Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: zgrssd
"I had a bunch of Tourist questions:
- is Tourism Income taken out of the Private economy of whoever is owning those tourists, or is it generated from thin air?
- do Tourists actually travel around within the Region of space, or just go Home->The one place to visit->Back home?"

Yes, the State runs these bases to encourage/protect tourism, so the tourists that travel there on private sector passenger ships do end up in effect transferring money from the private economy to the state.

Tourism is focused on one destination, so they'll pick a spot that has high scenery and is relatively close to the world they normally live on and go there. For this reason, high scenery worlds or bases that are near your most populated worlds tend to perform the best as far as generating tourism income. A low scenery site far away from everything may not attract any real tourism.

Regards,

- Erik

ORIGINAL: Darkmater
I am curious on mining stations and asteroids, does one mining station cover an area so potentially a strategically placed station could cover a large set of asteroids? If so, how does one tell the mining coverage area?

Yes, if you have the mining station selected it will show the range of its asteroid mining. It will mine all asteroids within that range. If you turn off the weapon overlay it's easier to see the mining range overlay when a mining station is selected.

Furthermore, will tech increase the coverage size of a mining station?

Yes, higher tech mining engines provide more mining range.

Finally are there still gas and ore mining stations or does one do both now?

Your mining stations and mining engines can now mine either depending on where you place the mining station.

Regards,

- Erik

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Furthermore, will tech increase the coverage size of a mining station?

Yes, higher tech mining engines provide more mining range.

Finally are there still gas and ore mining stations or does one do both now?

Your mining stations and mining engines can now mine either depending on where you place the mining station.

The part where the range does not increase might have been intentional back in 1. If you increase the range, you get into issues with some mines invalidating/competing with other mines because their ranges now overlap.

One followup jus crossed my mind:
Planets, Stations and Ships can directly exchange resources via shuttles (no spaceships or docking needed). And mining stations and ships also use those drones.
But could planets mine a surrounding asteroid belt without the aid of ships an stations?

Question came up about Boarding and Planetary Invasion:
Do we need Boarding pods on top of troop space to invade planet?
Do we need Ground Troops to board ships?

ORIGINAL: zgrssd
Question came up about Boarding and Planetary Invasion:
Do we need Boarding pods on top of troop space to invade planet?

Yes, boarding pods and assault landing pods are effectively the same. In fact, the boarding/landing pod tech is a prerequisite for researching troop transports.

Do we need Ground Troops to board ships?

No, it's assumed the crew/shipboard marines can do that as long as you have boarding pods on the ship. Star Marine Barracks (a later ship component) can also help with this.

Regards,

- Erik

I noticed in the previews that the exploration ships send out probes, but when viewed they seem to come in and out of a metal wall in the ships hull. Is there a missing prob bay type mesh, or just something that was viewed as too minor to add in that detail?

Correct, it was viewed as too minor a detail to worry about. In general, those little drones should exit/enter from a hangar bay entrance if a ship has one, otherwise they just come from the center and we leave it to the imagination. I realize so much else has been done in great 3D detail, but the drones are already mainly a cosmetic indicator of activity rather than a real interactive element like the ships, stations or starfighters.

Regards,

- Erik

Concerning fleets, are you able to set them to jump together and move in warp at the speed of the slowest ship. Based on the previews it seems like fleets end up getting separated due to different jump sequence or warp speed. Resulting in the fleet ships reaching the enemy in parts and not a whole, meaning the full brunt of its power is not delivered effectively. Also putting those ships arriving and engaging early at a disadvantage.

ORIGINAL: Darkmater

Concerning fleets, are you able to set them to jump together and move in warp at the speed of the slowest ship. Based on the previews it seems like fleets end up getting separated due to different jump sequence or warp speed. Resulting in the fleet ships reaching the enemy in parts and not a whole, meaning the full brunt of its power is not delivered effectively. Also putting those ships arriving and engaging early at a disadvantage.

This was an irritation I had forgotten about in DW:U. I suspect the mess of jump-times hasn't changed in DW2, but it's certainly a feature I would love to have.

I imagine checking off a button organized in each fleet's settings, forcing all ships in said fleet to arrive at destinations at the same time. Better yet, perhaps a hotkey you could hold down as you give orders, which would make coordinating the arrival of multiple fleets even easier.

One followup jus crossed my mind:
Planets, Stations and Ships can directly exchange resources via shuttles (no spaceships or docking needed). And mining stations and ships also use those drones.
But could planets mine a surrounding asteroid belt without the aid of ships an stations?

No, you need a mining station to mine outside the planet efficiently.

ORIGINAL: Darkmater
Concerning fleets, are you able to set them to jump together and move in warp at the speed of the slowest ship. Based on the previews it seems like fleets end up getting separated due to different jump sequence or warp speed. Resulting in the fleet ships reaching the enemy in parts and not a whole, meaning the full brunt of its power is not delivered effectively. Also putting those ships arriving and engaging early at a disadvantage.

This is one of those things most people probably haven't noticed, but we've put a lot of effort in DW2 into getting fleets to stay together, to jump at the speed of the slowest ship and to fight in formation. It's still possible you might end up with some stragglers, especially if extremely different ships are in the same fleet or if you have the fleet formation/ship management automated which sometimes may swap in a ship that's farther away, but overall it's much better than DW1 in my experience.

Regards,

- Erik

Will there be gender diversity for the races, at least female characters/portraits for human. I can see this being less an issue for other races, them being less differentiated as a racial structure (e.g., insects).

ORIGINAL: Darkmater

Will there be gender diversity for the races, at least female characters/portraits for human. I can see this being less an issue for other races, them being less differentiated as a racial structure (e.g., insects).

I'm not speaking for the developers, but rather voicing what I feel is a strong belief amongst the Distant Worlds crowd. Flatly put, we don't play DW to customize silly portraits. Nobody keeps playing because the franchise offers a healthy plethora of flag symbols. We're not here to play Sims 4 on a galactic scale. Distant Worlds captivates us because the meat of the game—no, the simulation—is so compelling, so incredibly detailed and well-modeled, so enveloping in its breadth yet enrichening in its depth, where all of these beautiful traits swirl together in a whirlpool of madness akin to the grandeur of a space opera; that is why we play Distant Worlds.

We do not play Distant Worlds to model an accurate display of genders across a multitude of make-believe space creatures. You can take your fantasies back to Stellaris if gender gnaws at your curiosity enough to justify a post here on the forums asking about it.

ORIGINAL: Darkmater
Will there be gender diversity for the races, at least female characters/portraits for human. I can see this being less an issue for other races, them being less differentiated as a racial structure (e.g., insects).

Not in the initial release, but allowing for both male and female character art for the human faction is in our high priority post-release plans. The way the system was initially setup, it requires additional work to support more variations and we ran out of time for that before release after implementing the male set.

For the other alien factions, we expect for the most part to leave that to the player's imagination.

Regards,

- Erik

ORIGINAL: Galaxy227
We do not play Distant Worlds to model an accurate display of genders across a multitude of make-believe space creatures. You can take your fantasies back to Stellaris if gender gnaws at your curiosity enough to justify a post here on the forums asking about it.

This is certainly rude and could be taken as personal, which is against the forum rules. Keep the discussions here civil and keep this forum a welcoming place for gamers. Consider this an official warning and reminder that we are here to focus on our shared interest in strategy games. It was a perfectly valid question.

Regards,

- Erik

Noted.

Hi @Jorgen_CAB, all,

Mostly I set research concurrent to ONE. However, there is one situation where you may want to have two concurrent research.

Crash research cannot be canceled. If you crash research a very long project, but realize that you want another tech to be researched, you may want to add that in (crash it as well if you'd like) so that it finishes before it would have if you waited for them to complete serially.

There, now you can go to sleep happy that there is at least SOME reason for concurrent research

ORIGINAL: tortugapower

Hi @Jorgen_CAB, all,

Mostly I set research concurrent to ONE. However, there is one situation where you may want to have two concurrent research.

Crash research cannot be canceled. If you crash research a very long project, but realize that you want another tech to be researched, you may want to add that in (crash it as well if you'd like) so that it finishes before it would have if you waited for them to complete serially.

There, now you can go to sleep happy that there is at least SOME reason for concurrent research

Ah... yes... I sort of figured that out as well actually. That is probably the only reason for doing it from a mathematically perspective.

We discussed this in the other thread as well... so yes there is a reason for why it can be useful. That is also why I think we proposed that one research should always be default even when you get multiple labs so you can switch it on when and if it becomes important. I think that was sort of the conclusion to that discussion I think.

One of my objection is probably also one of presentation... many people will not realise that it is not beneficial as they don't reflect on it. Therefore will use the feature not understanding it is ultimately detrimental too them.. If they think there is a benefit but it is the reverse it is not really fair, that I think was my main objection really.

Any thoughts or future considerations for after battle reports that summarize defense and weapon effectiveness for your ships and enemy ships? Obviously this would be tied to tech ability to derive those measures. Was good to have them in games like sword of the stars, etc to see what was doing or absorbing most damage.

Yes, we'd like to eventually do something like that, but we won't have that in for the initial release and it's a relatively tricky one because of the nature of some battles in DW2. It's something on our wish list for future updates/expansions.