Micromanagers Intro to Distant Worlds: Return of the Shakturi

[Justascratch]

Two more ships to go and we'll have to call it a session for now.

In the early game the destroyers are the big guns. Once you research fighters they are even large enough to carry a small contingent of them into battle. The default design even includes a troop module allowing you to invade lightly defended colonies of work as a fleet invade more formidable targets.

For this game I need the first generation detroyers to be hard core gun ships. Once expansion begins in earnest I will design specialized models to round out the fleet.

You will notice I have kept the excess energy levels at 112 so this ship can fire till her guns melt. I also designed to a size of 225 to leave enough room for the sensors currently being researched.

[Justascratch]

The last ship is everyones favorite - the exploration ship.

For my plan of rapid conquest I need these ships to have a very long range and enough manuverability and defenses to stay alive by running from trouble.

The design is fairly simple: more fuel, more shields and more manuverability.

[jalapen0]

ORIGINAL: Justascratch

Once expansion begins in earnest I will design specialized models to round out the fleet.

I REALLY want to know how this works. It was next to impossible to do on the vanilla version.

Also, I'm from the ATL too.

[Spacecadet]

ORIGINAL: Justascratch

Just a quick note to brag on these new screens. Players know that every design choice is a compromise. Some serious effort went into the ship design screens so you can see the key effect of each choice as you make it.

For example my default frigate had 112 extra energy units, so I took out a reactor to lighten the load and make room for other equipment. My excess enegy dropped to 52, just slightly above the 48 units this ship needs to maintain a full rate of fire.

The loss of the reactor dropped my weight thus improving my acceleration rate from 9.2 to 7.6 (Movement Panel)

I added another shield generator raising my shield power from 200 to 300, but lower energy and additional power consumption slowed my shield recharge rate by 1/3 from .6 seconds to .9

Overall this ship will do well in a light skirmish, but the loss of the gererator may be her death in a longer engagement.

If I understand it correctly, your acceleration decreased from 9.2/sec to 7.6/sec, and your shield recharge went up from .6/sec to .9/sec.

[Spacecadet]

ORIGINAL: jalapen0

ORIGINAL: Justascratch

Once expansion begins in earnest I will design specialized models to round out the fleet.

I REALLY want to know how this works. It was next to impossible to do on the vanilla version.

Also, I'm from the ATL too.

There are three ways (that I know of) to do this:

1. You can use the "Add New" and create your own custom designs to the list.

2. You can use the "Copy as New" to duplicate a design and then custom edit this design - there is a drawback to this method.

3. You can "Save Designs" from a game and then use the "Load Designs" in a new game - there are drawbacks to this method.


Drawbacks:

2. While both the original and modified design will be available, only the newest model will show up under the "Display Latest Designs" option.
You can see them all under "Display Non-Obsolete" though, and they will also be selectable in the various "Build" menus.

3. When you use "Save Designs" it will save all non-obsolete designs to the file (STATE and PRIVATE), so when you use "Load Designs" it will add all these saved designs to your current list.
Basically you'll generally end up with a lot of duplicate (but usually differently named) ships.
Of course you can "Obsolete" designs before you save them and make custom design files, but it's a bit more work.

[alexalexuk]

thanks for this AAR - its just made me want to really purchase the expansion!

[Nibelung44]

are there any novelty on the ship naming convention front? I mean, in my last game I often met ships with the names of cities of earth, this sounded silly...

[ehsumrell1]

ORIGINAL: Nibelung44

are there any novelty on the ship naming convention front? I mean, in my last game I often met ships with the names of cities of earth, this sounded silly...

You always have the option to name or rename any selected, or all, of your vessels via
the ships & bases menu. For example, ships newly created AND in building queues
at construction yards/colonies are color-coded and you can pull up either the entire
list or a selected list (i.e. exploration ships only) and name/rename to your heart's
desire ( or TWO heart's desire if you're Sluken...lol).

[Justascratch]

Hi Everyone.

I will be a little late with the next post. Just had my daughter and her family show up from New York for a suprise holiday visit. It's been about five years since I've seen them. I will start again Sunday morning and hopefully finish this up. Also let me say thanks to the other testers that have contributed to this effort. I have been posting as quickly as I could and made a few errors along the way and they have kept me honest.

Maybe one of them would be kind enough to walk through the empire summary screen tonight or possibly discuss some of the new diplomacy options.

Thanks for understanding.

[lancer]

G'day Justascratch,

Thanks for your endeavours here.

Very good and much appreciated.

Cheers,
Lancer

[Spacecadet]

So, in Justascratch's temporary absence I'll try to go over the new layout of the Empire Summary Screen.
It's been a while since I played 1.0.6.0, so I might miss a few of the newer changes here, so bear with me [;)]


Okay, in the bottom left you now have reference to some of your Empire bonuses from special Race abilities, special Planetary bonuses (Garden of Acadia, Merchant Guild, etc.), as well as a few others.

The upper right section is mostly the same as before, with the exception being the Bonus Income breakout.
You have:
- Spaceport Income from ship building & trade.
- Foreign Trade Bonuses from Free Trade Agreements.
- Resort Income from . . . well Resort Bases.

This income (above) is what caused your Cash Flow readout to fluctuate so much in the Vanilla version.

Your primary Cashflow will still vary a little, but not much, it's pretty stable now.
The Bonus Income will of course change quite a bit, but that's the nature of this type income - and you'll be surprised at how much income you can generate in this area.
Note the Colony Taxes on the right, this is your STATE income (left). Colony Taxes are a sum of each planets revenue x each planets tax rate.


In the lower right is the Ships & Bases expenditure breakout.
The way this is laid out now makes it much easier to who pays for what.
I know in the past it's always been confusing (for newer players) to figure this out.

The left column is primarily Military Ships and the center column is what I'd call neutral type assets. These two are paid for and maintained by the STATE.

The right column is all paid for and maintained by PRIVATE - with the exception being Mining Stations & Gas Mining Stations (the bottom two).
Mining Stations & Gas Mining Stations are paid to be built by the STATE, but are maintained by PRIVATE.

The last thing I'd like to point out is at the upper right.
You have a button which will open up your Empire Policy Screen.
There's quite a bit you can do in the Empire Policy Screen, so that's going to have to be another post (or two).

[Nibelung44]

ORIGINAL: ehsumrell1

ORIGINAL: Nibelung44

are there any novelty on the ship naming convention front? I mean, in my last game I often met ships with the names of cities of earth, this sounded silly...

You always have the option to name or rename any selected, or all, of your vessels via
the ships & bases menu. For example, ships newly created AND in building queues
at construction yards/colonies are color-coded and you can pull up either the entire
list or a selected list (i.e. exploration ships only) and name/rename to your heart's
desire ( or TWO heart's desire if you're Sluken...lol).

Key words: 'I often met'

I know I can rename my ships. I just don't want to see others races with silly names. Meeting 'Sumatra' or 'Tokyo' as ship names just don't make it for me, sorry. [8D]

[Litjan]

ORIGINAL: Justascratch

Hi Everyone.

I will be a little late with the next post. Just had my daughter and her family show up from New York for a suprise holiday visit...

Mental note to Erik: Need to have Beta-testers sign affidavit that forbid´s them all contact with family and friends... [:D]

Hope you enjoy the visit - that is all that life is REALLY about!

Jan

[Justascratch]

I'll be doing three or four smaller posts today vs one big one so I can spread out my time a bit.

Thanks so much to Spacecadet for keeping the show going last night.

You can see that the data on my empire summary screen clearly shows this is a new game. And Spacecadet always plays a very efficient game so I will be strating out with a bad case of cash flow envy.

My finacial plan for this game will be to keep my cash balance in the green and rapidly improve my cash flow.

I will do this by aggressively scouting the Local Group and close-in star systems to map out resources that will help stimulate the private sector - as they build ships. my cash flow will increase.

I will also manually control my first two construction ships early in the game to ensure they concentrate on building mining stations at locations with luxury goods as fast as possible.

During this phase, my combat fleets will most likely be engaging pirates & monsters - at least until I locate an independent or AI colony.

Also, I will do something that might seem a bit strange to some. Even though I am playing as a war monger, I will be investing a great deal of cash into my research projects vs building large fleets early on. In the early game the techs are less expensive and sometimes having a large selection of early level tech gives an early advantage at the trading table, allowing us to trade-up to a few of the more expensive techs.

Like all strategies this one has it's risks, but that's where the fun is!

[Justascratch]

As Spacecadet mentioned, the button on the top right of the Empire Summary screen provides access to the Empire Policy Screen.

The Empire Policy screen is a very satisfying tool for both micro and macro managers. I have done a quick Photoshop of this screen so you can see two of the drop down menus displayed at the same time. While the options available may seem sparse or simple, they strike an excellent balance between flexibility and complexity. With a few clicks you can fine tune several aspects of the game to suit your playing style.

Essentially fro each listed function you can, choose to do things yourself (lots of fun once you have the game system down pat), Let your staff of AI advisors run with the ball in selected areas, or allow the advisors to tap you on the shoulder with a suggestion that you can shrug off or claim as your own idea.

I often find myself working on the combat portion of the game and I can miss an opportunity to exploit an enemy or assist a friend, but I hate not making the decisions myself. So, I instruct my treaty and sanction advisors to keep the ideas coming. Later in the game I tend to drop these back to manual.

I'm not much for gift giving.

I keep control of Recruitment and Mission assignments for my Intelligence branch. I like to try and build-up the capabilities of my agents by initially assigning them lower risk missions that increase their skill without too much risk of losing them. If successful I will end up with several highly skilled 007 types that I can swarm against an enemy in an instant. For this strategy, I find the AI tends to send them out on higher risk missions so it is difficult to build up the team the way I like them without manual control.

However, the level of control that can be maintained while still allowing the AI to run this function is wonderful! Check out the drop down list for the last two Intelligence Assignments. You can spy on an opponent if you don't like them and auto escalate to sabatage if you declare war on them. And using the check box options you can further focus these efforts on specific goals.

[yoshino]

Thanks for the AAR.Very impressive and informative.As almost the tutorial.
Looking forward to the release day.

[Justascratch]

Since I plan to invade an enemy empire quickly, I will need some ground troops. The Colony window provides tabs across the lower left panel that allow you to see various aspects of the colony.

Clicking on the troops tab shows I have three full trained units and one new unit still in training. Time to start a draft. I'm going to put in an order for 8 more divisions using the Recruit button.

[Justascratch]

As the number of troop divisions grows and they become scattered across the galaxy it is easier to keep track of them via the troop window.

[Justascratch]

One more thing to do before sending out the ships.

I need a bigger fleet.

The Build window allows me a simple way to place the order.

2 Mandible Class Destroyers & 3 Feeler Class Explorers should do it.

[Justascratch]

Early in the game I will control my ships manually (this is a micromangers AAR afterall). The default control for new ships is automatic. The screen below shows all my explorer vessels from the Empire Navigation Tool on the left as well as on the Ships and Bases screen. I'm going to click the last column of the Ship and Base screen to set these ships to manual control.

I will get a scrolling message when they are built, but they won't take off on any missions until I assign them. I will use the drop down filter to select my military ships and construction ships to manual control as well.