Are there plans to give more critical in-game data to the player?

[drdru7029]

I am wondering if there are plans to make more critical information available in-game to the player? Browsing various forums and user feedback, as well as from personal experience, this seems to be a major issue inhibiting a lot of strategy formation and decision making in the game.

I think the main place to start would be understanding if/where/why resource bottlenecks exist-- resource management is really the backbone of the game and underlies trade/production/the economy. Having access to data, charts etc showing total production/consumption, globally and by system/planet, as well as where there are supply/demand inefficiencies would go a long way.

In addition, generally being able to have histogram charts relating to pretty much everything would go so far in making the game comprehensible and more enjoyable to the majority of the player base. Seeing how your economy, production/consumption, military, etc etc has changed over time and in relation to other empires whose data you have access to would go a long way (I'm specifically thinking of Civilization 4's wonderful histogram and data section).

Just some thoughts from a longtime DW:U player who has always wished the game capitalized on exposing some insight into its deep mechanics.

Here's a curated list of all ideas in this thread, I'll try to keep it updated with any ideas people post:

Total current resource consumption and demand across your whole empire, as well as among each empire for which you can access this level of information (great for having a metric to gauge the 'activity' of your empire. Something to understand/quantify how your empire grows/shrinks over time. I know that there is a 'Current resources in transit' but this is transient and does not indicate consumption/demand. I also know there are individual supply/demand, but no aggregate metrics to gauge totals)

Hovering over resource flows shows current resources in transit (e.g. between these two systems, which resources are flowing between them and how much)

Galaxy-wide 'space lanes' can be color coded as a gradient by total volume (it would be awesome to see the true galactic superhighways, as after the galaxy becomes mature, the space lanes become too many and one cannot differentiate traffic volume between them)

Trade income by station (would be great to roleplay which stations become 'superstar trade hubs', also good to understand which are of vital importance)

Total trade income and by empire to empire (how much are you actually making from trade? which other empires are trading goliaths? with whom are you doing the most business?)

Detailed fleet screen (e.g. DW1) which shows info such as maintenance, all ships details, etc (I feel each fleet can't be understood in depth, can't be personalized as much as in DW1)

Histograms of nearly anything the game allows (Please, let us see how we're doing over time across a variety of economic, military, trade and social metrics. Let us be able to compare the current and history trends across all visible empires, this adds so much immersion to the game.)

"Profitability Figures" for mining stations (a lifetime and last year assessment of the cost vs income of a station)

Highest net tax colonies

Corruption per colony (as an integrated table)

Sum of happiness buff or neg (the auto tax advisor ends up balancing these to barely positive, it's be interesting to see a rank of which planets have the most underlying happiness or not exclusive of the tax modifier)

Number of kills per ship (both in ship screen and as aggregate ship stats)

[zgrssd]

Just today I had the itch to see a return of the "Profitability Figures" for mining stations, that we had on DW1.
Just a lifetime and last year assessment of the cost vs income of a station.

[drdru7029]

Yes. It's these kinds of things which endear a player to their game. They reveal problems to solve, which for me is the main factor in wanting to continue playing a game. If there isn't enough information to show those problems in a meaningful way, the player is left without a clear path, and blind expansion or development without a clear reason why gets tiresome quickly.

These little pieces of information about why your empire is unique with unique problems to overcome and unique little accomplishments to revel in (even if it's identifying the most profitable trading / mining stations), attach one to their game and make it feel special, and it would be a 'low hanging fruit' to attach players more to the game, increase game time per player, and generally make it a better experience.

[Ranbir]

I need an indicator of 'range' for colonies. In DW1 it used to be by sectors but that is no longer in DW2.

However, in starting/setting up a new game there is an option to limit the colonization range, which is fine...except I have no reference or help to determine what those ranges actually mean on the galaxy map.

[rxnnxs]

Hopefully!
I made a poll and wrote down my thoughts also about the same problematic.
here

It would also be intriguing when we could export all stats to access it with a data mining tool.
From exel up to any other data visualization tool.

[zgrssd]

I need an indicator of 'range' for colonies. In DW1 it used to be by sectors but that is no longer in DW2.

However, in starting/setting up a new game there is an option to limit the colonization range, which is fine...except I have no reference or help to determine what those ranges actually mean on the galaxy map.

IIRC, a System is usually 2 Million Distance Units across.
And well, jump ranges are measured in Millions of Units to begin with. So that should give you an idea.

Also note the game takes the real distance, which has to account for any Nebulas - so it being within a circle does not mean you can reach it anyway.

[drdru7029]

Honestly, yes I would be happy with just exposing game data in a raw csv or other format that could be parsed by scripting/Excel etc. I don't understand why a game that prides itself on such complex interactions of data and mechanics, doesn't make that data available to the player. It would have a larger impact on playtime and user retention than apparently is believed.

Hopefully!
I made a poll and wrote down my thoughts also about the same problematic.
here

It would also be intriguing when we could export all stats to access it with a data mining tool.
From exel up to any other data visualization tool.

[Ranbir]

I need an indicator of 'range' for colonies. In DW1 it used to be by sectors but that is no longer in DW2.

However, in starting/setting up a new game there is an option to limit the colonization range, which is fine...except I have no reference or help to determine what those ranges actually mean on the galaxy map.

IIRC, a System is usually 2 Million Distance Units across.
And well, jump ranges are measured in Millions of Units to begin with. So that should give you an idea.

Also note the game takes the real distance, which has to account for any Nebulas - so it being within a circle does not mean you can reach it anyway.

Right but it's hard to visualise that without any reference during the game set-up. I can't immediately visualise what 5000M looks like and even then, when I'm in the game, the only way I know is if I click on a ship and look at the range circle.

[zgrssd]

I need an indicator of 'range' for colonies. In DW1 it used to be by sectors but that is no longer in DW2.

However, in starting/setting up a new game there is an option to limit the colonization range, which is fine...except I have no reference or help to determine what those ranges actually mean on the galaxy map.

IIRC, a System is usually 2 Million Distance Units across.
And well, jump ranges are measured in Millions of Units to begin with. So that should give you an idea.

Also note the game takes the real distance, which has to account for any Nebulas - so it being within a circle does not mean you can reach it anyway.

Right but it's hard to visualise that without any reference during the game set-up. I can't immediately visualise what 5000M looks like and even then, when I'm in the game, the only way I know is if I click on a ship and look at the range circle.

It doesn't mater how they visualize it - in the end it is trial and error if the values work for you anyway.

I lowered Colony and Independent occurrence by one step, and increased Influence range and Colonisation range by one step. And thus far it seems to work out.

[frankycl]

I am wondering if there are plans to make more critical information available in-game to the player?
(...)

+1

[76mm]

Tooltips for tech tree would be my top choice, and I see that someone has just released a mod with these tooltips, so that's a great start!

[frankycl]

Tooltips for tech tree would be my top choice, and I see that someone has just released a mod with these tooltips, so that's a great start!

Sorry to disappoint you, maybe - but no, the mod you metioned is not already released - it's only under construction and could / needs to be finalized with our/your help.

[76mm]

Sorry to disappoint you, maybe - but no, the mod you metioned is not already released - it's only under construction and could / needs to be finalized with our/your help.

Oh noes! I downloaded a file, I thought that was the mod, what was it? I'm not sure that I have enough experience to even provide helpful feedback, what is there already looked like a 1000% improvement over what is available now!

[frankycl]

Sorry to disappoint you, maybe - but no, the mod you metioned is not already released - it's only under construction and could / needs to be finalized with our/your help.

Oh noes! I downloaded a file, I thought that was the mod, what was it? I'm not sure that I have enough experience to even provide helpful feedback, what is there already looked like a 1000% improvement over what is available now!

It's kinda Alpha-version of the mod - for testing.

But it's also really easy to use it (if you don't know/want to use the in-game mod-manager): just make a backup of the the original XML-file (that's similar to the XML-file you downloaded) and put the mod-XML in the same directory as the original. This way you won't be able to switch the mod on/off in game, but you can always "turn off the mod" in deleting the mod-XML outside the game, and/or use your backup from the original file to restore everything if something got corrupted or doesn't work es espected anymore.

[drdru7029]

In terms of 'critical data', here's what I'm thinking of currently. Please feel free to add more in replies and I can aggregate it at the top of the thread:


Total current resource consumption and demand across your whole empire, as well as among each empire for which you can access this level of information (great for having a metric to gauge the 'activity' of your empire. Something to understand/quantify how your empire grows/shrinks over time. I know that there is a 'Current resources in transit' but this is transient and does not indicate consumption/demand. I also know there are individual supply/demand, but no aggregate metrics to gauge totals)

Hovering over resource flows shows current resources in transit (e.g. between these two systems, which resources are flowing between them and how much)

Galaxy-wide 'space lanes' can be color coded as a gradient by total volume (it would be awesome to see the true galactic superhighways, as after the galaxy becomes mature, the space lanes become too many and one cannot differentiate traffic volume between them)

Trade income by station (would be great to roleplay which stations become 'superstar trade hubs', also good to understand which are of vital importance)

Total trade income and by empire to empire (how much are you actually making from trade? which other empires are trading goliaths? with whom are you doing the most business?)

Detailed fleet screen (e.g. DW1) which shows info such as maintenance, all ships details, etc (I feel each fleet can't be understood in depth, can't be personalized as much as in DW1)

Histograms of nearly anything the game allows. (Please, let us see how we're doing over time across a variety of economic, military, trade and social metrics. Let us be able to compare the current and history trends across all visible empires, this adds so much immersion to the game.)

It would be great if some of these were possible via modding as well, but I don't think the game is moddable to this degree yet (please correct me if wrong).

[AKicebear]

I'd like to see a empire/galaxy heat map of:
- highest net tax colonies
- corruption per colony
- sum of happiness buff or neg - the auto tax advisor ends up balancing these to barely positive, it's be interesting to see a rank of which planets have the most underlying happiness or not exclusive of the tax modifier

And if course all the histograms you mentioned. Ideally only for yourself - with espionage missions to fill in the history of other empires histograms.

[drdru7029]

I'd like to see a empire/galaxy heat map of:
- highest net tax colonies
- corruption per colony
- sum of happiness buff or neg - the auto tax advisor ends up balancing these to barely positive, it's be interesting to see a rank of which planets have the most underlying happiness or not exclusive of the tax modifier

And if course all the histograms you mentioned. Ideally only for yourself - with espionage missions to fill in the history of other empires histograms.

Great! have added them to the original post.

[mathefff]

Great idea!

Upvoting.

[OrnluWolfjarl]

I've been working on a document that outlines the chances that a resource will appear at a planet (because the galactopedia is lying), as well as their prices. I've been planning to sit down and figure out the mining rates, in exact numbers, for each resource.

[zgrssd]

I've been working on a document that outlines the chances that a resource will appear at a planet (because the galactopedia is lying), as well as their prices. I've been planning to sit down and figure out the mining rates, in exact numbers, for each resource.

Pretty sure that data is in some XML files. The ones the Planets are generated from.