Distant Worlds v1.9.5.5 Public Beta Update Available!

[Nanaki]

It is odd that counterespionage was buffed against espionage, considering that only sabotage was consistantly getting through high counterespionage.

[Unforeseen]

ORIGINAL: BigWolf

ORIGINAL: Unforeseen

Can we please have an option to turn independent races completely off?

Yes please
And possibly something in the race files to prevent certain races being independant

That would be fantastic! I could actually make the races I don't think should be empires at the same time as everyone else be independent, and prevent all the other races from being so. That might actually let us go over the race cap...which would be pretty cool though the AI probably isn't designed to manage that many races.

[deathnoise]

It would be great to have some degree of control on how the planets are being generated in each and every kind of solar system (galaxy.txt?) with a format similar to what we've already got when it comes to resources.txt, that describes how the resources are being generated when a player chooses to play a new game

Something like:
1. solar system (Main sequence, red giant, super giant star, black hole, etc),
2. Type (0=Planet, 1=Asteroid, 2=GasCloud)
3. SubType: 0=Continental, 1=MarshySwamp, 2=Ocean, 3=Desert, 4=Ice, 5=Volcanic, 6=BarrenRock, 7=GasGiant, 8=FrozenGasGiant, 9=Metal (asteroid), 10=Ammonia, 11=Argon, 12=CarbonDioxide, 13=Chlorine, 14=Helium, 15=Hydrogen, 16=NitrogenOxygen, 17=Oxygen
4. Chance to appear in the specific (1) solar system, min/max amount, min/max quality
5. If the type in (2) is a planet, you can set one or more, multiple entries that will set up: min/max amount of moons of the specific type for the specific subtype of the planet in the chosen solar system (subtype of moon, min/max amount for the specific planet, min/max chance of of each and one of them to appear, min/max quality)
etc etc

And another important thing:

Allow us to set if the empire-wide bonus effect of the specific facility (in facilities.txt file) should stack up (or - not) with the effect of other facilities and/or ruins that are giving the same kind of bonus

[Tcby]

ORIGINAL: Tcby

Yep, I just lost my agent with 102% espionage skill, performing a 91% chance mission. Made me very, very sad [:'(]

So, I've been testing this some more...all espionage has definitely been substantially weakened against counter intelligence as well. To the point where you might as well forget about ever succeeding on multiple missions. I'm testing with Tek Ixito, the Ugnari starting intelligence agent. Current skills are:
Espionage: +92
Sabotage: +38
Counter Intelligence: -10%
Concealment: +10%

Out of 10 steal technology missions I'm failing about 80%. Each one has a success rating of at least 90%. Every failed mission, except once, also resulted in Tek being captured. The most recent 4 failures were on a 95% success chance mission, against a race with below average intelligence (haree's Napour, ~96 intelligence IIRC). All resulted in capture!

Point is, Tek is crazy good and he is constantly getting captured during 90%+ success chance missions. Possibly not working as intended?

[Nanaki]

Im thinking that elliot decided to buff counterespionage across the board, but in previous versions counterespionage was only having problems against sabotage, it worked fine vs espionage actions, so im guessing the across-the-board buff fixed the sabotage problem but also made espionage too difficult now.

[Tcby]

Yeah, looks that way.

[spiralaxis]

That should be tweaked before 1955 goes live. Some races depend on tech theft thrive.

[Locarnus]

1. You cant force the large fonts on people who paid 100€ and have low dpi monitors. Those need to be optional.

It is as if I buy a car with bright interior and during the next checkup they just paint the whole interior black without asking, because people in sunny and snowy areas complained...

Or amazon changing books on their kindles without asking.

If I want that behavior, I go to EA. From matrixgames I demand a different approach after spending that kind of money!


2. The way you implemented the specific research order is a major blow to partial mods (eg focused on research only) and a massive step towards only total conversion mods.
You kill interchangeability, now modders have to decide whether to make the most of the options (fixed research path) or stay compatible to eg a research mod. You could have asked the affected modders before. But instead you just implemented it, like with the racial research option from the last update.

The constant undiscussed/top down blows to the basis of my mod (modularity, so my research mod works with other mods, eg racial/themed ones) make partial modding impossible.

I therefore have to cancel my BalanceMod, after putting quite some effort in it, after this was marketed to be the modding friendly expansion.
Instead it feels like a paid modding beta with false advertising.

[Erik Rutins]

Hi Locarnus,

ORIGINAL: Locarnus
1. You cant force the large fonts on people who paid 100€ and have low dpi monitors. Those need to be optional.

We've made these changes optional wherever possible. We hope to be able to make them optional in all cases in the future. Making font size changes to DW is not at all easy, which is why we held off as long as we did, but the overwhelming feedback with DWU was that players wanted larger fonts. This takes more time than anyone probably realizes to do, so we cannot easily reverse what we've done, but the end goal is to allow a choice between two sizes if at all possible. We are just over a month from release and have been doing weekly updates, but there is only so much a small team can do quickly.

2. The way you implemented the specific research order is a major blow to partial mods (eg focused on research only) and a massive step towards only total conversion mods.
You kill interchangeability, now modders have to decide whether to make the most of the options (fixed research path) or stay compatible to eg a research mod. You could have asked the affected modders before. But instead you just implemented it, like with the racial research option from the last update.

We implemented this based on modder requests not least of which your requests. We are always listening though and we've already noted your concern on this as well. We're debating this internally right now.

The constant undiscussed/top down blows to the basis of my mod (modularity, so my research mod works with other mods, eg racial/themed ones) make partial modding impossible.

I think it's somewhat exaggerated and unfair to say that we are making constant top down "blows" to your mod, when we've actually been trying to implement and have implemented some of the feature requests you have specifically made.

I therefore have to cancel my BalanceMod, after putting quite some effort in it, after this was marketed to be the modding friendly expansion.
Instead it feels like a paid modding beta with false advertising.

I'm sorry you feel that way. I hope you'll keep checking back - as far as I can tell nothing really prevents you completing your mod and a lot of folks were looking forward to it.

Regards,

- Erik

[vmxa_slith]

Shocked to hear that people spent 100c on the game and still have a crappy monitor. Glad Matrix is not letting the lowest common denominator determine everything. Fonts size needed all the help that are willing to give it. Far more people prefer an improved font, than another mod to use. Sorry it had to impact you.

[PsyKoSnake]

The font size is perfect now.

[Cauldyth]

Another vote in support of the new, larger font size. It's impossible to cater to everyone, but I believe Matrix has catered to the majority of their fan base.

[spiralaxis]

I would definitely make having a couple of font sizes a priority. It's one of those things that can make a game unplayable.

[PsyKoSnake]

With the old font size, i needed to get at 25 cm of my screen to see something... was not realy interresting. Now I can read almost all text.

[Shogouki]

Is there no way to allow multiple font sizes that we can choose from?

[Unforeseen]

Would be nice

[Tormodino]

Nice patch. The AI plays quite a bit more coherently now. The researching is tighter, the designs are more efficient. Overall there is less crazy AI behaviour.
Font is excellent.

It still frequently sends entire fleets and individual ships off into the great beyond to test the limits of fuel and reason I now call it the Leap of Faith.

Still waiting for the click click click click UI sound to finally die a quiet death. Can't be the hardest thing to fix, tbh. It is actually super annoying.

The AI will suicide its finest characters. Particularly the scientists, but also captains, admirals and generals. It will, without fail in my games, place them on the vulnerable science stations to be popped by pirates or random passers-by, and send them into combat against insane odds. I like the bravery. Not so much the wasting of talent.

The scientist thing is also problematic since smaller stations fall very easily to sabotage effectively suiciding these high value characters.
Not a problem if I micro the characters, but if this is consistent with all AI behaviour for characters it is a huge problems for it. Basic survival 101 for characters is to place them on a big bad space station, not on the fringes of your empire, completely undefended. This must stop. It checks for nearby pirates, but it will still not pay them off quickly enough to prevent characters dying.

When I micro my troop recruitment I will have pretty much no pirate faction activity on my planets. When I leave this to the AI it will desperately avoid building troops until the pirates are already well entrenched on a planet. This problem quickly spirals out of control. Again it's up to the player to prevent pirates taking over planets. However, this is a problem of AI passivity towards high risk threats (just observe how the AI will let a planet building a criminal network fall without any fight at all, even though this is a huge potential problem).
The player can deal, the AI empires very frequently can't.

Speaking of pirates. Not sure how this works, but the AI will at some point which seems to be related to its military power (anecdotal, not real science) being greater than "some number" it thinks it can take them all, and will no longer ally, even when planets are being pounded and entire systems are cleared of ships and bases. This seems deliberately suicidal and unintelligent.
There are exceptions to this, but I see them very rarely and they seldom prevent the pirate siege spiral. Again, mainly a problem for the AI, since the player can decide to actually attack the pirates where it would hurt them, rather than go to the far end of the map to kill a Kaltor, or take 25 ships to kill a single pirate escort over and over and over.

The pattern of descisions made by the AI emerges as pretty much random. It pursues its goals with some efficiency, but the general collapse caused by not prioritizing major threats like pirate networks and taking out pirate bases closer to home really hurts it.
Just last night I had a big fleet change its orders 5 times in less than 5 seconds while I was watching. They were wildly different orders as well, mixing attack orders with patrol orders and whatever else.
And then it went to suicide gloriously, halfway across the map, at the mouth of a heavily guarded and indestructible large space station.

The game is steadily improving, and the last few patches have been good, so keep it up.
And please keep listening to the people who want even more modding capabilites

[deciplex]

ORIGINAL: Tcby
Point is, Tek is crazy good and he is constantly getting captured during 90%+ success chance missions. Possibly not working as intended?

Definitely broken and I'm seeing similar results. At least, you'd expect the success percentage to incorporate counter-espionage of the target. Chance of success is most certainly no where near what it says it is.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: deciplex

ORIGINAL: Tcby
Point is, Tek is crazy good and he is constantly getting captured during 90%+ success chance missions. Possibly not working as intended?

Definitely broken and I'm seeing similar results. At least, you'd expect the success percentage to incorporate counter-espionage of the target. Chance of success is most certainly no where near what it says it is.

We addressed this in the 1.9.5.5 official version (we hope!).

The success chance deliberately does not include counter-intelligence though, that's an unknown for the player.

Definitely give it another try with the official version of 1.9.5.5 and let us know how it works for you.

Regards,

- Erik

[spiralaxis]

Erik, you should add a new spy mission to assess the strength of an empire's counterintelligence.

Or make it something the ambassador can find out.