Patched 1.0.4 Beta 2 = Game Players Feed Back

[Stardog]

sUp Guys!

Matrix asked for feed back on diff games & did not see a post for it.?

Game Settings ->

All Settings to Manual
Colonize & Mine in same systems = NO

Galaxy Type = Spiral
Stars = 400 stars
Empire age = Starting
Inde alien life = Normal
Aggression = Normal
Research = Very Slow < & let me tell ya'll it's slow [X(]
Space creatures = Few
Pirates = Normal
Starting Location = Core
Home System = Excellent
Tech Level = Basic
Race = Mortalen
Government = Military Dict.


The "ENEMY" AI's Settings:

Random Empires = Off

Manl/set to = 4 Empires
Race type's = Random
Gov's = 1)Fiefdom ,1)Monarchy ,1)Republic ,1)Democracy
Empire Size = Starting
Tech level = Basic
Home System = Normal

Independent alien colonies to become Empires = No

Victory Settings = Sandbox

Game Time: 3 1/2 Hours
Game Speed: 0.50 with some 15 to 20 Min's at 1.00/Nom Speed

Have 22 Worlds 9 Cont, 2 Marsh, Rest Desert
Cash in Bank = +210,4562
Cash in flow = This fluxes a bit from +30,000<<HIGHEST to +8,000<<LOWEST - but have not had any negative (-) Cash flow yet.
And no Big prob's so far :[:D]

Would like to post screen saves can anyone out there tell me how that's done.?

Thanks Matrix/EK/Guys!! [&o]

WM

[Shark7]

The quickest and easiest way to post a screen shot is to hit your 'PrintScreen' button, which saves a shot to the clipboard. Then open up a graphics program MS Paint, Paint Shop Pro or Photo Shop for example, and 'Paste from Clipboard'. You can then save it in a .jpg or .gif format (for best compression) and will be able to post it.

[Stardog]

Sweet!

Thanks Shark7 !!!!

WM

[Erik Rutins]

Thank you very much for the feedback.

[antigen]

Here's one more:

Game Settings ->

Ship design and Colony tax rates automated, rest manual
Colonize & Mine in same systems = NO

Galaxy Type = Elliptical
Stars = 700 stars
Independant alien life = Normal
Expansion = Starting
Aggression = Normal
Research speed = Normal
Space creatures = Normal
Pirates = Normal

Starting Location = Inner rim
Home System = Normal
Size = Starting
Tech Level = Basic
Race = Quameno
Government = Technocracy


The "ENEMY" AI's Settings:

Random Empires = On : 11 auto-generated empires

Independent alien colonies to become Empires = Yes

Victory Settings = 33% for territory, pop, and economy

Game Time: 2768

Have 26 colonies in 18 systems, comprised of continental and ocean worlds, with one volcanic.
Cash in Bank = Fluctuates around 0 [:D]
Cash in flow = Usually varied between -10k and +20. Just got to the point where the growth of my income is exceeding the growth of ship/base maintenance so I dont have to rely on space port income to survive.

Turned off troops and agents automation because it would suck me dry at the beginning of the game. Didn't buy any yet but was going to. Except that the game is freezing now [&:]. (posted about it in tech support forum)


Thanks Stardog for the format, did a bit of copy/paste...

[Stardog]

No Prob's Antgien Broski!

I saw you remembered & reminded me to put in the "Inde Alien Life" .

Thanks!

WM

[Krippakrull]

First, let me tell you, I'm one of those that hate excessive micro management. For example, I consider MOO1 the pinnacle of the MOO series. MOO2, while decent, is neither as fun, nor as elegant in design as the first one - in big parts due to added micro. Also, I rarely try to run a "perfect" winning game by the numbers when playing 4X, but instead let staying in role and whimsical notions take presedence (It doesn't really need mentioning that the much lauded Stars! is one of my nightmare 4x games.).

Game Time: 2771
Galaxy: Outer Rim
Race: Mortalen
Government: Despotism (Until 2770)
Empire age: Starting
Aggression: Normal
Research: Very Slow
Space creatures: Normal
Pirates: Normal
Starting Location: Outer Rim
Home System: Normal
Tech Level: Basic

4 Other Empires, Random Races and Govts. Same starting conditions as me, also set to start far away.


I chose a random race and random government, the RNG decided to deal me Mortalen under a despotic government. While I'm not sure how harsh the 40% corruption penalty Despotism carries is, it should be one of the worst governments from an economy standpoint for sure, even with the lower upkeep. Mortalen shouldn't really be an economic powerhouse either, and that maneuvering thruster probably is the worst racial tech ever. I therefore decided to really test these allegations of the harsh economy, and just stay with the despotic government.

My starting system was okayish. In the orbit next to my swampy capital Tallaan 2, I had a continental planet by the fancy name of Tallaan 1. With a size of 30k and both gold and steel in the crust I made this my first colony target. Exploration revealed that I had no populated planets whatsoever in the vicinity of my home system, and the only ruins in the neighbourhood was on a non colonizable ice planet. I did catch a break with luxuries though, and had the important 10 different luxury resources secured within the span of two years. (To note is that I don't build mining stations manually at all) I also had a third and fourth colony (21k continental moon and 30k desert planet with 2 luxury resources) by the end of the second year

During the next two years I held back on expansion, waiting for my colonies to mature a bit and turn a thousand or two in profit through taxes. On the security front, pirates where causing some minor problems, though my tiny fleet kept up decently. I did find a low tech capital ship, the "Indomitable Deception" during the third year. With 1440 shields and 96 firepower it made an excellent pirate buster (It actually still serves that purpose in my navy, some 16 years later.) I quickly dealt with the 2 pirate bases I found so far and I kept whacking them as they crept up from their holes. On the exploration front I found a few ruins. One netted me some system maps, another a treasure of 5k. The one closest by (almost two whole sectors away from my home planet lol) was a real paradise though. 32k continental planet with Rephidium Ale, Lead, Gold, Steel and Nekros Stone. Of course I managed to trigger a Kaltor swarm in the ruins. I didn't want to risk my slow, unarmored pirate smasher so at first I built and sent a lone colony ship, trying to slip by the Kaltors. Of course I didn't succeed and there went at least 5k down the drain. Thus I slowly began building a small armored destroyer fleet to deal with space monsters.

The end of the fourth year still saw me adding a fourth colony to my budding empire. A big, resource rich desert world in the neighbouring sector. The fifth colony came but half a year later. A continental planet of modest size. I also found a hidden high tech cruiser which brought me some sweet engine tech when scrapped. I also dealt with the Kaltor swarm during year 6, using my small fleet of armored destroyers and subsequently colonized Raldon 2, the paradise world mentioned earlier.

From then on I just continued in the same, slowly increasing pace. One or two colonies a year, an extra constructor every bunch of years, an added explorer here and there. As the population of my early colonies grew, taxes increased, and the pace of expansion went up. Some of the notable happenings:

• Finding a ruin containing a huge population of independant Teekans in a system 4 sectors from my core worlds and having to send three colonizers to win them over (In retrospect, what the hell was I doing being friendly? I'm bossing a race of militant lizards with ground combat as their forte!)

• Having more ships and bases exploding on me than I want to remember. A quick look through the news tells me that a bit over half of all bases and ships I've found exploded on me. After having revealed a bit less than a quarter of the galaxy I've found exactly three working ships, and four bases.

• Finding a world destroyer I missed at first in a system *after* colonizing it. My armored destroyers were used on the space slugs guarding it to great effect, and the derelict fleet around it netted me some much needed tech (fusion reactor, hell yeah!). The world destroyer? My advisors assure me that it will be completed on schedule...

As I reached the 16th year of the reign of the grand great kahuna of the Mortalen Authority (2770 in the galactic standard calendar), I had 15 colonies in 13 systems under my belt (around half of them ruins). End of year profits, with 4 frigates, 4 destroyers, 4 constructors, 1 capital ship, a small space port at every planet and anything from 1 to 3 colony ships travelling the stars and being constructed was around 10-15k, with my coffers holding between 40 and 60k depending on what I was doing. Even with the wims of my God Emperor and the rampant corruption that brought, I was seeing the end of the tunnel. If I were to find a competing empire I could fight a war, or I could just continue growing outwards. But in the end of 2770 a lone explorer chanced upon a strange ruin:

We have discovered the Temple of Eternal Blackness, ancient ruins from a lost civilization, at the ice planet Rallteer 2 in the Rallteer system.

Surveying from orbit indicates that the ruins are located near the edge of an icy tundra wasteland.

Should we investigate the ruins?

This, of course, brought the Way of Darkness to my empire. The God Emperor is no more, long live the council of Shadows! Now, towards the end of the first year of the Council of Shadows (1771), my bankroll shows 93k, with a staggering 68k as end of year profit! And here ends my story of the despotic Mortalen Authority. Who knows where my lizards will go without the guidance of their despot, I might get back to you on that.

What I micromanaged:

Smashing pirate bases with my pet capship. Killing particularly troublesome monster infestations with my destroyer fleet. Telling a few explorers to "Explore this sector." in the beginning years. Colonizing planets. (Mostly through the expansion planner.) A few designs, mostly adding some minor bits to military ships, explorers and colony ships, mostly I just marked the entire design list and clicked "Upgrade" after major technology breakthroughs. Building a small space port at each and every planet (This might even be a negative to the economy as a whole, but I feel it should even out with the med bays and entertainment together with the versatility this brings.) Salvaging the fleet around the Devastation Moon Project. Firing each and every agent except one (I did this after probably ten years into the game. The God Emperor decided to give his spymaster a lava shower after discovering he had hired four agents. While the paranoia of the late spymaster was worthy of applause, we felt this money surely could be better spent buying new slaves for our harem.) Constructing explorers, and four destroyers.

What I didn't micromanage:

Taxes, not once. Research and mining base contruction. Troop recruitment. Guarding bases, civvies and such.

In short, I mostly did what I found fun - and ignored what I didn't. Had I wanted to play a "perfect" game I could have done a great deal more. I could have micromanaged taxes and hovered around the economic redline in the beginning to expand more aggressively. I could have micromanaged my constructors to build precisely the required mining stations, more and better research stations and more resort stations at better locations. This would probably have made my empire grow much quicker.

General comments:

My feeling is that the economy is pretty close to being right on, at least for the starting and early mid game. By being thrifty and expanding conservatively I managed to grow decently with a bad economic race/govt. combo, and with IMO very little tedious micromanagement. If strategic resources gets to play a larger role and resource shortages becomes a real threat it might have to scale back a little bit. Granted, I haven't built much ships or been in an extended war so far, so my opinion might change. I also learned to not be afraid of the economy showing some red income, especially in the first half of the year. Due to growth and incomes from star ports and resorts the figures usually righted themselves come the end of the year.

How my despotic, largely disliked lizards would have delt with a start in close proximity to other races I'm not sure. Probably with early conquest, since the ground combat bonus, lower maintenance and lower war weariness pretty much makes this the only recourse. Both because the God Emperor wants blood, and because empires with powerful economic abilities would have left me in the dust if left to grow. Instead of building more colonizers and explorers, I would probably have used most of my starting cash to build a small but potent fleet and invaded my closest neighbour at first opportunity.

My feeling is that the economy is pretty close to being right on. By being thrifty and expanding conservatively I managed to grow decently with a bad economic race/govt. combo, and with IMO very little tedious micromanagement. If strategic resources gets to play a larger role and resource shortages becomes a real threat it might have to scale back a little bit. Granted, I haven't built much ships or been in an extended war so far, so my opinion might change.

Since this is my first post on the forums, let me end this tl;dr wall of text with a few general comments. First, I really, really like the idea behind the game and the general design. The private sector makes the universe feel alive and with some of the kinks ironed out of the AI I'm sure the automation will be just fine also.

When it comes to the planets, I absolutely love that there are no buildings to build or have automatically built for you. As a galactic emperor I don't want to worry about building farms on Lalande 21432, planet three. More planetary features (like the extra bonus ruins and ultra rare resources) are always nice though. While I probably haven't seen all of these yet, having a large deck of these to pick from serves to keep it fresh and makes you care about your planets. I'm not saying there should be more planets with them in the galaxy, just that there should be a lot of different ones.

When it comes to ships, I really feel that ship sizes need some love. This game, if there aren't mechanics under the hood I'm not aware of, is falling in the MOO2 trap of "bigger is mostly always better". Sure, you can project more force over a larger territory with a lot of small ships, but mostly small ships serve very little purpose except being blown up when defending a station or merchant. I'm not even sure if, given their upkeep and purchase costs, they earn their keep (I'm not sure if the AI for the opponents and pirates is smart enough to see them as an actual deterrent though.). I still have a large fleet of frigates and escorts since I like thinking I have a large fleet of small, defensive ships to keep my shipping lanes safe. The fact of the matter though, is that they often cost a lot more, both in lost ships and bang for your buck, than the bigger ships. This also hurts the AI since they build a lot of small ships to keep trade lanes safe. I don't know exactly what to do about this, maybe penalize upkeep a bit as ship size grows, give small ships a small evasion bonus, or maybe let components give diminishing returns as you add more of them I don't know, but I would like to not feel stupid for building small ships that seemingly are a lot less effective than big ones at virtually everything.

I have more, unfinished, comments circling in my head, but this post is long enough as it is. Thanks for trying some new ideas in a 4X and I look forward to what you are going to do with the game in the future.

[HsojVvad]

ORIGINAL: Shark7

The quickest and easiest way to post a screen shot is to hit your 'PrintScreen' button, which saves a shot to the clipboard. Then open up a graphics program MS Paint, Paint Shop Pro or Photo Shop for example, and 'Paste from Clipboard'. You can then save it in a .jpg or .gif format (for best compression) and will be able to post it.

I am sorry, I have to disagree here. The easist way of taking a picture is hitting the 0 key on the on the num pad. By using the print screen key, you can only take one picture, then leave the game, open up paint or what ever you use, and then paste and save.

The easiest way I find is like I said. If you have a num pad, hit 0, and you can take as many pictures as you want. Just look where the directory is. I forget at the moment where it is. Then if you have photobucket or some other picture hosting web site, up loaded them to there, then you can use the image tags here, to post your link.

[Astorax]

Davor, it saves it under "/AppData/Roaming/Code Force Limited/Distant Worlds/[version #]/screenshots"

[lordxorn]

I can understand your frustrations with ships sizes because DW handles them in a different way. First of all ship size is absolutely dictated by how many components you have. With that being said, it makes no sense to pack an escort with over 150 hull size.

I disagree that escorts or frigates or even destroyer serve no purpose.

As I have mentioned in other threads,

A good tactic for fleet management is to leave all your escorts and frigates on AI control. The AI does a decent job of assigning them actual escort and defend missions. Make sure they are fast and have enough firepower to deal with the various pirates and space monsters.

Then create fleets of your biggest ships like first cruisers, then caps ships, to do the heavy stuff like taking out large space ports and clearing debris fields of many space monsters. Leave AI on suggest targets and assign your fleets to Ctrl+1, etc. That way it gives you quick access to your firepower in times of need, and you don't have to be everywhere at once because the AI got your covered if provided with enough escorts and frigates.

Also have one of your fleets patrol your homeworld, and ignore any AI suggestions to pull that fleet off for a mission. (there should be a excluded this fleet from suggestions check box)**

[Stardog]

Thanks Davor!


NOTE:
Still playing the same game - [:)] The "Mortalen Star Empire" is in control of 1/4 of the galaxy. Pulling in over 85,000+ To 120,000 per turn! The Bank is exploding!!

Found Way of Darkness , Found some Ruins on a Desert planet of a Weapon's/Armaments Factory/Research gives a +100 Weapons Research Bonus!!!![X(]

BUT!!

HAS ANYONE SEEN THIS YET?????
Resupply Ship = Stock Ship was like 700+ in size?
So I took all Weapons off, a few Shields , 1 -Gas Extractor & 1 - Cargo Bay or 2 .
Anyways got it under the 600 Size limit - Cool! -great! Rename RS-2

Now 1st FLEET is kicking Butt on Pirates & there base ! My boys are thirsty So I send RS-2 to a big fat juicy gas giant(Its Loaded with Car/HyD= GAS) ,Deployed it at said planet. Cool!

Command 1st FLEET Refuel at RS-2 .They went to it but 1st FLEET never docked or got any gas?? I broke of a single ship sent it to get gas?? No dice? This is a On Rep Nightmare?? WTH??
Then I see that Resupply Ship (RS-2) is not staying with the planet? Crazy It never stayed with the Gas Giant? The Planet moved on in its orbit leaving behind the RS-2 ?

But that's the only thing I have found so far.

Later Bro's

WM

[Astorax]

Stardog, your Resupply Ship can be as big as it needs to be because it is built at a planet, not your spaceport. Of course, with 1.04 supposedly they did impose some arbitrary upper limit methinks but I'm not sure what that is. In any case, its a good idea to keep all your weapons and shields on that as its *vital* to a forward strike force going deep into enemy territory. Also, the gas extractor is how it refuels. When it deploys at a gas giant (make sure its a gas giant with your type fuel on it btw) it will start to extract the gas and store it in those cargo bays you took off ...

[:D]

[Pocus]

For what's worth, I'm ok with the economic balance in 1.04 b2. But you can be in the black only if you have a tendency to micro-manage things, as I do (i.e all automation checkboxes unlocked, plus pay attention to your need in resources, etc.).

There are still some glaring annoyances with the interface though, that could be easily be fixed by adding some more contextual menus. For example you should be able to retire or retrofit a private station by an other mean than the editor. Or much more of a problem, the fact that 'refuel at nearest' target the nearest startport, even if it don't have any caslon in stock, or that you can't remove from a selection of ship one particular ship (not by ctrl, shift, alt, it does not work), etc. I have a dozen or so entries like that which would be cool to be fixed/added for 1.05 [:D]

But the game is already very pleasant, it needs time to mature and it can be a real hit, on par with GalCiv2!

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: lordxorn

I disagree that escorts or frigates or even destroyer serve no purpose.

As I have mentioned in other threads,

A good tactic for fleet management is to leave all your escorts and frigates on AI control. The AI does a decent job of assigning them actual escort and defend missions. Make sure they are fast and have enough firepower to deal with the various pirates and space monsters.

The problem is not that escorts, frigates, and destroyers serve no purpose. The reason escorts, frigates, and destroyers in the doghouse is simply because building, or even designing, good escorts, frigates, and destroyers, is basically like taking your fancy new prototype shotgun and unloading it full auto into your foot. Anything you do is automatically defeated by the fact that pirates will immediately copy and spawn with those designs, often before YOU have even built them yourself, which entirely eliminates any gain you would have had there and replaces it with a loss again.

[Krippakrull]

ORIGINAL: Fishman

The problem is not that escorts, frigates, and destroyers serve no purpose. The reason escorts, frigates, and destroyers in the doghouse is simply because building, or even designing, good escorts, frigates, and destroyers, is basically like taking your fancy new prototype shotgun and unloading it full auto into your foot. Anything you do is automatically defeated by the fact that pirates will immediately copy and spawn with those designs, often before YOU have even built them yourself, which entirely eliminates any gain you would have had there and replaces it with a loss again.

While the way of copying your designs directly lacks some elegance and could have been done better, I really like that the pirates don't have their own designs though they maybe should have retrofitted civilian ships instead. But to the question... Have you actually seen pirates use your latest designs in great numbers? I have seen a few used here and there, but many still seem to be using lower tier hardware. Maybe it's because I clean out pirate hideouts with quite some regularity, but I seriously haven't found this to be a big problem after having played like 2 games on the older patches and 1 on the newest one.

For me, when it comes to sizes, it still stands that you'll get less of virtually everything; hyperspeed (at least until you get higher tier reactors), durability, firepower, and fuel in a smaller ship AND what you get of these comes at a higher premium in construction cost and upkeep. Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill, but for me strategy is about none obvious choices. As it stands, it's an obvious choice to not include what the game passes for a frigate or even a destroyer (if you have some shipyard technology) in a fleet. But me being me, I am still doing it, and feeling all the more stupid for it.

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Davor

ORIGINAL: Shark7

The quickest and easiest way to post a screen shot is to hit your 'PrintScreen' button, which saves a shot to the clipboard. Then open up a graphics program MS Paint, Paint Shop Pro or Photo Shop for example, and 'Paste from Clipboard'. You can then save it in a .jpg or .gif format (for best compression) and will be able to post it.

I am sorry, I have to disagree here. The easist way of taking a picture is hitting the 0 key on the on the num pad. By using the print screen key, you can only take one picture, then leave the game, open up paint or what ever you use, and then paste and save.

The easiest way I find is like I said. If you have a num pad, hit 0, and you can take as many pictures as you want. Just look where the directory is. I forget at the moment where it is. Then if you have photobucket or some other picture hosting web site, up loaded them to there, then you can use the image tags here, to post your link.

Well just goes to show that you learn something every day. I had no idea that hitting the numpad 0 would even take a screenshot, let alone allow you to take multiple screenshots.

[Sarissofoi]

I find that if I make deal with pirates they gain access to your designs fast. On the other hand if I say no to all their trades they still use other empires ships.

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: Sarissofoi

I find that if I make deal with pirates they gain access to your designs fast. On the other hand if I say no to all their trades they still use other empires ships.

Coincidence. There isn't any such mechanic, as the only dealings I have ever had with them is to lob plasma torpedoes at them, but they still shortly ended up flying around in my escorts. Indeed, if you look in the editor, they even appear to have duplicate copies of the same designs, so there additionally appears to be a memory leak or duplication bug of some sort in addition to this.