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Have you all updated by the way? They've released 2 updates since the release of Shadows. They are working hard to fix the bugs. Please update Distant Worlds if you haven't.quote:Full Change List for 1.9.0.2 from 1.9.0.1:
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May 30, 2013 00:33
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Played for about 5 hours earlier, got into a few systems, then my empire pretty much imploded. I feel that every race I had met was sabotaging all my bases. Research and mining facilities blowing up every few days  how do I combat that!?
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May 30, 2013 00:42
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Set your intelligence agents to run counter-espionage. Did you happen to have the Ketarov nearby by any chance? They are phenomenal spies and if they want to gently caress with you there is almost nothing you can do about it but smack them down. They get a +50% bonus to espionage, all but guaranteeing that a year long mission will succeed. They're my favorite race to play because of this.
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May 30, 2013 00:51
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The General posted:Played for about 5 hours earlier, got into a few systems, then my empire pretty much imploded. I feel that every race I had met was sabotaging all my bases. Research and mining facilities blowing up every few days I had the same issue and no intelligence agents near the beginning of the game. Bye bye research station, defense platform, other research station, rebuilt research station. *sigh*
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May 30, 2013 01:57
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Frog Assassin posted:Set your intelligence agents to run counter-espionage. Did you happen to have the Ketarov nearby by any chance? They are phenomenal spies and if they want to gently caress with you there is almost nothing you can do about it but smack them down. They get a +50% bonus to espionage, all but guaranteeing that a year long mission will succeed. They're my favorite race to play because of this. The Ketarov may be my favorite race. They're space dog/bears that can barely exist as a civilization because they're so paranoid. Lowen posted:
Thanks a ton! That's really helpful. Should I be building space ports as soon as I colonize? What about size? Should I just make the smallest and retrofit later or are the maintenance differences not that extreme? What about systems with multiple colonies? One spaceport per system or should each have one? I didn't know about the pirate income taking away mine. That makes a lot of sense. I'd been taking out pirate facilities when I saw them, but I'm sure i'd missed quite a few. Speaking of troops, do they cost much to maintain? I'm wondering if that's part of my phantom money drain. I think I had the AI set to automatically build a bunch even though I was controlling colonization. Anyway, thanks again.
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May 30, 2013 02:09
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Ports can be maintenance hogs especially once you begin designing your own, because there's no real limit to their size and you'll probably overstuff them. I try to have one large port per sector and will eventually aim to have at least a small port in every system I've got a colony. One per system though, I don't double up if I have more than one planet in a system colonized. I'll upgrade the smalls to mediums if things start to get backed up. Occasionally you'll find an abandoned port in an uncolonized system and you'll be able to claim it. I recommend scrapping those, they'll get very little traffic but queued military ships will be built there, which means construction will stall for lack of resources at the port, requiring freighters to make shipping runs there, keeping them from delivering goods elsewhere, and it all just turns into a snowball effect of slow irritation. As for when to build ports, off the top of my head I believe the automation settings won't build a small until 30 million colonists (i.e. pretty much as soon as you colonize), a medium until 500 million and a large until 2 billion maybe? Don't quite remember, but it's something like that and it seems to work well enough. The real trick isn't so much waiting for the right size as it is making sure you're not building a bunch of them at once, because again, your freighters will have to ship the resources necessary out there. Troops can be expensive if you go really crazy with them but robotic troops have much lower costs so that helps some. Also remember that troop transports aren't just for offense, if a war starts you can always deliver troops to worlds you expect the enemy to invade. By moving them around as needed you can get by with having fewer of them.
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May 30, 2013 03:17
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That's weird. In my latest game (playing Ketarov) I started in the Slukis system and have a partial Sluken population.
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May 30, 2013 06:07
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Sankis posted:Thanks a ton! That's really helpful. Should I be building space ports as soon as I colonize? What about size? Should I just make the smallest and retrofit later or are the maintenance differences not that extreme? What about systems with multiple colonies? One spaceport per system or should each have one? You definitely want 1 spaceport over every colony, and you definitely want to start out with a small spaceport. It's also a good idea to design an even smaller, small spaceport than the AI likes to design itself. Just clear all the red items off to start with a basic thing that just qualifies as a spaceport, then make sure you add a medical center and a recreation center, unless you're doing age of shadows and haven't researched them. After that consider adding some basic defenses and extra docks. If you don't mind the micromanagement you can gradually update this in steps. Space ports in orbit around one of your colonies don't seem to need cargo bays at all, I wasn't sure about that so I just tested it with an age of shadows start. Of course, you'll want at least one medium/large spaceport over your homeworld and other important worlds with plenty of construction yards, manufacturing plants, labs, and defenses. Sankis posted:I didn't know about the pirate income taking away mine. That makes a lot of sense. I'd been taking out pirate facilities when I saw them, but I'm sure i'd missed quite a few. I don't know how much troops cost upfront, I usually leave that on automatic myself. But I do know from looking at the empire report that troops can be a significant maintenance cost drain. Usually my empires maintenance costs seem roughly evenly split between ships/troops/bases. Be careful about skimping on troops though, remember that no one HAS to clear out your fleets or bases from orbit before invading if they have durable enough troop ships, so you'll probably want to have a large army on your homeworld at all times. Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention that can help a lot with economy is changing your government type. You can do this whenever and it doesn't seem as risky as the warning that pops up indicates. You might want to dip into something with higher colony income or lower maintenance costs depending on what the empire summary screen tells you will give you more money. Corruption usually doesn't matter much unless you have a very large far away world without a regional capitol.
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May 30, 2013 07:31
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1.9.0.3 is out, click those update buttons. Seems they're getting a handle on the bigger problems, which is great. Patch notes: Crash Fixes - Fixed crash when edit planet with Warp Field Precursor tech ruins - Fixed various other crashes General Bug Fixes - Fixed problem where research progress sometimes stops - Fixed bug where owned pirate colonies would often not earn tax income - Fixed bug where recruited Cloned troops were too strong - Further fixed Build Order advisor suggestions so that the construction price is constantly updated to reflect current economic conditions - Fixed bug with colony upkeep costs, so that this is now properly calculated and displayed - Fixed bug where the ship design AI would not properly obsolete old ship and base designs if they were above the current construction size limit - Bombard weapons are now properly added to designs when in a design template Pirates - Pirates no longer build new spaceports or other bases at a planet where they already have a spaceport - Fixed description of pirate corruption at colonies to show correct value (Colonies screen, Population tab) - Reduced reputation level increases from destroying pirates, destroying pirate spaceports is the most significant factor counting towards reputation - Now properly show extra settings in Empire Policy screen once a pirate faction builds the Criminal Network and has owned colonies - Pirates now cannot raid a colony when the same pirate faction is already invading colony (with standard troops) Other - Fixed Selection Panel so that it properly displays bases and ships with many fighters (200+) - Changed hotkey for taking screenshots to PrntScrn (was "/" on numeric keypad) - Auto-controlled military ships without hyperdrives now do not attempt to escort ships with hyperdrives - Added further improvements to refuelling for independent freighters and civilian pirate ships - Can no longer board and capture abandoned ships or bases (e.g. planet destroyers, debris fields, etc)
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May 30, 2013 12:50
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In my current game, three of the pirate factions near me have hundreds of ships.  One has ~100, the other has 300, and the last one has 524 with a combined firepower of 17k. How the hell do I fight against that? Their stations have about 7k shields and I can't imagine how many ships around it.Is being a pirate THAT lucrative? Admittedly I haven't tried it yet but that's a whole lot of upkeep.
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May 31, 2013 06:53
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Is anyone else having issues with not being able to turn the ship vector display on? Neither the state nor private sector buttons seem to do anything. Edit: "Solved" the problem. It seems like the travel vectors only kick in when the distance is great enough for your warp drive to kick in. I was playing a prewarp Shadows game, so my nonexistent warp drives never activated and thus the vectors were never shown. edgeman83 fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Jun 2, 2013 |
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Jun 1, 2013 06:24
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Achievement Unlocked: Destroy a hostile World Destroyer  (there isn't an achievement for thus but there SHOULD BE GODDAMNIT.)Still lost a couple of border planets because my battle fleets were refuelling nearby when it first arrived, but really all it takes is decent timing, enough hyperdeny platforms, and not minding losing a few ships to the thing's insane DPS while you chew through the size-2700 hitpoint wall. I'm not sure yet if you can keep it from using the superlaser against a nearby planet by engaging it in combat, I only caught it because it lingered after its first kill to blow up random mining stations and civilian ships rather than blow up the other planet in the system and leave.
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Jun 1, 2013 20:07
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Make sure you update your Distant Worlds again... another patch came out. I'm glad they're doing this tbqh. It's a great game and they are doing great support. They are up to .4 now so pretty much update everytime you play it seems.
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Jun 2, 2013 13:30
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Is fleet refueling still buggy as gently caress? I remember pretty much rage quitting because my fleet just could not stay fueled no matter what I did.
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Jun 2, 2013 15:34
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FileNotFound posted:Is fleet refueling still buggy as gently caress? I've never really had a problem with refuelling. Do you use the energy collectors to power passive systems? They're really excellent for military ships since they won't use fuel when idling in systems. Are you complaining about pathing for refuel trips? Mining stations and even space ports have finite storage so you can't expect to be able to refuel a large fleet at a gas giant. When you click refuel the fleet will go to the closest point with enough fuel for the whole fleet.
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Jun 2, 2013 15:50
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FileNotFound posted:Is fleet refueling still buggy as gently caress? They fixed that ages ago. The problem (more recently) used to be that Fleets would refuel even if you didn't want them too and ordered them not too, but that got resolved as well. I think they even added a policy option for when the fleet will attempt to refuel (percentage of fuel wise) automatically, but you can still cancel the order manually.
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Jun 2, 2013 15:55
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Sankis posted:In my current game, three of the pirate factions near me have hundreds of ships. Well, when playing as a Pirate, you keep getting asked to spend all your money on ships. As a player, you can ignore it. AI, not so much. And things can get very lucrative after a time. Pirate-way mostly through smuggling, empire-side through your own economy. It's kinda funny, really as a Shadows Empire-you spend so long trapped in your own system your money just stacks up because there's nothing to use it on. All to the good.
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Jun 2, 2013 16:50
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I haven't seen any super pirates like that yet. In my current game the legit empires have shredded the pirates but their construction ships keep escaping and I think you need to destroy those plus all their star ports to completely eliminate a faction. So there are something like fifteen pirate factions, most of whom have 0 military strength but aren't eliminated, and most of them dial me up once a year to offer "protection" for some piddly rear end sum like 66 credits per month. I'm finding the difficulty in completely eliminating them pretty annoying. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?
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Jun 2, 2013 17:03
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nessin posted:They fixed that ages ago. The problem (more recently) used to be that Fleets would refuel even if you didn't want them too and ordered them not too, but that got resolved as well. I think they even added a policy option for when the fleet will attempt to refuel (percentage of fuel wise) automatically, but you can still cancel the order manually. Fair enough. Haven't played in years. Will try again.
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Jun 2, 2013 17:47
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From Matrix Games regarding the bundle sale:quote:...I can't comment on exact sales numbers, but the Shadows release is going very well, above our expectations. ... I hope they make it permanent myself.
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Jun 6, 2013 16:49
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Is it possible they've finally figured out lowering the price means you sell more in volume? I was not planning on buying Shadows for a while, but the moment I saw it was half off, I had to snag it. There was no better time.
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Jun 7, 2013 02:01
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The expansion's been out long enough for the rose tinted glasses to fade, what is the general consensus now? Is this expansion worth buying? Does it have/add enough features to be called an expansion?
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Jul 3, 2013 16:40
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Can't speak for anybody but myself, but I love the expansion and don't regret buying it for a minute. They're still patching regularly to iron out bugs and adjust balance, and the last couple of them have gone a long way towards eliminating the things I found irritating. Pirate factions that have been gutted will join stronger pirates, cutting down on the message spam from them, and the patch yesterday fixed their annoying habit of dialing you up to try and sell you the technology that you're currently 98% finished researching. The one place this game is weak is the tactical level. Ship to ship combat is pretty much blob vs. blob, with the bigger blob winning unless the smaller has a major tech edge. On the strategic level it's fantastic because of how big the empires are, and the economy, trade, diplomacy and espionage are all solid. With the Extended mod the total number of available races is something like 34, and all of them can be in the game at once. This has COMPLETELY ruined me for space 4x games that use the standard 8 race setup. Over the last 15 years or so I've probably put over one thousand hours into Master of Orion 2, and I think Distant Worlds is better. It's a shame the price for the full setup is so unreasonable and that Matrix insists on remaining isolated from Steam. But if you've got the cash, are a 4x fan, and you're patient with the learning curve, then I can't imagine not liking the game as it stands right now.
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Jul 3, 2013 17:14
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I've tried getting into this a few times but get scared at the start up screen. How good are the tutorials, and if they're inadequate, is there a good getting started guide floating around?
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Jul 3, 2013 17:31
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Frog Assassin posted:Over the last 15 years or so I've probably put over one thousand hours into Master of Orion 2, and I think Distant Worlds is better. It's a shame the price for the full setup is so unreasonable and that Matrix insists on remaining isolated from Steam. But if you've got the cash, are a 4x fan, and you're patient with the learning curve, then I can't imagine not liking the game as it stands right now. I bought the base game, but it's just not grabbing me. Is there a lot in the later expansions that make it better?
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Jul 3, 2013 17:45
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Hav posted:I bought the base game, but it's just not grabbing me. Is there a lot in the later expansions that make it better? I've never the base game, I got into it later on, but everything I've read here and elsewhere indicates that the base game isn't much to write home about. I know some critical game features like spheres of influence were added in later expansions, so it's a pretty safe bet that this is a game where you go all-in or you stay out. Which sadly makes the price even more of a problem for most people. prometheusbound2 posted:I've tried getting into this a few times but get scared at the start up screen. How good are the tutorials, and if they're inadequate, is there a good getting started guide floating around? The tutorials are semi-helpful with learning the (sometimes obscure) interface but really the only way to get used to this game is to dive in. Let the AI run things you're not sure about. It does a competent although not quite optimal job, and it will literally run everything if you let it. You can start taking over things as you feel more comfortable. Some stuff you'll probably always leave to the AI. I pretty much never design my own ships, and I let it handle colonial taxes and troop recruitment most of the time. You can always override the AI anytime you want, and for a lot of things you can set it to "AI suggests" which means you'll get popups from time to time saying stuff like "we want to build these ships" or "we want to colonize this planet" or "lets spy on these guys" and you can approve or deny the request. I think one other thing that can make getting used to this game difficult is that you've got to learn to accept that losses happen. You're going to get raided by pirates, they're going to destroy ships and stations, when you go to war you're going to lose ships and stations and probably planets, at least temporarily, and the conquering and re-conquering of those planets is going to kill civilians resulting in lower population and lower taxes. It can't be helped. The trick is learning how to minimize the losses and maximize your gains in the meantime. It's easy to start a game and get overwhelmed by pirate raids and space monsters and other crazy poo poo and just feel like it's a hopeless cause. It almost never really is.
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Jul 3, 2013 18:11
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Hav posted:I bought the base game, but it's just not grabbing me. Is there a lot in the later expansions that make it better? Yes, honestly the first two expansions are about mandatory, hopefully one day they'll sell DW as DW the base game + the first two expansions. The game is just better. The third expansion makes the game harder, particularly if you start in the Age before the real game starts. I haven't played as pirates but I've heard that's no piece of cake as well. So I would say that if you are looking for more challenge in the game, certainly get the third expansion. If not, then it's not as necessary as the previous two.
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Jul 3, 2013 18:13
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As it increases performance you probably want it. The game ran insanely poor prior to this engine update.
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Jul 3, 2013 18:51
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I just picked up the full game (base + all expansions) seeing as it's on sale. I started it up and tinkered around a bit and it seems slow/unresponsive. It takes like a second for anything to respond to an input (scrolling, zooming, selections). Is this normal?
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Jul 3, 2013 19:25
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Dark_Swordmaster posted:As it increases performance you probably want it. The game ran insanely poor prior to this engine update. They don't apply engine optimizations to the base game? That's kinda lame. superfutureedit: Scratch that, it's completely lame, given how much they want for all the expansions. F these guys. doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 08:37 on Aug 2, 2013 |
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Jul 3, 2013 19:33
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EchoBase posted:I just picked up the full game (base + all expansions) seeing as it's on sale. I started it up and tinkered around a bit and it seems slow/unresponsive. It takes like a second for anything to respond to an input (scrolling, zooming, selections). Is this normal? Nope. I just started a huge/huge game, zooming/scrolling and selecting stuff is instant. Make sure all your game and video drivers are up to date and post in the matrix tech support forum I guess?
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Jul 3, 2013 20:01
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Does the autoupdater get "stuck" for anyone else? Mine will start, say it has found downloads, and when I click next, it gets stuck on "creating handle" and then Windows tells me it is not responding.
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Jul 3, 2013 20:11
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EchoBase posted:I just picked up the full game (base + all expansions) seeing as it's on sale. I started it up and tinkered around a bit and it seems slow/unresponsive. It takes like a second for anything to respond to an input (scrolling, zooming, selections). Is this normal?
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Jul 3, 2013 21:52
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So, I just learned about this game, and it definitely seems interesting to me, but the base game plus all of it's expansions would run me $85, which seems like quite a bit of money to drop on any game. Is it good enough to be $85, and if not, how often is it on sale?
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Aug 1, 2013 17:54
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Inglonias posted:So, I just learned about this game, and it definitely seems interesting to me, but the base game plus all of it's expansions would run me $85, which seems like quite a bit of money to drop on any game. It really is excellent, but the price discussion comes up often enough in this thread as well. The game only really goes on sale about once a year, or when a new expansion comes out. It's really an absurd pricing strategy from Matrix in my opinion, as it isolates what I consider to be one of the best 4X games out there from eager masses. But it doesn't look like it'll change anytime soon. Suck it up, basically.
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Aug 1, 2013 17:59
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Matrix are chief among publishers in the "stupid loving pricing" catagory. Look at any game they sell. That said, it went on sale during the holidays last year for about $60 for the base game and first two expansions.
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Aug 1, 2013 18:03
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Best way to get into it is just buy the base game. If you enjoy that, then get the first two expansions as they add a lot of UI and engine refinements. If you're still enjoying it (highly likely) then get Shadows.
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Aug 1, 2013 23:24
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It may also bear mentioning that (at least I've never seen one) there is NO package deal. It'll cost you the same to buy them all in one purchase as it would to buy them over the span of fifteen years, so it really is the best deal to just buy the base game, see if you dig it and want expanded features (and a decent framerate) and then get the expansions.
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Aug 2, 2013 00:08
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It's not dead yet! http://www.spacesector.com/blog/2013/08/distant-worlds-interview-part-2-further-work-and-sequel/
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Aug 28, 2013 18:37
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| # ? May 24, 2024 00:51 |
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Erik posted:Erik: Either or both. There’s several things about Distant Worlds that we regularly get feedback on. One is the pricing. And the price points are not, per game, in any way astronomical. You have $30 for the original game, $20 for the expansions. If you start the way the original players started, the buying cost is not harsh. A lot of people started with the original Distant Worlds and then worked their way through the expansions. Hate to tell you Erik, but I won't be buying the expansions for the base game after playing the base game. It's kinda fun, but it's older and clunkier than other offerings... Seriously, I know that a 'Gold' package right now would maximize their profits out the rear end. There's little point in having a great profit margin if you don't make sales. Guess it works for them, I suppose, but people *do* look at the DLC price and make a judgement.
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Aug 28, 2013 19:39
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