Thanks for your super kind message! It is always great to see returning players tell us how they think the game is developing, and seeing as you seem to appreciate all these changes, I'd say we're on the right track!

For your feedback on weapons, we have some changes in the works that will affect somewhat dramatically weapon balance and lead to more interesting ship and fleet designs. As for the information and the UI, we do try and keep the UI streamlined to make sure the game doesn't hide menus within menus, but at some point with so many systems, there's only so much we can do before we run out of space (ha.). But we're still working on it. If you've got specific suggestions, however, feel free to share them.

On a closing note, welcome back! Hope we see you around the community!

Just wait until you get your hands on the newly-announced Galactic Statecraft content. IT'S FREE and so, so, so good. 

I'm a giant fanboy for a reason. 

DevildogFF wrote:

Just wait until you get your hands on the newly-announced Galactic Statecraft content. IT'S FREE and so, so, so good. 

I'm a giant fanboy for a reason. 

Just saw the announcement.... Oh, boy! Looking forward to seeing more!

Christmas is comming early this year November 15th it seems.

The update is coming on the 16th, plutar... ;)

Oh, so thats why my dates are wrong, I pick up my crazy pills the 15th... SORRY!

By the way I believe that Fleet loadouts and information about fleets should be hidden in the game. This require you to cover more bases and build more diverse fleets rather than special counters

plutar wrote:

By the way I believe that Fleet loadouts and information about fleets should be hidden in the game. This require you to cover more bases and build more diverse fleets rather than special counters

Thats actually brilliant, fleet load outs should be hidden until after combat!

I mentioned the "hidden factor" here:

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/ideas/1019-scanning-module-probe-upgrade

AlmondBrown wrote:

KingValkyrik wrote:

plutar wrote:

By the way I believe that Fleet loadouts and information about fleets should be hidden in the game. This require you to cover more bases and build more diverse fleets rather than special counters

Thats actually brilliant, fleet load outs should be hidden until after combat!

And that info is only available if you Win the Fight outright right? No Draws nor Retreats just to garner such info. ;) ;)

I don't agree with that, because realistically once you're in battle you're going to see the enemies defenses and attacks so the knowledge is gained and theres no reasonable explanation for why the battle data couldn't be transmitted live so.

 that's exactly why I think this information should be hidden. It encourages players to watch battles and to look at the Battle report to see what happened. Then you can retrofit accordingly. the battle cards are the secret that you should never know what your opponent is going to play, that's where the strategy of educated guesses come into place.

Watching battles is fun the first time, after that it's largely inconsequential and in MP everyone watching every battle will significantly increase turn time. Not to mention forcing players to write down what fleet has what is neither fun nor adding a layer of complexity, it's just more tedious actions needed in a late game that has more than enough already.

KingValkyrik wrote:

Watching battles is fun the first time, after that it's largely inconsequential and in MP everyone watching every battle will significantly increase turn time. Not to mention forcing players to write down what fleet has what is neither fun nor adding a layer of complexity, it's just more tedious actions needed in a late game that has more than enough already.

If that's truly the case, then the developers wasted a huge amount of time and resources on ship models, texturing, weapon effects and battle scene backgrounds and I guess they could have gone with ASCII graphics for most things. Other players and the developers may feel differently.

I personally like watching battles if they are big enough to be interesting visually. If the player 'needs' to pay attention to one or two battles out of 10, I don't think thats a huge deal. I'd say then the time they spent on those things I mentioned above was at least a bit worth it.