Potential buyer here... (Full Version)

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Whydmer -> Potential buyer here... (11/18/2011 4:48:31 PM)

I was a big fan of MoO I and II back in the day, enjoyed but ultimately tired of Galactic Civilizations II, especially after their last expansion for some reason. Enjoyed Sins of a Solar Empire but never really delved too deep into it. I've looked at DW for a while and have never decided to jump in. Now I have enough discretionary money to buy a game, even the base game and the expansions as well. So I am taking a long look at this game. The Let's Play series on you tube was definitely a good selling tool.

Some questions.

Learning curve, I am a working adult with a wife and 2 kids, I don't have the time to put into learning games that I did way back when. Can I play and learn small bits at a time and ease into the game?

Micromanagement, I actually enjoy some micromanagement and details when I have the time, other times I want to whip out a few turns and just progress towards the end (especially once I know I am winning). Where on the spectrum to you feel this game is?

Is there an optimal design to ships/empire that you really have to "role-play" not to follow? Or are different pathways to creating your ships and evolving your empire that are equally effective?

Anyone have any educated guesses as to whether there might be a bundled package once Legends is released? (to save a little money). And if I just want to get my toes wet how is the original vanilla DW to play with no expansions?

I thank you in advance for any feedback/advice you can offer. Between money and time I can really follow only one gaming path at the moment, and I want to figure out if this is "The One".



Gelatinous Cube -> RE: Potential buyer here... (11/18/2011 5:21:32 PM)

Other people will answer your questions in far more detail, I'm sure, but here's what I can offer:

quote:

Learning curve, I am a working adult with a wife and 2 kids, I don't have the time to put into learning games that I did way back when. Can I play and learn small bits at a time and ease into the game?


I also am on a tight schedule, which is one of the reasons I like this game. It eases you in. The Automated helper AI is not just a gimmick. It is an essential part of the game, and learning how to fine-tune it is necesarry for maximum enjoyment. There's so many different ways to do it, and frankly most of them are for those of us who DON'T like micro-management. I really love the AI helper, and wouldn't even play this game without it. It may take you a week to get it all figured out to your satisfaction, if you only get a couple hours a day to yourself, but once you figure out how you enjoy playing the game then you're good to go.


quote:

Micromanagement, I actually enjoy some micromanagement and details when I have the time, other times I want to whip out a few turns and just progress towards the end (especially once I know I am winning). Where on the spectrum to you feel this game is?



I am a sworn enemy of micro-management. Seriously. We had a fight to the death once, somehow we both lived.

Honestly though, like I said above, the AI Helper can be fine-tuned to your level of play, and by default most things will be automatic when you first start up the game. It will look daunting and intimidating, because you will think "How can I possibly run all this myself?" then you will think "Well if the AI is going to do it all, then why should I care?"

And then, once you begin taking over different aspects of the game from the AI, you realize that it is just competent enough to keep your empire prosperous in good times, and you will slowly notice things that you can do better. By the end of your first playthrough you will probably have at least half of the options on manual control, even if you don't like to micro.


quote:

Is there an optimal design to ships/empire that you really have to "role-play" not to follow? Or are different pathways to creating your ships and evolving your empire that are equally effective?


The tech tree is pretty much the same for every race, except most races have one "branch" of the tree for their own stuff. However, all the races are very different--especially at the start of the game. Even if everything else stayed the same (which it won't) you would have a completely different game by playing a different race.

quote:

Anyone have any educated guesses as to whether there might be a bundled package once Legends is released? (to save a little money). And if I just want to get my toes wet how is the original vanilla DW to play with no expansions?


Nobody knows whether there will be a bundle. I certainly hope so, as I would love to see more people play this game. Its the best find i've made in years.



tjhkkr -> RE: Potential buyer here... (11/18/2011 5:26:10 PM)

[Learning curve, I am a working adult with a wife and 2 kids, I don't have the time to put into learning games that I did way back when. Can I play and learn small bits at a time and ease into the game?]
I am a very busy man my self; I think you will find the interface easy enough to use. Having said that, not even I have learned all the secrets...

[Is there an optimal design to ships/empire that you really have to "role-play" not to follow? Or are different pathways to creating your ships and evolving your empire that are equally effective?]
I would say different pathways to be equally effective. You run your empire the way you want to.

[Micromanagement, I actually enjoy some micromanagement and details when I have the time, other times I want to whip out a few turns and just progress towards the end (especially once I know I am winning). Where on the spectrum to you feel this game is?]
I would say there is a level of micromanagement, but that varies to your taste. There are a lot of things you can automate, or even semi-automate (I am thinking of scout ships).

Look, I will not blue sky you, I have heavily modified my game to my tastes... I am a big Star Wars: Clone Wars/Attack of the Clones fan and all of my races and so on reflect that taste. Other folks have done Star Trek themes and there are some BSG and B5 folks too... (and you can download a number of people's work)
I have almost never played the base game with the base races and so on... so I have no idea how it plays. Some of the other folks may comment on that.
I have found this game to be a very enjoyable use of free time...
So far, Data, our resident father among us has not had his wife divorce him, so I suspect one can enjoy the game without hacking off the wife to bad!

Hope it helps!



Shark7 -> RE: Potential buyer here... (11/18/2011 5:43:06 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Whydmer

I was a big fan of MoO I and II back in the day, enjoyed but ultimately tired of Galactic Civilizations II, especially after their last expansion for some reason. Enjoyed Sins of a Solar Empire but never really delved too deep into it. I've looked at DW for a while and have never decided to jump in. Now I have enough discretionary money to buy a game, even the base game and the expansions as well. So I am taking a long look at this game. The Let's Play series on you tube was definitely a good selling tool.

Some questions.

Learning curve, I am a working adult with a wife and 2 kids, I don't have the time to put into learning games that I did way back when. Can I play and learn small bits at a time and ease into the game?



I'd say the learning curve is moderate to easy. You can set the AI to do most of what is needed, or to help you through 'hints'. As others have stated, DW simply would not work without the helper AI, the game is a living galaxy, with something going on constantly...you need the AI to handle some tasks for you.

quote:



Micromanagement, I actually enjoy some micromanagement and details when I have the time, other times I want to whip out a few turns and just progress towards the end (especially once I know I am winning). Where on the spectrum to you feel this game is?



Personally I hate micro-management, but you can micro-manage till your heart's content by turning off aspects of the helper AI.

For example, I tend to leave Intelligence, exploration and colony development on automatic, diplomacy, fleets and military ship building on manual, and all other things on suggest. It strikes a nice balance for me, allowing me to control the things I enjoy controlling while leaving mundane tasks to the AI.

quote:



Is there an optimal design to ships/empire that you really have to "role-play" not to follow? Or are different pathways to creating your ships and evolving your empire that are equally effective?



Ship design is open, you can 'role-play' by designing ships to fit the role you want to. For example, you can build heavily shielded all beam weapon ships if you want, while I might design ships that all have fighter bays, etc. Since it is a single player game, and the AI never complains ( [;)] ) you have unlimited options for ship design from truly unbalanced fleet killers or keeping to a more moderate design that leaves the AI very competative...it's up to you. [:)]

quote:



Anyone have any educated guesses as to whether there might be a bundled package once Legends is released? (to save a little money). And if I just want to get my toes wet how is the original vanilla DW to play with no expansions?

I thank you in advance for any feedback/advice you can offer. Between money and time I can really follow only one gaming path at the moment, and I want to figure out if this is "The One".


There was a bundle with the release of ROTS, so it is probably safe to assume a bundle with the release of Legends.



Locarnus -> RE: Potential buyer here... (11/18/2011 5:59:11 PM)

I wouldnt buy the original alone, it had lots of unnecessary annoyances.
With the first expansion some annoyances were addressed, others remained, for the second expansion it looks like this is going to continue.
Imho the expansions should be more focused on addressing annoyances and a little less on adding content (since the annoyances should be addressed in patches instead of expansions anyway...).

With better modability this would of course be done by the community within weaks or months, but I mentioned that to no avail 2 years ago. Just imagine Space Empires 5 without mods (especially balancemod) [8|] .

Examples for annoyances:
1) In the orginal you could find a "Deathstar". When repaired, you were unstoppable for a long time, long enough to simply win the game without any need to build an empire. You could also find gaveyards of powerful ships, a single one of those could take out an early empires fleet alone...
This was gamebreaking, persistent for a long time, but now you can deactivate it with a simple box in the start screen. What would have taken modders about 10 min you had to wait for for months...

2) Diplomacy pop ups, when another empire asks for a new treaty. Afair only addressed in the first expansion, the do not pop up in your face all the time when you declined the last one 1min ago, but are banned to a history message box... Totally ruined the later game when you had 12 other empires constantly asking for the same changes in the treaty you declined minutes ago. Imagine windows asked you every 30 seconds in a pop up if you are sure you dont want to change something...

3) The ship design concentrated on one design. With the first expansion it had some more diversity (fighters), the second expansion brings even more variety. Of course its not comparable to SE5-BM or MoO2. But thats not an annoyance, rather a design decision.

It goes on like this. With the first expansion its playable, but leaves much to be done and many things are not done in the second expansion as well (and the modding support seems not to become significantly better for the near future...)


On the other hand, once you experienced the "living galaxy" feeling in this game (among other things), you miss it everywhere else.
Eg the ability to partially automate is really great.



DasTactic -> RE: Potential buyer here... (11/18/2011 6:45:08 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Whydmer
The Let's Play series on you tube was definitely a good selling tool.

Thanks. :) I made that series with new players in mind because I think a lot of new players find the game overwhelming. But as that game shows you can play at a slow or conservative pace and still make reasonable progress. The difficulty in DW is not so much learning the mechanics of the game as in understanding how those mechanics are played out in a living galaxy. For example, the freighting of resources to where they are needed is not something you can control and if your infrastructure (which you can control) is not good enough then you may find some resources never reach the other end of your empire. I love this aspect about DW because it makes you focus on building the right network of bases etc to allow the civilians to do their stuff.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Whydmer
Learning curve, I am a working adult with a wife and 2 kids, I don't have the time to put into learning games that I did way back when. Can I play and learn small bits at a time and ease into the game?

I also don't have a lot of time to devote to games and like games that I don't need to relearn when I come back to them. Distant Worlds has a mountain of things going on under the hood but the beauty of it is that so much can be automated. It is also important to understand that unlike Sins etc, you will find times when the right approach is to sit back and watch what happens rather than try to push the game along. It isn't like other RTS games where if you don't develop quickly you are quickly left behind.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Whydmer
Micromanagement, I actually enjoy some micromanagement and details when I have the time, other times I want to whip out a few turns and just progress towards the end (especially once I know I am winning). Where on the spectrum to you feel this game is?

Both ends of the spectrum to a degree except you can't micromanage the civilians (freighter network). I can't remember the specific numbers but when you colonise a planet it will attract a small number of freighters (2?). When you build star bases these will make freighters to add more to the network. Keep in mind there are heaps of different resources and ultimately you will need all of them so you do need a lot of freighters. The range of star drives dictates how far freighters will travel so the real micromanagement within this aspect consists of: selecting resource targets to build mines; building bases to make freighters; making sure you have sources and supply of fuel along the route; protecting the trade routes and mines. So your job is to make sure the living galaxy has the best structure to do its stuff. Of course, all the above can be automated as well. I leave most things on auto but override when I need to.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Whydmer
Is there an optimal design to ships/empire that you really have to "role-play" not to follow? Or are different pathways to creating your ships and evolving your empire that are equally effective?

You can build better ships than the AI will make - but not dramatically better. The AI will build general-purpose ships where you may want a ship with a specific purpose. Two examples: you may want a troop carrier with extra troop compartments, extra speed, but at the expense of shields - the idea being that you want to kamakazi the troops onto the planet; or, you may want to make sure you design ships small enough to be built within your current tech levels. Cruisers are typically 500 tonnes but your tech level might only allow 400 max. I tend to leave the smaller ship designs up to the AI and just tweak the AI larger ship designs. Role play isn't affected in any way. :)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Whydmer
Anyone have any educated guesses as to whether there might be a bundled package once Legends is released? (to save a little money). And if I just want to get my toes wet how is the original vanilla DW to play with no expansions?

No idea but it would make sense. Definitely better to get the expansions.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Whydmer
I thank you in advance for any feedback/advice you can offer. Between money and time I can really follow only one gaming path at the moment, and I want to figure out if this is "The One".

I hummed and hared before purchasing for much the same reasons as you listed. All I can say is that DW is one of the four 'must install' games on my computer along with MineCraft, Advanced Tactics, and Age of Wonders. I love it because each game is so damned different each time.



Whydmer -> RE: Potential buyer here... (11/18/2011 7:05:09 PM)

Wow! [&o] 

I want to thank you all for such quick and well considered responses.  The Matrix community is usually quite good and helpful, and the DW community in particular is holding up its end for sure. :)

[quote=Das123]I hummed and hared before purchasing for much the same reasons as you listed. All I can say is that DW is one of the four 'must install' games on my computer along with MineCraft, Advanced Tactics, and Age of Wonders. I love it because each game is so damned different each time. [/quote] Well this may be the ultimate selling point.  Minecraft I can only take in small doses, but the other 2 are standards on my computer as well.




Keston -> RE: Potential buyer here... (11/18/2011 7:59:38 PM)

I played the original game for a while, but went back to Sins for a clean, crisp, fast-playing package with a very usable UI. I came back to DW for the expansion and with its improvements have not felt the need to touch Sins. DW does feel more like a living galaxy than a stylized sci fi novel-type environment. There is a lot going on that I don't know about and I don't need to know about. The Legends expansion promises a lot of positive changes and UI improvements, so I would suggest buying the bundle, if there is one, and playing that to start. Since it might be out on the 23rd, it is not long to wait.

Good suggestions above about automating things and then stepping in more as you learn - the "suggest" option tells you what the AI thinks you should do - useful even if you don't do it or try to handle the task yourself. The tutorials and in-game guide provide an adequate intro and the War Room forum here and user-created strategy guides go deeper.

Rather than the classic one-world start, I suggest either the default preset with some colonies or one of the scenarios that starts you with a modest empire. This speeds up the learning curve and if you do something foolish it does not matter that much. You can easily click ship automation on or off and locate any idle ships to command those yourself. Early on I found exploring anomalies while also clicking to go to the source of event messages a good way to start.

I customize all ships and stations for reasons including choice of fuel, desired long or short cruising range, speed and tactics. Upgunning mining ships and stations intended for use outside friendly territory is fairly commmon. There are also special-purpose craft - I built a class of standoff missile cruisers focusing on long-range throwweight rather than protection or performance. A group of these with a specialized command cruiser (featuring fleet-level targeting and countermeasures) can wreak havoc while remaining untouched as enemy seek to reach them. Based on Jeeves' strategy guide cited in the tips and tricks War Room thread, I also designed a spy probe ship with a huge scanner array, lots of fuel tanks, and enough armor, shields and speed to escape most enemies. It is a fairly large ship, but also stealthed, so I send them out to explore and to monitor enemy fleet movements. Are these optimal? I don't know, but they are fun and serve my purpose.



khelvan -> RE: Potential buyer here... (11/23/2011 1:34:15 AM)

I am a potential new buyer as well, and am quite excited by the Characters in Legends. I haven't seen leaders with hidden skills like this in a 4x game since Stellar Crusade, and that combined with the good things I've read about DW has me waiting with bated breath for what, I hope, is finally a worthy successor to MoO II.

I am hoping for a bundle since I don't own the original game.



Manzikert -> RE: Potential buyer here... (11/23/2011 2:51:43 PM)

The AI automation really really helps with the learning curve and micromanagement avoidance.  You can basically play your first game with your side automated and just dive in here or there as needed.Once you get a handle on thigns turn the automation on or off as per your preferred level of micromangment.  I turn about half of it off.

Read the manual as well, it is really quite good.

khelvan-

SotS1 (with the expansions) is a good 4x game if you haven't played it. Stay away from SotS2 though for the next year or so because the recent release was badly unfinished.



mbar -> RE: Potential buyer here... (11/23/2011 4:05:45 PM)

You can edit the game on the fly. You get so much control to make the game play the way you like.



the1sean -> RE: Potential buyer here... (11/23/2011 10:15:21 PM)

I play the game and set the AI to "Suggest" courses of action on everything from colonization to diplomacy, just in case I forget about that juicy planet, etc. I run warfleets myself but leave may escorts and frigates automated to defend my trade routes.



Whydmer -> RE: Potential buyer here... (11/23/2011 11:17:26 PM)

Confirmed Buyer now...

A recap of my day:

Arrive home at 7:50 am after a 12+ hour night shift.
Sit impatiently at computer while eating my dinner/breakfast.
Almost go to bed before seeing that the game was released.
Buy all three games, deciding to wait on other Matrix sale items.
Go to bed and start downloading, force myself to go to sleep before downloading the expansions, as I knew if i actually fired up the game I would get lost for hours.
Slept for 4.5 hours, finished downloading, now installing...
may be able to play for a few minutes before having to go back to work tonight.
First day off to really play will be Friday.

Cheers all!



the1sean -> RE: Potential buyer here... (11/24/2011 2:17:36 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Whydmer
Arrive home at 7:50 am after a 12+ hour night shift.
Sit impatiently at computer while eating my dinner/breakfast.

Wow, sounds like you work with some of my buddies [:)]

Glad to hear you have taken the plunge, welcome to the community! I am a huge MoO2 fan myself, and none of the 4x offerings out there scratched the same itch until DW (although I bought them all and dumped in the gaming hours). Getting the expansion bundle deal was the right move. Keep us updated with your impressions!



khelvan -> RE: Potential buyer here... (11/24/2011 11:54:43 PM)

I have purchased the bundle as well. Am I allowed to install it on multiple PCs, or just one?



Gelatinous Cube -> RE: Potential buyer here... (11/24/2011 11:56:30 PM)

When I got a new PC, I had to put in a ticket on the Matrix website for them to re-send me a valid download link. The whole process took about a day, and only because I sent my ticket at the end of the business day.



Erik Rutins -> RE: Potential buyer here... (11/25/2011 12:03:33 AM)

Hi Khelvan,

As long as you keep the downloaded install files and serial numbers, you can absolutely install it on another PC. The only thing we ask is that it be for your use only, so you can have it on your home PC, your work PC, your laptop, etc. as long as you are the only one playing it. We apply common sense to this, the main intention is that if you have a friend or family member that wants their own copy, they should get one.

Regards,

- Erik



khelvan -> RE: Potential buyer here... (11/25/2011 12:03:40 AM)

Edit: Nevermind, thank you Erik!



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