Just an observation....

[QuantumWinter]

Since Distant Worlds is a real-time strategy game, then......battles take place over the course of days, right? How does that account for the second-by-second action of combat, in which ships unleash weapons in the course of seconds, but simultaneously colonies grow and develop amid all of this? I guess this might end up being a request, but I'd like to see a way of addressing the passage of time between combat and empire management. This might be an insane request, but it's just one silly idea I thought merited some thought besides pre-start map editing.

[MarQan]

Real-time doesn't really mean consistent, perfectly scaled time.
Although I totally understand what you're saying.

What would we gain with the new, realistic time-scale?

[Cauldyth]

Who's to say what space combat should be like? Perhaps the weapons involved require such immense power that they take 12 hours to charge for each firing, that ships maneuver for days at distances of hundreds of thousands of miles from each other, and that shields take weeks to get to full strength.

I kind of like the idea - instead of a frantic up-close Star-Wars-like battle, it's a game of chess among the ships' captains, played at immense distances, where they're all trying to optimally positioned their vessels 12 hours in the future, when their weapons are fully charged and ready to fire again. [;)]

[joeyeti]

It's a GAME you know... [8|]

[FerretStyle]

ORIGINAL: joeyeti

It's a GAME you know... [8|]

Well, sure it is. But what harm would making the timescale more realistic be?

Missiles taking 2 days to reach their target is a bit... silly.

[Osito]

Actually, I do just "imagine" the combat as taking that long. Two weeks to charge up a hyperdrive jump? Hell yeah! It's just one interpretation of an imaginary future.

But if you want to get really picky, the scale isn't right anyway. For example, the stars should generally be much larger, e.g. at least 10 larger than the largest planet, for most systems; and the ship's scale is far too large.

[joeyeti]

I stick to my "It's a GAME" statement.

In a game you have to make many compromises to make it playable and enjoyable and I pretty much believe that in DW (which has MANY intervowen systems) many things had to be adjusted, scaled differently, realisme removed etc. etc. If realism is your forte, try the indie developed game Aurora [8D]

[elanaagain]

The time scales in different areas of the game are not consistent. However, IMHO, the mix here works well. Sid meyer (of civilization fame) also was involved in a game about railroads. The game included building new rail lines, buying and scheduling various kinds of equipment, rail cars, etc., and scheduling them to 'do business.' There were stock companies, and economic cycles. Once a year, the financials were displayed, and how ell your business was doing was shown. During the years, except when paused, the trains ran the schedules you gave them. Strategy very important. A clever time scale change was used to determine how well your train empire was doing was used. Instead of having the trains go 365 days in a row, (boring to watch, even if your eyes could actually see all the blurring, lol), the cycle of one day of train activity was scaled to become your years profits and losses. Two very different time scales neatly integrated to create a very satisfying gaming experience. Same with DW, times scales are 'off' but its all "relative." (smile) I'm ok with the way it is.

[scotten_usa]

If you start reading into the scale of any PC game, you're likely going to run into issues. Enjoy it for what it is.

[MartialDoctor]

OP, you're getting too concerned with inconsequential details.

As was pointed out, this is a game, after all [:)]

[elanaagain]

Its a game? oh.... i need to talk to my therapist.... J/K

[dostillevi]

Its really a fundamental problem of game design, although I think this and most other games find a decent balance. Realism vs gameplay.. I love the idea of realism but, lets face it, we aren't actually immortal interstellar emperors, or in other games knights or wizards. Most modern games turn our limited capacities into entertaining experiences that use what skills we do have in an engaging way to simulate imaginary events. We don't have the capacity to spend 300 or so years building a galactic empire in real time, so the game is sped up. Unfortunately we would miss many entertaining events if the entire game proceeded at breakneck speed, so instead we compromise some realism for gameplay and effectively layer a 2d top down spaceship combat simulator on top of an interstellar empire management game in such a way that both "minigames" benefit from their interaction. Other games take the approach of having "instanced" combat, like the total war games, where combat happens in real time and asynchronously from the rest of the game. This can work as well, but it means the player must actively participate in each combat or instead allow the ai to play out the combat for them. Usually the player is vastly most capable than the ai so it isn't very fair to give the player a choice between having to participate in another boring cookie cutter fight so as to not lose units, or instead move on to something more interesting at the cost of lost units.

Anyway, returning to this game, I've considered at length the compromises that must be made in space empire management games in order to make an entertaining and relate-able experience, and really there are no games that come even close to realism in any way, and there's very little point in complaining about it. Either you enjoy the gameplay as it is presented or you move on to a game that you do like (or make your own!). Accurate realism in a space game requires, just for starters, the high likelihood that there is no possibility of faster than light travel, followed almost immediately by the possibility that no biological race will ever travel the stars, replaced instead by intelligent machines due to the huge complexities of hauling biology all over space. If you can get past those two likelihoods and have a game with both faster than light travel and green tentacle aliens in space, then you have to deal with physics 101; momentum, impulse, inertia, mass, acceleration, and more. That's just to get your ship moving realistically in a vacuum. Weapons are a whole other story.. remember that any object moving at any significant portion of the speed of light is massively destructive.. any ship becomes a weapon able to wipe out whole cities if not more, and if you can make a ship go fast, it would be even easier to push a mass of steel or hell, even a few asteroids, onto a deadly trajectory, and once at a significant portion of the speed of light there is almost nothing that can be done to stop such weapons. If your ships can travel faster than light, than so can your weapons, and if that is possible you won't even have any warning before you explode, as even light will be outpaced by the weapon. I could go on. Suffice to say that the sort of space strategy game you might be familiar with is extraordinarily unlikely to be anything at all like reality.

However, they also tend to be a lot of fun!

[QuantumWinter]

I get that it's just a game, of course I'm here for the fun parts. [:D]

My only real concern was how it was rationalized, and I think I got a good response from Osito. I suppose in the DW universe, naval combat is a grand chess game with slow-as-hell weaponry. That works for me. If there were future optimizations or mods dedicated to addressing the issue, however, I'd definitely help code it. Thanks for the replies and opinions guys, I look forward to more awesome updates for D.W.

[Dracus]

yea 100 years to build a tank in CIV was crazy

[Osito]

ORIGINAL: Dracus

yea 100 years to build a tank in CIV was crazy

Yeah, but you were probably trying to build it in, like 1000 AD, or something. 100 years is pretty good from there [:)]