I might have read my economic number wrong and it may have been +21k (I thought I triple checked as it seemed like a lot, but the font is small). Irrelevant. Iwrnt to check the DW forums at matrix and see if there was any interesting commentary. I see lots of people talking about economies turning on a dime, and suggestions from (I think a dev) that it may be due to overexpansion (basically: too mahy colonies drains precious luxury resources from the home world, which gets unhappy and revenue there drops). Within two seconds of loading my game I was suddenly way in the read. Unlike the cases in the forums, I didn’t have an expansion issue. It had bene some time since my last colony (it’s possible as the colonies developed luxury demand there went up. I guess). Waaaaay in the red. My attempts to deal with this have been for naught. I can’t figure out how to scrap ships.
I tried to send some mining ships to go capture some luxury resources I had demand for (but couldn’t meet), but for som reason nothing seems to have changed.
Sounding great thus far. I’ve been chatting with a guy on the stardock IRC who bought the game earlier today, and the flexibility seems awesome. From what he’s been saying, with the automation you can have everything being run by AI (reminds me of Alpha Centauri in that respect, though obviously only loosely) and just roam around in your own little cruiser playing picard if you’re so inclined. Seems to me like a grand strategy game, but with the possibility of some micro role playing star control 2-ish bits available, as well as all of the other facets of your empire you can concentrate on with everything else automated.
Soon as I finish my current eu3 game (1703!) I’m picking this one up.
Yes, from early reports the economy bug, which didn’t effect everyone, is cleared up with this. The beta tester (like myself) are completely mystified, because none of us had this problem - and some of the testers really combed over the economy. But Matrix shows it’s amazing customer support with the speedy patching!
Anyway, the buzz is pretty good out there, so if you are sitting on the fence - check out the Wargamer threads and the Matrix threads for more information. The game is complex and very very deep, so be ready!
I’ve finally gotten to play for an hour or two, and am LOVING it. So far, in this first early game, I’m letting the computer automate most things so I can concentrate on enjoying the exploration, and I’ve not felt engrossed at exploring a galaxy like this in a long time. Reminds me of Starflight in that regard, only on a grander scale in terms of what you have to work with and manage (i.e. one ship vs. a whole empire).
Well this is looking like a definate buy(after CivV and Elemental). What are peoples impression on the AI? This is often the achilles heal of these type of games(i guess Moo3 being a good example). Can the AI deal with all the complexity in the design or at least put up a decent fight?
Hmph, this looks really tempting in some ways.
However, from reading up on the matrix board, one thing that greatly disturbs me is the lack of a tech tree.
Yeah, there are techs, but all races appearently share the same techs and make the same discoveries, so it’s basically just fancy naming for “beam weapon I” or “shields III”. All choices you can appearently make are if you want to “priorize” any tech by funneling money into it’s research.
They have these fancy insectoid races with a hive mind, brutish reptilian folk that are extremely warlike and even humans, but they’ll all go beam-weapon 1, beam-weapon 2, beam-weapon 3 etc.
Lack of race specific tech trees was one of the dumb design decisions in GalCiv2, but at least they DID have a techtree from the start and they even made it race-specific later on with an expansion…
Also, you can appearently end up in a situation where you lack the resources to build your own starting equipment. Great stuff.
Ah well, I’ll probably be picking this up anyway in the end. Not exactly much to chose from these days when it comes to 4x games.
Distant Worlds is 9 kinds of awesome. Spent way too much time on it over the weekend. For once one of these comes out that actually makes me feel like the head of the empire, rather than a bureaucrat. The automation is really required to play this game, and it’s tuned around it.
I certainly have a wishlist of things I’d love to see better, but it’s just great to be seeing the reports from your scouts, watching your civilian fleets start getting their act together, zipping in to the odd pirate battle, all while planning your high level strategy and bumping elbows with the intergalactic neighbors.
The graphics are nothing to write home about but I find the 2D combat far easier to parse than the prettier 3D space games of the past few years.
There are some awfully daunting screens, but nothing as bad as a Paradox game, IMO. The production values on the interface and help systems are decent, though the help is certainly lacking in a few areas – particularly if you want explanation of what a particular interface notation (of which there are MANY) means.
I’m thinking of starting up an AAR, actually… maybe I’ll take QT3 name suggestions for my fleets, colonies, and agents. :)
That’s one big thing I’m loving about the game. It allows you to marvel at the wonder of the universe you’re exploring without being mired in minutae. I’ve only played for a few hours so far but I’ve loved my time with it thus far.
I’ve not been in any big battles, only ones against giant space crabs, but the AI seems to be okay. Thing I worry about is refuelling, but apparently the developers are looking into the refuelling problems people are having. Apparently I read on the forum that refuelling ships and stations shouldn’t actually go with fleets – as is done in other games – but left at strategic locations so fleets can go there quickly.
I’ve not run into a sitch where ships have run out of fuel, but I don’t want to either. :)
Well don’t listen to me, I have no resolve. If it has spaceships in it, I’m likely to buy it. I do need to play more SotS though, only played it once. ;)
