New to Distant Worlds

[Cralis]

I see that there are numerous threads about being new, and what players see, but I don't want to add to an ongoing thread. Before I begin I want to state that, as a VERY experienced 4X gamer, I found this game and could find very little about it - and it turned out to be a diamond in the rough. Very unexpected. Probably 90-95% of 4X games I have tried simply do not measure up.

But on to my observations.

Like some others I have found this game's automation of the civilian economy to be fantastic! I am VERY leery of macro games because they simply don't measure up. Either you end up dealing with the wrong minutia OR you end up being unable to control your empire in areas that you desire. There are a few problems that should be easily fixed, but on the whole DW does it about as right as I've ever seen it.

The graphics in this game are pretty good! While I prefer as much realism as possible, DW has a fairly good mix of realistic elements with some simplifications - and it works. In fact I'd have to say that the universe generation is probably the best mix I've ever seen (not counting games outside of the 4X genre, and not counting board games).

Overall DW is pretty genius. Like any other designer there are some things I'd do differently, but I think that many of the more detailed or more complex elements would have simply lengthened the game time and probably reduced the 'footprint of interest' by the average gamer. I am glad I bought this game, and I hope the developers will be able to stick with adding features/patches long enough to turn this into a game I never put away.

But on to my observations/suggestions:

Observations/Suggestions

1. The biggest annoyance I found in the game was the combat automation/non-automation. If you automate your ships they fly all over creation and attack crap. That is VERY annoying. And worse - if you turn automation off the ships simply don't defend themselves or attack anything. WORSE. This is the biggest complaint I have with the game... I'm hoping I've simply overlooked something in the interface, but either way I have some ideas.

A. There needs to be an option to "go here and attack anything nearby." I don't mean "in the same star system nearby", but perhaps "within 1 screen width nearby." It would be nice to also have a "go here and defend the whole star system" option as well. This way I can turn combat automation off so my ships won't go attack other star systems (grrr) and I don't have to set them on patrol. This is important because I make sure to put energy panels so they can sit in one spot until needed - as sometimes have them on patrol means they are never where you need them most (like defending your world building your fleet).

B. Ships should ALWAYS automatically defend themselves! ALWAYS! Maybe not when an enemy comes near, but the instant something starts shooting them they should always shoot back.

2. Troop ships need a button that says "go pickup troops at the nearest planet with troops" (basically). Sometimes it takes too much effort to find all the troops you need for your troop transports.

3. Sensor ranges are myopic. At some point in late game it would be nice to be able to cover most of your territory with long-range sensors on bases without having to build them into scouts and place them all over the map.

4. On the screen where you can tell it to build and send colony ships to worlds, it would be nice to be able to choose which world builds it. And then to be able to change the priority of which goes where. I thought it really tacky when I tried to queue 5 or 6 colony ships and found out all but 1 was at the same planet. It required much more micro-managing, but building them at slightly further away worlds was faster because I didn't have them all in a single planet's queue and they were completed much faster.

5. I find the fleet right-click menu interface MUCH more useful then the shortcut interface for single ships. Please put the menu for all ships - single or fleeted.

6. About starting games: the story line is awesome. But sometimes I'd like to play a game where you don't get a massive tech jump by finding a few artifacts halfway through the game. It always enables me to win. Having the same types of things as random events with MUCH SMALLER benefits would be very cool, or just being able to turn them off. Sometimes I just want to fight other empires head-to-head without worry about finding the death ray or world annihilator before the computer - whoever finds them first often wins.

7. I wish there was a little more variety in the weapons technologies. Perhaps missiles that don't degrade in damage as they fly, but they don't do as much damage as the torpedoes. Maybe specialized beams that do more damage to shields or armor. Or maybe a special one that bypasses both and has a chance to damage some internal system. There are lots of possibilities.

Anyways, I'm being informed that it is time to go. I will post more later.

[Joram]

Welcome to the forums, seems we have several newcomers today!
 
Excellent points all the way through.  The only thing I may correct you on is that you can build long-range sensors into bases and that provides quite adequate coverage with perhaps an extra base or two on the fringes.   Maybe you already have the long-range sensors and they are still too short for you but I find they work quite well.

[Cralis]

PS. One more thing I had to post before I go:

For ship design two things:

1. Upgrades should simply append a number "1" or something like "v1" on the end of your existing ship name. Or better, pop-up a window asking for the name with this already suggested (so players can choose some other nomenclature if they want). I simply do not use the upgrade button because it changes the name. VERY annoying.

2. With the "copy of a new ship" I don't like the "copy of" before the name... why? Nobody EVER uses that in a name. Perhaps use the suggestion above for the suggested name.

3. The addition of the "outdated" selection on the design menu WAS VERY NEEDED! THANK YOU! However, going one step further - being able to select "previous design outdated" when upgrading or making a copy would be awesome!

4. Last, the ship pictures are very cool. But having them all strung together is a little frustrating...partially because anyone can choose anything. Almost every 4X game I've played makes you choose a group and stick with it...with this game I can see the problem: when you find alien ships you want to be able to build them. Perhaps just group them and allow you to choose which group (better, make it so you select one group to start and have to find the other groups to use them?) would work well.

5. A bug? Did you know that if you find a ship larger than you can build, you can refit it to be any size larger than you can build? I found a 600-ish size cap size and refit it to be 800-ish. I just thought of it but haven't tested...can I build a ship up to my limit then refit it to be bigger? Have to try that.

Ok later.

[JaguarUSF]

ORIGINAL: Cralis
2. Troop ships need a button that says "go pickup troops at the nearest planet with troops" (basically). Sometimes it takes too much effort to find all the troops you need for your troop transports.

This. I ran into this problem today. Refuel / refit / re-troop.

[Cralis]

Two more things I've noticed:

1. The AI doesn't appear to build ships bigger than a destroyer, well maybe the occasional cruiser, until it gets into a war. By then it is too late...

2. Tankers? Where are tankers? I'm surprised that we cannot build ships smaller then the resupply ship that simply carries fuel and docks. Ooooh in thinking about this, it should be a civilian ship. It could then automatically go out and refuel your ships...

Although I'd want an option to "not refuel this ship" so my tankers don't go out to my explorers and get stranded/destroyed in the middle of nowhere, or go out to my war fleets in enemy territory and get blasted to oblivion.

EDIT: And something else I can't believe I forgot to put on the first post!! Save games, especially autosaves, should have a game name or something! You cannot tell them apart! I pretty much delete all autosaves once I start a new game.

At least I've only crashed once, even on the original game.

[Wade1000]

Resupply ships, or any ship, are tankers/tenders(at fleet refuel and repair ships) if you design them with the appropriate components.
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2432568 (Whats a good tip of refueling?)

[Cralis]

ORIGINAL: Wade1000

Resupply ships, or any ship, are tankers/tenders(at fleet refuel and repair ships) if you design them with the appropriate components.
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2432568 (Whats a good tip of refueling?)

Yeah I was trying to get regular ships to work with cargo holds and docking bays, but it doesn't look like the game will use them unless they are a resupply ship. This is important because resupply ships are slow. I was hoping to use a 50-ish space ship to do it so it was as fast as my fleet.

[Cralis]

Ok something else.

I REALLY like that you allow ship templates with the load/save designs feature. But there is one problem: you cannot choose to have it erase all the designs on the board and load in a completely new template.

I figured this out by building a template, and then on this next game loading it into the existing designs...and resulting in a mess of designs that took ten minutes to clean up. Blah. While I understand there is a reason to have multiple templates and load them in without replacing existing designs, it would be nice to have some selection to load a new template and wipe out all the existing designs...especially when you first start a game.

[cswelleswatts]

I REALLY like that you allow ship templates with the load/save designs feature. But there is one problem: you cannot choose to have it erase all the designs on the board and load in a completely new template.

AMEN!!! Please add this feature!!

[thiosk]

Welcome dude!

I had similar thoughts when I started as well, its amazing how many mediocre games get turned out in this area.

[Erik Rutins]

Looks like this was actually a thread from shortly after release in April that just got bumped to the top.

Regards,

- Erik