Snowballs and spies

The Galaxy Lives On! Distant Worlds, the critically acclaimed 4X space strategy game is back with a brand new 64-bit engine, 3D graphics and a polished interface to begin an epic new Distant Worlds series with Distant Worlds 2. Distant Worlds 2 is a vast, pausable real-time 4X space strategy game. Experience the full depth and detail of turn-based strategy, but with the simplicity and ease of real-time, and on the scale of a massively-multiplayer online game.

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Stormy Fairweather
Posts: 74
Joined: Fri Jul 01, 2011 6:30 pm

Snowballs and spies

Post by Stormy Fairweather »

I have been pining for a sequel to DW for years... and that si funny cause i had zero idea this was in development until 20hr before launch. which was an awesome surprise, and obviously i scooped it instantly.

there are a number of things i find annoying; lack of information for many things, whether it be a lack of a tooltip or simply an incomplete one, or ion storms without any indication on the map or way to tell yer automated ships to avoid it, or fleets scattering in transit and trickling in to an attack target, among others. most of those i would chalk up to release issues i expect to see sorted out eventually.

however, there are 2 things i see being issues with the core gameplay itself. one, spies are too efficient. WAY too efficient. you get too many spies, too fast, their missions are too short, and they succeed far too often. the penalties for failure are insignificant. why risk half a fleet taking on a spaceport when a spy can nuke it without risk or investment? wanna debilitate an empire before starting a war? nuke all their caslon mines. enemy empire sniped one of yer border colonies with a shit ton of ground troops you couldnt respond to? incite revolution and just let em rejoin. this goes the other way around as well, i've seen a dozen mining stations of mine go up in a month, the thing is it only exaggerates power differentials. i dont think spying should be as huge a mechanic as it is, imo it should be more supplementary and less a game shaping force. perhaps sabatoging bases should destroy their cargo holds and other core systems while leaving it mostly intact to be repaired. or maybe just scale the damage so sabotaging a small ship destroys it pretty easy, while you might destroy the engines of a battleship. perhaps instead of stealing all operation information on an empire, you steal the orders of a fleet or ship. perhaps instead of their entire systems map, you plant a bug that gives you the view of a planet or ship? point is, spying does too much, for too little, too fast.

and second, the snowball. i got about 50 colonies, havent been focusing on much of anything really, mostly just tweaking automation, designing my ships, and keeping other empires at arm's length. but i am now getting technologies so fast that when i do upgrade some components are skipping several generations of improvements with every upgrade.technology is coming in so fast that ships that come off the production line arent merely out of date, they are archaic. sure, i left tech advancement on normal in a huge galaxy, but i had assumed it would scale for the galaxy size. if it doesnt, this is an oversight, and if it does it doesnt scale enough. and on the topic of scaling, increasing tech cost (this is based on experience in DWU and other 4x games as i havent started another game yet) massively slows down the early game, but as the game progresses it becomes less and less noticeable. so perhaps increasing costs should work by having little effect on early techs, but scale exponentially as your empire develops more advanced techs. there are two main reasons i think this should be adjusted; one, skipping tech is skipping content, all those techs you leapfrog over that you dont get to use are functionally meaningless. and two, the snowball is real. there needs to be penalties to prevent you from receiving four different, better, technologies before the first ever sees use. whether it be increasing cost by empire sprawl (one of the best ideas from stellaris), or by increasing the costs based on research completed. but either way; mid game tech advancement is WAY too fast, and assuming there will be any advancement left in late game i strongly suspect it will be the same there. early game progress was good, felt abotu right to get yer key systems, but once the snowball starts it is far too much far too fast with no ways (that i have seen) of limiting it.

as an aside; loving the game so far. there is a TON of potential with this design.
Jasebump
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Mar 11, 2022 9:46 am

Re: Snowballs and spies

Post by Jasebump »

Seconding this, posted about these issues as well on Reddit. The snowball is real and one of the reasons I get bored sometime after I hit midgame and just start over. If I have a good sabotage spy I can completely cripple an empire before sending a single ship. Game threats like Hive carriers don't bother me either, I'm usually strong enough to deal with them right away - if my fleets can get fuel somehow because logistics automation with fuel tankers is a nightmare.

You can snowball straight from pre-warp into midgame and in my games my ships are at such a high tech level they can take on AI empires with no issues even if my ships' tech level is generations older than my current researched tech - plus my economy is in such good shape I can field way more military ships than the AI.

Would've thought this would have been thoroughly tested and caught in the beta, but I guess either the beta testers were a select few from an "inner circle" who were just happy to finally play DW2 after a few years of waiting or they were just focused on how to be the first to publish content videos for those precious clicks and donations. :lol:
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