Distant Worlds 2 Melting Pot

[tbrass]

As I understand it, DW wasn't built with moddability in mind. But DW2 could be. This is, after all, a wish fulfillment thread.

Thanks for the heads up on Star Ruler. Haven't played. Another upcoming, far more tactical space strategy/rpg game (not 4x) is The Mandate. Looking forward to that one!

[Icemania]

The AI

ORIGINAL: Icemania
The intent when I suggested an Expert System based on human players was to go a lot further than ship design e.g. Technology research order particularly early, better tax rate policy to encourage faster colony growth, more Explorers to find goodies, more Constructors to build Relics etc. Again, I would do this on hard or above.

Galactic Civilisations 3 have some interesting ideas here that they have had in mind for a long time. Apparently Galactic Civilisations 2 did a little of this.

A game where the AI (even if it's just via patches from central meta-analysis to improve the Expert Systems used) turns not only your own ship designs against you but also the best designs from others, and does the same for various other parts of the game such as research and build orders would be awesome.

So you think you have your strategy in the bag? Well wait for the next patch where you'll be scratching your head again ...

Of course, for that to happen, you probably need a dedicated AI Programmer or close to it, which isn't going to happen with a one man band.

[Flinkebeinchen]

DW2 really could use some more manpower (UI Design, Graphics, Sounds, AI...) but I don't think this will ever happen because its Elliots baby.

[Pipewrench]

Icemania +1 for Galactic Civ.

My perfect distant worlds game would be turn based....

must be multilayer

online sign up to different maps of different sizes and number of players.

sandbox or predetermined alliances that cannot be broken.

Game Time elapsed per turn cycle can be set and turn always advances at a stated day, hour etc.

You must never know who your opponents are....AI or Human.

Orders are given each turn cycle and animation is scripted to run like a movie upon completion of the server executing the turn.

You have no physical control over battles. Your rely on your admiral or General's traits. Stance settings also rule the day.

just some thoughts.....

[Spidey]

I don't mean to be crash, but I don't think I could possibly disagree more about your "perfect DW", Pipe. Just saying. [:)]

[DevildogFF]

ORIGINAL: Spidey

I don't mean to be crash, but I don't think I could possibly disagree more about your "perfect DW", Pipe. Just saying. [:)]

Completely agree.

Pipe, methinks you're looking for a much different game. You literally just took everything unique away from Distant Worlds.

[Pipewrench]

No problem .... to each his own. love the game but would love a human vs human interaction based on Distant Worlds.[:)]

[Ares106]

I want real tactical battles. I want WW1 type ships battles in space, with lines of ships and crossing T's. or at least weapon arks. I dont want 3D just slightly better graphics and sound. I want more diplomacy like a galactic council and storyline elements and scenarios. I dont want to grind, there should be 3-4 major battles in a war + harassment attacks and then the war should be concluded with a treaty. But I also want toward the end game to have even blocks or plays develop and lead to a galaxy wide conflict between two monolithic alliances. I want each race to have a different tech three. I want planetary combat that is interesting with decisions and special troops you can send on suicide missions or using strategic orbital bombardment, but the system should be automated if you are not paying attention, still you should be able to coordinate a strategy to your liking on massive home world battles.

Ive run out of things for now but im sure ill have more stuff later...

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Ares106
and lead to a galaxy wide conflict between two monolithic alliances.

I’d love to see a game on the scale of the Traveller Universe. No matter how well you think you are doing, the Universe is simply immense. Imagine, after fighting many wars and spending tons of time in your game conquering an area the size of the Imperium, you happen to take a break from game play and scroll out and realize just how tiny your game is at that point. Scroll the map and you’ll see what I mean lol.

http://www.travellermap.com/

Jim

[Spidey]

Sure, it would be awesome, but I'm thinking it might also be a tad slow. Billions of stars, potentially tens of thousands of different factions, and a late game with quadrillions of ships flying to and from. As fun as that game would be to play, I just can't help imagining how much more fun it would be to have a computer that could do all that stuff in real time.

By the way, good luck getting anywhere without AI delegation. I'm actually having shivers just thinking about it and I imagine that both Jeeves and Ice would break down in tears after having spent weeks in isolation with their computers, having worked and worked and worked to get their empires going, and still not even having explored one percent of the stars in the galaxy.

[Shark7]

Although, wouldn't it be awesome to conquer your galaxy, only to find a jump gate and open up a completely new galaxy with new enemies to play in? You still get resources from your first conquered galaxy, but get to start over in a new one.

Just imagine if the game gave us as many stars that actually exist in galaxies. Our own galaxy has 400 billion stars in it...the scale would be overwhelming.

[Jim D Burns]

Well, you’d have to have some kind strategic overlay at that level so instead of seeing ships on map you’d only see icons representing large fleets. Only big battles would zoom you down to see ship sized action. Merchants and whatnot would also need some kind of spreadsheet style queue to keep track of things that again only zoomed in to the battles themselves.

But what a grand epic a game on such a scale could be. I can envision AAR’s that last years in the making real time.

Jim

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Shark7

Although, wouldn't it be awesome to conquer your galaxy, only to find a jump gate and open up a completely new galaxy with new enemies to play in? You still get resources from your first conquered galaxy, but get to start over in a new one.

Just imagine if the game gave us as many stars that actually exist in galaxies. Our own galaxy has 400 billion stars in it...the scale would be overwhelming.

The game Aurora kind of scratches that itch, though I doubt anyone would ever go beyond a few hundred stars in that game given how detailed and complex the game is. But basically it’s an unending Universe, explore a new jump hole and the game creates the systems linked to that jump hole and any systems linked to the new system. It also creates additional systems for any possible newly discovered races in the new system. So potentially it’s an unending universe limited only by your patience to deal with the complex game system.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php#3

Jim

[Ares106]

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

The game Aurora kind of scratches that itch,

I took a look at it...

Would be nice if they add some graphics (not spectacular but at least functional) to that game, you need a lot of imagination to turn spreadsheets into a space opera.

I hope the same way we have an explosion of dwarf fortress type games with graphics, someone will eventually do the same with Aurora.

[feygan]

ORIGINAL: Ares106

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

The game Aurora kind of scratches that itch,

I took a look at it...

Would be nice if they add some graphics (not spectacular but at least functional) to that game, you need a lot of imagination to turn spreadsheets into a space opera.

I hope the same way we have an explosion of dwarf fortress type games with graphics, someone will eventually do the same with Aurora.

It is designed to be without graphics as is was built more as a tool for story telling than as a video game. Also if you had even basic dwarf fortress level graphics it would cause most machines to implode with the sheer amount of data needed to process each turn cycle.

If you have the imagination to deal with the spreadsheets and the patience for the slow pace it is probably one of the best 4x games around and will be for at least a couple of years.

[Athelas2211]

I'd really love DW2 to have huge technology trees for races and it would change the graphics and playing of the game through ages..
For techonolgies:
would be great to get them tohrough stealing, trade, ancient sites or relics, conquest, reverse engineering of wrecks or captured ships, but some specific racial techs (some variable each game?) should be kept a secret, unless you vassalize a race.
On another thing,
AI in trading should be very capable. It shouldn't sell it's important research without trying to get a worthiness higher then real worth.
also, an erratic element of chance, graded by each race behaviours , could spicen the diplomacy and trading?

[Ralzakark]

For me,

- Different galaxy and solar system types. I'd like to play in a barred spiral or elliptical galaxy and find stars orbited by hot jupiters.

- Ability to manage relationships with other races at a greater level of granularity. For example, if I am playing as Human I cannot currently set my colonies to allow Wekkarus in but keep Gizureans out. The differences between races have increased noticably since the original Distant Worlds, but I'd be happy to see even more.

- Improved and expanded diplomacy.

[ChildServices]

ORIGINAL: athelas.loraiel

I'd really love DW2 to have huge technology trees for races and it would change the graphics and playing of the game through ages..
For techonolgies:
would be great to get them tohrough stealing, trade, ancient sites or relics, conquest, reverse engineering of wrecks or captured ships, but some specific racial techs (some variable each game?) should be kept a secret, unless you vassalize a race.
On another thing,
AI in trading should be very capable. It shouldn't sell it's important research without trying to get a worthiness higher then real worth.
also, an erratic element of chance, graded by each race behaviours , could spicen the diplomacy and trading?

ORIGINAL: Ralzakark

For me,

- Different galaxy and solar system types. I'd like to play in a barred spiral or elliptical galaxy and find stars orbited by hot jupiters.
- Ability to manage relationships with other races at a greater level of granularity. For example, if I am playing as Human I cannot currently set my colonies to allow Wekkarus in but keep Gizureans out. The differences between races have increased noticably since the original Distant Worlds, but I'd be happy to see even more.
- Improved and expanded diplomacy.

Everything here.
I'd also really like the economy to expanded a lot. Introduce things like corporations, monopolies, entrepreneurship, trade unions and even the idea of charity or welfare.

Also I think government and policy should be much more complicated and more relevant to one-another than they are now. I'll give some examples for a republic. Obviously each government would treat these things differently.
[*] Your empire has a senate, which has a chance to block your attempts at changing things in the policy screen, tax-rates of your colonies or even stop you declaring war, based on the political parties of each of your senators.
[*] You could tie this in with a "public opinion" display, which will give you a rough outline on what your empire's voting trends will be (although to a fairly large margin for error) come time for the elections. By doing certain things, you'd be able to influence public opinion towards keeping a leader character that you like in power, rather than just getting screwed by the RNG after a specific time interval.
[*] This could tie into the economy directly in some more unpleasant ways. Say for example a lot of people are starving and poor. Come election time, you might find a few fascists or communists in your senate. If this goes on long enough and you let them continue campaigning and scoring public opinion points, you can find your government changed, or your empire in a civil war. Destroying poverty shouldn't really be enough to get rid of them, though.
[*] It'd also add a whole new level of depth if you added the things I spoke about above for the economy side of the game, because you'd be able to have parts of the private sector lobby politicians and contribute money to the campaign funds of certain parties, having them stay in charge longer or have a greater chance of being elected.

You'd still have a fairly high level of control over your empire (you'd still control almost every aspect of it), but I think having the concept of an NPC government within your empire would give you more internal obstacles to overcome. In the end, I think this would result in a much more dynamic and challenging game.
Rather than just being an option that gives you different stat boosts and penalties, government would actually be something extremely important to the way the game plays.

Of course, it'd be good to have the difficulty of your government as something that can be influenced by a slider in your game setup to the point of:
A) At one extreme, removing all of your policy control and effectively leaving it up to the computer being influenced by your actions*
B) At the other extreme, turning the feature off entirely so that government functions more like it does in Distant Worlds 1.
* would depend on what your government actually is. If you're playing as a military dictatorship or anything more authoritarian, there's nobody to really say no to you if you decide that it's time to send all aliens in your empire away to the gas-chambers.

And also, feudalism/monarchy governments could have something like vassals instead of a senate. The potential to add even more dynamic situations to the game is almost endless.
You could also opt to have things like constitutional monarchies, which allows your empire to set its own economic policy, whilst you still have a lot of control and can veto things if you think the AI is doing something really stupid.

[HectorOfTroy]

All I need for DW 2 is two things:

- better graphics: nothing too fancy, still 2D but prettier and better optimized. Stardrive's graphics perhaps.

- I want fleet control. I want ships to be grouped, ability to put them into different formations (eg, carriers and missile frigates in the back, heavy armoured cruisers in the front, etc) Also, admirals and captains could then provide bonuses to formations, certain ship types (eg fleet admiral would provide bonuses to missile reloads, etc). Ability to keep ships close to each other or spread out, which comes with positives and negatives.

[Athelas2211]

ORIGINAL: HectorOfTroy

All I need for DW 2 is two things:

- better graphics: nothing too fancy, still 2D but prettier and better optimized. Stardrive's graphics perhaps.

- I want fleet control. I want ships to be grouped, ability to put them into different formations (eg, carriers and missile frigates in the back, heavy armoured cruisers in the front, etc) Also, admirals and captains could then provide bonuses to formations, certain ship types (eg fleet admiral would provide bonuses to missile reloads, etc). Ability to keep ships close to each other or spread out, which comes with positives and negatives.

agreed. Even fleet management that can be more AI streamlined, like having set of orders for fleets (the ones less important) like Dominions has.