Got this game a few weeks ago after getting tired of civ, got my shit kicked in right by the AI but I somehow won my first game as sophons on normal. Any tips for the higher difficulties? Only got the Hissho & Vaulter dlc.
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Endless AI isn't particularly difficult. Doesn't have any differences in behavior, just bonuses to resources. Best advice I can give is focus on industry and remember to build a fleet to deter aggression from the AI.
sending many early scouts with decent action points will give you more than investing in anything else early
if you do that, you do not even have to research military tech tree, you just get blueprints for weapons that are strong and do not even require non dust resources
I have yet to achieve any placement in the behemoth quest. Even as cravers I just dipped into military for early game weapon boost and more CP on fleet. I also completely skipped on small hull designs because craver exploration ships mog everything lmao.
How do I git gud at Cravers besides being constantly at war? I find that my planets keep drying up before I can conquer more?
You can reduce depletion by population management. This can be done by moving them with spaceport (increase system level) or chain gang program. Increase slave pop and decrease craver pop CAREFULLY as the slaver approval penalties can be quite severe. Having free planets to host slave pop without cravers can be helpful. If you really vacuum cleaned a system and it drags you down to much use pic rel (or raze it if nothing else helps).
I forgot to post the vacate system pic so have the management screen of what I think is my first successful craver run. Besides a fleet of fighting & siege-explorers I focused on food production early to compensate the bad approval and need for manpower.
Use depleted systems as concentration camps
>concentration camps
*breeding grounds
Leave a couple cravers there and juice up the xenos, then export any newborn bug.
I just started playing it as well. Like most 4X, seems knocking out your neighbor quickly is pretty much guaranteed success. Early game exploration and picking good planets seems huge, mid-game is good tech and building choices. Academy is super fricking broken if you can get spear. First game I did UE on normal and got a supremacy victory in 200ish turns, second game I did Lumeris on hard and got an economic victory in 150ish turns. Bumping up the difficulty again but not sure who I want to play.
That's what I was thinking too, but the ai seems to expand way too fast for me to catch up, esp if they're horatio or riftborn. Guess I just need to really pump out military even more
Horatio has a terribly weak start with awful military capability and are basically just free systems if they happen to be your neighbor. I think part of the problem might be that maybe the sophons aren't super good in the early game. I decided to goof around with the vodyani now and they seem awfully strong.
I'll keep that in mind.
Unrelated but is it a good idea to have all my ground troops be tanks in the early game or should I just keep all troop types equal?
I think it really depends on available manpower and how upgraded your units are, but it seems to be that there's no reason not to go full armor if you can dump enough soldiers on a planet.
Always play Horatio
t. horatio
The real Horatia is dead, killed by the first clones created because there can be no equality if the original is around.
you should play as the sexy robots
Still playing the Vodyani on serious this time. Spawned in bumfrick nowhere and hauled ass all the way to the top of the system only to find some shitty ass depleted Craver planets but the Hissho are the next lane over so I think its salvagable. This faction is pretty dang sick though, barreling through space in a giant death machine actually legit genociding everything is hilarious.
How the FRICK do I defeat this guy?
I(UE) am twice as big as him and have ships coming out like diarrhea and STILL he manages to besiege. Already lost three fleets of 22CP to his one hero led fleet.
If nothing else I guess it makes for good roleplay, the forces of humanity sent to the meatgrinder and barely staving off unholy space vampires.
Vodyani AI are seriously fricked but I've never really had in issue with their fleets, only ground battles. They will pretty much endlessly send out smaller fleets to reclaim lost arcs and if those arcs just happen to be in your territory that can be seriously fricking annoying so maybe thats whats happening? I can only assume you've been neglecting ship and weapon technology and/or aren't putting heroes in your fleets. A decent level hero with fleet skills will absolutely be the deciding factor in whether or not your fleet will win or lose so don't discount them. Scientist and Industrialist each have a really powerful empire-wide fleet buffing law too which pretty much win you the game if you're going the conquest route.
Got over it, turns out I was picking the wrong battle tactic.
Vodies are usually pushovers, they just got unnaturally big in this game because their only other neighbor was UC (free real estate) and I was busy containing Cravers.
Well, things got increasingly awful in the vodyani campaign so I abandoned it and restarted both with newfound ship building knowledge and a lack of craver AI. This time I sacked an AI capital on turn 22, built my hero ship properly with the proper armor and range so he can solo the event pirates in the beginning that really enjoy spawning right on top of my leechers for some reason, and also found super lasers while probing which is nice because my hero gives a bonus 40% to energy weapons so now I have a battle ark with about 3300 offensive strength early game. There are 2 riftborn planets left but I think I'm just gunna leech them because apparently leechers drain pop and can completely rape a planet to death anyways. The hissho are in the next lane over again so probably gunna expand into that. My big issue now is manpower, I literally cannot create soldiers fast enough to fill my ships. Probably should have improved relations with a minor civ for the extra manpower, but just notes for next time I guess.
>Want to play threat to the galaxy
>Cravers, a race so suited to conquest they can never be at peace with anyone
>Still builds EndlessWorld theme parks
>Still builds supermarkets
>Still sends members of its species to Space-Hogwarts
>They actually swear oaths and obey Space-Hogwarts
Ever since Alien, people have to pretend they can do better than a creature unclouded by remorse or conscience. Ever since Terminator, some pretend they can do better than something that doesn't feel pity, remorse or fear, that can't be bargained or reasoned with. Halloween shat the bed the moment the Shape started having reasons to do anything.
Well you can't and that's the reason why as a concept, these are memorable and actually terrifying.
So you want the zerg?
No, the Zerg are an example of the thing I don't like. This is the case the moment we are introduced to the Overmind and Cerebrates, which is made even worse by SC2 HoTS and LoV further establishing them as misunderstood, as if that's an improvement over mysterious.
The horror is gone the moment a monster has reason and can be reasoned with because it means the point-of-view characters always have a chance, rather than leaving it as an open question.
For the monster point-of-view, it should be more creative than 'office politics and family drama, but we're monsters'.
These options are available so you can play as redeemed cravers. If you wanna be a heartless slavedriver & warmonger then play into it.
Yes and the problem is it even being a possibility ruins the thematic.
I'll give the Umbral Choir(Clouds) a try. I got it into my head that it was a benevolent Star Trek entity rather than one of the cool terrifying ones.
You should play as the clouds, the Riftborn, or Horatio then. Riftborn want to sterilize the galaxy and can barely even cope with its existence. Horatio wants to turn everyone into himself and wipe out those who are not. Even if he makes a nice civ for himself, he sort of fits the can't be reasoned or bargained with thing. I forgot what the clouds' name is but they're the horror movie race.
What is the best way to design stacks in this game? Is it having a blend of units that can each do one thing well (Few defense ships various ranges, few offense various ranges, etc.) or just gimmick stacks like 6 units of nothing but defense, then another stack of long range offense, then another stack of short range offense, etc?
What I always do is just get a mix of 1/3 coordinator (defensive) ships and 2/3 hunter (offensive) ships and then once you unlock carriers put one or two of those in the fleet substituting two hunter ships out since carriers cost 6 CP. The default tactics cards (just the first two that boost your defenses) are honestly really good and I end up using one of them 90% of the time. Only thing I'll say is if you go lighter on coordinator ships you'll probably have to replace them more often but you will be bringing more firepower to each fight so those extra guns could actually be cutting down on casualties.
For loadouts I use flaks and those 100% accuracy lasers almost exclusively. Lasers can deal good damage at any range and the flaks double as both a weapon and defense so they'll at least shoot down enemy missiles at any range, plus if you actually get into close range they'll do surprisingly good damage. Boarding pods are fricking sick if your race has strong footsoldiers (so not sophons) and if you've been keeping up on the soldier buffing tech and can let you just collect your enemies fleets for yourself with little effort but they really shouldn't be your main weapon. There isn't a "best weapon" though they're all balanced pretty well so just experiment with stuff once you've figured out the combat.
When you get into a fight look at advanced data and see what's doing damage and at what range, and build fleets accordingly. There isn't one right answer due to support modules, hero synergies, and tactics.
I just make stacks of best big or best small-efficient ship with one cruiser with aura modules on it.
1 protector/coordinator per flotilla for tanking damage and as many attackers/hunters as you can fit into the remaining cp unless you want some utility like fleet repair or cloaking, which should be put on dedicated protectors because aura modules' costs scale with size, but their effectiveness doesn't so you're wasting resources by putting them on anything larger than a protector.
Once you have carriers, it simplifies to carriers + utility since carriers have firepower and survivability.
For weapons, it's best to have either full energy or full kinetic because of enhancers, though tanks should always have some slugs in case you're up against missiles - just keep in mind the flak from large x4 weapon mounts is the same as a single x1 mount on a small hull, so it's probably better to have an actual weapon in an upgraded coordinator's large weapon slot.
>x4 Flak same as x1 mount
Are you sure? I thought I checked all available weapons systems on these slots.
Checking in-game, it seems slugs have the same damage vs missiles and damage vs squadron regardless of slot size. I thought I remembered the 4x large turret modules getting the same flak stats as the weapon slots on small ships, but either that was never the case and I'm mistaken or it was changed at some point.
I missed the anti-missile aspect. Sorry haven't played the game for so long I forgot about most stuff anyway. I guess I was fooled by increasing damage numbers against ships in the 4xflak tool tip.
are space battles in es2 better than stellaris?
They are far less moronic, yes, but not some mind blowing aspect of the game. The preparations and logistics of warfare are more interesting than the battles themselves, which are quickly auto-resolved.
>due to time/tech constraints you ignore 90% of bloated war mechanics
They're about the same
Game is unbalanced, at high levels winning or losing is decided on how good is your starting system and surrounding planets.
Is this a good game? I've never played any of Endless games. Should I try? Even the Legend one.
Some people say that the release of Stellaris made this one antique.
I played ES2 sometime ago and i really liked it, BUT.
Are there any 4x games with truly massive scale? I'm playing stellaris now and don't reallly like that it gets cramped after a while. I'd prefer if it was a bit more grand, so to speak. Are there any games like that?
so you really want an rpg lite sandbox game
well, ideally i'd like something like "factorio but in space" conceptuallly
or maybe "starsector freeroam, but it's empire builder instead"
As long as game designers keep appealing to people who don't actually want strategy but just paint a map, it can never be. There were a lot of free-to-player browser games that are probably still around, but their whole thing is time-gating and pumping numbers up, in order to stop their massive maps being filled by just a handful of players.
The problem is you'd get a lot of fluff that's just empty calculation for your PC. Maybe (You) can afford it, but the higher specs a game needs the smaller its market will be.
We live in the age of cloud computing, and by that I don't mean 'some calculations are done by servers and that's why our generic product #441 requires always-online'.
I mean it's possible to scale programs for massive data in real-time, because companies like Google have to. It's not enough to be able to afford huge storage and server farms, because they could never keep up with the demands of the web without the software innovations that keep overheads down.
Developers need to go back to making their own engines though and stop relying on Unity.
You overestimate CPU processing power and no one will give it to you for free. Thanks to the gayman market though your GPU is able to shit out all the shaders and bloom you'd ever want. Have fun looking at pretty shit without substance.
>You overestimate
No, I don't. The opposite actually.
>train that AI
Not even suggested, so what are you talking about? Consumer-grade AI isn't trained on anything but very narrow parameters. It still doesn't work and requires outside help in the form of stat boosts, which gives bad game designers an incentive to make their shitty products more spreadsheeted and stat-based. There are other methods, none of which are even explored for the reasons I gave: developers not bothering to invest in engines.
who is going to train that AI with millions of matches? what about dlc or patches which change mechanics you will have to spend million to train it again on data which doesnt exist. Dont even get me started on always online bullshit it will require.
Empirechads, Mezari, Sheridyn or none?
Mezari just feel like the best option to me personally since more science means quicker unlock of the last 2 technology tiers which usually take fricking forever to unlock (unless you're sophons). Those outer 2 rings of tech in all fields just has so much good shit in them.
Mezari's teleportation just feels like cheating. They were my main ally in my last game and were centrally located so I could use their teleporters to warp pretty much anywhere on the map except my home system which was way at the end of a massive lane that took like a dozen turns to traverse. I did colonize Auriga from under their noses as well which was funny.
You mean Vaulters?
Colonization tech? Never heard of it.
Is this a good game?
It's a solid 4x with emphasis on atmosphere. Getting the hang of diplomacy and influence is fun.
I'm trying to make a tyranid cravers custom faction. Which traits should I take aside from Gene Stealer and Extreme Foremen?
if only I can take ship boud as well...
Yes.
I wish they would go back and work on this game after how bad Humankind did. I have nothing with 4X games but absolutely love this one.
Same here, I actually prefer the combat being so simple because you have to do so much of it. And I don't care much for hexgrids. I just wish the AI was a tad more varied. They become very predictable by the third playthrough.
How does it compare to DW?
I have never noticed these community content packs. How do you get them and are they worth the hassle of creating new accounts?
forgot pic. Has anyone unlocked the muck and makers pack?
as I recall, you get muck and makers by linking your steam and amplitude account.
desu, when I did, the information just wouldn't go through, and I gave up after a bit, though I never contacted their customer support about it. a couple weeks later, it suddenly went through and linked without me even knowing.
truthfully I was just doing it for free endless space 1, but it's up to you if you want to try
Is Space 2 better than Legend? That one was kinda shallow and unbalanced.
Yes.
They're actually pretty similar but I prefer ES2 starlanes and systems to civ-like grids and combat is simpler and thus better. I pressed auto-battle in EL most of the time anyway and the outcome usually was worse than playing the battles yourself which is annoying.
build super tall with hissho economic behemoth. never leave your home system. nuke everyone
How does playing tall with Hissho work exactly?
Just using economic behemots to max your systems output?
It seemed to me, that Hissho have abilities better suited for war, than building tall empire, don't they?
you basically supercharge your capital with their mining. you'll have behemoths sitting in empty space that the ai will want to go colonize, so you have to slap their shit out of your mining spots. this eventually leads to total war.
make sure you use your keii spells