Ship ETA

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Plant
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RE: Ship ETA

Post by Plant »

Scanner tech allows you to see cargo, onboard troops and component status of individual ships supposedly. Also allows you to see passenger number, fuel and energy levels as well. Well, I've never seen cargo, and what it does allow you to see is near worthless even in combat, since you don't know how many components the enemy ships have. Most of the information it givs you, can be discerned by a competent eye.

As for fog of war Numydydar, isn't the game under a fog of war system? Except for knowing what is in your system automatically. It is because of long range scanners and proximity sensors that you equip your ships with that you can see them at all.

Smetimes you can see fleets heading your way due to hyperjump tracking from the proximity sensors. An ETA would be justified from that, since it will be cancelled if they change course.

But the main argument for an ETA for YOUR SHIPS, is for proper time management. It helps a great deal in your gameplay, if you know when your ship will arrive at a location you asked them to attack, rather than to eyeball a rough time and constantly checking.
Numdydar
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RE: Ship ETA

Post by Numdydar »

By 'fog' I meant that unless a ship is within scanner range of something, you should nor see anything, bases, ships, colonies, etc. Of course once you found a base or colony then they would always be marked since they are hard to move [:)] Of course they would stay marked even if someone destroyed them unless you scanned them again (or exchanged maps with someone who had more updated information).

Is seems like you should not know a fleet is anywhere near (or even in) your system unless you have ship/planets/bases with the approporate scanner. Much less know that ships are headed your way from a completely different star system lightyears away. Aurora handles scanner systems the best of any game I have seen. Of course I do think having to worry about how sentistive versus the range of a sensor is a little excessive. Realistic, yes. Adds a lot to the game, not so much.

Imho, there should be 4 different types of military scanner tech that supports two componats for ships and two componats for bases (and very large ships). The first tech pair would cover scanning hyper drive emissions. One tech would increse range, the other sensitivity. Where sensitivity increase would allow ship to be detected sooner based on size. So the 'more' sensitive your scanner, you can start picking up smaller ships based on the range tech, while larger ships could be detected even further away. The other pair of tech would cover non-hyper scanneing and follow the same pattern as the hyper version.

So without any scanners, it would be entirely possible for a fleet to just 'appear out of nowhere' versus how it seems to work now. Also, if you have the hyperdire scanners tech up but not the other, you could see them coming, but them they could disapear within your system once they got there [X(]. Unless they started blowing things up of course [:D]

The countermeasures tech already in the game (which I never research either [:(]) could be used as a 'anti-scanner' to the above, so the higher your countermeasures are, the range/sensitivity of the scaner techs are reduced (but not eliminated) by some value. Of course, you also have counter measures to counter measures too. But I do not think adding in yet another componate to research would add anything since the 'ECCM' (Electronic Counter Counter Measure for those not of a military background [:)]) could be assumed to built into the scanner tech itself.

Just some random thoughts as I hate having tech that seems to have no importance in the game. So if it not doing anything in game terms, why have in there at all?
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Plant
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RE: Ship ETA

Post by Plant »

Yeah, knowing everything in a system you own is slightly odd, but if you do own it chances are, you will plonk a spaceport with a long range scanner on it eventually.

But the reason you know ships are headed your way is from the proximity scanners, with their hyperspace tracking.
As for countermeasure tech, they are cheap to research and a cheap component, and they improve your ships survivability so much, there isn't any reason to not research countermeasures, unless you have misunderstood their function.
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cdcool
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RE: Ship ETA

Post by cdcool »

I disagree, I just brought Shadows.

ETA provides you a realistic time frame of whats going on in the game. It gives you a real time assessment on how long your activities will take in in regards to ship movement, going from one place to another.

Watching a ship(for example)march across a sector to colonize a planet 5 squares away and not knowing the time it will arrive does leave me with a since of less control of other activities that may depend on that colony.

Bottom line: its needed and should be implemented as quickly as possible. This is a great game which is very detailed, why omit a very strategic value, not unless it can't be implemented.

Thank you for considering the addition.
If everything around you is blowing up..it's us
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cdcool
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RE: Ship ETA

Post by cdcool »

[
If everything around you is blowing up..it's us
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cdcool
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RE: Ship ETA

Post by cdcool »

ORIGINAL: Numdydar

ORIGINAL: Mansen

ETA is a very important aspect of realtime strategy games - just the other day I had an enemy strike fleet flying straight at me, couldn't see how far they'd gone half the time so I wasn't sure if my defensive fleet would make it in time or if I needed to build more defenses in the meantime.

Tiny feature - huge effect.

Why should you know their ETA? Do you have a ship in scanner range or someone following them. Are you even sure they will actually end up going where you think they are/ They could easily change to a different target than the one you think.

While I respect your view that an ETA is important, I think there are many other things the game should have before this gets implemented. Personally, I would love to see a 'fog of war' option where you do not see any other races ships on the map unless you have a ship with scanners and within scanning range before an ETA was implemented. But hey that is just me [:)]
I disagree, I just brought Shadows.

ETA provides you a realistic time frame of whats going on in the game. It gives you a real time assessment on how long your activities will take in in regards to ship movement, going from one place to another.

Watching a ship(for example)march across a sector to colonize a planet 5 squares away and not knowing the time it will arrive does leave me with a since of less control of other activities that may depend on that colony.

Bottom line: its needed and should be implemented as quickly as possible. This is a great game which is very detailed, why omit a very strategic value, not unless it can't be implemented.

Thank you for considering the addition.
If everything around you is blowing up..it's us
gsol69
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RE: Ship ETA

Post by gsol69 »

Hello all,
I thought that ship desination lines were now included in DW Shadows, so I just purchased Shadows and installed everything (DW + 3 Exp packs). Watched the Tutorials again, and am now running thru game #1 using all of the settings from Erik's "Easy Intro Game in the Pre-Warp Age of Shadows" thread. I stopped playing this game after Shakturi because I couldn't tell what was going on.
Now I have my first automated exploration ship moving around, but still don't see any destination lines telling me to where.
Don't want to have to click on every ship to see this. I have the "Show Travel Vectors for Stata ships" = On, but no changes that I can see on the map display. Am I missing something, or is there still no visual map indicator displaying a ships destination?
 
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. 
Starke
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RE: Ship ETA

Post by Starke »

ORIGINAL: gsol69

Hello all,
I thought that ship desination lines were now included in DW Shadows, so I just purchased Shadows and installed everything (DW + 3 Exp packs). Watched the Tutorials again, and am now running thru game #1 using all of the settings from Erik's "Easy Intro Game in the Pre-Warp Age of Shadows" thread. I stopped playing this game after Shakturi because I couldn't tell what was going on.
Now I have my first automated exploration ship moving around, but still don't see any destination lines telling me to where.
Don't want to have to click on every ship to see this. I have the "Show Travel Vectors for Stata ships" = On, but no changes that I can see on the map display. Am I missing something, or is there still no visual map indicator displaying a ships destination?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. 
With State Ship Vectors on, all state-owned ships will show a dotted line and arrow from them to their destination. The only conditions involved IIRC are a) if the order is given to a fleet, you will only see the vector for the fleet's lead ship, b) it won't show in-system warp vectors unless the specific fleet or ship is selected, and c) both the ship/fleet and it's destination must be on screen.

Do any of those things explain your problem?
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elanaagain
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RE: Ship ETA

Post by elanaagain »

eta on vectors has been requests numerious times in the request / wish list threads. Add your 'request.' Maybe if enough users state they want this...
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gsol69
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RE: Ship ETA

Post by gsol69 »

Thanks for the responses.
 
Starke, if the feature is included then it must be user error, but I can't figure out what.
I took a screenshot to display the situation but don't know how to add it too this msg ("add image" button above prompted for an http address, and could not paste the image from my buffer into this msg.
I have a non-fleet explorer ship in auto mode heading to explore a planet on the same screen. Mouse hovering over that ship shows the destination as the planet on the same screen. Have Show travel vectors for state ships = on,
but no lines anywhere showing the destination.
 
Elanaagain, not overly concerned about ETA at this time, although that would be nice. I am just looking for an easy way to tell where a ship is heading with out having to dig!
 
Thanks again
 
 
 
 
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elanaagain
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RE: Ship ETA

Post by elanaagain »

ah yes. select the ship, and turn on the vectors. Sometimes you have to play with your view distance on the main screen to 'see' the vectors.
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gsol69
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RE: Ship ETA

Post by gsol69 »

Thanks Elanaagain, but no go even with the latest patch installed via Steam. I select the ship (in the System view), zoom in / zoom out, toggle Show travel Vectors for State ships on / off, have ship set to explore automated or manual control, but still the only way I can tell where my explorer ship is going is to actually select the ship and read the ship details screen (or hover the mouse over the ship itself. When the screen gets busy as the empire grows, I'm not going to do this for every ship I want to check. I SO wanted DW to be an updated replacement for my beloved MOO 2, which is why I keep buying the expansion packs and getting my hopes up, but I may be giving up now. I miss many things from MOO 2 and the Space Empires series such as controlling tactical combat and readable screens  that show me what I'm producing at each colony at a glance. For me the whole point of growing a civilization is to colonize planets to increase my research points to discover cool components to add to a ships I design and produce to control in tactical combat as they (hopefully) destroy my competitors. Too many tiny fonts for these old eyes as well. 
Looks like I may be back to installing MOO 2 again, or possibly Gal Civ 2 or Space Empires V.
 
Maybe DW just isn't my thing, but I kept checking back hoping it was!
 
Thanks again
 
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