You also get to a point where you might want to make specialised 'Invasion' ships or fleets, as the effectiveness of air to ground weapons for taking planets is increased with a different module. I guess you have two options, either have each ship focused on a different weapon type or each ship have all 3, but less of them. Also, you unlock varying hull types which can hold more modules and have better defence etc etc. I'd say its very similar to the ship customisation in EVE, if you know it. Likewise, there are 3 armour types each designed to deflect one weapon type. Basically I just put an equal number of each module onto my ships. There's 3 main types of weapon, each one being most effective during a certain range in the combat phase. The UI is so gorgeous So, as you go down the military tree you basically unlock more options for ship upgrades. I'm gunna go back to it when it reaches beta officially and Multiplayer seems more stable. What I can speak for of this game though has been great, despite the bugs.

However it looks nice enough and once you have a good selection of cards can be quite varied.Īs for end game stuff, I've lost every game I've played on Normal because it's way too much to take in, so I can't speak for it. If you don't want to deal with the combat you can totally auto-resolve everything, controlling manually can be both good and bad, it's random in a rock-paper-scissors kind of way. The game seems really complex and all the factions are well varied to have tendencies to certain playstyles.

The tech-tree is enormous, and is divided into 4 distinct branches, Diplomacy, Expansion, Military and (Economy? I forget the 4th, I haven't played in a few weeks). There are like 6 or 7 different win conditions, many non-military, so you can totally play the game without just constantly making fleets.

HOWEVER, so far this game has been pretty awesome. 3 of the 8 factions still aren't in the game because they aren't balanced at all. Well, the game is in Alpha so balance of factions is bound to be fucked at the moment. I ask because no matter how many videos I watch of people playing the game (and how good the game looks and seems to play) I can't get a good sense of things like the balance of factions or what the end game scenarios look like, if the combat system get tedious after a while and whether the tech-tree allows for varied playstyles instead of just:

Endless space 2 tips on ground combat