Controversial! What do you dislike the most about DW/DW ROTS? Troll free Zone Please.

[J HG T]

ORIGINAL: cmdrnarrain

One thing will shut me up, however... a $90 refund.

Jealousy is shadow of greed.

This one doesn't have time for your solid waste excretions!

*pushes the magic green button*

[Cosian]

ORIGINAL: cookie monster

I've played this game (DW ROTS) solidly for over 6 weeks now and have a few things which annoy me.

1. I'm always refuelling.

2. I'm always moving troops.

3. The freighters are always slowly moving with no fuel.

4. Everything's reserved for trade and some other mystical reason.

5. The AI can't fight.

6. The save games take about 7 minutes for a late 1400 star galaxy at 90 MB in size.

7. The game crashes quite frequently.

8. There is no difficulty level setting. I know how to boost the AI but I'm looking for a sterotypical EASY/NORMAL/CHALLENGING/HARD/IMPOSSIBLE SETTING

9. Ships don't escape danger very well.

10. Expansion Planner is well slow and clunky. Even with 16GB of RAM.

I know how to play the game now so I'm not really looking for advice just posting my observations.

I wonder what you guys and gals find annoying about the game?

Don't get me wrong I love the game, but sometimes it's a micromangement hell on manual, just to get the best outta the game.

I love the game and don't experience the vast majority of issues you mention. But then again, I manage most aspects of the game. The key thing to manage in my mind that solves a lot of problems is ship design and upgrade. Few of my ships have problems escaping danger because I make them fast. I also focus early research on ship speed, hyperdrive, and manuverability which in turn make everything work better including your economy. I don't have fuel issues because I add tanks and also make sure I have plenty of fuel points in place.....I also don't partrol systems, but rather just move fleets to an object within a system if I want them there.....this seems to save alot on fuel. Freighters slow? Well of course unless you make them faster.

I have never had a crash ...... knock on wood ....

Yes, save games are slow .....

Upgrading ships needs to be easier .... most importantly a much easier way to see at a glance what revision or design model a ship is at. I end up changing the name for every ship I upgrade to denote model but also recognize this is a level of management most don't want. A revision number field should be added to the design table and be displayed in the ship screen, and perhaps other places as well so you can see at a glance what design a ship is constructed from. Perhaps a filter by type and model on ship screen as well.

Anyway, I love the game and expansion and hope they keep chipping away at it.

[Shark7]

Most of the fuel and freighter problems are easily fixed if you order your constructors to build gas mining stations at gas giants and gas clouds from the start. Just queue them up, and eventually the stocks build up.

Also, using Hydrogen fuel for the military (once available) and keeping the civilians on Caslon really helps that as well.

[tjhkkr]

I do wish for a few more diplomatic options. When I have a Free Trade Agreement, I do not like the fact that it allows a KaHUGE military task force into my space. I feel like they are probing my defences... and I am not even sure that the game's AI can do that... but I do not like it...
Now if they had intelligence freighters.... that would be another story...

And maybe that might be a cool thing to add... especially if we get more character intensive in later versions... more intelligence options.

It is hard for me to gripe, I love the game.

[Astax]

I think AI should be able to mimic Human Designed ships if it finds itself losing too badly.  If we had espionage option to steal ship designs, that could help the AI.

I also hate the refueling.  Ships should refuel faster IMO.

[cookie monster]

ORIGINAL: tjhkkr

I do wish for a few more diplomatic options. When I have a Free Trade Agreement, I do not like the fact that it allows a KaHUGE military task force into my space. I feel like they are probing my defences... and I am not even sure that the game's AI can do that... but I do not like it...

They go there to refuel in the empire policy screen set the ''Refuel Other Empires Ships'' to 'When we have an MDP'' or ''Never''.

[cookie monster]

ORIGINAL: Shark7

Most of the fuel and freighter problems are easily fixed if you order your constructors to build gas mining stations at gas giants and gas clouds from the start. Just queue them up, and eventually the stocks build up.

Also, using Hydrogen fuel for the military (once available) and keeping the civilians on Caslon really helps that as well.

Fuel problems can be galaxy wide. Aggressive AI race settings lead to too many wars with inevitable destruction of gas mining stations. Too many pirates equals the same.

This will lead to AI empires reserving large amounts of fuel at your stations and never coming to collect.

Refuelling their fleets also leads to less fuel in your stock.

You can queue constructors but then when they hit low stocks of a resource they will sit there constructing waiting for a delivery. They must be manually told to refuel and then told to repair the unfinished station only then will they return to base and collect the missing resource.

Some constructors stuck in resource item needed loop can have as many as 17 projects queued. So it may appear from the expansion planner your on top of construction when your not.

Fuel prices are set galaxy wide, it doesn't matter how much you have in stock.

In my present massive game I have around 80 constructors about 70% on auto, so I don't think my polymer/caslon problem is something of my creation.

As for the freighters if the other empires have no mining stations thru wars and pirates the freighters cant refuel, no fuel equals 1/3 speed, again outside my control.

I have checked via the editor and the other empires mining stations must have been destroyed.

They have massive amounts of everything reserved in my stores and we make ''colossal levels of trade'' no wonder when they have no mines themselves.

I could go on but I have highlighted some problems in my tech support forum threads. As long as we list our actual problems then at least Elliot has a chance to make patchable changes.

I do wish the lurkers would take 5 minutes to add to this. How many opportunities are we gonna get to list our game change demands in one easy to follow thread.

Seperate thread requests and rants are not gonna get anything patched.

[Setekh]

The private sector is starting to annoy me to no end in recent games.

Fine example last night: Chronic shortage of Carbon fibre. I want to upgrade my fleets, I have no carbon fibre left and the upgrades stop. I build 2 mining stations at planets with an abundance of carbon fibre but instead of private freighters getting that stuff to where it's needed in my empire, they SELL THE DAMN STUFF TO MY ENEMIES!!!  [:@][:@][:@]

[Foraven]

Not sure what i do differently, but i never have any shortage of anything... Maybe it's because i oversee where my spaceports are (ie make sure they are large enough for the traffic) and often build extra mining/gas stations.

[cookie monster]

ORIGINAL: Setekh

The private sector is starting to annoy me to no end in recent games.

Fine example last night: Chronic shortage of Carbon fibre. I want to upgrade my fleets, I have no carbon fibre left and the upgrades stop. I build 2 mining stations at planets with an abundance of carbon fibre but instead of private freighters getting that stuff to where it's needed in my empire, they SELL THE DAMN STUFF TO MY ENEMIES!!!  [:@][:@][:@]

I am experiencing the same problem, the amount of reserved items is becoming a problem. Fuel sources can sometimes be fully reserved by the other empires leaving not much over.

I think last night I saw 60,000 of one item reserved at a planet. Planet storage is no problem but when I see a gas mining station with 99.9% Caslon reserved and only one entry for Hydrogen...well it was annoying.

I have redesigned my mining bases and starbases for more storage on the new builds but the extra polymer demand and steel demand is a killer when the AI trade sector has suicided.

I have also noticed a white icon with a red X in the resources list in the cargo tab.

I presume this is supposed to be allocated to the 2 AI empires I absorbed into my Empire.

So what happens with these unclaimed cargoes are the stuck forever unallocated.

I include a picture of it. Here you can see how bad reserved is with lots of reserved items at my homeworld.

[Data]

That'a something to look at, maybe you should upload a save game for Elliot to check it up; we need to scrounge up every bit of resource we can get our hands on [:)]

[cookie monster]

ORIGINAL: Data

That'a something to look at, maybe you should upload a save game for Elliot to check it up; we need to scrounge up every bit of resource we can get our hands on [:)]

LOL... Is it just me? Surely your all playing the same game? He's got enough of my save games. I'll send him a link to this thread in 5 days. We just need you, yes you MR LURKER to provide some feedback.

[Data]

Yeees, come out of the closet.....the army needs you [:)]
or the guard or the legion or whatever

[Lord_Astraios]

I do love the game,  and compared to many games in the perspective of other huge companies with more tons of money,  this community is the few that actually have someone from the development team inside the forums instead of a poor pawn forwarding the messages.

My only issues from the game is:

Lack of mod support

Pirates are way to weak,  they also have their own design but combined with the rest but also have the ability to grow but not as an empire

The creatures are ok i think,  sometimes i end up in a place with 40 space slugs and attaching to my hull.

I havent had a problem with save files, well,  for my laptop yes but for my other PC is a no,  but also i got a lot of trash in the darn laptop computer,  the game loads and crashes within the load with a 65 MB save file with a Dual Core 1.8 Intel Centrino with 1.5 Gig of RAM and XP Pro. 700 stars and 80% planets colonized.

Diplomacy does needs improovement,  but i think is ok maybee because i dont spend too much time with it,  i get messages and half of them ignore them and tell them to stick it,  and the rest i do the apropiate move.

AI,  somewhat easy,  of course ,  i do mod the game to provide some boost to the opponents,  and i do prefer that 200% bonus boost to the shakturi,  sometimes i love getting mopped at the floor for the first few rounds before i show my teeth.

There should be a slider or something in the options to give the AI more power.

As in example as i played in some games in the past and loved it,  when all of the sudden something appears and all hell breaks loose and in the story your team is loosing,  thats fun in many aspects.

Like Universe at War,  in the first set of missions,  playing as a human facing the alien invaders,  of course it was tough and lost many missions but taking down only one "walker"  was cool.

[Lord_Astraios]

The one thing i dont understand is the performance,  i know there are hiccups and slow performances depending on the machine,  But some specs ive seen here in this thread is just plain weird. 

I know no machine even if it is the same brand and model is the same,  nope,  ive learned it over the years of repairing computers for people and companies. 

But also my PC in which i use for design and gaming,  and is custom built and i keep it fit not like my laptop,  high end but not that high end since i havent spent over 600$ nor 300$ for a piece of hardware,  and my video card was $210,  and my system is set up for 32 bit,  so im only using 3.4 gig for the XP system instead of 4 GIG with a 3000 AMD 2.2 GHZ with 1TB 7200 RPM drive and a ATI HD 5700 series of 1GB MEM GPU and i play max with all my games.
not to show off but tell you of my experience:
with a 1400 star galaxy
and with 20 races making a mess including me and having my rear served to the Shakturi
and my saved files reached around the 115 MB

Ive seen the drop of performance but nothing to impede me keep playing and all interfaces are running ok,  but yes,  some aspects of the game in performance should be improved over the time.

[Rising-Sun]

Well the most part about this game that its not completely modable.

[cookie monster]

ORIGINAL: RisingSun

Well the most part about this game that its not completely modable.

Could you expand on that please what would you like to mod?

The technology? The AI designs? The interface?

Unless I'm wrong most cosmetic things are in fact moddable at the moment.

I will send Elliot at CodeForce the link on Thursday. That'll give him something to think about over the weekend.[;)]

It would be great if people could list their patchable requests rather than wishlist/expansion ideas.

[cookie monster]

I just timed the save/load times on a late game 1400 star galaxy of 100MB's save game size.

100MB save took 2mins 30 secs to load

100MB's took 8mins 30secs to save. This was timed twice.

I have an SSD with a write speed of 70MB/second.

I think this long a saving time is unacceptable.

I't's ok to take a break every 30 mins, but after I've made a drink I wanna progress the game.

I also dislike how the autosave interupts at the elapsed time and autosaves while you are in the middle of for example empire wide design changes.

The autosave should be confirmed by the player and after saving the game should be paused in case your away. It's a pain to have to sit patiently waiting for the save to finish or to monitor it while surfing for example.

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: cookie monster

ORIGINAL: RisingSun

Well the most part about this game that its not completely modable.

Could you expand on that please what would you like to mod?

The technology? The AI designs? The interface?

Unless I'm wrong most cosmetic things are in fact moddable at the moment.

I will send Elliot at CodeForce the link on Thursday. That'll give him something to think about over the weekend.[;)]

It would be great if people could list their patchable requests rather than wishlist/expansion ideas.

All of the above.

I think what the modding community as a whole is looking for are the following:

1. Mod the tech tree and racial tech trees.
2. Mod the resources and add resources.
3. Event scripting.
4. Ship designing for the AI races (or at least templates for them to use).
5. Ability to add new galactic 'structures' that could be used as event triggers. (IE you find a series of 'stargates' that triggers something even nastier than the shakturi etc).
6. Ability to mod in exactly what a race does when it conquers another race. (Exterminate, Forced Labor, Assimilate, turn into Soylent Green, etc).
7. Planetary modding and adding new planet types.
8. New Race species (IE Gasbags that live on Gas giants or felinoid species type for examples).

I think that covered the general fan base wants.

Personally I'd also like the ability to add new planetary structures to act as resource sinks or even factories that take stuff in and put stuff out. But that is for much further down the road. Think of it in this manner...planet builds a refinery, all the fuel gases have to go there before being turned into bunker fuel, etc.

[Undecided]

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but as to the slow loading and high RAM requirements: After having played douzens of 4X games, I can say Distant Worlds is the only one that comes to mind that plays out totally in real-time. Nearly all others do not: Civilization, Galactic Civ, Total War, Dominion, Alpha Centauri, Sword of the Stars, Master of Orion, etc.

Since the overwhelming majority of 4X games are turned-based, that suggests the whole high RAM & slow loading issue is not so much a flaw with the Distant Worlds game engine as it is simply a matter of personal computer hardware being insufficiently powerful to keep up with these increasingly complex games. Or, alternatively, it simply is too time consuming to code steamlined real-time 4X games if a game company wants to make a profit. Props to Matrix Games for at least trying, and coming closer to it than any other I've seen.