Extended Skip Drive

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marksmango
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Apr 07, 2022 2:01 am

Extended Skip Drive

Post by marksmango »

Having played through the early game more times than I can count, the tech jump from skip drive straight to warp bubble generator always struck me as too sudden. You can rush two relatively cheap techs and move your empire from limping across a star system to jumping between stars in a few seconds.

Not anymore.

This mod turns the skip drive into a slow, but capable method of reaching nearby stars. It also adds an upgraded version of the skip drive, and adjusts the warp bubble research to make it much less of a freebie.

On the largest sector size, the base skip drive will get you to 1-3 of the closest stars. The Advanced drive extends this out quite a bit and also makes the trip significantly faster (still on the scale of a year or two).

v2skiprange.png
v2skiprange.png (322.45 KiB) Viewed 879 times
^ Advanced skip drive range

At minimum, it takes 8 completed techs to get warp generators. So you can rush them if you want, but that's still quite a bit of time to not focus on any other important items.


Original Skip Drive (Early Warp Field Experiments Tech)
  • Jump range increased to 38M (from 2.5M)
  • Energy usage of 15(was 30)
Advanced Skip Drive (Warp Field Development Tech)
  • 75M range
  • Energy usage of 10
  • Speed of 25K (2.5x faster than original)
  • Requires Storage Systems tech (T2 fuel cells) and Early Warp Field Experiments
Warp Bubble Generator (Stable Warp Fields Tech)
  • Research time doubled
  • Now requires Fusion Ignition, Advanced Nuclear Fission, Proton Ionization, Research Labs, and Warp Field Development

* I play on the largest sectors possible, and typically on the slowest research settings. Playing on smaller sectors may put more stars within reach of both of these drives (which isn't necessarily a balance issue as far as I can tell because it still takes a while to reach them). I haven't tested this on smaller sectors, so any screenshots or feedback for that is appreciated.

Playing with faster research may mean this mod doesn't do much for you.

** Fuel management can be a bit tricky. Pre-planning tankers or well-placed mining stations can save your ships long trips through the void. Automatic retrofitting, admittedly, is a bit of a hassle when all of your state ships start a years-long trip home for basic armor plating. These two are the points I'd most like to address in the future.

=====
NOTE
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When selecting a ship, the yellow ring is its current fuel range. The orange ring is its jump range. For the AI to move a ship, it has to be able to hop between stars that are less than the jump range apart from each other. You can, however, manually move a ship through any space or directly to an unexplored star by zooming into the system level of the point you want to move it to.
Attachments
Extended Skip Drive.zip
Main file, needs the mod loader
(3.21 KiB) Downloaded 48 times
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frankycl
Posts: 401
Joined: Mon Mar 01, 2021 5:16 pm

Re: Extended Skip Drive

Post by frankycl »

Hey, this looks like a very interesting and much appreciated improvement of the gameplay mechanics - thank you very much for your efforts and the nice display you put up with your post. :mrgreen:

But I've seen that you haven't offered a readme in your download - would be possible to add this in the future ? (this way it would be easier to store this for later use ;-)) - Thanks also in advance. ;)
dostillevi
Posts: 323
Joined: Fri Aug 31, 2012 11:31 am

Re: Extended Skip Drive

Post by dostillevi »

Played a few games with this, and I like the concept. I have a few suggestions:

1. When upgrading from the initial skip drive manually, the advanced skip drive doesn't automatically replace the skip drive. Normally components that are direct upgrades will replace older versions during the upgrade process. I worry this might affect AI upgrades as well.

2. Could I suggest greatly increasing the speed of the advanced skip drive while also increasing it's fuel usage? I like the range (maybe make it slightly further?), but I'm finding that I'm usually able to get the warp drive before my first wave of advanced skip drive scouts has reached their destination. I know I don't have to beeline the warp drive, but it's prerequisites are the next logical research items and the warp drive itself is such a big upgrade over the advanced skip drive at a time where exploration is critical, that I can't see doing anything else.

If the advanced skip drive was faster but without increased range, I could see it being more viable. As it is, I'm idling my explorers until I can get warp drives.

Another option might be to reduce the speed of warp drives a bit. Perhaps create a tick-tock research cadence where one upgrade increases speed but also fuel consumption, and the next keeps speed about the same but reduces fuel consumption (and therefore increases range). The latter would be the "advanced" version while the former would be the basic version. Jumping from an advanced version of one drive to the basic version of the next should result in faster ships travel, but not necessarily further range.
mordachai
Posts: 684
Joined: Fri Mar 06, 2015 4:55 pm

Re: Extended Skip Drive

Post by mordachai »

<3 this. Mind if I integrate it into a mod I'm starting on? (with attribution)

Ah, I see that this uses the mod loader to modify things on the fly. Should work with what I do - assuming I keep my changes relatively lite..
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