Distant Worlds

[Demorve]

I probably hadn’t researched those yet. My confusion was the fact that I have a bunch of Frigates and Destroyers running around but A) Couldn’t retrofit them and B) didn’t have any designs for them when I went and looked (it was later that I realized there were Obsolete designs for them). If this is a normal situation then that’s fine, it was just confusing. I thought I’d at least be able to upgrade their weapons or see a design for them on the Design screen. I’ll keep the game going and see if I can start retrofitting them or building them later, I just didn’t recall this happening in my previous game (It very well may have, I may have just been too preoccupied with other stuff to notice).

Could you have pressed the manually upgrade design button then changed your mind and cancelled out? that will mark the design as obsolete.

[KevinC]

Could you have pressed the manually upgrade design button then changed your mind and cancelled out? that will mark the design as obsolete.

If I did it was a mis-click, I’ve never knowingly clicked on that button before.

[joefriendgood]

Over time if left on auto your construction ships will do a pretty good job of building mining bases to beef up your economy, but especially early on you might need to take a more direct hand.

Your freighters are actually pretty smart about moving resources around to get them to places that need them, so assuming you have enough freighters you basically just need to make sure you have plenty of the resources you’re short on being mined. There’s a number of other things it could be, but the most likely is just a general lack of resources.

I usually go into the expansion planner every so often and look at how many sources of each of the strategic resources I need. If there’s any I have none of or only 1 or 2 I’ll look through the list of discovered resources and queue up a few of that type to be mined.

With the new expansion you can also request resources at any of your colonies. Just select the planet and in the buttons underneath it’s picture in the bottom left there’s a button you can hit to put out a contract for resources. It can take a bit, and there’s no guarantee any pirates will take up the contract, but eventually they usually do.

I wish there was a way to request resources that you already own to a specific planet. My home base is my main ship builder, but it runs out of fuel from building so many ships. I have tons of Caslon off planet, but the freighters only bring small amounts. Any ideas?

[Jarrodhk]

If I did it was a mis-click, I’ve never knowingly clicked on that button before.

You might also check the ‘latest designs’ filter. It is different from your ‘latest buildable’ filter. If you have designs listed there you can look to see if it is in fact an issue of not being able to build ships that size.

You may also want to double-check to make sure you have the AI set to automatically update designs.

[KevinC]

You might also check the ‘latest designs’ filter. It is different from your ‘latest buildable’ filter. If you have designs listed there you can look to see if it is in fact an issue of not being able to build ships that size.

You may also want to double-check to make sure you have the AI set to automatically update designs.

I checked “Latest Designs” and there are indeed ships of various military designs listed, thanks! Man, it’d be helpful if (as Tylertoo mentioned above) there were some more feedback. On the Build Order screen I should be able to see the ships I can build in red if I’m lacking resources or research or the like. Either that or just a handy tooltip to explain why nothing is listed when it says “No available designs”. I was scratching my head wondering if the AI deleted all the military designs for some reason.

Regarding ship design, does anyone create designs manually? I poked around a bit with it but it seemed a little tedious with all the necessary components (habitation, command, reactors, etc). Would be nice to add a component and if it needed additional modules it would pop up a dialog that says “Component A will require Component B, C, and D. Would you like to add the most recent components of those types to the design?” or something along those lines. Maybe there ARE ways of doing so (or better ways to design ships manually in general). If so I’m all open to some education. :)

Thanks for all the help.

[Sepiche]

I have tons of Caslon off planet, but the freighters only bring small amounts. Any ideas?

Hmm, well I would probably check out your supply chain in this case and see if there are any unexpected holdups. Fuels like caslon are vitally important, so make sure you are mining as much of it as possible. I tend to try to make sure there’s a fuel mining operation a short distance from every colony I setup.

Also, check where the nearest caslon mining station is compared to your capital and make sure there are no obstructions that are keeping ships from making that run safely (pirates, enemies, storms, etc), and make sure it’s has a good caslon mining rate. Just to be safe you should also probably check out your freighter designs and make sure they are good. Sometimes they might lack the range to transport the resources you need if it’s a particularly long run. It can also be useful just to watch one or two of your freighters make that run and see what sorts of things they are running into.

If all that checks out you’re probably just running into the limits of what your supply system can handle. You may need to scale back production for a little while to let your freighters catch up and stockpile more caslon. A few other things you can try if this ends up being the case is retrofitting your gas mining stations with extra extractors or retrofitting your freighters with more cargo bays.

Hope that helps some. A lot of this depends on the size of your empire, but generally as long as I have more than a few gas mining stations spread around my empire I don’t see too many problems with fuel getting to where I need it.

[joefriendgood]

Thanks for the advice. I have about 400k of Caslon and a mining base in the same system as the capital. Not sure what the deal is with this one. I guess I am looking for a ‘bring resource here’ button that doesn’t involve paying pirates for it.

Speaking of resources, when I am clicking around various planets looking for resources, it would be great if in addition to telling you how rare it is (common, very rare, etc) and what it is used for, that it would tell you your stockpile and number of sources without having to go to the expansion planner.

[Sepiche]

Thanks for the advice. I have about 400k of Caslon and a mining base in the same system as the capital. Not sure what the deal is with this one. I guess I am looking for a ‘bring resource here’ button that doesn’t involve paying pirates for it.

Hmm that’s weird. That’s a ton of Caslon and assuming you have freighters running around they should moving that to your homeworld. You might consider posting that savegame to the DW forum and see if it’s a known bug.

[hepcat]

Jumping between this and Crusader Kings 2 and my brain feels like it’s been placed in a deep frier for 20 minutes and then slapped around with a tennis racket for another 30.

…but lovin’ it all the same!

[Ponicus]

I know it’s been discussed to death but…

I love the Distant Worlds games. Got Shadows. I install and play mods. Post in the official forums, yadda yadda.

But maybe I’m getting old, but the damn fonts and font sizes and non-scalable UI for it on my 17 inch 1080 laptop screen sear painful holes in my eyes. I used to be able to deal with it but recently it’s become a big issue for me.

The game NEEDS scalable UI. It’s not a nice-to-have. It’s a requirement. Specially for a game which costs as much as it does. This REALLY needs to be addressed ASAP. I’m a little disappointed it was not with Shadows.

[KiloOhm]

Is Caslon the only resource at that planet? When you mine don’t you get a proportional amount of each resource? Is that’s all that is on the freighter?

[Hotfreak]

Jumping between this and Crusader Kings 2 and my brain feels like it’s been placed in a deep frier for 20 minutes and then slapped around with a tennis racket for another 30.

Okay, I laughed out loud. :)

I’m so glad I can come here and see that others are overcoming this learning curve. I know I’m going to love DW eventually, just having a hard time digesting everything in the short stints I have to focus on it. I’ve gotten through the tutorials and watched a couple games like DW was a wonderfully complex screensaver. Next up, solo piloting and empire management avoidance!

[Jarrodhk]

Okay, I laughed out loud. :)

I’m so glad I can come here and see that others are overcoming this learning curve. I know I’m going to love DW eventually, just having a hard time digesting everything in the short stints I have to focus on it. I’ve gotten through the tutorials and watched a couple games like DW was a wonderfully complex screensaver. Next up, solo piloting and empire management avoidance!

Yeah, the one thing about Distant Worlds that I don’t like, is that I lose whole days to it if I am not careful. So it tends to be a weekend/holiday thing for me anymore.

[KevinC]

Alright, I promise I did look around in the documentation for this answer before asking here, but no luck. What is the percentage by resources when I’m looking at planets? Like lets say I have a moon and it has one resource: “55% Steel”, what does that mean? Or what does it mean in the case of multiple resources, all with varying percentages?

[Sepiche]

That’s a direct modifier of the gather rate for that resource on that planet. So a 50% steel would harvest half as many units of steel as a 100% steel.

[HighPlainsDrifter]

Thanks for the advice. I have about 400k of Caslon and a mining base in the same system as the capital. Not sure what the deal is with this one. I guess I am looking for a ‘bring resource here’ button that doesn’t involve paying pirates for it.

Recent patch included fixes for civilian ships that went idle. Do you have freighters standing still somewhere?

[Kelan]

Hmm, I should probably patch my game up too. I am still running on the .0 initial release version I believe.

I was initially concerned about breaking my current game save, but it sounds like the updated versions are compatible with previous version saves although it may default to a new saved games directory so you have to browse back to your original directory. That shouldn’t be a problem, though.

[Scotten]

DW is awesome about saved game compatibility. Unlike another 4X game (SotS2) that received a massive patch that DELETED all your old saves… ya know, just to be safe.

[Scotten]

What do you mean? What I describe involves just clicking the “load troops” on the transports from time to time, waiting for them to do that with the fleet overview nicely tracking progress for you, and once they have enough troops, clicking once onto the enemy planet to unload. Like I said, such an attack on a homeworld does not even devolve into a micromanagement hell.

Sorry, I totally blew this discussion. It’s not micro the invasion, it’s when you finally reach the enemy homeworld and realize he has, oh, I dunno, 200 armies along with a shield generator and fortress thingie (I’m using Legends-talk right now). To beat them, you need maybe, what, 600 armies? Maybe more with the planetary fortress.

I normally do not have a huge army - it’s pretty costly and not effective for much except homeworld-busting. So now I have recruit 100’s of troops. Meanwhile, the homeworld continues to recruit more troops. I recruit the troops on 5-10 worls, but then I have to pick them all up and get them to the enemy (this is micro pain in the ass).

With Shadows, the Garrison command makes it somewhat easier. But that feature only allows me to not worry about my troopships taking all my armies and leaving my planets undefended.

[hepcat]

Just noticed a new patch is out. I think we’re at 1.9.05 at this point.