RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (Full Version)

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taltamir -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/23/2010 9:31:06 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Florestan

quote:

ORIGINAL: taltamir

I want my spaceports CENTERED on the planet...


I'm quite surprised that this may actually bother someone... What's the difference having it a little bit out-center ?


it is a little less effective in defending the planet against invasion... and it looks less pretty.




Spacecadet -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/24/2010 3:31:40 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: taltamir

quote:

ORIGINAL: Florestan

quote:

ORIGINAL: taltamir

I want my spaceports CENTERED on the planet...


I'm quite surprised that this may actually bother someone... What's the difference having it a little bit out-center ?


it is a little less effective in defending the planet against invasion... and it looks less pretty.


My thoughts exactly on both points - centered & defensive layout.





bigbaba -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/24/2010 6:39:59 AM)

ok, after several hours of testing, i am still very happy with the challenging AI.

i play as human monarch in a smal galaxy with 11 other empires (the most aggressive species in the game) and they give me a realy good game for my money.

now my empire includes 5 colonies and i realize that i am in a very bad financlal situation. i post a screenshot later today, but my tax income (69k) is eaten up by high maintance costs (maintaining a fregate costs 2200 credits) and also very high fuel usage.

anyone else experienced a financial crisis like that in the new beta game?




taltamir -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/24/2010 12:17:54 PM)

fuel tends to dry up in late game. This is a big financial problem because it is ALSO used in the construction of some ships... since construction cost is 8 * cost of materials, and maintenance is a percentage of that, both construction and maintenance cost become very high very rapidly with increasing fuel costs...
A colony ship that costs mere 8000 @ with all components costing 1 credit, will cost 200,000 when fuel cost rises to 40 credits each.
If you design your own ships and bases you can somewhat mitigate it, give more ships collectors, give more collectors to space ports, design civilian ships with the best calson reactor and the military ships with the best hydrogen reactor (which is a lot better than the best calson)...

finally, build a lot of construction ships and use those to build a lot of gas mining stations on sources of calson and hydrogen (primarily hydrogen).




WoodMan -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/24/2010 4:15:35 PM)

Hey Eliott,

One thing I mentioned a while back, I can't remember if it was in the wishlist thread or if it was in one of the Beta threads.  Just thought I'd bring it up again because I *think* its a minor change that might be easily acheived.

Starting systems always have an extra planet/moon that you can colonize in addition to your homeworld.  I think this is not needed and again going back to atmosphere/immersion, its really quite unlikely.  Could we possibly have say a 60% chance of two planets on normal settings, then increase/decrease the chance by 20% for each home system setting, so trying for example would be a 40% chance of having the extra continental world in your home-system.




jscott991 -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/24/2010 7:10:21 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: taltamir

fuel tends to dry up in late game. This is a big financial problem because it is ALSO used in the construction of some ships... since construction cost is 8 * cost of materials, and maintenance is a percentage of that, both construction and maintenance cost become very high very rapidly with increasing fuel costs...
A colony ship that costs mere 8000 @ with all components costing 1 credit, will cost 200,000 when fuel cost rises to 40 credits each.
If you design your own ships and bases you can somewhat mitigate it, give more ships collectors, give more collectors to space ports, design civilian ships with the best calson reactor and the military ships with the best hydrogen reactor (which is a lot better than the best calson)...

finally, build a lot of construction ships and use those to build a lot of gas mining stations on sources of calson and hydrogen (primarily hydrogen).


You've mentioned this fuel crisis before and I've never seen it and I've played quite a few 1.04 and before games to very late dates. Did this get worse in 1.05 or is about the same as you were saying in the past? If the latter, then I wonder if its something you're doing (and I hate saying because that's how dismissive people have attacked my own bug/balance reports)?

Did the economy get much harder in 1.05 and .06? If so, then I'm glad I abandoned the game.




taltamir -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/24/2010 8:15:18 PM)

it seems to be worse the bigger the galaxy is. i never see in 250 planet galaxies, in late game in a 1000 planet galaxy right now fuel has reached 10 credits, in 1400 ones its worse.
I can upload saves if anyone needs them.




Florestan -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/24/2010 9:06:41 PM)

About the fuel problem : I never noticed that in the few game I took to the end...

It seems there is a missing improvement : Pirate bases now are fully working space ports (without research capabilities, of course).




WoodMan -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/24/2010 10:05:36 PM)

I've never seen the fuel problem either [&:]

I think some pirate bases were weren't they?  Before they had either a Spaceport or a Mining Station.  Were their Spaceports not functional before?




taltamir -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/24/2010 10:18:53 PM)

its possible you didn't notice.
Look at the actual price of hydrogen and calson in the expansion planner, it should be 1.

Also, I only play sandbox games, and I keep playing far beyond the point of "victory"




WoodMan -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/24/2010 10:31:11 PM)

Yeah, if a price is more than 1 I build a mining station (if possible for that resource) but its possible you play a lot longer than I actually do. 

Have you tried playing with the game settings to reduce home-system and general planet quality?  Also try reducing independants settings down to minimum.  Maybe you already play like this, but if not give it a try, smaller populations = less money = less ships = less fuel costs (I think).  It might make the game better in the long run if you plan to stay on until you take the whole galaxy [:D]




taltamir -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/24/2010 10:45:52 PM)

when every single planet in the galaxy is colonized, it tends to take more than 1 GMS.

and yes, I do build them manually, that is the point; the solution to rising fuel costs is to build lots of GMS manually, the AI doesn't build enough...
auto construction builds a few, but not enough for really large really long games. For smaller and shorter games, auto construction builds more then enough.
then there is also the AI's consumption and amount built. if your AI on full auto doesn't build enough, neither is the AI for the non player opponents.




Dadekster -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/25/2010 4:28:22 AM)

Very nice once again.




bigbaba -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/25/2010 1:00:51 PM)

from what i understand, energy collectors work when a ship is inside a system without moveing around (regardless if its in a orbit of a planet or not) and they reduce the fuel usage because static ships do not use fuel to hold their position. instead of that they use solar energy which they collect from the sun radiation in the system. is that correct guys?




taltamir -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/25/2010 1:18:10 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: bigbaba

from what i understand, energy collectors work when a ship is inside a system without moveing around (regardless if its in a orbit of a planet or not) and they reduce the fuel usage because static ships do not use fuel to hold their position. instead of that they use solar energy which they collect from the sun radiation in the system. is that correct guys?


they indeed only collect energy when they stand still within a system. but its not because of "holding position"... a variety of components (sensors, shields, etc) consume a static amount of energy per second, all the time. the collectors collect energy for that consumption, thus alleviating the need to burn fuel.




jalapen0 -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/25/2010 3:33:57 PM)

Are pirates tougher now? I started a new game with 1.0.6 last night. Played about an hour and ran into a pirate CRUISER. He was a real pain in my ass. His base also had 800+ shields, I couldn't get it knocked down with even 15 ships. It was great fun. :)




Florestan -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/25/2010 4:52:50 PM)

That fuel problem is quite strange. I just checked on my current game, and I don't have it. I'm playing Quameno, and this probably helps for my personal consumption, as their technology is a reactor that consumes only 2.5 hydrogen for 1000 energy, but for 96 planets, I have only two bases producing hydrogen, and I still have 53 k in stock. Prices are 1 for both caslon and hydrogen.
Are your stocks low, too ?
I think a lot of my production is made from gas mining ships. Do yours still work on the ones of your games that have this problem ? Perhaps the resource planets stocks are beginning to be low in such a late game, and that the regeneration is too slow ? (don't ask me how you could dry a gas giant planet or gas cloud... It recalls me of the oil price of the early 21st century...)
I can't think of any other possibility.




bigbaba -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/25/2010 5:05:17 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: jalapen0

Are pirates tougher now? I started a new game with 1.0.6 last night. Played about an hour and ran into a pirate CRUISER. He was a real pain in my ass. His base also had 800+ shields, I couldn't get it knocked down with even 15 ships. It was great fun. :)


pirates are more aggressive imho. i am in the early stage of a 1.0.6 game and meet pirate destroyers with around 140 firepower while most pirate ships in the earlier version had weaker weapons.




Florestan -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/25/2010 5:16:58 PM)

quote:


I think some pirate bases were [space port] weren't they?


Well the best I could find had a shipyard component, but never any production component. They didn't have the gaz mining capabilities they now have.
I found some other little fixes not in the list, by the way, but I suppose they are not really worth listing...




Griz -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/25/2010 7:51:20 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: WoodMan
I think some pirate bases were weren't they?  Before they had either a Spaceport or a Mining Station.  Were their Spaceports not functional before?


in 1.0.5.8 I had a former pirate base that looked like it had a working construction yard, but one of my explorers tried to go there for repair/refit and just sat there for hours with no work being done on it.




Baleur -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/26/2010 2:31:41 AM)

16. All moons now have unique names

[&o][&o]

Sneaking in a feature request here.. Rare planets around black holes / pulsars.. Like 2 planets max at 10% chance (since the black holes and pulsars are already rare), 1 planet at 40% chance. With extreme luxury (or normal) resource abundance, making the rare black holes / pulsars who do have a planet hotspots for empire greed and "we covet your planets rroar!" diplomacy annoyance [:D]




taltamir -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/26/2010 2:46:27 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Florestan

That fuel problem is quite strange. I just checked on my current game, and I don't have it. I'm playing Quameno, and this probably helps for my personal consumption, as their technology is a reactor that consumes only 2.5 hydrogen for 1000 energy, but for 96 planets, I have only two bases producing hydrogen, and I still have 53 k in stock. Prices are 1 for both caslon and hydrogen.
Are your stocks low, too ?
I think a lot of my production is made from gas mining ships. Do yours still work on the ones of your games that have this problem ? Perhaps the resource planets stocks are beginning to be low in such a late game, and that the regeneration is too slow ? (don't ask me how you could dry a gas giant planet or gas cloud... It recalls me of the oil price of the early 21st century...)
I can't think of any other possibility.


I have 600 planets now. I think it only started going above 1 credit each at about 400 planets. and its a lot better than it used to be (price is around 10 now, before they fixed the bug with gas bases being deleted instead of retrofitting it was 40)

And I am late enough in the game where I have ALL technologies maxed out. (started out me and the other empires had only 1 planet and no tech)...
Also, no pirates, no monsters, low corruption (maybe that results in more ships being built)...

I know of every planet in the galaxy, I have colonized every colonizable one in my systems, and the AI has pretty much colonized everything else... planets now only change hands. the game is actually laggy actually with every single planet colonized.




the1sean -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/26/2010 4:23:52 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: taltamir

quote:

ORIGINAL: WoodMan

quote:

I think ALL moons, regardless of quality or type, should be named "<Solar System> <Planet Number in Arabic numeral><Moon's number in letter form>"
So, for our system (Sol), the System name is Sol, the Earth is Sol 3, and our moon is Sol 3a (the first moon of Sol 3).

The unique names are nicer then random alphanumeric code, but they still don't TELL us anything (neither does a planet having a unique name)...

If I see "Zentebia 5c" I immediately know that it is a moon, specifically, the third moon of the 5th planet of the Zentebia system.
If I see UX523 it tells me nothing, if I see "Plemai" (actual name of a moon I saw) it tells me nothing.


Okay, you just gave me an idea Talt, its obvious we are different types of player, practicality seems of paramount importance to you, whereas atmosphere is of paramount importance to me, however all practicality and no atmosphere, or all atmosphere and no practicality is bad for everyone.

If we give all planets a designation following your/mine above suggestions, i.e Star Klatuueni, Planet Klatuueni 1, Moon Klatuueni 1a and keep the above suggestions I made for names also, meaning all planets have a designation following your system, but the naming sytem I suggested still applies.

So, if the first moon of the first planet of the star Klatuueni was an Ocean planet with 65% quality then its designation would be Klatuueni 1a and its name could be Plemai. 

There could be an option in the option screen for named planets to display their designation, their name or both so it could appear as Klatuueni 1a, Plemai or Klatuueni 1a (Plemai) depending on what option you choose.  This would be 100% perfect in terms of practicality and atmosphere and satisfy both the type of player you are and the type of player I am while giving us both that extra bit of practicality and atmosphere that would have been missed by our previous suggestions.



I like it... it has both an address (Star Klatuueni, planet 1, moon a) AND a name (Plemai)... it both provides info and an atmosphere. This is an excellent idea and is far better then my original suggestion.
And personally, I do like a touch of "atmosphere" when it doesn't get in the way of practicality... i would very much prefer to set it to "Klatuueni 1a (Plemai)" rather then just Plemai or just Klatuunei 1a. (although having all 3 options is a good idea)

BTW: if you are wondering what is the practicality part of having the name be the address... If I see in the colonization screen that 3 planets/moons are in the same system, I will first colonize only the best one of them, and focus on claiming other systems (by colonizing one, the best, planet per system)... then later, when I have the cash / am out of systems to claim at the moment, I will solidify my hold on each system by colonizing every planet and moon in it.

also, if I see that a system has multiple good planets, but is infested with pirates or monsters... I will target it before a system with only one planet/moon for clearing of hostiles and colonization.


These naming convention improvements are an awesome idea. Best of both worlds, usability and atmosphere. Also, i t has been suggested that planetary body names be hyperlinks to that location if clicked. Combine these two ideas, and it would bring order to "1000 solar systems on one map" chaos. Said chaos can be debilitating for any half-way successful player!

PS: Kudos to the devs for changing the low quality planet name color from red to orange, great idea [;)]




thiosk -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/26/2010 9:37:45 AM)

I'm the emperor, if I want my starbases over the equator, THEY BETTER BE OVER THE EQUATOR.





Fishman -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/26/2010 11:45:52 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Florestan

I'm quite surprised that this may actually bother someone... What's the difference having it a little bit out-center ?
Defeinsive coverage. A port that is perfectly centered covers the LZ, an off center port leaves an angle from which an attacker can approach much more easily as your weapons range over that spot is much shorter.




Florestan -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/26/2010 1:22:31 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: thiosk

I'm the emperor, if I want my starbases over the equator, THEY BETTER BE OVER THE EQUATOR.



It will be as you wish, my Master [&o]




jscott991 -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/26/2010 5:35:27 PM)

The devs have done so much between 1.04 and now that I really think they dropped the ball not releasing at least one official patch in between.

Sure, those of us REALLY into the game and with knowledge of how Matrix's site works have access to all of these wonderful changes, but I wonder about the casual or "normal" level player. They are still toiling in 1.04 (which, admittedly, I came to think of as very playable).

The buzz for this game is almost completely dead outside of this forum (and is a bit subdued even here) and I wonder if a lot of the devs efforts are going to go for naught in bringing back enthusiasm for DW.

In short, I think there were too many beta patches. Some of these features should have been made official to keep less fanatical players interested.




WoodMan -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/26/2010 6:21:47 PM)

Apart from the War in the Pacific forum, the DW forum here is the busiest in the Matrix Games range, so although the buzz is small for a game overall, it looks like for a Matrix game its pretty big.

After my experiences in recent games I've played I'm happy about the Beta patches, there is way more content than other devs add and two of the other games I've played the most over the past year or two (Blood Bowl and Far Cry 2) both had very few patches, that contained very little, and in both cases patches introduced new and worse bugs to the game than the ones they were fixing (FC2 in the last ever patch[:-]).  Neither of the companies that made those games made beta patches nor did they take into account anything the fans said.  Personally I prefer the Matrix/Codeforce way of doing things.

I can see what you mean about casual players, but judging by the type of game Matrix make and how hard it is to find their games in the first place, the audience here is probably somewhat more advanced than the audience for other games, and more likely to benefit from the Matrix/Codeforce way than lose interest because they can't click a link and type in a password to download a patch [:D]




Baleur -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/26/2010 7:22:41 PM)

No offence WoodMan, but if the games you played the most over the past year or two were Blood Bowl and Far Cry 2, that isnt really a large basis for comparison with how often other devs release patches.
In my experience, Distant Worlds is probably the slowest patched game i've played in a long time (including the beta patch updates).. I could sit and list game after game that updates more frequently but that wouldnt make much difference.

I'm glad they still update it, but its definetly not even close to being a high standard in comparison to most other games out there (multimillion dollar devs or indie devs).
And i agree with the "too many beta patches" opinion. For the majority of gamers (who dont visit these forums) the game is still basically unplaayble.. When i first got the game i was dissapointed, the economy was so broken and the ai (your own ships and such) were so fidgety that it was a struggle against the interface.

---------- [:o] WARNING, wall of text regarding PR [:o] -------------

NOW however, with the latest beta patches, its great. I enjoy it very much, its playable, its fun. But those people never know that.. In their eyes the game came and gone, they probably already gave up on it.
I suspect the only thing that can reinvigorate interest is an expansion pack (with a hype-campaign) or a big eyecandy update such as AI War's 2.0 update (which was when i first even heard of the game).
I dont want this game to fall into oblivion, i love the concept, i want it to evolve and continue at a rapid pace, not this snail pace.
Now i dont know anything about game development costs or blah blah, thats not my job. I'm just saying that i really wish this game was as frequently updated (with as large updates, including content-wise) as some of my other favorite indie games (that is how they became my favorite games, because they get updated so often its almost like an MMO), such as AI War etc.

Sometimes i just get the feeling that Matrix Games settle for less than they have to.. This is a compliment, you could do so much more, get so much more sales.
I dont know what it is, a lack of aspiration or not realizing the potential. There's no reason to aim for a tiny forum-centric target group, when you could aim for the entire gaming community, and get a fair chunk of them interested in the game (because it is very unique, Galciv2 isnt like DW, Space Empires 4 isnt like DW, SoTS isnt like DW).
Dont settle for less, go after them! There's no reason Distant Worlds cant be counted amongst those other great space strategy games i just mentioned, you just gotta get people to hear about it, and show them why they should be interested, not assume that everyone will google around on their own accord.

Now im off to continue my epic battle, me as Naxxilians and my (i forgot their race name, sorry!) allies against the large and ever expanding Haakonish Industries empire [:D][:D]
I never even played a game past getting 20 colonies pre-betapatches. All these changes have to be made official NOW, and put some hype out there on game forums and blah blah.
I dont care what you do, hype it as "the eve online real time 4x strategy game", whatever it takes to get eyes back on this game. Most people probably havent even heard of it.
Put a new trailer up on gametrailers.com and gamespot etc, showing the latest changes, add dramatic music and try to make an event out of it.
Or heck, hire me as your PR agent lol.

Incorporate some of the eyecandy mods into the patches, make a deal with the guy who makes the planet overhaul mod to finish it, give him a free burger or something, i'm sure he'd do it. I'd do it if i could, but all i can do are backdrops lol.

I'm like every other so called hardcore gamer out there (i hate that term, as if anyone playing games are better than anyone else playing games, we're all geeks anyway), and just because we / they play Battlefield, Halo, Starcraft or World of frigin Warcraft, does not mean they arent your audience and that you shouldnt go after them. You caught me, you can catch them, you just need to let them know the game exists, and present it in a good way!




WoodMan -> RE: New v1.0.6.0 Public Beta Now Available! (7/26/2010 8:44:29 PM)

Well, tbh I said played the most (FC2 because of the map editor and BB because I liked the board game when I was younger) but over the past 2 years I've probably purchased in the region of 10-20 games (excluding consoles), by far the best support in terms of rate of patch releases, amount of patch releases, and content in the patches, and certainly paying attention to the players is DW.  However, most games I buy are the really big releases from big companies and I've kind of noticed the bigger the dev/publisher, the worse the support... ahem, EA/UBI.

I should also add I've only played DW since 1.0.4.9 and not before, so 4 Beta patches in the 2 months or so since I bought the game is more than I've seen from any other Dev before.  But before 1.0.4.9 maybe things were slower, I dunno, I wasn't here [:)]




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