Distant Worlds: Shadows (Released)

[Kushan]

If I only spring for the base game and 1st expansion how much gameplay am I missing v. how much I get? I just can't bring myself to plunk down almost 70 bucks on a game I have not tried. Also, can the 'pre-warp' scenario above be accomplished with just the first two or is one of the later expansions needed?

Shouldn't miss much. You'll get fighters/bombers but you won't get dedicated carriers (they were added in Legends). You will get ion weapons and missile weapon types along with some other new tech options. You will get some of the improved UI with ROTS. Can't seem to find the latest ROTS patch notes, but I'm pretty sure it got a patch this year so it might have gotten some of the Legends UI and AI changes. Legends also runs a little bit smoother (for me at least) then ROTS. ROTS is certainly playable, but Legends seems better optimized for the larger galaxies. Again some of the performance improvements might have been patched into ROTS as well.

You won't get the character system which was added in Legends. No ambassadors, faction leaders, fleet admirals, etc. They really just offer different negative and positive bonuses to your faction. The character system is nice for immersion, but you could go without it and no miss it.

No you can't set up a "pre-warp" start. You can set it up so you only start with your home system in the classic 4x start but you can't set it up to where you have to explore your home system and research hyper drives.

DW+ROTS isn't a bad way to try it out considering the lack of a demo.

[mikeck]

I think Eric mentioned something about a pack coming out. I would just wait a bit.

[Tuna]

LOL.. don't know why, just couldn't resist.. took the 'plunge'.. grabbed DW - Legends and Return.. hoping I love it like a lot of people do!

[panzerde]

LOL.. don't know why, just couldn't resist.. took the 'plunge'.. grabbed DW - Legends and Return.. hoping I love it like a lot of people do!

I hope you enjoy it, Tuna!

I know it can be a daunting game, because there's a lot going on.  One of the things people who love it tend to really like is that it really is a living universe, with a ton of ship traffic going on, private sector ships running all around your empire (and being built at your spaceports), characters going on missions and conducting research - it's amazing, but can quickly seem like WAY too much - if you think you need to try and control it all and/or pay close attention to everything going on.

The first thing to know is that you don't.  The automation is really good.  If you've play Command Ops and come to trust the automation there, this is just as good.  Don't try and do it all.  Automate almost everything except the bits you really want to mess with.  You'll soon find out from the game's feedback system if there's something you should pay attention to and ignore something else.  The pace is not such that you'll be frantically trying to keep on top of it all.

I wrote the following in response to a request for some newbie advice on the Distant Worlds Reddit.  It concerns fleet postures and might be helpful to those just picking up the game:

You can automate a lot of fleet management by using fleet postures. There's a great post on how to do so on the Matrix forums:

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2973167&mpage=1&key=Fleet%2Cposture&#2973167

I'll typically create a number of Strike Forces equipped with frigates and destroyers, and station these at my colonies. I'll set my fleet posture to defend with either a range of "Target and nearby systems" or "Sector." If you have the "Show fleet postures" overlay turned on, you'll see a bunch of blue circles centered on the locations you've based your fleets. Any time there's an attack within those circles, your fleets will automatically move to deal with it.

On the offensive side, you can posture fleets for attack, and then give them a specific target. Again, you can set the range. If I think I'm about to get into a war with an enemy, I'll build several purely offensive fleets, base them behind what I think the front line will be (protected by my defensively postured fleets) give them a target like a space port or defensive battery, and set the range to what I think will be most effective. If it's likely to be a heavily defended system, I'll keep them focused on just that system. If I want more raiding and harassment, I'll tell them to hit the target and then go after targets of opportunity in the whole sector. Again, with the overlay you'll see red lines and red circles centered on your targets.

Then, when you declare war or have it declared on you, your offensive fleets will immediately begin moving toward their targets. I'll typically keep control of a single strike fleet and an invasion fleet mostly made up of troop ships, and I'll personally control those to go after targets of high priority. The rest of my fleets mostly take care of themselves, based on the fleet postures I've assigned.

I also turn on the automation for my advisors to suggest targets. That way, when one of my automated fleets has hit their main target, I'll usually get a good suggestions for what their next target of opportunity should be. By doing it this way I can more easily control a multi-fleet operation against several targets, keeping the enemy AI from concentrating and usually achieving my war goals fairly quickly. You can't totally ignore your automated fleets; you need to check them to be sure they aren't too damaged, out of fuel, etc, but it takes much less micro-management.

Finally, I find that limited wars for a definite objective (a particular colony or system, for example) are more effective than trying to go after an enemy all in one shot.

[Kushan]

Was thinking of doing a how to AAR for new people or for people looking at the game. But it would seem that neither Fraps or the default DW screenshot button will work when a in game menu is open. Anyone happen to know of a fix for this or an alternate way to take a screenshot? Video seems to work just fine, but I don't have any recording software.

[Bison]

If FRAPS isn't working I'm not sure what you'd do unless print screen and paste into paint works.

[Bison]

Print Screen and then pasted it into paint.  One of the more annoying ways to do an AAR having to alt-tab in and out for each screen shot.  But I guess it works.

[Yskonyn]

DW has a screenshot hotkey built in. I dont know which one it is out the top of my head, but I do know its there.

Alternatively I would suggest BandiCam over Fraps. It has the Same functions, but its performance is way better and its video's a lot smaller while retaining 720p.

[Kushan]

Thanks Bison. I always forget about MS paint. I have two monitors so alt-tab isn't that bad. At least DW runs in windowed mode.

DW has a screenshot hotkey built in. I dont know which one it is out the top of my head, but I do know its there.

Its the "/" on the numpad. They remapped it from the numpad "0" in the shadows patch. But it doesn't take a screen shot when a in game menu is open, will only take a screen shot of the galaxy map.

[Tuna]

Thanks for the tips Panzerde.. I went through the tutorials last night, and it certainly looks like something that's going to catch my fancy, at least I hope so!

[son_of_montfort]

Woah, I beat my first game as the Zenox. It wasn't a cake walk, by any means, but my technological superiority allowed me to crush those purple nasty bug guys. Otherwise, I grabbed a win by having a huge empire and completing the Galactic Archives. I have decided I like smaller galaxies with fewer enemy civs, as you get a quicker and more reasonable game.

I am having some problems with the automatic ship designs, however. I research all this cool weaponry and all the automatic ship designer wants to use is Electron Torpedoes and Maxos Blasters! So I manually go in and add stuff like graviton beams, area weapons, and Ion cannons. Trouble is, the AI decides - after a while - that it wants to "upgrade" those into a new MK II and puts back in the Maxos Blasters and Torpedoes!

Any advice on how to deal with this? It is really irritating. On the other hand, I also want to have the AI put in the nuts and bolts to all my designs (the turning engines and such). So I don't want to turn off automation completely.

[Yskonyn]

SoM, this is something I have been experiencing too.
I know this has been a topic of extensive beta testing and I also thought we had nailed it. But I will put up the issue again on the beta tester's forum to get some feedback on it.
I'll report back.

[Yskonyn]

I have been discussing with the beta guys;

Basically this is a problem that has been around since RotS and isn't properly addressed, but there are some workarounds.
What happens is that the AI has a certain focus on design templates. I assume its something like a scripted 'priority' of components it wants to use.

Here's a snippet from Darkspire to illustrate: "(...)for example the Acceleros engine is always dropped in favor of the Quantum engine, the Acceleros engine has a max thrust of 1530 and the Quantum only 1230, the cruise speed for Acceleros is 720 the Quantum is 620, the difference is the energy usage, as the Acceleros uses more energy it is replaced by the slower Quantum one. Same goes for the Equinox drive, it is always replaced by the Kaldos drive, Equinox speed is 18750 and the Kaldos is 13750 but the Kaldos is chosen to replace the Equinox because the Jump initiation is quicker, 12 on the Equinox and 7 on the Kaldos."

In short it comes down to having to babysit the AI when you want it to design ships.
A few things to keep in mind:

With automated design, you can go to the empire policies and uncheck the ones you want to design yourself.
So you can have the AI skip designs for frigates and small freighters, but handle the rest of them.

If you have automated design and manual research, be sure to research what the designs use. The quick way is to look at research priorities in empire policies. If Phasers and torpedoes are tech focuses, the AI designs use those. If you then research rail gun and missiles, fun things are likely to happen when you finally start expanding the blaster tree and low tech phasers.

This partly due to lore reasons where each race has a certain 'flavour' and the AI sticks with that.

The whole situation is a bit cumbersome and the beta team is looking with Codeforce to see wether this can be made working more intuitively.

[JudgeDredd]

Thanks for that Yskonyn

Whilst I can see why that might happen, it does seem like quite a major flaw and a pita to remedy.

So upgrades have different characteristics (energy used/speed or say (for weapons) armour penetration/rate of fire etc) and the AI decides which is best - with the user having no way to change the AI's point of view on that?

Hence (in SoMs case) even though he's seemingly researched better weapons - they are only better in one/some other characteristics but weaker in others - and the AI is deciding his torpedoes and Maxo Blasters (seemingly inferior because they've did research - why reserach weapons if they are weaker somehow?) are better?

Ouch.

I've yet to get into this - but that seems like a real headache...does that not kind of negate the use of research?

Surely either you should be able to give the AI priorities (that is tell the AI you prefer distance over speed for engines or armour penetration over rate of fire for weapons) - and I don't see how that would work because that might not be the case for some ships/weapons - or (probably better) is that EVERY researched improvement has an increase in ALL aspects...so the engines would be "slightly" better at (say) speed and much better at distance...then the next researched upgrade would be "slightly" better at distance and much better at speed

Dunno - I don't want to be the professor of doom (especially as I've yet to get into it) but that does make it sound like researched is kind of porked without needing to babysit

On the plus side I did go through the first basic tutorial last night when I found some time...but towards the end I was kind of nodding off with all the reading I had to do!

[Yskonyn]

I am not deep into the inner workings, so I am not able to answer all your questions JD.
But the AI used policies and design templates. I don't think the things the AI want to use is hardcoded, but it judges what to build upon its research focus. And I *think* this focus is hardcoded for the different races.
Still the AI is coded in such a way that it can still go for other modules, it just gauges the coded focus to have more value.
So, A Gizzurean will focus on different stuff than a Teekan.

I would vouch for a system where, while playing the game designing your ships, a copy is then placed into a templates folder which the AI can use for its work. A bit like what GalCiv did after the manual ship design was introduced.

In the current version, though, there are templates. But they are not well documented and the modders are waiting on more info about what is actually meant in those files.

I am afraid that manual design is the best way to go if you really get annoyed.
Mind you, the AI does a decent job of designing ships for you. But you just can't trust on it 100% and need to babysit the process.

The problem, from a coders perspective, is that there are so many variables in here with so many situations that can develop that would call for a specific design of a ship that its almost impossible to have an AI adapt for every situation.
But to have a better working 'general design process' from the AI would be nice indeed.

And to close on a soothing note; it's still being looked into actively.