Broken Logistics Again.

[Jorgen_CAB]

If I have Lv2 blasters, I never NEED Lv3 blasters for the game to function. Yes, my blasters will eventually be very weak weapons, but my empire will still run if I choose to hamstring my fleet with crappy weapons.

If you do not research medium freighters, you cannot build medium freighters. That's easy to understand. But if you don't realize you NEED medium freighters and assume you can do everything with the less efficient smaller version while you prioritize other techs, there is nothing to compel you to research it, and you arrive at the conclusion that the game must be bugged when your empire automation breaks.

That's what I am saying - the game needs to explain any hidden or implicit mechanisms that could cause an ignorant player to assume the game is broken. I'm not saying the game needs to hand-hold you through efficient or effective empire building, and it certainly doesn't need to laundry-list the potential consequences of your actions. But if an automation system DEPENDS on you making certain research choices or it fails to properly function, then those sorts of dependencies need to be clear to the player.

This is not the first thread where a player makes a gameplay error that they conclude must be a broken/bugged part of the game. That means that the game isn't effectively communicating to the player what it needs from them. It isn't a design failure at all, and the game is brilliant. But if a player can hit a wall that feels like a bug because of an action they failed to take, communication can be improved. That's all I'm saying. "Learn 2 play" works for some games, but something this massive and opaque will just lose players and positive reviews if it expects people to trial-and-error their way through a vast tech tree to unbork a basic system that is never explained to them. And the fix is as easy as a Galactopedia page explaining freighter logic. Nice.

I agree to a certain degree... but the player in this case have taken steps to intentionally sideline medium freighters. When they discover that there seem to be something wrong with freighters not working it should be the first step to check if enable the medium freighters again would fix it.

My argument was that if you actively work against the default functions of the game you need to at least figure that this action can lead to somewhat unforeseen consequences.

It should not be rocket science to suspect that omitting the medium freighters could be the problem rather than jump to the conclusion the game is bugged.

By default the game will automatically build/design all types of freighters...

I'm sure the developers could add some code so freighter logic works fine with a player not using medium freighters if the large ones are available. It can be considered a bug.

[thegreybetween]

I agree to a certain degree... but the player in this case have taken steps to intentionally sideline medium freighters. When they discover that there seem to be something wrong with freighters not working it should be the first step to check if enable the medium freighters again would fix it.

My argument was that if you actively work against the default functions of the game you need to at least figure that this action can lead to somewhat unforeseen consequences.

It should not be rocket science to suspect that omitting the medium freighters could be the problem rather than jump to the conclusion the game is bugged.

By default the game will automatically build/design all types of freighters...

I'm sure the developers could add some code so freighter logic works fine with a player not using medium freighters if the large ones are available. It can be considered a bug.

We're basically circling around the same point, but from slightly different perspectives.

I think that if the devs leave the code alone, and simply include a Galactopedia page that explains how freighter logic works, it would be the only "fix" necessary. The game works fine. But the players don't really have the resources to know how it works, so they can accidentally break it. Rather than change the way the game works, all they need to do is tell us what is happening so we can make better decisions. I'm sure that LoBlo would not have disabled medium freighters (or figured out how to turn them back on without needing to post a save here) if there was a reference that explained how the freighter system actually works.

Certainly, even veteran players would benefit from more documentation and clarity for complex systems. And many, many non-veteran complaints about the game could be solved if there were simply better in-game resources to understand systems like freighters, fleet logic, refueling, and other popular "this game is broken" topics that are often (unwittingly) player-caused issues.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Probably not really enough to be honest... too many people don't read the Galactopedia and even if they do they might not even know the info is there and never search for it.

[thegreybetween]

Sadly, that's probably true.

But having documentation will help the people who know to look for it. And having documentation to point at when someone botches a mechanism is better than having to say "Just do (X). Trust me."

I guess I'm just a fan of understanding the games I play, so I'd rather err on the side of: More info is better than less, especially when it comes to opaque mechanical systems that I can accidentally break by not knowing about them.

[AKicebear]

Probably not really enough to be honest... too many people don't read the Galactopedia and even if they do they might not even know the info is there and never search for it.

This is a bizarre approach to development. "Don't bother with documentation, no one will read in anyway!"

[ChrisGb]

This is not the first thread where a player makes a gameplay error that they conclude must be a broken/bugged part of the game. That means that the game isn't effectively communicating to the player what it needs from them. It isn't a design failure at all, and the game is brilliant. But if a player can hit a wall that feels like a bug because of an action they failed to take, communication can be improved.

Its still a "shift the blame" approach by inverting responsibility.
You only see these kind of complaints from very vew individuals that do awkward stuff then come complaining.
Stuff that most people would not do due to common sense or they do it once and if it screws things up they take note and next game they take a different approach...basically they learn from their errors.
The individuals that do weird stuff often do not learn from their errors and keep insisting on doing it or do even more weird stuff that work even less with the obvious results.

Let me be clear...a forum does NOT represent the broader player base. Never did, never will...!!!
The broader player base is the 90+% that never bother to come to a forum, mostly cause generally it works for them and they accept a few quirks and keep playing while take on board the patches that drop.
This is a fact!

The problem in small forums is that those who do weird stuff and/or break the game in different shapes or forms are often also individuals that go to forums to vent their anger and/or frustration.
So to speak you have an overrepresentation of these individuals on a small forum that can lead to overrepresentation of non-issue complaints yet it could give the impression that this particualr non-issue thing has merit cause various people posted similar stuff (translate: various people broke tha game in a similar way)

Weirdly enough I had similar issues once or twice in the early stages, I observed, took note and it never happend again ever since...so I was none the wiser than OP yet resolved the issue by observing and learning and adapting. That seems the minimum one can expect from an adult ?!?!
A developer cannot hold the hand and nanny all those individuals that do weird stuff with the game.

This is a bizarre approach to development. "Don't bother with documentation, no one will read in anyway!"

Thats NOT what he said, he said poeple dont bother to read it...dont try to shift the blame

especially when it comes to opaque mechanical systems that I can accidentally break by not knowing about them.

Its literally a non-issue as a regular play with common sense will not break anything (except we talk about unitentional behavior>bugs) Its the weird stuff or sometimes the idividual expectation about how something works that not match reality

That the most experienced players disparage players making these mistakes, rather than understanding why they make them, isn't helpful.

well, they dont...that you made up on the fly just because.

I wonder how DW2 is doing commercially.

should be pretty good
aprx 100.000 sold on Steam that not count Matrix and GOG
we talk about some serious money considering there is no greedy publisher with a greedy CEO and greedy shareholders vampires to feed.

Only thing I wish is they would do right now is hire some muscle for advancing bug fixing and implement small but effective QOL mechanics for manual play.
Indian programmers are not expensive yet effective

These forums feel very quiet the last year or so.

Its because the main story unfolds at the Discord and the Steam Forum.
Running 3 Forums is also not a good idea due to Fragmentation.

They should be integrated so wherever you post/reply it should work as one. Also would help the devs as they not have to scan 3 Forums.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Probably not really enough to be honest... too many people don't read the Galactopedia and even if they do they might not even know the info is there and never search for it.

This is a bizarre approach to development. "Don't bother with documentation, no one will read in anyway!"

Not really what I said though... I said it probably is not enough... not sure how you judge that as me saying it should not be there?!?!!

[thegreybetween]

Look, the point is really simple: Clear documentation of game systems is a good thing.

Is there anything fundamentally wrong with that premise? The only cost is a little dev time typing up something that they should already be able to modify from an internal resource anyway.
- Players who want to see how things work have a resource
- Players who ignore it are completely unphased
- Players with so much common sense that they never need resources can continue to be amazing in spite of them
- The vast majority of players who never use a forum are covered. Y'know...just in case. Because those same players won't come to a forum to let you know they quit when they found the game frustrating.

Sure, this thread is about a niche issue. Sure, MOST threads are about niche issues. And all the documentation in the world won't stop some players from getting into their own mess. But none of that changes the very simple fact: Documentation of a game's rules and systems is a good thing to have available.

It seems like there is an odd wave of resistance to what is ultimately a simple statement: More documentation, please. It really doesn't matter how much a given player should, would, or could use it. It isn't a debate about the validity of documentation. This isn't a values judgment against people who don't need documentation, or who choose to ignore it, or who intentionally try to break it. Do with the documentation as you see fit! Just please provide that documentation. The game has a manual and an internal encyclopedia already, implying that the devs intend to communicate this stuff to us. So this is a point of feedback that those resources could be more robust. That's it.

[Jorgen_CAB]

As I said... documentation is not always enough... sometimes too much documentation just mean no one will ever read it because it is too much so it actually is not always a good thing. So documentation are needed but only to a certain degree. This is something I have learned the hard way in my own profession of coding applications and advanced IT systems.

For this particular issue it would be better if either the code was changed so the freighters don't derp out if you omit some of them or make it so that you are forced to have at least one design active at any one time.

Documentation in this case I think could be one of those times allot of people would never read or find it and just assume the game are broken. Documentation only take you so far.

[AKicebear]

Blaming the uninformed player is a popular refrain of more seasoned players on the these forums, but is a luxury most game developers cannot afford.

For whatever it's perceived success, DW2 does have only a 70% positive rating on Steam. The negative reviews tend to focus on excess complexity. An issue I think could be solved by explanation in game - not dumbing the game down.

A fan of the systems, but they are often obfuscated intentionally or accidentally. Trial and error isn't a reasonable option for all players.

[ChrisGb]

Blaming the uninformed player is a popular refrain of more seasoned players on the these forums, but is a luxury most game developers cannot afford.

Those seasoned players did their research and learned how the game works by playing it...so they earned the ropes without anybody holding their hand.
The notion that new players have the right to be served everything on a silver plate while the others had to learn it investing their time and effort...well...* modern western world and entitlement thinking and instant gratification demand is a whole different set of problems not here to be discussed.

And I do not mean this in a combative way...its just the sad state of affairs and with millenials even more so.

For whatever it's perceived success, DW2 does have only a 70% positive rating on Steam. The negative reviews tend to focus on excess complexity. An issue I think could be solved by explanation in game - not dumbing the game down.

Im not sure there is a way to achieve this as peole simply do not read the documentation and prefer to complain anyway...and this goes thru all generations.
I confirm this to be true!
My field of work requires many individuals to read the provided documentation (only once a year!!! and still fail) and its shocking to see the level of disinterest in educating themself, instead they come complaining and when confronted with the documentation sometimes even throwing a tantrum.
Bounce back to *

DW2 does good in financial terms, we talk about millions at this point. Its about units sold and not ratings on Steam, these 2 metrics are not connected.

If at the end of the journey they will update and explain every little detail in the Galactopedia, well..great...if not...well,nvmd.
Back in the day with Heart of Iron II you got nothing from Paradox about the inner workings of the game...you had to find out.
The Galactopedia is already lightyears ahead of literally every 4x space game that I came across over time.
I not see why DW2 should be hold to an absurd standard just to appease a few individuals that do break the game anyway with the way they play it.

-Look, the point is really simple: Clear documentation of game systems is a good thing.
-But none of that changes the very simple fact: Documentation of a game's rules and systems is a good thing to have available.

I not disagree with you, however the Galactopedia is already lightyears ahead of literally every 4x space game that I came across over time.

Trial and error isn't a reasonable option for all players.

Sorry, wrong game...need play more arcady games then
Stellaris is among the best options then...
Games do not have to fit everybody but only their target audience.

The man who chases two rabbits will catch neigher or as one of our great ancestors noted: He who defends everything, defends nothing!

As I said... documentation is not always enough... sometimes too much documentation just mean no one will ever read it because it is too much so it actually is not always a good thing. So documentation are needed but only to a certain degree. This is something I have learned the hard way in my own profession of coding applications and advanced IT systems.

Totally true, its so depressing to see vast % of adults utterly fail in the most basic tasks of educating themself with provided documentation about their responsbilities.

[thegreybetween]

I'm sorry, but this thread is getting silly. ChrisGb, I appreciate where you are coming from, but your post is a walking mass of self-contradiction!

First you say that asking for documentation is an act of millennial entitlement and call out everyone who doesn't take it upon themselves to battle their way to their own understanding as the sad majority. Then you handwave the request for more documentation because nobody is going to read it anyway...in a thread where people are actively ASKING for it. You agree that more documentation can be helpful, but then dismiss that this game could be improved because we already have better documentation than other games. You repeatedly call out a mass disinterest in self-education in the face of a request for educational resources, and peg-knock players as "not the target audience, go play arcade games" while celebrating your own knowledge that you gained in spite of admittedly poor resources.

I'm sorry, but your stance reeks of elitism. I play a lot of DW2, and I enjoy the game and its complex systems. I also learn much of the better play through experimentation, as is expected. But this game is awesome precisely because of how deep and intricate that it is, and I think you're doing many people who play it a disservice by stereotyping them into a bunch of lazy crybabies. We KNOW that the game expects a lot from us - time, experimentation, the pursuit of mastery. But even you acknowledge that many of the systems are excessively opaque. Isn't it fair to concede that shedding light on these areas of the game is, at worst, harmless, and at best, a valuable tool to save time and frustration for the intrepid few who are willing to consume it?

I'm honestly baffled by the staunch resistance to a simple request for a few galactopedia pages. We're not tackling world hunger, and we're not talking about anything that will steal more than a few hours of dev time. The value of documentation doesn't scale with the number of people who read it, so if it is just you and me, who cares? We do! This whole "don't bother trying to improve yourself because not enough other people will do the same" is just dumb, guys.

[ChrisGb]

....and we're not talking about anything that will steal more than a few hours of dev time.

Adding a button to the ingame modloader UI "Upload/Update to Steam" and tie a wee script to it to execute the command line would probably take even less.
And dozens of other little tiny things...
Yet here we are 3 years later and none in sight.
So inbetween these kind of QOL improvements and the "few" h of dev time for the Galactopedia to explain the game for the more "impatient"...my choice is clear.

Also I fail to see how asking for a minimum of personal initiative is elitism.
Maybe it is the way I express myself. My apologies. Sometimes my points may seem contradictive yet they all stand on their own. In Pro and in Contra.
No hard feelings

I play a lot of DW2, and I enjoy the game and its complex systems. I also learn much of the better play through experimentation, as is expected. But this game is awesome precisely because of how deep and intricate that it is, and I think you're doing many people who play it a disservice by stereotyping them into a bunch of lazy crybabies. We KNOW that the game expects a lot from us - time, experimentation, the pursuit of mastery. But even you acknowledge that many of the systems are excessively opaque. Isn't it fair to concede that shedding light on these areas of the game is, at worst, harmless, and at best, a valuable tool to save time and frustration for the intrepid few who are willing to consume it?

+1

[thegreybetween]

To be clear: No hard feelings on my end either.

I feel like we've covered this ground more than enough. I'll just let the record reflect that a request for an update to the in-game documentation to better clarify sticky invisibles like freighter logic has been made. The devs will do (or not do) with it as they will.

Cheers!

[LoBlo]

I'm sorry but this whole debacle are player induced...
You have omitted building any medium freighters which completely borked the freighter logic.
Different freighters have different roles... if they are available you have to build them or the freighter logic will break.
After I added a medium freighter hull to the game then ALL freighters started working and I had a very healthy logistic going very fast after this.
I will also say it... and I know allot of people disagree... but adding so many small mining modules to your mining stations completely unbalance the mining game. I would recommend staying with only a single large one so the game stays at least somewhat competitive against the AI... but that is just a suggestion.

Nope. Medium Freighters makes it worse and increases the congestion. This isn't my 1st time having this problem. I intentionally leave freight sizes out because adding new freight classes *increases* the congestion, not decreases.

Here's a summary of those recommendations of Jorgen_CAB and CrisGb...

1. Do don't have enough types of freighters! That's why you have idle freighters not doing anything, because you don't have enough of them! Get more of them!
2. Your mining stations have too many resources! That's why your planets don't have enough resources! Because your making too many!
3. Your not playing into strange NPC behavior. You should accept suboptimal NPC programming. Its your fault!
4. Your frigerator is broken because you keep putting cold stuff in there! Put room-temperature things in your frig and it wouldn't be broken!

Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Tried your recs and the situation just got even more out of control. Here's adding medium freighters.

Worse.jpg (1.09 MiB) Viewed 419 times

[LoBlo]

Thanks, we'll investigate.

Appreciate you! If you need system information:

I9 2.2 Ghx processor 24 cores
64 bits of installed Ram
GeForce Rtx 4090

[Jorgen_CAB]

I'm sorry but this whole debacle are player induced...
You have omitted building any medium freighters which completely borked the freighter logic.
Different freighters have different roles... if they are available you have to build them or the freighter logic will break.
After I added a medium freighter hull to the game then ALL freighters started working and I had a very healthy logistic going very fast after this.
I will also say it... and I know allot of people disagree... but adding so many small mining modules to your mining stations completely unbalance the mining game. I would recommend staying with only a single large one so the game stays at least somewhat competitive against the AI... but that is just a suggestion.

Nope. Medium Freighters makes it worse and increases the congestion. This isn't my 1st time having this problem. I intentionally leave freight sizes out because adding new freight classes *increases* the congestion, not decreases.

Here's a summary of those recommendations of Jorgen_CAB and CrisGb...

1. Do don't have enough types of freighters! That's why you have idle freighters not doing anything, because you don't have enough of them! Get more of them!
2. Your mining stations have too many resources! That's why your planets don't have enough resources! Because your making too many!
3. Your not playing into strange NPC behavior. You should accept suboptimal NPC programming. Its your fault!
4. Your frigerator is broken because you keep putting cold stuff in there! Put room-temperature things in your frig and it wouldn't be broken!

Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Tried your recs and the situation just got even more out of control. Here's adding medium freighters.

Worse.jpg

I downloaded your game and just built medium freighters and it started to work just fine... you are just trolling me now.

I can repeatedly fix this over and over using your save...

This is how the home world look like after a few years of adjustment... I only ever did ONE thing... added the medium freighter. Done NOTHING else to the game.

From this...


To this...



(overall tax income also increased from around 3.8 million to 10.8 million)

So stop being so difficult!!!!

[Jorgen_CAB]

2. Your mining stations have too many resources! That's why your planets don't have enough resources! Because your making too many!
3. Your not playing into strange NPC behavior. You should accept suboptimal NPC programming. Its your fault!

Also... me telling you to not stack mining module are just a suggestion. Doing what you do simply make the game too easy and unbalanced. The developer should remove this feature because it completely make the resource game pointless as resources NEVER becomes an issue what so ever. It also is something that require next to no effort of the player to achieve or require any sacrifices, so it is a no brainer to use it.

The AI should not be able to do it either, it is perfectly possible to mod the game so the AI build more mining modules too or simply remove the possibility to have more than one, I did that before but no longer bother as it make no difference between me simply not doing it.

It is up to you however how you like to play, it is just a friendly advice.

I also would not consider it handicapping yourself since it is a game balance issue not about being a smart move. This is just an advice trying to reflect on how the game balance and resources should be important.

[LoBlo]

I downloaded your game and just built medium freighters and it started to work just fine... you are just trolling me now.

I can repeatedly fix this over and over using your save...

So stop being so difficult!!!!

Trolling? Nope!

And I also added medium freighters, and the congestion rose by a factor of 10. Got worse not better.

Perhaps its a some sort of hardware issue. Guess we'll never know. Decided it's a game limitation so I've lost interest.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I downloaded your game and just built medium freighters and it started to work just fine... you are just trolling me now.

I can repeatedly fix this over and over using your save...

So stop being so difficult!!!!

Trolling? Nope!

And I also added medium freighters, and the congestion rose by a factor of 10. Got worse not better.

Perhaps its a some sort of hardware issue. Guess we'll never know. Decided it's a game limitation so I've lost interest.

It is definitely not hardware related... I have the same result om my Laptop which does not have the absolute best performance results.

You are definitely doing something wrong... if you add another save I can take a look at that one too. But as you see from my pictures above there was nothing wrong with your game. The only thing I did was to add a medium freighter design, it was simply AI design even.

If you run the save that I downloaded here and the ONLY thing you do is add a new AI generated medium freighter and then allow the game to run for another 5-12 years and it will fix itself. Do nothing else....

I'm not trying to be difficult or right... I really want to help figure out what is wrong.