The 3 simple things you'd like to see in Distant Worlds

[MartialDoctor]

A year or so ago, there was a thread asking what people wished Distant Worlds would have. My intention here is to make a similar thread but for simple ideas... ones that could be easily done in a patch and ones that, you feel, would greatly enhance Distant Worlds as a game.

Honestly, I think Distant Worlds has so many great ideas and so much potential. However, there are many small things that really take away from this. Many are very easy to change.

These are three changes I would like to see in the near future:

1) The biggest one... difficult levels. There's not enough levels and the levels need to do more. Bonuses to research, population growth, mining rate, attack / defense, trade bonuses, etc.. These would allow the AI to be more competent, especially in the late game.

2) Diplomacy - races need to hold to there decisions. It's so annoying to have race A constantly start and stop trade sanctions on me. They should either start them, or end them, not flip flop. Also, If you pay them to end them, they should end (for a time period). If you pay another race to start a trade sanction / war on another race, they should do it and hold to it! I think a simple change in the diplomatic ratings could change this for the short term (e.g. if you negotiate an end to trade sanctions, they like you a bit more... for a time period). I think that could solve the issue for the short term until something better could be designed (for instance, diplomatic hits if you break them over a certain time period).

Also, a mod ability to change how much the AI values tech, disputed stations, wars / trade sanctions. Since I really would like to change these.

3) A Resource Slider. We have one for everything else but not for resources. A simple slider, when creating a world, would be great! It would allow the player to select the overall abundance of resources in their universe.

These three things are so simple and would increase my enjoyment of this game immensely.

So, please, offer your three insights (or less), keep them to ones that are easy enough to implement in a patch, and try to be clear for the devs. I think I'm not the only one who wishes some small things would be changed.

[unclean]

1) Add a "hide fleets" toggle to the military ships sidepanel. This thing:


This would let you quickly find a spare destroyer if one of your defense fleets suffers a casualty, instead of having to drill through the ships and bases screen.

2) Add "show asteroids" toggle to the potential resort locations sidepanel.

Seems silly that some of the best tourism bonuses are on asteroids but you have to use the galaxy map screen to find them.

3) Some kind of indicator when a spaceport runs out of a material, or is about to.

Similarly some kind of indicator on spaceports that shows the quantity of the three fuel types. Although that might be pretty tricky to implement.

[Fishman]

There are THREE fueltypes? What's the third? I don't think I've ever seen a reactor run on anything other than Hydrogen or Caslon.

What I want to see is a limit on how much queue spam the private sector can produce: Private Sector should never queue up more builds at a port than the number of build slots at the port. It's ridiculous when it queues several hundred things at one port, completely jamming the entire game until you destroy the port to stop it. There's no reason it needs to do this, it can queue up more when the port actually has build slots available in the near future, and really, why do we need several hundred freighters, anyway? The empire was working just fine with only a few dozen and everything ground to a halt the moment it did that.

Plus the unnecessary freighter spam eventually crashes the entire game. And the spam behavior is probably crippling the AI by eating all its resources building useless garbage.

[WiZz]

ORIGINAL: MartialDoctor
A lot of text...

Wait for the next addon...

[Gareth_Bryne]

I'd swear you know something[:D].

[Jaimoe_MatrixForum]

1. I would like to see mission queues for ships and fleets. When there are 3 or 4 steps to getting a fleet to do what I need it to do, I would like to be able to assign it all at once and not have to go back to the fleet after every step.

2. An option to enslave particular empires or races and not just race categories would be nice as well. Not because I'm race hating but because sometimes a particular race is giving you a hard time in a game and you want to treat them particularly harshly when you conquer them. Or one empire is a pain in your posterior but another empire of the same race treats you better, so you want to treat them differently.

3. I'd also like to be able to assign fleets to patrol a sector instead of just a planet or system. This could be helpful when setting up empire wide defenses.

[MartialDoctor]

ORIGINAL: WiZz

ORIGINAL: MartialDoctor
A lot of text...

Wait for the next addon...

Well, considering #2 is an actual issue with the game that needs to be fixed and #1 I have been waiting for for more than a year already (since it's implementation in Legends was not sufficient), I don't think it's too much to ask for it now. Especially considering how easy it would be to implement.

[WiZz]

ORIGINAL: Gareth_Bryne
I'd swear you know something[:D].

It's obviously. If work on next expansion has begun, only one game coder doesn't have enough time for fixing and adding new features. I call that "Patches for paid" (Paradox practices this widely). You maybe be sure, that most of present bugs will be fix, but only in the next expansion.

Well, considering #2 is an actual issue with the game that needs to be fixed and #1 I have been waiting for for more than a year already (since it's implementation in Legends was not sufficient), I don't think it's too much to ask for it now. Especially considering how easy it would be to implement.

Honestly, diplomacy was a big problem in game ALWAYS for me. Beginning from original game to the second addon, I hoped, that diplomacy would be more complex and logical. And I was disappointed with every addon release, when I saw, that diplomacy wasn't changed. That's why I always prefer tactic of total war in my games. Diplomacy is USELESS.

I wrote numerous posts in different topics, that AI had become worse. New features are very nice, but it seems, that AI can't handle with it correctly. I also began topic, where I wrote about finding some ai limitation, for example low possibility for AI crash research.
I am almost sure, that great changes didn't appeared.

[DasTactic]

I agree with the suggestions here - especially those by unclean in post 2.

My three are:

1. Display shield strength and troops next to fuel bar when looking at groups of ships.

2. Highlight the required materials missing from construction queues (for planets and construction ship). And perhaps have an indicator on the galaxy map that construction has stopped due to shortages - like the fuel indicator.

3. Remember the settings of the ship/base type you are looking at when viewing the Ship/Base screen. (This would also be cool on all the management screens.)

[jpwrunyan]

I totally support everything said in this thread so far except for one thing:

I do not believe we should wait for an expansion for these to be fixed. I dont need more bug ridden game features to enjoy this game (oh look something new that doesnt work!). I want the current feature set to be polished up.

I am sure there is some economic calculus involved here since patches to existing features does not directly translate into revenue. But limiting your games appeal with bugs and unrefined features, and risking your current client base by neglecting them can also negatively affect revenue. In other words I hope those of us who have bought the game are shown a little love before asked to shell out money again for an expansion.

[Beag]

The resource slider is a good idea, and besides one changing the overall amount of resources I´d also like to see a bar that could set the ranges of resources´ distribution (that is, I want to be able to create a galaxy with many low-resource worlds and fewer rich planets, to make competition more fierce and strategic).

[Tampa_Gamer]

3 simple things, well here goes:

(1) [RALLY POINTS] Almost every single strategy game (turn-based and real-time) contain these since they help reduce the number of repeated commands mid/late game (good examples - Space Empires V, GalCiv 2, etc.). Optimally, you would create these by right-clicking on a set point in space or an object (a/k/a fleet or planet) and then be offered an edit box to name them. Once created you should also be able to bring up a listbox of current rally points and edit them rename them, etc. (similar to the Fleets screen). Finally, you should be utilize the rally points when you (1) right-click a ship and give it a move order (the list of rally points should appear similar to the assign fleet interface), and (2) in the shipyard menu - where you should be able to tell a shipyard to direct all state ships to rally point X.

(2) [GENERATE A MESSAGE IF CONSTRUCTION YARD IS STALLED FOR A PARTICULAR RESOURCE] Currently, there are no notifications of any stoppage. If you are lucky enough to realize something is stalled (for me I am lucky if I catch it in the first year, if at all), you then have to punch up the construction summary to see what resources the item needs, then you need to punch up the cargo amount of the construction yard to see if any amounts are 0/X reserved. Then you can scan out to see if any freighters are inbound with the material, then you can perhaps build an appropriate mine nearby if necessary. A lot of needlelss time could be avoided by simply generating a low level message to the player that the construction yard on XXXX is stalled due to a shortage of YYYYYY. If a player does not want to see those messages, it could be a toggle in the options screen along with the other message options.

(3) [FIX/REDUCE MENU TRANSITION TIMES] Currently if you open/close many of the windows it takes upwards to 5-10 seconds for them to open, depending on the amount of data. I have to think there is some way to optimize these.

[Bebop Cola]

ORIGINAL: unclean
1) Add a "hide fleets" toggle to the military ships sidepanel. This thing:

This would let you quickly find a spare destroyer if one of your defense fleets suffers a casualty, instead of having to drill through the ships and bases screen.

Seconded.

ORIGINAL: Jaimoe
2. An option to enslave particular empires or races and not just race categories would be nice as well. Not because I'm race hating but because sometimes a particular race is giving you a hard time in a game and you want to treat them particularly harshly when you conquer them. Or one empire is a pain in your posterior but another empire of the same race treats you better, so you want to treat them differently.

Seconded.

Sometimes I do want to be a race-hater; the bug people are creepy and seem like a natural enemy for all decent starfaring races, or food for the lizard-folk. Other times I may want to enslave/exterminate/resettle the useless Atuuk but keep the Zenox for their bonuses.

I'd also like the Empire's native race to be included. I want to be able to tell my fellow Terrans that the Securan pleasure planet is for vacations only, not for living on. Also, mind the Emperor's private reserve on pain of death.

Seriously though, a multi-cultural empire is fine and good, but I may want to set up my own push/pull weights to try and encourage certain races to live on certain planets to better maximize both planet utilization as well as capturing race bonuses.

ORIGINAL: Jaimoe
3. I'd also like to be able to assign fleets to patrol a sector instead of just a planet or system. This could be helpful when setting up empire wide defenses.

Also seconded, but with exploration ships included to help track down new foreign empire/pirate bases.

As for my own, I'll just add one:
The ability to display all resource nodes in a single system, including asteroids. I tend to prefer fully exploiting my colony systems as I already have a spaceport there anyway. Seems reasonable to have mining bases on all the resource nodes for the system as they have the shortest delivery time to the spaceport. Asteroids are a pain to track down.

Currently, I need to go into the expansion planner, select resources by galaxy demand, check the show asteroids checkbox, then sort by distance. This lets me see everything in my systems(displayed as green), but not necessary the system I'm working on exploiting currently. If I just queue up from there my constructions ships might be wasting time zipping from system to system rather than focusing their efforts more efficiently.

Alternatively, the ability to set an automation zone for construction ships like those for fleets would be handy. Being able to tell them to fully mine a given system, nearby systems, or sector would be nice and easy. I'd be ecstatic to let them putter about in their automation zones.

[jpwrunyan]

I would like to see the size of all mining components increased dramatically so that with level 1 tech it is impossible to put more than one (or two for strategic/luxury mines) on a single mining base or mining ship. This would eliminate what I consider to be an exploit: 3 or 4 mining comps on one base yielding a max potential extraction rate. As it is, I would never build 3 mining bases for steel when 1 mining base with 3 extractors is dramatically more efficient and easier to defend.

Mining bases/ships could also have a %size bonus just for these components (similar to carriers with fighter bays) so you could eliminate the research base extractor exploit (or at least make it much more costly). Right now 3 gas extractors on my research base and 3 gas extractors on my gas mine and I can get 200% extraction off one gas giant.

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan

This would eliminate what I consider to be an exploit: 3 or 4 mining comps on one base yielding a max potential extraction rate. As it is, I would never build 3 mining bases for steel when 1 mining base with 3 extractors is dramatically more efficient and easier to defend.

Or, you know, you could build 3 mining bases each with 3 extractors, because you need WAAAAY more minerals than that. You should have seen how it was BEFORE there was a max extraction, when we'd assemble giant bases with 20 extractors on them. Drill, baby, drill!

ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan

Right now 3 gas extractors on my research base and 3 gas extractors on my gas mine and I can get 200% extraction off one gas giant.

Honestly, I'm not really sure why that shouldn't be allowed. A gas giant is, after all, just a big ball of gas, and there's really no logical reason why you should even be limited in extraction rate on a gas giant at all.

[onomastikon]

I like the original OP suggestions, I think I would slightly modify mine (e.g. in game setup, a slider for strategic AND luxury resource abundance) and perhaps add my pet UI peeve (when I have a constructor ship selected bottom left, why can't I (control)-right click a potential job for that constructor ship in the empire management screen middle left?!? Please see my thread here, for example) or adding some kind of money sink for midgame and late game (e.g. vastly increasing upkeep costs the more ships you have).

There are some changes I think this game needs which are not simple (e.g. updating the emigration and economic system to make taxation on non-homeworlds viable and change late-game money overabundance; making the AI more efficient in planning and carrying out sustained warfare).

I would also strongly disagree with the suggestion that all or, indeed, any single one of these simple things be implemented in an expansion. I'd like to see some hint that at least some would be implemented in a patch before I even consider purchasing an expansion.

[Fishman]

The AI is inefficient in planning because it somehow feels an empire requires a few thousand freighters, even though most of the freighters appear to be flying about aimlessly with empty cargo holds or barely any cargo at all. The obvious emigration change should be that the taxation itself should affect the emigration policy. When you slap 100% taxes on a planet, while there are perfectly good empty planets with no taxes at all, you'd think people would bugger the hell off.

[Jeeves]

What I want is wormhole star-gates, building colossal bases which can transport ships and fleets any distance if given sufficient power. That would be a game changer as in master of orion series.

Lonnie Courtney Clay

[Fishman]

While the ability to warp between your own planets quickly IS pretty sweet, I'm not sure that this would add anything to the game as it stands now. In DW, by the time you get an empire big enough to actually benefit from such a thing, you've taken up so much territory that you're going to be declared the winner any minute now from the sprawl alone.

[rogerbacon51]

ORIGINAL: Fishman

ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan

This would eliminate what I consider to be an exploit: 3 or 4 mining comps on one base yielding a max potential extraction rate. As it is, I would never build 3 mining bases for steel when 1 mining base with 3 extractors is dramatically more efficient and easier to defend.

Or, you know, you could build 3 mining bases each with 3 extractors, because you need WAAAAY more minerals than that. You should have seen how it was BEFORE there was a max extraction, when we'd assemble giant bases with 20 extractors on them. Drill, baby, drill!

ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan

Right now 3 gas extractors on my research base and 3 gas extractors on my gas mine and I can get 200% extraction off one gas giant.

Honestly, I'm not really sure why that shouldn't be allowed. A gas giant is, after all, just a big ball of gas, and there's really no logical reason why you should even be limited in extraction rate on a gas giant at all.

What is the limit on extractors and where did you find it?