The Galaxy Lives On! Distant Worlds, the critically acclaimed 4X space strategy game is back with a brand new 64-bit engine, 3D graphics and a polished interface to begin an epic new Distant Worlds series with Distant Worlds 2. Distant Worlds 2 is a vast, pausable real-time 4X space strategy game. Experience the full depth and detail of turn-based strategy, but with the simplicity and ease of real-time, and on the scale of a massively-multiplayer online game.
ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
You can certainly mod in unique fighter-only or bomber-only bays and if beta feedback suggests that this is desirable, we may add them in as well or perhaps add a policy option to adjust the ratio.
The former sounds like what I'll be going with, then. A policy option doesn't really make much sense to me, because I seek to tune the fighter/bomber ratio per design. The lighter support ships would get the fighters, while the carriers hanging back get all bombers.
Is the game more about colonizing asap, as much as possible, in a kind of land-grab or are some disincentives present to not occupy as fast as possible planets around you? I'm thinking of a significant monetary cost for a new colony for example?
I don't like a lot game where you rush in all directions, like Gal Civ, because otherwise the AI will be there before you, to be honest. Also, from a realism standpoint, a new colony does not make profit, it costs to the mother nation.
Related to all this, perhaps you know of the concept of "Infinite City Sprawl" from Civilization... It was bad for the game and that's why Civilization is less about placing as many as possible and more about placing them at the right spot. Hopefully DW2 will also favors that?
DW2 is much less about rushing colonization than in DW1 and choosing better worlds definitely helps. Colonization techs are more expensive, Colonization components for Colony ships are much larger and more expensive and new colonies require significant resource and credits in order to develop and grow, which must be provided from an existing economic base until they can sustain themselves. You can still "rush", but you'll soon reach a point where you can't sustain more colonies until some of them grow to be larger and able to provide for themselves. More colonies may also strain what your private sector can provide in terms of passenger ships for migration, whereas fewer higher quality colonies will get focused migration. As a result, going for only the best most strategic worlds can be an equally good strategy as claiming all the habitable worlds you can find, within what your economy can sustain.
Even though the game is 3d, does the action still all take place in a plane, more or less? I'm assuming and hoping so since I don't feel plotting and moving in full 3d really adds anything except complexity.
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ORIGINAL: RogerBacon
Even though the game is 3d, does the action still all take place in a plane, more or less? I'm assuming and hoping so since I don't feel plotting and moving in full 3d really adds anything except complexity.
Yes, the Z axis is really used mainly just to help with temporary collision avoidance as well as adding a better sense of depth and scale and of course much better graphics. The ships and stations themselves are effectively on a plane in that 3D space.
Ambassadors in DW2 can help with Empires, Independents and Pirate Factions. In fact, _not_ having an ambassador assigned to a faction can also cause possible diplomatic penalties.
Regards,
- Erik
I sure hope we see more ambassadors then, or an option to promote them. In DW:U it was hard to find enough characters to fill the ranks much of the time. This was also true for other character types as well.
Will we be able to mod in additional filters/Map overlays like the resource ones?
Playing DW1 for about 10 hours, I could spot a bunch of minor upgrades to the UI that would have massively improved playability for me:
- showing colonies possible with technology
- marking systems with a (serious) enemy presence
- a prediction where a enemy fleet that just left my sensor range might be going to - basic vector tracking
- a display who actually owns a system, even if it is nominally within my territory
- clear positions of spaceports & refuel stations
While the big ones seem to be solved or might be made unessesary with a base rule change, I will definitely find more things that would be worth adding to the UI.
The map overlays are a bit underdeveloped right now, that's actually one of the main areas I expect we'll expand during beta based on player feedback. Modding them in does not seem likely, but we'll try to make sure we have the bases covered before release, so to speak.
My apologies if this has already been asked, but I didn't see it on the main post. With tech being condensed into one tech tree, does this mean we will only research one tech at a time instead of three at a time like in DW1, and research is essentially 66% slower as a result? Also does this mean that the research lab component from DW1 is no longer split into military research lab, economic, etc?
I absolutely cannot wait for DW2 it looks amazing, I'm still partially in disbelief that it's actually coming out.
ORIGINAL: Miskatonic81
My apologies if this has already been asked, but I didn't see it on the main post. With tech being condensed into one tech tree, does this mean we will only research one tech at a time instead of three at a time like in DW1, and research is essentially 66% slower as a result? Also does this mean that the research lab component from DW1 is no longer split into military research lab, economic, etc?
A lot has changed with research. You have one big tech tree, but it has all the stuff that was in DW1 and more. In addition, it can be played in a way that the paths are not always the same and that you don't see the entire tech tree from the start. You may not even get all the projects each time, though of course what you can't research, you could always try to trade for, steal through espionage or reverse engineer through salvage or exploration.
In addition, your ability to research multiple concurrent projects still exists, but you only get access to more concurrency as you expand your research stations and capacity.
There is a single research lab component now. However, there are also research bonuses across more categories and those bonuses can also allow you to overcome threshholds that lead to higher level techs, which makes your research locations more strategically important not only for research speed but for actually accessing higher tech levels at all. Finding the right research locations and exploiting and defending them is more important.
In addition, there are initiation costs in credits and resources for each project, related to the type of tech being researched, that make it more costly to try to "beeline" up the tree (assuming you have the necessary threshhold bonuses to unlock the higher techs).
Interesting. Is this going to be the old mechanic of a scout ship discovery or advanced ship retirement where you get a research project bonus or will it yield specific results like a tech you can't normally use like a racial tech?
It seems nice, original and smart. Not just fawning over here [:D]
First, having a semi-random research tree is really adding up to replayability, it is boring to have all your games start the same way otherwise. Second this threshold necessary to unlock certain tech gives a quality flavor to research site, and is far superior to the DW1 model where only the top one or so was of interest.
Follow up questions, how many racial techs exist on average per race? 1-2? More? This also gives more replayability.
ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
A lot has changed with research. You have one big tech tree, but it has all the stuff that was in DW1 and more.
Great to hear!
ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
In addition, there are initiation costs in credits and resources for each project, related to the type of tech being researched, that make it more costly to try to "beeline" up the tree (assuming you have the necessary threshhold bonuses to unlock the higher techs).
I see. Though i wasn't particularly successful at it, sometimes the proverbial stars aligned (Ancient Way gov, pretty much) and beelining up the tree was pretty fun so i hope it's still possible somewhat. I mean, that reads like it is but just wanted to mention it.
Random technologies trees but also random prerequisites can be funny !
Imaging if when you just unlocked the thruster technology you see in the following research another path for increase missiles speed and precision, this path shared with the missile path.
Or the next game you see in the following of the thruster technology a path with ground scuds launcher for make new ground vehicles.
Also technologies trees could be random for every empires, in the same game not only every new games.
My apologies if this has already been asked, but I didn't see it on the main post. With tech being condensed into one tech tree, does this mean we will only research one tech at a time instead of three at a time like in DW1, and research is essentially 66% slower as a result? Also does this mean that the research lab component from DW1 is no longer split into military research lab, economic, etc?
I absolutely cannot wait for DW2 it looks amazing, I'm still partially in disbelief that it's actually coming out.
As I understand it:
- There are still categories
- Research bonuses now apply to a specific category
- to unlock higher techs in any group, you need a certain "minimum bonus"
I would not asume research is 1/3 the speed. Not if you cut the costs by 1/3, increase the production by 1/3 or just focus all 3 areas production into 1.
Edit: Sorry, did not see the page of replies since that post.
Hi Erik, I am a huge and long term fan of your game and I am so exicted for DW2, here are some things I really like about the game and a list of recommendations or things that I think can be improved on for DW2
Things I like
- I especially like the deep ship builder system where each component does different things and you have to make tactical tradeoffs when constructing ships, i wish to see more of this in DW2
- I really like the population system where planet and colony populations are represented by actual large numbers like 500 million, 2.61 billion, 3.34 billion, etc, this aspect really adds to the games immersion as it feels like you are overseeing an actual planet with tangible, concrete numbers compared to other games like stellaris where populations are represented by abstract numbers like 6 or 7 pops. This is a major reason why I still prefer and love this game over other newer 4x games.
- I REALLY like the whole private and public sector aspect of the game, especially seeing civilian ships flying to planet to planet, doing their own thing, it REALLY adds to the games immersion as you honestly feel like your playing in and experiencing a living breathing universe as your empire, this is such a huge reason why I think your game attracts so much fans
- The colonization tab is extremely well made and thought out and really makes colonization a straightforward and easy process,
Things to improve or recommendation
1. Will DW2 have military/army only drag? or an option to toggle that? Often times, I have to drag select my ships to send them off somewhere or to battle but when I do that, my non-military ships like construction ships also get selected. This makes it a tedious pain to individually select them and send them away, a lot of rts and 4x games have a army only drag so I would recommend that
2. In DWU, ships operate on fuel and they have to refuel which I really like and feels immersive and realistic and adds another tactical level, however, when a fleet is heading somewhere and one of the ships runs out of gas, the entire fleet will slow to a crawl and move at the same speed as the out of fuel ship, this is very frustrating, especially when you are trying to send ships to battle or to another planet, the only thing I can do is individually select those ships and send them back or just out of annoyance and its easier than selecting and sending them back, I just delete the ships from my fleet, now if its just one ship in a large fleet, then that's tolerable, but when its like 25 ships I have to manually select and send back, it becomes a annoying tedious chore and really ruins the gaming experience, if in DW2, there is a efficient and effective method to redirect or select those out of fuel ships to go refuel without making it a manually intensive chore, that would be awesome
3. Similar to point 3, loading troops into transport ships is a pain and tedious and manually intensive, while unloading is pretty straightforward, (although I think a option to decide how many of those troops we want to unload would be nice), after the invasion, loading those troops back onto the transports is a pain and not efficient and requires tedious micro as it just says "Load troops at this planet" rather than give more efficient options to load large numbers of troops effectively onto many transports
4. DWU Research/Tech tree is very meh and bland and uninspired, it leaves much to be desired, I would recommend making research a much more immersive experience with better tech tree design in DW2
5. I would highly recommend creating a map that has our solar system when playing as humans, while I do like the setting and story of the DWU, I also really like to rp as humanity from earth slowly expanding and conquering through the stars, it makes the experience much more personable and easier to rp when we are exploring and expanding from our own solar system rather than one we are not really familiar or connected to
6. Deeper govt features and more govt types, more interesting rebellion and unrest mechanics, rival parties, etc
7. I think troop ground invasions could be made more immersive and interesting, whether that be more tactical options, varied ground troop types, orbital bombardments, as well as more immersive ground invasion battlefield visuals,
8. pirates often feel more annoying than challenging and could use some improvement
9. Economy could be made more interesting and engaging as often times, the numbers I see in revenue I can't correlate or connect with anything, I just accept it and only care that it goes up but I dont know what is driving it and how I can tweak and improve it, I think this can be improved by making detailed economy sheets that show exactly what your revenue is coming from and what the expenses are and how the markets/trade is affecting it
10. While this game obviously isn't the prettiest game (which I have no issue with as I always believe gameplay > graphics), I think maybe for DW2, when clicking on a planet, we can see a more aesthetically pleasing picture, either of the cityscape or environment of the planet or the planet itself,
I have a probably easy question to answer about hyper drives. The new system makes it so that each drive only are able to jump a specific distance. Now... my question is what differs a ship from jumping the entire way to a destination rather than making multiple short jumps? I assume that we can basically end and start a jump at any point and we are not limited to systems.
In a hypothetical example...
What are the differences between jumping the full distance to a specific point in one go from doing it in three jumps if we assume that both ships have the same speed and fuel effciency?
Are there anything in particular except perhaps forcing to stop in some bad terrain that will impact the total trip in time? Obviously jumping three times rather then one will take more time as you have to slow down and then jump again two times extra.
Will there be a relation between war weariness and the actual amount of losses? I tend to think this could influence strategies and tactics in interesting ways, both to avoid war fatigue and to induce it in opponents.
"You can’t win unless you try to win, but you can lose by trying not to lose."
Jack Campbell
Will there be a relation between war weariness and the actual amount of losses? I tend to think this could influence strategies and tactics in interesting ways, both to avoid war fatigue and to induce it in opponents.
Dropping in to +1
Stellaris accumulates war weariness based on not only the amount of time spent in war, but also losses in battles, loss of planets, and even the accomplishment of various war goals. I believe DW1 only factors in time for war weariness (though I could be wrong, it isn't always clear what exactly effects game mechanics in DW1). I strongly oppose time as the sole factor in measuring war weariness, and would greatly appreciate if somehow losses were also accounted for.
I imagine what would work best is an equation that calculates the value of war weariness based on the quantity of ship, base, army, colony, and even certain character losses—all proportional to the total size of an empire. Proportional calculations would, for instance, measure a capital ship loss as far more devastating to an economically-weak empire's war weariness than a stronger one.
Perhaps this is all too much work, though one can dream... [:D]
