Distant Worlds: Universe

[ColdSteel]

You can leave on the general design automation, but to change to hydrogen: edit the design to what you want, then on the design screen click on Automatic under the upgrade column for that ship. That means the AI will leave that ship alone and you'll have to make any future upgrades yourself, but custom designs are worth the extra time to maintain.

Yes, that's what I did. I finally decided to just go ahead and bite the micromanagement bullet and turned on manual updating for most of the state and private ship designs. So I spent hours tweaking and redoing all the designs for these ships. It works great, but it means every time I get enough new tech, I have to go in and update all those designs. It takes a lot of time but boy it's sure fun being able to design your own ships because you can try out some crazy stuff.

I dumped the escort and frigate designs altogether because I'm not using those classes for escort missions. Instead I just designed the private ships to be able to defend themselves or run away fast. I'm using destroyers in the exploration ship role and that's working well. They can defend themselves pretty well against most space critters and they carry extra scanning equipment. I have another destroyer variation I use for system defense in the traditional destroyer role. I just got cruisers so I designed a normal fighting cruiser and then a variation cruiser that's a carrier cruiser, it has 3 fighter bays and not much else for weaponry. I'm not sure how effective it will be but it'll sure be fun to find out.

One of my destroyer exploration ships just found a field of abandoned ships (loaded with giant kaltors, of course) and it looks like 2 of them are capital ships. That part of the game is a lot of fun. Just got to run some constructors over there now to repair them and see what I've got. I guess this game has its hooks back into me again. This time the tiny font issue is a lot better than before so I anticipate I'll be playing it a lot. It really is so much better than the other 4x games out there. I'm hoping Codeforce makes enough on the Steam release to decide to do DW2 with a better engine and a scaling UI. If so, I wonder if they'll use Unity like most indies are these days.

[Sepiche]

Been busy the last few days, so I haven't had a lot of time to play, but here's a slightly updated map:


This was taken just before I began my invasion of yellow down there in the south. If you look close you can see I already have most of my strike fleets in position over his worlds and I was just waiting on one of my fleets and an invasion force to arrive at their capital Rindula Minor.

My ground forces are starting to get pretty powerful now. I was waiting on researching cloning technology before the war began, and once I had it I produced a large force of clones on my homeworld so there were about 30 divisions of them along with some armor and special forces in that invasion fleet headed to their capital.

Clones are incredibly powerful because when you produce one they start with the experience and stats of the strongest infantry division currently in your empire. In my case since I'd been doing a lot of combat against pirate raiders as well as a few planetary invasions I had a unit that had already gotten to elite to make my clones from, so each of my clones starts with a combat attack value of around 54,000 which is more than the basic armored units I can produce now .

Anyway, the invasion went according to plan and I've taken all of their worlds now, but I'm still 4% away from victory. I expect one more homeworld will be enough population to put me over the top, so I'm thinking of focusing on the two green-ish empires to my east. They shouldn't be too strong and taking both those homeworlds should push my empire's population above 200 billion which should be enough I think to secure victory.

[Sepiche]

Victory! Last night I knocked over one of those green empires to my east which put me at 79% out of 80% for victory. I was massing troops and ships to invade that other green empire when I noticed I had a lot of planets in my sphere of influence that could be colonized, so I commissioned about 30 colony ships to start taking them and that gave me the boost I needed to hit 80%.

I could continue on playing, but I was pretty much walking away with that game at that point (the next closest empire to me had about 5% of my military strength) so I'm planning on setting up a new game tonight with a little smaller map and stronger AI. That last game I played was on the largest map size with 1400 systems, plentiful colony worlds, and teeming independent life and it made for a slow, chaotic game toward the end, so this next one I'll make a little more manageable I think.

For this next game I'm leaning toward the Teekan. Small, smelly, 3 eyed rabbit people with a penchant for trading and tinkering. One of their major drawbacks is their military ships have -20% max size, but they make up for that with +20% size on civilian ships which, along with their other economy bonuses, should hopefully make for an economic powerhouse if I can survive the early game.

I was also curious if anyone was interested in setting up an OO team game? Something along the lines of setting up a rotation and each person playing for about a year or so and then handing it off to the next person and documenting their time in charge... kind of like we did with Dwarf Fortress a few times.

[ColdSteel]

Victory!

Gratz! I've been tied up this week and haven't been able to play any. I'm hoping I can finish my game up this weekend. I'm not sure if the new patch that came out last night will mess with my save games though. Last patch I had to restart because it would just crash on load after the patch but it was fine with a new game. It's not a big deal because I'm only about 4% from victory on my victory conditions anyway and this is just a test game in a small galaxy.

Teekan are pretty cool looking. They're right next to me in my current game and I have a nice trade agreement going with them. As for an OO succession game, I might be up for it but only if we got a good number of other folks and I wasn't the one to start it off. I'm still on my first DW: Universe game and I still have not even tried ground combat yet so there's a lot of new things I need to figure out. I wouldn't want to botch it up because I didn't know what I was doing.

[dbemont]

I've been trying the game out, and it is certainly interesting. Interface is tough, even with all the automation, though.

The money accounting has me scratching my head. I see terrible red negative numbers for my cash flow, but find that my money total keeps going up anyway. I also keep getting asked about paying for retrofitting, with the bill being almost as much cash as I have. Yet, I never seem to pay that money. Not sure if this is some kind of bug or a misunderstanding on my part. But it seems clear to me that if If I have 32k money with a -4k cashflow and then agree to a 20k retrofitting, I should be headed for financial trouble. Anyone experienced with the game care to explain what might be doing this?

[Sepiche]

The money accounting has me scratching my head. I see terrible red negative numbers for my cash flow, but find that my money total keeps going up anyway. I also keep getting asked about paying for retrofitting, with the bill being almost as much cash as I have. Yet, I never seem to pay that money. Not sure if this is some kind of bug or a misunderstanding on my part. But it seems clear to me that if If I have 32k money with a -4k cashflow and then agree to a 20k retrofitting, I should be headed for financial trouble. Anyone experienced with the game care to explain what might be doing this?

Your cashflow only includes stable sources of income... mainly your colony taxes. The number under that is the less stable income sources: resorts, foreign trade, and spaceport fees which are fees paid by the private sector to the state for building and retrofitting private ships.

So your expenses are more than you are taking in in taxes, but you're making up for that most likely with ships sales to your private sector.

[dbemont]

Thanks, Sepiche, that makes sense, even if it makes budgeting kind of dicey.

Next question -- how reliable is automation supposed to be? Here's my recent experience. I'm paying three pirate organizations for "protection" and doing great in everything. Expanding, gaining techs, and having plenty of money.

Meanwhile, I get repeated recommendations to break my agreements with the pirates. I hesitate to do that because according to the diplomacy screen, their firepower is significantly higher than mine. But finally, with my tech levels piling up, I try to break just one of these. I win one little battle with the pirates at a minor colony, but soon afterwards, they arrive with a capital ship at my home planet (I just got he ability to build a cruiser) and blow up everything.

I'm also noticing that at far off locations, I have automated ships with no common sense. A single ship attacks four ships, each of which appears, based on my limited knowledge, to be about its equal, so of course gets blown up.

Is this a fluke? I had the impression automation could handle most things, so I could start by focusing on colonization and research and leave the rest of it for now. But based on this limited sample of automation, that might be a flawed plan.

[ColdSteel]

how reliable is automation supposed to be?

General automation is different from advisors. In my experience I'd say never, EVER rely on the diplomatic advisors. It's far better for you to handle all the diplomatic stuff yourself when it comes to war making, attacking stuff or treaties. Same with the spying stuff. Everything else is pretty good.

I'm also noticing that at far off locations, I have automated ships with no common sense. A single ship attacks four ships, each of which appears, based on my limited knowledge, to be about its equal, so of course gets blown up.

It sounds like you have your ship or fleet policies set wrong. You can change those in your empire setting so that those ships will run away instead when they're outclassed.

[dbemont]

how reliable is automation supposed to be?

General automation is different from advisors. In my experience I'd say never, EVER rely on the diplomatic advisors. It's far better for you to handle all the diplomatic stuff yourself when it comes to war making, attacking stuff or treaties. Same with the spying stuff. Everything else is pretty good.

I'm also noticing that at far off locations, I have automated ships with no common sense. A single ship attacks four ships, each of which appears, based on my limited knowledge, to be about its equal, so of course gets blown up.

It sounds like you have your ship or fleet policies set wrong. You can change those in your empire setting so that those ships will run away instead when they're outclassed.

Thank you, ColdSteel, that first part should be straight forward to follow.

The second part, I'll have to look through the interface to find this setting. An online tutorial mentioned designing a ship with a particular retreat policy, but I'm nowhere near that far along. I'll have to locate the place in the empire settings for this kind of thing. (Though it still shakes my confidence a bit in the automation. I mean, under what circumstances would anyone want to have their ship attack in such a situation, yet that appears to be the default.)

[ColdSteel]

The second part, I'll have to look through the interface to find this setting. An online tutorial mentioned designing a ship with a particular retreat policy, but I'm nowhere near that far along.

You don't have to design a ship to set their engagement policies. The engagement stance of a ship depends on the mission you have given them. From the developer:

The engagement stance is set based on the type of mission you assign to a ship.

Go to the Game Options screen (O key) and click on the Empire Settings button. In the Empire Settings screen alter the Default Engagement Stances for the specified mission types to a stance that suits you. If you do NOT want automatic engagement stance setting when you assign a mission to a ship, then select the setting "No default stance".

So give that a try. Just out of curiosity, what mission did your ill-fated ships have? System Patrol? Explore? Defend something?

[dbemont]

The second part, I'll have to look through the interface to find this setting. An online tutorial mentioned designing a ship with a particular retreat policy, but I'm nowhere near that far along.

You don't have to design a ship to set their engagement policies. The engagement stance of a ship depends on the mission you have given them. From the developer:

The engagement stance is set based on the type of mission you assign to a ship.

Go to the Game Options screen (O key) and click on the Empire Settings button. In the Empire Settings screen alter the Default Engagement Stances for the specified mission types to a stance that suits you. If you do NOT want automatic engagement stance setting when you assign a mission to a ship, then select the setting "No default stance".

So give that a try. Just out of curiosity, what mission did your ill-fated ships have? System Patrol? Explore? Defend something?

Thanks. That should help.

I'm not really sure what the missions were on these ships. I had all of that automated (just doing colonization and technology for my first playthough). On the "Let's Play/Tutorial" thing I watched, he seemed to ignore all these battle notifications, but I was clicking on them because I was so skeptical of the adviser's advice to tangle with these pirates. All I really saw was my single ships deliberately sticking around to attack groups of ships. But I'm guessing they were defending some mining operations.

[ColdSteel]

But I'm guessing they were defending some mining operations.

That or system defense would be my guess too. If you need to defend something you should establish a fleet by right clicking on a ship and select 'new fleet'. It will create a fleet with a name like "Fleet 1". Then you can right click on other ships and order them to join "Fleet 1". Then give the fleet the mission to defend the mining operation. If you have 4 or 5 of those little ships grouped as a fleet defending together, they won't get killed so easily. I always keep all of my ships except for explorers in fleets. My best fleet defends my home system.

[dbemont]

Okay, found the screen. For each (patrol, escort, attack/bombard, and other), it gives the options
* engage system targets
* engage nearby targets
* engage when attacked
* no default stance

I don't see how this really helps. I would be looking for an option such as "engage nearby targets, except flee if opposition is at least 1.5x stronger than you"
On the other hand, I see something like this in the ship design. You can set it so that the ship reacts differently to stronger and weaker opponents, and you can define when to flee. but I'd much rather delay that delving into that aspect of the game until I've played enough to have some idea how different kinds of components are working out.

[ColdSteel]

On the other hand, I see something like this in the ship design. You can set it so that the ship reacts differently to stronger and weaker opponents

Okay, then maybe you do have to set it in the designer. I just started playing again after not playing for a few years so I'm certainly no expert in this area. I know that my ships do run if they run into something stronger and I certainly didn't set them to do that in the designer so I don't know what the deal is on this.

Maybe Sepiche knows the answer?

[Lorini]

This may help with controlling fleets. It explains the posture system of the game.

[dbemont]

Thanks, looks helpful. I don't understand it all by any means, but it gives me a resource to use while I am learning.

[Lorini]

This is also good playlist just to learn the game. I don't like watching youtube very much but this was well worth the time if you want to better understand the game.

[Sepiche]

Maybe Sepiche knows the answer?

Sorry, busy weekend and only getting caught up now.

Yeah, there are some controls on the design screen that might be useful. You can tell your ship how to fight versus stronger or weaker ships, or give it orders to just flee when attacked, that kind of thing, but not sure how much that would have helped in the situation described.

As a general rule the automation AI is competent, but it's definitely not as good as a human. I tend to start out games controlling quite a bit and slowly hand things off to the AI as more and more gets on my plate, but the more you can control yourself the better off you are once you get the game.

I do tend to leave all my escorts and frigates on automation and they do an okay job of protecting planets and ships without me having to do much, but you will have to accept some of them will do stupid stuff and die. Also don't be afraid to intervene and give a ship orders to escape and then put it back on auto.

The trick is getting enough light ships out there that anytime an enemy jumps into one of your systems they get swarmed by all the local ships. If I was really spending the time though I would probably group up all my frigates and escorts into system defense fleets and station one fleet in each system with orders to protect it and possibly the surrounding systems. It takes a little more micro to set that up, but it tends to work well against pirates until they can mass up larger fleets.

[dbemont]

Thanks.

An interface question. I keep unchecking automation of tax rates in settings and lowering the rates as much as possible early on to increase population growth. But every time I come back to the game after a break, I find that the automation has been turned back on.

What's up with that? How do you get your automation (or no-automation) settings to stick?

[Sepiche]

Thanks.

An interface question. I keep unchecking automation of tax rates in settings and lowering the rates as much as possible early on to increase population growth. But every time I come back to the game after a break, I find that the automation has been turned back on.

What's up with that? How do you get your automation (or no-automation) settings to stick?

Hmm not sure about that one. If you're editing it on the policy screen make sure you are applying the change before closing the screen, and be aware that whenever they patch the game they also blow away preference settings which might also be causing that.

FWIW they recently changed the mechanics so a lot tax rate has less of an impact on growth and more of an impact on migration, so it's a little less vital to maintain low tax rates. To be honest I usually just automate tax rates, although I do tweak the policy setting for them occasionally.

[Sepiche]

New beta patch coming out today:

CRASH FIXES
- fixed rare crash when determining object visibility for an empire

BUG FIXES
- fixed bug where loading a previously saved game was sometimes auto-switching to default theme, even when default theme was already loaded
- building pirate bases, fortresses and Criminal Network using the Facility dropdown list in the Colonies screen now properly assigns facility ownership to player pirate faction
- now ensure that cost for building pirate Criminal Network is always properly deducted
- now ensure that custom ship names (shipNames.txt) are used for new pirate ships built using the Build Order screen
- fixed bug where ship design images were being rotated when received a popup message about new ship type research breakthrough (e.g. Carriers)
- fixed bug where Robotic Troops (BattleBots from Robotic Troop Foundry) were not getting maintenance reduction bonuses when recruited from action button under Selection Panel

RESEARCH AND SHIP DESIGN
- AI ship designer now always adds sufficient reactors to ship designs (possibly more than one) to enable hyperdrive to operate at full speed
- AI ship designer now more willing to shrink new designs to fit within current construction size limits, especially when first obtain hyperdrive technology
- altered size of starting Colonization Module component (now 300 instead of 360, updated components.txt)
- NEW MODDING FEATURE: allow restricting any research project to specific races using the new ALLOWED RACES line in the research.txt file (updated header comments of research.txt explains)
- improved AI research pathing to better emphasize tech focuses from empire policy (ResearchDesignTechFocus1-6), while still researching other important techs
- increased research output for lab components by approximately 50% (components.txt and research.txt)

GAME BALANCE
- Shakturi now have faster construction and lower ship maintenance (updated Shakturi.txt race file)
- Shakturi ship design templates now use more weapons and other components (military ships, medium & large spaceports, defensive bases)
- Shakturi empire policy now builds more large military ships and less small military ships
- reputation gain from attacking pirates is now reduced by 50%
- Robotic Troops are now cheaper to maintain (25% of normal instead of 33%), and now twice as fast to recruit
- empires are now more willing to use excess cash on hand as factor when deciding whether to build new ships (e.g. low or negative cashflow, but large cash reserves on hand), especially when at war
- now much harder to perform intelligence missions against Ancient Guardians (steal maps, tech, etc)

OTHER
- no longer scrap and rebuild fighters after loading a saved game
- all sound effects (button clicks, etc) are now disabled when effect volume is set to zero in options screen
- savegame and settings folder location is now standardized to "My Documents\My Games\Distant Worlds Universe" (this remains the same across version updates)
- now send a message to an empire when one of their colonies is lost to a pirate faction that builds a Criminal Network there
- immediately update empire list in Diplomacy screen when trade Empire contact (can now immediately see new empire in list)

[dbemont]

Starting to get very discouraged with this game.

It's a two edged problem. First, I'm finding partial automation a nightmare. By year 2140, the number of ships out there is vastly more than I could ever enjoy micromanaging. So I let the AI do most of the forming fleets, and let those go on auto. I am trying to limit myself to a couple fleets that I set to guard the truly crucial areas in my empire.

However, this is wildly frustrating. The non-automated fleets seem to have a mind of their own. Look away and they take off to crush meaningless annoyances leaving the high priorities are exposed. Not sure, but I think the problem is not fleet settings but rather what happens due to refitting. Tech advances come pretty often, and you get two choices: retrofit or no. I think by choosing yes, I allow the non-automated fleets go off, get retrofitted, and then come up with their own ideas what would be fun to do. (Choosing no is a non-starter. Someone might think it's fun to go through dozens and dozens of ships and choose to send them for retrofitting every little bit, but count me out. I wish there were an option to retrofit all automated ships only.)

Meanwhile, the automated fleets and individual ships act irrationally. There's no sense of "come back later with reinforcements so we have a chance." The suicide attacks are painful to watch, and an incredible waste of money and resources.

But that's just one half of the problem. The other half is that I seem to be winning easily anyway. Maybe it's just a fluke, but I am way, way ahead. Of course, I may be misunderstanding, maybe leads in this game are very tentative, but I have a million cash, everyone gives me gifts, and replacing wasted ships in not a big deal... Making me suspect that, as poorly as my semi-automated ships are doing their jobs, there's no need to do any better than that to bear the AI.

Any encouraging words out there? Am I misunderstanding things here?

[Lorini]

Did you try doing what was discussed in this link?

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2973167

Set the game to Classic Empire, many strong pirates and you will find the game plenty challenging, trust me.

[dbemont]

Did you try doing what was discussed in this link?

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2973167

Set the game to Classic Empire, many strong pirates and you will find the game plenty challenging, trust me.

I have tried to do what is in that link, with varied success. As I said above, I get a sense that something occasionally frees these fleets from my the fleet posturing settings. My theory is that it is the clicking yes for retrofitting, but I am not sure.

I'm playing with normal pirates, and maybe I just am having a very lucky first full game. Don't know.

[hepcat]

Just a heads up. Version 2.0 of the amazing Star Trek mod for DW:U was released yesterday. The amount of work that has gone into this mod is commendable. If you play DW:U you owe it to yourself to grab this one.

[baelthazar]

Just a heads up. Version 2.0 of the amazing Star Trek mod for DW:U was released yesterday. The amount of work that has gone in this mod is commendable. If you play DW:U you owe it to yourself to grab this one.

Weighing in at 660MB, you can tell this is going to be something special!

Thanks Hep, I was thinking about starting a DW:U game today and this gives me more reason!

[hepcat]

I played Romulans and spent my time sabotaging and inciting revolutions like a good Romulan would.

[GreenGoo]

Wow, does that picture ever remind me of Stars! especially after exporting the data and importing it into a map generator. Any relation between this game and Stars!?

[Lorini]

Nope. I hate Star Trek so I will continue to play vanilla with the icon mod as I always have .

[hepcat]

And I'll continue enjoying my life as a Romulan ruler who likes more than one flavor.

[Defiant]

FYI: It's on sale today for $30 on Steam.

[Lorini]

Well worth the money if you want a complete space strategy game. This is the cheapest it's ever been.

[Cortilian]

Yup gotta say, awesome game.

[Zenn7]

K, you've convinced me to part with $30. Last non-blizzard game I paid that much or more for was probably Elemental - that Stardock fiasco that buying early did get me several free xpac/new versions.

I bought Diablo 3 and the xpac and used to buy the WOW xpacs on release (didn't buy the latest one). Steam/sales haves spoiled me. Especially as I have a significant backlog (I would say large, but in these parts, I am probably just barely out of miniscule).

Seriously - game's been on my wishlist since they put it on Steam. Not expecting to see it for cheaper than $30 any time soon, so gave in for that (your "convincing" was just the first notice I'd seen that it was that cheap).

[Pyperkub]

Yeah, I've had it high on the wish list too. Even buried in gal civ 3 I'll have to give it a shot.

[Defiant]

Just a heads up. Version 2.0 of the amazing Star Trek mod for DW:U was released yesterday. The amount of work that has gone into this mod is commendable. If you play DW:U you owe it to yourself to grab this one.

While it looks good, I don't understand the initial set up. The Federation starts with two planets? Seems like it's more like Enterprise than Next Generation. OTOH, the Klingons start with six, which give them a big advantage.

[hepcat]

Hmmm...not sure why they gave the Feds only two planets to start. I've played Romulan and Cardassian only so far, so wasn't aware of it. I'm guessing it's a balance issue as perhaps the Feds get something else that makes those six starting planets for the Klingons less powerful in the long game?

edit: Saw this on the mod's forum from the creator:

We have created the mod so that it's play is balanced across the 5 different styles of DW play. Most of the super and major powers align to the regular DW taxation logic. However, the Borg, Naussicans and select minor races have been tweaked accordingly so they can compete (and if the right things occur) and even win via their victory conditions.

Remember that you can also tweak the race files to your personal preference, but be aware that what you modify from the original setting may make that race's play balance unevenly stronger or weaker than intended by the mod. Enjoy and have fun conquering the Star Trek Universe...if you can!

[jztemple2]

This just went on the Steam Flash Sale at 50% off for the next 24 hours.

[jztemple2]

Broke down and bought it after watching a half-dozen of the videos by Das24680. Even at 50% off it was still thirty bucks, but I think I might enjoy it.

[Lorini]

Thread necro!

On sale at GOG for $14.99

Still an excellent if not ugly game.