The famous fun-sized phantasm of flight fights fearlessly ~

Lloyd Sabin, 15 April 2018

I totally forgot that I was supposed to focus on the combat of Endless Space 2 last week when I wrote up House of the Dying Sun. It happens. Our own BayonetBrant had to ask me ‘WTF happened to the 2nd part you said you were going to write up on Endless Space 2 combat?’

My response? ‘Well f– me, I totally forgot.’ Until now. Even if it is a dayweek late.

Endless Space 2 combat is liked by some, disliked by others. I enjoyed it because it had a lot of options that I had not seen it 4x games before, like your force’s offensive/defensive disposition, formations, etc. And again, I only scratched the very shallow surface of this game, including the combat component, and will be back for much more in the near future.

Battle engaged!

That’s my hero’s ship, responding to the call, slightly modified by me beforehand in the ship customization screen.

And there is my massive world-ship, the ark. One of two that my faction has.

One of two Hissho ships coming in to engage.

Executing my previously issued order, my ships rip open one of the enemy, with both rockets and gun fire.

The ark is so huge, it’s very difficult for the much smaller enemy ships to mount any kind of effective attack. The stubbornly and perhaps stupidly keep going. Not a great showing for the AI but hey it was fun.

Smacked them around real good and ultimately they did withdraw. If I engage them again they don’t have a chance.

And as luck would have it, I had another ark nearby. I used it to engage the two Hissho ships again and the results were…excellent.

They come charging in again…not a good move, for them.

One down, one extremely weak ship left to go.

Done! Victory. Against a very weak opponent, sure, but a victory still.

This was a really quick visual summary, but even in the short space of this write-up you can see some of the varied options open to the player, including defensive stance, type of targets engaged, advanced tactics menu and more. The combat is fire and forget yes, but the player has a lot of options to choose from, an amazing array even, before pulling the trigger.

For me, it felt varied, wide open and free, not limiting at all and perhaps a bit more organized than if combat were real-time. When I dive back in to Endless Space 2, I look forward to going way deeper in to the combat, with bigger fleets, more tech and options at my disposal.

See you next week!

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