Distant Worlds Catch All

Those are some significant changes to the game. Is it safe to play it now?

garion333 wrote:

Not going to happen, unfortunately. The price isn't likely to come down either, but the longer you wait, the more it does get patched up. So there's that.

I haven't picked the game up in months. I never felt like I got a good feel for it and with the flurry of patches being released early on, I kept feeling like I was starting over in some ways. Aaaaaaaand then a bunch of other games got released and a big Steam sale, yada yada yada. I think about the game from time to time, but don't actually play it. Strange.

I thought I was the only one. DW looks like a great game that I really want to like, but the time I would need to invest in this to grok the gameplay details is too much. Also, minor things about the game bother me like the scroll speed and the gamespeed always seems off a bit. Either too fast or way too slow. Overall though I'm happy the game exists and definitely will give it another try soon.

Definitely going to dig into it again.

So tell me is the game better, worse, same, or different from Sins? I have almost pulled the trigger on this several times this weekend, but don't want to drop forty on something I play once and shelve because it is craptacular.

It's way different. It's more like Europa Universalis in space than Sins (actually Hearts of Iron III is perhaps a better comparison with it's automation stuff). It may look and sound like Sins in many ways, but it plays nothing like it.

Agreed. Very different from Sins. Think more like a Maxis Space Empire Simulator.

Well I picked it up - so we shall see. All the comparisons to MOO put me over the top. Any thoughts on the Armada game?

It's not really Master of Orion, either. I haven't ever really played a game quite like Distant Worlds. It probably is closer to Sim City in space as Robear mentioned. It's a very macro game and there's a lot you're better off not trying to micromanage.

I didn't touch Armada 2526 game, but what I gathered from the Wargamer thread was that it was a fine game, but a bit bland.

Macro is the word. The game will suggest colonies for you, manage fleets, run the civilian economy, generally do all sorts of things. You respond to attacks (if you want, policy will let the AI do that too), design ships, pull the trigger on colonization, manage the economy at high level (by spending on projects, or not) and similar tasks. It's oddly satisfying for something so high-level.

Is it worth the extra 10 to get a physical copy? I'm wondering if the manual is worth it?

Markly wrote:

Is it worth the extra 10 to get a physical copy? I'm wondering if the manual is worth it?

With how much the game keeps changing as it gets patched, I don't know how accurate the manual would be anymore.

I just printed the pdf, but garion333 has a valid point.

I did the extra $10 just because Matrix Games doesn't provide free redownloads after a certain period. The unopened cardboard box is still sitting under my desk. I don't really regret doing it, but even if I had a hard drive failure I'd be able to torrent it and use my cd key (probably), so it may not have been the best choice.

Distant Worlds expansion...patch...thingy coming soon

On the Distant Worlds forum, the Director of Product Development called it a patch but it looks like they've done a lot of work on this. Again, on their forum, they say it looks like it will be ready by Christmas. It looks like it's free.

On the positive, it appears that they have streamlined a lot of things, made a lot of UI improvements, and added some new ship components (fighters, anyone?).
On the negative side of things, from the screenshots on their forums, it looks like they have kept the font, which kind of sucks.

I'm definitely looking forward to this.

I like what I'm hearing.

Though it's being called and expansion and has the product page on Matrix's site, so I wouldn't expect it to be free. I'm browsing the forums to see if I can find anything about that.

I've been waiting for a reason to pick this up again.

garion333 wrote:

Though it's being called and expansion and has the product page on Matrix's site, so I wouldn't expect it to be free.

Yeah your probably right about that. I did not see a price on the Matrix Store page for this plus I know I saw the word patch (and expansion) in the Distant World forums posted by their director of product dev and kind of jumped to conclusions. But after looking at other Matrix games that are coming soon, none of them have a price either. Sorry for the misinformation.

Expansion video at the link, but Tom makes a good point that I think is worth reading/discussing.

I know the people who are going to buy Distant Worlds are a pretty niche audience with a fair amount of patience, but the production quality on that video is atrocious.

In other news, watching a video for Distant Worlds just makes me want to play AI War more.

Speaking as someone who is really looking forward to the expansion, that video was pretty damn bad. But that seems to be how Matrix rolls. For example, for years their web site has been tortuous to navigate; only recently has it become a bit more friendly. And by "a bit more friendly" I mean slightly less ball-crushingly tortuous. But as a fan of a niche genre, I am just happy to be able to get stuff like this, no matter how hard the publisher tries to keep it's offerings purely inside their niche.

Just wanted to let any fans of Distant Worlds know that the new expansion, Return of the Shakturi is coming out today, probably before 5pm EST. This is a major addition to the game, with many significant interface and management improvements, new units (fighters, bombers, and more), and a new story line.

Matrix is setting the price at $24.99, but current DW owners can get it for $19.99 until the end of the year. If you don't own DW, $19.99 is RotS's standard price if you purchase with DW.

Enjoy!

Just grabbed it D-Man, thanks for the heads-up. I see the Wargamer guys are talking about it too.

Huh? Still $40? Still a $25 expansion? No other sales place but their web site?

Interesting, but that's a lot to venture nowadays, with the abundance of Steam sales.

Stele wrote:

Huh? Still $40? Still a $25 expansion? No other sales place but their web site?

Interesting, but that's a lot to venture nowadays, with the abundance of Steam sales.

You can only ever hope for a sale of $5 or so. It's how Matrix works, for better or worse. They cater to a niche audience and that niche will pay.

Usually once or twice a year they have a 25% off sale. That's about as good as it will get though. Good game though.

I'm interested, but not sure if I'm interested enough to pull the trigger. Think I'll sleep on it.

So did you do it, or am I going to have to crack and do it

I didn't. The 2D thing put me off, but I still might be convinced.

Let me know if you crack and what you think when you do.

Haakon7 wrote:

I didn't. The 2D thing put me off, but I still might be convinced.

Let me know if you crack and what you think when you do. :)

Just curious but what was it about 2D that you don't like? I'm working on a hexagon tile based 2D starship game now and kind of stuck with 2D due to budget & my very poor 3D modeling skills. Was it the fact that outer space should allow the use of the z-axis during combat? I've been struggling what to do about that. It's just not user-intuitive to have stacks of friendly / enemy ships within a single tile so I'm keeping everything on a strict 2D plane.

I'm 100% okay with 2d in 4x games. Just sayin.

Yeah, it was a combination of the z-axis issue and the suggested scope of the game. The discussion and descriptions of the game seemed to be selling me a far-reaching yet scalable 4x game where I could watch fleets converge to determine the fate of star systems, knowing that it had taken decades to set the stage. But when I started looking at the screenshots and considered what they were trying to do, it felt like they let it down somewhat.

That said, I don't mind 2D games, or even ASCII. I loved Space Rangers 2, for example, so am not really opposed to the design, but it would be more about managing expectations.

I could still be convinced about Distant Worlds.