Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Sir Pseudonymous]

The secret to fighting wars is dropship spam on their capital/largest planets. Without those, they'll be hemorrhaging money and left without their main shipyards, so it's a simple matter to mop up their fledgling colonies with three or four legions each (to quickly overwhelm the defenders and be ready for redeployment to the next target). Sad there's not an option to enslave/massacre/deport/eat the inhabitants though... I want to play as the Imperium of Man, and slaughter all the filthy fucking xenos.

I take a slightly different take on war in DW. I do lightning raids on all of their mining stations, strangling their material income so they can't replace losses.

I left out the biggest benefit: you gain the income you take from them. If you started all the empires out on equal footing with a single planet, that means one planet will be producing 99% of their income. You take that planet, and if it's the first you've taken that will double your income. Results are less pronounced for subsequent invasions, but the big thing is that it directly hurts them, and directly helps you.

[forsaken1111]

The expansion is out now: Distant Worlds - Return of the Shakturi

Features

    New backstory
    Two new alien races with exciting storyline events!
    Next chapter of the storyline where a possible intergalactic menace returns!
    Fighters and Carriers
    Build fighter bay components into ships and bases
    Fighters launch from carriers to intercept enemies: standard fighters that attack other fighters, bombers that attack ships and bases. Several fighter and bomber variants available with research.
    Completely new Research system with comprehensive tech trees
    Greatly expanded technology options with customizable research costs allow you to tailor your game to your liking!
    Queue multiple research projects in each tree, crash research to obtain new tech faster
    Some research projects improve existing components, minimizing the need to retrofit ships and bases to obtain new tech advantages
    New tech for your ships and bases
    Missiles faster and longer range than torpedoes
    Ion Weapons fire ion bolts that disable weapons and engines of enemy ships
    Ion Defense protects ships and bases from the effects of ion weapons
    Point Defense Cannons attack enemy fighters and bombers
    Fleet Targeting Uplink improve weapons targeting of all nearby ships
    Fleet Area ECM improve countermeasures of all nearby ships
    Area Shield Restore quickly recharge shields of your nearby ships when in battle
    HyperBlock Components provide safe zone around space ports, pulling enemy ships out of hyperspace before they reach a target
    Trace Scanners reveal internal details of enemy ships and bases
    Planetary Facilities built at colonies
    Troop Academy trains elite troops with high strength
    Robotic Troop Foundry manufactures robotic troops
    Troop Cloning Facility clones the best troops in your empire
    Giant Ion Cannon fires disabling ion bolts at invading enemy ships
    Planetary Shield defends the colony against enemy bombardment
    Regional Capital provides additional capitals in your empire, reducing corruption in nearby colonies
    User Interface Improvements
    Action Buttons - One-click access to common tasks, enabling you to easily manage most of your empire directly from the main screen
        Colonize planets, build mining stations and other bases
        Construct new ships and bases at space ports and colonies
        Select enemy targets to attack
    Empire Navigation Tool - Set of scrollable lists that provide quick access to everything in your empire: colonies, space ports, fleets, potential colonies, potential mining stations, etc.
        Hover over an item in the list to ping its location in the main view
        Click an item in the list to select it, double-click an item to move to it
    Enemy Targets List - Shows all known enemy targets
        Click a target to assign the nearest available fleet to attack it
        Or cycle your fleets to attack with the selected fleet
    Build Orders - Mass-produce many new ships in one simple step
    Fleet enhancements
    Automated Fleet formation generates both large and small sized fleets to more effectively handle both offense and defense
    Automated Fleets automatically respond to intercept nearby enemies without additional player management
    Other
    Empire Policies: More detailed control over the automation of your empire set policy options that your advisers will enact for you, allowing you to focus on the strategic level.
    New galaxy shapes in game setup
    Extended modding support
    Access to tech descriptions during Diplomacy
    Many other minor improvements
    Play Distant Worlds in windowed mode minimize the window while your game plays in the background
    Please note: Distant Worlds Return of the Shakturi REQUIRES ownership of the original full Distant Worlds game.

[Journier]

since i bought this game the day it came out nearly, and was very saddened by its "mod support" Id like to know what the "extended mod support" means in the expansion.

first game you could just mod pictures and race details .

hopefully this expansion makes it truthfully moddable.

[forsaken1111]

since i bought this game the day it came out nearly, and was very saddened by its "mod support" Id like to know what the "extended mod support" means in the expansion.

first game you could just mod pictures and race details .

hopefully this expansion makes it truthfully moddable.

I honestly don't know, as I haven't tried modding the game. You could ask on their forum.

The game is pretty good though, and I would certainly recommend buying the expansion; it makes your life a lot easier.

To anyone who played this game briefly and then stopped for whatever reason, I suggest you start a new game with everything on manual control at first rather than letting the AI make all of the decisions. It can make you feel a bit disconnected when everything is acting on its own, like you aren't really playing. As your empire grows put some things on automatic, like your escort ships for patrolling systems and bases, and set it to suggest certain things. This really renewed my interest in the game, running it all myself.

[forsaken1111]

So after having played the expansion for a few hours, I am pretty impressed. The game is much more 'complete' and polished now, with many tools to assist you in running an empire. I'm in the middle of a pitched battle with a neighboring alien empire. The new ship construction window helps immensely as it spreads whatever ships you order across your available construction yards to get it done faster.

[The13thRonin]

since i bought this game the day it came out nearly, and was very saddened by its "mod support" Id like to know what the "extended mod support" means in the expansion.

first game you could just mod pictures and race details .

hopefully this expansion makes it truthfully moddable.

Modding support is on the agenda for all post-expansion updates. First one is coming before Christmas and is going to flesh out the in-game editor allowing us to truly customise planets (aka - basic map making will be implemented). After that they've said they're gonna work on allowing the players to modify the tech tree and also ship components. Races are also moddable now after the expansion and their is no upward limit.

[ductape]

the first things we will see are full Star Wars and Star Trek mods. A good chunk of the ship graphics are already done.

[Arkum]

I was under the impression that the expansion would come under the normal patching process. For example. When they released patch 1.06 the modding range was increased for the editor. It looks like they are doing the same thing Paradox did with the Doomsday so called expansion of HOI2. When Paradox pulled this one some yeard ago I never bought any more products from them and I guess I will repeat my actions wifh Matrix Games. They just loss a customer for War In the Pacific the Admiral Ed.
I would also like to say that the game still had crash issues  that are present after patch 1.06 .

[forsaken1111]

I was under the impression that the expansion would come under the normal patching process. For example. When they released patch 1.06 the modding range was increased for the editor. It looks like they are doing the same thing Paradox did with the Doomsday so called expansion of HOI2. When Paradox pulled this one some yeard ago I never bought any more products from them and I guess I will repeat my actions wifh Matrix Games. They just loss a customer for War In the Pacific the Admiral Ed.
I would also like to say that the game still had crash issues  that are present after patch 1.06 .

I'm not sure I understand. You're saying you wanted all of the expansion content for free as a patch?

[ductape]

I GET what he is saying, the expansion is mostly improvements on the UI that in some opinions might ought to have been there int he first place. We put up with lots of bugs and such in the original game which they eventually patched.

The new "content" is 2 new races and a new endgame/backstory/plot which is not very game changing. IT not really and expansion, almost like a sequel.

That being said, i think its worth the extra money. Its an amazing game and in the end you need to ask yourself if you want to play it for the price. That's the only question, if you ask me rather than some perceived notion of how the company is trying to milk our dollars out of us. I feel the devs put the right amount of work into this for the amount of money they have made.

[forsaken1111]

The 2 new races aren't playable actually, they're analogous to the Antarans/New Orions in Master of Orion 2/3 respectively as they function as part of the overall plotline. Some of the changes are UI improvements yes but others... the entire tech tree is expanded and much more usable.

Pre-expansion you had blasters and torpedos. Now I have carriers backing up missile boats with heavily shielded (Dense Energy Bank shield variant, one of three shield 'types') destroyers with high-damage low-range blaster variants for close-in knife fighting.

The tech expansion alone is worth the cost, but I'm sure it took them quite a bit of time overhauling the UI as well and they deserve to be paid for the work. The expanded storyline does actually impact the game quite a lot, and that is as much as I can say without dropping spoilers.

[Arkum]

I do not believe this game is has good as the Space Empires III & IV. Those games are almost infinitely more moddable than DW an cheaper in are virtually crash free. I would only give the DW an edge on the AI.

[forsaken1111]

I do not believe this game is has good as the Space Empires III & IV. Those games are far almost infinitely more moddable than DW an cheaper in are virtually crash free. I would only give the DW an edge on the AI.

They're also completely different games, with DW being a real-time strategy game focused on elective automation and SE4 being a turn-based strategy game focused on intensive micromanagement. I enjoy SE4 but the micromanagement really turns me off sometimes. With DW if I don't feel like worrying about a certain aspect of the game for a while I just automate it.

[Paul]

Good game, but the new Shakturi storyline was a bit anti-climactic. Mostly due to a bug ruining the surprise for me, lol...

I started up a game with 400 star clusters galaxy, 17 AIs, and both histories turned on. Ai set to the most hostile option (forgot what its called) Early on I met two very unfriendly aliens and had a bit of a 2v1 war, which was mildly challenging, but their ships were all focused on beams and I had researched the new missiles as my first research project so my ships just kited theirs to death. This ended up with me having three capitals and a very strong financial base. I'll put the rest of my story in spoiler, since its a pretty big spoiler for anyone playing the Shakturi history out.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Further exploration found a colony ship with sleeping SHAKTURI (I assume thats a bug? seemed odd to find the supposed evil master race in a colony ship). So I make me a shakturi colony. Around this point I was researching some of the new techs and had developed the tech for elite troops, so I started making elite shakturi troops which are crazy badass. Little bit longer and I get troop cloning facility. Hey look, im cloning elite super badass Shakturi troops on every colony. These suckers are 3x the strength of my regular troops, and I'm loading all my troop transports with them. Next race to declare war on me is in trouble...

Anyway, long story short: I spent a few years expanding and researching new stuff, fully colonizing the entire central cluster and making contact with all the surrounding empires. I suddenly notice that one of the new faces in the neighborhood (introducing themselves as peaceful refugees) has the race picture of the Shakturi that I found in the colony ship. Weird, huh? Because of this (and because they're dirty filthy insectoids that need to die) I immediately declare war on them and send my fleets to attack their world (they only have the 1 so far).

Right as my fleet arrives the other new neighbors, lets call them the cybernetic face people, contact me to say Hey, those guys you're at war with are really the ancient evil Shakturi! Gee, who woulda thunk it? They want me to band together and save the galaxy, yada yada yada. I say sure, why not, my fleets already on the way.

My fleet shows up and starts giving the Shakturi the missiles that I gift wrapped for them, and my troop transports drop off all my super elite shakturi clone troops. A few seconds before their planet falls the Shakturi give me the whole "We are the Shakturi, you will be assimilated! (or destroyed, whatever)" line and whip out their world destroyer right beside their homeworld. I tell my fleet to attack it. Right about the time the planet is conquered their world destroyer explodes in a hail of missiles. Half of my fleet is dead, but theirs is pretty much gone with just a few scattered ships flying around. Cue the victory screen. I defeated the ancient evil. Huzzah?

Now, this all happened in a shorter time than it took me to type this post. The timeline was something like: See Shakturi, declare war, send fleet. Minute or so later, fleet arrives, robots tell me im fighting the shakturi, 20 seconds pass as my troops invade, Shakturi tell me they're really evil and im going to die to their world destroyer, 10 seconds later victory screen.
 

[Journier]

lol that is funny.

question-

Did the expansion ever fix the laggy feeling camera when you zoom, you can feel the annoying zoom preset levels or something while zooming in.