No future

[Dave32]

I've played a game to the state when almost all (standard) galaxy is developed, and my race has the most colonies (about 90), and it's easy to see DW engine simply unable to work with such scale.

Go to expansion window, - the number of potential colonies is impossible for manual colonization (even if they fix very annoying feature - having clicked "build and send colony ship" the list redraws and jumps to the top), - ok - but open the list of resource targets (by any priority) - my Core2Quad CPU opens this list for about 20 seconds, then you click to send some construction ship to build a mining station and wait another 20s while the list opens again, - unusable.
The engine can't handle this many, and I don't think any patch can fix this - it's the basis of the game.

Ok, this all can be done by AI (it seems current AI can't? then too complex to patch, wait for DW4.0) - what about wars when 30 colonies empire vs. another same size empire or several? - In any game for sure there'd be player's system where other race'd colonize a planet and would be angry with your forces in their system thus war - several times this occured in my game - how can you handle manualy simultaneous attack at all your 30 colonies? or better to say guard your hundreds of ships (freighters etc) and mining stations?
Manually - impossible, you get multple attack messages every second. Current AI can't handle this, and I don't see how the current game engine can be scaled for this.

(and they didn't think of multhicore CPU support!! this also can't be fixed by patch - it's a core of the game, completely new game to develop)

And even if it can be scaled, in some DW4.0 version - what'll it be for a player? Everything is automated, watch and accept trade agreements/wars. All the attraction is at start of a new game and few hours more.

So, the great idea "1000 stars ets" in this implementation won't work.

I think after fixing a lot of bugs/features (in few months) DW can handle small galaxies, 100-200 stars, not more. And they sell it as much bigger product? BTW, how could they release it with all those bugs and unfriendly interface everywhere?
DW sales would fail, there'd be no DW2 thus no new game engines capable to scale that much.

DW has no future. Sorry but.
I'm out of this.

[Zakhal]

I think 1000 stars is silly too. A bit like playing planetary size civilization. Im planning to stick to mostly 200-300 stars.

Still I hope the games future is designed based on these smaller managable games instead of gigantic 1000 stars nightmares.

[jnpoint]

Maybe you are right Dave32, but I only play small scale - that is complex enough for me!

[EisenHammer]

I don't even want to think about playing 1000+ star game 400 is good enough for me.

[BigWolfChris]

Nothing wrong with Large scale maps
BUT, someone needs to come up with an ingenious way to make it friendly for the player and keep the fun factor
And automating everything isn't it

[HsojVvad]

@ Dave, can you please use spacing between your paragraphs? I find it a bit hard to read. I agree with you, way too many starts for my simple brain to take in. I went with 100 stars at first, but found the distances to big for the fuel game aspect. I love the huge distances but I just don't like how you run out of fuel so fast, so I found 400 Stars to be a good number. I might change my mind once the game kicks into mid level. I think that is still too many planets and moons so I might restart and go bact to 100 stars again.

[deanco2]

Armada 2526 is the same way, huge galaxies cannot be saved after 20 min of play.

I don't understand why devs keep doing this.  If 1000 stars doesn't work, it shouldn't be in the game.

Of course, people would then complain that the game is 'limited in scope'...

Anyway, that problem doesn't concern me, a small galaxy is plenty to keep me occupied.

[BigWolfChris]

ORIGINAL: deanco2

I don't understand why devs keep doing this.  If 1000 stars doesn't work, it shouldn't be in the game.

Because of this silly notion that larger numbers = better stuff

I can name many FPS games that needlessly have a zero at the end of scores or multiple numbers, so players feel better about scoring more points

[OberonDark]

Well you see, Distant Worlds is SINGLE THREADED. -_-

[EagleMountainDK]

I'm pretty sure Erik wrote that they added multicore support right before release...


Ok not multi core directly but aware and it uses multi threading: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/fb.asp?m=2422377


I think the games uses Windows Forms for creating the UI and its some what slow. It could also explain why the game pauses when we open a new screen.