Endless Space

[Syt]

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etExP7050GI&feature=related

[Tamas]

it's all over Steam 

[Berkut]

I am intrigued.

Very, very intrigued...

Tell me about MP...

[sbr]

I am intrigued.

Very, very intrigued...

Tell me about MP...

I asked some friends that have played it:

Yes. It's fairly fun but can take a while for turns to finish the longer it goes on. If someone's in a full scale war with multiple battles per turn it can be a chore for everyone else to wait around for them, since there's no way to "view" the battles like there is in, say, Sword of the Stars. On top of that, the battles against the AI fleets are usually very repetitive curbstomps that are only really fought just to ensure that as few ships are lost as possible.

Even worse, it seems to go out of sync fairly often when players auto-resolve battles.

Well it seems to go out of sync fairly often in general, to be perfectly honest.

[Razgovory]

I just couldn't get into that last 4X game  Distant worlds.  The game played without me and I had no idea what the fuck I was doing.  Game needed a tutorial.

[Syt]

I liked playing Distant Worlds. I would set the Empire parameters (research focus, fleet compositions, taxation etc), diplomacy, fleet movement, expansion. System improvements were handled on a suggestion basis. Gave me enough to do without miring me in the minutiae of manually managing each of my 1000+ ships.

[Razgovory]

I liked playing Distant Worlds. I would set the Empire parameters (research focus, fleet compositions, taxation etc), diplomacy, fleet movement, expansion. System improvements were handled on a suggestion basis. Gave me enough to do without miring me in the minutiae of manually managing each of my 1000+ ships.

I didn't know how to do that!

[Tonitrus]

I liked a lot of what DW had to offer...but it seemed (or I recall poorly) like ship/fleet movement was like an RTS (ala Warcraft)...which turned me off.

[Razgovory]

They came out with some expansions.  Of course you have to buy them from Matrix games.

[Kleves]

Looks interesting. How many planets/fleets do you have to manage? Is it comparable to managing cities/armies in Civ V?

[Tamas]

Looks interesting. How many planets/fleets do you have to manage? Is it comparable to managing cities/armies in Civ V?

roughly, yeah, altough of course you can gather your units into fleets.

[Monoriu]

My impression so far.

Pros

Old school space 4x, nothing too fancy.  Straightforward, short-learning curve. 
Addictive, fast-paced.  Not too much micro-management. 
AI is responsive to my ship designs and builds ships to counter my ships.
The tech tree is pretty well designed.  There are real choices involved.
Custom race is here and there are a lot of options available. 

Cons

Can't do much in space-battles.  Watching the battles get boring really fast. 
Too little in-game help.  There are a few times when I can't figure out how to do stuff and the in-game explanation isn't helpful.
The tutorial sucks.  They basically display a bunch of static screens.  No interactive tutorial.

[Monoriu]

The battles are a big disappointment.  I can live with no tactical combat, the phases and cards.  First problem is that the cards don't seem to do much.  The battle result seems determined before it is fought.  If you have more ships, the right kind of ships, the biggest ships, you'll win.  There is no useful player input, and no way to influence the result.  When it is time to pick a card, I feel like "yawn, is it over yet?" instead of "damn, which card should I choose, hmm, hmmmmm, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, *pulls hair out*". 

Second problem is the battle animation.  Watching the battle can be, and should be fun.  The issue here is that they are all the same.  In every battle, the fleets are the same.  They fly in the same direction.  They fire at each other.  The shields and defences glow in different colours.  Then, ships begin to explode.  It doesn't matter how I design my ships.  The same ship class will always look the same in battle.  There is no way to tell how the battle is going, until you start to see ships exploding.  There is very little variation in between battles.  I can't see point defence weapons shooting down missles. 

I don't know if I have missed anything, but the only available weapons are missles, kinetic weapons, and beam weapons.  That's it.  No fighters, black hole generators, gundams. 

Ground combat.  It is handled like sieges.  I can't hire any ground troops.  All I can do is install ground attack weapons on my ships to speed up the sieges.  I can do without them if I want.  I move my fleet to an enemy system to attack it.  Press the invade button and the siege begins.  There is a circle surrounding every star system, showing the colour of the owner.  When I lay siege to a system, part of the circle will change to my colour.  The next turn, a bigger share of the circle will show my colour.  Until the entire circle shows the right colour, and the system is mine. 

[Richard Hakluyt]

I liked playing Distant Worlds. I would set the Empire parameters (research focus, fleet compositions, taxation etc), diplomacy, fleet movement, expansion. System improvements were handled on a suggestion basis. Gave me enough to do without miring me in the minutiae of manually managing each of my 1000+ ships.

I was playing Endless Space but got a trifle fatigued with the expansion limitations, so started playing Distant Worlds again. Then I noticed that there have been two expansions of Distant Worlds. So, I bought them........warning........it did set me back 50 quid. Anyway, I'm playing the fully patched-up Legends version of Distant Worlds atm and having a grand old time 

I'm playing on the vast galaxy mode so it has that feeling of scale,many things are automated of course but I'm still making meaningful decisions that are helping my empire along.........I think they may have got it right.......played about 20 hours of it so far.......

[Syt]

Yes, DW definitely hit a sweet spot for me.

One of the more interesting games I had saw me in a pretty strong alliance going repeatedly to war with another coalition. The battles were tough, and gains minimal: a small colony here or there, destroying mining stations . . .

At some point I had stopped paying attention to my homefront, and after an especially drawn out campaign half my colonies (12 or 15 or so) broke free from my Empire, including my home planet. I was actually looking forward to reclaiming my Empire, but the save game was messed and I had  repeatable crash.