Distant Worlds

[Lancefighter]

Anyway. First, holy hell the scale. If anything I see a spiritual successor to Space Empires games.. with a few others thrown in.

I've restarted a good dozen times, finally put about 6-7 hours into a game where I'm doing fairly well, but.. Its just.. agh the scale! I zoom out, and i see quite literally thousands of little pink dots roaming around (my ships), with a few hundred each lime green and dark blue (both subjugated multiple times.. damn things need to be unable to just randomly declare independence again), and I've barely seen the other 8 empires.. (got some brown moving around, but not much.. not sure about the others).

But I zoom out... and I'm like.. agh halp. its only a 400 star ring (i like the ring ones >.> ) map, and I'm just lost.

My ministers.. advisers have seem to like requesting dozens of ships being built, but i almost never see them.. automation kicks in and they dissapear far before I can collect them off to a fleet..

For those of you new to the game -
Think Civ in space, with mostly automated units. you 'officially' control only tax rate and 'state' ships, state ships being combat and combat support ships. Freighters, which are everywhere, and mining ships.. stuff like that are all 'private' owned, and you can not tell them what to do. They do merchanty things - move goods from place to place, move people from place to place, get shot at by pirates, etc. most things start off as automated, so often youll get messages saying 'we decided you should build more ships. Hit the ok button to build some'. your consruction yards (the space port you start with has like 8 production lines) are then sent off to do something - often patrolling or escorting an important ship, like a construction ship.

The player largely feels like an observer most of the time (think like how your head of state runs the country - he doesnt tell everyone what to do all the time..) which is good and bad. I almost just quit at one point because ... i wasnt doing anything. I was sitting there watching my little ships fly around doing their little things. Cool right? eh maybe. Often I have felt like it was rather pointless to do anything.. Until i figured out that i was just doing it wrong.
I never got anywhere until i took someones advice on the forums - start as a merchant empire government thing. That gives you +colony income and -maintenance costs. With that i was able to expand a good deal, and actually had money in my coffers for when someone declared war on me (from either, either pay them off or blow them up... Careful, if you choose the blow them up route, your colonies might get 'war weariness', the one thing i hated back from civ games. Seriously. Who thought it would be a good idea to give excessive penalties to a state whos entire economy is already being poured into a war effort? For me, 9 out of ten times i ended up so deep in the red i just gave up (i was winning the war though   )

Anyway, this writeup must end so I can go sleep. Heh staying up way too late playing this.. Three Moves Ahead did an episode on DW last week, check it out. Not sure wht their problem was with resupply though.. maybe it was fixed in a patch?

[eRe4s3r]

If you resupplied a fleet the ships would loose supply while others where getting resupplied - thanks to the moving planets in sectors. If that weren't bad enough, resupply is 1 at a time .. good luck doing it with a fleet of 300 ships

The game really fails on the large scale though - subjugating empires is pointless, they rebel within an hour. So you gotta play whack-a-mole in space-empires scale. Then there is the problem that unless you take automation of mining bases from the AI your empire will be in the reds very fast. Civilian ones don't cost you anything, but your own built do, and a lot. (Also, the game never says it - but mining bases always also "mine" luxury resources if you put a mining device on them)

Generally, i absolutely disagree that this is a good 4X game - here is what you don't do in this game

Explore = The AI explores automated, your only explore part is clicking on yes/no (usually) If you don't let the ai expore, you still just say "explore this sector" because of 700000 planets everywhere.

Expand = Your only action in this matter is pointing at a planet, then its automatic all the way from colony ship to super mega homeworld planet. Building manually is pointless - you need a lot of ships for civilian protection. Forming fleets is your only "expansion" but then we go back to play whack-a-mole. No colony management beyond taxes - and often you don't have much choice in taxes.

The weapon ranges in this game mean that defense bases are useless. There are no minefields, no drones, automated defenses, no local police forces/militia or anything like that.

Exploit ie. Research its random lottery based, you can't even give general directions - game researches for you. Mining is automated, trade is automated. Everything interesting is automated too.

Exterminate = its downright impossible to exterminate anything in large scale. You can conquer, but even then thats a bad choice.

This game is more a civilian trading sim with tacked on military. and lets not get me started on how large combat works on this game. AI War does combat infinitely better/smoother than this without even being 4X game.

My main problem with this game is this.

Every single round plays out exactly the same, same research progressions, same ship upgrades, heck apart from engines there isn't even such a difference between the races. Like you, i got bored 15 hours in, i had 150 planets on a 600 planet map - 400000 in money per tick. Thousands of ships and 2 fleets with 100 deadnoughts each. Even if you play merchant the inevitable combat means you will either go red, or play an eternal game of catch the rebellion.

If had to chose between MOO3 and Distant Worlds, I'd play MOO3

Also - The graphics are absolutely completely butt-ugly. And the game runs, *really* bad in late-stages.

Also, if you wondered why my opinion sways from awesome 4x to broken by design, the reason is was playing yesterday a lot of this game - and at some point you realize, what you are doing is not playing a game, but watching an interactive screensaver. It made me go back to 4x games like MOO3 to see why i thought this and i realized, if you let moo3 sit around for 30 minutes having a script press end-turn for that long, once overy 30 second, you have lost.

If you do it in Distant Worlds, you can let the game run over breakfast, and come back to a game that played itself without you.

[Lancefighter]

i cant really argue with any of that lol

not sure about the interactive screensaver bit though - It was using some 70+% of my cpus (2.5 dualcore)... thats a tad hefty for a screensaver.

and I never seemed for get incredibly far down the tech tree either. I placed 2 research stations at a black hole, but my research screen said 'lololol nub your empire is tiny no research for you' and that kinda pissed me off..

i did discover the way of the ancients, but I'm hesitant to switch yet because of my colony tax bonus...
 
*shrug* the fact that it is realtime means you are pressed for time - in space empires, if something goes wrong, i have literally forever to figure out how to fix it... (then again, in SE your colonies never stop producing resources if your at war)

perhaps if i were to start out with a larger empire and let the AI start with some too, i could make some good battles?

eh about battles. My fleets are retarded - they wont attack anything unless i tell them to for some reason..


 

[eRe4s3r]

What your ships are doing in battle got something to do with the design screen and what you set there - though off-hand i can't remember what exactly it was. Ships can be set to free-roam (patrol) and will do that in-sector pretty well, fleets however just sort of work - thats what i mean with combat in ai war is infinitely better. I haven't found a way to do "FRD" so i have the same problem (and equally confused look) as you.

I just don't get why some reviews praise this game so much - the AI is not good, it is exploiting gameplay weaknesses (like how its a major pain to assemble fleets) or how you can't do anything really when zoomed out. Being pressed for time doesn't work in games where ships survive 10 seconds - heck most of the time i read "under-attack" click on it, only to see my ships/bases explode.

The game is just.. not thought out. There is so many problems and flawed gameplay decisions, how research works pisses me off - everything is blurry, nothing you do has direct results. You might build a colony at a place with high value resources, but in the game i played distribution even among equal planets was .. flaky. You never have any idea's what your civilian ships are doing or why. So thats what i mean with, the game plays itself. Theres no resource shortages ever. Civilians get your stuff for you (raises construction costs) but a merchant empire could buy the entire galaxy in mid-game.

If you play Utopian Society you get a +50 approval bonus which means 50% taxes everywhere, and huge income to go with it.

As always, 4x game makers forgot to include an actual game. Large scale is impressive, but the most fun game you have at BELOW 50 worlds. Anything beyond that just becomes so chaotic and random...

[Lancefighter]

As always, 4x game makers forgot to include an actual game. Large scale is impressive, but the most fun game you have at BELOW 50 worlds. Anything beyond that just becomes so chaotic and random...

I did notice, however, if I blockaded a world long enough its development level went down.. slowly.. very slowly..

research is indeed annoying, but once your rich enough you can just crash research what you want, and pretend that researching costs money...

I've heard the best tactic is to design a merchant fleet with weapons, so that you dont have to pay for defenses and such.
Unfortunately, the design screen is as chaotic as it gets, and I never quite understood the 'upgrade' button.. at least in space empires (4 at least), the upgrade button would open the selected design, upgrade all components to the latest type, and let you make final adjustments. That makes sense.

I usually maintain the few combat designs (which dont make sense either - each ship type is just a name... I see almost no reason to build 'escorts', just because they are smaller. Smaller ships dont go faster in hyperspace..)

I could agree that its not very thought out, but by the opposite token, its over thought out. The fact that you need so many of each type of resource to build each module is very complicated. And you care? I've never had a station tell me 'not enough xyz materials to build'. it never tells me 'you should make an effort to mine x strategic resource'

[eRe4s3r]

Thats true, one has to wonder why they even added it in the game.

I really don't understand how Distant Wolds came to be, it seems like 2 games from 2 people. I am sure in theory there can be a point where resource shortages can exist ( i have *never* ever seen shortages) but even then you don't have any power to change it (since its probably because of expanding enemy empire). Crashing research manually is really tedious ;p.

Heck, the entire economy is a huge mishmash of ideas, and none of them work properly. Thousands of civilian ships looks nice, but why is it in the game. I much prefer Space Empires way, stuff in cargo is stuff you can spend. But here stuff has to not only be in cargo but in cargo where you want to build it. Which leads to performance problems and bad graphics.

[Lancefighter]

Thats true, one has to wonder why they even added it in the game.

I really don't understand how Distant Wolds came to be, it seems like 2 games from 2 people. I am sure in theory there can be a point where resource shortages can exist ( i have *never* ever seen shortages) but even then you don't have any power to change it (since its probably because of expanding enemy empire). Crashing research manually is really tedious ;p.

Heck, the entire economy is a huge mishmash of ideas, and none of them work properly. Thousands of civilian ships looks nice, but why is it in the game. I much prefer Space Empires way, stuff in cargo is stuff you can spend. But here stuff has to not only be in cargo but in cargo where you want to build it. Which leads to performance problems and bad graphics.

Well, again, blockades could in theory stop production because the station cant get the resources it needs.. but you could do it so much more simply o.0

perhaps, dare i say it, it was meant to be some sort of AI/economic simulator - never actually meant to be a 'game' per se? take an empire, set it on full auto, and see how long it lasts? lol

I would like to see a tad more customization - for instance, my own empire based on so many racial points and such (oh dear, back to space empires i go)

Then again, weapon ranges need to be increased for combat to be viable.. I wonder if i could mod it to the point where battles last, on average, 10x longer at around 5-6x range? more 'epic space pewpew' and less 'instapop'.. more times for ship to escape as well, unless there is an interdictor nearby.
edit
of course id have to change relative troop strength and such so they last longer as well.. and decrease war wearyness onset by a factor of 10..
mmm this is sounding better indeed.

[eRe4s3r]

I don't think modding is possible 

[Lancefighter]

. . . WHAT?!
No singleplayer game lasts long without mods. Who the hell designs a singleplayer only '4x' game.. WITHOUT MODDING!?


I know you can modify empires to an extent (there is even a modding section on their forum), but as far as I've seen it is limited to empires and ships...
But seriously. Who makes a game like that without modding? 

[eRe4s3r]

Actually i am 100% certain that the only thing you can mod is empire values because i browsed the files and thats the only thing there except strings of names for designs/planets/ships.

Everything else is hard-coded.

Changing graphics is modding.. i guess, but you can't change the uglyness P;

[Lancefighter]

well, its a small step above what AI wars lets us mod 

granted graphics and such.. well, i dont consider modding at all.. >.>
*sigh*

well, on that, its doubtful ill ever play DW again - i tried to start a new game today and after around a hour of play i just gave up.. its just not entertaining. 

[eRe4s3r]

Well but unlike Distant Worlds AI War doesn't really need much modding. In fact, given the current state of the game, I'd have no real urge to mod anything in. Its pretty complete and what it aims to do it does perfectly.

Anything I'd really want to change would require code changes anyway to support - like dynamically loading and scaling/centering sprites. So that we could increase unit sizes without their off-set being wrong.

Though i would love to see different gameplay spawned from ai war (fleets vs fleets MP over many planets, sort of like capture the flag/king of the hill). But given how it is made i don't think mods can do that.

I wonder if we can indulge x4000 to write a scripting ability in for custom play modes, In lua so that mods could create new game-scenarios with the ability to hook into the exe and change all unit stats. But i don't how if that were possible.

[Lancefighter]

well yeah, but because of the components system of (SE) DW, it should be easy to change them around a bit - in SE it was a single (albeit large lol) text file that contained each component.. surely DW can be easily made to accomidate the same. The tech tree might have to be solidified a bit (as it stands there are minor differences each play through from what i understand?)

agh it just annoys me the level of unmoddibility in many games, ESPECIALLY singleplayer ones. (and especially strategy types.. heh)