I hesitate because....... (Full Version)

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DiggyDad -> I hesitate because....... (3/31/2010 4:35:05 AM)

I really don't know whether to buy or not. I love 4X games but LOATHE RTS ones. I'm also concerned about the many posts about refueling and strange automated ship/fleet behavior. Are these game/fun breakers or just annoyances? Should I just wait for a couple of patches and see how they turn out first? Any help from you guys would be appreciated.



lordxorn -> RE: I hesitate because....... (3/31/2010 4:40:25 AM)

To me they are not game breakers, the biggest thing are the crashes. They are rare but without a auto sav feature make sure you save often.

Also ask you yourself how involved are the publisher and dev and that would be enough for me to take the leap if I was still on the fence.



2ndACR -> RE: I hesitate because....... (3/31/2010 4:40:48 AM)

 Well, I have never been a fan of RTS, but this one is worth it IMO.

You can pause at any time and slow things to a crawl if you want. Refueling is a pain in the butt, but I bet it will be tweaked etc. The automation really takes some getting used to, but you can also turn alot of things to manual control, but be prepared, it is a HUGE MAP!!!!!

I will say not game breakers at all. Annoyances is the right word to use. I say jump now and start figuring it out. It is already a keeper, it will only get better.

p.s. Matrix is very, very involved (in all their games) and Codeforce seems to be on the ball too......patch out over the weekend to try and fix things that slipped thru etc.



Darthcaboose -> RE: I hesitate because....... (3/31/2010 4:43:30 AM)

Heya,

This game can be as 4Xish or even RTSish as you'd like. Playing the game at a speed of x0.25 or x0.5 is really slow enough to watch events unfurl and issue orders as you seem fit. You can even pause the game and issue orders there if things get out of hand and you can take your time optimizing your way to victory!

... and if that's too slow for you, you can crank the speed up to 1x, 2x or 4x if you want something you're waiting for to happen quickly!

The refueling and strange automated ship/fleet behavior is being looked at by the devs. So far, in the three or so games I'm running simultaneously, it's not a huge game or fun breaker. It seems like many "running out of fuel" issues pop up when the AI asks you if they could launch some crazy attack on a distant colony. Given how fast Matrix Games / Code Force has come up wtih a fix for the luxury bonus distribution economy issue, I'm pretty sure that they'll figure out a good fix for this too.



HsojVvad -> RE: I hesitate because....... (3/31/2010 4:56:30 AM)

Maybe it's because I am pausing the game alot, or playing it on slow level, I don't seem this as a RTS game. I generally don't like RTS games, that is why I stayed away from War Craft series. I tried the Age of Kings and never cared for it. So far, I am starting alot over and over again, because I am trying to learn how the game plays, so I am finally starting for me, a real game.

Again, I am not to fond of RTS games, and I don't consider this an RTS game. I consider this a 4X game that is real time, but not an RTS game at all. It has elemenets of a RTS game, but dosen't feel like a RTS at all.

Hope this helps.



DiggyDad -> RE: I hesitate because....... (3/31/2010 5:27:22 AM)

Thanks fellas, downloading now.  Hope I'm not up all night, I have things to do tomorrow morning. 



Emmet333 -> RE: I hesitate because....... (3/31/2010 5:39:31 AM)

Although this game moves forward in a "real-time" scale, it is not an RTS in the traditional sense. You can pause it, slow it down or speed it up as you like, giving orders as needed. As a turn-based fan myself I find Distant Worlds very manageable and fun. (For reference, my favorite build/strat games in -roughly the same category- are: Civ Series, Alpha Centauri, Total War series, MoO 1 & 2).

Although there are some significant improvements to be made, the Dev Team seems *very* active, both on the forums and in their patching aggressiveness (2 patches in the first week of launch!). If you love 4x space games, I would definitely recommend this one: the game is solid (not perfect) and is easily within development range of becoming awesome!

You are going to have a bit of learning curve but keep checking forum posts for suggestions and post questions. The community here is great!

I've found myself eliminating any irritating game elements through some trial and error and by reading these forums.



malkuth74 -> RE: I hesitate because....... (3/31/2010 6:14:46 AM)

The game is not RTS. I can put that to rest for you.

The refueling issue is not really a bug its a design decision. Its just a pain in the but. And they are just annoyances. But you come down with a system eventually I did in my last game. But it takes awhile to learn that system and much trial and error.

It has more positives then negatives though, it really brings the idea of running an empire to you. It really does, the hugeness of it. The overwelming thought of it. Its mind boggling sometimes. And I only play on 400 star maps. The biggest is 1400 stars. I can't even imagine that. The secret to the game though is to have lots of empires with you in the game. You really need it to flesh out the game, and fill the galsxy with variety!

This game is huge in scope and I highly suggest it if your a 4X fan. But I will give you one more thing that annoys me to no end. Like all games of this type the late game becomes too much of a chore. Just too much going on for one person to handle. Or you just become to powerful. But this is not the games fault, its just the way all games are in this type of game. The fun part is the building up and stuff.

Once you get late in the game and everyone starts researching other planets to colonise (IE Ocean, ice, moons etc) the map borders become so cluttered that I find this totally annoying to be honest. I will post a pic of a Mid late game galaxy for you to try to understand. I like borders and late game this game has none, which makes wars a hair raising experience.

This you can see how we are so spread out and criss cross each other. Uggh.
[image]http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd138/malkuth74/lategame.jpg[/image]

This is just a picutre of your empires and all the ships going around. I am the dark blue, there is a light blue guy who is my ally that hard to tell apart though. I own most of the middle.
[image]http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd138/malkuth74/lategame2.jpg[/image]



Flaviusx -> RE: I hesitate because....... (3/31/2010 6:55:07 AM)

I'm loving it and each game I play I take more and more stuff away from automation and am really getting into the nuts and bolts.

My latest game I've gone to town on ship design. Left that up to the AI before mostly. The default designs are horrible, you can optimize those.

I'm also getting the hang of fleets. You have to babysit those to get 'em right, the fleet automation is bad. 

So far as refueling goes, I've solved that issue to my own satisfation by designing ships with more fuel capacity. Like 1.5-2 times more than the default designs. That's more than enough for deep strikes into enemy territory. I also am a fanatic about putting spaceports everywhere, including my frontier worlds and have a cheap port design to support fleet strikes as a fuel point. They don't need to be expensive ports with all the bells and whistles of your homeworld.



lordxorn -> RE: I hesitate because....... (3/31/2010 9:12:08 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: DiggyDad

Thanks fellas, downloading now.  Hope I'm not up all night, I have things to do tomorrow morning. 


Definitely let us know your impressions of it in this thread, I am very interested to know. [:)]



lordxorn -> RE: I hesitate because....... (3/31/2010 9:14:55 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

I'm loving it and each game I play I take more and more stuff away from automation and am really getting into the nuts and bolts.

My latest game I've gone to town on ship design. Left that up to the AI before mostly. The default designs are horrible, you can optimize those.

I'm also getting the hang of fleets. You have to babysit those to get 'em right, the fleet automation is bad. 

So far as refueling goes, I've solved that issue to my own satisfation by designing ships with more fuel capacity. Like 1.5-2 times more than the default designs. That's more than enough for deep strikes into enemy territory. I also am a fanatic about putting spaceports everywhere, including my frontier worlds and have a cheap port design to support fleet strikes as a fuel point. They don't need to be expensive ports with all the bells and whistles of your homeworld.


Yes you are dead on with the re-design and extra fuel capacity. It becomes so much more manageable. I was also trying to figure out a way to get around the resupply bug, by designing a starbase that doesn't sit on a gas giant, and only used collectors. However, I realized I was hoping for a Electric Car only solution, and so I designed a massive war base that can refuel lots of ships and be deployed in a hostile territory but still fend of pretty big attacks.



Gertjan -> RE: I hesitate because....... (3/31/2010 10:39:47 AM)

I love the game! Go and buy it, you wont be dissapointed. Just make sure you have a fast cpu(s) (ip if you want to play large galaxies), since the game runs mostly on that.



DiggyDad -> RE: I hesitate because....... (3/31/2010 2:56:55 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: lordxorn


quote:

ORIGINAL: DiggyDad

Thanks fellas, downloading now.  Hope I'm not up all night, I have things to do tomorrow morning. 


Definitely let us know your impressions of it in this thread, I am very interested to know. [:)]



Ok, only made it through the tutorials last night but my first impression was WOW. Holy Cow, I've got some work to do to get a grasp on this one. The level of detail is a bit overwhelming but I think its going to be super cool to get it all figured out. One minor thing, I think the physical size of the ships and bases should be smaller; that would leave a less cluttered look to colony areas where there is alot of ships and bases floating around. I'll post more after I get a little more into it, got to go do real life stuff today as my daughter is being presented a young authors award, yea I'm proud.



Gertjan -> RE: I hesitate because....... (3/31/2010 3:06:33 PM)

Good that you have bought it!



lordxorn -> RE: I hesitate because....... (3/31/2010 5:14:41 PM)

Yeah you make a good point, there might be a way to mod that.



Gertjan -> RE: I hesitate because....... (3/31/2010 9:56:20 PM)

malkuth how do you get the screenshots so nice in the posts?



AMF -> RE: I hesitate because....... (4/1/2010 2:47:53 PM)

Ok, I am also on the fence, and reading the forums, here are my concerns.

* No carriers/fighters?
* not a very deep tech tree?
* not as moddable as I would like (i.e., no chance for a unleashed modding community to come up with really cool things...?)
* moons have unique names, not sequential off the star name (i.e., not Sol-3 but XC890, or something like that. This may sound trivial, but it really bugs me since I doubt I'll be able to keep track of places named like this)
* no multiplayer?
* no late game stellar manipulation tech?
* alien races tech not really unique/different from standard?

I am willing to overlook all these, I think, so long as they will be added later in expansions or fixed in patches. Is the consensus that they will be?

I'll probably think of more things to get worried about, but this is a first pass just from reading the forums...and note that I come at all this from a Space Empires 4 and MOO2 perspective, which probably explains my concerns above.

Thanks,

AMF



Nemo84 -> RE: I hesitate because....... (4/1/2010 3:26:00 PM)

quote:

* No carriers/fighters?


I know, very unfortunate. However, balancing fighters to capital ships is a real pain in the behind, and few games manage to do this well. Better to exclude them than to make them worthless or overpowered. Think of the space combat as WW1 battleships in space, not WW2 carriers.

quote:

* not a very deep tech tree?


I don't know, I haven't really gotten to the end of it yet. It doesn't seem very deep, though, and I think I will use the slow research option next game. All research though is evolution of existing components, not revolution and that is a bit disappointing though understandable in a grand strategy game.

quote:

* not as moddable as I would like (i.e., no chance for a unleashed modding community to come up with really cool things...?)


Totally agree, and I also hope more of the inner workings are revealed to modders. I've already seen others like Okim ask for this, and if he is whom I think he is I'll be extremely disappointed if he won't get the chance to do some extensive modding.

quote:

* moons have unique names, not sequential off the star name (i.e., not Sol-3 but XC890, or something like that. This may sound trivial, but it really bugs me since I doubt I'll be able to keep track of places named like this)


Not really a problem, you can simply rename them after colonization. A bit annoying, but hardly worth complaining in my opinion.

quote:

* no multiplayer?


Not turn-based and too time-consuming for multiplayer. A wise decision.

quote:

* no late game stellar manipulation tech?


I've seen mention of some sort of Death Star being possible, so planet destruction is hopefully included.

quote:

* alien races tech not really unique/different from standard?


Different planet preferences and some unique techs/governments. They went with the typical genre convention here. As far as I know, there is only one game that doesn't do this, and it has a mere handful of races.



Erik Rutins -> RE: I hesitate because....... (4/1/2010 4:34:40 PM)

Hi AMF,

quote:

ORIGINAL: AMF
* No carriers/fighters?
* not a very deep tech tree?
* not as moddable as I would like (i.e., no chance for a unleashed modding community to come up with really cool things...?)
* moons have unique names, not sequential off the star name (i.e., not Sol-3 but XC890, or something like that. This may sound trivial, but it really bugs me since I doubt I'll be able to keep track of places named like this)
* no late game stellar manipulation tech?
* alien races tech not really unique/different from standard?


I can say that everything except adding multiplayer is currently in our long-range plans for future expansions and improvements. So more tech, more aliens, more mod support, new ship types, etc. is all stuff that can be expected once we get past the post-release support period and back to "new" development.



Pymous -> RE: I hesitate because....... (4/1/2010 4:39:36 PM)

Awsome news :)
Thanks for the support Erik, maybe i'll then start to mod by drawing new ships designs :)



DiggyDad -> RE: I hesitate because....... (4/1/2010 4:44:20 PM)

Well, I've got to give it to the designers, I don't think I've played anything quite like this before. This game would not work as a Turn-Based game, the Real-Time is not so bad with this one either. You can slow it down enough to enable multi-tasking in an intelligent manner. It was a bit disconcerting starting time rolling the first time and seeing all of my ships moving without my telling them to do anything. Now I see myself as trying to shepherd my empire in the right direction rather than micromanaging, although as I get better I'm sure I'll take on more tasks myself.

I do have some questions though:

1) Should I leave available a space port or star base for civilian construction? I feel like I may be hampering my business growth by using my construction for military too much.

2) How do you, or can you, get one ship to break off from a fleet to refuel and leave the rest of the fleet intact? Is there a way to automate this behavior or do I have to do this manually?

3) Is there a way to check how well the civilians are doing on particular mining bases? Can I get them to transport certain commodities to certain planets or am I at the whim of the freighters and the AI?

This game is certainly an achievement in design and vision and I'm sure I will enjoy this for some time. It does have a learning curve, which I'm still on, but if you want to try something really different this is it. If the devs continue with development and maybe even some expansion packs this game could remain on hard drives for a long time. I heartily recommend it. More questions to come, thanks!!












Grotius -> RE: I hesitate because....... (4/1/2010 5:46:28 PM)

I have the same questions as DiggyDad, especially about transport of particular resources. I like the idea of a private sector I can't touch, but at least can I influence which resources go where? Maybe I do this indirectly by starting construction of a ship at a particular location?



EisenHammer -> RE: I hesitate because....... (4/1/2010 6:06:28 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
So more tech, more aliens, more mod support, new ship types, etc. is all stuff that can be expected once we get past the post-release support period and back to "new" development.


Nice...[:)]

This game is awesome.



DiggyDad -> RE: I hesitate because....... (4/1/2010 6:21:02 PM)

I think I may have found a bonafide bug.  I have a mining station in the middle of a system not on a planet,  I can't scrap him because it is civilian.  Bugger is sure sucking up money though for maintenance.  How do I correct this?



freeboy -> RE: I hesitate because....... (4/1/2010 7:57:03 PM)

how mobile are star bases?
if they can move they are the substitute for no carriers



Zakhal -> RE: I hesitate because....... (4/1/2010 8:03:51 PM)

Is the AI any good? Does it provide plenty of challenge even after you have learned to play the game?



DiggyDad -> RE: I hesitate because....... (4/1/2010 8:10:11 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: freeboy

how mobile are star bases?
if they can move they are the substitute for no carriers

I don't know much yet but I can tell you that Star Bases don't move.



licker -> RE: I hesitate because....... (4/1/2010 8:12:23 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Zakhal

Is the AI any good? Does it provide plenty of challenge even after you have learned to play the game?


The answer is 'it depends', but generally the answer will probably be 'no'. Of course there are lots of different ways you can set up your games to give yourself additional challenges, though that kind of a challenge is somewhat different in nature from the AI being challenging in and of itself.

Though is there a game you feel has an AI which provides 'plenty of challenge' after you've learned the game?



Zakhal -> RE: I hesitate because....... (4/1/2010 8:21:58 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: licker
Though is there a game you feel has an AI which provides 'plenty of challenge' after you've learned the game?


I would say that if I loose just because I dont know how to play the game aka build ships or colonize planets then the AI is not challenging. If I know how to play the game but still loose because my strategy in the game is not good enough yet then the AI is challenging.

How challenging the game is depends on how long it takes to discover good strategies against the AI. I would say 30-40 hours is pretty good if the game costs only 30€. Thats how I would define it.



DiggyDad -> RE: I hesitate because....... (4/1/2010 8:38:29 PM)

I just noticed another weird occurrence.  I had my fleet out destroying some pirates; when they finished the job I told them to 'refuel at nearest' as gas was getting low. The fleet captain must have been panicked about the situation because he decided to go to a neighboring empires' star base to do it.  Needless to say my neighbors weren't pleased.  I think we need to change the AI on this one.  Fleets should only go to our own bases or to neighbors were we have a mutual agreement, if there is such a thing.  It was weird though; even though my neighbor didn't like them there, he still refueled my ships.:)    



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