Distant Worlds: Shadows

[Erik Rutins]

A Dhayut homeworld with infantry, armor and planetary defense units.

Each troop type has different attack and defense strengths, different size for transport and different maintenance levels. Each can be upgraded through their unique branch in the new ground combat tech tree.

Note also the troop types with green backgrounds in the planet details, these are garrisoned. You can have the automation set garrison levels automatically. You can also set them manually. Garrisoned troops will never be loaded by transports and removed from the planet, they stay and defend it.

[Erik Rutins]

Another invasion underway. Note also the resource shortage message in the planet detail screen. We've added a great deal of information to the player in the various screens and also in event messages to make it easy to know why something has stopped building and what you need to get it started again.

[Erik Rutins]

Note the new Capture ship order.

[Erik Rutins]

Boarding action underway.

[Erik Rutins]

A view of the updated Fleet screen with new troop loading settings.

[Erik Rutins]

A view of a planet's troops through the colony screen, with the new garrison and ungarrison options.

[Erik Rutins]

A view of the updated troop screen, which now supports multi-select and more sortable options and filters for easy troop management.

[Erik Rutins]

A view of the Ground Combat tech tree.

[Erik Rutins]

A view of the Gravitic Weapons tree, including one of the new Gravitic Area Weapons. These are very fun. They don't extend out from the ship, instead they target a point in space and create a gravitic distortion there, along with pulses of tremendously strong gravity that can destroy ships and bases. When one of these goes off, you see the ships in the area pulled in towards its center and shaken to pieces.

[Erik Rutins]

New Troop policy options.

[Erik Rutins]

New Boarding and Capture policy options.

[Erik Rutins]

Some of the new Planetary Facilities (which now also cost maintenance - the late game economy in general is much more in balance after a variety of adjustments during Shadows development).

[Erik Rutins]

And finally, the first implementation of interface scaling. Please look at the bottom left information display and compare it in size to the other screenshots. The new two way arrow button in the top left of that display toggles it between the larger size for easier to read text and the smaller size to see more of the map.

[Simulation01]

It looks like empires are now able to "gift" ships. Also, from that last image it looked as though planet based empires can issue their own missions for others to consider. Is that accurate?

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Simulation01
It looks like empires are now able to "gift" ships. Also, from that last image it looked as though planet based empires can issue their own missions for others to consider. Is that accurate?

All Empires can now request assistance through Attack, Defense and Smuggling missions. Pirate Empires can accept all these missions, all empire types can issue them. As a planetary empire, you can enlist those mercenary-oriented space factions to help you in your wars much more directly and precisely than before. As a pirate empire, your reputation with planetary empires will increase as you successfully perform these missions. You can also commission them yourself and try to coordinate a massive attack on a planetary civilization from several pirate factions at a time, if you have the money and influence to do so. Smuggling missions can be for a specific resource or for any that are in shortage, with a bonus paid to smugglers for each unit delivered. Smuggler and Mercenary style pirates can use these missions to create a positive/honorable playstyle as well, if they so choose, working together with planetary empires and building up trust. You can also use them to bring your enemies to their knees. [8D]

Regards,

- Erik

[Webbco]

Wow, you seem to have added a lot of new features in this expansion at the same time as trying to address some of the major requested improvements! This looks fantastic, thanks Erik for the update, it's really appreciated!

I really hope you can find a way to promote this game in slightly more mainstream circles to coincide with the release of the expansion as I'm sure there are many that would be interested in such an immersive real-time 4X game such as this. To be honest, it somewhat surprises me that the likes of PC Gamer and Rock Paper Shotgun haven't posted a single article about this game.

Anyway, very excited about this being released soon...

[Simulation01]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

ORIGINAL: Simulation01
It looks like empires are now able to "gift" ships. Also, from that last image it looked as though planet based empires can issue their own missions for others to consider. Is that accurate?

All Empires can now request assistance through Attack, Defense and Smuggling missions. Pirate Empires can accept all these missions, all empire types can issue them. As a planetary empire, you can enlist those mercenary-oriented space factions to help you in your wars much more directly and precisely than before. As a pirate empire, your reputation with planetary empires will increase as you successfully perform these missions. You can also commission them yourself and try to coordinate a massive attack on a planetary civilization from several pirate factions at a time, if you have the money and influence to do so. Smuggling missions can be for a specific resource or for any that are in shortage, with a bonus paid to smugglers for each unit delivered. Smuggler and Mercenary style pirates can use these missions to create a positive/honorable playstyle as well, if they so choose, working together with planetary empires and building up trust. You can also use them to bring your enemies to their knees. [8D]

Regards,

- Erik

Awesome! Sounds like it's gonna be fun! At the risk of exceeding my question quota [;)] .... how does the sphere of influence and prate empires interact? Do prate factions also have their own sphere of influence (here there be pirates! Argh!)?

[ASHBERY76]

That weapons tech tree really should be split into two as its getting huge.The A.I struggles to pick clever routes even with policy priority in Legends so I wonder if they will even use these cool new mechanics for most games as there are too many options and paths.A new defence tree needs to be added I think.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Simulation01
Awesome! Sounds like it's gonna be fun! At the risk of exceeding my question quota [;)] .... how does the sphere of influence and prate empires interact? Do prate factions also have their own sphere of influence (here there be pirates! Argh!)?

Pirates empires only have influence within their own systems rather than a sphere of influence, unless they manage to be very successful and transition to planetary empires through the full control of colonies. In that case, they get a normal sphere of influence that works like that for the other empires.

They get annoyed with you if you are interested in the same systems and colonies they are interested in, but they don't have "borders" the way a normal empire does until they actually get full colonies (they start out entirely space-based, think tens of thousands of survivors per faction, rather than the millions on the planets).

Regards,

- Erik

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76
That weapons tech tree really should be split into two as its getting huge.The A.I struggles to pick clever routes even with policy priority in Legends so I wonder if they will even use these cool new mechanics for most games as there are too many options and paths.A new defence tree needs to be added I think.

The AI in Shadows is significantly better at focusing its tech research and we're continuing to improve it in that area. I've seen it setup good defenses as well as good invasions (the latter is an area we're continuing to improve as well) and make good use of boarding and capture of ships and stations. I'd say our highest remaining priority is bug-fixing and continuing AI improvements up until release.

Regards,

- Erik