What are your views of Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current incarnations?

Distant Worlds is a vast, pausable real-time, 4X space strategy game which models a "living galaxy" with incredible options for replayability and customizability. Experience the full depth and detail of large turn-based strategy games, but with the simplicity and ease of real-time, and on the scale of a massively-multiplayer online game. Now greatly enhanced with the new Universe release, which includes all four previous releases as well as the new Universe expansion!

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joeyeti
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What are your views of Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current incarnations?

Post by joeyeti »

From Space Sector reviews I found out that Star Ruler improved significantly since its release and is currently a very good game. I watched a two-part video overview and found many good things in Star Ruler, that are interesting in the 4X genre (for instance the ship creation system or the overall "feel" of the gameplay with not too many screens and choices.

Endless Space sits somewhere lower in complexity even, leaving you with fewer choices, but on the other hand also having an appeal in the visuals, being turn-based and having a good potential for further development. What I fear a little is the late-game phase, where you possibly only wait for Research to be completed, so that you can build better ships and annihilate opponents (or race for the economy win).

That said, I am also eager to try DW out, as it fills that "demanding" end of the spectrum (although the difficulty is optional as you can automate most of the stuff anyway and get into the game gradually). I remember playing Space Empires V a while ago, but not getting any far, and also playing X2 and X3 more extensively (but they had to be dropped because of time constraints). And of course, Stars! back in the day :)

So I wanted to know your oppinions on Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current forms and why (if) you play them in conjunction (or instead of) DW?
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RE: How are your views of Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current incarnations?

Post by stryc »

Endless Space seduces you with its very well made interface and slick visuals; however, after only 30 hours of play you quickly come to see that the game is very shallow and offers little in the way of varied replayability.

The AI is rudimentary and only gets harder by virtue of having access to free resources. The game AI also suffers from fleet spam in the later stages, and due to the way that the combat system works, i.e., one fleet can attack only one fleet at a time and said fleets are very small, you will often find yourself clicking Auto on battles well over 50 odd times just to churn through all of the chaff.

Also, don’t believe what it says on the tin: Endless Space says that it’s turn based but it really isn’t in the truest sense; it uses simultaneous movement in the same way that Civ V does. Quite often you will complete your moves, hit end turn and then all of a sudden the AI will shove a half-dozen fleets around. Worse, battles can start when you're in other parts of the game unable to respond to how you want the battle to be played before the 'battle timer' runs out. Also, it is very easily exploitable in PvP multiplayer. Personally, I think this design choice was a huge mistake.

The combat system is minimally interactive; you choose a ‘Battle Action Card’ at the start of each of the three combat phased (long, medium, short range) which has a chance of countering your opponents blind choice, and vice versa. I don’t mind this approach because it levels the playing field between RTS players and the more strategically minded; however, the novelty very quickly wears off and battles then become tedious. There needs to be more interactivity to make the otherwise very pretty combat sequences more rewarding. Sadly, when the AI takes over a battle for you against a Human attacker, which it will be doing very often due to the simultaneous combat moves system, it doesn't play any cards at all for you which invariably equates to an auto-lose.

The ship design system is functional, if a little basic; weapons and armour are essentially RPS-styled. Sadly, the game suffers from monohull spam in that clouds of glass cannon destroyers will see you carve through any AI (and most Human players) with ease.

On the upside, Amplitude say that ES will be expanded upon greatly as time moves on. It’s difficult to compare ES to games like SotS et al as such games have benefited from expansions over the years, whereas this is the first version of ES. It's easy to forget how horribly flawed SotS was on its first release. If Amplitude can sort out the dubious game design mechanics, give the AI some intelligence, and of course build in lots more content then maybe it will be one to keep an eye on.

Also, it runs very well indeed on an ATi 6870 which isn’t something that I can say for DW at present.
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joeyeti
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RE: How are your views of Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current incarnations?

Post by joeyeti »

Thx defekt... that basically confirms my vague thoughts about ES, but I am patient and will wait for its further development.

Now about Star Ruler, if we have a player in here somewhere... :)
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RE: What are your views of Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current incarnations?

Post by WiZz »

I played ES around 50 hours. Its main disadvantage is combat system. Unwillingness of developers to change it makes me very sad. Emptiness in gameplay. You may only click on button "End turn" most part of turns. Nothing interesting to see, to read after couple hours of gaming. Honestly, game needs a few addons with cardinal changing/adding some gameplay features.
Tried Star ruler few times, but nothing interested me in this game.
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RE: What are your views of Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current incarnations?

Post by Modest »

About Endles Space - I totaly agree with defekt. It gives very good look at the begining, but more You play - the more You see that this game is lacking many things. And turn system is a real mess. Of course ES has it's good sides, but they are shadowed by it's lackings. Space combat would be done nice if You would have more control, than just choosing an action card. But I must say that sole idea of those action cards (they are like saying befor combat to Your soldiers "Ok, we fight it defencivly" or "In 3 minutes we are going to preform mass assault on enemy posision" etc. For me problem is that it is the only thing I can do (apart from deciding what kind of protection and weapons to put on my ships ). Also in my opinion it was very bad decision to make it WEAPON A-DEFENCE A, WEAPON B-DEFENCE B, WEAPON C-DEFENCE C. And it does not matter that You have put a lot of DEFENCE B on Your ship if enemy is using WEAPON A. I understand that it should not be as effective as DEFENCE A, but still it should help.

As for Star Ruler... For me it is total fail. For me - SR is not even worth my trouble to write anything abut it. But still I will, because even there I can see some great points. One is the ability to scale everything as much as I want - this part of the game is just great. Second thing which I like in SR is the fact that You can (I think that You can) upgrade Your technology forever - it never ends. Also I like how I have to blindly check possibilities of researching new type of technology (with a possibility that it may go wrong and I will just waste time). So even THIS game have it's good sides. However when I see in a center of a galaxy a BIG STAR, or I see a possibility to build on planets BIG THRUSTERS and fly it like it would be a ship, or unseen magical civilian fleet which is providing resources everywhere I just can laught at SR. It's silliness outmach whatever is good in this game. That is my opinon. I know that many will disagrre - and that is their opinion. I honor their choise to like SR and I want them to honor my choise to dislike it. I agree that SR has VERY GOOD things and I am gladly giving credit to it for them.

DW is far more complex than ES or SR. It has it's own problems nad lackings. But in my opinion if I would have to put all three games together and choose the best I would choose DW. ES is "turn" based so it is for me at the begining on worse posision. Add to this what defekt said and I do not need to argument why it is worse than DW (my opinion, not a fact!). As for the SR... In DW galaxy is living and is feeling very real. In SR even if You will colonise everything it is still feeling dead and empty. And with this big star in a center it certialy may not feel real. There is not so many space objects in SR. In DW we have asteroids, stars which went nova, space storms, nebula clouds, gas clouds, many types of planets with many sizes, colonisable moons, stars, black holes and old abandoned space bases. In SR? We have planets, stars, asteroids, moons which are not colonisable (sic!), comets (credit for that, but they serve no purpose)... And? And that's it. Maybe in SR we can find dual star systems. I am not sure. Resource system is in my opinion also better in DW. In DW we have really many resources. I do not want to say not true but I think it is 23 of them (may be wrong). SR - let's see... 6 or maybe 8. And my favourite - in DW You actually have massive, important civilian sector. It is unique for DW. I didn't saw it anywhere else. Civilian ships must load a resource - transport them to destination - and unload them (I am not saying that it works perfectly). In SR You just build space port, or two, or three... Each of them has certian capability to transport resources from planet and into planet. And that is it! No resource transports, no civilian fleets are needed (yes, I know that there are transporters but please... It is not something what You may compare to Civilian Sector). Resources are just magically transported. In turn based game that would be ok for me. In real time 4x - absolutly not. But to be fair I have to say that ships are better made in SR - You will not find such scaling options in DW. I remember that I build once a ship which was as big as a 1/4 of a galaxy and I was able to destroy stars using it's firepower with no real trouble (unrealistic because such construction would have so massive gravity that it would went black hole, but still fun). Generaly I thing that SR and ES are no match for DW and aren't even close to be... But they have theirs stronger sides and I must admit it. AI is issue in each of those games so I do not know if any of them would get an upper hand.

On the end I will say that this post reflect my opinion. It is not a fact with which everybody must agree. It is not an opinion of all-knowing superhumman. It is simple opinion of only one person. And I will ad - a person which may make mistakes, may not remember something and may be not objective in his jugment (even if I really try to be).
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joeyeti
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RE: What are your views of Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current incarnations?

Post by joeyeti »

Thx WiZz and modest.

I do wonder about the comparison between the Ship builder in SR and DW. Which do you find more usable, more compelling and would you like the one in DW replaced or tweaked by the functionality from SR?
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RE: What are your views of Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current incarnations?

Post by Modest »

You are welcomed Joeyeti ;)

Well... To begin in DW You have final size of a ship. It is decided by Your current technology level (not as a whole, but there is one research branch which do the trick), and there is very little You can do in order to built something bigger than limit allow You. Some races can built for example 20% bigger ships. Also some types of ships may be bigger by some percent (carriers for example). But apart from that You are limited (propably You will not built largest possible ships because there is no need for it, but still there is a limit). In SR there is not such thing as limit in ship size. Not even at the begining of the game. But try tu build ship which will be bigger than Your ecconomy may handle and You are in very bad situation. So I will risk theory that in DW technology is oficially limiting factor, while in SR economy is unoficially limiting factor. That is for the limits.

In DW and SR ships are built by components (SR do not have civilians so components are mainly military ones). Of course each game have diffrent component system. In DW each component has it own parameters, and You may not change them (you may upgrade them by researching better version of current component, but You may not change nothing in ship designer). You may decide how many of what component do You want. Two blasters of the same kind, with sthe same technology level will have alweys the same stats if are on the same ship. If they are in two diffrent ships their stats may be diffrent but only because one ship may be influenced by something else - for example it may have targeting CPU component (+10% accuracy) or may be in a fleet with better fleet admiral. But this is indirect influence - You may not directly influence it. In SR parameters of each component are changable. This is done in at least three ways. First way is to scale a ship. In DW making bigger ship means that I may put more components on it - so instead 10 b lasters I have now 15. In SR components' parameters (including size) is scaling. That means that making the same ship just bigger will also make it's weapons bigger. So the number of components will stay the same. Second way to influence parameters of a component is to make it bigger or smaler than normal. Component of normal size on small ship is smaller than component of normal size on bigger ship. It works on proportions. If we will assume that component of normal size is 1, than we may make components of size 0,25, 0,5, 1, 1,5, and 2. Also, it is important to remember that huge component on small ship may be smaller than tiny one on huge ship. And the third way to influence component's parameters is to give it some addon (addons are components themselfs, and they are also being scaled and may be made bigger or smaller if I am remembering it good). Addons are given to specivically picked component. So I may have three Laser Canons of the same proportions on the same ship, but I will give them diffrent addons. It will make each of them unique in some ways.

Now, if we will compare those two ways of making ships we will see that in this aspect SR has upper hand over DW. But there are elements where DW is better even at ship building element. For example - it is impossible to build huge anti fighter space ship. Why? Because if You will scale it as a very big ship, than even tiny weapons will be to big to effectively engage small fighters. Also it is kind of annoying when Your enemys' plan for winning a war is to build bigger ships than You have - not better balanced, with better weapons and protections. No - just bigger (bigger ship -> bigger gun and so). And in SR when You are making new ship usually You are making it only in one goal in mind - to fight. In DW if You want to You may design frighters fo Civilian Sector, miners, population stransport ships. You may make military ships be able to mine resources... But I have to be fair. Better is better. And SR in my opinion has better ship designing element.

I wouldn't like system in DW being replaced by the one from SR. But I would like to see possibility to give modifications (addons) to my components. Also making them bigger and more powerfull, or smaller and less powerfull but with better rate of fire would be nice in my opinion.

And one more thing - in SR if You choose that a ship which You are building will be a frigate, than You are being limited to certian components. In DW there is no such limitations, and I like it. Thanks to that my escorts may be as big as my cruisers, but have just diffrent parameters.
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ASHBERY76
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RE: What are your views of Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current incarnations?

Post by ASHBERY76 »

I did not think the title for Endless space was describing the gameplay when I bought it,heh.In all fairness I think the game will be half decent after a few expansions but has been vastly overated by mainstream sites who have only played Galshit2 or MOO2 from the sounds of it.SOTS,DW and even Armada are much better 4x games for a hardcore gamer.
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RE: What are your views of Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current incarnations?

Post by Pipewrench »

So I wanted to know your opinions on Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current forms and why (if) you play them in conjunction (or instead of) DW?

I cannot comment on Star ruler but after playing Endless space for many hours I have packed it away and gone back to Distant Worlds.

I agree mostly with what has been said and could add that Endless space is usually over the minute you start a new game. You technically have 50 turns to do something before your expansion becomes limited. You must take the right research path, which is laid out for you from beginning to end and Colonize in exactly the same way every game. What changes is luck of the draw where good planets who have proper bonus's are close and have other helper planets in the system. It might wash in single player mode but it is going to be a big problem in multi-player.

In Distant worlds you have to actually explore because at the start your economy and production are not generic. You have to find resources to build things, explore 1000's of places on the map and build an economy that can support your expansion plans. You have to stay on budget and have the raw materials on hand to expand. Same can be said for attacking as you can raid systems to cut into an enemies economy by destroying mining bases, freighters etc. There is depth here and planning is truly needed.

Have fun exploring.


To Modest:
Regarding endless space:
Try just researching torpedo's if you play endless space again.
Place as many as you can on the destroyer design and just enough shielding to survive 1 long range attack . Now spam them and attach an admiral. Instant snore fest as your kamikaze fleet always gets thru with massive torpedo damage. Fleet might be destroyed but admiral can be healed and poof new experience bonus. Battleships vs u-bouts, got to love it.[:)]

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RE: What are your views of Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current incarnations?

Post by WiZz »

SOTS,DW and even Armada are much better 4x games for a hardcore gamer.

Disagree. SOTS without warfare is totally primitive and empty. Armada is one more simple game.
MOO2 is a brilliant, but weak AI and absence of normal MP is killing it. [:(]
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RE: What are your views of Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current incarnations?

Post by Simulation01 »

Endless Space: I thought about it but, the lack of a combat system turned me off.


Star Ruler: Bought it when it first came out.... had high hopes but, have permanently shelved it.


Distant Worlds: Still love it but, I'm waiting for the patch.... I simply don't have the time to beta test.


I am currently looking very hard at Legends of Pegasus. The few trailers and screenshots have me cautiously excited (I'm tired of being a beta tester... I won't live forever...this is going out to SOTS II, Star Ruler, Elemental and, Warlock: Master of the Arcane).
"Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved Earth and Heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will." -Tennyson
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RE: What are your views of Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current incarnations?

Post by Grotius »

I like Endless Space more than you guys, and I'm still playing it, but I agree that it's not perfect. Personally I prefer turn-based games, so I like that about ES. I also don't have a big need for tactical combat, and I rather like the "card-based" combat that ES has. I have only had to deal with AI fleet spam occasionally; mostly it's tolerable for me. The Research system in the game is cool, with four separate tech trees, race-specific techs, and optional techs that you can bypass. I never follow the same research path twice. I find it more satisfying than the research in Distant Worlds.

But the thing DW has that ES doesn't is a living, breathing galaxy. DW really feels much more alive. I suppose that's partly because of its real-time nature (though I wish it were turn-based), but mostly it's the vast number of systems in DW, the huge scope of your empire and logistical operations, the events, etc. So I do find myself itching to return to DW.

I gather we're waiting for a new DW patch? Should I wait a bit before I fire up the game again? I'm busy with "Case Blue" now anyway.
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RE: What are your views of Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current incarnations?

Post by Modest »

To pipewrench: Thank You :) I will try this next time when I will play ES. And since missile attacks are powerfull (I learnd it hard way in my first play) I bet it will be very succesful.

Grotius: You know... I would advice You to not wait - If You feel that You want to do something just do it :) You can alweys stop whenever You want and continue whenever You want. And if the patch will show in a middle of Your game? You always can end current game and start a new one. That way You would feel the best changes made in this patch.
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RE: How are your views of Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current incarnations?

Post by shinobu »

ORIGINAL: defekt

Endless Space seduces you with its very well made interface and slick visuals; however, after only 30 hours of play you quickly come to see that the game is very shallow and offers little in the way of varied replayability.


Agreed. I've already put it aside...
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ASHBERY76
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RE: How are your views of Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current incarnations?

Post by ASHBERY76 »

I am suprised you rate the research so highly in Endless Space considering the majority of it is +10 to this and +10 to that.DistantWorlds research actually gives you new systems and components at more or less every level.The race-specific techs are pathetic too in ES.
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RE: What are your views of Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current incarnations?

Post by onomastikon »

ORIGINAL: pipewrench

You have to find resources to build things, explore 1000's of places on the map and build an economy that can support your expansion plans. You have to stay on budget and have the raw materials on hand to expand. Same can be said for attacking as you can raid systems to cut into an enemies economy by destroying mining bases, freighters etc. There is depth here and planning is truly needed.

I wish this were the case, but sadly, I find it not to be so. True, what you say holds up, in a way at least, until the mid-game begins; but I have not found a way to set up a game in which I quickly have a superabundance of everything I need. If we could stipulate via a slider how rare some or all resources were, that would be a different story: best would be 19 discreet sliders or however many resources there are in DW (I forget haven't played in ages).
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RE: How are your views of Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current incarnations?

Post by Haree78 »

I've played Endless Space quite a bit now. It has a fairly simplified gameplay with replayabaility coming from quite random maps and starting conditions. It was a lot of fun against the AI during beta but at some point rather than fixing some fundamental flaws in the way the AI plays, which an amateur could have done they decided to make the AI cheat incredibly. Able to spawn fleets like nobodies business so now end game is steam rolling AI fleet after AI fleet, and eventually you get sick of the combat and just auto it all..

The majority of my 121 hours game time has been multiplayer with friends though. Right now I'm pretty annoyed, we pointed out an easily repeatable multiplayer de synchronisation issue caused by invasions very close to after release and so far we haven't received a fix. My gaming group wont play it right now because it's just too annoying to have to reload and 1 person to find his whole game situation has changed because he de synched some time ago.
As a programmer it is even more infuriating because I realise how easy it is for them to be checking de synchs between players, especially as the game saves after every turn. Writing the code to fix a de synch in the case of one would take the rest of the afternoons work...
It also has some essential balance issues that needs fixing. Rather than having Civilisations spear men killing tanks in this game you can have tanks that are completely invulnerable to entire battalions of rifle men. Tech is too strong and heroes are way too strong so an enemy can be completely invulnerable, or rather vs the AI you become invulnerable to it.

With all that moaning out of the way it is actually fundamentally a good game that needs some attention. It's got an easy interface, some nice presentation and the different races do actually play differently enough. The strategic decisions are fun and not as simple as you might think when you start playing with people. Unfortunately I see at least 1 of the vocal admins over on the forums who only plays Vs the AI claiming the balance issues aren't there, which is astounding and concerns me that the game wont see the polish it needs.
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RE: How are your views of Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current incarnations?

Post by Texashawk »

FWIW, it looks like the '1.0' all-clear patch for SOTS II should be up in the next week or so. If you haven't tried it lately, it's really coming around as a neat game. Of course, it only took 61(!) patches to get it to this state... and yes, I counted. In fact, I think that's some sort of record, but at least they never gave up.... [:D]
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RE: How are your views of Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current incarnations?

Post by Gareth_Bryne »

They should have done it the indy way: no fanfare, no promises, just drop alpha after alpha, beta after beta, until it's done.
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RE: How are your views of Star Ruler and Endless Space in their current incarnations?

Post by Registered55 »

SR for me was a bit to arcade in the sense of how many ships the player and AI starts to spam..... Tens of thousands of ships scattered all over the place.... for me to unrealistic and far to chaotic

DW in my opinion suffers the same problem at the moment too, although not as exaggerated as SR.... in DW the player and AI can have hundreds of huge ships which only cost money.... nothing else seems to be an equation when it comes to how large fleets can be, money is not everything when it comes to fleet operation size (SR and DW doesn't seem to take in account LOGISTIC limitations)

SR had some great potential, and there is a couple of mature MODS available for it, but two annoying things for me was, the ARCADE (cannon fodder) feel towards what felt like endless amount of ships being created, and for me I did like the movement system (Newtonian laws and all that pony) it just felt weird, and also I found the system quite clumsy when it came to battle.... it was like thousands of marbles being let loose down a hilly road or another way of looking at it, 50 ice-skaters trying to fight on ICE!!!!

for me so many games do not take into account that a real empire would not be using mouses, keyboards and the like to control an empire, further more an empire like running a country would be staffed by many to achieve the goal of running an empire...... what that means is that game developers must take into account these very debilitating and limiting aspects of control and support the player must contend with, DW with all its automation still leads to chaos because the automation only helps alleviate some of the size and scale of the games systems, but unfortunately the number of military ships is still too high, the interface and single individual at the helm (pardon the pun) becomes overburden.

SR is even worse, because the number of ships is 10x more than DW, yet SR has less automation than DW, and the automaton it does have is quite basic (the game engine would be over taxed because AI scripts can eat so much CPU cycles if they grow in complexity or numbers (sometimes both even))

ES, first any game of today that is turn based in my opinion must loose points for that fact alone, turn based games are in them self based on concepts that was born from board games, yet the player plays against the AI instead of other human players..... but this system is old and very antiquated and for me quite boring from the get go, having to click a "end turn" button in today’s world of gaming is so..... OLD.... behind the times.

anyway, with that said, ES does a good job in its GUI, very polished and quite innovative upon it initial release.... however like has been said it's got some fundamental flaws with it, a couple of them I don't think will be fixable without redesigning the game (patches don't do that) so those flaws will ultimately remain (movement for one, endless battles needing processing before player can complete the turn), the fleet system though hopefully will be addressed, there are too many small fleets in the game, again like mentioned before leading to CANNON FODDER.


now I wish to emphasize that I am aware that cannon fodder is a fact of life, and has always existed in state of wars, but in reality there are many forms of command and control, also large administration and logistical support that goes with it, RTS games must simulate that aspect or chaos quickly consumes the interface limitations that we have to use (mouse, keyboard, VDU..... even our own body limitations such as one brain, one set of eyes that kind of thing)

My point is, all the games above, ES, DW, and SR all suffer the same problems at the moment..... far too many ships for a single player to MANAGE (ES being a smaller game by galactic size does a better job, but looses out when there are 30 battles queued the player has to process..... yeah pressing "AUTO" 30 times ..... that’s fun!), in fact DW has got some threads on this subject already, there has been requests asking for a way to increase the maintenance of ships, if they cost more, than an empire must have less

One last issue for me regarding DW, I have said before, too much of its development foundation is based on Dotnetframework..... because of this it has this sluggish, jittery feel to it, even though it runs fine, the FEEL is sluggish (a bit like how a webcam records in a way) if feels like a couple of frames are being dropped from time to time.

However, DW wins hands down, but I must iterate that DW has had two expansions......

For me, DW would be so much better if there was less ships.... not because that would be realistic, but because I am just one PLAYER with a mouse and keyboard trying to keep tabs on hundreds if not thousands of ships amongst dealing with an entire empire..... although I do strongly FEEL that DW does not emulate all the important factors needed to account how large an empire (countries) fleet can be, although money of course is the most important factor.... things like SKILLED personal, Command and control and logistical support is definitely missed if DW and would help to reduce the number of ships DW has right now.

(please forgive me, the above is only my 2nd draft..... something has come up, no time to finalize the draft.....sorry)
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