UPDATED: Distant Worlds 1.0.4 Public Beta 2 Now Available

[Munchies]

Can now design defense, monotoring, and research bases. gj

Now on to the economy which I admit has me baffled. Probably because there are some "behind the scene" things happening I know nothing about.
One is the resort base income in my new game. I have 2 resorts at scenic locations. (One is 23% and the other is 53% bonus) At one base I now have 127k humans and the other has 47k. At one point in the game, the income spiked at 20k resort income for a very short time. But nothing since that time and it has been a few game years now.
Resort income is 0.
Are the passengers at the resort suppose to leave after a time or just live there indefinitely? Because I have yet to see a passenger ship pick any up. They just drop them off and leave to never return.
(Resort is at a neutron star very close to my home system)

Also, for over 1 game year I have had a positive net income (white) ranging from 10,000 to 31,000. (more or less)
Yet, all during that time my cash on hand has gone from +1,000 to -44,000.
What is draining my cash? crooked merchants? lol
I have not spent one coin on anything because I have been in the negative.
If it is the automation of the AI building new basses and such, then this needs to be fixed. It should not take money that is not there to begin with.

Just crazy to have a positive cash flow yet continue down until you are bankrupt.

[Druthlen]

I have also noticed the resort bases are acting funny. However due to advances in tech I scrap the old ones and rebuild and income starts flowing in again. So if they get stragnate scrap um.

Jscott i said computer errors but I can see how posting in a gaming forum you could draw the conclussion that I was speaking about strickly gaming. Driver and registry corruption is a serious issue that happens more then you would expect it to from visiting warez, and um other websites. It can do some squirrely things to your computer. IE the reason I never visit said websites.

[Anthropoid]

I've played about 30 or 40 hours with 1.02, and have not updated to 1.04beta yet. I have a well-tuned rig (MD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+, MMX, 3DNow (2 CPUs), ~2.6GHz 3328MB RAM) with ample power (900w) and a good vid card (NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT) and run XP Home. I keep malware off my machine assiduously. It has been a long time since I did a tuneup but it doesn't seem to matter yet.

I've never had a crash or lockup with this game, let alone a slow-down or process glitch. No errors, no pauses, no CTDs. Not a single crash in about 40 hours of play time.

I've had a lot of fun with this game too. Right at the moment I've turned my attention over to Mount & Blade Warband, but I'll be playing this one for months I'm sure. When the 1.04 official patch is done I'll install it and, based on about 8 years of experience with these Matrix guys, and about 12 or 15 of their games, I am confident that I'll be pleased with the improvements/tweaks.

Apart from some "ghost" space ships that left port before they were finished, and some mines that got "knocked lose" from their moorings on moons or planets, I have encountered NOTHING in this game that I think could be qualifed as being "broken."

As far as I could tell, EVERYTHING is working as designed.

I keep seeing the same people use that phrase 'broken,' and apart from them having crashes or errors, I have yet (despite asking more than once) to see them list precisely in objective terms what aspects of the game they are talking about when they say it is "broken." If it is broken, tell me where, and I'll be happy to play a bit to try to replicate your observations and see if I have the same results.

Tis' true that not everything is optimally balanced, and some functionality is a bit awkward or less than ideally efficient. In a highly complex strategy game made by a small Independent developer, those are the types of things that get gradually sorted out by players commenting on them and developers adjusting, if not mods being made.

The expectation that some folks have expressed in here that a publisher like Matrix should behave like an Xbox publisher is absolutely detached from reality. To be fair, the fact that the game works WELL on my machine does not mean that it does not behave as if it is "broken" on your machine. Maybe you are not full of it, and really are just frustrated. If so: calm down, note the problems you are having while you play, take screen-caps, run Dxdiag so you can tell them your rig specs are, and be prepared to follow the myriad of other objective calm actions that a constructive user will follow to help the publisher to troubleshoot. If you switch to that approach instead of the bashing approach, and you sincerely want to have a fun game and not simply have an excuse to troll around Matrix forums, you will get what you want. I say that with confidence based on my past experience with these Matrix guys. Or you could just shelve it and come back later after more patches come out.

But assuming that your perspective is authoritative, that you are "not alone" and that there are "lots of others" who share your perspective, when in fact there are many of us who have repeatedly praised the game in the same threads in which you post your rants suggests one thing: you are a troll.

[Gertjan]

Do you really need 900w in your pc?

[Athalian]

ORIGINAL: Gertjan

Do you really need 900w in your pc?

its better to go above as this leads to a more stable power supply, but yes, that is a bit over the top Though he does have 2 cpus, thats goin to draw a bit of power

[Zakhal]

The game crashed after 5 hours of play and I noticed I handnt remember to save and the autosave wasnt on . And this was my best game ever so far! It will take somtime to recover from this loss.

[Speedy2511]

Hello everyone!

First this is a awesome game!

I think with the new beta the economy is going into the right direction. Before the patch a made to much money. The other empires were far behind me. Now i lost the half of my money. I had a free trade agangement with all the other empires. If i go to war with one of the others, i where in the reds very soon!

I hope the Opponent AI can handle this.

Greetings from Germany
Nico

[Anthropoid]

I have four fans, plus the 2 CPUs. I don't know what the "minimum" would be, but given that a 900w power supply (hmmm, maybe it was only an 800 or 850 I cannot remember for certain) only cost me about $90

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... u=T13-1106

Whereas a 500w model runs/ran about $50

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... =ULT-LS500

I'd rather have excess power than not enough.

My buddies over at a Civ site recommended that you can almost never have too much power. Evidently power supply, and the front serial bus specs on the MoBo are two characteristics that commonly get shortchanged on 'high performance' packages. As I understand it, if you've got a 4GhZ chip, but an inadequate Fsb or not enough power, your rig will not get anywhere close to its optimum performance.

[Zakhal]

The bigger psu you have the better chance you have of running it on best efficiency. Because of that smaller psu consume more power than bigger ones.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Zakhal
The game crashed after 5 hours of play and I noticed I handnt remember to save and the autosave wasnt on . And this was my best game ever so far! It will take somtime to recover from this loss.

Argh, always turn the autosave on, especially for beta updates. I'll see if we can turn that on by default.

[Athalian]

ORIGINAL: Anthropoid

I have four fans, plus the 2 CPUs. I don't know what the "minimum" would be, but given that a 900w power supply (hmmm, maybe it was only an 800 or 850 I cannot remember for certain) only cost me about $90

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... u=T13-1106

Whereas a 500w model runs/ran about $50

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... =ULT-LS500

I'd rather have excess power than not enough.

My buddies over at a Civ site recommended that you can almost never have too much power. Evidently power supply, and the front serial bus specs on the MoBo are two characteristics that commonly get shortchanged on 'high performance' packages. As I understand it, if you've got a 4GhZ chip, but an inadequate Fsb or not enough power, your rig will not get anywhere close to its optimum performance.

Without knowing ur exact specs i would guess u need bout 450W (4 sticks of ddr2 ram, 2hdd and led fans). Its better to have a good 600w psu then a cheap 900w psu due to fluctuations in the psu. Fluctuations not good

I got a good 700W one and need bout 550W (high end gfx card ^^)

Psu is one of those things you DONT cut costs on.

[Sigh]

Well as said im not going to be an ass anymore but for everybody who thinks im SO absolutely wrong: Please at least read my posts before commenting.. seriously [8|]

[Grotius]

Well, I like DW a lot. So there.

Erik, any timetable on the "official" release of 1.04? I haven't gotten around to installing beta 1.04 yet, and if the release is tomorrow, I'll just wait a day.

[Astorax]

He's already said it might be next week. Could be tomorrow, might be next week.

[Sigh]

Btw Okim it actually is not true that you can not return software (at least in the USA). You have every right to return broken software.. But many stores try to get out of it.

In the case of matrix it might not count though (As you receive a full downloaded version) which is understandable. If I would receive a refund it's not like im going to delete the copy from my computer

[Erik Rutins]

Regarding the timing of the official release, I think it will be next week as we would still like to make a few more fixes and a few more economy tweaks for a Beta 3 before the official release. Sorry to disappoint, but I think it's worth one more iteration.

[Sliverine]

@Anthropoid: Coolmax PSU huh...i use the Corsair HX750 (750W) and it supports my i7 920 + dual gfx card just fine, not to mention the multitude of cpu and case coolers i have on...lol. Not sure about the Coolmax brand.

But 900 should be more then sufficient for at least a 3 way SLI gfx setup if im not wrong. I would recommend that you go for one of the more tried/tested/reviewed PSU brands around. Coolmax might not be one of them. Like what Athalian said, the PSU is one of the few things in your comp that you shouldnt cut costs on.

And btw, the newer intel CPUs dont really use FSB nowadays i guess. They use QPI now (Quick Path Interconnect).

[dawilko]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Regarding the timing of the official release, I think it will be next week as we would still like to make a few more fixes and a few more economy tweaks for a Beta 3 before the official release. Sorry to disappoint, but I think it's worth one more iteration.

I think for the majority of users, your not disappointing at all. I wish all games that are released had this level of developer commitment and involvement. Keep up the good work, I for one am enjoying you game.

[atlana]

ORIGINAL: Sliverine

@Anthropoid: Coolmax PSU huh...i use the Corsair HX750 (750W) and it supports my i7 920 + dual gfx card just fine, not to mention the multitude of cpu and case coolers i have on...lol. Not sure about the Coolmax brand.

But 900 should be more then sufficient for at least a 3 way SLI gfx setup if im not wrong. I would recommend that you go for one of the more tried/tested/reviewed PSU brands around. Coolmax might not be one of them. Like what Athalian said, the PSU is one of the few things in your comp that you shouldnt cut costs on.

And btw, the newer intel CPUs dont really use FSB nowadays i guess. They use QPI now (Quick Path Interconnect).

actually that is so not entirely correct, if you're one of those people - like me - who have a crapload of internal HDDs plugged-in (my EVGA X58 mainboard takes 10 internal SATA-2 HDDs), or - like me - leave your system running 24/7, such has a drain on the PSU in itself. The rule of thumb is, that after ONE year of your PSU running 24/7, the PSU lost roughly 30% of it's wattage capacity. I personally run a ANTEC TRUPOWER QUATTRO 1000, because anything less doesn't have enough wattage on the +12 volt rails that power my internal HDDs, beside that I run a stock i7 core 920 @ 3.5 Ghz, 24 GB DDR3 Ram and a Nvidia GTX295 (Revision B, single-PCB) in a CoolerMaster HAF 932 Case that has a lot of big fans inside.

as for how much power one really needs, I have an excellent link for that question:
http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp
enjoy the PSU calculator - saved me a lot of headaches

EDIT: click on the LITE-VERSION link, no need to go "Pro".

cheers
@

[Dadekster]

I've yet to experience a crash. Other than loose mining stations which were easy enough to fix myself I have yet to come across something that totally destroyed my game itself or immersion in it (as far as things like space monsters and every alien civilization having exactly the same technology goes ). Are some things working the way I thought they would or should? No. Does that make it broken? Imo...no. Do things need to be tweaked some more maybe? I'd say yes. I'd love more feedback regarding things going on in my economy for example. With that I would probably be able to figure more stuff out, which looking around the boards seems to be a common theme (people not 100% of how things work). As it stands atm, I can't tell if something isn't working as intended or if it's just a WAD. I don't see a problem with making the information avaliable either. If a micro type person wants it they can look at it. If you're more a macro/auto person, don't look at the info. What makes people argue over the stuff is if that info is required to play the game. At that point people don't have a choice and complain and as we all know, some people don't need much to start complaining.

Keep up the good work, I like what I am seeing in the public version 2 beta so far.