Quick Look: Endless Space

@jeffrud: Every mention of SMAC just makes me badly badly want a new SMAC game ><. By far my favourite 4X.

Ah! I've been waiting for this, it looks pretty spectacular. Though, it's a shame it never got it's due in the recent Steam sale.

Wow, this looks great but intimidating.

"al-dabarān"

Real star, Brad. Real word.

Best like from the QL:

• Brad does space end? - Drew

I feel like Brad is at his best when he's the player between three people. Works wonderfully in the Doom 2 Breaking Brad and here he shines. I think its a big plus that he's passionate about space and the game looks cool to boot. I think when there's two he can bounce off of, he gets better reactions from what he does and he plays better to that dynamic I think. Furthermore the two can pick up the slack when Brad is trying to concentrate and play the game at the same time.

@gladspooky said:

@GalacticPunt said:

@Chavtheworld said:

@BasketSnake said:

There's a lot of uncertainty being presented here. These guys wouldn't survive a lightyear in space. And you know that when you're in space....a lightyear is nothing.

Uhhhh, a lightyear is a measure of distance...

Only takes a couple parsecs to figure that out!

The perfect response...

Ahahahaha that's too good!

Last weeks QL's are so nice. I don't feel a empty spot because Patrick is not doing them at all.

I'm a dick.

this actually looks really fun. wish it was out on Mac (my only internet connected machine).

@ESREVER said:

Has anyone played the hex board game "Twilight Imperium"? Its a 4X space board game with tech trees, a political system, multiple races, and takes forever and a day to complete a game of it. (longest game of it I had lasted around 16 hours)

Can anyone tell me how similar that game is to Endless Space. I really want to play a digital version of TI, because getting a 6-8 player of TI is getting difficult.

They're reasonably similar. Endless Space takes a bit more time to play if you do multiplayer than if you were just sitting down at a table playing Twilight Imperium, but if you love that game and would like something rather similar to that on the computer, Endless Space is probably a great choice for you.

How is the weapon balance? With long range phase always going first it seems like going missiles is always the best idea. WIth short range weapons you have to suffer two phases of damage and losses until you are in optimal range.

This is actually reminding me of "Stars!", although looks way better. I really wish they would make a modern Stars! game...

These games look so boring to me - I'm all for exploring new planets and space and whatnot, but I'm no fan of doing it via imagination and graphs. But man, I cannot for the life of me figure out why I love watching Brad, Vinny and Drew play through games I would personally hate to play (like anything the Giantbomb Flight Crew takes on). Thumbnails for these types of games are always misleading:(

Whatever. I'm in the mood for space-fighting. I just picked up Star Wars: Starfighter on the Steam Summer Sale for, like, a buck. It's all configured with my 360 pad and ready to go. I'll go play that instead.

That button next to the end turn button is there to be used Brad! You're wasting a bunch of turns when your ships have movements they could perform, and then you could act on their movement, by going to another new turn.

Also, colonise quicker. You ignored a colonisable planet for aaaaaages. In the beginning colonise everything.

Great game, bought it in beta, loved it. Imperium Galactica 2 is still king though. Forget mainstream 4X games like MOO2 and Galciv 2. :v

Also why didn't you colonize the ocean planet :<?

@TruthTellah: Nice! Thanks for the response. Now the question is, do I pickup Endless Space now, wait for an eventual sale, or see what Legends of Pegasus has to offer.

@Addfwyn said:

@jeffrud: Every mention of SMAC just makes me badly badly want a new SMAC game ><. By far my favourite 4X.

Super Monday Afternoon Combat!

>A trillionaire industrialist discovers ancient cloning labs and founds a civilization OF HIMSELF

That's the funniest/dumbest sci-fi culture idea I've seen in a while. HORATIO ÜBER ALLES

I'm always horrible at 4x games, but this looks pretty damn cool and I might pick it up soon anyway.

Nice QL, guys.

@Brad or anyone else interested in the subject matter, since it got mentioned at the start of the Quick Look:

This is a great and fairly popular talk by Lawrence Krauss, where he goes, in understandable, layman's terms, through the plausibility arguments for a flat universe as opposed to a closed or open one, dark matter, dark energy, virtual particles, inflation, etc. pp. in just about an hour - time well spent.

@asmo29a: Thanks for the reminder -- I've had that video on a mental to-do list for ages and never gotten around to watching it.

@Scratch: It didn't go on sale since it came out this month, so you didn't miss anything.

If any one is interested, a really good book about this stuff is "A Universe in a Nut Shell." You have to have some knowledge, but it explains a lot of stuff very simply. Its by Steven Hawking.

I wouldn't mind a endurance run of this

space HoMM hot damn!

Watching this just reminds me of how bad we need a Mass Effect RTS.

This is the first time a quick look has gotten me from not caring about a game AT ALL, to me ending up buying it halfway through the QL. Thanks guys!

@asmo29a: Fucking awesome talk there, thanks for sharing that video. Extremely interesting to listen to.

i apologize if i offend anyone. but damn this game looks boooooooring

God fucking damn tiny impossible to read fonts. Why the fuck can't PC developers realize you're supposed to make UI scalable in 2012. Yet another quicklook I'll have to download in HD to make anything out and certainly unwatchable on a non-"retina" phone.

This makes me want a Dune game like this really bad

This is fucking beautiful. I really like the interface & how it  
removed a ton of the menu systems.  I normally don't pay 
full price for a Steam Indie, but I'm going to make an  
exception on this one.  Looks like a good game to get  
into until the next Mass Effect game comes out. :)

game looks pretty good, except the combat didnt sell me at all. This basically just made me play Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion again.

Which im kiiind of upset the didnt do a quick look about. Thought for sure one of the PC people would try it out

Feels a lot like Civ V in space. This Quick Look has me intrigued.

Also, the quality of Quick Looks and video features lately has been great!

i put off watching this quick look for a few days because it wasn't really a game i was interested in all that much but man after watching the last 30 minutes I am sold, the combat is probably what did it for me, that card game looks like it could be interesting and certainly a much more interesting way to settle a fight between two balanced sides than a random numbers affair. psyched for designing my own ships too.

@MrKlorox said:

God fucking damn tiny impossible to read fonts. Why the fuck can't PC developers realize you're supposed to make UI scalable in 2012. Yet another quicklook I'll have to download in HD to make anything out and certainly unwatchable on a non-"retina" phone.

You think that PC game developers should make their games with people watching compressed video footage of their game on a phone in mind?

@MrKlorox said:

God fucking damn tiny impossible to read fonts. Why the fuck can't PC developers realize you're supposed to make UI scalable in 2012. Yet another quicklook I'll have to download in HD to make anything out and certainly unwatchable on a non-"retina" phone.

You're kidding, right?

This is just you roleplaying the Joe Sixpack cliché, right?

Highly compressed video at a reduced resolution and you're seriously complaining about the readability of text? On your phone?

That's fucking insane.

@MrKlorox said:

God fucking damn tiny impossible to read fonts. Why the fuck can't PC developers realize you're supposed to make UI scalable in 2012. Yet another quicklook I'll have to download in HD to make anything out and certainly unwatchable on a non-"retina" phone.

It's a PC game that's meant to be played sitting a few inches from a monitor. You really expect them to worry about how it will look like when viewed in video form after a shitty video codec compresses it so you can view it on a tiny phone screen?

War has been declared. You are involved.

This game rules.

Hot damn this game looks right up my alley...and that UI is just super slick. Wow.

This looks pretty damn awesome. I liked Gal Civ, but I honestly couldn't deal with the visual style of that game so I didn't get way into it. This game looks gorgeous though, and appears to be lite enough for me to handle but deep enough to get a lot out of. Thanks for the QL! Consider another copy sold!

Sold!

This looks really cool. Won't be able to play it without a PC though.

Looks like an excellent game. I think this game & Evochron Mercenary will be 
the two games I spend the majority of my time on now that I'm practically done 
with Mass Effect 3. 
 
One thing I don't like: this game doesn't have Steam Achievements! What the deuce?

Looks very nice. There is a ton of 4X games over the past five years but this one reminds me the most of Galactic Civilizations and Master of Orion. I'll be getting it once I have more time to devote to it. Thanks guys, these long quicklooks are just as useful as reviews.

Been playing a lot of X3: Terran Conflict with the X Superbox I picked up during the Steam sale. This looks pretty sweet though. Wasn't a fan of the first Sins of a Solar Empire, but somehow this intrigues me.

This game has some really impressive looking interface design. There's a TON of information being thrown out at once, but they are making some really nice choices in shorthand and scaling.

I'm for it.

Coming into this QL out of boredom I had zero interest. 30 minutes into it, I have extreme interest and can't wait to buy it. I'm usually not impulsive either. Really, really dig what I'm seeing here. And it's a shame too, what with school looming 'round the corner, as this'll likely cause a drop in grades the same way Civ V did when I got it. Curse you, Endless Space!