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Even enlarged, I can't get those big enough to actually read most of what's in the screenshots but I had policy set to 'Always Capture' and it didn't do any good *shrug*. This might be a good point to mention that I seem to be good at running into random bugs. I had one game that was ruined because freighters steadfastly refused to take any resources to a certain colony regardless of how much was available or how many idle freighters there were. I've never seen that again, just the once. Edit: One item I'm curious about, though some of the tech is obviously well beyond where we are in the game. What advantadges does the corvette have over just putting a sensor base in some random place that you want coverage in? Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Aug 29, 2021 |
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Aug 29, 2021 16:30
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From my own habits, I'd say laziness and redundancy. I also put sensor and weapon bases here and there, but that's mostly an effort in mine laying and providing the next generation of space faring species with a better gun so that they can civilize each other faster. (Also sometimes a bloodyminded desire to defend one spot of resources I've got very attached to, for example silicon when the game gives me one desert planet that has it and nothing else until I start a bloody campaign in the next empire. For the singularly rare "sand" objects.)
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Aug 29, 2021 17:18
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huh, sorry about that. my monitor is only 1600x900 so anything higher on the other end is going to be tiny tiny. The sensor corvette is mobile. i only need to build one or two, and as needs change, i can move it to another location. This keeps me from using my construction ships for building a static monitor that will need to be destroyed later as it becomes obsolete. Offensively, defensively, or just scouting down nebula and the like. Move it into the center of a star cluster, allow the LR scanner to turn on, look around for anything unusual like debris fields, abandoned ships, etc, move on. If it has a longer term mission, like offensive scouting, you can park it in hostile territory to keep tabs on their fleets. If it does get spotted, it can run, vs a monitor which will just get blown up. The capture policy I have is Always Capture ships Always Capture bases Enlist when NOT hightech or larger Always disassemble at shipyard Upgrade enlisted military ships Then the ship itself has Invade when clear. I am suspecting this is needed, because pirates use boarding pods to raid colonies, and this spawns armies on the world in question. it might be whats needed for an automated ship to fire off its pods. i do use Escort, Destroyer, Cruiser, Capital for my ship roles vs three flavours of frigate like you have in your game, as automated upgrade will pick which ever it likes of a class with multiple ship designs in one role, vs more patrol ships. winterwerefox fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Aug 29, 2021 |
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Aug 29, 2021 18:49
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Just changed my resolution to be able to see it a little better, no big deal. Seems to me though that Long Range Scanners have a low enough range until you get quite high up in the tech tree that it wouldn't really be worth doing that. I.e. they just can't see far enough. Part of that is probably due to galaxy type, on Irregular like I'm playing it's quite rare to get other stars close enough to be able to watch them. It could be the 'Invade' setting, I thought that applied only to attacking planets.
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Aug 30, 2021 00:12
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They work perfectly well in deep space as well, so you can park them outside of a system to peek on in, but there is the fact I was playing a much denser galaxy with the 1400 stars setting. I've just found points of interest on accident enough that its a design that is worth it for me to have one or two. its otherwise a monitor buoy with a minimal engine strapped on. I just dont like building a station, and then having become obsolete.
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Aug 30, 2021 01:34
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 Wonders, Colony Ships & Pirate Base Assault (22:25) It'll be a long and expensive process, but we're taking the first step in bringing the fight to the pirates. To establish a secure footing for our would-be empire, we'll need to carve out a sizable section of the galaxy free of their influence, a process that is fraught with peril. Some thorny decisions along that line will begin soon.
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Aug 31, 2021 17:19
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When Pirates Just Won't Wait (30:22) Colonization is delayed yet again as the Black Market Cartel just won't cooperate, requiring our full attention. Along the way, the first special structures aka Facilities become available, and we begin building the Bakuras Shipyards. After pounding through the resistance in Draithus, hopefully we will now be able to secure expansion and properly begin to call ourselves a fledgling galactic empire. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Sep 16, 2021 |
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Sep 16, 2021 17:01
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You copied your previous link for episode twelve. The correct link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B42GD4U9ELQ
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Sep 16, 2021 17:14
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Go Team! Fixed now.
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Sep 16, 2021 19:20
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Normally at this stage of the game, I stuff my exploration ships with as much fuel cells as they can carry and order them to explore per sector instead per system, just to minimize the constant annoyance when I'm trying to do "important things". And by normally I mean twice so far since I only got the game a month ago after I started to watch this LP.
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Sep 16, 2021 20:11
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Enjoyed seeing a system being cleared out - is that the end of the Black Cartel? Feels like colonisation is a much bigger step compared to other 4x games like MOO.
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Sep 16, 2021 23:30
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It feels somewhat rare that you get a game start in which the basic rudiments of the genre need to be researched. You can build settlers in Civ right away, Stellaris starts you out at the FTL stage, etc. Besides this game I don't know of a 4x where you start and you're immediately shaken down for tribute money because you're so feeble. Like if you fired up a Civ game, you settle your first city and can't build any units besides a builder and there are five barbarian tribes around you that could raze your sole city unless you bribe them. So you'd have to research things like "having a military" and "being able to move more than one hex away from the capital" and of course "building more than one city."
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Sep 16, 2021 23:49
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gently caress off Batman posted:I stuff my exploration ships with as much fuel cells as they can carry and order them to explore per sector instead per system, just to minimize the constant annoyance when I'm trying to do "important things". I don't do this because ruins. That way I'll end up with a bunch of unexplored ruins - and probably some derelicts. Just not worth it IMO. MightySteed posted:Enjoyed seeing a system being cleared out - is that the end of the Black Cartel? Unfortunately not. They are diminished, and will retreat to a base further away, which means they are unlikely to be a problem again anytime soon. But they're not gone. Unless things go really badly for a pirate faction, they won't be totally eliminated until the galaxy is much more filled with developed empires. Even the Dark Minerals, who we previously knocked down to I think two ships, are still around. We've found their current base of operations well to the right of the Utrantu Collective, several sectors away from our territory. They have only a single ship, but they're not completely gone. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Sep 17, 2021 |
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Sep 17, 2021 03:46
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A Peaceful Act of Violence: Colonizing Begins! (25:23) The amount of happenings to keep an eye on continues to grow. After catching up on that and answering some of the questions that have been asked, we get moving with finally colonizing our first planet, Ikkuro 1. This includes our first ground combat against pirates who have begun setting up a base there. In general, the pirates don't react well to our expansion efforts and we'll be seeing more of that moving forward, but so far we've been able to meet their challenge and the end of the video includes a brief discussion of the facilities the pirates can build and why they do so.
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Sep 22, 2021 17:45
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I like the idea of the barebones/backwater stations. I'm gonna use that for myself. 
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Sep 22, 2021 20:47
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winterwerefox posted:I like the idea of the barebones/backwater stations. I'm gonna use that for myself. I agree, this is great. One thing I'd like the planned sequel to this game do with a better auto-design feature is, rather than designing just small/medium/large for stations/ships is an option to have it auto-design "cheap/normal/extravagant" based around how good your economy is. I can never get into the ship building so dramatically myself, but having the option to put up just enough, especially on either the fringes of my empire (and also the stuff that's so deep in my empire it stands no chance of being attacked) would be a giant QoL improvement. In the meantime, it might be worth copying some of Sage's designs and just putting them in a text file somewhere. Sage, I have a question: When you got the Way of the Ancients, you mentioned that it was unique and locked every other empire out of switching to that government. (I never knew that!) Does the Way of Darkness operate the same way? Did you finding it lock everyone else out of getting it? Because if so, that discovery is huge, and basically thwarts one of the best ways for another empire to possibly catch up to you. Another observation: When you found that Teekan ship, I had first thought they were Atuuks, because I noticed it described them as kinda dumb. Not sure on the "intelligence" trait of the Teekans, but lorewise (and I believe mechanically) they are excellent engineers. The way you've been playing your empire, with trying to salvage everything you can get your mitts on is very in line with how Teekans operate in story. So for anyone watching that likes to get into emergent storytelling, it makes perfect sense for them to want to incorporate into Sage's empire, especially since they'll have essentially equal rights under the Way of the Ancients.* Since one of the Ikkuran victory conditions is "have the most space ports" Teekans make sense from a "yes, I want these characters in my empire" perspective and not merely a "yes, these guys can colonize planets other than what I can" perspective. Which leads me to "a" second question (OK, I have several questions): I've never had it happen, but is it possible to have another species/race become the dominant race in your empire? What happens if they actually outstrip your starting population? Anything? And if it's nothing, if you founded a planet with Teekans and had your two Ikkuran planets taken over or destroyed, you wouldn't be defeated. Would that not then imply that you could theoretically achieve any species' victory conditions by playing the game as an entirely different species, with a little bit of creativity? EDIT *The Teekans were also found in the same system that had the Way of Darkness temple. I somehow doubt they were, themselves, practicing this trade, but their lore states that other empires frequently enslaved them. My head-canon for this discovery is when everything went tits-up for the old Way of Darkness empire, only the local Teekans on the planet were savvy enough to Jury-rig a working stasis/colony ship together and survive. That would be very much in line with their lore. Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Sep 22, 2021 |
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Sep 22, 2021 21:14
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I've had it happen where my main species was the minority after I ran into a bug planet early on that was independent. Somehow, they already had 5-6 billion compared to my 4 billion humans. I loaded up troop transports, invade it, and now I have tons of bugs in my republic. You get their racial bonus at full power, I think those ones were Gizurean and minus maintenance costs. Your empire portrait doesn't change, your relations don't shift families for the "Instinctively Dislike" malus on relations. The huge planet you have will have stability issues, though, if like I had you had a planet that "Instinctively Dislike" toward your main species. I play sandbox most exclusively until I get bored, so I can't answer the victory conditions question, but I suspect those are coded in from the start. A Securan empire with only Dayut will want to have the most happy resort spiders vs changing tact toward genocide.
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Sep 22, 2021 21:55
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Veryslightlymad posted:When you got the Way of the Ancients, you mentioned that it was unique and locked every other empire out of switching to that government. (I never knew that!) Does the Way of Darkness operate the same way? Did you finding it lock everyone else out of getting it? Because if so, that discovery is huge, and basically thwarts one of the best ways for another empire to possibly catch up to you. I think it does. Emphasis on think, because I'm basing that on other more experienced players. But I would say we should definitely find out in this game; either other empires get one of them, or that never happens. Veryslightlymad posted:I've never had it happen, but is it possible to have another species/race become the dominant race in your empire? What happens if they actually outstrip your starting population? Anything? And if it's nothing, if you founded a planet with Teekans and had your two Ikkuran planets taken over or destroyed, you wouldn't be defeated. Would that not then imply that you could theoretically achieve any species' victory conditions by playing the game as an entirely different species, with a little bit of creativity? Winterwerefox's answer is better than anything I'd be able to say. I've never been in that situation, so I don't know. As for the Teekans, they are Quite Stupid, with primary attributes being passivity and dependability. Also reckless and friendly. So they're real good at getting over their head apparently. Basic they are traders and engineers because anything they might invent wouldn't be as good as what they can salvage. As small furry semi-nomadic rodents with an affinity for desert environments, they are totally not in any way, shape or form a Jawa ripoff.
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Sep 24, 2021 00:43
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Migration Considerations & Continued Expansion (30:26) We continue to find more rival empires, this time including the home of the Ancient Guardians - which is always a very special planet in the 'look, but don't touch' category. A bit about migration which we'll need to explore more later, but it becomes a factor now that we have a second planet for Ikkuros to live on. Seizing Buthawoe becomes our next target, but soon we'll need to deal with pirates again - some of them are continuing to grow in strength.
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Sep 29, 2021 17:03
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I didnt know what all led into planet growth. good to learn! My roommate keeps asking why i watch these when ive beat the game more than a few times and I point out I don't know what is causing what with a lot of systems, just that I can win. Usually when my economy hits a point where I cant spend enough to crash it.
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Oct 2, 2021 03:29
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Just picked DW back up for the first time in a long time and man, I had forgotten how good the game is (and many of its rough edges). You mentioned the Gizureans in the latest video, and they've been my favorite or second favorite alien species in the game. Mechanics/Species spoilers: Holy poo poo is the fast growth they have absolutely amazing. Combine that with a permanent leader who always has population growth and can get a bonus of upwards of 50%, and your colonies shoot up in population so quickly that it's somewhat dizzying. Since almost everything ends up scaling off of population, you end up with an utterly absurd and nearly insurmountable advantage very quickly. On top of the fastest pop growth in the game (though Securans can give them a run for their money), they get -35% maintenance costs. Not only do you get an absurd quantity of wealth very quickly due to growth, but you can sustain a massive fleet with very little trouble due to the extremely low maintenance. This enables you to rush lots of colonies very quickly and do things that would overextend a normal empire, but the kicker is that you can actually sustain defensive platforms and fleets of sufficient size to actually secure your new colonies, and your ridiculous pop growth brings new colonies online in a fraction of the time that it would take other empires. Sure, other empires are much, much stronger on paper; once they get a nice core of fully populated worlds, their advantages in research or income might become insurmountable. However, you'll reach that point literal decades before they do, and since the scaling is exponential (though thankfully research capacity appears to scale logarithmically) there's very little anyone else can do to actually stop you. I played a couple of fun games as Securans and ran into something similar. Having your pop growing at +44% at times is hilarious and I advise everyone to try it at least once. Edit: Just for grins, I started up a game and compared the capital population of a Gizurean empire to SS's Ikkuran capital, and the Gizureans already have more people after only 5 years in game than the Ikkurans have after nearly 15. The Gizureans are continuing to grow with 0% tax at a rate in excess of 25%. Again, the pops aren't as "good," but it hardly matters when this level of quantity is a quality all its own. Edit 2: Was able to max out their homeworld in under 8 years. Dirk the Average fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Oct 2, 2021 |
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Oct 2, 2021 18:20
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Gizureans definitely grow stupid-fast, but it's also worth noting that a *ton* of that growth rate comes from 0% tax factor. If I zero out taxes on Reese right now in the game, growth rate goes from 7.7% to 37.2%.
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Oct 3, 2021 02:26
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winterwerefox posted:My roommate keeps asking why i watch these when ive beat the game more than a few times and I point out I don't know what is causing what with a lot of systems, just that I can win. Usually when my economy hits a point where I cant spend enough to crash it. Glad you're enjoying it - I do think this kind of game can be a lot more fun when you actually understand what's going on. There have been a few cool 'discovery' moments for me as I've learned it. This might be a good time to mention is that we're taking a bit of a turn here. I've basically accepted that I can't cram enough into an episode to feel like I've actually accomplished something in much less than half an hour, so they're probably going to stay around that in length. Sort of going along with that is we've hit a bit of a critical mass to my mind in reaching a point where there aren't a lot of 'game systems' left to explore, it's more going forward and applying that knowledge to new situations. The game has definitely tipped now, in the sense of really starting to be able to push around whoever it is we need to push around. So I'm going to be doing more time-skipping going forward, semi-similar to what I did with Imperium Galactica for those who watched that. Reasoning is simply that if I record as I'm going through everything, there's more 'interruptions' to do busy-work like scouting, building more ships, moving ships between fleets, retrofitting, etc. than there is actually doing engaging activities in the game ... and we'd also move like 4 months an episode or something, which will just make it *drag* unless I turn on a bunch of automation and have Distant Worlds play itself, which has it's own problems. This will also mean a higher proportion of exposition which I think is generally not good when it can be avoided, 'show not tell' and all that - but I don't really see a useful alternative here. I also figure anyone who is still watching this far into the series probably enjoys the game to a certain level and is hopefully interested in those details as they come up. It'll probably be clearer what I mean when next week's episode, which I just finished, goes public, but if there are any useful thoughts on these ramblings or ideas on how to make the balance of this run better, I'm open to those for sure.
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Oct 3, 2021 03:00
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Cutting the videos to "I found ruins, I did this battle, this revolutionary tech came in, making me design new ship classes" and losing the maintenance content of sending off your scouts and directing mining stations would be a good call
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Oct 3, 2021 03:42
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We've Got Company! (29:20) More pirates are cleared out, another super-luxury resource is claimed, and we expand to the next-larger size of military ships. This really makes a big difference, literally and figuratively, as we can now cram in a lot more weapons. We've now met most of the rival empires as well.
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Oct 6, 2021 16:11
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The fusion/quantum split is usually where I take over designing my civie ships myself. I will leave civilian ships and stations on fission, or later, quantum reactors, and change my military to fusion/hyper fusion. mainly because caslon is used for nothing else and having it become useless irks me.
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Oct 8, 2021 00:34
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Heh, I think I'd rather dump all my caslon out the nearest airlock than design all the civilian ships manually. I have enough to do 
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Oct 8, 2021 05:19
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Its not so bad. I tend to good enough them, and use the same core for all ships. 7 engines, 1-2 power plants to get full speed hyper drive, hyper drive, 1 maneuver, 5-6 fuel tanks, 200-300 size, 1 energy panel, 2 armor, 1 shield. This is all civie ships. If pirates are an issue ill toss on counter measures. Fill up space with 4/8/12 cargo holds for freighters, mining/gas ships with 3 cargo 3 extractors, passenger ships with 10-12 passenger units. Once my civilian fleet is where I want them tech wise, I will only upgrade hyper drive, cargo and fuel size. Then leave them with outdated proton engines, armor, corvidian shields, and fission power plants. Any that get boarded and captured are not likely to give someone free tech. A fission plant puts out enough power to go fast enough for most civilian needs, especially with the 2nd tier hyper drives. Its nice to see differing views on how to do things
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Oct 8, 2021 09:24
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Pirate Whack-A-Mole (24:41) Halmat 2 and Urctun get colonized by the end of this session, and the rate of pirate-clearing accelerates. There's still a good amount of unclaimed space left, but the galaxy is starting to fill up and we know where most of the rivals are now.
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Oct 13, 2021 16:54
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Not much to say, other than I build smaller transports at 5 compartments and use the space to arm them. its enough room for each transport to have a tank, 2 infantry and a special forces unit. perfect for invading independents, and 4-5 such ships is enough for most planets. In other news, its entirely possible to start on a world with a sub population of another species on your starting world. I started a couple games as humans, had atuuk on one start, at about 1.2 billion, and another with the ikkuro with a similar population count. the start with ikkuro saw me start with two sets of racial abilities, with the human better research and spies, and the ikkuro better maintenance. Recruiting armies and building colony ships on mixed species worlds draw exclusively from the higher population.
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Oct 14, 2021 05:34
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Today it was announced that Distant Worlds 2 has been pushed back to first quarter of next year. From a purely selfish point of view, at least I won't be rushed on finishing up this run.
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Oct 14, 2021 19:07
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My only misgiving is it only has seven races, but each race takes its own set of 3d models, so im not THAt miffed.
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Oct 14, 2021 21:15
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winterwerefox posted:My only misgiving is it only has seven races, but each race takes its own set of 3d models, so im not THAt miffed. That's why the Devil invented DLC. Hopefully some of it is free. Sadly, my sweet baby idiot Shandar and Atuuks are not in this first batch.
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Oct 15, 2021 00:21
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I have other misgivings, and also a fair bit of optimism. I'm pretty much on the fence right now in terms of whether I think it'll be any good. Too early to know anyway, so not drawing any firm conclusions as of yet.
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Oct 15, 2021 02:00
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Pushing Outwards (20:55) We see what happens when a pirate faction surrenders ... and when one puts up more of a fight than expected. One amusing bit to me was the shortest-lived Admiral in Distant Worlds history.
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Oct 20, 2021 16:52
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Just chiming in to say that I'm enjoying this very much.
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Oct 20, 2021 16:59
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Shouting furiously over the sounds of alarms and shearing metal: Capt. Serraby: "Damnation! What is this communication from Reese that's eating up all of our ship's resources? We need more power to thrusters! This had better be important" Comms: "Wait! It's finished downloading. I have it, Sir. It looks like... Sir, you have officially been promoted to Admiral." Serraby: "Well, that's just grea---" BOOM. At least Admiral Serraby's widow will receive a greater compensation. ~~~ Have you actually managed to generate zero colony governors?
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Oct 20, 2021 17:49
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Fat Samurai posted:Just chiming in to say that I'm enjoying this very much. Glad to hear it! Veryslightlymad posted:Have you actually managed to generate zero colony governors? I have. Still just the one on Reese. I've been fairly surprised by that, by not having to replace my leader yet - that happened quite a bit in testing but so far, nope. It's been a really long time since we got a new scientist, even with an academy in place - there's been a fair bit of strangeness on the character front.
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Oct 23, 2021 04:58
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I have a suspicion that there is a cap on the number of characters you can have of each class, based on empire size and population, modified by racial traits. A good spy race will average 4 or so spies, while a poor one will have 1-2. Once you have your racial number, the odds of them showing up go way down. Its rare I see more than 3 scientists, and academies will quickly replace those I dismiss or have die in a lab getting blown up, but then numbers stagnate again. I haven't tested this, but that has been my experience as far as characters go.
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Oct 23, 2021 05:52
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Land Grab Intensifies (23:53) Shortly after the end of the previous episode I actually did get a new Colony Governor. We don't know much about them yet, but it's our first leader of a foreign race. We're also starting to pile up fairly useless Ship Captains. I have to say I wonder about that role in the game, I can see how they'd be useful early on for Pirates but on an established empire any boost to one ship is a hearty 'so what'. Anyway, I finally send out one of our agents on a mission partly just to do it, and we move up to the next larger size of ships. As the episode title indicates, we're now moving on from the Pirate Wars to Land Grab phase - still fighting pirates of course, but right now it's about getting as much territory as we can and keeping it away from the other empires. We can see the time of galactic war at the end of the tunnel, but it's still quite a ways off from here.
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Oct 28, 2021 16:37
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