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Node posted:I'm not very good at articulating why in this case. It just feels like there isn't much gameplay. I haven't dedicated hundreds of hours to it like Civ 4, for instance, but every game feels the same and the few decisions you make don't seem to make a noticeable difference. Like any grand strategy game, every instance of it will feel the same if you don't develop your own twists. Hell, its a staple of most games, you just don't realize it when the an instance of game is only an hour or two. I will grant that Distant Worlds is a bit more restrictive than most since you'll usually automate a lot of the micro-management. The first expansion adds quite a few options, especially when it comes to tech progression.
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Oct 30, 2011 05:30
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Can anyone confirm whether Legends was released? Work decides to block the Matrix Games site but not SomethingAwful, as if that makes perfect sense.
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Nov 23, 2011 21:59
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Bhodi posted:Yeah, sadly this is priced out of what I'm willing to go for. You're indie in a niche market, why don't you make it half the price. Star Ruler got my money, but you won't! They're hardly indie. Matrix/Slitherine are somewhere in the realm of 75% of the video wargaming market. And they've had some games get put out to Steam/GamersGate/what not with the occasional sale, but I'm not sure if that is a publisher decision or individual developers.
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Nov 23, 2011 22:27
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Trying to remember all the stuff about the late-game that I forgot. Is there an option to cause ships to automatically retrofit to the latest design after they've finished their current mission? You know you can do it with fleets, but I'm talking about the random non-fleet boats you've got flying around on automation? Once you get big enough going through and selecting all the ship classes individually in the ships window then hitting retrofit button (then having to select the design) just gets tedious.
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Nov 25, 2011 20:03
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Griz posted:It does have a limit - your population generates some amount of research points ("empire research potential" or something) which are then "consumed" by labs. Your starting base doesn't have enough labs to consume all the RP, but I think you only need like 10 of each for maximum research rate on a typical start. I just leave the base alone and use the homeworld's one construction slot for colonizers while my construction ships build a few research stations with 3-4 of each lab at bonus sites. The problem is the AI doesn't get it right. Their designs match the standard you start with, so they only grow in research when they build new research stations at research bonus areas (very inefficient for achieving your max potential) or space ports (which are few and far between compared to your average player). After some initial expansion you'll quickly outpace the AI unless you limit your space port use, which is hard to avoid given the critical nature of space ports, and don't put up extra research stations even avoiding any "gamey" tactics.
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Mar 2, 2013 01:17
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Aside from the fact that Matrix is a publisher, thus inserting another cog in the wheel that A-Sharp and Spiderweb don't have to deal with, Matrix has also had games (or at least the developers they've represented) put up on Steam and other platforms before. For all of you that cry foul on their stance, the fact is you are working entirely off heresay and assumptions while Matrix has access to actual data. Granted they still could be insane when the data shows it would work out in their favor, but unless they reveal the actual data or someone reveals hard numbers from a caparable market, you can argue till you're blue in the face but it won't change the fact that they know more than you do on the subject.
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Apr 2, 2013 16:21
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Lorini posted:Sorry, but there's such a thing as sound business practices. I'm not working off hearsay, I'm working off my damned MBA. And the work I've done and the studies I've seen all say that for Distant Worlds they are wrong. This specific title (not all of their titles because I don't know or track all of their titles) has more people wanting to buy it and not buying because of the price than I've ever seen, even with Dominions. I'd raise your MBA with my own, but it's meaningless to sit here and say "Oh yeah, well I have a MBA too!" In any case, there is a lot more to consider. For example, if they go to Steam what will that count for in loss of direct sales? Every person who would have bought through Matrix but instead buys through Steam (or other third-party) is a sale at whatever the price sold minus the distributor fee over a direct sale. Just to throw some easy numbers out as an example, if Matrix sells a copy direct they $55 per sale, say a base price of 60 minus an assumed 5 for thier own download service/support. If you switch to selling on Steam, assuming at $60 and Steam gets a 20% cut (no idea what Steam's usual cut is), then you're looking at $48 per sale. For every person that would have bought through Matrix but instead chooses Steam you've lost $7 and given them reason to wait before buying other games through Matrix in the hopes of getting it on Steam, and this can add up. If you assume 10,000 in sales without Steam then you're looking at 550,000 in profit. By switching to Steam let's assume half your customers being purchasing through Steam, then you've got 5,000 sales at $55, and 5,000 at $48. Now of course Steam will certainly bring in more sales than they would have without out, but you already need to make up $50,000 (roughly just over a 1000 Steam sales) before you're ahead of the game for switching to Steam. I think it's safe to assume Steam would definitely make up for that, but sales or price reductions begin to make that number you've got to make up grow, and grow quickly. And for all I know Steam could take 30% and Matrix pays less than $5 for their downloade service per sale which would skew the numbers even further. I'm not arguing that putting the game on Steam would be a bad idea. I'm all for Matrix offering their games through Steam, GamersGate, GoG, wherever they can get it to diversify and expand their market, but it's insane to assume you know more than they do on the subject or that it's not without potential negatives in niche markets. And there is definitely a case to be made that Distant Worlds isn't in nearly as niche a market as their traditional wargame, but it's definitely not a game you can expect to sell millions of copies even if it was on steam for $5.
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Apr 2, 2013 21:49
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Dallan Invictus posted:Whoa. Is that shortage notifier new, or has my economy always been such a well-oiled machine that I never noticed it? The shortage notifier is new, and I saw screenshots where you can designate how many of each type of troop the AI builds and loads into ships, as well as a minimum number to keep on planets.
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May 22, 2013 18:30
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Can't see it while at work, but did they put up a deal for the base game and first two expansions?
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May 23, 2013 15:40
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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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FredMSloniker posted:Well, where will the patch notes be/where are patch notes for previous patches? They've always been on the forums, although I'm not sure if they delete the old patch notes threads or just unsticky them (or maybe just replace the text outright). No idea where to find them anymore if they're not in the old forum posts.
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Dec 9, 2013 05:58
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Travic posted:I'm really starting to get into this game but I have a few quality of life questions: Best option I've found to handle building is assign your ships to a fleet after you've queued it up to be built, then when complete it will assemble at it's home and stay within the defined region for the fleet.
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Jan 9, 2014 20:10
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Travic posted:Is there anything I can do about troop transports? I just had an enemy fleet attack one of my worlds and a troop transport waltzed right past my impregnable defenses in the confusion and took over a world. Then my defense bases switch over and destroyed the defending fleet. What in the gently caress. You can't stop the transports short of having enough firepower to get them before they reach the planet itself, which is one of the major problems the game has had for a while, although the new ground combat system makes it much easier to defend planets with the bonuses you can gain from orbital control and buildings. Basic answer is don't leave your planets undefended on the ground, no matter what. The upside is that bombing a planet to destroy it rather than take it is a serious diplomacy problem, so it's rare that it actually happens and you can easily defend planets entirely through a strong ground presence if you need to. quote:Also I'm still not getting the hang of the economy. My income goes from +5,000 to -10,000 randomly when it's not spiralling downward. I'm lost. I want to like this game I really do, but it seems like there's waaaaaaay to much going on under the hood that I can't affect. I did what you said and put the tax rate to 0% on all colonies that are not at max pop, but the road from 0-X billion will take hours (real time). Yeah, the actual income values on a moment to moment basis are nearly useless because they reflect a large range of possible ups and downs and depend on when you actually get your income. There are some ways you can play with the system (manual control of taxes as needed, shorter distances between space ports which will also increase maintenance costs, controlling stronger caches of high value resources, etc...) but it is a game where you have to play with the hand your dealt with a lot of respects to the economy. quote:Also my fleets are randomly abandoning my worlds. I'll set a fleet to patrol a colony (most times they fly to the world then sit at those coordinates as the colony orbits away defenseless) then come back a few minutes later and they're off in some backwater system. Are you manually telling them to patrol a colony or are you setting their home base and defensive stance settings to cover it? It is annoying until you get used to it, and arguably should be changed, but fleets still maintain some AI control even when you're manually assigning them jobs. They'll usually complete whatever mission your assigned them then go back to a base set of rules, such as needing to refuel at a certain fuel supply level or returning to patrol their home base once they've spent some time patrolling what you wanted them to patrol. I typically only directly control invasion fleets, fleets I'm sending to attack a pirate base, or large fleets I'm using to bash other large fleets. Otherwise I typically just use the fleet stances and attack targets to control fleets since it's just easier than dealing with the times when they fall back on their internal orders. quote:Also how do I tell the game that when I say no to a suggestion I mean no. After I've said no I don't need to see the same suggestion every few minutes. You generally can't. I typically play with my options set to full automated control or full manual control and disable advisor recommendations entirely. One occasional exception for diplomacy, since it's occasionally useful to get a reminder about giving someone money or seeing a trade sanction recommendation for someone I didn't realize was beginning to hate me. nessin fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Jan 13, 2014 |
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Jan 13, 2014 19:33
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Cardiovorax posted:I haven't looked at this game since 2012 or so, is the AI still hardcoded to cheat its rear end off and rubberband to your tech level instantly, no matter what you do? I keep hoping they'll eventually fix that bullshit, but I can't find any real information. Most of that was Tech Trading, which you can turn off. I can't remember a point when the AI ever did any sort of unreasonable catch up (within the ocnfines of bonuses due to difficulty) other than through tech trading (pretty much the same issue as Civ V).
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Feb 6, 2014 20:45
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Comstar posted:I won my first game...not sure how. By the end I just set automate EVERYTHING, and was getting bombarded with messages, diplomatic requents, 60 pirate attacks a minute, -50k income meaning I can't choose to build anything anyway, and oh, I just won the game. There are two forms of automating a fleet, one is automating fleet formation in the options window and the other is the normal automation of the ships/fleets in main window. If you have fleet formation set to AI control via the options you basically don't control your own fleets/ships. The AI not only creates, disbands, and expands/contracts, fleets at will they also set fleet posture and home port. Basically you can't do jack with them. In addition, any individual ship that is automated is subject to the whims of the AI with regards to fleet status. Also it will try and meet your ship limits/maximums when forming fleets, but the game has some internal measurement to assess if that is possible or not and will ultimately do whatever in the hell it wants regardless of your wishes. Moral of the story, don't automate fleet formation unless you're looking to completely eliminate all forms of actual control over your empire's military assets.
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Jun 3, 2014 21:09
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Lowen posted:I'm really confused by players that get private sector crashes. Typically in my games the private sector balance just grows and grows... You're not running a corporate nationalist government are you? It's really easy to crash the Civilian economy through two different methods that I imagine most experienced players skipped past dealing with long ago: 1) Rapid expansion across large areas of space. Lots of Civilian ships get built but your colony income is small and what little income they do make is eaten up by maintenance costs quicker than the freighters can the colonies can go and over time the increasing maintenance costs from long trips without a lot of benefit cause a death spiral. 2) Building lots of military ships (even if just cheap escorts) without enough construction space to let your Civilians pump out ships in between so the colony income stagnates while you go into a hole and death spiral. Especially if you're working with the original construction ship or two and are resource strapped.
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Jun 15, 2014 03:48
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