Distant Worlds: Shadows (Released)

[vyshka]

Judge...let me make two recommendations to reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed:

First: automate your exploration ships and construction ships unless there is a specific location you want to look at. If you have a about 12 exploration ships, you will have the surrounding areas mapped in no time. This way, you don't have the constant "this ship is done with its missio " stuff. The construction ships will just wait for the next assignment on auto. So and you see a planet worth mining, click on it and in the display window (bottom left) click on the "build gas/ mine her" icon. It will Automatically send it to the closest construction ship...so keep them on Auto.

This way, you are ignoring exploration and construction ships

2. DON'T WORRY ABOUT SHIPS FLYING AROUND. I know it can fluster you to see a bunch of ships flying around for no reason but here's the deal: those are private ships owned by private companies. Each one is flying to a mine to pick up a resource flying to a construction ship/shipyard to drop off a resource. Ignore them, when they are flying around, it's a good thing.

The beauty of DW is this private sector. Every constructor or shipyard that is building something (building, ship, mine, etc) requires minerals like silicon, lead, gold, etc. the constructor ships and shipyards actually carry supplies of this stuff on board. The ships will load up on different supplies depending on what it is building. If it runs out, construction stops while a private freighter is dispatched to carry that mineral to it from a mine. The game actually keeps track of what each freighter is carrying, what each shipyard is using and how much supply the shipyards have.

So in effect, you have a REAL private trading sector that is not abstracted,...every mineral needed must be mined and transported by a ship to the shipyard building it. The more items traded by Judge Dread priva-co... The more money it makes.  This is wht makes warfare so fun...targeting his mines and trade ships really matters.

So, short version is : automate explorers and construction ships and then ignore all ten ships flying around...they aren't yours

This is definitely true. In my first game, I played the Ackdarians and the Sluken homeworld started 2 stars away from me. Naturally war broke out rather quickly. They were a bit ahead with tech, because I got off to a slow start with the warp precursors. I managed to take out a lot of their ships raiding my homesystem, but they had targeted mining stations and were effective. A while later my entire navy was out of fuel because I didn't realize there weren't any gas mining stations.

[JudgeDredd]

Anyone answer what's going on here?

I've set a construction ship to build a defensive platform at the highlighted planet - but it seems to be buggering off in the wrong direction. It does say "Build Defensive base at Acorea 12" and Acorea 12 is the circled planet - but it's heading off north east!

[Nefaro]

Was there a resource shortage preventing progress on it?

I'm not sure if construction ships have to load up on resources for building, too.   Was it resupplying?

[JudgeDredd]

Could've been Nefaro. I am having some supply issues.

Starting as pre-warp certainly made the game easier to handle from a pace perspective - but it does leave you resource hungry!

[Darkspire]

Anyone answer what's going on here?

I've set a construction ship to build a defensive platform at the highlighted planet - but it seems to be buggering off in the wrong direction. It does say "Build Defensive base at Acorea 12" and Acorea 12 is the circled planet - but it's heading off north east!

When you tell a construction ship to build a mine or gas mine it will 'bugger off' to the nearest SP to get the needed resources and then return to build the mine, hence increasing the tech level for warp drives becomes a high priority to save time, the Equinox drive is a good choice of drive till you can access a Torrent one.

Darkspire

[Martok]

Was there a resource shortage preventing progress on it?

I'm not sure if construction ships have to load up on resources for building, too.   Was it resupplying?

That was the first thing I thought of as well.  JD, it's possible your construction ship first needs to swing by a mining station or two to pick up needed materials. 


EDIT:  Never mind, Darkspire beat me to it.  :) 

[JudgeDredd]

Well...it's with great sadness I have to say - my game is done. I'm in negative equity and I've lost my space port (I accidentally retired it lol)

Also, I saw a message (more than once) telling me I should stop my protection payments to pirates - and this time I decided to do so - only they had a rather powerful ship in my system that wiped out my 1st Fleet, 2 Defence bases and a weapons research station before I found out where to go to ask them for protection again!

I eventually worked out how to design a ship and designed a Colony ship - only to discover I created one that had a max speed of 2 and only 4% range of my system...meaning it can't go anywhere - and where it can go, it goes really, reeeeaaaalllly slowly! lol - disaster!

I'm being told I should consider hyperdrives - but I can't actually see any hyperdrive components in my list of components.

Anyway - I have to start again I think. I don't have any money (-4k) and -9k cash flow.

But I've learned some stuff.

[vyshka]

Erik also posted some settings for a beginner game on the Matrix forums. http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3333889

[mikeck]

You have to research hyperdrives. Once you do, it will show up in the components as a name like "gerax" or something like that. In the right of the design screen under the graph are numbers...one will say "sector range" with a number like 3.5. That is the sector diameter of the range.

If I was you, I would seriously let the AI design every ship except military ships. If you want to colonize a planet, click on it and them click the checkered flag. If it says "no colony ship designed" then you need to make sure you have researched colonization tech and the two underneath that have to due with storage and enhanced storage (I think that's it)

[JudgeDredd]

^ I did  - but there was no Colony Ship design...so I designed one - a bad one.

Also Research is on auto...and I've been told we have hyperdrive capability - and the ship design page was saying (at the top where it suggests modules) in yellow "Consider Adding Hyperdrive component" - but I can't see anything in the list of components that says Hyperdrive...or even looks like it's some sort of propulsion system except for the ones already in use - fuel cells, Proton thrusters, fission reactor

[JudgeDredd]

Actually I've just spotted Warp Bubble Generator!

[mikeck]

AI is pretty good about designing non military ships. If it hasn't designed a colony ship, then it's probably because you can make one that's worth a crap. Usually it's because you haven't researched construction yards up to the point that you can build size 400 ships which is about the size a hyperspace traveling colony ship will be.

If you feel up to it, I would set research to manual. Then pause the game and take your time looking at the 3 fields and what each does. Then select some. You can queue research

Also, you may not know that you can slow and speed up the pace of the game with the arrows in the top left. I usually run at 50%...makes for a more "realistic" pace I find

[vyshka]

Stupid question, how do you build a research station so it stays in orbit of a planet?

[Kushan]

Stupid question, how do you build a research station so it stays in orbit of a planet?

Build it through the planet construction que, either by right clicking on the colony and selecting from the build option, or go through the colony menu, the planet icon on the top left of the UI.

[JudgeDredd]

AI is pretty good about designing non military ships. If it hasn't designed a colony ship, then it's probably because you can make one that's worth a crap. Usually it's because you haven't researched construction yards up to the point that you can build size 400 ships which is about the size a hyperspace traveling colony ship will be.

If you feel up to it, I would set research to manual. Then pause the game and take your time looking at the 3 fields and what each does. Then select some. You can queue research

Also, you may not know that you can slow and speed up the pace of the game with the arrows in the top left. I usually run at 50%...makes for a more "realistic" pace I find

Well - I'm not going to go on and on for fear of making a big issue out of this - because I'm not - just answering some of your points.

There was no colonial ship in the design shop - I had to make one. Once I had made one, it became available under the planets available construction options. I had been getting messages about increased size of ships being available, though I'll be honest and tell you I can't remember anything specific about the size - just that the capacity had grown.

There was also hyperspace technology researched - unfortunately I was looking in the list for Hyperspace and not some other name it had assigned to it (in this case Warp Bubble Generator. I discovered, when I found that, that the TYPE column showed HYP....so I know what to look for next time.

But I was able to design a Colony ship with the Warp Bubble Generator and enough drives, power and fuel to give it a decent punch.


Having said that...
I did (once) get a message to say there was a colony I could colonise...but that was after I had created my design and had started building the ship. It's more than likely that I didn't have the resources when I created the design (some of the components added did show a lack of resources, but I carried on designing anyway because I guessed they would show up) and therefore I "jumped in" before the AI could...likely had I not jumped in to design one, then the AI would have offered to create one when I had the necessary resources.

So I think the AI would have created one when I had the necessary resources available. I jumped in as soon as I saw my population grow to more than 5m (which I believe is what is required to create a colony?). What can I say - I was excited that I had eventually developed Hyperdrive and the colony module and got to 5m pop.


My current game is a dead dog though. My cash flow is positive, but I've ran out of just about everything I need to make anything at all. All building is on stall and I really don't know where I'm likely to get the things I need.

One thing I would like to ask...I'm sure I saw someone post on here about getting Pirates to do missions (bring you resources) you need. Well...they could've made a shed load out of me - but they didn't offer and I couldn't see where to ask. The only thing the pirates were doing to me were blockading me, attacking me or offering me protection

Is there some special menu you need to go to to get them to bring you stuff you need, or did I misread that on here?