Distant Worlds: Shadows (Released)

[mikeck]

Dammit! He found us...hide!

[Tuna]

Dammit! He found us...hide!

Oops.. I didn't realize we were hiding!

[Yskonyn]

Hi Erik! Don't mind the loonies here! :D

[mikeck]

Hi Erik! Don't mind the loonies here! :D

I prefer paranoid schizophrenic with associate personality disorder

[Nefaro]

It's well worth attempting to send another colony ship if the neutral planet's racial type is the same, or even of the same family group.  The extra initial head start in population is always helpful, even if it takes some work to sway them.

[mikeck]

This is the reAson I play with independents "rare". Annoying. I also play without space monsters and with pirates on rare. Except pirates in the new expansion, they are merely annoyances I feel

[Rayfer]

This is the reAson I play with independents "rare". Annoying. I also play without space monsters and with pirates on rare. Except pirates in the new expansion, they are merely annoyances I feel

I feel the same way about space monsters but I enjoy the pirates and independents, they throw a wrinkle into things, especially the pirates who you can do a lot more with in the Shadows release, you can hire them to attack other empire's bases, to protect your own or you can go to war against them (which I am finding much harder to win with Shadows, they are tough opponents now).

[mikeck]

Agreed. I play with pirates on in shadows. Before they were just something to blow up your ships until you could build a military. Now they are useful as they can smuggle stuff for you and are a lot more useful as mercenaries.

On a side not, something really cool: I role play with this game(have to create a back story)... And in my current game, I play as if my planet are colonists from "the west"  who left earth. The excluded nations were left to fight for earths remaining resources for which they went to war and - in essence- destroyed themselves. So, I am exploring my galaxy and I find "sol". It has 8 planets...the third is a continental planet with remnants of a independent human civilization! Cool. Naturally, I  am going to return and reclaim it in the name of the "Commonwealth of Planets"

[Martok]

Incidentally, I noticed there's now a checkbox you can click so that destroyed pirate factions don't respawn.  Yay! 



I have both a Wekkarus and Zenox campaign going right now, same settings for both:  Classic age, max size galaxy (both number of stars & sectors), 12 empires total, Normal difficulty.  I'm having fun with them so far. 


I do have to second one of JudgeDredd's gripes however -- empire placement continues to be an issue (and has been since the original game):  In both my campaigns, I've started out near two other empires (both are barely a sector away).  In a galaxy with 1500 stars and 75 sectors -- and only 12 empires -- this seems a bit much.  Yes, I know I could set the other empires to max distance, but then it seems like they always wind up crowded to close to each other, which hampers the AI even further. 

I feel that some further tweaking of the algorithm governing this may be warranted. 

Hi Erik! Don't mind the loonies here! :D

Well that would be all of us...  :P 


In any case, welcome to Grogheads, Erik!  Good to see you on here. 

It's well worth attempting to send another colony ship if the neutral planet's racial type is the same, or even of the same family group.  The extra initial head start in population is always helpful, even if it takes some work to sway them.

+1 

Don't give up on that independent colony, JD!  Even if you lose a colony ship or two, it's still worth a few attempts. 

[Kushan]

If you play with 9 races, how many systems do you use?  The default 1000?

I've only been tinkering with the 400 system option because that's plenty large enough for jumping back in (and 3-4 AI races).  It may be a better introduction for those like Judge who feel overwhelmed, as I often felt like that once everything began to get established on larger settings.

Irregular galaxy with 700 stars. Pre-warp, pirates set to many, and colony prevalence and independent life set to occasional/scattered. Colony range limit is set to 2. Shadow story events are turned off. Galaxy aggression is set to restless.

Its turning to out to be one of the more interesting and challenging pre-warp games I've had so far. Started in a system with 13 planets and a ton of moons. Have multiple sources from the common materials (lead, steel, gold, and irridium) and plenty of fuel sources. Its almost year 10 and I'm now finishing up construction of all the mining stations. Haven't run into any pirates. Which has made stockpiling chormium, carbon fibre, nekros stone. and polymer a real challenge. I've been able to avoid any resource shortages by not building any I don't have to. I waited until year 8 before I built any military ships. Even then all I built where a few escorts to try and protect the outlying mining stations from raiders. Going to need those resources en masse in the next few game years though.

Hi Erik! Don't mind the loonies here! :D

Well that would be all of us...  :P 

I like to think I'm at least partially sane.

[Darkspire]

I think the manual says somewhere that if a planet has a pre existing colony of an independent race, then it has to be the same race to colonize without invading. Most colonies don't have anyone on them so its not an issue. If you click on the planet, it should tell you whether you can colonize in the window bottom left

As for starting location. You can't set every race to be far away but one or two should have worked. I get beat results when I set them all to random... Usually seven races on a huge map with with over 1000 stars

Greetings  from the Darkverse :) The following information is my own observations mixed with things I have learned over the last few years playing Distant Worlds and from the Matrix forum and is current with the new expansion Shadows.     

You can send a colony ship from any race to colonize an independent, it does not have to be the same race. When the message comes up that tells you that an independent colony has been found by one of your far flung exploration ships it will say if they are friendly or not, there attitude towards your race comes from the race biases.txt which contains how every race feels about each other (values from 50 to -50) and also from what race type you are (Humanoid, Ursidian, Insectoid, Reptilian, Amphibian, Rodent, Machine). Not to sure if there are other factors involved like your reputation but the first two definitely hold true. If you find an independent that is the same race as yourself then its more or less assured that they will join you if you send a colony ship. Useful thing to remember is not to click the flag to set up an auto colonize, if you do that the nearest planet will get the build order and if that planet is on the fringe of your empire it may be lacking resources. The best thing to do is go to the construction yard screen, select your homeworld and build one from there, then go into the expansion planner and select the planet and click to send your newly ordered colony ship from there. This of course is down to your own logical assessment as to whether you have good enough fuel cell capacity and your hyper drive tech is going to get the ship there in a reasonable amount of time.

All races can be set to be distant from you from the game setup screen, makes for some really weird games if you set your start point as the center of the galaxy with about 6-8 races.

There are some really good videos on how to play Distant Worlds, it does seem over whelming at first but all the various parts can be tackled separately, let the AI help you in some areas while you concentrate on others, once your comfortable and feel that you have got the hang of an area take over another area manually and just slowly reduce the AI help till you get to the point that you are happy with, the AI in Shadows has been improved immeasurably to that end. I myself after playing for a few years still leave the AI to deal with taxes, troop recruitment, suggestions for trade, war and sanctions and colony buildings, I sometimes take over the intelligence part as well if I am in the mood. The important thing to remember is that it is your game, if you want the AI to do 90% of the work then let it, if you want to micromanage everything and check out what freight is being hauled following freighters to see where and what they do, do it, as long as your enjoying the game then do not worry about how others play, if your stuck there are always folk to ask over at the Matrix forums, we are a small community but try to be a friendly and helpful one.

Darkspire

[JudgeDredd]

...
All races can be set to be distant from you from the game setup screen, makes for some really weird games if you set your start point as the center of the galaxy with about 6-8 races.
...

Thanks for your tips - but this "placement" of races simply doesn't work.

Here...this is my galaxy - there are 3 AI factions and look where it placed one of them

[Darkspire]

I never use the setups for empires unless I am testing new races for my mod, rest of the time I just leave it on random for about 8 races.
All I can say from from your image is what size is the galaxy? looks like a 10x10+ possibly? how many stars and how many empires? I am no expert on this matter but I tend to look at like I am looking down from above at a square box and have, for example, 20 marbles (me and 19 empires) now I put one in the middle of the box (me) and then try to place the other 19 marbles equal distance and as far as possible away from myself, not sure but I would say that I would have a problem with placing them like that, there are going to be some closer than others.
After a few games under your belt and a fair understanding of the tech tree the setup you have posted would be a fairly decent start IMHO, resources are not distributed evenly across the galaxy, you have two close neighbors to trade with for any missing resources or two close targets to increase your empires planets, If that was me and I had mid range tech I would take the homeworlds and just expand the empire, I tend to go with the 'kill a sapling before it becomes a tree' approach, yet again with a few games under your belt you will know what races can cause you problems and which ones are cannon fodder.

Darkspire

[JudgeDredd]

It's 8x8 (I did think I had setup 10x10) - and 400 stars

[Darkspire]

You never mentioned the amount of empires but on a middle sized map you are going to have problems with distance from you with the more empires added on game setup. Even on a 15x15 1400 19 empires can sometimes be generated close to your home system. On a map of that size I would say set the number of empires to 8, the settings to distant and your empire at center on an irregular map and see what you end up with.
Remember that the amount of empires you set up do not mean that is the limit for the game, I generally put in 12 empires on a 10x10 700 and by mid game there are sometimes 15-16 empires and 10+ pirate factions.

Darkspire