Let's Preview Distant Worlds: Shadows

[ASHBERY76]

The dumb A.I empires trading all their money for locations made the game easier than it should.[8|]

I had hoped diplomacy would factor more than just a cost factor but some intelligence.Keeping a cash reserve,not trading newest weapons,etc by now.

[Bingeling]

I agree, but trading is not something you have to do. I rarely trade, as I prefer to make my own money and research.

It would be interesting to see how much trading is happening between AI empires. They offer their wares quite a lot, and the AI seems to accept any trade it deems fair based on trade values.

I figure play style is personal, and Das' play style for sure involve trading for cash

[ASHBERY76]

Not the point as it made his game easy.Why bother with missions for pittance when exploiting the A.I's money makes you 1 zillion.

I would prefer the game to be inline with other 4x games when it comes to tighter trading rather than some house rule.

[Bingeling]

The secret locations (ruins) for sure are stupid. What is the value unless one of the new epic ones?

Why would pirates trade away colony locations? Maybe trade away those they can't control, though, to put the empire at war with rival factions [:D]

For research they put value at clearly obsolete tech. Early tech from lines you don't use are not worth anything once you are deep into your chosen tech (or have a stubborn, inflexible AI designer).

Not to mention the crazy inflated mine values once the game matures a bit.

[joeyeti]

Thx Erik for the explanation! Makes sense reg. the policy setup now...

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: joeyeti

I do wonder (if that has not been explained elsewhere), the red arrows, sometimes flashing on and back off for ships, are indicators of some shortage for that ship?

Just watching ep. 6 and noticed that in ep. 5 also...

EDIT:

Or, even better, does it mean that that ship is carrying critical resources???

Better late than never...

I did a check now doing my AAR. Civilians can have red travel vectors, and I am pretty sure that is a signal that they are working for whoever you have selected. If I select my capital spaceport, there are tons of red arrows, some heading for mines or even foreign colonies. It is hard to get a good image of that, since civilian vectors are only shown when zoomed pretty far in, and that gives little overview on an image suited for forum posting.

The attached image is not so bad, though. I selected a newly built spaceport in a system with two colonies. We can see some freighters, and some lines for freighters outside the system. Notice the one of the red ones is heading for a mine in the system.

The white lined one incoming, is going to pick up Riphidium Ale, so it is working for someone else. The one in the image, from the lower right, carries 360 gold. The one in the center of the system carries 620 caslon, 1224 helium and 1155 krypton. When clicking through colonies, I can see it turn red when Beta Kapola 1 is selected, that is the colony north of this. It just hads it spaceport complete too, and since it works for the colony, we know the colony must have ordered this before the spaceport was complete (the capital have no freighters working for it, the capital spaceport does).

The one aimed for the mine has order to transport wiconium, dantha fur, silicon. Since it is red, we know it will bring it to this spaceport.

So we can use this to track incoming wares, but not mine traffic. Noone is working for the mine unless bringing retrofit supplies (or fuel).

If I click the capital spaceport, I can see that a freighter that is right outside the edge of this image (starting in this system), is heading for a gas mine, as is going to deliver caslon to the capital.

Dang, it is possible to waste quite some time watching red arrows, reservations, cargo... [:D]

[joeyeti]

Thx binge!

Yeah, a game where you follow some freighters around, as was already done by players

[DasTactic]

Appologies for the lack of updates in here over the last 5 days. Been away at a conference so I asked my wife do the uploading of the videos while I was gone.

Distant Worlds Shadows ~ Preview Ep9 ~ Exploding

Distant Worlds Shadows ~ Preview Ep10 ~ Midas Touch

Distant Worlds Shadows ~ Preview Ep11 ~ Take the Core

Distant Worlds Shadows ~ Preview Ep12 ~ Repulsed at Gizurea

Distant Worlds Shadows ~ Preview Ep13 ~ Pushed Back

Can't wait for launch tomorrow.

After launch I'll make a new series playing as a pre-warp empire.

[Bingeling]

I think your captured things blowing up is one of two things. Either it is boarding setting in empire policy (scrap for money), or a lately inserted routine to auto scrap heavily damaged ships if no construction yard or constructor is nearby.

[Bingeling]

Either pirates have been tuned down (I doubt so), or your game was hard for pirates. Reducing the default (plentiful) independent count was probably not a good idea at all. Less targets for empires and pirates to spread their efforts on. To get multiple targets, you had to spread over a wide area of space.

[joeyeti]

That turnaround at Braugelle was really nasty!
I do wonder if that really was just the game difficulty ramping up, as you were pretty ahead of anyone else, or if even other factors had a say...

[Erik Rutins]

Braugele was a Gizurean planet. That means a huge growth rate, so it was a race against time to gain ownership before they became an empire. The only way to "keep them down" would have been constant raiding, which probably would have kept things under control long enough for the Criminal Network to be completed. Once they turned into an independent empire with that as the homeworld, it was not going to be a very healthy place for a pirate base.

Given how well Das was doing, the game difficulty certainly did also scale, which was helping out the Empires Das was encountering too.

I think Das did really well considering the settings and that it was his first time playing as a Pirate, with minimal documentation.

Regards,

- Erik

[joeyeti]

Thx Erik!

What you say about Braugelle can also be documented by how his last efforts to land troops were swiftly repulsed by the local populace I guess...

And yes, kudos to Das for his effort!
Shows very much about Shadows pirate gameplay and shows it well!