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RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/20/2012 9:56:46 PM

Mad Igor

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Erik Rutins,now i know how u made 30K posts

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Post #: 181

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/20/2012 10:07:55 PM

Shark7

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Mad Igor

Erik Rutins,now i know how u made 30K posts

He's probably worn out a keyboard or two just answering our questions.

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Post #: 182

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/20/2012 11:00:22 PM

Bebop Cola

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bebop Cola
Will it be possible for an empire to transition back and forth between these states? For example, could a space-based empire capture a planet to become a traditional empire, then return to being spaced-based if their last planet is captured while they still retain say, a construction ship, in play?

Yes, there is a path that space-based empires can pursue (it's not easy though) that will give them control over a planet and they could also lose that planet and be entirely space-based again. It's difficult to eliminate a space-based faction entirely because as long as they have a space port or a resupply ship or a construction ship somewhere, they are still in the game. With the new ability to board and capture other ships and bases, they are quite resilient.

Regards,

- Erik

What about the other way around? Do planet-based empires have a similar opportunity to transition into a space-based empire?

It seems like it would not only fit in with the whole fleeing refugee theme with Legends, but would be a logical extension of a space-based empire's ability to do the same. Whereas the majority of an empire's surviving civilian and military fleet may raise the flag of their conqueror, maybe colonizers, supply ships, constructor, and mining ships(and remote bases) have a chance to remain loyal and form a government in exile. Toss in the rare military vessel and you can have a fun and compelling narrative of a refugee armada looking for a safe place to set down roots and plan the return to their home planets.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bebop Cola
I'd also like to see much more done with running costs. Not just raw cash, but resources as well. Large worlds need to be gluttons for resources and those resources need to disappear. Most times I feel like large stockpiles are just shuffled around currently.

We've been thinking along these lines too - the faction-specific resource bonuses in Legends were a step in that direction, but in Shadows each colony consumes strategic resources based on its size and development. If it doesn't get enough, it won't grow and it will keep demanding those resources even if nothing is being built there. We were a bit cautious about doing this earlier for various reasons, but it's working well in Shadows and I think it has a great effect on the economy and gameplay.

Regards,

- Erik

I am quite pleased to see this. I'm interested to see how it will affect gameplay and resource scarcity. Should be interesting.

(in reply to Erik Rutins)

Post #: 183

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/21/2012 12:13:15 AM

ASHBERY76

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Any love given to the living galaxy part of the game.New monsters,events,planet specials,space loot,new resources,ect.

Oh and a nice screenshot of that new animated ground combat screen would be nice.

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Post #: 184

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/21/2012 2:43:50 AM

JosEPhII

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From: Cornfields of Western IL. USA
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Kayoz

quote:

ORIGINAL: nelsonlee

- New expanded Ground Combat with new troop types and an animated ground battle resolution screen

is it something like Total War?

I think you're being dementedly hopeful.

I'm rather expecting something akin to MOO2's invasion graphics.

Has anyone pointed out to you that your sreenshot is from the 1st MoO not from II? Thought I'd point that out. In MoOII the Soldiers, Tanks, and Battleoids actually moved towards each other on the planets surface (looked like a field with a city in the background) while firing.

Too Many years playing both to let this one pass.

JosEPh (MoOIII Keeper of the Roll Call)

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Post #: 185

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/21/2012 3:27:00 AM

tjhkkr

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

quote:

ORIGINAL: tjhkkr
Will we get a cool contest like last time?
I trully had fun reading all the cool ideas people had?

Hm, I've been thinking about this but hadn't come up with a good one yet. We could do another space monster, or perhaps a unique space-based faction. Any suggestions?
Regards,
- Erik

How about the name of the Pirate/Space Faction and a flag file, the metaphile kind?

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Post #: 186

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/21/2012 4:43:33 AM

Cruis.In

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can we get clarification on the alternate play styles gameplay?

What does play as a mercenary mean? I control one ship? I get hired and paid to do jobs? Do jobs scaled in payment with difficulty. Is this one of those space based factions you mean? Do I directly control one ship?

Smuggler means smuggling things on a OR my ship through an empire? Again for money?

So I take it space based races will be like operating from a fortress of a space port surrounded by defensive batteries and your fleet. So do you buy/steal resources from other factions? Like ok do I send a fleet of 5 ships to raid a shipping lane, and see these ships individually shooting and disabling ships and board/raid for the resources, which incidentally go in the cargo ship I brought along as part of the fleet? Do you raid a planet? Send in a stealthy ship, orbit planet, beam down infiltrator then after some dice rolling he returns with loot?

Sine it is so complex as it is now to make sure you have the necessary resources to build stuff I am just wondering about the acquisition of resources to sustain yourself as a space based nation. I imagine jobs will have to pay well. Since a nice cruiser costs 15k a ship.

Ok please can you elaborate thanks :)

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Post #: 187

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/21/2012 6:53:40 AM

Martian

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Thank you very much for your answers, Erik!

Would you please add more zoom level to the game?

Actually the game now have different close up limit for mouse scroll zoom and manual zoom through "page down" key. Please at least extend mouse scroll zoom to be as close as "page down" zoom. Thank you.

< Message edited by Martian -- 11/21/2012 6:58:18 AM >

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Post #: 188

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/21/2012 8:34:16 AM

Kayoz

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quote:

ORIGINAL: JosEPh_II
Has anyone pointed out to you that your sreenshot is from the 1st MoO not from II? Thought I'd point that out. In MoOII the Soldiers, Tanks, and Battleoids actually moved towards each other on the planets surface (looked like a field with a city in the background) while firing.

Too Many years playing both to let this one pass.

JosEPh (MoOIII Keeper of the Roll Call)

I bow before your harder and longer nerd gland. Mine is a sad and floppy thing in comparison.

You're right, it is indeed MOO, not MOO2.

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Post #: 189

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/21/2012 9:53:41 PM

dejagore

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@Erik - please do tell me that there will be some tweaks in the 'colonization' aspect of the game. It's really too easy that You can just setup a colony and take no penalties from it at the beginning. There should be some serious maintenance costs!

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Post #: 190

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/21/2012 9:57:26 PM

Buio

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
Our holiday sale will start very soon and all existing Distant Worlds releases will be included. That means about 33% off until mid-January.
Regards,
- Erik

Rogntudju! I just bought the game and expansions for about 700SEK just a few days ago. Well, it doesn't really matter, appears to be worth the money anyway.

Looking forward to Distant Worlds: Shadows. The features I read about in this thread seems great.

(in reply to Erik Rutins)

Post #: 191

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/21/2012 9:58:41 PM

Ralzakark

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Erik, many thanks for taking the time to reply and for such detailed comments.

Looking forward to this one even more now!

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Post #: 192

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/21/2012 10:36:47 PM

Cruis.In

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i bought dw 1 day before the sale. yay for me.

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Post #: 193

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/22/2012 1:41:21 AM

Cruis.In

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how come DW won't or doesnt have a 3d engine? I don't mean isometric or pan all around like Sins necessarily but more like star drive. In DW you seem to zoom in with the mouse wheel in increments 3-6-9 which makes it stuttery, but with star drive and sins you zoom in and its smooth like a floating point increment. 0.1 > 0.2 etc as you scroll and it's fast. No stutter.

Is there plans to ever go with a different rendering engine? How hard would it be to simply render what we see in a more advanced 3d way while keeping the game as it is? I mean it is just the visuals.

SINS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWJT2rCABKs

Star drive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWV6Ky1xNog

see the view in Star drive is just like DW 2d top down, but its 3d. The ships are actual textured models, as you can see them turn and you see the side etc.

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Post #: 194

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/22/2012 2:13:10 AM

adamsolo

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quote:

ORIGINAL: dejagore

@Erik - please do tell me that there will be some tweaks in the 'colonization' aspect of the game. It's really too easy that You can just setup a colony and take no penalties from it at the beginning. There should be some serious maintenance costs!

+1

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Post #: 195

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/22/2012 11:02:15 AM

Martian

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Cruis.In

how come DW won't or doesnt have a 3d engine? I don't mean isometric or pan all around like Sins necessarily but more like star drive. In DW you seem to zoom in with the mouse wheel in increments 3-6-9 which makes it stuttery, but with star drive and sins you zoom in and its smooth like a floating point increment. 0.1 > 0.2 etc as you scroll and it's fast. No stutter.

Is there plans to ever go with a different rendering engine? How hard would it be to simply render what we see in a more advanced 3d way while keeping the game as it is? I mean it is just the visuals.

SINS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWJT2rCABKs

Star drive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWV6Ky1xNog

see the view in Star drive is just like DW 2d top down, but its 3d. The ships are actual textured models, as you can see them turn and you see the side etc.

I agree with you so much!!! Although I am completely happy with 2D ships and planets, but smooth "graphics card powered" engine is a must to fully enjoy DW's great features & mechanics. Unfortunately, right now it feels like using car's engine to propel an airplane (DW's gameplay) - enough to move it out of hangar, but not enough to take off and really fly!

I understand quite well that writing new engine is not a simple thing to do, but I do really hope Elliot & Erik will make it as one of highest priority for a next big release.

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Post #: 196

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/22/2012 11:03:33 AM

Martian

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(removed double post)

< Message edited by Martian -- 11/22/2012 11:06:50 AM >

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RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/22/2012 11:16:42 AM

adecoy95

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i dont have a problem with distant worlds graphics personally, i think that sprites age pretty well as a graphics medium in gaming

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Post #: 198

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/22/2012 12:21:17 PM

Martian

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quote:

ORIGINAL: adecoy95

i dont have a problem with distant worlds graphics personally, i think that sprites age pretty well as a graphics medium in gaming

No, sprites are completely ok. I am sure well made sprites can look more pleasant and nicer than 3d objects. I actually think that DW as well as most other strategy games don't need any 3d, unless its directly affecting game mechanics (like in Total War series). But powerful engine able to smoothly visualize, fluently zoom in & out, quickly managing all interface elements is very important in such GRAND SCALE REAL-TIME game as Distant Worlds.
Right now because of engine limits I cant play big maps with 20-30 races. After few hours of play the game's fps drops and interface's slow response becomes very very distracting. Because of that I could never finish any of my big galaxy games. (And although my PC's spec is not top, it's still quite decent: quadcore @ 3,6Ghz, 8Gb of RAM. It's a great pity DW doesn't use my Radeon HD6850, nor any of 3 other cores of my CPU....

)

< Message edited by Martian -- 11/22/2012 12:24:34 PM >

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RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/22/2012 7:54:34 PM

Shark7

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Martian

quote:

ORIGINAL: adecoy95

i dont have a problem with distant worlds graphics personally, i think that sprites age pretty well as a graphics medium in gaming

No, sprites are completely ok. I am sure well made sprites can look more pleasant and nicer than 3d objects. I actually think that DW as well as most other strategy games don't need any 3d, unless its directly affecting game mechanics (like in Total War series). But powerful engine able to smoothly visualize, fluently zoom in & out, quickly managing all interface elements is very important in such GRAND SCALE REAL-TIME game as Distant Worlds.
Right now because of engine limits I cant play big maps with 20-30 races. After few hours of play the game's fps drops and interface's slow response becomes very very distracting. Because of that I could never finish any of my big galaxy games. (And although my PC's spec is not top, it's still quite decent: quadcore @ 3,6Ghz, 8Gb of RAM. It's a great pity DW doesn't use my Radeon HD6850, nor any of 3 other cores of my CPU.... )

Sprites are far better from a resource usage point of view. You can make very good looking 3d models for the game...but you have to do one of two things to accomplish it. Have polygon heavy meshes or very detailed, large textures. Both of these are very resource intensive to render on screen. Personally I'd rather have the sprites, easier on the CPU/GPU and more time can be spent on actual gameplay options.

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RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/22/2012 8:41:04 PM

Cruis.In

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nah, the kind of models we're talking about would probably be like 100-300 polys, even 500 of them on screen couldn't slow a 3d card today. Remember the 3d card we all have is inefficient at running 2d things like DW. Processing power/ram is more important for running the renderer which DW is using. A 3d engine will use the full power of the card what it was made to do. (note that a 3d engine doesn't mean 6degrees of movement or freedom)

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Post #: 201

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/23/2012 6:30:11 AM

MartialDoctor

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Erik, thanks for all of your detailed responses! I came back to check on the forum just to see how things are coming along.

If the AI improvements are really what I am hoping them to be, Distant Worlds will finally achieve the kind of potential I have always seen it to have

Good luck with the expansion. I'm very much looking forward to it!

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Post #: 202

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/23/2012 6:31:02 AM

MartialDoctor

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quote:

ORIGINAL: dejagore

@Erik - please do tell me that there will be some tweaks in the 'colonization' aspect of the game. It's really too easy that You can just setup a colony and take no penalties from it at the beginning. There should be some serious maintenance costs!

+1

I also am big on this one!

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Post #: 203

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/23/2012 5:55:49 PM

ASHBERY76

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From: England
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quote:

ORIGINAL: dejagore

@Erik - please do tell me that there will be some tweaks in the 'colonization' aspect of the game. It's really too easy that You can just setup a colony and take no penalties from it at the beginning. There should be some serious maintenance costs!

With a changed and tweaked economy which is promised this hopefully will not be needed.The majority of new colonies make little money your empire anyway as they developed slowly and stay a 0 tax for 20 years.

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RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/23/2012 10:12:21 PM

adecoy95

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quote:

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

quote:

ORIGINAL: dejagore

@Erik - please do tell me that there will be some tweaks in the 'colonization' aspect of the game. It's really too easy that You can just setup a colony and take no penalties from it at the beginning. There should be some serious maintenance costs!

With a changed and tweaked economy which is promised this hopefully will not be needed.The majority of new colonies make little money your empire anyway as they developed slowly and stay a 0 tax for 20 years.

its more of an issue with how many 0 tax colonies your able to support, which is as many as you want. at least with the way it is right now

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Post #: 205

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/23/2012 10:55:27 PM

Cauldyth

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quote:

in Shadows each colony consumes strategic resources based on its size and development. If it doesn't get enough, it won't grow and it will keep demanding those resources even if nothing is being built there.

Maybe the above will help balance it a bit. If colonies are consuming resources, and resources are harder to come by, that could be a natural throttle for expansion speed. Hopefully they consume enough that it's noticeable, but I can't imagine them going to the trouble of implementing this if it's not going to be a significant factor.

< Message edited by Cauldyth -- 11/23/2012 10:57:21 PM >

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Post #: 206

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/24/2012 1:34:26 AM

Darkspire

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Cauldyth

quote:

in Shadows each colony consumes strategic resources based on its size and development. If it doesn't get enough, it won't grow and it will keep demanding those resources even if nothing is being built there.

Maybe the above will help balance it a bit. If colonies are consuming resources, and resources are harder to come by, that could be a natural throttle for expansion speed. Hopefully they consume enough that it's noticeable, but I can't imagine them going to the trouble of implementing this if it's not going to be a significant factor.

So lets get this right, they are now implementing resources being used on new colonies when we already are suffering 'bottlenecks' on the introduction of the reduced and poorly balanced resources in Legends?

Great idea, add more problems on top before fixing the ones the game already has.

Darkspire

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RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/24/2012 2:20:52 AM

WoodMan

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Darkspire

quote:

ORIGINAL: Cauldyth

quote:

in Shadows each colony consumes strategic resources based on its size and development. If it doesn't get enough, it won't grow and it will keep demanding those resources even if nothing is being built there.

Maybe the above will help balance it a bit. If colonies are consuming resources, and resources are harder to come by, that could be a natural throttle for expansion speed. Hopefully they consume enough that it's noticeable, but I can't imagine them going to the trouble of implementing this if it's not going to be a significant factor.

So lets get this right, they are now implementing resources being used on new colonies when we already are suffering 'bottlenecks' on the introduction of the reduced and poorly balanced resources in Legends?

Great idea, add more problems on top before fixing the ones the game already has.

Darkspire

I've never had a bottleneck.

Well... once, Cromium, long time ago!

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Post #: 208

RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/24/2012 2:29:23 AM

Cauldyth

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Yeah, can't say resource shortage has ever been a problem for me.

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RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows - 11/24/2012 3:11:21 AM

Kayoz

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Darkspire
So lets get this right, they are now implementing resources being used on new colonies when we already are suffering 'bottlenecks' on the introduction of the reduced and poorly balanced resources in Legends?

Great idea, add more problems on top before fixing the ones the game already has.

Darkspire

Really depends on how it's implemented; how well it's balanced.

That said, it would make it more interesting to have resource usage regardless of one's shipbuilding activities. It seems that mid-game, my freighters are shuffling resources from one planet to another and never really using them. At least till the Shak show up, and I go on a shipbuilding bonanza.

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RE: Distant Worlds: Shadows