Endless Space

[Tamas]

no thread on this yet. Shame, Languish.

I have been poking around in this game since the beta.

It is a 4X game, with a most excellent interface, nice "feeling", and some unique ideas.

One of the ideas, which is universaly hated by control freaks, is that combat isn't human controlled, so you lose the chance to exploit the limitations  of tactical AIs. Instead, you have 3 phases in combat based on range, and for each phase you select a "card" from the ones available, to select your tactic. I like it.

An other interesting take is that while you have separate population on planets, and different kind of planets let you produce different amount of resources (food, industry, research, money) per population on it, the buildings are built on the system level. So if you build an industrial complex it will give bonus on your industry for all planets in the system.
I find this an acceptable compromise between solar system detail and limit on necessary micromanagement.

The planets may have various resources, CIV-style.

The default state of diplomacy against othe races is "cold war" where you are free to engage them in systems which are not colonies. And if you colonize the first planet in a system, it is just an outpost - it will take it a while to become a colony, until which it is vulnerable to cold-warring enemies.
There are treaties like peace and alliance and stuff, you need to research these though.

The races are a mixed bag, but in general nice. Backstory have the Altarans... I mean some other ancient über-advanced civilization being disappeared, and a lot of stuff you can find on planets is based on those remains, and so are the two "robot" species, one are the war-waging robots of the ancients being lose, the other are the terraformer robots of the ancients just going on about their business of terraforming the galaxy.
Beside them, you have telepathic giant amobeas, evil industrial empire humans, religious humans worshipping the ancients, samurai-ish bird people, and a race which is made of the clones of a multi-billionaire who felt like it was a great idea to keep cloning himself endlessly and build a civilization.

I would simply love this game, if it wasnt for the AI. The game got released yesterday, and there was a huge patch I haven't tried, and initial reports say there have been very obvious improvements to the AI, but there was a pretty big room for improvements.
Most notably, while combat techs are Galciv 2-ish in terms of various kinds of attacks having various kinds of defenses against them and you can't really outfit your start and mid-era ships with everything, the AI was never big about changing it's design mid-game, in the beta.
People saying this has changed, I'll see how much.

The game also has now, with the release version, a custom race builder. And it has multiplayer. I think it would be a pretty good candidate for some Languish space-gaming, as I said it is very streamlined, but there are clear opportunities for different strategies and ways of victory.

[The Brain]

I've been looking at this for a while but 4xperience tells me that these games suck.

[The Brain]

What do you know about Legends of Pegasus btw?

[Tamas]

What do you know about Legends of Pegasus btw?

Isnt that being made by Kalypso? If yes, there are two problems with it: it is not done yet, and it is being made by Kalypso.

[The Brain]

What do you know about Legends of Pegasus btw?

Isnt that being made by Kalypso? If yes, there are two problems with it: it is not done yet, and it is being made by Kalypso.

10-4.

[Syt]

Played the beta a bit, but haven't spent much time with it because turn processing was so. Fucking. Slow. Saw the release yesterday but haven't played it yet.

I like the general look and feel of the game and that it tries to break out of some of the mold of space 4x with some of its races and designs. It has the customary scientist/diplomat/warrior races, but I like the wackiness of stuff like the terraformers or Horatio (a super-rich guy who decided to populate the galaxy with clones of himself). Humans are not your usual neutral trade/diplomacy/average race, but an evil corporate/monarchy mix - or more peaceful religious nutters. The ambient music also scores high on my list.

[Cecil]

Can you craft your own race like Moo2?

[Syt]

Can you craft your own race like Moo2?

I think they added that feature in the live release.

[Cecil]

Whats with the no review tampax? You are dissapointing us here. 

[Tamas]

Whats with the no review tampax? You are dissapointing us here. 

i ignore that derogatory nick, FYI

[Cecil]

Whats with the no review tampax? You are dissapointing us here. 

i ignore that derogatory nick, FYI

Start cracking at that review and I´ll stop using it.

[The Brain]

Chop chop, Tampax.

[Tamas]

  effin' aholes, the lot of you.

Quite the nerve you have, since I already gave you a review in the opening post.

You are welcome.

[Cecil]

effin' aholes, the lot of you.

Quite the nerve you have, since I already gave you a review in the opening post.

You are welcome.

Bah that barely covers what would be seen on the backside of an old PC game box.

[Berkut]

Tammy fails at providing link to game he is babbling about.