Distant Worlds Catch All

I went for it because I'm an absolute sucker for a good space game. I'm hoping to dive into it this weekend and see how it measures up to Aurora.

Yonder wrote:

I went for it because I'm an absolute sucker for a good space game. I'm hoping to dive into it this weekend and see how it measures up to Aurora.

I think that they are really two sides of the space 4X coin.
Aurora: very fiddly, hands on everything, nth degree of detail, almost no automation, labyrinthine UI, Harpoon-in-space combat.
Distant Worlds: hands off, abstract, tons of automation, nice UI (although I agree with whoever posted about the tutorial text being hard to read, most of the rest of the UI is pretty nice), almost cartoony space combat (which can be taken as a knock, and I suppose it is, but the point is that it is nothing like Aurora's and lacks the visual splendor of, say, a Sins of a Solar Empire).

Whoever said (in this or the space 4X game thread) that this feels like EU3 in space came pretty close to summing up my experience with this game so far.

Kehama I would hate to make you waste $40 but this one might be worth it if your a 4x fan. Especially if your into real space as it does a relatively decent job of making you feel like your playing in real space. The game does need some work and has a steep learning curve if you want to get in to it and fidget around although you can leave pretty much everything autmated and just take control of an exploration vessel.

Robear wrote:

So one thing that's not clear to me is whether the AI will prompt you for military ship production. Seems to me I'm expanding, but not being asked to build military ships (except for resupplies). Is that intended to be left to the player? In which case I need to start working. :-)

Yeah if in the options you have the suggest turned on for the ship builder ai it will throw up a msgbox every so often saying "we've analyzed your situation and you should build 4x destroyer 6xfrigate etc etc". Apparently there is a problem/bug that it is currently not building your new custom designs. I leave mine off as I am trying to figure out all the micro available in the game.

I'm going to do the micro stuff after I get familiar. I just was not seeing it, and felt like I needed more military ships, so I asked.

Have you guys found the custom ship design to be worth the effort? I suppose not if it's bugged to where the AI doesn't build them? I've always left that (ship design) automated and controlled everything else on my own. I have read on the matrix forums where people found custom escorts to be worth while but that seemed minor to me?

Also what races are people trying?

clever id wrote:

Have you guys found the custom ship design to be worth the effort? I suppose not if it's bugged to where the AI doesn't build them? I've always left that (ship design) automated and controlled everything else on my own. I have read on the matrix forums where people found custom escorts to be worth while but that seemed minor to me?

Also what races are people trying?

Its really open to the player and poorly documented. I messed with it for about an hour with paper and pen handy to figure it out. You can definetly min/max it out better than the automation ai whether or not its worth it to do so is up to you. Heck you could turn everything on auto and just design the ships (although right now that bug would probably inhibit doing so). For example you can make the starting frigate faster, better turn rate, more weapons, but cost more. You could make your escorts go the same speed as your contructors (to me that seems their main role) and beef them up a bit. You could also take the troop transport off the destroyer and get more speed/weapons/defenses and make it for colony defense and then build another one with troop transport for inavasions.

It all depends if thats how you get your enjoyment out of the game, the game is easily beatable though just letting the ai handle ship design.

So I put a few hours into this over the weekend, and so far I'm pretty interested. I had one brutal false start where I was quickly rolled, but it was a nice learning experience. I started as one of the smart, research bonus races (there are lots of pretty sweet races, enough for several different play styles. My only complaint was that it looked like all 4-5 of the insect races were hive minded, and vice versa, that's the sort of scifi cliche that I have been wanting to die for awhile now. Just because something has an exoskeleton and an antenna doesn't mean that they have a hive mind, and just because something has a vertebra doesn't mean that they aren't! This letdown was balanced by the existence of a big-headed baby T-rex race.)

However after a quick initial period of growth my income stalled out very quickly, as clever mentioned. This left me next door to an increasingly agitated neighbor (another tech race) with a navy at least three times the size of mine. The agitation was partially my fault, as I had not turned off the setting to avoid other Empires systems if we were peaceful. They understandably took exception to mining ships and whatnot that went into their systems to mine what they would view as their resources. Their attacking of freighters which were only trying to trade with them made less sense by itself, but I believe it was just part of their overall policy of ramping up aggression towards me in general. For their part, being larger than me, they continued to send mining ships and freighters to my territories without compunction.

Overall I thought this shaped up very very well and believably, and I was suitably impressed. I should expand on what I mean by "attacking" my civilian ships. They had escorts wandering around in pairs or singly which would shoot up mining ships in their surrounding systems. They didn't damage them much, and never pursued after they escaped. They had a fleet of 23 ships at their major planet closest to my system. This is where the freighters would attempt to stop. When my freighters warped into the area a single ship would break off from the fleet of 23 and head toward the freighter, generally chasing it off without firing a shot. Basically, this wasn't some sort of crazy genocidal campaign, this was a completely reasonable, limited response to noncombatants that weren't respecting their territory.

I wanted to increase my fleet of 8 up to 30 or so, enough to actually be able to make this guy listen to my warnings and stop attacking my people, unfortunately I was broke. I had been spending all of my money on colony ships and space ports, as well as the construction ships and resupply ships that the AI constantly requested from me. Basically I had spread too fast, too soon, and was now unable to protect my territory. Given that my foe was another tech race I am pretty confident that had I spread to 4-5 colonies instead of 12-14 I would be in substantially better shape right now.

Anyhow, this went on for awhile, my relationship with the aliens slowly growing worse by the month, and I sorta knew that things were heading for doom.

"Hey!" the AI said, "Listen! You should rebase your fleet here, you will be positioned great for a surprise attack on his research facility here." I was pretty sure this would end in tears, but I was up for that too, I agreed to the request, then ordered the attack.

After the research station was destroyed my advisor popped up again "We've been thinking about this whole situation with the aliens, and have decided it's a good idea to declare war on them, do you agree?" You heard that right, I just blew the crap out of their research station and we were still not officially at war, when they say surprise attack, they really mean it. Of course this obviously military action carried out prior to a declaration of war has damaged my Empire's trustworthiness. Exquisite!

I figured at this point the simmering cold war was officially at an end, so I agreed to declare war on them. A short while later their 23 ships warped in over my capital and destroyed its spaceport and two military defensive bases. They then started to carve up my fleet.

My advisor popped up "Hey, we don't think this war is going all that well, we should make peace." That's a fantastic assessment, I wonder if it ever thought that a different outcome was possible. The aliens let us know that they'd be happy to go to peace with us if we became our vassals. Although the details of the vassal relationship intrigued me, I decided that it would be more effective to start a new game.

Overall I was actually really impressed by the AI on both fronts during this game. Yeah it was pretty ridiculous for it to want to carry out an attack on a totally superior foe, but the details of this attack were perfect. The AI identified a valuable and vulnerable target close to my borders, and the steps that I could take to prepare for that possibility. Keep in mind that the only thing that the AI requested was the re-deploy to a different planet, with a suggestion for what to do next, I was the one that actually carried out the attack, and I did so knowing that it would end the game for me. I'm sure that the AI knew I didn't have a chance, and if I actually had the money for it I'm sure it would have been requesting funding for tons more warships. As it was it was telling me how I could do the most damage with what I had.

On my foe's side the AI was even better. At first we enjoyed a small amount of trade (with no formal agreement) but then I went into a second phase of expansion that stretched fairly deep into some systems very close to it's capitol, systems where it was in fact already mining. Not only that, but this race has a very small military.
1. It moved it's fleet from (I assume) it's capital into the rich formerly independent colony in between their lands and mine, a perfect position to cover my world and protect their own.
2. They use nonlethal force to kick miners and explorers out of their systems, freighters as well.
3. This race has the audacity to attack and destroy a valuable research base without warning, then declare war on it. Rather than going around the weak parts and destroying them, they take their large fleet straight to the capital, destroy it's defenses, and demand the dominion that they so obviously deserve.

Right now I'm doing my second play through as an economic race, since that seems to be easier for a beginner to pick up. I also bumped up from a "tiny" to "small" galaxy to give me a little more time to settle in before a fight.

garion333 wrote:

Tom Chick has a post on Fidgit about the game.

I really hope they talk about this game on Three Moves Ahead...

EDIT: He likes the game for making him care, but in Tom's words:

I'll have more to say about this in the future, but I'm afraid I don't really recommend the game, at least until it's been patched some more. Right now, as of v1.02, much of it simply doesn't work as it's supposed to. It's a great idea, but it falls apart the more you handle it. :(

Sounds like a wait and see, or sale.

The 1.03 patch is coming out on Thursday, and is supposed to address many of his concerns.

Yonder wrote:

The 1.03 patch is coming out on Thursday, and is supposed to address many of his concerns.

Matrix Games wrote:

Items fixed/added in v1.0.3:

1. Memory usage extensively optimized and reduced. Large games now consume much less memory. Should resolve the crashes related to Out of Memory and crashes during save/load.
2. Added AutoSave feature - turn on in Game Options screen (O key), can set variable interval between saves from 10-60 minutes
3. Fleets now respond properly to manual control - will not automatically disband
4. Added new buttons in Fleets screen: Repair and Refuel selected fleet, Retrofit selected fleet
5. Names of damaged ships display as red in Ships and Bases screen
6. Added new button to Ships and Bases screen: Repair Selected Ship
7. Fixed Design screen issues (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...). Also reworked Designs screen as follows:
- Can filter designs to show: All, Non-Obsolete, Latest of each type
- Can toggle designs as obsolete/not obsolete directly from designs list
- Can mass upgrade designs from Designs Screen - multi-select designs and click Upgrade button
- Allow retrofit to any non-obsolete design for a given ship type (right-click menu)
- AI ship design will no longer auto-obsolete manually created designs
8. Fixed Trade negative money with another empire (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...)
9. Fixed crash when attack abandoned ship (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...)
10. Fixed drawing crash (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...�)
11. Fixed Design values for Recreation center and Medical center components (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...)
12. Fixed bug where could build advanced designs without proper tech (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...)
13. Ships evaluate space monsters as stronger threats, keeping their distance from them when attacking (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...)
14. Fixed UI issues after history events from Zenox (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...)
15. Fixed exploration ships sometimes getting stuck, especially when manually assigned to explore a system
16. Refueling bug fixed where ships prefer not to refuel at colonies with incomplete space ports (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...)
17. Can now continue playing after you lose a game, but only if you have not been completely conquered (no colonies left) (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...? m=2420055)
18. Fixed crash research program sometimes not stopping (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...)
19. Ensure Resupply Ships properly deploy and refuel themselves from own supply (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...)
20. Fixed stalled construction problems - construction now much less likely to stall
21. Added Resort Bases to build menu (were missing previously) (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...)
22. Bombard weapons and Torpedo weapons now properly used in designs when upgrading (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...)
23. Fixed positioning of information in Selection Panel (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...)
24. Canceling a retrofit mission for a ship no longer prevents reassigning another retrofit mission (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...)
25. Fixed retrofitting issues (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...)
26. Fixed crash in Trade screen (http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...)
27. Rebalanced and reduced colony income for large empires - corruption stronger when grow very large

Also:

Matrix Games wrote:

Also, while this patch contains a lot of stuff, there's still more that we haven't got to yet. So we'll be continuing to work on the remaining issues and improvement areas. But we though it best to get this update released as soon as possible, especially with the important memory fixes.

Some features we're planning to add soon:

- support for mass retrofitting from Ships and Bases screen
- allow toggling which ship and base icons are displayed when zoomed out to sector/galaxy view (especially useful late game when want to focus on war and fleets)
- tweaks for fleet AI to help them stay together better and be even more relentless as they pursue you

linky

Yonder wrote:

AAR type stuff

After reading your report and based on my previous experiences, I think DW does a excellent job presenting a universe in which you can easily role play game after game and have different outcomes. I'm not much of a min/max player so this suits me well.

Eep. James over at Out of Eight gave this one a 8 out of 8. Eep. Not good for my wallet.

And long writeups (see: Yonder) don't help to keep my impulses under control.

Muahahahahahahahaha

I finally sat down for a good 2 hour session last night and the game is finally starting to grow on me. I found I had to really tweak with the automation settings as well as the starting game size in order to really start to "get it". Like 8 of 8 mentioned...there is a subtle learning curve here and you really have to understand that this game is trying to help you with the automation tasks.

garion333 wrote:

Eep. James over at Out of Eight gave this one a 8 out of 8. Eep. Not good for my wallet.

And long writeups (see: Yonder) don't help to keep my impulses under control.

Geee, that does look nice. How is there already a torrent of really good looking new games in April?

Looking around a continuing complaint is that the high fuel usage of ships makes it hard to coordinate offenses. A common suggestion to help ease this is to put Collectors on the larger ships that you generally manually control.

A (solar) collector provides power to the ships while it is stopped in a system with a star. (I am guessing the "stopped" part is a quick and dirty fix to make sure that the power from the collector couldn't be used for propulsion, if I'm wrong let me know the real reason, if I'm right hopefully that will eventually be changed) This means that while your ships are stopped at a planet waiting for new orders they won't be using any more fuel, one collector should be sufficient to run all of the life support, control systems, and other passive systems. As it is right now, even when the ships aren't moving they are gradually burning fuel to power all of these secondary systems.

It's unnecessary to put these things on the smaller escorts or civilian ships because they are almost always moving, so they will rarely benefit. Even if collectors were changed to operate while moving the computer does a fine job of keeping ships refueled in between patrols or trade runs, it's your manual ships that you have to worry about, it's pretty annoying to select your fleet to attack some space monster and find that they only have 3/4 fuel because they have been idling for so long.

I'm working on this game right now for a review, and while I find the concept really interesting, I'm not sure about the interface and indeed, there seem to be things which aren't working correctly. Hopefully the patch will address the later, but the former is still an issue. For example, there really needs to be a GUI interface (like in Gratuitous Space Battles) rather than a list interface for ship design. Also, a lot of the text is really quite tiny on my 22 inch monitor - hate to think what it would be like on a 30 incher.

Good call Yonder.

I've really scratched my head about the fuel issue...especially for ship that are not moving. I'll give the collector "fix" a try.

Yonder wrote:

Looking around a continuing complaint is that the high fuel usage of ships makes it hard to coordinate offenses. A common suggestion to help ease this is to put Collectors on the larger ships that you generally manually control.

darrenl wrote:

I've really scratched my head about the fuel issue...especially for ship that are not moving. I'll give the collector "fix" a try.

That's a good design fix. Also, don't forget you can create and deploy resupply ships which will allow you to harvest fuel from gas clouds and gas giants and refuel fleets far from home.

fyi....patch 1.0.3 as detailed above is available as a public beta.

...very noticeable performance boost for me. Patch is worth it's weight in gold alone for the "Refuel Fleet" button

Good. I was going to comment on the fleet issue, but that's the only real bug (besides one crash) that's impeding play for me. I'm more comfortable every time I sit down with the game, and learning to focus on the high level creates a different narrative from that you'd see in a more bottom-up game. I think this is shaping up to be a classic.

Faceless Clock wrote:

For example, there really needs to be a GUI interface (like in Gratuitous Space Battles) rather than a list interface for ship design.

This is not a big deal for me personally, I think this is just as valid a way of doing this as having some sort of GUI for doing it. Mind you, I played a lot of Aurora, so I may have a skewed perception on this

Faceless Clock wrote:

Also, a lot of the text is really quite tiny on my 22 inch monitor - hate to think what it would be like on a 30 incher.

This, however, is a pretty big problem. At least they didn't use the same font that gets use din the tutorial.

Hey check it out, I got Tom Chick to record an episode of Three Moves Ahead specifically about Distant Worlds!

.....Ok I had nothing to do with it really, but there IS the 0.45% chance I got him to elaborate on his impressions following the 1.03 patch...

Budo wrote:

Hey check it out, I got Tom Chick to record an episode of Three Moves Ahead specifically about Distant Worlds!

.....Ok I had nothing to do with it really, but there IS the 0.45% chance I got him to elaborate on his impressions following the 1.03 patch...

Was just coming to post about the episode. Troy didn't post it early enough today for me to give it a listen, but I will tomorrow. And then I'll probably buy the game. The force is strong with them. I don't know if I'll survive their influence.

Nightmare wrote:

This is not a big deal for me personally, I think this is just as valid a way of doing this as having some sort of GUI for doing it. Mind you, I played a lot of Aurora, so I may have a skewed perception on this

I would agree if the lists seemed to fit. Right now though a big ship can have a lot of parts...and requires a lot of scrolling to design.

garion333 wrote:
Budo wrote:

Hey check it out, I got Tom Chick to record an episode of Three Moves Ahead specifically about Distant Worlds!

.....Ok I had nothing to do with it really, but there IS the 0.45% chance I got him to elaborate on his impressions following the 1.03 patch...

Was just coming to post about the episode. Troy didn't post it early enough today for me to give it a listen, but I will tomorrow. And then I'll probably buy the game. The force is strong with them. I don't know if I'll survive their influence.

Three Moves Ahead is personally responsible for me buying Crusader Kings (I was warm towards it), Armada 2526 (first liked it, became meh very quickly), and reinstalling Sins of a Solar Empire.

If they even liked Distant Worlds I am going to cave in faster than my hopes and dreams after college.

Faceless Clock wrote:
Nightmare wrote:

This is not a big deal for me personally, I think this is just as valid a way of doing this as having some sort of GUI for doing it. Mind you, I played a lot of Aurora, so I may have a skewed perception on this

I would agree if the lists seemed to fit. Right now though a big ship can have a lot of parts...and requires a lot of scrolling to design.

It would work just fine if your 25 beam weapons were listed as:
Beam Weapon Gamma X 25

instead of

Beam Weapon Gamma
Beam Weapon Gamma
Beam Weapon Gamma
Beam Weapon Gamma
...
...

Yonder wrote:
Faceless Clock wrote:
Nightmare wrote:

This is not a big deal for me personally, I think this is just as valid a way of doing this as having some sort of GUI for doing it. Mind you, I played a lot of Aurora, so I may have a skewed perception on this

I would agree if the lists seemed to fit. Right now though a big ship can have a lot of parts...and requires a lot of scrolling to design.

It would work just fine if your 25 beam weapons were listed as:
Beam Weapon Gamma X 25

instead of

Beam Weapon Gamma
Beam Weapon Gamma
Beam Weapon Gamma
Beam Weapon Gamma
...
...

OK, I am recanting. This is not a good way to do this. I looked at all the space 4X games I have handy to remind myself of how they allow ship design. Other games seem to have fixed hull sizes with one of
- fixed hard points with component size limitations based on hull size (MOO)
- slots, the number of which is based on hull size (Space Empires 4 and 5)
- modular hull components (SotS)

Armada 2526 and Sins do not allow you to make your own ship designs.

I wish I had MOO2 up and running to check out, but I believe it has a similar mechanic to the first one (totally not sure about that, I need to get it re-installed and play it). Also, this exercise in nerd-dom made me realize that I totally need to re-download the Gal Civs.

I suppose the saving grace of Distant World's method is that it is more free-form than other games. But it is a bigger pain, no doubt about that.

Is there any DRM associated with this game? How do they handle registration--license key, etc.? Can I install this on more than one machine?

D-Man777 wrote:

Is there any DRM associated with this game? How do they handle registration--license key, etc.? Can I install this on more than one machine?

When I bought it something on the site said there was "No DRM" but there was a license number that they gave you on download that you had to key in. I would assume though, that you can install it however many times you want, I didn't see anywhere that said anything about limited activations.

Three Moves Ahead discusses Distant Worlds