I decided to share my first impressions of DW.
I started DW 4 times and each time i felt too overwhelmed with extremely self-aware activity in my empire. I though that automation should help me focus on learning the game, but in fact it turned out to be much easier to learn DW while keeping everything under mine control. I replaced all automation to suggestions and turned off ship designs and etc. This way it was more obvious what decisions and in what circumstances should be taken.
I started my fourth game as Weekarus - a very funny crustaceans race - in a small galaxy (100 stars) with 5 players and pirates set to 'rare'. I tend to role-play in most of my games so i planned my race to be a bit slow, but well-protected and cautious. This resulted in major redesign of all my civilian vessels and bases to be armed and have some extra protection (mostly armor), military ships were set to retreat at 50% of shields to represent lobsters 'jumping' away from danger.
I was quite lucky to start in an extremely habitable system Maelstrum with 2 continental and one ocean planets + my homeworld. The abundance of resources of all kinds at first made me happy. Imagine that the majority of your upstart civilisation`s resource base is situated in one system. However i soon recognised that my system had less than 10 resources of available 40t.
First thing that i`ve order was construction of a small fleet of my slow juggernauts (4 escorts, 3 frigates, 3 destroyers with torpedoes). Homeworld was set to colony ship production - my crab-like fellas impatiently awaited a moment when they dip their 'ironclad' bodies into fresh waters of neighbouring planets.
Construction ships were send to expand mining operations on a neighbouring huge gas giant with 4 barren moons.
I noticed that my freighters were drifting around HW with no mission. I thought that resource transportation consists of constant inter-base/colony resource exchange. It seems to be more transport-on-demand like than i expected.
While my crabbies were slowly awakening from their pre-warp slumber i decided to leave them to their orders and focus on exploration. I`ve send my exploration ship to travel to a nearby star and noticed that i started game with several neighbour starts already discovered. I was quite rejoiced to see that my mining vessel was already pumping resources from one of these star`s planets. Actually i was so interested in this kind of activity that i wanted to order more mining vessels, BUT (!) civies didn`t allow me to construct any of their ships.. Well, let`s hope they better know how to do these kind of things. BTW i wonder how do i refit civilian ships and what exactly does 'upgrade' button in ship designs do?
While my explorer was quite slowly traversing to its destination i was looking at one of my mining stations that was pumping some resources from a planet furiously scattering clouds of dust and ramble into space. Suddenly an unknown vessel emerged not far from it and turned towards it with obviously unfriendly intentions. A pop-up window emerged telling me what i already was observing - a PIRATE destroyer was after my base in my home system! And this was happening near my HW, what an insolense! I reacted with sending everything i was able to scramble - two escorts, frigate and destroyer answered the call of their dirt-prospector fellows. Pirate managed to 'unseal' two of my crab-like escorts that did not have any armor at all and were easily damaged beyond ability to counter-attack. I was glad to see how battle in DW looks like and how badly-damaged ships are shown. However i noticed a small glitch when one of my escorts was blown to bits - one (or several) of the explosion frames had white corners that made an explosion end in a square-like image. It seems that there is some problem with alpha in these frames (if they use alpha channel at all).
While i was trying to figure out how to refit my ships and bases an explorer ship reported finding nothing at its destination. What a pity, i hoped to find something interesting in my first exploration expeditions.[:(] There were some other stars in the vicinity and i ordered my explorer to travel to a nearest unexplored.
The design flaw of default ships not having armor is a tough one, so i ordered more of my armor-clad military ships to be build to counter future pirate activities. Newly constructed vessels were set to automation and they instantly picked their escort/patrol targets. A very useful feature when you have multiple freighters/stations that are endangered by these dare and greedy pirates.
Some time has passed and my empire now had all 4 habitable planets in my home system under my control. I imagine the joy that my crabbies take crawling in fresh yet-unpolluted waters of these new worlds. Let`s hope they will remain joyful and obedient for a long time.
I was prompted to construct a new exploration ship and decided to build 2 extra ships in addition to it. There were many alluring stars nearby that were crying to explore them ASAP. In a few following minutes i would regret not ordering these ships at the very beginning... My only explorer discovered ruins in one of the systems and harried to it just to find it empty. A few moments later an exploration ship of another race was found stalking nearby. The new race turned out to be a group of insectiod-like creatures calling themselves 'Dhauyt Territories'. Man i was so afraid of the new neighbour that i did not know what to do for the first few moments. I opened 'introduction of alien races' thread and found out that these buggies are quite aggressive and probably will not be so friendly towards me. I wonder why i actually referred to that thread and not to galactopedia that also had that info
I decided that i need to focus on defending my territories from these buggies. As time passed i was able to scramble a little fleet and found out that i can`t give it multiple patrol orders (i see patrol as a set of waypoints where each waypoint is a planet or a base). While trying to uncover the secret lore of how to set waypoints and whether they actually exist in DW i was contacted by my 'friends'. As i expected they were not playing friendly. The first message that i received from my rival player in DW was a demand of some money for the protection of my ships on their territories from their ships. Lucky me.. This message actually brought a lot of new excitement rather than disappointment - in such a bad manner was i introduced to a diplomacy screen where two contacts were shown - the one that mistakenly thinks that i cannot protect myself in his territories [8D] and the second is a group of Slukan pirates!
I enjoyed communicating with these buggy criminals as they provided me with coordinates of a ruin in a previously overloked star system. It is needless to say that for this kind of info these greedy bastards demanded 10k of credits! I wonder if the money i gave them will actually result in an increased pirate activities in the future.
Another explorer made contact with a new race - Securans. Man i was so rejoiced to find a 'sane' and peaceful neighbour in this dangerous space that i even ordered my construction ships to move out of my system to the vicinity of my space and construct a mining outpost in a large asteroid cloud orbiting one of the stars and a recreation base at a beautiful planet with a spectacular ring over it. I wonder does mining station have any kind of 'mining range'? Do i need to build multiple bases in that asteroid field - it seems to be composed of numerous asteroids (or fields) that have different resources. Also how can i figure out how attractive the planet with rings is?
This is an end of the first part of my AAR. Hope you`ll find some useful info here. I`ll try to post some new info in a day or two )
