New Player Saying Hi

[LordArkham]

Hello everyone. Just wanted to drop in and say hi.

I was hesitant about dropping $60.00 USD for this game but did anyway - so far I like it! I've logged about 5 hours in and am pretty comfortable with the game. Seems like it will be great fun.

My only challenges at this point are:

Fuel logistics (haven't got this figured out yet)
the right balance between auto and manual (somewhat related to fuel logistics)
Knowing when to go to .25 x or 4x or hit the pause button (I don't like pausing as it just takes that much longer for stuff to get done)
The right ship design

Nice forum!

[Blabsawaw22]

all these things you get very soon when played enough..

you'll know just exactly when to slow down to .25x and 4x.. haha.. like when you are bored waiting to travel across the galaxy.. well you ain't gonna put it at .25x are you then?? haha

and you pause when you have a big fleet battle and you need to select a new target.. simple as that..

and then what do you even mean about fuel logistics??? you just throw as many fuel mines and gas mining ships as possible out there to get fuel?? or do you mean about ships fuel and how they use it??

[LordArkham]

Fuel logistics - this current game is confusing me. I have a lot of gas mines. My small fleet is getting low on fuel. They just finished stomping some pirates and some slugs. I tell them to head to the nearest refuel point - they go to the next discovered system! I couldn't figure that one out.

I've been doing some reading on fuel and mines - ie what's available etc.. I'm hopefully I'll get it figured. Base / Ship Design it seems will have an impact on efficiency.

[Blabsawaw22]

so you have a fleet of ships in some random part of the galaxy and when you hit the little "blue" button to refuel they go to a random system that is not yours?? is that what you are saying??

when you tell a fleet to refuel they are supposed to go to the closest fuel source that "supposedly" has enough fuel to fuel all the ships.. of course, you'll soon learn as your fleets get too big that they go wherever and don't all refuel when you have too big of fleets..


but is that what you mean?


also if you don't know about right clicking, start always right clicking on things and even in the middle of space on nothing selected.. you'll notice alot of interesting options show up then..

for example select your fleet and then scroll/zoom to a planet that belongs to you or any planet and right click on that planet with your fleet selected.. you will see more missions.. and things like maybe "refuel here"..

so experiment with right clicking on everything...

select your fleet and then right click on a gas mine... it should show up options.. "refuel at (name) gas mine" ...

[Shark7]

Fuel Logistics: They are your nemesis. It seems you will never have enough, no matter how much you mine. It will get better as the game progresses, but it takes a while to build up the stocks. Another thing to remember about fuel, not only do your ships need it, your planets require it. So the more colonies you have, the more strain on your fuel reserves. One thing you can do to help is make sure your military ships and civilian ships each use a different fuel type, that will cut down the stress on your reserves.

When it comes to ships, the automatic templates are pretty good. As to what to build...since you can arm a frigate exactly the same as a capital ship with manual designs, and the cost of the ship is based on its components, honestly it doesn't matter so much. The ship 'class' will determine how the AI will use the ship, as it will use escorts, frigates and destroyers to escort freighters and patrol, while it tends to use destroyers, cruisers, carriers and capital ships for strike fleets. So basically if you are going to let the AI handle most ship operations, you'll want to have more escorts and frigates for handling pirates and the like.

[LordArkham]

Thanks for the tips!

Blabsaw - I was right clicking on fleet and told them refuel at my space port close by (I thought they could refuel there, apparently not!) Then, I told them to go the closest refuel point and they warped to another system.

Shark - good to know what I'm up against from the beginning. Component considerations regarding design will take some time to figure out, I think!

Oh, isolating fuel types between state and private is a great idea! What fuel do the planets use?

[Blabsawaw22]

If you right clicked on your home spaceport and they didn't refuel it's obviously because you don't have one of the following at your spaceport:

1. enough Fuel! ha.
2. enough docking bays available
3. Fuel...
4.Fuel! haha

I'm guessing the Planets use both Caslon and Hydrogen.. You'll have to look at one of your planets with no spaceport on it..and doubleclick the left windows with it selected and open up the "cargo" tab and look at the planet..

[makasouleater69]

Hello. Your doing better than me I am 200 hours in, and I am just manage to get to the point to manually controlled and everything.

[RiftHick]

All colonies (colonies themselves that is) need access to steel, hydrogen, caslon, lead, silicon, polymer and I think carbon fibre to maintain a large amount of colony development it's not much compared to what you'd spend fueling ships or building things but they need them. If you pick good sites for your mining stations then you'll probably not need that many stations but sometimes you get unlucky when it comes rarer strategics like carbon fibre and polymer so you might have no choice but to build on a poor source (a poor source is better than no source).

You'll want to split your fuel between state and private sectors. Most opt to put hydrogen based reactors on state ships/ stations meanwhile private sector things like mining bases and freighters get caslon, though depending on mods this fuel split between private and state might be different if for whatever reason circumstances dictate you do something different. one of things you should do early on in a game (assuming pre-warp that is) is increasing the base number of fuel cells on your private sector freighters and mining ships, you might also need to fix your mining ships and mining stations to have the right number of extractors. I also recommend to put the energy efficient hyper-drive on your private sector ships so they are all much more fuel efficient.

[RemoteLeg]

Yes, fuel can be a problem with large empires. You can never have too much fuel.

I find the best way is to:
1) Build gas mines at planets with fuel wherever possible. Preferably in well traveled areas. These are your gas stations so you always want one nearby.
2) Research energy collectors so stationary bases & ships (esp constructors) don't waste fuel needlessly.
3) Research better fuel tanks.
4) If that fails, just add more fuel tanks to your designs. The design screen tells you how far your ships can travel with a full tank.

The Resupply Ship design is a bit disappointing, so don't think that will solve your fuel problems.

Remember that you can tell a ship to refuel at a specific fuel source. That stops it wandering off when it runs low on fuel.

[LordArkham]

I appreciate the warm welcome everyone and the tips! Keep them coming!

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: LordArkham

Fuel logistics - this current game is confusing me. I have a lot of gas mines. My small fleet is getting low on fuel. They just finished stomping some pirates and some slugs. I tell them to head to the nearest refuel point - they go to the next discovered system! I couldn't figure that one out.

I've been doing some reading on fuel and mines - ie what's available etc.. I'm hopefully I'll get it figured. Base / Ship Design it seems will have an impact on efficiency.

Why they won't refuel:

You got a 4 ship fleet with 300 fuel capacity each. When they refuel, they want to reserve their full fuel capacity to know that there will be fuel waiting for them. So they reserve 1200 caslon (or hydrogen) (300x4).

On the mine/spaceport/colony there are two numbers in the cargo list. Amt and rsvd or something like that. What happens when a fleet refuels there is that its request for 1200 caslon is added to the reserved amount. The actual free amount is "amt-rsvd". Be aware that even if they only lack 20# fuel or so, they will reserve 1200 (or 300 each) until after refueling.

The fleet will always look for a spot with the 1200 caslon free (unreserved). If they warp off, the closer source does not have enough caslon (not 1200 free). Once it has refueled, it will release its reserved amount, so it could possibly take only 200 of those 1200, and 1000 is available for others afterwards.

The other "reservers" are freighters. When they go for a pickup they will reserve their order.

This means that two large fleets will be reluctant to refuel at the same location, because an incoming fleet reserves a large amount of fuel. And they require a large free amount to go there in the first place. If you have anything remotely close to a fuel shortage, freighters will be aggressive about carrying it "home", and there is never much unreserved fuel on the mines. With a proper shortage, they probably grab fuel in bulks of 30 or so, spending more fuel transporting it "home" than they actually carry...

The way refueling ships reserve the full amount makes sure they will actually be able to fill up, but it also makes it tricky to refuel multiple fleets in the same area. You can control-right click the fuel location with the fleet selected and tell them to "refuel at...", in which case they will go, but if there is not enough fuel as they arrive, only the first ships (if any) will get any fuel apart from fumes.

The advice about bigger fuel tanks seem counter productive. Bigger tanks, means more fuel must be present to actually refuel, and more fuel is reserved by refuelers (also civilian ships). Also, more fuel is lost if the ship is destroyed. Bigger fuel tanks give more range, but it should also give more problems if there is a dodgy fuel situation.

If you are short of fuel in an area, focus on better cargo system to get some capacity on resupply ships, and refuel the military from one of those.

[LordArkham]

Sorry for another question! What is infinity cash? How do I get back to normal cash.. I can't post the link to the screen shot.

Also, does the game get confused? I started a new game, told constructors to hit some gas giants and they went in another direction somewhere else. Everything is set to manual.

[Wheem]

ORIGINAL: LordArkham
Also, does the game get confused? I started a new game, told constructors to hit some gas giants and they went in another direction somewhere else. Everything is set to manual.

The ships were probably going to your space port to pick up the construction materials that they needed in order to build the gas mine.

[ardonquen]

Fueling is a pain in the butt and will probably be as much of an enemy to you as any of the rival empires! Like somebody has already mentioned, it is a good idea to make sure that civilian and military ships use different fuel. I like to use hydrogen (fusion generators) for military ships and caslon (fission and quantum generators) for civilian.

Oooh! By the way, make sure to steal the fuel cell tech from the Haakonish at the earliest possible time. Getting hold of their unique fuel cell technology early will be a major boon for you, and will allow your ships to operate away from home for much longer periods of time.

As for automation, I manually control everything but have the computer suggest things to me for lots of stuff. As for speed, I play at 1x until my empire grows, and then I play at 0.5x. Anything above that just seems way too frantic when you have a large empire beset by enemies.

[Blabsawaw22]

you know, if you have the patience to sit and watch videos, I forgot to mention there are 100 videos of people doing playthroughs.. all on this forum they are listed or just type "distant worlds legends" playthrough in youtube..

then you really could get a grip on how people play..

[LordArkham]

You guys helped a bunch. I did a 6 hour session yesterday and really got a good understanding of what to expect based on your "alls" helpful replies here. I will check out some videos as well.

This is my training wheels campaign. It really helps when the private sector finally gets off their butts and upgrades the designs you send to them! It took them a while but they did it. Going full manual really is a great way to learn this game. The only real issue now is eyeballing the potential mining locations and knowing instantly what resource the icons represent (as I am running out of stuff, as usual!). But that will come with time.

Thanks again for the welcome and tips!

[Blabsawaw22]

for the resource shortages..

but make sure you have mines for the resources your short of!

I dont know why, especially sometimes in moments of extreme need people don't use this but, you should check your policy menu..

and turn off "trade with other empires"

this supposedly stops other empires from buying your resources so you keep whatever your mining/gas stations are getting for you and you only.


thats my understanding of that anyway please someone correct me if wrong..

I guess the trade-off is you lose a litte (its tiny anyway though) amount of money since other empires aren't buying your resources from you..

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: LordArkham

Thanks for the tips!

Blabsaw - I was right clicking on fleet and told them refuel at my space port close by (I thought they could refuel there, apparently not!) Then, I told them to go the closest refuel point and they warped to another system.

Shark - good to know what I'm up against from the beginning. Component considerations regarding design will take some time to figure out, I think!

Oh, isolating fuel types between state and private is a great idea! What fuel do the planets use?

Planets require both types, but by splitting the ships up, you can remove a lot of stress off the caslon reserves (which is the fuel source for fleet at game start). I usually put the navy on hydrogen, since I want to make sure I can always get my military ships fueled up, and leave the civilian freighters on caslon.

[LordArkham]

ORIGINAL: Blabsawaw22

[..] you should check your policy menu..

and turn off "trade with other empires" [..]

Thanks for the tip.