Bubbles
I'm forever blowing
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- Aug 7, 2013
- Messages
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Codex preview is up. Not much new information, but at least I got to ask a community question.
-
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4X Endless Space 2
- Thread starter covr
- Start date
Space Satan
Arcane
I hope senate and evlections will be government-specific because Hivemind elections do not amuse me. Especially if it'll work like "drone faction win the election because they represent majority of the population".
CptMace
Self-Ejected
Simply making the game less start-dependant would greatly improve the game experience, spawn in a shit sector in ES1 and you're done. Don't mind lackluster combat, i'm used to automated resolutions anyway.
Space Satan
Arcane
Welp, according to some released DDs, game MAY have a potential, if they are lucky. Weapon system seems to be the same shit we saw in ES1 and Galactic Civilizations but they say batte results will be less dependant on weapon layouts so it seems all your ships would be jack-of-all-trades anyway.
Rationale
The battle has a few base components inherited from Endless Space. The first and foremost is an epic, cool-looking cinematic battle. Having a cinematic battle is followed by a number of gameplay trade-offs. This means the entire battle from the ground up has been designed with the idea of strategic planning in mind as opposed to in-battle moment-to-moment tactics.
Image 1: Concept image of what we imagined battles looking like.
Coming from Endless Space, there are of course some lessons we’ve carried on. One of those lessons are the idea of how scale and context of battles are very important. This means that the ships will follow a completely different scale from Endless Space. Going between each ship size will feature an around 3 times increase in size. This means several hundred fighters could fit inside a large ship! Not that we will be able to put that many fighters in any one battle considering the graphical upgrade.
Importantly, the cinematic battles will also feature dynamic length – allowing us to shorten small scale battles and give proper time to large scale battles. The gameplay of battles is featured in what we’ve called the "Three layers of planning". But before that, let’s have a look at the battle.
The Battle
Before the battle occurs, players make various planning choices that are explained in the next section – these planning choices include where the battle takes place and what kind of fleets are engaging as well as reinforcement strategies and more. These layers of planning are there for several gameplay reasons, but are also there to increase the variety and fidelity of the cinematics. The ‘Battle Arena’ will define the visual arena you see, the "Ship Design" will have visual weapon modules that turn and fire and the ‘Battle Plays’ define the movement of ships. All of this should lead to a lot of variety in the cinematic experience of the battle.
This focus on decisions taken before and just up to the battle as opposed to decisions in the battle changes the dynamic significantly. Ships can now take damage on specific parts of the ship, specific modules can take damage and be destroyed during the battle, which means that the maneuvering present in "Battle Plays" (explained in the "Three Layers of Planning" section) will have a large impact on the battle outcome and the arena affecting the efficiency of modules and ships will also have a large overarching effect on battles.
The battle is split into 5 phases. A cinematic arrival phase, three battle phases and finally a cinematic resolution phase. The cinematic part of the battle is, besides looking awesome, meant to highlight what parts of the planning had an effect on the outcome of the battle.
To this end a couple of systems are in place. The Battle Director, as it has formally been named, will be in charge of analyzing the battle and figuring out what is worth showing to the player. It will evaluate all of the events that can occur during a battle and select what you see, attempting to show you the most awesome battle possible. The Free Camera View is also there to allow the player to experience the battle from their own desired perspective and finally a Tactical View exists to give the player an overview of what is happening in terms of fleet movements.
Finally the battle report will give you all the information you would need to understand the outcome. The battle report will:
Also, this time around – Heroes will appear on the battlefield and fight side by side with the fleet! Upon the battle beginning, all that there is left for the player is to sit back and enjoy the epic battle!
Image 2: Early in-game screenshot of a battle
Three Layers of Planning
An initial goal of the battle system in Endless Space 2 is that there should be no difference between using the auto-battle compared to manual battle. To retain the strategic gameplay of battles, the battle is split into 3 layers of strategic planning, which defines the outcome of battles. These are Ship Design, Battle Arenas and Battle Plays.
Ship Design
Ship Design is heavily expanded from Endless Space and even Endless Legend. It will receive its own GDD – so this will only serve as a short summary.
Similar to Endless Space, the game will feature 3 different ships sizes (Small, Medium and Large), which will require Command Points to field in your fleets. Fighters and bombers will also be featured as a type of module.
Each faction will have 5 combat ship hulls – 2 small, 2 medium and 1 large that will correspond to 4 roles (Attacker, Defender, Support and Carrier) and each faction will also a civilian ship. Ships corresponding to their roles and faction have a "Slot Layout". Slots are positions on the ship where modules are placed. Note that the position and angle of modules are relevant to whether or not they are used at any given time in the battle – a weapon module can only fire if it has a target within its arc of fire.
Damage calculation also will not occur in phases as it did in Endless Space. Damage calculations are more fluidly considering each salvo of shots angle and defenses. Each shield and hull will have different stats to deal with different types and ranges of weapons – and the destruction of a ship occurs when its core has been destroyed.
This system along with a focus on weapon variations – such as rockets usually being good at one thing, say hull damage - can with a later technology allow a player to equip EMP rockets instead that are good at another thing, say disabling modules and/or shields. Using this system of creating ship designs and smartly combining those into fleets with the other layers of planning allow the players to gain an advantage of the battlefield.
Battle Arenas
The Battle Arenas are generated from galaxy parameters. This means if you have a system with an anomaly, say "Aurora Wave" – that anomaly will likely be featured in the battle arena with an effect on battles in that system. The goal of this system is to generate different predictable battle arenas. Players can choose to place their fleets and battle in systems they feel they have an advantage. Players may even be able to modify the arena using system improvements or special ship modules.
The Battle Arena is generated from:
These "arena hazards" can have global effects on the battle or can be localized in the battle arena. Flying through an anomaly could disable shields – or the sun type could simply emit a type of radiation weakening the targeting system of missiles!
Battle Plays
Finally, upon two players engaging in a battle, the final layer of planning occurs: the "Battle Play". This will be no stranger to Endless Space veterans, but for the rest of you. The Battle Cards have 3 parameters: a buff effect, a type and a counter type. Each player plays a card in 3 phases of the battle, and the counters would remove the effect of the opponent’s card if he picked the counter type.
The Endless Space 2 model will only choose one "Battle Play" at the start, but this model will be expanded to include fleet movements as well as card effects.
Image 3: Concept image for "Play Loading Screen"
At the start of a battle the player will be presented with a number of choices:
The Battle Play contains a number of effects that help define under which conditions it would be useful (To add some prediction capability) – such as a long range-based play or a defensive play. These will also be tagged as a "Play Type", which is where the "Card Counter" system explained above comes in. Countering a play will reduce or negate the buff effects of the opponent’s card.
Then the player will have to distribute his fleet into Flotillas – smaller fleets that are specific to the current battle. These flotillas can have contextual buffs or restrictions (such as only large ships), based on the chosen play. These flotillas will follow the path defined by the play, and this will be where battle manoeuvres are chosen and this is where interaction with localized arena hazards will occur. Note that these arena hazards can have positive effects as well as negative effects.
The last large choice to make is reinforcements. Reinforcements will be an additional pool of CP that can be added to the battle. The choice involves how soon – in which phase this additional flotilla will arrive at. This choice of when they arrive will be a trade-off between having a battle penalty for being unprepared to having a battle buff for coming in late with additional information and preparation.
VIP Feedback
Visuals
Visuals is a very high priority and we hope we will be able to provide a ton of visual variety. This is primarily a content issue – so will be an ongoing process for the entire lifetime of the game.
Battle
The battle will only occur between two sides - while it is possible to have more, it would be impossible in terms of our GUI requirements. The splines will also be 'static' related to the plays. But you may still have different plays in different situations (unlocks/battle arena/etc.). In terms of the questions regarding customizing splines and giving ships behaviors - these are things are currently not a priority, but we will be keeping this open as we move forward.
On the point of variety - we are aware of the concerns of each faction having the same distribution of small/medium/large ships and the roles associated. But the content attached (modules, slots and ship design as a whole) - we are free to add a lot of variety. And even if we don't - the system was made with this sort of customization in mind. As such I assume a MOD will exist for those who really thinks it's too simple. The reason we're going this way is firstly for visual feedback - when you see a ship, you know its function based on its shape. And secondarily for the purposes of having 'reasonable' balance between factions on a battle level - pushing the larger balance efforts to empire level.
Medals are made as a way to feedback which ship designs are doing well and to differentiate XP. We can provide additional bonuses in addition to this, but the overall idea is to start with those two functions and then evolve the system based on early playtests.
For Heroes, they will participate in the battle in their own ships. Heroes come from the academy and thus will have separate ships (though you could imagine quest heroes having different ships). These will be defined primarily by their class.
We will also look into ways of saving setups and ship designs and such between battles, between games. However, we do not know exactly yet what will be possible.
Modules
We are trying to focus on weapon variety more than just pure numbers. We are also moving away from the rock/paper/scissors style mechanics and doing something more general. But we still want to retain a certain idea of 'shields are good against certain types of weapons and hulls are good against other types' for example. But the entire system will be more open.
Ship Design
We will not focus too much on ship designs as there will be a separate GDD... but we are keeping this in mind.
The battle has a few base components inherited from Endless Space. The first and foremost is an epic, cool-looking cinematic battle. Having a cinematic battle is followed by a number of gameplay trade-offs. This means the entire battle from the ground up has been designed with the idea of strategic planning in mind as opposed to in-battle moment-to-moment tactics.
Image 1: Concept image of what we imagined battles looking like.
Coming from Endless Space, there are of course some lessons we’ve carried on. One of those lessons are the idea of how scale and context of battles are very important. This means that the ships will follow a completely different scale from Endless Space. Going between each ship size will feature an around 3 times increase in size. This means several hundred fighters could fit inside a large ship! Not that we will be able to put that many fighters in any one battle considering the graphical upgrade.
Importantly, the cinematic battles will also feature dynamic length – allowing us to shorten small scale battles and give proper time to large scale battles. The gameplay of battles is featured in what we’ve called the "Three layers of planning". But before that, let’s have a look at the battle.
The Battle
Before the battle occurs, players make various planning choices that are explained in the next section – these planning choices include where the battle takes place and what kind of fleets are engaging as well as reinforcement strategies and more. These layers of planning are there for several gameplay reasons, but are also there to increase the variety and fidelity of the cinematics. The ‘Battle Arena’ will define the visual arena you see, the "Ship Design" will have visual weapon modules that turn and fire and the ‘Battle Plays’ define the movement of ships. All of this should lead to a lot of variety in the cinematic experience of the battle.
This focus on decisions taken before and just up to the battle as opposed to decisions in the battle changes the dynamic significantly. Ships can now take damage on specific parts of the ship, specific modules can take damage and be destroyed during the battle, which means that the maneuvering present in "Battle Plays" (explained in the "Three Layers of Planning" section) will have a large impact on the battle outcome and the arena affecting the efficiency of modules and ships will also have a large overarching effect on battles.
The battle is split into 5 phases. A cinematic arrival phase, three battle phases and finally a cinematic resolution phase. The cinematic part of the battle is, besides looking awesome, meant to highlight what parts of the planning had an effect on the outcome of the battle.
To this end a couple of systems are in place. The Battle Director, as it has formally been named, will be in charge of analyzing the battle and figuring out what is worth showing to the player. It will evaluate all of the events that can occur during a battle and select what you see, attempting to show you the most awesome battle possible. The Free Camera View is also there to allow the player to experience the battle from their own desired perspective and finally a Tactical View exists to give the player an overview of what is happening in terms of fleet movements.
Finally the battle report will give you all the information you would need to understand the outcome. The battle report will:
- Visually show the battlefield
- Show Fleet movements
- Show important key movements
- Give information on ships
- Certain ships performing really well will receive "medals"
- Show the sections and modules damaged in the battle
- Show each ships relation to the "Battle Play"
Also, this time around – Heroes will appear on the battlefield and fight side by side with the fleet! Upon the battle beginning, all that there is left for the player is to sit back and enjoy the epic battle!
Image 2: Early in-game screenshot of a battle
Three Layers of Planning
An initial goal of the battle system in Endless Space 2 is that there should be no difference between using the auto-battle compared to manual battle. To retain the strategic gameplay of battles, the battle is split into 3 layers of strategic planning, which defines the outcome of battles. These are Ship Design, Battle Arenas and Battle Plays.
Ship Design
Ship Design is heavily expanded from Endless Space and even Endless Legend. It will receive its own GDD – so this will only serve as a short summary.
Similar to Endless Space, the game will feature 3 different ships sizes (Small, Medium and Large), which will require Command Points to field in your fleets. Fighters and bombers will also be featured as a type of module.
Each faction will have 5 combat ship hulls – 2 small, 2 medium and 1 large that will correspond to 4 roles (Attacker, Defender, Support and Carrier) and each faction will also a civilian ship. Ships corresponding to their roles and faction have a "Slot Layout". Slots are positions on the ship where modules are placed. Note that the position and angle of modules are relevant to whether or not they are used at any given time in the battle – a weapon module can only fire if it has a target within its arc of fire.
Damage calculation also will not occur in phases as it did in Endless Space. Damage calculations are more fluidly considering each salvo of shots angle and defenses. Each shield and hull will have different stats to deal with different types and ranges of weapons – and the destruction of a ship occurs when its core has been destroyed.
This system along with a focus on weapon variations – such as rockets usually being good at one thing, say hull damage - can with a later technology allow a player to equip EMP rockets instead that are good at another thing, say disabling modules and/or shields. Using this system of creating ship designs and smartly combining those into fleets with the other layers of planning allow the players to gain an advantage of the battlefield.
Battle Arenas
The Battle Arenas are generated from galaxy parameters. This means if you have a system with an anomaly, say "Aurora Wave" – that anomaly will likely be featured in the battle arena with an effect on battles in that system. The goal of this system is to generate different predictable battle arenas. Players can choose to place their fleets and battle in systems they feel they have an advantage. Players may even be able to modify the arena using system improvements or special ship modules.
The Battle Arena is generated from:
- Galaxy Nodes:
- Anomalies.
- Planets.
- Sun Type.
- Player Interventions:
- Special modules.
- System improvements.
- Temporary or aggregated events:
- An anomaly appears in a system for X turns.
- ‘Ship Graveyard’ appears from repeated battles in the same node.
These "arena hazards" can have global effects on the battle or can be localized in the battle arena. Flying through an anomaly could disable shields – or the sun type could simply emit a type of radiation weakening the targeting system of missiles!
Battle Plays
Finally, upon two players engaging in a battle, the final layer of planning occurs: the "Battle Play". This will be no stranger to Endless Space veterans, but for the rest of you. The Battle Cards have 3 parameters: a buff effect, a type and a counter type. Each player plays a card in 3 phases of the battle, and the counters would remove the effect of the opponent’s card if he picked the counter type.
The Endless Space 2 model will only choose one "Battle Play" at the start, but this model will be expanded to include fleet movements as well as card effects.
Image 3: Concept image for "Play Loading Screen"
At the start of a battle the player will be presented with a number of choices:
- Pick a "Battle Play".
- Distribute Fleet into Flotillas.
- Choose Reinforcement Pattern.
The Battle Play contains a number of effects that help define under which conditions it would be useful (To add some prediction capability) – such as a long range-based play or a defensive play. These will also be tagged as a "Play Type", which is where the "Card Counter" system explained above comes in. Countering a play will reduce or negate the buff effects of the opponent’s card.
Then the player will have to distribute his fleet into Flotillas – smaller fleets that are specific to the current battle. These flotillas can have contextual buffs or restrictions (such as only large ships), based on the chosen play. These flotillas will follow the path defined by the play, and this will be where battle manoeuvres are chosen and this is where interaction with localized arena hazards will occur. Note that these arena hazards can have positive effects as well as negative effects.
The last large choice to make is reinforcements. Reinforcements will be an additional pool of CP that can be added to the battle. The choice involves how soon – in which phase this additional flotilla will arrive at. This choice of when they arrive will be a trade-off between having a battle penalty for being unprepared to having a battle buff for coming in late with additional information and preparation.
VIP Feedback
Visuals
- Praise for localized modules and damage/explosions.
- Concerns about "visual variation" – i.e. not seeing the same battle over and over again.
- Some comments on hoping the battle director – if done good enough, will provide a lot of variety in battles.
Visuals is a very high priority and we hope we will be able to provide a ton of visual variety. This is primarily a content issue – so will be an ongoing process for the entire lifetime of the game.
Battle
- Comments on how ‘banter’ between heroes would be cool in loading screen.
- Positive comments on the point of "battle play movement" – with the caveat of making sure that it does exactly what is expected.
- Questions regarding how many sides can be involved in a battle and who and how many can reinforce a battle.
- Questions regarding how heroes will show up in the battle.
- Some questions/requests to have "programmed behaviors" in the battle. (I.e. in Situation X, ship type would stop). Including some worry that lacking this could make ships seem a bit silly.
- Clarification on the fact that splines are pre-designed in the "Battle Play" and that they are chosen as a set. Meaning it currently does not support players "drawing splines" or mixing and matching splines.
- Question regarding Medal system.
- Concerns about uniformity and lack of variation on ships.
- Also questions regarding heroes and how to make them feel more unique.
- Comments on ‘battle card’ system, regarding making it more than just rock, paper, scissors – idea of adding "deck-building" by finding "unique" plays in the game through exploration/quests/heroes.
- Wishes to be able to save "battle setups".
The battle will only occur between two sides - while it is possible to have more, it would be impossible in terms of our GUI requirements. The splines will also be 'static' related to the plays. But you may still have different plays in different situations (unlocks/battle arena/etc.). In terms of the questions regarding customizing splines and giving ships behaviors - these are things are currently not a priority, but we will be keeping this open as we move forward.
On the point of variety - we are aware of the concerns of each faction having the same distribution of small/medium/large ships and the roles associated. But the content attached (modules, slots and ship design as a whole) - we are free to add a lot of variety. And even if we don't - the system was made with this sort of customization in mind. As such I assume a MOD will exist for those who really thinks it's too simple. The reason we're going this way is firstly for visual feedback - when you see a ship, you know its function based on its shape. And secondarily for the purposes of having 'reasonable' balance between factions on a battle level - pushing the larger balance efforts to empire level.
Medals are made as a way to feedback which ship designs are doing well and to differentiate XP. We can provide additional bonuses in addition to this, but the overall idea is to start with those two functions and then evolve the system based on early playtests.
For Heroes, they will participate in the battle in their own ships. Heroes come from the academy and thus will have separate ships (though you could imagine quest heroes having different ships). These will be defined primarily by their class.
We will also look into ways of saving setups and ship designs and such between battles, between games. However, we do not know exactly yet what will be possible.
Modules
- Positive comments on weapon variety and wish for more of that.
- Also ideas on ‘customizable’ weapons.
We are trying to focus on weapon variety more than just pure numbers. We are also moving away from the rock/paper/scissors style mechanics and doing something more general. But we still want to retain a certain idea of 'shields are good against certain types of weapons and hulls are good against other types' for example. But the entire system will be more open.
Ship Design
- Some fears of wacky design messing up gameplay.
We will not focus too much on ship designs as there will be a separate GDD... but we are keeping this in mind.
We usually implement VIP feedback at the end of the document, but this time we’ll break the rules.
The political ideology (we sometimes talk about "politics" for short) system and the Senate are at the heart of empire management, and since we presented it to the VIPs it evolved a lot from their feedback and our own perception.
RATIONALE
On one hand, we have the political ideology that drives the empire, on the other hand we have the Senate that allows the player to manage their empire thanks to the dominant ideologies. Political ideologies are here to represent the population’s opinion in a given empire. Over the course of the game, the population will be open to more and more political ideologies, based on what happened to them. Still, we want to build a system that is easy to understand for the player and that relies on the player’s actions as well as gameplay events.
In order to do that, there are three layers of effects on the population’s ideological votes: The populations’ own cultural inclination, the conditions of the system they live in and the conditions of the empire they preside under. The Senate is meant to represent the empire management and allow the player to customise their empire throughout the game. The Senate emphasises the opinions of the population, forcing the player to play with that to achieve their goals. Still, they can choose a government type to control their significance. And keep in mind that population is also a tool under your control (to some extent), on which we’ll delve deeper later.
Controlling the Senate is mandatory to grow and develop your empire! Thus, the player is going to be challenged, as any action might affect the population and thus on a bigger scale, the Senate.
POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES
The ideology wheel
We divide the potential political ideology into 6 ideologies, each opposed to one another. Keep in mind that the names are temporary / work in progress:
These different ideologies allow us to cover all the aspects of the gameplay, and we’ve been able to build a wheel to set relationships between the ideologies over this opposition. This allows us to use that for other game systems such as diplomacy.
Unlocking political ideologies
At the beginning of the game, each faction starts with one or two political ideologies unlocked, depending on their population. The other political ideologies are then unlocked over the course of the game, depending on the score they accumulate. To unlock a new political ideology, one needs to reach a certain threshold ; the value of this threshold depends on the number of unlocked political ideologies: the more political ideologies are unlocked the harder it is to unlock a new one. Thus, we can spread over a long period the appearance of the different ideologies and make each empire follow a more unique path.
Unlocking political ideologies is important as only known ideologies can be represented in the Senate!
Assigning scores to political ideologies
The political ideology have scores assigned to each of them that will evolve over the course of the game. The score at a given time is the sum of all modifiers applied to it. We have two types of score modifiers:
When summing up these scores, we’re then able to define what the beliefs’ repartition on a system are.
Tracking political ideology
The player can track the repartition of the political ideologies between their populations in each system within the interface. We’re displaying a percentage repartition based on the sum of the scores of the different political ideologies. This representation allows the player to have an idea of the political state of the different systems, as well as the reasons behind them.
THE SENATE
The conclusion of the political ideologies system is symbolised by the Senate. The Senate is here to replace the tools we gave to players in our previous game (Tax Rates and Empire Plans).
The senate gives the opportunity to vote laws, attached to political ideologies. Laws have to be considered as what we called traits in the previous game: powerful modifiers / game changer abilities.
With the Senate, we want the player to be able to adapt their empire and refine it over the course of the game. However, it’s going to cost Influence, and having the wanted political ideologies will require long term investments as all actions matter!
The election process
Every 20/40 turns, an election renews the Senate, based on the political beliefs of the population. The process is divided into 3 steps, but only the first one is interactive:
In addition, we also list the laws unlocked for the first time, and any game events that could have been triggered by this election. We consider the ideology with the most support as the Main Political Ideology, which defines the global political ideologies for the Empire (used for instance for the diplomacy).
Using the senate
Laws
Laws depend on the Political Ideology. When an ideology is elected in the Senate, all the categories of laws linked to it are available.
Example: When a Militarist and a Scientific Political Ideology have been elected, the player can choose the Militarist and Scientific laws.
In order to unlock laws, the empire needs to reach a certain support attached to the law. The support is divided into different levels which allows the player to unlock a certain number of laws.
For instance, a support between 0 and 10% is considered as low, and will unlock all laws requiring a low support while a support above 50% is considered as consequent and will unlock all laws requiring a consequent support and below.
The available laws are clickable in the Senate Screen. In addition to the support, we have other prerequisites that unlock the access of additional laws:
Voting a law
The player can select any available law to vote it.
Cancelling a law
When a law is activated, it will cost influence to cancel it for a predefined duration. Once enough time elapsed, cancelling the law is free.
Cancelling a law immediately remove its effects.
Maintaining a Law
By default a law doesn’t require any maintenance however, if a law becomes illegal after an election, it will cost influence to be maintained. The amount of influence points is defined by the power of the law and will be a fixed number.
If the law’s maintenance cannot be paid, said law is automatically cancelled, starting with the one costing the most, until the player has enough influence to support the remaining ones.
Government
In addition to voting laws, the player can manage the government of their empire from the Senate. A government affects the following elements:
Let us know what you think!
- Initially, we had 8 political ideologies, but it was hard to balance properly what could affect each of them without redundancy; thus we've decided to remove two of them.
- The law management has been completely reworked in order to be simplified and more interesting.
RATIONALE
On one hand, we have the political ideology that drives the empire, on the other hand we have the Senate that allows the player to manage their empire thanks to the dominant ideologies. Political ideologies are here to represent the population’s opinion in a given empire. Over the course of the game, the population will be open to more and more political ideologies, based on what happened to them. Still, we want to build a system that is easy to understand for the player and that relies on the player’s actions as well as gameplay events.
In order to do that, there are three layers of effects on the population’s ideological votes: The populations’ own cultural inclination, the conditions of the system they live in and the conditions of the empire they preside under. The Senate is meant to represent the empire management and allow the player to customise their empire throughout the game. The Senate emphasises the opinions of the population, forcing the player to play with that to achieve their goals. Still, they can choose a government type to control their significance. And keep in mind that population is also a tool under your control (to some extent), on which we’ll delve deeper later.
Controlling the Senate is mandatory to grow and develop your empire! Thus, the player is going to be challenged, as any action might affect the population and thus on a bigger scale, the Senate.
POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES
The ideology wheel
We divide the potential political ideology into 6 ideologies, each opposed to one another. Keep in mind that the names are temporary / work in progress:
- Industrialists: people focusing on industrialization, improving their system and valuing work more than other moral values.
- Ecologists: people who want to preserve the planets they live on ; they want to live in harmony with their environment.
- Scientists: people pushed by the will of experimenting, thrilled by discoveries and inexplicable phenomena.
- Religious: people who find comfort and value in the power of individuals. They nurture and worship great heroes!
- Pacifists: people who value peace and diplomatic relations ; they want to forge the greatest alliances and reap mutual benefits.
- Militarists: people attracted by war, blood and violence. Conquests and fights entertain them. They want to live in a secure place and they are pleased by an authoritarian system.
These different ideologies allow us to cover all the aspects of the gameplay, and we’ve been able to build a wheel to set relationships between the ideologies over this opposition. This allows us to use that for other game systems such as diplomacy.
Unlocking political ideologies
At the beginning of the game, each faction starts with one or two political ideologies unlocked, depending on their population. The other political ideologies are then unlocked over the course of the game, depending on the score they accumulate. To unlock a new political ideology, one needs to reach a certain threshold ; the value of this threshold depends on the number of unlocked political ideologies: the more political ideologies are unlocked the harder it is to unlock a new one. Thus, we can spread over a long period the appearance of the different ideologies and make each empire follow a more unique path.
Unlocking political ideologies is important as only known ideologies can be represented in the Senate!
Assigning scores to political ideologies
The political ideology have scores assigned to each of them that will evolve over the course of the game. The score at a given time is the sum of all modifiers applied to it. We have two types of score modifiers:
- The population’s identity: each population (Sophons, Cravers, UNREVEALED FACTIONS …) within the game has a static “political belief” that defines its affinity toward ideologies.
- This belief is shared by all populations of a race, independently of the empire.
- This belief can be modified through rare events, otherwise it’s a static score.
- The score attached to the belief is multiplied by the population count.
- Game events and state modifiers: these are more diversified. They are providing a default score for a specific political ideology. Events and states are linked to the player’s actions (signing a diplomatic treaty, being under invasion, searching a technology…). In addition to their default value, they will also provide additional effect depending on the concerned population. Each population has a list of psychological traits that defines how they react to their environment (and thus which ideology they will lean towards depending on the stimulus they receive). The events and state provide temporary score, that will disappear after a certain duration or when the state is removed.
When summing up these scores, we’re then able to define what the beliefs’ repartition on a system are.
Tracking political ideology
The player can track the repartition of the political ideologies between their populations in each system within the interface. We’re displaying a percentage repartition based on the sum of the scores of the different political ideologies. This representation allows the player to have an idea of the political state of the different systems, as well as the reasons behind them.
THE SENATE
The conclusion of the political ideologies system is symbolised by the Senate. The Senate is here to replace the tools we gave to players in our previous game (Tax Rates and Empire Plans).
The senate gives the opportunity to vote laws, attached to political ideologies. Laws have to be considered as what we called traits in the previous game: powerful modifiers / game changer abilities.
With the Senate, we want the player to be able to adapt their empire and refine it over the course of the game. However, it’s going to cost Influence, and having the wanted political ideologies will require long term investments as all actions matter!
The election process
Every 20/40 turns, an election renews the Senate, based on the political beliefs of the population. The process is divided into 3 steps, but only the first one is interactive:
- The candidate presentation: here the player can see the different political ideologies that will receive votes during the next step. Each ideology is represented, and the player has to support one. The one supported will have a popularity boost and will have more chance to gather votes. In addition, the player can pay to trigger different actions that will help the supported candidate.
- The local election: during this step, each system is going to compute representatives. Depending on the government the process will be different. In one hand it can use a majority or a proportional system and in the other hand rely on the population count or relative system value (the best systems have more weight on the election). In any case, we’ll output representatives for each systems that are assigned to a political ideology.
- The Election’s results: in this screen, we display the results of the election, summing all the representatives attached to each political ideology to obtain the percentage of support they receive: only the four best ideologies are represented at the Senate.
In addition, we also list the laws unlocked for the first time, and any game events that could have been triggered by this election. We consider the ideology with the most support as the Main Political Ideology, which defines the global political ideologies for the Empire (used for instance for the diplomacy).
Using the senate
Laws
Laws depend on the Political Ideology. When an ideology is elected in the Senate, all the categories of laws linked to it are available.
Example: When a Militarist and a Scientific Political Ideology have been elected, the player can choose the Militarist and Scientific laws.
In order to unlock laws, the empire needs to reach a certain support attached to the law. The support is divided into different levels which allows the player to unlock a certain number of laws.
For instance, a support between 0 and 10% is considered as low, and will unlock all laws requiring a low support while a support above 50% is considered as consequent and will unlock all laws requiring a consequent support and below.
The available laws are clickable in the Senate Screen. In addition to the support, we have other prerequisites that unlock the access of additional laws:
- Technology unlocked
- Government type
- Faction affinity
- Etc.
Voting a law
The player can select any available law to vote it.
- Voting a law requires to pay its cost immediately. The cost can be anything even if design-wise it’s going to mainly be Influence.
- The cost of a law is computed based on:
- The support required to unlock the law: the higher, the more expensive
- the number of systems
- Voting a law activates its effect immediately
- Voting a law requires a free slot: the number of active laws is limited!
Cancelling a law
When a law is activated, it will cost influence to cancel it for a predefined duration. Once enough time elapsed, cancelling the law is free.
Cancelling a law immediately remove its effects.
Maintaining a Law
By default a law doesn’t require any maintenance however, if a law becomes illegal after an election, it will cost influence to be maintained. The amount of influence points is defined by the power of the law and will be a fixed number.
If the law’s maintenance cannot be paid, said law is automatically cancelled, starting with the one costing the most, until the player has enough influence to support the remaining ones.
Government
In addition to voting laws, the player can manage the government of their empire from the Senate. A government affects the following elements:
- Empire bonuses: each government directly affects the whole empire economy.
- Available laws: some laws can only be available under a certain government type.
- Election process: the government especially affects the elections at different levels, from the available actions to the way the local elections are run. Choosing a government can deeply affect how the different political ideologies will share power in the Senate. Some governments are perfect to favourite a political ideology and build an empire around a unique and powerful ideology, but remove flexibility. Others help the various ideologies to coexist, providing a wider set of laws which are, however, more standard.
Let us know what you think!
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2009
- Messages
- 1,723
Why??!! If you want realtime just use the moo3 battle system, remove the direct control and add some strategic options like targetting specific enemy shiptypes, guarding and whatnot. Not this this fucking abstract, gamey card-counter clusterfuck shit. ARRRGH.
Space Satan
Arcane
Looks like they have a clue
Space Satan
Arcane
This is something new. ES planet captures war godawful. they are completely overhauling it
[ES2] GDD 14 - Ground Battle
Hi everyone,
You've read the title right.
Here's our game design document on Ground Battles in Endless Space 2!
RATIONALE
The goal is to create a minimalist system with very few player actions, but very significant impact on the overall strategic choices of the game.
The ground battle starts by building the empire’s army from the population living in a system, and will conclude through epic battles that will last a few turns in order to capture that system.
MANPOWER, TROOPS & SYSTEM DEFENCE
GENERATING MANPOWER
Manpower represents the conscription of the population to man the empire’s army. It’s used to fill the spaceships' crews and especially resolving ground invasions.
Generating Manpower is going to consume the growth of the empire, slowing down its development. We really want to make wars a population sink that will make the economy of involved empires plummet if it lasts for too long.
Passive Generation
We’ve added to the empire a new resource called “Manpower”. This resource is filled thanks to growth from systems every turn. All systems will have an upkeep based on the manpower max limit of the empire, which will slow down their growth and even make them lose population.
Instant generation
In case of emergency, the player has two options to get a huge amount of Manpower in a short time:
TROOPS
There are 3 types of troops:
Each type has a different attribute which defines their efficiency and cost.
Upgrading troops
Thanks to technologies, the player can unlock two types of improvements for their troops to:
At the beginning, players start with infantry only (so 100% of the manpower will be turned into infantry), and then by unlocking the technology they will be able to adjust the ratio. If 1 infantry technology and 1 tank technology are unlocked, troops will split equally, with 50% of the Manpower going to infantry and 50% to tanks.
Population impact
In addition to the technology, the different populations can provide bonuses to troops, either on damages, health or effectiveness against another type of troops.
In order to unlock the bonuses, the empire needs to maintain a certain number of this population within its systems. If the population goes below the threshold, the bonus is deactivated.
System’s Defence
Defence allows protection for the system against invasions, and provides bonuses to the troops during battles. Each system is going to generate troops by itself when attacked depending on the local Manpower stock and the current population count.
The attacker can besiege the system to lower the defence before engaging the invasion, or attack it directly but will then face buffed troops.
INVASION FLOW
BESIEGING
When orbiting an opponent’s system (that the player is at war with), a siege is automatically triggered. A system under siege suffers from:
The system’s loss is based on the orbiting Manpower: the more military power the higher the loss suffered by the defender.
STARTING AN INVASION
In order to trigger an invasion a player needs:
Tactical Choices
Before the battle, both the defender and the attacker can choose between different tactical choices. These choices will affect the proceedings of the battle, by providing bonuses to troops, involving some risk/rewards. Thanks to these choices, players will be able to modulate the length of the invasion, or surrender to protect the system in order to be able to take it back undamaged.
As they are part of the ground battle notification, players will be able to adapt to the situation every turn.
COMPUTING THE INVASION
First, we instantiate the troops for both sides, based on their empire ratio. The visual of the troops is based on the population living in the empire, but has no gameplay consequences.
Then, we compute the bonuses based on:
The battle is divided into rounds, during which troops will attack each other. We consider 1 stack per type in terms of resolution and not each unit individually. Each type of troop is going to deal damage to all types of troops in the opposing side.
The number of rounds will vary depending on the tactical decision taken by the attacker, meaning a ground battle could last more or less turns based on that.
Computing damages
When a stack of units attacks another stacks, it generates X damages. X is the sum of damages computed for each units of the stack. A unit deals damage, randomly between its min and max damage values.
Improvement destruction
For each round, we compute a probability of losing an improvement on the invaded system. This probability depends on the troop’s types, the system’s improvement, and the tactical decisions taken at the beginning of the turn.
INVASION REPORT
At the end of the battle, the report displays the loss of troops for both sides, and the consequences on the system (population loss and improvement destroyed).
If both sides are still alive, the attacker can click on a button to continue the invasion: at the beginning of the next turn, an invasion notification will be generated, allowing both players to choose their strategy and start a new invasion process.
If new ships arrived in orbit, they will be able to reinforce their side by dropping their manpower to generate new troops on the battlefield.
If the attacker wins, the system is captured:
VIP FEEDBACK
The mechanics of manpower is a bit unclear.
Manpower is an empire resource produced on systems like Dust and Prestige. Producing ships and defence improvements will consume this stock to fill their local Manpower (used to solve the ground battle).
As long as your storage on the empire is not full, you will generate Manpower; meaning that while you continuously produce Manpower, if you keep producing ships, it will require more Manpower than you are able to generate.
It would be interesting to have means to create Manpower without consuming growth (robots)
The initial rationale of the Manpower is to exhaust empires if the war lasts too long. We want the Manpower to affect the economy by starving the population. However, that's an interesting idea that we will look at, especially for the late game.
Using research to manage your "mix" of ground units seems odd.
We will look into a better way to exert control over that part.
Please no "unit designer" for ground troops! (If there's 3D models at all)
There won’t be one. We don’t want to push the micro to this level; there are only three troop types, with stats managed at a high level.
It could be interesting to have troop’s efficiency altered by the planets where the battle occurs.
We’re not fond of this lead as it could generate lots of contextual micromanagement. We’d prefer if the player focused on adapting the troops to counter the opponent’s empire composition.
We look forward to reading your feedback!
Hi everyone,
You've read the title right.
RATIONALE
The goal is to create a minimalist system with very few player actions, but very significant impact on the overall strategic choices of the game.
The ground battle starts by building the empire’s army from the population living in a system, and will conclude through epic battles that will last a few turns in order to capture that system.
MANPOWER, TROOPS & SYSTEM DEFENCE
GENERATING MANPOWER
Manpower represents the conscription of the population to man the empire’s army. It’s used to fill the spaceships' crews and especially resolving ground invasions.
Generating Manpower is going to consume the growth of the empire, slowing down its development. We really want to make wars a population sink that will make the economy of involved empires plummet if it lasts for too long.
Passive Generation
We’ve added to the empire a new resource called “Manpower”. This resource is filled thanks to growth from systems every turn. All systems will have an upkeep based on the manpower max limit of the empire, which will slow down their growth and even make them lose population.
Instant generation
In case of emergency, the player has two options to get a huge amount of Manpower in a short time:
- Locally, it can use an instant action that turns a part of growth stock into manpower. The taken growth is equivalent to the last population point. The improvement tooltip needs to feedback the output of Manpower.
- Empire-wide: a button is available next to the Manpower gauge. Using it costs Influence, and will consume one population on all systems to generate Manpower. Hovering the button need to display the gain of Manpower, visually on the gauge and numerically just below.
TROOPS
There are 3 types of troops:
- Infantry
- Ground vehicles (“tanks”)
- Flying vehicles (“planes”)
Each type has a different attribute which defines their efficiency and cost.
Upgrading troops
Thanks to technologies, the player can unlock two types of improvements for their troops to:
- Improve their stats
- Unlock bonuses against specific troop types
- Modulate the repartition of newly-generated troop types
At the beginning, players start with infantry only (so 100% of the manpower will be turned into infantry), and then by unlocking the technology they will be able to adjust the ratio. If 1 infantry technology and 1 tank technology are unlocked, troops will split equally, with 50% of the Manpower going to infantry and 50% to tanks.
Population impact
In addition to the technology, the different populations can provide bonuses to troops, either on damages, health or effectiveness against another type of troops.
In order to unlock the bonuses, the empire needs to maintain a certain number of this population within its systems. If the population goes below the threshold, the bonus is deactivated.
System’s Defence
Defence allows protection for the system against invasions, and provides bonuses to the troops during battles. Each system is going to generate troops by itself when attacked depending on the local Manpower stock and the current population count.
The attacker can besiege the system to lower the defence before engaging the invasion, or attack it directly but will then face buffed troops.
INVASION FLOW
BESIEGING
When orbiting an opponent’s system (that the player is at war with), a siege is automatically triggered. A system under siege suffers from:
- The same consequences as a blockade
- The loss of system defence every turn
- If the system defence is null: there is loss of Manpower
The system’s loss is based on the orbiting Manpower: the more military power the higher the loss suffered by the defender.
STARTING AN INVASION
In order to trigger an invasion a player needs:
- To orbit an opponent system without owned/allied fleet protecting it
- The system not to be under invasion already
- To have at least one ship with invasion modules in orbit
- To have more than 0 Manpower
Tactical Choices
Before the battle, both the defender and the attacker can choose between different tactical choices. These choices will affect the proceedings of the battle, by providing bonuses to troops, involving some risk/rewards. Thanks to these choices, players will be able to modulate the length of the invasion, or surrender to protect the system in order to be able to take it back undamaged.
As they are part of the ground battle notification, players will be able to adapt to the situation every turn.
COMPUTING THE INVASION
First, we instantiate the troops for both sides, based on their empire ratio. The visual of the troops is based on the population living in the empire, but has no gameplay consequences.
Then, we compute the bonuses based on:
- The hero skills (both the hero in orbit or on the system provide bonuses to their side)
- The system properties
- The orbiting fleets: some module allows preventive bombing or support troops on the field
The battle is divided into rounds, during which troops will attack each other. We consider 1 stack per type in terms of resolution and not each unit individually. Each type of troop is going to deal damage to all types of troops in the opposing side.
The number of rounds will vary depending on the tactical decision taken by the attacker, meaning a ground battle could last more or less turns based on that.
Computing damages
When a stack of units attacks another stacks, it generates X damages. X is the sum of damages computed for each units of the stack. A unit deals damage, randomly between its min and max damage values.
Improvement destruction
For each round, we compute a probability of losing an improvement on the invaded system. This probability depends on the troop’s types, the system’s improvement, and the tactical decisions taken at the beginning of the turn.
INVASION REPORT
At the end of the battle, the report displays the loss of troops for both sides, and the consequences on the system (population loss and improvement destroyed).
If both sides are still alive, the attacker can click on a button to continue the invasion: at the beginning of the next turn, an invasion notification will be generated, allowing both players to choose their strategy and start a new invasion process.
If new ships arrived in orbit, they will be able to reinforce their side by dropping their manpower to generate new troops on the battlefield.
If the attacker wins, the system is captured:
- Ownership is set based on the previous empire’s ownership value and will climb towards 100.
- The previous owner ownership will decrease turn by turn until reaching zero.
VIP FEEDBACK
The mechanics of manpower is a bit unclear.
Manpower is an empire resource produced on systems like Dust and Prestige. Producing ships and defence improvements will consume this stock to fill their local Manpower (used to solve the ground battle).
As long as your storage on the empire is not full, you will generate Manpower; meaning that while you continuously produce Manpower, if you keep producing ships, it will require more Manpower than you are able to generate.
It would be interesting to have means to create Manpower without consuming growth (robots)
The initial rationale of the Manpower is to exhaust empires if the war lasts too long. We want the Manpower to affect the economy by starving the population. However, that's an interesting idea that we will look at, especially for the late game.
Using research to manage your "mix" of ground units seems odd.
We will look into a better way to exert control over that part.
Please no "unit designer" for ground troops! (If there's 3D models at all)
There won’t be one. We don’t want to push the micro to this level; there are only three troop types, with stats managed at a high level.
It could be interesting to have troop’s efficiency altered by the planets where the battle occurs.
We’re not fond of this lead as it could generate lots of contextual micromanagement. We’d prefer if the player focused on adapting the troops to counter the opponent’s empire composition.
We look forward to reading your feedback!
DakaSha II
Prospernaut
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2016
- Messages
- 209
both 4x' by this company suck dick. i dont see why this one should be any different
bonescraper
Guest
Everything sucks dick since the dawn of time, news at 11.
DakaSha II
Prospernaut
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2016
- Messages
- 209
wrong
Executr
Cipher
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2014
- Messages
- 310
Source: http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/sega-acquires-amplitude-studios/0169236
Can I say 'Endless' DLC incoming?
Space Satan
Arcane
bonescraper
Guest
Incoming?Executr said:
It's called Endless Legend.
St Antony of Padua
Savant
After reading the blog comments in Games2Gether (Amplitude's forum), I have to say that relative to the English there I am quite impressed with the quality of English on this forum. Some of the comments are terrible.
well just great.
i am (and stiil is) a big fan of Amplitude and espetialy the GAME2GETHER (in fact that is what got me to buy the Endless Space in the first plase)/
Howewer SEGA as a publisher is rather infamos, espetialy for the DLC policise they use.
But my bigest question is the future prise of the Endless Space 2.
See i live in Russia and afer resent political and economical ''events'' pirices for game got up realy high.
SEGA is the second vorse case it this, their prises thripled resently(even old games became quaite exspansive).
But francli i still belive in you and will support the new game regardless of the prise, but i wold like to now if it will change or not.
i am (and stiil is) a big fan of Amplitude and espetialy the GAME2GETHER (in fact that is what got me to buy the Endless Space in the first plase)/
Howewer SEGA as a publisher is rather infamos, espetialy for the DLC policise they use.
But my bigest question is the future prise of the Endless Space 2.
See i live in Russia and afer resent political and economical ''events'' pirices for game got up realy high.
SEGA is the second vorse case it this, their prises thripled resently(even old games became quaite exspansive).
But francli i still belive in you and will support the new game regardless of the prise, but i wold like to now if it will change or not.
DramaticPopcorn
Guest
Holy shit, I knew something was afoot but thought they were just updating their sites. Goddamn, why can't we have (moderately) nice things
Yeesh
Magister
This news is not pleasing to me, but it's worth pointing out that Endless Legend is already pretty DLCwhorey. Maybe they were actively courting Sega...Incoming?Executr said:
I hope they got a truckload of money and can now live on some nice island, making small indie games as they please.
rezaf
Cipher
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2015
- Messages
- 665
Ah, you mean like Notch?
Yes, pretty much.
Selling yoursoul studio to the devil a money whoring corporation is IMO acceptable when the price is high.
Selling your
DramaticPopcorn
Guest
bother with hard-on instead
Kem0sabe
Arcane
The game needs to be a significant step up from the first one to be worth while. ES was soulless piece of crap, even after all the dlc...
Now, if they somehow manage to do endless legend in space, maybe that will be worthwhile.
Now, if they somehow manage to do endless legend in space, maybe that will be worthwhile.
Zboj Lamignat
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2012
- Messages
- 5,818
EL is hands down the best 4X game of the last few years, so it's hard not to be optimistic. I also like them for Dungeon of the Endless, that was a really fun game. Then again, this takeover and the fact that the last few EL dlcs were shitty moneygrabs... Oh well, I guess most people would kill for a space 4X that's actually good at this point, so I wish them good luck.
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