Kayoz
Posts: 1516
Joined: 12/20/2010
From: Timbuktu
Status: offline
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Well, I finally got around to downloading and trying out the expansion to DW, and here are my impressions.
These random thoughts are arranged by:
UI Changes
Mechanic Changes
Non-bugs
Bugs
Wish-List
UI Changes
The UI has been tweaked and cleaned up. It's easier to use and doesn't require quite so much digging around to find things. Still room for improvement here, but perhaps there's more in the pipeline. UI changes of note are:
1. Left sidebar
Quick access to lists of your fleets, colonies, etc. Much of the information is in the expansion and fleet info dialogs, but this is a bit neater and quicker. Of particular note is the addition of potential resort locations and special locations (hyperblock zones, debris fields, moon project sites). In the case of the special location list, hunting around for these if you saw them, but can't remember where they were, was quite a chore. This eases things somewhat. As for the resort location dialog - I'm not sure why this was implemented. It's quick enough to look it up on the galaxy map - so I can't say this button gets a lot of use... but perhaps that's just my gameplay style. I tend to build a resort - and ignore it unless I have a desire to rebuild it for upgrades (perhaps once or twice in the course of a game).
2. expansion planner
There's now some colour coding on the planets list, when you are showing potential colonies. Red is for claimed systems (other players'), yellow for dangerous (pirate/creature, and green for player owned systems. This takes some of the headache out of backfilling colonization (in my case, anyhow - since I generally prefer to backfill systems I already own, and expand in specific directions otherwise).
3. construction ships
In DW, you right-click on a potential colony and build & send a colony ship. If it's already the target of a colony ship, then the interface tells you (name of ship colonizing it). RotS has added this information of a planet being targeted by a construction ship to worlds as well - so you're less likely to be trying to send multiple construction ships to build a resort at a site than before.
4. Research
There's too much to say on this topic. Suffice to say, that it's been completely reworked. You now have 3 areas of research, and can queue up your projects in each. Gone are the days of being a leaf caught in the eddies of the general research pool. You can still crash-research - but it's no longer nearly as important to do so. I won't delve into this, as the research interface on its own deserves several threads to discuss it.
Mechanic Changes
There have been some mechanics changes as well - it's not quite the same game DW was.
1. new weapons
Ion weapons, missiles and fighters. It's no longer the standard beam/torpedo choice when choosing weapons. How this stands up for balance, I can only guess. My first impression is that missiles seem rather undperforming, and fighters - whil being a godsend when dealing with creatures - aren't really worth their weight in a ship-to-ship slugfest. But there's still potential - specialty ships dedicated to lobbing missiles or carrying huge fighter swarms may play a role in some players' strategies... though AoE weapons would seem to be the ultimate fly-swatter for the fighter swarm tactic. Still, it's added some depth to the combat system.
2. new story
Shakturi - the name of the expansion is a bit of a giveaway. I haven't seen these bad-boys yet - well, I did, but it was due to my invading Ancient Guardians' HW and getting his colony ship, which had them on it. If these guys are like the Mongols of M:TW, then perhaps someone can fill me in.
3. colonization mechanics
a. racial HW type - you now start off with only being able to colonize your racial HW type - as opposed to being able to colonize continental planets AND your racial type. This means it's no longer quite the advantage it was, to be able to colonize desert as a racial off the bat. Now, if you want to colonize non-HW planet types, you need to research the tech to do so. This has been a balance issue in DW. And yes, the developers did see fit to change the planet qualities - so volcanic races won't be stuck with 5-20% worlds.
b. The minimum population for building a colony ship at a colony has been raised from 100m to 500m. This means it takes a LOT longer to "nurture" a colony to the point that you can start to back-fill your territory.
c. Initial colony population (for a fresh colony) has been raised from 10m to 30m. Colonies become money-makers far more quickly.
4. research
The interface is a whole new beast. 'nuff said.
As a note, research points are now generated by research labs, and then bonuses applied to the sum of all research in the empire. So gone are the days of mobs of research stations near black holes/in nebulae (I've put quite enough IN black holes, thank-you very much. They didn't generate any research that I was aware of.). You can have them ANYWHERE and it doesn't matter. The one on the "bonus site" merely assigns the bonus to your empire.
5. planetary facilities
In RotS, you can now build facilities at planets. Robotic troop foundries (garbage but cheap and quick troops), cloning facilities (copy your toughest troop), planetary shields and massive ion cannons. Planets are more than just cash-cows now. This adds some strategic depth to those important locations. As a note, the ancient ruins which allow you to build uber troops, does not stack with the facility. Damn - and I was hoping to turn out the invasion force from heck.
Non-bugs - some non-bugs which I had hoped would be fixed.
1. Special Site Ownership
It seems that some sites only allow one of any type of base over them. For example, a gas giant can have one of gas mining, tech research or resort station over it. This doesn't seem to be the case with black holes (you can have any number and from any player) at a black hole. And neutron stars seem to allow only one resort station - though multiple (though only the same owner) research stations. I'm not sure if this is a bug, but having it clarified in the documentation would help. It's a tad annoying to find your construction ship idling away at the target, after having gone through the whole time to pick up the supplies and run to the location. Surely there would be a simple way to warn players that there's a potential conflict?
2. AI - target prioritization
The AI still almost entirely ignores research and resort bases. If the AI went and smacked my resorts, it would have a far greater impact on my economy than blowing up a few of my all-too-numerous mining stations. While this isn't a bug, I think it's a potential area for great improvement. As well, taking out my +35% reseach bonus site would have far greater impact than the gas mining station next to it.
Bugs
A lot of the DW 1.06 bugs are still evident in RotS. Particularly annoying and still of issue are:
1. exploding moon
Sometimes when you finish repairing a moon project, it goes pop as soon as it's done. I believe this is caused by sabotage on the construction ship adding up to all the slots in the moon project - so when it's finally done, the game looks at it and goes, "oh dear, everything is damaged - destroy ship". I think it would be a pretty trivial and not unrealistic change, to have the constructor behaviour changed so that they go back and repair what sabotage has messed up, before proceeding. This would take care of the whole "bang" problem, as well as allowing one to focus spies on delaying a repair - while not allowing them to destroy the focus of that repair.
2. claim jumping abandoned ships
This is still an issue. You still have to camp debris fields with silly numbers of ships, in order to make sure the AI doesn't wander in and claim all the ships you repair. I am aware that this has been discussed as potentially being a design feature - but the fact that the AI doesn not defend against it or react to it indicates to me that it's a bug.
3. colonization ship stopping
Sometimes colonization missions seem to stop, and the ship goes to idle (reporting completion of mission), while sitting a tick away from the colonization target. While this doesn't happen very often, it's still annoying.
4. Ancient Guardian racial behaviour
As is documented, they have no desire for expansion. They're quite happy to stay with their (uber) homeworld. So why then, do they insist on spamming mines and research sites at all the juicy locations? Their behaviour seems to be one where invasion and colonization have been scripted out for them, while retaining ALL the other behaviour. They seem to have ALL the tech in the game - so why build research stations? Why do their ports have research labs? IMO, their behaviour is buggy and needs to be altered.
5. expansion planner
Full list refresh when sending colony ships (either existing or "build & send").
This is horribly annoying. Every time you use the expansion planner list of locations, it has to refresh itself in entirety when you send out a colony ship. While this makes some sense in the case of construction ships - since it should be re-evaluating what resources are in demand (though I've never seen it change between sending a constructor and the refresh) - this seems to me to be a code fix that could be done in an afternoon. Add the flag to the planet (colonization ship targeted at planet) and redisplay the list. Egads - why regenerate the whole list again? It's not like the list of potential colonies is going to change.
6. diplomacy - warnings - "remove your military forces"
I'm not sure what this is supposed to do. All I've ever gotten from the AI has been feigned ignorance of any of their military ships in my systems. Is it a bug? I think so. I've yet to see the AI withdraw his fleets due to my warning.
Wish-List - Things I'd like to see in the next update:
1. ancient ruins
Those ruins, which in RotS show the colony in blue on the expansion planner list (eg: tech sites, tougher troops, etc) - adding this text into the colonies (your colonies) list text colouring, would be appreciated. How else is one to try to figure our how important a planet is (or if you can build some uber troops on it), unless you either remember it or go through the planets one-by-one. Also, having these specials as a potential selection on the galaxy map would be incredibly handy (ie: knowing where to hit your opponents). This would be a pretty noddy design change.
2. Game generation - derelict fleets/moon projects
It's my pet-peeve, but these are complete game-changers that the AI doesn't make use of. I'd really love to see them as optional in game generation.
3. Game generation - player spacing
Randomly created galaxies seem to locate all the AI positions based on the human player's position. If you start in the bottom-left corner, then it's VERY rare that there's ANYONE in the upper-right corner. This wouldn't be that difficult to implement, and would increase the replayability of the game.
**Edit log
1: punctuation
2: spelling
< Message edited by Kayoz -- 12/20/2010 4:25:28 AM >
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Distant Worlds: RotS - impressions [SPOILER] - 
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4 combinations of storyline options. Anyone feel inclined to count how many total variations there are on vanilla galaxy setup (including figuring out how to count the 999 different research speeds you can use and all the different hyperdrive speeds), seems like a big task in itself.
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