newbie questions

[eolivas]

if a planet has a zero quality score but it shows resources (gold 71%) is my mining station generating resources?

Is there a place to see how many of the luxury resources my empire/my planets are receiving?

How do I know that mining stations are worth the maintenance cost?

[Spacecadet]

First, Welcome [:)]

The Zero quality is for Colonization, anything below 50% incurs cost to colonize and maintain (in short you'll never make money from it).

The Resource percentages indicate how rapidly you'll harvest those resources.

The Expansion Planner will show your resource situation.
Looking at Cargo for each Colony will show what you have at each Colony.

The Private sector pays for Mine maintenance, so generally you don't need to worry about it.

[Starke]

Re: quality vs. resource percentage - the resource percentage is the only thing relevant for mining stations.

The expansion planner is your main tool for resource-collection management. The top part shows your empire's status - try sorting by sources to see what you have and what you need. Early game, sorting by cost is also useful (the prices pretty much all drop to their respective minimums later in). Late game when you have gobs of resources, you can sort by unfulfilled to see what is still having issues. Then try going to the bottom section, selecting 'your empire resource locations', and the problematic resource in the second drop-down menu to see what areas are short of supply.

And I may as well state the obvious, as this is a newbie help thread, just in case: the expansion planners bottom display is hella useful for expanding your mining station network. =P

To see what a colony actually has in storage, open the colonies screen, select the colony, and click the cargo tab.

Mining station maintenance fees are paid by your private sector, whose finances are easily viewable right beside the state finances in the empire screen. Your private sector which will generally flourish unless you tax the crap out of it early game. The only things you can do that effect it's finances are a) build mining stations, b) assign pirate smuggling missions, which it pays for, and c) manually update your private sector ship designs, which will cause the fleet to retrofit over time, costing them money - which they pay directly to you!

Mining stations are pretty much always worth building - it's more a question of which one is worth building next. Try to focus on places that have 3 or more resources when possible, but a rarer resource can be completely worth getting even if it's all alone.

[eolivas]

Ok, I have 19 planets , 13 space stations, and 66 mining stations. and I still get messages saying Im out of 10 different strategic resources. how can know that I am mining and distributing successfully?

anywhere easy to know if your luxury resources are delivering a certain development percentage?

[Mad Igor]

your problem ?
exe error,monitor blowing up ?i fail to see where is THE problem.

[Canute0]

Ok, I have 19 planets , 13 space stations, and 66 mining stations. and I still get messages saying Im out of 10 different strategic resources. how can know that I am mining and distributing successfully?

Empire wide you arn't out of these resources. But these bases/planets don't have any at moment.
Since you have no control over your freighters you need to wait until the private sector distribute these resources. The private sector don't work like a player would do, so it takes alot time to transport nessesary resources to your border stations mosttimes.

[Starke]

In the colony screen where it says you're development is being hampered by a lack of strategic resources, it doesn't actually mean you're out of the ones mentioned. To see which ones you actually are short on, check the cargo tab of any planet in the colonies screen, and click the column header called amount (quantity?) to sort by that. Any of the strategic resources mentioned that you have <200 (things like caslon and steel you'll want a lot more than that of though) or so of are the ones you want. If you only need one or two, you can try setting a smuggling mission for that planet to only bring that one resource - when you specify one thing the smugglers are much better about getting you want you need, rather than bringing you a million units of hydrogen. =P

P.S. remember to check each planet's own cargo to see what they need.

[Juma]

Hello everybody,

im very tired of switching my desktop resolution all the time.
Is there a way to set the resolution?

[ehsumrell1]

ORIGINAL: Juma

Hello everybody,

im very tired of switching my desktop resolution all the time.
Is there a way to set the resolution?

Hello Juma and welcome to the forums!

Yes there is. In the main Distant Worlds directory find the Startup config file and open it
with Notepad. Edit the file as you need (as shown below*) Hope this helps!

"'Distant Worlds startup settings

'screenwidth 1024 <---------- *
'screenheight 768 <---------- *
'hyperdrivespeed 1.6

[Juma]

Thank you, but i've already tried that and it didnt work.
I tried different resolutions and write-protected the file, but the game resolution stayed the same...
(Im using the base game + all expansions and updated to the newest version)

[HariSeldon]

Maybe you have a graphic software controler (ATI Catalyst or Nvidia Control Panel) which forces the game resolution ?

[StarLab]

ORIGINAL: Juma

Thank you, but i've already tried that and it didnt work.
I tried different resolutions and write-protected the file, but the game resolution stayed the same...
(Im using the base game + all expansions and updated to the newest version)

Be sure to remove the ' from the front of each line also.

screenwidth 1024
screenheight 768

[Juma]

Thank you everybody for your help!

Sadly, after trying every suggestion it still does not work.

Guess i'll have to wait for the implementation of an ingame option to choose between resolutions...