Matrix Games Forums

This is looking great

I will certainly be modding this game.

ORIGINAL: Deathball

Reading this I'm actually surprised by the font complaints. I've never had any trouble reading anything and hope that any changes would be optional since I like having information compressed like that.

Well, I'm glad for you that you haven't had any issue with this, but I can assure you that some people do, as I was one of them. If I were 30 years younger, I'll bet I wouldn't have had a problem either, but the fact is that your eyes go off as you get older, and even wearing glasses doesn't completely correct it. At a native 2,560x1,440 I found much of the the screen unreadable, especially the stuff down the left hand side and along the top. I'm using a native 1920x1200 at the moment, which is okay, but could be better.

ORIGINAL: Icemania

I really hope the Shaktur Dominion are serious bad asses (e.g. like the Borg in Star Trek Armada 3) and this game is much more difficult. I want to get slaughtered in my first Universe game ...

I hope vanilla Universe won't do the trick for you (since that's bad, bad news for the rest of us), but my worklist (assuming I have the time) looks like this:

1) Rebalance torpedo tech
2) Make it more fuel intensive to do early scouting so scout spam will be a serious drain on fuel reserves.
3) Make it possible for all planet types to have good stuff so players can't just pass by systems that are all ice, gas, and barren. This makes AI scouting more efficient and reduces the benefit of mega-micro.
4) Rebalance technocracy so it doesn't all by itself turn halfwits into genius scientists.
5) A buff to anti-fighter tech so players can't just go mass carriers for the win.
6) If possible and not too much of a right pain in the nutsack, fiddle with AI research and build strategies.
7) More emphasis on econ and warrior bonuses for the relevant races so those races stand a chance of keeping up with the research races.
8) More anti-corruption options so you don't end up with a galaxy funded by 5-6 super-colonies near the regional capitals.

Save for the AI tinkering, I'm reasonably confident that Universe will actually allow those things to get done. Am I missing any obvious player exploits? I would think that even you might suddenly find yourself forced to rethink your strategies if I can manage to get these things done right.

ORIGINAL: Deathball

Reading this I'm actually surprised by the font complaints. I've never had any trouble reading anything and hope that any changes would be optional since I like having information compressed like that.

Well, I fixed it by dropping the resolution on my monitor but I'm fairly sure the biggest problem is how damned gnarly the font is. It's hard to tell letters apart, at least for me, and at 1920x1080 the font really isn't very big at all. I need to concentrate a lot and that's not a good way of trying to relax. Gives me a headache too.

A new pair of glasses might help out but reading is only really a problem with DW.

My main concerns are the price, discount of people who have everything before DWU and whether or not the discount would apply to physical copies and if matrix would ship to Australia.

Seriously do something about the font, then I am happily buying Universe.

I'm hoping for Australian shipping too

ORIGINAL: Spidey

ORIGINAL: Icemania

I really hope the Shaktur Dominion are serious bad asses (e.g. like the Borg in Star Trek Armada 3) and this game is much more difficult. I want to get slaughtered in my first Universe game ...

I hope vanilla Universe won't do the trick for you (since that's bad, bad news for the rest of us), but my worklist (assuming I have the time) looks like this:

1) Rebalance torpedo tech
2) Make it more fuel intensive to do early scouting so scout spam will be a serious drain on fuel reserves.
3) Make it possible for all planet types to have good stuff so players can't just pass by systems that are all ice, gas, and barren. This makes AI scouting more efficient and reduces the benefit of mega-micro.
4) Rebalance technocracy so it doesn't all by itself turn halfwits into genius scientists.
5) A buff to anti-fighter tech so players can't just go mass carriers for the win.
6) If possible and not too much of a right pain in the nutsack, fiddle with AI research and build strategies.
7) More emphasis on econ and warrior bonuses for the relevant races so those races stand a chance of keeping up with the research races.
8) More anti-corruption options so you don't end up with a galaxy funded by 5-6 super-colonies near the regional capitals.

Save for the AI tinkering, I'm reasonably confident that Universe will actually allow those things to get done. Am I missing any obvious player exploits? I would think that even you might suddenly find yourself forced to rethink your strategies if I can manage to get these things done right.

The key is being able to mod the AI as you hinted in Item 6 (also exploration AI, fleet building AI and so on). Technology selling is also a huge exploit that has never been fixed. The other items would slow it all down but it's easy enough to win on Extreme even when other empires are far more advanced as well (or die in 5 minutes, nothing in between).

ORIGINAL: Tcby
I'm hoping for Australian shipping too

Another Aussie here too.

Although I don't understand why so many want physical copies!

I only care about physical copies for games I *really* like. It's more a show of support than anything else.

ORIGINAL: Icemania

ORIGINAL: Tcby
I'm hoping for Australian shipping too

Another Aussie here too.

Although I don't understand why so many want physical copies!

For most of us, the full color printed manual is a big deal. It is far easier for me to read a printed book than a .pdf file...

And there is the nostalgia of it...reminds us of the 'good old days' when everything came in a box with a nice printed manual.

ORIGINAL: Icemania

ORIGINAL: Tcby
I'm hoping for Australian shipping too

Another Aussie here too.

Although I don't understand why so many want physical copies!

Personally, for the manual and something to show off to everyone and I am going to frame it and place a plaque that it is the greatest 4x yet until the sequel comes out. Really hope for Australian shipping and good discount on it though as it costs an arm and a leg.

ORIGINAL: Icemania

The key is being able to mod the AI as you hinted in Item 6 (also exploration AI, fleet building AI and so on). Technology selling is also a huge exploit that has never been fixed. The other items would slow it all down but it's easy enough to win on Extreme even when other empires are far more advanced as well (or die in 5 minutes, nothing in between).

Yeah, I know about tech selling but there's no fixing the values of tech and I don't think mods can convince the AI that paying 100k credits for a tech that's "worth" 200k is actually a bad deal. Then again, I'm not sure how the mechanoids are made to refuse any and all trade, but some level of that might work as a fix for those who don't want to disable tech trade entirely.

And yes, the other things won't keep you from winning but they'll even things out a bit. And alleviate the pain of either being tremendously inefficient or being stuck in a micro nightmare. It's also my suspicion that the AI ends up building itself into a corner somewhat by trying to build too much and then running into corruption issues that reduce further economic growth.

But what you seem to be hoping for, I gather, is something that will make the AI a better "chess player" than you are and that's just not likely to happen in a game this complex. There will always be moves and counter-moves and since you're human, you'll be actively looking for AI behavior patterns and how to manipulate them while the AI can only really be programmed to look at the raw basics of the scenario and how to respond to that. This means you can set traps for the AI but it can't very easily set traps for you.

What can happen, however, is that the AI empires are made sufficiently competitive that you have to worry a whole lot about getting yourself entangled in too many confrontations. Think of it as a tiger vs wolfpack scenario. A tiger will kill a wolf any day, but a tiger can only chew on one thing at a time. If you're busy chewing on one wolf then the other 12 might decide to start chewing on you. If you refrain from chewing on anything then they'll back off, but then you'll also not be able to eat.

There's one other thing I don't know how to fix, by the way, and it involves the rather predictable AI response whenever hostile ships moves into a system. Abusing this won't make battles totally one-sided, but it will help reducing the effect of an AI having numerical superiority in the system, assuming tech parity. Fixing this means messing with the raw AI code, which almost certainly won't be an option.

Oh, and of course there's the obvious diplomacy thing where you bend over backwards to keep the other factions happy while you maul convenient targets one at a time, keeping you out of multi-front wars. That's not something a modder can fix either. I think the best answer for this is a historical aggression value assigned to each faction, so if someone decides to pull a Putin then other factions will remember it and be paranoid as hell about it for a few decades, no matter how much one tries to chat them up.

ORIGINAL: Spidey
Yeah, I know about tech selling but there's no fixing the values of tech and I don't think mods can convince the AI that paying 100k credits for a tech that's "worth" 200k is actually a bad deal. Then again, I'm not sure how the mechanoids are made to refuse any and all trade, but some level of that might work as a fix for those who don't want to disable tech trade entirely.

I would prefer that Universe has mod capabilities so that technology trading/selling can remain in the game but without it being an exploit e.g. allowing the pricing rules to be changed i.e. so they are not so overpriced. The AI's should also have some smarts to that pricing e.g. a militaristic race would not value economic technologies very highly etc.

ORIGINAL: Spidey

But what you seem to be hoping for, I gather, is something that will make the AI a better "chess player" than you are and that's just not likely to happen in a game this complex. There will always be moves and counter-moves and since you're human, you'll be actively looking for AI behavior patterns and how to manipulate them while the AI can only really be programmed to look at the raw basics of the scenario and how to respond to that. This means you can set traps for the AI but it can't very easily set traps for you.

What can happen, however, is that the AI empires are made sufficiently competitive that you have to worry a whole lot about getting yourself entangled in too many confrontations. Think of it as a tiger vs wolfpack scenario. A tiger will kill a wolf any day, but a tiger can only chew on one thing at a time. If you're busy chewing on one wolf then the other 12 might decide to start chewing on you. If you refrain from chewing on anything then they'll back off, but then you'll also not be able to eat.

No I'm not expecting the AI to be a better chess player. In background, as a hobby many years ago, I did my "other" Honours degree in Algorithms. What is workable is implementing an expert system for the AI based on good human players. And even better continuing to update the AI in patches after release to capture new strategies. What the AI current does with research orders, build orders, ship build size and exploration (amongst other factors), IMO, can be vastly improved with this approach. I just hope Universe opens up the AI to this. I'm happy to help provide strategies for modders and test them.

ORIGINAL: DrApostle

May I humbly suggest that you take a look at all of the folks who made mods up to this point and give them the update for free. And I hope that Haree78 has been helping you develop this expansion.

I'm involved don't worry
And again it's not my place to reveal stuff but really pleased with what I am able to do with the current version of the Extended mod.
Any previous missing issues for modding are in that I might need.

ORIGINAL: Haree78

ORIGINAL: DrApostle

May I humbly suggest that you take a look at all of the folks who made mods up to this point and give them the update for free. And I hope that Haree78 has been helping you develop this expansion.

I'm involved don't worry
And again it's not my place to reveal stuff but really pleased with what I am able to do with the current version of the Extended mod.
Any previous missing issues for modding are in that I might need.

Sweet! Big fan of the extended mod. I rarely play games modded but I installed DW Extended because its great and makes the game feels like a different game.

ORIGINAL: towerbooks3192
I rarely play games modded but I installed DW Extended because its great and makes the game feels like a different game.

Same here. DW Extended is the only mod I've used for any game, not just DW, in many years.

ORIGINAL: Icemania
Although I don't understand why so many want physical copies!

Likewise. I've got enough stuff cluttering my apartment already. I've been digitizing documents and magazine articles and tossing the hard copies left and right lately.

Maybe if there was a Distant Worlds Collectors Edition with a model Silvermist?

And then when you wake up in the morning there are 128 of them ...

If the silvermist model comes to life, I doubt you wake up at all.