Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: Lucian

In the Designs screen there is a column called "Optimized" which says no for every single design. I cant find any info in either the game or the manual as to what this is. Anyone know?

Pre-loaded Optimized Designs

Added new feature that allows usage of pre-made custom ship and base
designs loaded per race from folders at game startup:
New designs subfolder under main game folder can contain
subfolders for each race containing saved design files, e.g.
"C:\Matrix Games\Distant Worlds\designs\human\"
These design folders are also used by any themes/mods (i.e. you
can create a designs subfolder cointaining race subfolders in a
theme)
These designs are loaded for each race at game startup and are
used as optimized designs for each empire
These optimized designs are used whenever an empire has all the
required tech and is within current construction size limits. These
optimized designs are always preferred over all other designs,
unless made obsolete
If multiple optimized designs for a single subrole can be built (e.g.
multiple optimized destroyer designs), then the most advanced
design will be preferred
Optimized designs also guide AI research decisions: preference
will be given to research projects with components required by the
optimized designs

Because of the above, you should make custom designs that use the racespecific
tech and tech focuses (from Empire Policy) for the race, otherwise
there will be many required research paths, and research will be diluted, e.g.
Boskara designs should utilize Shaktur Firestorm torpedoes (race-specific
tech), and Phasers (Empire Policy tech focus)



Creating New Custom Design Files

Create custom designs in the Design screen and then save them to a file
Ideal setup to create new designs is to start a new game at max tech level
(Level 7) so that all components are available, then create custom designs at
various tech levels (different components that become available at different
times in the game)
Note that saved designs preserve the ship/base picture and any race-specific
tech, so design files probably should not be shared between races - i.e. you
should create different custom designs per race
Lowered required file permissions for reading custom Empire Policy files -
this should ensure that these customized files are always used when their
Theme is enabled. Also should no longer matter whether customized file
properties are read-only or read-write

ORIGINAL: Lucian

Ahh that would explain why it always says "no" in my games. Thanks for the info Darkspire