. Just feels bad to fail, repeatedly, for what feel like dice rolls. For clarity, I started sandwiched between an Unfallen and a UE. I've been dividing my hacking between the two, more on the Unfallen. I have 1 sleeper in their entire empire near turn 70. Basically every action seems to just be dice rolls with little strategic interaction.

Which may be a symptom of a larger if less annoying problem: these guys are opaque. I've never felt lost in EL or ES before, every other system has clicked, even if I've been totally wrong about whether or not my plan will work. But here I'm just stumbling in the dark.

On the other hand, I don't feel weak. There's one other human, playing Hissho, who's #1 and I was able to force a stalemate in a conventional war with 1/3 the points. Which gave him Keii but also meant he wasn't invading somebody with actual territory, while hacking continued unabated.

Anyway, I like UC more than their last attempt at stealth with Forgotten, but it still just is much less fun than normal gameplay.

Generic Octopus
Mar 27, 2010

Tulip posted:

I'm about halfway into one game as Umbral Choir. Not liking them.

Biggest problem is that hacking feels really unreliable. On top of being a slow expansion mechanism. Just feels bad to fail, repeatedly, for what feel like dice rolls. For clarity, I started sandwiched between an Unfallen and a UE. I've been dividing my hacking between the two, more on the Unfallen. I have 1 sleeper in their entire empire near turn 70. Basically every action seems to just be dice rolls with little strategic interaction.

Which may be a symptom of a larger if less annoying problem: these guys are opaque. I've never felt lost in EL or ES before, every other system has clicked, even if I've been totally wrong about whether or not my plan will work. But here I'm just stumbling in the dark.

On the other hand, I don't feel weak. There's one other human, playing Hissho, who's #1 and I was able to force a stalemate in a conventional war with 1/3 the points. Which gave him Keii but also meant he wasn't invading somebody with actual territory, while hacking continued unabated.

Anyway, I like UC more than their last attempt at stealth with Forgotten, but it still just is much less fun than normal gameplay.

The hacking will be unreliable until you start increasing your "hack speed" via programs/tech/hero skills/etc. Before you start ramping that up, you'll need to route your hack through other systems so that their trace takes longer to reach you; if you try direct routes early on, you'll fail constantly, since traces move faster toward the source of the hack than hacks move toward their target node, plus once your hack signal arrives at the node, it actually takes time to hack it, while a trace just needs to reach your source node.

Something that took a bit for me to parse was that there's basically 2 aspects of hacking; your "signal" reaching the target node, and the actual "hack" once it reaches the target node. Once your signal reaches your target, then it becomes a race between their trace and your hack speed (your offensive programs like Accelerator aren't going to do anything until your signal actually reaches the node). It's definitely the subsystem with the least clarity I've encountered in an Amplitude game, but once it clicked I really started liking it. UC are probably my favorite faction now. There's more to hacking that I don't fully get yet, but I've had a lot of success with it so far with just the above worked out.

Amethyst
Mar 28, 2004

I CANNOT HELP BUT MAKE THE DCSS THREAD A FETID SWAMP OF UNFUN POSTING
plz notice me trunk-senpai
A redditor tested out all the hacking mechanics and measured results:

https://www.reddit.com/r/EndlessSpace/comments/ala9bh/results_of_hacking_program_testing/

Lots of annoying poorly documented noob traps. For example:

quote:

(Accelerators) work, but they're not great. I confirmed that their effects do NOT persist after they leave the node they are placed on. To test, I had a long hack start on turn 119, set to complete on turn 145. Applying accelerators to the 4 enemy nodes the hack passed through, it finished on turn 144.

Effective hacking is also really, REALLY micro-heavy:

quote:

Ah redirect, how I love the. You've certainly seen the game not let you hack the same node with multiple hacks at the same time, this is how you get around that. Redirect is cast on a node that a hack is currently on, and allows you to change the destination. If the destination is the node the hack is currently on, you're probably using this correctly.

Start a hack on an enemy system. Next turn, start another hack that goes THROUGH that system. When the first finishes, you're free to redirect the second for a one-two punch.

Why even have the single node restriction if they're going to put in a way around that rule, at a cost of manually looking at your hack screen to intervene at the right time

Amethyst fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Jan 31, 2019

Amethyst
Mar 28, 2004

I CANNOT HELP BUT MAKE THE DCSS THREAD A FETID SWAMP OF UNFUN POSTING
plz notice me trunk-senpai

Tulip posted:

I'm about halfway into one game as Umbral Choir. Not liking them.

Biggest problem is that hacking feels really unreliable. On top of being a slow expansion mechanism. Just feels bad to fail, repeatedly, for what feel like dice rolls. For clarity, I started sandwiched between an Unfallen and a UE. I've been dividing my hacking between the two, more on the Unfallen. I have 1 sleeper in their entire empire near turn 70. Basically every action seems to just be dice rolls with little strategic interaction.

Which may be a symptom of a larger if less annoying problem: these guys are opaque. I've never felt lost in EL or ES before, every other system has clicked, even if I've been totally wrong about whether or not my plan will work. But here I'm just stumbling in the dark.

On the other hand, I don't feel weak. There's one other human, playing Hissho, who's #1 and I was able to force a stalemate in a conventional war with 1/3 the points. Which gave him Keii but also meant he wasn't invading somebody with actual territory, while hacking continued unabated.

Anyway, I like UC more than their last attempt at stealth with Forgotten, but it still just is much less fun than normal gameplay.

I agree. I don't really like this dlc at all, it feels like a weird addition that they added because they felt obligated to add mechanics in a dlc.

KPC_Mammon
Jan 23, 2004

Ready for the fashy circle jerk

Amethyst posted:

Why even have the single node restriction if they're going to put in a way around that rule, at a cost of manually looking at your hack screen to intervene at the right time

This sounds more like a bug than an intentional feature.

Demiurge4
Aug 10, 2011

For those of you interested, I値l be running weekly games of endless space 2 every Saturday at 1600 gmt for Mapgoons. If you want to join in you can find the mapgoon discord in the private games sub forum.

Tulip
Jun 3, 2008

yeah thats pretty good


Generic Octopus posted:

The hacking will be unreliable until you start increasing your "hack speed" via programs/tech/hero skills/etc. Before you start ramping that up, you'll need to route your hack through other systems so that their trace takes longer to reach you; if you try direct routes early on, you'll fail constantly, since traces move faster toward the source of the hack than hacks move toward their target node, plus once your hack signal arrives at the node, it actually takes time to hack it, while a trace just needs to reach your source node.

Something that took a bit for me to parse was that there's basically 2 aspects of hacking; your "signal" reaching the target node, and the actual "hack" once it reaches the target node. Once your signal reaches your target, then it becomes a race between their trace and your hack speed (your offensive programs like Accelerator aren't going to do anything until your signal actually reaches the node). It's definitely the subsystem with the least clarity I've encountered in an Amplitude game, but once it clicked I really started liking it. UC are probably my favorite faction now. There's more to hacking that I don't fully get yet, but I've had a lot of success with it so far with just the above worked out.

these are good points, though I think I'll have to try fiddling with map settings - in my ongoing game, the starlanes wound up being largely single file (unique cluster, 2 arm, large), so not many ways to reroute. I'll see how these influence my play next time me and my bud get a chance.

really queer Christmas
Apr 22, 2014

Breakfast All Day posted:

I bought Endless Space 2 on a whim while sick and played through a game. I played ES1 and can't remember a thing about it, and played EL twice and enjoyed it but it left no lasting impressions.

Surprisingly, I really enjoyed my first game of ES2 despite in every detail sort of missing some nuance from Stellaris. The thing that killed Stellaris for me, and always ruins just about every Paradox game, is the chaotic instability. At any moment in a Paradox game, either an inexplicable AI bug causing it to suicide its whole army or ridiculously unbalanced combat can end a game. If you have lots of time for games, that can be fun and sandboxy, but if you don't, putting 20+ hours into a game only to have it explode just doesn't work. Turned based games are also more relaxing to me than the sort of micro you can end up having to do in Paradox games.

I got the sense from ES2 that it doesn't suffer from those issues as much, and that the AI, while dumb, at least won't implode and is Civ V ish levels of "at least I can meaningfully finish the game". It felt reasonably balanced for competent but casual players. The only real bare spot I noticed was quests drying up midgame.

Before I pour time into playing a longer game, I wanted to find out from the thread if that's true. Also, is multiplayer co-op reasonably fun and stable also (again with Civ as a benchmark)?

agreed with this. Played ES2 last weekend because it was free and ended up buying it because I just couldn't stop playing. A good relaxing space 4X was what I bought stellaris for, and that game has always left me feeling frustrated after a session. It's still early so I'm still learning, but that hasn't really happened with ES2.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Flipswitch
Mar 30, 2010


The big Urkann(?) lads have some obscenely strong benefits. Currently in a game as the Kapaku and I've managed to get two of them so far whilst keeping the Necrophages at bay in the North.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply