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Noob suggestions/questions - 6/22/2014 7:50:23 PM

SuperBran

Posts: 3
Joined: 6/22/2014
Status: offline

Hi guys,

Excellent work with the game! I am new to distant worlds and I must say that I am loving it. It is by far my favorite 4 x game. I had a few questions and ideas that I would like to run by the community.

1. Is there any way to have a ship designer feature on the webpage? This would be similiar to the WoW character skill tree except you could be building ships. You could toggle on and off tech, money, size ect. It might be a nice way to see what kind of ships you can build or rather what tech you need for said ships. Plus it would give people like me something to focus on while pretendingh to work!

2. Any chance that we could get an in game list of each races infantry strength. I know that I have seen that base lists in the forums but what about having a more detailed version available. For example, it could show base strength, then be able to toggle off racial bonuses from resources, mating cycles, all tech upgrades ect ect so you could see where your guys stack up at any given point vs any other ground troops. Also, having the robotic infantry listed would be nice as well. Also having a troop designer on the webpage would be cool.

3. Any chance to have a feature that would let you scroll through abandoned ships that you find? I tend to lose track of them and even when I know what system they are in, it can still be a giant pain to find them. Also, I have noticed that if I send a construction ship to fix an abandoned ship that is in a territory far away, it will go out once, fix it up a bit, come back for more parts and then not go back because I can no longer see the ship. Is this normal?

4. Any chance we could get a monster-pedia with the different space monters stats on them? A universal super monster like the dread Space Kraken might be fun also. Maybe have it lurking out in no mans land defending some treaure. Give it some long range capability so that it cant be kited or something.

5. Any comprehensive lists of traits and what they do? Some of the traits are very straight forward but I find that some of them are not.

6. I know that this one has been asked but I can't seem to find the answer, is there any way that we could have the max number of characters possible at this time be shown in the character screen? Every empire ends up with some real lemon characters but how do you know if it is worth dismissing them if you are not at your max?

7. Is there a way to edit my race without messing with all the files? I know that some people will say go into the editor but I was kind of hoping for a create your own race option with points attached to each ability ect ect. As a side note, this is the ONLY 4x game that I have played where the races are so varied and fun that I haven't felt the NEED for making my own race. It would just be a nice touch.

Those are just some of the wish listy stuff that I had on my mind. On the plus side, I have a ton of great things to say about this game. You guys did an excellent job with the automation. The automation being good made learning so much easier. I am now up to the point where I micro manage most things and I wouldn't have been able to do that without the awesome ai auto managing getting me through my first few games. The community guides for this game are incredible. You guys obviously have a very motivated and helpful community. I never posted on a game board before but the community seems so cool here that I just want to be part of it. I want to apologize if this is in the wrong forum or wrong format. Good luck stopping your enemies into the ground and hearing the laments of their women! I garuntee I will have more questions coming!

Post #: 1

RE: Noob suggestions/questions - 6/23/2014 8:22:01 PM

Verjigorm

Posts: 19
Joined: 6/15/2014
From: Germany
Status: offline

5. http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3615682 it contains a list of traits and what they do...

7. The link above help you with that too. Create your own theme within the "Customization" folder, copy the related file(s) and edit them. Then switch to the theme and begin a new game. I'd guess it's not a good idea loading games from a different theme, if the changes are more than purely cosmetic.

_____________________________

Lost dark soul, imprisoned abysmal desire
plunged in flames, gone through hellfire

(in reply to SuperBran)

Post #: 2

RE: Noob suggestions/questions - 6/24/2014 2:39:53 PM

mxmissile

Posts: 30
Joined: 10/30/2013
Status: offline

#1 I have actually started on this, work on it on my spare time. Needed to teach myself knockout.js so I thought what the hell.

I'll post a link here when I get something up somewhat usable.

(in reply to SuperBran)

Post #: 3

RE: Noob suggestions/questions - 6/26/2014 5:12:32 PM

SuperBran

Posts: 3
Joined: 6/22/2014
Status: offline

THank you for the quick and helpful replies. I definitely appreciate it! Now onward for more noob questions!

(in reply to mxmissile)

Post #: 4

RE: Noob suggestions/questions - 6/26/2014 8:49:48 PM

necaradan666

Posts: 256
Joined: 5/28/2012
Status: offline

1. you could start a tech 7 game, uncheck show only latest components in design screen and then just try out any ship design you can make, you can use that method to try ship designs of different sizes and techs as long as you keep those requirements in mind when you go to make them in a proper game.

3. When you find a ship graveyard it should be added to the special locations list on your empire navigation tool at the left. Clicking these will take you right there, you can't scroll individual ships in those locations though. If you forget where individual broken down ships are they can be difficult to find, but you could try installing long range scanners on something, then they will show up on the map if in range. Retaining that use for the scanner component is a good reason for them stay slightly more difficult to find. I've never seen one of my constructors go back to base for more resources for anything less that a world destroyer, make sure you have enough cargo bays, or larger cargo bays. They should not fail to return when they do go back though, they used to but I thought that was fixed. Perhaps they are being redirected by automation, or queued missions?

4. In a couple of those ship graveyards you can find larger than usual space monsters, they have unique names for example 'the space slug of char dilba' or whatever. As for stats.. there's really not much to space monsters, you can click them to reveal size and hit points, they gain more size and hit points when they eat ships, other than that they don't really have much else it'd be a really small list: ardilus can hyperjump, silvermist is vulnerable to ion weapons, that's about all I can think of that is relevant.

(in reply to SuperBran)

Post #: 5

RE: Noob suggestions/questions - 7/2/2014 6:16:05 PM

devout

Posts: 1
Joined: 7/2/2014
Status: offline

I have 2 newbie questions:
1. Can anyone suggest a shield to armor ratio? Its not clear to me how much armor to put on a ship.
2. What is the deal with the luxury resource extractor? Default mining base has 2 mining extractors and 1 luxery resource extractor. I read that it is suggested to use 3 mining extractors. So I update the design to use 3 mining extractors + 1 luxury based. Should I be uising 3 mining and 3 luxury?

(in reply to necaradan666)

Post #: 6

RE: Noob suggestions/questions - 7/2/2014 7:16:22 PM

Aeson

Posts: 784
Joined: 8/30/2013
Status: offline

quote:

1. Can anyone suggest a shield to armor ratio? Its not clear to me how much armor to put on a ship.

I would never put more than perhaps 20 armor plates on a ship, and if the vessel is less than size 300 I'd put no more than about 10 armor plates on, and typically somewhere around 5. Shields will protect against anything that armor will, as even railguns only have a chance to bypass the shields, whereas gravity weapons bypass both (sort of; the damage gets dealt to a random component, so the armor plates and shield generators still offer some degree of protection in the sense of taking the shot for some other component), and armor doesn't regenerate on its own the way shields do, for the most part. Except for highly-specialized designs, if you have enough armor plates that you could replace 10 of them with a shield generator and still have 5-20 armor plates on your design, I'd take the shields over the armor.

Another thing to remember is that armor is relatively expensive, at 5 resources (steel) per plate of standard armor versus 15 (4 gold, 3 helium, 8 lead) resources per corvidian shield generator. 10 size units of standard armor costs 50 steel, whereas 10 size units of corvidian shields costs 15 mixed resources. Assuming you have enough of all resources to keep costs at the minimum level, 10 units of armor is more than three times as expensive as a single shield generator, so it's not really an economically sensible defense to use in great quantity on all your designs. The highest quality shields require 21 units of assorted resources for a single size-10 component, while the highest quality armor requires 8 units of assorted resources for a single size-1 component, so the cost differential per unit size remains similar (4 or so in the end-game, rather than 3 or so in the early game).

quote:

2. What is the deal with the luxury resource extractor? Default mining base has 2 mining extractors and 1 luxery resource extractor. I read that it is suggested to use 3 mining extractors. So I update the design to use 3 mining extractors + 1 luxury based. Should I be uising 3 mining and 3 luxury?

You can certainly do so, and it doesn't really hurt to get more luxuries out of a mine if there is a source present. On the other hand, you also don't necessarily need as much production of the luxuries as of the strategic resources, so getting just a little from each mine can be sufficient and slightly reduces the purchase cost (paid by the state) and maintenance cost (paid by the private sector) of a mining station because you're not paying for the extra extractors. Luxury resources give a development bonus to your colonies, if I recall correctly, which will increase the tax income, so as long as you have enough luxury production to keep 10 different luxuries in stock on most of your colonies (particularly the large colonies), you're doing fine. If you notice the computer complaining about luxury shortages or using up stocks of a luxury on some world or asking you to assign a smuggling mission to bring luxuries somewhere, you might want to increase your luxury production. Otherwise, it probably doesn't matter too much.

< Message edited by Aeson -- 7/2/2014 8:23:44 PM >

(in reply to devout)

Post #: 7

RE: Noob suggestions/questions - 7/3/2014 1:33:18 AM

Keston

Posts: 300
Joined: 5/7/2010
Status: offline

Wow, I hadn't done the math on armor costs so didn't realize that. I wish the design screen showed the cost (whether "standard" or market price) per component since it's a bit of work to put it together without creating a cost estimator spreadsheet. Of course I also with the game allowed some design notes text on each design to save time and help plan. Fortunately I tend to have lots of steel. Resource shortages forced me to focus on missiles more than I otherwise would.

I have tended toward an armor strength/shield strength ratio of 10-20% depending on the expected duration of combat, which is not too different from your numbers.

Choice of shield type has a similar type of trade-off between shield strength and recharge. I'm not 100% clear on how recharge works and is interrupted, but it seems like fast regen is desirable for extended combat while a high maximum number is important for limited duration exposure, like assault transports dropping troops in the face of orbital defenses and then fleeing.

For mining, I thought the rationale for not maxing the mining output for luxuries was that we just need some, not much, per planet so we best make the resources last before running out. For building materials, however, quantity is the thing.

(in reply to Aeson)

Post #: 8

RE: Noob suggestions/questions - 7/3/2014 3:16:57 AM

feelotraveller

Posts: 1040
Joined: 9/12/2011
Status: offline

@Keston If you look at the top of the design details screen you will see the total cost of the ship/base and its maintenance fee (at current market prices). These figures will change as you add or subtract components.

@devout The number of extractors (mining, luxury or gas) on your bases depends on the state of your game. Near the start of a prewarp game I will never use more than one mining and one luxury extractor and only rarely use 2 gas extractors. If you are playing a fast expanding classic game you probably want to drop 3 mining extractors on the best source of steel you can find... and then do it again.

Generally only the super-luxuries are worth more than one extractor.

My starting rule of thumb for shields vs armour is an equal numbers of components. But different designs call for different mixes - sometimes I make monster mashers with lots of armour and no shields (or a token one shield in case they stray into real combat...) and sometimes I load up shields on fast beamer assault ships. If you are facing a known enemy then modifying your ships to take account of their weapons tech can sometimes be useful.

Have fun!

(in reply to Keston)

Post #: 9

RE: Noob suggestions/questions - 7/3/2014 4:34:37 AM

Aeson

Posts: 784
Joined: 8/30/2013
Status: offline

quote:

Choice of shield type has a similar type of trade-off between shield strength and recharge. I'm not 100% clear on how recharge works and is interrupted, but it seems like fast regen is desirable for extended combat while a high maximum number is important for limited duration exposure, like assault transports dropping troops in the face of orbital defenses and then fleeing.

It really depends on how big of an alpha strike and how much sustained DPS you're looking at. Shield recharge is the number of shield points recovered per second, and is only interrupted if you run out of power (the power required to recover shields at the full recharge rate is equal to the recharge rate; you'll need that much on top of your cruise or sprint energy and weapons energy requirements in excess reactor output if you want to get the most out of your designs in combat, while having a hyperdrive that uses all the excess reactor output means that your shields will not recharge while your ship is warping off somewhere).

quote:

I wish the design screen showed the cost (whether "standard" or market price) per component since it's a bit of work to put it together without creating a cost estimator spreadsheet.

You can look at the total design cost estimate at the top of the design screen like feelotraveller says, or you can open the component viewer in the design screen and count up the total number of resources used by the part. The higher the number of resources per size unit for a given component, the more expensive that component is, and if your strategic resources all have about the same cost this will also allow you to approximate the difference in cost between this component and something else. Corvidian shields require 1.5 resources per size unit (or 15 resources per shield generator), while standard armor requires 5 resources per size unit. Thus, if steel costs you about the same amount as each of the resources required for Corvidian shields, the armor is about 3.3 times more expensive than the shields are (which also means that the resources for the shields would need to cost about 2.6 credits per unit each before the shields cost you as much as the armor does, if steel costs 0.8 credits per unit).

I'll also say that feelotraveller brought up something that I neglected to mention. There is one thing that armor will protect against that shields simply will not - the attacks of space monsters. If you're creating a design specifically intended for killing space monsters and aren't intending to use the design against anything else, there is a case to be made that shield generators are simply wasted space as the attacks of space monsters will never be impeded by shielding, no matter how strong or high-tech the shields are. There is also a case to be made for using only armor components on a station built in an area where energy collectors do not function, as relying on the private sector to keep such a base adequately supplied with fuel is not necessarily the best bet, and without fuel you don't have power, which means you don't have weapons or shield regeneration, so passive components may be a more worthwhile defense than active components.

< Message edited by Aeson -- 7/3/2014 5:34:55 AM >

(in reply to feelotraveller)

Post #: 10

RE: Noob suggestions/questions - 7/3/2014 6:18:39 AM

Airpower

Posts: 85
Joined: 7/2/2014
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: SuperBran

4. Any chance we could get a monster-pedia with the different space monters stats on them? A universal super monster like the dread Space Kraken might be fun also. Maybe have it lurking out in no mans land defending some treaure. Give it some long range capability so that it cant be kited or something.

This reminds me of the Guardian from Master of Orion 2, which guarded a high quality colonizable planet and a trove of end-game weapons and such. I'd support having a legendary super monster in the galaxy. :)

(in reply to SuperBran)

Post #: 11