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Do multiple Passenger Compartments stack? Also, has anyone found an IRC community for this? Routine searching didn't turn anything up.
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May 28, 2014 01:45
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Question for more veteran players: Is there a reason why in every game there are always a handful of empires that never expand beyond one system? When I first started seeing this I was playing only Pre-Warp starts, and figured it was just the AI getting confused. I've played a couple Classic starts now though and even then there are still always a couple empires that just don't ever grab a second planet. I've seen this happen with empires nearby early in the game too, so it doesn't seem to just be a matter of all of their colonizable planets being gobbled up already. Very frustrating, as it seems almost always to be the non-insectoids who show this behavior, leaving Team Insect with a pretty serious advantage in territory and power.
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May 29, 2014 22:02
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I've been trying to find the right settings to get a Shadows game that's a little more epic space-opera, but the consistent problem I run into is that the AI empires grow extremely slowly or not at all. Community wisdom seems to be that certain settings have very noticeable effects on how well the AI does and this has been supported by my experiences. Specifically: Colony Prevalence: This seems to have the most impact. The AI does not seem to handle well having limited settlement options. Pirate Numbers: The fewer pirates, the bigger they can grow and if you're playing a Shadows start they can really throw a wrench in early empires. More pirates means more pirate infighting. Number of Stars: Anecdotal evidence from the community was that less stars made for more capable empires. I thought this was odd until I noticed that at 1000 stars my home system had on average 6 planets/moons, but at 700 stars the average was more like 20! If that seems high by comparison to the experience of others it should be noted I'm playing with the Extended mod and all 37 races enabled and I suspect that the galaxy generation takes into account number of races in some manner in order to place enough resources. I think the best way to give the AI some help may be to set their home systems to Excellent, but I've run into a small snag when manually adding the empires: Mechanoids are listed in the race dropdown and I'm unsure what happens if I do or don't add them. Do I need to add Mechanoids to get Ancient Guardians in the game, or are they automatically added if RotS events are enabled (meaning that adding them would result in two Mechanoid empires)?
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Jun 5, 2014 15:45
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Comstar posted:At what point should you upgrade from a small->medium->large spaceport? I figured out one of the reasons I hit a wall is my stations cost too much, but I don't know when to update them. Quick Answer: The deciding factor for me is always Construction Yard / Docking Bay throughput. If you have a spaceports with a ton of ships waiting, select it and look at the bottom of the info pane for the Building and Docked queues. If those numbers hover at double digits it's time to upgrade. Best time to check this for Construction Yards is when you've just put through a retrofit order for a lot of ships, since they will all rush for the nearest port. Likewise you can test Docking Bay numbers by having a big fleet try to refuel there. Real  Answer:If you want to get into manual designs but have been holding off, spaceports are actually a great place to start. I've found what's most effective for me is to place Small/Medium/Large bases thinking about it in terms of what you need to provide spaceport services to a region. I use almost entirely Small and Medium bases, with Large reserved for my homeworld until my empire is huge enough to need another regional capitol. Here's some guidelines: 1) Strip all labs from Small/Medium spaceports. They are in the default designs so that as you build spaceports you are steadily increasing your research potential. This is great for hand-holding newbies but it is actually insanely inefficient. More efficient is to consolidate all your Labs into one place so that you can get the most out of your Scientists there, and update the design for that base as your total potential grows (seen in the Research Stations tab in the Research screen). Note that there are diminishing returns for multiple Scientists so if you are a race that gets a lot of them you may want to experiment with moving a few to Research Stations of the appropriate type. Protip: Alter your Research Stations to include 2 each of the other kinds of labs so that if you place a Scientist there, their bonuses to the other two fields aren't completely wasted. 2) Make your Small spaceport really barebones. The default Construction Yards and Docking Bays, Medical/Recreationmodules for planetary improvement, Commerce module. The main purpose of these bases is to get the Medical/Recreation bonus for the planet's growth. Every planet gets at least a Small spaceport. 3) Put Medium spaceports where strategically useful: valuable planets, map chokepoints, near your frontlines, etc. They are your main construction and repair/refueling centers. For that reason, like 90% of your mined resources are going to end up there. If you want to get really spergin about it, make sure that regional Medium bases all have nearby mines for strategic resources. 4) Defenses on each spaceport type can be based on where you are in the game. Early with no wars and pirates all paid off? You don't even need any. Getting ready to start cleaning out pirates? Toss shields and weapons on there in proportions relative to how much pressure you think you're going to get. The most important thing is that you have enough Shields. This is something you get a feel for as you play more, but what you're aiming for is enough shields so that if a typical attack force shows up, the shields can hold out until local defense arrives. MagnumOpus fucked around with this message at 13:19 on Jun 6, 2014 |
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Jun 6, 2014 12:38
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Confirmed that Long Range Sensors do actually work on ships. They won't be active while the ship is moving but if you bring the ship to a stop they will kick on after a little bit. I put them on my Exploration ships now so that as I'm tightening the noose around an enemy empire I can have sensor coverage over the warzone.
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Jun 7, 2014 16:19
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They are probably Securans. They always take off real early because the Happiness of your homeworld is such a big factor in early game development. As for Research, you want to go to Research > Research Stations and look at the Total Empire Research Potential. That's the amount of Research your Empire produces, derived as best I can tell by some obscure calculation related to the even more obscure Culture rating of Colonies. What's important is that the Research Potential is before bonuses from Stations and Scientists, and gets divided up between the three categories based on how much you have of each type universally. TLDR; Keep Total Research Capacity higher than Actual Output and you'll be fine. MagnumOpus fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Jun 8, 2014 |
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Jun 8, 2014 02:54
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DentedLamp posted:Is the "area-pulse"/AoE weapon line useful at all? Like, say, against fighters and such? If you are fighting Gizureans then the answer is holy gently caress yes.
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Jun 11, 2014 19:52
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Elos posted:Pre-warp start is good if you turn pirates to few and very weak or something. I've found that if you want to neuter the pirates you're actually better off setting them to Many/Very Many. The more pirate factions there are the less territory there is to go around, and they spend far more time fighting each other than other empires. With fewer pirates one of them is more likely to gobble up everything of strategic value and become Space Blackbeard.
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Jun 12, 2014 22:24
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double nine posted:Is it a good idea to put medical centers on troop transports or are they a waste of space? Yes. Medical Centers improve troop Readiness recovery.
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Jun 12, 2014 23:59
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Talky posted:But does the quality of a race's troops effect the strength of their assault pod boarders? I've only ever seen debate about it on the Matrix forums, but the leading opinion seems to be that it does. My boarders seem more effective when I'm a strong combat race but that might just be confirmation bias. PittTheElder posted:Since I managed to salvage some capital ships from out in the void, I gathered them all up and sent them to clear this place out so at least my private sector wouldn't continuously suicide themselves there. I've got control of the planet's orbit now, but there is a non-stop wave of new pirate ships warping in, and getting continuously massacred by my fleet. It's hilarious, but I don't understand why they're doing it. My best guess is because there's an unfinished Hidden Pirate Base down on the surface? Whatever it is, I'm watching the military power of those involved drop like a stone. The pirates are there for the same reason as your civvies: the fuel. They must not have any other convenient fueling locations in the area. Congratulations you've got a wonderful pirate honeypot there. Assign your Ship Captains and Fleet Admirals to the defense fleet there, then rename the colony Fleet Training Zone.
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Jun 15, 2014 01:34
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PittTheElder posted:Well, the thing is, of the pirate groups that are constantly attacking that world, none of them are the ones with the base on the planet. So I have no damned idea what they want. So the way that pirates work is they are always trying to fight over "Control" of colonies, a mechanical value that is hidden from Empire players. The rough details: - Control is generated by having pirate vessels in orbit of the planet - Only one pirate faction can have a positive Control percentage at a time; if another faction pulls up into orbit, they will first reduce the current rating for the controlling faction to 0% and then begin building their own. - At 50% Control, the pirate faction can drop $30k to build a Hidden Pirate Base at the colony. This locks Control to their faction and let's them start building the next tiers of pirate facilities. - Hidden Pirate Bases can only be removed by ground combat on the planet. Either initiated by the colony owner or by other pirates when they raid the planet. So the reason you are seeing all those pirates from other factions show up is because they desperately want to drop raiders on the planet so that they can destroy the Hidden Pirate Base and unlock the colony Control.
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Jun 15, 2014 02:01
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In my current epic game I've just moved some long-range sensor scouts into the south-east corner of the map, a sort of rough no-mans land that the rest of civilized space has ignored while the "great powers" waged war. This place is a real poo poo-hole. Seven single-system states fight losing defensive wars against a Gizurean empire, following the Way of Darkness, that dominates the major cluster. The Tairoshans were at one time the gatekeepers and police of the area but they're now beset by Yor on one side and Ortain on the other, losing ground every year. Basically the grease-trap of the galaxy. The only reason I'd even sent recon ships down there was to track down the legendary pirates that made the region their home (of course). Found their starbase finally just as a battlegroup of Ancient Guardian ships dropped out of hyperspace around it and opened fire. They lost. The pirates captured five of their ships. I see another, smaller, Ancient Guardian strike-force on it's way to the system. This could get ugly.
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Jun 15, 2014 06:08
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Bloodly posted:...For the record, do you have an idea what the tech level of the galaxy? I find it unbelievable that the Ancient Guardians, who are by default max-tech, could be dropped by anything who isn't at least close to max tech themselves. Well these are "Legendary Pirates" so they have multiple capitals and their lair is a starbase with 2 beefy defense bases. And the Ancients went right at it like at least they got chicken. Tech level peak is probably around 4-5 for the leading empires as this is a 480k research speed game. EDIT: Now the Ortain have sent a colony ship from 2.5 sectors away to colonize a planet in the system. So that'll be under pirate control instantly and the Ortain will probably start sending regular strikeforces to the system for the pirates to snack on between Ancient Meals. MagnumOpus fucked around with this message at 07:31 on Jun 15, 2014 |
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Jun 15, 2014 07:24
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Phlegmish posted:How do you defeat the Shaktur empire? They only have their home planet left and I'm blockading it, but it's impossible to invade since they have about 8000K troops there. I don't know where they're getting the money from. If only there were a way to destroy those 8000K troops without landing on the planet.
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Jun 15, 2014 20:11
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I feel like the ship types might have some effect on ship behavior when automated. Escorts seem to focus on escort civilian ships, Frigates seem to spend most of their time patrolling planets and mining systems, Cruisers seem to wander around performing attack missions on Kaltor swarms and the like. All of this is anecdotal of course and I have not seen much discussion of it on the Matrix forums. EDIT: I didn't notice these behaviors until a recent game where I repaired something like 100 ships from debris fields. I usually put all of my ships into fleets with explicit defense orders, but when you are repairing derelicts you can't actually give them orders yet (no buttons) at the time that they "come online", so when their final repairs are done they jump right to automation. Had so many that I was just leaving them on auto until I needed to augment the existing fleets, and that's when I started seeing this difference in behavior. MagnumOpus fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Jun 16, 2014 |
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Jun 16, 2014 19:59
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:Does increased size directly effect maximum speed? I would expect the benefit of smaller ships to be that they are more maneuverable and faster, but I can't really tell if that's the case. Size affects speed indirectly as engines generate Thrust (either direct or vectored), and Speed is derived from Thrust versus Size. As you add more components the Size of the ship increases and the movement/turn speeds reduce. You can offset this with more engines/vectors but then you are getting even bigger so you'll end up seeing diminishing returns as you need more Hab Modules and Life Support, more fuel storage for all those engines, etc... Eventually you'll find yourself hitting a plateau as all the stuff you need to add per engine gets excessive, and the solution to that is to research up your thruster/vector techs. Pro-tip edit: Turn radius is just as important as speed. Especially true for non-military ships because they need to rotate to their new heading before engaging hyperspace drives, like every time they leave a spaceport/mine or when aligning for warp to escape ships and monsters. MagnumOpus fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Jun 16, 2014 |
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Jun 16, 2014 21:43
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Panzeh posted:While larger ships are pretty much going to be better and more efficient than smaller ones, there's almost no way to make them fast in tactical situations. Unless you're Sluken. Holy poo poo Starburner Drives.
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Jun 16, 2014 22:34
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PittTheElder posted:Is there a faster way to repair the abandoned derelict ships you find out in the void? I just stumbled upon two World Destroyer projects, but it's got like 200 damaged components or something. It would take years for the default constructor to fix them, but is there something I can do in the design to make a better salvage fleet? Can I just assign multiple construction ships? If I have to wait for just one ship to fix it up, I'm just going to blow them the gently caress up to make sure the pirates don't get them. I've seen multiple AI ships on top of a world Destroyer so I believe multiple can be repairing at once, but I've never been able to get more than one going because as soon as one constructor is on top of the wreckage it seems impossible to actually target the wreckage with your cursor. The AI doesn't have the same problem because it doesn't need the UI.  That said the techs that improve Construction Yard speed should increase your repair rate. Remember that you can build Defense Bases and Star Bases anywhere. When I find Planet Destroyers I usually drop at least a couple Defense Bases if not a Starbase right next to it so that I can maintain control of the area. Kilroy posted:Is there any way to have fighters and bombers redock with defensive bases and starports, and stay there? You can instruct them to dock, and they will, but then they immediately redeploy. It would be nice not to have these guys buzzing around for the rest of the game. There's no way to prevent deployment that I know of but I also don't think there is any harm to having them buzzing around other than the visual clutter.
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Jun 17, 2014 02:47
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In the Extended Mod there is a race called the Lemeresh whose shtick is that they have a Super Laser tech that does 30k damage. This is balanced in their behavior because they never leave their home system. They're basically a flavor race or lategame challenge. In my current game, they found the Temple of Eternal Blackness:  That's a little over one system a year.
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Jun 19, 2014 07:06
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:Question about when to build bases. Someone mentioned earlier that building spaceports causes freighters to shuffle goods around more, so you're better off having less of them. But is there another way to provide the bonuses from trade/entertainment/medical modules without building a spaceport? Will it count if I slap those onto a Monitoring station or Defensive station? If there's one thing to understand about Distant Worlds it's that it is a min-maxer's worst nightmare. This is incidentally why I think it's an incredible game. There are very few best-at-all-times strategies. The decisions you're making need to be evaluated against the context of your current situation, not an objective idea of optimal play. So with that in mind I'll say that yes if you wanted to limit the amount of freighters around you would probably start by having less spaceports. Realistically though this will have the effect of severely limiting the development of your private economy. It will also only slow the rate of freighter building, as they will try to build what's needed to fulfill transport orders, the limiting factor being number of Construction Yards available for them to be building in. In general though you probably don't want to limit the growth of your private economy unless you have an abysmal selection of resources nearby. Less freighters itself doesn't really get you anything positive itself, and more importantly it's the constant pace of the private economy that most effects your private sector growth. What I mean by this is that the private sector develops based upon demand for goods caused by construction. The more that is queued to build, the more transport orders you have open, and the more freighters needed to service them. What you're developing here building all of these mining stations and freighters is in reality the capacity and resilience of your construction infrastructure, the same infrastructure that supports the construction of your military ships. So if you limit that too much you're going to find yourself restricted in growing your military. Where I think people get ideas like "you want less freighters" is when they stop making use of that infrastructure. Your private ships and stations make money off of the movement of goods. If they do not have transport orders to fulfill they're going to stop making money, and all those freighters are going to start costing more in maintenance than they take in, tanking the private economy. The biggest causes for this are: Resource Shortages - Far and away the biggest danger. If not enough materials are available or making it to your spaceports in time, not only does production stall but the price of those materials will begin to skyrocket. If you're unable to fill the orders from your own infrastructure, foreign traders will have to bring the goods in costing you even more and none of that income will go to your economy. The worst case scenario is that you lack enough of a key resource like Steel or Helium used in making common components. If this happens when you are trying to construct stations and freighters, you can end up in a failure cascade as construction and freight movement grinds to a halt. You're basically hosed at that point, waiting for some nearby empire's traders to come bail you out at massive cost for you (profit for them). The solution here is to grow at the right pace, which you'll have to develop a feel for but in general you want to be looking at the Expansion Planner to monitor your resource availability and the cashflow/cash on hand for the private sector to figure out if you're set up well enough for more expansion. Military Construction Plateaus - This is probably one of the biggest gotchas for people who have played a lot of other 4X games. While a lot of construction (which drives economic growth) is in the private sector for bases and freighters, military ships use both larger amounts of basic materials and are the only places for the more rare strategic materials (Nekros Stone, Silicon, etc) used in weapons and the like. The point here is that unlike in most games where the replacement of destroyed military units is an objective economic loss, in Distant Worlds it is also a mechanism by which the private economy is stimulated. Long story short: get blown up early and often. Trade Sanctions - The underestimated killer of economies. If you're not trading with someone, neither your freighters or theirs are making money off of transport orders between empires. If either one of you were moving a lot of goods across that border, that's going to significantly effect your private income. You can use this as a weapon if you are otherwise economically stable, but you should be very careful. If you are sitting on a lot of resources, particularly the luxury resources, your private sector is probably making a mint off of transport orders to other empires. This is how the Teekan are often one of the power players in games despite being so poorly suited to warfare. If that income source is suddenly lost you could find your private economy in the red really fast.
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Jun 20, 2014 19:26
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Dryb posted:I think the private economy makes way too many freighters. I fix this by manually designing all my ships, state and private, and make a 'default' tiny tiny freighter class that I use for all 3 sizes, about size 100-120 at the start of the game. I'm curious to try this out. I tend to go the opposite direction with my freighter designs, making them more expensive.
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Jun 20, 2014 20:34
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:The private sector also handles foreign trade and tourism right? So helping them expand should also improve my bonus income over time as well then? Yeah the private sector will run passenger ships to Resort Bases racking up tons of cash for whoever owns the base, though you have to build the bases yourself. And you should, because Resort Bases make a metric poo poo-ton of cash and as far as I've seen the AI won't build them for you. Gwyrgyn Blood posted:BTW on the Diplomacy screen, what's the number next to each race, says 0K or some other value. Is that the current trade income from that race? Over the last year I guess? I'm not sure how often it is adjusted but that number is trade income, yeah. Free Trade agreements increase the rate at which your freighters conduct foreign trade, result being that the total trade amount rises.
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Jun 20, 2014 21:38
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Goncyn posted:This is wrong; mining stations and gas mining stations are private sector bases and are always paid for by the private sector, regardless of how the base got built. You can easily verify this by looking at the Empire Summary screen -- the line item for mining stations is in the PRIVATE column. Likewise you'll find that if your Private Sector has no Cash On Hand you are unable to order ships to build Mining Stations. The button will be disabled and the tooltip will report "Not enough cash". Things the Private Sector pays for (Initial and Maintenance Fees): Mining/Gas Mining Stations Mining/Gas Mining Ships Freighters (all types) Passenger Ships Additionally, retrofits to these ships/stations are paid for by the Private Sector and go into the State coffers.
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Jun 22, 2014 21:21
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Phlegmish posted:So, has anyone ever encountered this bug when trying to save: I've had this happen during autosave when I've left the game on overnight. Very much most likely just your garden variety OOM exception for a game as loosely coded as this one so I wouldn't put your rig under suspicion.
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Jun 30, 2014 19:52
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:I think the in-game help also says changing governments can cause civil war in some cases, but I haven't seen it myself. Maybe it's based on happiness rating? I've never seen a civil war, but changing governments does cause a hit to colony Culture ratings.
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Jul 2, 2014 02:35
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Interesting. I've never been on the controlling end of a Planet Destroyer to see that happen. The modding guide lists a Civil War action that can be triggered with Events but I haven't tested it out yet.
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Jul 2, 2014 02:53
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PittTheElder posted:Does playing with Age of Shadows off mean you never have The Ancients and Shakturi in your game? I was surprised when I didn't see them at all. To play without The Ancients and Shakturi you want to select "Custom Game", and on the last setup page before launching the game you want to un-check "Enable Return of the Shakturi story events and victory conditions".
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Jul 3, 2014 03:04
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PittTheElder posted:Fair enough. I was just surprised they didn't show up in my game where I'm pretty sure I did have that checked. I guess sometimes not all the story line stuff fires, which is really not a bad idea. The events are triggered by research levels so if you didn't get far enough into the tech tress you wouldn't have seen them. It's also possible that (storyline spoilers) they were there and you didn't even know it because they first show up as the Etrukah Refugees before revealing their true nature.
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Jul 3, 2014 03:15
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Arghy posted:Some empire just got axed by 'independent' what does that mean? they were my neighbors and a military dictatorship haha did they get hit by the games golden horde? I already beefed up my military though i keep losing some ships to pirate skirmishes. I've seen that happen a couple times. I'm almost 100% sure that's what the message will say if the last colony of an empire is glassed by Silvermists. I've also seen it before when there were none around and my theory has been that it's an independent colony-turned-empire that did the axing. Never been able to prove it though.
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Jul 5, 2014 01:56
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NatasDog posted:On the subject of gas/mineral mining, is there any reason you can't just use a single gas/mining/luxury combo base as a one size fits all base for your mining needs? You could but Constructor ships on auto or given orders from the Expansion Planner always build gas or mining stations as appropriate for the target planet so unless you're always manually ordering builds from the right-click menu you're not saving yourself any time or convenience, and additionally your combo stations are going to always have one type of unused extractor inflating their maintenance costs.
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Jul 9, 2014 01:18
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Different races have different sensitivities to your empire Reputation. Phone posting so I can't check if Quammeno are particularly sensitive right now, but my anecdotal experience is that Quammeno seem to splinter often in games where I've not played them.
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Jul 22, 2014 23:21
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NatasDog posted:Haven't seen this posted yet but it appears the AI improvement mod has made some drastic changes to things. The author of that mod would do blitz-LPs of the game on Extreme difficulty and possibly knows the nuances of the mechanics better than the developers. From what I've been following on the forums he's made great steps to making the AI more competitive without cheating. I have not tried it yet as I can't bring myself to play without Extended if not my own mods, but he's 4 deep into the Extended races so that should be available soon.
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Aug 5, 2014 18:18
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fuf posted:Thanks both. The usual suspects for early game resource crunches are typically Helium, Chromium, Polymer, and Carbon Fibre. Definitely prioritize finding sources in the early game, especially Helium with Chromium shortly behind in importance. As for Energy Collectors they are a straight up efficiency boost to everything you could put them on. Even freighters, which spend more time in transit between systems than any other vessel, benefit from not having to pay fuel costs while docking/undocking from stations. And while it's not obvious when zoomed out looking at all your freighters zipping around space, the reality is that freighters spend an awful lot of time docking/undocking. Even early game with the Gerax we might be talking 3-4 day hops between nearby systems in your growing empire, compared to dropping out of hyperspeed inches from a station and taking over a week to ponderously turn and crawl into the dock, unload, and lumber out of the berth.
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Aug 25, 2014 19:18
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