I like being blocked off from the entire galaxy.
Are there any mods that fix map gen?
Anon I think that's just spiral formation. If you have an awkward number of spiral arms versus competitors (7 players on a 6-arm spiral galaxy, 8 players on a 4 arm, etc.), you will have people spawn in the middle and one on the outside of each constellation. There's also the advanced settings tab where you can change the empire spawn method to be spread out, truly random or everybody together in the middle.
If you have a problem, like you want to run a crowded game but don't want to get cucked like that, set the galaxy shape to something else, like Ovoids. They're just open with no "terrain" that gets in the way and you won't be blocked off by shit, a web of systems connected by lanes and warpholes (you should spec into those by the way),
Against AI, hacking usually isn't an issue. I sincerely have not noticed what pirates do when hacking your system, so don't worry about them so much. Whatever it is, it isn't good, so get rid of them, but you should be doing that anyway because they're pirates. Empires hacking you is different. Best case scenario, they just throw a sleeper in and be done with it. Worst case scenario, your home system is hacked by another faction and your empire gets its government changed. To prevent this, you want to establish a barrier of systems around your home system, make any hacking attempt too long for them to put up with it. Most AI do not hack across open space for 17 turns; of all the factions to attempt such a thing, pirates do that.
Heroes are made of two parts; their faction their class. Factions are self-explanatory, but classes need clarification. There's four classes, Seekers, Guardians, Overseers, and Counselors, and each have their own ship and their own perk trees. If you are to make a hero lead a fleet, Seekers and Guardians provide the best advantages at providing speed and damage across the fleet. Counselors and Overseers are a bit gimmicky when you use them as fleet commanders but make great governors. All heroes are competent at either, but look at their traits and play them to their strengths. Acknowledge that they can do both and their impact can be amazing, especially late game, with surprisingly little investment. Heroes do not provide much to a system as a governor at level 1, so I start with my Seeker hero exploring and gaining levels to put into governor traits, until right before I finish building one of my first Industry constructions. Then I assign them as governor so they get the experience and I should have my +30 Science a turn which plus Cram Exam act will tide me over until I get some science buildings down.
But that's me and my hundreds of hours of Unfallen gameplay.
>wow this anon gives solid advic— >Unfallen gameplay
You don't get good at the game playing with a crutch.
Also really, the cost of colonization for Unfallen is just frontloaded with the creation of your Vineships. It's made much faster if you're tall and get an 8stack of Vineships rolling around. Unlike other empires, building a ship or growing a vine costs zero food, so you can keep booming your pops while expanding. Any bonus planets you can colonize in your starting system are a godsend because the best way to increase industry without techs or constructions is more workers. And if you're looking for new ways to start out, reminder that conquering a system in range instantly vines it and you can research Behemoths on turn 1.
The only thing that actually sucks is that there's no upgrade to colonization modules. Does any faction have a colonization module you can upgrade? I feel like that's such an obvious tech to have forgotten.
Thanks for the tips. You mentioning unfallen made me think of the first time I really got impressed by the AI. I decided to play Unfallen because I think the gimmick is cool, I noticed that the Lumeris AI had the "Sneaky" Label and I wasn't sure what that meant. I ignored the hacking warnings not knowing how to stop them beyond just spamming encryption and then one turn I got a gorillion ground battle as suddenly every single system I had was invaded by pirates. I lost immediately, of course. It was a fun learning experience though specially when I got to do that to another empire the next time I played.
It's funny that the enemy AI has a "sneaky" mode where they taunt you about fricking you over. I guess it's akin to playing a board game in real life and then seeing one of the players act really smug for no reason
nta but disable penumbra if you're new that DLC sucks wieners and there's only a select few ways to make hacking more useful than annoying >It's funny that the enemy AI has a "sneaky" mode where they taunt you about fricking you over
It's so that players don't cry about surprise wars being "random" like they do in all other 4X games >I really got impressed by the AI.
lol
So how do people equip ther ships? Does having a mix of the weapon types matter or is it just amassing as much power as possible. Ive been using a mix of missile and laser based ships in my fleets and its worked fine but i dont know if i can be more efficient with it or not.
People say arm to counter the enemy but I find myself just getting the techs that have my most abundant resources.
https://i.imgur.com/tqyBOB7.jpg
Endless Space 2 thread!
>want to roleplay Borg collective >riftborn >shipbound >play >can't build pops, still have to leech >still can build "machine embodiment" anyway, which leads to nothing
>Non-Tikanan citizens of your empire have always tolerated an uneasy relationship with their insectoid compatriots, but now several well-publicisized examples of Tikanan aggression have threatened to entirely destabilize the balance. >Many fear the Tikanan are devolving back to their wilder nature, and attacks will only worsen. They demand a response. >Patrol (boost favor in rational community): The citizens are right to be afraid. The streets must be protected, and the Tikanans watched. >Reject (boosts favor in industrialist party): The Tikanan's reputation is being dragged through the dirt due to the stirrings of a few political commentators, not any regression of their nature. >Intimidate (boosts favor in militarist community): the only way to kerb the tikanan aggression is via a vulgar display of power. A suitably weaponized vessel should do it.
This game is clearly from before they became woke because holy shit imagine this quest in Humankind. Not only its mere existence, but then apply the fact that the game implies the smart and rational thing to do would be to increase police presence.
Same new player, some general questions:
What are the best minor factions to assimilate? Which have the best traits?
What is the best overall luxury resource?
>What are the best minor factions to assimilate?
I'd say anything you can get your hands on >What is the best overall luxury resource?
Industry ones are the best hands down
Factions have a select few traits that they can have. For example, Amoebas can give you .1 Food per 1 Industry on all of your systems, or they could give you Influence from having friendly relations with other empires. Pulsos can give +1 per Curiosity found on all of your systems, or 20% bonus to techs on branches if you own the previous tech. And the only way you can tell is by looking at their screen, it'll be located next to their portrait. If you have multiple minor factions near you, shoot for the ones with the best sounding trait, because that +1 Industry for curiosity is actually fricking great. >Best overall resource
It swings around your playstyle but you want something that will, eventually, boost your industry because with Industry you can get everything else. As the resident Unfallen main I shoot for Hydromiel because I am getting Chlorophyll Chemistry and suddenly all my food becomes Industry, 1:1. I find that when you get the Biofuel going, Food is strictly better than Industry because if you need to replace your population for whatever reason, say, send tons of people over to some new systems where you exterminated all the Cravers, you can pump out pops constantly and then in a few turns you're back in powerhouse industry mode. Plus, Biofuel works on top of every other industry construction, so I'm not gated off from anything by building toward it and having a frickload of food. Being able to top-off all of your systems all the time is fantastic, especially if you're playing expansionist and need to cope with people not being Happy.
But it really depends on how strong you want to be early or late game, the starter resources can really carry a system into fruition and kick off your war machine, but you won't be seeing 10k Industry a turn off Jadonyx in the last third of the game.
When playing with ESG somehow that biofuel building will get my food into negative, essentially make me lost pop and then next turn getting it back and then losing it over and over again it's irritating.
do factions not get eliminated if they have an outpost in progress? Im doing a fish breasts campaign and trying to genocide the fricking cravers and took all their systems, but they're still alive.
Factions are eliminated if they are without a home for about five turns, across every game speed. An outpost may turn into a colony within this time and thus become their new home. A simple blockade will delay the colony's founding.
Okay, so the colonization limit. I hate it so much.
Why is it a permanent limit that lasts until you get a super high end building.
And why is it so low. My current map has, by extrapolation, something like upwards of 100 systems in it, and I can only hold 7 of them at a time without penalty? That's insane, how am I even supposed to wage war if I can't hold systems.
Help me love this game, there's a lot of cool stuff here, but wow is the limit just terrible.
You are supposed to >build approval buildings >use governors with approval skills (every hero has one) >use laws to increase approval (if you are painting the galaxy red, you get approval for free by being at war with people by virtue of being a militarist government, for each faction you are at war with. Pacifists get this for peace and alliance as a paid law.) >terraform planets away from extremely sterile and unpleasant >not occupy planets with awful anomalies like irradiation and acid rain >choose your systems knowing not every system is worth taking >bribe revolting citizens with luxuries
there also is a form of government where heroes give you a bonus to your system limit before hitting disapproval. But
You are supposed to >build approval buildings >use governors with approval skills (every hero has one) >use laws to increase approval (if you are painting the galaxy red, you get approval for free by being at war with people by virtue of being a militarist government, for each faction you are at war with. Pacifists get this for peace and alliance as a paid law.) >terraform planets away from extremely sterile and unpleasant >not occupy planets with awful anomalies like irradiation and acid rain >choose your systems knowing not every system is worth taking >bribe revolting citizens with luxuries
pretty much explained it. You can go over the limit and things still run smoothly if the system approval ratings are high enough. Some heroes have the skill where it automatically sets the system approval to max. So there are plenty of ways around the disapproval penalty.
reaching 100% happiness is extremely easy if you know what you're doing.
You are supposed to >build approval buildings >use governors with approval skills (every hero has one) >use laws to increase approval (if you are painting the galaxy red, you get approval for free by being at war with people by virtue of being a militarist government, for each faction you are at war with. Pacifists get this for peace and alliance as a paid law.) >terraform planets away from extremely sterile and unpleasant >not occupy planets with awful anomalies like irradiation and acid rain >choose your systems knowing not every system is worth taking >bribe revolting citizens with luxuries
summed it up pretty well, overall going over the limit slightly is never an issue, and by the time it does you should already have access to tier 4 modernization
>tolerating guardians
Not even with a rented dick. >banking on system upgrades
By the time you have the empire spread necessary to gather enough luxuries your enemies have the siege fleets necessary to deplete your manpower anyway.
They're *my* Guardians. I AM the Unfallen. Do you know how long vining systems takes? Not as long as this siege you'd try. Chain gang gives 300 MP per pop, which I gain rapidly from big dick food production I get by virtue of being Unfallen. To siege that system to 0 at a reasonable pace of ten turns with me chain ganging would require 19 coordinators with 5 Slug modules each. Some factions have coordinators with ONLY five modules. Then there's the actually invading the system which each time you do, 3200 damage to offenders before the attack begins. This gives me lots of time to come up with an answer to the all the ships flying over my system that are not designed to win space battles.
The best shot against such a system would be constant aerial invasions with the sole purpose of destroying the military installations and pops to minimize the amount of losses taken each invasion. You'd have to get the biggest invasion force possible and you'd need to start ferrying ships back to your systems to restock on manpower with the fastest most cocaine free movement speed hero you can get your hands on just so you can avoid the enemy vine travel penalty. Even when troops die during an invasion, they still do damage to the system, which is key. With how easily manpower can replenish during a siege of this scale, you'd HAVE to start actively destroying the system so you could blow up all the military installations and kill the guardian to make the act of invading to take it over not make D-Day look like a joke.
So how do people equip ther ships? Does having a mix of the weapon types matter or is it just amassing as much power as possible. Ive been using a mix of missile and laser based ships in my fleets and its worked fine but i dont know if i can be more efficient with it or not.
Just refit to counter the enemy every time
If you'd rather not then build based on your hero fleet-wide buffs
On bigger ship never mix and match because you have the kinetic/energy damage buff modules that incentivize specialization
last option is building your fleet based on terrain, for example if you catch a kinetic fleet on a black hole with an energy fleet you will always win, but it's a pretty rare occurrence
In general the one unbeatable strategy in ES2 is waiting in your own system, scouting the enemy with probes, refit to counter and heal after a battle with dust
>Always have one gun mod; each gun module has flak defenses which helps defend against rockets. Even if the guns never hit, rockets hurt like crap, man, and if you use guns those modules are either acting as a defensive module against rockets or your flotilla is too close for rockets to be effective. >Always bring ONE shield, maybe two if the neighbors have a primarily energy loadout; all other defensive slots get plating, as plating provides HP which is helpful against all weapon types. >Take Trophies as default tactic; it's Turtle but better because you make mad money and science, you are out of convenient range range of pure gun setups, and higher damage weapons like rockets are viable at these ranges, and high damage = less damage taken due to not surviving a long grueling battle >Coordinators are busted; if you can make them work as your primary ship type, you will boom hard. For the science module, you gain 40 research per destroyed CP. If you have 3 of these on coordinators AND Take Trophies active, each CP destroyed will net you a total of 170 per CP destroyed per ship. Bring these to a battle against a fleet battle and you are looking in the range of 2-4k Science, even on defeat. >Lock-On; the actual reason why Coordinators are busted. Three of these on any Coordinator makes your ship deal 36% more damage to ships of equal size, 72% more to Carriers, and 120% more to Behemoths. For reference, a Hunter ship trades that potential for more weapon slots and a flat 20% damage buff.
Pic related is a ship I have at the game's end.
what's that improvement you get from curiosities that gives you industry per garrisoned manpower? it would fit very well
Sim Camp is the second most broken thing in the game below the Annihilator beam. Quadranix Lock-On is comically powerful but redundant because why do you need a fleet of 9 ships with potentially 26k attack power each? To kill what?
Im getting tired of stellaris being just rush tech and spam battleships and the game turning into watching resource numbers go up infinitely in the midgame and combat being just deathstacks. How does this game compare? I only really liked stellaris because it had alot of civ customizations but they all play practically the same anyway so i looked at this game. Is it any good?
>Is it any good?
yes. Factions all have unique mechanics. Like any 4x game though, you will eventually figure out the exploits. But you should get a good 80+ hours of enjoyment out of it. Maybe wait for a 75% off sale to grab the base game and try it out. Even if you don't like it, it's worth the price for the soundtrack alone. It's a literal 10/10.
I like the space birbs, utterl broken with spamming mining probes
I like being blocked off from the entire galaxy.
Are there any mods that fix map gen?
what do you mean?
The last time I played Horatio decided to spawn on my only star lane to the rest of the galaxy.
so the game has asymmetrically generated maps
Anon I think that's just spiral formation. If you have an awkward number of spiral arms versus competitors (7 players on a 6-arm spiral galaxy, 8 players on a 4 arm, etc.), you will have people spawn in the middle and one on the outside of each constellation. There's also the advanced settings tab where you can change the empire spawn method to be spread out, truly random or everybody together in the middle.
If you have a problem, like you want to run a crowded game but don't want to get cucked like that, set the galaxy shape to something else, like Ovoids. They're just open with no "terrain" that gets in the way and you won't be blocked off by shit, a web of systems connected by lanes and warpholes (you should spec into those by the way),
after 400 hours I can confidently say
-Umbral Choir DLC was bad
-Academy DLC is a literal waste of money
>-Umbral Choir DLC was bad
It took you 400 hours to determine that??
Best 4X on the market
I hate the fact that you're right.
good game if only the AI was so utter dogshite at war
I'm new at this game. How do I not immediately get raped by hacking? Should I put my heroes in fleets or in systems?
Against AI, hacking usually isn't an issue. I sincerely have not noticed what pirates do when hacking your system, so don't worry about them so much. Whatever it is, it isn't good, so get rid of them, but you should be doing that anyway because they're pirates. Empires hacking you is different. Best case scenario, they just throw a sleeper in and be done with it. Worst case scenario, your home system is hacked by another faction and your empire gets its government changed. To prevent this, you want to establish a barrier of systems around your home system, make any hacking attempt too long for them to put up with it. Most AI do not hack across open space for 17 turns; of all the factions to attempt such a thing, pirates do that.
Heroes are made of two parts; their faction their class. Factions are self-explanatory, but classes need clarification. There's four classes, Seekers, Guardians, Overseers, and Counselors, and each have their own ship and their own perk trees. If you are to make a hero lead a fleet, Seekers and Guardians provide the best advantages at providing speed and damage across the fleet. Counselors and Overseers are a bit gimmicky when you use them as fleet commanders but make great governors. All heroes are competent at either, but look at their traits and play them to their strengths. Acknowledge that they can do both and their impact can be amazing, especially late game, with surprisingly little investment. Heroes do not provide much to a system as a governor at level 1, so I start with my Seeker hero exploring and gaining levels to put into governor traits, until right before I finish building one of my first Industry constructions. Then I assign them as governor so they get the experience and I should have my +30 Science a turn which plus Cram Exam act will tide me over until I get some science buildings down.
But that's me and my hundreds of hours of Unfallen gameplay.
>hundreds of hours of Unfallen gameplay
You don't get good at the game playing with a crutch.
Also really, the cost of colonization for Unfallen is just frontloaded with the creation of your Vineships. It's made much faster if you're tall and get an 8stack of Vineships rolling around. Unlike other empires, building a ship or growing a vine costs zero food, so you can keep booming your pops while expanding. Any bonus planets you can colonize in your starting system are a godsend because the best way to increase industry without techs or constructions is more workers. And if you're looking for new ways to start out, reminder that conquering a system in range instantly vines it and you can research Behemoths on turn 1.
The only thing that actually sucks is that there's no upgrade to colonization modules. Does any faction have a colonization module you can upgrade? I feel like that's such an obvious tech to have forgotten.
>wow this anon gives solid advic—
>Unfallen gameplay
Thanks for the tips. You mentioning unfallen made me think of the first time I really got impressed by the AI. I decided to play Unfallen because I think the gimmick is cool, I noticed that the Lumeris AI had the "Sneaky" Label and I wasn't sure what that meant. I ignored the hacking warnings not knowing how to stop them beyond just spamming encryption and then one turn I got a gorillion ground battle as suddenly every single system I had was invaded by pirates. I lost immediately, of course. It was a fun learning experience though specially when I got to do that to another empire the next time I played.
It's funny that the enemy AI has a "sneaky" mode where they taunt you about fricking you over. I guess it's akin to playing a board game in real life and then seeing one of the players act really smug for no reason
nta but disable penumbra if you're new that DLC sucks wieners and there's only a select few ways to make hacking more useful than annoying
>It's funny that the enemy AI has a "sneaky" mode where they taunt you about fricking you over
It's so that players don't cry about surprise wars being "random" like they do in all other 4X games
>I really got impressed by the AI.
lol
>How do I not immediately get raped by hacking?
Turn off the Umbral Choir DLC that added hacking.
which hero would u fug
Same
St. Taiage does things to me.
People say arm to counter the enemy but I find myself just getting the techs that have my most abundant resources.
>want to roleplay Borg collective
>riftborn
>shipbound
>play
>can't build pops, still have to leech
>still can build "machine embodiment" anyway, which leads to nothing
There are too many to count, Dust is too powerful
all horatios
Anyone tried playing this on steam deck? Does the launcher frick everything up?
the game is listed as playable on the deck
Gay and woke
>Non-Tikanan citizens of your empire have always tolerated an uneasy relationship with their insectoid compatriots, but now several well-publicisized examples of Tikanan aggression have threatened to entirely destabilize the balance.
>Many fear the Tikanan are devolving back to their wilder nature, and attacks will only worsen. They demand a response.
>Patrol (boost favor in rational community): The citizens are right to be afraid. The streets must be protected, and the Tikanans watched.
>Reject (boosts favor in industrialist party): The Tikanan's reputation is being dragged through the dirt due to the stirrings of a few political commentators, not any regression of their nature.
>Intimidate (boosts favor in militarist community): the only way to kerb the tikanan aggression is via a vulgar display of power. A suitably weaponized vessel should do it.
This game is clearly from before they became woke because holy shit imagine this quest in Humankind. Not only its mere existence, but then apply the fact that the game implies the smart and rational thing to do would be to increase police presence.
Can't thing of anything woke in ES2 off the top of my head
Bad bait
Same new player, some general questions:
What are the best minor factions to assimilate? Which have the best traits?
What is the best overall luxury resource?
>What are the best minor factions to assimilate?
I'd say anything you can get your hands on
>What is the best overall luxury resource?
Industry ones are the best hands down
Factions have a select few traits that they can have. For example, Amoebas can give you .1 Food per 1 Industry on all of your systems, or they could give you Influence from having friendly relations with other empires. Pulsos can give +1 per Curiosity found on all of your systems, or 20% bonus to techs on branches if you own the previous tech. And the only way you can tell is by looking at their screen, it'll be located next to their portrait. If you have multiple minor factions near you, shoot for the ones with the best sounding trait, because that +1 Industry for curiosity is actually fricking great.
>Best overall resource
It swings around your playstyle but you want something that will, eventually, boost your industry because with Industry you can get everything else. As the resident Unfallen main I shoot for Hydromiel because I am getting Chlorophyll Chemistry and suddenly all my food becomes Industry, 1:1. I find that when you get the Biofuel going, Food is strictly better than Industry because if you need to replace your population for whatever reason, say, send tons of people over to some new systems where you exterminated all the Cravers, you can pump out pops constantly and then in a few turns you're back in powerhouse industry mode. Plus, Biofuel works on top of every other industry construction, so I'm not gated off from anything by building toward it and having a frickload of food. Being able to top-off all of your systems all the time is fantastic, especially if you're playing expansionist and need to cope with people not being Happy.
But it really depends on how strong you want to be early or late game, the starter resources can really carry a system into fruition and kick off your war machine, but you won't be seeing 10k Industry a turn off Jadonyx in the last third of the game.
When playing with ESG somehow that biofuel building will get my food into negative, essentially make me lost pop and then next turn getting it back and then losing it over and over again it's irritating.
I think it's some kind of bug. It happens to me once in a while. It's annoying, but not game breaking at least.
Do you rename your planets?
no
>Our friendship is something pure, isn't it?
I want a riftborn gf so bad bros
But you can't really frick or even kiss them
I want to feel what a Vodyani gf's cloth is like.
I want the upbeat and lost puppy personality of a Riftborn gf in a Vodyani gf cloth
same
do factions not get eliminated if they have an outpost in progress? Im doing a fish breasts campaign and trying to genocide the fricking cravers and took all their systems, but they're still alive.
Factions are eliminated if they are without a home for about five turns, across every game speed. An outpost may turn into a colony within this time and thus become their new home. A simple blockade will delay the colony's founding.
Okay, so the colonization limit. I hate it so much.
Why is it a permanent limit that lasts until you get a super high end building.
And why is it so low. My current map has, by extrapolation, something like upwards of 100 systems in it, and I can only hold 7 of them at a time without penalty? That's insane, how am I even supposed to wage war if I can't hold systems.
Help me love this game, there's a lot of cool stuff here, but wow is the limit just terrible.
You are supposed to
>build approval buildings
>use governors with approval skills (every hero has one)
>use laws to increase approval (if you are painting the galaxy red, you get approval for free by being at war with people by virtue of being a militarist government, for each faction you are at war with. Pacifists get this for peace and alliance as a paid law.)
>terraform planets away from extremely sterile and unpleasant
>not occupy planets with awful anomalies like irradiation and acid rain
>choose your systems knowing not every system is worth taking
>bribe revolting citizens with luxuries
there also is a form of government where heroes give you a bonus to your system limit before hitting disapproval. But
pretty much explained it. You can go over the limit and things still run smoothly if the system approval ratings are high enough. Some heroes have the skill where it automatically sets the system approval to max. So there are plenty of ways around the disapproval penalty.
reaching 100% happiness is extremely easy if you know what you're doing.
summed it up pretty well, overall going over the limit slightly is never an issue, and by the time it does you should already have access to tier 4 modernization
anyone knows any mod that allows the player to refit ships he bought from the marketplace and/or got from minor factions?
I'd like to make a public statement:
FRICK SPIDERS
thank you
Reminder to hold off on system upgrades to maximize the amount of jank you can do
>tolerating guardians
Not even with a rented dick.
>banking on system upgrades
By the time you have the empire spread necessary to gather enough luxuries your enemies have the siege fleets necessary to deplete your manpower anyway.
They're *my* Guardians. I AM the Unfallen. Do you know how long vining systems takes? Not as long as this siege you'd try. Chain gang gives 300 MP per pop, which I gain rapidly from big dick food production I get by virtue of being Unfallen. To siege that system to 0 at a reasonable pace of ten turns with me chain ganging would require 19 coordinators with 5 Slug modules each. Some factions have coordinators with ONLY five modules. Then there's the actually invading the system which each time you do, 3200 damage to offenders before the attack begins. This gives me lots of time to come up with an answer to the all the ships flying over my system that are not designed to win space battles.
The best shot against such a system would be constant aerial invasions with the sole purpose of destroying the military installations and pops to minimize the amount of losses taken each invasion. You'd have to get the biggest invasion force possible and you'd need to start ferrying ships back to your systems to restock on manpower with the fastest most cocaine free movement speed hero you can get your hands on just so you can avoid the enemy vine travel penalty. Even when troops die during an invasion, they still do damage to the system, which is key. With how easily manpower can replenish during a siege of this scale, you'd HAVE to start actively destroying the system so you could blow up all the military installations and kill the guardian to make the act of invading to take it over not make D-Day look like a joke.
what's that improvement you get from curiosities that gives you industry per garrisoned manpower? it would fit very well
Look at all that essence.
So how do people equip ther ships? Does having a mix of the weapon types matter or is it just amassing as much power as possible. Ive been using a mix of missile and laser based ships in my fleets and its worked fine but i dont know if i can be more efficient with it or not.
Just refit to counter the enemy every time
If you'd rather not then build based on your hero fleet-wide buffs
On bigger ship never mix and match because you have the kinetic/energy damage buff modules that incentivize specialization
last option is building your fleet based on terrain, for example if you catch a kinetic fleet on a black hole with an energy fleet you will always win, but it's a pretty rare occurrence
In general the one unbeatable strategy in ES2 is waiting in your own system, scouting the enemy with probes, refit to counter and heal after a battle with dust
>Always have one gun mod; each gun module has flak defenses which helps defend against rockets. Even if the guns never hit, rockets hurt like crap, man, and if you use guns those modules are either acting as a defensive module against rockets or your flotilla is too close for rockets to be effective.
>Always bring ONE shield, maybe two if the neighbors have a primarily energy loadout; all other defensive slots get plating, as plating provides HP which is helpful against all weapon types.
>Take Trophies as default tactic; it's Turtle but better because you make mad money and science, you are out of convenient range range of pure gun setups, and higher damage weapons like rockets are viable at these ranges, and high damage = less damage taken due to not surviving a long grueling battle
>Coordinators are busted; if you can make them work as your primary ship type, you will boom hard. For the science module, you gain 40 research per destroyed CP. If you have 3 of these on coordinators AND Take Trophies active, each CP destroyed will net you a total of 170 per CP destroyed per ship. Bring these to a battle against a fleet battle and you are looking in the range of 2-4k Science, even on defeat.
>Lock-On; the actual reason why Coordinators are busted. Three of these on any Coordinator makes your ship deal 36% more damage to ships of equal size, 72% more to Carriers, and 120% more to Behemoths. For reference, a Hunter ship trades that potential for more weapon slots and a flat 20% damage buff.
Pic related is a ship I have at the game's end.
Sim Camp is the second most broken thing in the game below the Annihilator beam. Quadranix Lock-On is comically powerful but redundant because why do you need a fleet of 9 ships with potentially 26k attack power each? To kill what?
Im getting tired of stellaris being just rush tech and spam battleships and the game turning into watching resource numbers go up infinitely in the midgame and combat being just deathstacks. How does this game compare? I only really liked stellaris because it had alot of civ customizations but they all play practically the same anyway so i looked at this game. Is it any good?
>Is it any good?
yes. Factions all have unique mechanics. Like any 4x game though, you will eventually figure out the exploits. But you should get a good 80+ hours of enjoyment out of it. Maybe wait for a 75% off sale to grab the base game and try it out. Even if you don't like it, it's worth the price for the soundtrack alone. It's a literal 10/10.