Distant Worlds: Shadows (Released)

[Nefaro]

Also a war drains pretty heavily on your economy. Especially if you are rebuilding a planet that has been bombarded into oblivion.

Not to mention.. enemy ships will destroy your freighters if they happen upon them while there's a war on. 

Commerce raiders, yay!


Also:

This IS Ceti Alpha V!

[JudgeDredd]

...let the Ai control everything except production and just concentrate on sending ships to mine stuff, then add tech research and so on. The game plays itself on auto...

I think that's part of my problem with the game. I know you can't please everyone all of the time...but not knowing what to turn off and on and when seems to be the difficult hurdle of these configurable games.

I get that turning everything over to the AI makes it easy to get into - but then you have difficulty understanding what to switch off and what to switch on and when....

Sometimes there are so many options that the game becomes a battle with what you should be taking care off against what you can let the AI do - whilst keeping some control over proceedings.

I guess my problem seems to be with the game what to do and when...what to leave to the AI and what to take control of and - even more - WHEN to take control of AI controlled functions.

I end up just watching the game play itself and responding to random messages!

Like I said - I've bought the game and all the expansions (including Shadows) and I WANT to love it and I WANT to learn it - but it's one of those games that fights me every single time I start it.  :'(

[Rayfer]

Crap....I did the hot fix/patch and when it was over and I went to play, all of my saved games were gone.  It was probably in the patch notes which I, of course, didn't read. 

[Kushan]

There still there. just navigate up one level in the load save game menu. DW saves games in separate folders based on the game version. From what Erik said the new patch is save game compatible.

[Rayfer]

Thanks....I went to the Matrix forums and got the same reply.  But I already started a new game....so no harm done!

[mikeck]

...let the Ai control everything except production and just concentrate on sending ships to mine stuff, then add tech research and so on. The game plays itself on auto...

I think that's part of my problem with the game. I know you can't please everyone all of the time...but not knowing what to turn off and on and when seems to be the difficult hurdle of these configurable games.

I get that turning everything over to the AI makes it easy to get into - but then you have difficulty understanding what to switch off and what to switch on and when....

Sometimes there are so many options that the game becomes a battle with what you should be taking care off against what you can let the AI do - whilst keeping some control over proceedings.

I guess my problem seems to be with the game what to do and when...what to leave to the AI and what to take control of and - even more - WHEN to take control of AI controlled functions.

I end up just watching the game play itself and responding to random messages!

Like I said - I've bought the game and all the expansions (including Shadows) and I WANT to love it and I WANT to learn it - but it's one of those games that fights me every single time I start it.  :'(

I get it. When I run into a game like this, I force myself to play for 2 hours straight. I promise myself that I won't quit for two hours. Start clicking things to see what they do. Right click a planet and see your choices...pick one, etc. At the end of the two hours, you should know enough to know whether you will like it or not

[Kushan]

Doesn;t seem like the AI is designing mining ships with enough fuel tanks to reach across the solar system in a pre-warp start. I'm about to run out of fuel (caslon) because gas mining ships are just sitting in orbit around my home system. Whats strange is that the AI is designing freighters with enough fuel.

[mikeck]

Are they que'd up waiting for their turn at the pump? Maybe if your starting planet is the only source for fuel? Just guessing

Does anyone else have trouble seeing the icons for your ships? I mean the little colored triangle or diamond around them? When I scroll out so the ship sprite isn't visible, I can barely see then icon thingy...very thin and faint.

[Kushan]

Are they que'd up waiting for their turn at the pump? Maybe if your starting planet is the only source for fuel? Just guessing

Does anyone else have trouble seeing the icons for your ships? I mean the little colored triangle or diamond around them? When I scroll out so the ship sprite isn't visible, I can barely see then icon thingy...very thin and faint.

No they were all almost fully fueled. When I clicked on them the range ring barely reaches the planet in question. Not going to worry about it too much now. Normal freighters seem to be handling things now that my gas mining station is in place.

Now that you mention it, they do seem a little dim when zoomed out.

I'm having a lot more fun this second game then I did my first one. Set research to very expensive, so its dragging out the pre-warp phase a little more. In my first game I was just starting to get a system economy going when I got warp drives. This game I've actually going to have that economy up and running for more then 5 minutes by the time I get warp capability.

[Grimnirsson]

In a game that dependent on AI controlling so many aspects of the game it needs to be a real good AI - is it good?

[Yskonyn]

I think the AI does a perfectly adequate job. Of course there are some problems with it, but that's bound to happen in complex games like these, but the AI is perfectly adequate in helping you manage your empire and it's also putting up quite the challenge as an opponent in this version of the game.

Economic peaks and valleys are still common, depending on your starting position, so you might find that the one game is much more easier than the next one you play.
You can enforce this somewhat by being smart about the setup of the game and the myriad of settings you have available to tailor the game. Still it might sometimes turn out to be a lot easier than the next start or a lot harder than the next start.

@Kushan, I have no idea why your freighters won't fly to the planet if its within their range?
If you mean that your ship building AI is not upgrading your freighters correctly with gear you want, you might want to check on the size of the hull. The AI cannot make designs if they would 'outsize' the hull it is using.

@JD, I feel you pain. :) I've had this with the original game. But I can safely say that you can just fiddle around with the settings. There is only one way to learn and that is to play.
The most confusing part, I found at first, was to keep tabs on what my ships and fleets were doing because most of them were set to automatic. You need to let this feeling go. You don't need to know where every individual ship hangs out. That is what fleets are for;

You select or build a given amount of ships to form a fleet with. This fleet will not be on automatic and you can roam about attacking and defending where needed with your input.
The rest of the denizens of your empire will roam about.
Exploration is something you can leave on automatic. I find it tedious and time consuming and to be honest I don't care where my general exploration goes to. I do, however, have 2 or 3 exploration ships on manual to quickly buzz off into interesting systems I find.
Another way to let automation help you, while still maintaining control.

In the options menu I would first go with getting rid of the following tickmarks for automation, so you can control this yourself:
Fleet Formation
Research
Ship Design (if you want, but for a first game I would leave this on auto)

Then in the dropdown list window I would go with the following options:
Set all to: Suggest, except for Colonization and Diplomatic Gifts. Set those to control manually.

This would give you a game (pre-warp or classic) where you can focus on some aspects, while the AI will help you build up, but suggests something before it will actually do it. This will make it much more clear what the AI does and helps getting stuff to be more clear.
Once you feel you start to know what you're doing, change other options to manual as you go.

[JudgeDredd]

^Thanks for the advice.

I'll be giving a pre-warp game a go today (if I can get my daughter off World of Warcraft!)

[Grim.Reaper]

^Thanks for the advice.

I'll be giving a pre-warp game a go today (if I can get my daughter off World of Warcraft!)

Let us know how it goes....if you can get into it, maybe hope for me too:)

[Yskonyn]

Oh and JD, don't play as the Pirates for your first game.
I would only advise to play as them once you have a solid grasp on how the game works. Their ways of making money and running their economy is pretty different. Stick with a normal empire at first.

[mikeck]

I have never won a game of Distant Worlds I can honestly say. Now, a disclaimer: I always manually select my opponents and I set a few of them to be one or two levels more advanced than me. After all, do we really think all civilizations are starting at the same time? Anyway , it force me to attack other races to secure resources and colonies and to forge alliances with other "special needs" races like me