Hey everyone,
The first Early Access update for Endless Space 2 is now available! It features super cool additions such as a new major faction: the United Empire, three new minor factions, the marketplace, Era 4 of the Technology Tree, and more!
As previously stated in a blog post, we plan to have 3 more major updates until the release! Check out our roadmap here.
FYI, your saves should still be compatible with this new update, but with all the new changes and fixes we've implemented, we'd still encourage you to start a new game.
Here's the complete release notes:
[MAJOR CHANGES]
- A new faction has been added to the game: the United Empire
- The Marketplace is now available
- Added Mercenaries system action that will allow you to use mercenary units not showing their owner's flag
- You can now raze your systems
- Added Pillage: in addition to razing the systems, players will generate Dust based on the destroyed Star System Improvements and the killed population
- Reworked Truce system. Truce won't be forced anymore but will be based on civil unrest. The only way to remove the civil unrest is to end the war.
- Added the Eusocial minor culture
- Added 3 news minor faction (Z'vali / Pilgrim / Amoeba)
- Changed Deuyivan minor faction from Scavenger to Eusocial culture
- Added Manpower panel
- Added Era 4 of the Technology Tree
- System Influence conversion buyout: when a Star System is passively converted by another Empire's area of influence, this Empire can pay Influence to capture the system
- Increased turn limit to 200 turns: the score victory will now trigger at turn 200!
- Technology cost increases more slowly within an era but the steps from an era to another is bigger
- New technologies have been added to the three first eras, related to different features
- Marketplace
- Privateers
- Manpower management
- Manpower quantity on systems, ships, and empire has been increased
Ground Battle plan has been updated - Ownership mechanics have been added: it will take turns before gaining ownership on a system, affecting the approval and forbidding the deployment of the influence
- Minor faction can be assimilated through the resolution of specific quests
- Wonders related to Deeds have been implemented but the Deeds are still WIP (interface and implementation)
- The global enrolment has been replaced by a local enrolment converting 1 population into Manpower
[UI]
- Added the star system list population management
- Added the star system planetary management
- Victory screen has been retaken
[IMPROVEMENTS]
- Added health regeneration on ships
- Heroes can now be hidden (received only via quests)
- Heroes recruited by empires when the game starts will not be available in the first pool of heroes
- AI can now attack when another player declares war
- Improved the way hero unlock points are displayed in the Academy screen
- Added several shortcuts:
- Page Up and Down to zoom in and out in the galaxy view
- Enter and Escape to close a notification
- It is no longer possible to have the same hero twice in a hero recruitment notification
- Several missing texts have been added in game
- Improved performance especially with fastest settings
- A system can't be besieged if it has personal or allied fleets in orbit.
- A system can't be invaded if it is under siege.
- Systems become under siege when enemy fleet leave the attacked system.
- When a system is under your influence you’ll be able to buyout it with influence
- Minor factions now all spawn fleet which belong to the same rebel empire
- Removed weapons restrictions on hull, all hulls can use kinetics, beams, lasers and missiles
- Strategic resources on weapon and defence modules have been spread out in a different way (exotic effects are still WIP)
- Tweaked some values and costs of the weapon and defence modules
- Increased range efficiency of the weapon modules (now more spread out and you can see the efficiency percentages in the tooltip)
- Added bonuses on Attacker and Support hulls (currently the same for all the factions but will eventually be different):
- Attacker: Focuses fire with the flotilla to quickly eliminate ships + weapon damage bonus
- Support: Attracts fire from enemy to protect the other ships + defence module bonus
- Added different target orders for attacker, support and carrier ships (hover the role to see them)
- Fixed strategic resource costs for all the enhanced module slots
- The defensive military power now takes into account the initial hull health
- Added health bonus on ships when they level up
[GROUND BATTLE]
- The manpower of both all attacker and defender fleets are used in the ground BattleReport
- The fleet manpower is given back at the end of the ground battle
- Ground battles can be aborted with a diplomatic relation change or if the defender colonised system disappears
- Improved a bit the feedback on the notification (more improvements coming soon)
[AI]
- AI refreshes and creates new ship designs for specialized roles
- AI takes more meaningful military decisions
- AI uses advanced manpower system
- AI protects its outposts, harasses the player's outposts, and handles outpost equality
- Fixed several issues leading to infinite end of turn
- Fixed Fleets in order to go to the right goal with minimum moves
- Limited the number of concurrent exploration
- Raised the number of concurrent colonization
- Players can now attack in different fronts in same time when a war is launch
- The AI should be more reactive when attacked
- Fixed the drop of some missions
- AI can now block other outposts
- AI can now use all possible actions to accelerate the capture of an outpost
- Guard system has been added
- Added cancellable missions
- AI can now repair and retrofit fleets
- The AI will retreat its fleet in a suicidal encounter
- AI can now buy manpower upgrade
- The AI can now cancel infinite building when something better is available
[FIXES]
- Fixed inconsistency in several tooltips
- Fixed an issue where players are not informed that anarchy duration is modified by the empire approval rating
- Fixed an issue where there are no tooltips in the Post Game Screen
- Fixed an issue where the fleet indicator does not properly work on systems with motherships and fleets
- Fixed an issue where minor factions create fleets which exceed their command point limit
- Fixed expedition buttons not refreshing properly in orbital view
- Pressing escape when launching a probe will now quit probe launching mode
- Fixed attack button saying "cannot attack allies" when there is nobody around the node
- Improved the objective for the "Those Darn Kids" quest which was misleading
- Fixed an issue where several technologies overlapped the category symbols from the technology screen
- Reorganised the technologies category symbols
- Autosaves no longer overwrite the user's manual save if the manual save is named "Autosave"
- A system can no longer be invaded while it has personal or allied fleets in orbit.
- The "Ship design" screen now inform the user about the retrofit cost
- Added "Show location" on mothership notifications
- Fixed error occurring when using a slider in the NewGameScreen and pressing ESC at the same time.
- Fixed many errors occurring when exiting a game, due to windows trying to access released data.
- Fixed motherships being detachable when under siege/invaded
- Retreat button is no longer visible when the ground battle has ended
- Fixed laws received as quest rewards not being received
- Fixed non-major empires being able to discover the Academy
- The user can now interact with elements that are situated on the far right of the Technology Screen
- Empire Dust is now displayed in the Ship Design screen
- Fixed an issue where the icon of the faction was visible even though that faction was unknown
- Fixed hulls & modules not having the right price in tooltips
- Fixed Vodyani happiness not refreshing properly
- Added in the control banner the political party unlocked and their trend
- User are now informed that ships costs are increased when a new era is reached
- The scan view button is now clickable
- The user is now informed that he can lose his fleet when attempting to retreat to a undiscovered system
- Added a "remaining turns" section to the constructible tooltip
We can't wait to hear your feedback!
Have fun,
~Amplitude Studios