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~ Man, I bet the biography of that Boskaran colony governor is interesting as hell. ~ I'm surprised the Shandar hadn't taken Endo San yet---I can't tell if they're being too picky with their quality expectations, or if their neighbors are a real problem, or if they're just that much of a backwater. ~ Nasty event with the sinkholes. That'd be crippling if it happened on a planet like Endo San, if you were taking it for land-grabbing instead of quality. ~ On that note, it's interesting to see you go so wide. I'm not sure Wide/tall is what I mean here. In my small number of games, I usually kept my expansion as close to my territory as possible---but grabbed all the highest quality stuff I could, but I was also somewhat more aggressive in grabbing it, being OK if my most recent grabs weren't as developed as you like to have. And this seemed to work really well. It seems like you're approaching it as a move against your opponents less than a move strictly for yourself. One thing I really appreciate about Distant Worlds is the two point grid, showing you exactly where the proposed colony is, but also where you'd be colonizing from. This is easily the most straightforward and elegant way I have seen a game display that information. The colony planner in this game is the best I have seen, defeating games that are decades more recent. ~ As for your thoughts on Ship Captains, it almost feels like the game at one point intended for mother ships to be a bigger part of space combat. If an empire could only afford 4 or 5 ships that were significantly better than the rank-and-file of most of their navy, then it would make sense to have a captain for each one. As it stands, I agree with you. When you're 1 ship in a fleet of two dozen exactly equal ships, the small boost isn't going to be a big deal, or even a deal at all. EDIT Page snipe, so I added a link to the latest update. Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Oct 28, 2021 |
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Oct 28, 2021 22:40
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Captains were a design feature from when they wanted ships to have individual experience and bonuses, but they were viewed as too much for an entire fleet of ships to have these bonuses. So they went with the Captain/Admiral system. This was talked about in one of the dev diaries for DW2, where they are planning on going to the other system of individual ships again. I suspect a legacy of this system is how your small, cheap ship classes with the escort and frigate will be named something like Marine Frigate Mk12 143 and your cruisers and up will be named "Fearless Lion of Secura" and the like. If ship classes had size modifiers and limits like escorts can be no larger than 50% of your max hull size, frigates 75%, cruisers 100%, capital 125% this would make sense, as your Cruisers, Carriers and Capital ships would be your biggest most important ships for your captains. Thats not how the game plays, so unless you feel your need a ton of cheap ships of the cheap ship classes, building everything max size to gain benefits from only having to build 1 command deck and other 'this is a ship' parts for a size 900 ship vs x3 of everything for 3 size 300 ships adds up.
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Oct 29, 2021 19:27
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veryslightlymad posted:usually kept my expansion as close to my territory as possible---but grabbed all the highest quality stuff I could, but I was also somewhat more aggressive in grabbing it, being OK if my most recent grabs weren't as developed as you like to have. And this seemed to work really well. It seems like you're approaching it as a move against your opponents less than a move strictly for yourself I agree with you on the colony planner. On this, every time I've tried that approach, I've demonstrated what happens some in this series, all it does is end up with a bunch of colonies that grow slowly because of the freighters being over-taxed. Keeping the expansion closer speeds up how quickly that's rectified, but if I just keep grabbing more colonies the freighters will never catch up and I just have chronic resource shortages everywhere. I guess I just don't see how that could possibly be better. The playing against the opponent part is definitely true now, because I can grab the more profitable planets later. That produces a better long-term result IMO than going for the nearer options and not restricting rival expansion. winterwerefox posted:building everything max size to gain benefits from only having to build 1 command deck and other 'this is a ship' parts for a size 900 ship vs x3 of everything for 3 size 300 ships adds up. The 'this is a ship parts' description amused me far more than it had any right to, esp. since that's exactly what they are.
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Oct 31, 2021 17:54
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Oh, I wouldn't claim it was better. I haven't played nearly enough. I'm just saying that it worked. I recall sinking a ton of cash into smuggling missions from pirates, so that does say that the resource shortages were definitely real. But I did win the game.
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Oct 31, 2021 20:22
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 War!! (22:23) The session starts out intending to be peaceful, as we do the usual rounds of having colonized another planet, looking at at the next set of research options, etc. But then a rival empire decides it's time for war - not with us, but it's still a situation we need to deal with one way or the other. This kicks off the final phase of the game, wherein conflict between empires will be more or less commonplace until somebody achieves the critical mass necessary for victory.
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Nov 4, 2021 14:34
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I'm curious, why did you skip over the planet colonisation techs in setting up your research? Do you just have enough colonial targets on current tech for the moment or?
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Nov 4, 2021 22:21
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I noticed you captured a pirate spy near the end of the update. Is that the first spy you have caught in this run? That might be a system worth showing off for people who haven't seen it.
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Nov 4, 2021 23:53
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What do the dashed lines between systems mean? Star lanes?
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Nov 5, 2021 00:06
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Mighty Steed posted:What do the dashed lines between systems mean? Star lanes? The dashed lines linking colonies are showing trade routes and shipyards, more or less. A visual aid showing "This planet or station will have more resources" as it is one that has added supplies designated to it for ship building. Small shipyards will have less, medium more, large the most. It is mostly automated, I think it will web out to have trade lanes mostly make sense, using one world as a stockpile to spread out to others in your empire, but I haven't investigated it much. If you were to put a hyper deny starbase line in deep space along an enemy lane, you could interdict an empire in half where their civilian fleet keeps running into your wall and getting pulled out of hyperspace. This could be pretty cheap, under size 200 per station, but would take 10 or so to make a line long enough to matter as a grav spike mine field. You could also picket ships designed for such, for a mobile line.
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Nov 5, 2021 00:44
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veryslightlymad posted:I noticed you captured a pirate spy near the end of the update. Is that the first spy you have caught in this run? That might be a system worth showing off for people who haven't seen it. It's not the first one, but there haven't been many. I don't know what 'system' you mean - afaik there's very little to it. You either have enough counterintel spies to catch them or you don't ... what am I missing?
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Nov 5, 2021 01:42
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Veloxyll posted:why did you skip over the planet colonisation techs in setting up your research? Do you just have enough colonial targets on current tech for the moment or? From my point of view I didn't skip over them, I'm just not there yet. High Tech is currently on the 4th tier. The only one we can get up to that level is Continental (3rd tier) which literally does us no good unless we also get Desert (5th tier). Ocean is also 5th tier, and they are actually twice as expensive (minus our 10% racial discount) as the other 5th tier techs. Or to put numbers with that, we're working on 480k techs, Desert/Ocean Colonization are 1728k. But you are also right that I don't particularly care that much since, looking it up just put numbers with it again, we have 12 Marshy Swamp/Continental planets in range, not counting the Volcanic/Ice, that we could take. So it's a target-rich environment if we want to expand.
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Nov 5, 2021 01:50
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MightySteed posted:What do the dashed lines between systems mean? Star lanes? Just to say it slightly differently, afaik - and I don't know for sure, even experienced players have debated a lot what *exactly* they mean - but it appears to be the route freighters will take to supply systems. I.e. they won't go directly from Kurbus to Ubas, but rather between Kurbus and Urctun and then between Urctun and Ubas as an example.
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Nov 5, 2021 01:52
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Strategic Sage posted:It's not the first one, but there haven't been many. I don't know what 'system' you mean - afaik there's very little to it. You either have enough counterintel spies to catch them or you don't ... what am I missing? I could have sworn there was a system of deport/execute and also the option of just sitting on them and using them for leverage in future negotiations, but, after looking into it, I think I'm confusing it with the system in New MoO.
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Nov 5, 2021 02:41
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So I am unclear as to what your objectives are for this war, and based on that on why you think ground invasions will be neccessary.
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Nov 5, 2021 04:18
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The primary objective is just to keep an aggressive, militaristic rival from expanding and growing stronger. Whether you view it as punitive or opportunistic - I'd say some of each - we could just knock out of a bunch of their ships, but they'd just rebuild them and in the meantime they've already grown larger at the Ackdarian's expense. To permanently weaken them we need to take their territory, and we wouldn't mind having more systems ourselves of course. The purpose of any war in Distant Worlds is to take territory, unless you're purely on the defensive in which case it's probably a war you didn't choose.
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Nov 5, 2021 08:00
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Conflict Brings Complications (27:40) After taking some time to answer questions asked here and elsewhere, we begin the war. It's not long before we've weakened the Durvalla Hive enough for the Holtumu Federation to begin fighting back. It will take some time for a proper build-up for full conquest, and meanwhile the war effects are slowing our economy a bit though it's nothing we can't easily shrug off. Even the Utrantu, who theoretically should come to their defense, have not. Perhaps they are smart enough to see the writing on the wall. We also get to see how easy it is to get into a cycle on constant rebellions if you take a planet under ill-advised conditions ...
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Nov 12, 2021 18:01
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Durvalla Speed Bumps (21:18) We take more territory and now have our sights set on the Durvalla capital. Getting the ground troops in place will take some time, and meanwhile the concentrated stupid of our private sector is compelling me to deploy Resupply Ships for the first time. Those are a fun bit of work and another design diversion from the war.
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Nov 19, 2021 18:42
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And just to spite you, the trade lanes have redrawn so it's a straight run from Reese to the front lines
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Nov 20, 2021 00:51
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Yeah, but they keep going back and forth with it. I'm not relying on those nitwits 
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Nov 20, 2021 02:06
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The Fall of Ridri (23:53) A breakdown of the 4th weapons tier takes up a significant portion of this session. We also see the Resupply ships in action and make a correction there - apparently they are considered stations for size purposes which I didn't realize and think is really quite dumb. More research is laid out and then we get back to war, where we have enough troops in place to take down the Durvalla homeworld. It's a long battle but the outcome is assured, and there is only cleanup left in this war.
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Nov 26, 2021 16:09
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Neat
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Nov 26, 2021 16:21
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Strategic Sage posted:
I did not realise that population based troops would surrender once you won. Neat.
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Nov 26, 2021 23:27
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It seems that people just don't want to go face-to-face with an invading army for very long without support. Really speaks to the benefit of having at least one infantry as a garrison on all planets.
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Nov 28, 2021 18:49
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Nothing Really Matters (17:19) The Durvalla War has ended, and a couple of others that we don't really care about have broken out. Peaceful expansion resumes, and victory is close; it appears to be only a matter of time. We could easily shorten it by just finding someone else to attack and/or just spamming out more colonies, but we'll wait it out a bit longer and continue climbing up the tech tree. It is inevitable though at this point that the Ikkuro Commonwealth will come to dominate this galactic era.
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Dec 3, 2021 15:56
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Victory! (22:03) The Ikkuro Commonwealth achieve supremacy, as an actually rather interesting war nearby us breaks out and once again we take advantage. I get into some of the research we didn't get to yet, which is mostly just upgrades but there are some more interesting items remaining, and a few other loose ends. We get what I think is supposed to be a midgame crisis to shake things up, but it's too late to matter. Thanks to all who watched and participated here, I did another vote on the channel to see if people wanted some other Distant Worlds scenario and except for one person, they all wanted me to move on to a different game. So next week we'll be diving into a very different project, the quirky and well-regarded 2014 indie RTS Infested Planet.
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Dec 10, 2021 18:05
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If that felt like work, I invite you to check out Aurora 4X. I really like the automation in this game, I wish it was slightly less of a mess. (Another thing I wish it had is a way to become nomadic, it's a thing I want in all those space games, especially when resources are limited.)
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Dec 11, 2021 02:20
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Apparently I found this thread just as the LP ended, but that's fine. Distant Worlds: Universe is one of those games that I got sold on by reading about someone else playing it, only to bounce quite firmly off once I tried it myself. Hopefully watching your videos will at least answer the question of whether I should give it another try.
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Dec 11, 2021 05:41
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The first time you destroy a world by accident, you'll laugh a lot, that's an important selling point.
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Dec 11, 2021 06:02
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SIGSEGV posted:The first time you destroy a world by accident, you'll laugh a lot, that's an important selling point. Yeah, but Sage played with that feature turned off. I'm guessing that and the derelict starfleets is a Shakturi only feature.
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Dec 11, 2021 09:00
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SIGSEGV posted:If that felt like work, I invite you to check out Aurora 4X. Interestingly, Aurora never felt as much like work to me. That's probably largely psychological; Aurora doesnt really present itself as a game so much as an AAR generator, and I never played with a lot of NPCs. More as an exploration of humanity's future with multiple factions. FredMSloniker posted:Hopefully watching your videos will at least answer the question of whether I should give it another try. Obligatory 'new LPs thread' mention, but also I think bouncing off this game does make quite a bit of sense really. I think it's great if you really want what it's trying to do, but I would put it in the 'acquired taste' category overall.
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Dec 13, 2021 13:33
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Its definitely a game I pick up for a week or two, then set down every few years. its fun to look at what my old designs were and think "why did I do that?!" thanks for this though, got me to dive into it again 
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Dec 13, 2021 23:16
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Submitted for archiving.
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Dec 13, 2021 23:34
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