We’re actually the same company (Matrix Games and Slitherine) so yep we expect to setup all the DW releases on the Slitherine store as well once Shadows releases.
Thank you for the heads up on that typo.
So Erik, Those here have have not bought the base game yet are curious if there will some kind of bundle purchase incentive upon launch of the new expansion. Can you comment on that at this stage, or too early? :)
I’m curious how the pirate stuff impacts the regular game. Do you know Brian, or have you only started scratching the surface?
The pirate game feels insanely different than the normal game. Acquiring planets and resources is different, diplomacy is different, handling money is different, etc. How do you mean by impacting the regular game?
I guess he means - if you play a normal (not from a pirate POV) game, do the new mechanics have in impact on how that plays out? ie, do the pirate factions now play by different rules and mechanics in a vanilla game?
Oh, I’ve been playing mostly as the pirates, as they get some of the nifty stuff like ship boarding and capturing. If you play a regular empire in the normal game (classical age), you’ll still get access to the new ground stuff with its associated tech tree, as well as other new fun techs I think. If you play a regular empire in the time of shadows, you can basically exist pre-hyperspace, so you only have access to your own home system while you research hyperdrives, while pirates and mercenaries still have hyperdrives, so it changes the dynamic of the game a lot. I’ve not played as an empire long enough to see if pirates act any differently, however.
Overall, so far Shadows adds significant new ways to play this game. I hope this answers your question.
Oh, I also can’t stress enough how much more smoothly this game runs. Legends stuttered a bit when scrolling and zooming on my old rig and my current one, but Shadows is damned smooth. It’s really sweet.
robc04
1607
Has resource balance been improved? Do you need to work harder to get the resources you need? I guess it may be too early to determine that since it would require some extensive playing as an empire.
As a pirate, I had to work my ASS off to get resources, and was always too low on them. Then again, I’m not much for raiding. I’m gonna try smuggling on my next playthrough.
Dunno if I’ve conveyed how much I love this. ;) I am a bit biased though.
robc04
1610
You biased… no! Just enthusiastic.
The pirate mechanics do seem like they shake things up and give the game an entirely different feel. Even without the new expansion, DW is a game I really want to like more than I did, and I think it is close. Erik was going to get back to me with suggestions on how I may be able to get more out of DW but with the release of the expansion I think he has been too busy so I haven’t been bugging him about it.
I really think 1 new feature could help DW out. I don’t like automating, but without it monitoring your fleets to reinforce them when needed is tedious. I really wish they could add a feature to DW that would auto reinforce a fleet when it sustains losses. I would be much happier because as it is now you have to constantly look at your fleets after each combat to see if they need reinforcements. I would like to be able to station them and set their stance / posture and forget about them more or less. Maybe they could add a fleet destroyed notification if one doesn’t already exist too. This would allow the player to set up some defenses and let the AI worry about it until the fleet was actually destroyed.
Huh, the game miiiiiight do that now. Last night I tried a game with everything on automation, just to watch what the AI would do. The game built several military ships, put some in a fleet, raided some colonies, and when it lost a couple, it looked like the game built two more and put 'em in that fleet. At least that’s what I believe I saw.
robc04
1612
Except I don’t want to automate ship construction. I want to build my own ships and fleets, give them their orders and set their stances to defend locations in my empire. Then I want the AI to automatically reinforce my fleets when they take losses. That is the only part I want to automate.
Oohhhhh, that I don’t think it does. :/
Hi Rob,
If the fleet is automated and fleet formation is automated, it should still reinforce fleets for you. If either the fleet is on manual or Fleet Formation is not automated, it won’t.
I can confirm there will be a promotion for all the DW games at the release of Shadows, but can’t share more details on the exact scope of the promotion yet.
Regards,
Also, sorry I haven’t had time to post a response to your review yet, I should have time in the next week though. Hoping to go gold with Shadows in the next couple of days but still in crazy crunch mode right now.
Regards,
robc04
1616
I think it would be very useful if there was a separate automation setting to let the player automate only fleet reinforcements for the reasons above. To reiterate:
- A player chooses to build his own ships and form his own fleets.
- The player then orders the fleet to a location and sets the posture to defend a system, sector, etc.
- Eventually the fleet enters battle and loses some ships. It would be great if the fleet would then put in the order to build reinforcements and add then to the fleet.
There can be a lot of combat in the game and it is tedious to manually reinforce all of your fleets. I would like to retain the initial control of building ships and fleets and setting their posture commands, but not the busywork of keeping my fleets at 100% strength. Since I initially created the fleets the AI knows what fleet makeup I want so it would be great if it could try to keep it there. This feature would let the player retain control without retaining the busywork. Any chance such a feature could be considered? I can’t imagine I’m the only player who would find that helpful.
robc04
1617
No problem. I figured you were busy so I didn’t keep pinging you :-)
I typically do this now by having Fleet Formation automation on but keeping individual fleets on Manual until I want them reformed. I then switch the fleet to automated and give it a minute for the automation to rebuild it, then switch it back to manual. With that said, I think additional resolution to just have automated reinforcements is absolutely something worth consideration and could make it into a future release.
Regards,
I’ll just single this point out for any that may have missed it. Promising news for those that do not yet have the game!
