DW Universe : Where to start?

[Hobomaniac]

Hello,

I just bought DWUniverse, have done the tutorials and have played the introductory easy game.

Now I'm a little confused about the storyline of the whole campaign.
What is the best way to play for the first time?

Is it to start with a Legends Game (including storylines from the original+shakturi+legends games)?

Or to start with a Standard Empire in the age of Shadows. Maybe it's the way to take advantage of all the enhancements but I've heard that the Shadows extension contains spoilers from the previous games?

I don't want to start in the Ancient Galaxy era because I know it is a whole different game, containing spoilers and an expert level.

[ArrowRL201]

I honestly started with a custom game where I personalized everything. I really diminished the power of the pirates, and set my starting world to be very good quality, among other things.

[Aeson]

Age of Shadows is the more difficult start for planetary (normal) empires, while Classical Era is more difficult for pirate factions. Pirate factions are in general more difficult to play than planetary empires, though this can be somewhat variable.

If you're looking for a low-difficulty game, setting your home system quality to one of the higher settings is a good place to start, as is toning down the strength of the monsters and pirate factions. I would not, however, turn either of these off, as if you do you won't learn how to deal with them, and that could be a problem in the future. Pirates should probably be set to not respawn, and you'll probably want their proximity to be 'average' or 'distant' rather than 'nearby,' as the former two settings (especially 'distant') will result in less harassment by pirates in the early game.

The storylines are a mixed bag, as far as how they affect the game difficulty. This is because the storylines add a lot of really powerful abandoned ships to the game (many of these have to be repaired by a construction ship before they can be used, but some are your run-of-the-mill send-a-ship-to-claim-it abandoned warships), which tends to result in things like pirates who have a 700 firepower capital ship in your home system three years into the game or, very rarely, a planet killer. Things like this can greatly affect the game difficulty, as that kind of ship is very difficult to defeat with early-game tech (it'll happen even with none of the storylines enabled, but the storylines put more abandoned ships like that out there for you, and your enemies, to find). The Return of the Shakturi and Legends storylines additionally each eventually spawn a rather powerful faction (in RotS, it's a planetary empire, while in Legends it's a pirate faction), though the RotS faction is fairly easy to deal with when it first spawns if you decide to just crush it rather than letting the storyline continue to play out but grows more threatening if you let it be, while the Legends faction is rather difficult to deal with at first but the threat it poses tends to diminish with time. Both of these faction spawns tend to be rather rare; you're far from guaranteed to see either in any given game, so the larger concern with game difficulty is the abandoned ships scattered over the map. In player hands, abandoned ships can be an incredible boost to your technology or a great boon to a specific fleet's strength, depending on how you want to handle it (if you don't wan the abandoned ships that you recover to greatly impact game difficulty, order them scrapped immediately and all you'll get from them is a bit of money; 'retire at nearest shipyard' gives you a tech bonus, while keeping them in your fleet typically gives you a ship better than anything you'll be able to make for a bit). The computer typically seems to enlist any abandoned ships it finds into its navy, which makes any fleets which have one or more of these in them somewhat difficult to deal with, which can be a serious obstacle for early or mid-game wars, though on the other hand you'll tend to find you have an advantage in the wars anyways because you're probably better at using your assets efficiently than the computer players are. The storylines add a lot of interesting stuff, it's just stuff that can greatly affect the game difficulty depending on who finds it first.

Aggression settings should probably be kept to 'normal' or perhaps even 'peaceful,' as this will tend to keep wars from sprouting up, though note that this also tends to mean that the computer factions are somewhat stronger, as the computer tends to perform better with lower aggression settings because they're not constantly jumping into wars with all their neighbors and suffering from all the war-related penalties.

[Hobomaniac]

I quote the manual "SPOILER ALERT: If you have not yet played through all the Distant Worlds storylines, this section will contain some spoilers, so if you prefer to discover the stories in the game then skip to the next section".

My question is not about the difficulty level but the continuity of the story. What are thoses spoilers the manual is refering to? Obviously, the story begins with the original Distant Worlds and then expands through the successive addons.
My question is : where do I start if I want to really enjoy the different stories ? In the age of shadows? or in Classic era? or can I directly begin in the Ancient Galaxy, without spoiling any of the other storylines?

[Hobomaniac]

If I start a custom game in the age of shadows, will the game switch to the original Distant World storyline once hyperdrive and colonization technologies are discovered? So you can play from the beginning to the end in one single continuous game.
How does it work?

[Aeson]

There's no 'switching' involved. If you enable a storyline in game setup, most of what the storyline adds will exist somewhere in the galaxy from the start of the game, and the triggers for anything that doesn't exist at game start to emerge will also be enabled. And yes, you can play from an Age of Shadows start and theoretically see everything from the original, RotS, Legends, and Shadows storylines in a single game (as long as you aren't playing pirates, as they can't use the RotS storyline). The Ancient Galaxy 'storyline' is the only one of these that you can't really include (but it's also not an option for inclusion anyways), as the implication is basically that in going from the Ancient Galaxy to the Age of Shadows or later stages essentially means that you (and everyone else) lost the game - civilization collapses and the majority of technology is forgotten, to the point that some of the technology in the Ancient Galaxy is not available at all in the later settings (though there's arguably a reason in that there's theoretically not a need for some of that technology).

[Hobomaniac]

Oh that's what I wanted to know.
So I'll start from the age of shadows with all the storylines enabled for my first campaign. Just to enjoy all the enhancements. I'll play a game in the Ancient Galaxy later when I get more experience.

And what about the option to enable the Giant Kaltors at the start of the game (it's in the Victory Conditions screen)? I can't find what this is about. Should I enable it? And if I don't, do the Kaltors emerge later in the game? What is this option about?

[Aeson]

And what about the option to enable the Giant Kaltors at the start of the game (it's in the Victory Conditions screen)? I can't find what this is about. Should I enable it? And if I don't, do the Kaltors emerge later in the game? What is this option about?

Warning: this will be a slight spoiler.

I believe that this box controls whether or not Giant Kaltors will spawn in your home system when you make your first hyperjump, though I am not certain about this. I suspect the option is there because Giant Kaltors and other space monsters are a little bit of a pain to deal with using early-game weapons and defenses, particularly if you haven't developed anything better than the Seeker Missile or Pulse Blaster yet and have slow-moving, slow-turning ships that lack armor (note that all space monster attacks completely bypass all types of shielding, no matter how much of it you apply to your ships).

[Hobomaniac]

Thank you for the spoiler warning.

So it seems I should disable the Giant Kaltors when starting a game in the age of shadows

[Tcby]

The option is more there to enable the creation of different scenarios, like the ancient galaxy theme. In some setups the mod author may not want to allow Kaltors initially, for thematic or other reasons.

[Hobomaniac]

The developers of the game thought about everything