An update for the Distant Worlds community...

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Niaru

Actually, it would be quite easy to avoid micromanagement in that regard:
Let the AI resettle the population with the highest development bonus and the highest population increase bonus for any given type of planet to any colony.

So, you're proposing scrapping the happiness-based migration system? That is, population migration is, under your suggestion, from:
- low development -> high development
- low growth -> high growth

As I understand it, that would result in population resettling from your new colonies (low development certainly, low growth possibly) to your established colonies.

ORIGINAL: Niaru
The rest (e.g. how you resettle: slavery, assimilation etc) is already implemented as far as I got it.

Resettlement/enslavement/extermination/etc is only based on racial family - so you can set policies for those of the same racial family, and those who are not of the same racial family. Your own race, however, is not restricted by these policies. They can and will migrate anywhere. Including to planets where they are immediately enslaved or exterminated (migrating to a world owned by another faction that is less than hospitable to aliens).

ORIGINAL: Niaru
It could even involve the othervise rather useless "tourist transports". Win-win.

Passenger ships move population around (migration). How much of this you see depends on your individual game. You might try raising the tax rate as high as you can on your homeworld, and watching the passenger ships swarm it.

ORIGINAL: Niaru
Concerning the AI, well I'm not that concerned. It works fine for me as long as I don't exploit certain things and spoil my game.

I have to say that I disagree here. AI could use some serious love from Elliot.

[Vincenzo_Beretta]

ORIGINAL: msnevil

ORIGINAL: Vincenzo Beretta

This is a classic example of "find something else to blame, anything"

Games like Civilization 4 (dunno about 5) and Galactic Civilizations 2 do sell... and then sell... and then go on selling, far beyond the "instant success" for the "instant gratification crowd".

The games you listed btw were about 5 years ago when released. (Which I own both.) And by today's standards they are considered ancient.

Actually no, which is one of the most important points Matrix/Slitherine made during the press event in Stresa: this kind of games is more comparable to boardgames. No one stops playing Avalanche's "The Great War at Sea" or Multiman's "Advanced Squad Leader" because they are "ancient". If a strategy/war game is good and covers an interesting topic it is bought and played. It is not by chance that last week Iain McNeil noted how "Harpoon" is still one of their best selling lines.

The "instant gratification" crowd and the "strategy" crowd maybe overlap (I do play "Assassin's Creed" like anyone else), but they are of two very different mindsets. Thinking that the latter doesn't exist because the former does is a serious mistake - and approaching the idea of developing games starting with this mistake means to cut off right off the bat a whole potential market.

[DMan777]

Is it me, or has this thread entirely derailed? I doubt we could ever expect Erik to further update us with what this discussion has become. I'm not a mod, but could we perhaps try to stay on topic and leave the wishlisting/criticism to more appropriate threads. Thanks.

Now please excuse me whilst I step down from my elevated equine.[:)]

[Vincenzo_Beretta]

ORIGINAL: DMan777
Is it me, or has this thread entirely derailed?

I politely disagree [:)] Since the info on thenext expansion is still sparse, there is nothing wrong about talking wich features it could add/improve. And a general discussion about the viability of producing 4X strategy games it not, IMHO, OT either, because it involves how both expansions, new iterations of DW, and other games of the same kind could be approached by Matrix.

[DMan777]

I won't perpetuate the problem by debating it further. I'll simply point out that the thread was started by the developer and entitled:

RE: An update for the Distant Worlds community...

[Shadow Tiger]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

ORIGINAL: onomastikon
May I ask: Are you saying that the suggestion to have ship design work dynamically according to Settings rules, much as Shadow Tiger and others outlined here, has been noticed, found to be worthwhile, and might be implemented at a much later date (e.g. in an update in summer, for example)? Or are you saying that it has been noticed but deemed too time-consuming ever to be implemented? Sorry, I was not able to read in-between the lines very well. Thanks much!

We noticed those, found them for the most part to be excellent suggestions, but the time to develop something like that is too much for this update. We will be making some improvements along those lines, but we can't do the whole thing. We would definitely like to implement something close to that in a more complete form in the future.

Regards,

- Erik

Late to the party, but I just wanted to jump in and say Thank You for adding this stuff in. Doing the overall approach in the policy screen was pure genius. Solved most of what we were after on a global scale. The one thing I'd like to see is a way to set policy based on ship class (private as well as state, including stations, etc) so we can have specialized ship roles outside the norm.

One example would be no carriers normally, except one class that's designed specifically for fighters. It would also allow some of the other ideas like max ship size for each class.