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Bloodly
Nov 3, 2008

Not as strong as you'd expect.
Certainly that's what's said at the official forums, and it seems to be true. Retooling in those cases is a matter of retiring it and rebuilding fresh.

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Bouchacha
Feb 7, 2006

Does this mean that mining stations and the like don't get upgraded unless you intervene or is that taken care by automation?

Dallan Invictus
Oct 11, 2007

The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes, look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
Upgrading mining stations means "let the constant stream of pirates blow it up and then let the AI rebuild it sometime (or do it yourself if you MUST but I would go insane)."

Bad WolfZxc
Jul 28, 2009
Playing a game, got the difficulty and aggression on second highest setting. Get into war with one of the bugs. Rather than invade even the smallest pop planets of mine he just glasses them from orbit. This is a huge pain because he takes out half a dozen of my worlds before I can stop him. Is this a result of either my difficulty or aggression level? or do the bugs do this every time?

E: Also I noticed after they glass one of my planets their rep doesn't go down. What's that about? It was a low pop world, but is it based on number of civies killed or the fact they wiped out a planet?

Bad WolfZxc fucked around with this message at 14:12 on Mar 6, 2013

V for Vegas
Sep 1, 2004

THUNDERDOME LOSER
Looks like Shadows has been pushed back to April because the developer is moving house.

lolasaurusrex
Feb 8, 2013

PUKED posted:

If anyone hasn't checked out mods in a while the Graphics Enhancement Mod is amazing, I've been using it + the Gloom Mod + Explosion Mod + Tampa Sound Mod and it makes a massive difference.

There's also Distant Worlds Extended, which I haven't tried but it looks solid.

Holy poo poo, the Graphics Enhancement Mod looks to make a hell of difference. For some reason the custom cursors are what do it for me, they make knowing what you're about to do so much easier.

I've used DW:Extended before and it is pretty neat, I'd recommend it to anyone who plays a lot of DW.

Toadsniff
Apr 10, 2006

Fire Down Below: Crab Company 2
Was on the Matrix Games site, they have a sale hidden in some Easter eggs.

I found this 30% off code for whoever: 447-554-224

V for Vegas
Sep 1, 2004

THUNDERDOME LOSER
DW Infodump incoming

quote:

Hi Erik, how is Distant Worlds doing?

Very well, thank you for your interest! We’re very excited about the future of Distant Worlds. We’re working on the Shadows expansion right now, but that is just the beginning of what we have in store in the next year or two.

A quick question about the selling: why is the game not available on Steam? It sure deserves to be on this platform.

Our audience knows where to come for good quality strategy games of this sort and building and supporting that community is a strategy that's important to us. We greatly admire what Steam does but it's not a one size fits all world. That is not to say we would never look at this platform, but for us this is a case by case issue and to date we have not seen this case made out. Their business model very much favours mass market products and deep discounting. This is not necessarily the correct business model for our titles or our audience. The truth is that there is not much real data among other distributors for our sorts of products or our audience and to be frank we are arguably the best source of this data.

Additionally, we provide much greater support to our developers and where appropriate this can include financial support. In essence we enter into a full partnership with them and whilst increasing the number of units sold at extremely low prices might not affect us greatly it can often damage our developers and that would be a betrayal of their trust. Of course there are some "Angry Birds" ( :lol: ) phenomena's out there where low pricing can work and on occasion a title might break through into this mass market, but for our sorts of products the reality is, this is a roll of a dice. Not necessarily sound business? We had a 67% growth last year so we must be doing something right.

So in the current state of the game, what do you think needs to be improved the most? And what do players want to be improved?

We have a very active player base and we read their input regularly to help guide us on the areas of the game we should focus on.

Because Distant Worlds is played against the AI and also has many options to automate and delegate tasks to your own AI “viceroys”, the AI is always at or near the top of the list. Improvements in this area tend to have a lot of leverage on improving gameplay overall.
We also get a lot of requests for additional mod support – we have added a great deal over the past two expansions, but this is an area where Distant Worlds can still improve a great deal. As usual, we’re making sure that the new features and gameplay we add are open to modders and that previous mods will work well with Shadows without requiring an overhaul. We’re also planning to do a modder-focused expansion after Shadows to incorporate as many of the mod community’s requests for customizability as possible.

Because Distant Worlds can be played in many different styles and at many different levels, we also get a lot of interface and information management suggestions. We spend a fair amount of time improving the interface with each expansion to make sure that the new features are well presented and add fun rather than work for the player.

As the in-game galaxies can also get fairly huge, performance also gets a frequent mention and we’ve been improving that with each Distant Worlds release. Legends and now Shadows both made significant improvements to performance. In Legends we used some of the extra room those performance improvements gave us to implement more features. In Shadows we’ve made the most significant improvements to the performance of the graphics and memory management in Distant Worlds since the original release.

Finally, there’s always interest in new gameplay and new stories to tell. In eachj of those areas, each expansion has tried to outdo the previous one.

In the next add-on, Shadows, gameplay will offer a new experience. Can you tell us about this new experience?

Absolutely. In terms of the storyline, Distant Worlds: Shadows takes the player to the time before the original Distant Worlds. I don’t want to spoil the original story for those who have not played it, but this earlier starting point means that the events of Distant Worlds, Return of the SHakturi and Legends have not yet happened and the various empires are just leaving their planets and reaching out into space. In Shadows we’ve added the option of playing as a pre-hyperspace planetary civilization that starts with just a single planet and nothing else or as a completely new playstyle, a space-based faction that starts with no planets, but with unique new gameplay options and victory conditions. This means you can also play as a pirate, mercenary or smuggler rather than just a planetary empire.

In addition, we’ve added many other new features.

- New Pirate Leader and Pirate Captain characters
- Assault pods and ship to ship or base boarding actions, including ship and base capture
- Gravitic Weapons and Tractor Beams
- New expanded Ground Combat with new troop types and an animated ground battle resolution screen
- Infantry, Armor/Mech, Special Forces, Planetary Defense Units (multi-layered)
- Resolution of the multiple stages of a planetary assault
- Expanded troop experience
- New Ground Combat technology tree
- Expanded and improved Area Weapons
- New planetary facilities
- Improved AI and new comprehensive difficulty settings

The new difficulty options along with the two Age of Shadows pre-hyperspace empires and space-based factions should make for a challenging game for players of all levels. Even the most experienced Distant Worlds players can now configure the game so that their skills will be tested.

If you don’t mind some storyline spoilers, I’ll add the following:

In the original Distant Worlds, civilizations have recently rebuilt themselves and returned to space in a galaxy that was nearly destroyed at the end of the last war against a great intergalactic foe. The time immediately after that great war was known as the Age of Darkness. During this time, there was very little left of the previous galactic civilizations. In addition to a few survivors on planets and colonies here and there, a very few survived on ships and remote stations. Many who survived the end of the war did not survive long into the future, but others managed to find a way. Generation after generation passed, even among the long-lived species.

In these early days, the survivors who had escaped the near-extermination of galactic life with some technology intact, especially those who still had working stations or ships and knowledge from the old empires, were in a better position than most on the planets, where the devastation and regression to a near-primitive state had been nearly complete and in many cases the plagues of the past war still periodically returned. Space seemed a much safer place to many.

During the Age of Darkness, these space-based survivors who still had the means (although in many cases limited and often decreasing with each generation) to travel space searched the galaxy for other remnants of civilization and the means to keep their technology working. In some cases, they formed beneficial relationship with those who were left here and there on the planets, even helping them to develop and rebuild. In other cases, they raided the planets and their remaining populations and took what they needed as plunder. Often, it was a bit of both.
Eventually, the balance of power began to shift. The space-based survivors had developed their own empires of sorts, usually as traders, warlords or pirates. Despite their access to some of the old technologies, their numbers remained few and the planets began to exert greater control over their own destinies. Some had even developed populations and civilization to the point where they were able to contest control over their local space. This is the Age of Shadows, in between the Age of Darkness and the Distant Worlds galaxy as you have known it to date.

What were previously just "pirates" are now independent space-based factions that can pursue a variety of playstyles, ranging from trade, war and espionage to pure chaos and plunder.

What is the difference between playing as a smuggler, pirate or mercenary?

When you play as a space-based faction, you compete with the other space-based factions. Each playstyle (smuggler, raider, mercenary or pirate) has its own different victory conditions and has a different starting situation.

For example, if you prefer to explore and trade, playing as a Smuggler will give you advantages in those areas and also give you a starting position and victory conditions that reward that kind of play. This includes special smuggling missions that can be requested by the planetary empires, which give a bonus for the transport of certain resources.
Similarly, a Raider will want to gain income, technology and victory points by attacking, raiding those resources he can find. The new “Raid” order is a type of attack that uses boarding or raiding parties to attack bases and planets, not to conquer, but to loot and pillage.

Space-based civilizations research fairly slowly as they have very little population relative to the planetary civilizations, but they have other options ranging from trade to ship and base capture, to technology raids for gaining what they need.

Mercenaries can similarly accept military missions set by the planetary civilizations to attack or defend certain targets, earning rewards and reputation through success.
The balanced Pirate playstyle includes a bit of everything.

And the difference between current timeline and the Age of Shadows?

Please see the long answer above. It’s older, more primitive, more chaotic and more dangerous in its own way. Players will be challenged in new ways and at smaller scales, where a single mining or research station will be much more critical than in the large empires of the previous releases. Of course, if you wish you can start in the Age of Shadows and play through the original Distant Worlds storyline as well as continue on through Return of the Shakturi and Legends to have the full Distant Worlds experience.

At PC4WAR, we love tactic, and it seems that you will implement a new ground battle screen? How is it going to work?

The ground combat screen has two main parts. The first is the planet surface and the second is the space/orbit section. At any time, players can click on the troops area on a planet that is under attack to watch the combat unfold.

Each new unit type plays a role and you can watch the invading forces move from space to the planet surface, while being engaged by the planetary defenses. Once on the surface, special forces may go after the planetary defenses, while armor, mech and infantry troops fight it out. You can watch each unit and see which enemy it is engaging while also monitoring their strength and casualties.

As with Legends, characters can have a big impact (in the form of Generals, who also gains some new abilities), as can various new combined arms and attack/counter-attack bonuses for the right combination of troop types relative to the enemy forces.

Are you going to change graphics and UI, add new factions, custom options, automation parameters, … ?

We are always making improvements in these areas and Shadows will be no exception, though many are there to support the new features, but also add a lot of nice new options for the player. For example, you can now set a garrison level on each planet to make sure you keep a minimum level of troops there even when loading transports. Troop and Fleet management has been improved and we’ve added a better view of resource demand to the expansion planner. The new factions take the form of the new space-based factions and every significant new feature we add as always has automation options and policy settings.

We also spent a fair amount of time improving the AI – it needed to become smarter to survive in the Age of Shadows, both as a space-based faction and as a pre-hyperspace planetary civilization. In every area from exploration and expansion to resource exploitation, economic planning and warfare it is better.

Can you tell us something exclusive on this already exciting new extension? :)

Sure, I’ll give you more than one.

As a space-based faction, you can gain influence over planetary civilizations. The exact method depends on your playstyle, but the net result is an increase in income for you and an increase in planetary corruption for the owner of the planet. Over time, if your influence is high enough, you can build a secret base or even a secret fortress there, which locks in your influence and gives you other advantages (for example, while smugglers normally have a small chance of being detected and turned away if the planet is unfriendly to you, if you have a secret base there, they are no longer distinguishable from normal traders as far as the planet is concerned). In time, if your influence is strong enough you can even get to the point that your space-based civilization may in fact bring the planet completely under your control. This means that while you start as a space-based faction, if you are very successful and you wish to focus on that path, you can transition to a planetary empire as well.

Also, Gravitic Weapons are the first weapon in the game that can ignore both shields and armor. Fortunately, they have a relatively short range and are less effective against larger targets, but if you pursue the entire tech tree the results can be extremely impressive, including the gravitic wave weapons and to create something similar to a short duration small black hole.

Finally, I will also mention that we plan to do one more expansion after Shadows, in which we expect to open the game up more than ever to the modding community. After that, we’re planning something even more exciting…

Thank you!





uber_stoat
Jan 21, 2001



Pillbug
It's unfortunate that they have such a wrong-headed view of how Steam works. I'm sure there are many thousands of people out there who would take a chance on this game if only it was available on Steam for a less cash.

Sankis
Mar 8, 2004

But I remember the fella who told me. Big lad. Arms as thick as oak trees, a stunning collection of scars, nice eye patch. A REAL therapist he was. Er wait. Maybe it was rapist?


Matrixgames and the one or two other similar sites that cater to super hardcore strategy all have that philosophy. They somehow convince the developers they publish that it's in their best interest to remain available solely on their website using whatever crap distribution they have. I have no idea how they manage it anymore considering how much most developers love what Steam lets them do.

Fromdusktilprawn
Mar 11, 2009

uber_stoat posted:

It's unfortunate that they have such a wrong-headed view of how Steam works. I'm sure there are many thousands of people out there who would take a chance on this game if only it was available on Steam for a less cash.

Yeah, I would at least. Steam, gog or some other decent one at a decent price and I would buy it.

V for Vegas
Sep 1, 2004

THUNDERDOME LOSER
From the 'financial support' line, I would say Matrix requires devs to pay a fixed $ amount from sales. With high prices, you need a lower amount of sales to reach the figure. Matrix no doubt has data showing what the 'hardcore' audience is and likely sales targets. With high volume low price sales, you have to make a lot more sales before the Matrix payment is met, if ever.

Demiurge4
Aug 10, 2011

But why would anyone choose Matrix Games over Gog or Steam? A-Sharp was vehemently against Steam for the longest time but they eventually made bank with King of Dragon Pass on iOS. I don't have numbers for Gog sales but I imagine they're quite decent. There really is no data to suggest that Distant Worlds wouldn't be crazy successful on Steam for a $15 pricetag.

Grey Hunter
Oct 17, 2007

Hero of the soviet union.
Accidental destroyer of planets

Demiurge4 posted:

But why would anyone choose Matrix Games over Gog or Steam? A-Sharp was vehemently against Steam for the longest time but they eventually made bank with King of Dragon Pass on iOS. I don't have numbers for Gog sales but I imagine they're quite decent. There really is no data to suggest that Distant Worlds wouldn't be crazy successful on Steam for a $15 pricetag.

A question asked time and time again. I can ALMOST see it for WITP or another of the really complex games, but DW is a RT space strat game! that's almost bankable!

Bouchacha
Feb 7, 2006

Yeah it's really bizarre. A-Sharp and Spiderweb were both vehemently against the low margin/mass sale approach until they made all the money from it. I would think those two high-profile converts would be sufficient for a semi-mainstream title such as Distant Worlds to pursue the same strategy.

Demiurge4
Aug 10, 2011

Bouchacha posted:

Yeah it's really bizarre. A-Sharp and Spiderweb were both vehemently against the low margin/mass sale approach until they made all the money from it. I would think those two high-profile converts would be sufficient for a semi-mainstream title such as Distant Worlds to pursue the same strategy.

I forgot about Spiderweb. I'd be really curious to know how much money they made from Steam, compared to their lifetime sales before Steam. I played the original Exile games (before they became Avernum) and I went ahead and bought the new ones on Steam just for convenience because they were cheap anyway. I do kind of prefer the old ones though, they simplified the classes and stats a lot for the Avernum upgrade but the better graphics and UI is a good tradeoff.

Bouchacha
Feb 7, 2006

Here's Jeff Vogel on what changed his mind: http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2011/10/why-all-our-games-are-now-cheaper.html

quote:

I'm a dumb person in plenty of key ways, so it took me a while to observe the key fact:

A LOT of money is being made by selling games for cheap.

ExiledTinkerer
Nov 4, 2009
It seems like the only thing that might change their mind is a combo of a literal intervention by the Illwinter chaps who have at long last finally branched to Desura and Steam after being on Shrapnel, the other of these sorts, for ages now at a high price...and some sort of horrid implosion of Shrapnel outright that clears the fog of mystique that has been built up.

Mayveena
Dec 27, 2006

People keep vandalizing my ID photo; I've lodged a complaint with HR
They increasing a dollar profit by x% is totally irrelevant. Not saying that's what happened, but please spare me the percentage increases. Steam offers free marketing and is clearly a successful platform for both established publishers and indie developers. They are simply stupid.

ArchangeI
Jul 15, 2010
I simply can not get into the mindset that selling to a broader audience somehow means you make less money. I just can't. No one is stopping them from selling for 60 bucks right after release and then droping to 30 for a steam season sale. These people literally hate money. Even if the entire process of going on steam only nets them a handful of sales, those are probably sales they would not otherwise have gotten. I think it is a fairly safe bet that the grognards will find your game wherever you may chose to put it, but the casual gamers will not, even if they might want to play - or at least buy - it.

nessin
Feb 7, 2010
Aside from the fact that Matrix is a publisher, thus inserting another cog in the wheel that A-Sharp and Spiderweb don't have to deal with, Matrix has also had games (or at least the developers they've represented) put up on Steam and other platforms before. For all of you that cry foul on their stance, the fact is you are working entirely off heresay and assumptions while Matrix has access to actual data. Granted they still could be insane when the data shows it would work out in their favor, but unless they reveal the actual data or someone reveals hard numbers from a caparable market, you can argue till you're blue in the face but it won't change the fact that they know more than you do on the subject.

Mayveena
Dec 27, 2006

People keep vandalizing my ID photo; I've lodged a complaint with HR

nessin posted:

Aside from the fact that Matrix is a publisher, thus inserting another cog in the wheel that A-Sharp and Spiderweb don't have to deal with, Matrix has also had games (or at least the developers they've represented) put up on Steam and other platforms before. For all of you that cry foul on their stance, the fact is you are working entirely off heresay and assumptions while Matrix has access to actual data. Granted they still could be insane when the data shows it would work out in their favor, but unless they reveal the actual data or someone reveals hard numbers from a caparable market, you can argue till you're blue in the face but it won't change the fact that they know more than you do on the subject.

Sorry, but there's such a thing as sound business practices. I'm not working off hearsay, I'm working off my damned MBA. And the work I've done and the studies I've seen all say that for Distant Worlds they are wrong. This specific title (not all of their titles because I don't know or track all of their titles) has more people wanting to buy it and not buying because of the price than I've ever seen, even with Dominions.

Basically, you want to leverage marketing power. Matrix Games has little marketing power, few people have heard of it outside of the core space strategy folks. Steam on the other hand is used by millions, if you release on Steam you are guaranteed at least a few days on the front page of new releases. There is no possible way that the number of people who see the new releases on Steam isn't a gazillion times greater than the people who go to the Matrix website and find out about the game there. This means that they are sacrificing critical marketing exposure by not going with Steam. Then they have to price very high, because they are not selling in enough quantity to price low. But if millions of people saw their damned game for a few days, they'd sell more copies than they've sold for three years during that time. There's simply no way that they are reaching more than just their core audience. The advantage of Steam is that people who don't know who the gently caress Matrix is will learn about the game, see all the resulting forum posts and Steam/friend reviews and buy the game. This is what marketing is all about. Sure you have a demographic but the real money profit is in the crossover traffic.

But they are pigheaded and like not having money so hey, whatever. I cannot for the life of me think of any MBA who would advise them to do what they are doing with this specific title. Logistically it could be a challenge to remove Distant Worlds from the rest of their stable of games, but they need to do just that.

nessin
Feb 7, 2010

Lorini posted:

Sorry, but there's such a thing as sound business practices. I'm not working off hearsay, I'm working off my damned MBA. And the work I've done and the studies I've seen all say that for Distant Worlds they are wrong. This specific title (not all of their titles because I don't know or track all of their titles) has more people wanting to buy it and not buying because of the price than I've ever seen, even with Dominions.

I'd raise your MBA with my own, but it's meaningless to sit here and say "Oh yeah, well I have a MBA too!"

In any case, there is a lot more to consider. For example, if they go to Steam what will that count for in loss of direct sales? Every person who would have bought through Matrix but instead buys through Steam (or other third-party) is a sale at whatever the price sold minus the distributor fee over a direct sale. Just to throw some easy numbers out as an example, if Matrix sells a copy direct they $55 per sale, say a base price of 60 minus an assumed 5 for thier own download service/support. If you switch to selling on Steam, assuming at $60 and Steam gets a 20% cut (no idea what Steam's usual cut is), then you're looking at $48 per sale. For every person that would have bought through Matrix but instead chooses Steam you've lost $7 and given them reason to wait before buying other games through Matrix in the hopes of getting it on Steam, and this can add up. If you assume 10,000 in sales without Steam then you're looking at 550,000 in profit. By switching to Steam let's assume half your customers being purchasing through Steam, then you've got 5,000 sales at $55, and 5,000 at $48. Now of course Steam will certainly bring in more sales than they would have without out, but you already need to make up $50,000 (roughly just over a 1000 Steam sales) before you're ahead of the game for switching to Steam.

I think it's safe to assume Steam would definitely make up for that, but sales or price reductions begin to make that number you've got to make up grow, and grow quickly. And for all I know Steam could take 30% and Matrix pays less than $5 for their downloade service per sale which would skew the numbers even further.

I'm not arguing that putting the game on Steam would be a bad idea. I'm all for Matrix offering their games through Steam, GamersGate, GoG, wherever they can get it to diversify and expand their market, but it's insane to assume you know more than they do on the subject or that it's not without potential negatives in niche markets. And there is definitely a case to be made that Distant Worlds isn't in nearly as niche a market as their traditional wargame, but it's definitely not a game you can expect to sell millions of copies even if it was on steam for $5.

Bouchacha
Feb 7, 2006

Yeah I agree with nessin. Matrix has the biggest incentive of pricing Distant Worlds at whatever optimizes profit. We can sit here and speculate, and maybe even speculate correctly too, but we'll never have the same data or have spent as much thought on the issue as Matrix has.

I still think they're being stupid though.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Ignoring strict profit and money for the moment, though not abandoning it, as people who either play the game or who simply want to, or those who just want others to enjoy the game like they do: we are all staggered by the $90 entry fee, and the apparent choice to entrench the game in an obscure, niche storefront, who say they know what is best for the game itself and its players. It's not just annoying, it's infuriating, at worst, alienating for people who actually like the game.

It's just dumb all around.

edit: much like my post.

doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 10:29 on Apr 3, 2013

Mayveena
Dec 27, 2006

People keep vandalizing my ID photo; I've lodged a complaint with HR
If we were actually talking $55 that would make sense. Not everyone knows everything about business, there are plenty of business people making stupid decisions, unfortunately many of us encounter them every day. $90 entry fee because you don't want to have another company take a cut is ridiculous. Who else charges that for what really is not a lot of code?

I totally understand why they don't put many of their games on Steam; historical wargames just don't have much appeal outside of their core demographic so why bother? But everyone I know who is the slightest bit interested in space strategy games would like Distant Worlds. It's far more accessible than most war games and is more polished as well.

There's no way that they *know* that their way is better because they haven't tried Steam. They can make what I consider to be poor assumptions about the appeal of the game if they like, but there's no magical data out there that will tell them how many units the game will sell with a price point that is more in line with other indie games assuming Steam's marketing strategy. Sure they can prove that using their marketing they would lose money by cutting the price, but that's not the point. The point is with millions more people seeing the game, they would get more sales at a competitive price.

Bloodly
Nov 3, 2008

Not as strong as you'd expect.
The concern may be more due to Steamworks than Steam, if that makes sense.

Valve have somehow finagled themselves into the position where it's lying over the entire PC gaming industry from biggest to smallest like a lazy cat-god demanding tribute. This despite Steam at start doing terribly at it's start-'it should have died', one could argue. Even old games Steam or Gamersgate or etc sells like UFO:Enemy Unknown, which HAD no 'protection', will say it needs Steamworks now.

It's a very concerning thing, personally. How did they get themselves into this position where everyone trusts them with everything that is gaming? And what happens when the whole thing breaks down as it will inevitably?(He says as he plays Warlock: Master of the Arcane. Yes, I'm pretty much a hypocrite after breaking my own 'embargo' for the sake of one game.)

...Regardless, knocking aside GOG IS a very stupid move.

Mistayke
May 7, 2003

Time to get your wallets at the ready.......SOON.

http://www.matrixgames.com/products/466/details/Distant.Worlds-.Shadows


...soon.

Start a new empire before the discovery of hyperspace travel and try to expand into the stars, or play as one of the legendary Pirate factions of the Age of Shadows, competing with new victory conditions to establish an alternate history where the pirates triumphed over the planetary civilizations. The pirate options alone include four completely new playstyles (ranging from Raiders to Smugglers) and new smuggling and mercenary missions. Also included are ship boarding actions and ship and base capture, new Ship Captain characters and pirate raids of planets and space stations.

New gameplay also includes expanded ground combat, with a full new ground combat tech tree, a ground combat resolution screen and multiple different troop types (infantry, armor, planetary defences and special forces). Ground combat is now animated and resolved from the descent of the first assault pods from orbit to the final battles for planetary control, with new bonuses for combined arms and the effects of the different troop types as well as local space superiority all considered in the outcome.

The expanded tech tree also includes Gravitic Weapons and Tractor Beams as well as additional planetary facilities that allow you more customization on character recruitment.

Distant Worlds: Shadows also includes an updated and improved graphical engine that allows for much better performance in the epic 1,000+ star galaxies that many Distant Worlds fans enjoy. The AI is also much improved, especially in terms of the economy and a new comprehensive difficulty setting should mean that even the most experienced Distant Worlds player will find a challenge in Distant Worlds: Shadows. As usual, modding support has been kept up to date with the new improvements.

Mistayke fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Apr 10, 2013

V for Vegas
Sep 1, 2004

THUNDERDOME LOSER
May 21 is the release date.


e: The new ground combat mechanics are very granular. You actually build lots of different troop types (armour, infantry, special ops) which seem to work in a rock paper scissors configuration. Seems like a lot more micro for little gain.



V for Vegas fucked around with this message at 13:42 on Apr 28, 2013

Yar The Pirate
Feb 19, 2012
For anyone that still plays this the sound, graphics, bloom, and explosion mods mentioned in the OP have really improved my experience. I was kinda lukewarm about the game since the ship models looked stretched and bare but the mods improved that. Also that awful digging sound the mining bases make is softer so I don't jump out of my chair every time I zoom into a planet with one. They really do improve the game a lot.

Edit: I also hope that the new ground combat mechanic is optional at start if it sucks.

Yar The Pirate fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Apr 28, 2013

Zilkin
Jan 9, 2009

That is definitely something the people at Matrix Games should read. Also in some other blog post Vogel revealed the exact sales numbers for some of his past titles, and it was about only couple thousand copies total(this was before Steam obviously). I'd imagine the sales number for a fringe title like DW, sold only on their own very poorly known site, can't be much higher.

At the very least it would make sense for Matrix to put title or two on Steam to test the waters.

Dallan Invictus
Oct 11, 2007

The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes, look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.

V for Vegas posted:

May 21 is the release date.


e: The new ground combat mechanics are very granular. You actually build lots of different troop types (armour, infantry, special ops) which seem to work in a rock paper scissors configuration. Seems like a lot more micro for little gain.

Whoa. Is that shortage notifier new, or has my economy always been such a well-oiled machine that I never noticed it?

(as for ground combat, well, as long as the AI can still manage it competently and there's a policy or something to tweak force mixes I give no fucks how much micro is involved. All this game's crazy micro is optional, that's the best part.)

Bloodly
Nov 3, 2008

Not as strong as you'd expect.
Hopefully it will mean that races that are weaker in ground combat won't be completely hosed-tech and unlocked forces may help with the weakness better now. As it is now, you can't invade(Not nice, but understandable), and you can't resist invasion(Ridiculous). And war isn't always avoidable.

Bloodly fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Apr 28, 2013

V for Vegas
Sep 1, 2004

THUNDERDOME LOSER
Preview up http://www.spacesector.com/blog/2013/05/distant-worlds-shadows-preview/

This pirate stuff sounds kick-rear end.

quote:


The Life of a Pirate

These new pirate factions expand their influence and wealth very differently from traditional empires. While the empires economy is based mostly on taxing the population, and from revenue obtained from trading and tourism, pirates gain their wealth by very different means. And, Shadows lets you play three distinct types of pirating experiences.

You can decide to be a Raider leader and expand your wealth and influence as a looter and as a terrorizer and controller of worlds. And to do that, you take advantage of Shadows’ new raid system which lets you attack, sack and plunder bases and planets for loot. But, when you play as a Raider you not only go after easy prey but also try to establish control of planets by having war ships nearby, and fiercely compete with other pirate factions for control of such planets. The more you control a planet, and the more developed it is, the more wealth you can extract from it. To extend your control further you can build pirate bases and pirate fortresses on planets. Ultimately, you can even deploy a very special facility that will allow you to have full control of a planet like normal empires do. If you end up controlling a notable amount of colonies, you eliminate the most rival pirate factions and conduct the most successful raids in the galaxy, you win as a Raider pirate. Sounds fun to you?

But, if you find the need to control independent, or other empires’ colonies boring, and the business of other pirate factions, or anybody else for that matter, don’t interest you that much, you can decide to go full rogue and go all guns for hire. You’re a Mercenary pirate, and your business is to take advantage of the new pirate attack and defense mission mechanics, which are missions requested by other factions for a price. But, while you find the Raider’s need to control others people’s lives boring, you still find a lot of fun on rising havoc and plunder on those poor innocents who just want to run an honest life. Bah, where’s the fun on that anyway? :)

So, if you play as a Mercenary pirate, you will want to not only complete the most pirate attack and defense missions, but also undertake the most raids in the galaxy. In between, and as stealing can be much easier and more fun than building stuff, you will want to capture what you don’t destroy, and so, you should try your best to use Shadows new boarding and capture mechanics to achieve just that.

Alternatively, if you find all that aggression unnecessary and just an inefficient use of resources, you can always decide to take a more reserved and low-profile pirate posture and act as the Galaxy’s supplier and protector. The kind of people who can get you anything and whom you can “trust”. Are you in need of a particular supply of resources? Don’t despair. We are here all day to help you out in your needs and ventures, but not without asking you for an outrageous lump of money for the trouble. After all, these fresh supplies, which were exactly what you needed, were very hard to come by, and so, all we ask is a “small” compensation for our efforts.

This is the life of a smuggler pirate, and when you choose to be a smuggler lord, that means you’re an information trafficker and you’re also extremely resourceful. You prefer to avoid conflict if possible, but not without a price. So, you’ll want to establish as many pirate fee, I mean, protection arrangements with other empires as possible, and you’ll want to expand your influence by carrying out the most intelligence missions as well. Of course, knowledge is power, so you should also do your best to accomplish the most research in the galaxy.

But, Shadows offers you a fourth pirate style option: a balanced approach. So, if you don’t want to specialize and just want to experience a bit of everything the new pirate gameplay has to offer, you can decide to go with a “balanced” pirate style which combines all the other three pirate-style’s victory conditions into a balanced mix.

As you can see, I let myself carry away pretty easily while describing the different types of Shadows pirate experiences, and the new mechanics that come along with them. And, I think that’s proof that, while I’m still scratching the surface here, I think CodeForce has a done a great job on designing the different pirate gameplay styles. Time will tell how balanced and fun playing as the pirates really is, but in the period of time I played this beta preview build I did enjoy these different experiences. And, I don’t usually fancy pirate stuff that much.

Mayveena
Dec 27, 2006

People keep vandalizing my ID photo; I've lodged a complaint with HR
Release of the new expansion is scheduled for Thursday, May 23rd. Sale/promotion will also happen at that time.

Demiurge4
Aug 10, 2011

It's going to cost $40, isn't it?

Mayveena
Dec 27, 2006

People keep vandalizing my ID photo; I've lodged a complaint with HR

Demiurge4 posted:

It's going to cost $40, isn't it?

They are being very coy, but I would expect that from past expansions.

V for Vegas
Sep 1, 2004

THUNDERDOME LOSER
But Distant worlds, Shakturi and Legends will be 'discounted' to only $20 each, making the whole package a reasonable $100.

Mayveena
Dec 27, 2006

People keep vandalizing my ID photo; I've lodged a complaint with HR
They just released an update for Legends and Shadows is still on schedule to be released tomorrow. Use Check for Updates on the opening menu.

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Malcolm
May 11, 2008
It's a month late but what the hell I'll chime in with a Steam anecdote. I am one person that enjoys space sims and this is my story:

I bought Distant Worlds at launch, and remember how odd it was that the Matrix download site would only let me download one time. The game I just purchased. "Be sure to burn a copy to physical media!" the download page warned. I think it was $3 to download again in the future if I lost my backup installer. I never really got into Distant Worlds as the base game wasn't terribly meaty, something the expansions rectified I'm sure. I never found out firsthand because I didn't feel like shelling out high prices for each expansion from the same publisher.

I also purchased Sins of a Solar Empire from Matrix Games, and even tolerated installing a launcher just for Sins. I played it quite a bit and bought the first couple expansions when they came out. Much time passed. I grew weary of the Matrix launcher and stopped installing it on new OS builds. One day I saw that SoaSE: Rebellion was available on Steam, possibly on sale. I bought it on Steam and never looked back. Now I can play the game I like with Steam that I can tolerate. I would buy DW and all its content on Steam for about $50, there should be plenty of room there for everyone to get fat and happy.

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