Now for the GDD n°8 - Heroes

Reminder: A summary of the state of the Early Access version regarding this topic will be available at the end of the post.

HEROES

Rationale & Definition

The general idea of heroes is to add some personality through characters that players can get attached to. To this end, each hero will have a story attached that will start out the same in each game, and that may evolve in one of a few possible directions over the course of the game.

A hero is defined as:

• A Name
• An "origin" faction (i.e. Sophons)
• A class
• A political party they support
  
  

As mentioned in the Space Battle GDD, heroes will appear in battles. Their ships will be of the academy visual style of ships and will be tied to their class. The gameplay and slot layout of their ship design can still be different between them.

Hero ships will work similarly to normal ship designs (which will be addressed further in an upcoming GDD), but we could give heroes special modules or other goodies to make them stand out!

In terms of gameplay, Heroes will function similarly to our previous games as players will assign them to different assignments. The current assignments are: Fleet Commander and Governor.

Image 1: Image of the heroes shown at GamesCom

Acquisition

Like in our previous games, heroes are mercenaries that each player will take control of in their quest to world domination. A large difference, however, is that in this iteration heroes will no longer be bought, but unlocked through actions in the game.

This change is reflective of a slightly different perspective on the lore behind the Academy. The Academy will now have an agenda. This agenda is reflected in sending its heroes to empires to train them based on how much perceived influence (actions performed) the empire has. And the Academy will look for assistance from the empires, presented in the quests described in the next section.

Every action you perform will be tracked in the Academy Screen and will allow the unlocking of new heroes to progress. These actions will be split into each class, so that your actions will correspond to the likelihood of getting a certain class of hero. If you are avoiding war for instance, you will have a harder time getting an admiral!

Besides the likelihood of class: the composition of your populations and the composition of your politics will decide the likelihood of gaining heroes of certain factions and politics. Essentially, if you have 100% Sophon populations, the system will usually provide you with a Sophon hero, if any such hero is available.

Upon unlocking a hero, you will be given 3 choices based on the three likelihood parameters: Class, Population factions and Politics distributions. These choices are chosen from the pool of remaining heroes.

Academy

The Academy is stepping into a larger role in Endless Space 2. The Academy is positioned in a node of the galaxy. Upon any empire discovers this node (See Discovery of curiosities in the Galaxy GDD) heroes start getting unlocked in the game for all empires. Building an Academy Embassy is also possible in order to be able to start unlocking heroes before the Academy is discovered or to unlock them faster after someone discovered the Academy. The Academy will have restrictions on the number of heroes they give to empires. This is a game-wide limit on heroes in the game. Doing competitive/cooperative quests for the academy will both gain favor with the Academy and allow for more heroes to enter the game for all empires!

If an empire owns the Academy node in the galaxy, that empire is able to gain information on all heroes in the game and what sort of assignment they have. This is the only advantage to owning the node, aside from it potentially working like an 'anomaly'.

Besides this, we of course have the same Screen as in previous games to give an overview of your own heroes, allow assignment and see your progress towards unlocking new heroes.

Classes & Assignments

Heroes come in 4 classes. Two are focused on fleet assignment: Guardian and Seeker, and two focused on governor assignment: Counselor and Overseer.

There is a third "automatic" assignment -> Senator Assignment. The first hero you obtain within each politic will become the "visual" representative for that politics in the government and elections. If that politics is elected in and the hero is assigned -> that hero can have "senate" specific skills that will give empire wide bonuses.

The heroes will gain experience for being assigned to a fleet or system performing actions. Experience will of course translate into levels, which allows the hero to progress through a skill tree. The skill tree will be very familiar to players of any RPG. This skill tree will also, like in Endless Legend, have 3 branches: 1 general shared by all heroes, 1 for each class and 1 for each faction. The primary limitation for skills will be "level thresholds" and not connections to other skills. The goal is to allow players to pick whichever skill they have access to from any branch to help their hero plan, instead of being locked into one branch.

Image 2: Concept of a Hero Ship

Visualization

Heroes will have animated portraits that will give some additional personality as well as of course their visualization in space battles.

HOW'S THE EARLY ACCESS VERSION ON THIS ASPECT?

Pretty much as described here

On the contrary, I like this Space Rangers style, but it would be more convenient if a heroic ship colour reflected its empire colour. It would provide a bit more immersion and make flotillas more distinguishable in the space opera whenever 2 same races fight.

Also I think that the hero appearance could be more individual as heroes are independent mercs and don't have a very tight connection with their origins. Using colours/cloths/backgrounds/equipment that are unusual to their race would be nice and make it easier to remember who is who. If Lumeris are ok in this respect sophons, cravers and many other heroes often look too ordinary for their kind.

Another thing (actually, most disturbing to me in respect of the topic) is that a true appearance of Mavros, Hissho and Horashem is still not represented in the game - the art shows their suits only. So, will this be changed in the future? Or are they all bionics like Sophons? I hope they aren't cause you know.. too many cyborgs in one game.